Volume 44: Changing Ways, Making Change

CHANGING W AY S , M A K I N G CHANGE

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL Vol ume 4 4 / 20 19

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

The Carolina Planning Journal is the annual, student-run journal of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

© Copyright 2019, Carolina Planning Journal. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

PRINTING

A Better Image Durham, North Carolina ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Funding for this publication was generously provided by the John A. Parker Endowment Fund, the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association, the Graduate and Professional Student Federation of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and by our subscribers.

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

Department of City and Regional Planning University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill CB #3140, New East Building Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3140 USA carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com

www.carolinaangles.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

COVER PHOTOGRAPHER

Margaret Keener

Dylan Alvarez

EDITORIAL BOARD

SPECIAL THANKS

Nora Schwaller Leah Campbell Olivia Corriere Tory Gibler Adam Hasan Anna Patterson Emily Paul Ezra Rawitsch Natalie Swanson Kathia Toledo

The Carolina Planning Journal would also like to thank the many people who have helped us all year long. These people and organizations include Ken Bowers, Ben Howell, and Bonnie Estes from the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association; our faculty advisor Andrew Whittemore; DCRP Chair Noreen McDonald; Mike Celeste and the entire team at A Better Image Printing; former Carolina Planning Journal Editor-in-Chief Carly Hoffmann; Planners’ Forum student leaders James Carter, Matt Stern, Frank Muraca, and Lara Seltzer; Manuel Hernandez, Michelle Hoffner O’Connor, Joanna Warren, and the Appropriations Committee of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation; and, of course, all of our subscribers.

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Audrie Lathrop

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill D e p art me nt of C ity + Reg ional Planning

CHANGING W AY S , M A K I N G CHANGE

CAROLINA PLANNING JOURNAL

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

BAC K I S SU E T I TLE S

5

1975

V1

INAUGURAL ISSUE

1976

V2.1

AGING AND LAND POLICY

1976

V2.2

THE COASTAL ENVIRONMENT

1977

V3.1

THE ENERGY BREAKDOWN

1977

V3.2

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

1978

V4.1

LAND USE POLICY

1978

V4.2

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

1978

V5.1

ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING

1979

V5.2

NORTH CAROLINA'S ECONOMIC PREDICAMENT

1980

V6.1

NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING

1980

V6.2

COASTAL

1981

V7.1

CASH, CONDOS, AND CRISIS

1981

V7.2

PLANNING IN THE EIGHTIES

1982

V8.1

RURAL PLANNING

1982

V8.2

PUBLIC/PRIVATE VENTURES

1983

V9.1

NORTH CAROLINA'S SMALL CITIES

1983

V9.2

WATER RESOURCES

1984

V10.1

TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1984

V10.2

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES FOR URBAN ECONOMIES

1985

V11.1

AFTER THE STORM: PLANNING FOR DISASTER

1985

V11.2

ISSUES IN HOUSING & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

1986

V12.1

DEVELOPMENT DISPUTE RESOLUTION

1986

V12.2

FROM PLANNING PRACTICE TO ACADEMIA

1987

V13

COST RECOVERY FEES

1988

V14.1

PLANNING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

1988

V14.2

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH CAROLINA

1989

V15.1

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

1989

V15.2

EMERGING PLANNING ISSUES

1990

V16.1

POLITICS & PLANNING

1990

V16.2

FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1991

V17.1

REVIEWING TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES

1991

V17.2

HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

1992

V18.1

ON THE WATERFRONT

WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

1993

V18.2

UNIVERSITIES AND PLANNING

1993

V19.1

FEDERAL MANDATES

1994

V19.2

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

1995

V20.1

PLANNING IN NORTH CAROLINA CITIES

1995

V20.2

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1995

V21.1

MAIN STREET PROGRAM

1996

V21.2

REGIONAL AND COUNTY-LEVEL PLANNING

1996

V22.1

NEW URBANISM

1997

V22.2

CONSERVATION-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

1998

V23.1

GROWTH AND THE TRIANGLE

1998

V23.2

REVOLVING LOAN FUNDS IN NORTH CAROLINA

1999

V24.1

SPECIAL ISSUE: WEISS URBAN LIVABILITY SYMPOSIUM

1999

V24.2

PLACE, TYPOLOGY AND DESIGN VALUES IN URBANISM

2000

V25.1

PLANNING OUR COAST

2000

V25.2

PRESERVING AFFORDABLE HOUSING

2001

V26.1

RURAL HOUSING

2001

V26.2

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH STRATEGIES IN THE SOUTHEAST

2002

V27

REDEFINING LIVABILITY IN THE URBAN SOUTHEAST

2002

V28.1

MANUFACTURED HOUSING

2003

V28.2

SMART GROWTH AND RURAL AMERICA

2004

V29.1

FORGING AHEAD AND LAGGING BEHIND

2004

V29.2

ARE WE IN THE RIGHT LANE?

2005

V30.1

GREEN BUILDING, GREEN PLANNING

2005

V30.2

PATHS TO HEALTHY PLANS

2006

V31.1

THE CHANGING FACE OF PLANNING

2006

V31.2

PLANNING ACROSS THE COLOR LINE

2007

V32.1

TOWARDS THE NEXT 50 YEARS

2007

V32.2

EMERGING ISSUES IN HOUSING

2008

V33

RESILIENT CITIES

2009

V34

URBAN GREENING

2010

V35

TRANSPORTATION + ACCESSIBILITY

2011

V36

REGAINING RELEVANCY

2012

V37

PLANNING FOR EQUITY

2013

V38

COLLABORATIONS IN PLANNING

2014

V39

PLANNING FOR THE NEW ECONOMY

2015

V40

JUST CREATIVITY

2016

V41

R E ( ANY THING )

2017

V42

PLANNING FOR UNCERTAINTY

2018

V43 6

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

CON T E N T S 008 FROM THE EDITOR 010 EDITORIAL BOARD

FE AT URE S 0 12 IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING LOCAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING CHALLENGES IN NORTH CAROLINA Patricia Amend, Erika Brandt, Leigh Anne King, AICP, LEED AP, Cheryl Plourde, Charlotte R. Stewart, & Emila Sutton

0 24 ARTIST RESIDENCIES AS PLACEKEEPERS UNDER CREATIVE DISTRICT DISPLACEMENT PRESSURES IN COLUMBUS, OHIO Rebecca F. Kemper

030 PLANNING FOR WOMEN: LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES FROM INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTIONS Mia Candy

040 TRANSIT AS A WOMEN’S ISSUE: WHY PLANNERS SHOULD PRIORITIZE WOMEN IN TRANSIT PLANNING, DESIGN, AND OPERATION Michelle E. Nance, AICP & Emily Scott-Cruz

050 SAFE SYSTEMS: A NEW AND NECESSARY TRANSPORTATION SAFETY PARADIGM Seth LaJeunesse

05 8 LESSONS IN NEW MOBILITY: ELECTRIC SCOOTERS IN INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Daniel Hedglin

0 6 6 EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 2.0: SHARED MOBILITY FOR EQUITABLE EVACUATION AND DISASTER PLANNING Samantha Porter, MPA & Lindsay Oluyede, AICP

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BOOK REVIEWS 0 74 DESIGNS FOR THE PLURIVERSE: RADICAL INTERDEPENDENCE, AUTONOMY, AND THE MAKING OF WORLDS Book Review by Darien Williams

0 76 RISING: DISPATCHES FROM THE NEW AMERICAN SHORE Book Review by Leah Campbell

0 78 FOOD JUSTICE NOW!: DEEPENING THE ROOTS OF SOCIAL STRUGGLE Book Review by Emily Paul

0 8 0 PRIUS OR PICKUP? HOW THE ANSWERS TO FOUR SIMPLE QUESTIONS EXPLAIN AMERICA’S GREAT DIVIDE Book Review by Olivia Corriere

0 8 2 THE POISONED CITY: FLINT’S WATER AND THE AMERICAN URBAN TRAGEDY Book Review by Nora Schwaller

0 84 BOOM TOWN: THE FANTASTICAL SAGA OF OKLAHOMA CITY, ITS CHAOTIC FOUNDING, ITS PURLOINED BASKETBALL TEAM, AND THE DREAM OF BECOMING A WORLD-CLASS METROPOLIS Book Review by Frank Muraca

ST UDENT WORK 086 BEST MASTER’S PROJECTS 090 MASTER’S PROJECT TITLES

Class of 2018

0 9 2 YEAR-IN-REVIEW: AN UPDATE FROM NEW EAST 0 9 4 NC-APA CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

VOLUME 45 CA LL F OR PA PERS

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

F RO M T H E E D I TO R

MARGARET KEENER is the Editor-in-Chief of the

Carolina Planning Journal and a second-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, focusing on land use and environmental planning. Prior to UNC, she worked as a graphic designer for a global city network. Margaret graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2014 with a degree in Global Environmental Change and Sustainability.

MARGARET KEENER

DE AR RE ADERS , The theme of Volume 44, Changing Ways, Making Change, was inspired by the planner’s enduring yet evolving relationship with change. Our field is inherently intertwined with change: how can we best adapt to and manage inevitable change, prevent detrimental change, and create positive change in our communities?

At the same time, planning as a discipline is as dynamic as the communities in which we work. Fresh minds entering the field, technological advancements, and emerging challenges, among a host of other factors, drive the evolution of planning strategies. Authors in this volume share new tools and approaches, advocate for novel applications of successful methods, and propose alternative paradigms for planning.

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This volume begins close to home. Patricia Amend, Erika Brandt, MCRP ’17, Leigh Anne King, AICP, LEED AP, Cheryl Plourde, Charlotte R. Stewart, and Emila Sutton provide an overview of affordable housing tools and program to address both supply- and demandside housing needs in North Carolina. Next, we travel to Columbus, Ohio, where Rebecca E. Kemper shares a compelling case study of artist residencies shifting from “placemakers” to “placekeepers” to counter displacement pressures in creative districts.

Two of our articles explore the topic of women and planning. Mia Candy, MCRP ’16, encourages us to look beyond US borders for gender mainstreaming interventions that better meet the needs of women, making cities more accessible, convenient, and affordable for all. Michelle E. Nance, AICP and Emily Scott-Cruz present a deep dive of women and transit, culminating in a robust list of recommendations for policymakers and planners.

On the topic of transportation, Seth LaJeunesse, MCRP ’10, challenges us to rethink our current transportation safety narrative by proffering a new Safe Systems paradigm. A timely commentary on the introduction of electric scooters in Indianapolis by Daniel Hedglin, MCRP ’14, is sure to resonate with many municipalities navigating policy creation fitting to a new and unexpected mode of transport. Finally, in light of continually record-breaking hurricane seasons, Samantha Porter, MPA and Lindsay Oluyede, AICP propose a novel application of social media and ride-hailing for equitable evacuation that better serves vulnerable populations.

As always, this volume includes an overview of Master’s Projects from 2018, a year-in-review newsletter from the halls of New East, and book reviews from current students, with a featured review by Darien Williams, MCRP ’18.

The cover image by photographer Dylan Alvarez of sunrise in Everglades National Park portrays the vitality and potential of each new day. Authors in this volume remind us of the importance of creativity, the need to critically examine why we do what we have always done, and the value of embracing new ways—from near and far—to make needed change.

Thank you for reading! We hope you enjoy.

Margaret

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ED ITO R I A L B OARD The following people are integral to the success of the Journal and its online platform, CarolinaAngles.com:

NORA SCHWALLER / Managing Editor of Carolina Angles

ANNA PATTERSON / Online Content Editor

Nora Schwaller is a licensed architect and a second-year PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. At UNC, she concentrates on housing and community development with a focus on resilience and disaster recovery. In this area, she is most interested in the effect of disasters on communities, population displacement, and tipping points for settlement abandonment. Prior to returning to graduate school, she worked for an architecture firm in San Francisco, focusing on municipal projects such as fire stations.

Anna is a second-year dual degree Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Department of Health Behavior.

Her scholarly interests include health and the built environment, vulnerable populations, and community development. Prior to coming to UNC, Anna worked as a program officer for a health foundation in Alamance County, NC. She likes American folk music, slalom water skiing, and hikes along the Haw River.

LEAH CAMPBELL / Online Content Editor and Leah Campbell is a first-year PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, where she focuses on integrating equity and resilience into climate adaptation to address urban flooding. Prior to UNC, she worked in the environmental nonprofit sector in California after receiving her BS in Geophysics and Environmental Science from Yale in 2015. Outside of academics, Leah enjoys folk music, long road trips, and anything that gets her outside.

Emily is a first-year Master’s student seeking dual degrees from the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research interests involve how the built environment can address social justice issues and the impact of climate change and the environment on health. Prior to UNC, Emily earned her Bachelor’s degree in Urban and Environmental Planning and Spanish at the University of Virginia. In her free time, Emily enjoys gardening, painting with watercolors, and reading in local coffee shops and teahouses.

OLIVIA CORRIERE / Online Content Editor

EZRA RAWITSCH / Online Content Editor

Olivia Corriere is a Junior undergraduate studying Environmental Sustainability, Geography, and City and Regional Planning. She works as a development analyst at 1st & Main Development in Durham, NC, focusing on mixed-use and historic preservation projects across the Carolinas. She also serves as Co-Chair of the UNC Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee, managing renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy education projects on campus. In her free time, Olivia enjoys hiking, producing sports politics podcast The Agony of Defeat, and cooking with friends and family.

Ezra is a Senior undergraduate in Geography at UNC-Chapel Hill.

He is interested in post-Socialist urban political economy and the architecture and urban design of Central and Eastern Europe.

Incoming Managing Editor of Carolina Angles

TORY GIBLER / Online Content Editor Tory is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning with a concentration in Transportation Planning.

A passionate advocate for accessibility in transportation, she actively promotes access and multimodal transportation as a volunteer and former board member of the Raleigh bicycle advocacy group, Oaks & Spokes, and as a Graduate Research Assistant at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center. Tory received her undergraduate degree in Nonprofit Management and Fundraising from Indiana University. In her free time, she enjoys bicycle camping.

ADAM HASAN / Online Content Editor Adam is a Junior undergraduate student studying Geography and City and Regional Planning. His research interests include understanding the actors involved in defining and redefining Global South urbanisms through social movements, governance systems, and media, as well as the history of spatial planning in post-colonial regions. Adam has previously worked with participatory informal settlement upgrading in South Africa, coastal resilience planning in Brooklyn, and was once ranked internationally as one of SimCity 4’s best city builders. In his free time he enjoys birdwatching, coffee roasting, and plays vice-skip on a local curling team.

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EMILY PAUL / Online Content Editor

NATALIE SWANSON / Online Content Editor and

Incoming Editor-in-Chief

Natalie is a first-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, concentrating in housing and community development. She received her BA in English from Rice University in Houston. In her free time, Natalie enjoys swing dancing and making highly specific playlists on Spotify.

KATHIA TOLEDO / Online Content Editor Kathia Toledo is a second-year Master’s student in Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, she is pursuing the Land Use and Environmental Planning specialization. Kathia is particularly interested in the dynamic between varying urban landscapes, sustainability, and planning. She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and Environmental Studies and a minor in Urban Planning. Her hobbies include creative endeavors like urban sketching and photography, biking on the American Tobacco Trail, and exploring new cities and towns.

NORA SCHWALLER

LEAH CAMPBELL

OLIVIA CORRIERE

TORY GIBLER

ADAM HASAN

ANNA PATTERSON

EMILY PAUL

EZRA RAWITSCH

NATALIE SWANSON

KATHIA TOLEDO 12

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

I D ENTI FYI NG AND ADDRES S ING LOCA L A F FO RDABLE H O U SI NG C HA LLENGES I N NO RTH CARO LI NA PATRICIA AMEND Patricia Amend oversees program funding, policy, research, and reporting in her capacity as Director of Business Services and Solutions at the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. She

trained as a CPA and worked for Deloitte & Touche before coming to the Agency, where she

has made contributions in grant and bond accounting; bond issuance; cross-state relationships; and technological, policy, and program development over the last twenty-four years.

ERIKA BRANDT Erika Brandt is Senior Policy and Research Analyst at the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency

where she works to unearth and communicate the meaning behind spreadsheet numbers.

Before coming to the Agency, Ms. Brandt served as an AmeriCorps member with Habitat for Humanity of Wake County where she learned from experience why sheathing should always

span at least two joists. She holds a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from UNC Chapel Hill.

LEIGH ANNE KING, AICP, LEED AP Leigh Anne King, AICP, LEED AP, is a Director in Clarion’s Chapel Hill office. With nearly twenty

years of experience, she leads the east coast planning practice working with local governments to lead planning initiatives including sustainable community land use plans, comprehensive plans, affordable housing programs, growth management strategies, and open space planning

initiatives. She was the lead author of seven award winning plans in the Carolinas. She speaks regularly at national- and state-level conferences on the topics of comprehensive and strategic

planning, affordable workforce housing, and other planning topics. She serves as a co-chair

for the APA-NC’s Affordable Housing Task Force. Before joining Clarion, Ms. King worked for a national land conservation nonprofit.

CHERYL PLOURDE Cheryl Plourde is a Policy and Research Analyst at the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency

and has over ten years of experience in the housing and homelessness field. Prior to working at the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, she administered federal and state homeless

programs at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. Ms. Plourde graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Master of Social Work degree with a concentration in Social Work Administration, Planning, and Policy practice.

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F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

CHARLOTTE R. STEWART Charlotte R. Stewart joined the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency as a Policy and Research

Analyst in fall 2016. Outside of work, she volunteers with organizations dedicated to access to justice, leadership development and social service, including the North Carolina Bar Foundation’s 4All Steering Committee, the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, and Balance of State Subcommittee on Ending Veteran Homelessness. Ms. Stewart holds a law degree from

UNC Chapel Hill and previously worked to serve the unmet legal needs of veterans, homeless individuals and other marginalized communities statewide.

EMILA SUTTON Emila Sutton is the Policy and Research Team Lead at the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency

where she has worked for the past six years. Prior to joining NCHFA, Ms. Sutton worked in the

homelessness and asset building sectors for seven years, starting as an AmeriCorps VISTA in Tucson, AZ. She holds a Master’s degree in History from James Madison University and a law degree from North Carolina Central University.

ABSTR ACT A recent APA-NC survey identified that affordable housing is a challenge facing many communities throughout North Carolina and that planners and advocates need planning tools that can be tailored to the unique housing needs of their communities. This article outlines the benefits of affordable housing, provides resources for characterizing local housing markets, and identifies tools and programs to address both supply- and demandside housing needs. State and federal funding sources, particularly those affiliated with the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, are described. Additionally, land use and other strategies available to local planners are identified, including a clearinghouse being developed by the APA-NC Affordable Housing Task Force. The goal of this article is to help develop a shared understanding among local and state players of affordable housing benefits, needs, and resources in North Carolina communities.

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

Communities across the United States and North Carolina have identified affordable housing as one of the most critical local needs. Affordable housing creates benefits beyond the provision of shelter, including positive health outcomes for children and the elderly, and cost savings to the public healthcare system as a whole. Creating and preserving affordable housing also boosts local economies and provides social benefits to communities.

Families without affordable housing options often live in unsafe and unhealthy housing conditions. Well-maintained housing reduces asthma, pest-borne illnesses, lead poisoning, accidental injury, and other health risks associated with substandard housing.1 For children, living in safe, quality housing is essential to avoid hazards such as lead poisoning that can impact their development and learning abilities.2 Housing subsidies can make families more food-secure by preventing tradeoffs between paying for housing and paying for healthy food, which can improve children’s nutrition.3 Living in housing that is affordable increases a household’s probability of staying current on their rent payments, providing residential stability that improves children’s education outcomes.4 For older homeowners, assistance with home repairs can help people age in place, rather than entering costly assisted living facilities; for example, every dollar invested in emergency home repairs could save up to nineteen dollars in Medicaid/Medicare costs.5 Similarly, living in affordable housing coupled with supportive services reduces emergency room visits and lowers Medicaid expenses of renters with disabilities by about $1,000 per year. For tenants with intensive service needs, such as chronic illnesses, the cost savings of evidence-based housing interventions are even higher.6 At the community level, homeownership can encourage property upkeep, leading to higher home values. Affordable rental housing can also revitalize distressed communities.

Nationally, studies show affordable rental properties increase surrounding property values by an average of 6.5% in lowerincome neighborhoods.7 Despite some homeowners’ fears that affordable housing will lower their property values, a study by North Carolina Housing Finance Agency (the Agency) shows 15

that Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) properties do not have a negative impact on surrounding home values in North Carolina.8 Furthermore, affordable housing development supports construction jobs and an adequate local housing supply bolsters economic development efforts by ensuring workers can live and pay taxes in the communities in which they work. In a national survey of more than 300 companies, 55 percent of the largest companies reported insufficient local affordable housing supply, and two-thirds of these respondents believe that the shortage has a negative impact on retaining qualified entry-level and mid-level employees.9 In short, housing impacts us all: from teachers to construction workers, to seniors to people with disabilities, housing plays a crucial part in our society in providing stability and safety in our communities. Furthermore, our communities face numerous challenges that could be overcome by providing accessible, stable, safe, permanent affordable housing options. Here, we profile a range of strategies to facilitate affordable housing and discuss how planners, community leaders, and affordable housing advocates at the local, regional, and state levels can work together to help North Carolinians prosper through access to quality housing options.

IDENTIF YING LOCAL HOUSING NEEDS The big picture benefits and impacts of affordable housing are important and useful in helping planners make the case for affordable housing. However, differing local contexts impact housing development and availability, requiring additional context-specific research to identify housing strategies best suited to specific communities. The following data tools and resources can provide insight into local needs, which can inform locally-appropriate solutions.

The Agency hosts the “State of Housing,” an interactive web map with the latest county-level housing data, including: demographics, population change, homelessness, median income, quantity and age of housing stock, renters’ and homeowners’ cost-burden, and eviction and foreclosure filings (Fig. 1).10 The Agency updates the maps as new data emerges.11 Interactive maps, such as the State of Housing,

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

FIGURE 1- The North Carolina Housing Finance Agency’s State of Housing map.

can help planners visualize housing market conditions and observe how data points overlay and interact in order to gain a more robust understanding of housing challenges local communities face.

The State of Housing map was built with PolicyMap, a web mapping tool that can pull from over 37,000 indicators on topics from housing to health to education, displayed at various geographic levels.12 The free version of PolicyMap allows users to view one data layer at a time, but with a subscription, users can overlay up to three layers, upload their own data, and more.

The North Carolina Housing Coalition hosts another useful web map, “Mapping Housing Insecurity,” which assigns a housing insecurity score to each North Carolina county based on data points, such as percent of cost-burdened households (who pay more than 30 percent of their income toward housing), eviction rate,13 and foreclosure rate. This map is a versatile tool for quickly comparing overall housing needs in different regions of the state. It also includes some unique layers showing average annual energy costs, a component of housing affordability not often parsed out from primary housing costs like rent and mortgage payments. Additionally, it has an option to overlay Congressional and North Carolina State House and Senate district boundaries on top of the housing data, which could be particularly useful for advocacy and government relations.

Although less user-friendly than the mapping tools above, a final particularly useful dataset for housing planners is the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS), a special tabulation of American Community Survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau.14 CHAS contains several combinations and overlays of housing-related data.

This includes household characteristics, such as tenure (owner- versus renter-occupied), income, race/ethnicity, disability, and household composition; it also includes as unit characteristics, such as housing problems (e.g., cost burden, lack of plumbing), vacancies, and rent/mortgage affordability. These unique combinations of data enable detailed analysis of communities’ specific housing needs.

CREATING TAILORED HOUSING SOLUTIONS Local and state government entities like the Agency (in partnership with local lenders, developers, nonprofits, and governments) facilitate both supply- and demandside interventions to increase housing availability, quality, affordability, accessibility, and stability (Table 1). Supplyside approaches expand housing affordability by financing the construction of new units and the preservation of older assets, while demand-side approaches improve access to affordable homes and apartments.15 The following sections describe key interventions at the federal, state, and local levels, with special emphasis on new and emerging strategies in municipalities across North Carolina.

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affordability, accessibility, and stability (Table 1). Supply-side approaches expand housing affordability by financing the Carolina Planning Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change construction of new Journal units and:the preservation of older assets, while demand-side approaches improve access to 15 affordable homes and apartments. The following sections describe key interventions at the federal, state, and local levels, with special emphasis on new and emerging strategies in municipalities across North Carolina.

Table 1. ​Examples of solutions to increase housing affordability, quality, accessibility, and stability.

Availability

Quality

Affordability

Accessibility

Stability

New Construction

Rehabilitation and Modification

Housing Subsidy and Rental Assistance

Housing Navigation, Training, and Literacy

Eviction Prevention and Housing Safety Net

I n t e r v e n t i o n O p t i o n s N C E x a m p l e s P a r t n e r s

Financing for affordable rental and single-family homeownership opportunities

Rehabilitation programs to improve housing quality, prevent displacement, and support aging in place

Tenant- or project-based rental assistance to make housing affordable

Housing navigation services, fair housing trainings, housing 101 programs, and landlord incentives to remove housing barriers

Low-Income Housing Credit (LIHTC), Workforce Housing Loan Program, Rental Production Program, Self-Help Loan Pool, and Community Partners Loan Pool

Urgent Repair Program, Displacement Prevention Partnership, and Essential Single-Family Rehabilitation Loan Pool

Key Rental Assistance, Homeless Short-Term Rental Assistance, Back@Home, and Transitions to Community Living Voucher

NCHousingSearch.org (run

by SocialServe.com), Fair Housing Trainings, Coordinated Entry into Homeless Service System,and Landlord Incentive Pilot Program

NC Housing Finance Agency, Local Governments, Nonprofit Organizations, and Developers

NC Housing Finance Agency, Local Governments, Nonprofit Organizations, and NC Department of Health and Human Services Vocational Rehab

NC Housing Finance Agency, NC Department of Health and Human Services, Local Management Entities/Managed Care Organizations (LME/MCOs), NC Coalition to End Homelessness, Continuum of Care Network, Public Housing Authorities, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

NC Housing Finance Agency, SocialServe.com, NC Justice Center, NC Fair Housing Project, LME/MCOs, NC Coalition to End Homelessness, NC Housing Coalition, Continuum of Care Network, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

Eviction prevention programs, which includes legal representation, landlord mediation and retention support, short-term rental assistance, and other emergency household needs Durham Eviction Clinic, and Legal Aid of NC - Eviction Diversion

Duke Law’s Civil Justice Clinic, Legal Aid of NC, and NC Division of Social Services

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For a detailed summary of all Agency programs, see “Affordable Housing Is Our Business” at TABLE 1- Examples of solutions to increase housing affordability, quality, accessibility, and stability. https://www.nchfa.com/sites/default/files/page_attachments/AffordableHousingIsOurBusiness.pdf

Supply-side: Developing and Preserving Housing Supply-side tools assist with the funding, production, and conveyance of affordable housing in order to increase the supply of units within communities.

State and Federal Tools Several state and federal programs support supply-side affordable housing expansion.​ ​The Agency’s Self-Help Loan Pool 16 finances low-cost mortgages in partnership with Habitat for Humanity affiliates. Funds from the Agency and Habitat

17

Supply-side tools assist with the funding, production, and conveyance of affordable housing in order to increase the supply of units within communities.

State and Federal Tools Several state and federal programs support supply-side affordable housing expansion. The Agency’s Self-Help Loan Pool finances low-cost mortgages in partnership with Habitat for Humanity affiliates.16 Funds from the Agency and Habitat are combined into a single loan, which is serviced by the Habitat affiliate. Combining financing in this way keeps payment straightforward for home buyers.

The Essential Single-Family Rehabilitation Loan Pool, Urgent Repair Program, and Displacement Prevention Partnership are single-family home repair programs that help preserve existing affordability for homeowners.17 Each program differs slightly in its scope and target household types, but together, they cover a broad spectrum of owneroccupied housing. For homeowners impacted by Hurricane Matthew or Tropical Storms Julia and Hermine in 2016, the Essential Single-Family Rehabilitation Loan Pool– Disaster Recovery program, funded by a special state appropriation, works with community organizations to repair homes damaged in the storms that are occupied by low- to moderate-income homeowners. Federal disaster assistance for home repair has also recently become available through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program.18 On the rental side, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit) finances new construction and rehabilitation of affordable apartment homes.19 The Agency leverages state funds through the Rental Production Program (funded by the North Carolina Housing Trust Fund) and the Workforce Housing Loan Program (funded by its own state appropriation) to make Housing Credit projects financially feasible, especially in rural areas where rents are too low to cover operating costs.,21, 22 The Supportive Housing Development Program, also funded by the state Housing Trust Fund, finances production of

emergency and permanent housing for people who have a disability, are experiencing homelessness, or have other special housing needs.

