New Geography

Author: Andy Sywak

  • Central Valley Noir: California’s Changing Geography of Murder

    Phillip Marlowe, Joe Friday, pack your bags. Your talents are needed elsewhere. The City of Angels is starting to live up to its namesake but the same cannot be said of the state’s agricultural communities.

    Homicide has long been associated with the inner city, the worst crime suffered disproportionately by those who fare the worst. But the annual report on homicide released this month by the California Attorney General reveals that counties traditionally dominated by agriculture have the highest rates. Monterey, Merced, San Joaquin and Kern counties top the list where the largest city to be found is Bakersfield with under 350,000 residents. In fact, the counties that hold the state’s four largest cities, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and San Francisco, are not even in the top ten. Alameda, Fresno and Contra Costa are the only arguably urban-dominated counties to be in the top ten and including Fresno on this list is a stretch.

    Why is this the case? The city of Salinas in Monterey County has a horrible gang problem as does Fresno. Although most criminologists do not link murder to a poor economy, the Central Valley has suffered tremendously in recent years, causing one observer to call it “California’s Detroit .” Los Angeles, which had the state’s second highest murder rate in 2001, saw a precipitous drop in violent crime in the last decade under LAPD Chief Bill Bratton. It’s 2010 murder rate (5.9 homicides per 100,000 residents) was nearly half of the rate in 2001 (11).

    Another eye-popper in the report was the incidence of homicide in the Hispanic community: Hispanics comprised nearly 45 percent of the state’s homicide victims and nearly 49 percent of those arrested for the crime (27 percent of victims were black and 18 percent were white for comparison).

    Other interesting highlights of the report:

    • The homicide rate went down for the fifth year in the row to a rate of 4.7 homicides per 100,000 residents – the lowest rate since 1966. Monterey and Merced both had rates of 10.
    • Thirty-six percent of all homicides were gang-related. Another thirty-six percent occurred as a result of an argument.
    • Whites who murder and are murdered tend to be older than other ethnic groups: 40 percent of white arrestees were age 40 or over, and 52 percent of white murder victims were over 40.
    • For cases in which the cause of murder is known, 71 percent of homicides involve a firearm.

  • Toyota: How Mississippi Engineered the Blue Springs Deal

    A big crowd gathered earlier today to welcome the first Corolla that rolled off the assembly line at Toyota’s tenth U.S. plant in the tiny hamlet of Blue Springs, Mississippi. Situated in Union County, just 17 miles from Elvis’ hometown of Tupelo, the new plant is the latest new automobile manufacturing facility to fly the flag of a foreign manufacturer in the Deep South.

    The opening culminates a year of project announcements in the area. Mercedes-Benz will invest $350 million to add capacity to its plant just outside of Tuscaloosa, joining Navistar, the nation’s top manufacturer of school buses and medium-duty trucks, which also announced plans to expand in Alabama. In neighboring Tennessee, eleven automotive related projects totaling $300 million have been announced since June. A commissioner from the state’s economic development office recently said that one third of the manufacturing jobs in the Volunteer State now relate to the automotive sector.

    But the growth of the auto industry in the area is not a stroke of fate. “It was a deliberate strategy, a regional strategy,” said David Rumbarger, President and CEO of the Community Development Foundation for Tupelo/Lee County. In 2001, three northeast Mississippi counties, Pontotoc, Union, and Lee, formed the PUL Alliance with the goal of luring a major automobile manufacturer to the area. Two years later, they identified the Blue Springs site, began looking for a tenant, and named the endeavor the Wellspring Project.

    “At the time, North Mississippi said, ‘We’ve got to diversity our economy here’ and we narrowed it down to automotive,’” said Josh West, Economic Developer for Pontotoc and Union counties. Nissan’s announcement in 2000 that it would open the state’s first assembly line plant in Canton proved it could be done.

    Furniture manufacturers, anchored by Ashley Furniture, Lane Furniture and Southern Motion, had long provided the region’s economic backbone (as recently as the 2007 Economic Census, more workers were employed in the state manufacturing furniture than automobiles). But, as with the textile industry, the industry slowly declined through downsizing and outsourcing, forcing locals to explore how to best capitalize on the area’s skilled labor force. The members of the PUL Alliance also probably couldn’t help but notice that the annual compensation cost for workers making automobiles is three times higher nationwide than for those manufacturing furniture.

    Furniture manufacturing provided a good labor basis for the region, West said, “but the computer technology and robotics needed to be taught.” To that end, the PUL Alliance formed a consortium of four area community colleges to offer the skills needed at the Blue Springs facility.

