MUPPS,
As you probably know, the APA-IL conference is coming up in September in Bloomington/Normal. I went on the conference website today to look at all the options and sign myself up for the full event as there seem to be so many great mobile workshops lined up, such as biking around Normal-Bloomington’s Constitution Trail, Canoeing the Mackinaw River, going to a cheese farm and vineyard, and touring a wind farm! To see the schedule of events, go here.
As you can see, so much is planned! There will also be events with other student organizations and young planners groups, as well as movie night for the international film festival and a pub quiz! Unfortunately, there will not be an opportunity for free or discounted admission to the conference for volunteering this year. However, we still encourage student to offer up volunteering for opportunities to network with other professionals in the field. Who knows, this might even lead to an internship, as it has for others in the past!
Attendance
I have signed up for the conference ($90) and have also signed up for the bike ride, the vineyard and the wind farm tour (total another $85). I encourage all of you to attend the conference, even if you do not attend any of the mobile workshops. You do not need to sign up for everything and the conference has student discounts if you want to attend for just one day, instead of all 3. New MUPPS, if you do not have an APA account yet, have no fear! Hazel sends an email to APA for your free 1 yrs student membership once everyone has been accounted for. You might have to wait to sign up for the event, but you can certainly plan ahead and book your transportation and lodging in the interim.
Transportation
In addition, I have contacted Amtrak to see about taking my bike to the conference. The cost for the train there, including return is $36, with the bike cost being another $20, however, there are certain trains bikes are allowed on during rush hours and you need to reserve a spot. If other people are planning on bringing their bikes, we should plan a night ride through the city, or out to the fields! Call 1-800-USA-RAIL to book your trip and reserve the space for your bike. Some seats on the train are already filling up.
Hotels
The conference is being held at the Marriott in Bloomington, with a room cost per night of $119 for a double. I did a quick hotels. com search and found rooms as low as $51 for the 21st-24th, 2 miles away from the site (Bring your bike!) If we get a group together for the event, we might be able to get a cheaper deal at one of these hotels. Also, please access the UPPSA website forum to put down your dates, logistics, and find a room mate!
Costs
As you can see, things start to add up very quickly for the event. As a member of UPPSA, you will get some of your costs for the conference reimbursed; the amount depends on how many students attend, which we will not know until closer to the date. If you are not a member of UPPSA, or need to pay your new semester dues, please check out the form on the website.
Action items:
-sign up or pay for your dues to UPPSA. The form can be handed in electronically with a bill pay sent to UPPSA , or a paper copy and check to Ann Barnds in UPP.
-sign up for the conference here
-book your transportation options early, here
-add a post for room mates and lodging on the forum here
-send your receipts to uppsainfo@gmail.com once EVERYTHING has been paid and closer to the conference date
Please let me know if you have any other questions or need anything from me!
Sara F. Amaral
samara2@uic.edu
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Friday - July 9th General Assembly meeting and TOD
Hello returning MUPPs and welcome to the newest MUPPs!
Join us for the first UPPSA event of the year.
We will be gathering to discuss goals and initiatives for the upcoming year, and to introduce you to the new executive officers on the UPPSA board. The event will be Open House style, so please drop in whenever you can and stay for as long as you would like!
The meeting itself will be from 6:00-7:00 at Charlie's Ale House bar in Andersonville (5308 N. Clark St.) A quick introduction to our new board members, followed by a presentation of the board's ideas for the upcoming academic year. Afterwards, we'll walk over as a group to Chase Park:
When: Friday, July 9th 6:00pm-10:00pm (maybe later??)
Where: Movies in the Park -- "The Neverending Story" (Chase Park, 4701 N. Ashland Ave.) [movie starts at 8:30]
http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/events.results/object_id/b85d63cb-6aec-45f0-8cdb-9c38d0a57e19.cfm
Why: To mingle with fellow MUPPs, of course! For our newest MUPPs, this provides you a great chance to make new friends with people you'll be sharing classes and the computer labs with.
Join us for the first UPPSA event of the year.
We will be gathering to discuss goals and initiatives for the upcoming year, and to introduce you to the new executive officers on the UPPSA board. The event will be Open House style, so please drop in whenever you can and stay for as long as you would like!
The meeting itself will be from 6:00-7:00 at Charlie's Ale House bar in Andersonville (5308 N. Clark St.) A quick introduction to our new board members, followed by a presentation of the board's ideas for the upcoming academic year. Afterwards, we'll walk over as a group to Chase Park:
When: Friday, July 9th 6:00pm-10:00pm (maybe later??)
Where: Movies in the Park -- "The Neverending Story" (Chase Park, 4701 N. Ashland Ave.) [movie starts at 8:30]
http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/events.results/object_id/b85d63cb-6aec-45f0-8cdb-9c38d0a57e19.cfm
Why: To mingle with fellow MUPPs, of course! For our newest MUPPs, this provides you a great chance to make new friends with people you'll be sharing classes and the computer labs with.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Chicago Care's Serv-a-thon, June 12th! And Pub Quiz, May 16th!
ATTENTION MUPP STUDENTS!!
CHICAGO CARES NEEDS OUR HELP!!
Please join your fellow MUPP students as we come together to revitalize Chicago’s public schools and raise money for Chicago Cares, Chicago’s leading community service organization. We are seeking various students who want to show the City of Chicago how dedicated Urban Planning Students are to improving the quality of our communities. The UPPSA Board is dedicated in assisting with the 17th Annual Chicago Cares’ Serv-a-thon, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help to reach our fundraising goal and in joining us on the day of action!
