Agora 11

PERSPECTIVE PROGRESSION

AGORA

2007

GROWTH MANAGEMENT

2008

CHANGE

2009

DETROIT

2010

ENDURANCE AND ADAPTATION

2011

CONNECTION

2012

PUBLIC | PRIVATE

2013

ALTERNATIVES

2014

DIVISIONS

2015

PROGRESSION

2016

PERSPECTIVE

University of Michigan A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design Volume 11: 2017

AGORA 11 STAFF Editor-in-Chief Taylor LaFave Creative Director Grant Priester Deputy Editor Karen Otzen Director of Distribution and Finance Daniel Mihalov Director of Fundraising and Outreach Alana Tucker Managing Editor of Special Projects Rich Bunnell Staff Editors

Layout Editors

William Doran

Bader Bajaber

Andrew Justus

Emily Burrowes

Jonathan Riley

Yuchen Ding

Jess Wunsch

Eric Krohngold JP Mansolf Srinidhi Venugopal

TABLE OF CONTENTS The Case for Bridge Planning and Cross-Cultural Practice Grace Cho Urban Climate Adaptation and Resisting the Urge to Panic Rich Bunnell New Genre Public Art and the Law Daniel Sharp Racial Residential Integration in Urban America Rebecca Labov

An Architectural Approach to Coastal Infrastructure Frank Gibase IV Striving for Just Green Enough Calli VanderWilde The Catalytic Escalators of Hong Kong Liz Szatko

Housing for Returning Offenders in the United States Rachel Baccile Post-Trauma Aesthetics Adam Abou-Aleiwi and Erika Linenfelser The Application of the IoT to Enhance Urban Sustainability Shufan Zhang The Regulation of Transportation Network Companies Deanna Dupuy

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR T

he Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design enters its next decade stronger than ever. The Journal’s first decade built the foundation for a “gathering place” of new ideas on planning and urbanism. Agora 11 continues the Journal’s progression. This year we expanded our call for submissions to all University of Michigan students, which resulted in a record number of submissions. We enhanced the quality of the Journal—with the help of our renowned urban planning faculty and doctoral students—by implementing our first-ever peer review process. These efforts culminated in the diverse selection of thought-provoking pieces published in this volume.

Agora 11’s theme, “Perspective,” recognizes that cities are constantly evolving ecosystems, and each of us sees them through different eyes. The pieces in this volume represent a variety of perspectives on the urban experience, the issues that urban inhabitants face, and creative ways to reconceptualize cities for the shared benefit of all who inhabit them. Not only is this the first volume of Agora’s second decade, it is also the first volume published since the new American president’s inauguration. Pieces in this volume cover topics such as residential integration, climate adaptation, public space, returning offenders, and the future of infrastructure, all of which are being challenged by the new administration’s urban perspective. In this trying time for planning, urban policy and cities as a whole, public dialogue on topics such as these is more important than ever.

I would like to thank our authors, photographers, current and past staff, peer reviewers, benefactors, faculty advisors, and you, the reader. Thanks to each of you, Agora remains a “gathering place” for urban perspectives.

Happy reading, Taylor LaFave Editor-in-Chief Master of Urban Planning 2017

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR T

he year 2017 marks the start of the second decade of the Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design. It also marks an historic shift in the body politic of the United States. Two attributes of this new era, at least, are notable and troubling. They include, first, a decline in civility and, second, a growing rift between city and country, or urban and rural. I ponder the causes of these two phenomena, how they are related, and what they portend for urban planning.

Early on in ancient Greece, the agora was the area in the city “where free-born citizens could gather to hear civic announcements, muster for military campaigns, or discuss politics,” while later it defined the open-air market-place of the city.1 Modern notions of civility and citizenship take their origins from and are bound up in the ancient city—a place where people met and engaged a host of inter-dependent relationships— familial, political, commercial—toward the betterment of their society. For the first time in recorded human history there are now more urban residents than rural, and we see today in the U.S. a resurgent interest in reinvigorated city life. Yet a substantial portion of our country’s population remains decidedly not-city, and they express great indifference to—if not disdain for—urban life, often in very uncivil terms. What’s going on, and how might urban planners respond?

There are some great ironies in the recent turn of events. A denizen of the city has won the hearts and minds of much of rural America. A businessman who made his wealth on urban real estate and the attractions of city life claims a political sensibility fixed on notions of independence (certainly not inter-dependence) and an asocial responsibility for oneself and one’s family alone. I do not mean to suggest that rural Americans have been hoodwinked, or that they inherently lack a sense of civility. If anything, I believe our new president has proven masterful at tapping into real and existential fears. That distinction is an important one to draw, because it suggests that the president is not himself the message but rather the messenger. Something real is indeed going on beneath all the commotion, something we need acknowledge and address.

A goal of this issue of Agora is to “represent a wide range of perspectives on the urban experience, the issues that urban inhabitants face, and creative ways to reconceptualize cities toward the shared benefit of all who live in them.” I do not expect that the authors of this issue had the recent election in mind, or contemplated the growing rift between urban and rural, when they wrote and submitted their work. I hope, however, that a better understanding of just these attributes of the city might help us better respond to its detractors, and perhaps even revisit notions of civility and citizenship at the same time. Please engage this issue of Agora with our unique historical context in mind, and please do so with an eye toward promoting a fruitful dialogue that might lead to greater mutual understanding and appreciation—especially between urban and rural—rather than continued, uncivil decline.

Richard K. Norton Professor and Chair, Urban and Regional Planning Program 1. Ancient History Encyclopedia (http://www.ancient.eu/agora/)

Chicago, Illinois by Meng Li

The Case for Bridge Planning and Cross-Cultural Practice Grace Cho Master of Urban Planning 2018 Florida-born and California-raised, Grace Cho was a global studies major and urban and regional studies minor at UCLA. She was inspired to pursue planning after participating in a faith-based inner city immersion program in Fresno, California.

Her experience as an AmeriCorps member also motivated her to help build a more equitable and inclusive society—physically, economically, and socially. She is currently pursuing her Master of Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and is surviving the cold. So far.

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Grace Cho

Like other professional and academic disciplines, planning faces the underrepresentation of minority groups. Despite some progress, planners of color may still face significant barriers to and within professional practice and academia. Some minority-race planners may have an internalized desire to advocate for marginalized communities, based on their own experience with oppressive circumstances. However, they are often “tokenized” within the workplace as being the most capable to work with minority groups.

Even when a minority planner does possess an enhanced cultural fluency, they may feel unfairly burdened or pressured to deal with certain communities. Rather than pigeonhole minority planners with the expectation for advocacy, all planners can embrace this kind of work. These so-called “bridge planners” may be more comfortable in majority culture, but also possess an internalized value for social justice that motivates them to meaningfully engage with people who are different than them. Bridge planners must have the social knowledge and willpower to advocate for minority groups within their work and workplaces. When undertaken by planners of privilege, this can serve the dual purpose of alleviating the burden on minority planners and meaningfully leveraging their privilege to serve marginalized groups.

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pon visiting 12 prominent planning programs, Paul L. Niebanck observed large numbers of female students, but “among neither student bodies nor faculties, are blacks, Asians, Hispanics, or Native Americans adequately represented, by any standard of fairness…The situation is reprehensible, and it should embarrass us.”1 It is in this context that I will address the implications of the lack of racial diversity in the planning profession. I begin by briefly examining structural issues that contribute to the underrepresentation of minority planners, who can fill an important role in facilitating equitable development.

While minority planners often have unique social knowledge and values that empower them to advocate for marginalized groups, ultimately, all planners should develop the ability to work with, represent, and advocate for communities they cannot claim membership to. Planners of privileged status should highlight the needs and perspectives of minority communities and planners to shift dynamics of power and privilege within the profession. I have adapted the term “bridge planner” from June Thomas’s discussion of black planners working in “minority-race” and/or low-income communities.2 I will expand the definition of the bridge planner as an individual of any background who strives to

make planning processes and workplaces more inclusive of underrepresented groups. Using Thomas’s framework for “unified diversity for social action,”3 I will argue that bridge planners must develop an understanding of structural groups, know how to navigate cross-cultural relationships in a variety of contexts, and leverage their privilege to successfully function as the link between marginalized groups and institutions of power.

According to Forester, the planning profession needs people who “speak articulately to the realities of poverty and suffering, [and] deal with race, displacement, and histories of underserved communities in ways that do not leave people’s pain at the door.”4 Notably, Forester does not refer to planners’ identities, choosing instead to focus on their knowledge of minority communities and their ability to choose empathy and empowerment over pity.

Individual planners may come to understand dynamics of power and privilege through Young’s “structural groups, social positions that people occupy which condition their opportunities and life chances.”5 In Young’s conceptualization, factors like race, class, and gender can all influence individual and community outcomes.

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The Case for Bridge Planning and Cross-Cultural Practice

Based on these ideas, I define bridge planners as individuals who, regardless of cultural background, understand the effect of Young’s structural groups on outcomes for society and within the planning profession. Bridge planners strive to address structural inequalities both in the workplace and in communities they serve.

The lack of diversity within the planning field provides an opportunity for bridge planners to elevate the voice and experience of their minority colleagues. This failure to adequately represent and respect the voice of minority planners begins in academia. Etienne and Sweet found that minority racial groups were underrepresented at all levels within planning schools. Troublingly, minority doctoral students experience difficulties in maintaining positions in academia, while those who succeed find themselves to be a hyper-minority among faculty members.6 This inequitable representation has also been identified in the planning field; a study of 600 planners in the New York City metropolitan area found that African-American and Latino planners were underrepresented in the profession.7

The struggles of minority planners extend beyond underrepresentation; as a result of their background, they may be subject to marginalization within the professional workplace. In the same study of 600 planners in the New York City metropolitan area, Vazquez found that community members often are more responsive to minority planners. “Unfortunately, this limited notion of diversity tends to keep planners of color in frontline positions in minority neighborhoods while other planners are in positions of influence over development and public policy.”8 Such behavior, while seeming to leverage the cultural fluency of the minority planner, can in fact unfairly make one individual the sole agent for community advocacy and even stifle career advancement.

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This may have a demoralizing effect on minority professionals. Indeed, Thomas completed six in-depth interviews with black planners who graduated from one program in Michigan to understand their experiences as bridge planners.9 One planner reported that he felt “tokenized” when “colleagues relied upon him to serve as a bridge [to minority communities], oblivious to his other work commitments.”10 Designating minority individuals as the only bridge planners, while well-intentioned, places unfair expectations on them. In addition, it assumes that minority planners are comfortable in such a role.

Troublingly, such actions absolve organizations from learning to navigate cross-cultural community relationships on a more structural level, which perpetuates existing power dynamics within the professional workplace and in the field.

Planning firms can and do benefit from the unique skills and perspectives of minority planners. Thomas’s interviews confirm that planners’ experiences as minority individuals enriched their professional practice, allowing them to “defend the interests of the minority or disadvantaged community within the [planning] agency, and…to link communication between urban communities and planning agencies.”11 Thus, minority professionals can play a unique role in the planning process, and may in fact be motivated to do so. Planners with experiences of marginalization simultaneously occupy positions of influence in planning processes and of sociocultural inequality. This combination of privilege and disadvantage can give minority planners the knowledge, skills, empathy, and trust-building capacity to effectively advocate for historically disadvantaged communities.

Such skills and experiences are assets that the profession can benefit from.

However, the question of whether this kind of action is sustainable for the minority planner

Grace Cho

remains. “Racial fatigue” among minority professionals results from “persistent experiences of racial discrimination and distrust” in their professional and/or personal lives.12 Indeed, this phenomenon may be exacerbated by minority planners who place a burden on themselves to constantly play the difficult role of pushing against structural norms regarding representation and advocacy. Although minority individuals may be well-equipped to be bridge planners and have a strong desire to fill such a role, it is not sensible to thrust community advocacy on a few individuals and expect any kind of widespread, sustained success. Minority planners often inhabit the contested space between institutions of power and marginalized communities, either by choice or delegation. In the long run, this is not beneficial for either the institution of planning or the individual planner.

In light of the challenges faced by minority planners, scholars have highlighted the pressing need to diversify the planning profession.13, 14, 15 Since the current lack of diversity in the planning profession is, in Niebanck’s words, embarrassing,16 planning agencies will continue to struggle to navigate relationships with minority professionals and communities. As a result, minority individuals will continue to experience underrepresentation and stifling tokenism for the foreseeable future within the profession.

In light of this imbalance of power, minority planners cannot advocate for themselves or other minorities in an effective way. Non-minority planners must also be able to build trust crossculturally, both in the professional workplace and with minority communities. Given the fact that non-minority planners may hold more positions of authority, they are perhaps best positioned to effectively act as bridge planners in present conditions of unrepresentativeness.17 Indeed, “one might argue that planners who are racial minorities in situations of uneven opportunity may have much less personal power to move the

system than planners who are not.”18 Majorityculture planners, who currently make up most of the profession and often hold racial and class privilege, are more likely to determine the trajectory of the field than their minority counterparts. These planners thus should partner with their minority colleagues to build authentic cross-cultural relationships as a part of their planning practice. Unless planners of privilege consciously choose to engage with the need for bridge planners, progress in achieving sustained diversity and informed practice may be thwarted.

What, then, does it mean to be a bridge planner?

A bridge planner exhibits an internalized value for informed practice that prioritizes openness, respect of difference, and the affirmation of others’ dignity. The idea of the bridge planner aligns with Thomas’s discussion of “unified diversity for social action,” a model for planning practice that leverages a sustainable, inclusive, and intentional diversity in pursuit of social justice in urban and regional contexts.19 As planners develop meaningful relationships with colleagues and communities that acknowledge personal histories, abilities, and present struggles, they can leverage their knowledge, skills, and privilege on behalf of marginalized groups.

This intentional value set can inspire planners to work alongside the communities they serve, an ideal that perhaps reflects the best of Thomas’s framework for diversity.

The process of becoming a bridge planner is unique for everyone, and must prompt the individual to internalize a value for social justice.

The American Institute of Certified Planners defines “social justice” as expanding “choice and opportunity for all persons, recognizing a special responsibility to plan for the needs of the disadvantaged, and to promote racial and economic integration.”20 Put another way, pursuing social justice inherently prioritizes

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marginalized communities because of the existence of social inequity. Adopting a value for social justice thus can motivate bridge planners to reorient their professional practice toward the communities they intend to serve. Individuals who do not have personal experiences of societal inequity may build an understanding of social justice through education, exposure, humanistic concerns, meaningful relationships with people of different life experiences, or other means.

Fainstein’s theory of the “just city” provides a helpful framework for aspiring bridge planners by valuing “participation in decision making by relatively powerless groups and [the pursuit of] equity of outcomes.”21 Bridge planners also promote justice within the field by advocating for better representation of minorities and by elevating minority voices. The value for social justice thus acts as a catalyst that motivates planners to pursue equitable outcomes.

With the goal of social justice in mind, prospective bridge planners must be able to critically examine how structural qualities of race, class, sexuality, and gender manifest in cities. In addition, they must identify the aspects of their own personhood that contribute to their economic, political, and social privilege and/ or marginalization. In recognizing components of their own identity, bridge planners will, at minimum, understand the need for nuanced trust-building in pursuit of social justice. Beyond their structural group associations, planners inherently occupy a position of privilege because of their role in making and influencing decisions about cities. Furthermore, planners often represent institutions of governance and, thus, power. Depending on the relationship between a community and said institutions, a planner may be viewed with distrust.22 An effective bridge planner understands this potentially contentious power dynamic and approaches communities with a learner’s perspective. In addition, they must have the will to act upon this social

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knowledge in ways that are sensitive to the needs and perspectives of marginalized communities.

