first year completed....two to go

sorry for lack of response... been super busy this year, finished wedding and all its planning, first year of graduate school and now resting for another school year starting.... NEXT WEEK!

Will be starting this back up again along with a new blog.... with my daily look living cheap yet sustainable as possible!

coming soon!

The states Ive visited

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Environmental Justice

Smelser, N. J., and P. B. Baltes. "Scale in Geography." International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001, 13501-3504.

Williams, Robert W. "The Contested Terrain of Environmental Justice Research: Community as Unit of Analysis." The Social Science Journal 36, no. 2` (1999): 313-28.

 Environmental justice research sparked a comparison to a project of windy ridge neighborhood. The readings had many parallel stories to that area, My understanding is if these lands are being zoned to house the poor as they are not important, where are the planners, and what have they been doing. My understanding was very confused by the reading but I believe in Environmental Justice as seeing from urban perspective living in Chicago for four years, Neighborhoods in south side being affected by zoning where factories were changing zoning displacing the poor to west side. However census data was affected by that as more people were being displaced, that the zip codes were used to get a broader perspective. I hate the word “gentrification” because in reality it moves the poor out without helping them. The term discrimination will pop into the problem, causing issues. Terminology is an issue at play here, for example I do not understand the purpose of “white, black,” is the census not politically correct or discrimination is at play?

Spatial Demography

De Castro, Marcia Caldas. "Spatial Demography: An Opportunity to Improve Policy Making at Diverse Decision Levels." Springer Science+Business Medi 2007 (September 6, 2007): 477-503.

Voss, Paul R. "Demography as a Spatial Social Science." Springer Science+Business Media 2007 (September 25, 2007): 457-71.

This readings was merely suggestion of how history plays a huge role on spatial demography and the importance of this. I believe it has a great role as we need to understand how our population lives and with birth rates and mortality rates. However my concern lies with how it will be used. Id rather it use for the good, but at same time it can have negative results. It was good to see a table but I wish there were examples of how each one is being used. Being a visual person, and potential planner, will I use all these tools or are they used for research only?

I like to think that with Geography major, I am growing into this field I have been able to start the “ability to think spatially” as Castro was saying, I want to see the meaning of recent events such as recession that affected our economy. How does the role of recession help migration, especially in the “new south,” as many northerners moving here in droves since 2000 census. Even the latest low levels of crime, is it because of policing or is it because people are out actively looking for jobs? Just some thoughts...

How would policy making play in a role, for instance social security, many politicians don’t dare to touch the topic but we know the system needs to be taken care of?

How radical are we becoming taking from traditional models of quantitative demography?

What is a plan?

According to Webster dictionary, a plan is a detailed proposal that provides structure and diagram of something to be arraigned. with urban planning, we are expected to plan and provide an sequence of how we will get there. There is a understanding that to accomplish something, there are steps to be made. This is the case in MMC neighborhood that is now already in “train passed” stage where once you are on, there is no going back.

There is a reason why they want that because what if someone new came into the meetings, the vibe and the existing issues may be lost. The concern is there to keep forward movement going in hopes a resolution is being made. 

The readings this week discussed several examples of plans that have been case studies and examples of what happened in centuries past. The first one I studied quite a bit growing up in Chicago suburbs. Chicago itself is a large history textbook and many field trips to the city, I can say I understand the history very well or recall of something that happened with planning, the chicago plan 1909 also known as the beautification plan. While there are few evident of the plan but it helped the shape the city’s future. The goal was to bring people back to the city and live there while working, i.e. beauty in the city life. the failure was not of the plan but of the tax base at the time was not sufficient to build grand ideas from the plan.

The readings also mentioned “good planning must be distinguishable from bad” by listing several important things agenda, policy and visions. The vision part I believe should be by action of the people, which are the residents that should help make a vision. If there is no vision participation ie Villa heights/belmont neighborhood. The city made a plan and the residents had no say to it and it ended up being so bad that the city had to pay outside planning company to take over. The city of Charlotte made a mistake of not involving the residence, thus I wonder if the relationship between the residents and city since then have healed? There was no neighborhood organization, as we had to start from scratch. We had to help make a vision while finding future agenda for the next semester

Bad design plan would be not taking all three main points that is in triangle here and utilizing them to create a good plan. Last semester was my first semester learning how planning worked. One of the neighborhoods, Farm Pond needed an agenda as

undergrad students. Truth be told I was terrified and still terrified that the undergrads would/will fail this. Our group was very proficient on what we did and became very close in the end. We did what we could do to help Judith in the end, making sure there were stuff for her to give out and show them how amazing the neighborhood is. The goal as I felt was a good start and accomplished in the beginning by getting their vision and agenda. As for Policy, I think we introduced in near the end but never got to finish the conversation which I hope is continued in the next neighborhood meetings. I am very excited to see Farm Pond grow and hopefully the plan we executed will become the good plan with many more pages being added.