When: Saturday, June 12th 2010
What: Serve-a-thon volunteers will:
o Add fresh coats of paint to classrooms, transforming bland spaces into vibrant ones.
o Organize libraries to provide environments conducive to learning.
o Transform indoor and outdoor spaces with bright, colorful murals.
o Paint bright, colorful line games on playgrounds to encourage activity.
o Plant flowers and create landscapes to beautify the schools.
Where: Various Chicago Public Schools (location based on size of volunteer team)
How: Fundraising will occur through several activities planned up until June 12th (If you would like to help with fundraising ideas/activities please let us know. We would love to work with you!)
Visit http://uppsa.org/ to
register as a volunteer and/or help with fundraising activities.
FIRST FUNDRAISING ACTIVITY – INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS
PUB QUIZ - Sunday, May 16th 2010 @ 5pm
Participant Suggested Donation - $5
Free Pitchers of Beer to Winning Team
Location: Rocking Horse (in Logan Square)
2535 N. Milwaukee Avenue @ Sacramento Avenue
RSVP at www.uppsa.org
CHICAGO CARES NEEDS OUR HELP!!
Please join your fellow MUPP students as we come together to revitalize Chicago’s public schools and raise money for Chicago Cares, Chicago’s leading community service organization. We are seeking various students who want to show the City of Chicago how dedicated Urban Planning Students are to improving the quality of our communities. The UPPSA Board is dedicated in assisting with the 17th Annual Chicago Cares’ Serv-a-thon, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help to reach our fundraising goal and in joining us on the day of action!
When: Saturday, June 12th 2010
What: Serve-a-thon volunteers will:
o Add fresh coats of paint to classrooms, transforming bland spaces into vibrant ones.
o Organize libraries to provide environments conducive to learning.
o Transform indoor and outdoor spaces with bright, colorful murals.
o Paint bright, colorful line games on playgrounds to encourage activity.
o Plant flowers and create landscapes to beautify the schools.
Where: Various Chicago Public Schools (location based on size of volunteer team)
How: Fundraising will occur through several activities planned up until June 12th (If you would like to help with fundraising ideas/activities please let us know. We would love to work with you!)
Visit http://uppsa.org/ to
register as a volunteer and/or help with fundraising activities.
FIRST FUNDRAISING ACTIVITY – INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS
PUB QUIZ - Sunday, May 16th 2010 @ 5pm
Participant Suggested Donation - $5
Free Pitchers of Beer to Winning Team
Location: Rocking Horse (in Logan Square)
2535 N. Milwaukee Avenue @ Sacramento Avenue
RSVP at www.uppsa.org
Thursday, April 15, 2010
A Plan to Spur Growth Away From Haiti’s Capital - NYT article
Found Here
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: March 30, 2010
Even as outsiders feel sympathy for Haiti’s suffering, they tend to look upon it as a country beyond saving.
Now there is a plan to do just that, and it is surprisingly convincing. The lucid, far-reaching reconstruction guidelines that the Haitian government is scheduled to unveil on Wednesday at a donors’ conference at the United Nations should give all who care about Haiti’s future cause for hope.
Prepared by a group of urban planners from the Haitian government agency responsible for the country’s development, the plan is built around a bold central idea: to redistribute large parts of the population of Port-au-Prince to smaller Haitian cities, many of them at a safe distance from areas most vulnerable to natural disaster. In the process the plan would completely transform Haiti from a country dominated by a single metropolis to what the planners call a network of smaller urban “growth poles.”
The guidelines are still in a nascent stage, and Haiti’s fate will ultimately have a lot to do with economic and political developments beyond the scope of planners. But the guidelines already surpass any of the early reconstruction plans for post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans or for the parts of Asia affected by the tsunami in 2004. The guidelines’ well-reasoned thinking about environmental threats and the history of urban development in Haiti suggests that they could become a reliable blueprint not just for reconstruction, but also for solving many of the urban ills that have plagued the country for decades.
The causes of those troubles can be traced back a century. Haiti was once primarily rural, with its major economic activity distributed among several ports along the northern, western and southern coasts. But after the United States invaded in 1915, the Americans began to concentrate most trade operations in Port-au-Prince, the site of their military headquarters. The port was dredged to make room for big new steamships; other major ports, to the north and west, began to lose their importance. By the middle of the 1960s, François Duvalier had shut down the other ports entirely as part of an effort to concentrate his power base in the capital.
The growth of Port-au-Prince accelerated in the political turmoil after Duvalier’s son and heir, Jean-Claude, fled the country in 1986. Over the next 20 years, the city’s population nearly doubled, to close to three million people, according to some estimates.
The effect of this shift was an urban disaster — one that has put more and more pressure on the capital while draining the provinces of economic opportunity.
“You need to restore a balance,” said Leslie Voltaire, an urban planner and a special envoy to the United Nations, in an interview on Tuesday. “If we don’t do anything, Port-au-Prince is expected to grow to 6,000,000 in the next 15 years. It will become an incubator for further crime and violence. Our economic advantage is in agriculture and tourism, and these are by nature decentralized.”
The notion of shrinking the capital and reviving provincial cities dates back to 1987. It was enshrined as a goal in the post-Duvalier constitution by a government seeking to redistribute political power and has been brought up periodically by urban planners ever since, to little effect.
The environmental and geological concerns raised by the earthquake have made this approach seem all the more critical. Geologists point out that the dangers posed by the fault line running across Port-au-Prince are compounded by others, like landslides and flooding.
In essence, the guidelines treat the recent disaster as an opportunity. Thousands of public buildings in Port-au-Prince were destroyed by the earthquake, including schools, hospitals and markets. Around 600,000 survivors have since fled the capital for cities like Cap Haitien, in the north, and Hinche, in the central plateau. The population of Gonaïves, a port city on the west coast roughly midway between the country’s two major fault lines, has swollen to 300,000 from 200,000 in less than three months.