Bridge planners must be prepared to deal with opposition from the organizations they represent, as well as from communities themselves. Planners must use their position of power to encourage community participation and collaboration, rather than as a blunt instrument to coerce groups to submit to a mediocre or even harmful vision for their neighborhoods.

Ultimately, the bridge planner can navigate potentially uncomfortable cross-cultural situations by building trust and relationships. According to Umemoto, “it [is not] realistic to think that one could become conversant in an unlimited number of cultural paradigms. It is not unrealistic, however, to create the foundation for social learning that emphasizes multiple epistemologies within planning processes.”23 Umemoto highlights the importance of mastering the ability to interact respectfully and effectively with people of different backgrounds, a skill that perhaps lies at the heart of bridge planning. By understanding one’s own position in society, as well as the structure of society itself, the bridge planner is motivated to work with groups that they do not claim membership to. In this way, the bridge planner leverages their privilege on behalf of minority communities in a non-paternalistic way.

Many professional and educational fields are concerned about the lack of diversity within their respective field. Planning is unique because it theorizes about and exerts change upon an intricate web of structures that influences the daily lives of individuals, communities, and organizations. In attempting to shape the processes that make up the movements and trajectories of cities, planners must grow in their understanding of how cities, communities, and individuals operate on a sociopolitical plane. Without this knowledge, professionals

Grace Cho

will simply enact changes on systems without understanding the potential ramifications, especially for specific structural groups. For the politically disenfranchised, economically disadvantaged, and socially excluded, such decontextualized actions reinforce a history of erasure and marginalization. Planners must be aware of the power they hold, both professionally and individually, to best serve underrepresented communities.

Understandably, some planners may not have been faced with the need to build meaningful working relationships that acknowledge systemic injustices. While principles of social justice can be taught, some individuals may resist internalizing Young’s notions of structural groups and power.24

Part of the solution may be implemented in planning schools, which present an opportunity to systematically address the need for bridge planners. In this essay I have argued for the empowerment of minority bridge planners who can deftly supplement the culturally sensitive and socio-politically inclusive work of minority advocates. In addition, planners should begin to think about how to train and empower majorityculture bridge planners of all backgrounds to address the immediate needs of a diversifying society. Further research on how to build and maintain racial diversity in planning programs and professions is needed. Thoughtful actions and advocacy can and will influence institutions to better reflect the population and better serve marginalized communities.

Endnotes 11. Thomas, “Minority Race Planner,” 238.

1. Paul L. Niebanck. “Planning Education: Unleashing the Future.” Journal of the American Planning Association 54, no. 4 (1988): 441. DOI:10.1080/01944368808976670.

12. Thomas, “Minority Race Planner,” 239.

13. Sweet and Etienne, “Commentary: Diversity.”

2. June M. Thomas. “The Minority-Race Planner in the Quest for a Just City.” Planning Theory 7, no. 3 (2008): 237-238.

DOI:10.1177/1473095208094822.

14. Thomas, “Educating Planners.”

3. June M. Thomas. “Educating Planners: Unified Diversity for Social Action.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 15, no. 3 (1996): 171-82. DOI:10.1177/0739456x9601500302.

4. John Forester. “Why Planning Theory? Educating Citizens, Recognizing Differences, Mediating Deliberations.” Edited by B. Sanyal. In The Profession of City Planning: Changes, Images and Challenges: 1950–2000, edited by L. Rodwin, 259. Rutgers, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 2000.

16. Niebanck, “Planning Education,” 441.

17. Vazquez, “Diversity and the Planning Profession,” 33.

18. Thomas, “The Minority-Race Planner,” 235.

19. Thomas, “Education Planners,” 179.

5. Iris Marion Young. “Social Difference as Political Resource.”

In Inclusion and Democracy, 94. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

6. Elizabeth L. Sweet, and Harley F. Etienne. “Commentary: Diversity in Urban Planning Education and Practice.”

Journal of Planning Education and Research 31, no. 3 (2011): 336. doi:10.1177/0739456x11414715.

7. Leonardo Vazquez. “Diversity and the Planning Profession.”

Planning: The Magazine of Planners Network, Summer 2002, 33.

8. Vazquez, “Diversity and the Planning Profession,”33.

15. Thomas, “Minority Race Planner.”

20. American Institute of Certified Planners. “AICP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.” American Planning Association. April 1, 2016. Accessed February 03, 2017. https://www.planning.org/ethics/ethicscode.htm.

21. Susan S. Fainstein. “New Directions in Planning Theory.”

Urban Affairs Review 35, no. 4 (2000): 468.

22. Karen Umemoto. “Walking in Another’s Shoes Epistemological Challenges in Participatory Planning.”

Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning 1 21, no. 1 (2001): 22. doi:10.4324/9780203314623_chapter_8.

23. Umemoto, “Walking in Another’s Shoes,” 20.

24. Young, “Social Difference,” 94.

9. Thomas, “Minority Race Planner,”236.

10. Thomas, “Minority Race Planner,” 238.

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Taipei, Taiwan by Michelle Bohrson

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Urban Climate Adaptation and Resisting the Urge to Panic Rich Bunnell Master of Urban Planning 2017 Rich Bunnell is a student in the Master of Urban Planning program at the University of Michigan. He is also Agora’s Managing Editor of Special Projects. He received his Bachelor of Arts in history from University of California, Berkeley in 2005, then spent the better part of a decade working as a copy editor, arts journalist, and page designer for publications including the Oakland Tribune and San Francisco Examiner. He plans to work in climate change adaptation in the Great Lakes region.

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Rich Bunnell

Through actions and words, the incoming Trump administration has adopted a hostile attitude toward climate change and other environmental issues, leading to a state of dread and panic among the nation’s climate researchers. Indeed, the U.S. federal government has served a pivotal role in providing climate data and funding, as well as coordinating climate-related efforts on a grand scale. Losing this network of support represents a critical challenge in the years to come. Instead of paralysis, however, urban and regional planners need to respond to this challenge by promoting three fundamental societal shifts. First, planners should work to move beyond climate change mitigation strategies focused on the reduction of emissions, and integrate climate change adaptation strategies focused on helping the world to live with ongoing climate changes. Secondly, planners need to narrow their geographic focus from the national to the regional level, the scale at which the primary impacts of climate change occur and climate adaptation takes place. Finally, planners must take action to help individuals and communities shift from a feeling of powerlessness to empowerment, as climate change adaptation represents an opportunity to demonstrate to people that their actions matter.

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n Douglas Adams’ classic science fiction work The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, everyman Arthur Dent survives the ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of Earth, carried out by bureaucratic extraterrestrials in an act of intergalactic eminent domain. Dent’s rescuer, Ford Prefect, hands him a copy of the titular Hitchhiker’s Guide, an encyclopedia emblazoned with the words “Don’t Panic!” As the universe forces him to confront a sudden, previously unimaginable level of absurdism, Dent remarks, “It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.”1

Today, planners are coping with the smaller but significant looming environmental catastrophe of global climate change, combined with the sudden, absurdist reality of Donald Trump’s election to the United States presidency. On the campaign trail, President Trump repeatedly referred to climate change as “a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese,”2 engendering a state of fear and panic among environmentalists, and the first signs from the administration appear to confirm those fears.

President Trump has appointed Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier with deep ties to the oil and gas industry, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.3 His transition team sent an ominous memo to the Department of Energy requesting names of employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings,

as well as those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics.4 It also appears likely that the administration will attempt to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, a pact between 195 countries to take action toward climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance.5 Even beyond the current actions of the incoming administration, the federal government funds and maintains a number of climate-related initiatives that climate change researchers and practitioners rely on for their daily work. This includes the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s National Climate Assessment, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Climate-Ready States and Cities Initiative, the Department of Agriculture’s National Roadmap for Responding to Climate Change, the Department of the Interior’s network of Climate Science Centers, climate models run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to determine climate impacts and adaptation strategies, and a host of other initiatives too lengthy to list.6 These initiatives form an intricate web of support for climate strategies, and researchers are desperately scurrying to copy this information in case the federal sources suddenly go dark.7

This is a long list of dire premonitions, and given the sudden, drastic sea change in the attitude of the federal government toward climate change, it

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is easy to succumb to fatalism. But climate change is going to advance whether the U.S. federal government takes action or not, and given the nation’s increasingly urban population—roughly 80 percent of citizens as of the 2010 U.S. Census, expected to rise to 87 percent by 20508—it is imperative that planners take action to prepare for the changing climate to come. This includes the risks of increased flooding, drought, extreme heat events, and more powerful extreme weather events such as snowstorms and hurricanes.9 In the face of substantial uncertainty, planners should resist the urge to panic and see 2017 as the moment to bring about three fundamental shifts in climate change planning: from mitigation to adaptation, from national to regional levels of government, and from individual powerlessness to individual empowerment.

From Mitigation to Adaptation The first step in reframing the dialogue surrounding climate change is working to increase public awareness of climate change adaptation.

Much of the conversation surrounding climate change has focused primarily on mitigation, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines as anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.10 Adaptation is the other, less publicized side of climate change response, defined by the IPCC as the process of adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climate and its effects.11 Mitigation seeks to reduce the effects of climate change, while adaptation prepares for the changes that are expected to occur regardless of mitigation efforts. Both responses are necessary as components of a comprehensive response.12

It is important to note that adaptation and mitigation do not comprise separate, siloed strategies, but rather need to form two ingredients of an integrated strategy. This theoretical approach is known as the “mitigation-adaptation interface,” and acknowledges that each strategy has the potential to enhance or undercut the effects of the other.13 For example, installation of air conditioners can help urban residents adapt to extreme heat events, but these air conditioners also release greenhouse gases that aggravate the effects of climate change.

Conversely, “green infrastructure,” such as living roofs, simultaneously exerts a cooling effect on the surrounding urban environment and captures greenhouse gases, simultaneously serving adaptation and mitigation goals. Environmental analyst Jeff Howard likens adaptation responses that do not serve mitigation goals to “learning that the house is on fire but, instead of fighting the fire, trying to devise methods to live in the flaming structure.”14

Climate adaptation is still a nascent field, with a variety of promising regional strategies but comparatively little in the way of on-the-ground implementation or centralized coordination.

Until recently, adaptation was a taboo subject among planners, who saw it as an implicit admission of defeat in the face of impending disaster.15 Environmental planning has only recently experienced an adaptation “turn,”16 with extreme weather events such as New York City’s Hurricane Sandy prompting decision makers and planners to realize the dangers that climate change poses, even in the near term.17 As a result, adaptation research and practice is currently scattered, with a number of competing typologies that present the same concepts using different frameworks.18

Communities throughout the world have devised a wide variety of adaptation strategies

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targeted toward local and regional needs. For the challenge of sea level rise alone, options include building sea walls,19 acquiring land to relocate homes and infrastructure under threat,20 and establishing “rolling easements,” in which coastal development is designed to gradually yield to wetlands, beaches, and barrier islands migrating inland.21 But physical strategies are just one component of a broad suite of systemic institutional responses. Among these, decisionmakers and institutions are predominantly focusing on the preliminary step of capacity building, which the IPCC defines as the practice of enhancing the strengths and attributes of, and resources available to, an individual, community, society, or organization to respond to change.22 This is an important step, but because it tends to be the first step that communities take toward building climate resilience, it is a sign that there is significant work to be done. As of 2016, more than 40 U.S. communities had created standalone climate adaptation plans, with potentially hundreds more embedding climate considerations into other planning approaches. However, the thoroughness and consistency of these plans vary wildly.23

So what can planners do? Planning theorist John Forester once wrote that planners’ true power lies in their facilitation of information and anticipation and deflection of misinformation, and this applies to an important but underrecognized field such as climate adaptation.24 To wit, it is important that planners not only support and participate in adaptation efforts, but also increase public awareness of adaptation, which can in part be done by working to make adaptation a way of life. A critical component of the adaptation process is “mainstreaming,” the embedding of climate considerations into other dominant planning domains and decision-making processes.25 This has the advantage of allowing planners to apply existing institutional tools toward adaptation-friendly goals.

For example, Boston is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, containing four watersheds that all have the potential to overflow and flood sections of the city.26 The City of Boston has incorporated adaptation into the wider planning process through their new comprehensive plan, Imagine Boston 2030. Scheduled for release in 2017, the plan incorporates a complete assessment and visioning of risks to the Boston waterfront, with climate change a central issue.27 The City has also folded adaptation into its official hazard mitigation28 and capital improvement plans,29 and has made moves toward amending its zoning code to make climate preparedness a formal requirement for development review.30 Boston’s example demonstrates that adaptation is fundamentally a process that takes place within the existing context of planning, and there are numerous opportunities for planners to apply their expertise.

From National to Regional While working to make adaptation part of mainstream discourse, planners need to focus their energy at the local and regional level, the scale at which climate change adaptation actually takes place. In the wake of the 2016 election, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg released an op-ed insisting that if the federal government backs away from climate change action, the cities and mayors of the U.S. would step in to fill the gap. Bloomberg cited the fact that the government has passed little in the way of direct climate change legislation, likely a result of the congressional gridlock characteristic of most of the Obama administration.31

Bloomberg is correct in that climate adaptation primarily takes place at scales beneath the national level. Though Earth’s average temperature is expected to warm overall

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as the 21st century progresses, individual communities will experience a wide variation in temperature shifts, with the impacts varying based on geographic characteristics and broader climate patterns. Accordingly, there is no “one size fits all” approach to adaptation, and much innovation has taken place at the local level, with cities serving as “laboratories” for adaptation approaches.32 For example, cities in hot and humid regions will likely benefit from installation of reflective roofs to ameliorate the urban heat island effect, expected to increase as climate change advances.33 However, cities that experience powerful winds benefit from compact development with medium-height buildings, in order to shield downwind buildings from damage.34

What Bloomberg undersells, however, is the federal government’s significant capacity to coordinate climate action on an extremely broad scale. The federal government serves as a source of usable information and financial support for adaptation, fosters stewardship of public resources, anticipates impacts that cross political boundaries, establishes federal policies that allow for flexibility in adaptation efforts, disseminates best adaptation practices, and is unparalleled in its ability to build public awareness.35 Cities deal with the impacts of climate change more directly than other levels of government, but should federal support dry up completely, it will take a massive, coordinated effort to make up for the robust network of federal support that has been an integral part of adaptation efforts for years.

So what can planners do? Regional adaptation efforts require coordination, or they run the risk of forming a patchwork of responses that could potentially undercut one another’s goals.

A persistent, substantial gap also exists between climate adaptation research and practice, with one side often unaware of what the other

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is doing. Planners taking a holistic view of climate adaptation need to do whatever they can to fill this gap, as well as the broader gap that a retreat in federal support would create.

Along these lines, the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences + Assessments Center pioneered a “boundary chain” model, identifying “boundary organizations” that form links between the producers of climate knowledge and the local institutions capable of translating this knowledge into practice.36

Several regional entities already exist that take a systems-based approach to adaptation, treating each municipality as a component in a broader network rather than an island. In 2010, the Florida counties of Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach formed the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact to coordinate mitigation and adaptation activities across county lines.37 California’s Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation adopts an even broader scope, providing support and guidance at the state level to individual regional actors, allowing regions to share resources and lessons learned across the entire state while still focusing on their own locally targeted needs.38 Even without federal support, a broad range of local, regional, state, and nongovernmental actors are doing substantial work in climate adaptation, and it is the job of planners to strengthen the links in this chain.

