Personally, I look forward to JHK’s weekly blog post.  I don’t take his view as gospel but, his riffs usually have a good rhythm, the content is interesting to me and there is nearly always some dark, sardonic humour that makes me laugh a little.  So, Monday mornings (with Jim) - shortly after nine I like to take five minutes, sip my coffee and read the latest installment of The Clusterfuck Nation.  The name of the blog should tell you right off that James Kunstler is not at all happy with his nation’s situation.  The origin of the term "clusterfuck " is not totally clear but is largely attributed to U.S. military speak to describe an event or situation that goes wrong and continues to get worse (more refined folk refer to this as a negative-feedback-loop) despite every effort to correct it.  Clusterfuck and FUBAR (fucked-up beyond all recognition) are usually used in tandem.

I think both terms are appropriate to define our current state of affairs here (in Windsor, in Ontario, in Canada, in North America, as a member of NATO, as a member of NAFTA, as a leading nation of the world - take your pick).  I’m going to limit this to Windsor, Ontario and Canada.  Our federal government just tabled a budget that will keep Canada in a deficit situation for the foreseeable future.  Deficit means increased debt, means more of the people’s money that should be spent on the people will be spent servicing debts.  Which means either higher taxes to make-up the difference or reduced departmental spending to pay-off the holders of our sovereign debt (banks and other countries).

Our provincial government will likely follow the same route - continued deficits, higher taxes/user fees and less service.  Of course this leads to municipal governments getting smaller transfer payments to provide the services mandated by the senior levels of government…I hope you get the picture.

Facing a future of much less the plan here in Windsor seems to be to wish and pretend that everything will go back to the way it was.  Some magical solution will be found to get our workforce back to work, to allow us to continue to build outward, to continue to ignore the growing cracks in our social fabric…

There are some bright spots but when you consider them against all that is stacking up to make the future road a steep pass to climb one can begin to feel like Sisyphus.  Maybe that’s where the big ugly doomerism came from in JHK’s latest post.  Perhaps he just felt like lashing out and imagining the end will come sooner, rather than later so that everyone would finally understand just what he was trying to tell them - that car culture, consumerism, suburbia and something-for-nothing will not be part of the future.

“Solving your jobs problem through incorrect planning is like solving your weight problem by taking up smoking”

The Chamber’s main objection tonight was that they outright reject the premise of “Zero sum”. That new rezoning of agricultural and residential land for commercial does not have to result in jobs lost or moved from another area.

Technically, his statement is true, in a perfect world, under normal circumstances, economics is not zero sum. Entrepreneurs are magicians that can create jobs and industry out of thin air, look at apple and microsoft as examples in tech. However, neither of these is true in Windsor. Here are the three things that the Chamber either is denying or ignorant of.

1. Population growth is actually a decline. Job growth is in decline, both are necessary for these expansions to create permanent jobs. Any takers on this bet “next census will show a population decline of a minimum of 1,000 per year for the past 3 years (probably more like 2,000 or up)

2. The past rezonings in Windsor have not lead to job growth in Windsor. At no time has the building of commercial ever resulted in job growth beyond the construction phase. New Big Box strip malls results in less money kept in Windsor than if spent on the businesses in the core.

3. Development charges do not cover the costs of creating infrastructure in these areas and Property taxes do not cover maintenence of that infrastructure. This results in higher property taxes which kill jobs and cause people to exit

Thats why the chamber gets it wrong yet again

“Where is the canal in San Antonio by the way? I thought the Riverwalk were improvements along the San Antonio River - a prexisting natural feature the city capitalized on?”

My answer is as follows which is information garnered from a 40 minute river tour (thats how long it takes a boat to transverse the canal at a leisurely rate)

I’m not disagreeing on but are you saying that the mayor’s plan is not to capitalize on a pre-existing natural feature in Windsor?

However here are a few of the vast, differences. From which I conclude that we should never, I mean ever, compare the two projects again.

the Canal in San Antonio served a purpose beyond being an architectural feature (Thats the best term I’ve found to describe it)

In San Antonio, they had a flooding problem and dug out the Canal to deal with floodwaters. The Canal served as a way to mitigate the problems when the river flooded

Also they were looking for a way to connect the convention center to the River, a way to move people between the two. The Canal serves as pedestrian, boat (they have taxi’s and river shuttles) to take you between your hotel and the convention center

In addition to that the Canal serves as a pedestrian route connecting hotels to the Alamo plaza, the mall and Aztec theater which all have entrances on the riverwalk.

