New Geography

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  • Michael Harrington

  • Redrawing the Electoral Map? Not so fast.

    With Barack Obama’s historic presidential win there has been much celebratory talk about redrawing the electoral map. Obama himself boasted that he was the only Democratic candidate who could accomplish this feat.

    However, actual voting results suggest the map only shifted slightly at the margins from the 2000 and 2004 elections and that our geographic voting patterns may be more durable than we think. Here is a comparison of the famous red-blue divide:

    Exit polls show that Obama received roughly two-thirds of the non-black minority vote and about 95% of the black vote. On top of that he got more than two-thirds of the 18-29 age cohort. But none of this data captures the electoral geography that drives the Electoral College results. The true shift from red to blue was actually driven by a slight shift at the margins of the divide. The tipping point was in the suburbs where middle and upper class suburbanites congregate and 49% of the electorate resides. These voters shifted to the Democratic candidate and tipped the balance in those swing states of Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and North Carolina. They found Obama more convincing on economic matters and fundamental change from the previous administration, but it would be a mistake to assume this means they embrace a radically new governing ideology.

    To examine the results more closely we can compare the demographic characteristics of counties won by Obama and McCain and also compare these to Bush and Kerry in 2004. The following maps illustrate county vote shares in shades from blue to purple to red to show how the underlying vote compares between 2004 and 2008. Not a big difference, is there?


    The following table compares the demographic profiles of 3115 counties and how they voted in the past three presidential elections. We can see that Obama captured more suburban counties outside the urban core than either Gore or Kerry. These counties not only have lower population densities but also higher incomes and more white inhabitants. So much for race.


    This conclusion is confirmed by looking only at those counties that flipped from red to blue (Bush to Obama) or blue to red (Kerry to McCain). Is this case we can see that Obama won more populous, whiter, and richer counties than McCain. Interestingly, the older, female heads-of-household gravitated slightly toward McCain.


    Finally, we can look at an important subset of metro counties, meaning those counties that border the 50 largest metro areas in the country. There are 417 of these counties and they are classified by concentric rings from the urban core outward to the exurbs.


    These data confirm where the major shift took place. Obama had gains of roughly 5-6% over Kerry’s results in suburban counties. Obama won handily in the mature suburbs where Bush and Kerry had evenly split. This is also where much of the non-black minority support for Obama resides. On the other hand, we again see a consistent monotonic relationship between party preference and population density: as we move outward from the urban core voting preferences shift from blue to purple to red. This suggests that the urban-rural split in American politics is still very much with us. This should not surprise us if these political differences are based on lifestyle preferences that do not change from election to election or candidate to candidate.

    *State and county maps courtesy of Mark Newman: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

    Michael Harrington is a political scientist, policy analyst and writer living in Los Angeles. He has extensively researched the red-blue divide of the past three presidential elections by focusing on county level census and voting data.

  • Where is the financial bailout money going?

    So far the Treasury Department has spread out $241 billion to AIG and 124 banks in mostly coastal states and Ohio and Indiana. Check out ProPublica’s frequently updated map of financial bailout recipients. ProPublica is monitoring the bailout and offers an RSS feed and a bailout widget to keep tabs on where the money is going.

    Here’s some other financial crisis visuals:

    Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis
    A map at GEOCommons of the Wachovia takeover by Wells Fargo
    Our GeoCommons Map of states dependent on the securities, commodities and investments industries

  • Back to Basics in Orlando

    By Richard Reep

    For the last decade the City of Orlando has been concentrating form, trying somehow to displace its image as the ultimate plastic city. Although tourism helped insulate Central Florida from the slowdowns of the 1970s and 1980s, the last three recessions hit Orlando harder than the national average. This metropolitan area has now been taking on a more essential task of morphing slowly away from its status as ephemeral support city for the theme parks.

    One sign of this new appreciation for the basic necessity of good jobs can be seen in two new districts: one concentrated around medical research and practice; the other concentrated around digital media.