An emerging federal program positioned to incentivize affordable housing development and preservation is the Opportunity Zones program. Opportunity Zones are low-income census tracts nominated by governors and certified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The program is designed to connect private capital with these communities by offering investors capital gains tax incentives for investing equity in Opportunity Funds that finance developments and businesses in Opportunity Zones. While there is concern that Opportunity Zones could worsen gentrification and displacement in hot housing markets, the program has the potential to benefit low- and moderate-income residents through investments in community development banking and affordable housing finance—activities that some investors have already begun.23

Local Tools Municipalities have several policy tools at their disposal for promoting affordable housing development, most of which are land use controls. The most contentious of these is inclusionary zoning.24 According to the Inclusionary Housing Database Map, Asheville, Black Mountain, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Dare County, Davidson, Durham, Greensboro, Manteo, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, and Winston-Salem all have some type of inclusionary housing policy.25 Davidson, Chapel Hill, and Manteo are the only communities in the state with “mandatory” inclusionary zoning, meaning a certain percentage of units are required to be set-aside as affordable. Asheville, Black Mountain, Carrboro, Charlotte, Dare County, Durham, Greensboro, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, and WinstonSalem, on the other hand, have “voluntary” inclusionary zoning programs that provide incentives to developers who set aside affordable units. In addition, Chatham County, New Bern, Watauga County, and Wilmington have policies and incentives for affordable housing in their local ordinances (Table 2).

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Supply-side: Developing and Preserving Housing

Chapel Hill, and Manteo are the only communities in the state with “mandatory” inclusionary zoning, meaning a certain percentage of units are required to be set-aside as affordable. Asheville, Black Mountain, Carrboro, Charlotte, Dare County, Durham, Greensboro, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, and Winston-Salem, on the other hand, have “voluntary” inclusionary zoning Journal programs: Volume that provide to developers who set aside affordable units. In addition, Chatham Carolina Planning 44 incentives / Changing Ways, Making Change County, New Bern, Watauga County, and Wilmington have policies and incentives for affordable housing in their local ordinances (Table 2).

Table 2.​ Local affordable housing policies in North Carolina municipalities Municipality

Affordable Housing Policy

Document and Page Number

Chatham County

Moderately Priced Dwellings Requirement

Compact Communities Ordinance, p. 18

City of New Bern

Density Bonus Incentives for Affordable Housing

Code of Ordinances, Article XXII, Sec. 15-182

Watauga County

Affordable Workforce Housing Policy

Ordinance to Govern Subdivisions and Multi-Unit Structures, Appendix L

City of Wilmington

Density Bonus Incentives for Affordable Housing

Code of Ordinances, Article 5, Div. II, Sec. 18-185(e)(4)(b)(v)

TABLE 2- Local affordable housing policies in North Carolina municipalities

In addition to these tools, local governments in North Carolina are finding new ways to support construction of affordable housing. Several communities in North Carolina, including Wake County, Asheville, and, most recently, Chapel Hill, have passed general obligation bonds to fund development of affordable units. The City of Asheville has developed unique funding toolsgovernments to incentivize development affordable units, including a land use incentive grant and Inseveral addition to these tools, local in the North Carolina of State and Federal Tools 26 a fee rebate.

The Land Use Incentive Grant essentially functions as a property tax rebate. Eligible affordable housing are finding new ways to support construction of affordable For homebuyers, the Agency offers a suite of affordable projects can earn annual grants up to the amount of one-year of increased City property taxes on the new development housing. Several communities in North Carolina, including mortgage and down payment assistance products to (above the base tax on the original land or property) for up to ten years. The Affordable Housing Fee Rebate allows Wake County, Asheville, and, most recently, Chapel Hill, expand homebuying options for low- and moderatedevelopers of eligible affordable housing to qualify for a 50 percent rebate on certain City development fees. The City is have passed general obligation bonds to fund development income families.27 The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s also considering funding land acquisition or development costs to develop units on high impact sites and has established ofa affordable units.

City of low Asheville developed Rural Housing Service housing trust fundThe to provide interesthas loans to developers of affordable housing.provides first mortgages and several unique funding tools to incentivize the development of payment assistance to eligible first-time homebuyers in Demand-side: Accessing Maintaining Housing affordable units, including a landand use incentive grant and a fee rural areas through the Section 502 Direct Loan Program.28 26 Demand-side interventions include financial assistance to helpatindividuals purchase homes,toavoid rebate.

The Land Use Incentive Grant essentially functions and as services Homeowners risk of losing their homes foreclosure foreclosure, overcome barriers to renting, and avoid eviction. a property tax rebate. Eligible affordable housing projects can may qualify for mortgage payment assistance through earn annual grants up to the amount of one-year of increased the NC Foreclosure Prevention Fund and free counseling State and Federal Tools 29 City taxesthe on the new offers development the basemortgage through Statepayment Home Foreclosure Forproperty homebuyers, Agency a suite (above of affordable andthe down assistancePrevention products toProject. expand 27 tax on the original landfor or lowproperty) for up to ten years.families.

The homebuying options and moderate-income The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service provides first and developers payment assistance first-time homebuyers in rural areas through theis Affordable Housing Feemortgages Rebate allows of eligibleto eligible For renters, the largest and most well-known program 28 Section 502 Direct Program.

Homeowners risk of losing their homes to foreclosure may qualify for(formerly mortgage affordable housing toLoan qualify for a 50 percent rebate onatcertain the federal Housing Choice Voucher program City development fees. The City is also considering funding “Section 8”), which pays the difference between the actual land acquisition or development costs to develop units on rent of a unit and what a household can afford.30 Other high impact sites and has established a housing trust fund to federal resources provide rent assistance and services provide low interest loans to developers of affordable housing. to specific populations, such as the HUD-Veterans 25 https://gsn.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=331f8a985a244e8fb6e6a2ad23731179 26 Affairs Supportive Housing and the Supportive Services ftp://ftp.ashevillenc.gov/OED/CommAndEconDevIncentives/KeyReadingforCreativeEconDevConsulting/City%20of%20Asheville%20All%20Development%20Incentiv Demand-side: Accessing for Veteran Families programs.31 HUD also provides es%204-15-13.pdf 27 https://www.nchfa.com/home-buyers/buy-home rental assistance funding for households experiencing and Maintaining Housing 28 https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/single-family-housing-direct-home-loans Demand-side interventions include financial assistance homelessness through the Emergency Solutions Grant and services to help individuals purchase homes, avoid and Continuum of Care Rental Assistance.32 A detailed foreclosure, overcome barriers to renting, and avoid eviction. comparison of North Carolina’s state and federal rental

19

similar incentives to rent to families and individuals experiencing homelessness, as well as housing stability bonuses for landlords who successfully retain tenants.39

Local Tools Two state-funded rental assistance programs are administered by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in partnership with the Agency: Key Rental Assistance and the Transitions to Community Living Voucher (TCLV).34 Key Rental Assistance is tied to specific units called “Targeted Units,� which are typically designated through the Housing Credit development process.35 Targeted Units are reserved for people with disabilities who are referred to the units through agencies approved by DHHS. Key Rental Assistance helps make the units affordable to occupants living on Social Security Income/Social Security Disability Income by subsidizing a portion of monthly rent. To receive Housing Credit financing, properties must set aside 10 to 20 percent of units as Targeted Units.

The Transitions to Community Living Voucher provides rent assistance to help individuals live successfully in integrated community settings rather than institutional settings such as group homes.36 In the wake of Hurricane Florence in September of 2018, a new program called Back@Home North Carolina, administered by DHHS in partnership with the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness, was created to help individuals and families who are ineligible for FEMA assistance quickly transition to safe, sustainable, longer-term housing and secure supportive services.37 An emerging complement to rental assistance is the landlord risk mitigation fund, which provides financial assurances to engage private market landlords who are wary of renting to low-income tenants, usually for fear that they will not be able to pay rent or will damage units.

Both Key Rental Assistance and TCLV include incentives for landlords, such as reimbursements for unpaid damages and unpaid rent after tenant move-out.38 The Landlord Incentive Pilot Program is another initiative offering

As with supply-side interventions, municipalities typically focus on land use levers to promote demand-side access to affordable housing.40 Land banking and community land trusts (CLTs) are among the most promising models for preserving housing affordability, particularly when used together. Land banks are public entities, often run by local governments, that acquire and convert vacant or foreclosed properties into productive uses like affordable housing. In North Carolina, several statutes permit local governments to land bank lots and properties by granting them power to acquire and hold property, stabilize property and eliminate encumbrances (such as unpaid liens), and convey property to a redeveloper.41 Unlike land banks, CLTs are private entities that hold land in trust to provide affordable housing (or other community assets) in perpetuity.42 CLTs do not have the same powers as land banks to clear titles or tackle other encumbrances on properties, but they can purchase land from land banks and manage the sale and rental of affordable units.43 CLTs ensure long-term affordability by facilitating development of housing on their land, then selling homes at affordable prices to low- and moderate-income buyers or renters. CLTs typically provide a ninety-nine-year lease to homeowners and have stipulations that require an affordable unit must be sold to a qualifying household to ensure long-term affordability of units. This ensures that homes will remain affordable for the next generation of buyers. North Carolina currently has at least two CLTs: the Durham Community Land Trust, and the Community Home Trust of Orange County.

While land use tools are the primary means for local entities to expand affordable housing supply, they are not the only way to expand access. Rental assistance programs and landlord risk mitigation funds can both be implemented at the local level by municipal or nonprofit entities. For example, Dorcas Ministries in Cary, North

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assistance options, including information on recipient eligibility requirements and eligible uses of funds, is available at the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency’s website.33

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

Carolina offers eligible applicants financial assistance to cover rent, mortgage, utility, and other costs.44 Likewise, several cities including Portland, Oregon and Orlando, Florida have created landlord risk mitigation funds that expand access to private rental housing to low-income tenants.45 One particular benefit of this model is it can engage landlords in expanding housing access without necessarily requiring much financial investment, since landlords are only reimbursed if damages or losses are actually incurred.

Local solutions to help renters in danger of eviction are also emerging across the state. In May 2018, the Durham City Council voted to help fund the pilot Eviction Diversion Program, which provides legal representation to tenants facing eviction who cannot afford to pay for legal services.46 Greensboro is developing a similar program to “act as a stopgap between the initial filing for an eviction in court and the tenant going to court.” In other words, the program will work to mediate eviction cases after the landlord has filed for eviction and attempt to find a resolution outside of the court system.47 As of fall 2018, eviction mitigation initiatives are also being developed in Mecklenburg and Wake Counties.

CONCLUSION While planners know the many benefits and impacts affordable housing has for their communities, identifying specific local housing needs and crafting appropriate solutions tailored to unique market conditions can be a challenge, particularly since many of the biggest funding resources for housing are controlled at the state and federal, rather than municipal or regional, levels. However, many of these state and federal programs have flexible local implementation options, or can be layered in different ways to achieve specific housing goals. Local governments and other entities can also use land use and other policy tools to further enhance housing strategies. For example, if a town is rapidly growing and faces a shortage of affordable units, a good strategy could couple land use tools like Asheville’s tax and fee rebate programs to promote creation of affordable apartments with community land trusts to ensure long-term affordability of single-family homes. If, on the other hand, a town has a surplus of “naturally occurring affordable housing” but few landlords willing to rent to low-income tenants, local governments and nonprofits might prioritize rental assistance or landlord risk mitigation programs to increase access to those units.

21

The North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association identified affordable housing as a strategic priority in the Chapter’s 2018-2022 Four-Year Plan for Chapter Work and Development (i.e., Chapter Work Plan).

Specifically, the Chapter Work Plan states: APA-NC can serve as a resource for data, defining the problem, and potential solutions that can be implemented in NC, as well as a source of advocacy for enhanced local authority. Many local governments in NC have done great work on this topic; their findings and best practices should be broadly shared. APA-NC can also work with partners to dispel myths about affordable housing, such as adverse impacts on property values or increases in crime, neither of which have been observed in rigorous studies.48 In the summer of 2018, the APA-NC Affordable Housing Task Force was launched. The membership includes a broad array of affordable housing advocates including planners, nonprofit and for-profit affordable housing developers, community developers, land use law experts, housing authorities, and local and regional governments. Over the next year, this Task Force will be working to highlight the tools and programs being employed by local governments across North Carolina, and will be developing a web portal for easy access to this information. This web portal will serve as a clearinghouse to North Carolina’s planners and housing advocates seeking to identify case study examples of tools and approaches employed by other communities in the state for consideration in their locality.

With populations and housing values continuing to outpace residential development and income growth in many North Carolina communities, there is every reason to invest now in long-term affordable housing. Bringing local players and state administrators to the same table can help build shared understanding of the varying affordable housing needs in communities across the state as well as understanding of current and emerging tools and programs that facilitate development, preservation, and access to affordable units.

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E S

END NOTES 1.

Cohen, 2007

2.

Coley et al., 2013

3.

Meyers et al., 2005

4.

Yun & Evangelou, 2016

5.

NCHFA, 2017

6.

Vartanian et al., 2015

7.

Diamond & McQuade, 2016

8.

NCHFA, 2018

9.

Wardrip et al., 2011

10.

11.

https://www.nchfa.com/about-us/research-reporting-and-policy/ housing-research For example, eviction filings and homelessness counts were added in 2018 as prominent topics in housing.

12.

https://www.policymap.com/

13.

https://nchousing.org/mapping-housing-insecurity/

14.

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/cp.html

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

For a detailed summary of all Agency programs, see “Affordable Housing Is Our Business� at https://www.nchfa.com/sites/default/files/page_ attachments/AffordableHousingIsOurBusiness.pdf https://www.nchfa.com/homeownership-partners/communitypartners/community-programs/self-help-loan-pool Essential Single-Family Rehabilitation Loan Pool: https://www.nchfa. com/homeownership-partners/community-partners/communityprograms/single-family-rehabilitation-loan-pool; Urgent Repair Program: https://www.nchfa.com/homeownership-partners/ community-partners/community-programs/urgent-repair-program; Displacement Prevention Partnership: https://www.nchfa.com/ current-homeowners/repairing-your-home/displacement-preventionpartnership https://www.nccommerce.com/ruraldevelopment/state-cdbg/disasterrecovery-program https://www.nchfa.com/rental-housing-partners/rental-developers/ rental-development-financing-options/low-income-housing-tax-credits Rental Production Program: https://www.nchfa.com/rental-housingpartners/rental-developers/rental-development-financing-options/ rental-production-program-loans; Workforce Housing Loan Program: https://www.nchfa.com/rental-housing-partners/rental-developers/ rental-development-financing-options/workforce-housing-loanprogram Allowable rent caps in LIHTC-funded properties are based on Area Median Income. Thus, higher median incomes in urban areas translate to higher allowable rents, helping developers pay back the loans used to build Housing Credit properties. In many rural markets, however, allowable rents are not high enough to cover construction costs, leaving a funding gap and making the project less attractive to private lenders.

Programs that provide interest-free debt financing, such as WHLP, can fill the gap.

Lorin, 2018

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

23.

Lucia, 2018

24.

GSN, 2018

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

ht t p s://g s n .m ap s . a r c g i s .c om /ap p s/web ap pv ie we r/i nde x . html?id=331f8a985a244e8fb6e6a2ad23731179 ftp://ftp.ashevillenc.gov/OED/CommAndEconDevIncentives/ KeyReadingforCreativeEconDevConsulting/City%20of%20 Asheville%20All%20Development%20Incentives%204-15-13.pdf https://www.nchfa.com/home-buyers/buy-home https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/single-family-housingdirect-home-loans NC Foreclosure Prevention Fund: http://www.ncforeclosureprevention. gov/; State Home Foreclosure Prevention Program: http://www. ncforeclosureprevention.gov/shfpp.aspx https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/public_indian_housing/ programs/hcv/about/fact_sheet HUD-VASH: https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/public_indian_ housing/programs/hcv/vash; SSVF: https://www.va.gov/homeless/ssvf/ HUD awards CoC-RA funds directly to Continuums of Care (“CoCs”), which are local/regional consortia of homeless services providers, while ESG funds flow through the state Department of Health and Human Services, which then awards them to CoC applicants. See https://www. hudexchange.info/programs/esg/ and https://www.hudexchange.info/ programs/coc/. https://www.nchfa.com/about-us/research-reporting-and-policy/ agency-investment-impacts https://www.nchfa.com/community-living-programs See the most recent Qualified Allocation Plan, which guides the Housing Credit development process, here: https://www.nchfa.com/ rental-housing-partners/rental-developers/qualified-allocation-plan.

TCLV is a feature of the Transitions to Community Living Initiative, which is part of North Carolina’s Olmstead Settlement Agreement.

See https://www2.ncdhhs.gov/mhddsas/providers/dojsettlement/ nc-settlement-olmstead.pdf and https://www.ncdhhs.gov/about/ department-initiatives/transitions-community-living-initiative. https://www.backathome.org/ https://www.nchfa.com/sites/default/files/page_attachments/ TCLVRiskMitigationHandout.pdf

39.

https://www.ncceh.org/lipp/

40.

Thaden et al., 2016

41.

Mulligan, 2014

42.

Thaden et al., 2016

43.

Thaden et al., 2016

44.

https://dorcascary.org/services/financial-assistance/

45.

Miller, 2016

46.

Vaughan, 2018

47.

CHCS, 2018

48.

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https://apa-nc.org/about/four-year-plan-for-chapter-work-anddevelopment-2018-2022/

Center for Housing and Community Studies [CHCS]. (2018). Eviction Diversion Program (EDP) [Web page]. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Center for Housing and Community Studies. Available at https://chcs.uncg.edu/research/projects/eviction-diversion-program-edp/.

Mulligan, T. (2014, March). How a North Carolina local government can operate a land bank for redevelopment. Coates’ Canons: NC Local Government Law. Available at https://canons.sog.unc.edu/how-a-north-carolina-localgovernment-can-operate-a-land-bank-for-redevelopment/.

Cohen, R. (2007). The positive impacts of affordable housing on health: A research summary. The Center for Housing Policy and Enterprise Community Partners. Available at http://www.housingpartners.com/ assets/creating_change/http___app.bronto.pdf.

North Carolina Housing Finance Agency [NCHFA]. (2017, November).

Urgent home repair: Quality of life and cost impacts. Available at https:// www.nchfa.com/sites/default/files/page_attachments/URPPolicyBrief.pdf.

Coley, R., Leventhal, T., Lynch, A. & Kull, M. (2013, September). Poor quality housing is tied to children’s emotional and behavioral problems. MacArthur Foundation: How Housing Matters. Available at https://www.macfound. org/media/files/HHM_Policy_Research_Brief_-_Sept_2013.pdf.

Diamond, R. & McQuade, T. (2016). Who wants affordable housing in their backyard? An equilibrium analysis of low income property development (Working Paper No. 22204). Retrieved from National Bureau of Economic Research website: www.nber.org/papers/w22204.

Grounded Solutions Network [GSN]. (2018). What is inclusionary housing? [Web page]. InclusionaryHousing.org. Available at https:// inclusionaryhousing.org/inclusionary-housing-explained/what-isinclusionary-housing/.

Lorin, E. (2018, April). “How You Can Help Fix America's Affordable Housing Crisis (And Earn Returns In The Process)”. Forbes. Available at https://www. forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2018/04/16/how-you-can-helpfix-americas-affordable-housing-crisis-and-earn-returns-in-the-process/.

Lucia, B. (2018, August). Figuring out if 'Opportunity Zones' can revitalize struggling neighborhoods. Route Fifty. Available at https://www.routefifty. com/management/2018/08/alabama-opportunity-zones-birminghamhuntsville/150291/.

Meyers et al. (2005). Subsidized housing and children's nutritional status: Data from a multisite surveillance study. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 159(6):551-556. doi: 10.1001/archpedi.159.6.551.

Miller, K. (2016, April). Using incentives to engage landlords: Risk mitigation funds [Web page]. U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Available at https://www.usich.gov/news/using-incentives-to-engage-landlords-riskmitigation-funds/.

North Carolina Housing Finance Agency [NCHFA]. (2018, May). The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and neighborhood property values in North Carolina. Available at https://www.nchfa.com/sites/default/files/ page_attachments/LIHTCPolicyBrief2.pdf.

Thaden, E., Graziani, K., & Stup, A. (2016, November). Land banks and community land trusts: Not synonyms or antonyms. Complements.

Shelterforce. Available at https://shelterforce.org/2016/11/09/land-bankscommunity-land-trusts-not-synonyms-or-antonyms-complements/.

Vartanian, K., Weller, M., & Saul, A. (2015, November). Health in housing: Exploring the intersection between housing and health care.

Providence Center for Outcomes Research and Education and Enterprise Community Partners. Available at www.enterprisecommunity.org/ download?fid=4489&nid=4243.

Vaughan, D. (2018, May). “Durham eviction crisis: What the city’s going to spend on it”. The Durham Herald-Sun. Available at https://www.heraldsun. com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article212272754.html.

Wardrip, K., Williams, L., & Hague, S. (2011, January). The role of affordable housing in creating jobs and stimulating local economic development: A review of the literature. Center for Housing Policy. Available at https:// providencehousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Housing-andEconomic-Development-Report-2011.pdf.

Yun, L. & Evangelou, N. (2016). Social benefits of homeownership and stable housing. National Association of REALTORS®, Research Division. Available at https://realtoru.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/HomeownershipStable-Housing.pdf?sf53127756=1.

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WORKS CITED

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

A RTI ST RE SI DE N CI E S A S PLAC EKEEPERS U NDE R CRE ATI VE DI ST RICT DIS PLAC EMENT P RE SSURE S I N CO LU MBUS , OHIO REBECCA F. KEMPER Rebecca F. Kemper is the founder of Equitable Urban Futures, an urban studies research firm located in Columbus, Ohio and has served as a researcher for the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy at Ohio State University. She is a PhD candidate in the Knowlton School of Architecture’s City & Regional Planning program and her research

is focused on the convergence of social justice concerns and the 21st century knowledge economy revolution.

ABSTR ACT As economic segregation increases in the United States, there has also been a reframing of artist residencies. Once positioned to facilitate creative work by covering an artist’s living expenses, artist residencies are currently attempting to maintain creatives and affordable housing where they are being priced out of the neighborhood. These institutions function as part of the sharing economy where multiple artists work to support the residency itself in a communal studio environment. This collective structure often extends to non-artist neighborhood residents who experience similar economic displacement pressures through various co-produced community events, creative advocacy art production, and public calls-to-action. Such respect and coproduction of creative efforts between art residencies and the local community has shifted the artist role from ‘placemaker’ to ‘placekeeper’ in an urban planning environment that values the global creative economy but accidentally overlooks those already engaged in creative entrepreneurial production.

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IMAGE 1 - Mona Gazala, mixed media artist & founder uses her artist residency 'deal' art to build community. Photo by author.

INTRODUCTION Cities around the world are striving to become the next cultural destination, fighting to stay ahead of the global economic competition for creatives in a post-industrial world (Gross et al. 2015). Many creative city plans include worthy aspirations for urban revitalization, yet they include “fuzzy” and untethered goals from the local urban creative economy (Markusen 2013). Additionally, creative placemaking, or seeking creative human capital gains by leveraging local cultural and artistic assets with public and private partnerships, often adopts strategies and metrics from established global cities; however, these efforts often neglect the native identity, homegrown culture, and local governance needed to support artists (Nicodemus 2013; Redaelli 2011). Such oversights can erode the very sense of authenticity and diversity which creative placemaking efforts require for economic sustainability. Furthermore, strictly commercial creative production can fuel neighborhood land speculation effects, increasing residential displacement (Grodach et al. 2014).

Creative placemaking efforts must first consider the specifics of its location when looking to adopt outside economic revitalization strategies. However, according to

Kirchberg & Kagan (2013), creative placemaking has two competing agendas: one that seeks to increase innovative, yet disruptive, creative production and another that seeks to maintain the district’s cultural identity.

This paper will use the city and artist residency environment of Columbus, Ohio as a case study to explore the opportunities local artist residencies can play as placekeepers within communities threatened by economic displacement. While planners are actively shaping Columbus, Ohio’s urban context for the global creative economy, the city is experiencing some of the highest levels of economic segregation in the country (Florida & Mellander 2015; Price 2015). The paper will explore how contemporary artist residencies hold critical knowledge for urban planners as they try to balance the competing demands of the creative city agenda.

PL ACEKEEPING AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO PL ACEMAKING According to art scholar and activist, Roberto Bedoya (2014), artists and their affiliated institutions should act

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

as placekeepers in the face of current economic segregation.

He defines placekeeping as actions whereby local and visiting artists work collaboratively with neighborhood residents to strengthen existing culture and neighborhood cohesion.

Here, Bedoya’s placekeeping perspective recognizes the identity tension put forth by other creative city scholars, where the focus on staying globally competitive can promote homogenous development strategies that not only fail to account for low-income artist housing needs but also eliminate the local, vernacular culture of a place (Zukin 2009).

Bedoya purposefully positions placekeeping in opposition to “creative placemaking,” noting how this latter term has been commandeered by developers. Developers capitalize on urban trends to boost the perceived relevance of their proposals, and the creative city agenda lends itself to a city image narrative composed of the aesthetically beautiful, streamlined housing environments for a futuristic knowledge economy (Olson 2018). Other scholars have also noted how creative placemaking strategies often marginalize creatives themselves, along with other low-income residents, in the development process (Zitcer 2018). This marginalization can occur through misunderstandings of the creative needs (e.g. prioritizing luxury housing assets instead of affordable mixed-use work/live production spaces) exacerbated by agendas and decision-makers unfamiliar with both the creative economy and increasing economic segregation.

ARTIST RESIDENCIES, STUDIO WORKSPACES, AND CURRENT ECONOMIC SEGREGATION The creative economy is supported through numerous of institutions at various budgetary, outreach, and production scales. Traditionally, artist residencies have functioned on a household-scale of supporting visiting artist. However, global economic competition has started to shift this institution into a much more diversified state in terms of both scope and scale given that it requires localized human capital development. The Alliance of Artists Communities, a professional organization representing international artist residencies, defines contemporary artist residencies as institutions that, “provide dedicated time and space for creative work…[located] in urban or rural areas, serving one artist at a time or multiple artists” (2017, 1). In the face of unprecedented economic disparities, artist residencies are 27

IMAGE 2 - Kelsey Leib’s community displacement narrative

woven shelter is pitched at Second Sight. Photo by author.

now explicitly attempting to prevent resident displacement where creatives and non-creative residents alike are being priced out of neighborhoods (Bedoya 2014; Timberg 2015).

Such economic displacement is highly correlated with cities pursuing global creative placemaking development strategies and has resulted in unsafe and inhumane housing conditions for neighborhood residents, both in and outside of the creative class (Farha 2018; McCausland 2016; Peck 2005).

A model of this placekeeping initiative is featured in Rick Lowe’s Project Row House, an artist residency located in Houston, Texas. This artist residency is made up of renovated row houses that provide local, economicallymarginalized residents a place to live. There, they can also engage in the creative economy alongside internationallyrenown visiting artists. In turn, the visiting artists must advocate for resident needs in one of the most unplanned, fiercely developing cities in the US as they achieve their artistic goals (Kimmelman 2006; Mixon 2010). Researchers have noted that engaging marginalized, low-income populations in creative work can be a way to overcome

COLUMBUS, OHIO CASE STUDY Through the Great Recession, Columbus, Ohio has had a risk-averse local economy based on banking, insurance, and education; in fact, its highly stable, business-focused economy led to a course at Harvard Business Review called “The Columbus Way” touting its supposedly recessionproof economy (Blackford 2016; Fischer 2017). Coming off of the Great Recession, Columbus has increased by more than one million residents as it pursues a 21st century knowledge-based economy, complete with winning the Smart Cities federal transportation grant (City of Columbus 2016). Yet, Columbus has pronounced economic segregation; economic success has favored those in the creative class (Florida & Mellander 2015; Pendall & Hedman 2015). While the knowledge economy is now the primary focus of the city’s planning office, bridging this economic divide in the city’s oldest neighborhood, Franklinton, may need more than traditional creative placemaking initiatives.

labor opportunities disappeared (Edin & Shaefer 2016; Ehrenreich 2011). At the same time, central Ohio saw a steep increase in the number of millennial knowledgeeconomy workers, including creatives, migrating to the city towards the end of the Great Recession, although the sustainability of this population influx is questionable (Millsap 2018). Researchers have noted that the millennial generation, globally, has a rather homogenous consumption and lifestyle preference towards authentic, meaningful, and urban environments (Fenich, et al. 2014), This cohort influx exacerbated an already tough housing market for owners and renters alike in Columbus, Ohio, creating economic displacement pressures upon all neighborhood districts in close proximity to the Columbus downtown area. An average rental cost jumped from $873 to just over $1,062 between the years 2014 to 2017 (Florida & Mellander 2015; Miller 2018). With additional river improvement measures to mitigate flooding into the Franklinton neighborhood, this once working class area is now front and center in creative city revitalization efforts (City of Columbus 2018; Goldberg-Miller & Heimlich 2017; Papsidero 2013). These housing cost escalations can also

FR ANKLINTON, SECOND SIGHT PROJECT, AND PL ANNING’S KNOWLEDGE OF PL ACE IDENTIT Y The Franklinton neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio is located in the natural floodplain of the Scioto River. Throughout its history the area was prone to disastrous flooding, yet its close proximity to downtown industries made it an ideal location for housing the working class (Blackford 2016).