Recently, they spent $72 million extended the Canal so that it could connect to the a Hotel. This extension was paid for 100% by the hotels that wanted to connect to the riverwalk. Yep, thats right, privately funded.

The amount of ways that the riverwalk connects to the city streets are vast, there are multiple elevators.

(I’d like to see one elevator that takes people from our riverfront to riverside street level)

This post is not meant to discourage the idea of a Canal in WIndsor, only the thought that it would or should ever be used in the same sentence as San Antonio. Ours is meant to be a pretty architectural feature that I do believe does capitalize on our city’s pre-existing natural riverfront feature. However, what will it connect the river to? a neighborhood with some mixed use.

From what I’ve seen in Florida and Texas, there is no more retail to lure. In Naples Florida I’ve seen amazingly designed lifestyle centers that sit completely void of retail. We’ll get some cafe’s and I’m sure some nice restaurants but other than a gift shop, retail would be very doubtful.

Now back to my primary question, what will it take to lure potential residents to Downtown? When will we get down to actually asking them?

Another overused word will be sustainability. That means different things to different people. My idea of sustainability leads to liveability making the second an outcome, not a strategy in itself. I think our city needs to facilitate new job growth. I choose that word carefully. What does sustainability mean to me?

• It means monetizing (transforming to a industry that provides jobs for our community and sells our local cultural identity to those outside of Windsor bringing money into our economy) our local arts and culture.
• It means putting residents in the core so that local main streets businesses/BIA’s have customers.
• It means stop subsidizing the building of new commercial space that when combined with negative job and population growth can only lead to the cannibalization of local businesses. This doesn’t mean we ban these developments, just stop subsidizing them (We subsidize with cheap, crappy site plan requirements and development charges that are less than the city’s cost)
• Sustainability means making it affordable for people to live in Windsor on the lower income jobs that are being produced or in this new retirement community strategy. Living and working without needing a car, being able to access a computer/internet for free, easily obtaining healthy food.

A Canal is an architectural feature in a much larger plan. Mr. Schnurr sometimes criticizes my position on this issue as moving all the time, however I see it as evolving and I am proud of that. I consider my position on the Canal feature as a “Fanatical Agnostic”, (the difference between that and a regular agnostic is that not only am I not sure if this feature will work, I’m DAMN sure you don’t know either) Only a survey of potential residents will decide what features or measures will work an which will not, anything else is unfounded speculation based on anecdotal evidence.

Some of the items in that plan are pretty darn good. A small transient marina with a ferry dock allows our core to connect with detroits’ core where some pretty wonderful things are happening in the middle of their devastated city. I’ve always felt the two nation destination strategy was a good one. Downtown Detroit is an adjacent neighborhood, a customer for our goods and services and a natural ally in our quest to solve our problems, many of which we share.

Now I’m not running for office, I’m just looking to support candidates who share my beliefs and values

And eventually we will see something being done to tidy up the land that got caught in last winter’s fire. Do something that has appeal to people considering Austin as a place to live. Perhaps create a winding stream with rocks and curves making its way downtown.

Tale of two shrinking cities: Flint and Detroit deal with downsizing in different ways

Flint Mayor Dayne Walling has said repeatedly that the city will not save some Flint neighborhoods at the expense of others or encourage people to leave their homes.

In Detroit, it’s a different story.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has said he “absolutely” intends to relocate residents from mostly vacant neighborhoods and is bracing for legal challenges to his downsizing plan, media reports indicate.

So even though the cities’ past and present have run along parallel lines — separated by 68 miles along Interstate 75 — Flint and Detroit each could become a model of a different kind of right-sizing.

Detroit Warns of Bankruptcy as It Prepares Bond Sale

March 5 (Bloomberg) — Detroit, the largest U.S. city whose debt is rated below investment grade, warned investors of the risk of bankruptcy as it prepares to sell $250 million of bonds to help close its budget deficit.

My Year With Chickens: What You Should Know Before Getting Chickens

Today is the first birthday of my four hens but I don’t feel much like celebrating; I think I’ll just have an omelet. These unlikely members of my household come with benefits and drawbacks, not all of them expected when I first decided to get them

Developer redefining Burlington

It’s big, bold and in the core.