    “Each (college) couldn’t teach all the needed courses by themselves,” Rumbarger said, referring to courses on working with sheet metal, tool and dye technology and robotics, among others. “When we put the four institutions together, it helped spread the education of the workforce. It allowed the whole region to upgrade their skills.”

    After approaching Ford and other domestic manufacturers (“I spent a lot of time in Detroit,” Rumbarger said), Toyota announced in 2007 that it would break ground in Blue Springs, originally to make the Prius; Toyota later announced the plant will make only Corollas. Automakers have generally avoided opening up new plants in states where the United Auto Workers have a long history, choosing instead sites in the South with right-to-work laws that prohibit workers from being forced to join unions if their co-workers do so.

    “It’s definitely a benefit to us to be a right-to-work state,” West said, estimating that less than two percent of private employees in the northern Mississippi area belong to unions.

    The plant received 35,000 applications for 1,300 available spots, hiring mostly locals, with plans to hire more next year. Of course, a spin-off of every new auto plant is the wealth of suppliers who move into the area, producing seat bumpers, plastics, metals and other auto parts that add an estimated 1,000 jobs to the area. With Nissan’s Canton plant a four-hour drive south, suppliers have additional incentive to set up shop.

    According to Rumbarger, economic development officials in the area had a wage target of 15 to 28 dollars an hour for the jobs at the Blue Springs plant, an increase from the average hourly manufacturing wage in the area of $13.50. With the median home value in Union County at $79,200 and a per capita average under $18,000, the wages paid by Toyota should make home ownership easily attainable to its plant employees. The area has also seen an increase of 200 home starts this year compared to last.

    “I would speak to community groups and ask if anyone knew somebody who worked for Toyota. A couple of hands would go up,” Rumbarger said. “Now when I pose the question, nearly half of people know somebody who worked for Toyota. That’s the difference over the last 18 months.”

    Andy Sywak is the former publisher of the Castro Courier newspaper in San Francisco. He now lives in Los Angeles.

    Photo: Toyota Corolla by Paulo Keller

  • Local Stakeholders Debate Changes to San Francisco Neighborhood Demographics

    Despite one of the highest population densities in California and a prohibitive cost of living, San Francisco keeps packing them in. Figures released by the U.S. Census last month show that “the City” added 28,502 people during the last ten years, a modest population bump of 3.7 percent from 2000.

    The racial composition of the city changed significantly during the “naughts.” The 2010 Census numbers indicate that the city lost nearly a quarter of its black population with 14,000 fewer residents than in 2000. Although still the largest group as described by race, there were 48,000 fewer white residents than in 2000, a 14 percent decrease. Both the number of Asian and Hispanic residents increased by 11 percent, constituting 33 and 15 percent of the city’s population, respectively.

    Additionally, San Francisco saw its already small percentage of children sink further: there were 5,000 fewer residents under the age of 18 residing in the city than in 2000. Although the former head of the city’s Department Children, Youth and Their Families believes that this number is low due to the number of undocumented children, the findings confirm the anecdote familiar to all San Francisco residents that there very well may be more dogs than children.

    Although the Census has not yet released data more specific smaller geographic units to help decipher the precise demographic shifts, Castro neighborhood stakeholders believe the area has changed in the last ten years. Despite the findings of the Census, many neighborhood observers have seen an increase in the number of children in the area, anecdotally suggesting that the increase in youngsters was absorbed by decreases in other neighborhoods. Perhaps families who can afford to raise children in such an expensive city are choosing to do so among the plush hills and restored Victorians of the Castro and nearby areas – nearby Noe Valley has long derisively been called “Stroller Valley” by the city’s hipsters.

    “The Castro has always been diverse in a number of ways,” Supervisor Scott Wiener said. “I think the biggest demographic changes over the past decade have been an increase in the number of parents, gay and straight, with children, and fewer young people because of the cost of housing in the neighborhood.”

    The 2000 Census showed the 94114 zip code with markedly different demographics than the rest of the City. For instance, 83 percent of the population was white, compared to nearly 50 percent citywide in 2000, and nearly 60 percent of residents in the zip code were male.

    “I do think that the area has become more diverse,” Mark Dicko, a realtor based at Herth Real Estate on Castro Street, said, agreeing with Wiener.

    However, the realtor did not share the same opinion on the area becoming grayer. “I’ve seen quite a few younger people moving into the area, many of the Google, Facebook, Apple employees have been able to purchase homes and condos or just want to rent in the area to be in the city. I have seen all ethnicities and sexual orientations deciding that they want to live in this area which is just fantastic.”