With the Great Recession and the knowledge economy revolution of the early 21st century, Franklinton became even more economically depressed as livable-wage

IMAGE 3 - Visiting artist community talk (pictured left to

right Kelsey Leib, Jessie Glover Boettcher, Mona Gazala).

Photo by author.

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barriers to employment (Symons & Hurley 2018). Yet, placekeeping is more than just economic sustainability, it is about supporting local identities. Rick Lowe’s efforts are directly aligned with placekeeping initiatives of strengthening local identities and neighborhood cohesion by artists in residence working collaboratively with local residents to support their continued existence in the city.

Rick Lowe’s Project Row House has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship; his work has also been recognized by planning scholars, specifically with his 2016 keynote address at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference (Lee 2014; Lee & Wood 2016).

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burden incoming creatives and knowledge economy workers, often in the beginning stages of their careers (Timberg 2015).

One artist, Mona Gazala, deliberately moved to Columbus from Cleveland, Ohio as she was observing problematic residential displacement affecting working class districts within the city at the start of the Great Recession. She first bought a house on the west side of Franklinton, overlooking the neighborhood’s first, yet vacant at the time, Bellows School building. After a few years, she purchased a duplex directly behind this property. This complex became the Second Sight Project, a youth community center complete with art classes and a free lending library and illuminated by a font-based art piece stating “We’ll Only Be Dealing In Ideas From Now On” (Image 1). Second Sight Project is now a a 501(c)3 nonprofit with both domestic and international visiting artists. Gazala has been intentional in using placekeeping as a mission for her artist residency, offering weekly art lessons and advocacy-based participatory art creation activities whereby neighborhood residents can present their experiences with economic housing pressures in Columbus. She requires all artists-in-residence to become informed residents of the neighborhood, create a community-centered interactive program for residents during their stay, and provide at least one free gallery showing of their work to the local public.

In many ways, Gazala has incorporated Rick Lowe’s Houston artist residency model into the Franklinton neighborhood.

Her efforts have led to multiple interviews in local newspapers and grant-funded work where she has been able to capture and convey stories of economic displacement and identity of place which often go unnoticed. Second Sight Project regularly hosts artists who portray the untethered agendas of creative city as unflattering and provide opportunities for local residents to document their displacement in a collaborative, spatial form (Image 2). One such hosted artist was San Francisco-area creative Kelsey Leib (Image 3) who chose to lecture visiting university fine arts students on the precarious role artists can play within neighborhood development demands and subsequent economic displacement. Such public talks and communal art installations from Second Sight Project artists have created opportunities for local Franklinton residents to convey their stories, their local identity, and their urban displacement concerns to other Columbus residents unaware 29

of the day-to-day reality of living in poverty under the constant specter of displacement. Second Sight Project is proving to be a conveyer of local identity knowledge and value systems as it promotes the creative economy needs for economically sustainable, authentic milieus. It provides the opportunity to be a creative while actively combating homogenous, creative city renewal agendas ill-fitted to this particular location.

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR PL ANNING PR ACTITIONERS The embedded nature of artist residencies positions them to promote an economically sustainable creative economy by both maintaining a neighborhood’s identity and by attracting creatives to the area. Therefore, artist residencies can aid planners in addressing the contradictory goals of a globalized economy and local character of the creative city agenda (Evans 2009; Kirchberg & Kagan 2013).

As competition for urban space increases within our globalized economy, planners will have to seek local creative collectives to provide critical knowledge of the community for sustainable, responsible, and successful planning growth. Planners could work directly with artist residencies to strengthen their community outreach initiatives by using their expertise, creative and greaterresident social networks, and location to better plan for neighborhood identity within creative city initiatives.

Additionally, cities could actively attract artist residencies by funding localized grants, particularly operational overhead grants missing from federal funding initiatives, to reinvest in the physical and human capital of inner-city neighborhoods.

Alliance of Artists Communities 2017 City of Columbus. “Scioto Mile & Bicentennial Park Renewal.” 2018. http://www.sciotomile.com/about-themile/development-of-the-mile/ Bedoya, Roberto. “OP-ED Spatial Justice: Rasquachification, Race and the City.” Creative Times Reports, September 15, 2014. http:// creativetimereports.org/2014/09/15/spatial-justice-rasquachificationrace-and-the-city/.

Blackford, Mansel G. Columbus, Ohio: Two centuries of business and environmental change. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2016.

City of Columbus. “Scioto Mile & Bicentennial Park Renewal.” 2018. http:// www.sciotomile.com/about-the-mile/development-of-the-mile/ City of Columbus. “Smart Columbus Application & Award.” Smart Columbus Home, 2016. https://www.columbus.gov/smartcolumbus/home/.

Edin, Kathryn, and H. Luke Shaefer. $2.00 a day: living on almost nothing in America. Boston: Mariner Books, 2016.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2011. Nickel and dimed: on (not) getting by in America. New York: Picador.

Farha, Leilani. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living, and on the Right to Non-Discrimination in This Context.” United Nations, September 19, 2018. http://www.undocs.org/A/73/310/rev.1.

Fenich, George G., Sheila Scott-Halsell, Godwin-Charles Ogbeide, and Kathryn Hashimoto. “What the Millennial Generation from Around the World Prefers in Their Meetings, Conventions, and Events.” Journal of Convention & Event Tourism 15 (2014): 236–241.

Fischer, Alex. “For Columbus, Public-Private Partnerships Are Key to Economic Development.” The Brookings Institute, May 17, 2017. https:// www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/05/17/for-columbus-publicprivate-partnerships-are-key-to-economic-development/.

Florida, Richard, and Charlotta Mellander. “Segregated City.” Martin Prosperity Institute,2015. http://martinprosperity.org/media/ Segregated%20City.pdf.

Goldberg-Miller, Shoshanah B.D., and Joe E. Heimlich. 2017. “Creatives’ expectations: The role of supercreatives in cultural district development”.

Cities. 62: 120-130.

Grodach, Carl, Nicole Foster, and James Murdoch III. “Gentrification and the Artistic Dividend: The Role of the Arts in Neighborhood Change.” Journal of the American Planning Association 80, no. 1 (2014): 21–35.

Gross, Stephen, and Noel Campbell. “Central City Vibrancy and New Business Venturing.” Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy 4, no. 2 (2015): 257–71.

Kimmelman, Michael. 2006. “In Houston, Art Is Where the Home Is”. New York Times. 156.

Kirchberg, Volker, and Sacha Kagan. “The roles of artists in the emergence of creative sustainable cities: Theoretical clues and empirical illustrations.”

City, Culture and Society. 4 (2013): 137-152.

Lee, Felicia R. 2014. “MacArthur Awards Go to 21 Diverse Fellows”. New York Times. 163 (56627).

Lee, Aujean & James Wood. 2016. “Student Bulletin: Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning”. ACSP Annual Conference Proceedings.

Markusen, Ann. “Fuzzy Concepts, Proxy Data: Why Indicators Would Not Track Creative Placemaking Success.” International Journal of Urban Sciences17, no. 3 (2013): 291–303.

McCausland, Phil. “’Ghost Ship’ One of Country’s Deadliest Building Fires in Half-Century”. NBC News. (December 4, 2016). Retrieved September 4, 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ghost-ship-one-countrys-deadliest-building-fires-half-century-n691766.

Miller, Derek. 2018. “Top 10 Cities With the Largest Rent Increases – 2018 Edition.” 2018 Edition. SmartAssets. https://smartasset.com/checkingaccount/top-10-cities-with-the-largest-rent-increases-2018-edition.

Millsap, Adam. “Columbus, Ohio Is Booming But Will It Last?” 2018. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2018/08/06/columbus-ohiois-booming-but-will-it-last/#1a5c12a325be Mixon, J. 2010. “Four Land Use Vignettes from Unzoned (?) Houston”. Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. 24 (1): 159-186.

Nicodemus, Anne Gadwa. 2013. “Fuzzy Vibrancy: Creative Placemaking as Ascendant US Cultural Policy.” Cultural Trends 22 (3–4): 213–222.

Olson, Carly. “This Is Why Art Is the New Must-Have Amenity for Leading Real-Estate Developers.” Architectural Digest, January 3, 2018. https://www. architecturaldigest.com/story/art-is-the-new-real-estate-amenity.

Papsidero, Vince. “East Franklinton Creative Districts Plan” City of Columbus Planning Department. 2013. https://www.columbus.gov/uploadedFiles/ Columbus/Departments/Development/Planning_Division/Current_ Projects/East_Franklinton/EF%20District%20Overview%20April%20 2013.pdf Peck, Jamie. “Struggling with the Creative Class.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, no. 4 (2005): Pages 740–770. http:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00620.x/full.

Pendall, Rolf, and Carl Hedman. “Worlds Apart: Inequality between America’s Most and Least Affluent Neighborhoods.” Neighborhoods, Cities and Metros. Urban Institute, June 2015. https://www.urban.org/ sites/default/files/publication/60956/2000288-Worlds-Apart-Inequalitybetween-Americas-Most-and-Least-Affluent-Neighborhoods.pdf.

Price, Rita. “Neighborhood Inequality Particularly Profound in Columbus Area.” The Columbus Dispatch, July 12, 2015.

Redaelli, Eleonora. “Analyzing the ‘Creative City’ Governance: Relational Processes in Columbus, Ohio.” City, Culture and Society 2, no. 2 (2011): 85–91.

Symons, Jessica, and Ursula Hurley. “Strategies for Connecting Low Income Communities to the Creative Economy through Play: Two Case Studies in Northern England.” Creative Industries Journal, 2018, 1–16.

Timberg, Scott. Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Zitcer, Andrew. “Making Up Creative Placemaking.” Journal of Planning Education and Research, (May 2018).

Zukin, Sharon. “Changing Landscapes of Power: Opulence and the Urge for Authenticity.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33, no.

2 (2009): 1187–1201.

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WORKS CITED

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

P LAN N I N G FO R WO MEN: LE SSO N S FO R TH E UNIT ED STAT ES F RO M I NTE RNATI O NA L INT ERVENT IONS MIA CANDY Mia Candy is a Senior Planner and community engagement specialist at Renaissance Planning in Durham, North Carolina. For the past ten years, she has worked in the U.S. and South Africa in the fields of planning, education, and public health. Mia’s work falls at the intersection of

planning, placemaking, and urban design, with a focus on community engagement, facilitation, and coalition building. Mia received her Master’s in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and served on the inaugural editorial board for the Carolina Planning Journal.

ABSTR ACT “Gender Mainstreaming” is a policy framework that gives men and women equal access to city resources. Applied to city planning, gender mainstreaming requires that we understand and center the needs of women in the urban environment. Cities across the globe are implementing a variety of gendered policies and design practices to meet the needs of women. This article examines five international case studies to understand how American cities may benefit from gender mainstreaming. We argue that by planning for women, we can build cities that are more accessible, convenient, and affordable for all.

“ An investment in one group can cascade out and up and be a substantial investment in the broader well-being of a nation–one whose policies and practices create an equitable economy, a healthy community of opportunity, and just society.”1 –The “Curb Cut Effect,” as defined by Policy Link

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Our cities are built by men, for men. Those of us who identify as women understand this to be true based on our lived experiences. Increasingly, data is emerging to empirically validate our collective, subjective experience that American cities are less safe, more expensive, and less convenient for women. One way for planners and policymakers to address such disparities is to adopt the principle that “a feminist city is a humanist city.�2 This approach means that when we plan for women and girls, we create cities that are overall more equitable, accessible, sustainable, resilient, and efficient for all people.

AMERICAN CITIES ARE DESIGNED AND PL ANNED BY MEN Representation matters. Despite relative gender parity in enrollment in American planning, architecture, and public policy programs, women remain underrepresented in these same professional fields.3 In 2017, women accounted for 51 percent of all planning graduate students,4 60 percent of public policy, affairs, and administration students,5 and 40 percent of all architecture students.6 In contrast, women made up only 37 percent of faculty at planning schools,7 roughly 40 percent of American Planning Association (APA) membership,8 36 percent of newly licensed architects, and 40 percent of speakers at major urbanism conference in the U.S.10 As of March 2018, just 22 percent of US cities with over 30,000 people had woman mayors.11 Planning schools may be churning out female graduates every year, but planning curricula remain dominated by (primarily white) male authors. A recent review of major urbanist textbooks found that, for example, only four out of sixtysix contributors to the 2016 edition of the Routledge City Reader were women.12

CITIES ARE LESS SAFE, MORE EXPENSIVE, AND LESS CONVENIENT FOR WOMEN When cities are planned, designed, and managed based on the experiences of men, they fall short in meeting the needs of women. Furthermore, a lack of intentional design for women frequently results in cities that are less safe, more expensive, and less convenient. These inequities are most acute for women of color, women living in poverty, women with disabilities, and young girls and seniors.

It is therefore vital that, when we observe and address behavioral patterns in cities, we do so not just from a gendered lens, but also from an intersectional feminist lens.

Less Safe For a long time, real and perceived danger for women in cities was widely understood, but largely anecdotal.

This is changing as researchers collect more information that supports, empirically, the safety differential among genders. Most recently, a 2018 study conducted in New York City found that 75 percent of female respondents had been harassed or been the victims of theft while taking public transportation, compared to 47 percent of men.13 This trend is not limited to public transportation either; harassment of women on bicycles goes back to the late 19th century14 and persists today. In the U.S., the Star Bike Messenger Association (*BMA)15 is particularly vocal about the daily harassment they experience on the job.16 The gender gap in safety concerns is not limited to harassment; in fact, the 2014 U.S. Bicycling Participation Study showed that 55 percent of women fear being hit while cycling, compared to only 49 percent of men.17 The differential between perceived safety for men and women may explain, in part, why women cycle less than men: nationally, just 28 percent of bike commuters are women.18

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More Expensive

TOWARDS A SOLUTION: GENDER

Perhaps less obvious, is that overall, cities are also more MAINSTREAMING IN THE PUBLIC REALM expensive for women. This phenomenon–where a product, Our cities are gendered. The problem, at its root, is the service, or experience is more expensive for women than primacy given to men’s experiences and needs in policy for men–has come to be known as the ‘Pink Tax.’ Part of and design decision making. The solution, therefore, lies this heightened cost is closely related to prioritization of in a reframing, in a shift to city building that centers the safety. For example, in the aforementioned New York City experiences of women and other marginalized groups study, 29 percent of women said that they avoid taking public alongside those of men. The United Nations articulates transportation late at night, compared to 8 percent of men.19 this approach as “gender mainstreaming,” defined as: As a result, women were more likely to rely on expensive alternatives like taxis and ride-sharing apps. Women who “a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality. can afford to are, therefore, paying between twenty-six to fifty Mainstreaming is not an end in itself but a strategy, an approach, dollars more per month than men for transportation. Those a means to achieve the goal of gender equality. Mainstreaming who cannot afford to pay the extra cost of a safer, private involves ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal ride, must instead navigate potentially unsafe situations. of gender equality are central to all activities–policy development, In addition, primary caregivers–75 percent of whom are research, advocacy/ dialogue, legislation, resource allocation, women–spend an additional $100 per month on trips to and planning, implementation, and monitoring of programs and assist children and the elderly in their care. This additional projects.”21 20 cost burden, coupled with the gender pay gap, means that women are paying more, and a larger proportion of their While gender mainstreaming as a guiding principle has income, to live, work, and spend time in cities. primarily been integrated into the fields of international development and global health, a few cities have tailored gender mainstreaming programs for the city scale. In Less Convenient an urban context, gender mainstreaming manifests as When we explore the ways that women and men use cities differently, we run the risk of reinforcing gender “laws, rules, and regulations that give men and women essentialisms. That being said, data show that, in general, equal access to city resources.”22 This approach includes both policy and design interventions in the public realm: women’s travel behaviors differ from those of men. While buildings, streets, public parks and recreation areas, plazas, men tend to commute to and from work twice a day during traditional peak hours, women take more circuitous routes, pedestrian and cycling networks, neighborhoods, and districts. Cities in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, make multiple stops, and travel at off-peak hours. There are and Australia are beginning to explore what gender also modal differences. Women walk and take transit more than men, while men drive and cycle more than women. mainstreaming means for these spaces, but the United States is behind the curve. By examining international Standard city infrastructure, design, and policies fail women case studies, we can better understand what gender and caretakers by ignoring their day-to-day needs and modal mainstreaming might look like in the U.S., what the choices and prioritizing vehicular and peak hour travel–both barriers to success may be, and what benefits may accrue of which disproportionately cater to men. to our cities in the long-term.

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GENDER MAINSTREAMING: CASE STUDIES CASE STUDY 1: Frauen-Werk-Stadt (“Women-Work-City”)–Vienna, Austria

CASE STUDY 2: The Saltway–Seoul, South Korea

AREA OF PLANNING: Urban Design, Land Use Policy, Affordable Housing

AREA OF PLANNING: Placemaking, Public Space, Urban design

One of the most impressive applications of gender mainstreaming in urban policy can be found in Vienna, Austria. Since 1997, the city has built three subsidized housing projects–known as FrauenWerk-Stadt I, II, and III–that are designed by female architects to meet the practical everyday needs of women.23 Together, the three housing complexes supply 540 apartments for women and their families, at all stages of life, and for a variety of different family structures (for example, single mothers or young families).24 The land use and design principles that characterize the developments are safety, accessibility, and connectivity, as well as robust public and communal spaces, and access to childcare, health services, and transportation.25 FIGURE 2- The Saltway Project in Seoul, Korea is a 1-mile fitness

route that includes bright facades, public art, and interactive games and exercises. Photo Credit: Park Jung-Woo for Time Out Magazine, Seoul.

FIGURE 1- Frauen-Werk-Stadt (Women-Work-City) Complex in

Vienna, Austria. Photo Credit: Christine Zwingl.

Though some vocal critics have argued that gender mainstreaming during development is not necessary, qualitative and anecdotal evidence indicate that the complexes have improved safety and ease of movement for the women who live there. Advocates also point out that Frauen-Werk-Stadt brought a fresh perspective to the planning process and resulted in gender equity in development, without major additional cost. As a result, ‘gendersensitive analysis’ is now a requirement in all bids for city social housing contracts in Vienna.26 Such analyses consider the extent to which a development supports different types of paid and unpaid work, encourages social interaction between neighbors, fosters a sense of safety and security, and allows for different family configurations.27 A progressive policy in name and intention, the efficacy of the requirement–and whether it will translate into measurable impact–remains to be seen.

Before 2012, residents of the Yeomri-Dong neighborhood of Seoul “lived isolated, not knowing each other, and were afraid to use the public space at night due to violent crimes, mostly targeted at women.”28 Developed in 2012 through a participatory planning process, the Saltway is a one-mile fitness circuit through the Yeomri-Dong neighborhood that includes good lighting, maps, colorful public spaces and alleyways, and wayfinding, as well as security tools such as safe houses, emergency buttons, and security cameras. In this way, the Saltway incorporates principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED).

CPTED is an internationally recognized, multi-disciplinary approach for reducing crime through urban and environmental design and the management and use of built environments.29 The five core principles of CPTED are: natural surveillance (or “eyes on the street”), territoriality, access control, activity support, and management and maintenance.

Since implementation, the Korean Institute of Crime Policy has seen a 9 percent decrease in the perception of crime, and the program has been expanded to neighboring communities.30 Beyond crime intervention, the project led to supplemental benefits such as stronger community ties, and cohesion programs such as tool sharing and communal gardening. However, data collection on the actual crime rate is ongoing, and some residents– particularly women–are skeptical about the efficacy of the program in what remains a dense tangle of alleyways.

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CASE STUDY 3: Women Only Train Cars–Tokyo, Japan

CASE STUDY 4: Gender Equal Plowing–Stockholm, Sweden

PLANNING AREA: Transportation Policy, Station Design

PLANNING AREA: Maintenance, Utilities

FIGURE 3- Women-Only Subway Cars on the Keio Line in Tokyo,

Japan. Photo Credit: WikiMedia Commons, WomensCar, CC BY-SA

In the discussion of planning cities for women, one of the most well-known–and contentious–interventions is the establishment of women-only train cars. Since 2005, most subway companies operating lines in Tokyo (and Osaka) have had women-only train cars. Some providers also allow access to young boys, people with disabilities, and caregivers (regardless of gender), illustrating that when we plan for women, we plan for all caregivers and marginalized groups. The policy is coupled with the criminalization of groping.

Anyone found guilty of groping a woman is liable to imprisonment or a fine of up to 500,000 yen ($4,500). In Tokyo, providers found that “the system proved to be very effective…with complaints (decreasing) by a third in just one year.”31 Women-only train cars have also been implemented in select cities throughout India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America,32, 33 with varying success. Many critics believe that while “on the surface, it looks like the womenonly subway cars are meant to protect women,”34 the policy puts the onus on women to avoid harassment, rather than addressing the fundamental issue that men harass women in public places.

Additional challenges include the difficulty of enforcement and capacity limitations. If not thoughtfully implemented, this policy can also run the risk of reinforcing a gender dichotomy that undermines the ultimate safety of trans and non-binary women.

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Stockholm, Sweden, along with its Scandinavian siblings, is often considered an inspiration for progressive urban design and planning. Gender-equal snow plowing is the latest Scandinavian policy to push the envelope on traditional city management practices. The new policy aims to address the unequal distribution of city resources by changing the way streets and public spaces in Stockholm are plowed during winter. The city now prioritizes routes more often used by women by first clearing sidewalks, cycle lanes, bus lanes and stops, and entrances to daycares and schools, then clearing vehicular lanes and construction sites.35 After rollout, the policy was widely ridiculed as impractical. But as the initial criticism subsided, other cold climate countries took notice. In 2018, the Canadian government released a gender-conscious national budget inspired, partially, by Sweden’s gender-equal policy approaches.

FIGURE 4 - Gender-equal snow-plowing prioritizes snow removal

from sidewalks, cycle lanes and bus lanes.

Photo Credit: Викентий Елизаров for Adobe Stock.

Two years into implementation, Stockholm’s Vice Mayor stated that more people are walking, biking, and taking public transportation during winter than ever before.36 Policymakers also claim that winter-time injuries declined due to fewer vehicles on the roads and a safer environment for vulnerable pedestrians.

To be replicated worldwide, such an approach would require substantial cultural shifts, including investment in women leaders in policy-making and governance. But gender-equal snow plowing is a smart move for snowy cities that wish to encourage biking and walking (for all people), and it may act as another small step away from vehicle-supremacy and towards active transportation.

PLANNING AREA: Public Space, Data Collection, Technology, Public Participation

that women may avoid them, but also so that we can understand where intervention is needed.38 These apps serve to address the symptoms of sexual harassment and assault, while collecting invaluable data that can be used to shape urban policy and design. Data collected in the Free to Be app were published in the 2018 report, “Unsafe in the City.” This assessment is a startling indictment of the state of urban safety for women and girls across the globe. Naturally, one major limitation of these apps is that they require technological literacy and access to a smartphone.

LESSONS LEARNED AND APPLICATION IN THE UNITED STATES As we consider the applicability of these international case studies to American cities, it is important to acknowledge unique contextual and socio-political differences. However, it is still possible to extract key lessons from these examples about the value of gender mainstreaming, the challenges we will face in our own implementation, and how we may take the first step towards gender balanced cities here at home.

FIGURE 5 - The cover of the 2018 report Unsafe in the City

released by Plan International. Photo Credit: Plan International, Unsafe in the City Report

In an ideal world, women would move freely around cities without limitations or fear of harm. Gender mainstreaming policies and design are intended to help bring this vision to fruition. But in the meantime, women and girls are using technology to navigate the urban experience by crowdsourcing routes and spaces of concern.

The mobile application ‘Free to Be’ was launched in Melbourne, Australia and has since expanded to Sydney, Lima, Delhi, Madrid, and Kampala. By dropping good or bad pins at specific locations, the app allows women to identify and share public spaces that make them feel happy and safe, or uneasy and scared. For each pin, users describe what they like or dislike about the space– such as the quality of light, presence or absence of places to sit, or whether a space was busy or deserted–and the nature of any harassment. Since 2016, women and girls in the six cities used the app to identify and describe over 21,000 public spaces. Of those, 70 percent were “bad” places (where girls felt unsafe or uncomfortable). In addition, 65 percent (4,264) of the “bad” spots reported included an experience of sexual harassment or assault.

Free to Be, and several analogous apps that exist around the world,37 enable the geographic identification of “bad spots” so

1 . When we plan for women, we plan for everyone: Planning for women requires the application of what we already know to be best practices for all people: density; mixed uses; access to services, transit, and work opportunities; accessibility and connectivity; robust recreation and green spaces; aging in place; eyes on the street; and multimodal and active transportation. These principles characterize the Frauen-Werk-Stadt developments in Vienna, genderequal snow plowing in Stockholm, and the Saltway trail in Seoul. When we plan for women, we also plan with everyone; gender mainstreaming projects tend to involve participatory planning and placemaking, which, in turn, builds community and long-term social capacity.

2 . Human-Centered Design Thinking:39 Too many planning and urban design projects are driven by spurious assumptions about what people want and how they behave. Planning for targeted groups– including women, minorities, people with disabilities, youth, and seniors–forces us to “define the needs of the people using the space first and then look for technical solutions.”40 This process is known as 36

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CASE STUDY 5: Free to Be Safety App–Melbourne and Sydney, Australia; Lima, Peru; Delhi, India; Madrid, Spain; and Kampala, Uganda

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human-centered design thinking41 and is applied widely in the tech industry to put user experience front and center. The cases outlined here, particularly FrauenWerk-Stadt, CPTED, and gendered snow clearing, rely on similar user-driven data. The planning field would do well to apply this approach to urban problem solving to better meet the needs of all vulnerable groups.

3. Integrated Planning: The financial, political, cultural, and legal barriers to implementation for gender mainstreaming demand strong cross-sector integration and collaboration with experts in public administration, architecture, health, public safety, education, law, and technology. But most important is an interdisciplinary approach within our own field that effectively integrates of land use, multimodal transit, affordable housing, community development, and neighborhood design.

A central strength of the cases presented here is their foundation in integrated planning. Frauen-WerkStadt is an innovative, integrated land use, affordable housing, and design project. Similarly, the Saltway project successfully integrated placemaking, technology, policy surveillance, and community engagement. If women-only train cars are problematic in theory and application, it is because they are often proposed without an integrated education, social services, and policing plan.

4 . Treating the Symptoms While Treating the Cause: As planners, we have limited capacity to address the root causes of inequality in cities, and systemic overhaul can be slow. But our planning toolkit is well-equipped to supplement long-term strategies with immediate, high impact interventions. Gender mainstreaming is most successful when applied at a variety of scales and on multiple timelines. Women-only train cars and safety apps like Free to Be and SafetiPin are examples of tools that treat the symptoms of crime and harassment in cities and can protect women in the short run. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design integrates short-term deterrents (e.g., lighting) with longer term behavioral change mechanisms (e.g., social cohesion).

By integrating multifaceted gender mainstreaming practices, we may, eventually see cities that are safer and more equitable for all people.

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5 . Data

Gathering: Effective gender mainstreaming for urban interventions requires sufficient data on the needs, experiences, and behaviors of women.

Mobile apps such as Free to Be and SafetiPin can be a good source of data collection, especially if they are translated into compelling research and policy documents. The 2018 Unsafe in the City report converted the 22,000 ‘pins’ placed in the app into data on the nature, severity, and location of harassment and assault in six major international cities. Other initiatives are emerging to collect and disseminate data on women in cities, including the Women4Climate Knowledge Lab.42 The lab’s first case study took place right here in the U.S.–“Women and Biking: A Case Study on the Use of San Francisco Bike Lanes” was released in the summer of 2018.43

6 . Leadership,

Representation, Intentionality, Vision: What all the case studies have in common is that they required strong leadership with a clear vision and equal representation by women in the planning and development phase. To get there, we in the United States will need to reform our planning school curricula and ensure that the gender parity at the graduate level extends into the professional practice. Even with strong women leaders (and, perhaps, especially then), gender mainstreaming projects will face push-back. Are we equipped to handle it?