And it’s affordable. If you consider a $265,000 condominium unit affordable housing. It’s the Molinaro Group’s $60-million highrise project on Maple Avenue, on the west edge of the city’s downtown.

The planned 21-storey, 186-unit highrise began in November with occupancy planned for the spring of 2011.

Urban Wind Power

Via All About Cities

Maybe meeting expectations makes “cities” happy

Richard Florida has a new thought provoking piece on what makes cities happy.  Since cities are inanimate and cannot really be happy or sad, he seems to be referring to the aggregate mood of the people.

He and his colleagues look at the positive correlations between happiness and such things as income and having higher education levels.  And they note the negative correlation to lower education levels.

This made me think about political revolution theory.  More specifically the theory that societies are most prone to revolution when rising expectations fail to meet reality.  (This is the J-Curve model.)  The reverse also generally holds: revolutions are least likely when reality is matching rising expectations — because people are happy if their expectations for life are being met, or exceeded.

So, therefore, if a city is able to meet the rising expectations of people who live there, the citizens will appear to be happy by most measures.  I think this partially fits with Florida’s observations.

For example, he found that cities with high numbers of citizens with advanced education levels tend to be happier.  We could assume that these individuals have higher expectations for themselves, and also tend to meet them.  But we should probably watch out for situations in which those with higher education are not succeeding.

Florida also notes the lower levels of happiness among metro areas associated with the working class — their expectations for life have likely been dashed.
For political leaders a key issue may be to manage expectations.  For those of us just trying to understand cities, we may need to look beyond comparing such things as housing prices, average wages, and even education levels across cities.  For example, it may not matter to happiness if one city’s citizens have a lower living standard because of high costs; it matters more whether they expect something different.

Richard Florida – Makes Cities Happy - you can click on the link for all the graphs.

“Earlier this week, I discussed the new Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index of happy cities. Today, with the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander, I look at some of the social, demographic, and economic factors that might be associated with the happiness and well-being of cities.

There has been considerable debate on the factors that are associated with happiness and well-being at the national level. The well-known Easterlin Paradox suggested that happiness tends to level off after a certain income threshold. Psychologists, notably Edward Diener, have argued that factors such as health, challenging work, and close social relationships, among others, play a considerable role in happiness. Some have even made the case for instituting a new measure ofgross national happiness to supplement conventional metrics like gross national product.”

We look at the associations between the Gallup-Healthways Metro happiness index and key social, demographic, and economic factors–like income, unemployment, high-technology industry, and socioeconomic structure. Data-matching reduces the size of our sample to 170 metros–roughly half of all U.S. regions. As usual, we point out that our analysis points only to associations between variables. It does not specify causation or the causal direction of those associations which are questions for future research. Still, the results are interesting across several dimensions.

Income, Wages, and Output: So what is the relationship between metro-level happiness and income, wages, and output?  We find moderate correlations between city happiness and  wages (.45), income (.4), and economic output per capita (.37). The scatter-graphs below show the relationships are reasonably linear, though there is a better fit for wages and income than for output per capita….”

“Unemployment: Conventional wisdom and academic studies suggest that a rising unemployment rate would take a big toll on happiness. We find a moderate correlation between unemployment and happiness across U.S. metros. The correlation between happiness and the unemployment rate is -.34 and between it and the year-over-year (December 2008 to December 2009) change in unemployment is -.3.”

“Post-Industrial Economic Structures: In our ongoing research, we have been testing the notion that happiness and well-being may be more associated with key features of so-called post-industrial economic structures–namely the shift from physically oriented work to knowledge, professional, and creative occupations and industries–and from lower-skilled to more highly skilled and educated workforces. A large body of research has found a close association between human capital (measured as share of the population with a B.A. and above) and economic development across nations as well as regions; other research has found thathuman capital levels are becoming more divergent across regions over time. To get at this, we looked at the associations between happiness and human capital, as well as between it and creative-knowledge-professional occupations and blue-collar working class occupations.

Human Capital: Happiness at the city or metro-level is more closely associated with human capital with a correlation of .68 - the strongest correlation of any of the variables we looked at. The scatter-graph below shows a fairly linear relationship. ..”