The plan I am very interested in and I hope to do more is hybrid plans as they combine land use, verbal and classification into one plan. I wonder what other peers would use if they had to pick? Is this by choice or is this told to us as a planner? Just out of curiosity.

Rationality and Power

Let me first start off saying, this weeks reading over 100 pages long, I debated how to start my memo as it was hard read, trying to follow the people and understand why so much conflict.  Flyvbjerg attempted to show a case of difficulty of striking a balance in between both rationality and power; he also suggested at the end of the book not to use this model as conflict of interest gets in the way but to use it as a guide of not to attempt.

I have to hold my feelings back for this book as I feel the situation is not always the case for every cities, maybe for some but I do feel this is a good guide for future administrators. Perhaps can reduce the “to much powers” can simmer other problem planning scenarios. I honestly as a potential planner worry about Public Policy majors as I wonder what they are getting out of the policy making and I feel this should be bible for them to understand how power can do more harm than good.  I know I can be stubborn but I do think of the outcome and how that can be reflected in future. I am curious of Public administrator major’s role as a policy maker would flexibility be something that they will consider?

So is it, 'Rationality over Power, or Power over Rationality?  To be Rational is to be logical but if we are not being logical it can potentially harm any relationship we have left. For instance, My frustration of reading was for the residents being in the loser situation here by not them participate and the city taking control of this project. The power over rationality brutalize every ethic or beliefs of every planner hold. Our morals shift like our last week discussion of leaving position to conflict of interest and how that can determine if our job is neutral or not.

Using Aalborg scenario displays a detail how authority and power relationships influence or fractures the connection of individuals who are part of organization.  It almost becomes a "push pull relationship" as power has a large role than of using rationality as a tool. This results in relationship being fractured and changed which this should not be a good thing when it comes to planning as it can hold up projects. Our jobs are to take each others opinions and see if they benefit for the good, now if they don’t we can take them away or use them for another situation, project or the future.

This can be a situation for Cherry as land use is a situation here, you have residents that have been there for decades and feel the 1995 plan was not good.  You also have the city who feels land use is not as important topic compared to the whole. We have to show how power creates its own reality that influences logic to rationalize its decisions. Then use of both political and expert debates as needed to CCM neighborhood get a better outcome to Aalborg situation.

Ethics of planning

The ethic dilemma in Planning Theory reading asked of what we would do if  high power planning director ask of an ethic situation which can bring dividing lines between city and government.  In my personal opinion, I would resign as it is conflict of interest, since I “happened to live three blocks away.”  Regardless of economic situation in wall street, I would walk away knowing that I didn't let down my values. It is almost if they expect you to sell your soul.

There is an personal story that compares to the main story here. My father-in-law lives in a small town of 3000 resides which is 30 minutes outside of Peoria, IL and recently a gas company, Casey came in town asking for a permit of built across from the existing town gas station. Casey specializes in small town retail/gas station as they do around the country. There were residents for and against the zoning rights. One side believed that with the existing station, the owner is at old age and no one would continue funding the station in case his health  declined. This would also help bring revenue to the town as it is a bigger company. Other opposed as it was a threat to the existing town. They eventually passed the zoning and the town has not had any conflict of interest as it would be in the story. The residents were not planners but ordinary citizens on zoning board that took control of situation. 

This scenario is also based on values which we talked about in class last week and how we all have sets of values as a person and a planner. My question brings is how can we be free of influence in planning.  Especially in the United States, since this country is still in a segregated mentality. We typically view poor as the African American population that are on section 8 and living in rough parts of town. Whenever  studies come out in those terminology, it become biased that they planned their lives to be that way.  Planning would not justify it as the area eventually becomes gentrified, moving the poor out and the planning backfires; in reality, the residents need to make change for themselves without government’s assistance.

