As protest erupt and some rioting, looting, and arson occur I wonder what will be the fate of the community after the fires are put out?
Will the community see a long list of closed businesses as commerce flees this troubled community?
Will the commercial districts most impacted by the unfortunate events lie in ruins like major areas of the South and West side of Chicago did for decades after the 68 riots.?
I hope there is a way to radically change the way we respond to this community in crisis so that it doesn't just languish and further deteriorate.
Comments and ideas are needed for a design response to not just rebuild and renewal Ferguson but to bring it up and out of the sad state of affairs that lead to this crisis.
That is a BIG BIG list of social reforms you are talking about and ones that have been worked on and discussed for decades, with hardly any significant change or difference.
I was talking with a client yesterday who is a financial planner about the health care system. He said that there will never be a single payer system in the USA until someone finds out how to make money on it. The insurance companies are making too much money to let it float away and for what the betterment of society, please.
Same thing with urban renewal and the advancement of the disenfranchised, until someone makes money nothing is going to happen.
Typical urban renewal programs take advantage of distressed areas so that developers can buy land cheap and build luxury housing and upscale stores for global chains. Part of that program is creating the opportunity by destroying neighborhoods through poverty and neglect. In the meantime they can always put posters of plants and window shades over the boarded up windows.
So - as go do it said - until the underlying economic-political structure is abandoned there will only be more of the same. Design in this case is neither the problem nor the solution.
Who cares if Furguson is Burning! Let the savages kill themselves off... all we need is more impoverished and uneducated savages eating up our tax dollars...
architectural problem... if we're talking built environment, we need to seriously rethink complete reliance on auto-mobility - the federal highway program was used to disperse and cordon off neighborhoods of color (via redlining), and cars essential dominate our public ways and much of our landscape - so that it makes it difficult and downright unsafe (and sometimes illegal and in some places culturally unacceptable) to move around by other modes. Jobs that are a step up out of poverty are now mostly only accessible by car... transportation equity is one of the major front lines of the ongoing civil rights battle.
if you haven't noticed - the parallel sympathy protests in other cities are targeting highways.
bulgar - the issue isn't really what mike brown did, but issues with racialized policing in the st. louis area and response in the aftermath of the shooting. If the police in ferguson had a better relationship with the community, I'm sure this wouldn't be as much of an issue. If things are already tense, it doesn't take much to push people over the edge.
I know this is a hard thing to understand if you (and your community) aren't subjected to almost daily and systemic discrimination.
after a history of enslavement, followed by the social and economic enslavement to the consequences of this history of enslavement within an economic system that naturally is biased against the weak and the poor and those already emerging out of the above mentioned history and, given their suffering from racial discrimination - socially and economically- at the hands of the policing and judiciatry authorities, BulgarBlogger's solution is for this oppressed community to get over "its race complex". Not, for example, to seriously take the community`s concerns and context into mind.
Perhaps the community is reacting this way not simply because of the killing of this kid (and the least-to-say odd circumstances surrounding it, like being left dead on the street for hours) but also because this death has seriously tipped the balance for them.
Accusing them of having a "race complex" is such a perverse reversal of dynamics and shows complete lack of empathy.
there is no solution to the problem until people in general, no matter what country, state, community they are in, stop blaming events that happened in the past and start taking responsibility for the present.
Don't get me wrong- I am NOT racist by any means. But I am SICK and TIRED of people constantly referencing history as the REASON for why they cannot generate change DESPITE that history. I'm originally from Bulgaria and there are many who blame current state of affairs in Bulgaria for all sorts of things - ranging from 500 years of slavery under Ottoman Rule to the tough transition from communist regime to democracy in the early 90s.
People just need to stop and re-evaluate their culture and assess if they need to generate change internally before asking others to do the same. Why is the Furguson community so special? Why should the police change first? Maybe parents in the Furguson community need to discipline their kids better and teach them not to just walk into a store and take whatever they want or treat police officers with disrespect. Not that this should be a reason for why anyone should get hurt or killed, but it definitely is a reason for Police officers not to be non-vigilant.
But Seriously we can have a conversation focused on transforming this community for the better once the anger has played out and the out of town anarchist mostly white folks in guy Fawkes mask stop burning things.