In most American cities, curb cuts–ramps between the sidewalk and the street–are ubiquitous. We use them every day to navigate the urban environment comfortably with our strollers, suitcases, and bicycles. We owe this convenience to a group of dedicated disability advocates who fought, over decades, for their right to move around their cities safely. When “laws and programs designed to benefit vulnerable groups, such as the disabled or people of color… end up benefiting all”44 the phenomenon is known as the “curb cut effect.” Planning for women, and gender mainstreaming policies in general, can have a profound curb cut effect. When we plan for women, we support the fair distribution of resources among genders, but we also create cities that are safer, more convenient, and more affordable for all people.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

“The Curb-Cut Effect,” Policy Link, accessed February 18, 2019, http:// www.policylink.org/about-us/curb-cut-effect.

17.

“Our Mission,” Women Led Cities, accessed February 18, 2019, https:// www.womenledcities.com/mission.

Engineering remains male dominated, with women representing roughly 20 percent of students and practitioners–and as low as 7 percent in certain tracks such as mechanical engineering. (“Higher Education,” Society of Women Engineers, accessed February 18, 2019, https://research. swe.org/category/higher-education/.)

Planning Accreditation Board. 2017 Annual Report Data: Student and Faculty Composition in PAB-Accredited Programs. December 31, 2017. http://www. planningaccreditationboard.org/index.php?id=112.

18.

19.

20.

NASPAA Data Center, “NASPAA Data and Trends” (presentation, NASPAA Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 10, 2018).

“Education,” National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), accessed February 18, 2019, https://www.ncarb.org/nbtn2017/education Planning Accreditation Board. 2017 Annual Report Data: Student and Faculty Composition in PAB-Accredited Programs. December 31, 2017. http://www. planningaccreditationboard.org/index.php?id=112.

No recent data is made available on the proportion of APA members and AICP certificate holders that are women. Analogous data sources suggest roughly 40 percent of APA members are women: The 2018 APA Salary Survey found that of 6,770 respondents, 43 percent were women and the APA’s 2019 Draft Planning for Equity Policy Guide lists membership data from 2012 during which time roughly 37 percent of APA members were women.

“Demographics,” National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), accessed February 19, 2019, https://www.ncarb.org/nbtn2017/education https://www.ncarb.org/nbtn2017/demographics Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, “Urban Planning has a Sexism Problem,” Next City, December 19, 2017, https://nextcity.org/features/view/urbanplanning-sexism-problem.

“Women Mayors in U.S. Cities 2018,” Center for American Women and Politics, accessed February 19, 2019, http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/ levels_of_office/women-mayors-us-cities-2018 Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, “Urban Planning has a Sexism Problem,” Next City, December 19, 2017, https://nextcity.org/features/view/urbanplanning-sexism-problem.

Sarah M. Kaufman et al, The Pink Tax on Transportation: Women’s Challenges in Mobility (New York: NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation, November 2018).

JR Thorpe, “The Feminist History of Bicycles,” Bustle, May 12, 2017, https:// www.bustle.com/p/the-feminist-history-of-bicycles-57455 Formerly the Women’s BMA, the *BMA represents “everyone who is under-represented in a cis male dominated field”. (http://www.starbma. com/?page_id=117) Zoë Leverant, “For Female Bike Messengers, Street Harassment Is Literally Life-Threatening,” Broadly., February 23, 2016, https://broadly. vice.com/en_us/article/gvzayx/for-female-bike-messengers-streetharassment-is-literally-life-threatening

21.

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24.

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Sarah Braker, “New Research on Women’s Bicycling Participation Reveals Insights-And Some Surprises,” People for Bikes, May 28, 2015, https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/new-research-on-womens-bicyclingparticipation-reveals-insightsand-some-surprises/ Mary Wisniewski, “Chicago is supposed to be a bike city – so why don’t more women ride?” Chicago Tribune, December 24, 2018, https://www. chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-biz-women-bikinggetting-around-20181205-story.html Sarah M. Kaufman et al, The Pink Tax on Transportation: Women’s Challenges in Mobility (New York: NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation, November 2018).

In 2017, white women made eighty cents on the dollar compared to white men, while women of color made an average of sixty-five cents on the dollar compared to white men.

“Gender Mainstreaming,” United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, accessed February 19, 2019, http:// www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/gendermainstreaming.htm Odette Chalaby, “How Vienna designed a city for women: Urban design has improved safety and ease of movement,” apolitical, August 23, 2017, https://apolitical.co/solution_article/vienna-designed-city-women/ Ibid Eva Kail, “Gender Implementation in Vienna – an overview” (presentation, Barcelona, Spain, October 5, 2011).

Ibid Odette Chalaby, “How Vienna designed a city for women: Urban design has improved safety and ease of movement.”

Eva Kail, “Gender Implementation in Vienna – an overview” (presentation, Barcelona, Spain, October 5, 2011).

World Urban Campaign http://www.worldurbancampaign.org/ saltway-%E2%80%93-crime-prevention-through-environmentaldesign-cpted-yeomri-dong-seoul “Welcome to the ICA,” International CPTED Association, accessed February 19, 2019, http://www.cpted.net/ Sung So-young, “Step by step, social design tries to make better places,” Korea JoongAng Daily, June 3, 2013, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/ news/article/article.aspx?aid=2972507 “Women only cars in trains,” Japan Experience, last modified January 19, 2018, https://www.japan-experience.com/to-know/visiting-japan/ women-only-cars-in-trains Emma Graham-Harrison, “Women-only carriages around the world: do they work?” The Guardian, August 26, 2015, https://www.theguardian. com/world/2015/aug/26/women-only-train-carriages-around-theworld-jeremy-corbyn Specifically, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Nepal, Philippines, Iran, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, and Mexico Sui-Lee Wee and Giolia Marchi, “China’s Women-Only Subway Cars, Where Men Rush In,” The New York Times, March 4, 2018, https://www. nytimes.com/2018/03/04/business/china-women-only-subway-cars. html

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END NOTES

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

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Oliver Gee, “Sweden warms to ‘gender equal’ snow ploughing,” The Local, December 11, 2013, https://www.thelocal.se/20131211/snow-plowing-shouldbe-gender-equal-greens CBC Radio, “Should Ottawa adopt Sweden’s gender-balanced snow-clearing policies?” CBC News, January 24, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ ottawa/sweden-snow-clearing-gender-ottawa-1.4500636 SafetiPin is an analogous app launched in India and available in over fifty cities across the globe. Local governments in Delhi, Hanoi, and Bogota used data collected on the app to inform planning and design decisions.

Similarly, the HarrassMap App was launched in Egypt in 2010 to allow women to log sexual harassment and violence. The concept has since expanded to over eighty cities worldwide including in Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

“Free to Be,” Plan International, accessed February 19, 2019, https://www. plan.org.au/freetobe Note that HCDT is an approach to problem solving not limited to traditional design. it has been proven effective in a wide variety of industries including policy development.

Clare Foran, “How to Design a City for Women,” Citylab, September 16, 2013, https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2013/09/how-design-citywomen/6739/ “Design Thinking,” IDEO U, accessed February 19, 2019, https://www.ideou. com/pages/design-thinking “Empower & Inspire the next generation of women climate leaders,” Women4Climate, accessed February 19,2019, https://w4c.org/ Elizabeth Deakin et al., Women and Biking: A case study on the use of San Francisco bike lanes (San Francisco: C40 Cities, 2018).

“The Curb-Cut Effect,” Policy Link, accessed February 25, 2019, http://www. policylink.org/about-us/curb-cut-effect.

99 Percent Invisible. “Episode 308: Curb Cuts.” Accessed February 25, 2019. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/.

Kail, Eva. “Gender Implementation in Vienna – an overview.” (Presentation, Barcelona, Spain, October 5, 2011).

American Planning Association (APA). “A Portrait of Planners.” Accessed February 19, 2019. https://www.planning.org/salary/planner/.

Kaufman, Sarah M., Christopher F. Polack, and Gloria A. Campbell. The Pink Tax on Transportation: Women’s Challenges in Mobility. New York: NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation, November 2018.

American Planning Association (APA). “Planning for Equity Policy Guide: Draft for Member Review”. Accessed February 19, 2019. https://www. planning.org/media/document/9171169/.

Braker, Sarah. “New Research on Women’s Bicycling Participation Reveals Insights-And Some Surprises.” People for Bikes, May 28, 2015. https:// peopleforbikes.org/blog/new-research-on-womens-bicycling-participationreveals-insightsand-some-surprises/.

Leverant, Zoë. “For Female Bike Messengers, Street Harassment Is Literally Life-Threatening.” Broadly., February 23, 2016. https://broadly.vice.com/ en_us/article/gvzayx/for-female-bike-messengers-street-harassmentis-literally-life-threatening.

NASPAA Data Center. “NASPAA Data and Trends”. Presented at the NASPAA Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 2018.

CBC Radio. “Should Ottawa adopt Sweden’s gender-balanced snow-clearing policies?” CBC News, January 24, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ ottawa/sweden-snow-clearing-gender-ottawa-1.4500636.

National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). “Demographics.”

Accessed February 19, 2019. https://www.ncarb.org/nbtn2017/ demographics.

Center for American Women and Politics. “Women Mayors in U.S. Cities 2018.” Accessed February 19, 2019. http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/levels_ of_office/women-mayors-us-cities-2018.

National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). “Education.” Accessed February 18, 2019. https://www.ncarb.org/nbtn2017/education.

Chalaby, Odette. “How Vienna designed a city for women: Urban design has improved safety and ease of movement.” apolitical, August 23, 2017. https:// apolitical.co/solution_article/vienna-designed-city-women/.

Deakin, Elizabeth, Vidya Bhamidi, Dorry Fukami, Tasha Golani, and Margaret McCarthy. Women and Biking: A case study on the use of San Francisco bike lanes. San Francisco: C40 Cities, 2018.

Fleming, Amy. “What would a city that is safe for women look like?” The Guardian, December 13, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/ dec/13/what-would-a-city-that-is-safe-for-women-look-like.

Foran, Clare. “How to Design a City for Women.” Citylab. September 16, 2013. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2013/09/how-design-citywomen/6739/.

Gee, Oliver. “Sweden warms to ‘gender equal’ snow ploughing.” The Local, December 11, 2013. https://www.thelocal.se/20131211/snow-plowing-shouldbe-gender-equal-greens.

Graham-Harrison, Emma. “Women-only carriages around the world: do they work?” The Guardian. August 26, 2015. https://www.theguardian. com/world/2015/aug/26/women-only-train-carriages-around-the-worldjeremy-corbyn.

IDEO U. “Design Thinking.” Accessed February 19, 2019. https://www.ideou. com/pages/design-thinking.

International CPTED Association. “Welcome to the ICA.” Accessed February 19,2019. http://www.cpted.net/.

Japan Experience. “Women only cars in trains.” Last modified January 19, 2018, https://www.japan-experience.com/to-know/visiting-japan/womenonly-cars-in-trains Johnston-Zimmerman, Katrina. “Urban Planning has a Sexism Problem.”

Next City, December 19, 2017. https://nextcity.org/features/view/urbanplanning-sexism-problem.

Plan International. “Free to Be.” Accessed February 19, 2019. https://www. plan.org.au/freetobe.

Planning Accreditation Board. “2017 Annual Report Data: Student and Faculty Composition in PAB-Accredited Programs.” Accessed February 18, 2019. http://www.planningaccreditationboard.org/index.php?id=112.

Policy Link. “The Curb-Cut Effect.” Accessed February 18, 2019. http:// www.policylink.org/about-us/curb-cut-effect.

Society of Women Engineers. “Higher Education.” Accessed February 18, 2019. https://research.swe.org/category/higher-education/.

So-young, Sung. “Step by step, social design tries to make better places.”

Korea JoongAng Daily, June 3, 2013. http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/ news/article/article.aspx?aid=2972507.

Thorpe, JR. “The Feminist History of Bicycles.” Bustle, May 12, 2017. https:// www.bustle.com/p/the-feminist-history-of-bicycles-57455 United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. “Gender Mainstreaming.” Accessed February 19, 2019. http:// www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/gendermainstreaming.htm.

Wee, Sui-Lee and Marchi, Giolia. “China’s Women-Only Subway Cars, Where Men Rush In.” The New York Times. March 4, 2018. https://www. nytimes.com/2018/03/04/business/china-women-only-subway-cars.html.

Wisniewski, Mary. “Chicago is supposed to be a bike city – so why don’t more women ride?” Chicago Tribune, December 24, 2018. https://www. chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-biz-women-biking-gettingaround-20181205-story.html.

Women Led Cities. “Our Mission.” Accessed February 18, 2019. https:// www.womenledcities.com/mission.

Women4Climate. “Empower & Inspire the next generation of women climate leaders.” Accessed February 19,2019. https://w4c.org/,

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WORKS CITED

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

T RANSI T AS A WO M E N’S IS S UE: W h y P l a n n e r s S h o u l d Pr i o r i t i z e Wo m e n i n Tr a n s i t P l a n n i n g , D e s i g n , a n d O p e r a t i o n

MICHELLE E. NANCE, AICP Michelle E. Nance, AICP is the Planning Director for the Centralina Council of Governments, providing planning services to nine counties in the greater Charlotte region. She directs the Council’s work related to land use and transportation, healthy community initiatives, energy

and the environment and has experience in state, regional, and local government planning, economic development, and policy analysis. Michelle holds a Master of Public Administration

and BS in Urban and Regional Planning from East Carolina University. She is a past president of the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association, was honored as one of the 2017 50 Most Influential Women in the Charlotte region, and was named 2017 Woman of the Year by the Mecklenburg Times.

EMILY SCOTT-CRUZ Emily Scott-Cruz is a Planning Intern for the Centralina Council of Governments. She conducts

research to assist with planning services in the nine county, Greater Charlotte region. Her

work includes analysis and assessment of data to aid local governments in solving community challenges, public engagement, and transportation planning. Emily received her Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies at Salem College and is a current graduate student in the UNC Charlotte

Master of Public Administration Program. After receiving her MPA in May 2019, Emily aims to continue work as a Planner to further equitable development in her community.

ABSTR ACT Transportation options are important for all communities and transit in particular has a distinct role to play in providing access to jobs, healthcare, education, and services. While responsive transit services benefit the entire community, gendered differences emerge when considering issues such as poverty and earnings, how women are employed, and caretaker roles for children and aging parents. Women’s life expectancy, greater years without a driver’s license, and safety perceptions all point to a strong connection between women’s challenges and transportation needs. This paper explores the reasons why women have much to gain from increased transit service, and therefore, should be a center point in transit planning, design, and operation based on the many ways that transit can help women meet their unique challenges.

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Transportation infrastructure serves as the backbone for our cities and small towns, creating the base infrastructure that often guides the placement of employment and commercial centers, residential growth, and utilities.

Historically, sea and river navigation routes, railroad corridors, and highways have served to define communities and these investments have reflected the values and interests of those at the decision-making table, to the detriment of omitted populations. As communities plan for transit, inclusive engagement is critical, as investment decisions have long-standing community implications.

The design and function of transportation can keep communities apart or bring them together. Transit is often viewed as a public service with a singular purpose: mobility for those who cannot afford or do not have the physical ability to drive a single occupancy vehicle. However, effective transit systems—those that have frequent service, well-designed routes, and significant destinations—can serve as a foundational pillar for livable communities and equitable economic growth and prosperity. Public transit, especially, has the potential to facilitate economic opportunity and social equity by increasing accessibility to life-sustaining services (e.g. preventative medical care, healthy food, prescriptions, child care, laundry services), places of employment, educational institutions, parks and recreation, cultural activities and other community services. If properly planned and implemented, public transit systems can advance inclusive growth and positively impact the physical and mental health of residents. Transit can also serve as an economic driver, especially when planned in conjunction with surrounding land uses that both support and benefit from the transit service.

Transit is an important factor in long-term upward mobility.

Nationwide, household transportation expenses averaged $8,755 per year in 2016, making transportation the second

largest household expenditure category after housing (Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2017). Personal vehicles account for the majority of transportation expenditures, made up of car payments and operating expenses, including maintenance, gas, and insurance.

Increasing access to alternative forms of transportation, including transit, can reduce household transportation costs by reducing the number of household vehicles and associated expenses. Reducing the household transportation burden is especially important to women due to a higher poverty rate and lower average wages, as seen in Figure 1 and 2.

For the purposes of this paper, transit is defined as public transportation by rail, bus, or van and does not include single occupancy vehicles, private ride-hail, bikes, or scooters. Transit mode share is not addressed, as each community system is planned and designed according to local needs. Instead this paper focuses on the intersection of transit and gender as a way to highlight the benefits of including women in all phases of community transit planning while underlining the unique issues affecting women. Key concepts explored in this paper include why transit is important to women, how transit can address women’s unique challenges, and how transit planners can be instrumental in making transit successful by keeping woman in the forefront through all phases of transit planning, design, and operation.

WOMEN’S TR ANSIT USE Gender differences extend across all realms of human activity from access to resources and household roles, to income and opportunity. The social effects of gender differences translate to distinctly gendered travel patterns as well (Law 1999). In a sample of major U.S. transit systems, there are greater numbers of female riders than there are male riders (see Figure 1). Riders are defined as individuals who use public transportation to travel to work, essential 42

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

services, and recreation. Out of the twelve largest transit systems, only Seattle had a higher percentage of male riders.

Women’s overrepresentation in transit statistics leads to further consideration about how transit development can become more intentionally inclusive of women, through planning, design, and operation. This overrepresentation highlights the need to ensure that transit systems are inclusive of women’s values and interests. Unfortunately, there is a gap in literature surrounding gender and transport in rural areas (Law 1999).

FIGURE 1 - Female Ridership in Major Cities (Saksa 2015)

Women’s daily movements are unique and based on responsibilities and challenges they face daily. Female trips through a community often crisscross and zigzag, with one trip involving multiple destinations, a characteristic often described as trip-chaining. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) defines a trip chain as a sequence of trips bounded by stops of 30 minutes or less. In effect, women tend to take a greater number of shorter trips to dispersed locations at more varied times. These travel characteristics create trips that are more expensive in terms of time and money (Kunieda and Gauthier 2007). These women-centered travel patterns have implications on transit design, operation, and policy, and should remain at the forefront for transit planners.

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Disparity across gender becomes apparent when considering issues such as poverty and earnings, how women are employed, and caretaker roles for children and aging parents. Women’s life expectancy, greater years without a driver’s license, and safety perceptions all point to a strong connection between women’s challenges and transportation needs.

These inequalities and challenges are often interconnected. The gendered wage gap and difference in poverty rates highlight the need for affordable transit. The higher rates of women spending money on private ride-hailing (like taxis, Uber, Lyft) to compensate for safety concerns adds an additional facet to the necessity of affordable transit.

CHALLENGE: Wage Gap and Poverty Women continue to earn, on average, considerably less than men, despite making up almost half of the workforce, serving as the sole or co-breadwinner in half of American families with children, and receiving more college and graduate degrees than men. In 2017, female full-time, year-round workers made only 81.8 cents for every dollar earned by men—a gender wage gap of 20 percent (Hegewisch 2018). The gender pay gap that exists between men and women is influenced by race. White women earn only 81.9 percent of what white men earn, and the disparity between male and female earnings grows more pronounced for black, Hispanic, and Asian women. As Figure 2 shows, black women earned a mere 67.7 percent of what white men earned, and Hispanic women earn 62.1 percent of what white men earned in 2017. The lower earnings can be attributed to numerous other factors including discrimination in hiring, recruiting, and compensation, the absence of family leave, and higher rates of women in lower-earning occupations (Blau & Kahn 2016).

FIGURE 2 - Wage Differences by Sex and Race/Ethnicity (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018)

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CHALLENGES OFTEN FACED BY WOMEN

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The wage gap influences the number of women in poverty and while poverty rates in the U.S. continue to fall, being a woman increases the odds of being poor. The U.S. Census Bureau data released in September 2017 shows women were 38 percent more likely to live in poverty than men, with more than one in eight women– nearly 16.3 million– living in poverty in 2016. Women make up nearly two-thirds of all people in poverty ages 65 and older and more than half of all children living in poverty lived in families headed by women. Perhaps the most striking disparity is in the poverty rates for female-headed households with children (35.6 percent) versus male-headed households with children (17.3 percent) and households with children headed by married couples (6.6 percent) outlined in Figure 3 (Census Bureau 2016).

FIGURE 3 - Poverty Rates (Census Bureau 2016)

The implications of the gendered wage gap and female poverty rates point to the need for multiple transportation options, including transit, to lower the overall household transportation costs, freeing up resources for other household needs.

Affordable, effective transit options also provide the access and stability needed to secure and retain long-term employment.

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These conditions impact women’s travel patterns and highlight the importance of transit frequencies and headways to address inconsistent travel times. It is especially challenging for women to coordinate local transit schedules with their primary and secondary jobs, as well as child and/or elder care. As women make up a large percentage of low wage, hourly workers across all industries, they are essentially captive public transit users based on both financial necessity and the need for additional trips between workplaces. These work schedules also have implications on the need for essential services (e.g. groceries, child care, medical facilities) that are easily accessible to transit due to women’s lack of extra time and money.

CHALLENGE: Caretaker for Children Women’s role as caretakers contributes to the discussion of travel patterns and transit usage. While fathers have nearly tripled the time they spend caring for children since 1965, on average eight hours a week, women spend about fourteen hours per week caring for children (Livingston 2017).

The presence of children results in increased numbers of trips and the need for transit routes that provide access to healthcare, childcare, recreation, and education (Crane 2007). Increasingly, the number of school choice options

make public transportation even more important for children who do not always attend their neighborhood school (Vincent, et al. 2014). For older children, transit is also needed for important supplements to education including internships, clubs, jobs, and recreational activities at schools or in other locations. A family’s ability to take advantage of increased educational options hinges on their access to safe, reliable, and affordable transportation. Access to transit often determines which families have the opportunity to choose the most appropriate schools and development experiences for children.

CHALLENGE: Caretaker for Adults The role that women play as caretakers also extends into elder care, as women are twice as likely to care for an aging parent as men. Of the 41.3 million eldercare providers in non-institutional, civilian population (ages fifteen and older), 56 percent were women (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2017). This creates a situation where women routinely leave the workforce for periods of time or exit the workforce early (retire) to focus on elder needs. According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP 2013), over 36 million Americans are age 65 or older. By 2030, this number will double, with one in five Americans 65 or older.

As the senior population ages, there will be increased pressure placed on transportation systems and female caretakers (Coughlin 2009). If seniors were independent longer, with access to mobility options, such as transit, the time period devoted to elder care could be reduced.

Additionally, absence from the workforce required for eldercare produces a tremendous financial impact in the form of lost wages, sacrifice of future pay raises or promotions, and reduced contributions to retirement savings. The average income lost by caregivers each year is 33 percent. Caregivers pay for many expenses out of their own pockets, to the tune of $10,000 per year, and roughly 11 percent of caregivers end up having to quit their job to care for someone at home around-the-clock. If a woman leaves her job due to caregiving needs, the lost wages, pensions and Social Security benefits over her lifetime total more than $300,000 (Fahle and McGarry 2017).

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CHALLENGE: Multiple Jobs While the share of workers holding multiple jobs has been declining since 1994, and is currently at a twenty-year low, a disparity emerges when this data is broken out by gender.

Women are more likely to have multiple jobs, a trend that is even more pronounced for younger women, ages twenty to twenty-four. In the two decades between 1995 and 2015, young men have been far less likely to hold multiple jobs than young women (Wilson 2015). Nationwide, nearly 4.3 million women work more than one job and nearly 50 percent work a secondary part- or full-time job on top of a primary full-time job. More than half a million women who held multiple jobs had a primary or secondary job with hours that varied–meaning their job was not consistently part-time or full-time (Temple 2016).

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

CHALLENGE: Years After Driving Cessation Women’s life expectancy is five years longer than males, with 2016 life expectancies at 81.1 years and 76.1 years, respectively.

Nationwide, many elderly drivers quit driving each year and must seek alternative sources of transportation, such as transit. Because of differences in life expectancy, women require more years of support for transportation, on average, than men after age seventy. On average, male drivers aged seventy to seventy-four years will be dependent on alternative sources of transportation for approximately seven years and female drivers of the same age will be dependent on alternative sources of transportation for approximately ten years (Foley, et al. 2002).

Mobility needs do not cease when age leads to driving cessation. Once mobility through single occupancy vehicles ends, there is even greater need for accessible public transportation (O’Neill 2010). More and more, seniors are turning to public transit to address mobility needs after driving is no longer an option. And, out of necessity for wheelchair accessible mobility, both fixed-route and demand response transit services are lifelines to medical, nutrition, and amenity services.

per year. This cost is higher for female caregivers, who are responsible for transporting children and elderly family members who face logistical challenges as well as perceived safety risks. The study estimated female caregivers can spend an extra $100 per month, or $1,200 a year, on travel (Kaufman 2018).

In addition, it should be recognized that women’s unique travel patterns (trip-chaining) lead to increased transfers.

If these travel patterns are not taken into consideration when developing fare policies, the cost of transit can be inequitably skewed based on gender.

CHALLENGE: Land Use Dispersed land uses create issues that transit alone cannot address. Often, affordable housing is not evenly distributed meaning that women are forced to move further away from employment opportunities, child care, grocery stores, medical facilities, and educational institutions.

This creates a need to travel great distances to meet daily needs for women in affordable housing. In smaller towns and rural areas, distance can be a prohibitive factor, and limited transit resources cannot bridge the gap, leaving mobility needs unaddressed.

CHALLENGE: Safety Women’s safety is an important challenge that must be considered along with the additional money spent by women on transportation based on safety threats. Long-term discrimination and oppression that women face—especially in public spaces, has discouraged women from traveling alone, especially at night. This lack of safety is perpetuated and almost sanctioned through its normalization. Safety perceptions must be recognized in order to understand the disadvantages that women face when it comes to transit experiences.

In a first of its kind study on gender-based price discrimination in public transportation conducted by the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation, researchers found that because of harassment and safety perceptions, over 58 percent of females used forhire vehicles or taxis (over public transportation) for late night travel. Ultimately, the median extra cost per month for men, due to safety reasons, is $0, while the median extra cost per month for women is up to $50, amounting to $600 47

FIGURE 4 - Authors Emily Scott-Cruz (left) and Michelle E. Nance

(right) at the JW Clay Transit Station of the LYNX Blue Line in Charlotte, North Carolina.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Inequitable public transit disproportionately burdens women. Looking at transit through a lens of gender differences when applying transit practices, can carry immense implications for improvement in equitable access and treatment of women using public transit.

Based on the challenges outlined herein, there are select recommendations that may prove beneficial for planners.

•

Transit Access and Affordability •

Target houses of worship, social services, and community crisis centers for education on transit availability and travel training.

•

Evaluate fare systems and transfer policies to ensure better accommodation of female travel patterns, which include trip-chaining, with multiple destinations per trip.

•

Public participation on future transit expansions and surveys to assess transit rider experience should be gender balanced.

•

Conduct gender focused audits to better understand women’s travel patterns in order to evaluate bias and determine if transit is meeting women’s needs. Use results to inform future transit and land use planning.

•

Advertise transit in terms specifically tailored to women’s mobility issues. Marketing and Transportation Demand Management (TDM) programs should frame advertisements to show transit readiness for families, seniors, and female riders.

Transit Policy •

Establish family friendly policies for public transportation, including clear messaging on priority seating, seats for breastfeeding mothers or the elderly.

•

Establish and highly publicize an easy process for accommodating unexpected and emergency rides that may occur during the day (outside of transit schedules).

In keeping with the principles of representative bureaucracy, hire more female drivers, especially in rural demand response systems, to reduce negative safety perceptions in transit.

Built Environment •

Plan transit stops near healthcare and childcare facilities, grocery stores and public services, and parks and schools in order to facilitate caretaker roles by making frequent destinations more accessible.

•

Analyze transit infrastructure with a “community policing through environmental design” (CPTED) lens; which includes planning transit stations and stops that increase visibility and safety, and incorporate well-lit, clearly visible, emergency service-equipped sidewalks.

•

Ensure that transit frequencies and headways consider the typical trip patterns and trips taken daily by women.

•

Establish rider focused coordination policies between transit systems and across political jurisdictions to support medical, and other trips, frequently needed by seniors and to reduce the additive costs of layered fares.

•

Provide methods to report bad behavior to authorities and highly publicize zero tolerance for harassment.