    Both districts will greatly enhance the city’s core offering of service jobs, and are being nationally scrutinized for their viability as a new home for technological research and application. In the next phase of city-making, Orlando can make important steps towards a sustainable economy, if it grows good jobs while focusing on the basics of safety, security, and a spiritual core for its citizens.

    The first growth district, on Orlando’s ring road, is Lake Nona. Private interests have combined with institutions of higher education to create a core of medical research and technology. The most recent star addition to this, Nemours Children’s Hospital, will anchor part of the development. Medical research laboratories by Florida’s major public universities flank the hospital, and more medical facilities are on their way.

    Surrounded by residential communities and scrub pine, the medical district is in its infancy. This community already boasts two promising features. For one, the focus on good jobs sets the fundamental stage for organic and meaningful growth created. This seems logical enough, but the employment element has been largely missing from most new developments of regional impact. Secondly, the residential community, currently less than 10% developed, appears to be growing unmolested by the need to conform to pre-set ideas about cities. Lake Nona’s Master Plan promises an 11-acre oval “town center”, likely to be a mixed-use district typical of recent Southeastern town centers: shops, offices, residential, and of course, the local supermarket, Publix.

    Thankfully, the developer is leaving the town center to the future, and this new core will have a chance to reflect Lake Nona’s mature identity, rather than be thrust upon the community by the Master Developer in some kind of bland neohistorical form. This is reminiscent of Valencia, planned in the late 1950s and developed in the 1960s, where core community functions such as hospitals, government offices, and schools were built first by the Newhall family near Los Angeles. Residential areas filled in the 1960’s and 1970s; but the original Town Center, designed by Victor Gruen, was not built until the late 1980s, after Valencia matured. The lesson of Valencia is that organic growth can yield a vibrant, successful development plan. Valencia remains today a positive addition to the Santa Clarita Valley and southern California in general.

    Switch focus to the inner city: forgotten, chaotic, grim residences; sagging front porches and weedy lots. Orlando’s own inner city, Parramore, did not benefit very well from the run-up in the last six years, and by the looks on the faces of the residents who watch you as you drive by, they know it. The City of Orlando has decided that it is now their turn.

    This will be an interesting experiment to see whether the greenfield results of New Urbanism can be translated to what is essentially a classic, 1960s urban renewal project in reverse: Demolition of 20-year-old event center slums, to be replaced by new construction to further the cause of virtual reality.

    The City’s bonding capacity, sadly, has been tapped for major venues (a new sports arena and a performing arts center), but failure of the event center has led to a healthy focus on higher skilled jobs. The city envisions a partnership with higher education and the private sector to create a digital media village, similar to Laval, a suburban community just north of Montreal. Laval, an existing neighborhood in search of new life, benefited from a similar effort when the city focused on developing its bioscience and information industries. Now Laval’s status has begun to show some basic street life and has a highly successful retail complex that draws shoppers from throughout the region.

    This concept of a technopole has now been borrowed by the City of Orlando to create a similar district centered around digital media: movies, gaming, and other pursuits. The city must be careful to make sure that, like Laval, it concentrates on jobs growth first, and then seeks to integrate those jobs with the community. As a city with a strong, form-based planning outlook, Orlando will certainly be anxious that the Media Village conforms to the concepts of New Urbanism.

    The trend is ominous: Cities that allow their job base to become concentrated in a small handful of industries are risking their economic lives on a set of very outdated assumptions. On the other hand, cities that have sought out high technology jobs have become the “survivors” of the economic downturn.

    In the year 1980, there were only nine research parks in America. Today there are more than 200 in the United States, and competition from overseas is heating up fast.

    It is important to remember what a giant head start that we gave to other cities. The Triangle Research Park near Raleigh / Durham was founded back in 1959, and now houses more than 150 research and technology companies. Although Orlando is the “new kid” on this particular block, if we focus on what the employers need, we still have a lot to offer besides tourism.

    With the economy stagnating, a growing focus on jobs – and building an environment that promotes growth – should have a strong appeal. As in the 1930s, slower growth can begin to get the community to look beyond New Urbanist form-obsession and look to more fundamental elements that create jobs and wealth as opposed to seeking to win accolades from developers and the architectural and planning establishments.