High-Tech: Happiness is also associated with locations that have higher concentrations of high-tech industries. We find a correlation of .41 between it and the Milken Institute’s Tech-Pole measure.

Working Class: On the other hand, metro-level happiness is negatively associated with the working class, -.34, a finding which is similar to that for states.”

- - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - -

I’ve been back in this city for twenty years. The first four or five years back I really wanted to move away - basically back to Ottawa were I had worked for three years after graduating from graduate school. I was born here but moved away in 1958 and came back in 1971 and then left again in 1985.

Am I happy living in this city, somewhat but that is never a concrete question with a definitive answer.There is always expectations and let downs - life. I am working and according to Florida those with post secondary degrees are happier than those without. I am a member of the creative class, work in a high tech profession, therefore I should be happy with Windsor and in Windsor. Which I generally am. Can things be better sure, can they get worse with our economy - yes.

But then I’ve never asked or really sat down and addressed the question is Windsor a Happy City

Because of the enormous impact of agriculture on climate change, pick up any book about “green” solutions and you’ll find the suggestions that you grow a vegetable garden. Bang into the “we can’t go on as we are” end of the environmental movement (mine), and you’ll see the general assumption that growing food is part of any process of adaptation to lower resource use.

Ecological Intelligence: Do Humans Have What it Takes to Survive?

Modern life diminishes such skills and wisdom; at the beginning of the twenty-first century, society has lost touch with what may be the singular sensibility crucial to our survival as a species. The routines of our daily lives go on completely disconnected from their adverse impacts on the world around us; our collective mind harbors blind spots that disconnect our everyday activities from the crises those same activities create in natural systems

Gridlock and Growth: The Effect of Traffic Congestion on Regional Economic Performance

How reducing traffic congestion can add billions of dollars in economic growth to local economies

NOT! Study: developers need to start organizing online; opponents are!

Saint Consulting, recently conducted a study to assess the extent to which community groups were utilizing Facebook to oppose real estate development projects. The results should provide a wake-up call to developers.

Using a set of strict research criteria, Saint Consulting found a significant number of community groups conducting well-organized opposition campaigns online. Not surprising to us, we also found that these opposition campaigns outnumbered support campaigns by a ratio of 9 to 1. These virtual campaigns consist of many of the same elements of traditional offline grassroots campaigns.

New Report: Road Funding From Non-Road Users Doubled in 25 Years

The myth that U.S. roads “pay for themselves” thanks to user fees is a subject that’s likely familiar to many Streetsblog Capitol Hill readers — but just how much of the nation’s highway funding is provided by charging drivers?

The answer may surprise even active critics of the current asphalt-centric transportation system. Between 1982 and 2007, the amount of federal highway revenue derived from non-users of the highway system has doubled, according to a study released today by Subsidyscope.

The Fat Lady Has Sung

“Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 911 for a medical emergency. But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year, which allows them to call 911 as many times as necessary. Or there’s the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.”

And it gets worse!

Cities Shortening Yellow Traffic Lights for Deadly Profit

And …Chapter 9 Cities on the Rise

The country of the future may finally be arriving

Imposing in territory (world’s fifth largest country) and population (fifth most populous, at 190 million), Brazil has never come close to fulfilling its potential, having been mired for decades in authoritarian governments, hyperinflation, staggering inequalities and a curious ambivalence about the rest of South America and, indeed, the rest of the world.

Now, maybe for the first time, the future that Brazilians always believed would be theirs – as a country of moderate prosperity, international influence and global respect – might slowly be unfolding.

Does It Really Matter Whether Your Food Was Produced Locally?

Counting food miles can lead to wrong turns: Instead of worrying about how far our food has traveled we should look at the way it’s produced and hauled.

Dissatisfied Ontario no longer happy camper of Confederation

..The Mowat Centre conducted new polling to determine whether these features of Canadian political culture are changing. They are, and if they continue to change, the implications for the federation could be far-reaching.

Our survey tracks the evolution of Ontarians’ views on a number of key polling questions that were asked in the late ’90s through until 2004. Those surveys asked Canadians whether their province received its fair share of respect in the federation, fair share of federal spending and fair share of influence on national decisions. From 1998 to 2004, Ontarians were unique among Canadians in being satisfied that their home province was well-treated on all three of these dimensions: respect, money and influence.