By relocating many schools and hospitals to smaller cities, planners hope to create an economic incentive to keep people from returning to Port-au-Prince once reconstruction begins. The new buildings could be organized around public squares and parks to provide civic centers to communities sorely lacking in them.
Planners have outlined a similar approach for rural villages, with farms encircling a communal core containing a market, a school and health-care facilities. The public structures would be built by the government; much of the housing could be put up privately by Haitians but under stricter building regulations. (Mr. Voltaire even imagines a prototype for basic shelter that could be transformed into a more permanent house over time.)
“This will only work if these poles become magnets of attraction — with agriculture, tourism, industry and especially jobs,” Mr. Voltaire said. “Otherwise, these people are going to come back.”
If they do return, it will be to a Port-au-Prince that was already stretched beyond capacity before the quake. International aid organizations invested heavily in the city’s infrastructure in the 1970s, building sewers and expanding the electrical network, but there has been almost no investment since. Sewage treatment facilities are more or less nonexistent. The city’s building code is barely two pages long.
The guidelines could lead to new zoning regulations that would at least begin to segregate residential from commercial activities in some of the densest downtown areas. A light rail system, running on a north-south axis through the city center, would help relieve traffic congestion. The millions of cubic tons of debris resulting from the earthquake would be used as landfill at the water’s edge, creating room for a waterfront park in a city in dire need of public space. Sites that were once occupied by schools and hospitals that have been moved out of town would be turned into other parks and public squares.
“The best thing that could happen is to insert public spaces — new parks, squares, exchange centers, markets — into these voids,” Mr. Voltaire said. “We should think in terms of the city’s urban evolution rather than large-scale development.”
More than a few of the renderings at this early stage suggest conventional planning formulas found in Southern California, suburban Boston or Beijing. But what matters is the underlying principles that inform the guidelines and that treat the reconstruction effort as an opportunity to build community.
What Haiti’s planners will need next is not just money, but also access to ideas. Mr. Voltaire and a group of Haitian planners spent several days last week refining their plan at the University of Miami, for example. The institution’s faculty and students provided much-needed logistical support, helping to produce maps and renderings. It was also an opportunity for the university, a stronghold of New Urbanism, to promote that movement’s small-town planning philosophy.
In New York the architect Steven Holl recently completed a proposal for urban reconstruction, though he has had no direct contact with the Haitian government. In contrast to the New Urbanist model, his proposal, though few have seen it, favors urban density over suburbanization.
I’ve had reservations about New Urbanist theory in the past. But the point is that those who are planning Haiti’s reconstruction should have access to the widest range of talent and ideas. International development authorities could set up such a framework. Haiti can then determine the best fit for itself.
This will not be an easy task. Americans may remember the good will that swirled around New Orleans in the months after Hurricane Katrina. Architects and planners, moved by what they saw, churned out plans for the city’s recovery. Some of these plans — environmentally sensitive, rooted in a knowledge of New Orleans and its racial and social tensions — could have formed the foundation for something of genuine value. But a connection between good urban planning ideas and political realities on the ground was never made. The best plans went nowhere. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen in Haiti.
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: March 30, 2010
Even as outsiders feel sympathy for Haiti’s suffering, they tend to look upon it as a country beyond saving.
Now there is a plan to do just that, and it is surprisingly convincing. The lucid, far-reaching reconstruction guidelines that the Haitian government is scheduled to unveil on Wednesday at a donors’ conference at the United Nations should give all who care about Haiti’s future cause for hope.
Prepared by a group of urban planners from the Haitian government agency responsible for the country’s development, the plan is built around a bold central idea: to redistribute large parts of the population of Port-au-Prince to smaller Haitian cities, many of them at a safe distance from areas most vulnerable to natural disaster. In the process the plan would completely transform Haiti from a country dominated by a single metropolis to what the planners call a network of smaller urban “growth poles.”
The guidelines are still in a nascent stage, and Haiti’s fate will ultimately have a lot to do with economic and political developments beyond the scope of planners. But the guidelines already surpass any of the early reconstruction plans for post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans or for the parts of Asia affected by the tsunami in 2004. The guidelines’ well-reasoned thinking about environmental threats and the history of urban development in Haiti suggests that they could become a reliable blueprint not just for reconstruction, but also for solving many of the urban ills that have plagued the country for decades.
The causes of those troubles can be traced back a century. Haiti was once primarily rural, with its major economic activity distributed among several ports along the northern, western and southern coasts. But after the United States invaded in 1915, the Americans began to concentrate most trade operations in Port-au-Prince, the site of their military headquarters. The port was dredged to make room for big new steamships; other major ports, to the north and west, began to lose their importance. By the middle of the 1960s, François Duvalier had shut down the other ports entirely as part of an effort to concentrate his power base in the capital.
The growth of Port-au-Prince accelerated in the political turmoil after Duvalier’s son and heir, Jean-Claude, fled the country in 1986. Over the next 20 years, the city’s population nearly doubled, to close to three million people, according to some estimates.
The effect of this shift was an urban disaster — one that has put more and more pressure on the capital while draining the provinces of economic opportunity.
“You need to restore a balance,” said Leslie Voltaire, an urban planner and a special envoy to the United Nations, in an interview on Tuesday. “If we don’t do anything, Port-au-Prince is expected to grow to 6,000,000 in the next 15 years. It will become an incubator for further crime and violence. Our economic advantage is in agriculture and tourism, and these are by nature decentralized.”
