Richard Florida – Strategic [Urban] Ecologies, Engineering, and Decision-Making

This Week in Infrastructure Systems (#TWIST), I'm not writing about infrastructure systems, per se, but about the unique spaces they enable--the city! This week we highlight the New York Times' cautionary tale about Hong Kong, Strong Towns' challenge to the wisdom of strip malls, and Politico's assertion that cities can independently assert their own agendas.

Hong Kong Skyline. Source: publicdomainpictures.net

Hong Kong: A City In Trouble? I'm not so sure about that, as Hong Kong is one of the most unique and beautiful cities I've had the opportunity to visit in the past 5 years. However, as Hong Kong and China begin to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the city's return to Chinese rule it faces a number of challenges that it must reckon with. The New York Times argues that political tensions between Beijing and local opposition have made it increasingly difficult to address housing, cultural, and education challenges facing Hong Kong.

An empty mall in Ohio. Source: Strong Towns.

Strip malls are a blight on the American landscape, and these--sometimes misguided--projects are going to suffer increasingly more as the American retail sector declines. The challenge is that many cities don't have the option to re-purpose strip malls as mixed use development projects because of local laws or regulations. Strong Towns cites Forbes' Scott Beyer arguing in the past that these projects constrain some cities and towns to low-density development due to single-use zoning, minimum parking requirements, setback requirements, and density limits. While walkable urbanism seems to be the future of American development, strip malls threaten to keep too many communities locked in the past.
Finally, the decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate accord has been disappointing to many. Nonetheless, many cities, including the city of Baltimore where I reside, have decided to maintain independent commitments to the Paris accords. This is reflective of a much larger issue--the fact that the urban/everywhere else divide in American life is so stark that it will be very difficult for any coherent urban policy to emerge from the federal level. Richard Florida's "A Declaration of Urban Independence," in Politico this week is a thought provoking exploration of the governance challenges facing our nation due to the urban/everwhere else split (and the creative class/everyone else split).

The newly opened pagoda in Patterson Park, Baltimore, MD, USA. By Phil! Gold

This week, I want to talk briefly about a topic that is not infrastructure, per se, but increasingly intertwines infrastructure, justice, affordability, class, and economic growth--Incusive Urbanism.

Like many terms, inclusive urbanism is dangerously close to the "destined to become meaningless" space occupied by "sustainability" and "resilience." Just like those terms, though, inclusive urbanism saves you a paragraph each time you use it in conversation after the first time. When folks say inclusive urbanism, what they generally intend is that we want to revitalize our cities, but do so in such a way that current and long-term residents have an opportunity to benefit from the revitalization. When they say inclusive urbanism, what they refer to is the challenge of achieving substantive economic transformation while not driving out current residents. When they say inclusive urbanism, what they really mean--at least sometimes--is gentrification without the side effects.

Thursday's On Point with Tom Ashbrook of WBUR, "Can Startups Share Their Big City Success?" addresses this issue. In an interview with Richard Florida, they explore this issue using the term hoarding economic growth. This is the second time this week I've heard something along these lines. The general argument is that there is substantial economic growth and urban revitalization, but these gains only contribute to growing urban inequality. If the upper middle class does not share their gains, the very real economic gains that are accumulating will be hoarded as inequality only increases.

What would you do to solve this problem? How can we keep the urban renewal gains that we are seeing in many of our cities, while empowering residents that have lived through the worst of their declines and now have nowhere to go?

I'm not sure there's a 'good' solution to this problem, but I couldn't help thinking to myself: by the time these tech companies or advanced industries move in, it is too late for many of the current residents. Isn't there a way we could anticipate and prepare the current residents for the skills and capabilities needed by modern industry? I co-teach a course with Prof. Chris Leinberger of the GW School of Business, and he says that an urban area needs an economic reason to exist. Our cities need to anticipate the economic reasons to exist in the next few decades, and begin preparing our residents--from childhood through adulthood--for these changes so that when inevitable economic shifts do occur, those residents that have weathered the storm can be rewarded.

Have you heard some compelling solutions to these problems?

Tag: Richard Florida

#TWIST, 30 June 2017, Concentrating on Cities