•

Train law enforcement and first responders in harassment and assault so that victims reporting violence receive the appropriate support.

Use TOD to create density and a mixture of uses conducive to transit, including affordable housing, employment, services, and community amenities.

•

Involve women in the design of transit facilities.

•

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Transit Oriented Development (TOD) describes the practice of mixed-use development including “commercial, residential, office, and entertainment centered around or located near a transit station” (Federal Transit Administration 2018). TOD’s strives to lower public infrastructure and service costs, increase access to mobility, reduce household transportation costs, catalyze economic development, and expand affordable housing through higher density zoning (EPA 2017). These TOD goals work together to address many of the challenges noted above. By placing access and mobility at the forefront of discussions surrounding transit and development, TOD also emphasizes equity.

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•

Transit design should consider that women often have strollers and bags, necessitating ramps, wider aisles and gates.

•

Consider the needs of older adults and provide travel training for seniors allowing them to be independent longer, assisting women as caretakers and as older adults after driving cessation (Currie and Delbrose 2010; Oxley and Charlton 2011).

Other Considerations •

Ensure women are represented at all levels of transit planning, design, and implementation, including transit agency leadership, consultant teams hired to design transit components, and on standing transit stakeholder groups.

•

Expose girls to career pathways in transit through targeted outreach, scholarships, and mentoring.

•

Support non-profit and community groups whose mission advocates for women transit riders and first-mile/lastmile solutions important to women.

•

Create and/or support forums where women can advocate locally for transit safety, fare policy, and routes.

•

Transportation planners need to take into account women’s disproportionate use of transit, and revise transit practices based on women’s needs. Women have much to gain from increased transit service, and therefore, should be a center point in transit planning, design, and operation. Understanding women’s unique transit challenges and including women in the process to address those challenges will lead to a more equitable, inclusive system and improved access and mobility for the broader community.

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Transportation planners need to take into account women’s disproportionate use of transit, and revise transit practices based on women’s needs. Women have much to gain from increased transit service, and therefore, should be a center point in transit planning, design, and operation. Understanding women’s unique transit challenges and including women in the process to address those challenges will lead to a more equitable, inclusive system and improved access and mobility for the broader community.

AARP. 2013. “The Benefits of Public Transportation Expanding the Transportation Options in an Aging Society.” AARP. https://www.aarp. org/content/dam/aarp/livable-communities/old-learn/transportation/ benefits-of-public-transportation-aarp.pdf.

Blau, F.D. and Kahn, L. 2016. “The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations.” NBER Working Paper No. 21913. <http://www.nber.org/ papers/w21913> (accessed January 2019).

Bliss, Lauren. 2017. “Mass Transit Mobilizes Women. Why Don’t Women Mobilize for Transit?” CityLab.com. January 23. https://www.citylab.com/ transportation/2017/01/mass-transit-mobilizes-women-why-dont-womenmobilize-for-transit/514112/.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2017. “Unpaid Eldercare in the United States.”

BLS.gov. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/elcare_09202017.htm.

—. 2018. “Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers Third Quarter 2018.” BLS.gov. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf.

Bureau of Transportation Statistics. 2017. “Transportation Economic Trends.” https://www.bts.gov/browse-statistical-products-and-data/transportationeconomic-trends/tet-2017-chapter-6-household Coughlin, J.F. 2009. “Longevity, Lifestyle, and Anticipating the New Demands of Aging on the Transportation System.” Public Works Management Policy 13 (4).

Crane, R. 2007. “Is there a Quiet Revolution in Women’s Travel? Revisiting the Gender Gap in Commuting.” Journal of the American Planning Association 73 (3): 298-316.

Currie, G., and A. Delbrose. 2010. “Exploring Public Transport Using Trends in an Aging Population.” Transportation 37 (1): 151-164.

DeWolf, Mark. 2017. “12 Stats About Working Women.” U.S. Department of Labor Blog. March 1. https://blog.dol.gov/2017/03/01/12-stats-about-workingwomen.

EPA. 2017. “Smart Growth and Transportation.” EPA.gov. September 1.

Accessed December 22, 2019. https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/smartgrowth-and-transportation.

Fahle, S., and K. McGarry. 2018. “Women Working Longer: Labor Market Implications of Providing Family Care.” In Women Working Longer: Increased Employment At Older Ages, by National Bureau of Economic Research, 157-181.

University of Chicago Press.

Federal Transit Administration. 2018. “Transit-Oriented Development.” transit.dot.gov. May 4. Accessed December 19, 2018. https://www.transit. dot.gov/TOD. Foley, D.J., H.K. Heimovitz, J.M. Guralnik, and D.B. Brock. 2002. “Driving Life Expectancy of Persons Aged 70 Years and Older in the United States.”

American Journal of Public Health 92 (8): 1284-1289.

Gordon, E.W., B.L. Bridgall, and A.S. Meroe. 2005. Supplementary Education: The Hidden Curriculum of High Academic Achievement. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Jaffe, Eric. 2012. “Public Transportation’s Hidden Gender Imbalance.”

CityLab.com. February 1. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/02/ public-transportations-hidden-gender-imbalance/1107/.

Kaufman, S., C. Polack, and G. Campbell. 2018. The Pink Tax on Transportation: Women’s Challenges in Mobility. New York, NY: NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation.

Kunieda, M., and A. Gauthier. 2007. “Gender and Urban Transport: Smart and Affordable.” GTZ, Eschborn. http://www.itdp.org/ documents/7aGenderUT(Sept).pdf.

Law, R. 1999. “Beyond Women and Transport: Towards New Geographies of Gender and Daily Mobility.” Progress in Human Geography 23 (4).

Livingston, G., and K. Bialik. 2017. “7 Facts About U.S. Moms.”, Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/10/facts-aboutu-s-mothers/ O’Neil, D. 2010. “Deciding on Driving Cessation and Transport Planning in Older Drivers with Dementia.” European Geriatric Medicine 1 (1): 22-25.

Oxley, J, and J. Charlton. 2011. “Gender Differences in Attitudes to and Mobility Impacts of Driving Cessation.” Women’s Issues in Transportation: Summary of the Fourth International Conference, Volume 2: Technical Papers.

Washington, DC: United States National Research Council (NRC) Transportation Research Board. 64-73.

Saksa, Jim. 2015. “SEPTA has largest percentage of female riders – 64% among large transit agencies.” Plan Philly. January 26. http://planphilly. com/articles/2015/01/26/septa-has-largest-percentage-of-female-riders64-among-large-transit-agencies.

Temple, B. 2016. “4.3 Million Women Work Multiple Jobs to Make Ends Meet.” National Women’s Law Center. December 2. https://nwlc.org/blog/43-million-women-work-multiple-jobs-to-make-ends-meet/.

Tucker, J., and C. Lowell. 2016. “National Snapshot: Poverty Among Women & Families, 2015.” National Women’s Law Center. https://nwlc.org/wp-content/ uploads/2016/09/Poverty-Snapshot-Factsheet-2016.pdf.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by selected characteristics, Annual Averages (retrieved January 2019).

U.S. Department of Labor. 2016. “Consumer Expenditure Survey 2016 Microdata.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/cex/.

—. 2016. “Consumer Expenditure Survey 2016 Microdata.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/cex.

Vincent, J.M., C. Makarewicz, R. Miller, J. Ehrman, and D.L. McKoy. 2014.

Beyond the Yellow Bus: Promising Practices for Maximizing Access to Opportunity Through Innovations in Student Transportation. Berkeley, CA: Center for Cities + Schools, University of California.

Wilson, V. 2015. “Women Are More Likely to Work Multiple Jobs than Men.” Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/womenare-more-likely-to-work-multiple-jobs-than-men/.

Hegewisch, Ariane. 2018. “The Gender Wage Gap: 2017, Fact Sheet.” Institute for Women’s Policy Research. September. https://iwpr.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/09/C473.pdf.

Institute for Women’s Policy Research. 2018. “The Gender Wage Gap: 2017.”

Fact Sheet. September. https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/C473. pdf.

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WORKS CITED

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S AFE SYSTE M S: A N e w a n d N e c e s s a r y Tr a n s p o r t a t i o n S a f e t y P a r a d i g m

SETH LAJEUNESSE Seth LaJeunesse is a Research Associate with the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center (UNC HSRC) where he designs studies that draw from psychology, sociology,

and systems science to explore ways of accelerating the diffusion of effective road safety practice.

Seth is a member of the American Planning Association and TRBâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pedestrians Committee.

Formerly a school psychologist, he holds a Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

ABSTR ACT For nearly four decades, the dominant narrative on transportation safety in the United States places responsibility for traffic injury on road users themselves. There are signs that this narrative is changing. Transportation safety professionals, researchers, and decision-makers across levels of government are reframing road user injury as predictable and preventable. The author reviews a history of transportation safety paradigms in the United States and explores how paradigms have shifted in other scientific fields.

He introduces a novel transportation safety paradigm called Safe Systems and considers how a shift toward this new paradigm might unfold over the next twenty years.

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It is mid-January 2018 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The dry night air hovers around 34 degrees. The clock reaches 9:30 pm as Stephen Daniel Taylor steps across one of two southbound lanes on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (MLK Boulevard). A pool of sodium vapor street light marks a spot to cross. In the time it takes to adjust a coat on one’s shoulder, a driver heading south at 40-45mph strikes and kills Stephen nearly instantly.1 Local media note Taylor’s death, yet focus on the resulting four-hour closure of a portion of MLK Boulevard. Chapel Hill police tell the public to “expect significant delays in the area” as that evening, UNC was playing a home basketball game against Clemson, which implies greater car traffic than average.2 Two miles down the same road on a temperate Sunday evening in February 2018, James Keeter crosses MLK Boulevard leaving the site of a BP gas station. He steps into the road and starts across five travel lanes toward a posted 35 mph sign on the other side. This time, a driver traveling northbound on MLK Boulevard at 8:30 pm hits and kills James on the spot. That same evening, local media outlets report that “this is the second time in a month that a pedestrian was killed trying to cross MLK Boulevard, where there isn’t a crosswalk.”3 In fact, on several occasions, the media notes how “neither man used a crosswalk.”4 By the looks of things, Taylor’s and Keeter’s deaths are the result of their bad judgment.

To correct reckless road user behavior, the Chapel Hill Police Department commits to patrol the road more frequently, enforce safe driving speeds, and install a lighted safety sign that instructs pedestrians to cross at the nearest crosswalk along MLK near where Keeter was struck.5 Police issue more behavioral advice, encouraging the public to “be bright at night” by wearing bright clothing and reflective gear. They advise drivers to look up, repress impulses to change the radio station, or glance at their phones. As Keeter and Taylor were both experiencing homelessness at the times of their crashes, the police provide the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness with reflective clothing for distribution.

For most, the media coverage of fatal pedestrian crashes and the subsequent police response are unremarkable.

Yet for the few of us trying to explain the recent rise in pedestrian deaths across the country6 and the seeming lack of public outcry to do something about the nearly 40,000 people who die in motor vehicle crashes on American

roads each year,7 the way local media and law enforcement frame traffic crashes is of concern and interest. Indeed, one cannot help wondering about the myriad of crashrelated elements that the media and police left unreported and underexplored.

For example, the media and police never report how fast the drivers were traveling when each crash occurred. They could have reported on whether and to what extent the drivers exceeded the posted speed limit of 35 mph. Put differently, by the time the drivers saw either of the men cross the street, did either have sufficient time to bring their cars to a complete stop?8 What was the vehiclepedestrian impact speed upon each crash? What about the street lighting? Since each crash occurred at night, was the travel space sufficiently illuminated for drivers to see crossing pedestrians? Additionally, questions may linger about the role of the built environment in protecting people walking (or not). Both crashes occurred near land use destinations (a transit stop and gas station, respectively). Why don’t these street segments feature mid-block crosswalks? Both street segments offered enough room for a pedestrian refuge island. Why are none provided?

ON TR AFFIC SAFET Y PAR ADIGMS In a paper entitled Four Paradigms: Traffic Safety in the Twentieth-Century United States,9 University of Virginia professor and transportation historian, Peter Norton, offers a historiography of traffic safety in the United States.

In the paper, he presents four overlapping and sequential traffic safety paradigms since the introduction of the automobile in this country. He frames each paradigm in terms of speed, if victims of traffic injury are described as either innocent victims or culpable contributors of crashes, the role of road design and vehicle design, the responsibility placed on drivers, and the extent to which traffic crashes are preventable. What follows is a summary of Norton’s paradigms accompanied with brief descriptions of each.

1 . Safety First (1900s–1920s): Speed management is critical; pedestrians are innocent; road and vehicle designs are peripheral; drivers are responsible; and crashes are inevitable.

2 . Control (1920s–1960s): Speeding can be safe with good road design; vehicle occupants are innocent; 52

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vehicle design is peripheral; drivers are reckless; and crashes are preventable.

3. Crashworthiness (1960s–1980s): Speeding can be safe with good road and vehicle design; vehicle occupants are innocent; drivers are not responsible; and crashes are inevitable.

4. Responsibility

(1980s–present): Speeding can be safe with sober and alert drivers; crash victims are responsible; roads are designed for drivers; vehicles designed to make accidents safer; drivers are responsible, yet crashes are largely inevitable.

FIGURE 1 - Looking south down MLK Blvd near the North

Apartments complex, the approximate site where Stephen Daniel Taylor was killed. Google (2018, May). Photograph of 1701 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Street View, digital images. Retrieved from google.com/maps.

Viewing these paradigms, you may observe how many of the principles from previous paradigms remain with us today. For example, the “three E’s” of traffic safety administered by an emergent class of road safety experts starting in the 1920s—(highway) Engineering, Education, and Enforcement—are embedded in today’s 6 E’s of Safe Routes to School. These include: Engineering (bicycle and pedestrian), Education, Enforcement, Encouragement, Evaluation, and Equity.10 Industry groups continue to rate cars according to their crashworthiness, which is a 1960s innovation during the Crashworthiness paradigm.11 As seen in the media portrayal of the two fatal pedestrian crashes presented at the beginning of this article, Norton’s concept of Responsibility remains the dominant paradigm. That is, by and large, crash events are the result of inevitable human error. In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 94 percent of all fatal traffic crashes point to human error as the “critical reason” for the crash or “the last failure in the causal chain of events leading up to the crash.” Two percent of crashes are attributable to “unknown critical reasons,” and the remaining four percent of crashes had been attributed to degrading vehicle components or elements of the environment (e.g., slick roads, weather events).12 And thus the story goes: if humans are responsible for the vast majority of crashes, drivers and other road users become the factors that law enforcement officers investigate on the scene. Consequently, local media reporters, in talking with reporting officers and listening to police scanners, echo the notion that individual road users are responsible for the traffic violence that befalls them.

Nonetheless, this status quo approach to explaining traffic injury is beginning to change in often unexpected places.

SIGNS OF SYSTEMS CHANGE IN TR AFFIC SAFET Y FIGURE 2 - Looking south down MLK Blvd near Critz Drive, the

approximate site where James Keeter was killed. Google (2017, April). Photograph of 1201 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Street View, digital images. Retrieved from google. com/maps

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This change has been emerging from larger U.S. cities in the form of “Vision Zero.” Vision Zero constitutes “a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.”13 By most accounts, the strategy was a Swedish innovation

At the federal level, in August of 2017, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a report called Reducing Speeding-Related Crashes Involving Passenger Vehicles,16 which examined the role of speeding in safety outcomes for vehicle occupants. Investigating more than 100,000 traffic fatalities in the U.S. that occurred from 2005 through 2014, the study authors determined that speed was a major contributing factor in an estimated 31 percent of all fatal crashes. As such, NTSB members issued a series of recommendations to federal agencies, several of which directly challenged the status quo of traffic safety. The NTSB encouraged the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to remove guidance in the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD)—the standard guidance for developing and placing roadway signs and pavement markings—on using the 85th percentile of drivers’ speed as a standard to set speed limits. Additionally, to seven states that prohibit automated speed enforcement (i.e., “speed” or “safety” cameras), NTSB promoted amending state laws to authorize state and local agencies to use such enforcement.

Together with a growing network of cities and the authoritative NTSB, cross-sector partnerships are forming to address enduring and emerging traffic safety challenges.

One large-scale partnership is the Road to Zero Coalition, a professional alliance of more than 1,500 traffic safety agencies and organizations across the U.S. and managed by the National Safety Council. This coalition developed a guiding document called A Road to Zero: A vision for achieving

zero roadway deaths by 2050 to aid states and municipalities in setting up robust traffic safety programs.17 In the document, authors outline three broad approaches to ending traffic fatalities in the United States:

1 . Double

down on what works: Increase the application of evidence-based interventions in the realms of roadway design and construction, vehicle engineering, law enforcement, public education, and trauma care.

2 . Accelerate

advanced technology: Increase the market uptake of existing vehicle technologies (e.g., automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, and lane-keeping) and advance implementation of future technology by developing partnerships among manufacturers, technology providers, emergency medical and trauma systems, and public safety and health professionals.

3 . Prioritize safety: Foster the creation of a traffic safety culture through the engagement of citizens, corporations and governments in changing social norms surrounding travel (e.g., through strategies such as public education, consistent reinforcement of safe traveling behavior, and community road; and descriptive norms campaigns).

To accelerate progress toward realizing zero roadway fatalities, starting in 2017, the Road to Zero Coalition has administered grants to a diverse body of governmental and nonprofit agencies. Among an array of safety initiatives and studies, grant recipients proposed strategies such as enhancing safety prioritization methods within state Departments of Transportation (DOTs), tackling distracted and drowsy driving, and increasing the uptake of systemic safety programs across cities and towns.18 University Transportation Centers have also emerged, drawing upon the technologies and innovative methods of a multi-disciplinary group of researchers to push U.S. traffic safety practice and culture into a new paradigm.

One such center is the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS) led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a National University 54

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from the mid-1990s. New York City established the United States’ first Vision Zero Action Plan, released by Mayor de Blasio’s office in February 2014. Cities such as Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and Washington, D.C. soon followed suit with their own Vision Zero programs.14 In several of these cities (e.g., Boston, New York, and Seattle), a systems-level effort to improve road user safety has been to lower posted speed limits citywide. A study commissioned by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) focusing on Boston’s speed reduction program found that even a 5 mph lowering of posted speeds significantly decreases the odds of drivers going faster than 35 mph.15

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FIGURE 3 - Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS) draft strategic roadmap.

Unpublished manuscript, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2018).

Transportation Center supporting the FAST Act research priority of promoting safety, CSCRS unites leading transportation research, planning, public health, data science and engineering programs at Duke University; Florida Atlantic University; University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

A review of CSCRS researchers’ funded projects reveals how partners are incorporating innovative research and technology transfer methods into multidisciplinary studies.

Some of these include: systems mapping techniques (a set of visual practices conducted to display elements of our transportation system and connections among them); systemic or “proactive” traffic safety analysis; integrating police-reported crash and health outcome data to better understand the societal impacts of traffic crashes; human-

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robotics interaction research in anticipation of the diffusion of automated vehicles and vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-people technologies; and embedding land use scenario planning into transportation forecasting and decision-making schemes.19 A key purpose of the CSCRS and its many safety-oriented partners is to advance a new transportation paradigm called Safe Systems. A central tenet of this paradigm is to institute and maintain resilient transportation systems designed to accommodate human error. Organizing goals of the CSCRS are to foster a shared understanding of the principles of Safe Systems and champion the use of systems science tools toward eliminating serious traffic injuries and fatalities. In principle, Safe Systems aims to:

the structure and function of the system to the complexities of human behavior: Conceptualize, plan for, and design roadways, vehicles, and other transportation-related systems to reduce the likelihood of human mistakes; mitigate the consequences of such mistakes; and adapt to changing human behaviors.

2 . Manage the kinetic energy transferred among road users: Maintain separation of road users throughout the transportation network according to users of different mass and speeds (i.e., faster traveling cars separated from slower bicyclists and pedestrians); facilitate population shifts toward slower, more sustainable modes of travel; and advance automated vehicle technologies to discern and automatically slow down in populated contexts.

3 . Treat road user safety as the foundation of all system interventions: Acknowledge inherent tensions and interrelationships among safety, mobility, and access; define a hierarchy of road user needs that is aligned with community values.

4 . Foster

the creation of a shared vision and coordinated action: Advance greater vertical and horizontal integration of the systems that influence safety through coordination of funding, planning, and actions across diverse partners; work to prevent unintended consequences and recognize the implications of decision-making in other interrelated areas of the transportation system.

HOW PAR ADIGMS SHIFT Thomas Kuhn—progenitor of the idea of “paradigm shifts” physicist, philosopher, and author of a seminal book on paradigm shifts of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions20—proposed that scientific revolutions have occurred not as a result of linear scientific progress, but as evident disruptions in the way that science is practiced. In a survey of paradigm shifts in chemistry and physics, Kuhn advanced a narrative of how paradigms change: champions of a novel paradigm continually highlight anomalies and failures in the old paradigm and extol the virtues of the new one. If possible, they embed people supportive of the

new paradigm in visible positions of power. They forgo working with reactionaries, as reactionaries distract from the positive elements of the new paradigm. Instead, they enlist the help of change agents who have access to working with what Donella Meadows—an influential environmental and systems science thinker—called “the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.”21 This is precisely how road safety practitioners are organizing with guidance from the Vision Zero Network.

It is also what the research community is committing to through collaboratives like the CSCRS. One wonders how our transportation system will look, feel, and function under a Safe Systems paradigm. Perhaps the future will be much like the Road to Zero Coalition and CSCRS envision; it is interesting to consider what a Safe Systems future might entail. Two decades from now, how might the design of vehicles and roadways, decisions related to land development, and collaborations change among diverse professional groups working in public health and planning, engineering and enforcement?

ENVISIONING A NEW TR AFFIC SAFET Y PAR ADIGM Within the next two decades, nearly all vehicles will be equipped with automatic braking systems and motiondetection technology that anticipates the presence and movement of pedestrians, bicyclists, and users of transit and light electric vehicles (e.g., e-scooters, e-bikes, hoverboards). Along street segments and corridors, pedestrian lighting precedes high visibility crosswalks, ensuring that drivers can more readily see people trying to cross the street. Upon the unusual event of a vehiclepedestrian crash, the vehicle’s hood deploys an air mattress, providing a soft landing for the struck person.

In investigations of these crashes, police consistently provide information on surrounding land uses, lighting conditions, weather, and roadway elements. Local media support police officers’ assessments of crashes, providing environmental context for all crashes.

Given the enhanced stability of vehicle maneuvering, ten feet becomes the standard for travel lane widths in comparison to the current standard of twelve feet. This 56

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inspires the construction of fewer travel lanes, as cars can safely travel closer together than ever before, removing the need to build more lanes and thus more “capacity.”

Land use planners work with decision-makers to develop compact, accessible activity centers—only seldom do we see dispersed, single uses along roadways. Transportation planners work with local businesses to manage access to their establishments through driveway consolidation and center median installation. Bus and trolley stops are placed at the far side of intersections, providing safe places for alighting pedestrians to cross the street. Along higher speed, higher capacity roadways, cyclists enjoy vertical and horizontal separation from car traffic and enter ubiquitous “protected intersections.” Indeed, a decade after their introduction, these facilities become simply known as “intersections.”

It may be difficult to visualize this possible future from the perch of the present. Yet hope lies with the palpable energy and coordination among partners across political and governmental divides to improve the safety, and thus the dignity, of all people carrying out the fundamentally human activity of getting around.

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1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Speculation based on studies on the likelihood of death for older adults at various vehicle-pedestrian impact speeds. See Tefft, J. (2011). Impact speed and a pedestrian’s risk of severe injury or death. AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Retrieved from https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/02/2011PedestrianRiskVsSpeedReport.pdf.

Overton, R. (2018, January 16). Pedestrian killed in vehicle collision in Chapel Hill. CBS17 News. Retrieved form https://www.cbs17.com/ news/local-news/pedestrian-killed-in-collision-with-vehicle-in-chapelhill/1036304600.

Blanford, A. (2018, February 19). Another pedestrian struck, killed on Chapel Hill’s MLK Boulevard. ABC 11 Eyewitness News. Retrieved from https://abc11.com/another-pedestrian-struck-killed-on-chapel-hillsmlk-Boulevard/3107102/.

Simmons, T. (2018, February 20). Effort to improve pedestrian safety on MLK Boulevard in Chapel Hill. Spectrum News, Central NC. Retrieved from https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/2018/02/21/ man-killed-while-trying-to-cross-mlk-Boulevard-in-chapel-hillsunday-night.

Simmons, T. (2018, February 20). Effort to improve pedestrian safety on MLK Boulevard in Chapel Hill. Spectrum News, Central NC. Retrieved from https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/2018/02/21/ man-killed-while-trying-to-cross-mlk-Boulevard-in-chapel-hillsunday-night

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

Governors’ Highway Safety Administration (GHSA). (2018). Pedestrian traffic fatalities by state: 2017 preliminary data. Retrieved from https://www. ghsa.org/resources/spotlight-pedestrians18.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). (2019). General statistics: Fatality facts. Retrieved from https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/generalstatistics/fatalityfacts/overview-of-fatality-facts.

This references a phenomenon called “stopping sight distance.” For more information, see: Dumbaugh, E., & King, M. (2018). Engineering livable streets: A thematic review of advancements in urban street design.

Journal of Planning Literature, 33(4), 451-465. doi:10.1177/0885412218783471.

Norton, P. D. (2015). Four paradigms: Traffic safety in the twentiethcentury United States. Technology and Culture, 56(2), 319-334. doi:10.1353/ tech.2015.0065.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Zimmerman, S. (2015). The 6 E’s of Safe Routes to School: Embracing equity. Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Retrieved from https:// www.saferoutespartnership.org/blog/6-es-safe-routes-schoolembracing-equity.

Rechnitzer, G. & Grzebieta, R. (1999). Crashworthy systems: A paradigm shift in road safety design. Transport Engineering in Australia, 5(2), 1-16.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). (2015).

Critical reasons for crashes investigated in the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey. Traffic Safety Facts. DOT HS 812.

Vision Zero Network. (2018). What is Vision Zero? Retrieved from https:// visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/.

For more on this “pioneering” U.S. Vision Zero cities, see: https:// visionzeronetwork.org/vzn_focus_cities/.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). (2018). City drivers slow down for lower speed limit in Boston. Retrieved from https://www.iihs.org/ iihs/news/desktopnews/city-drivers-slow-down-for-lower-speedlimit-in-boston.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). (2017). Reducing speeding-related crashes involving passenger vehicles. Retrieved from https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS1701.pdf.

National Safety Council and the RAND Corporation. (2018).

A Road to Zero: A vision for achieving zero roadway deaths by 2050.

Retrieved from https://www.nsc.org/Portals/0/Documents/ DistractedDrivingDocuments/Driver-Tech/Road%20to%20Zero/ The-Report.pdf?ver=2018-04-17-111652-263.

To read more about the Road to Zero Grant recipients and their projects, visit: https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/get-involved/road-to-zero/ grants.

For more information on the CSCRS, its mission, and research endeavors, visit: https://www.roadsafety.unc.edu/. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_ Revolutions To read more about paradigm shifts and systems more generally, I recommend reading Donella Meadow’s essay, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, accessible here: http://donellameadows.org/ archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/.

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

LE SSO N S I N NE W M OBILITY: Electric Scooters in Indianapolis, Indiana

DANIEL HEDGLIN Daniel Hedglin is a Senior Planner for Information and Innovation with the Department of Metropolitan Development in the City of Indianapolis. Daniel’s interests include utilizing data

to craft efficient and effective city policy along with making planning more accessible for nonplanners. He received his Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

ABSTR ACT Over the past year, Indianapolis, Indiana—and cities across the country—have been impacted by the abrupt introduction of electric scooters. Though this additional mode of shared mobility offers numerous opportunities and benefits, the introduction of scooters to Indianapolis has also posed a set of new challenges for the City. These include managing scooter parking, determining the best places for scooters to operate, and developing appropriate data sharing standards. In addressing these challenges, Indianapolis has learned several key lessons, including that the built environment shapes scooter riders’ behavior and that scooters may provide a solution to the “last mile problem” associated with transit, among others. Given the rapidly changing nature of scooter usage and user behavior, Indianapolis will continue to learn and adapt to these challenges.

INTRODUCTION Over the past several years, Indianapolis has been setting the stage for how its residents move across the city. Last year, the City completed Indy Moves, an integrated transportation plan that captures community values and sets a vision for transportation in Indianapolis. Additionally, Indianapolis, in coordination with 59

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outside organizations, has created miles of bike lanes and multimodal trails throughout the city. A primary example of this is the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, a world-class multimodal trail winding throughout downtown.