The notion of shrinking the capital and reviving provincial cities dates back to 1987. It was enshrined as a goal in the post-Duvalier constitution by a government seeking to redistribute political power and has been brought up periodically by urban planners ever since, to little effect.
The environmental and geological concerns raised by the earthquake have made this approach seem all the more critical. Geologists point out that the dangers posed by the fault line running across Port-au-Prince are compounded by others, like landslides and flooding.
In essence, the guidelines treat the recent disaster as an opportunity. Thousands of public buildings in Port-au-Prince were destroyed by the earthquake, including schools, hospitals and markets. Around 600,000 survivors have since fled the capital for cities like Cap Haitien, in the north, and Hinche, in the central plateau. The population of Gonaïves, a port city on the west coast roughly midway between the country’s two major fault lines, has swollen to 300,000 from 200,000 in less than three months.
By relocating many schools and hospitals to smaller cities, planners hope to create an economic incentive to keep people from returning to Port-au-Prince once reconstruction begins. The new buildings could be organized around public squares and parks to provide civic centers to communities sorely lacking in them.
Planners have outlined a similar approach for rural villages, with farms encircling a communal core containing a market, a school and health-care facilities. The public structures would be built by the government; much of the housing could be put up privately by Haitians but under stricter building regulations. (Mr. Voltaire even imagines a prototype for basic shelter that could be transformed into a more permanent house over time.)
“This will only work if these poles become magnets of attraction — with agriculture, tourism, industry and especially jobs,” Mr. Voltaire said. “Otherwise, these people are going to come back.”
If they do return, it will be to a Port-au-Prince that was already stretched beyond capacity before the quake. International aid organizations invested heavily in the city’s infrastructure in the 1970s, building sewers and expanding the electrical network, but there has been almost no investment since. Sewage treatment facilities are more or less nonexistent. The city’s building code is barely two pages long.
The guidelines could lead to new zoning regulations that would at least begin to segregate residential from commercial activities in some of the densest downtown areas. A light rail system, running on a north-south axis through the city center, would help relieve traffic congestion. The millions of cubic tons of debris resulting from the earthquake would be used as landfill at the water’s edge, creating room for a waterfront park in a city in dire need of public space. Sites that were once occupied by schools and hospitals that have been moved out of town would be turned into other parks and public squares.
“The best thing that could happen is to insert public spaces — new parks, squares, exchange centers, markets — into these voids,” Mr. Voltaire said. “We should think in terms of the city’s urban evolution rather than large-scale development.”
More than a few of the renderings at this early stage suggest conventional planning formulas found in Southern California, suburban Boston or Beijing. But what matters is the underlying principles that inform the guidelines and that treat the reconstruction effort as an opportunity to build community.
What Haiti’s planners will need next is not just money, but also access to ideas. Mr. Voltaire and a group of Haitian planners spent several days last week refining their plan at the University of Miami, for example. The institution’s faculty and students provided much-needed logistical support, helping to produce maps and renderings. It was also an opportunity for the university, a stronghold of New Urbanism, to promote that movement’s small-town planning philosophy.
In New York the architect Steven Holl recently completed a proposal for urban reconstruction, though he has had no direct contact with the Haitian government. In contrast to the New Urbanist model, his proposal, though few have seen it, favors urban density over suburbanization.
I’ve had reservations about New Urbanist theory in the past. But the point is that those who are planning Haiti’s reconstruction should have access to the widest range of talent and ideas. International development authorities could set up such a framework. Haiti can then determine the best fit for itself.
This will not be an easy task. Americans may remember the good will that swirled around New Orleans in the months after Hurricane Katrina. Architects and planners, moved by what they saw, churned out plans for the city’s recovery. Some of these plans — environmentally sensitive, rooted in a knowledge of New Orleans and its racial and social tensions — could have formed the foundation for something of genuine value. But a connection between good urban planning ideas and political realities on the ground was never made. The best plans went nowhere. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen in Haiti.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Join the fun and be active in your planning careers!
It's back! Mark your calendars for Friday, April 9th for the second
(annual?) "I Love Logan Square" Party, a fundraiser for the mighty
Logan Square Neighborhood Association (www.lsna.net). See attachment
for official invitation.
Who: You and all your friends (it's a great group outing!)
Must be 21+ or with a parent
What: "I Love Logan Square" party, a fundraiser for Logan Square
Neighborhood Assoc.
When: Friday, April 9th 8pm- 1am
(Salsa lessons at 8:30pm; Live Auction at 9:30pm; DJ at 10:30pm)
Where: Elastic Arts, 2830 N. Milwaukee, a hidden spot upstairs from
Friendship Chinese
How much: A mere $10 gets you in the door, and additional donations
will get you drinks, prizes and photo ops with SUPER-LSNA, the
official superhero of Logan Square.
The action-packed, thrilling Liiiiive Auction, which starts at 9:30pm, includes one-of-a-kind prizes such as:
- Garage (or other wall) mural consultation by Marcelo Ferrer
- A Day on the Farm with Radical Root
- An opera serenade at the time and place of your choosing by a professional opera singer
- Custom bike painting by Chester Cycles www.chestercycles.com
- Gift certificates for massage and stress relief yoga
- Neighbor-to-neighbor lessons in beer-making, meat-curing,
tamale-making, poker, guitar, drums and more!
- Laughter and merriment for all provided by our two auctioneers--Raul Islas and Sarah Mathers
Cash, check and credit card accepted. Roughly 90% of money donated will go directly to LSNA. Show some love for Logan Square, and forward along this invitation to your friends. Please RSVP to bmurphy@lsna.net or rwalz@lsna.net so we can get a sense of our head count.
