Posts Tagged ‘new york times’

Got (interesting) people?

February 22nd, 2010

Yesterday I caught a Tweet from @Richard_Florida which read, “When I asked Jane Jacobs about this, she said: ‘When a place gets boring even the rich people leave.’  http://is.gd/8RwVh…”.

I believe the “this” Florida references is the gentrification of some urban neighborhoods, especially as it occurs in once down-and-out and working class neighborhoods. 

I draw this conclusion largely from the New York Times article that he links to titled “A Contrarian’s Lament in a Blitz of Gentrification.”

The article looks at the gentrification of New York City’s neighborhoods, through the eyes of Sharon Zukin, a Brooklyn College professor.  Zurkin laments this gentrification and identifies urban theorist Jane Jacobs as partially to blame.

Jacobs looked at cities as organic, self-regulating organisms that planners often screwed up.  She loathed the suburban car culture and it’s sterile, middle-class only suburbs.  Her zeal for local economy, mixed use neighborhoods and a bottom up approach to community planning have no doubt played a role in the resurgence of urban neighborhoods across the country.  But as the article points out, gentrification can be an unwanted result.

I’m a huge fan of Jane Jacobs, but Zurkin raises some good points.  I found one of her comments in the article particularly interesting:

“Much of what made these neighborhoods unique lives on only in the buildings, not the people.” (source:  Michael Powell, “A Contrarian’s Lament in a Blitz of Gentrification,”  New York Times, 2-18-10)

People, not buildings, make a place interesting.  That’s something all of us in community development should hold onto.

I also think most of our small, rural communities could benefit from becoming “more interesting,” and I’d advocate that we consider some of Jane Jacobs’s ideas for inspiration. 

To begin we can look at the physical design of our communities as a starting point.  Simply put, we have to look better.  It’s that belief that lead the Rural Learning Center to co-develop Design:SD. 

But design alone is not the answer.  We must showcase the talents and creativity of the people who live in our small towns.  That’s why the emphasis on cultural activities in Dr. David Ivan’s “Can Small Towns be Cool?” research resonates with me.  It’s also part of the reason I advocate that rural communities consider the strategy of developing “third places” as a part of their economic development plan. 

The above are by no means the only ways rural communities can become more interesting.  But it’s a start.

So what’s your community doing to make itself more interesting? 

 

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Third Places, the workplace, Facebook, and Starbucks

May 19th, 2009

Catherine Bergart gets the value of value of third places.  In an excellent piece written for the New York Times titled “Losing the Income, and the Camaraderie“, Bergart walks the reader through the tribulations of losing her job at a place she considered her third place.  (Read more about third places here.)

While losing her source of income was traumatic, she considers the loss of the camaraderie at her former third place as the real tragedy of her job loss.  Try as she might, Facebook and Starbucks, couldn’t provide the “social nourishment” she craves.

Bergart writes about third places from the perspective of an individual, while much of our writing about third places (at ReImagine Rural) has focused on its community development implications.  What I find relevant to rural communities, however, is that she discerns the weakness of pseudo-third places like Facebook and Starbucks.    Neither offers the richness of the social interaction between people of disparate backgrounds that that a true third place delivers.

And that’s why I’m both excited and skeptical about social media at the same time.  While I firmly believe rural communities need to develop a social media strategy to connect to people — especially to those people whose lives have taken them outside of the community – I’m not convinced that it can generate the deep relationships that will move our rural communities towards the transformation they need.   

But maybe that’s ok.  We probably shouldn’t think of Web 2.0 technologies like Facebook as the end-all tool.  Like physical third places, they are probably just one piece of the complex puzzle to creating vibrant rural communities.

Other Resources:

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A Southern pick-me-up

March 3rd, 2009

Every now and then community leaders need a little pick-me-up.  At times, this is a “keep it up, we’re behind you” pat-on-the-back from a community member.  Other times, it’s a story about a rural community that is succeeding. 

That’s what happened to me this morning when I caught a short post on the Legal Ruralism blog about a New York Times article titled “Outside Atlanta, a utopia arises.”  Featured in the travel section, the article describes how Palmetto, Georgia transformed itself from a sleepy hamlet to a travel destination in just a few years.  

At times, we forget that the rural South endured a cycle of poverty for more than a century following the Civil War.  While many communities still endure hardships, some, like Palmetto, have broken the cycle. 

Having previously lived in a southern community that succeeded at reinventing itself, I understand all too well that changes like those in Palmetto come at an expense.  And I’m not suggesting that every community should try to become a destination for wealthy visitors. 

But their example offers hope for those of us on the Great Plains whose communities entered a period of decline during the 1920s and accelerated by the Great Depression.  It takes hard work, vision, and above all, the desire to never give up. 

Note:  Thanks to Legal Ruralism for making me aware of the NY Times article

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