It’s hard to believe that only eight weeks ago, we started the CityLab course. Looking back over the last eight weeks, I find that the way I look at cities has fundamentally changed. This shift has been especially illuminated through my various travels this past eight weeks. I've been to five different cities in China, two cities in Malaysia, cities in Canada, Maine, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. All these places presented different urban challenges ranging from pollution and smog to hunger and food access and anywhere in between. I sat and looked out the window in a number of these cities and thought about how we, as a society, got “here”, with a particular focus on the significant inequality that exists in our world. Even in the US, there is significant over consumption while others go hungry. And I don't think that most people choose to over consume necessarily or that they do to spite those who don't have access to the resources but rather I think that as a society, we have been almost trained to be consumers of goods and resources and when unchecked, we return to our biological past where we want to gather and consume as much as possible because that ensures our survival. However, as we become an increasingly global population, how we manage these resources, especially within cities, will be essential in writing the story of the 21st century. The last module on shared prosperity was the perfect finish. Shared prosperity is the driver for Gateway. It incorporates the business and capitalism system discussed in Module 2, progresses Healthy Habitats from Module 3, addresses many of the social determinants of health from Module 4, increases and expands cohesive communities from Module 5 and serves to better engage citizens from Module 6. To move forwards, Gateway needs to synthesize everything we learned to create shared prosperity that provides benefits for both residents and investors. Broad based ownership in the community, both in an actual business sense but also in a community sense in creating an overarching vision of the community will be key. No ESOPs, credit unions, Co-Ops, socially facing companies, nonprofits, and muni or state-owned companies exist in Gateway but they could provide huge benefits. These business models serve to benefit the community and the corporation. To the community, the these businesses provides economic stability, career education, access to healthy food, community and social interactions, better health outcomes, and more. To the business, they will realize financial gains and generate business from an underserved population and would almost become a monopoly within the greater Gateway resource desert. If successful, there can be a shift in the mindset of other businesses within Gateway from outward focused profit generators that only externalize costs onto Gateway and instead, create wealth for both the community and the corporation. A few pilot businesses could provide the link in convincing businesses that there is a reason and value to invest in Gateway.
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The concept of shared prosperity has never been more important, as cities continue to see a growing disparity between the rich and the poor. But these challenges are not unsolvable. Through community engagement, the government can implement programs like sustained public transportation, which aim to improve the lives of many and not just the lives of a few. Community development can also occur outside of the typical government programs and policies. Communities can utilize work cooperatives, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), social enterprises, municipal ownership, emerging hybrid companies, and employee stock ownership plan companies (ESOPs) to improve local neighborhoods. These new models for development can help to create jobs, help small businesses and residents gain access to financing, and lower the cost of utilities.
Many of the ideas that were discussed in this Module’s reading were very applicable to my experiences in Gateway. Basu’s discussion about the danger of income inequality can be felt in and around Gateway and also the neighboring Fort Lincoln. The differences in socioeconomic factors can divide neighborhoods and increase tension among citizens. As inequality rises, crime increases forcing some citizens to leave the area, removing key resources. Moreno further links this idea of inequality to skills or opportunity gaps that develop and I fear that opportunities are being missed in Gateway. Without the community resources or relevant action, residents must leave the community to participate in meaningful experiences that ready and prepare them for opportunities. I believe that this search for experience would be much more participated in, if the experiences were in the community rather than removed. The Ross Center article couldn’t be more pertinent to Gateway. Not only is the community disconnected from effective public transportation, it also is disconnected from meaningful economic development because of this. The influx of people into this community just doesn’t happen because it’s a difficult neighborhood to get to without a car. Transportation then is a means for economic development and paramount to growth and survival. The development of rail for example, enables livability, shopping, and sustainability. Advocacy for the above is needed. The larger community needs to be a voice. This voice is absent in Gateway. Finally, the 20 Cities article and DCF article stress the importance of taking broad based ownership in the community, both in the actual businesses but also in the overarching vision of the community. ESOPs, connected and interested companies, credit unions, Co-Ops, socially facing companies, nonprofits, and muni or state-owned companies do not exist in Gateway. Encouraging the growth of these partnerships not only stirs economic development but also educated and progresses the community towards a brighter future. All of these programs serve to engage the community and include them more. As with anything else, more involvement typically means more interest or at least some “skin in the game”. Continuing to expand and broaden this involvement will be key for Gateway and beyond. This week, the team read about the idea of engagement and both the importance of it in a community, and the disconnect many citizens feel with their ability, or the value, of their engagement. While there is a notable amount of voting and volunteering, the idea of engagement goes beyond this and needs to include a longer term, broader sense of community. Democracy Collaborative works toward this idea by creating opportunities for community and economic development through shared ownership. The Land Trust Alliance also expands on this idea of shared ownership by creating a land trust to help protect collections of privately owned land from urbanization. The critical theme throughout the resources has been the many layers required to have real community engagement and the importance of ownership (as a sense, or literal) in engaging citizens in their community. This helps fulfill the need to make engagement a deeper and more ingrained aspect of being part of a community.
