Hella Bus (the Washington Bus blog) distills the following video well:
City design equals community, and community equals political perspective. Therefore, how you build your community defines your local politics. Interesting, eh? Kind of puts your neighborhood planning process into a new light…
YES! More this. Shout it from the rooftops.
For some reason, 2008 was the first election that I really noticed the county-level results. When you look at a map of the returns by county:
It’s pretty striking how the blue counties draw a picture of historic (and current) trade routes. It is natural trade routes that have been the primary drivers of density and “creative traffic” – more visitors, more migration to/from/between, more immigration, cultural exchange, yeeee. So then that makes me think…
A) Economic development IS urban design. As far as I’m seeing, land use decisions seem pretty driven by economic development (e.g. South Lake Union, ID upzone, etc).
B) Historic Preservationists, historians, cultural workers, artspace builders, all drive the kind of creative traffic that Silver shows to predict lower levels of racism, and all have a really important role to play in anti-racist work through the built environment.
(Nitpick – Silver”s unfortunate assumption about his audience “when we think of Arkansas we think of hicks” etc)
In order to be effective partners in urban planning and help maintain/build culturally vibrant, diverse neighborhoods, we need rad new economic development plans informed by culture workers’ expertise…. This is definitely a premise of CODAC…
Thoughts? What models are you aware of?
