No. 184 ISSN 1559-9736 Summer 2010

The Magazine of Planners Network

The Invisible Cyclists Photo by Allison Mannos

Also In This Issue: 2010 Just Metropolis Conference Reports from Rio, Mexico City, New York and Youngstown, Ohio

www.plannersnetwork.org “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions Summer 2010 Issue Contents: The Seventh on the next seven generations.” -From the Great Law of the The Seventh Generation Progressive Planning Leader Pat Rosenthal and Common Iroquois Confederacy Wealth Inc. of Youngstown, Ohio G e n e r a t i o n by Pierre Clavel...... Page 20 Beyond Networking, Left Alternatives by Tom Angotti...... Page 2 Did You Miss the 2010 PN Conference? by NORMA RANTISI...... Page 24 Feature Articles The Long Struggle for Community-Based Planning in New Beyond Networking, Left Alternatives The Invisible Cyclists of Los Angeles York City by Omari Fuller and Edgar Beltran...... Page 4 by Eve Baron...... Page 30 by Tom Angotti The 2016 Olympics in Rio: A Community Plays Against the Researching the “Just City”: A Study of Urban Revitalization in Real Estate Game Toronto, Canada by Theresa Williamson...... Page 9 by Jed Kilbourn...... Page 33

Shortly after the Towards a Just Metropolis conference The U.S. Social Forum is dedicated to building a Mexico City Creates Charter for the Right to the City The Community Land Trust Reader in the Bay Area (see pp. 24 - 28), the U.S. Social “multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, by Jill Wigle and Lorena Zárate...... Page 13 Review by PIERRE CLAVEL...... Page 36 Forum convened in Detroit. Between June 22 and diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement.” How to Join, Purchase Back Issues, etc...... Page 38 26 some 20,000 people got together there, nearly It is a powerful but beginning attempt to start Social Currency: A Tool to Empower Migrant Workers doubling the attendance at the first forum in Atlanta dialogues and networks at a national level while by Alfonso Morales...... Page 17 in 2007. remaining conscious of the formidable role of the U.S. in promoting war and unequal development While architects, planners, and community throughout the world. activists seriously networked at the Bay Area confab, the Detroit gathering was a gigantic But is this networking enough? At a recent report- networking extravaganza in comparison. Billed back from Detroit held at the Brecht Forum in New as “a movement-building process” and not a York City (which I moderated), seasoned activist conference, the U.S. Social Forum was filled with Rob Robinson of Take Back the Land expressed thousands of self-organized workshops, assemblies frustration that there were so many self-organized and plenaries. workshops on the same topics. Didn’t the organizers of these sessions talk to each other in advance? To some extent this apparent chaos was intentional. What does this say about the state of the progressive www.plannersnetwork.org In order to nurture political and social diversity, and left forces nationally? If people are not aware Planners Network Progressive Planning is published quarterly PLANNERS NETWORK the structure was kept fairly basic and efforts to of individuals and groups in other cities and states 106 West Sibley Hall by Planners Network, Inc., a non-profit STEERING COMMITTEE get people to commit to bigger political projects that share the same concerns and have similar Cornell University corporation in the State of New York. Tom Angotti, Nancy Campbell, Lee were minimized. Since the first World Social Forum experiences, isn’t organizing for a national conference Ithaca, NY 14853, USA Deuben, Ann Forsyth, Chester Hartman, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, that global enterprise, an ideal way to bring people together in a dialogue Ph: 607.254.8890 Copyright 2010 by Planners Network. Stacy Harwood, Marie Kennedy, Josh Fx: 612.626.0600 Lerner, Marilena Liguori, Richard dedicated to the proposition that “Another World that covers common themes? Wouldn’t this kind of Email: [email protected] Reprinting and distribution of portions Milgrom, Marla Nelson, Libby Porter, is Possible,” has had to deal with opportunistic organizing promote common action and solidarity Website: www.plannersnetwork.org of this magazine for non-commercial Norma Rantisi, Alex Schafran, Amy moves by some well-funded political groups and instead of reinforcing the isolation and fragmentation purposes are encouraged. Reprints Siciliano, DRU Williams-Clark MAGAZINE EDITORS for commercial purposes require organizations to impose homogenizing discipline so common in our movements? In other words, what Tom Angotti, Jason Blackman, Pierre Clavel, writtem permission from the publisher. PLANNERS NETWORK and stifle the voices of the most excluded. The good is a national conversation if everyone’s in a Michael Dudley, Ann Forsyth, Chester Progressive Planning is indexed in the ADVISORY COMMITTEE world forums confront even more serious barriers different room? Will this ever lead to action? Hartman, Kara Heffernan, Clara Irazábal, Alternative Press Index. Chester Hartman (Chair) Teresa Cordova, Marie Kennedy, Norma Rantisi, Amy Siciliano Dana R. Driskell, Ann Forsyth, Marie than the national and regional forums because Kennedy, Patricia Nolan, Ken Reardon, deep language and cultural barriers often prevent Networks, from small groups like Planners Network MAGAZINE LAYOUT Arturo Sanchez, Peg Seip, Ruth Yabes, basic communication, so English—the premiere to the much larger U.S. Social Forum, are really Donovan Finn Ayse Yonder language of the powerful—dominates. more complex than this, and cont. on page 29 E-NEWSLETTER EDITORS Guidelines for Authors Jason Blackman, Mandana Nouri-Nekoei Please see www.plannersnetwork.org

2 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 3 who put all those bike lanes in Santa Monica [a more On the road, immigrant cyclists face more challenges The Invisible Cyclists of Los Angeles affluent and less diverse neighboring city], but they when they have to deal with L.A. drivers. According did a good job, and we need that here!” to Adrian, a Latino student who is also active in the by Omari Fuller and Edgar Beltran burgeoning Los Angeles bicycle movement, “Older The dangerous biking conditions that result from Latino immigrants don’t know their rights. Due to crumbling pavement and no separation from car traffic language issues or being misinformed, they let cars Night has fallen and you’re driving through a gritty sub-standard bicycles and safety equipment, no in these older neighborhoods disproportionately affect push them to ride literally right next to the curb, urban center when you approach an intersection. knowledge of cyclist rights, more dangerous streets low-income people of color. Their affordable, second-rate almost pedal striking it.” (Pedal striking is bike lingo Just as you turn right through the crosswalk a dark with fewer provisions for safe bicycling, increased bicycles strain unreliably under these conditions. Bicycle and refers to the dangerous situation arising when figure materializes before you. You slam on the brakes danger of bicycle theft and robbery, police harassment, helmets, which should be indispensable for hazardous the pedal strikes something, which can cause the and stop just a foot or two away. Without pausing to lack of health insurance, minimal publicly available urban riding, are seen as expensive and optional. bike to swerve wildly and the cyclist to be thrown off acknowledge the near miss, the figure cruises to the far data on the aforementioned conditions and no political the bike into traffic.) Thus, although the California side of the street and disappears down the sidewalk in representation. We will look at these challenges in A further hazard is the high volume of truck traffic Vehicle Code states that bicycles have all the rights the murky glare of streetlights. detail to make a case for the need to address the that low-income cyclists encounter when traveling and responsibilities of vehicle drivers, including full particular oppression that this group faces. to and from work in industrial areas. According to use of the roadway, ignorance of the law contributes to You’ve just glimpsed an invisible cyclist. Allison Mannos, program coordinator at the Los We’ll rely on tenets from critical race theory (CRT) to Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, accidents between Thousands of working-class people use bicycles to help structure our arguments. A key CRT tenet considers cyclists and big-rigs are not uncommon. When injured, traverse cities and towns across the U.S. every day. racism to be endemic and pervasive in our society and cyclists and their families, many of whom lack health In the city of Los Angeles, this group of cyclists is institutions. We will note subversive effects that are insurance, may suffer the additional hardship of as dedicated as any other, riding through the wet of specifically directed against Latino identity. CRT also expensive medical bills. winter and simmering heat of summer. uses personal narratives to amplify the other voices that challenge the dominant narratives in society. Throughout Another infrastructure problem is the dearth of bicycle Yet you won’t see invisible cyclists at Los Angeles City this article we’ll hear the voices of those closest to this parking in high-crime neighborhoods where bikes are Council meetings demanding bike lanes. You might struggle. CRT also recognizes that there are unique more likely to get stolen. Allison Mannos comments, not see them in the street either, as these cyclists tend challenges presented by the intersection of a plurality of “Even if not so many of them have a bike, at least 50 to ride alone, often intermingled with pedestrians on identities related to race, class, gender, citizenship status percent of them had a bike. So they’re still cyclists in the sidewalk, and without lights or reflective clothing. and innumerable other characteristics. As such, we must the sense that many would ride if their bikes hadn’t These cyclists are also often Latino immigrants, and acknowledge the multiple identities of this group of been stolen.” nearly 20,000 of them in the L.A. metropolitan area use cyclists and the oppression that members of this group a bicycle as their main means of transportation to work must endure in the form of unfair treatment as a result of Biking while Immigrant those identities. As we’ll explain in this article, this particular group As immigrants, this population of cyclists experiences has different needs than other cyclists, yet their Less Money = Less Choice + More Danger other challenges on top of those that arise from interests receive little attention. This article will also being low-wage workers. The many undocumented examine a program called City of Lights, which Low-wage workers have limited transportation immigrants of L.A are legally barred from obtaining aims to bring invisible cyclists out of the shadows options, compelling them to bike. Since work may not California driver’s licenses, limiting their transportation using a combination of self-empowerment training be steady enough or income high enough to be able to options by legal means on top of economic ones. and advocacy work. We found City of Lights to be afford a car, or perhaps even a monthly bus pass, some a promising model for assessing the needs of an are effectively captive cyclists. Limited mobility means under-served group and pursuing a more equitable fewer accessible job opportunities, which perpetuates distribution of resources. low-income status.