See you April 9!
P.S. Let me know if you have any talents/skills/services to auction
off OR if you would like to volunteer--we could always use more help
greeting people, serving drinks, printing SUPER-LSNA's photos, etc.
P.P.S. If you don't take our word for it, check out the rave review of
last yea's party in New City, Not Just for Squares: Everyone Loves
Logan Square
http://newcity.com/2009/04/21/not-for-squares-everyone-loves-logan-square/
(annual?) "I Love Logan Square" Party, a fundraiser for the mighty
Logan Square Neighborhood Association (www.lsna.net). See attachment
for official invitation.
Who: You and all your friends (it's a great group outing!)
Must be 21+ or with a parent
What: "I Love Logan Square" party, a fundraiser for Logan Square
Neighborhood Assoc.
When: Friday, April 9th 8pm- 1am
(Salsa lessons at 8:30pm; Live Auction at 9:30pm; DJ at 10:30pm)
Where: Elastic Arts, 2830 N. Milwaukee, a hidden spot upstairs from
Friendship Chinese
How much: A mere $10 gets you in the door, and additional donations
will get you drinks, prizes and photo ops with SUPER-LSNA, the
official superhero of Logan Square.
The action-packed, thrilling Liiiiive Auction, which starts at 9:30pm, includes one-of-a-kind prizes such as:
- Garage (or other wall) mural consultation by Marcelo Ferrer
- A Day on the Farm with Radical Root
- An opera serenade at the time and place of your choosing by a professional opera singer
- Custom bike painting by Chester Cycles www.chestercycles.com
- Gift certificates for massage and stress relief yoga
- Neighbor-to-neighbor lessons in beer-making, meat-curing,
tamale-making, poker, guitar, drums and more!
- Laughter and merriment for all provided by our two auctioneers--Raul Islas and Sarah Mathers
Cash, check and credit card accepted. Roughly 90% of money donated will go directly to LSNA. Show some love for Logan Square, and forward along this invitation to your friends. Please RSVP to bmurphy@lsna.net or rwalz@lsna.net so we can get a sense of our head count.
See you April 9!
P.S. Let me know if you have any talents/skills/services to auction
off OR if you would like to volunteer--we could always use more help
greeting people, serving drinks, printing SUPER-LSNA's photos, etc.
P.P.S. If you don't take our word for it, check out the rave review of
last yea's party in New City, Not Just for Squares: Everyone Loves
Logan Square
http://newcity.com/2009/04/21/not-for-squares-everyone-loves-logan-square/
Call for Papers
This year the Upper Midwest Regional Planning Conference held in Mankato, MN on September 22 through September 24 will include a Student Presentation session that will allow you the opportunity to showcase projects you have completed as part of your curriculum. As you complete projects or prepare for final projects please consider presenting them at the conference. Presentation format for this session may vary from a presentation and Q&A session to an informal booth session with visuals that showcases work completed.
This should be a terrific opportunity to display your talents and skills to professionals and spark dialogue on planning issues important to you and central to this conference’s topic: “Planning in a New Decade.” To submit a project or for more information please contact Alex Conzemius at AlexCo@Bolton-Menk.com
This should be a terrific opportunity to display your talents and skills to professionals and spark dialogue on planning issues important to you and central to this conference’s topic: “Planning in a New Decade.” To submit a project or for more information please contact Alex Conzemius at AlexCo@Bolton-Menk.com
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Frank Gehry presents the Cindy Pritzker Lecture on Urban Life and Issues
Date: Tue. April 06, 2010
Time: 6:00 pm
Location:
Harold Washington Library Center
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 S. State Street
60605
About this event:
The Board of Directors of the Chicago Public Library annually honors its former President, Cindy Pritzker, by presenting the Cindy Pritzker Lecture on Urban Life and Issues. This year's lecture features renowned architect Frank Gehry, interviewed by Tom Pritzker, Chairman and CEO of the Pritzker Organization.
More information at http://www.chipublib.org/events/details/id/42162/
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Spring Break Itinerary to The Big D!
For our trip to the Motor City on Monday, I thought I would pass along the itinerary as well as some "non-required" readings:
Leave CUPPA around 8 or 9am
Arrive in Detroit about 2
Tour of the Motor City by 2 wheels at 3ish:
we will see:
Also, on Tuesday, we are meeting with some planners with Data Driven Detroit,
Please take a look at recent work of Data Driven Detroit:
Detroit Residential Parcel Survey, http://www.detroitparcelsurvey.org/
Powerpoint Overview
http://www.detroitparcelsurvey.org/pdf/Detroit_Residential_Parcel_Survey_Presentation.pdf
Reports - (Download the Citywide reports for the higher resolution maps)
http://www.detroitparcelsurvey.org/interior.php?nav=reports
Data Definitions pdf
http://www.detroitparcelsurvey.org/pdf/DRPS_Definitions_021510.pdf
News Articles
Survey finds third of Detroit lots vacant: Positive news uncovered, too, BY JOHN GALLAGHER, Detroit Free Press, February 20, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/20100220/BUSINESS04/2200371/1318/Survey-finds-third-of-Detroit-lots-vacant
Maps and Charts: See results of the survey, Graphics by MARTHA THIERRY, MOSES HARRIS, ERIC MILLIKIN, KRISTI TANNER and JOHN GALLAGHER, Detroit Free Press, Febraury 20, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/20100220/BUSINESS04/100220001/Maps-See-results-of-the-survey
Refit the city to its reality: Population data point to smarter schools and policing, EDITORIAL, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 28, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/20100228/OPINION01/2280424/1069/opinion01/Refit-the-city-to-its-reality
Getting to a smaller Detroit, COMMENTARY BY ROBIN BOYLE, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 28, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/20100228/OPINION05/100226057/1068/OPINION/Getting-to-a-smaller-Detroit
Flash Map - Interactive: The challenges of Detroit's vacant homes
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100309/SPECIAL01/100308001
See you Monday!!!