From Powerlessness to Empowerment The third major shift for planners working in climate change adaptation is fostering greater individual empowerment among U.S. citizens—a sense that individuals and their actions matter.

A side effect of the broader climate change narrative’s focus on mitigation is that it has

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engendered a sense of powerlessness among average citizens. Individuals often feel that their own actions are just a drop in the bucket compared with the actions of corporations or the collective,39 and eliminating or drastically reducing one’s own contribution to the overall level of emissions can require significant effort or investments of time or money.40 Cumulatively, the actions of individuals have a significant, quantifiable impact on climate change, but on a psychological level, it is a seemingly insurmountable barrier.

As Lorenzoni and Pidgeon write, “the widely observed public ambivalence towards climate change may well reflect an expression of frustration fueled by disempowerment.”41 The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s “Six Americas” tracking study, which surveys Americans’ beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviors regarding climate change, has found that 23 percent of Americans are split roughly evenly between the two extremes of concern (“alarmed” and “dismissive”), while the remainder of Americans barely pay attention to the issue.42 Climate change discourse in the U.S. is characterized by a mixture of apathy and fatalism, citizens either certain that the end is nigh, convinced that the status quo is acceptable, unable to bring themselves to care, or simply outright denying it.

Climate adaptation, in contrast, is experienced primarily at the individual level, and many limitations are endogenous, emerging from within society. Adger et al. write that the availability of scientific knowledge, the extent to which places and cultures are valued, and individuals’ ethical standpoint and attitudes toward risk can limit societies’ ability to adapt to climate change.

While these factors are significant barriers, the authors write, they are liable to change.43 The ability of a society to overcome these barriers is

determined by “the availability of technology and the capacity for learning, but fundamentally by the ethics of the treatment of vulnerable people and places within societal decision-making structures.”44

So what can planners do? As adaptation has gained ground in theory and practice, it has become clear that many of the world’s most vulnerable populations do not have the resources to implement expensive, infrastructure-based solutions to climate change. A concept that has emerged in response to this challenge is community-based adaptation (CBA), based on the premise that local communities have the skills, knowledge, and connections to undertake climate adaptation.45 This is no easy task, as local communities contain highly heterogeneous groups of stakeholders, differentiated by factors such as gender, class, ethnicity, and age.46 Nonetheless, CBA represents an alternative to top-down, government-driven adaptation. It is an opportunity for planners to engage with communities directly, and increase community members’ sense of self-efficacy in the face of an environmental crisis.

Another key factor in helping adaptation gain ground is the presence of strong leadership. Shi et al. conducted a survey on local adaptation planning in 156 U.S. municipalities, 60 percent of which were actively planning for climate change. The authors found that existing state policy was not a significant predictor of climate adaptation action, but the presence of strong, charismatic political leadership was a major determinant.47 In contrast with the fatalistic view that individual action is inherently fruitless, the actions of devoted individuals can and have made a difference in forwarding sustainable planning.

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An inspiring example is the administration of former Grand Rapids, Michigan Mayor George Heartwell, who, unsatisfied with federal and state leadership on environmental issues, opted to lead by example at the local level. The mayor guided Grand Rapids toward adopting a standalone Sustainability Plan, which serves as the City’s overall strategic plan. The Sustainability Plan has spurred substantial economic growth48 and improved Grand Rapids’ environmental health, with the City drawing 20 percent of its municipal energy needs from renewable sources by 2013, with a goal of 100 percent by 2020.49 It is true that no person acts in isolation, and Grand Rapids’ successes are the work of hundreds of dedicated individuals. However, Heartwell’s undeniable charisma, an outgrowth of his experience as an ordained minister, has served as a rallying source of energy for the city’s rebirth, and serves as a sign to planners that the actions of individuals can have an immediate and lasting impact.

Uncertain Yet Familiar Times Whether existing adaptation efforts will proceed if federal funding and coordination disappear, or whether non-federal actors will prove capable of filling the gap, is still very much up in the air.

So amid this substantial uncertainty, how can planners reassure themselves? One answer is that uncertainty by its very nature is a component of climate adaptation planning, and plans that directly address uncertainty rather than cast rigid projections onto the future will remain relevant longer, allow for iterative course correction, and ultimately avoid maladaptive outcomes.50

There is also a sense of “this has all happened before” concerning the Trump administration.

Since the environmental revolution of the 1970s, the U.S. has experienced two presidential administrations that were extremely hostile

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toward environmental issues, prompting a significant bottom-up response. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan appointed antienvironmentalist James Watt as Secretary of the Interior and gutted federal funding to environmental programs, catalyzing growth in the environmental movement.51 Similarly, in the 2000s, President George W. Bush’s administration and the accompanying Republican Congressional majority vehemently opposed mandatory federal emissions standards. In their place, a wide range of states and municipalities adopted emissions standards of their own, and U.S.based NGOs, firms, and universities launched their own emissions reduction programs.52 This demonstrates how in the absence of federal support, other actors have historically arrived to fill the vacuum.

Finally, there is an opportunity for growth in the urban planning profession, with the current crisis underscoring a need for climate education and preparedness to become a core part of the urban planning curriculum. Environmental planning is traditionally a niche subfield of urban planning, sitting alongside other areas of focus such as food systems, physical planning, transportation, and housing policy—and these subfields indeed all represent critical components of the planning profession. But urban environments are, themselves, human-centered ecosystems, and restricting environmental planning to a siloed area of study ignores the fact that as it advances, climate change is going to have a system-wide effect on every individual component of the urban environment.53 No matter their chosen field of study, in the coming decades, a planner not well versed in climate change will be at an inherent disadvantage.

The recommendations in this piece do not comprise a comprehensive policy response, but rather general shifts in societal attitudes toward

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climate change, and suggestions for how planners can work to effect this change holistically and smoothly. The bottom line is that climate change has advanced to a stage where it is more urgent than ever that networks of cities, regions, and organizations have the support and resources necessary to take action, and it is going to take

genuine innovation, leadership, and collaboration to make it through the uncertain years to come.

But no matter how daunting, complex, and uncertain the challenge may seem, and no matter how absurd the surrounding political context grows, it is important to remember Adams’ sage advice: Don’t panic!

Endnotes 10. Ibid.

1. Douglas Adams. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

New York: Ballantine Books (2002).

11. Ibid.

2. Edward Wong. “Trump Has Called Climate Change a Chinese Hoax. Beijing Says It Is Anything But.” The New York Times, November 8, 2016, accessed February 17, 2017, https://www. nytimes.com/2016/11/19/world/asia/china-trump-climatechange.html?_r=0 3. Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton. “Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.” The New York Times, December 7, 2016, accessed January 4, 2017, http://www. nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-trump. html?_r=0 4. Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin. “Trump Transition Team for Energy Department Seeks Names of Employees Involved in Climate Meetings.” The Washington Post, December 9, 2016, accessed January 4, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/09/trump-transitionteam-for-energy-department-seeks-names-of-employees-involved-in-climate-meetings/?utm_term=.44ef2dcd81f1 5. Brian Kahn. “Trump’s Presidency Poses Serious Risks to the Climate.” Climate Central, November 9, 2016. http:// www.climatecentral.org/news/trumps-presidency-climate-change-20858 6. Rosina Bierbaum, Joel B. Smith, Arthur Lee, Maria Blair, Lynne Carter, F. Stuart Chapin III, Paul Fleming, Susan Ruffo, Missy Stults, Shannon McNeeley, Emily Wasley, and Laura Verduzco. “A Comprehensive Review of Climate Adaptation in the United States: More Than Before, But Less Than Needed.”

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 18 no. 3 (2013): 361–406.

7. Brady Dennis. “Scientists Are Frantically Copying U.S. Climate Data, Fearing It Might Vanish Under Trump.” The Washington Post, December 13, 2016, accessed February 15, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-us-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?utm_term=.58c013884eed 8. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision: Highlights” (New York: United Nations, 2014).

9. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report (Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, 2014).

12. Jeff Howard. “Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in Developed Nations: A Critical Perspective on the Adaptation Turn in Urban Climate Planning.” In Planning for Climate Change: Strategies for Mitigation and Adaptation for Spatial Planners, edited by Simin Davoudi, Jenny Crawford and Abid Mehmood. London; Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2009.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ron Brunner and John Nordgren. “Climate Adaptation as an Evolutionary Process: A White Paper.” In Living with Climate Change: How Communities are Surviving and Thriving in a Changing Climate, edited by Bullock, Jane A., George D. Haddow, Kim S. Haddow, and Damon P. Coppola. CRC Press, 2015.

16. Howard, “Climate change mitigation.:” 17. Cynthia Rosenzweig and William Solecki. “Hurricane Sandy and Adaptation Pathways in New York: Lessons from a First-Responder City.” Global Environmental Change 28 (2014): 395-408.

18. Bonizella Biagini, Rosina Bierbaum, Missy Stults, Saliha Dobardzic, and Shannon M. McNeeley. “A Typology of Adaptation Actions: A Global Look at Climate Adaptation Actions Financed Through the Global Environment Facility.” Global Environmental Change 25 (2014): 97-108.

19. Emily Boyd. “Climate Adaptation: Holistic Thinking Beyond Technology.” Nature Climate Change 7 no. 2 (2017): 97-98.

20. Robin Bronen and F. Stuart Chapin. “Adaptive Governance and Institutional Strategies for Climate-Induced Community Relocations in Alaska.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 no. 23 (2013): 9320-9325.

21. Erica Novack. “Resurrecting the Public Trust Doctrine: How Rolling Easements Can Adapt to Sea Level Rise and Preserve the United States Coastline.” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 43 (2016): 575.

22. Missy Stults and Sierra C. Woodruff. “Looking Under the Hood of Local Adaptation Plans: Shedding Light on the Actions Prioritized to Build Local Resilience to Climate Change.”

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change (2016): 1-31.

23. Ibid.

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24. John Forester. “Planning in the Face of Power.” Journal of the American Planning Association 48 no. 1 (1982): 67-80.

25. Stults and Woodruff, “Looking Under the Hood.”

26. City of Boston. Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan. Boston, MA, 2015. https://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/ Boston%20Revised%20Draft%20Hazard%20Mitigation%20 Plan%202014%20Update%20%2003-31-15_tcm3-51167.pdf.

27. City of Boston. Imagine Boston Waterfront: Assessment and Vision. Boston, MA, 2016. http://20222-presscdn.pagely. netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IBW_Deliverable_2016-12-8-FINAL.pdf.

28. City of Boston. Hazard Mitigation Plan.

29. City of Boston. Capital Planning. Boston, MA, 2016. https:// www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/08%20Capital%20 Planning_tcm3-53289.pdf.

30. City of Boston Climate Preparedness Task Force. Climate Ready Boston. Boston, MA, 2013. https://issuu.com/ees_boston/ docs/final_report_29oct13.

40. Chris J. Cuomo. “Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Responsibility.” Hypatia 26 no. 4 (2011): 690-714.

41. Irene Lorenzoni and Nick F. Pidgeon. “Public Views on Climate Change: European and USA Perspectives.” Climatic Change 77 no. 1 (2006): 73-95.

42. Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach, Connie Roser-Renouf, Geoff Feinberg, and Seth Rosenthal. “Global Warming’s Six Americas, March 2015” (Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2015).

43. W. Neil Adger, Suraje Dessai, Marisa Goulden, Mike Hulme, Irene Lorenzoni, Donald R. Nelson, Lars Otto Naess, Johanna Wolf and Anita Wreford. “Are There Social Limits to Adaptation to Climate Change?” Climatic Change 93 no. 3–4 (2009): 335-354.

44. Ibid.

31. Michael Bloomberg. “Washington Won’t Have Last Word on Climate Change.” Bloomberg View, November 22, 2016. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-22/washington-won-t-have-last-word-on-climate-change

45. David Dodman and Diana Mitlin. “Challenges for Community-Based Adaptation: Discovering the Potential for Transformation.” Journal of International Development 25 no. 5 (July 2013): 640-659.

32. Bierbaum et al., “Comprehensive Review of Climate Adaptation.”

46. Thomas G. Measham, Benjamin L. Preston, Timothy F. Smith, Cassandra Brooke, Russell Gorddard, Geoff Withycombe, and Craig Morrison. “Adapting to Climate Change Through Local Municipal Planning: Barriers and Challenges.”

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 16 no. 8 (December 2011): 889-909.

33. M. Georgescu, W. T. Chow, Z. H. Wang, A. J. Brazel, B. Trapido-Lurie, M. Roth, and V. Benson-Lira. “Prioritizing Urban Sustainability Solutions: Coordinated Approaches Must Incorporate Scale-Dependent Built Environment Induced Effects.” Environmental Research Letters 10 (2015): 1-5.

34. Rafael Pizarro. “Urban Form and Climate Change: Towards Appropriate Development Patterns to Mitigate and Adapt to Global Warming.” In Planning for Climate Change: Strategies for Mitigation and Adaptation for Spatial Planners, edited by Simin Davoudi, Jenny Crawford and Abid Mehmood, 41. London; Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2009.

35. Bierbaum et al., “Comprehensive review of climate adaptation.”

36. Maria Carmen Lemos, Christine J. Kirchhoff, Scott E. Kalafatis, Donald Scavia, and Richard B. Rood. “Moving climate information off the shelf: boundary chains and the role of RISAs as adaptive organizations.” Weather, Climate, and Society 6 no. 2 (2014): 273-285.

37. “Who we are,” Southeast Florida Regional Compact, accessed February 15, 2017, http://www.southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/who-we-are/.

38. Laura Hammett. “Thinking Beyond the City: Regional Climate Adaptation Planning and Habitat III.” F&ES Blog, June 3, 2016. https://environment.yale.edu/blog/2016/06/ thinking-beyond-the-city-regional-climate-adaptation-planning-and-habitat-iii/.

39. Jan C. Semenza, David E. Hall, Daniel J. Wilson, Brian D.

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Bontempo, David J. Sailor, and Linda A. George. “Public Perception of Climate Change: Voluntary Mitigation and Barriers to Behavior Change.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 35 no. 5 (2008): 479-487.

47. Linda Shi, Eric Chu, and Jessica Debats. “Explaining Progress in Climate Adaptation Planning Across 156 U.S. Municipalities.” Journal of the American Planning Association 81 no.

3 (2015): 191-202.

48. Caitlin Geary. “Sustainable Connections: Linking Sustainability and Economic Development Strategies” (Washington, D.C.: National League of Cities, 2011).

49. George Heartwell. “Sustainable Practices in a Michigan City,” presentation, Rackham Amphitheatre, Ann Arbor, MI, October 1, 2015.

50. Sierra C. Woodruff. “Planning for an Unknowable Future: Uncertainty in Climate Change Adaptation Planning.” Climatic Change 139 no. 3 (2016): 445-459.

51. Laura A. Johnson. “An Open Field: Emerging Opportunities for a Global Private Land Conservation Movement” (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2014).

52. Henrik Selin, and Stacy D. VanDeveer. “Political Science and Prediction: What’s Next for U.S. Climate Change Policy?”, Review of Policy Research 24 no. 1 (2007): 1-27.

