“Many creative writers keep journals; the sociologist’s need for systematic reflection demands it.” -C. Wright Mills

For those interested, the search committee has apparently made a decision about whom to ask to join the UP faculty, but they have not made that decision public yet. They’re waiting until they can contact the candidates. Hold your breath, kiddies.

Want to follow cabs through San Francisco? (via Babo)

Can you tell I’m busy? Busy reconstructing my computer after the mouse went schizo.

A dialogue is slowly starting to brew on the ACSP student listserve Bowling League (now a Google group, which kind of sucks) on the future of the profession. My first contribution follows.
Already here two vital issues have been indirectly raised. The first is the main issue here of ’separation’ vs. well, what? If we are not separate, what are we? We cannot claim to be planners (assuming that’s desirable) because we have not distinguished ourselves from our colleagues. I agree with Lester that a firmer core does not necessarily preclude useful investigation, though I think Josh is correct that doing so may close off some routes.

I’ve become a big fan of the later Wittgenstein’s concept of a definitional family. Loosely, the ‘definition’ of a word is the set of concepts and associations that hang upon the word. For example, there is no absolute, universal ‘red’ to which we compare our experience of things but rather a collection of experiences of things we were told/decided are called ‘red’. At what point does ‘red’ become ‘brown’ or ‘pink’? It’s a discretionary call that doesn’t have to be made with categorical authority, though we might agree on a no-man’s land in which we’re not sure (though that raises the same philosophical issues).

This is to say that I think we can work to reign in the definition of planning. I think planning, by embracing all aspects of the urban, has become diffuse to the point of disintegration. Whether disintegration is desirable is another question I’ll come back to. I think this is exemplified by the degree to which urban planning programs have been absorbed into policy schools and ‘lost ground’ to architecture, engineering, and real estate. If we are not distinct from these other disciplines, we should cease to exist. If we have something ‘unique’ to bring (sorry for all the quotes!), which I think we do, we need to identify that and try to tie our associational definitions of planning closer to that unique element.

For me that unique element is space, which will surprise none of my closer associates. My position has been and continues to be (with some overstatement) that an explicit concern with space (and policy) distinguishes us from other disciplines (geographers are screaming already). Perhaps my fetish for space is misguided, however. Silvia’s statement, which indirectly supports Josh’s position, raises the second issue, by claiming that she is a planner but not an urban planner. If we are to *separate* planning, as I think we are, how broadly should we define planning? Do we mean simply the process of projecting into the future and preparing (making plans) for future outcomes? Do we mean something more political, like the primacy of participatory democracy in decision making over neo-classical economic calculation or social justice? Or do we mean something narrower, like organizing the space(s) of the urban?

In sum, I think we need to identify a (liquid) core of our discipline that will generate gravity sufficient to make us strong and identifiable actors in decision making processes. We live in a universe of embedded power relations and a stronger core will assist us in making the cities we want.

Been busy, folks. Moved Jay from Harlem to Pelham Parkway. Read stuff. Did stuff. Most of it failed stuff, i.e., my venture into the Nairobi slums housing market, which will move forward again from tomorrow.

And I’ll be back.

Here’s the official preliminary announcement for the Just City conference:

The Department of Urban Planning, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Columbia University invite you to join us for a one-day conference:

Searching for the Just City

Date: April 29th 2006, 10am – 6pm
Location: Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University
Admission is free and open to the public.

Urban planning, despite its many inherent contradictions, represents a discipline that has been strongly influenced by a belief in social change and a desire to either diminish or eradicate the manifold inequalities that characterize cities and the societies in which they are embedded. Susan Fainstein’s conception of the “Just City” encourages planners and policy makers to embrace a normative approach to urban planning that combines progressive planners’ earlier focus on equity and material well-being with more recent concerns such as diversity, participation, and sustainability to attaining a better quality of human and urban life within the context of a global capitalist political economy.

Organized by Columbia University’s Urban Planning doctoral students, this one-day conference “Searching for the Just City” aims to thank Susan Fainstein for her contributions as a Professor and Director of our program, to honor her scholarly contributions as one of the leading urban theorists of the present day, and to critically discuss the question of whether her – or any other – vision of the “Just City” can guide future planners to make cities a better place.

Confirmed participants include: Eddie Bautista (Director of Community Planning, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest), Bob Beauregard (the New School), Eugenie Birch (UPenn), Susan Fainstein (Columbia and Harvard Universities), Frank Fischer (Rutgers University), David Harvey (CUNY Graduate Center), Dolores Hayden (Yale University), John Logan (Brown University), Setha Low (CUNY Graduate Center), Peter Marcuse (Columbia University), John Mollenkopf (CUNY Graduate Center), and Laura Wolf-Powers (Pratt Institute).