    Richard Reep is an Architect and artist living in Winter Park, Florida. His practice has centered around hospitality-driven mixed use, and has contributed in various capacities to urban mixed-use projects, both nationally and internationally, for the last 25 years.

  • From Rhetoric to Reality on Transit

    Rhetoric always seems to trump reality in the headline department. This has been evident as a fawning press and commentators have made the most of the decline in driving from high gas prices and the related increase in transit ridership. As gas prices rose to their above $4.00 peak, driving in the nation’s urban areas had declined 2.0 percent over a year. At the same time, transit ridership rose 3.3 percent, leading to the impression that transit ridership increases had accounted for most, if not more than the loss in driving.

    Now, as gas prices dip below $2.00 nationally, $1.50 in some places and to their lowest point since well before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there are indications that the new riders are returning to their cars. Here in the St. Louis area, where I live, prices are now $1.39, the lowest in the nation.

    The Los Angeles Times, for example, notes lower transit ridership and increased freeway traffic volumes, while the Dallas Morning News notes that it is no longer a challenge to find parking places at DART rail stations.

    As gasoline prices have returned to reality, it is a good time also for the transit rhetoric to be transformed into reality.

    First, the increase in transit ridership was never significant in overall terms. Yes, ridership increases in some systems strained capacity on the already crowded buses and trains taking workers to downtown locations. But, since transit accounts for so little in urban mobility, the increases counted for little in the overall scheme of things. For example, the 10 percent increase in ridership that occurred in the Atlanta area could account, at a maximum, for only a 0.2 percent decline in automobile use.

    The reason is simple: less than two percent of travel in the Atlanta area is on transit. Atlanta was among the leaders. In most other urban areas, the impact of the transit increase was less than 0.1 percent. It is thus not surprising that the decrease in driving and increase in transit translated into a national urban market share increase somewhat greater than 0.1 percent over the last year – that is 1 out of 1,000.

    Second, as much as some commentators applauded the shift, it is important to understand why it occurred. The shift did not occur because people had been convinced that such a move would materially reduce greenhouse gas emissions (It would not – outside the New York City area, cars emit little more greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile than transit). The shift occurred, purely and simply, because it was in the best interests of the shifters. It saved them money and worth the time lost (transit work trip travel times are double that of the car). Now that driving is no longer prohibitively expensive, it is rational to expect much of transit’s ridership gain to be lost.

    Third, the return to the car should not be considered a reflection of the much ballyhooed “love affair” with the automobile. Simply put, people use transit where it makes sense and do not where it does not.

    This can be illustrated by six households on a typical street in Long Island’s Nassau County, an inner suburb that borders the city of New York. One in 6 Nassau County workers was employed in Manhattan in 2000. For them, travel to Manhattan from Nassau County makes total economic and psychic sense. Crossing Queens and maybe Brooklyn – particularly at rush hour – on the way to Manhattan is an experience to be avoided. In addition, train and even bus travel into Manhattan is relatively fast and, once on the island, the subway can whisk you to a dazzling array of locations. No surprise that 75 percent of Mahnattan workers take transit to work.

    But what about the other five workers? Even in New York, transit services to work locations other than Manhattan tends to be sparse. As a result, the other five neighbors who do not work in Manhattan drive to work. It’s not those five have a love affair with the automobile, any more than the Manhattan commuter has romantic attachments to the subway. It simply indicates that for 5 of the workers, using a car makes sense, while for one, using transit does.

    Indeed, if one is looking for true love affairs, look to refrigerators or toilets. It can be expected that all six houses have them. Of course, such a characterization would be ludicrous. People tend to adopt those products and practices that make their lives better. For those few (in the national context) who work in the largest downtown areas, transit makes their lives better. For those working elsewhere, cars do. Finally, it can be expected that when all six workers go to a supermarket, the furniture store or Jones Beach, they use the car. Even Manhattanites abandon transit to motor on weekends to their second homes across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania in the Poconos.

