cuz produces

On this site stood a local market…

I’m just back from another wonderful ACSP conference. This time it took place in Milwaukee. It was interesting and disturbing to see others even closer to the job market than I am dealing with the stress of being on all the time and trying to meet the right people. I do not look forward to next year.

On the plus side, though, I attended a panel that opened up a new avenue for my dissertation and helps me make some planning sense of the geography research on scale that I’ve been proposing. It appears that the RPA and others have put forth a move toward national planning called America 2050. This is very exciting. I’ve been thinking about national planning and the port research lends itself to national planning. So now I have a framework to hand it on that appeals to me! More in the future.

Another review of Elizabeth Currid’s The Warhol Economy.

The weather was gorgeous, so YK and I went for a walk today. Finally found the Koreatown on 204th up in Bedford Park, which I believe is supposed to be the original Koreatown in New York. It consists of perhaps ten shops, which don’t look like they’re doing too great. The original store, Suzie’s Supermarket, apparently closed in the spring and was split into a video rental place and a 99-cent store. People here seem to think that the neighborhood is becoming Dominican and more crime-ridden.

Five developers have put in apparently similar proposals for a series of residential towers surrounding open space for Hudson Yards. (via NYT)

The port in downtown Helsinki will soon move to Vuosaari. A cargo port located adjacent to the current downtown will become available by 2012. Here is a description of the plans for reusing the space.

This story in the NYTimes describes the outcome of Japan’s model welfare reform city: individuals starving to death when their benefits are cut. While the government builds bridges to nowhere and sells of the Postal service for billions of dollars, they’re pushing the costs of welfare onto local administrations. The takeaway quote:

In his first year as a case worker, Mr. Fujiyabu recalled, a woman in her 50s, smelling of alcohol, asked for assistance. “I was told by my supervisor, ‘You know, don’t you think someone like that is better off dead?’”

My 10-year-old niece Jordan would like everyone to beware of some dangerous Chinese manufactured toys. She sends these anecdotes drawn, she says, from this webpage.

A 3 year old swallowed a macnetix ball, got stuck to his inside skin and died. And (they are gone now) some chineese popcorn, if you smell it to much, you could get sick.

She also mentioned that she’s worried about Chinese workers. Not Korean workers, she clarifies, but Chinese workers. (Disclosure: My wife is Korean.) She probably is unaware that many of the recent environmental failings of Chinese goods began when the US government strengthened some environmental standards and began aggressively enforcing them. (Sorry, no cites.)

One might also consider that many US companies demand that their suppliers (the companies that they buy from) reduce their prices by a certain percentage each year. This is supposed to make everyone work better. But when there are no more opportunities to save money, it could make their suppliers cut costs in bad ways just to stay in business.

DCW notes this NYTimes article on the proliferation of transit station-focused developments on Long Island.

All things architectural and container-al.

Carter’s historic visit to Charlotte Street in the Bronx occurred 30 years ago today.

The NYTimes reports that a man in Tennessee, who had applied for a a property rezoning that would increase the value of his property so that he could sell it and settle the debt he incurred in a failed attempt to boost business by enlarging his barber shop, pulled out a small caliber gun and shot himself in front of the city council immediately after they denied his application.