Profile of an Oppressed Group Many can only afford to live in older, less affluent neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, these neighborhoods Working-class immigrant Latino cyclists face a have older and narrower streets with no space for multitude of challenges that are more pronounced bike lanes. As one cyclist in the majority-Latino than those facing most other cyclists. These include neighborhood of MacArthur Park put it, “I don’t know

4 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 5 immigrant cyclists being intimidated and forced into language proficiency and a community-wide questionable grounds. Motorists are another group of City of Lights bike safety workshops educate cyclists on even greater danger at the margins in the gutter and mistrust of the authorities help explain why it is beneficiaries who gain in time and convenience what the rules of the road and safe riding techniques, essential on the sidewalk. uncharacteristic of this group to walk into City Hall invisible cyclists lose in safety. In other neighborhoods knowledge for the dangerous areas where these cyclists and demand better police treatment or more resources of L.A. that have better amenities, residents ride. The educational programming is reinforced with Biking while Latino for safe biking in their neighborhoods. Complicating and bicyclists may benefit from infrastructure the provision of donated safety equipment such as lights, any effort to make such demands is the absence of improvements that should be shared with less affluent helmets, locks and bike maps to cyclists for whom the Does being Latino contribute to being stopped by accident statistics or data on police stops and ticketing parts of the city. expense of such equipment would be too great. A bike police while biking? Although the Los Angeles Police that might illustrate the degree to which heightened maintenance workshop might stress the importance of Department doesn’t release data on police stops by risks affect this particular group of cyclists. That is More work should be done to identify the beneficiaries maintaining the proper tire pressure, which not only helps race, we know that one of the few places they’ve set why, according to Allison Mannos, “Any data at all, in this scenario and to eliminate the incentives that prevent having a dangerous blow-out while riding in traffic, up stings to enforce a no-bikes-on-sidewalk law is in quantitative or qualitative, that we can get on the perpetuate it. In the meantime, let’s consider the current but can save cyclists money by avoiding the costs of tire the MacArthur Park area where around 80 percent experiences of this population is a good thing.” efforts being taken on behalf of the invisible cyclists. repair or replacement and travel delays. These workshops of residents are Latino. Also, adult cyclists are not are hands-on and designed to foster self-reliance, teaching required to wear a helmet, but comments like “I’ve Who Benefits? Who Loses? Illuminating the Shadows: Critical Race Theory and cyclists how to maintain their bikes against the strain of been stopped by the cops three times for not wearing Advocacy riding on L.A. streets. Some workshop participants have a helmet,” were common when we interviewed Because they ride at the margins with little evidence of expressed that their new bike maintenance skills could open working-class Latino cyclists. In these instances, their plight and without a voice in the civic arena the City of Lights is a program of the Los Angeles County a door to employment opportunities or business ownership, possible police targeting compounded by ignorance public is oblivious to these invisible cyclists. Critical Bicycle Coalition that was created to reach out to which could have a very positive effect on their income. of the law leaves Latino cyclists vulnerable to race theorists suggest that for every disadvantaged working-class Latino immigrant cyclists who have Legal rights workshops are designed to curtail the number mistreatment that other groups may not face. group, another group receives some advantage. We limited English proficiency. The program is working of unwarranted citations. wonder who benefits from the challenges confronting to ameliorate the oppressions that affect this group There is little opportunity for this group to redress invisible cyclists. One possibility is law enforcement, through advocacy and education, in the form of Data backs up the advocacy efforts of the City of Lights these and other oppressions due to their lack of which increases its revenues and police power by community workshops on safety issues, legal rights program. As Allison Mannos describes, existing cyclist representation in the civic arena. Limited English ticketing and detaining members of this population on and bike maintenance. data provides little information on Latino immigrant

6 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 7 cyclists, who may not feel comfortable responding to conventional bike surveys. City of Lights tries to rectify The 2016 Olympics in Rio: this by conducting their own surveys with questions that capture the difficulties and experiences of this group of A Community Plays Against the Real Estate Game cyclists. Quantitative data is of interest, but collecting personal narratives also affords invaluable insights. For by Theresa Williamson example, asking cyclists about their riding experience in the U.S. and in their country of origin can reveal a person’s economic, social and environmental motives for riding. When Rio de Janeiro won the Erasing a Neighborhood for the governor of the state of Rio The next advocacy step is to raise general awareness bid for the 2016 Olympics in the Olympics and supports the eviction of Vila of invisible cyclists. To that end City of Lights staff 2009, only cries of approval Autódromo. attend conferences to highlight their data findings and were heard from Brazilians. The But now, as the government moves workshops in the low-income Latino immigrant cycling government threw a huge party to clear at least one neighborhood Vila Autódromo is at the edge community. They also push the Los Angeles City Council on Copacabana beach, in Brazil’s and real estate speculation heats of Barra, next to Jacarepaguá and municipal departments to provide more bike lanes densest neighborhood. According up in anticipation of the games, Lagoon. It was first settled over and bike parking where these cyclists live, work and ride to Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), the chronic, ugly downside of forty years ago by fishermen who and they communicate with law enforcement to request the popular Brazilian president the Olympics is again emerging lived subsistence lives kilometers data on how often and why invisible cyclists are stopped and leader of the Brazilian and, along with it, the seeds of away from the developed part and cited, potentially revealing and deterring oppressive Workers Party, “Brazil has left its community protest. of the city, and later by workers police tactics. second-class status behind and brought to the site to build the has joined the first class. Today Just west of Copacabana, in city’s racetrack. Today it is a By focusing on invisible cyclists and establishing their we received respect.” Lula said the area known as Barra da working-class neighborhood of concerns as worthy of attention, the City of Lights efforts that “the same (people) who Tijuca, the community of Vila some 4,000 residents. build on another tenet of critical race theory: centering thought we wouldn’t have the Autódromo is challenging the and validating the experiences of marginalized people. ability to govern will be surprised government’s moves to take its When the first fishermen arrived, According to Allison Mannos, the key is to rely on the with our country’s capacity to land, apparently for nothing the lagoon was immaculate. Today narrated experiences of members of the specific group to organize the Olympics.” Lula’s more than the establishment of a it is filled with sewage and garbage identify their needs, rather than imposing on them external optimism is being fed by Brazil’s buffer zone around the planned from neighboring apartment ideas about what their needs are. “When we talked to these booming economy. The World Olympics facilities. It has brought blocks. The fishermen who remain cyclists,” says Mannos, “we found out they aren’t that into Bank predicts that by 2016, its challenge to the International complain that there is often no racing or wearing spandex, but they are interested in having Brazil, where the largest offshore Olympics Committee (IOC), fish, only the occasional Tilapia, a place where they can work on their bikes and see other petroleum deposits in the world which has an established policy a fish that feasts on detritus. Yet people like them. Our priority now is to create spaces like were recently discovered, will of holding the games only in residents remember when, in 1992, that where they can build their own cycling community.” jump from having the tenth cities where there is no significant the city tried to remove them for largest economy in the world to local protest. the first time, alleging that Vila Bringing invisible cyclists together and out of the the fifth largest. Autódromo posed “aesthetic shadows should help address their numerous Barra da Tijuca, often referred and environmental damage” to challenges and, hopefully, make your next encounter Lula failed to mention that to as Rio’s Miami, was built on the surrounding area. At that with them far less harrowing. part of the reason Rio won marshland over the last thirty time, Barra had become a new the bid is that there was no years, with exclusive apartment destination for commercial, sports Omari Fuller and Edgar Beltran are master’s candidates in organized opposition on the blocks, luxury condos and and residential facilities. The legal the Department of Urban Planning at the UCLA School of ground. Several groups had malls designed to minimize challenge claimed that the city’s Public Affairs. expressed concern but were contact with the city’s poor. “new aesthetic” excluded the hopeful, as all of us were, that Rio’s dynamic and youthful poor and in 1994 Vila Autódromo All photographs accompanying this article are taken from the Olympics would be properly new mayor, Eduardo Paes, who received title with the right to the photographic ethnography Invisible Cyclists by used for public benefit, and thus was raised in Barra, enjoys use the land for forty years. Still, Allison Mannos. supported the bid. good relations with Lula and on several subsequent occasions

8 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 9 municipal officials threatened Because we would run this risk.” for the community to present have remained peaceful (no drug between the “favelas and asphalt” When asked if this affects Vila the community with removal, Then he repeated, “I’m Brazilian, I an alternative plan for the area or vigilante militias) through as the debate here is summarized, Autódromo, municipal officials including a proposed road wanted so much for the Olympics (though it took the city’s experts citizen action. As one resident there is no comprehension on the told me straight up: “No.” Now, widening for the Pan-American to be held here. But because three years to prepare their plan). explains, “This is a community part of the city’s elite that what the most recent map shows Games. The Olympics offered I knew we’d once again face where anyone can appear at all constitutes “life in the favela” is essentially nothing built in the them yet another opportunity. pressure (to leave), I was rooting Stable, Working-Class Favela times of day and no one will not all bad. The cultural wealth, area. Apparently, Vila Autódromo that we wouldn’t be chosen.” question ‘who are you here to architectural innovation and simply needs to be removed to Only days after the announcement Vila Autódromo is a relatively see.’ This is a family community, strong sense of community in these create a “security perimeter” for that Rio had been chosen to This kind of personal conflict over stable, working-class everyone knows each other, spaces is entirely ignored when the Olympic venues. host the 2016 Olympic Games, the Olympics is widespread. On neighborhood and many everyone lives well, whether near making plans to remove them— the city’s largest daily, O Globo, the one hand, investment from the households are committed to or distant neighbors.” perhaps because the “elite” parts But if that is the case, why are announced plans to remove Vila event could bring benefits but, on staying. One resident told me, of the city are notoriously lacking luxury condos going up just as Autódromo to make way for the other hand, municipal officials “There is nothing the city could Little attention is paid to the in these attributes. Moreover, close—across the street in fact— Olympic venues. When I visited can’t be trusted to make use of offer me that would make it worth quality of the housing that is to the ability of favela residents to with a “box seat” view of the Vila Autódromo and neighboring such an opportunity in a way that my while to leave. What I’d really be demolished—unique houses participate effectively is severely Olympic venues? Why couldn’t communities right after this, is fair. Government leaders never like is for them to leave us alone, designed slowly, over time, to underestimated. the city simply provide residents I found residents were visibly visited the community or sought that everyone stays where they are, suit individual needs of families. with rent subsidies during the frightened. Community leaders community input. Community and that they sought to legalize In the case of Vila Autódromo, The City Moves the Goalposts three weeks of the Games, as they complained of panic attacks. leaders were only invited to speak and improve our situation so the bulk of residents have have done in other cases? Or why One man spent yet another day with the mayor after they led a people could pay their taxes, and successfully built high-quality The city’s actions indicate that not get rid of the “eyesore” by building his home—a form of demonstration with hundreds of for something worthwhile. No homes in an expanding part of they are interested in getting doing what residents request and nonviolent resistance, if you protesters representing twenty politician has ever done anything the city with access to jobs. They rid of Vila Autódromo even if it upgrading this essentially lower will—and told me how he felt communities outside City Hall in for this community.” have also built businesses in Vila isn’t essential for the Olympics. middle-class, up-and-coming when the decision was made early March. Organizers describe Autódromo and neighboring In October of 2009, the mayor community, which has proved that Rio would get the Olympics: these conversations as “one-way “This is a dormitory community,” communities. They know their announced that the site would be its ability to coexist peacefully “I sincerely knew there would dialogues” in which the city states Altair Guimarães, president of the neighbors and, unlike other used to build the Olympics Media with major events ranging from be complications for us. I’m its intentions without much room neighborhood association, tells me. areas, do not have a problem Facility. But months later plans the Formula 1 to Rock in Rio? Brazilian, I’d really like these for discussion. At the next meeting Everyone’s at work or in school. with drug trafficking. changed and the city decided to Why not be really creative and Olympics to be held in Rio, but the city will present its resettlement Vila Autódromo is one of the 18 Due to a historic class rift in Rio, move several facilities to the port develop a model for all future I was rooting for us not to win. plans and provide an opportunity percent of Rio’s communities that known as the “Divided City,” area the mayor seeks to revitalize. Olympics bids to involve residents Photo by Theresa Williamson