In Urbana Illinois in 2010 there was a riot of sorts and community members and designers and other civic leaders decided to use this event and low point for a small neighborhood to create change, small change but change none the less. A community garden came up condemned foreclosed property was seized by the city and came down and a liquor store that was also selling drug paraphernalia closed. Change can happen out of a tragedy and design has some role to play in the success of the outcome.
Community gardens are not the only design tool to use we can also look at ways to quickly bring back damaged or destroyed businesses think pop ups but popping up in a parking lot or other vacant lots.
Useful ideas that may help folks who still have to live with the damage a few stupid people did are needed.
Snide remarks as fair or justified as they may or may not be are better suited for another forum.
here`s an interesting nugget (although the article is overall interesting) about how policing has become a way of profiting from the poor rather than safeguarding them and about the lack of representation at the level of the policing authority,. I`m not sure a community garden is going to help alleviate that:
The death of Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in August and the ensuing protests, crackdowns and violence have drawn lots of attention to St. Louis County, and spawned lots of discussions about issues like race and racism, police brutality, poverty, police shootings, police militarization and the relationship between police departments and the communities they serve.
The Justice Department is launching a civil rights probe into the Ferguson Police Department after the shooting of an unarmed black teen Michael Brown, setting off days of protests. (Reuters)
But these of course are problems that extend well beyond the St. Louis area. Local officials, scholars, and activists say that whatever happened between Brown and Wilson, St. Louis County’s unique political geography, heightened class-consciousness, and the regrettable history that created both have made the St. Louis suburbs especially prone to a Ferguson-like eruption.
Locals say the cops and court officers often come not only from different zip codes, but from completely different cultures and lifestyles than the people whose fines and court fees fund their paychecks. “It was always apparent that police don’t usually have a lot in common with the towns where they work,” says Javad Khazaeli, whose firm Khazaeli Wyrsch represents municipal court clients pro bono. (Disclosure: Khazaeli is also a personal friend.) “But I think Ferguson really showed just how much that can be a problem.” A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch survey of the 31 St. Louis County municipalities where blacks made up 10 percent or more of the population found just one town where black representation on the police force was equal or greater than the black presence in the town itself. Some towns were shockingly disparate. In Velda City, for example, blacks make up 95 percent of the town, but just 20 percent of the police. In Flordell Hills, it’s 91 percent and 25 percent respectively. In Normandy, 71 and 14. In Bellefontaine Neighbors, 73 and 3. In Riverview, 70 and 0. Residents of these towns feel as if their governments see them as little more than sources of revenue. To many residents, the cops and court officers are just outsiders who are paid to come to their towns and make their lives miserable. There’s also a widely held sentiment that the police spend far more time looking for petty offenses that produce fines than they do keeping these communities safe.
i think the solution is to police the police. Can you make spaces that encourage the public to police the police rather than the police policing the public?
"Locals say the cops and court officers often come not only from different zip codes, but from completely different cultures and lifestyles than the people whose fines and court fees fund their paychecks"
AND I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH THIS POLICY... Justice is blind!
in Wash DC, they had a special intern program to bring along local kids to get them out of the poverty stream and into a profession, in this case, the fire department...but the program struggled because the kids didn't have the education to succeed and didn't have the environment to escape the violence and criminality that surrounded them as they grew up
i believe the program was halted for lack of success (forgive me, i'm going off a memory of a news story)
but this is the sort of thing that maybe can be tried in more communities...ie getting locals involved in work in their own communities
the difficulty is establishing a culture of respect and a fundamental motivation to educate our kids
a place where cops don't assume someone did something criminal because of what they look like
but also
a place where people don't steal from or destroy their neighborhoods
The problem with these types of discussions is that at some level all of the arguments have a nugget of truth. Should people take responsibility for their own lives, yes. Should they get a better education, yes. Should they follow the law, yes. Should they remember the past but not let it dictate their lives, yes.
But... When you can't get a job because you are black and a young male what then? Or if you are placed in special education at an early age for not having the ability to learn but just because you are in need of extra instruction and stuck there and stigmatized what then?