This leads to Micro and Macro economics of planning that in beginning, planning was typically micro in theory and now it has shift to the macroeconomics in larger scale. While micro is good for smaller government such as smaller countries, that was explained in Bollen’s intergroup conflict and fractured planning. It focuses on the small scale where in United States, we have over 50 states with different planning and zoning regulations. The macro can come in and replace “me” theory with “we” theory to bring in closer relationships. 

There were several mentions of color blind planning,  if I were to plan without color in mind, I can see people objecting to the cluster as there are people out there believe in individuality. I think we could co exist in planning in a way that individualism is also important. The meeting on Tuesday mentioned that the January Vision meeting that everyone wants to group together but yet there were some opposition that Cherry wanted their own plan. I can see why they would want their own plan. However, to save time and put them together is also idealistic as they can form a closer bond with each other. 

Values were also put on table frequently as the planners debated the terminology and “uptown”  while sharing their thoughts. Each one of them felt different over the word center city, yet there was really no conclusion over the word. I walked away feeling how do I define “Uptown, center city” as an outsider looking in, wanting to share my feelings with them. I knew better but there were times I am sure the other classmates wanted to share their inputs.

I believe planning cannot be neutral however we can help them steer to the path of resolution instead of attacking each other. Planning is therapeutic if you let the planner help you resolve the conflict between parties.

Critique and Summery Report of history Of US Sports

Our American society was partly influenced by the role of sports. The popularity of the entertainment was a channel to provide principles such as justice, fair play, and teamwork that became our social glue that brings the country together. To understand how sports affected America, you have to understand it correspondence to the social history as both affected each other.

The typical American sports of baseball, basketball and football originally came from other European countries bringing settlers with their traditions and old life across the ocean in the seventeenth to nineteenth century. This was a form of entertainment that help revolutionize the game that continued through industrialization had hit in Twentieth century, providing different ways of playing the game. This kept residents occupied as the country was changing in ways that lost of entertainment became evident through time.

With introduction of newer technology and displacing farmers caused migrating towards the cities; leaving for better jobs, money and a promise for a better life.  Cities were growing with many immigrants were coming to find homes and places to work. People living on top of each other causing restlessness; lack of work-life balance that never fully brought in play until after the industrial revolution.  This resulted many exhausting themselves out by working upwards of 60 or more hours a week harming many businesses as turn overs and high absences were being reported.

Business owners and cities officials debated on how to keep their production levels high and in turn give their employees and residents a life outside work. The realization of entertainment was high on the list of needs that could help the future of the country. This turn became that parks started emerging for the city residents giving them opportunity to play and resulting a playground movement. It was a commodity for the cities and urbanization; eventually led to the growth of playing sports that later became professionalized. 

Urban planners were designating places such as public, semi public and private faculties around the cities to accommodate the urban population as this was possible to do when large land was available and cheap to build. It bought new sense of belonging to its social class and economic statuses that affected how you lived. For instance, public facilities were typically free and used by the lower class whereas the semi public and private facilities required admission fees to join. These places were harder to get into unless you had a higher social rank and money to pay for these amenities. This led to social change of feeling like a community.

Sports soon became an agent of urban culture. These games were refashioned and elaborated in the course that evolved over time, from unorganized to become professional game with ethic rules that became paralleled to worker’s lives. Baseball became a success as the game was revolutionized by the mass population attendance.  It started from local players to professional and better players around. The owners of the teams recognized the desire for this and started charging admissions.

The realization of having cities were evident as mass of people would help the growth of sports. This also helped American football and basketball’s growth as many places started small but the realization of smaller cities didn't help which caused many teams stop playing or moving to larger cites.  The smaller market issues are related to its market size, they need the viewers and the funding to support a team. It became increasingly important of having a fan base as it is critical to bring more attendance to games as well as more revenues for the gates. If there were fewer fans, money would be lost in that case. 