LEFT: Olympics 2016 plan showing Vila Autódromo as open space

RIGHT: Vila Autódromo

10 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 11 directly? Engage them as workers that would have unfolded. When now is what it will do with this Mexico City Creates Charter for the Right to the City and welcoming agents and Vila Autódromo goes down, the chance. Build on the cultural encourage small businesses to precedent will be set, reversing wealth of this unique city or by Jill Wigle and Lorena Zárate cater to tourists. Wouldn’t this decades of hard-won housing strengthen the market at any be a more just way of handling a rights legislation. cost, measuring development community? Wouldn’t this speak through economic growth and a to the Olympics values of hope, The Olympics has provided a rare declining crime rate, regardless of A new collective tool for social mobilization and participated in drafting the charter. An estimated 3,500 excellence, respect, harmony and opportunity for the city to avoid whether the end result is cultural democratic planning has been established in Mexico citizens also participated in the elaboration of the charter friendship, as well as to its new the obligation for public comment sterility? If the current approach City. On July 13, 2010 Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the through various events and consultations. The process “Development through Sport” while making evictions publicly goes forward, there is a serious Federal District of Mexico signed the Mexico City for creating the charter reflects a key element of the right initiative, which is supposed to acceptable to the middle class risk that the cultural marvels Charter for the Right to the City. to the city—that it must include the right of people living “put human beings first?” and the bulk of neighborhoods Lula declares as having attracted in cities to participate in decisions that affect city life and that wouldn’t be affected. In interest from the IOC in the first In a recent article in the New Left Review, Emir Sader the production of urban space. The implementation of The only explanation for the fact, the mainstream media has place will be commodified, not argues that Latin America, once a “privileged territory the principles contained in the charter, however, will lack of creativity, transparency treated efforts to fight evictions as humanized, by 2016. for neoliberalism,” has now become “the leading require a more sustained mobilization effort, underlining and willingness to dialogue practically traitorous. arena not only for resistance but for the construction of the importance of social movements in democratizing and compromise shown by the As Lula put it, “These Olympics alternatives” to neoliberalism. One of these alternatives city planning and governance. city on this issue is its desire to What do residents want to see? As are retribution to the marvelous includes the Right to the City, a rights-based approach to maximize real estate speculation the public defender argues: “It is people of Rio de Janeiro that urban life with strong roots in the Latin American region Advances in the Mexico City Charter in the area. And residents of the clear that residents do not want many times show up only in general and in urban social movements in particular. area who have put up with the to be removed. On the contrary, in newspapers.” But will all Although it has a long history, the first World Social The Mexico City charter builds on the collective experience of pollution of the Jacarepaguá they claim the right to upgrades people gain retribution equally, Forum in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was a key moment similar initiatives, including Brazil’s City Statute of 2001, the Lagoon for years will not benefit and public investment.” It would or will Rio’s rich end up with in the articulation of and mobilization for the right to the Montreal Charter of 2006 and the World Charter on the Right from the cleanup that is supposed be fairly easy to upgrade the the lion’s share? city. A central component of the right to the city is the to the City, now being developed. But the Mexico City charter to be part of the environmental neighborhood, given support from insistence on the social function of property to produce has several characteristics worth noting. First, the initiative legacy of the Games. the residents, wide roads and solid Theresa Williamson holds a Ph.D. more inclusive and just cities, shifting away from the was advanced by the urban social movement “from below” brick homes. in City and Regional Planning from prevailing situation of cities as key sites for capital and adopted by a city-level government. The charter also Public Defenders Take Action the University of Pennsylvania and accumulation and deepening socio-spatial segregation underlines important political and policy differences between A technical team of engineers is founder and executive director and displacement through market-led development. the Federal District and the national government. Finally, the Public defenders have taken and architects assembled to of Catalytic Communities (www. charter seeks to go beyond realizing human rights in the city legal action in support of Vila study the situation asked, “Why catcomm.org), a Rio de Janeiro-based The Right to the City is a burgeoning political project, to also include a focus on realizing the collective right to the Autódromo’s case. They also are condominiums, shopping NGO. Follow the latest news on Rio’s research agenda and policy initiative of international city (see table on page 14). The Mexico City Charter (2010) notified the IOC with a detailed centers and other commercial mega events and related city politics agencies (such as UN-HABITAT and UNESCO), non- defines the right to the city as follows: 78-page document, including a developments being approved as relayed by the city’s community governmental organizations and social networks technical overview, because they for the edges of the lagoon?” In organizers at www.RioOnWatch.org. (including the Habitat International Coalition, to The right to the city is the equitable use (usufructo fear this community’s removal fact, just across the street from the which Planners Network belongs), activist alliances equitativo) of cities according to principles of would open the floodgates for community, five luxury condos are and even some governments (Brazil, for example). sustainability, democracy, equity and social forced evictions across the city. going up. A billboard reads: “Place justice. It is a collective right of urban inhabitants In fact, when the news media your dreams at the top of the In Mexico, the government of the Federal District joined that confers upon them the legitimate right to announced Vila Autódromo’s podium. Three rooms in the region this growing list of supporters with the signing of the action and organization, based on respect of their impending removal in October of that’ll grow most by 2016. And Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City (see Figures 1 differences, cultural expressions and practices, 2009, it was cited as first on a list you’ll get to see it all from your and 2). This was the culmination of a three-year advocacy with the objective of exercising their right to self- of nine areas. Within a week the very own box seat.” process led by the Urban Popular Movement (Movimiento determination and attaining an adequate standard city had retracted the rest of the Urbano Popular, or MUP), with support from the Habitat of living. The right to the city is interdependent list, claiming that the intention is It’s Back to You, Lula! International Coalition-Latin America (HIC-AL), the with other internationally-recognized human rights, to remove only this community. Mexico City Commission for Human Rights and the including civil, political, economic, social, cultural According to activists, this is a way Lula tells us that “this country Coalition of Civil Society Organizations for Economic, and environmental rights as defined in international of weakening the joint response deserves a chance.” The question Social and Cultural Rights (Espacio DESC), all of whom human rights treaties [authors’ translation].

12 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 13 The charter identifies six fundamental principles that Henri Lefebvre in the 1960s: 1) the right to participate in area of Mexico City is comprised of so-called “informal” a different order of citizenship.” This process invokes incorporate an amalgam of human rights and collective decisions affecting urban inhabitants and the production housing. This represents direct participation in city- Lefebvre’s assertion that the right to the city involves rights understood as being interdependent and indivisible of urban space; and 2) the right to appropriate urban building, decision-making and active (albeit piecemeal) the ongoing appropriation of urban space for use rather to promoting the right to the city. The charter puts space in favor of its use value over exchange value. everyday resistance to “formal” planning at the same than exchange, but it also reflects the socio-economic forward a territorial approach to rights and democracy Notably, these components include legal rights, social and time (see “State Support for the Social Production of inequality that underpins informal settlement. Although (i.e., representative, distributive and participatory), a political claims and material conditions. Housing?” in Progressive Planning, No. 175, Spring 2008). urban planning cannot singularly resolve such deep- strategic direction especially relevant now that there is seated structural inequalities, it can play a prominent a Human Rights Program for the Federal District. The Planning and the Right to the City In writing about Sao Paulo, James Holston has referred role in promoting the social function of property charter conceives of urban inhabitants as the “subject” to this process as one of “insurgent citizenship” in and facilitating the appropriation of urban space to of the rights outlined in the charter and describes The six key principles included in the Mexico City charter which poorer residents build and defend their living fulfill important social rights such as housing and government agencies and elected representatives as suggest a significant role for planning. The charter aspires space, construct a new city and “propose a city with employment, and to better accommodate the diversity being “subject to” the obligations to respect, protect and to recapture the public and collective function of spatial fulfill these rights through the creation of new laws and planning. The article in the Fall 2009 Progressive Planning Table: Key Strategic Principles of the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City urban policies and/or the enforcement of existing ones. (No. 181) entitled “The Right to the City Alliance: Time to Adapted and translated by authors from Carta de la Ciudad de México por el Derecho a la Ciudad (2010). Like Brazil’s groundbreaking City Statute, the Mexico Democratize Urban Governance” highlighted the three City charter also establishes new rights at a collective principles that should guide the work of planners with level, such as the social function of property. This is regard to the right to the city: the right to participate, the a key component of the right to the city that entails right to security and the right to resist. While aimed at fundamental urban reforms and the redistribution and planners working in the United States, these principles will regulation of urban land for the purpose of constructing a also be important for planners in Mexico City interested in more just and inclusive city. The charter also incorporates pushing forward strategies and initiatives in support of the at least two important principles addressing the right charter, though they will need to be adjusted to a different to the city as first articulated by French philosopher social, economic and political context. Photos by Noe Pineda, HIC-AL

David Harvey has written that “we individually and collectively make the city through our daily actions and our political, intellectual and economic engagements. But, in return, the city makes us.” This observation takes on a very concrete meaning in cities of the Global South such as Mexico City, where the majority of urban inhabitants must construct their own housing and urban services (e.g., water, sewage) through an arduous, incremental and insecure process, thereby appropriating space for housing and livelihoods and actively making the city in the process. At least 40 percent of the built-up

TOP: Jamie Rello of the Urban Popular Movement speaks at the signing of the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City, as Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard (at right, bended elbow) listens.