    “Certainly up in Buena Vista Park in the last 10-15 years, many families who had been there for a long time have moved out,” Richard Magary, chair of the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association, said. “Lots of upper-middle class houses changed hands to families with kids. It’s nice to see the fresher and younger families coming in.”

    Overall, the state added almost 4.5 million new residents, an increase of 10 percent from 2000. Much of this growth occurred in the Inland Empire and other counties in the San Joaquin Valley.

    Nationwide, the population grew by 9.7 percent to nearly 309 million.

    A version of this article was originally published in the Castro Courier neighborhood newspaper in San Francisco. Andy Sywak is the former publisher of the Courier. He now lives in Sacramento.

    Photo by stephanie vacher

  • Driving for Popsicles: Kidnapping Hysteria in America

    Not long ago, I saw an urban planner speak about the “Popsicle test” as a barometer for healthy urban design: in an ideal community, a child is able to safely walk a short distance from their home to buy a Popsicle. In such a community, kids have the freedom and independence to enjoy a carefree childhood walk without having to worry about traffic or neighborhood bullies.

    But increasingly, allowing a child to walk those few blocks for his beloved Klondike bar is looked at as a gross act of parental negligence and child abandonment. As this NY Times article attests, allowing an unsupervised or unaccompanied stroll from school in many communities will earn you the admonishment of school administrators, the police, and of course, fellow parents. One Columbus, Ohio parent allowed her 10 year-old son to walk the mile back from school prompting several 911 calls by concerned drivers upon seeing the child walking alone. A police officer drove him home and reprimanded the parents. And it was an unusual sight: only 13% of children walked or biked to school in 2001 compared to 41% in 1969.

    Overparenting run amok? Every time a stomach-churning story about a Jaycee Dugard breaks, it dominates the news for a good week. Coupled with the innumerable fictional depictions of kidnapping on television shows and it’s no wonder that American parents expect to see a dirty van with tinted windows on every suburban street.

    Yet, an examination of missing children statistics shows that the fear of kidnapping is rather disproportionate to the actual threat. Looking at the data from the California Dept. of Justice, for example, there were 114,000 missing children reports filed in the state last year (for comparison’s sake there were nearly 37,000 missing adults claims). Of this number, 108,000 or 95%, were runaways. There were 35 documented Dugard-type stranger abductions compared to 1,363 parental or family abductions. That is to say, in documented cases, a child is almost 40 times more likely to be swept away by a disgruntled parent wronged in a divorce settlement than a Philip Garrido whack-job. But when a child is missing, in 19 of 20 cases they have run away.

    But such nuances of the data are lost on sites like the National Amber Alert Registry which announces, on its “statistics page” complete with a clock ticker, that 800,000 children go missing every year – one every 40 seconds. A more accurate ticker would say, “a child goes missing every 40 seconds, but most are runaways that end up returning home.”

    It goes without saying that the value of parental diligence and responsibility should never be discounted and that the nightmare of child abduction does exist, but the fear of it has grown in recent years to a such level of hysteria that some of the pleasures and autonomy of childhood have been removed. Groups like Safe Routes to School are concerned by the decrease in the number of children walking and biking to school and are working on increasing the number of safe commuting routes for kids.

    But as long as the fear of the “Popsicle walk” is pervasive, it appears that kids will be nagging their parents for a “Popsicle drive” for a long time to come.

  • High life on New York’s High Line

    Last month, an old elevated train track on Manhattan’s west side was re-opened to the public as a public park. The High Line was a 1.5-mile stretch of track constructed in the 1930s to carry freight trains. The last train ran on the platform in 1980 and the space has been the subject of battles ever since between park-minded preservationists and residents who wanted to tear down the steel monstrosity with no apparent function.

    It is a great thing the preservationists won. The High Line is a magnificent and inspiring park, a one-of-a-kind public space with views of the Hudson River that shows a great respect for the industrial history of the surrounding uber-hip Meatpacking District. It manages to feel both modern and classic at once, with moveable wooden chez lounges that look like they could belong by the pool at a W Hotel sliding along the original tracks at places. Gardens are planted along the walkway and amidst the old tracks making it a perfect place to stroll, visit and view the west side of the city.

    The first phase of the park runs from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street with the second phase slated to open next year extending all the way to 30th Street. The Promenade Plantee in Paris was the first elevated garden to be transformed into a public space but the bug is catching on and other projects are planned in St. Louis, Philadelphia, Jersey City and Chicago.

