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Posts Tagged ‘urban’

Saving Detroit

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

As we have mentioned before, Detroit is finding creative ways to deal with empty buildings and loss of population.

Jay Walljasper at Shareable adds his take.

“Stories of Detroit’s emerging comeback often highlight the city’s attraction to young hipsters. According to plentiful media reports, well-educated twenty-somethings are streaming into the Motor City to test out new ideas, explore art and music projects, or launch D-I-Y revitalization initiatives.

“You can spot a number of once-dormant corners of the city now pulsing with activity thanks to young entrepreneurs. …

“While a new, more positive narrative about Detroit is welcome, there are problems in focusing entirely on idealistic young adventurers swooping in to save the city – it reinforces the stereotype of native Detroiters as hapless, helpless, and hopeless.

“The truth is, locals have been working hard for years to uplift the common good in Detroit, which drew the interest of outsiders. And newcomers aren’t the only ones stirring up excitement around town. Good People Popcorn, for instance, was started by two sisters and a cousin, all of whom grew up here. Sarida Scott Montgomery, one of the founders who is also a lawyer and executive director of the Community Development Advocates of Detroit, says people are often surprised she grew up in the city. ‘Not in the suburbs,’ she says, ‘but in Detroit itself.’ …

“Allyson McLean, who grew up in the Detroit suburbs and has worked on brownfield redevelopment in Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority and on strategic planning for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington D.C, is back in town aiding real estate development in low-income communities with the Community Investment Support Fund.

“ ‘Now that I am back,’ she says, ‘it’s frustrating to hear from friends I grew up with who have no plans to ever return. … They have no idea what they’re missing in their hometown.’ ”

Read more about Detroit’s revitalization here.


Photograph: Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor
Dewayne Hurling loves Detroit and is thrilled to have renovated a beautiful old home in the Boston-Edison neighborhood of the city.

 

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Outdoor Experience for Kids

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2012| 2 Comments »

Shawn and Laura Sears were touched by inner-city kids with too many strikes against them and invited a few for an outdoor camping experience. The outing was so satisfying all around that they just kept doing it.

Marilyn Jones has the story at the Christian Science Monitor.

“Leaving college with liberal arts degrees – his in psychology, hers in geology – Shawn and Laura applied to Teach for America and were eventually placed to teach in one of the poorest regions in the country.

“Today, celebrating 14 years together (getting married along the way in 2004), they’ve seen the seeds sown during their experiences in Mississippi grow to fruition in the founding of Vida Verde Nature Education, a nonprofit outdoor education camp they’ve now run for 11 years.

“Located on northern California’s spectacular coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, this free camp for children from low-income families has served more than 7,000 kids from the inner cities of Oakland, East Palo Alto, San Francisco, and San Jose.

” ‘We help them let go of much of the negativity they often carry,’ Shawn says. ‘It’s nonstop fun, and they get to just be kids for a few days. Three days later, they’re transformed.’ ”

Read more.

Tony Avelar/Special to the Christian Science Monitor
Laura and Shawn Sears founded Vida Verde to give groups of students three days of exposure to and hands-on experience in the outdoors.

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Arts for Underserved Children

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Gwarlingo pointed me to Time In, an initiative that provides arts experiences for children who might not get such enrichment any other way.

“Time In brings some of the youngest, most at-risk public school children OUT of underserved classrooms and INTO the world of the living arts every week of the school year.

“Starting from Pre-K, children {try] hands-on art in our studio one week, with hops to the world’s best galleries and museums the next! Regardless of their backgrounds, children are children. The world of imagination, creativity and fantasy is their most fertile ground. Time In acknowledges children’s phenomenal gifts and innate abilities and is dedicated to developing learning environments that stimulate, rather than stifle.

“We are proud to have changed the lives of more than 1,000 underserved Pre-K-2nd graders since 2006, and look forward to working with over 400 children this year. Time In will continue to foster not only wonderfully conceptual thinkers, but perceptive and aesthetically sensitive children, each of whom will be poised to nourish our society in the days to come.”