BOTTOM: Mayor Marcelo Ebrard signs the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City in the presence of Alejandra Barrales, head of the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District (right) and Edgar Elias Azar of the Superior Tribunal of the Federal District (left).

14 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 15 of needs found within cities, including access to public The recent signing of the Mexico City Charter for the goods and services. In the context of Mexico City, this Right to the City builds on these programs and also Social Currency: involves the introduction of new planning practices at proposes a more comprehensive set of interventions at different spatial scales. different levels—the individual lot, neighborhood and A Tool to Empower Migrant Workers city. Implicitly, the Right to the City Campaign waged It also involves sorting out and taking a position on by urban social movements represents the recognition by Alfonso Morales the contradictions contained in existing planning of the limits of place-based urban policy. Although documents, including the principles of “sustainability, the Housing and Barrio Improvement Programs have equity and competitiveness” underpinning the new helped to improve the material living conditions of urban development program in the Federal District. lower-income residents, they have left unchallenged the In a small town in the Southwest, a pilot program agricultural industry are exposed to hazardous market-led development ongoing in the rest of the city built around the creation of social currency chemicals and pesticides as well as unsafe drinking Pushing for the Charter—A Multi-Level Process that is extending and solidifying elite residential and shows that migrant workers facing environmental water, and they lack access to adequate bathroom commercial enclaves and other processes of socio-spatial and health hazards can work together and facilities. Research links pesticide exposure to birth Although the MUP began advocating for the charter in exclusion. Moreover, the charter aims to not only direct break down the barriers to healthcare. Social defects, leukemia and cancer. Therefore, besides 2007, the issues at stake go back further in time and involve the production of urban space, but also open up decision- currency is an alternative form of money that workplace injustice, the most immediate concern for the promotion of several important social policies. These making in an effort to create “productive habitats” can, like real money, be exchanged for goods migrant workers is access to health services. policy changes were enabled by the reintroduction of local capable of providing secure livelihoods and a dignified and services within communities. Families using democracy in Mexico City in 1997, and more specifically, standard of living. social currency in the pilot program reaped Health-related problems for migrant workers reduce the support of elected representatives (including mayors) both immediate benefits and long-term benefits, their quality of life and inhibit their participation from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution At the signing of the Charter for the Right to the City, sustaining the supportive relationships they in the community. Individual health and social (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, or PRD). The first of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard described it as “the document developed with each other during the pilot even relationships suffer further as support networks these initiatives was the Housing Improvement Program with the most ambitious goals of what [our] city should after the pilot program concluded. shrink and social isolation grows. Workers take on (Programa de Mejoramiento de Vivienda), first introduced be.” He also announced that the charter will form the subordinate roles in service relationships instead in 1999 by the Mexico City government under pressure basis for the elaboration of a constitution for Mexico City Anthony, New Mexico: A Community of Migrant Workers of being part of social networks and organizations from social organizations and a number of housing NGOs. within the next year, and committed to redesigning the of self-support. In short, health-related problems Since its inception, the program has provided numerous way in which government is structured and functions The city of Anthony links Texas and New Mexico weave a web of difficulties that constrain life interest-free loans to improve housing conditions for lower- to guarantee citizen participation in governing the near the U.S.-Mexico border. Like many communities chances, erode self-esteem and impede immigrants’ income households in the city. The program supported over city. Clearly, this would extend the social development in the region, it is small, dependent on agriculture integration into civic life. 165,000 housing improvement interventions in informally- processes described here and help to institutionalize the and predominantly Latino. The town’s immigrants, settled areas of the city between 2001 and 2009. And since important social demands expressed in the charter. Still, many hailing from Mexico, often work in vegetable Migrant workers, like many Latino immigrants in 2007, the lot-level Housing Improvement Program has ongoing advocacy and mobilization will be needed to packing plants and their families add to the migrant the U.S., face barriers to accessing health services, been complemented by the Barrio Improvement Program continually push forward this process of realizing social, worker population. including language and cultural barriers and (Programa de Mejoramiento Barrial). By 2010, approximately economic, political and cultural rights in the city, and lack of education, transportation, insurance and $31.2 million had been channelled by local government above all, the right to construct and enjoy the city as a Immigrants keep the U.S. agricultural industry financial means. into community-scale improvements for around 530 place of social transformation and citizenship. afloat. In 2002 migrant workers accounted for 42 projects in “marginalized” communities in the city, such as percent of the U.S. farm workforce. Agricultural The Promotora Program Builds Social Currency the introduction or upgrading of recreational and cultural Jill Wigle ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in workers are poorly paid and lack health benefits, facilities, sidewalks or other urban infrastructure, parks, the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies which often leads to health problems. Poor To confront the barriers to quality healthcare, La community centers and public art projects. This initiative at Carleton University, Ottawa. Lorena Zárate (info@hic-al. nutrition, one contributing factor to poor health, Clinica de la Familia has provided healthcare in not only supports informal housing and the appropriation org) is coordinator of the Habitat International Coalition is widespread in the migrant worker population. southeastern New Mexico for more than thirty years, of urban space in the city for community and social Regional Office for Latin America (HIC-AL) based in Mexico Many adults suffer from hypertension and obesity, and for more than a decade, one of its programs, the purposes, but it does so through a decision-making process City. HIC is an international network of more than 350 while children suffer from anemia and upper Promotora (Health Promoter) program, has focused that involves the collective organization of residents at the organizations, academics and activists working on housing respiratory problems. Such health problems on working with migrant workers who face social, neighborhood level to propose improvement projects as and human settlement issues in 118 countries. HIC-AL was resulting from poor nutrition often lead to pre- political, economic and health hardships on a daily well as the participation of citizens in the eventual selection part of the committee that helped to draft the Mexico City and post-natal death, poor dental health and poor basis. The Promotora program actively supports of the projects to be supported by the local government—a Charter for the Right to the City. More information is physical and mental development in children. health promotion and political participation in order truncated but significant form of participatory budgeting at available at www.hic-al.org (in Spanish) and www.hic-net. Environmental hazards related to working conditions to ameliorate health and other problems and enable the city level. org (in English and French). make the situation worse. Immigrants in the clients politically.

16 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 17 In 2002 I won a grant to support health access agreed to help form the Nuevos Amigos club and to from the program, but participants also realized face of scholars and policymakers who believe that among migrant workers. Staff from the Promotora empower the migrant workers. other collective benefits to participation, including migrant workers are shackled by their poverty and recruited migrant worker families to form a club social support, self-efficacy and improvements in poor life chances and too inflexible to or incapable based on the creation of social currency among Organizing Social Currency overall quality of life. Observations and self reports of incrementally improving their conditions. By members. Families paid their “club dues” in indicate how children’s participation fostered working with migrant workers, not just for them, hours of service to each other and received “club To begin the pilot program, Promotora staff recruited intergenerational relationships and increased their the Promotora program proved the truth of the benefits” in the form of cash payments to cover participants and explained the social currency self-confidence. adage, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. health-related expenses. For ten weeks, Nuevos concept. Since the migrant worker families were not Teach a man to fish, however, and he’ll eat for a Amigos, a group of non-related migrant worker well acquainted with each other, an initial dinner Social Currency and Capability Ethics lifetime,” Migrant workers were supported in co- families in and around the town of Anthony, meeting was provided in which families could meet producing improved homes, resilient households participated in the social currency pilot program. each other, do some research-related intake and form This pilot provides hope for migrant workers and and supportive relationships with other migrant During this period we collected qualitative and the new club, which would meet every two weeks. similarly disenfranchised populations. But how worker families. This pilot study is a prime quantitative data that showed improvements In that initial meeting, participants identified each does social currency, a form of community-based example of how people of even the most minimal to participant quality of life in terms of both other’s needs and began supporting each other and action, really work? Some studies suggest that resources can work for themselves and also assist healthcare and strengthened social networks. reporting their hours to the promotoras, and eventually community-directed interventions and community- members of their community. Migrant workers can Follow-up interviews six months after the program to one of their own who served as a liaison between based participatory research, approaches that La develop and foster social networks and are fully ended testified to ongoing support between the the organizations. Clinica de la Familia uses, are effective in underserved capable of helping themselves and supporting each families and improved confidence in navigating the and underrepresented target areas. The intervention other; all they need is the opportunity and the organizational environment. The families quickly developed a mutual trust described is of this family of interventions and means to do so. based on three factors: they trusted the individual is founded on the premise of “capability” ethics Early on, the Promotora organization understood that promotora workers they already knew; they saw and asset-based community development, which Alfonso Morales ([email protected]) is an assistant migrant workers have a strong work ethic, generally themselves in the same situation; and they readily mean that even the most marginalized people have professor of urban and regional planning at the strong intra-family ties and an ongoing interest understood the program as a social opportunity that capabilities that can be recognized, developed and University of Wisconsin-Madison. The original research in experimenting, albeit cautiously, with ways to came with economic benefits. Every two weeks the shared with one another. The root of capability on the program is reported in the Journal of Southern improve their lives. Most migrant workers, however, hours of support families invested in program was ethics is its focus on what someone is able to do or Rural Sociology, 24:1, 92-112. Those interested in the have little experience with engaging in community transformed into a reward paid directly to healthcare to be, rather than what resources they possess or Promotora Program can contact Sylvia Sapien at ssapien@ organizations or public life because they are focused needs. Families identified “health” very broadly, as in how satisfied they are with their lives. What people lcdfnm.org or 575.526.1105. on surviving. Still, they have hope for a future in the need for money to buy healthier food or to pay for are able to do or be, however, is dependent on which they can build or improve their homes, seize health-related home necessities such as new windows, organizational support and the socio-legal context. new economic opportunities and devote resources to rent bills and utility bills. Perhaps the largest benefit In this, the social currency approach united isolated their children. In short, despite their marginalization, was that the organization adjusted its own rules individuals and oriented interaction simultaneously migrant workers verbalize and practice self-reliance to support non-club members. This represents an among individuals and the community. and tentatively engage social service organizations important ability to understand and participate in based on their needs, interests and desires to improve civil society. Social currencies, which go by various names (Time their situations. Dollars, Ithaca Bucks, etc.), are designed to promote The assessment of this ten-week pilot program interdependence, self-reliance and solidarity, and as One hope for improving migrant worker prospects indicated how many hours club members such, are applicable to many different contexts and lies at the intersection of their endeavors and accumulated and how they spent their benefits. populations. Social currency intentionally replaces the aspirations and the practices and resources Club members, adults and children, dedicated hours typical market logic of caveat emptor (“buyer beware”) deployed by organizations that work with them. working to support each other by providing childcare with e pluribus Unum (“out of many, one”) by creating Organizations can be limited by self-interest, local, and rides for doctor or grocery store visits, performing incentives for interdependence between people. The state and federal regulations and other demands household repairs and attending club meetings. Promotora program successfully implements social that distract the organization’s attention. They must We saw clear changes in health-related aspects of currency to build social networks and place market always balance the needs of the clients with their migrant family lives and in the capacities of club forces in a subordinate role within the community. own survival. But the Promotora is one example members to run their own organization and get to In Anthony, New Mexico, migrant workers of how an organization deploys discretion that know each other and interface with the community improved their health-related circumstances by co- enables its street-level bureaucrats to promote each and the promotoras. Improved health-related quality creating and participating in a social currency pilot person’s capabilities. The organizers (promotoras) of life was an immediate collective good that resulted program. The success of the program flies in the