Sponsors include: Urban Studies Department, Barnard College; Center for Urban Research and Policy, Columbia University; Columbia Society of Urbanists; and the Center for Sustainable Urban Development, Earth Institute.

For more information, contact James Connolly (jjc2119@columbia.edu) or Johannes Novy (jn2115@columbia.edu).

Though my worthy visitors probably have better things to do with their time, apparently I don’t. I found this article on Orange, New Jersey from 28 August 2005. It describes the two decades of work by HANDS to remove blight and to rehab ‘nightmare’ buildings ‘where vandals and drug dealers had become lords of the manor’ ‘to respectability’ for sale to (mostly) first-time low- and moderate-income homebuyers. It quotes the director of Hands as saying, “Now that the neighborhoods have been stabilized, the stage is set for a tremendous renaissance in Orange.” Blocks are described as ’stabilized, or coming up’. The article also puts some meat on the term ‘upscale’ that Floyd used in his presentation to describe the vision for the future commercial strip. They intend to build New York City style brownstones.

So all the language in the article is about coming up, respectability, and renaissance. And since most new development is market rate (400 condo units mentioned in the article) as opposed to respectable rehabbing (9 units mentioned), I think we can identify a trend away from disinvestment and toward higher land values (and property taxes, which is good for the city) and higher income households. And I think this trend is more or less in line with Neil Smith’s definition of gentrification in The New Urban Frontier: “Gentrification is the process…by which poor and working-class neighborhoods in the inner city are refurbished via an influx of private capital and middle-class homebuyers and renters–neighborhoods that had previously expereinced disinvestment and a middle-class exodus.” (p32) To confirm the last qualification, one should look at the history of the Hat Capital to note that at one time it was a thriving industrial town (presumably middle-class, or at least as middle-class as the Lower East Side was).

Let’s also take a moment to look at the prime movers behind HANDS, Inc., the non-profit that has been doing so much to revitalize Orange. They include a local lecturer, the execturive director of the organization, the executive director of the National Housing Institute, a crime prevention officer, three leaders of block associations and neighborhood improvement associations, a former president of the local Chamber of Commerce, and a director from Fleet Bank. In his seminal 1976 piece, The City as Growth Machine, Harvey Molotch posits that cities are generally operated by land-interest groups serving their own ends, “whether at the level of a residential block club, a neighborhood association, a city or metropolitan chamber of commerce, a state development agency, or a regional association.” (p311) He goes on to include local bankers, who make housing loans, and newpapers. These land-interests are fairly strongly represented in the composition of the board of HANDS, Inc., lending strength to the claim that increasing land values and profits through stabilization, rehabilitation, and renaissance are the underlying interests of local decision makers. (Note, however, that many of HANDS’ units go to graduates of its own program and in this way local residents’ interests are being kept in mind.)

So to me it looks as though we have a number of dedicated local land-interests who have had some success in building stronger neighborhoods based on home-ownership and that the construction of MidtownDirect and a booming housing market are now converging to drive forward the gentrification of Orange. Whether you feel this is a good thing or not probably depends on your political persuasion. It is clearly good for land-owners and businesses, and it is probably bad for renters, who will probably soon have to find a new home in a less conveniently located town. This dynamic is directly related to the lack of sufficient regional planning, toward which the cross-acceptance requirements are a feeble drive, but this is a discussion for another time.

There has reasonably enough been some interest in recent developments that have raised the program security threat level to Orange. To my knowledge there have been no developments. Simply silence. I presume Floyd is taking some time to prepare a substantive response to the previous posting, which I eagerly await. As you may imagine, I have reread the post several times over the last two days and, in my obviously biased opinion, I feel that the entry points out the areas where my arguments are weak and how they might be overcome. After all, I hope I’m wrong. I could be wrong about the details. I could be wrong about the impact of various aspects of the plan. And, for what it is (and to open a huge door), I imagine it could be reasonably argued that the master plan for Orange as it stands is an optimal compromise document given the local political dynamics. Of course, that argument would require some explanation of the local political dynamics.

Others have asked me about how ‘heated’ the LiPs session was. Personally, I don’t think it was particularly heated. Alarmed at what I was hearing, I made some of the same critiques I made here, and I offered them with some emotional trembling in my voice. But I don’t think it could have been construed as aggressive. After his response, which as I recall, was addressed more to others than me, I pursued the issue with one more question, and then I let it drop…and came home and ripped out that blog entry. Others who were there should feel free to add their interpretation of the interaction by commenting here. After all, as we all do, I have a very skewed understanding of my own motives and behavior.