However, even the best transportation plans cannot anticipate all future developments. In 2018, two companies dropped electric scooters in Indianapolis with little warning. At this time, the City had not yet established a regulatory framework for managing shared mobility devices. Like many other cities throughout the United States, Indianapolis has placed significant effort in working to meet the new challenges posed by this new and unexpected mode of transportation entering the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape by creating regulations based on best practices for shared mobility devices.

The growth of shared mobility devices, including electric scooters, offers challenges and opportunities for the City of Indianapolis, its people, and its transportation system.

This article will describe scooter ridership trends over the first few months of operation, challenges this new mode of transportation poses for Indianapolis, actions the City has taken to address these challenges so far, and potential opportunities in the future.

OVERVIEW OF SCOOTER RIDERSHIP IN INDIANAPOLIS Even in their early presence, scooters have impacted the way that Indianapolis moves. Per the licensing agreement between shared mobility companies and the City of Indianapolis, scooter operators provide user data which supplies a more nuanced understanding of scooter use in the area. This data includes temporal patterns, geographical patterns, and trip length.

Scooter ridership is lowest in the morning and steadily increases throughout the day. Peak ridership occurs after

4:00 pm and continues until approximately 8:00 pm.

Ridership is generally higher during weekend days than during weekdays, and ridership does seem to decrease with precipitation. These peak ridership days and times suggest that scooters are most often utilized to travel to and from recreational activities rather than to commute for work. Seasonally speaking, ridership overall peaked in October 2018 and decreased steadily from October to December. Although this could suggest a waning interest in scooters after their initial September debut, this likely can be explained by colder Midwestern winter temperatures that are increasingly near or below freezing.

Geographically, the majority of rides occur within the downtown core of Indianapolis (between Interstate 65, Interstate 70, and the White River). This is likely due to the higher population density, particularly among younger residents, both in and around downtown. High levels of tourism associated with conventions may also increase ridership downtown. However, the higher ridership in downtown is likely also a reflection of scooter placement: high concentrations of scooters are placed in high-density, high-traffic downtown locations at the beginning of the day. Outside of downtown, there are pockets of scooter activity around Indianapolis, particularly in neighborhoods to the north and south and around Butler University, Marion University, and the University of Indianapolis.

Between September 2018 and November 2018, over half a million scooter trips accounted for more than 500,000 miles traveled in Marion County; this is further than twice the average distance between the Earth to the moon (238,855 miles) (NASA 2018). Most noteworthy, however, is that a majority of scooter trips in Indianapolis are less than one mile in length. This suggests that scooters have the potential to address the â&#x20AC;&#x153;last mileâ&#x20AC;? challenge associated with public transportation. At this point, it is 60

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FIGURE 1 - Downtown Indianapolis has a network of bike lanes, greenways, and trails that allow for non-automobile movement.

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unclear whether people are using scooters to connect to and from public transportation, and further analysis of data is needed. However, Indianapolisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; public transportation system is undergoing significant changes in the coming years, including adding multiple lines of a bus rapid transit system. There will be opportunities to integrate public transportation with shared mobility options like bikeshare and scooters to increase non-automobile transportation options within Marion County.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOOTERS IN INDIANAPOLIS Unsurprisingly, the introduction of a new transportation option creates both opportunities and challenges for the city of Indianapolis. Specifically, these key challenges include integrating scooters into the existing built environment that was shaped for cars and pedestrians, establishing coordination across government departments to create effective regulations that meet the varying priorities of these departments, and creating data sharing requirements that offers insight into scooter rider behaviors to help shape effective policy while protecting individual user privacy. The section that follows provides an overview of these listed challenges posed by the introduction and quick growth of this new form of shared mobility, presents tangible approaches and actions taken by the City, and outlines further opportunities.

Challenges with the Built Environment Over the past decade, cities have increasingly attempted to manage parking requirements more efficiently, particularly in high-density downtown areas. Parking reduces the amount of available space for development, hurts the walkability of cities, and can increase the cost of development. Non-automobile options like buses, bikes, and scooters provide Indianapolis residents with transportation options that do not require large investments in land and money for parking lots.

As downtown Indianapolis continues to grow, reducing the need for parking could have major implications on urban design and future development. For example, Indianapolis hosts a number of professional sports teams and major events throughout the year. In 2018, the average attendance

IMAGE 1 - The Mass Ave Cultural District is a hot spot for local activity. However, scooter usage has put pressure on cars and pedestrians utilizing its thin roads and smaller sidewalks.

of an Indianapolis Colts game was 59,199 (ESPN 2019), and there are 39,649 parking spaces within six blocks of Lucas Oil Stadium (Lucas Oil Stadium 2019). If just one percent of attendees switched from traveling by car to riding scooters to games, this could reduce the number of required parking spaces by 592; it takes 2.32 acres of land to accommodate this many parking spaces. This land could instead be used for other uses that would benefit downtown such as hotels, housing, restaurants, or retail.

Even if people switch from taking rideshare services like Uber or Lyft to riding scooters to the game, this would reduce traffic in and around major events.

Cities have had decades to develop, test, and implement automobile parking regulations. This long history resulted not only in an orderly framework for managing parking but also in cities that are designed around the needs of cars. Though scooters do not require as much space for parking as cars, cities like Indianapolis were not designed to park large numbers of scooters. Without thoughtful placement consideration by shared mobility operators and users, scooters wind up parked in places that are inconvenient, and potentially dangerous, to pedestrians. Further complicating scooter parking is the 62

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nature of dockless shared mobility devices and the appeal for the user to park them in any location. Though scooter companies recommend parking scooters near existing bicycle infrastructure, some users park scooters in pedestrian pathways or in front of handicapped accessible areas. Even though this likely represents a small percentage of scooter riders, just a small percentage of thousands of trips still can result in tens or hundreds of illegally or unsuitably parked devices each day.

Beyond parking, officials and government administrators in Indianapolis are contemplating appropriate locations to operate scooters (May & Hill 2018). Generally speaking, scooters have worked well in areas with existing bicycle infrastructure, like bike lanes. Though bike lanes are frequently among the most traveled routes by scooters, there are only 104 miles of bike lanes in Marion County, as compared to the over 8,000 miles of city-maintained roads (Indy Moves 2018). Though data shows that greenways and the Indianapolis Cultural Trail are also popular routes for scooter riders, motorized vehiclesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which includes electric scooters â&#x20AC;&#x201D;are not allowed to operate in these areas, and riders who operate scooters there are subject to being ticketed.

Scooters have not worked as well in areas that lack bicycle infrastructure. In particular, hot spots in Indianapolis with smaller streets and limited bike infrastructure such as the Mass Ave Arts District, which already attracts large crowds, have struggled with scooter parking and scooters on sidewalks and streets. With maximum speeds of 15 miles per hour, scooters can pose risks to pedestrians on sidewalks, particularly in high traffic areas. However, scooters are significantly slower than automobiles, which can leave scooter riders feeling vulnerable on streets and car drivers feeling agitated when the two transportation modes encounter each other.

The City of Indianapolis has been grappling with the question of operating location by developing scooter regulations that support improvements to the built environment. As part of the licensing agreement, Indianapolis charges a per-day fee for each scooter that is released. This fee is to be allocated to improving multimodal infrastructure throughout the city.

Though the city is still dealing with how to manage tensions between pedestrians, cars, and scooter users, funds from this 63

form of transportation will help create an environment that is friendlier and safer to non-automobile users.

Indianapolis has been open to other forms of shared mobility devices including docked bikeshare and electric car share, and it remains open to other forms of transportation like scooters. However, scooter riders, bikers, pedestrians, and car drivers all deserve reasonable levels of safety and comfort when navigating the city.

Developing new policies and prioritizing infrastructure improvements are strategies that can help to create space for new types of transportation in harmony with existing modes and to ensure safety and comfort for all who travel.

Cross Departmental Coordination Managing and maintaining a city as large as Indianapolis is a complex challenge, and responsibilities are split across numerous departments. When a problem can be addressed by a single department, coordination is easy because leadership in that department can take full ownership of solving a problem as they see fit. The challenges associated with electric scooters, however, touch on responsibilities for multiple departments. Regulating and managing electric scooters has required coordination from the Department of Business and Neighborhood Services, which operates licenses and permitting in Indianapolis; the Department of Public Works, which manages infrastructure and studies traffic; and the Department of Metropolitan Development, which carries out long-range planning and zoning. Each department has its own set of goals and responsibilities as they relate to electric scooters, and these goals at times are not the same.

Though departments in Indianapolis have worked together before, there was not an existing framework of collaboration that included all the relevant stakeholders needed to address challenges associated with electric scooters. Indianapolis has worked to integrate multiple departments into the process of solving scooter challenges.

In particular, the City held regular meetings across departments when crafting the ordinance that manages shared mobility providers. Additionally, in the early months of electric scooter operation, members from several departments have collaborated to analyze early

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IMAGE 2 - The Indianapolis Cultural Trail is a world-class multimodal trail that winds through downtown Indianapolis.

It allows bikers and pedestrians to easily navigate downtown.

experiences with electric scooters to improve the scooter experience in the future. This has created a nice balance of responsibilities and communication that generally meets each departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs.

Data Sharing As of January 2018, the City of Indianapolis requires that shared mobility providersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including electric scooter companiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;submit a monthly overview report with general ridership information, individual trip reports, collision and complaint reports, and maintenance reports. Data from electric scooters provides us with the opportunity to understand how individuals travel across the city in great detail, including when and where they travel. We can use this data to evaluate shared mobility policies in near real-time to understand the efficacy of existing policies, to guide new policy development, and to increase enforcement efficiency. The data can also supplement information that will be used to inform the development of infrastructure plans, ensuring that investments are being made where they are needed.

However, because shared mobility is such a new and rapidly developing field, creating appropriate data sharing guidelines that balances providing the City with meaningful information, protecting the privacy of scooter

riders, and allowing room for shared mobility providers to succeed is tricky.

Data available from shared mobility providers is greater in size, scope, and detail than many governmental agencies are accustomed to working with; if the data is not standardized, collecting and analyzing data from multiple vendors across different mobility types is challenging.

For example, if different operators provide data in a mix of PDFs, word processing documents, and spreadsheets, compiling the data in a comparable form requires timeconsuming effort. To address this challenge, Indianapolis created standards for shared mobility providers to report their data. Because Indianapolis has not collected data in this way in the past, creating new data reporting standards from scratch was uncharted territory. Fortunately, many cities are facing similar challenges simultaneously and are willing to share policies on existing best practices.

Organizations such as the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) have also released guidelines for the regulation and management of shared mobility devices (NACTO 2018). Using information from these other public and nonprofit organizations has been valuable in crafting data regulation standards in Indianapolis.

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types of information collected for individual trip data.

However, in this period of rapid change for shared mobility providers, best practices for data collection are quickly evolving, and Indianapolis remains open to updating its standards to reflect best practices.

IMAGE 3 - Two scooters parked in front of the historic Indianapolis

City Market, located in the heart of downtown.

An additional challenge Indianapolis has faced is balancing the benefits of data collected by shared mobility providers with protecting the privacy of individual users. For example, many cities now require that shared mobility providers provide access to trip data that can include starting points, ending points, and trip paths. This data provides valuable insight into travel behavior patterns because it shows how people navigate the city and the connections between different places. However, data that displays the beginning and ending points for trips, even when anonymized, has the potential for being combined with other data sources to reveal sensitive information about users. Additionally, because this data is collected by a public agency, it is subject to public records requests per Indiana law. It is important that cities are careful that data is appropriately anonymized prior to collection.

Indianapolis addresses this challenge in part by limiting the amount of real-time data it collects and by limiting certain 65

Finally, Indianapolis is grappling with technical challenges associated with collecting and analyzing data. Cities are increasingly developing data sharing requirements that utilize application program interfaces (APIs) to share data between shared mobility providers and governmental organizations. Though this offers cities with the opportunity to conveniently collect data with a specific focus, utilizing APIs requires programming skills that are beyond the existing capabilities of many planning staffs. Furthermore, drawing meaningful conclusions from this many data pointsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;over 500,000 scooter trips in Indianapolis during 2018â&#x20AC;&#x201D;can require advanced data analysis techniques. Indianapolis has addressed this challenge by structuring data reporting requirements in a way that is usable by current staff, and the City is considering third-party vendors and outside partners to assist in addressing technical challenges like utilizing real-time data APIs. When developing data standards, cities should consider their capability for collecting and analyzing data; if existing staff does not have the technical capability or time to manage data collection and analysis, then cities should consider utilizing a third party to create tools for managing data and building the cost of this tool into proposed fees.

TOWARDS THE FUTURE Though Indianapolis has created its initial set of rules and regulations for shared mobility, the rapidly changing nature of shared mobility transportation options will likely require updates to these regulations to address existing challenges and to further the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s long-range transportation goals, including prioritizing equity with scooters, ensuring scooter safety, and applying scooter data in new ways.

Key goals developed through the Indy Moves process include addressing transportation disparities, increasing access to transit opportunities, and expanding mobility choices (Indy

Another important tool for improving transportation in Indianapolis will be using data collected from the shared mobility providers to understand scooter rider behavior.

There are crucial questions about scooter usage that are still to be answered, particularly related to scooter safety.

Combining scooter data with other data sources, including crash data from the Indiana State Police, may provide a clearer picture on safety issues associated with scooters.

Though some of this analysis may be done within the city government, there may be opportunities to partner with research institutions within the region to better understand this data.

Finally, the City will explore how to utilize scooter usage data to improve city services, regulations, and enforcement.

Because different departments may use this information in different ways, continued coordination across different departments is essential.

MOVING FORWARD WITH SCOOTERS IN INDIANAPOLIS AND BEYOND Though we are still learning lessons from the electric scooter experience, Indianapolis’s commitment to crossdepartment coordination and its willingness to adapt to new challenges will hopefully put us in a position to succeed in the future. Many of the challenges that Indianapolis has faced over the first few months of electric scooter operations are not unique to the city or even the region; other cities are also struggling to balance challenges with the built environment and developing appropriate data sharing regulations. Though there is no clear playbook that will work perfectly for any individual city, we recommend that other cities continue to build on the experience of their peer cities as they address similar challenges.

It is easy to envision how scooters can play a role in diversifying transportation options in Indianapolis, particularly in coordination with the bus rapid transit system that will begin to come online over the next few years. However, there are still barriers to integrating electric scooters into the fabric of the city successfully.

Given the rapid rate that scooters have entered the field of transportation, the coming years will be exciting yet challenging times for cities adapting to shared mobility trends.

WORKS CITED City of Indianapolis. Department of Metropolitan Development. Indy Moves.

2018. Accessed December 15, 2018. http://indymoves.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/09/Indy-Moves-Plan_20181001.pdf.

City of Indianapolis. Department of Metropolitan Development.

Bicentennial Agenda. 2016. Accessed January 2, 2019. http://indymoves. org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Indy-Moves-Plan_20181001.pdf.

Electric Scooter - Individual Trip Data. Raw data. City of Indianapolis. 2018.

ESPN. Accessed January 10, 2019. http://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance.

“In Depth | About the Moon -- Moon: NASA Science.” NASA. June 12, 2018.

Accessed January 5, 2019. https://moon.nasa.gov/about/in-depth/.

May, Ethan and Crystal Hill. “After More than 20 Injuries in September, Scooter Rule Enforcement Begins in Indianapolis.” IndyStar, October 5, 2018. Accessed December 28, 2018. https://www.indystar.com/story/ news/2018/10/05/bird-lime-scooters-indianapolis-safety-enforcementspotlight/1419495002/.

National Association of City Transportation Officials. Guidelines for the Regulation and Management of Shared Active Transportation Version 1: July 2018. Accessed December 20, 2018. https://nacto.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/07/NACTO-Shared-Active-Transportation-Guidelines.pdf.

“Parking.” Upcoming Events | Lucas Oil Stadium. Accessed January 2, 2019. http://www.lucasoilstadium.com/parking.aspx.

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Moves 2018). The plan also includes a Transportation Equity Index that shows areas with higher needs for affordable transportation options. Because scooters have the potential to play a role in Indianapolis’s transit future, the city will explore options, including the use of required deployment in defined “equity zones,” to ensure that shared mobility devices such as scooters reach a wide swath of people, regardless of income.

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

E M E RGE NCY M ANAGEMENT 2.0: S HA RED MO BI LI TY FO R E Q UI TABLE EVAC UAT ION A ND DI SASTE R P LAN NING SAMANTHA PORTER, MPA Samantha is Director of Place-Based Initiatives in the City of Philadelphiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity. She directs Federal initiatives, including the West Philadelphia

Promise Zone Initiative on behalf of her agency. She brings her experience coordinating Federal programs from Disaster Recovery to more traditional community development work. She began

her work in Disaster Recovery in 2013 in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy as Program Specialist

for the State of New Jersey. At ICF, she continued her work in Disaster Recovery as a Technical Specialist, creating tools and providing technical assistance for the implementation of singlefamily housing recovery programs. Recently, as resilience, hazard mitigation, and emergency

planning become increasingly important components of disaster recovery, an opportunity

to explore innovative approaches to emergency management have arisen. Prior to ICF, her

work experience included administering multimillion-dollar federal grants for basic science

research and clinical trials. She is an experienced project manager who brings a collaborative approach to large scale projects.

LINDSAY OLUYEDE, AICP Lindsay is a PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Until recently, she worked as a transportation planner at ICF, where

she conducted research on a wide range of planning topics related to multimodal transportation, integrated planning, and collaborative decision-making. Prior to ICF, she worked at Rails-to-

Trails Conservancy where she provided technical assistance to communities on building and managing multi-use trails. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

ABSTR ACT This paper examines the increasing role of technology in emergency response and evacuation planning, with a focus on two trends: the role that the sharing economy (ride-hailing, dynamic carpooling, Uber, Lyft, etc.) can play in evacuations during the immediate recovery and the use of social media to disseminate evacuation information. These technological trends can help address some of the most significant challenges in emergency response and evacuation planning: 1) communications in a rapidly changing and uncertain context; and 2) mobility, particularly in underserved and transportation vulnerable

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communities. Integrating technology into emergency response plans can support the activation of nimble and effective communications between local, State, and Federal agencies, and also with first responders and the public. Leveraging the shared economy can augment the delivery of transportation during evacuations and recovery, especially for underserved populations (low-income, older adults, persons with disabilities, etc.) who may not be able to self-evacuate. This paper provides an overview of the current role that ride-hailing and social media play in the planning and facilitation of emergency transportation and considers the opportunities and policy barriers to integrating these technologies into emergency response while also addressing equity considerations.

responders during and after the storm (Federal Emergency Management Agency 2017). In 2018, in the ten days after Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina, response teams made more than 5,200 rescues (Bacon 2018). Increased pre-event evacuations reduce the number of emergency rescues during and after storm events, which are both risky and costly (Mileti 1999). These rescue efforts signal new opportunities to invest in the revision of city and State evacuation plans with greater consideration for the most vulnerable populations. Such investments in planning may reduce both the costs and risks of emergency rescue and offer a path towards increased resilience. In the face of more frequent and severe weather events, resilience is an issue of increasing interest in the planning field (Stromberg 2017).

INTRODUCTION In 2005, the evacuations of New Orleans and Houston (due to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, respectively) illuminated the transportation inequities that result from car-centric evacuation planning. Of the reported 1.2 million Katrina evacuees, the majority evacuated using a private vehicle.

The City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan only contemplated 100,000 carless residents would require shelter (Morse 2008). In the aftermath of these storms, there was increased interest in the evacuation of vulnerable populations, as academics and practitioners sought to capture lessons learned from the 2005 hurricane season (Renne et al 2008). For example, the New Orleans City-Assisted Evacuation Plan (CAEP) implemented in 2008, resulting from the failures of Katrina, provided plans for the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s carless and vulnerable populations (Renne 2011).

Now, more than a decade later, emergency rescues remain a critical part of hurricane response. When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas in 2017, more than 122,000 people were rescued by Federal, State, and local first

Transportation related evacuation planning is a critical component of building resilience, and the inclusion of vulnerable populations in evacuation planning is a transportation equity issue that needs to be addressed to increase environmental justice (Renne 2011). A recent report prepared for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) investigates the application of shared use mobility in transportation planning in Region IV MPOs. This report defines shared use mobility as a term used to describe transportation services that are shared among multiple users. The study goes on to identify a variety of transportation services included in this definition, including buses, trains, bikeshare programs, and ride sourcing services such as Uber and Lyft (Haynes 2018).

The growth of shared use mobility (e.g. ride sourcing or ride-hailing, etc.) in the transportation sector presents additional travel options that could be leveraged to enhance evacuations, particularly among vulnerable populations. This article examines research on factors that influence evacuation behaviors, the unique characteristics of vulnerable populations, and planning for carless

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evacuations to identify opportunities and barriers for utilizing shared use mobility and social media to potentially make evacuation planning more equitable.

LITER ATURE REVIEW Transportation Vulnerability and Determinants of Evacuation Behavior In the context of evacuation planning, the notion of transportation vulnerability is multifaceted. Transportation vulnerable primarily includes carless populations, defined as: “Anyone, for any reason, that does not have access to an automobile or [the option] to use it for purposes of evacuation (no money for gas/ lodging, fearful of operating it under stress, etc.). This includes the young, elderly, disabled, poor, and anyone else that does not drive.”

(Renne et al. 2008) Another vulnerable group is comprised of individuals with special needs, namely the elderly and those with medical conditions. These individuals may require ongoing medical attention and other support or may be afflicted with a condition that prevents a long journey by car (Renne et al.

2008). The homeless comprise another vulnerable group (Transportation Research Board 2008). More broadly, those living in poverty are included in the population of transportation vulnerable individuals.

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated how the lack of access to automobiles complicated the evacuation effort, and researchers have documented the high poverty rate in New Orleans as contributing to the lack of automobile access (Guion 2007). Access to a personal vehicle may not be the only hindrance to evacuation; there are multiple factors that influence evacuation behavior. Research has shown that there is not a universal set of determinants, but potential factors include the clarity and prevalence of evacuation messaging, the evacuation behaviors of neighbors, and perceived risk (Guion et al. 2007; Stein et al. 2010). Studies have found that social and demographic characteristics are not predictors of evacuation, yet they may place constraints on evacuation behavior (Stein et al. 2010).

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While there is overlap between the vulnerable populations above and the traditionally transportation-disadvantaged groups that are the focus of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Title VI Program (FHWA 2017), it also includes groups that are not considered vulnerable in a non-emergency context, such as tourists and individuals who opt for a car-free lifestyle (Renne 2011).

For effective evacuation planning, is it important to not consider transportation vulnerable populations as a monolith. An individual may experience multiple layers of vulnerability simultaneously (Renne et al. 2008). Therefore, local emergency planners must understand and address the travel patterns, locations, and information needs and preferences for each vulnerable population (Renne et al.

2008).

Evacuation Planning for Vulnerable Populations Federal law requires that local emergency planning officials prepare for mass evacuations and since 2006 has also mandated evacuation assistance for populations with special needs (Transportation Research Board 2008).

However, guidance on implementation has been less clear.

Furthermore, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs)—the entity federally-mandated and -funded to conduct regional transportation planning—are not required to participate in emergency evacuation planning (Renne 2011).

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina prompted multiple research studies that examined the state of evacuation planning. Several common themes emerged pertaining to the evacuation of vulnerable populations, which are outlined below.

Current Plans Lack Adequate Specificity The severity of the 2005 hurricane season prompted interest in the state of the practice of transportation and evacuation planning. Multiple studies found that existing evacuation plans were vague and lacked focus

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IMAGE 1 - Evacuation of Residents, Shutterstock.com

and specificity about procedures in event of an emergency evacuation, specifically pertaining to vulnerable populations (Transportation Research Board 2008; Renne et al. 2008).

approach to evacuation planning accommodates diverse transportation needs and enables emergency response efforts that are more equitable (Renne 2011).

Car-Centric Approach Ignores Needs of Carless Populations; Multimodal Options Are Needed

An important lesson learned during Hurricane Katrina, which was echoed in recent disasters, is the opportunity for increased social marketing as it relates to evacuation opportunities. In a 2007 study, researchers examined the ways marketing can influence disaster management at each phase of the classic four phase model of emergency management, which includes preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation (Mileti 1999). The findings of this study indicate the critical need for consistent, reliable communication at each phase in a disaster (Guion 2007). An integrated approach to social marketing as an element of evacuation planning and disaster management may connect evacuees to the strategies at each phase of

Social Marketing in Disaster Management

A 2006 report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security found that only 18 percent of State [emergency response and evacuation] plans and 7 percent of plans for urban areas were â&#x20AC;&#x153;sufficientâ&#x20AC;? in providing a multimodal approach to evacuation planning. The majority of plans were car-centric and focused on evacuation using personal vehicles (Renne 2011). Car-centric planning poses several challenges. It leads to inefficient use of roadways that leads to traffic congestion and fuel shortages (Renne et al. 2008) and ignores the needs of vulnerable and carless populations (Transportation Research Board 2008). Thus, a multimodal

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

disaster management model for more effective emergency management (Guion 2007). Examples of integrated social marketing include emergency notifications generated via cell phone, radio, and news program announcements. Emerging research on disaster social media points to the increasing use of social media by public sector agencies and emergency responders to “facilitate improved disaster communication and operations” (Houston et al. 2015).

and planning for returning carless evacuees during post-disaster recovery. It is critical to incorporate the evacuation of vulnerable populations during evacuation drills and training exercises (Renne 2011).

Pre-planning and public education are critical to success of carless evacuations. Research about the evacuations of vulnerable populations have also identified recommendations for successful implementation, including:

Educate Vulnerable and Carless Populations about Evacuation Options: Emergency managers have an opportunity to offer more robust public education, which is a critical component to the success of the evacuation of carless and vulnerable populations. Building public education strategies into the emergency management plan will ensure vulnerable populations are aware of the availability of evacuation assistance (Renne 2011).

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Adequate Pre-Planning: As part of the emergency planning process, identify vulnerable populations, including the carless/transit-dependent, tourists, the elderly, homeless, minority populations, lowincome residents, and individuals with medical needs (Transportation Research Board 2008; Renne 2011).

Establish assembly points to facilitate where special needs populations can access transit or other modes for evacuation (Transportation Research Board 2008).

Consider the role that walking, biking, transit, ridehailing, and carpooling can play in first-mile connections or evacuation travel and identify mobility hubs to facilitate easier transition between modes.

Emergency managers who consider developing a multimodal approach to evacuation planning gain an opportunity to engage shared mobility services, which can provide additional capacity for an effective evacuation. As previously stated, local governments have jurisdiction over much of the evacuation planning and response efforts. The inclusion of ride-hailing and other shared mobility options as an evacuation alternative may provide opportunities for increased equity, and therefore greater compliance, throughout an evacuation event, specifically among vulnerable populations noted above. The inclusion of ride-hailing services as an enhancement to transportation accessibility may have implications for the evolution of

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Identify and Address Transportations Gaps: Analyze capacity for meeting the evacuation travel surge demand, not limited to transit. Identify options for filling the gaps with the private sector, including shared mobility services, etc. (Transportation Research Board 2008).

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Establish Procedures for Emergency Operations: Augment emergency operations procedures to include protocols related to evacuating the carless and other evacuees. This could include coordinating with transportation agencies to provide dedicated lanes for return trips to support multiple rounds of evacuees

APPROACHES TO A SOLUTION

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IMAGE 2 - Evacuation Route, Shutterstock.com

Increased Equity Through Multi-modal Evacuation Planning Recent hurricanes have highlighted deficiencies in autocentric evacuation planning which largely ignored carless populations. The advent of ride-hailing providers has created a new level of access for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, people with disabilities, and low-income communities of color. Although initially a reaction to a lack of accessibility and lawsuits, some urban areas such as Boston and New York City have started to integrate ridehailing into local transportation planning, specifically as a supplement to non-ambulatory and paratransit service offerings (Rubinstein 2018; Taft 2018). These examples illustrate the opportunity offered by the inclusion of ridehailing in an evacuation as an alternative to traditional transportation options thus potentially increasing the ability of vulnerable residents to comply with an evacuation order. Not only could the integration of ridehailing in evacuation planning provide greater availability of a variety of vehicles (e.g. accessible, multi-passenger, offroad, etc.), it could affect relative affordable costs, increased autonomy in requesting services, and a relative increased comfort level for those unable to ride public transportation during an evacuation, thus reducing barriers to compliance.

Below is a discussion of opportunities and barriers presented by the potential to leverage shared mobility and social media to enhance emergency evacuations from an emergency management perspective.