18 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 19 the diocese and who was tasked with creating jobs. Staying Focused on the Big Picture Progressive Planning Leader Pat Rosenthal and The other was Jim Converse, a sociologist who had worked at several universities and non-profits. One key to Common Wealth’s emergence as a major Common Wealth Inc. of Youngstown, Ohio Converse and Rosenthal, who complemented each player in Youngstown and the region in the 1990s other professionally, also became a couple and was that its leadership never projected a narrowness eventually married, while at the same time providing of concern. The original mission came from the by Pierre Clavel essential leadership to the organization. shared experience and memory of the failed steel buyout attempt at the end of the 1970s. It was never Common Wealth moved ahead through trial and just housing. And when it was housing, it was a Photo by Jim Converse Common Wealth Inc. is a Community Development error. Its effort to use the loan fund to establish concern with how housing sat within the structure of Corporation (CDC) founded in Youngstown, Ohio, employee-owned and -managed businesses business in the community. that began by supporting worker buyouts and encountered obstacles. The community land trust cooperatives in the 1980s. Its story is largely that of failed to provide significant jobs and training, and In retrospect, a key move was Common Wealth’s Executive Director Pat Rosenthal, who turned to law residents were unable to generate equity or function decision to take the lead by inserting itself in school and organizing after three large steel mills collectively. Rosenthal and Converse could not Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) hearings. CRA closed and decimated Youngstown’s economy in 1978. sustain the employee self-management and buyout was the result of a 1970s federal law requiring banks model they initially envisioned for the loan fund. to invest in low-income communities if they wanted Common Wealth exemplifies the way many CDCs to expand services or acquire small community- changed in the 1980s and 1990s. CDCs built a lot of Common Wealth’s Housing Achievements oriented banks. Many took notice when Rosenthal affordable housing, and many became landlords, and Converse, with a coalition of advocates, but real estate development threatened to displace What Common Wealth was able to do, increasingly questioned local bank practices. As a result of a the original community development mission of in the 1990s, was develop affordable housing. protest filed by the coalition, an attempted bank creating jobs and actually involving local residents Converse and Rosenthal took the lead generating merger was denied by the Federal Reserve Board in improving their own neighborhoods and their housing projects as they managed public hearings and Converse, in part because of his research into own lives. In contrast, Common Wealth excelled as a and conducted opening negotiations for two bank practices, got the attention of city and county CDC for its ability, over two-and-a-half decades, to projects beginning in 1995 and 1996 in the land politicians and planners. Common Wealth soon was navigate its dilemmas and survive with many of its trust’s South Side neighborhood. Later there were a player in city efforts to attract federal and state original goals intact. other project opportunities in surrounding towns housing funds. Beginning in 1988, Converse and like Campbell, and by 1999 Rosenthal was able Rosenthal presented a policy paper that influenced Rosenthal was the key to preserving the CDC’s to project over 300 units of new housing under the city’s first Comprehensive Housing Affordability mission. She had begun organizing by helping construction or completed. Strategy (CHAS) document, which brought funds incorporate a worker-owned housecleaning into the city and provided Common Wealth and other cooperative. In 1986 Rosenthal and her allies started This expansion was possible because of Mark Whipkey, non-profits with additional funding. City government the CDC along with the Common Wealth Revolving support cooperative ownership and also served on who started working for Common Wealth in 1991 attitudes changed: non-profits became partners with Loan Fund to support both worker-owned and its board. Bishop James W. Malone, as head of the and played a major role in planning and packaging the city in many areas of policy. -managed start-ups and the retention and growth Roman Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, committed these projects. Rosenthal described Whipkey’s of existing companies. In 1988 Common Wealth matching funds and supported proposals submitted functions as a different “layer” of capacity, one she Common Wealth Goes Regional incorporated a community land trust to rehab houses to the national Catholic Campaign for Human and Converse could not have provided. Theirs was in the city’s South Side, while training local youth in Development (CCHD), including a five-year grant representation, advocacy and political bridge-building. With Whipkey involved, Common Wealth was able construction trades. that funded Common Wealth from 1988 to 1993 But it was Whipkey who drove the development team to hire and contract with additional staff to make and the loan loss reserve. John Logue, a political professionals, plans and applications so that projects projects go forward. Rosenthal and Converse were Committed Allies science professor at Kent State, focused on employee could go forward profitably. He also managed the then able to go in other directions. Starting in 1995, ownership and served as a unifying board member of construction so that projects stayed within budgets and but most importantly after 1999, they launched an Rosenthal had committed allies. Law associate and Common Wealth from 1986 until his death in 2009. timelines, making it possible rebudget construction effort at regional organizing. In 1995, Corbin made mentor Staughton Lynd had been instrumental in contingencies to cover developer fees instead of going contact with Mary Gonzales, and eventually Greg the Youngstown Ecumenical Coalition’s attempt to In 1987 Rosenthal got the support and involvement to construction cost overruns. Eventually there were Galluzzo, of the Gamaliel Foundation. Gamaliel achieve a worker buyout of one of the mills, and of two newcomers to the city. One was Brian Corbin, nine projects and several hundred units yielding a supported community organizing at the regional he helped organize Common Wealth’s effort to who Malone hired as the social action director for stream of discretionary income. scale. The logic, articulated by Gamaliel advisor

20 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 21 and Minnesota legislator and law professor Myron Metro-Equity Task Force in 2006, and there was the Wealth had found new energy in 2003 and 2004 by food program as a regional system, connecting Orfield, was that the problems of the inner city creation of Greater Ohio, listing offices in Columbus, helping to start and manage a farmers market in producers, wholesalers, marketers and consumers. had been exacerbated by the out-migration of Cincinnati, Cleveland and Youngstown, with its neighborhood; Converse had started markets Converse connected Common Wealth to national middle-class populations to suburban and rural Converse as Mahoning Valley Director. in other communities. Later, the organization was networks in this emerging central concern of the parts of city hinterlands, and that there was a joint inspired to expand by the work of Milwaukee community development movement. Partners interest in preservation of inner-city institutions Succession Crisis activist and MacArthur Fellow Will Allen, who with these complementary skills and instincts and neighborhoods. Gamaliel challenged Common was doing innovative work in food production are common in successful planning operations. Wealth and area congregations to raise funds to By 2006-07 Rosenthal and Converse had decisions to and cooperative marketing, and found enthusiastic Typically the planning director handles the employ a professional organizer who would work make about the future of Common Wealth. They were support in Youngstown and in the region, where “politics” while the staff provides the first cut, not with inner-city and suburban churches on joint facing, or thought they were facing, the beginnings new food production technologies were appearing. the definitive initiatives. solutions to city problems. of the effects of age. Both were now over 60. They had health problems in 2003, were feeling fragile and Thus the organizing mission that Common I think Rosenthal had an internal gyroscope that By 1998 Rosenthal and Converse had become wondering how to continue. At the end of 2005 they Wealth began with had new life. Whipkey’s allowed her to see the road in front of her and led informal associates of Gamaliel, earning invitations sought a grant for $25,000 from the state that would large-scale housing development initiatives now her to collective solutions to social issues rather to conferences and organizer retreats. Common provide administrative funding to free up some time. provided a cash flow to support at least some of than individualistic ones. There were certainly Wealth worked with local clergy and lay leaders The state grant required them to enact a succession this organizing work, and the prospect of new redistributive themes in all of Common Wealth’s to form ACTION (Alliance for Congregational plan. This might have been routine, but some grants seemed promising. At least one CDC had projects. There was sadness when South Side Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods) Common Wealth board members saw it as a chance avoided the narrowing of mission that many in the residents were unable to stick with the land trust and raised funds to hire an organizer. This helped to change direction. As Rosenthal thought later, movement feared. model. Above all the decision to mobilize the advance the cause of a regional approach to they would have argued that “affordable housing is Common Wealth board around a broader program, community development. Common Wealth provided what got us to where we are, so let’s make that our Lessons Learned eventually expressed in the food initiatives, reflected office space and served as fiscal agent. ACTION core mission.” Corbin had hoped for an infusion that tendency. organized twenty Youngstown and suburban of new energy to expand the finance role Whipkey What can we learn from the experiences of churches around issues of crime and corruption, represented, moving Common Wealth to a new level Rosenthal and Common Wealth? Pierre Clavel is a professor of city and regional planning education and a grocery store reopening. Common with new capacities to finance business start-ups at Cornell University and is the author of Activists Wealth then worked with Father Ed Noga of St. as well as housing. But Rosenthal and Converse First of all, Common Wealth’s evolution unfolded in City Hall, forthcoming from Cornell University Patrick’s Church and ACTION to raise funds to hire bridled at what they saw as a restriction of Common over a relatively long time. It took twenty- Press, September 2010. This story is the result of recent Myron Orfield for a critical study and two day-trips Wealth’s mission and sought board re-affirmation nine years from Rosenthal’s start in 1981 to the interviews by the author in Youngstown. to Youngstown that spurred suburban churches to of the broader goals of the organization. They present—the majority of Rosenthal’s working life. support further discussion of these regional concerns. prevailed. By the end of 2007 Whipkey had resigned In part this was because she worked carefully, Rosenthal later characterized the interaction as and Corbin, who had advocated the housing focus, getting buy-in and maintaining mutual respect “inspiring.” Orfield had organized an institute to do left the board. Rosenthal, characteristically, mended inside and outside the organization. analyses of regional finances and problems, and the fences. Whipkey agreed to continue as a consultant coalition raised $50,000 more to fund an analysis and and Corbin was appointed to the Common Wealth Was Rosenthal a “progressive planner?” report on regional dynamics impacting Youngstown. Revolving Loan Fund board. Elena Colmenares- Perhaps not a “planner.” Her training was law, This was presented at a meeting at Youngstown State Whipkey moved into the position of manager of and before that she had worked as a mental University in October 2001 and covered by news housing development and assets. health professional. Her entrance to law school media in more than a dozen articles and reports. was motivated by a desire to get past one-on- Moving into Food Deserts one counseling to systemic solutions to social Formal arrangements for regional cooperation problems. Lynd was as good as it gets as a were limited as some of the area churches pulled By 2008 an alternative direction was charted around a mentor in that regard. When asked if she “had out of the regional coalition due to impatience constellation of initiatives focused on food, including a plan” guiding Common Wealth’s course, she with the “metro-equity” focus favored by Common production, processing and marketing. As Common immediately denied it. It was all “seat of the Wealth. The coalition was weakened, but the core Wealth worked with inner city churches in 1997, the pants,” she said. I am not convinced. For one of communities and organizers was substantial problems associated with the loss of supermarket thing, it was not Rosenthal alone. Converse was and Common Wealth had new allies. Rosenthal service as the city population and income declined her intellectual and political partner, and together and Converse had been energized, and there were and neighborhoods became what activists later they added up. It was Converse who brought statewide results. Gamaliel sponsored an Ohio called “food deserts” became visible. Common in the land trust model, and who elaborated the