This week’s theme of Engaged citizens, centered around forming genuine and meaningful connections to the community and having “skin in the game” and caring about the happenings across the community. I think something that I found interesting this week was that, Gateway, in general, is disengaged. Rather than stopping there however, a deeper dive begins to shed additional light onto why the community isn’t very engaged. Every community around Gateway – Ivy City, Langdon, Fort Lincoln, etc. are all expanding rapidly and as such have active communities with active participants who are engaged in the community, directing it to a new direction. In Gateway, any new direction isn’t exactly desired. The citizens of Gateway are happy with their community enough to the point to resist outside development because nearby communities that are active, have pushed original citizens out of the community. Reflecting on this module, a simple question became obvious. How do communities balance the expanding activism that happens typically when new citizens come into the community with managing the expansion and development of the community and ensure older citizens don’t get pushed aside? For Gateway, it makes sense that they don’t want to be an active “up-and-coming” neighborhood because it could threaten their existence within the neighborhood. However, it is obvious, given the last 5 modules, that Gateway needs resources, food access, healthy access, and more to fully achieve human flourishing. The problem is, once a community flourishes, it doesn’t stay a secret for long. Newcomers desire to move into the community increases demand, rent or buy new places, and therefore, shorts supply. Basic economics tells us that this property becomes more valuable and those who cannot afford this anymore have a choice to make – either deal with the increased cost or move out. Typically, the later is chosen, ripping communities apart and relocating them. Sure, the community that emerges is a more engaged community but at what cost? Cohesive, resilient communities are multifaceted in nature and are more than just a simple sum of their parts. Resilient communities are more than just a collection of resilient individuals - rather a collection of resources, knowledge base, experiences, cultures and traditions, and social structures. When combined, these allow communities to minimize the impact of external shocks to the community. Communities are then able to withstand stress without degrading achieved through redundancy, interchangeable resources that can be suitable for multiple uses. In addition, the diversity of neighborhoods allows cohesive communities to rapidly achieve goals and to mobilize resources when conditions threaten the community. Divisions, either physically or socially can be devastating to the flow of resources required to achieve cohesive communities. Oftentimes, a community may need help from outside communities or government institutions that further diversify and supplement the resources of a community to mitigate external shocks. When developed, these cohesive communities can thrive and are also less likely to have common neighborhood problems such as crime and waste. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a lack of conflict but rather means that the community has an ability to manage the variety of tensions and disagreements that normally occur. All these activities contribute positively to people’s mental health and social well-being.
This week’s theme of Cohesive Communities, centered around the ability of resource exchange, was made tangible during my visit to Gateway. As I walk around Gateway, I see a neighborhood that has a very similar set of resources, knowledge base, experiences, and social structures. In fact, much of the community is linked within the same social structure. The neighborhood’s history has created a tight-knit group of people who have family ties to the area. In the entire neighborhood, there was only 1 house for sale. Only 2 other houses were being renovated. This historical entrenchment creates a community that is socially cohesive. However, I see a risk of resiliency because Gateway doesn’t have the varying resources that were mentioned throughout many of the readings from this module. This lack of redundancy and diversity in resources, in addition to a potential lack of resource mobility and rapidity leaves Gateway at risk when a crisis does strike. Furthermore, additional resources that may complement Gateway’s current resource set are entering the neighborhood but are physically separate from the main community. The development completed at 30th Place NE has brilliant new townhomes and with them, new kinds of resources. However, to be cohesive, the communities must be integrated which will no doubt be a challenge. Reflecting on this module, I think I was most surprised at the idea of cohesive communities and how they relate to resiliency. I always seemed to link the two as if cohesiveness made a community resilient. However, through both the readings this week and the urban immersion at Gateway, it became clear that resiliency is about much more than cohesion. Resources drive a community towards resiliency and without the necessary and diverse resources, resiliency can be challenged. Therefore, it takes more than just tight-knit communities to achieve a fully flourishing community. Rather, it takes an expansion of resources and a diversification of skill sets and assets to ensure that a community can react, respond, and ultimately adapt in a time of crisis. A few weeks ago, I ventured out for the first time into the Gateway neighborhood in Washington DC's Ward 5, not really sure what to expect. I drove up and parked in the middle of the neighborhood and started my exploration.