Today, however, Ontarians resemble other Canadians in believing that there are inequities in the federation that must be addressed.

The study

The New Ontario: The Shifting Attitudes of Ontarians toward the Federation

Slow economy leaves Ontario ample power

System regulator says unprecedented array of electricity options offers nuclear wiggle room

Labour shortages are not a thing of the past, but an impending reality: Canadian Chamber

In a report entitled: Recession, Recovery and the Future Evolution of the Labour Market which was released to coincide with the federal/provincial/territorial meeting of Ministers responsible for Labour, the Canadian Chamber cautioned that an aging population and low birth rate will exert significant strains on Canada’s labour market.

“Canada will have too few workers to meet the needs of its economy and of society,” says Perrin Beatty, President and CEO of the Canadian Chamber. “We need to expand Canada’s labour force if we want the Canadian economy to continue to grow.”

Want to Foster Walking, Biking and Transit? You Need Good Parking Policy

A report released today by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy [PDF] highlights the new wave of parking policy innovation that could pay huge dividends for sustainable transport and livable streets. If your city aspires to make streets safe, improve the quality of transit, and foster bicycling, then your city needs a coherent parking policy.

Geothermal Gardens and the Hot Zones of the City

For their “Reykjavik Botanical Garden,” Rice University architecture students Andrew Corrigan and John Carr proposed tapping that city’s geothermal energy to create “microclimates for varied plant growth.”

The Sidewalks of Today and Tomorrow: Is Concrete Our Only Option?

For most American cities, concrete is the go-to choice for building sidewalks. It’s relatively cheap to install — only about $12 per square foot — and it’s very solid. Its pale color reflects light, reducing nighttime illumination costs for cities compared to darker-hued alternatives. Plus, if adequately maintained, concrete can last up to eighty years.

Yet concrete also has its downsides: Manufacturing it has a high carbon footprint, since its fabrication requires the energy-intensive heating of limestone; it has a tendency to crack when tree routes grow underneath it; and it has no porosity, depriving the ground under it of essential ground water and increasing runoff problems.

Just the headlines!

The Death and Gentrification of Great American Cities

How the Recession Has Changed American Migration

Food and the Shape of Cities

“This Book Is Overdue!”: Hot for librarian

Majority of French restaurants using ready-made factory food

Budgets, boomers and ticking time bombs

Detroit’s $20 Million Demolition Plan

Higher U.S. passport fees could put a damper on local tourism

And finally, Where won’t Wal-Mart build?

“My friend Bill K recently sent three pieces about an idea that crops up in The Value of Nothing – The Right to the City. It’s the absurd notion that, within cities, people ought democratically to be able to control and manage the city’s resources.

The Right to the City is a necessary idea, particularly if you think that cities can harbour progressive and ecologically sustainable social change. Stewart Brand , in a Panglossian article seems to think that ’slums will save the planet’, but Mike Davis – an altogether more thoughtful scholar – does too. Sure, cities can be more ecologically and socially sustainable that rural communities, but that doesn’t happen by magic. Nor, as Brand seems to forget, is there anything terribly desirable about living in a slum. As he would discover were he ever to leave his houseboat visit one, most people would rather not live in one. And neither author spends as much time as he ought thinking about gender in the city. So where will the politics of sustainable urban change come from? The movements for the Right to the City can help answer that. More below the fold, and in the next two posts.

The Right to the City Alliance: Time to Democratize Urban Governance

Progressive Planning
Fall 2009

http://www.plannersnetwork.org/publications/2009_fall/leavitt_samara_brady.html

The Right to the City Alliance: Time to Democratize Urban Governance

by Jackie Leavitt, Tony Roshan Samara and Marnie Brady

In 2007, grassroots organizers in the United States formed the U.S. Right to the City (RTTC) Alliance as a means of taking their cities back from the coalitions of affluence that had formed during the 1980s and reframing the central scale of social struggle from the global to the urban. RTTC is one of the first mass formations to emerge from the previous era of sustained anti-globalization struggle stretching from the end of the Cold War through the election of George Bush, the attacks of 9/11 and the war on Iraq. Although it is a relatively new movement, RTTC holds much potential for re-centering and advancing the struggle for democratic urban governance. Planners Network has joined RTTC as a resource group….

it continues …The “right to the city” as a concept has captured the imagination of many involved with urban social struggles but it remains an underdeveloped social movement ideology. Below we provide an introduction to the alliance by briefly discussing some of the campaigns in which members in the Boston and New York City regions are engaged. We then attempt to draw out some of the key principles and issues which underpin these efforts and inform initiatives to develop national expressions and link these groups to others across the country and globe. Our data are drawn from interviews with RTTC members, participant observation and review of movement documents and campaigns.

