New, January 11, 2010
Study on high-speed rail could make or break city
A decision looms this year that could propel London to become a global economic force or banish it to the boondocks.
Can farming save Detroit?
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.”
Can Ailing Cities Attract the Creative Class?
In a scathing critique of Richard Florida, reporter Alec MacGillis claims that Florida’s creative class strategies haven’t worked for ailing cities around the country. Florida counters that the recession has changed the landscape.
The Urban EconomyI am generally a fan of the American Prospect and a very big fan of the people who work there, but the magazine’s latest issue, which highlights “The Post-Boom City” on the cover strikes me as a whiff all the way around. I discuss the Special Report on manufacturing here, but I also want to say a few things about Alec MacGillis’ piece (above) on Richard Florida and urban development.
New regulations in Virginia limiting their use may be the death knell for cul-de-sacs. Planners and developers debate their worth, but new studies show they aren’t cost effective for cities, or even as safe as assumed.
The Ruins of Detroit and New Orleans
Bryan Finoki looks at the devastated cities of Detroit and New Orleans and finds “blueprints for the manufacture of ruin”.
Urban Shepherds Help Save the Fields
The South Downs are pretty spectacular, but as can be seen from the photo, there is alot of grass there. Brighton and Hove Councils came up with the shepherd idea as a way to cut costs but also maintain the quality of the grasslands. The grass cutting bill is currently £25,000 a year while they reckon that the sheep project will reduce costs to just £1,800 a year.
Small Fridges Make Good Cities: Oprah Tours Fridges in Copenhagen
We have often quoted Toronto architect Donald Chong’s wonderful line, Small fridges make good cities, where you respond to the marketplace, the baker, vegetable store and farmers market instead of the big weekly shop at the Wal-Mart. You don’t need as big a fridge when you are committed to fresh and seasonal.
12-Cubed House Packs A Lot in A 12′ Cube. How Does He Do It?
It is an attractive, small building but there is something a bit odd about the windows. The designer tells Small House Style:
GMO is in, local is out Britain unveils future of food
Imported beef. Genetically modified potatoes. The disappearance of those handy labels that tell you just how far your green beans travelled before reaching the grocery store shelf.This is the stuff of Jamie Oliver’s nightmares – and all of it may come true.
The report: Food 2030
Drop in U.S. Car Ownership Surprises Analysts
Between high gas prices, the recession and widespread improvements in public transit systems, Americans drove four million fewer cars in 2009.
How the Crash Will Reshape America Richard Florida, The Atlantic
10 Ways to Help Cities Grow Smarter slide show
Downtown aquarium planned for Toronto
A new 150,000-square foot aquarium could be coming to the foot of the CN Tower.If approved by city planners, the aquarium would be a major addition to Toronto’s waterfront and the first brand new tourism attraction to open in the city in years, said Gordon McIvor, the vice-president of the Canada Lands Company, the Crown corporation which owns the CN Tower and the five-acre plot on which the aquarium would be located.
Humanizing the Science of Climate Change: The Role of the Arts in Driving Sustainable Lifestyles
In his address, titled “Humanizing the Science of Climate Change: The Role of the Arts in Driving Sustainable Lifestyles,” Todd will discuss the leading edge of eco-arts production and performance, and its potential as a catalyst for changing awareness and behaviour around the most compelling environmental issue of our day.
From the Forums: Fighting Auto Domination
Clutchlove has a problem with his city:Parking lots, roads, driveways, gas stations, car washes, auto parts stores. I did a rough measurement of some areas in the city I live in and found around 50% of the land is meant strictly for the automobile…This post is not meant as a complaint about the city I live in but rather just an illustration to point out amount of land we use with our cities when we really don’t need to.
London air pollution worst in Ontario
AIR POLLUTION: A new report says more than 6% of pollutants released over the London region are suspected causes of cancer
The city wants to bring downtown stakeholders together to devise ways to tackle crime and safety concerns and turn around the negative perception of the core.
The idea comes from Hamilton police — who have been criticized by Councillor Bob Bratina for not clamping down on downtown crime and letting “unfriendly persons” occupy Gore Park. It’s being endorsed by members of the police services board, including Mayor Fred Eisenberger.
The Downtown Business Improvement Area shares concerns about panhandlers and unsavoury characters hurting convention business and has called for action.