Urban areas are so important to the essentials of the game as a mass of people are needed to support the team; if teams are being underfunded, it affects their ability to perform thus resulting a move to a larger city or location. This happened several times between 1950s to today where teams are being forced to leave in a wake that cities become financial destitute. The economic scale for them goes down and having to market itself cost money. This is a case that is currently happening in Minnesota Vikings that they are shopping elsewhere since the revenue is not coming in for the team.  The duel perspective is important in this case as Minnesota’s environmental element is being changed by the teams uncertain future; the team is being affected by city’s economic status. We don't exactly know how the role will play for the future but to try to recruit Favre could help only slightly but in long term it may do more harm than good.  

The sports games and role of attachment is probably become more flexible as the country is changing where residents no longer stay in one place but migrate around. In my case, originally from Illinois following Greenbay Packers and now currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina, I find myself [among many young Generation of X and Y] that you can move wherever you want but also follow a sport from afar not near where you used to live. Football among other sports have been successful pulling fans from all over; for instance Charlotte never had a football team until 2000 and many of the residents are for Dallas Cowboys among other teams, resulting lower fan base here in Charlotte for the Panthers. 

I fully believe the history of the game is relevant to how we understand the sport. We have to understand the past to understand where the future is going. It is also important to know social economic with baseball and other professional sports. The discussion of history in classroom and debates has been an asset to our understand of the background.  Although the readings have been repeats in several formats, it feels as if they are stating the same themes but in different wording. I think we could find fewer reads but in extended formation could provide better understanding of the history.

 The book, “Home Team” is an introduction to other readings and has better examples in my opinion although the other readings implement to the main source. In classroom slide shows have been great to pinpoint the major themes from all the readings. My favorite discussion has been migration of teams and how they have influenced economically. I think we should discuss more of how the migration affected the cities after the move; how did they market themselves after their loss of sport team? Did they find another? It was in the readings but I think a discussions should be more in depth about the scenarios. In over all, it has been by far the interesting class in my caseload and most looked-forward class for each week.

society planning

This week reading had brought some interesting view of how public interest and society portrays planning. Planning gets a bad reputation because of the history of dirty money being handled and pet projects that often happened in the policy planning sector, that often blame planners. What fails for me is, why the public policy sector does not want to admit that they really do need planners.

Because without them, often public meetings do not go smooth as there are no guideline or smooth transition that the public wants to see instead of thousands of tax dollars being swallowed without any proof done. Charlotte is an example of this when it came to low income housing in Noda neighborhood, Johnston Mill was geared to the artist population. Unfortunately the Mill had to close down and all the money funneled into the project is gone and now the city is trying to sell for 600,000 dollars to redeem some of the money back. It is almost pointless to even gather focus into it because it is all Public Policy trying to fix their mistakes.

If we could compare planning into a game, lets say Monopoly? We understand it is a property tax game, yet if we can change it to planning game. The community chest would change into how the public views the planning object by providing examples of real life planning scenarios. The ups and downs of public policy taking over the board, losing money as they forget about zoning. The private sector will lose as the politics gets in the way; changes the zoning like eminent domain where the government can come in and take your property at a lowest market price.  The planners of the game would help things flow better and less money from public and private sectors would lose instead of tug of war. Planners do have a role, which is mediating and being a social worker in a way to bring solutions into the problem as well listening to interested parties. This displays fully on page 55 talking about Vilfredo Pareto critics on money examples.

Another point that was plastered in the reading was, how are planners now being viewed as a progressive? Is there another word that better describe them as I feel the term progressive is dirty almost like activist that the public tends to scoff and laugh at those kind of folks? I remember when I was in high school, I protested the Iraq war that almost got me suspended from school because I walked out of the classroom.  My reputation was changed from there as I became the person who didn't follow the trend of the river. The point is that why does planners have to be revolutionist? Why cant the public policy and government do that? We, especially as a country have fought in wars with other countries on revolution. My concern is when did the shift happen that the government slowed down and started following private sector in leading the country. 

I always fear that public policy as it seems to be a scheming thing where the city or government officials have their own pet projects that really can destroy planners and their position. Even in the Theory book (page 41) a professional suicide would be the case for planners if they were to have their own agenda.  

What Aaron Wildavsky fails to mention is to parallel planning with policy. The policy makers may make a law or a zoning regulation but they need someone to help plan the ruling or give them guidance otherwise it will not be as effective. A good example of this would be North Carolina Global transpark in Kinston, NC. The county has a zoning control of 5 mile radius around the airport to drive economic development. However without proper zoning and advisement from planners, the usage of the area planning can foil and the money spent would be wasted.