I have to go to work now but I can understand both sides. Just ask yourself if you lived in an urban depressed community with a family history of discrimination and systematic establishment disenfranchising policies would you make it out?
vaguely remembering a comment on CNN or something from the initial riots about the mainly Transient black population of Ferguson, I found this qoute from this article
noting prior to this point, that there is a lack of representation as many "In this small city, which is two-thirds African-American but has mostly white elected leaders, only 12 percent of registered voters took part in the last municipal election, and political experts say black turnout was very likely lower. "
then noting a lag in voting matching represenation.
___________________________
So I will suggest the following:
Transient means people who rent.
The former community has left for the most part, but we can presume they still own property which they then rent to the new community.
Because the former community still owns, its in their best interest to have their representation govern.
What will presumably happen is the new community will get representation and that's when the old community will begin selling their property.
Those who cannot afford to buy will remain transient (renting) and when rents begin to rise as the new community tries to increase population values through various governmental incentives, etc...the transient population will again move to a neighborhood in which they will not be represented but can afford rents.
To counter this cycle, in theme somewhat with Peter Normand, Architects could invent competitions on vacant lots for a community program pavillion (as many do) and at this new location introduce the new community on how to become represented and more importantly how to have some type of ownership - property or task for keeping the community theirs....presumably this would prevent looting and make them interested in keeping the trouble starters out.
So as an architect, track the data closely, contact the municipality, invent a competition for a community pavillion and get preachin'.
The black people that were rioting and causing destruction give the majority of the public a twisted perception of all black people. They are simply perpetuating their stereotypes. If you want to have pride in your race and strive for equality, do not give yourself a bad image. If they had protested peacefully, I'd be all for it. But they didn't, and it's a shame that they made that decision. Don't get me wrong, that cop should NOT have killed that kid. If everything that cop said is true, then he should have responded with a debilitating shot. Not a fatally wounding one. What happened to police shooting to debilitate and not to kill? Horrible situation is what it is.
Here is another idea, It has some of the same effects as redlining but lets put a twist on it, HUD which funds the housing authorities across this country and has some but limited oversight should make some rule changes for section 8 vouchers. No section 8 vouchers for properties not withing walking distance of reliable transit or job opportunities. Throw in grocery stores and exclude neighborhoods with exceptionally high crime rates and watch as the White deadbeat landlords squirm and pitch a fit and eventually bite the bullet to fix things up in the community or risk losing a major reliable source of rental income. Section 8 housing vouchers have the effect of concentrating poor people in undesirable communities with few if any services, places that if given a choice people would never rent in. Stop HUD from subsidizing landlords who build crummy apartments in rundown and isolated communities and keep people on housing assistance near transit and other vital services.
Peter - I appreciate your thoughts, dreams and respect your ideas, but history repeats itself:
1967 Detroit riot
2,509 stores looted or burned, 388 families rendered homeless or displaced and 412 buildings burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million
43 people died; 473 injured; 7,231 arrested.
When it was all over Mayor Cavanagh said – “Today we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes and dreams….”, and he was right -. Everybody who wasn’t black quietly picked up everything they had and moved north, way north and built new shining cities of their own and to this day, 47 years later, the area of the Detroit Riots is a wasteland. I had an office in Downtown Detroit and there were potential clients who wouldn’t work with us because they refused to drive into town…and it wasn’t because of the traffic or even the crime..
And all this happened because they thought that a white guy shot MLK.
Stealing a TV as a protest makes a brilliant social statement. If you want to help - take-up a collection for grass seed and send it to Ferguson, because they are going to need a lot of it.
For those who have generalised and condemned ...
from http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5684042
Ferguson Protesters Guard Stores From Looters
Aug 21, 2014 11:59 am
Chaos broke out in the streets of Ferguson on Friday night, the same day that police announced the name of the officer who killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown andreleased footage appearing to show Brown stealing cigarettes from a convenience store. Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson later said Friday the initial contact between Brown and officer Darren Wilson was not related to a convenience store robbery.
A peaceful protest on Friday night turned into another confrontation with police after some in the crowd reportedly threw rocks and people began looting stores, including the convenience store that Brown was accused of robbing. Police formed lines and fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
In the midst of it all, protesters took it upon themselves to guard stores against looting.