22 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 23 Photo by Johnson Molly speaker, conference organizer Did You Miss the 2010 PN Conference? and PN Steering Committee member Alex Schafran delivered by Norma Rantisi a provocative speech about the need to rethink the curriculum of planning programs to allow for more reflexive, engaged Towards a Just Metropolis: From Planners Network conferences inaugural event. Carl Anthony, and participatory ties to the Crisis to Possibilities, the joint usually excel because they mix founder and former executive community at large. The final conference of Planners Network exciting discussions and debates director of the environmental speaker, Maria Poblet from (PN), Architects/Designers/ with accessibility and fun. This justice organization Urban Causa Justa :: Just Cause and Planners for Social Responsibility year’s conference was no exception. Habitat, spoke about the the Right to the City Alliance, (ADPSR) and the Association for challenges and opportunities of provided examples of the Community Design (ACD), June A host of inspiring speakers set forging a multicultural alliances struggles—and successes—of 16-20, 2010. the tone for the conference at the to fight social and environmental citizens who are fighting for Photo Dykstra by Nicholas injustices in the city. He was basic housing rights in the San followed by Rahul Srivastava Francisco and Oakland areas. and Matias Echanove, who spoke The second day of the live from Mumbai via Skype. conference was filled up with Srivastava and Echanove are ten mobile workshops that

two members of URBZ, a non- Photo by Johnson Molly profit that designs adaptable structures and develops web tools for urban communities and practitioners. They talked about the importance of local knowledge in the design of work and live spaces and the role of the web as a medium for tapping into and disseminating local knowledge. Introducing the final Photo by Thomas McGurk.

TOP: Saturday lunch panel session ‘Justice, Equity and Rights in the City,’ with (from left to right) Peter Marcuse, Martha Matsuoka, James Holston, Teresa Caldeira and Ed Soja

BOTTOM: Maria Poblet, Causa Justa/Just Cause and Right to the City Alliance at the conference opening event.

24 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 25 Photo Dykstra by Nicholas took participants on tours of neighborhoods of San Francisco. and paper presentations, over LEFT: Architect Michael the Oakland Urban Villages Panelists included Amit Ghosh eighty in total. Topics ranged Pyatok discusses designing for Project, the East Bay Greenway, (former Chief of Comprehensive from community economic culturally diverse, lower income Bayview-Hunters Point, Silicon Planning), Lisa Feldstein (former development to food security communities Valley and the Oakland Army Planning Commissioner), Ada to smart growth to sustainable Base, among other local sites. Chan (former Mission Anti- transportation to eco-design. MIDDLE ROW, LEFT: Session That evening, a roundtable Displacement Coalition leader) One lunchtime session involved on ‘Confronting Crises’ with organized by Miriam Chion, and Oscar Grande (community a conversation about the views presenters (from left to right) a local conference committee leader and activist). of Jane Jacobs with the authors Marshall Feldman, Chester member and representative and editors of two new books Hartman and Peter Marcuse of the Association for Bay Two whole days were then about Jacobs, What We See: Area Governments, provided devoted to workshops, panels Advancing the Observations of Jane MIDDLE ROW, RIGHT: Alex Schafran, insight into the challenges of Photo by Johnson Molly conference organizer, welcoming bringing together stakeholders everyone on opening night with differing resources and agendas—planners, community BOTTOM, LEFT: Eve Baron leaders, citizens—to discuss and (center) discusses community planning in New York City

formulate planning strategies. Photo Dykstra by Nicholas Photo by Thomas McGurk. The focus of the panel was on the struggle for urban and regional sustainability in the eastern

THIS PAGE: Murals and art in the Mission District of San Francisco. Photo by Johnson Molly Photo by Johnson Molly Photo Dykstra by Nicholas Photo by Johnson Molly

26 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 27 Jacobs and The Battle for Gotham: making the conference such a like to be kept abreast of post- Angotti, 7th Generation, cont’d from page 2 New York in the Shadow of Robert successful event, attended by conference developments, visit Moses and Jane Jacobs. Another 450 people, including members the conference site at www. while the loose organization They treat our networks the they are personally committed lunchtime program consisted of from as far as the Netherlands, justmetropolis.org. that characterizes them same way the Republican Party to radical change, the elites are a panel discussion on the theme Greece and Taiwan. Also, thanks may appear to be a liability, treats the Tea Party, as an escape drawn into the interminable of “Justice, Equity and Rights in to the Department of City and Norma Rantisi is an editor of it can also be a necessary valve, a mine for new ideas and establishment conferences the City: A Conversation about Regional Planning and the Progressive Planning Magazine and useful tool for building a font for votes when an election dedicated to poverty-reduction Contemporary Urban Idea(l)s” College of Environmental Design and co-chair of the Planners Network alternatives. Still, networks comes around. They have a vested (every funding recipient now featuring Teresa P.R. Caldeira, at the University of California, Steering Committee. can be counterproductive if interest in guaranteeing that we has to have a “pro-poor” growth Peter Marcuse, James Holston, Berkeley for hosting many of the the networkers lose sight of won’t grow or threaten their own policy), global sustainability, Martha Matsuoka and Ed Soja. activities. If you are interested their political role and detach hegemony. The monopoly of the food security, indigenous rights The panelists expressed hope in learning more about the Just from action. Many networks two parties and their corporate and more. Instead of supporting in contemporary struggles for Metropolis conference or would arose in recent decades in the media outlets stifles serious political power for the historically land and housing rights and Photo Dykstra by Nicholas wake of the collapse of major political alternatives—not only oppressed, their institutions environmental justice but also left organizations and parties. third parties but any independent and funders support networks cautioned for the need to define Planners Network filled the political organization. In this that drain human and financial justice in terms of a substantive gap left by Planners for Equal nation known for its pragmatism, resources from the grassroots form of equality, one that Opportunity. The World Social the Democrats constantly remind efforts that seek a deep social and acknowledges and challenges Forum arose as the socialist us how important it is to line up political transformation. systemic discrimination, rather and communist parties, and for the next piece of watered- than equity in the abstract. the socialist camp, faded away, down legislation while they In the end, networking and helping to implant the notion turn their backs on grassroots communication is neither The conference was capped with a that there are other alternatives demands for fundamental progressive nor backward in and three-hour wandering tour of the to global capitalism. Conscious changes that guarantee basic of itself. Rob Robinson’s take on city. Throughout the conference, film of the mistakes made by the old human rights—to housing, to the U.S. Social Forum provoked screenings, art exhibitions, lively left, particularly a blindness healthcare, to the city—and an controversy and a much-needed music and tasty food provided lots to participatory democracy, end to corporate control over our discussion about the real politics of occasions for socializing. networkers have sought to lives. This is further reinforced by behind our propensity to network. restrain the forces from within our the foundations and charities that This is worth some added Many thanks to the local own ranks that seek to impose fund “social change” initiatives, discussion in Planners Network. organizing committee for new, stifling orthodoxies. Given many of them with openly Photo by Thomas McGurk. the historic role of racism and progressive aims, that orchestrate xenophobia in the U.S., networks and limit protest to extract short- also have a responsibility to insure term concessions and at the same that leadership by progressive time turn away from the solidarity people of color not be displaced. needed to bring about wider and more fundamental change. But there are some serious problems when networks become At the global level the the main or only format for action. limitations of networks are We need to realize that networks even more striking. Too many exist both as a sign of our existing networks depend on TOP: Mobile workshop: collective weakness and because funding from wealthy northern Responding to the Foreclosure there are no serious alternatives. countries and are dominated Crisis - The Oakland Land Trust In the U.S., we have well-funded by educated elites who easily efforts by the Democratic Party to navigate global institutions BOTTOM: Mobile workshop: convince us that they are the only and speak the languages of the Ecocity Builders’ Urban Village “practical” organized alternative. dominant cultures. Even when