    Some transit advocates believe the answer is to expand transit service so it can be as convenient and time-effective as an automobile. There are two difficulties with this. The first is that any such expansion would likely cost more to build and operate, each year, than the total personal income of any urban area attempting it. This is probably why no one has ever seriously proposed it. There is another issue: history shows that new money for transit does not produce a corresponding increase in transit ridership. From 1970 to 2006, US transit expenditures rose 270 percent, after adjustment for inflation. Over the same period, transit use rose less than 20 percent. The result – only 7 cents of new value (new transit ridership) was obtained for each new $1.00. So any infusion of new cash to expand transit service is likely to be largely wasted.

    Talk of auto eroticism or of a transit oriented future can capture the romantic sense in people and planners. But the reality remains that people will choose the mode of transport that makes their lives better, not those that make their lives more difficult.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • Who am I?

  • New Zealand Voters Swing Right: John Key’s Shower Power

    Reason magazine’s Jesse Walker opens his commentary on the New Zealand election by saying: “At least one country is responding to the financial crisis by moving to the right, not left.” This is factually correct but may overstate the case.

    Certainly, New Zealanders elected a conservative National-led coalition government and removed from office a Labour-led coalition which had served three terms of three years. While it is appealing to contrast this move to the right with America’s move to the left, it is probably unwise to claim that these were contrasting responses to the international financial crisis. Indeed, I suspect the analysis of both the New Zealand and American elections is equally flawed.

    The key mood in the New Zealand electorate was simply that it was “Time for a Change”. And given that the incumbent Government was a left-of-centre Government, the change could only be to the right of centre. In this regard, there is a strong parallel with the American Presidential race where the mood was equally that it was “Time for a Change.” In the US this meant a move from the Republican right to the Democratic left.

    The mood for change was probably stronger in New Zealand because for a three-term government (nine years) to win a fourth term is most uncommon here; Helen Clark’s nine years as leader of that Government was a record, and had she won a fourth term as a Labour Prime Minister it would have been unprecedented. The historical odds were against her. On the other hand, all US Presidents must move aside after two terms, so change is thrust upon them.

    Now that both elections are over, the new US president and the new National Government, led by John Key, must face up to the harsh reality of the inevitable recession or depression resulting from the collapse of the housing and financial bubbles that dominated both economies during the last decade. This focus may encourage analysts to believe that the financial crisis was the cause of the electoral outcomes, even if the ideological swings were opposite.

    However, I believe that Barack Obama would have won the Presidential race had there been no financial crisis, and that John Key would also now be Prime Minister of New Zealand. But both their victories might have been less emphatic.

    In both countries voters were faced with a generational change. Obama is a young man in his early prime; McCain is an old man whose mortality worked against him. Helen Clark is younger than McCain (58 vs 72), but because she entered Parliament in 1981, became Deputy Prime Minister in 1989, and has been Prime Minister since 1999, she was seen as one of the old guard. She has stepped down as leader of the Labour Party as part of conceding defeat on election night. John Key is a young man of 47 who has been in parliament only since 2002, and Leader of the Opposition only since 2006.

    The role of the financial crisis in this New Zealand election was an ambivalent one. By law, our full-on election campaign is brief – only three months – compared to US campaigns, and Parliament goes into recess during the whole of the campaign. As it happened, the full impact of the financial crisis on the NZ economy became apparent at about the same time as campaigning began, although the collapse of the housing market had begun somewhat earlier. The campaigning politicians had little time to develop solid policies in response to the threat and, given that Parliament was in recess, could do nothing about it anyhow.

    Helen Clark argued that her Labour Government had successfully managed the economy for nine years and her team had the experience to manage the New Zealand economy through the next three years. John Key argued that his party had more skills in the field, and that the Labour party benches were full of academics and trade unionists, most of whom had never run a business.

    Clark’s response was that the National Party, and John Key in particular, were part of the problem. Her trade union base saw Key as a Wall Street banker and a cause of the problem. Key’s business base saw him as a man who understood the industry and had the skills and know-how to deal with the problem.