Read more. Or vote for the nonprofit on Facebook as Part of Chase Community Giving.

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Another Music Outreach to Kids

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Here is another great music outreach to kids: the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra’s Tune up Philly initiative.

“The mission of Philadelphia Youth Orchestra’s Tune Up Philly program is to nurture urban children in challenging social and economic conditions by keeping them engaged in success through weekday out-of-school hours music instruction.  Through its Tune Up Philly program, Philadelphia Youth Orchestra organization believes that music education is a powerful vehicle for children to master skills that will enable them to acquire valuable tools for cooperative learning, teamwork, academic success and self-esteem.” More.

The Inquirer classical music critic Peter Dobrin wrote at Philly.com that an important goal of the initial program was to show the rest of the city what is possible.

“The brain-child of 24-year-old Curtis Institute of Music graduate Stanford Thompson … and adopted by the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, Tune Up Philly started at St. Francis de Sales … with the aim of replicating itself at other sites …

“Modeled on the widely praised and emulated El Sistema program that has educated millions of children in Venezuela, Philadelphia’s upstart is already gathering considerable support. Since initial coverage in the Inquirer and subsequent media attention, the program has received donations of cellos, clarinets, double basses, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, violas, violins and other instruments, plus about $13,000 in cash and $10,000 in in-kind services.” More.

Photograph: First graders exploring xylophones in the 2012 summer program.

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War Veterans Tackle Urban Blight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2012| 2 Comments »

Although the Christian Science Monitor daily is strictly online, there is a hard-copy Christian Science Monitor Weekly that is worth buying. The cover story of the latest issue is about a group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Each was floundering a bit in civilian life, looking for the same sense of purpose that they had felt in the military.

The story of how they came together in the blighted Oliver neighborhood of Baltimore is inspiring. The setting for the TV show The Wire, the area had been run by drug dealers for decades. Despite the best efforts of the local police, the residents could never get the help they needed to feel safe, to get vacant lots cleaned up, or to weatherize homes.

Today the veterans, applying the leadership and community-rebuilding skills they learned in places like Anbar Province, are making a difference — and feeling motivated once more.

See a great array of pictures at the Monitor website.

Photograph : Christian Science Monitor

Three veterans – (l. to r.) Patrick Young, Earl Johnson, and Dave Landymore – survey buildings and chat with neighbors on a warm Friday night. The men are volunteers with the 6th Branch, a nonprofit organization of volunteer veterans who use their community rebuilding skills to address urban blight in a project called Operation Oliver.

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Daily Life as a School

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2012| 10 Comments »

A reason that poor children are sometimes unprepared for school is that the words they are starting to read in books may not convey meaning to them. What does it mean to park a car if you have never ridden in a car?

The NY Times has a lovely article about one NYC school’s unusual field trips, designed to fill some gaps in knowledge that textbook writers take for granted.

Michael Winerip writes, “Experiences that are routine in middle-class homes are not for P.S. 142 children. When Dao Krings, a second-grade teacher, asked her students recently how many had never been inside a car, several, including Tyler Rodriguez, raised their hands. ‘I’ve been inside a bus,’ Tyler said. ‘Does that count?’

“When a new shipment of books arrives, Rhonda Levy, the principal, frets. Reading with comprehension assumes a shared prior knowledge, and cars are not the only gap at P.S. 142. Many of the children have never been to a zoo or to New Jersey. Some think the emergency room of New York Downtown Hospital is the doctor’s office. …

“Working with Renée Dinnerstein, an early childhood specialist, [Ms. Levy] has made real life experiences the center of academic lessons, in hopes of improving reading and math skills by broadening children’s frames of reference.