53. Nancy B. Grimm, J. Grove Grove, Steward TA Pickett, and Charles L. Redman. “Integrated Approaches to Long-Term Studies of Urban Ecological Systems.” BioScience 50 no. 7 (2000): 571-584.

Brooklyn, New York by Kaya Ramirez

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New Genre Public Art and the Law Daniel Sharp Bachelor of Arts 2017 Daniel Sharp is a senior at the University of Michigan studying public policy and art history. His primary focus is on art policy and the intersection of urban planning, policy, and art. In 2015, he founded Art on the Diag (D/ART), Michigan’s first public art organization dedicated to showcasing student work; recent projects included Bubbled (October 2015), Mirror Mimesis (March 2016), and Fall Waterfall (October 2016). He is also a DJ and a percussionist.

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Daniel Sharp

This piece critiques new genre public art, an artistic practice that emerged in the late 1970s and emphasizes spatial context and social engagement. Using the moveable public artwork Park (2000-2001) by Deborah Stratman, which highlights Chicago’s South Side’s use and misuse of public space, this paper connects public art and urbanism to reveal contradictions and concerns with their respective legal frameworks. While historicized new genre public artworks emphasize direct engagement and a strictly adhered-to narrative—such as Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in May (1977) or REPOhistory’s Circulation (2000)— Stratman’s Park operates in the antithesis. Dynamic new genre public artworks, Stratman demonstrates, can purposefully complicate, confuse, and combat their audience while still conveying their arguments effectively. Park’s “anti-engagement” with its context becomes a framing mechanism that highlights public art’s naïve role in low socioeconomic areas. A work’s legal status then reveals to artists and urban planners how an artwork may react to specific audiences, which can be used as a tool to encourage certain reactions to a work’s visitors.

D

eborah Stratman’s durational artwork Park (2000-2001) documents the life of parking booths in the South Side of Chicago.

Investigating what she defines as the “economic and aesthetic interest in the survival of tiny architecture,”¹ Stratman first photographed single-occupancy parking booths placed adjacent to parking lots (Figure 1), then built her own booth and photographed it in urban contexts.

Stratman’s seven selected locations for her booth included a lot near a highway overpass (Figure 2), empty parking lots (Figure 3), and flush against a small nondescript building (Figure 4). In contrast with the photos of in situ booths, Stratman’s booth is fresh and sterile. White paint underscores the word PARK printed black on the bottom half of her two-by-two foot structure, while the top half ’s thick Plexiglas allows the viewer a glimpse into the space. Black metal beams and a flat black roof support the structure. Stratman then screwed a black box inside, with the words TAKE ONE stickered onto the front and open to anyone who walks inside. The box contains brochures (Figure 5) that offer Stratman’s explanation of the work.² However, left unoccupied and unmonitored throughout its installation, the booth was appropriated, misused, tagged, cleaned, and inevitably stolen.

Park engages in the complex question of how a public artwork can engage its audience beyond that of pure aesthetic appeal. Public

artwork is defined here as any artwork located outside. Public artwork created in the late 1970s onward, however, aimed to not only establish a conversation with its context but also engage with the people who live within that context.

Pioneered by works such as Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in May (1977) in Los Angeles, the new socially engaged public artwork—defined as new genre public art—aimed to elicit a response to their often temporary public artworks. Personto-person dialogue between neighbors, city officials, artists, visitors, and the media became a primary technique of new genre public art for the remainder of the 20th century. But Park is purposefully disengaged. Standing empty and alone, it offers not an engagement but an anti-engagement, forcing Stratman’s audience to either accept the booth’s legitimacy or deny it, offering a different technique to “engage” with an audience.

Park additionally questions the value of the urban legal infrastructure in economically depressed neighborhoods. When compared to contemporaneous public artworks such as the law-abiding REPOhistory’s Circulation (2000) in New York City, Park’s illegality reveals how certain aspects of urban management and the law of private property can function differently dependent on the context, which proves crucial for artists and urban planners to understand if

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New Genre Public Art and the Law

they are to engage in public artistic projects and specific constituencies.

Stratman invites her audience to respond anonymously to Park’s claim to South Side properties, prompting artists and urban planners to reexamine the definition of new genre public art and investigate the effect of legal and illegal artwork on its context and audience.

Reexamining the Definition of New Genre Public Art Figure 2 shows Park situated on a plot of land running alongside a highway overpass. The highway, on its way into the air, provides the booth with a tan stone backdrop. A large steel truck emerges from the left of the photograph behind a grated fence and a few roadside bushes.

The sky dotted with clouds is pushed to the top of the photograph. The viewer is placed far enough from the booth to notice how no one is pictured in the photograph. It leads us to imagine how certain viewers reacted to the booth. Some may have seen the booth as legitimate, parking their cars nearby as the booth assumed a level of safety. Others may have not seen it at all, letting the booth blend into the backdrop of puddles, weeds, and urban banality. A neighbor might have assumed the booth to be a brand-new city installment or a new illegitimate venture by a con man. Whitewashed graffiti along the stone wall behind the booth indicates that graffiti artists and city cleaners have visited the place; the booth could have been tagged and/or cleaned by the respective parties.

Fig ure 1 Photographic selections from Park (Stratman, 2000).

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As viewers, we can recognize how others would immediately read Park in different ways, be it a banal structure, a municipality invasion, an opportunity to con others, a new canvas, or another object to clean. This assumption turns

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out to be entirely true. The booth experienced heavy use and damage throughout its two months and eight locations, including nearby valets who used the booth as a base of operation; graffiti artists who tagged the booth only for city cleaners to wash and repaint the booth after being tagged; a scam artist who occupied and used the booth as a legitimate structure to unsuspecting drivers; curious visitors (both near and far) who stuck their heads in to see the inside; and an unknown visitor who stole the booth from Figure 1’s position in late April of 2001.³

Stratman’s use of deliberately unattached and indirect communication with her various viewers stands in stark contrast to traditional new genre public artwork. Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in May (1977) (Figure 6), an oft-cited archetype of the genre, uncovered the lack of awareness of Los Angeles’s rape reports. For three weeks, Lacy invited artists to perform publically, draw with chalk on sidewalks, engage in free defense training classes and conversations with over 30 organizations, and dialogue with the media to directly engage in public policy. Documentation of the work emphasizes the direct interaction between artist and viewer: videos and photographs show artists holding signs in front of crowds, painting maps publically, drawing bodies on the street, and debating with passersby.

The multimedia, multi-stakeholder, and sociolegal engagements of Three Weeks in May avoid abstract or indirect concerns and instead engage in conversations on public policy and the law.⁴ The new genre public artist’s role shifted from a theorist posing questions to an organizer engaging in answers.⁵ Stratman, however, contrasts these principles with Park in two ways.

First, viewers are met with an inanimate object, not a person. Without an artist, docent, or activist standing nearby, a viewer is left without guidance. And if one were to use the booth for

Figure 2 - 4 (from top) North side of Archer between Arch and Haynes (approx. 2930 South), NE corner of VanBuren and Sangamon, North Side of 31st Street at Morgan (Stratman, 2000).

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Figure 5 Brochure from Park, details (Stratman, 2000).

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one’s own agenda or purpose (e.g., by tagging or stealing the booth), one would be met not with a conversation but with a cleaning and removal of the booth. Communication, therefore, between Stratman and her audience is indirect, disjointed, and incomplete. Stratman engages her audience by using alternative, oblique techniques without relying on panels or protests like Three Weeks in May.

The second method Stratman uses that contrasts with Three Weeks in May is the avoidance of documenting the work’s interaction with its visitors, misusers, and defenders. In order to defend its “success” at engaging an audience, the documentation of discussion and dialogue becomes a crucial aspect of new genre public art. Park’s photographs, however, concentrate on the booth and its context without anyone in the pictures. Such a decision can appear selfindulgent to new genre public artists because it emphasizes the work as an isolated, “art for art’s sake” object—not a catalyst or forum for a larger, greater discussion between constituents.

However, one can reframe Stratman’s abandoned pictures as highlighting how public artwork can miss its mark. While public art can engage and activate space, it does not guarantee a social, positive interaction with its audience or space. It further reveals how one can wrongfully assume that “engagement” is inherently a beneficial, visual interaction. Park, in this instance, is “antiengaged”: it offers nothing for its audience, save for an artificial sense of security, and in return it has no defense against the con man or the graffiti artist. Stratman’s definition of engagement, therefore, is one of indirect, isolated associations and phantom visitors like that of Rachel Whiteread’s House (1994) or Ann Messner’s Meteor (1987), rejecting the need to document the work’s “engagement” with a presupposed audience and instead visually isolating the work to reveal its potential downfalls.

Ultimately, the work does suffer from its own inconclusiveness. Attempting to discover the point of Park, other than the ease at which one can appropriate and misuse urban space, is a challenge unlike the clear intention of Three Weeks in May. What Park advocates for, however, might be for us to question the intent of urban infrastructures and those who claim their purposes. How best to use urban space is subjective, and its current use might ignore the needs of the overall community. Creating impromptu parking lots does little to aid the South Side in dire need of economic and infrastructural attention, highlighting spaces that could be parks, hospitals, businesses, or schools.

Instead, the booth becomes a visible punching bag by its context, and by pinpointing the dangers of leaving spaces unattended, it advocates for the better use of those spaces.

Park, in sum, is a unique and quietly subversive new genre public artwork. Not only does it possess the key elements of the genre—dialogue with an audience, activist in nature—it flips these elements by creating an indirect, complex web of assumptions and reactions that the audience at the time or after the work can choose to navigate or not. Socially engaged art can “succeed” in its message without having to directly “engage” in an audience, which offers us a more expanded definition of new genre public art and new tools to discuss topics in public spaces.

Reexamining the Law of Public Art As a noun, park is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “an area devoted to a specific purpose”; the verb to park identifies a vehicle being brought to a halt and left temporarily, typically in a car park or by the side of the road. The legal definition of park in the City of Chicago resonates with these descriptions,

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New Genre Public Art and the Law

Yet Park managed to evade prosecution while hiding in plain sight. This section reveals Stratman’s methods so that artists can incorporate her strategies and public space stakeholders can see how new genre public artworks can prove difficult to legally address.

Figure 6 Leslie Labowitz, Record Companies Drag Their Feet, from the project by Suzanne Lacy, Three Weeks in May (Labowitz, 1977). requiring all parking facilities and spaces on private property to be licensed by the City.⁶ Nonlicense holders or peddlers (such as Stratman in this context) who attempt to use private land for their own purposes are strictly limited to four legal exceptions: 1.

An outdoor sale conducted by a business served by the [owner’s] parking facilities; or

2.

An occasional outdoor sale in support of a tax-exempt charitable, educational, religious or philanthropical institution or organization…; or

3.

A special event presented by, or pursuant to permits issued by, the City; or

4.

A farmers’ market conducted pursuant to Chapter 4-12 of this Code.⁷

Stratman’s parking booth does not fall within any of these narrowly defined exemptions to the parking ordinance. It additionally violates municipal code 4-264-060, where “[no] secondhand dealer shall make use of any property, private or public, not included within the licensed premises, for the storage, handling or display of any secondhand article.”⁸

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Stratman counters the legal repercussions of trespassing through three carefully considered aesthetic decisions. First, the spatial context of Chicago’s South Side allows Stratman to dodge property law. One could argue that the Chicago Police Department, land owners, and neighbors had more urgent issues to address in the South Side in 2000 (e.g., violent crime, homicide) than a trespassing parking booth.

If Stratman placed Park in a parking lot, park, or street corner in Chicago’s Loop—where property is closely maintained, organized, and partitioned because of its high economic value—Park would have been reported, stolen, or destroyed quickly. Private trespasses, like the kind undertaken in Park, are regulated by private land owners or their appointed agents who must file claims for damages against alleged trespassers in the local court system. The enforcement is maintained at different intensities depending on the land’s value and the relative amount of local economic activity. Stratman’s ability to place Park for weeks without legal intervention in the South Side demonstrates how contexts with low economic activity and low land value sometimes escape enforcement of private trespasses due to absentee land owners and weak neighborhood social connections. These areas prioritize other concerns over the legal rights of landowners, and Stratman reveals and exploits this distinction.

Second, while it is the responsibility of a private landowner to remove Park from private land, it is difficult to ascertain who would be responsible for reporting the trespassing structure on public land. Is it the duty of the Police Department,

Daniel Sharp

City officials, or community members? The lack of clarification and municipal ambiguity create a quasi-bystander effect, diffusing the responsibility to report Stratman’s booth. And even if someone had reported the booth, Stratman could have safeguarded Park by claiming her right to free speech. With this logic, Park functioned like a flyer or traveling political advertisement, moving from one street corner to another to disseminate information, and not, say, generate revenue illegally.

Third, independent of whether Park was on public or private land, Stratman could protect Park’s afterlife by citing U.S. copyright law.

Photographing architecture without the property owner’s permission is allowed when it is “located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.”⁹ Stratman’s photographs are always from the street perspective—a public place where one can ordinarily view the buildings and parking lots that Park holds hostage. Additionally, attempting to take down Stratman’s photographs of the work after the completion of the project would prove difficult.

Park demonstrates the extent to which unexpected, legally ambiguous art can reveal the law’s uneven application across different contexts.

Stratman successfully usurps the law of private property, appropriating private land without leading to repercussions because of its strategic positioning in a neighborhood that deprioritizes property law and its photographs that frame Park as a docile, free speech oriented public artwork.

The methods downplay Park’s direct violation of Chicago city codes and allow it to successfully dodge legal concerns. And a concerned citizen, property owner, or urban planner is encouraged to avoid legal battles with new genre public artworks as they may prove difficult to prosecute. Contacting the artist and/or property owners directly ultimately proves to be a better

Figure 7 REPOhistory, Circulation (public art intervention), paper sign designed by Gregory Scholette, Manhattan (Scholette, 2000). alternative to address the work’s illegality.

Illegality in New Genre Public Art The previous two sections revealed how Park catalyzes a reexamination of new genre public art and bypasses property law. It leaves us, however, with a few unfinished considerations: is illegal new genre public art like Park inherently more effective at addressing its concerns than public art that plays by the rules? If so, will we see increasingly dangerous, daring, and illegal public artworks that perpetuate the radicalization of public space? The artist collective REPOhistory’s work Circulation (2000), as an example of legal new genre public art, acts as a foil to Park to answer these questions on the efficacy of illegality in artworks.

REPOhistory aimed to “repossess” history through the use of infographics either printed onto metal street signs and clamped onto lamps or printed and taped onto street signs.¹⁰ Organized protests, printed material, gallery shows, performances, and maps provided additional context to the precise historical

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narratives REPOhistory attempted to rearticulate (Figure 7). The group set its eyes on the history of blood for Circulation both as a metaphor for identity and a physical entity that has been unequally distributed across New York City.¹¹ The project began in February of 2000 and lasted two months, incorporating work from over 25 artists across Manhattan.¹²

The collective exchanged its staple medium (metal signs clamped onto public streetlights and lamps) for mass-printed posters taped at eye level on street signs and roadside poles for Circulation. The intentional shift likely responded to the collective’s previous work Civil Disturbances (1998-1999), for which the City nearly denied giving permits to REPOhistory after businesses complained about the signs.¹³ Circulation, as a result, avoids legal rebuttal by using posters whose ephemerality allows a potentially frustrated viewer to simply tear down the work without having to use the courts. In addition, extensive research, multiple meetings, and several proposals for Circulation lasted over four years to confirm the project’s legal right as free speech and obtain approvals from multiple public space stakeholders in New York City.¹⁴ These included the New York City Department of Transportation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, The Gunk Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, and multiple galleries.