The first thing I noted was the overall lack of people. Coming from Old Town Alexandria which is always busy with life, Gateway seemed non-existent. Where were the people? Where was the life? Now, after studying healthy habitats, it is obvious. There is no reason for people to be in Gateway. The neighborhood is exceptionally isolated, both physically by the roads that border its three sides, but also in mindset by the looming fences that enclose it from the south and the high brick walls that separate the townhomes of Fort Lincoln to the east. Looking back on my first experience, I looked at Gateway as undesirable and painted it with a certain broad stroke of ugliness that I never fully reflected on after that first visit. This week, I examined Gateway with a different lens, looking at the people who live in Gateway and around, and tried to put myself in their shoes. Throughout this process, I had several moments where I was moved by what I found. Sitting on a plane back from Hong Kong, there were numerous times my research led me to verbalize my shock or disbelief, so much so, that the woman next to me became interested in what I was working on. I explained the Gateway neighborhood to her, and the overall CityLab project and she provided a unique perspective as a rural native Chinese woman who wasn't nearly as surprised by the neighborhood as I was. It was eye-opening for me to see how much perspective matters, and to be better equipped to analyze my findings from differing points of view. I think the data that surprised me the most was a map showing how many trips, per 1,000 people, to the ER a community has. Gateway had almost 800 visits per 1000 people! I couldn't believe it. The last time I set foot in the ER was maybe 10 years ago, and that was my very first time. That discovery led my research deeper into different map layers that showed debt, foreclosures, income, etc. and the picture became clear. Gateway's resident's are under stress - biological, social, economic, and otherwise and the health consequences couldn't be more obvious. These health benefits then had further impacts on where they could work, how much they could earn, education deficiencies, etc. that all feedback to the stress. That cycle is dangerous and requires us, those lucky enough to not have to face those same realities, to help. This week’s focus looks at “healthy people” and the elements that go into the development of individuals capable of thriving in urban environments. There are many, and health is not merely vital signs. It is education (so people can be empowered in an economy), culture (so people can have identity and enjoyment), political efficacy (for people to have participatory democratic governments), and it is religion (part of human life since the beginning). We have also learned that creating effective public policy to reflect these values is not easy. In order to have successful policy, in this regard, those ordinances need to first and foremost promote people’s freedoms, help their ability to participate, and have an ethos of respect.
Human flourishing and its complexities was illuminated and expanded by my specific study on the Gateway neighborhood. Through focusing my approach on the social determinants of health, I examined the neighborhood for signs of humanity deficiencies. Sure enough, I found several data sets that seemed to indicate many of the social determinants of health were not being met such as food accessibility, education, transportation options, walkability, affordability and so on. What I saw was an extremely “stressed” population that had significant biological, social, and political concerns that need to be addressed before they can flourish. Combining that analysis with the readings from Deneulin this week, a more illuminating picture was found. The cause of the social determinants of health deficiencies stems, in part, from the institutional and political underpinnings of the Gateway neighborhood. Rather than sustainable investment, Gateway is left to crumble. Rather than policies being created to further the population, no backward looking, cause and effect analysis is being done. When policies are designed, implementation isn’t followed through. Looping in the previous module on history furthers the story. As the landscape of the Gateway neighborhood changed, the community was left on its own. Eventually inner city, low income folks were encouraged to leave as rents increased, pushing these families into Gateway. Now, the process of gentrification has started to reintegrate different socio-economic status families together but the process is slow and lacks the necessary drive. What I find most concerning is that each part of Gateway’s struggle feeds into itself in a negative loop. For example, the lack of resources causes a lack of food accessibility. This is further exacerbated by the fact that there are limited grocery store options. This then causes disease which causes disabilities which causes a further lack of resources. This feedback loop is destructive and takes outside resources and outside help to allow Gateway residents to escape from the loop. Of course, the residents themselves have some agency but their power is so limited that, even if fully focused, the chances of upward mobility are less than 30%. This lack of agency is a detriment to the human condition and prevents human flourishing. When people feel helpless about their outcomes and unable to control their condition, it leads to a crumbling of the individual and eventually the neighborhood. Therefore, it takes substantial effort to overcome this feedback loop. It is not as simple as placing a park or adding a grocery store. Rather, it takes a multi-faceted, multi-pronged approach that attempts to address as many of the social determinants of health as possible to give the community the best chance of getting back on its feet. This week’s readings focused on the livability theme and creating healthy habitats. Specifically, how the design of a neighborhood has an effect on the health and welfare of its citizens. The effect of a healthy living environment on people goes beyond the physical elements and additionally affects mental and emotional health. Building healthy habitats focuses on restoring the balance between people and the environment they live in. Building healthy habitats begins with clean air, clean water, access to healthy food, ability to socialize and have privacy, and access to routine physical activity, among other things. The readings this week focus on providing tools to analyze communities to find ways to provide these benefits to current communities as well as designing new developments that incorporate these ideas. Healthy habitats also include improving the air and living quality within buildings as well, providing ways to rid the air and water of toxins, and designing buildings that use less resources. There are many ways to improve both the exterior and interior environments of the neighborhoods in cities to develop encourage healthy habitats, people, communities, and prosperity overall.