    National Party heavyweights included Don Brash, who had stepped aside as Leader of the Opposition to allow John Key to take over. Brash had been Governor of the Reserve Bank for 14 years; since resigning from Parliament in 2007 he had served as an adjunct professor of Banking at the Auckland University of Technology (and Chairman of the Centre for Resource Management Studies). John Key began working as a foreign exchange dealer at Elders Finance in Wellington, then moved to Auckland-based Bankers Trust. In 1995, he joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore. He was promoted to Merrill’s global head of foreign exchange, based in London, and was a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2001.

    On election night Key’s Centrist but Conservative National Party, (combined with the soft, somewhat libertarian Act Party as a coalition partner) scored a decisive victory – probably about as decisive a victory as is possible, given our system of Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP).

    There is widespread agreement, at least among the supporters of the new regime, that Labour’s massive defeat was primarily caused by New Zealanders’ rejection of the “Nanny State,” which has increasingly interfered in our daily lives. And here may lie the real lesson for the new President of the USA.

    While the US is a genuine Super Power, and New Zealand is a mere pimple on the global body politic, we always aspire to punch above our weight, and frequently do. Helen Clark had decided that New Zealand would be a world leader in fighting climate change (anthropogenic global warming), and that we would become the world’s most sustainable economy with a carbon neutral footprint. So, for some time, New Zealanders responded with some enthusiasm to this new challenge of leadership on the world stage. We were proud to be Clean and Green, and of our Tourism Board’s promotion of New Zealand as 100% Pure – presumably we are free of even impure thoughts.

    However, as commentators as diverse as the late Aaron Wildavsky and Vaclav Klaus have warned, Global Warming is the mother of all scares because it enables Government to interfere in every aspect of our lives – to claim that no price is too high if necessary to save the planet for our grandchildren. Inevitably, the High Priests of “Sustainability” began to demand that we break our “addiction” to private automobiles and learn to love public transport; that we learn to love high-density apartments and abandon our home gardens; and that we stop doing anything which consumed fossil fuel. It soon became clear to many that the main concern of these New Puritans was that someone, somewhere, might just be enjoying themselves.

    Our unsubsidized grass farmers who pay most of our way in the world began to wonder why our belching cattle should be penalized by Kyoto rules, when subsidized European cattle were not. After all, cows have been belching since the first ruminants walked the earth, and they don’t run on fossil fuel.

    Rodney Hide, leader of the Act Party, began to argue that we should dump the Emissions Trading Scheme and withdraw from Kyoto because the whole Global Warming fear was a massive scam. This was supposed to be political suicide, but the polls showed that Act’s support suddenly increased. Act is now part of the new government, and their extra five seats consolidate John Key’s comfortable majority in the 120 seat Parliament.

    If President-Elect Obama becomes a High Priest of Climate Change, he too may find that 95% of Americans, just like New Zealanders, believe that other people should use public transport so that there will be more room on the road for them. He may also find that while the costs of Kyoto are scary and may drive even more energy intensive industries offshore to non-complying countries like China and India, it is the minor interventions in daily life which are the real irritants that could turn the electorate against him and make him a one term President.

    Because when it comes down to it, John Key’s majority may have been cemented in place by New Zealanders’ affection for taking a shower.

    A few weeks before the election, the Labour Government, largely at the behest of the Green Party on whose support they depended to maintain their majority in Parliament, proposed regulations which would limit the flow of water through a shower head to about 1.5 gallons per minute. The aim was to save both water and energy and thus make our houses more “sustainable”. The standard “low flow” rose in most showers at the time delivered about 3.5 gallons per minute.

    This proved to be the last straw. The grumblings about the proposed mandatory replacement of incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents, similar to the rumblings in the US, exploded into a furor on blog sites, talk-back radio and letters to the editor. A popular blogger drew up a list of 85 things the Greens want to ban. People recalled how a Green Party official had endorsed a petition calling for the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide…which just happens to be water.

    The proposal was not just irksome; it soon became evident that it probably would not even achieve its objective. People would stay in the shower longer or alternatively run a nice deep hot bath. As is so often the case in political campaigns, this single minor proposal came to symbolize a whole range of discontents, and people could use it as a focus for their latent rage and fury against the Nanny State.

