Urban Planning Blog

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 In the aftermath of the disaster, the local school boards have been replaced by charter schools that are although are publicly financed are run independently.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