Social Marketing Integration in Evacuation Beyond adequate transportation planning for carless populations in an evacuation, local governments also face the challenge of communication planning. Government officials and emergency managers may assume that

trends around the use of social media and smartphone apps is more prevalent among certain populations, such as carless millennials, however the results from a 2017 Pew Research Center survey indicates a rise in older Americansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;those 65 and olderâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;using smartphones and the internet (Anderson 2017). In their 2016 social media update, Pew Research Center reported that a majority of Americans now say they get news via social media (Greenwood 2016). The generally increasing norms among Americans to receive and trust information provided via social media outlets signals that a communication plan that includes an integrated social marketing strategy can be critical in an evacuation event. The layering of social media posts, smartphone application generated messaging, and traditional news media announcements addresses the need for flexible, scalable, and adaptable operational plan (FEMA, National Response Framework, 3rd Edition June 2016). Therefore, the solution to use of social media marketing and integrated messages in ride-hailing apps can ensure consistent, credible messaging about available transportation options.

Ride-hailing services offering evacuation assistance also creates an opportunity for vulnerable populations such as older adults, people with disabilities, and the carless who may need a longer window to make a decision to more readily comply with an evacuation order. When combined in a comprehensive disaster management plan, notifications pushed via ride-hailing apps and social media marketing provide clear and consistent messaging to target populations using real time updates about the availability of transportation in the affected area, traffic delays, and road closures.

Another novel aspect of this solution is the ability to update information across multiple platforms in real time. Once a designated agent, such as an emergency manager, obtains updated information about evacuation activities, social media consumers, including staff at the police, ambulatory, and fire departments, can receive potentially actionable information about new developments. Information as important as changes in

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State and Federal evacuation planning practices. In addition to greater equity, incorporating ride-hailing providers offers another communications platform (i.e., ridehailing apps) to integrate and leverage social marketing strategy that allows for dynamic, targeted, consistent, and credible communication about evacuation options, thus creating a longer opportunity window for compliance with evacuation in both voluntary and mandatory scenarios.

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

procedures for obtaining transportation, service outages, and changes in the status of evacuation routes can be integrated in the social marketing strategy that includes the push notifications offered by ride-hailing providers.

Leveraging Market Solutions to Address Governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Limited Capacity In disaster planning, local governments will see significant demand on available transportation resources, despite limited capacity. Not only are the numbers of government-operated vehicles limited, limitations exist to the number of personnel available to staff and coordinate transportation services.

Leveraging ride-hailing services essentially creates an alternative transportation workforce that may increase local governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capacity to evacuate residents, specifically those vulnerable populations for which evacuation planning is most challenging. Finally, despite the recognized importance of emergency evacuation plans, funding for these activities is often limited, especially at the local level. The cooperation and integration of ride-hailing services may also help control the cost of a large scale evacuation, thus increasing the value of each dollar available during such large scale emergencies.

FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES Recent hurricane seasons have once again highlighted the necessity of new approaches to transportation planning in emergency management. In the case of Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, evacuation plans still favor an auto-centric approach to evacuation. The development of multimodal evacuation plans, particularly that incorporate social marketing strategies, may allow transportation planning to include ride-hailing and robust communication strategies for equitable evacuations, especially among transportation vulnerable populations.

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As local governments increasingly incorporate ridehailing in general transportation planning for vulnerable populations, more opportunities emerge to develop deeper relationships with ride-hailing companies that formalize protocols for effective engagement. Those engagements have implications for inclusion in future emergency response and evacuation plans.

Studies of effective approaches to social marketing campaigns and communications through ride-hailing apps can also provide approaches to consistent messaging for evacuation planning and response. The increased attention transportation planners are now offering to improve evacuation of vulnerable populations can illuminate the cost benefit of deeper integration between ride-hailing companies and local government.

Recognizing the limitations of government resources and better relationships with ride-hailing providers may increase capacity of local officials to see greater compliance with evacuation plans and fewer emergency rescues following a disaster. With proper planning, local governments may create relationships with ridehailing providers that will also allow for expansive communications planning.

As evidenced by the Federal Transit Administration Region IV 2018 investigation of shared used mobility approaches in transportation planning, there are still challenges to this approach. Web-accessibility, unfamiliar terminology, and the need for clear definitions, as well as the inability to revise plans to reflect rapidly changing technology landscape, require transportation planners and emergency managers to continue to work together on new approaches.

These emerging solutions may allow local governments to address factors that influence evacuation behaviors and ultimately result in greater compliance and more equitable planning for transportation vulnerable populations.

Anderson, Monica and Andrew Perrin, “Tech Adoption Climbs Among Older Adult.” Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology, May 17, 2017, http://www. pewinternet.org/2017/05/17/tech-adoption-climbs-among-older-adults/.

Bacon, John. “Hurricane Florence hit 10 days ago, and still hundreds of roads remain closed, thousands evacuated,” USA Today, September 24, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/09/24/florence-10days-later-rescues-and-evacuations-continue/1408965002/.

“Environmental Justice, Title Vi, Non-Discrimination, and Equity,” Federal Highway Administration, accessed January 21, 2018, https://www.fhwa. dot.gov/environment/environmental_justice/equity/.

Guion, Deirdre T., Debra L. Scammon, and Aberdeen Leila Borders.

“Weathering the Storm: A Social Marketing Perspective on Disaster Preparedness and Response with Lessons from Hurricane Katrina.” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, no. 26 (Spring 2007): 20-32.

Greenwood, Shannon, Andrew Perrin and Maeve Duggan. “Social Media Update 2016.” Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology, November 11, 2016, http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/.

Haynes, David. “Shared Use Mobility, Transportation Technology, and Intercity Transit Services” A Field guide to How These Issues are Being Addressed in Metropolitan Planning Process and How Public Transit Agencies are Adapting to an Evolving Mobility Landscape. Federal Transit Administration, Region IV, Atlanta, GA. June 2018. Accessed February 11, 2019: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/about/ regional-offices/region-4/117516/shared-use-mobility-transportationtechnology-and-intercity-transit-services.pdf “Historic Disaster Response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas,” Federal Emergency Management Agency, accessed January 21, 2019, https://www. fema.gov/news-release/2017/09/22/historic-disaster-response-hurricaneharvey-texas.

Houston, Brian J et al. “Social Media and Disasters: a functional framework for social media use in disaster planning, response, and research.” Disasters, Vol 39 Issue 1 (2015). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ disa.12092

Mileti, Dennis. Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 1999.

Morse, Reilly. Environmental Justice Through the Eye of Hurricane Katrina. Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Inc. Washington, DC 2008 “National Response Framework, 3rd Edition, June 2016”, US Department of Homeland Security, FEMA. accessed February 11, 2019, https://www. fema.gov/media-library-data/1466014682982-9bcf8245ba4c60c120aa91 5abe74e15d/National_Response_Framework3rd.pdf Renne, John L., Thomas W. Sanchez, and Todd Litman. National Study on Carless and Special Needs Evacuation Planning: A Literature Review. New Orleans: University of New Orleans Transportation Center, 2008. www.planning.uno. edu/docs/CarlessEvacuationPlanning.pdf.

Renne, John L. “Evacuation Planning for Vulnerable Populations: Lessons from the New Orleans City Assisted Evacuation Plan.” In Lessons from the U.S. Gulf Coast after Katrina and Rita, edited by Amy Liu, Roland V. Anlin, and Richard M. Mizelle. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011.

Rubinstein, Dana. “In new suit, Uber, Lyft, and Via target New York’s wheelchair-accessibilty requirements,” Politico, April 13, 2018, https:// www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/04/13/in-newsuit-uber-lyft-and-via-target-new-yorks-wheelchair-accessibilityrequirements-364226 Special Report 294: The Role of Transit in Emergency Evacuation. Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board, 2018. http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/ sr/sr294.pdf.

Stein, Robert M., Leonardo Duenas-Osorio, et al., “Who Evacuates When Hurricanes Approach? The Role of Risk, Information, and Location.” Social Science Quarterly, no. 91 (2010): 816-834.

Stromberg, Meghan. “Planning for Resilience.” American Planning Association Blog, accessed January 21, 2019, https://www.planning.org/ blog/blogpost/9124762/.

Taft, Molly. “Why can’t Uber and Lyft be more wheelchair-friendly?”

CityLab, December 11, 2018, https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/12/ ride-hailing-users-disabilitiies-wheelchair-access-uber/577855/

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WORKS CITED

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

R E VI E W | DE SI GN S FOR T HE PLURIVERS E: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds

AUTHOR/ ARTURO ESCOBAR Review by Darien Williams

Duke University Press, 2018. 312 pages.

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In the advent of changing global migration patterns, disruptive climate events, and societies increasingly contending with growing pains of pluralism, demand for the decentering of Enlightenmentage Western thought in design and social science continues to increase. Students, practitioners, and policymakers in these fields are increasingly seeking out sustainable and resilient design solutions previously thought of as untenable. In Designs for the Pluriverse, Arturo Escobar (Encountering Development, Territories of Difference) reconciles these needs by positing a new approach built on theory and political accomplishments: movement towards the active and just creation of the pluriverse, or a â&#x20AC;&#x153;world in which many worlds fitâ&#x20AC;? (p.

6). In this approach, the author liberates himself from the weight of decolonial theory, a useful but sometimes too narrow paradigm, the author argues. Escobar resolves what he considers to be a troubling preoccupation with dismantling what currently exists, with a set of workable normative design paradigm for building what comes next.

Designs for the Pluriverse inserts itself as a starting point for reconciling the violence of imposed modernity, decentering Western framings of development, and hands the baton to societies in marginalized geographies to begin drawing from ancestral knowledge, theory, and lessons learned for both research and practice.

Escobar sets the stage by guiding the reader through claims of an accelerating crisis with roots in global adherence to modernist theory, goals, and approaches to worldbuilding. The author defines the impacts of climate change, ongoing sociopolitical conflicts, potential for nuclear war, and expanding imperial and extractive projects as caused by modernist-inspired design paradigms. Such paradigms, at their core, define humans as distinct from nature, societal needs distinguished from environmental concerns, and a universal understanding of space, time, and resources. Departing from these taken-for-granted tropes, the text frames contemporary design, with its basis in Western empiricism, rational thought, and normative assumptions, as unsustainably dependent on capitalist production. On this foundation, Escobar makes the case for reorienting design practice â&#x20AC;&#x153;from its dependence on the marketplace toward creative experimentation with forms, concepts, territories, and materials, especially when appropriated by subaltern

where he focuses on disaster recovery, marginalized populations, and Black settlements. He has previously worked in Eastern North Carolina with UNC on local planning in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew.

communities struggling to redefine their life projects in a mutually enhancing manner” (p. xvii).

The author illustrates design as a mechanism employed by international development policy predicated on the expansion of capital. The genealogy of such policy is rooted in post-war Bretton-Woods management approaches; labeling societies that prioritized other forms of human development, quality of life, and living in (more) harmonious connection with the processes of the Earth as “underdeveloped” or “undeveloped.”

Such efforts, Escobar argues, fail to leave room for worldbuilding projects like popular education movements or alternative economies. This argument is placed alongside the pressing challenges that face current and future generations: Western capitalistic modes of production, communication, and governance are now increasingly being understood as unsustainable with the potential for human extinction.

The book argues against the unsustainability of current mainstream practices (policy, production, and economy) as informed by design, and pulls from real and imaginary examples of the Global South reworking design to create a pluriverse (p. 111).

The author builds his argument on a robust collection of work, citing efforts in theory and practice on every continent– spanning from John Law and Walter Mignolo to Bob Marley, Anne-Marie Williams, and Brenda Laurel. He articulates a gap in the literature about decolonizing design practice; namely, once we actually move away from the imposed frameworks (or “defuturing,” or denying a potential collective future, as Escobar states) for understanding and addressing the world’s problems, what do we do next? In response to this question, Escobar is inspired by the Zapatista movement, which not only broke away from the grip of the nation-state of Mexico, but also asserted an alternative nonstate to serve the needs of a region.

In this example, the author problematizes the straightforward timeline often given to revolutionary movements, showing the “Zapatista method of autonomous government was not an invention of the EZLN,” but rather a product of centuries of resistance, trial-and-error, and reflection on lessons learned. It is at this junction that Escobar makes the jump from a purely decolonial project (critiquing and dismantling processes coercively imposed by the West) into an active pluriverse. “When we fail to have our own proposals, we end

up negotiating those of others” (p. 173). The book claims that there are workable metrics, standards, and understandings which are heavily reliant on locality and context that must be asserted after the extant modern modes of being are critiqued.

Efforts toward a pluriverse are not all on the scale of the autonomous Zapatista movement–they can be grounded in a site as small as the building-scale. At this level, Escobar refers to the visionary work of Jean-Paul Bourdier and Tinh T. Minh-ha, who have reframed traditional West African building styles deemed “underdeveloped” or “substandard” in the formal, Western-dominated development world. Their work contextualizes these building techniques, depicting them not only as rooted in tradition, but also as evolving and moving forward in an environmentally coherent and logical way. Escobar shows that with an approach guided by his pluriverse paradigm, these traditional techniques need not be looked upon with nostalgia, or dissected and rendered in Western architecture in a way that removes context, but rather can develop in their own right toward more just, sustainable goals.

The text contains several points that require grounding or clarification if the work is to reach wider audiences. Escobar cites numerous theories of design, underscoring that ‘design’ is ambiguously defined; however, he does not present a specific workable definition. This lack of clarity weakens the applicability of the text, though Escobar’s illustrative examples ensure the reader is not distracted . Additionally, Escobar’s arguments rely on “systems” as units of analysis without clearly defining or characterizing them. More than the aforementioned lack of definition for “design,” this omission endangers the text, making large swaths of Escobar’s work difficult to synthesize in real-world contexts not mentioned in the text.

Designs for the Pluriverse is a heavy-hitting theoretical framework with potential to inform the practice of the design scholar or professional in any field, from planning or architecture to product design, engineering, and beyond. The work makes sense of generations of decolonial scholarship, pushing the reader towards understanding their design work as more relational, long-term-oriented, and transformative than previously assumed.

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BOOK REVIEW

DARIEN ALEXANDER WILLIAMS is a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning,

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

R E VI E W | RI SI NG: Dispatches from the New American Shore

AUTHOR/ ELIZABETH RUSH Review by Leah Campbell

The threat of climate change is not some distant problem, but already here and now, reshaping the physical and social landscape of coastal communities from Maine to California. This is the take home point of Elizabeth Rush’s latest book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. Rising explores the physical processes that are irrevocably transforming the shoreline and the policies and decisions that have left some more vulnerable than others. Rush eloquently describes the geologic and human history of the coastlines, as well as the life cycles of the plants and animals that call them home. The book is advertised as an on-the-ground investigation of coastal communities coming to terms with sea level rise and what it means for their future. But on a more fundamental level, Rising is a somber meditation on the meaning of loss and vulnerability, which Rush delivers with a deep reverence and respect for both the natural and human world. While it seems there is a new book about sea level rise released every day, Rising is one of the more personal and humane out there.

The book is divided into three sections: Rampikes, titled after the dead trees emblematic of dying wetlands; Rhizomes, after the dense root networks that hold a marsh together; and Rising. Ostensibly, this structure is meant to provide a natural progression from those places there is no hope of saving, to those where ties within the community provide some sort of inherent resilience, to those where restoration efforts are underway. In reality, though, the stories and those that tell them bleed between each section and the more notable structure is geographic.

Milkweed Editions, 2018. 299 pages.

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Starting in her adopted home state of Rhode Island, Rush travels first to Louisiana’s Isle de Jean Charles, a rapidly disappearing island populated mostly by the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe that recently acquired federal funding to relocate. She goes to south Florida, where she moves from the glittering high rises of Miami to the abandoned trailers of Pensacola’s Tanyard neighborhood, which is home primarily to the descendants of escaped slaves. She explores a community in Staten Island devastated by Hurricane Sandy and travels from the marshes of the Gulf of Maine to the estuary of the San Francisco Bay. She even goes to Oregon’s central Cascades, hundreds of miles from

BOOK REVIEW

LEAH CAMPBELL is a first-year PhD student in the Department of City and Regional Planning, where she focuses on equitable climate adaptation and disaster mitigation. Prior to UNC, she worked in the environmental

nonprofit sector in California after receiving her BS in Geophysics and Environmental Science from Yale in 2015.

the coast, to illustrate the connectivity between different ecosystems. Rush powerfully articulates the immense complexity of both physical processes and emotions, trying to understand what makes a home and what it feels like to lose it. The overarching theme is human inadequacy: the mistakes that got people into this position in the first place, the inability to understand the scale of the problem, and society’s unyielding resolve that engineered interventions will solve everything.

But even as Rush criticizes people, the book, at its heart, is a story about people, including herself. She explores the circuitous career path that led her on this journey of exploration, even the difficulties of doing field work as a woman. She focuses on those communities for whom climate change is just the last straw in a series of compounding injustices, for whom retreat is the best option in a portfolio of bad ones. In some ways, Rising is a tribute to those communities, to those hardy people who have created homes for themselves in places that were not necessarily originally of their choosing. Most powerfully, Rush lets those communities tell their own stories, interspersing her own investigations with first-person testimonies from those living on the frontlines. Nicole Montalto of Staten Island describes the pain of losing her father during Hurricane Sandy while Chris Brunet explains how the relocation project in Isle de Jean Charles will help ensure “the rebirth of the community.” Laura Sewall from Small Point, Maine, is adamant that “living here is not denial. It is a choice.” Meanwhile, Dan Kipnis, “tired of this fight,” has already sold his dream house in Miami. Each individual Rush talks to brings their own insight and experience as to how they are managing the fear and uncertainty of living on the edge.

of the most pressing challenges humanity has ever faced.

Rush clearly feels this intensely herself. She describes being overwhelmed by an “acute form of anxiety” the more she understands what can and will be lost because of climate change. In this way, the book is as much a description of what is happening as the author’s personal reflections as she comes to terms with it. But, sometimes, the doom and gloom can be too much. Rush focuses so much on detailing how the “environmental apocalypse” is coming, that she offers only slivers of hope. She describes the power in witnessing residents of Oakwood on Staten Island mobilizing for relocation funding after Hurricane Sandy. But then she quickly transitions to Pensacola where poor residents have had to informally abandon their homes as it becomes too expensive to stay. Even in her discussion of the San Francisco Estuary Revitalization Project, the second largest restoration project underway in the country, she cannot help but exude pessimism, railing against the hubris of thinking that engineered restoration can fix this problem.

Perhaps Rush refuses to let her readers off the hook with too much optimism, perhaps she confronts them with such uncomfortable and complex truths because she knows there is no other way to tell this story. She poses such difficult questions because she herself does not have the answers. How do we let go of these places? How do you talk about retreat to communities with a history of forced displacement? What do we each value and who gets to decide what is valuable enough? What does voluntary mean for people who have no other option? The truth is, no one – not Rush or the scores of people she interviews – has the answers to these questions. In this way, Rising is not just Rush’s reflection on sea level rise, but an invitation for the reader to do some reflection of their own.

Though beautifully written, the book’s greatest shortcoming is, perhaps, its negativity. Anyone who works in the field can understand the unease that stems from confronting one 78

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

R E VI E W | FO O D JU STIC E NOW! Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle

AUTHOR/ JOSHUA SBICCA Review by Emily Paul

Environmental justice, which deals with equity in the natural and built environment, is increasingly a part of the national conversation.

However, its activists still have many battles ahead in advocating for social equity and restoring justice. There are numerous challenges associated with environmental justice, including inequitable distribution of resources, differential exposure to air or water pollution, unsafe residential conditions, fuel and renewable energy conflicts, land grabbing, and even the food we consume and its relative accessibility. These challenges span across the public and private sectors and a range of disciplines and impact every community in the United States in some form.

Social justice and food are the focus of Joshua Sbicca’s new book, Food Justice Now! Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle. In Sbicca’s own words, the book “dialectically link[s] oppression, resistance, and food justice” (p. 7). Food Justice Now! is segmented into five parts: the legacy of food justice movements relating to inequality we see it today; food justice as a resource to combat recidivism; fair labor standards and the advocacy role of the food industry worker in the economy; immigration issues in the fight against inequality; and collective power, solidarity, and diversity as preconditions for the practice of food politics. Sbicca concentrates on three Californiabased organizations to provide recent and poignant stories of this movement in the United States. By focusing on food through its relation to immigration, incarceration, and labor, Sbicca lays a powerful case for the people-oriented connection between food justice and social justice.

Milkweed Editions, 2018. 299 pages.

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While the food industry may seem out of the planner’s realm, access to a healthy, local, and affordable food system is a critical part of a sustainable and healthy community. Food impacts every human being, but food justice issues disproportionately affect people of color, immigrants, and individuals of lower economic status. Even though the targeted audience of the book does not necessarily include planners, the people impacted by food justice issues are also influenced by the housing, land use, and economic decisions of urban and rural planners. Both practitioners and academics can take lessons from the informed perspective of those within the industry to apply within their field. Sbicca’s book also provides

BOOK REVIEW

EMILY PAUL is a first-year Master’s student seeking dual degrees from the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research interests involve how the built environment can address social justice issues and the impact of climate change and the environment on health. Prior to UNC, Emily earned her Bachelor’s degree in Urban and Environmental Planning and Spanish at the University of Virginia.

insights into the history, legacy, and current workings of food justice—valuable context for planners to keep in mind while making decisions that will also impact local food systems.

Advocacy planners may take a special interest in Sbicca’s dissection of society’s systemic racial inequity and oppression of minorities, which collide in the example of “supermarket redlining.” Similar to mortgage lending redlining, in this trend grocery stores have fewer incentives to locate in working-class neighborhoods. Subsequently, the stores located in underserved communities cause problems in the community, including lower pay for grocery employees, increases in food deserts, and less investment in environmental programs that are often associated with wealthier neighborhoods. Sbicca delves into how the City of Los Angeles tackled this problem by re-allocating community redevelopment funds. He suggests that in this case, community benefits agreements were a viable option to hold developers accountable to community needs, a role that planners often play as mediators in public-private partnerships required for economic development.

In Sbicca’s words, “Food justice is a robust discursive framework to build alliances across social justice struggles,” suggesting the potential for cross-sector collaboration in implementing creative and effective solutions (p. 190).

Food security, because of its interdisciplinary nature, is discounted by practitioners and politicians as a component of their responsibility. Even union representatives, when confronted with a lack of healthy food options for minority and working-class communities in California, did not believe this fell within their purview. Sbicca writes that in this case, “One of the major issues was the abandonment of full-service supermarkets from working-class communities of color” (p. 99). Here, food justice activists see the retreat of urban affordability and livability, whereas planners lament the encroachment of big box stores because of parking mandates catered to consumerist holidays, fragmentation of walkable streets, and a loss of locally-owned businesses.

Sbicca expounds food justice’s contention with grocery stores in the example of Walmart, which exploited use-by-right clauses in city zoning laws in communities that otherwise

would have provided opposition to such development. For example, Sbicca recounts that Chinatown residents in Los Angeles protested the construction of a Walmart, arguing that it would destroy the neighborhood character. The corporation’s justification was providing affordable food options to the underserved; however, proper planning and market analysis would have confirmed this was not the case.

In reality, Walmart was aiming to undercut the competition by weaponizing the food justice movement for their own profit. Planners focusing on economic revitalization that prioritizes local business—with fair and ethical employment practices—have an opportunity to rectify this issue.

Sbicca calls to our attention the difficult paradigm of the United States being a country of “foodies,” food activists, and sustainability champions whilst simultaneously supporting an undercurrent of unfair labor practices and “the carceral logic superimposed on black communities” (p. 65). While planners may not have a role in the radical changes Sbicca suggests for state and federal policies, planners can take action in the activist space regarding food justice in the local and regional battles. Professionals in the planning field can utilize land use controls to support grocery stores in urban settings or disincentivize the development of large corporations, which continue to exploit low-wage and immigrant workers. Sbicca also calls on the Department of Housing and Urban Development to increase resources and augment policy regarding affordable housing; planners already grapple with the effects of gentrification, which unfairly impact food industry workers’ ability to live where they work.

Food Justice Now! should be on every planner’s list to read this year. The book serves as a primer on food justice and its far-reaching effects to all parts of our society in the United States. While its thesis does not strive to posit implementable solutions, it presents an interwoven narrative of the interrelated nature of food, equity, the economy, and politics.

This topic is integral to restorative justice—something that urban planners across the nation continue to confront in their communities. With deepening class discrepancies in the United States, food justice will increasingly influence urban planning in the coming years.

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R E VI E W | P RI U S O R P IC K UP? H o w t h e A n s w e r s t o Fo u r S i m p l e Q u e s t i o n s E x p l a i n A m e r i c a’s G re at D i v i d e

AUTHOR/

MARC HETHERINGTON AND JONATHAN WEILER Review by Olivia Corriere

Going home for the holidays can be challenging. Beyond the standard trials and tribulations of travel, people may find themselves breaking bread with loved ones so different from them that they might as well be from another planet. In modern America, this is especially true in families that span the political spectrum. Frequently, these individuals creatively avoid political discussions with relatives, as offensive comments about political stances can feel like personal attacks. But why do people experience loyalties to political parties so visceral that they can overpower even familial ties?

Prius or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide attempts to answer that question. Written by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professors Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, Prius or Pickup? proposes a framework through which to understand fervent party loyalty. They argue that political ties are based on an individual’s personal worldview, or the perspective from which they operate and define their identity. Specifically, most individuals can identify along a spectrum between two polar worldviews: fluid and fixed. People with fixed worldviews tend to see the world as more dangerous, and they find comfort in familiarity.

Conversely, those with fluid worldviews tend to perceive the world as expansive and exciting, a safe place to be explored.

Hetherington and Weiler outline four key questions as a worldview litmus test. Originally developed in the 1980s by political psychology trailblazer Stanley Feldman, these questions have been incorporated into surveys for years, starting with the 1992 American National Election Studies survey. Each question prompts the respondent to choose one of two character traits to be instilled in their child. In each set of choices, one trait is associated with a fixed worldview while the other is emblematic of a fluid one. The four choices are: respect for elders or independence, obedience or self-reliance, good manners or curiosity, and well-behaved or considerate.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. 224 pages.

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Using respondent data from an April 2017 study and a secondary analysis of pooled survey data, Hetherington and Weiler find that worldview influences where people choose to live, religious identities, norms that govern social interactions, and how people feel about others that are different from them. To illustrate this, Hetherington and Weiler spend an entire chapter exploring the hypothetical

Planning. She works as a development analyst at 1st & Main Development in Durham, NC, focusing on mixed-use and historic preservation projects across the Carolinas. She also serves as Co-Chair of the UNC Renewable Energy Special

Projects Committee, managing renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy education projects on campus. In her free time, Olivia enjoys hiking, producing sports politics podcast The Agony of Defeat, and cooking with friends and family.

existence of two families on either end of the spectrum: the Bleus and the Redds. The fluid-view Bleus have PhDs, are professors, and live in an urban downtown area where they can walk through bustling foot traffic to local craft breweries and independent coffee shops. The fixed-view Redds have a dog named Rex, two SUVs, go to church every Sunday, and prefer lighter beers at the end of the day. This hyperbolic, easy-to-read narrative helps the reader easily understand these conflicting worldviews and their implications for people’s daily choices. It also helps illustrate how self-segregation along the two poles ensures that each family finds themselves in an echo chamber.

This worldview conflict has shaped our entire political system throughout the twentieth century. The 1960s and 70s was a period of dramatic social upheaval and violence in the U.S. There was a pervasive national sense of political insecurity and unease, so politicians began leaning hard into marketing strategies based in emotion, finding it easy to recruit support by offering solutions to the instability. Republicans focused on promising safety and order, which appealed to fearful people with fixed worldviews. Meanwhile, Democrats aligned themselves with open-minded, progressive social and cultural ideals, appealing to those with fluid worldviews. As partisanship strengthened, worldviews and political parties converged, making party affiliation an important part of personal identity.

This strong identity with political parties reduces the level of accountability to which leaders are held. Because people feel a sense of unyielding loyalty to their party, they are willing to rationalize poor decisions, behavior, and comments by that party’s members. Social scientists call this “motivated reasoning,” and it happens at both ends of the spectrum. For the authors, Republicans’ defense of Trump is a perfect example: “Indeed, medal-worthy feats abound: for instance, rightleaning Americans have engaged in mental contortions of sufficient difficulty to believe that a certain president whose moral track record is spotty at best–who called African countries ‘shitholes,’ who apparently had multiple affairs,

including with a porn star and with a Playboy model while his young (third) wife was home with their newborn son, and who, on average, has lied five times a day since assuming the office–is a good role model for children. Indeed, more than 70 percent of Republicans said as much in a 2018 poll (p. 136).”