    So Jesse Walker’s comment that triggered the request for this commentary on the New Zealand election might more properly have read, “At least one country is responding to global warming alarmism by moving to the right, not the left.”

    Our recent experience in New Zealand should give Barack Obama reason to pause. A stance against Global Warming is popular, right up until it starts to bite. Then the American public too, might just bite back.

    Owen McShane is a Resource Management Consultant based in New Zealand

  • Architecture in an Age of Austerity

    “Architectural publication, criticism and even education are now focused relentlessly on the enticing visual image. The longing for singular, memorable imagery subordinates other aspects of buildings, isolating architecture in disembodied vision.” – Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, from his essay “Toward an Architecture of Humility”

    Anyone paying even remote attention to the domain of high architectural design in the past decade will surely recognize the name Frank Gehry. The celebrity architect (or if you prefer to use the portmanteau word used to describe such practitioners: starchitect) is best known for his unconventional creations-buildings that billow, swoop and shimmer. Whether the project is a concert hall, museum, or university building, the clientele hiring Gehry is paying for a brand name product. In this sense, a ‘Gehry-designed building’ is akin to a piece of fashion – with the value of the building based primarily on the name of the designer and not on how well it operates for end users as a work of architecture.

    Gehry was not alone in this respect. Real estate developers were quick to jump on the trend toward ‘signature’ buildings. Hiring other marquee architects such as Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, and Santiago Calatrava, high-end condo developers everywhere from Manhattan to Dubai were willing to deal with paying exorbitant design fees for the assumed marketing advantages of associating with such big names.

    But now the obsession with starchitecture may now itself be outdated. Thanks to the financial meltdown, the party may be ending both for starchitects and their credit wielding developer patrons. Not surprisingly, ambitious projects like the Gehry designed Grand Avenue development in Los Angeles and the Calatrava designed Chicago Spire have been put on hold and perhaps consigned to oblivion.

    These are just some of the most visible examples of the construction slowdown as it relates to high architectural design. Less renown figures in the architectural profession, both sole practitioners and those working in corporate firms, also find themselves struggling to retain projects. The imagined career trajectories of wannabe starchitects may be yet another casualty of the financial slowdown.

    Ironically, the economic crisis relates back to the very thing architects are entrusted with – the built environment. Of course, architects had a hand in only a very small percentage of what is actually built in the United States. During the most recent boom cycle of construction – at least until the last year or two – the single family detached housing developments in the suburbs and urban fringes dominated the market. These developments were often promoted in a manner that made the house as an investment vehicle paramount to it being a place of long-term inhabitance and raising a family.

    The subprime mortgage crisis has since debunked the commonly accepted strategy that real estate is always a ‘safe’ investment for the average American. But this is not only a suburban phenomenon, despite the claims by many in the architecture and urban planning professions that the real estate meltdown represented the triumph of the city over the suburbs. In reality the city development scene is also collapsing, a bit later perhaps, but largely because it took a while for the financial fallout to reach large urban projects.

    Ironically the starchitecture so celebrated by the popular media may have contributed to this. The fact that the majority of architecturally revered high-rise housing developments built in the past decade are geared toward the ‘luxury market’ may have slowed the potential market for in-city living. In too many cases, developers in the urban luxury condo market have relied on cash-wealthy individuals to purchase their units as second homes, a market that is certain to crash as the asset bubble bursts.

    The current recession is a trying time for most Americans, and as such, it could prove a pivotal time for architects, planners and those who care about the built environment to reassess their roles in a democratic culture. Great or monumental architecture – from imperial Rome to Napoleon III’s Paris and Dubai today – has often been built at the discretion of powerful religious institutions, monarchies or omnipotent dictatorships. Democratic architecture, in contrast, tends more to the functional and efficient, whether in the form of William Levitt’s suburbia or the high-rise towers that accommodated corporations.