Leave CUPPA around 8 or 9am
Arrive in Detroit about 2
Tour of the Motor City by 2 wheels at 3ish:
we will see:
- Urban blight
- Heidelberg Project heidelberg.org
- Urban Farms, specifically, Earthworks
- Belle Isle- like they're Central Park, but an island. Great architecture
- views of city and Canada
- Indian Village Low-density (as much of Detroit always has been), beautiful, single-family residential area
- Eastern Market- Country's oldest farmer's market for a food stop
- Dequindre Cut- Rail to trail back to the bike shop, goes through Lafayette Park a residential neighborhood with the most Mies Van Der Rohe homes
Also, on Tuesday, we are meeting with some planners with Data Driven Detroit,
Please take a look at recent work of Data Driven Detroit:
Detroit Residential Parcel Survey, http://www.
Powerpoint Overview
http://www.
Reports - (Download the Citywide reports for the higher resolution maps)
http://www.
Data Definitions pdf
http://www.
News Articles
Survey finds third of Detroit lots vacant: Positive news uncovered, too, BY JOHN GALLAGHER, Detroit Free Press, February 20, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/
Maps and Charts: See results of the survey, Graphics by MARTHA THIERRY, MOSES HARRIS, ERIC MILLIKIN, KRISTI TANNER and JOHN GALLAGHER, Detroit Free Press, Febraury 20, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/
Refit the city to its reality: Population data point to smarter schools and policing, EDITORIAL, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 28, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/
Getting to a smaller Detroit, COMMENTARY BY ROBIN BOYLE, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 28, 2010
http://www.freep.com/article/
Flash Map - Interactive: The challenges of Detroit's vacant homes
http://www.detnews.com/
See you Monday!!!
Friday, March 12, 2010
March 19th TOD!! Come one, come all!
***Celebrate the start of your Spring Break with us!***
Where: Heartland Cafe 7000 N. Glenwood Ave. one block North of Red Line Morse Stop
When: Friday, March 19th, 8-10pm, after the 6pm March General Assembly meeting in CUPPA Hall basement lounge
Why: Enjoy great food and drinks on the ***heated patio*** of the Heartland Cafe (one of TimeOut Chicago's Essential Restaurants in Chicago) and relax with your fellow MUPPs!
***Support a local restaurant whose owners are interested in urban planning, TOD, and creating a "green stop on the Red Line."***
Hope to see all of you there!
Where: Heartland Cafe 7000 N. Glenwood Ave. one block North of Red Line Morse Stop
When: Friday, March 19th, 8-10pm, after the 6pm March General Assembly meeting in CUPPA Hall basement lounge
Why: Enjoy great food and drinks on the ***heated patio*** of the Heartland Cafe (one of TimeOut Chicago's Essential Restaurants in Chicago) and relax with your fellow MUPPs!
***Support a local restaurant whose owners are interested in urban planning, TOD, and creating a "green stop on the Red Line."***
Hope to see all of you there!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Farming to save Detroit?
To get you excited about our upcoming UPPSA field trip during spring break, here is an article from CNN about Detroit's possible turnaround....
Can farming save Detroit?
DETROIT (Fortune) -- John Hantz is a wealthy money manager who lives in an older enclave of Detroit where all the houses are grand and not all of them are falling apart. Once a star stockbroker at American Express, he left 13 years ago to found his own firm. Today Hantz Financial Services has 20 offices in Michigan, Ohio, and Georgia, more than 500 employees, and $1.3 billion in assets under management.
Twice divorced, Hantz, 48, lives alone in clubby, paneled splendor, surrounded by early-American landscapes on the walls, an autograph collection that veers from Detroit icons such as Ty Cobb and Henry Ford to Baron von Richthofen and Mussolini, and a set of Ayn Rand first editions.
 |
| Stockbroker John Hantz is scouting empty acres in Detroit and says he'll start planting in the spring. |
With a net worth of more than $100 million, he's one of the richest men left in Detroit -- one of the very few in his demographic who stayed put when others were fleeing to Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills. Not long ago, while commuting, he stumbled on a big idea that might help save his dying city.
Every weekday Hantz pulls his Volvo SUV out of the gated driveway of his compound and drives half an hour to his office in Southfield, a northern suburb on the far side of Eight Mile Road. His route takes him through a desolate, postindustrial cityscape -- the kind of scene that is shockingly common in Detroit.
Along the way he passes vacant buildings, abandoned homes, and a whole lot of empty land. In some stretches he sees more pheasants than people. "Every year I tell myself it's going to get better," says Hantz, bright-eyed, with smooth cheeks and a little boy's carefully combed haircut, "and every year it doesn't."
Then one day about a year and a half ago, Hantz had a revelation. "We need scarcity," he thought to himself as he drove past block after unoccupied block. "We can't create opportunities, but we can create scarcity." And that, he says one afternoon in his living room between puffs on an expensive cigar, "is how I got onto this idea of the farm."
Yes, a farm. A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and -- most important of all -- stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He'll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit's east side. "Out of the gates," he says, "it'll be the largest urban farm in the world."
This is possibly not as crazy as it sounds. Granted, the notion of devoting valuable city land to agriculture would be unfathomable in New York, London, or Tokyo. But Detroit is a special case. The city that was once the fourth largest in the country and served as a symbol of America's industrial might has lately assumed a new role: North American poster child for the global phenomenon of shrinking postindustrial cities.