The City as Battleground

What unites the various RTTC members can be traced to the conditions facing urban communities across the country. Recent decades have seen once abandoned or neglected central cities reemerge as central economic and political nodes in the global economy; as a result, struggles over urban space have intensified. Although member organizations were formed in response to highly specific local events, their struggles are defined by the need to defend urban neighborhoods from encroaching developers and gentrifiers, to confront apathetic, negligent or antagonistic officials and to grapple with the local, national and global forces that govern urban spaces in their interests. In doing so, RTTC organizations, as well as the broader communities from which they come, are engaged in an attempt to radically redefine and reclaim urban democracy. They are guided by a deeply held belief that they have a right to the spaces they call home.

City Life/Vida Urbana, based in the Jamaica Plains neighborhood of Boston, was founded in 1973 to fight disinvestment and over time it has expanded its tenant organizing to other parts of Boston. It pioneered the idea of an “Eviction Free Zone” and a “Community-Controlled Housing Zone” to resist evictions, make visible existing ownership patterns and identify where power was situated (see article in PN, pp. ). Other RTTC organizations were founded in response to more recent neoliberal policies, such as that established by the Los Angeles City Council when it approved “workforce” housing on an ad hoc basis but avoided investing major resources into housing for those of the lowest income. L.A. has exacerbated conditions for the poor by pursuing “glamorous” projects like entertainment complexes that ultimately demolished buildings, displaced tenants and reduced the housing supply for those most in need. In response, RTTC-LA has begun a campaign to develop a community-based housing plan. This involves tenant leaders surveying neighbors to document code enforcement violations based on their lived experiences; in the process, new leaders are emerging and survey findings are expanding the ways in which regulating code enforcement is tied to larger questions about power and the community….

…Linking Theory and Practice

As a movement and a theory, right to the city remains a work in progress.
Within and beyond the RTTC, individuals and organizations are involved in the difficult political work of generating a theory that is both rooted in both the day-to-day struggles and realities of people’s lives and capable of creating opportunities for radical, long-lasting, social change. While the debate will continue, looking at RTTC campaigns allows us to begin to identify some emergent principles.

Right to the city at its most elementary concerns the relationship between people and place. It is from here, arguably, that all other rights are derived from and, in turn, grounded in. Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s original work from 1968, Le Droit a La Ville (Right to the City), right to the city is a political feature of the urban inhabitant, a new form of political belonging not rooted in national citizenship but in urban residency, from which it draws its political power. Issues related to residency have surfaced recently in immigrant struggles to get the vote in local and municipal elections and there is a history of undocumented immigrants gaining voting rights in school elections.

From this central principle, we can see in the actions and analyses of RTTC members and the alliance as a whole a subset of rights that gives a more defined form to the rights to the city. These are neither written in stone nor apply universally to all communities in all places, but they do allow us to move the process of defining the right to the city forward as grounded in actual struggle. Engagement with an ever-widening circle of social movements committed to deep transformation will only strengthen the frame.

…Linking Rights, Democracy and Planning

It is impossible to disentangle the discussion of rights from that of democracy, and perhaps right to the city is best understood as one of this generation’s attempts to breathe new life into government by the people, as the struggle for radical democracy and what some call deep democracy.
At the same time, the movement and theory must be grounded in the lives of real people and the concrete conditions of urban communities. Categories such as citizen and worker, while still relevant, are insufficient to contain and represent the multi-faceted struggles of urban inhabitants who are women, documented and undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ and people of color, many of whom may exist at the peripheries or even outside of the formal economy. New struggles for democracy, inside the city and beyond, will need to create political subjects and agendas that transcend these categories without losing sight of the particularities that shape their lives of urban inhabitants.