Yet while Circulation’s investment in its own legality satisfies some stakeholders, others may find its rule-following unadventurous or bland. When placed in conversation with Park, the two works reveal how audience members, depending on their background, react to a work’s (il)legality.

Three categories emerge: people who live near the work (neighbors, businesses, frequent passersby), people who live far from the work (likely artists or curators visiting for a brief moment), and people

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who work with the space (municipal workers and private property owners).

Circulation’s by-the-book relationship with its spatial context encouraged positive interactions by the people who live near or work with the space.¹⁵ Park, in contrast, did not, noting the tagging, misuse by a con man and valets, and theft of the booth. Viewers who fall under this category are likely to have hostile, confused, or ambivalent reactions to new constructions and artworks. Foreign objects serving a foreign purpose are unlikely to be trusted until they are cleared by friendly, professional, or legal methods.

Circulations’s desire to be approved by any and all stakeholders serves this purpose and gave the work legal weight and trust from these categories.

Park’s legal instability, at first a noted strength in the work, is here a downfall to those who value by-the-book public artworks. Its value and purpose are questioned in perpetuity only to make its artistic and aesthetic conversation difficult to sell to these groups.

The audience that lives far away from the work has an inverse relationship to the work. The average curator, artist, or adventurer visiting the work likely views its artistic narrative first without having to grapple with the work’s unsanitized and legal relationship with its surroundings. To bypass these legal concerns is to give the benefit of the doubt; it allows the artistic community to somehow morally allow, if not celebrate, the bending and breaking of the law. Park, existing in a grey area between illegality and legality, piques their interest. Circulation’s reliance on City and stakeholder approval, however, ossifies its radical message, appearing stodgy and conservative.

We are able, to an extent, to predict how and why certain viewers appreciate or vilify a public artwork’s illegality.

Daniel Sharp

The inevitable question Park and Circulation answer is why illegality matters in one’s reading of a public artwork. The question especially reverberates when the artwork deals with public policy or art’s relationship to the law. A viewer cannot help but see and consider a public artwork’s relationship to its outside space, where variables from neighbors, to taggers, to the law must converse with the work. Its effectiveness and reading relate not to the power it has to realize social change but its propensity to talk to its surroundings.¹⁶ The quality of discussion that arises then becomes dependent on where the viewer lands within the three categories.

us to reexamine the boundaries of new genre public art, arguing for a more expanded definition of audience engagement to include indirect, indifferent, or even hostile interactions. Artists’ planned community “engagements” need not be limited to beneficial or agenda-driven topics; indirect, even antagonistic, interactions between artwork and viewers are valid and should be treated with the same complex analysis. This piece placed Park historically (via Lacy) and concurrently (via REPOhistory) with the legal concerns it raises, hypothetical lawsuits, and the efficacy of illegality in public artworks. Further considerations include discussing the efficacy and ethical differences between illegal artworks that were caught by the law or “escaped” the law, as well as the role of duration in public artworks to escape repercussions.

Stratman’s Park offers overlooked insights into public art planning and the law. The work asks

Endnotes 12. The overall number of participants, however, differs depending on the source—be it Gregory Sholette, Tebor Scholz, Jim Costanzo, or Janet Koenig; see Costanzo (2000), Sholette, G., & Scholz, T. (2000). This is likely due to how specific collaborative projects led by Keith Christensen, Meryl Meisler, Oscar Tuazon, and Andre Knight sourced a vast network of staff and students that may or may not be reflected in the total number of those “participating” in the artwork. The numbers do not count, in addition, the city departments that sanctioned the project, which oftentimes become willing participants; see also Costanzo (2000), p. 32.

1. Nato Thompson. Experimental Geography. (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2008), p.54.

2. Text from the brochure can be viewed at http://www. temporaryservices.org/parkbook.html.

3. Stratman, email correspondence, November 29, 2016.

4. Lacy, Suzanne. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. 3rd ed. N.p.: Bay Printing (1994). Print, p. 24-25.

5. Thompson (2008), p. 54.

6. City of Chicago code § 4-4-337 Illegal use of parking facilities.

13. Diller, Matthew (1999). "COLLECTION: CIVIL DISTURBANCES: BATTLES FOR JUSTICE IN NEW YORK CITY REPOHISTORY." The Fordham Urban Law Journal, vol. 26, pp. 1320-30.

7. Ibid.

8. City of Chicago code § 4-264-060.

9. U.S. Copyright code § 120 Scope of exclusive rights in architectural works; Illinois Right of Privacy Act; and Brown v.

ACMI Pop Division, 375 Ill. App. 3d 276, 283, 873 N.E.2d 954, 959 (1st Dist. 2007).

10. Jim Costanzo. “REPOhistory's circulation: The migration of public art to the Internet.” Art Journal, 59(4) (2000): p. 32.

14. Gregory Sholette, & Tebor Scholz. “REPOhistory: Circulation.” Art Journal, 59(4), 38-53 (2000): p. 1-3.

15. Gonzales (1998), n.p.

16. Patricia C. Phillips. “Temporality and Public Art.” Art Journal, vol. 48, no. 4, (1989): www.jstor.org/stable/777018, p.

332-336.

11. Ibid. p. 33.

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Figures Figure 1. Deborah Stratman, selections from Park (photographs), 2000. © Deborah Stratman, viewable online at http://www. pythagorasfilm.com/park.html Figure 2. Deborah Stratman, Park (steel 2x2 angle iron - (4) 7'2" (2) 3'2" (2) 4'2" 1x1 angle iron - (1) 7'2" (2) 7' (2) 3'2" (2) 4' (2) 25" (4) 23" + miscellaneous steel sizes for sliding door track wood (2) sheets exterior grade 1/2" plywood (2) boards of 2x4 plexi (2) 4' x 3'2" & (2) 3' x 3'2" (2) 2" metal wheels clear silicone caulk liquid nails WD-40 clear coat polyurethene spray), North side of Archer b/w Arch and Haynes (approx. 2930 South), April 2000-April 2001. © Deborah Stratman, viewable online at http://www.temporaryservices.org/parkmap1.html Figure 3. Deborah Stratman, Park (booth), NE corner of VanBuren and Sangamon, 2000. © Deborah Stratman, viewable online at http://www.temporaryservices.org/ parkmap1.html Figure 4. Deborah Stratman, Park (booth), North side of 31st Street at Morgan, 2000. © Deborah Stratman, viewable online at http://www.temporaryservices.org/parkmap1.html Figure 5. Deborah Stratman, Park (brochure), details, 2000. © Deborah Stratman, viewable online at http://www. temporaryservices.org/PARK.pdf Figure 6. Leslie Labowitz, Record Companies Drag Their Feet (video), from the project by Suzanne Lacy, Three Weeks in May, Los Angeles, 1977. © Leslie Labowitz.

Figure 7. REPOhistory, Circulation (public art intervention), paper sign designed by Gregory Scholette, Manhattan, 2000. © Gregory Scholette, viewable online at http://www. gregorysholette.com/?page_id=71

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Hong Kong by Jeffrey Wong

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Racial Residential Integration in Urban America Rebecca Labov Master of Urban Planning 2018 Raised in Philadelphia, Rebecca Labov developed both a deep appreciation for cities and a frustration with the inequalities that exist across geographic lines. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in architecture and urban studies. After gaining professional experience as both an architect and a public school educator, she is pursuing a Master of Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, with the ultimate goal of working to create a more equitable educational landscape for young people.

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Rebecca Labov

Racial residential segregation remains a serious problem that adversely impacts people of color in the United States more than 40 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. A review and analysis of policy approaches considers the effectiveness of regulatory, demand-based, and supply-based strategies to address segregation. Historically, the U.S. has relied heavily on housing regulation that has been unsuccessful because it lacks adequate enforcement. Demand-based strategies have consisted mainly of mobility programs which, despite some successes, do not represent a realistic solution to widespread segregation. Policies that address the supply-side of housing issues, including the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and HOPE VI, have indirectly targeted segregation with moderate success. Promising practices in Inclusionary Zoning have addressed integration more directly, although progress has been limited. The Obama administration’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule is the most recent regulatory effort to address segregation; however, this rule was already under threat from Congress days after President Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. This underlines why anti-segregation strategies must be supported by quantitative measures and clear, results-based legal enforcement. In addition, demand- and supply-based programs are needed that provide state and local governments with the incentives and the means to work towards fair housing goals. Demand-based programs such as mortgage incentives and subsidies may be used to expand opportunities for marginalized groups. Supply-based programs that build off the successes of Inclusionary Zoning may serve as effective incentives for developers to provide housing that promotes integration.

R

acial residential segregation in the United States is a persistent equity issue that has confounded policymakers for decades. Despite the common conception that segregation is a result of socioeconomic rather than racial divisions, hypersegregation and concentrated poverty are conditions experienced predominantly by racial minorities. The share of poor black and Hispanic Americans living in concentrated poverty outnumbers that of poor whites more than four to one.1 These groups have been systematically oppressed, relegated to lower-quality neighborhoods, and cut off from sources of social, economic, and political capital. Minorities living in isolated conditions consistently see worse outcomes in terms of employment, education, and health risks.2 Housing segregation also means that households located outside of these neighborhoods have little or no exposure to them, which contributes to misunderstanding and harmful racial stereotypes.

While the roots of segregation are found in Jim Crow, redlining, and restrictive covenants, the problem is perpetuated by discrimination and rising housing costs. Efforts to solve segregation come up against deeply held American values

of choice and personal freedom; in some circles, even the mention of integration sparks concerns about social engineering and infringement on individual rights. White resistance to racial integration, coupled with minority concerns that integration may bring violent retaliation or dilute political representation, have contributed to maintaining the status quo.

Yet the crisis of racial segregation and its impacts must be addressed as a matter of social justice.

In the analysis that follows, I categorize efforts to promote residential integration as regulatory, demand-based or supply-based. Within each category, policies range from least to most aggressive. Moving forward, it is important to find the middle ground between policies that are weak and ineffective, and those that overreach and violate individual freedoms. In the past, policymakers have relied heavily on regulatory strategies that are timid and difficult to enforce due to local resistance. The new Trump administration is unlikely to pursue enforcement of existing fair housing regulation, and Congress is already taking steps to reduce the strength of these regulations. If future regulatory strategies are to be effective, fair housing legislation

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must be backed not just by clear, results-based enforcement, but also by an array of demandand supply-based programs that provide state and local governments with the incentives and the means to work towards fair housing goals.

Residential Segregation in the United States There is no clear way to measure segregation because it is a complex social issue. Measures generally fall into one of two categories: absolute measures, which describe the ratios of racial and ethnic groups in an area, and comparative measures, which consider segregation relative to the demographic makeup of a region.3 Descriptive research often uses comparative measures to highlight two-way segregation between whites and marginalized racial and ethnic groups: most often black-white and Hispanic-white. The two most commonly used metrics today are the index of dissimilarity, which measures the percentage of one group that would have to move to achieve integration, and the exposure index, which describes the percentage of one group located in the average neighborhood of another.

Racial residential segregation persists as a defining feature of the U.S. housing landscape.

In their influential 1993 work American Apartheid, Massey and Denton used both the index of dissimilarity and exposure index to illustrate that black and Hispanic Americans remained highly segregated from whites.4 Segregation waned little over the decade that followed; even in the 21st century, blacks are still considered hypersegregated in dozens of major metropolitan areas.5 Analysis of 2010 U.S. Census data reveals that black-white exposure scores have made little progress, and that unlike white neighborhoods, black neighborhoods have not become less homogenous.6 Racial discrimination

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continues to be a factor, as Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) fair housing audits (as recent as 2012) show that net discrimination in the rental market results in a difference of approximately 10 percent in access and favorability for black, Hispanic, and Asian renters.7

Theoretical explanations of racial segregation generally fall into three categories—consumer preferences, socioeconomic limitations, or racial discrimination—though subscribing to only one may oversimplify a complex issue. Theoretical models based on consumer preferences rely on the premise that individuals self-segregate.

Studies of racial preferences have shown that segregated patterns are mostly determined by the preferences of non-Hispanic whites, who exhibit self-segregating behaviors, although their resistance to integration has waned over time.8 The idea that patterns of segregation are due solely to differences in socioeconomic status does not account for the fact that blacks do not see the same payoff as whites for improved socioeconomic status through homeownership.9 Camille Charles argues against the tendency to minimize the impact of racial discrimination in her framework of the place stratification model of segregation, which considers racial discrimination to be an important structural force shaping housing patterns: “Present-day racial segregation…is best understood as emanating from structural forces tied to racial prejudice and discrimination that preserve the relative status advantage of whites.”10

Theoretical support for housing integration is expressed in terms of both the negative consequences of segregation and direct benefits of integration. Black and Hispanic households living in isolation face obstacles in terms of economic opportunities, education, mobility, crime, health, and neighborhood services.11, 12

Rebecca Labov

Racial segregation has been shown to have a detrimental impact on economic growth due to poor infrastructure and discrimination in lending for small businesses.13 The isolation of poor black and Hispanic children in schools has also been shown to have detrimental and lasting impacts on education and achievement.14 These factors limit socioeconomic mobility and promote intergenerational poverty.

processes through which black spaces in this country have become unlivable.”17 While there are clearly fundamental disagreements about the merits of integration, it is the prerogative of policy makers to look to integration as a solution only if it serves to remove barriers for the oppressed. The analysis that follows maintains a critical lens in examining past and contemporary integration policies.

The benefits of integration are also significant, though less often observed. Integration has been shown to result in education and employment gains for black and Hispanic households participating in residential mobility programs.

Integration may also have profound impacts on society; the contact hypothesis posits that proximity will improve relations between racial and ethnic groups. An Urban Institute report on the benefits of neighborhood diversity describes the link between integrated neighborhoods and “greater tolerance, fair-mindedness, and openness to diverse networks and settings.”15 While neighborhood diversity alone cannot guarantee a reduction in racism, it is a prerequisite for the mutual understanding needed to make meaningful progress.

Policy Approaches and Evaluation

Critics of integration argue that it does more harm than good for racially isolated neighborhoods, and that our resources would be better used to promote affordable housing and improve quality of life in those neighborhoods.

There is also a concern that breaking up majority-minority communities results in reduced political strength. Integration may also further subjugate people of color by reinforcing stigma, reducing access to housing, and forcing integration.16 Deeper criticism of integration asserts that it allows us to ignore the structural forces that create segregation in the first place; Maya Dukmasova in Slate writes that integration efforts have “done nothing to challenge the

Policy approaches to increase residential integration have been largely unsuccessful.

This is in part a function of erratic policies that change with each presidential administration, and the difficulty of obtaining funding for housing programs even in a liberal administration.18 When HUD has prioritized equity goals, it has come under heavy criticism for spending on “social engineering” rather than providing housing for those in need.19 Additionally, there is a history of disagreement amongst policymakers on how federal resources should be used to promote desegregation, and how to monitor compliance. Below, I provide an overview of regulatory, demand-based, and supply-based policies, ranging from least aggressive (voluntary) to most aggressive (mandatory and/or strictly enforced).