Nearly 2 million people used to live in Detroit. Fewer than 900,000 remain. Even if, unlikely as it seems, the auto industry were to rebound dramatically and the U.S. economy were to come roaring back tomorrow, no one -- not even the proudest civic boosters -- imagines that the worst is over. "Detroit will probably be a city of 700,000 people when it's all said and done," says Doug Rothwell, CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan. "The big challenge is, What do you do with a population of 700,000 in a geography that can accommodate three times that much?"
Whatever the answer is, whenever it comes, it won't be predicated on a return to past glory. "We have to be realistic," says George Jackson, CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC). "This is not about trying to re-create something. We're not a world-class city."
If not world class, then what? A regional financial center? That's already Chicago, and to a lesser extent Minneapolis. A biotech hub? Boston and San Diego are way out in front. Some think Detroit has a future in TV and movies, but Hollywood is skeptical. ("Best incentives in the country," one producer says. "Worst crew.") How about high tech and green manufacturing? Possibly, given the engineering and manufacturing talent that remains.
But still there's the problem of what to do with the city's enormous amount of abandoned land, conservatively estimated at 40 square miles in a sprawling metropolis whose 139-square-mile footprint is easily bigger than San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined. If you let it revert to nature, you abandon all hope of productive use. If you turn it over to parks and recreation, you add costs to an overburdened city government that can't afford to teach its children, police its streets, or maintain the infrastructure it already has.
Faced with those facts, a growing number of policymakers and urban planners have begun to endorse farming as a solution. Former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, now chairman of CityView, a private equity firm that invests in urban development, is familiar with Detroit's land problem. He says he's in favor of "other uses that engage human beings in their maintenance, such as urban agriculture." After studying the city's options at the request of civic leaders, the American Institute of Architects came to this conclusion in a recent report: "Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale."
In that sense, Detroit might actually be ahead of the curve. When Alex Krieger, chairman of the department of urban planning and design at Harvard, imagines what the settled world might look like half a century from now, he sees "a checkerboard pattern" with "more densely urbanized areas, and areas preserved for various purposes such as farming.
The notion of a walled city, a contained city -- that's an 18th-century idea." And where will the new ideas for the 21st century emerge? From older, decaying cities, Krieger believes, such as New Orleans, St. Louis, Cleveland, Newark, and especially Detroit -- cities that have become, at least in part, "kind of empty containers."
This is a lot to hang on Hantz. Most of what he knows about agriculture he's picked up over the past 18 months from the experts he's consulting at Michigan State and the Kellogg Foundation. Then there's the fact that many of his fellow citizens are openly rooting against him. Since word leaked of his scheme last spring, he has been criticized by community activists, who call the plan a land grab. Opponents have also raised questions about the run-ins he's had with regulators at Hantz Financial.
But Detroit is nothing if not desperate for new ideas, and Hantz has had no trouble getting his heard. "It all sounds very exciting," says the DEGC's Jackson, whose agency is working on assembling a package of incentives for Hantz, including free city land. "We hope it works."
Detroit's civic history is notable for repeated failed attempts to revitalize its core. Over the past three decades leaders have embraced a series of downtown redevelopment plans that promised to save the city.
The massive Renaissance Center office and retail complex, built in the 1970s, mostly served to suck tenants out of other downtown buildings. (Today 48 of those buildings stand empty.) Three new casinos (one already bankrupt) and two new sports arenas (one for the NFL's dreadful Lions, the other for MLB's Tigers) have restored, on some nights, a little spark to downtown Detroit but have inspired little in the way of peripheral development. Downtown is still eerily underpopulated, the tax base is still crumbling, and people are still leaving. The jobless rate in the city is 27%.
Nothing yet tried in Detroit even begins to address the fundamental issue of emptiness -- empty factories, empty office buildings, empty houses, and above all, empty lots. Rampant arson, culminating in the annual frenzy of Devil's Night, is partly to blame. But there has also been a lot of officially sanctioned demolition in Detroit. As white residents fled to the suburbs over the decades, houses in the decaying neighborhoods they left behind were often bulldozed.
Abandonment is an infrastructure problem, when you consider the cost of maintaining far-flung roads and sewer systems; it's a city services problem, when you think about the inefficiencies of collecting trash and fighting crime in sparsely populated neighborhoods; and it's a real estate problem. Houses in Detroit are selling for an average of $15,000.
That sounds like a buying opportunity, and in fact Detroit looks pretty good right now to a young artist or entrepreneur who can't afford anyplace else -- but not yet to an investor. The smart money sees no point in buying as long as fresh inventory keeps flooding the market. "In the target sites we have," says Hantz, "we [reevaluate] every two weeks."
As Hantz began thinking about ways to absorb some of that inventory, what he imagined, he says, was a glacier: one broad, continuous swath of farmland, growing acre by acre, year by year, until it had overrun enough territory to raise the scarcity alarm and impel other investors to act. Rick Foster, an executive at the Kellogg Foundation whom Hantz sought out for advice, nudged him gently in a different direction.
"I think you should make pods," Foster said, meaning not one farm but many. Hantz was taken right away with the concept of creating several pods -- or lakes, as he came to think of them -- each as large as 300 acres, and each surrounded by its own valuable frontage. "What if we had seven lakes in the city?" he wondered. "Would people develop around those lakes?"
To increase the odds that they will, Hantz plans on making his farms both visually stunning and technologically cutting edge. Where there are row crops, Hantz says, they'll be neatly organized, planted in "dead-straight lines -- they may even be in a design." But the plan isn't to make Detroit look like Iowa. "Don't think a farm with tractors," says Hantz. "That's old."