“The goal is to make learning more fun for younger children. … While many schools have removed stations for play from kindergarten, Ms. Levy has added them in first and second grades. [And] several times a month they take what are known as field trips to the sidewalk. In early February the second graders went around the block to study Muni-Meters and parking signs. They learned new vocabulary words, like ‘parking,’ ‘violations’ and ‘bureau.’ JenLee Zhong calculated that if Ms. Krings put 50 cents in the Muni-Meter and could park for 10 minutes, for 40 minutes she would have to put in $2. They discovered that a sign that says ‘No Standing Any Time’ is not intended for kids like them on the sidewalk.” Read more.

One thinks of all the small daily interactions one has with one’s own children and the learning occurring without forethought. There are interactions and learning in poor families, too, but if the words and concepts are not what they kids will encounter in school, I think these excursions can be very helpful.

Photograph: Librado Romero, NY Times

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The Interrupters

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I was hoping to see this documentary before writing about it, but can’t get it from Netflix.

Have you heard of The Interrupters? It’s about street workers in Chicago, former gang members, who try to stop violence by, if necessary, literally “interrupting” a fight. They are trying to atone to some extent for their own past and are working to keep other young people from making the same mistakes.

As Saul Austerlitz writes in the Boston Globe, one can “see the possibility of redemption, even in those seemingly beyond it, and to bear witness to the hesitant first steps taken by young men and women toward a better future. …

“If anything truly surprised [the filmmakers], it was how much they enjoyed making this film, somber subject matter to the contrary. ‘We got to hang out with people who are amazing, inspiring, funny, fun to be around,’ says James, ‘and who have made this incredible journey in their lives, and we got to bear witness to people beginning their own journey in that way.’

“Cajoling, hectoring, relentlessly interrogative, interrupters like Ameena are moral arbiters by virtue of their own experiences. ‘They have moral authority without moralizing,’ says James. Understanding their struggles to come to grips with their own pasts, we also understand their motivation.” Read more here.

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Evolution of Cities

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson has just published a book recounting his efforts to apply the principals of his discipline to improving urban life.

The book is called The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, and it sounds cool.

Mark Oppenheimer writes in the NY Times:

“For years the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson paid little attention to Binghamton, N.Y., where he lived and taught. ‘I hadn’t joined the PTA,’ he writes, ‘attended council meetings, given blood, or served turkey to the homeless on Thanksgiving.’ …

Photographer: Jonathan Cohen

“Five years ago Mr. Wilson, the author of two popular books about Darwin, decided it would be fruitful to apply his training to the (human) animals closer to home. With colleagues at Binghamton University, Mr. Wilson founded the Binghamton Neighborhood Project to use evolutionary theory, along with data collection, to improve the quality of life in his struggling city.”

Although the work is still — evolving — the people he works with make interesting reading as do the experiments.

Oppenheinmer says that the “best chapters describe some of the preliminary work Mr. Wilson’s team has done. For example the Project gave a wide cross section of Binghamton schoolchildren the Development Assessment Profile, a survey that measures sociability, citizenship skills and the conditions that promote such traits. Students rated their agreement with statements like ‘I think it is important to help other people’ and ‘I tell the truth even when it is not easy.’

“The project then figured out where the most trusting, pro-social children lived: which neighborhoods, in other words, seemed to be breeding the most social capital. Using the technology on which Google Earth relies, the project created a krig map — a topographical map representing demographic data — for the city. The valleys showed areas with low social capital, the peaks with high.”

The results have implications for where community-building intiatives might have the most impact. Read the whole review here.

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Up with Cities: “Better Block” and “Uni Project”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The other day on an American Public Media radio broadcast, I heard a story about Better Block Houston and its approach to urban revitalization. “The Better Block is a national movement which originated in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. Better Block projects have improved neighborhoods in Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Portland, and Memphis.”

Concerned residents focus on a vision for one block and throw a daylong event showing the potential.  The idea is that visitors might come to see the event and its special one-day amenities and would then notice cool things about the area and decide to return. New businesses might decide to move in. Sounds like wishful thinking, but the Better Block folks claim the approach is attracting more foot traffic and business.