This hyper-rationalization undermines a realistic perception of the conditions of the government and its operations. People are quick to defend their own party affiliates for anything and everything rather than critically evaluate their choices.

In this way, Trump came into power by appealing to the fear of fixed-view people by promising safety. For example, from a fix worldview perspective, opposition to immigration along the southern border is primarily about fear of who these immigrants are, what they bring with them, and how they may change the country. It is not a complex, nuanced issue. So Trump does not offer a complex, nuanced solution. He offers a wall. His quick and easy cure-alls, his strong statements and simple plans, provide the cognitive closure that people with fixed worldviews crave, which was enough to earn their votes.

Pickup or Prius? helps readers step back from their own political views. It helps them think about the violently emotional sentiments that the two American parties feel towards each other, and why worldview shapes every facet of American life. After reading this book, one will see manifestations of worldview everywhere and in every conversation. The only way to move forward and bridge the “political sclerosis” is to talk to people that have different ideas, be charitable interpreters, and work to understand each other. The authors end the book with Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 quote that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” As the country was then, Americans today are at a crossroads, with the choice to either come together or watch as even-handed leadership fades. In this way, Prius or Pickup? is a call to action to encourage and support diversity in political orientation within communities for the greater good of the American people.

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BOOK REVIEW

OLIVIA CORRIERE is a Junior undergraduate studying Environmental Sustainability, Geography, and City and Regional

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

R E VI E W | TH E P O I SO NED C ITY: F l i n t ’ s W a t e r a n d t h e A m e r i c a n U r b a n Tr a g e d y

AUTHOR/ ANNA CLARK Review by Nora Schwaller

The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark provides a meticulous look into the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Starting in 2014, large swaths of the city were subjected to drinking water better characterized as toxic waste, in a state with some of the most extensive freshwater resources in the world. To explore this, Clark looks at the history of Flint City and nests it within the historical narrative of urbanization trends in the United States at large, including the racialized federal practices that led to white flight and the disinvestment of central cities and minority communities. Additionally, she delves into the history and weaknesses of environmental legislation in the United States that purports to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink. Clark contrasts this history with an exploration of how different organizations perverted the intent of the law to allow for their greater profit and economic development.

Finally, she covers the decisions made at the different levels of government, as well as the journalistic efforts that eventually revealed the heart of the crisis. In doing so, she elucidates the lines where well-meaning mistakes bled into simple ineptitude and then tipped into criminal negligence supported by willful and dangerous disinformation.

Possibly because the Flint water crisis does not have one true cause, The Poisoned City does not have one true narrative. Clark’s account follows multiple historic arcs that range from the founding of the city to the rise and fall of powering vehicles with leaded gasoline. Similarly, narratives following personal accounts pick up and drop off as it suits the larger discussion, primarily driven by the unfolding of historic and contemporary events. Key players include Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, who had broad powers during the period of the water switch and the ensuing crisis, and LeeAnne Walters, whose ‘citizen science’ role proved to be particularly effective in connecting key individuals from different fields. Meanwhile, Clark introduces other individuals, such as minor councilmen and other residents

Metropolitan Books, 2018. 305 pages.

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Planning. At UNC, she concentrates on housing and community development with a focus on resilience and disaster

recovery. In this area, she is most interested in the effect of disasters on communities, population displacement, and

tipping points for settlement abandonment. Prior to returning to graduate school, she worked for an architecture firm in San Francisco, focusing on municipal projects such as fire stations.

of Flint, who provide brief but impactful quotes and horror stories before fading into the background.

Arguably, this broad approach to the subject works best when different themes and characters were implicitly linked across topical areas. For example, one of the recurring characters is Marc Edwards, a scientist and professor at Virginia Tech who was heavily involved in exposing the lead crisis in D.C. in 2004, and who became intimately involved in the Flint water crisis. Edwards co-developed a course titled “Engineering Ethics and the Public,” which focused on how engineers might respond to moral dilemmas. For a major class project, the students role played representatives of oversight and municipal agencies in a contentious press conference. Horrifically, Edwards found that the students “went so far in defending the office they represented, they sometimes invented information on the fly to counter questions they couldn’t answer” (p.

108). This becomes more compelling when Clark contrasts it against the sentiments of those who should have been safeguarding the health of the Flint public. Brad Wurfel, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, stated that “anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax” (p. 118). Stephen Busch, a district supervisor, assured other regulatory agency members that Flint had corrosion control that would help prevent lead intrusion, when in fact, it did not.

Similarly, the most compelling arcs are those that are woven throughout the book. Two main themes of the story are: (1) the trickle of people and organizations with power and means who begin to find alternatives to the water, such as General Motors, who transferred their plant to a different source when the Flint water caused rust to accumulate on the engines; and (2) the increasing public

concern as the governmental agencies faced accelerating and intensifying problems. This contrasted with the official response, which obstinately maintained that the water was safe and reliable. These tracks came to a head, and in the end, “the state had reversed course only after immense public pressure, a broadening media spotlight, and two independent water analyses left it with no other option” (p. 154). Along the way, the public’s concerns regarding its quality and the effects it appeared to be having on their physical health were routinely dismissed.

Through a social justice lens and a journalistic background, Clark does incredible work in telling a detailed story of the challenges that municipalities face when trying to manage a shrinking city. Further, she does a convincing job tying those issues back to decades of racialized disinvestment. However, in the midst of explaining the decisions that led to thousands of personal tragedies, she is inconsistent in delivering a compelling human story that would humanize the issues at hand and make the drama of the crisis more relatable. This is in large part because she primarily relies on secondary sources for her accounts of their experiences, and certain narratives are left wanting for more details. Prone to extensive detail of technical knowledge, this book may be best suited for couch historians or novice planning enthusiasts trying to gain further insight to the crisis and the myriad of factors that led to it. Still, Clark’s story and the anecdotes that fill the pages are enough to make you want to buy a water filter and test your taps.

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BOOK REVIEW

NORA SCHWALLER is a licensed architect and a second-year PhD student in the Department of City and Regional

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

R E VI E W | BO O M TO W N: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis AUTHOR/ SAM ANDERSON Review by Frank Muraca

Sam Anderson, New York Times Magazine staff writer and author of Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis, has written a rich and compelling biography of America’s greatest minor city.

Oklahoma City is both everywhere and nowhere. It’s just as southwestern as it is midwestern and is as part of the Bible Belt as it is the “frontier.” Built on crushing flatness 400 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and more than 1000 miles away from the both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, to outsiders it is often considered little more than a flyover destination. As Anderson explains in Boom Town, the city only attracts America’s attention during disasters like its destructive tornadoes or the deadly 1995 bombing, and its historical renown is exclusively linked to the Dust Bowl.

Boom Town breaks these stagnant stereotypes and delivers a metropolitan biography that reveals an outlandish, contradictory community. Anderson introduces an almost mythological cast of characters, from a precision-obsessed NBA manager and Robert Moses-esque planner, to a free-spirited rock star and a rock star weatherman. With over 65 bite-sized chapters, each of these characters adds their own interpretation and justification for belonging to Oklahoma City. Anderson guides readers through these different perspectives of the city and creates a diverse, complicated portrait of Middle America.

Crown, 2018. 448 pages.

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Even long-time residents admit the challenge of recording local history. “Oklahoma City has never quite mastered how to tell its story,” Steve Lackmeyer wrote in a review of Boom Town for The Oklahoman. There is, like in many communities, an “official” history promoted by local boosters, businesses, and politicians.

In the case of Oklahoma City, this history is managed by the local chamber of commerce, which Anderson describes as the de facto shadow government for the city. This polished, conflictfree history is about growth and the iron will of leaders to take bold, if sometimes inequitable, action. Boom Town is a departure

neighborhood change, displacement, and disaster housing. Prior to graduate school, he lived and worked in Jiangsu Province, China, writing about migrants and how changing city borders affect outlying farm communities. He is originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, and earned his Bachelor’s degree in Economics at George Mason University.

from this stale and inaccurate arc. Anderson is a planner’s historian. His account of how Oklahoma City has changed since its founding in 1889 includes often overlooked accounts of how segregation, urban renewal, and sprawl all worked together to shape the community. Not only does he introduce readers to these processes, but he also enlivens them with the advocates and organizers who fought for a more equitable Oklahoma City.

Boom Town highlights several voices that are often left out of local history lessons. Roscoe Dunjee, publisher of Black Dispatch, the leading local African American newspaper in the first half of the 20th Century, and Clara Luper, a civil rights advocate who began staging sit-ins throughout the city’s segregated downtown, are two of these voices. After Oklahoma City struck oil in 1928, an African American neighborhood’s only public park in the East Side was taken by the government and pumped “for all it was worth.” Dunjee railed against the Draper political machine that was tearing up Oklahoma City’s African American communities in the name of progress. Local power brokers like the chamber of commerce would rather leave out these chapters of critical history, instead elevating the discovery of oil as foundational to the city’s success.

largely left out. Anderson’s accounts of Oklahoma City’s civil rights advocates, intrepid public leaders, and artful basketball players are filled with life. It is unfortunate that the same business conglomerates that helped sew the fate of the city are not given the same biographical treatment.

Despite this blind spot, America is in need of more metropolitan histories like Boom Town, and the book leaves readers asking what untold stories can be found in their own communities. Anderson successfully turns our passive assumptions about the most boring place in the nation into a voracious hunger for Oklahoma City’s sports, history, and people.

Anderson’s success linking together these diverse voices and highlighting important subcultures overturns Oklahoma City’s stigma of monotony. But despite this enormous feat, Boom Town misses critical details of the region’s legacy, like the oil and natural gas industries. Despite a handful of references to the discovery of oil and escapades of dubious energy barons, readers do not see how these industries came to dominate the local political scene, especially after the state became one of the primary producers of natural gas toward the end of the 20th Century. While there are great examples of how the “business community” so powerfully shaped the city, the personalities of these industries are 86

BOOK REVIEW

FRANK MURACA is a first-year Master’s student in the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning, studying

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

BEST MASTERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S PR OJ E CT S CLASS OF 2018

K AT Y L ANG AN EVALUATION OF A DEMAND-RESPONSIVE TRANSIT PILOT IN NORTH CAROLINAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK First Place

GoTriangle, the regional transit agency for the Triangle region of North Carolina, is conducting an innovative, shared ride, demand-responsive transit pilot in Research Triangle Park (RTP). This pilot, called Go OnDemand, replaces four fixed-route shuttles. GoTriangle hopes that this pilot program will improve transit service in RTP, provide greater mobility and accessibility, and potentially reduce costs.

Transit agencies nationally are experimenting with shifting operations toward mobility as a service (MaaS) and other non-traditional ways of providing mobility to customers, using mobile apps, partnerships with the private sector, and shared models. Go OnDemand fits with this trend, adding a high-tech component to traditional dial-a-ride service by partnering with technology provider TransLoc and targeting the service in a low-density area of the Triangle.

Given its unique operating structure, demand-responsive transit services like Go OnDemand can be difficult to evaluate. This paper attempts to frame Go OnDemand in context by reviewing existing demand-responsive transit performance measures, bringing in customer-focused performance indicators, and where possible, comparing Go OnDemand performance to baseline metrics from other comparable services. This paper also analyzes four initial weeks of data.

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BEST MASTERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S PROJECTS - CLASS OF 2018

Initial results from the pilot suggest that the Go OnDemand is providing different but effective transit service in RTP. The expansion of midday service is clearly a benefit, and so are the additional connections that the point-to-point service provides to apartment complexes and commercial establishments within the service area. Factors helping Go OnDemand to succeed include the use of GoTriangleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own vehicles with ADA accessibility, partnership with a trusted and existing technology entity, and adding service both spatially and temporally. At the same time, predictability for regional connections has been reduced, and the service has not yet provided the hoped-for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reductions.

conducted to understand how customers make regional connections and how Go OnDemand could serve them better. Marketing efforts should be initiated for the service to increase ridership for trips to and from residences and retail, commercial, and healthcare destinations.

GoTriangle should also make sure to examine how Go OnDemand advances environmental justice and access for riders and residents of the service area. Performance indicators identified in this paper should be monitored throughout the pilot to identify areas for adjustment.

This initial evaluation generates additional questions and need for more data analysis. Are there travel patterns and needs that can be served better by Go OnDemand? Are there needs that are now unmet? Ongoing analysis, such as looking at the previous shuttle ride times compared to the new ride times from RTC to destinations, are currently underway at GoTriangle and TransLoc to understand crucial passenger-centric indicators. Rider surveys should also be

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

SAR AH PARKINS A USER GUIDE TO ONLINE ENGAGEMENT TOOLS Second Place

Community engagement affords community members the opportunity to weigh-in on projects impacting their well-being. While typical engagement activities involve transparent reporting and town hall meetings, there is a recent shift in how governments, developers, and planners are engaging with the public. Face-to-face engagement will always be crucial, but it is difficult to engage all citizens due to time constraints, lack of accessibility, and pessimism about their ability to make a difference. The push to make data more accessible has led cities to use technology to increase participation and aide in collaborative decision-making. Existing research in the planning field narrowly focuses on why planners should utilize digital tools rather than how. Research matching the why with the how is necessary to improve engagement through online tools.

This research paper critiques traditional community engagement, explores the current field of engagement technology, and analyzes three popular online engagement technologies to understand best practices for engagement. This research finds that online tools should not be used in â&#x20AC;&#x153;a one size fits allâ&#x20AC;? approach. Planners should look for tools that balance options of customization and standardization to make user set-up intuitive yet supportive, provide meaningful engagement opportunities, and limit barriers to participation.

This research produced a user guide for planners to learn about existing online engagement tools and how to select the best ones for their engagement process by assessing each tool by categories such as use or purpose, engagement opportunities, appearance, and user set-up. The guide can be accessed by visiting engagecommunityonline.com.

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COMPOUND DISASTERS: FEDERAL BUYOUTS AND THE GREAT RECESSION’S EFFECT ON BLACK AND WHITE HOUSEHOLD RESILIENCE Third Place

The intention of the buyout program is to reduce vulnerability by removing homes from the floodplain. But vulnerability is not just measured by physical exposure to risk. It is the capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from shocks (Fothergill & Peek 1999, cited Blaikie et al. 1994), which must account for the social, economic, and political context in which a disaster occurs. While experts see the buyout program as a viable hazard mitigation strategy, buyouts may have unknown consequences as they permanently alter physical, social, and economic landscapes. To better understand their impact, I studied the effect of the buyouts in North Carolina following Hurricanes Fran and Floyd after the Great Recession on communities that participated in the buyout program.

The findings indicate that buyout neighborhoods have a larger percent Black population and are more economically stressed than those without buyouts. Buyout neighborhoods also fared worse after the Recession than those without buyouts. When assessing the impact of buyouts on home purchase loan approvals, the likelihood of being approved for a conventional home purchase loan increased with the neighborhood’s concentration of buyouts from Hurricanes Fran and Floyd. This holds true both before and after the Recession. This trend only proved statistically significant for Black applicants after the Recession. Buyout neighborhoods therefore provide greater opportunity for Black home-ownership; yet, their flood risk undermines the likelihood of such an investment being a secure wealth building opportunity. This finding shows there are lasting implications of the buyout program beyond the removal of assets from flood prone areas. The buyout program interferes in local housing markets, creating opportunities for homeownership in the short-term, but increases the risk of lost wealth particularly for low-income Black homeowners.

STEPHANIE WATKINS-CRUZ MITIGATING DISPLACEMENT POST NEIGHBORHOOD STABILIZATION: A STUDY OF BEST PRACTICES FOR NEIGHBORHOOD STABILIZATION AND MITIGATING DISPLACEMENT IN OLD EAST DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA Honorable Mention

Gentrification is not a new phenomenon. One of its most infamous consequences is the displacement of incumbent residents. As neighborhoods and communities change and resident groups form to attempt to combat these forces of gentrification, there is potential in a layered investment approach that brings strategic investments into the neighborhood to improve overall quality of life and access to services. This is no different in the Old East Durham neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina. This Master’s Project aims to serve as an aid in two ways. First, by suggesting methods of investment that focus on preserving affordability and creating an age-friendly community. And second, by looking ahead and proactively investing in measures that could mitigate displacement as more private investment continues to enter the neighborhood.

In order to combat some of the negative consequences of gentrification like displacement, significant investment and strategic planning are needed. Tools such as comprehensive and continuous community engagement, communityminded capital, strategic acquisitions, and investment in plans with the support of local officials, a network of good can be created. Over time, the number of people displaced from this historic community they call home could diminish.

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BEST MASTER’S PROJECTS - CLASS OF 2018

COLLEEN DURFEE

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

CL AS S O F 2 0 1 8 M ASTE R’S P ROJ E CT T I T LE S

KATY LANG

SARAH PARKINS COLLEEN DURFEE

STEPHANIE WATKINS-CRUZ

A User Guide to Online Engagement Tools Compound Disasters: Federal buyouts and the Great Recession’s effect on household and community resilience Mitigating Displacement Post Neighborhood Stabilization: A study of best practices for neighborhood stabilization and mitigating displacement in Old East Durham

TAYLOR BILLINGS

Saving for Homeownership: An Analysis of Saving across the Foreclosure Crisis

MEREDITH BURNS

Lessons from Hurricane Matthew: Identifying Hazard Mitigation Opportunities for Water and Wastewater System in Eastern North Carolina

TRAVIS CRAYTON

An Exploratory Analysis of the Revenue and Service Impacts of Local Option Transportation Taxes for Transit

JAMES FARRELL

LISA MAE FIEDLER

KATRESE HALE

CARLY HOFFMANN KALEY HOUSTON ELLIS JOHNSON II ANSLEY JONES CHRISTIAN KAMRATH

RASHAUNDA LANIER-JACKSON

SARAH LONG 91

An Evaluation of a Demand-Responsive Transit Pilot in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park

Get Smarter: A Bicycle Accessibility Extension to the EPA Smart Location Database in Atlanta Recognizing Resegregation: the Divisive Intent and Implications of School District Transportation Policies SCHOOL CLOSURES & ADAPTIVE REUSE: A Financial Market Analysis for the Adaptive Reuse of Gaston School in Gaston, NC Uncharted Territory: A Case Study of Rental Assistance Demonstration Program Implementation in Durham, North Carolina From Gas Station to Gastro Pub: The Potential of Petroleum Brownfield Redevelopment through the North Carolina Brownfields Program Community Responses to Shuttered Public Schools Riding Out the Green Wave of Gentrification in Atlanta A Land Suitability Analysis for Post-Disaster Housing Relocation: An Application in Fair Bluff, North Carolina after Hurricane Matthew in 2016 Challenges of a Suburban Catholic School Serving Inner-City Children from Chicago: A School-Community Assessment of Waned Connections and A Partnership Plan to Rebuild Holistic Bridges of Support for Students and Families A Feasibility Study of 21st Century Sanitation in North Carolina

KATEY MOTE SADIE NOTT

PASAN PERERA

JENNIFER RANGEL GRIFFEN RICE KEAGAN SACRIPANTI NATHANIEL SEESKIN

SARAH SHAUGHNESSY JENNA SHOUSE

CHARLIE STANFIELD

YING SU JIANGYUE SUN

MARGARET TARTALA STEPHANIE TEPPERBERG

ASHLEY TUCKER GRACE TUSCHAK

SEN WANG ALYSON WEST MARY BETH WILLIAMS DARIEN WILLIAMS

GAR YEUNG

STUDENT WORK

CATHERINE MILLER

The Social Safety Net as a Budgeting Mechanism?: The Relationship between the Earned Income Tax Credit and Financial Delinquency in Low-Income Households A Health Impact Assessment of the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program in Durham, North Carolina The Resource Gap: Measuring Social Capital Among Low- and Moderate-Income Homeowners and Renters Impacts of Brownfield Redevelopment on Neighborhood Change: A Case Study of Durham, North Carolina Geographical Examination of Latino Urbanism - Oak Cliff as a Case Study Planning Pragueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Permitting Process Industrial Composition of Business Establishments within North Carolina Floodplains Not on My Street: Evaluating Equity in the Application Process for Residential Traffic Calming in San Francisco The Adaptation of Participatory Research Methods to Community-Based Planning Proposed Amendments to Section 8.3 Off-Street Parking and Loading of the Apex, NC Unified Development Ordinance An Analysis of Success Plans and Performance Metrics for Rural Transit Systems in North Carolina The Land Use Impacts on Beijing Residential Satisfaction at Neighborhood Level Spatial-temporal Distribution of Urban Population on Weekdays and Weekends Based on Cell Phone Data Flow, a Case Study in Shenzhen Moving Forward on Environmental Justice Analysis Updated Size, Demographic, and Health Characteristics of the U.S. Population with Reduced Access to Non-Emergency Medical Transport & Practical Implications A Pledge to Invest: Community Benefits Agreements for Community Reinvestment Food Hubs as Community Economic Development: Lessons From TRACTOR Food & Farms Influence of High-Speed Rail on Manufacturing Entry Women Cycling Survey: Analyzing and Communicating Survey Data via Tableau and Wordpress Collision Course Cities: Implementing Regional Governance in the Austin - San Antonio Corridor For The Long Haul: Public-Private Partnerships for Long-Term Disaster Recovery Perfluorinated Compound Contamination and Land Applied Residuals in the Cape Fear River Basin, North Carolina 92

Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change

Y EA R I N R E V I E W An Update From New East NATALIE SWANSON

The Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) continued to grow and accomplish over the 2018-2019 academic year. We are happy to celebrate the leadership of our students and faculty, their participation in conferences in the U.S. and abroad, and the awards they have received for their contributions in the planning field.

Thirty-seven Master’s students and five PhD students matriculated into the program in Fall 2018, and thirty-two Master’s students are graduating in Spring 2019. Additionally, DCRP welcomed Mary Beth Powell to the new staff position of Career Services Coordinator.

LEADERSHIP Student organizations have provided phenomenal supplemental and supportive programming. Plan For All, led by Alyzza May, Andrew Meeker, and Hilary Pollan, hosted Trans 101 Training addressing transgender rights, inclusion, and education on transgender issues in planning and coordinated biweekly Peer Support Group meetings during the first semester to encourage support among students and self-care.

The Placemaking Committee, led by Ben Berolzheimer, Brian Godfrey, and Heyne Kim, arranged group volunteer efforts to clean Morgan Creek and a celebration of the Korean New Year.

Co-Presidents James Carter and Matt Stern shepherded Planners’ Forum, the umbrella organization for DCRP student committees, through the year and now turn their positions over to first-years Frank Muraca and Lara Seltzer. Under its direction, DCRP students had the opportunity to visit Charleston, SC over Fall Break to learn about local planning issues like historic preservation, flooding, and affordable housing.

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CONFERENCES Allison Clonch, a dual-degree Master’s student in City and Regional Planning and Public Health, gave a presentation titled, “Water Infrastructure, Childhood Blood Lead, and Juvenile Delinquency” at several conferences: North Carolina Water Resources Research Conference in Raleigh, NC in March 2019; Break the Cycle of Environmental Health Disparities Conference in Atlanta, GA in April 2019; and the Society for Risk Analysis World Congress on Risk in Cape Town, South Africa in May 2019.

Doctoral student Atticus Jaramillo presented research at the 2018 ACSP Conference on the relationship between neighborhood poverty and residential satisfaction among Housing Choice Voucher households.

Professor Nichola Lowe presented a paper titled “Institutionalizing the Maker-Manufacturing Nexus: Implications for Spatial Equity Generational Integration” at the Urban Affairs Association conference in Toronto, Canada in April 2018. She also presented a paper titled “Innovation and Opportunity: Shaping Work in an Age of Automation” at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning conference in Buffalo, NY in October 2018.

Doctoral student Kai Monast presented on rural and intercity transportation and funding programs at the National Conference on Rural and Intercity Bus Transportation in Breckenridge, CO in October 2018.

Doctoral student Nora Schwaller presented “Impacts of Hazard Mitigation Grants on Individual and Community Level Post-Disaster Resilience” at the 2018 ACSP Conference.

Second-year Master’s student Matt Stern presented research from his Master’s Project titled “Chicago’s $1 Lot Sale Program: Measuring the crime and wealthbuilding impacts of returning 1,000 vacant urban parcels to community ownership” at the 2018 ACSP Conference and a hazards paper on innovative funding choices for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation at the Southeast & Caribbean Disaster Recovery Workshop in January 2019.

HONORS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS Doctoral students Jordan Branham and Nora Schwaller are semifinalists for the ASFPM 9th Annual Collegiate Student Paper Competition and will present their paper at the ASFPM Annual Conference in May 2019.

Doctoral student Ahmed Rachid El-Khattabi had a paper accepted to Economic Development Quarterly titled “Does Tax Increment Financing Pass the But-for test in Missouri?”

He was also the recipient of the Graduate Education Advancement Board Impact Award for research on price sensitivity to seasonally varying prices in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC in 2018.

The peer-reviewed journal Landscape Research Record published research by Ellen Emeric, a second-year Master’s student in DCRP, on public transportation in the shrinking city of Dayton, Ohio.

Tory Gibler, a first-year Master’s student in DCRP, received the Women in Transportation (WTS) Triangle Chapter Legacy Leadership Graduate Scholarship in February 2019 and UNC DCRP Chair’s Merit Scholarship in August 2018. She was the recipient of an honorable mention as part of GoTriangle’s Golden Modes Multi-Mode Innovator in November 2018 and was published as a Planetizen Online Guide Student Essay Contributor in Spring 2019.

Gillings Global Practice Award for 2018. She also received the Learning Moment Thematic Spotlight as part of the 2018 Carolina Global Photography Competition, which enabled her to work in Mexico and Ecuador for the Summer of 2018 to research the impact of western retirees in Latin American colonial cities. There, she explored the impact on the environment, economy, land uses, and social dynamics.

Research Associate Ria Kontou received an honorarium from the Pervasive Technology Institute of Indiana University to demonstrate the value of cloud computing environments in her own research at DCRP. Her work focuses on econometric modeling of the potential impact of ride-sourcing use on road crashes. She traveled to Microsoft’s 2019 Campus Connections Summit in Seattle in February 2019. Microsoft granted her access to their program Azure’s cloud computing environments to conduct her proposed research project.

Professor Nichola Lowe was awarded the Fall 2018 Provost Senior Competitive Research and Study Leave to finish a book project entitled Putting Skill to Work. She was also awarded a UNC Arts and Humanities Research Grant in December 2018 to study the intersection of climate change and the future of work.

Doctoral student Atticus Jaramillo was awarded the Ford Foundation PreDoctoral Fellowship from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in 2018.

Doctoral student Kai Monast published “An Analysis of Success Plans and Performance Measures for Rural Transit Systems in North Carolina” in the Transportation Research Record.

Dual-degree Master’s student in City and Regional Planning and Public Health Karla Jimenez-Magdaleno received the Diversity in Excellence Fellowship for 2018-19 and the

Doctoral student Lindsay Oluyede was awarded Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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NCAPA 2019 Conference

Wilmington Save the date!

October 8-11

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CA R O LI N A P LANNI NG JO U RN AL

VO LUME 4 5 CALL FO R PAP E RS The Carolina Planning Journal is now accepting abstracts for case studies, practical applications, criticism, research, and analysis related to the following planning techniques:

H A Z A R DS I N T H E SO U T H E A S T E R N U. S .

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Given a costly and devastating year for natural disasters, particularly in the Southeastern U.S., how can planners prepare for natural hazards in the near and distant future?

TOPICS MIGHT INCLUDE, BUT SHOULD NOT BE LIMITED TO:

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Hazards mitigation pre- and post-disaster

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Resilient infrastructure design

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Planning for climate change and sea level rise

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Equitable disaster recovery

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Historic preservation in natural disasters

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Watersheds and stormwater management

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Affordable housing and relocation

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Reflection on lessons from recent natural hazards events

By August 12, 2019, authors should submit a one to two page proposal for their articles. Proposals should include the title, a short description of the topic or case, the background and significance, preliminary implications, citations, and, if an academic proposal, a summary of existing literature on the subject including the title and thesis statement of a maximum of five relevant papers. Final papers will not exceed 3,000 words. Proposals should be submitted via e-mail to CarolinaPlanningJournal@gmail.com.

By September 12, 2019, the Committee will make a decision on all proposals. The Committee will contact authors regarding their proposals. Authors will work with the editors to monitor the paper’s progress and provide general guidance in completing the paper within the specified timelines. Authors should expect to work through two or three drafts with the editors. The print volume will be published in the Spring of 2019. Carolina Planning editors reserve the right to edit articles accepted for publication, subject to the author’s approval, for both length and content considerations.

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Carolina Planning Journal : Volume 44 / Changing Ways, Making Change