In fact, Hantz's operation will bear little resemblance to a traditional farm. Mike Score, who recently left Michigan State's agricultural extension program to join Hantz Farms as president, has written a business plan that calls for the deployment of the latest in farm technology, from compost-heated greenhouses to hydroponic (water only, no soil) and aeroponic (air only) growing systems designed to maximize productivity in cramped settings.
He's really excited about apples. Hantz Farms will use a trellised system that's compact, highly efficient, and tourist-friendly. It won't be like apple picking in Massachusetts, and that's the point. Score wants visitors to Hantz Farms to see that agriculture is not just something that takes place in the countryside. They will be able to "walk down the row pushing a baby stroller," he promises.
Crop selection will depend on the soil conditions of the plots that Hantz acquires. Experts insist that most of the land is not irretrievably toxic. The majority of the lots now vacant in Detroit were residential, not industrial; the biggest problem is how compacted the soil is. For the most part the farms will focus on high-margin edibles: peaches, berries, plums, nectarines, and exotic greens. Score says that the first crops are likely to be lettuce and heirloom tomatoes.
Hantz says he's willing to put up the entire $30 million investment himself -- all cash, no debt -- and immediately begin hiring locally for full-time positions. But he wants two things first from Jackson at the DEGC: free tax-delinquent land, which he'll combine with his own purchases, he says (he's aiming for an average cost of $3,000 per acre, in line with rural farmland in southern Michigan), and a zoning adjustment that would create a new, lower tax rate for agriculture. There's no deal yet, but neither request strikes Jackson as unattainable. "If we have reasonable due diligence," he says, "I think we'll give it a shot."
Detroit mayor Dave Bing is watching closely. The Pistons Hall of Fame guard turned entrepreneur has had what his spokesman describes as "productive discussions" with Hantz. In a statement to Fortune, Bing says he's "encouraged by the proposals to bring commercial farming back to Detroit. As we look to diversify our economy, commercial farming has some real potential for job growth and rebuilding our tax base."
Hantz, for his part, says he's got three or four locations all picked out ("one of them will pop") and is confident he'll have seeds in the ground "in some sort of demonstration capacity" this spring. "Some things you've got to see in order to believe," he says, waving his cigar. "This is a thing you've got to believe in order to see."
Many have a hard time making that leap. When news of Hantz's ambitious plan broke in the Detroit papers last spring, few people even knew who he was. A little digging turned up a less-than-spotless record at Hantz Financial Services. The firm has paid fines totaling more than $1 million in the past five years, including $675,000 in 2005, without admitting or denying guilt, "for fraud and misrepresentations relating to undisclosed revenue-sharing arrangements, as well as other violations," according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. (Hantz responds, "If we find something that isn't in compliance, we take immediate steps to correct the problem.")
Hantz Farms' first hire, VP Matt Allen, did have an established reputation in Detroit, but it wasn't a good one. Two years ago, while he was press secretary for former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Allen pleaded guilty to domestic violence and obstructing police after his wife called 911. He was sentenced to a year's probation. Hantz says he has known Allen for many years and values his deep knowledge of the city. "He has earned a second chance, and I'm willing to give it to him," he says.
Some of Hantz's biggest skeptics, ironically, are the same people who've been working to transform Detroit into a laboratory for urban farming for years, albeit on a much smaller scale. The nonprofit Detroit Agriculture Network counts nearly 900 urban gardens within the city limits. That's a twofold increase in two years, and it places Detroit at the forefront of a vibrant national movement to grow more food locally and lessen the nation's dependence on Big Ag.
None of those gardens is very big (average size: 0.25 acre), and they don't generate a lot of cash (most don't even try), but otherwise they're great: as antidotes to urban blight; sources of healthy, affordable food in a city that, incredibly, has no chain supermarkets; providers of meaningful, if generally unpaid, work to the chronically unemployed; and beacons around which disintegrating communities can begin to regather themselves.
That actually sounds a lot like what Hantz envisions his farms to be in the for-profit arena. But he doesn't have many fans among the community gardeners, who feel that Hantz is using his money and connections to capitalize on their pioneering work. "I'm concerned about the corporate takeover of the urban agriculture movement in Detroit," says Malik Yakini, a charter school principal and founder of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which operates D-Town Farm on Detroit's west side. "At this point the key players with him seem to be all white men in a city that's at least 82% black."
Hantz, meanwhile, has no patience for what he calls "fear-based" criticism. He has a hard time concealing his contempt for the nonprofit sector generally. ("Someone must pay taxes," he sniffs.) He also flatly rejects the idea that he's orchestrating some kind of underhanded land grab. In fact, Hantz says that he welcomes others who might want to start their own farms in the city. "Viability and sustainability to me are all that matters," he says.
And yet Hantz is fully aware of the potentially historic scope of what he is proposing. After all, he's talking about accumulating hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of acres inside a major American city. And it's clear that he views Hantz Farms as his legacy. Already he's told his 21-year-old daughter, Lauren, his only heir, that if she wants to own the land one day, she has to promise him she'll never sell it. "This is like buying a penthouse in New York in 1940," Hantz says. "No one should be able to afford to do this ever again."
That might seem like an overly optimistic view of Detroit's future. But allow Hantz to dream a little. Twenty years from now, when people come to the city and have a drink at the bar at the top of the Renaissance Center, what will they see? Maybe that's not the right vantage point. Maybe they'll actually be on the farm, picking apples, looking up at the RenCen. "That's the beauty of being down and out," says Hantz. "You can actually open your mind to ideas that you would never otherwise embrace." At this point, Detroit doesn't have much left to lose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)