Central to RTTC campaigns and analyses is the idea that the struggle for democracy today requires a return to the concept of rights. Students may study ethics in some programs, but planners need to ask how prevalent this is in most planning programs and practice. What would planning look like if classes and practice began from the frame of rights? Along with academic, policy and other movement allies, RTTC is engaged in the process of revitalizing the rights struggle and re-raising unsettled questions in the context of new political challenges. Questions of inclusion, for example, are far from new, yet the attack on immigrant communities forces us to acknowledge that we still lack a powerful rights movement and institutions that can adequately protect them. Similarly, market-driven displacement, criminalization and unresponsive elected officials reveal the inability of even citizenship to safeguard peoples’ civil rights.
Finally, existing rights, those guaranteed to citizens and for which many documented and undocumented immigrants strive, fail to even address basic issues of human security, including housing, medical care and employment.
In all these instances, communities are once again coming up against the limits of the individualistic and formal political rights that mark the liberal democracies.

And if you like RTTC #1 then you should like RTTC #2

Its been a quiet blog lately, you could almost say “too quiet”. Is this the winding down of the site that I claimed to be more than just a bunch of talking heads?

Where’s the radio show?
Where are those brilliantly organized guest speakers by Chris Holt? The candlelight vigils? Participation in ward boundary changing petition?

Is this the end? is it the beginning of the end?

No promises here but I like to think Its the end of the beginning. I’m hoping the calm before the storm

I can’t speak for the other scaledowners who I know are busy bee’s as well but here’s a list of items I’ve been researching and working on myself and through various organizations

1.a. Soon to be announced music video competition that will see local musicians working with local film makers (just need the interactive media component and we’ll see a complete convergence necessary to foster a comprehensive local industry)

b. developing a prototype of the web resource I committed to that would become a sort of interim film commission at www.wefilm.ca (its not up yet so no clicking, can’t believe the domain was still available as of last week)

2. Research into what is required to set up a local BALLE network. So far my work has consisted of attending a speaking engagement by the Ann Arbor think local chapter president, obtaining and reading the network information kit, participating in a nationwide 90 minute conference call. Putting out feelers to see what kind of interest.

I’m sure I will need a blog post just for this

3. Lightly researching Transitionnetwork.org heard a cool TED talk on the matter and I like how this type of local initiative has created alternative local currencies (they have one in Detroit), local food networks and helps write sustainability plans and policy for municipal government and schools. (Garden sharing,

Thats why I left supporting the politicians arena. The projects above are infinitely more exciting to me than being a talking head or campaigning. People talk about needing change. You want change, We need Action for a change (hey, thats a damn good campaign slogan).

Anyone interested in participating, read up on the above topics, and lets talk when I get back from SXSW.com (I can’t wait)

Mayor Dave Bing has appealed to Detroit’s suburban neighbors to work with his administration and help pull his struggling, near-bankrupt city from its financial mire for the good of the region.

The scaling down of a once bright city begins

Detroit –Mayor Dave Bing and a majority of City Council members are on board with the concept of downsizing the city to save it and may soon move closer to choosing which neighborhoods to target for help at the expense of others.

A first step in the controversial process began this week, when Bing was briefed on a block-by-block study of conditions in the city’s 133 square miles. Surveyors for the “Detroit Parcel Study” drove every street and logged details about every house, 350,000 parcels.

You could be farming around James Bay someday soon

The southern limit of permanently frozen ground has receded 80 miles north in the past 50 years in Canada—suggesting thatpermafrost in the James Bay region will completely disappear in the near future.

Sharing the road

The number of drivers turning to car sharing is forecast to grow eightfold by 2016 and a report says automakers should be worried

We pay huge price for stretching urban boundary

Ottawa councillors should not let the lure of development fees or the threat of legal action deter them from doing what is right for our city. It is irresponsible for the City of Ottawa to consider expanding the urban boundary at this time and there is no provincial requirement to do so. We are already seeing the consequences of uncontrolled growth and urban sprawl as our roads, sewers, and transit have reached capacity and our taxes no longer cover the city’s operating costs.

The Urban Destruction Caused by Parking

More! That’s the scream of merchants and others who believe that a downtown without an endless sea of parking is not worth going to. But once the whole downtown turns into a parking lot it’s not really worth much anymore, is it? Yet we still see the discussion of parking dominate without an eye for the destruction that it can cause a downtown if left unfettered.

Canada gives away the store in return for scraps from U.S.