No- I am not a Klansman. No- I am not racist. I love people; I just don't deal with stupidity. The looting in Furguson is stupid and unfortunately for the African American community down there, comments like, "Burn this bitch down," and what ensued thereafter are testaments to a deeply troubled culture. And I definitely don't mean culture as an all-encompassing term. Such culture has a lot to do with poverty and lack of education. This is what I would like to see change and what I view as being the most critical problem of American society today.
carrera - the detroit riots - you have to remember that this was also immediately following the destruction of Black Bottom and other black neighborhoods for the creation of the highways - black families were being forced into certain neighborhoods away from transit (which was also being gutted) so things were already tense. MLK assassination, while significant, was just something that pushed people over the edge.
cars and car infrastructure is the most direct physical representation of policies that have affected people of color and other marginalized populations over the years. We have 1950s and 60s urban renewal and the destruction of black communities - and then forcing people to rely on an overly expensive mode of transportation (and making it dangerous or downright impossible to get around by other modes). sure there has been institutionalized racism, but a big part of the problem is physically isolating people in low-density places where it is very difficult to build up your community without significant outside capital investment.
transportation equity, folks... this has always been one of the front lines of the civil rights battle.
Bulgar, you're a Klan, I can smell your stink all over. Nothing you ever say here will have any value; you're a fucking racist. Now, your Klan hood may provide you some anonymity here, but one thing I know about Klan, it won't be long before you out yourself, and have your stupid fucking mouth punched. Now run along to your White Friday Rally.
Oh get over yourself. And stop calling me a Klansman, or I will have to come after you for slander and libel. Look up the word if you don't know what it means.
Peter I would still go with education on voting in your representation. Just seeing your vote get someone you like into office is the same as ownership.
Representation Pavilion - an educational facility founded by architects who care, if you want a practical political application of architecture. A temporary Agora, for those who never thought anyone would introduce them to the Agora.
For christ's sake, make a car pool for those who can not own a car and get them to work.
As long as there is an atmosphere of designated outsiders, you'll get eruptions like this.
olaf - right - people of color have NEVER had issues with voting or education discrimination in this country...
and carpools? you know - they do make these bigger vehicles that fit like 50-60 people in them... maybe we could make them go on designated routes and pick a whole bunch of people up to take them to their jobs...
@toasteroven read my first post here before you ramble off into stupidity.
car pools, yes like Uber even, since its not in the public infrastructure of the local municipalities lacking the tax base, etc...have non-profits like Churches (hence Christ Sake) do this.
to go do it's and others point(s) about larger structural/social reforms needed -
Not sure if anyone/everyone saw it already (perhaps i just slept on it?), but just came across (this week) and posted a link in the latest EP a report from back in October, by The Economic Policy Institute - The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles, which lays out how "Policies enacted by federal, state, and local governments to create racially segregated metropolises are at the root of the events that occurred since August in Ferguson, Missouri ".
re: transportation equity agree is key, though if we focused on reinvestment in neighborhoods/communities and more TOD/pedestrian focused developed might not be as important.. though almost a semantics point i suppose...
Ferguson Is Burning
As protest erupt and some rioting, looting, and arson occur I wonder what will be the fate of the community after the fires are put out?
Will the community see a long list of closed businesses as commerce flees this troubled community?
Will the commercial districts most impacted by the unfortunate events lie in ruins like major areas of the South and West side of Chicago did for decades after the 68 riots.?
I hope there is a way to radically change the way we respond to this community in crisis so that it doesn't just languish and further deteriorate.
Comments and ideas are needed for a design response to not just rebuild and renewal Ferguson but to bring it up and out of the sad state of affairs that lead to this crisis.
Peter Normand
That is a BIG BIG list of social reforms you are talking about and ones that have been worked on and discussed for decades, with hardly any significant change or difference.
I was talking with a client yesterday who is a financial planner about the health care system. He said that there will never be a single payer system in the USA until someone finds out how to make money on it. The insurance companies are making too much money to let it float away and for what the betterment of society, please.
Same thing with urban renewal and the advancement of the disenfranchised, until someone makes money nothing is going to happen.
Nothing has really happened yet.
If history repeats itself, and it does, the “design response” will be grass-seed.
