Frank Lloyd Wright had a useful hint for the contemporary urban planner: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” As sentimental as this advice might sound, the role of nature in the context of the built environment is no light concern in the minds of policymakers and planners today. In a nod to the spirit of these “green” times, two current New York exhibitions are exploring the realities and potentials of this...
...en Elis of the Woodrow Wilson International Center reports that advancing sands now threaten entire villages and cities. In the Gansu province alone 4,000 communities are at high risk of being engulfed. Farmers, herdsmen, and urbanites alike must grapple with the water shortages accompanying desertification. According to the United Nations, the sum of these effects may create 50 million environmental refugees in China alone by the end of 2010. Co...
...30% of their income; the vouchers—financed by the federal government—pay the rest directly to the landlord, even as rents go up (which cannot happen unless the landlord justifies the increase to the Department of Housing and Urban Development). Significantly, the vouchers do not expire, continuing to pay out every month so long as the tenant stays in their apartment. An estimated three-quarters of 3333 Broadway’s population is comprised of Secti...
...the economic context of reform, time limits, and the quality of jobs for the newly employed reveals that welfare reform’s success is not so black and white. For many critics, TANF was a sign of the apocalypse come. The Urban Institute argued that the bill would send one million children into poverty. In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services reports that child poverty rates are at their lowest level since 1979 and overall child...
...al the end of a declined area that has been lying fallow since Brooklyn’s heyday at the turn of the twentieth century. On the other, it means uprooting the existing social fabric and instituting an entirely new, unprecedented urban dynamic. Property values, for example, will skyrocket in the surrounding areas, forcing residents living in the vicinity to move away. Yet hasn’t this process happened before? Weren’t the Atlantic Yards once a bustling...
...for civilians, and the statement that “the Islamic Shari’a will be the primary source of legislature.” The 27 governorates of Egypt that voted on the referendum are dispersed geographically, but are not based on population or urban density. The first important observation: only in three governorates did the majority of voters mark “no.” These were Cairo, Gharbia, and Monufia. In the rest of the governorates, including Alexandria (a city commonly...
...the pull of special interests. As tempting as such logic may be, a decision to carve what would be the nation’s sixth-largest city out of its second-largest would be a futile attempt to escape the realities of a complicated, urban environment. Secessionists have put forward five potential names for voters to choose among for the new city. Among the choices is the hopelessly quixotic title “Camelot.” Secession leaders hope that the name will remi...
photo from Wikimedia Commons On September 6, 2011, Tom Nielsen, a retired 71-year-old plumber, interrupted Paul Ryan’s “pay per view town hall” at the Greenfield, WI, Rotary Club. Nielsen, enraged by Ryan’s crusade against entitlements, yelled out, “I’ve paid into that for 50 years, for my unemployment, and my social security, and my Medicare! And now you’re gonna-”. The old man was not allowed to finish. Three security guards pummeled the reti...
...t yesterday, where he is gunning for the support of southern Virginia’s substantial veteran population. His support has always been strong in the northern areas that border the District of Columbia—Democrats always do well in urban areas—but his attempts to reach out to other parts of Virginia will make or break his ability to win there. Obama’s latest advertising soundbyte features what the president calls “economic patriotism,” and he used it o...
...to the further withdrawal of girls from school and an increase in child marriage. All this will further relegate women to the domestic sphere in a country already shamefully skewed towards men. These women, today part of the urban middle class that has historically played a central role in creating change and promoting progress in Iran, are now being forced to retreat from their volunteer work. The demise of public enterprise will inevitably for...
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