Regulatory Approaches Several legislative efforts were undertaken throughout the 1960s in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and increasing opposition to urban renewal, culminating in the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act).

Title VIII put an end to legal discrimination in sale, rental and financing of housing units based on race, religion, sex or national origin.

It also included language concerning HUD’s

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responsibility to “affirmatively furthering fair housing,” but the political resistance to enforcement of this clause was strong.20 It is often lamented that the law lacked “teeth”; George Romney, Richard Nixon’s appointee as HUD Secretary following the passage of the law, was stymied in his efforts to enforce fair housing practices at the state and local level.21 Ultimately, the presumption that the Fair Housing Act would bring about the end of residential segregation has been proven by Massey and Denton, Charles, and others to be incorrect.

The end of legal discrimination did lead to reduced segregation in select housing markets.

Sander’s research on these markets underlines the importance of demographic characteristics.

He points to San Diego and Minneapolis as cities that have maintained integration, while many other major cities have experienced resegregation over time. Sander found that the outcomes were dependent on demographic characteristics. Places that saw reduced segregation—or a “dissolving ghetto”—had a smaller black population and less closely knit white communities. This outcome supports the theoretical model that white flight occurs when whites begin to feel “outnumbered,” leading to neighborhood tipping and resegregation; on the other hand, whites are more tolerant of black neighbors if the black population is not large enough to pose a perceived threat to the white majority.22

While the passage of the Fair Housing Act itself was not sufficient to create racial equity in housing, numerous lawsuits have attempted to hold HUD accountable to fair housing goals with varying degrees of success. In two landmark cases brought by a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter against the city of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that municipalities were required to plan and

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zone for the provision of low and moderate income housing to reduce income segregation; however, this ruling was not adopted by other states.23 Action by the Clinton administration to strengthen HUD’s responsibility of “affirmatively furthering fair housing” triggered a number of additional lawsuits against HUD and local public housing authorities (PHAs) for failing to uphold this portion of the law.24 If there are sufficient resources and mechanisms in place to support enforcement of fair housing laws, regulatory approaches may see more success in reducing segregation in the future.

Demand-Based Approaches Demand-based integration programs are designed to alter households’ choice of location.

The Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, which was the result of litigation against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) for racially discriminatory actions, is a well-known demandbased example of integration. It is one of the few mobility programs that identifies racial integration explicitly in its goals; the CHA was mandated to provide housing for 7,500 black households scattered throughout predominantly white areas.25 Multiple studies on the effectiveness of the program show generally positive results for families in terms of employment, educational outcomes, and sustained integration.26 Critics point to the relatively small size of the program— an intentional move to reduce the risk of white flight—and claim that this makes it difficult to generalize the results.27 Nonetheless, numerous mobility programs have been founded on the perceived success of the Gautreaux model.

Moving to Opportunity (MTO) is among these programs. MTO was conceived as a social experiment to determine whether moving to wealthier neighborhoods improved the quality of life for low-income households. Unlike

Rebecca Labov

Gautreaux, MTO focused on income rather than race, although income often serves as a proxy for race when it comes to housing. Studies of outcomes for MTO households produced mixed results. A study by Chetty, Hendren, and Katz finds “robust evidence that children who moved to lower poverty neighborhoods saw substantial benefits” in terms of college attendance, individual earnings, college quality, marriage, and poverty share in ZIP code.28 However, other studies have shown a lack of convincing evidence regarding educational outcomes. Ultimately, as housing researcher Alex Schwartz writes, “the idea that movement away from a highly distressed environment can, by itself, enable lowincome people to improve their economic and educational position is…open to question.”29

While both Gautreaux and MTO were limited in size, the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program is a demand-based program that has grown dramatically since its inception in 1974, serving over two million households. The success rate of the vouchers varies by location, tightness of the housing market, and the presence of anti-discrimination laws. As of 2000, roughly 30 percent of households who received vouchers were unable to find a unit to accept them.30 For those who do find housing, the extent to which vouchers truly result in integration is only moderate. Section 8 vouchers perform marginally better than other public housing initiatives in terms of locating households in integrated areas, but are still more likely to locate households in neighborhoods with high poverty and a high minority population.31 Critics of vouchers find that even when recipients successfully integrate into new neighborhoods, they may be diverting political attention away from those residents who are left behind; in fact, problems in those neighborhoods may be exacerbated by population loss.32

Demand-based incentives designed to encourage movement across racial lines are a method of integration with a controversial history. “Integration maintenance” programs have generally been used to maintain the white population in neighborhoods that may be “tipping” towards a high percentage of minorities, rather than to increase housing opportunities for people of color. These programs typically rely on comparative, rather than absolute, measures of integration. This type of integration maintenance occurred in Park Forest South, Illinois in 1977, when the Township instituted an “affirmative marketing plan” to encourage entry of underrepresented groups into neighborhoods with the goal of achieving representation equal to the racial and ethnic makeup of the region. A related technique of “minority dispersal,” observed in Shaker Heights, Ohio, was an attempt to disperse minority households evenly throughout an area to prevent concentration.33 Both of these strategies use a degree of residential steering, which is discriminatory in that it removes agency from minority households in the name of racial balance.

The Cleveland Racial Integration Incentive, developed in the mid-1980s, was the first largescale integration maintenance program. Building off the dispersal practices in Shaker Heights, the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) set out to provide low-interest mortgage funds that would encourage white and black buyers to move into neighborhoods where they were underrepresented. Similar to the Park Forest South integration plan, the program aimed to mirror the racial makeup of the metropolitan area, which was roughly 25 percent black. There was serious objection to the plan from the black community, and legal challenges surfaced under the premise that it was invasive, discriminatory, and would “dilute” black America.34 The plan was ultimately modified to be more inclusive,

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but mortgage incentive-based integration remains legal. Further research is needed on the effectiveness of such a strategy in creating integrated communities.

The Cleveland suburb of Parma, Ohio was forced to administer integrative practices under legal pressure after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the City for violation of the Fair Housing Act. The City resisted implementation of the court’s remedies, which attacked Parma’s zoning ordinance and required multiple steps to establish low-income housing. The terms of the “agreement” were renegotiated in 1996, and included affirmative marketing and mortgage incentives. The result has been only a marginal increase in the non-white population of Parma, suggesting limits to the impact of legal action in resistant municipalities to encourage demand.35

The strictest form of demand-based integration strategies is ceiling quotas, which place explicit limits on sale or rental to racial groups based on pre-set quotas. In the 1970s, Oak Park, Illinois used ceiling quotas to curb black entry, with the goal of decreasing white fear of neighborhood tipping. This practice was often used to limit the numbers of non-whites in an area, and has since been found unconstitutional. Specifically, ceiling quotas undermine the Fair Housing Act’s prohibition of race-conscious behavior in the real estate industry that is not serving a remedial purpose. Additionally, quotas have the effect of reinforcing and affirming white prejudice.36

Supply-Based Approaches Supply-based integration incentives encourage the production of housing that will lead to integrated neighborhoods. Often, these efforts are aimed at creating mixed-income housing, which may indirectly lead to racial integration.

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The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program operates through market forces to encourage developers to provide low-income housing through the receipt of tradeable tax credits. This program has grown since it was established in 1984, providing more than 2.5 million units to low-income households as of 2011.37 However, there are limits to LIHTC’s ability to promote integration. First, the financing of these projects makes it more profitable to propose developments that are all low-income, rather than mixed-income. Second, research on the location of these projects indicates that they are more often located in low-income and minority areas than other market rental units.38 Another recent HUD initiative is the requirement for developers receiving HUD funds to submit an Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan, which describes how they plan to market units to attract those groups identified as “least likely to apply.”39 There is no evidence yet to point to the success of this program in achieving integration.

Public housing has also had an important role in supply-based integration efforts. Most of the integration achieved through public housing has been through the strategic location of units based on neighborhood income levels.

The redevelopment of public housing projects through HOPE VI into low-density housing was partially an attempt to deconcentrate poverty, sometimes incorporating mixed-income housing within the developments. While desegregation is not the sole goal of the program, it has led to significant improvements in terms of the dispersal of public housing. Since the implementation of HOPE VI, more public housing is located in Census tracts with low poverty rates and low percentages of minorities. However, the largest share of public housing is still located in high poverty, high minority Census tracts, and there are significant political challenges in changing this pattern.40 Opponents of the program criticize the displacement of minority households.

Rebecca Labov

Because HOPE VI did not require a one-to-one replacement of demolished units, many black and Hispanic households were in fact displaced and given housing vouchers, and they did not always find new housing.41

A practice that moves beyond incentives in housing supply and into requirements is Inclusionary Zoning (IZ), which requires developers to provide a percentage of affordable units in specific development areas—generally, those that are rapidly developing. IZ is a flexible practice; whether the program is mandatory or voluntary, the affordability requirements, and the duration of the requirements are all variables that can be adjusted to meet the needs of the local housing market.42 Montgomery County, Maryland was an early adopter of IZ in the 1970s, mandating that one-third of units be available to public housing residents. IZ has been successful in creating and sustaining diversity in Montgomery County.43 Like public housing, IZ is concerned with income rather than race, but if used effectively it can be an important way to preserve both income and racial diversity in rapidly developing housing markets. Studies have shown that density bonuses are related to increased production of affordable housing, and that IZ programs become more effective in the long run.44

Legal mandates for municipalities to supply integrated housing have been met with resistance. As the result of a 2009 lawsuit over discriminatory practices, Westchester County, New York was required to build 750 low-income units in its least integrated municipalities, set aside funds for fair housing, and enforce fair practices. A federal housing monitor found that the City of Pound Ridge in Westchester had exclusionary zoning laws, and forced the City to make changes to its zoning code to allow all types of multifamily housing. Although legally

it is the responsibility of the County to enforce fair housing practices in its cities, Westchester County has resisted the consent decree and refuses to act as enforcer.45 Much like the City of Parma with regard to demand-based approaches, Westchester highlights the challenges of enforcing legal mandates to desegregate housing in resistant localities.

The extent to which litigation can impact housing segregation in general is a matter of debate amongst policymakers. A study of fair housing enforcement by Ross and Galster examined whether fair housing enforcement agencies that have successfully exacted payouts through litigation have seen a decrease in discriminatory behaviors within the enforcement area. They found that there was a strong correlation, particularly in the rental sector, between litigation and reduced discrimination. However, financial penalties for failure to comply with fair housing laws are inherently problematic, given that the most exclusive communities are often those that can afford the penalties.46 The same problem applies where HUD funding is tied to compliance, since the biggest offenders are likely to be those who are least reliant on HUD funding.

This issue is especially relevant when considering the current policy context and the implications of President Obama’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule.

Current Policy & Implications The political landscape surrounding housing issues remains uncertain, but recent years have seen substantial progress on combating racial segregation. The wording in the 1968 Fair Housing Act that HUD should “affirmatively further fair housing” was ignored for decades, with the exception of a handful of lawsuits, and HUD essentially never denied funding to a PHA for failure to live up to that requirement.47

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In 1994, Bill Clinton’s administration revived this clause, establishing the requirement that municipalities applying for HUD funding complete an analysis of impediments (AI) that identified obstacles to fair housing. However, the AI was often completed as an afterthought, and President Clinton’s work did little outside of inspiring additional litigation efforts. In response to the 2008 National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity’s report of HUD’s failure to combat discrimination, the Obama administration dedicated itself to tackling issues of fair housing. These efforts culminated in the passage of the AFFH rule in 2015.48

AFFH requires all entities receiving HUD funding to create a thorough plan for addressing fair housing issues. It also attempts to add legitimacy to the AI by providing tools to help applicants accurately identify fair housing obstacles. These tools include access to the relevant raw Census data and an online user interface. Applicants then create an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH), which includes a summary of fair housing issues, capacity to address them, analysis of data on integration and segregation patterns, identification of areas of concentrated poverty, analysis of disparities in access, identification of fair housing priorities and goals, and a summary of community participation.49 The rule intends to help municipalities avoid litigation for violation of the Fair Housing Act. While there is no evaluative data around the impacts of this rule at this time, below I review the opportunities, limitations, and implications of this new standard in terms of promoting fair, integrated housing.

AFFH is significant in that it encourages proactive promotion of fair housing, although it has been criticized for elevating procedure over substance.

It asks municipalities to take active steps to reduce barriers to fair housing, and ties receipt of HUD

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funding to acknowledgement of obstacles and creation of a plan to address them. Rather than dictate solutions, it empowers municipalities to identify their unique problems and take ownership by setting their own strategies. Yet the law does not describe any sanctions for failure to take meaningful actions once the AFH is submitted. The program lacks accountability in results, which could be easily measured through traditional segregation metrics like the index of dissimilarity or exposure index. If funding were tied to quantitative results, it would improve the legitimacy of the law by connecting it to databased outcomes.50 Still, communities that do not rely heavily on HUD funds might choose to opt out entirely, skirting the requirements.

Shifting politics pose a threat to any meaningful progress that might be achieved through AFFH. In January of 2017, Utah Senator Mike Lee proposed the Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act that would nullify AFFH. Furthermore, it would prohibit HUD from considering racial disparities in designing future housing policy: “No Federal funds may be used to design, build, maintain, utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing.”51 If passed, this bill would strengthen the power of municipalities to develop in ways that may be exclusionary, and severely limit the possibilities for desegregation.

Another recent event that will have a significant impact on the future of fair housing is the 2016 Supreme Court ruling against the Texas Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). The DHCD was sued by a fair housing advocacy group for using LIHTC funds in areas that exacerbate racial segregation.

In a decision that has since become known as the “disparate impact” ruling, the court ruled that any housing decision that results in perpetuating

Rebecca Labov

the segregation of minorities is in violation of the Fair Housing Act, even if this result is unintentional.52 Such a ruling may enable more litigation against housing agencies. It will take years, however, to evaluate its full impact.

to move the needle on racial segregation. Those that are too extreme, such as racial quotas and steering, violate the race-conscious provisions of the Fair Housing Act and result in the subjugation rather than liberation of minorities.

Litigation to enforce fair housing laws has also been unsuccessful in producing positive outcomes due to the resistance of local governments to comply.

Moving Forward Residential segregation is the result of widespread institutional discrimination rather than isolated incidents, and achieving integration requires intentional intervention. Determining the best policy for addressing segregation means walking a tightrope between measures that are too weak and too extreme. Those that are too weak, such as voluntary mobility programs, do not manage

The inability of the Fair Housing Act to “affirmatively further fair housing” suggests that legislation on its own is not sufficient to solve segregation. Fair housing law, even when enforced, fails to treat the systematic intersection of race and poverty that create conditions of

Strategies to Promote Residential Integration Regulatory

Demand-Based

Supply-Based

Summary

Legislation or court rulings that require local agencies to directly address segregation.

Incentives, limits, or quotas for household relocation that will increase neighborhood diversity.

Provision of housing units in locations that will allow for diversity in income and/or race of householders.