Typical urban renewal programs take advantage of distressed areas so that developers can buy land cheap and build luxury housing and upscale stores for global chains. Part of that program is creating the opportunity by destroying neighborhoods through poverty and neglect. In the meantime they can always put posters of plants and window shades over the boarded up windows.
So - as go do it said - until the underlying economic-political structure is abandoned there will only be more of the same. Design in this case is neither the problem nor the solution.
Archinect, BOYCOTT St. Louis!
"Ferguson is burning"...
...as it should.
Ferguson is burning - So is Oakland -
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Late-night-looters-trash-Oakland-stores-5915959.php
"He said that there will never be a single payer system in the USA until someone finds out how to make money on it."
"Someone" did.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Correct thread now.... Miles, please, continue.
Saint,
"Someone" is making money but it is not a single payer system, not a government / socialized health care program.
Who cares if Furguson is Burning! Let the savages kill themselves off... all we need is more impoverished and uneducated savages eating up our tax dollars...
Go do it -- think you might be missing my point, but that's nether here nor there... BulgarB -- uh, what?
who lights up a storm after a verdict? savages... people who have no regard for the law... its 2014 people! Get over your race complex!
this WOULD NOT be a story if a black police officer shot a black kid or vice versa
architectural problem... if we're talking built environment, we need to seriously rethink complete reliance on auto-mobility - the federal highway program was used to disperse and cordon off neighborhoods of color (via redlining), and cars essential dominate our public ways and much of our landscape - so that it makes it difficult and downright unsafe (and sometimes illegal and in some places culturally unacceptable) to move around by other modes. Jobs that are a step up out of poverty are now mostly only accessible by car... transportation equity is one of the major front lines of the ongoing civil rights battle.
if you haven't noticed - the parallel sympathy protests in other cities are targeting highways.
And, Bulgar, your posts are going to contribute to solving which part?
bulgar - the issue isn't really what mike brown did, but issues with racialized policing in the st. louis area and response in the aftermath of the shooting. If the police in ferguson had a better relationship with the community, I'm sure this wouldn't be as much of an issue. If things are already tense, it doesn't take much to push people over the edge.
I know this is a hard thing to understand if you (and your community) aren't subjected to almost daily and systemic discrimination.
Please don't feed the trolls.
I'm sure I disagree with toasteroven, but Bulgar's approach is wrong.
after a history of enslavement, followed by the social and economic enslavement to the consequences of this history of enslavement within an economic system that naturally is biased against the weak and the poor and those already emerging out of the above mentioned history and, given their suffering from racial discrimination - socially and economically- at the hands of the policing and judiciatry authorities, BulgarBlogger's solution is for this oppressed community to get over "its race complex". Not, for example, to seriously take the community`s concerns and context into mind.
Perhaps the community is reacting this way not simply because of the killing of this kid (and the least-to-say odd circumstances surrounding it, like being left dead on the street for hours) but also because this death has seriously tipped the balance for them.
Accusing them of having a "race complex" is such a perverse reversal of dynamics and shows complete lack of empathy.
^ eh... actually, Miles, you're right. No more troll food from me.
there is no solution to the problem until people in general, no matter what country, state, community they are in, stop blaming events that happened in the past and start taking responsibility for the present.
Don't get me wrong- I am NOT racist by any means. But I am SICK and TIRED of people constantly referencing history as the REASON for why they cannot generate change DESPITE that history. I'm originally from Bulgaria and there are many who blame current state of affairs in Bulgaria for all sorts of things - ranging from 500 years of slavery under Ottoman Rule to the tough transition from communist regime to democracy in the early 90s.
People just need to stop and re-evaluate their culture and assess if they need to generate change internally before asking others to do the same. Why is the Furguson community so special? Why should the police change first? Maybe parents in the Furguson community need to discipline their kids better and teach them not to just walk into a store and take whatever they want or treat police officers with disrespect. Not that this should be a reason for why anyone should get hurt or killed, but it definitely is a reason for Police officers not to be non-vigilant.
BUT IT HAS BECOME A RACE ISSUE TAMMUZ-
It's a friggin case of a WHITE Police officer vs. a BLACK Citizen!
The media hasn't covered the case as a state vs citizen issue... they animated the story by emphasizing color.