28 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 29 (such as bus depots, sanitation garages and power There have been a few small successes from 197-a The Long Struggle for Community-Based generation facilities) and allow communities to plans and, since communities have so few other real propose alternative sites if they so choose. Fair planning tools, the focus for many advocates has Planning in New York City Share, at least on paper, was very good news for been to reform the planning process. communities with excessive environmental burdens. by Eve Baron The Campaign for Community-Based Planning The other reform was in Section 197-a of the New York City Charter. This section allows To support reform of the planning process, communities to produce their own comprehensive the Campaign for Community-Based Planning Some 100 community-based plans have emerged (DCP). The commission has the definitive vote on plans and have them go through an official was created in 2001. Members of the campaign from decades of activism in the largest city in the all planning decisions and the DCP plays a critical adoption process on the way to becoming include the community groups that have been U.S. Community advocates have also spurred major role by providing advice and recommendations to city policy. It was hailed as a victory for self- through the 197-a planning process, the groups reforms in the way the city plans. But planning in the commission. determined community growth and development, that have helped them, elected officials who the city is still largely controlled by a strong mayor. especially in the large and growing number of believe in community-based planning and good Recent efforts by the Campaign for Community- The result of this structure is that there is strong neighborhoods that had already undertaken government groups and academics who seek Based Planning to level the playing field have mayoral control over what goes into the public community plans on their own. transparency and accountability in planning. managed to put reform on the agenda, but prospects approval pipeline and over what it looks like when The task force that spearheaded the campaign for a breakthrough in the short run are limited. it comes out of the pipeline. Still, there are checks Thus, “197-a plans” were hailed and intensely has done the organizing, created an internal and balances built into the system. Borough officials sought after, as many community activists saw the governance structure and leadership roles, got New York’s Planning Context: Top-Down and Unequal have a say as do community boards, the fifty-nine potential to decentralize planning and encourage limited funding (now depleted) and developed an local self-governing entities whose members are active participation. There are now twelve officially agenda and policy recommendations. The goals of New York is a dense, post-industrial city with nearly appointed by a borough-wide elected official, but adopted 197-a plans and others in the pipeline, most the campaign are: a citywide planning framework 300 diverse neighborhoods. The city shows strong their recommendations are only advisory and not from environmentally burdened and low-income that spells out growth targets and benchmarks; the patterns of unequal development and inequitable determinative. New York City’s legislature, the City neighborhoods like Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Red provision of planning expertise for communities distribution of urban amenities and burdens. Income Council, also has a vote that counts, but the council Hook and Sunset Park in Brooklyn; the South Bronx; that isn’t controlled by the mayor; community disparity is pronounced: median household income rarely votes against the mayor given how much and East and West Harlem. plans that reflect diverse community interests; in the wealthiest census tract is over $188,000, while power the mayor wields over capital and expense and implementation of community planning in the poorest it is just over $9,000. budget items in their districts. But 197-a planning has not been the strong tool recommendations. that communities had hoped for. The record New York’s neighborhoods have shown remarkable Advances for Community-Based Planning of implementation is not good. The plans take The campaign has measured success in inches, resilience in the face of waves of disinvestment in years to create and there is no dedicated funding not miles. It has facilitated some limited planning the 1970s, neglect in the 1980s and reinvestment Despite this unlevel playing field for planning for them. They also have no legally binding assistance for community boards and brought that bypassed community control and often decisions, or maybe because of it, there is actually a connection to the budget or to land use decisions. some attention to making boards representative resulted in the displacement of long-time residents. great deal of community-based planning going on And they must be sponsored by the community and more reflective of neighborhood Community-based organizations were often in New York City. There are nearly 100 documented board, whose 50-member appointed volunteer demographics. It has been successful in getting the only thing that kept neighborhoods afloat community-based plans, including plans for open delegation does not necessarily reflect the full some elected officials to realize the city’s failure by stepping in where the government should space, waterfront access, alternative development diversity of a neighborhood. to listen to its neighborhoods. Community- otherwise have been by providing social and and comprehensive neighborhood development. based planning shows up in all the campaign legal services, building housing, combating drug So, what could have been a tool to empower rhetoric. For example, the two main Democratic epidemics and taking over schools. In 1989-1991, the city adopted two important communities and reconstruct the city’s planning Party candidates for mayor in the last election planning tools in response to strong pressure from process from the bottom up has become a missed incorporated many elements of the campaign’s New York has what is known as a strong mayoral community groups to decentralize decision-making. opportunity. Community plans cannot get traction program in their platforms (but Michael system which results in strong mayoral control One was Fair Share, a tool strongly supported by or compete with the plans of developers and as Bloomberg, who won by less than 5 percent, has over land use decisions. Seven of the thirteen environmental justice advocates to provide a greater a result they have failed in many cases to guide steadfastly ignored the campaign). city planning commissioners who make up the local voice in the siting of unwanted land uses and neighborhood development. Moreover, in some City Planning Commission are appointed by the to more equitably share the burdens of city services cases the City Planning Commission has rezoned The campaign has its work cut out for it as it mayor—one of whom is also the commissioner of across rich and poor neighborhoods. The city now neighborhoods in blatant contradiction of adopted strives to give community-based plans teeth and the New York City Department of City Planning must disclose its needs to site polluting facilities 197-a plans. create a citywide planning framework that rests on

30 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 31 a solid foundation of community-based plans. Not economy, which has reduced development only is foundation money drying up, community- pressures, gives communities time to plan, reflect Researching the “Just City”: based advocacy groups tend to be preoccupied and strategize. And the election of several new, with other, more urgent tasks, including their own more activist-based city council members bears A Study of Urban Revitalization in Toronto, Canada survival. Also, accomplishing these goals requires hope for planning reform that will finally give a redistribution of power within city government, communities a shot at plans that work for them, by Jed Kilbourn no simple feat under the best of circumstances. not against them. It is difficult to envision how to keep the fight going in the long run without a shift in tactics. It Eve Baron teaches at the Pratt Institute Graduate How can you take an abstract idea like the “just city” Initially, the tower neighborhoods were considered the appears that to maintain the broad coalition for Center for Planning and the Environment. This article and apply it to a real-world urban revitalization project? most modern and sophisticated housing in Toronto. community-based planning over the long term, is adapted from a presentation at the 2010 Towards a It may be nice to have a theory about how to make cities They were designed for young, upwardly mobile advocates will need to take advantage of new Just Metropolis Conference. more just, but what does it take to actually do it? tenants, similar to that of the condo boom that is opportunities and use flexible tactics to continue currently sweeping Toronto and other North American mobilizing support. These questions are the basis of a research project I am cities. Apartments were designed with amenities like completing as part of the Master in Environmental swimming pools and tennis courts and were often Although the mayor appointed a commission Studies program in planning at York University, Toronto. planned to provide their tenants with easy access to to review the charter this year and gave it the highways and transportation. They epitomized the mandate to “give city government a top-to- The starting point for my research was to understand modernist ideal of “towers in the park” (the buildings bottom overhaul,” and although there was the relationship between the built form of cities and themselves often have a 10 percent footprint on a lot potential to address land use and planning issues the ideas that produce it. For example, Hausmann’s that is primarily a sea of grass). in the context of this mandate, the only issue redesign of Paris in the late nineteenth century that is likely to be on the ballot as a referendum reflected a particular ideology and sensibility of Since these early glory days, the tower neighborhoods item this year is term limits (something voters how a city ought to be designed. Hausmann’s have become synonymous with issues like poverty addressed twice already). Yet the lull in the Paris represents one of the first examples of what and crime. Buildings have been poorly maintained later became known as “slum clearance”—projects and residents have little access to basic amenities. This designed to fix the disease-ridden and overcrowded phenomenon is illustrated in recent research by the neighborhoods that later typified the industrial city. Centre for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS) at the University of Toronto, which examines thirty My research revolves around two central questions. years worth of household income data for Toronto. The The first question, and perhaps the more difficult of research shows an increase in wealth in the downtown the two, asks how social justice can be determined, area, with a corresponding increase in poverty in the while the second question asks how elements of social inner suburbs, but relatively little change in the zone justice are present in the implementation of a particular between the two. Dubbed “The Three Cities within revitalization project. Toronto,” the research identifies three trends: income inequality, social polarization and spatial segregation. Toronto’s Tower Neighborhoods The trends shown by the “Three Cities” research echo To explore these questions I chose to focus on a project trends elsewhere in North America, frequently referred called Tower Renewal. Tower Renewal attempts to as the “decline of the middle class.” The decline of the to revitalize Toronto’s towers, a type of housing towers mirrors the decrease in Toronto (and Canada, development popular during the city’s postwar more broadly) of well-paid, unionized manufacturing economic boom. In addition to the typical post-war jobs, contributing, in part, to the first two trends of income suburban bungalow, between the 1950s and the 1980s inequality and social polarization. The “Three Cities” multi-story tower apartment buildings were built inhabit geographically distinct parts of Toronto, creating throughout the city at an incredible rate—nearly the third trend of spatial segregation. The wealthier city # 30,000 apartment units in 1968 alone, for example. 1 closely adheres to Toronto’s subway system outside of The development of these tower neighborhoods gave the downtown core. The rest of the city, represented by city Toronto a unique urban form. #2, which had little change in income, and city #3 which