“The ‘Better Block’ project provides a one-day living workshop of how a ‘Complete Street’ works, by actively engaging the community, helping them to visualize better outcomes for the future, and empowering them to provide feedback in real time. Better Block is a fun and interactive demonstration of a ‘Complete Street’ — and what it can do for a neighborhood. Complete Streets …  are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities must be able to safely move along and across a complete street. Complete Streets make it easy to cross the street, walk to shops, and bicycle to work. They allow buses to run on time and make it safe for people to walk to and from train stations.”

In Boston, a young couple I know, Sam and Leslie Davol, had an idea to set up a temporary library in Chinatown, which had not had a branch library in decades. Their project made use of a storefront that had been vacant during the economic downturn.

Leslie just sent out an e-mail about what they’re working on next: The Uni Project.

“Many of you know the Storefront Library, which Sam and I undertook in a vacant storefront in Boston’s Chinatown last year. That project had a big impact on us, just as it did on the Chinatown community. Since then, we’ve helped several local groups take over the books and Chinatown’s library advocacy, and we’ve spent time exploring a broader need for places like libraries in urban neighborhoods and cities generally. …

“The Uni is a portable infrastructure that will allow us to quickly deploy and create staffed, open-air reading rooms in almost any available urban space. The Uni is based on a system of cubes, and the books inside those cubes are just the start. Like libraries, we plan to use the Uni to provide a compelling venue for readings, talks, workshops, and screenings, through partnerships with local organizations and institutions. And the best part, once we fabricate this lightweight infrastructure, we can keep it running, serve multiple locations, and even replicate it.” Read about The Uni Project here.

8/11/12 update on Uni Project here. Now it’s even in Kazakhstan.

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Food Deserts (“deserts,” not “desserts”)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2011| 1 Comment »

I have been reading about Michelle Obama’s latest efforts to encourage good nutrition in childhood.

“Executives from Wal-Mart, Walgreens, SuperValu and other stores joined Michelle Obama at the White House on [July 21] to announce a pledge to open or expand a combined 1,500 stores in communities that have limited access to nutritious food and are designated as ‘food deserts.’

“With the pledges, secured by the Partnership for a Healthier America, which is part of Mrs. Obama’s campaign to reduce childhood obesity, the stores aim to reach 9.5 million of the 23.5 million Americans who live in areas where finding affordable healthy foods can be difficult. In those areas, many people turn to fast food restaurants or convenience stores.” Read the New York Times article here.

On a related note, John sent me a really interesting link from photographer Mark Menjivar, who documents the insides of people’s refrigerators. He includes a one-line insight into the person whose food he is photographing. Unsurprisingly, the fridge with the least food in it belongs to a “street advertiser” who lives on a $432 fixed monthly income.

See the fascinating photo essay here.

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Waiting for Superman

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 30, 2011|

Last night we finally watched the DVD of “Waiting for Superman.” We had to wait until we were up for it. We knew it would be good, but painful to watch. It’s a documentary about the broken public education system in this country.

I see now why people come away from this movie saying, “It’s the unions.” But although we clearly need to find a way to dismiss bad teachers and reward good teachers, to just say, “It’s the unions,” seems too simple to me. Even if it is true, when you consider the context of poverty, unemployment, the highest rates of incarceration in the developed world, the War on Drugs, three other wars, confused approaches to immigration, Wall Street greed at the expense of the poor and middle class, antigovernment bias, and many skewed political priorities, to lay the problems of inequality in public education at any one door seems too simplistic.

Still, as the movie makes clear, we need to get rid of bad teachers immediately and make sure children get high-quality teachers before they give up hope. Lotteries to get into better schools are too cruel to too many. Activists can check out this site.

By the way, the film is very well done. We loved the creative graphics making the data real and the clips of Superman movies and past political speeches and TV shows.

Reader Asakiyune writes: “I very much agree with what you said about unions and teaching and the documentary–it bothers me when a problem as complex as that is reduced to one soundbite.”

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