    To get to the High Line, get off the subway at the 14th Street and 8th Avenue station and walk west towards the river. You will not be disappointed, even it rains like the day I visited.

  • It’s Not the Economy Stupid: Crime Still Dropping in L.A.

    Unemployment may be at 11.4% in LA County, pundits may mock the dysfunctional state budget system, but crime is still dropping from already historic lows in the City of Los Angeles.

    According to statistics released by the LAPD yesterday, homicides are down a third compared to the first half of last year with violent crime down 6% and assaults down 8%.

    It seems to be received wisdom – I’ll call it pop criminology – that a spike in criminal activity always accompanies an economic crisis and a drop in employment. The recent movie “Public Enemies” milks this association most explicitly, and it may have been more true in the Depression. Overall, however, this is not the case in the U.S. these days and the numbers for property crime in LA also show a decrease: auto thefts fell 17% and property crime 7% overall compared to Jan. 1-June 30, 2008.

    Obviously, the relationship between crime and economic hardship is more complex and requires critical thinking about a host of sociological factors to attempt to explain the causality of crime. But these numbers, and similar findings in other cities, should debunk the common assertion that economic downturns correlate with criminal resurgence.

    The forthcoming book, “When Brute Force Fails” by UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman is an important contribution to the subject which I look forward to reading. It should be read by pop criminologists and criminologists alike.

    For those of you who have incredible interest in the subject, the LA Times Homicide Blog is an interesting resource. Increasingly, strapped papers like the L.A. Times (which recently discontinued its California section, merging it into the main section) are putting content like this on-line.

  • LAPD Getting it Right

    Though California state government may be truly dysfunctional, one much-maligned institution has managed to reinvent itself and flourish this decade: the LAPD.

    The town that once conjured up images of Bloods and Crips shooting it out as an indifferent and racist police force sat by has seen homicides drop 41%, rapes by 37% and aggravated assaults by a whopping 63% over the last six years. In 2008, Los Angeles had the fewest property crimes since 1959 and the lowest level of violent crime since 1969 – amazing given the plight of the economy. And the benefits are being felt in the city’s toughest neighborhoods: Compton, with 65 gangs crammed into 10 square miles, saw its lowest number of homicides in 25 years last year. All this has happened despite a much lower number of cops per capita – and a much larger area to patrol – than New York.

    Police Chief Bill Bratton deserves a huge amount of the credit for this amazing transformation, but the department has also remade itself in the image of the diverse city it serves. Over a decade ago, the LAPD was 80% white. Today that number is 38%, with 41% of the force composed of Latino officers, 12% black, 7% Asian. Almost 20% of officers are women.

    The LAPD has put a lot of effort into fixing its poor image in the communities where it was most detested – admitting to its checkered past in minority communities. And its strategies are working.

  • Laughing During ‘Gran Torino’

    Recently, I saw Clint Eastwood’s extraordinary new film, ‘Gran Torino’ in Hollywood. Set in a declining Detroit neighborhood, the movie chronicles the unlikely relationship retired auto worker Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) forges with his new Hmong neighbors.

    Walt is cranky, surly, and bigoted while still possessing a certain rough-edged charm. His dialogue is laced with racist terms and stereotypes that would mandate a lengthy “sensitivity training” seminar if he came of age in a different era.

    And yet, the audience laughed and laughed loud. Here, in one of the nation’s most multi-ethnic cities with a history of racial tension, blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos were chuckling as Walt bemoaned “gook food” and cringed at his neighbor’s ways. Twenty years ago, Walt’s language would have appeared less ironic, perhaps being interpreted as a sign of how a sizeable percentage of white Americans viewed minorities. To laugh at Walt then would appear to be laughing with him rather than at him.

    But in 2009 America, on the cusp of a black president arriving in the White House, a character like Walt feels safely anachronistic – his views seem fringe like. What seemed funny to the audience is that people like Walt still exist. What is so satisfying about ‘Gran Torino’ is how it eschews political correctness and decides to speak to an audience that it figures will laugh at Walt rather than with him. It assumes that Americans watching the film are smart and tolerant enough to get the joke. And they do.

    I’d be curious to know how audiences reacted to the movie across the country.

  • Skepticism Towards Congestion Pricing in San Francisco

    If there’s one place in America most likely to adopt congestion pricing, you would think it would be San Francisco. The combination of affluence, deep-seated environmentalism and a tradition of progressive politics would lend itself to adopting the program. But even residents there are skeptical.

