Urban Planning Blog

Pfizer said it would pull 1,400 jobs out of New London within two years and move most of them a few miles away to a campus it owns in Groton, Conn., as a cost-cutting measure. It would leave behind the city’s biggest office complex and an adjacent swath of barren land that was cleared of dozens of homes to make room for a hotel, stores and condominiums that were never built.

This decision by Pfizer to Leave New London, Connecticut is going to profoundly impact future eminent domain cases and gives a major boost to libertarians. The landmark SC ruling was unique in the sense that it acquired private land that included a built home to hand over to another private party for the “public good”. Without conditions to ensure that Pfizer would indeed add 1,400 jobs to the New London as promised, its decision to leave after just eight years is not surprising. Pfizer’s decision to move away puts paid to New London’s hopes of revitalizing the area around Kelo’s home by building an “urban village” to attract shoppers and tourists. So in effect, is Pfizer really responsible for making the city assume that they would stay forever? But Susette Kelo’s pink house still stands after it was moved across town by preservationist Avner Gregory who bought it for $1.

Research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that since 1995 federal funding for low-income housing assistance has dropped by over 20 percent, both as a share of GDP and non-military discretionary spending. Meanwhile, the number of low-income renters spending more than half of their income on housing costs has increased by over 33 percent since 2000.

In the current housing crisis, low-income homeowners continue to face the brunt.

LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he’s now supposed to regulate.

Everything is not perfect, right? Alex Steffen at WorldChanging comments on the disappointing choice of Transportation Secretary after other notable selections. As Alex writes, transportation is not a department you want to skimp out on especially in wake of crumbling infrastructure and Obama’s promise of rebuilding America.

The Obama transition team announced the chair of the newly-created office of Urban Policy. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion will head the new White House office of Urban Policy:

Carrion is a well-liked, pro-development official who has tried to enhance his limited power through an alliance with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and gives the New York mayor — whose aide was just appointed HUD Secretary — another ally in the White House, and suggests a New York-centric urban policy.

After eight years of hands-off policy from the Feds, it remains to be seen how a progressive administration fares toward urban policy.

Carrion was an important figure in the development of the Bronx Terminal Market & Hunts Point Vision projects and was responsible for bringing George Steinbrenner of the Yankees and the City to the table for negotiations in the development of the new Yankee stadium. On urban transportation, he was a vocal supporter of New York’s congestion pricing plan.

“Because he [Obama] began as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, he understands at the local level is really where you can impact change and that local government can play a vital role as we try to jump start our economy. So having somebody in the White House, because there are so many different agencies that really can impact urban America and to have one person whose job it is to really pull all of that together, is really a critical position. And there are plenty of terrific candidates for that spot.”

The Obama transition co-chair Valerie Jarrett has announced that the new President-elect will have a White House chief of urban policy.

Amidst all the hype and talk about China’s oh-so-beautiful capital, little is known about entire ‘ugly’ neighborhoods hidden behind temporary walls. Would this really work in a real democracy?

The destruction caused by hurricane Katrina allowed for revamping New Orlean’s public education system. In the aftermath of the disaster, the local school boards have been replaced by charter schools that are although are publicly financed are run independently. This experiment is seemingly working as test scores are increasingly significantly. Does this indicate a shift in favor of reforming the public education system?

But it might be too early to declare success. Perhaps comparison to school populations with pre-Katrina demographic mix would be a better indicator either in New Orleans or elsewhere.

While often unseen or overlooked, 1 out of every 100 Delhi residents earns a livelihood as a wastepicker. As a group, these informal garbage men and women collect over half of the city’s waste.

The City Fix shares a video that highlights the plight of the wasterpickers and their almost daily harassment by the police. The city government recently passed laws that favored private trash collection companies over this informal sector of laborers.

University and college rankings are always disputed regardless of the methodology they employ. The U.S.News and World Report rankings is the most used and oft-cited list although it has been repeatedly rubbished by academicians and professionals. These rankings are often based on reputation which is a self-feeding circle and endowment size which also like reputation doesn’t change ranks often. Thus to offer an alternative perspective, The Washington Monthly published their own rankings based on “how much of a contribution does each university make to the country”.

The methodology explained here is based on social mobility, research, and service i.e. “is the school recruiting and graduating low-income students? Is it producing PhDs and cutting-edge research? And is it encouraging in its students an ethic of service?” The ranking are displayed below and surprisingly puts my current graduate school, Texas A&M right at the top.

While I’m pleased as punch at the top billing given to my university, I must remain skeptical of such rankings. When the magazine lists its criteria as ‘contribution to the country’, are they neglecting the role of universities in the increasingly globalized world? Considering that international students contribute heavily at least to the research conducted in any top university, shouldn’t that factor in the rankings also? Are the universities necessarily established to keep America competitive in this global economy where human capital is increasingly mobile. You may argue that U.S. universities are clearly oriented toward bettering America’s standing since most of the research dollars come from federal agencies. However, is this also indicative of the immigration policies of the same government that doesn’t necessarily encourage immigration? I hope not.

Well, all rankings are subjective to criticism but I will attest to the top quality of research and education at Texas A&M. It is definitely one of the best. Also, I found it strangely funny that a liberal magazine chose a conservative university as its top choice.

I bet many homeowners have received cease and desist letters from the authorities for an unauthorized construction on their property. More often than not, the ignorance of the homeowner is attributed to the lack of permits. But not so in this case.

Read an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, State of Michigan. This guy’s response is hilarious, but read the State’s letter before you get to the response letter.

Don’t we love our bureaucracy?

tags: humor, environment, permit, bureaucracy