32 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 33 showed a decline in income, relies on a bus network that Tower Renewal has been applauded for its attempt but not always.” In contemporary planning Tower Renewal is an attempt to address a multitude of connects well with the subway, but not the rest of the city. to revitalize communities that are impoverished and practice, democratic principles, as evidenced by issues faced by the tower neighborhoods. Despite its Consequently, the cost of housing in city #3, including struggling. At the same time, there are some, like community consultations or design charettes, are ambitious vision and implied just city goals, one challenge the tower neighborhoods, is more affordable than in the myself, who are enthusiastic supporters of the project commonly lauded as the only just way of engaging faced by the project is that, by not having social justice as downtown core, and its towers are home to many of but are concerned about questions of social justice. communities. They may be the most common, a specific goal, in the process of bringing planning ideas to Toronto’s economically marginalized groups, including a Sometimes a blueprint for the built environment though they are not necessarily the most just. an already built city, social justice can easily be dismissed vast number of newcomers to Canada. suffers because of the process used to implement it. For or forgotten, which could make the tower neighborhoods example, Hausmann’s vision of a beautiful Paris came The Just City and Tower Renewal vulnerable to large-scale injustice. Also, the process of Toronto’s Tower Renewal at a steep cost to the people who were displaced when it implementing the project, while seemingly democratic, was actually built. The nature of such costs can be better My research, still in progress, looks at the way that could reinforce existing inequalities. In an effort to reverse the decline of the once-exalted understood with the help of the just city concept. social justice either is or is not built into the process towers, the City of Toronto created the Tower Renewal of implementing Tower Renewal. I chose Tower We need more research that openly discusses and Office in 2008. Housed in City Hall, the staff was Ideas of a Just City Renewal for this because the primary document for explicitly articulates concepts of social justice in the assembled from a number of different divisions in the the project, the “Opportunities Book,” articulates context of urban planning. This kind of research can city, though predominantly the City Planning Division Harvard Professor Susan Fainstein, in a discussion of issues of equity like equal access to transportation, help us take small steps toward bringing noble and and the Economic Development & Culture Division. planning for a just city, suggests that a planning process social services and economic development. Without significant ideas to fruition in the built environment. The initial proposal for the project, published by needs “sensitivity toward process and discourse as well using the term social justice, the book transparently, Our true test as planners, then, becomes not how just the City of Toronto as the “Mayor’s Tower Renewal … but never divorced from recognition of the political- but implicitly, incorporates views of social justice. the cities we imagine can be, but how we build justice Opportunities Book” (the “Opportunities Book”), had a economic structure and spatial form in which we find Even though it is not explicitly stated, the question with the people who inhabit them. number of key points, including: ourselves and those to which we wish to move.” (See I have is, “What does social justice look like in the review of Fainstein’s book in Progressive Planning a project that clearly, if not explicitly, articulates Jed Kilbourn is a student in the Master in Environmental • Retrofit existing buildings for energy efficiency.The Issue No. 183). socially just goals?” Studies program in planning at York University, Toronto. towers are some of the most energy-inefficient buildings in Toronto. The proposal is to add external cladding What I particularly like about Fainstein’s approach is to the buildings, a technique found in many northern her refusal to divorce planning from political-economic European countries. structure. This is no surprise to political economists, Planners Network on the Web though articulations of justice (entering at least their Currently available at www.plannersnetwork.org: • Infill development.Because many of the tower second millennium in Western thought) seem to be neighborhoods are far from basic services, the proposal somehow removed from the political and economic The latest E-Newsletter incorporates the addition of services such as farmers structures in which they find themselves. The challenge • Downloadable student Disorientation Guide markets, community services and settlement agencies at in any articulation of justice and its relationship to the • the base of the towers. city is that the context within which we find ourselves Job Postings (whether we call it late twentieth century capitalism, • • Community improvements. Community improvements a post-Fordist regime, post-industrial capitalism or The latest Individual Membership Directory from February 2008 incorporate ideas of connecting the neighborhoods neoliberal capitalism) is largely unjust (at least from • to the services that they need (recreation centers, a traditionally Marxist perspective), and I am left Local PN Chapter details • childcare, healthcare, etc.). Unfortunately, many of struggling with the question of what we do while we Information on Young Planners Network these communities are not well connected and are wait for a more just society. • often not walkable, a situation which was made clear Over 200 articles from Planners Network Magazine by walkability studies done jointly by Paul Hess of the Fainstein’s work resonates because it is an and Progressive Planning from 1997 to the present University of Toronto and Jane Farrow of Jane’s Walk. approach I call “pragmatic utopianism.” It is one • of many responses to the rational planning of PDF’s of issues since 2002 (PN members only) • • Transit City. Many of the tower neighborhoods are the mid-twentieth century. I also believe that the 13 Case Studies and Working Papers in areas poorly served by public transit. Transit City creation of just cities involves active conversations • is a City of Toronto initiative to develop light rail with communities in order to determine what Planners Network issue statements infrastructure and connect the inner suburbs with the is considered just for them. This defines justice • rest of the city. The proposal highlights the importance in terms of the context in which it occurs. Planners Network History of the transit connections made by Transit City. According to Fainstein, “Democracy is desirable,

34 Progressive Planning No. 184 / SUMMER 2010 35 of its 5,000 acres of land. And there were promising to-do-it handbook. Part Four is “Affordable Housing” The Community Land Trust Reader start-ups in Maine, East Tennessee and Cincinnati. and includes themes like “Subsidy Recapture,” “Deed But by the end of the decade ICE had built up its staff Restrictions vs. Ground Leases,” the interesting issue Review by Pierre Clavel to twenty-one members and had organized three of city hall involvements and several other pieces. national conferences—Atlanta in 1987, Stony Point, New York, in 1988 and Burlington, Vermont, in 1990. Part Five is “Beyond Housing” and includes topics The Community Land Trust Reader. Matthei left ICE to form Equity Trust, Inc. in 1990, like “regional integration,” the “theory and practices Edited by John Emmeus Davis but the technical assistance function was now being of land reform,” the question of partnerships between Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2010. provided by a number of others. ICE organized its community and conservation land trusts and 600 pp., $35.00 hard cover. last (of nine) national conferences in 2003, but there “preserving farms for farmers.” were 100 CLTs by the mid-1990s and there soon One of the keynote speakers at the Towards a Just emerged regional coalitions, a national network, more Part Six is “Beyond the United States,” with chapters Metropolis conference this past June in Berkeley asked annual conferences, a National Land Trust Academy, on England, Australia and Scotland. us for a big, overarching idea to move us forward. If support from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and there were such an idea in the conference sessions that eventually this new Reader. Part Seven is “Beyond the Horizon” and features followed, getting the United States off its dependency chapters on general topics by Anne Shlay, Tim on speculative gain, an idea underlying several The Reader touches all the bases. Davis begins with his McKenzie, Davis and Rick Jacobus, Peter Barnes, sessions, might be it. authoritative “Origins and Evolution of the Community David Morris and James Libby. Land Trust in the United States,” forty-five large, very If so, this new Reader will prove a great resource. readable pages that summarize and also transcend the Throughout the Reader it is noteworthy how Davis It recounts the history of the idea to eliminate the selections that follow—one might buy the book for this has managed to achieve several goals at once. Most speculative gain from land, back at least to Henry alone. But the selections that follow provide the CLT appealing to many will be the way he has represented George in the nineteenth century. It describes and history and ideals from their sources. people, providing just enough of their lives and documents, in enough detail to counter any argument, struggles to give the book a level of humanity not the emergence of the movement and institutions Part One, “Precursors,” includes selections from usually found in books of this size (600 pages). With underlying the community land trust (CLT), a device Henry George, Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden Cities of this volume we know a little more about Henry that provides for collective ownership and control of Tomorrow,” notes from “Gandhi Today: A Report on George and Ebenezer Howard, Ralph Borsodi, Arthur land and security of housing tenure. Mahatma Gandhi’s Successors” and a selection from Morgan, Robert Swann, Chuck Matthei, Kirby White, the 1972 Ralph Borsodi and Bob Swann publication, Tim Mckenzie, Lucy Poulin, Marie Cirillo, Brenda The chief authority, and person responsible for The Community Land Trust (1972), summarizing the Torpy, Julie Orvis and others. collecting this history and assemblage of concepts experience until that time. and practices, is John Emmeus Davis, now a of ICE there was substantial experience with CLTs We also see in the Reader the values that made this set principal in Burlington Associates, a consulting and several start-ups were in operation, but less than Part Two is “Prophets and Pioneers.” It includes of legal devices and institutions something people collective in Burlington, Vermont. Before co- a half dozen functioning organizations met the three selections from writings or interviews of Arthur would commit their lives to. We see this in Ralph founding Burlington Associates in 1993, Davis had criteria CLT organizers had painstakingly evolved: E. Morgan, Ralph Borsodi, Robert Swann, Charles Borsodi, Robert Swann and Slater King, Charles been housing director in Burlington under mayors 1) they were to be “trusts” committed to preserving Sherrod and Marie Cirillo. Sherrod and others in the Albany Movement. But we Bernie Sanders and Peter Clavelle. Before that he the viability of land tenure for the inhabitants; 2) they also see this perhaps above all in Chuck Matthei, at had been an activist and organizer in Tennessee and were to be community entities, rather than enclaves of Part Three is “Definitions and Purposes.” Here there are one crucial time the central figure taking their dreams Cincinnati, did a Ph.D. at Cornell, published the like-minded people; and 3) they were to be committed more key statements from The Community Land Trust and and their difficulties and crafting final touches on impressive book Contested Ground and then took a to the poorest members of the community. The Community Land Trust Handbook (1982). We have the the CLT model. On one occasion (page 282), after position at the Institute for Community Economics definition of a CLT inserted in the Federal Register when invoking many of these names, Matthei noted an old (ICE) in Greenfield, Massachusetts where he worked Matthei found fertile ground and gradually more Davis and Tim McKenzie, working out of Burlington labor poster by Jim Dombrowski of the 1930s Republic in support of CLTs in several places, including the groups emerged. When he organized the CLT City Hall, got then-Congressman Bernie Sanders to insert Steel Strike where workers were gunned down by then-fledgling efforts in Burlington. Handbook in 1982, there were still only a handful of it in the 1992 housing legislation; and statements by Pinkertons: “Remember well the dead. Acquaint CLTs. There was the experience of Robert Swann Swann (1992), Matthei (2000) and Davis (2006). yourselves with their names.” The CLT movement today is flourishing. Davis reports and Slater King’s “New Communities” project 240 land trusts now in operation. In 1980, when Chuck emerging from the Albany (Georgia) Movement of In the last half of the book, Davis moves on to more The Community Land Trust Reader, put together in Matthei, a charismatic organizer, took the directorship the 1960s—though it was soon to be forced to sell all applied topics, though this Reader is far from a how- Davis’ sure hands, does that.

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In This Issue: • The Invisible Cyclists of Los Angeles • The 2016 Olympics in Rio • Mexico City’s Right to the City Charter • Community Planning in New York City Also... • Pierre Clavel Profiles Pat Rosenthal • Pierre Clavel Reviews The Community Land Trust Reader • Tom Angotti on Networking and the US Social Forum

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