OK Simmer Down Now! Everybody has to Simmer Down.
But Seriously we can have a conversation focused on transforming this community for the better once the anger has played out and the out of town anarchist mostly white folks in guy Fawkes mask stop burning things.
In Urbana Illinois in 2010 there was a riot of sorts and community members and designers and other civic leaders decided to use this event and low point for a small neighborhood to create change, small change but change none the less. A community garden came up condemned foreclosed property was seized by the city and came down and a liquor store that was also selling drug paraphernalia closed. Change can happen out of a tragedy and design has some role to play in the success of the outcome.
Community gardens are not the only design tool to use we can also look at ways to quickly bring back damaged or destroyed businesses think pop ups but popping up in a parking lot or other vacant lots.
Useful ideas that may help folks who still have to live with the damage a few stupid people did are needed.
Snide remarks as fair or justified as they may or may not be are better suited for another forum.
I know we can come up with some good ideas
Over and OUT
Peter N
here`s an interesting nugget (although the article is overall interesting) about how policing has become a way of profiting from the poor rather than safeguarding them and about the lack of representation at the level of the policing authority,. I`m not sure a community garden is going to help alleviate that:
The death of Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in August and the ensuing protests, crackdowns and violence have drawn lots of attention to St. Louis County, and spawned lots of discussions about issues like race and racism, police brutality, poverty, police shootings, police militarization and the relationship between police departments and the communities they serve.
The Justice Department is launching a civil rights probe into the Ferguson Police Department after the shooting of an unarmed black teen Michael Brown, setting off days of protests. (Reuters)
But these of course are problems that extend well beyond the St. Louis area. Local officials, scholars, and activists say that whatever happened between Brown and Wilson, St. Louis County’s unique political geography, heightened class-consciousness, and the regrettable history that created both have made the St. Louis suburbs especially prone to a Ferguson-like eruption.
Locals say the cops and court officers often come not only from different zip codes, but from completely different cultures and lifestyles than the people whose fines and court fees fund their paychecks. “It was always apparent that police don’t usually have a lot in common with the towns where they work,” says Javad Khazaeli, whose firm Khazaeli Wyrsch represents municipal court clients pro bono. (Disclosure: Khazaeli is also a personal friend.) “But I think Ferguson really showed just how much that can be a problem.” A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch survey of the 31 St. Louis County municipalities where blacks made up 10 percent or more of the population found just one town where black representation on the police force was equal or greater than the black presence in the town itself. Some towns were shockingly disparate. In Velda City, for example, blacks make up 95 percent of the town, but just 20 percent of the police. In Flordell Hills, it’s 91 percent and 25 percent respectively. In Normandy, 71 and 14. In Bellefontaine Neighbors, 73 and 3. In Riverview, 70 and 0. Residents of these towns feel as if their governments see them as little more than sources of revenue. To many residents, the cops and court officers are just outsiders who are paid to come to their towns and make their lives miserable. There’s also a widely held sentiment that the police spend far more time looking for petty offenses that produce fines than they do keeping these communities safe.
i think the solution is to police the police. Can you make spaces that encourage the public to police the police rather than the police policing the public?
"Locals say the cops and court officers often come not only from different zip codes, but from completely different cultures and lifestyles than the people whose fines and court fees fund their paychecks"
AND I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH THIS POLICY... Justice is blind!
in Wash DC, they had a special intern program to bring along local kids to get them out of the poverty stream and into a profession, in this case, the fire department...but the program struggled because the kids didn't have the education to succeed and didn't have the environment to escape the violence and criminality that surrounded them as they grew up
i believe the program was halted for lack of success (forgive me, i'm going off a memory of a news story)
but this is the sort of thing that maybe can be tried in more communities...ie getting locals involved in work in their own communities
the difficulty is establishing a culture of respect and a fundamental motivation to educate our kids
a place where cops don't assume someone did something criminal because of what they look like
but also
a place where people don't steal from or destroy their neighborhoods
The problem with these types of discussions is that at some level all of the arguments have a nugget of truth. Should people take responsibility for their own lives, yes. Should they get a better education, yes. Should they follow the law, yes. Should they remember the past but not let it dictate their lives, yes.