Healthy habitats are a huge area of focus for me both personally, and because my wife has her Master’s of Public Health and is a Physician’s Assistant. Working in Baltimore and now in DC, healthy habitats have been a focus of both of ours. Individually, the components of healthy habitats are intuitive and simple. However, the combination and interdependence of many of the items is what makes achieving healthy habits exceptionally difficult. For example, currently, I am sitting in Zhuhai, China. The air quality is fair at best, the water quality is poor, the accessibility to both food and water is poor, and these then diminish the amount of physical activity that people do, diminish the overall health of the population as more diseases and toxins are presented and so on. In that sense, livable cities are really living bodies, that require attention, care, and attentiveness to survive. In addition, the implementation of these living things requires a thorough examination of the surroundings and each healthy habitat theme in an attempt to get each part to work as a whole. Like our bodies, livable cities need all of their components to work together, as a fully functioning machine. All it takes is one thing (or even the lack of one thing) to destroy the healthy habitat. The readings and other content provided numerous examples of cities that, by all standards, should have been teeming with life and activity, safe and secure, filled with green space and clean everything. However, in reality, they were all but dead because a single aspect was missing which created a domino effect. Like the examples that Jacobs gave about the squares in Philadelphia. Without diversity in functions, people stop coming through the squares, which means they go unmonitored, which means they attract the wrong types of people, which means they can breed crime, and so on. I see my focus neighborhood, Gateway, in a similar light. Historically, it was an active neighborhood, near the Anacostia branch of the Potomac, and an important and healthy town. However, as dirt ways turned into streets and industry sprang up along the river, the healthy habitat began to be destroyed. Now, more than ever, Gateway is isolated. It’s three main border streets are multiple lane, divided highways that prevent the comings and goings that are the heart of any city. Without the heart, it doesn’t matter how many green spaces, business, or anything else you have, the community won’t function. Then, add in the heavy industry, brownfields, sprawling and unlit parking lots, and unused sidewalks, and you get Gateway. Solving the disconnect between Gateway and the surrounding communities is essential to start rebuilding the healthy habitat that once existed. This week’s reading focused on capitalist market systems, being a visionary, and the methodology of data collection from ethnographers’ viewpoint. The reading demonstrated, in recent years, the capitalist market system is generating massive wealth; however, majority of investors or businesses are operating in similar fashions as decades ago, which creates vulnerability for the system to break down in serious ways. On the contrary, some positive examples are of those entrepreneurs who are changing norms by creatively redesigning, redefining and enhancing their approach to businesses, and entering new roles which are both necessary and possible for urban development. Keith Baker is a prime example of such an entrepreneur who is a visionary and helping bring new ideas to the Jonestown, Baltimore area through the redevelopment of the Hendler Creamery block. This project will revitalize two blocks of Jonestown, creating jobs and in the meantime, preserving the character of the community. Mr. Baker believes in valuing history, out of the box thinking to implement and grow a neighborhood and its surroundings. Lastly, the reading demonstrated that data collection varies between ethnographers. One particular trend of current ethnographers is to live in the same neighborhoods and communities of people they are studying to have meaning and true social context for the best results.
The theme of this week ties in perfectly to another class I am currently enrolled in, Corporate Governance. The two opposing views in Corporate Governance are expressed by Friedman, who matches the more negative view discussed above where the capitalist system has generated massive wealth for certain shareholders without respect for the surrounding communities and external stakeholders. Freeman, however believes in the more opportunistic for all approach mentioned above as well as the visionary idea to redefine and enhance their approach to business to include more than just a few select shareholders. The idea of corporations trying to maximize profits while externalizing costs to the surrounding stakeholders couldn’t relate more to what we are seeing in our communities across the country. Every business operates within a specific community, engages specific resources, affects its environment, engages its citizen through labor and otherwise, and ultimately affects more than just shareholders or employees. However, companies, to maximize profits have forgot about these “external” factors and only focused on wealth creation. True, this does create wealth, but at the expense of the communities, environment, and citizens that it exploits. However, how do we incentivize businesses to care about these external factors? I believe the only sustainable way to convince these businesses is to create value for doing so – after all, no one said that caring and supporting externalities and being profitable must be mutually exclusive. Many companies and corporations have specifically placed themselves into an area that is struggling and have, through focused corporate governance practices, helped both the community in which it finds itself while also generating significant profits for shareholders. The Port Covington development has this potential as it transforms a blighted neighborhood into something thriving. However, as the reading suggests, implementing these kinds of programs isn’t as simple as a company inserting themselves into a community. It takes ethnographers and cultural studies to evaluate the historical situation of the community and laying out a plan to implement and grow the neighborhood successful. |
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