Small Farming: It Takes A Village
Local food and small farming are part of a growing food trend in the U.S. But, as Steph Larsen writes, the trend is going to need more infrastructure down the supply chain to sustain itself
China Now Controls Majority Of Canada’s Athabasca Oil Sands Corp
A huge Chinese tar sands investment has been formally approved by the Canadian Federal government. It’s up to Chinese engineers and managers, now, to make the oil extraction and distribution cost-efficient enough to get the desired financial returns. With state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. reporting an investment of up to $1.7 billion in the tar patch they’ll have a good shot at it.
Editor’s pick: Markham plan could contain sprawl, save farms
A groundbreaking plan to freeze Markham’s expansion onto prime farmland could voluntarily take the fast-growing suburban powerhouse where no GTA municipality has dared go: upward but not outward.
Supermarket News Forecasts Non-GMO Uprising
For a couple of years, the Institute for Responsible Technology has predicted that the US would soon experience a tipping point of consumer rejection against genetically modified foods; a change we’re all helping to bring about. Now a December article in Supermarket News supports both our prediction and the role the Institute is playing.
Factory Farmed Meat Can Trigger a Global Pandemic That Wipes Out 60% of Those Infected
The chicken and pork industries have wrought unprecedented changes in bird and swine flu. Billions could die in a deadly flu pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen.
The Plug-N-Play Factory
In Singapore, where land is precious, new concepts in building are being proposed to create shared resources for different industries in the same space.
A Tale of Three Cities (of Detroit)
Then, I spent an afternoon with John Mogk – and his theory about Detroit put my head on straight. To him, Detroit is actually three separate cities – totally indiscriminately referred to as one.
You have heard of slow food; get ready for slow cities. It is an outgrowth of the slow food movement and like it, started in Italy. According to Der Spiegel, “Slow City” advocates argue that small cities should preserve their traditional structures by observing strict rules: cars should be banned from city centers; people should eat only local products and use sustainable energy. In these cities, there’s not much point in looking for a supermarket chain or McDonald’s.
Detroit Entrepreneurs Opt to Look Up
DETROIT — With $6,000 and some Hollywood-style spunk, four friends opened this city’s only independent foreign movie house three months ago in an abandoned school auditorium on an unlighted stretch of the Cass Corridor near downtown.
Multicultural Critical Theory. At B(usiness)-School?
“The ‘Eureka’ moment was when I could draw a data point between a hotshot, investment bank-oriented star lawyer and an elementary school principal,” Mr. Martin recalls. “I thought: ‘Holy smokes. In completely different situations, these people are thinking in very similar ways, and there may be something special about this pattern of thinking.’ ”
That insight led Mr. Martin to begin advocating what was then a radical idea in business education: that students needed to learn how to think critically and creatively every bit as much as they needed to learn finance or accounting. More specifically, they needed to learn how to approach problems from many perspectives and to combine various approaches to find innovative solutions.
Tags: aquariums, business schoolss, cars, Creative Class, cul-de-sacs, detroit, factories, factoring farming, Farming, food security, gentrification, Hamilton, High Speed Rail, landscaping, london, Markham, MBA, parks, Richard Florida, slow cities, small homes, sprawl, supermarket, Toronto, Urban farming
Post Feedback
So now Richard Florida says this:
“In his much-cited cover story in the March issue of The Atlantic — “How the Crash Will Reshape America” — he delivered the harsh news: “We need to be clear that ultimately, we can’t stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try. … Different eras favor different places, along with the industries and lifestyles those places embody. …”"
How does it help sustainability and climate change to abandon major manufacturing centres in the rustbelt and the autobelt? Too bad for you that you aren’t already living in Silicon Valley or Markham. Too bad for the planet to leave behind scarred wastelands for shanty towns in megopolises (or is that megopoli).
Not very creative thinking from the inventor of the creative class.
I wholly agree Margaret.
So much for Florida coming to Windsor to speak, we’re toast according to him. I’ve always had a problem with him and his Creative Class(es). My parents were professional artists all their lives but worked daily at other professions to pay the bills, I was a working visual artist at one time but worked on the line at Ford, I grew up in and with the creative classes. For us to be the absolute savours of a city, along with servers, hairdressers et al and the rest of the service industry is insane. There is no way a theatre, a gallery, an artist can hire 3,000 workers and pay them 40 bucks an hour or even the mininum wage.