    The future of urban development in the United States is likely to follow a different trajectory. For one thing environmental sustainability is likely to frame the decisions made in regards to urban planning in the coming years. In this context, metallic structures like those favored by Gehry and his acolytes do not represent a very energy-efficient form; in places like Los Angeles, Phoenix or Dubai they reflect sunlight and heat up the surrounding environment. The next era of American architecture will have to deal with such issues and also with the restrictions of a strapped fiscal environment.

    With funding for flashy and iconic buildings screeching to a halt, the era of the architect as detached genius and artiste appears to be coming to a close. In order to retain relevance at this crucial point in time, architects would be wise to come out from their ivory towers and shift their focus to becoming more civically engaged and oriented towards the needs of the middle class.

    At the dawn of the 21st Century, as the definitions of traditional urban centers, suburbs and metropolitan regions become more blurred, so does the role of the architect and planner. After the chaos of the current economic recession is settled, most construction is likely to be focused on updating existing infrastructure and building new ‘green’ infrastructure. What America needs most right now from the architectural profession is not more Frank Gehrys but a new commitment to build an environment that is both sustainable and affordable.

    Adam Nathaniel Mayer is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. Raised in the town of Los Gatos, on the edge of Silicon Valley, Adam developed a keen interest in the importance of place within the framework of a highly globalized economy. He currently lives in San Francisco where he works in the architecture profession.

  • Bailout or Just in Time Delivery?

    Toyota is careful in its ways; it didn’t get where it is today by idly locating manufacturing plants. And, so it chose Georgetown, Ky. – 12 miles north of Lexington on I-75 – for the location of its first and largest U.S. plant. It was followed in the ensuing years by numerous other foreign auto plants locating in the South – BMW, Mercedes, Saturn, Hyundai and yet another Toyota (in Mississippi).

    Why, you may ask, did they come to the South? The easy answer is that they came for cheaper land and labor. They were also drawn by large and much criticized tax incentive packages as the South decided – value judgments aside – to get in the game and establish a manufacturing base to replace the sagging agriculturally based small farm economy. Here in Kentucky, the less than bright future for tobacco was ample motivation for welcoming Toyota.

    But I believe there is more to this move. They came also for laborers eager to find the good paying auto jobs that had escaped the South for too long. The influx reversed a trend of Southerners leaving for the great factories of the North as my father did 60 years ago as he fled Appalachian Kentucky for Dayton, Ohio.

    Also, contrary to East Coast “attitudes” they came for another reason – the work ethic common to this region. In Kentucky workers from 116 of its 120 counties were hired when Toyota began operations – 7,000 strong. They wanted to work, and were willing to move, commute, or hitchhike for the opportunities. Just as importantly, Toyota created a new employment strategy of hiring a “cushion” of temporary employees to insulate full-time employees from the impact of an eventual economic downturn.

    This image contrasts that of Southerners – particularly those in Appalachia – as generally lazy, fat, dumb, happy, pregnant, barefoot, toothless, racist, sexist or any combination thereof. Speaking of lazy, we can thank Gary Tuchman and CNN for the latest contribution to stereotyping our Commonwealth when they chose to find poor sad people on a front porch in Clay County Ky., to enunciate in butchered English their discouragement with the state of the world.

    So when we hear about the bailouts, first for the financial industry and now the Detroit-based U.S. auto industry, we have reason for skepticism. Our auto industry – that is the generally healthy industry created by Japanese, Korean and German manufacturers – doesn’t seem on the bailout list. Neither do our local banks. They’re not too big to fail and not stupid enough to follow the lead of Wall Street.

    Of course, we don’t want to see any part of America fail, including Detroit. According to one Toyota executive, the webbing of the auto industry is so intertwined that the failure of the U.S. auto industry would bring down the entire house of cards, including the supplier plants that Toyota and other “new age” manufacturing plants call “just in time delivery” facilities.

    But others do see the bailout as undermining a trend that favors efficiency in manufacturing – and the wise investment Toyota and other companies have made in developing smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Still others are baffled about what they would do if it was their congressional vote. The global economy has grown complex in many ways. Among the most vexing issues are those surrounding present and future government involvement in private companies.