Examples

• •

•

Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program Moving to Opportunity Section 8 Vouchers Integration Maintenance/ Mortgage Incentives

• • •

LIHTC HOPE VI Inclusionary Zoning

Can result in subjugation of minorities through forced integration May reduce minority political power through dispersal May worsen conditions in the neighborhood the population moves from

• • •

Often limited in scope Can incite NIMBYism Developers concerned about the bottom line may resist implementation

Fair Housing Act AFFH Rule

• • •

Limitations

• •

•

Often difficult to enforce Municipalities may choose not to comply, especially if not dependent on funding Can be overturned due to shifting politics

•

•

•

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racial segregation.53 Future legislation needs more accountability in terms of follow-through on local plans. Monitoring progress through quantitative measures of segregation would be a valuable tool in this regard; furthermore, this data would represent an opportunity for researchers to study the relative impacts of different strategies for combating segregation. If legislation is to be effective, it must be coupled with clear enforcement as well as concrete demand-based and supply-based programs that act as tools and incentives for local governments to work towards fair housing goals.

A mix of demand-based and supply-based strategies are crucial to support any legislative efforts to address segregation. In terms of demand-based strategies, it is clear that while mobility programs may serve as demonstrations of functional integration, they do not represent a realistic solution to issues of widespread segregation. The expansion of mobility programs will only lead to worsening conditions in the isolated neighborhoods the program draws from. The smart use of demand-based programs like mortgage incentives and subsidies, so long

as they are used to expand rather than limit opportunities for marginalized groups, could be effective in promoting healthy integration. Ideally, these incentives can be used to open previously exclusionary housing markets, and to curb the displacing effects of gentrification. Supply-based programs will be most effective if they build off the successes of inclusionary zoning, using density bonuses as an incentive for developers and tailoring affordability requirements to local needs.

Racial residential segregation remains a serious problem that adversely impacts people of color in the U.S. more than 40 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. The minimal progress in housing integration parallels the minimal improvements in educational and economic outcomes for black and Hispanic Americans, and the correlation between housing and life outcomes is well documented. While overt and legal discrimination may be a relic of the past, the policymakers of today have a responsibility to address racial segregation and its impacts. The current divided political climate is a reminder of the urgency in bridging gaps between racial and ethnic group.

Endnotes 1. Marcia Fernald, Ed, “The State of the Nation’s Housing, 2015,” Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, (2015).

7. Alex Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 337.

2. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

8. Reynolds Farley et al., “Continued Racial Residential Segregation in Detroit: ‘Chocolate City, Vanilla Suburbs’ Revisited,” Journal of Housing Research, 4.1 (Jan 1, 1993).

3. Ray Sin and Maria Krysan, “What is Racial Residential Integration? A Research Synthesis, 1950-2013,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1(4) (2015).

4. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid.

5. Camille Charles, “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 29 (2003).

6. Austin King, “Affirmatively Further: Reviving The Fair Housing Act’s Integrationist Purpose,” New York University Law Review, Vol. 88 (2013), 2193.

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9. Charles, “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation.”

10. Ibid, 182.

11. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid.

12. Charles, “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation.”

13. Huiping Li, Harrison Campbell and Steven Fernandez, “Residential Segregation, Spatial Mismatch and Economic Growth across US Metropolitan Areas,” Urban Studies (2013).

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14. Richard Rothstein, “The Racial Achievement Gap, Segregated Schools, and Segregated Neighborhoods – A Constitutional Insult,” Race and Social Problems 6 (4) (2014).

33. Goel, “Maintaining Integration Against Minority Interests.”

34. Howard Husock, “Integration Incentives in Suburban Cleveland,” Kennedy School of Government Case Program (1989).

15. Margery Turner and Lynette Rawlings, “Promoting Neighborhood Diversity: Benefits, Barriers & Strategies,” The Urban Institute (2009). Retrieved from: http:// www.urban.org/research/publication/promotingneighborhood-diversity-benefits-barriers-and-strategies, p. 4.

35. W. Dennis Keating, “The Parma Housing Racial Discrimination Remedy Revisited,” Cleveland State Law Review, 235 (1998).

36. Rodney A. Smolla, “Integration Maintenance: The Unconstitutionality Of Benign Programs That Discourage Black Entry To Prevent White Flight,” Duke Law Journal (1981).

16. Ankur J. Goel, “Maintaining Integration Against Minority Interests,” The Urban Lawyer, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1990).

37. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 254.

17. Maya Dukmasova, “Our Impoverished Debate About Housing Segregation,” Slate, 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/ metropolis/2015/07/ _concentrated_poverty_the_term_ has_noble_intentions_but_it_s_damaging_our.html.

38. Ibid, 147.

39. Goering, Housing Desegregation and Federal Policy.

40. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 171.

18. Gary Orfield, “The Movement for Housing Integration: Rationale and the Nature of the Challenge,” Housing Desegregation and Federal Policy (1986).

41. Ibid.

42. Jenny Schuetz, Rachel Meltzer and Vicki Been, “31 Flavors of Inclusionary Zoning: Comparing Policies From San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Suburban Boston,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 75 (4) (2009).

19. John M. Goering, Housing Desegregation and Federal Policy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

20. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States.

43. Florence W. Roisman, “Lessons of American Apartheid: The Necessity and Means of Promoting Residential Racial Integration,” Review of American Apartheid, by Doug Massey and Nancy Denton. Iowa Law Review,Vol. 81 (1995).

21. Nikole Hannah-Jones, The Missionary on This American Life, Episode 512: House Rules [Podcast audio] (November 2013). Retrieved from http://www. thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/houserules.

44. Schuetz, Meltzer and Been, “31 Flavors of Inclusionary Zoning: Comparing Policies From San Francisco, Washington, DC and Suburban Boston.”

22. Richard H. Sander, “Housing Segregation and Housing Integration: The Diverging Paths of American Cities,” University of Miami Law Review, Vol. 52 (4) (1998).

45. Timothy Douglas, “Exclusion Resolved?: A Case Study of Zoning Reform in Pound Ridge, NY,” Master’s thesis, Columbia University, 2016.

23. Julian Juergensmeyer and Thomas Roberts, Land Use Planning and Development Regulation Law, 2nd Edition (St. Paul, MN: West, 2007).

46. George Galster and Stephen L. Ross, “Fair Housing Enforcement and Changes in Discrimination Between 1989 and 2000: An Exploratory Study,” University of Connecticut Economics Working Papers, Paper 200516 (2005).

24. King, “Affirmatively Further: Reviving The Fair Housing Act’s Integrationist Purpose.”

25. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States.

47. King, “Affirmatively Further: Reviving The Fair Housing Act’s Integrationist Purpose.”

26. James E. Rosenbaum and Leonard S. Rubinowitz, Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia (University of Chicago Press: 2000).

48. Ibid.

27. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States.

49. Ibid, 2,204.

28. Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz, “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” American Economic Review, Vol. 106 (4) (2016).

50. Ibid.

29. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 254.

52. Alana Semuels, “Supreme Court vs Neighborhood Segregation,” The Atlantic, 2015. Retrieved from: http:// www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/supremecourt-inclusive-communities/396401/.

51. S.103, 115th Congress, 1st session, Local Zoning Protection Act of 2017, (Jan 17, 2017). Retrieved from: https://www. congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/103/text.

30. Ibid, 233.

31. Ibid.

32. Stephen Steinberg, “The Myth of Concentrated Poverty,” in The Integration Debate: Competing Futures for American Cities, ed. C. Hartman and G. Squires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010).

53. Roisman, “Lessons of American Apartheid: The Necessity and Means of Promoting Residential Racial Integration.”

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Colorado, USA by Jonathan Riley

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Symposium How can cities respond to the infrastructure crisis?

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nfrastructure, the skeleton of the complex organism that is the city, has become an increasingly urgent concern for planners in the 21st century. Public health catastrophes such as the Flint water crisis have underscored the need to repair or replace the remnants of an increasingly distant past. In the United States, much of the nation’s roads, bridges, and dams date from either the 1930s New Deal era, when the federal Works Progress Administration put millions of unemployed citizens to work on public works projects, or the decades following World War II, which saw the construction of the Interstate Highway System. Accordingly, the third annual Agora symposium asks the question, “How can cities respond to the infrastructure crisis?” The authors in this collection address this question from several diverse angles, both domestic and international, including coastal solutions to climate change, the socioeconomic impacts of green space, and technology to facilitate higher urban densities. In the process, these pieces present a variety of perspectives on ways to address a problem that will only become more pressing in the coming decades, and will hopefully inspire the next generation of planners to devise increasingly innovative approaches.

Rich Bunnell Managing Editor of Special Projects

Hong Kong by Jeffrey Wong

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An Architectural Approach to Coastal Infrastructure Frank Gibase IV Master of Architecture 2017 Frank Gibase is a student in his final thesis year in the Master of Architecture Program at the University of Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Science in architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. His current interests lie in positioning the architect’s agency within the related disciplines of construction, engineering, and planning.

Coastal suburbia has a complicated relationship with the ground. While public life and public infrastructure exist on the ground plane, the coastal home must be elevated from the ground on stilts to be a legal, livable space. These stilts, or columns, are dual-functioning. They are structure, but they are also infrastructure. They serve as structure for the home above, but also as a device to protect the home from climate change and rising sea levels. Their place resides within the architect’s realm of specialty—the single-family home’s structure—but are also a stepping stone for the architect to have a larger presence within infrastructural decision making, specifically decisions surrounding infrastructure tied to climate change and sea level rise.

Since the beginnings of postmodernism, the architect has stood on the fringes of the infrastructural design world. City infrastructure issues are first a policy issue and second, a problem of efficiency—a problem given to engineers to solve. While this is not inherently a bad thing, the opportunities for the architect to create infrastructure that is better integrated into the ways we live are few and far between. In order to bring the architect back into discussions surrounding city infrastructure, the architect must first repurpose and exhaust the uses of the humble column. In approaching the coastal home’s structural columns as pieces of an expanded infrastructural system, climate change becomes the impetus for the reassertion of the architect’s agency, and an architectural approach to designing infrastructure begins to surface.

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he American coastal home lives its life on stilts. Some of these homes try their best to mask this, while others boast their elevated status.

While homes living on the ground plane benefit from existing infrastructure (streets, pedestrian pathways, green spaces, etc.), the raised nature of these homes removes any interaction with ground-level infrastructure or the homes around them. This condition is a direct result of building codes that dictate the base flood elevation line, the height at which these odd suburban living spaces must rest above the ground. As one views a plan cut through the elevating structural members of these homes, a free plan emerges.

The elevated structures are among the only architectural connection to the terrain below, yet these terrains oddly operate in the same ways that neighborhoods otherwise would.1

Considering this, these elevated columns could serve as evidence of the architect’s future role in designing infrastructure. Architects have long been excluded from the infrastructural issues that today’s cities face. Since early modernism, infrastructure has been the realm of engineers and policymakers.2 Still, the dual nature of the stilts that keep a home elevated offer an opportunity for architects to reintroduce their

Fra nk Gib a s e IV

Figure 1 Floor plan of Tybee Island Home.

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Figure 2 Three homes, each with a different structural language.

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Fra nk Gib a s e IV

own expertise to infrastructural design and decision making. These stilts are structure, but they are also infrastructure. They are structure in that they work locally to anchor the home above into the ground below, and infrastructure in that their expanded network works to provide homes with a basic operational necessity: the need to stay safe from water. Their place resides within the architect’s realm of specialty—the single-family home structure—but they are also a stepping stone for the architect to have a larger presence within infrastructural decision making, especially decisions tied to climate change and sea level rise.

The architectural column is among the most rudimentary facets of architectural thinking.

Easily understood by all, its basic, unassuming nature also may contribute to its versatility. A single column as an object in a field may suggest a monument or a point of demarcation. A grid of columns may suggest a framework for structure or a piece of a larger whole. But what happens when a column breaks its regulating grid lines and moves past simply serving as structure for the multitude of loads that lie within? They may group together to read as a mass of columns, or continue linearly and read as a line. Within a coastal housing context, the column reads both as structure and as a fleeing device from rising flood waters. If these columns began to reorganize outside of their usual gridlines, along the coast a mass of columns may perform as a sluice, or a line of columns may begin to perform as a seawall. If one reimagines how the column may be represented as a field condition, its performative capabilities may also expand beyond its traditional understanding, and a new, elevated urbanism with increased infrastructural capacity may emerge.

Given the possibility of the architectural column breaking its typological understanding and

Figure 3 Models exploring an expanded column framework.

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Figure 4 Scripted mutations of the column grid, with density informing column height. becoming a field of infrastructure, the housing and program that they support may also become a field condition. This field condition, involving an expanded column grid and its anomalies, may be reimagined to form new infrastructures. Dense groupings of the column may support larger public functions or larger housing projects, while expansive, less dense groups of columns may support streets or pedestrian infrastructure. In the context of climate change architecture, these expanded column grids may influence pieces of location-specific infrastructure (sluices, canals, dunes, etc.) as well as more general neighborhood infrastructure (streets, greenspaces).

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Agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency could build awareness of the advantages of a combined column and infrastructural framework. They could help to educate builders, planners, developers, and architects in coastal communities on the benefits of combining coastal infrastructure with the stilts that support various buildings. For new developments, planners could enter the equation by implementing zoning that emphasizes interplay between neighboring properties. With this new, elevated landscape, the “properties” that they support could be valued by leveraging relationships to organize a stream of experiences

Fra nk Gib a s e IV

Figure 5 An expanded column system influencing both structure and infrastructure within a barrier island beach context. rather than traditional “intangibles” such as mineral resources, wind, or aquifers.3

Considering this, the architecture of climate change will be the catalyst for the architect’s intervention within infrastructure. Since the rise of postmodernism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, architects have sat along the margins of infrastructural design. Still, as Stan Allen notes, “While architects are relatively powerless to generate new investment in infrastructure, they can redirect their own imaginative and technical

efforts toward the question of infrastructure.”4 The architect existing within their own domain is no longer a possibility. The conception of the pre-modernist architect who embraced landscapes, infrastructure, and architecture must gain prominence again as climate change continues to affect the country in greater and more visible ways.

If one approaches the coastal home’s structural columns as pieces of an expanded infrastructural system, climate change becomes the impetus for the reassertion of the architect’s agency, and an architectural approach to designing infrastructure begins to surface.

Endnotes 1. Michael Jefferson, Personal Discussion, December 9, 2016.

2. Scott Lloyd and Katrina Stoll, “Performance as Form,” in Infrastructure as Architecture: Designing Composite Networks, (Berlin: Jovis, 2010), 4-7.

3. Keller Easterling. “Interplay,” Harvard Design Magazine 39 (2014): Accessed February 1, 2017, http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/ issues/39/interplay.

4. “Infrastructural Urbanism” in Center 14: On Landscape Urbanism, ed.

Dean Almy (Austin, University of Texas at Austin, 2007) pp. 174-181.

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Striving for Just Green Enough Calli VanderWilde Master of Sustainable Systems 2018 Calli VanderWilde is a Pacific Northwest native originally from Spokane, Washington. However, having spent the past four years as a student athlete (Division I cross-country and track and field) at the University of Portland, she also considers Portland, Oregon home. In May 2016 Calli graduated with a Bachelor of Science in environmental science and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish. She is now pursuing her Master of Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan.

The benefits of urban green space have been welldocumented, resulting in a push for incorporating green infrastructure within the built environment. Efforts to design more biodiverse, nature-rich cities have been shown not only to provide resounding ecological benefits, but also to generally improve the quality of human life and well-being. Yet a dichotomy exists between the theory and practice of the integration of green space in urban areas.