No. Florida doesn’t get it!
Mark, Your comments are correct, but if I may, I’d like to project them onto the plight of the downtown. Are you in agreement that it is employment and wages that will bring back the downtown and not “a theatre, a gallery”, a canal, or an aquarium because they wouldn’t employ enough people or pay enough in salary? Would I be fair in my comparison?
A different mark replying. LOS, Jobs alone will not bring back downtown. The casino is an example of that. We need people to live downtown and provide whatever is required to make downtown a viable option to live.
No one has done a survey about what it would take to get people to want to live downtown. Maybe they’ll answer a canal or a theater or an aquarium (I doubt it just like you do) but whatever they answer is what we should all support.
Why not just go to the Caesars employees and find out how many out of 3000 would consider downtown, even if you get 100, you can then ask them what would influence their decision.
I think the new riverfront stage will provide such a good experience that it could actually draw those who enjoy shows to want to live withing walking distance.
A different mark replying. LOS, Jobs alone will not bring back downtown. The casino is an example of that. We need people to live downtown and provide whatever is required to make downtown a viable option to live.
No one has done a survey about what it would take to get people to want to live downtown. Maybe they’ll answer a canal or a theater or an aquarium (I doubt it just like you do) but whatever they answer is what we should all support.
Why not just go to the Caesars employees and find out how many out of 3000 would consider downtown, even if you get 100, you can then ask them what would influence their decision.
I think the new riverfront stage will provide such a good experience that it could actually draw those who enjoy shows to want to live withing walking distance.
A typical Florida response.
I have said it before on here. Florida may be intelligent but he is as greasy as a snake oil salesman. He gives platitudes and statements but never the road map to get there; re-hashing things said 30-40 years ago but with new buzzwords.
I don’t get why people pay him so much to speak when he isn’t really saying much at all except whqat those who are willing to do to make changes already know.
LOS, I disagree. jobs and wages will only give the people the ablility to move out. What we need to do is give people the incentive and the reason to stay or move to core areas. Yes, jobs and wages are very important but the downtown will not be like our grandparents downtown…never! Therefore I believe we need to make the changes to what is needed today and tomorrow.
As for pay, well there are a lot of young students that could work downtown who would love to have a job right now. We can’t forget them and we sure can’t go after only high paying jobs either.
Dave, I agree that jobs and wages won’t be enough to revive the downtown, and Mark Boscariol’s example of the casino is a good one. It also provides a good example of why the “build it and they will come” argument fails as well. The casino was sold to the citizens, partly, as the draw to revive downtown, but it has proven not to be the case. Mark’s suggestion of surveying the workers at the casino is also a good idea. What would it take for them to work AND live downtown?
Surveying those who live downtown would also provide some usable information. Why do they live downtown? Where do they work? Why do they stay? Are they thinking of leaving? Maybe something the DWBIA could look at doing.
What the downtown needs is not unlike any other part of the city; employment (small and larger), residences (single and multi-family, rentals, lease holds, and free holds), safety, esthetics, entertainments, and recreation. Getting people to visit is not the question, getting them to stay is.
There’s a big difference between the revival, or sustainability, of current downtown businesses and the revival of the downtown as a whole.
Cost/benefit analysis.
What are the costs (not just financial) of living downtown? What are the benefits?
Costs include not having a decent grocery store nearby, and not having much decent shopping in walking distance. Costs may also include a perceived unsafety/crime in the downtown area.
Benefits include the social/hospitality/entertainment scene downtown. Coffee shops, restaurants, theatres. Benefits also include decent transit options (although, not great, this is WindsorTransit we’re talking about). More frequent transit between the University and downtown might increase the number of students downtown.
Other things to look at are the quality of rental units, and price, compared to other areas.
For the students at St. Clair that will be studying at the MediaPlex, a significant benefit would be being able to walk to school.
For me to move closer to downtown (currently I live between the University and downtown), I would need to find an apartment that is a nice as mine, in the same price range. Why pay more to live downtown? I would definitely want convenient grocery shopping, at a store that sells decent produce.
As a self-employed professional, I would want to live close to my work. However, with the downtown core as it is, I’m not sure I would want to take the leap to put my business downtown. It is a catch-22.