    Congestion pricing is the practice of charging commuters a fee for driving through a congested downtown area during peak commute times. In San Francisco, they are discussing a payment of between 50 cents and $5 to be assessed to drivers who commute between 6–9 a.m. and 3–6 p.m. The argument is that by doing so, you reduce congestion and raise public coffers to be poured into public transportation. In London, traffic was reduced 21% and public transit increased 36% when congestion pricing was adopted (it’s also been adopted in Singapore and Stockholm).

    But SF is no London when it comes to public transportation. Anyone who has ever stuffed themselves into a city bus headed for points westward after work knows it is not nearly as reliable or as comfortable as “the tube.” It seems like there would have to be a rise in the standards of public transportation there to really make it effective – and money for that would not be available for some time given California’s budget circumstances.

  • “Milk” Puts New Attention on San Francisco’s Castro District

    The Castro District of San Francisco has found itself thrust into the national spotlight by recent events. With the premiere of Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” across the country and the continuing controversy over Proposition 8, the neighborhood so instrumental in the gay rights movement is receiving a new surge of attention – and more importantly respect – for its rich history. Yet the Castro is not a museum district; it is a living, breathing neighborhood that is changing and facing significant challenges in a down economy.

    Clearly the area has not lost its huge symbolic political role. The brouhaha over the passage of Proposition 8 – which barred gay marriage in California – sparked marches and protests. To many it appears that the battle that began with Harvey Milk all those years ago has just entered a new phase that many Castro residents are anxious to continue.

    Situated in the heart of the city, just east of Twin Peaks – a large golden hill which beats back the fog from the neighborhood – the Castro is beloved for its colorful Victorians, vintage European streetcars, and eclectic shops and restaurants. It is the site of Harvey Milk’s famous camera shop. The triumphs (and recent setbacks) of the gay rights movement are on display at the large LGBT Center at Octavia and Market streets and in a new small exhibition, “Passionate Struggle,” that was just opened by the GLBT Historical Society at 18th and Castro streets (in one of its last acts, the space for the exhibition was donated by Washington Mutual for a year).

    The neighborhood has been changing in recent years – shopkeepers report a surge in strollers in the neighborhood. Professional couples and their children who may not be able to land a place in Noe Valley over the hill (aka “Stroller Valley”) have slowly been moving into the “gayborhood” (as it is affectionately called). Tour buses have been stopping at the busy intersection of 18th and Castro streets where tourists have been known to get out and, not always out of respectful curiosity, snap photos of two men holding hands to show their aunt in Peoria.

    Local merchants are hoping that all this recent attention can translate to the bottom line (I challenge someone to find an area of a large American city with more neighborhood and merchant groups than the Castro). Though known for technology, tourism is one of the largest industries in San Francisco and business has been lackluster of late. A huge vacancy where Tower Records used to sit at Market and Noe streets still lies empty after nearly two years. The building used to house a large Finnish baths when the area was populated by so many Norwegians, Swedes and Finns it was known as “Little Scandinavia.” One retailer, All American Boy, recently closed its doors after 32 years, and Suri – one of my favorite restaurants – will close for good on December 6th.

    Although the neighborhood has successfully positioned itself as the historical home of the LGBT community, many wonder if that legacy will be continued by a younger generation of gays who came out in a more tolerant era. They may take for granted what was fought and even died for by Harvey Milk and many others.

    Talk to longtime Castro residents and you hear concern in their voices that the neighborhood has lost its knack for experimentation and zaniness. The nearby Mission and South of Market districts now appear more triumphant in terms of “edginess” – a quality that is so important to San Franciscans’ identity. A friend of mine surprised me when he told me that he much preferred the gay culture in his home city of Atlanta over the Castro. The bars, he explained, were “more happening” than those here.

    Today many younger gays often prefer to venture to the city’s uberhip South of Market district where the bars and clubs are larger. Many complain about the narrow and sometimes dirty sidewalks as well as the lack of a large public space in the neighborhood.

    Of course, the neighborhood does not always feel as modern in its look as the glass towers South of Market. But still the Castro continues to be a busy area with numerous cultural events, including the neighborhood’s greatest resource, the peerlessly beautiful Castro Theatre which showcases so many great festivals throughout the year. With numerous events, parties and festivals year-round, the Castro has retained much of its original flair and taste for experimentation even as gay culture and the economy have changed. “Milk,” and Sean Penn’s amazing performance, do not only testify to this historical iconoclasm but speak of its staying power.

    Andy Sywak is the publisher of the Castro Courier neighborhood newspaper.