    Ultimately we wonder what the attitude of the new administration will be toward Kentucky and the South. Kentucky in particular stood out once again with early poll closings, to be declared “red,” by a large percentage as it went to McCain. Obama tiptoed only once into the state, and that was in “blue” Louisville. He made no effort to win us over as Kennedy and Clinton had in earlier presidential campaigns. We will soon learn if he remains true to his rhetoric that proclaims that we are neither “red” nor “blue” but one America.

    There’s much our new President could do for this part of the world. The mega car factories might show what our workforce is capable of but they have not been enough to reverse our relatively low per capita incomes. New investments – roads, waterways, freight rail lines, skills training – could help lift our region up even further. We just hope that the new President realizes that all of America will benefit if the South can build on its automotive industry success to achieve a much broader prosperity.

    Sylvia L. Lovely is the Executive Director/CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities and the founder and president of the NewCities Institute. She currently serves as chair of the Morehead State University Board of Regents. Please send your comments to slovely@klc.org and visit her blog at sylvia.newcities.org.

  • Glimpsing Reasons to Give Thanks in the City of Angels

    This is one tough Thanksgiving coming up for a lot of folks in Los Angeles, where so many have been left vulnerable by the economic downturn.

    This place of ours, this city, looked good for the ride just a few months ago.

    Now it looks different.

    There are different faces on our streets. Some are new, out of place, in a daze over where they have landed.

    Some others are the same folks we used to see, but they look hungrier now, or less healthy.

    There are different faces in the stores and restaurants, too. Merchants look worried, and their employees seem just as wary.

    Friends and neighbors, shopkeepers and strangers — everyone, it seems, looks different these days. Concern has crowded out confidence.

    But look a bit closer and you’ll start to see something else, a certain characteristic that resides somewhere among the worries. The initial shock of the economy’s dive is wearing off. Resolve is beginning to show in folks’ eyes, offering a down payment on the promise that optimism will return in time.

    It will take some time, to be sure—and not every story will have a happy ending as we work our way through the economic storm.

    I am quite certain, though, that the vast majority of us will make it through, and that we’ll find the capacity to aid those who fall hardest.

    I am confident of this because I have learned quite a bit about the people who make up this city. I have seen what can be accomplished when resolve digs in against uncertainty.

    I received a reminder from a man at a bus stop on Broadway not long ago. I’ve known him for years because he has spent years working as a janitor at a Downtown office building that I have occasion to frequent. He has always struck me as a modest fellow — polite, constantly working, cleaning up after others.

    The man had his daughter with him, and the two of them were unsure whether they had the right bus stop. He called to me and asked if I could help. The young lady had to get to the Westside. I directed her to the correct stop across the street.

    The man thanked me, and told me that his daughter had to get to UCLA, where she is currently studying. He said he has another daughter enrolled at UCLA, too.

    It occurred to me that the modesty I had long attributed to this man is actually resolve. Oh, he may be a modest sort, but his accomplishments are not. His high-reaching daughters attest to the resolve in his character.

    It also occurred to me that this man is an immigrant who pulled up stakes somewhere far away to come here and pursue a better future. Think about the uncertainty of such a move — and then consider how often you encounter individuals who have done the same thing. Ponder how many others have faced similar uncertainty upon arriving here from another state — or even moving from one neighborhood to another in search of better circumstances.

    I spent some time thinking about this after I saw my acquaintance at the bus stop. I became lost in thought for a moment, and then a rumble of hunger brought me back. I had a cold and didn’t want to go out to eat, so I called a regular lunch spot for a delivery. It’s a small restaurant, and the owners are among the many to travel a long way to cast their lot in Los Angeles. They’re feeling the economic slump, their faces creased with concern lately.

    A familiar voice came on the line and took my order. She noticed that I sounded a bit off. She inquired about my health, and I told her about my cold.

    My lunch arrived 20 minutes later with something extra in the bag—a bowl of soup with a get-well note.

    It dawned on me that, yes, it will be a tough Thanksgiving for a lot of folks — but this is still the City of Angels.

    Look for them — they walk among us.

    Give thanks for them — they will not fail us.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)