The agreement gives Canada fleeting access to a sliver of the U.S. stimulus package. Canadian businesses will get to compete for no more than $4 billion to $5 billion (U.S.) worth of projects, amounting to less than 2 per cent of the $275 billion of procurement funded under the U.S. Recovery Act. The rest falls outside the scope of this deal.

Give Hamilton light rail, transit body told

Metrolinx should “dream big” for Hamilton and “bite the bullet” on light rail transit, a renowned urban expert told his colleagues on the transit agency’s board yesterday.

“This is one of the most important decisions for Hamilton in a generation,” said Paul Bedford, retired chief planner for Toronto

City of Seoul Transforms Freeway Into a River (Video)

Long ago in Seoul, South Korea city planners paved right over a natural stream to put in a road. It stayed that way for decades, becoming a freeway and adding to the traffic congestion in the burgeoning metropolis. But Fast Company reports that recently, city officials decided to return the road to its natural roots. Here’s FC’s video of how, and why, they transformed the freeway back into a stream

Metro Matters Podcast Episode 1

For the inaugural edition of Metro Matters, Next American City’s Editor in Chief, Diana Lind, talks with Alan Berube of theBrookings Institution about the Great Recession. Which cities have recovered best from the economic downturn? What’s next for the urban economy? And what should President Obama do to help out hurting metros?

Street Lamps Powered by Garbage

A cool new design concept marries composting with clean energy:  garbage-powered street lamps.  The Gaon Street Light from designer Haneum Lee keeps food waste out of landfills while keeping streets illuminated.

Imagine you keeping the street light operating in front of your house, with you compostable garbage

Green Revolution May Have Done More Harm Than Good…

Free trade, loss of support systems crippling food production in Africa

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Despite good intentions, the push to privatize government functions and insistence upon “free trade” that is too often unfair has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a hunger crisis for millions of people in many African nations, researchers conclude in a new study.

AMERICA’S EUROPEAN DREAM

But things are also dicey in some of the core European powers, notably Great Britain, which has soaring debt, high unemployment and very slow growth. Even solvent economies like France, the Netherlands and the continental superpower, Germany, have fallen short of expectations and are expected to experience meager growth for the rest of the year.

Europe’s poor performance undermines the widespread view held by left-leaning American pundits, policy wonks and academics about Europe’s supposedly superior model. This Euro-philia has a long history, going back at least to the Tories during the Revolution. In better times America usually moves beyond European norms instead of retreating to its cultural mother.

‘Walkability’ worth incorporating into Owen Sound’s re-branding

Much of what I am studying documents the huge uphill battle ahead of communities with low density sprawl. So entrenched is the automobile in that way of life, the work of making suburbia appealing for pedestrians seems insurmountable. It may seem sad that Owen Sound hasn’t had tremendous sprawling growth the way that Barrie or Brampton has, but I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that unlike most of Southern Ontario we won’t be spending the next 30 years trying to undo the physical damage.

‘Finally things are looking up’ for Windsor-Essex County, survey says

WINDSOR, Ont. — Windsor and Essex County business leaders are far more optimistic about the future than they were a year ago, according to a survey released Thursday.

The fourth annual Pulse of the Region Economic Confidence Survey found 37.7 per cent of business owners and executives were optimistic about the prospects for the local economy in 2010. Only 12.7 per cent felt that way going into 2009, according to the survey done by the University of Windsor’s Odette School of Business.

Green power sounds good until you calculate the cost

The McGuinty government is spending Ontario’s electricity revenue to encourage investments in wind and solar green power generation – with no benefit to the system or to the customer.

Big corporate investors in wind farms and, maybe, solar farms will reap rich rewards for 20 years while the customer pays higher and higher prices for electrical energy.

London eyes own multimillion-dollar recycling facility

A state-of-the-art regional recycling centre capable of handling 40,000 tonnes a year is ready and willing to accept London’s recyclables, its president says — but London is instead on the verge of building a citywide facility.

Hamilton chosen as site for megabakery

Hamilton will be the new home of a multimillion-dollar megabakery, officials announced this afternoon.

Canada Bread Co. has purchased a parcel of land in the former North Glanbrook Industrial Park, now called the Red Hill Business Park, to build the country’s largest bakery. The move is expected to bring 300 new jobs to Hamilton, as well as an extra 120 jobs during construction.