But... When you can't get a job because you are black and a young male what then? Or if you are placed in special education at an early age for not having the ability to learn but just because you are in need of extra instruction and stuck there and stigmatized what then?
I have to go to work now but I can understand both sides. Just ask yourself if you lived in an urban depressed community with a family history of discrimination and systematic establishment disenfranchising policies would you make it out?
go for it, i agree. things must be read against the wider context - historical, social, economic and so on.
I asked this on an archinect feature "where do the poor go when gentrification happens to their community" which relates to the Urban planning and architectural questions here related to the political and historical.
vaguely remembering a comment on CNN or something from the initial riots about the mainly Transient black population of Ferguson, I found this qoute from this article
Over the last 25 years, the population of Ferguson, now about 21,000, has shifted from nearly three-quarters white to mostly black. Even so, five of the six City Council members are white, as is Mayor James W. Knowles III. Mr. Knowles, who once led the St. Louis Young Republicans, won a second term in April with just 1,314 votes from among the city’s more than 12,000 registered voters. No one ran against him.
noting prior to this point, that there is a lack of representation as many "In this small city, which is two-thirds African-American but has mostly white elected leaders, only 12 percent of registered voters took part in the last municipal election, and political experts say black turnout was very likely lower. "
then noting a lag in voting matching represenation.
___________________________
So I will suggest the following:
Transient means people who rent.
The former community has left for the most part, but we can presume they still own property which they then rent to the new community.
Because the former community still owns, its in their best interest to have their representation govern.
What will presumably happen is the new community will get representation and that's when the old community will begin selling their property.
Those who cannot afford to buy will remain transient (renting) and when rents begin to rise as the new community tries to increase population values through various governmental incentives, etc...the transient population will again move to a neighborhood in which they will not be represented but can afford rents.
To counter this cycle, in theme somewhat with Peter Normand, Architects could invent competitions on vacant lots for a community program pavillion (as many do) and at this new location introduce the new community on how to become represented and more importantly how to have some type of ownership - property or task for keeping the community theirs....presumably this would prevent looting and make them interested in keeping the trouble starters out.
So as an architect, track the data closely, contact the municipality, invent a competition for a community pavillion and get preachin'.
"I am NOT racist by any means. But..."
el oh fucking el
tammuz,
go for it is my brother i am go do it
mom always liked him best
In short go fuck yourself you racist piece of shit.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Grumble, grumble. Klan.
saint - do you disagree with my comments on transportation equity or issues of community policing?
Here is another idea, It has some of the same effects as redlining but lets put a twist on it, HUD which funds the housing authorities across this country and has some but limited oversight should make some rule changes for section 8 vouchers. No section 8 vouchers for properties not withing walking distance of reliable transit or job opportunities. Throw in grocery stores and exclude neighborhoods with exceptionally high crime rates and watch as the White deadbeat landlords squirm and pitch a fit and eventually bite the bullet to fix things up in the community or risk losing a major reliable source of rental income. Section 8 housing vouchers have the effect of concentrating poor people in undesirable communities with few if any services, places that if given a choice people would never rent in. Stop HUD from subsidizing landlords who build crummy apartments in rundown and isolated communities and keep people on housing assistance near transit and other vital services.
That is one idea
Peter - I appreciate your thoughts, dreams and respect your ideas, but history repeats itself:
1967 Detroit riot
2,509 stores looted or burned, 388 families rendered homeless or displaced and 412 buildings burned or damaged enough to be demolished. Dollar losses from arson and looting ranged from $40 million to $80 million
43 people died; 473 injured; 7,231 arrested.
When it was all over Mayor Cavanagh said – “Today we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes and dreams….”, and he was right -. Everybody who wasn’t black quietly picked up everything they had and moved north, way north and built new shining cities of their own and to this day, 47 years later, the area of the Detroit Riots is a wasteland. I had an office in Downtown Detroit and there were potential clients who wouldn’t work with us because they refused to drive into town…and it wasn’t because of the traffic or even the crime..
And all this happened because they thought that a white guy shot MLK.
Stealing a TV as a protest makes a brilliant social statement. If you want to help - take-up a collection for grass seed and send it to Ferguson, because they are going to need a lot of it.