It all relates to each other and to argue that one does not need another will throw off the ecological system of planning.   The public would never have their voice heard, causing resentment with the public sector. The purpose is to bring all parties to the table instead of one lecture on how things will be done. The dark side of not having planners, as critics want can potentially harm the future globally, so respectively instead of being progressive, lets become innovative.

Come find out....

Planning Theory: Public vs. Private politics

This week’s reading focused on the politics of private and public sector of planning. The goal was to understand how rationality is applied to planning or the opposite of how planning theory should be. My interpretation of the reading was: Politics of the planning system really affects how planners do their jobs. Especially in last 100 years, planning has changed in ways of thinking about the future by employing the today’s skills. 

The only thing complicates me is the argument of public and private sector. I had a recent discussion with a classmate from last semester as we worked together on our project, I had revealed my desire to work in public sector and perhaps nonprofit organization and her response was, “Rethink that in two years because you will see the struggles of government getting involved and nothing ever gets done.” I asked her “but isn't that the challenge?”  The response was "how much of a challenge do you want when it is already a challenging career.”

It did made me think for some time but in my spirit of inquiry is if we are doing this for a profession, we are supposed to take many of the negatives with the positives in the field. On page 15 and 16 of “Planning Theory,” they mentioned of planners types and how they function. I would like to think myself as a hybrid as I want to understand the politics along the public sector but also be behind the desk drafting ideas to bring both sectors to work together. I understand that itself is a challenging idea but isn't the goal of being rational to express a relationship between both sectors. 

In my previous classes, there were discussions of how planning needs to have others participation in the process, within the reading of “Terrain of Planning Theory,” and other previous readings. The goal is to have public involvement that can help fulfill better outcomes by bringing knowledge to the public needs and preferences. In good circumstances, the collaboration can become more meaningful and more creative response will help with the continuous problems.  The intention of it is bring a closure community and in result of it, planners have to stray from the traditional planning but become more creative in pushing further in politics as well bringing more ideas to the table.

Chapter two’s mention of Theory gap is something really perplexing as they mentioned planning is not like what we will learn in school system. Take the Law school for an example and change it to planning.  The theory we will discuss in the classroom but how often will we apply it and is it really a dread topic between the profession?

How much knowledge will we really get in the classroom, as in for me, I have some background in Non profit organization and other fields but at this point I am not working as I am focusing my studies. I wonder how much will I contribute to the classroom. In the mean time, searching for internship and part time employment to ensure my thoughts will be meaningful in classroom, I may feel humble. I hope the knowledge of others will push some thought provoking ideas into the classroom

New Year

In 2010, I wanted to do something different for 2011 as this was going to be a new year, a new start and a refresh for myself. Last year, while bumpy was an educational experience for me. I have learned a lot about myself and the people surrounding me, close by or far. This had lead me to critically evaluate my life, progressive career, and how I see the world. The thought process I have decided was:

Since now I am in graduate school, I want to improve my English proficiency as I never  challenged myself to fully understand the root of the language. This sounds odd but my GRE scores were on the low side; that was the first realization of how I never got the feedback while growing up, often letting others edit my papers and write for me.

The disclaimer for this blog is to help myself write better and to critically evaluate as I have mentioned before, I would like feedback and input on how i word things, please be constructive if I make a mistake, give me examples so I can use this as a learning experiencee. 

The other goal is to see how Urban/Community planning fits in my life, I will educate myself by seeing community planning as well global planning can be an impact. I have a huge fascination on Disability rights and how it applies to planning. I will not be an advocate but a person with insight in community planning regards to the disabled population. I do not see myself as disabled but a person with one limitation, my hearing. I have a severe profound loss, that is continuous as I am getting older. People will find talking to me as that I only have an accent but my  speech is good with some mishaps such as stuttering and mispronunciation. 

This will be another push for myself to pronounce things better and to sound more on professional level. 

I also have another resolution but it is for personal, which is to walk and exercise with my dog everyday. I want to utilize my bike as a main form of transportation as the weather starts clearing. This will help push my urban ideals of using my own feet than automobile transportation.  I fully want to push on this while I am going to school. 

More thoughts to come, especially with first week of school evaluation of my classes this semester.