Category Archives: Urban Conflicts

Renzo Piano’s Nasher Museum in Dallas Has Sunburn Problem

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The center, designed by Renzo Piano and Peter Walker, was considered so appealing that a 42-story condominium called Museum Tower sprouted across the street. But the glass skin of the condo tower, still under construction, now reflects so much light that it is threatening artworks in the galleries, burning the plants in the center’s garden and blinding visitors with its glare.

Source: NYTimes.

An unfortunate problem that the museum’s architect can do nothing about but this is a mess than the city officials created. That’s why you need a holistic planning approach when you’re revitalizing a block.

Revealing Economic Terrorists: A Slumlord Conspiracy

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The EJO had been working with local tenants in run-down properties and soon started to notice some patterns. The EJO began to collect public data on the properties with the most violations. As the collected data grew in size, the EJO examined various ways they could visualize the data making it clear and understandable to all concerned. They tried various mind-mapping and organization-charting software but to no avail — the complex ties they were discovering just made the diagrams hopelessly unreadable. They turned to social network analysis [SNA] to make sense of the complex interconnectivity.

[Source: Revealing Economic Terrorists: a Slumlord Conspiracy]

So it turns out that social networks do have some use beyond selling us as products.

Rights to Development

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What the current system of land acquisition wants to do is take this productive land and pour concrete on it. A simple question is: If the most fertile land in the country produces cars and chemicals, what do we eat.

[Source: DNA India] Harini Calamur writing for DNA India rightly identifies the misplaced priorities in land acquisition for development. However, her conclusion is a little misplaced. The question is not whether we should pour concrete on fertile land but rather who gets to decide that we do. She points to the ‘throwaway prices’ that the government acquires these lands and hands them over to large companies, which may be at the core of most of these protests around India rather than the location of these industries.

I believe if the government stepped out of the equation and let these large companies deal directly with the farmers, the animosity toward such development would be far less. Critics may point toward price gouging in terms of land pricing but companies can always point to or head to better deals elsewhere in the state or the nation as a way of negotiation. The government can always step in to provide supporting infrastructure after such deals have been finalized.

In a large country like India, not all fertile land seeks to be paved over and in fact, innovations in agricultural technology may do more in increasingly yields from less land rather than preserving the amount of fertile land (cue anti-Malthus arguments). The amount of land is and has remained finite but the ways to make it more productive (and fertile) have always improved.

Social Outcomes and Height of the Building

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Point: The idea that descendants of African slaves are the only people in the history of our species to be done in by the configuration of architectural blueprints is mistaken.

It was much, much more complicated than that: the culprit was aspects of social history in America starting in the late sixties, not merely how housing projects were constructed and how far their doors happened to be from the street.

John McWhorter at the New Republic argues against the commonly held perception that crimes and social conditions are worse off in taller public housing than low-rises. I don’t understand the Sonia Sotomayor connection though and it seems forced in order to attract eyeballs.

Century of the City

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One in every ten people lived in urban areas a century ago. Now, for the first time ever, most people live in cities. By 2050, the United Nations projects, almost three-quarters of the world’s population will call urban areas home. The majority of this growth is centered in struggling, developing countries of the Global South, but cities in developed (or Global North) countries face increasingly complex challenges as well.

To help manage and plan for this accelerating urbanization, the Rockefeller Foundation convened an exceptional group of urbanists–leading policy makers and government officials, finance experts, urban researchers, members of civil society organizations, and other innovators–for a Global Urban Summit at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. This book shares their diverse perspectives, creative approaches, and urgent agenda for harnessing the vast opportunities of urbanization for a better world.

Order this book free.

Paying for Free Roads

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The peak toll in the first month of operation on State Route 167 in Washington was $5.75. I know, I know, you would never pay such an exorbitant amount when America has taught you that free roads are your birthright. But that money bought Washington drivers a 27-minute time savings. Is a half hour of your time worth $6?

Eric A. Morris in a two-part essay at Freakonomics weighs in favor of toll roads that vary in response to traffic levels as a way out of congestion and posits that this way, we may even love paying for roads that we generally consider free to us.

Racist City in America

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Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day and occasional blogger at Freakonomics wants to know which is the most racist city in America. the comment thread is rich with suggestions and opinions but I find the question too vague. It is extremely difficult to judge a city’s collective attitude toward racism without actually measuring for it. Even if you try measuring it, I don’t know if you can really come up with anything unless you specifically ask for opinions.

Creating Democratic Cities

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New Urbanists believe in the power of physical design (of cities and neighborhoods) in influencing user behavior. John Thackara and Sunil Abraham talk to Cluster Magazine about the dynamism of cities in fostering democratic perceptions and influencing user behavior [hat tip: Jinal Shah]:

Tolerance of everything and openness to everybody are not universally accepted principles. This is one reason why globalization and migration have introduced new complications. Most religions advocate tolerance in theory, but organised religion can be oppressive in practice.

I’m glad they recognize the limitations imposed by differentiation of cultural and religious norms within civilizations in creating democratic cities and unless users themselves demand certain freedoms, it will be hard to impose such on them. But at the same time, unless you expose them to certain freedoms that we take for granted they’ll not know what they are missing out on. Considering the current conflict in Iraq which also faces similar dilemmas, can the nature of rebuilding their cities help any?

Hurting the Informal Sector

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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.