For those who have generalised and condemned ... from http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5684042 Ferguson Protesters Guard Stores From Looters Aug 21, 2014 11:59 am Chaos broke out in the streets of Ferguson on Friday night, the same day that police announced the name of the officer who killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown andreleased footage appearing to show Brown stealing cigarettes from a convenience store. Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson later said Friday the initial contact between Brown and officer Darren Wilson was not related to a convenience store robbery. A peaceful protest on Friday night turned into another confrontation with police after some in the crowd reportedly threw rocks and people began looting stores, including the convenience store that Brown was accused of robbing. Police formed lines and fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. In the midst of it all, protesters took it upon themselves to guard stores against looting.
No- I am not a Klansman. No- I am not racist. I love people; I just don't deal with stupidity. The looting in Furguson is stupid and unfortunately for the African American community down there, comments like, "Burn this bitch down," and what ensued thereafter are testaments to a deeply troubled culture. And I definitely don't mean culture as an all-encompassing term. Such culture has a lot to do with poverty and lack of education. This is what I would like to see change and what I view as being the most critical problem of American society today.
carrera - the detroit riots - you have to remember that this was also immediately following the destruction of Black Bottom and other black neighborhoods for the creation of the highways - black families were being forced into certain neighborhoods away from transit (which was also being gutted) so things were already tense. MLK assassination, while significant, was just something that pushed people over the edge.
again - the protests that we saw immediately following the recent decisions ALL TARGETED URBAN HIGHWAYS.
cars and car infrastructure is the most direct physical representation of policies that have affected people of color and other marginalized populations over the years. We have 1950s and 60s urban renewal and the destruction of black communities - and then forcing people to rely on an overly expensive mode of transportation (and making it dangerous or downright impossible to get around by other modes). sure there has been institutionalized racism, but a big part of the problem is physically isolating people in low-density places where it is very difficult to build up your community without significant outside capital investment.
transportation equity, folks... this has always been one of the front lines of the civil rights battle.
Bulgar, you're a Klan, I can smell your stink all over. Nothing you ever say here will have any value; you're a fucking racist. Now, your Klan hood may provide you some anonymity here, but one thing I know about Klan, it won't be long before you out yourself, and have your stupid fucking mouth punched. Now run along to your White Friday Rally.
Hey Jupiter.... About KKK... http://rt.com/usa/209875-anonymous-kkk-leader-dox/
You must think that this article is racist too... check out the comments by many African Americans:
http://www.stuffeducatedblackpeoplelike.org/general/8-talking-about-uneducated-black-people/
That's your defense? Really Klan? I'm not laughing, and you're no comedian.
......
Oh get over yourself. And stop calling me a Klansman, or I will have to come after you for slander and libel. Look up the word if you don't know what it means.
Peter I would still go with education on voting in your representation. Just seeing your vote get someone you like into office is the same as ownership.
Representation Pavilion - an educational facility founded by architects who care, if you want a practical political application of architecture. A temporary Agora, for those who never thought anyone would introduce them to the Agora.
For christ's sake, make a car pool for those who can not own a car and get them to work.
As long as there is an atmosphere of designated outsiders, you'll get eruptions like this.
.
olaf - right - people of color have NEVER had issues with voting or education discrimination in this country...
and carpools? you know - they do make these bigger vehicles that fit like 50-60 people in them... maybe we could make them go on designated routes and pick a whole bunch of people up to take them to their jobs...
@toasteroven read my first post here before you ramble off into stupidity.
car pools, yes like Uber even, since its not in the public infrastructure of the local municipalities lacking the tax base, etc...have non-profits like Churches (hence Christ Sake) do this.
use your brain toasteroven.
to go do it's and others point(s) about larger structural/social reforms needed -
Not sure if anyone/everyone saw it already (perhaps i just slept on it?), but just came across (this week) and posted a link in the latest EP a report from back in October, by The Economic Policy Institute - The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles, which lays out how "Policies enacted by federal, state, and local governments to create racially segregated metropolises are at the root of the events that occurred since August in Ferguson, Missouri ".
re: transportation equity agree is key, though if we focused on reinvestment in neighborhoods/communities and more TOD/pedestrian focused developed might not be as important.. though almost a semantics point i suppose...
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