The benefits coupled with urban green infrastructure have hidden costs that contribute to the creation of spatially distributed inequities, which in turn lead to “ecogentrification.” For development to be truly sustainable, it must also be equitable. Therefore, urban green space must be designed in the context of the co-evolving complexities of socio-natural processes. Officials involved in green space implementation must acknowledge and account for the environmental justice issues produced by urban socioeconomic structures through “just green enough” strategies that integrate community-based participatory planning and anti-gentrification policies—thus ensuring the equitable realization of green space benefits.

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he United Nations’ Agenda for Sustainable Development outlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. Among these is the objective to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”1 In light of this, a

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growing number of cities are altering their development strategies to incorporate more public urban green space—including parks, parkways, gardens, and street trees—within the built environment. Studies consistently show that urban green space enriches biodiversity; provides ecosystem services; enhances physical, mental, and social well-being; grants opportunities for education and civic engagement; and generally improves local quality of life.

However, urban green space and its accompanying benefits are often inequitably distributed within cities. Access is often limited by “income, ethno-racial characteristics, age, gender, (dis)ability, and other axes of difference.”2 Furthermore, “eco-gentrification” is often intensified by neighborhood turnover and rising rents. Therefore, to truly contribute to sustainable development, urban green space development strategies must recognize the co-evolving complexities of socio-natural processes. This means recognizing that the environment is not separate from the socio-economic structures of the city, and that there are important human interdependencies and justice issues related to green space. Keeping these principles in mind,

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cities can realize urban green space benefits while minimizing eco-gentrification through “just green enough” strategies. These strategies seek to add public green space and co-opt their social, physical, and economic benefits to the greatest extent possible without creating gentrification or concentrating resources in a manner that limits more equitable distribution throughout a city.

“Just green enough” strategies uniquely recognize the political economies associated with a changing environment. They recognize that economic and political structures typically drive the creation of urban green space projects, and that these structures, their associated processes, and the outcomes they create, have hidden costs that contribute to disparities in the spatial distribution of “winners” and “losers”. Though not always the case, districts with greater access to green space, including yards, street trees, and public parks, are often more desirable and more expensive. This consequently benefits residents who can afford higher costs of living (“the winners”), while burdening low- and middle-income citizens (“the losers”), who often are priced-out to less desirable neighborhoods.

Numerous studies have shown that lower-income neighborhoods and ethnic or racially diverse communities are more likely to have decreased access to urban green space.3, 4, 5, 6 The winners are able to experience the “goods” associated with green spaces (such as biodiversity, ecosystem services including improved air and water quality, recreational opportunities, etc.) while the losers feel the burden of the “bads” (especially poor air and water quality, and lower levels of mental and physical well-being).

By understanding the chain of explanation for gentrification processes and differential power relations that contribute to these disparities, policymakers can pair anti-gentrification strategies with urban green space development

projects. Curran and Hamilton’s “just green enough” approach is one such method.7 In a 2015 issue of the international policy, administration, and institutions journal Governance, Daigneau describes how “just green enough” areas are successful due to their concomitant popularity with and benefice for neighborhood residents, and lack of appeal “for tourists or other neighborhood newcomers.”8 Haffner similarly elaborates on how projects following the “just green enough” strategy strive “to increase the environmental quality and public health of a neighbourhood, but without changing its socio-economic character.”9 Haffner then provides concrete steps that can be taken to minimize gentrification: “explicitly rejecting elements ... such as fancy waterfronts ... including neighbourhood residents in the planning process; and ... implementing changes gradually.”10 Her suggestion for community involvement is particularly salient as a method for addressing both urban green space inequities and ecogentrification.

Though urban green spaces ought to welcome all, it is important for planners to explicitly cater to the needs and desires of neighborhood groups that could otherwise be threatened by inequitable access and eco-gentrification processes. Green space designs must link utility and usability with the culture and values of the neighborhood community. As Cilliers and Timmermans state in their article on participatory planning’s role in the place-making process, “the aim of place-making is to determine the need of actual users of a public space, then link that to the functionality and opportunities of that space, setting the scene for the development.”11

The High Line in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood is a notable example of an urban green space that has received criticism for its failure to set the scene for development around

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Stri vi n g f or J ust G re e n E no ug h

the needs of the original neighborhood residents.

Designed to be a space for “strolling and taking in views of the city from a unique elevated perspective”—pastimes that generally pertain to relatively affluent white residents—it attracts a significantly different demographic than that of Chelsea.12, 13 While two large public housing projects bookend the High Line, and nearly one-third of neighborhood residents are of color, park visitors are “overwhelmingly white,” and the majority of visitors are tourists, not locals.14 A reported 7.8 million people visited the High Line in 2015, making it the most popular attraction in New York City; however, only 6 percent of these visitors hailed from the High Line area.15 The High Line’s appeal to outsiders and tourists has ushered in neighborhood newcomers while pushing out longtime residents. Rothenburg reports that almost immediately after the park’s opening, the area became “canopied and abutted by chic hotels, restaurants, and auction houses.”16 In 2005, the City adopted a policy for the West Chelsea Special District that rezoned the area for luxury development.17, 18 A study by the New York City Economic Development Corporation states that while the residential properties surrounding the High Line “were valued 8 percent below the overall median for Manhattan” before the redevelopment (between 2003 and 2011), property values near the park have increased 103 percent.19

The inequities and eco-gentrification associated with the High Line could have been minimized had planners consulted with the community to collaboratively conceptualize and design a more modest and diverse space—a park for residents and not for tourists. Such a park would be attractive for a wider variety of uses and consequently “a wider variety of users [i.e. longtime residents].”20 Payne et. al found race to play an especially significant role in park use, with black residents more likely to favor spaces that

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allow for active recreation.21 These findings tie into a larger body of research showing that black residents prefer more “natural environments that are open, well-groomed, and have more structured (i.e. built) amenities.”22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

It is also important to note that design decisions not only influence which groups realize the utility of a space, but also which groups feel either welcome or excluded from that space.28 Participation during the planning process alleviates the issue by imparting a sense of ownership upon citizens. By collaboratively planning with the community, integrating its needs and desires to design a “just green enough” urban space, inequities and eco-gentrification challenges may have been minimized with the High Line and in future projects.

Recognition of the differential power structures that arise from co-evolving socio-economic and natural processes is also important when working to minimize eco-gentrification and inequities related to urban green space. Wolch et al. propose that these issues can be addressed through the provision of affordable housing and housing trust funds as well as rent stabilization programs.29 Wachsmuth et al. recommend that “policymakers should treat social equity and ecological effectiveness as mutually reinforcing dynamics in urban sustainability. They should bring the widest range of social movements to the table and see those groups’ demands—such as revitalizing rent regulation and public housing— as central.”30 Urban green space projects ought to focus on the development of people, not just the place. Leveraging “just green enough” strategies, planners and policymakers can balance this socio-natural dualism to minimize inequities and eco-gentrification.

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In order to safeguard against “urban environments [that] are controlled, manipulated, and [used to serve] the interest of the elite at the expense of marginalized populations,” planners and policymakers ought to adopt “just green enough” strategies that couple communitybased methodologies with anti-gentrification policies.31 Such strategies dictate that planners and policymakers consider cultural relevance during the design of a space and refrain from

implementing “fancy” features that tend to draw in outsiders and tourists, thereby ensuring that green space benefits can be realized by local residents. As cities continue to progress towards sustainability, the next steps in urban green space development involve taking a hatchet to the traditionally myopic institutional approaches.

Instead they need to be sowing the seeds for more prudent “just green enough” improvements that incorporate broader social equity agendas.

Endnotes 1. United Nations. “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2015).

2. Jennifer R. Wolch, Jason Byrne, and Joshua P. Newell.

“Urban Green Space, Public Health, and Environmental Justice: The Challenge of Making Cities ‘Just Green Enough’.” Landscape and Urban Planning 125 (2014): 234-244.

3. Dong Wang, Gregory Brown, Guoping Zhong, Yan Liu, and Iderlina Mateo-Babiano. “Factors Influencing Perceived Access to Urban Parks: A Comparative Study of Brisbane (Australia) and Zhongshan (China).” Habitat International 50 (2015): 335346.

4. Wolch, “Urban Green Space.”

5. Chona Sister, Jennifer Wolch, and John Wilson.

“Got green? Addressing Environmental Justice in Park Provision.” GeoJournal 75 no. 3 (2010): 229-248.

14. Laura Bliss. “The High Line’s Next Balancing Act” CityLab. February 13, 2017. Accessed February 23, 2017. http:// www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2017/02/the-high-lines-nextbalancing-act-fair-and-affordable-development/515391/?utm_ source=nl__link3_020717.

15. Anton Egorov. “Visualizing Visitor Data.” High Line Magazine, Fall 2016. Accessed February 23, 2017. https:// indd.adobe.com/view/4c7159a4-7728-4f50-8154d6ff6559afda?ref=idm.

16. Julia Rothenberg and Steve Lang. Repurposing the High Line: Aesthetic Experience and Contradiction in West Chelsea, City, Culture and Society (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. ccs.2015.10.001.

17. Jeremiah Moss. “Disney World on the Hudson.” The New York Times, August 21, 2012. Accessed February 23, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/opinion/in-theshadows-of-the-high-line.html.

6. Ko-Wan Tsou, Yu-Ting Hung, and Yao-Lin Chang. “An Accessibility-Based Integrated Measure of Relative Spatial Equity in Urban Public Facilities.” Cities 22 no. 6 (2005): 424435.

7. Winifred Curran, and Trina Hamilton. “Just Green Enough: Contesting Environmental Gentrification in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.” Local Environment 17 no. 9 (2012): 1027-1042.

8. Elizabeth Daigneau. “Just Green Enough.” Governing, February 2015, 54+.

9. Jeanne Haffner. “The Dangers of Eco-Gentrification: What’s the Best Way to Make a City Greener.” The Guardian 6 (2015).

10. Ibid.

11. Elizelle J. Cilliers and Wim Timmermans. “The Importance of Creative Participatory Planning in the Public Place-Making Process.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 41 no. 3 (2014): 413-429.

12. Alexander J. Reichl. “The High Line and the Ideal of Democratic Public Space.” Urban Geography 37 no. 6 (2016): 904-925.

13. Reichl, “The High Line.”

18. Brock Emmetsberger. “Ten Years After Rezoning, West Chelsea Continues to Bloom.” Real Estate Weekly. March 17, 2016. Accessed February 23, 2017. http://rew-online. com/2016/03/17/ten-years-after-rezoning-west-chelseacontinues-to-bloom/.

19. Francesco Brindisi. “#19 The Economic Impact of Parks.”

NYCEDC. August 2011. Accessed February 23, 2017. https:// www.nycedc.com/podcast/19-economic-impact-parks.

20. Reichl, “The High Line.”

21. Laura L Payne, Andrew J. Mowen, and Elizabeth OrsegaSmith. “An Examination of Park Preferences and Behaviors Among Urban Residents: The Role of Residential Location, Race, and Age.” Leisure Sciences 24 no. 2 (2002): 181-198.

22. Payne et. al, “An Examination.”

23. Cassandra Y. Johnson, J. Michael Bowker, Donald BK English, and Dreamal Worthen. “Wildland Recreation in the Rural South: An Examination of Marginality and Ethnicity Theory.” Journal of Leisure Research 30, no. 1 (1998): 101.

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Stri vi n g f or J ust G re e n E no ug h

24. Rachel Kaplan and Janet Frey Talbot. “Ethnicity and Preference for Natural Settings: A Review and Recent Findings.” Landscape and Urban Planning 15, no. 1-2 (1988): 107-117.

25. Steven F. Philipp. “Racial Differences in the Perceived Attractiveness of Tourism Destinations, Interests, and Cultural Resources.” Journal of Leisure Research 25, no. 3 (1993): 290.

26. Spurgeon M. Stamps and Miriam B. Stamps. “Race, Class and Leisure Activities of Urban Residents.” Journal of Leisure Research 17 no. 1 (1985): 40-56.

27. Randy J. Virden, and Gordon J. Walker. “Ethnic/Racial and Gender Variations Among Meanings Given To, and Preferences for the Natural Environment.” Leisure Sciences 21, no.

3 (1999): 219-239.

28. Diana Ruth Sherman. “Participatory Parks Planning: Exploring Democratic Design as a Tool to Mediate Cultural Conflict over Neighborhood Green Space.” PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005.

29. Wolch, “Urban green space.”

30. David Wachsmuth, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Hillary Angelo. “Expand the Frontiers of Urban Sustainability.” Nature 536 no. 7617 (2016): 391-393.

31. Erik Swyngedouw. Social Power and the Urbanization of Water: Flows of Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

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The Catalytic Escalators of Hong Kong Liz Szatko Master of Architecture 2017 Liz Szatko is a student in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Michigan. She completed her undergraduate studies in architecture, landscape architecture, and art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has a continuing interest in interdisciplinary studies and investigating solutions through multiple lenses, utilizing tactics and principles from allied fields.

The Central Mid-Level Escalators in Hong Kong’s Central and Western Neighborhoods are the result of a highly dense urban fabric, a population that needs to move throughout the city, and topography that makes this movement difficult. The escalators facilitate the continuous and fluid movement of people through a city that has become a rich and vibrant urban metropolis. The resulting escalator corridor has provided unique connections and enlivened the urban environment at multiple levels, creating a street that flows in and out of Hong Kong’s buildings.

The diverse building makeups, parks that provide small moments of relief, and the ocean and forest as visual breaks further allow for an increased density while also providing a diverse and exciting urban context. This case study and accompanying illustrations show a few of the diverse moments along the path, and some of the lessons that can be learned from this successful infrastructural intervention.

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ong Kong is a Special Administrative Region on the coast of southeast Asia, covering a land area of 427 square miles stretching from mainland China to several small islands to the southeast.1 Among its land holdings is Hong Kong Island, a mountainous area covered with lava rock, steep mountainsides, and thick vegetation. Claimed as a British colony in 1841, the area between the island and mainland was soon established as an active trading port, as well as a safe haven from the rebellions and natural disasters in southern China.2 As a result,

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a large population developed on the island.

However, due to the island’s terrain, soil, and landforms, only a small percentage of its land area was suitable for building. This resulted in Hong Kong becoming one of the most densely populated metropolises in the world. A challenge of designing Hong Kong’s infrastructure was responding to the region’s geographical limitations and the demands of its population growth. This resulted in a variety of unique solutions, one of which was the Central MidLevel Escalators.

Constructed in 1993 by Hong Kong, the path of 20 escalators navigates Hong Kong’s steep terrain in the island’s Central and Western neighborhoods, providing free access for the neighborhoods’ residents between commercial, business, and residential districts.3 It is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world, spanning nearly a mile in length. It connects to the elevated walkways that run throughout many other Hong Kong neighborhoods. These connections facilitate pedestrian movement in three dimensions through a dense urban environment. During the hours from midnight to 10:00 a.m., the escalators run downhill, allowing the residents to move down the mountain towards the commercial and business districts

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CHINA

M I R S B AY

NEW TERRITORIES

KO W L O O N

L A N TA U I S L A N D

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F ig ure 1 M a p o f H o n g Ko n g. along the island’s waterfront. In the afternoon and evening hours the escalators run uphill, providing continuous movement up the base of the mountain back to the residential Mid-Level neighborhood.

Each day the elevators serve roughly 85,000 people4 at a rate of about 120 people per escalator per minute.5 Alongside the escalators there are paths for pedestrians traveling in the

opposite direction of movement, as well as a ground-level walking corridor lined by shops and restaurants. The escalators’ landings meet this ground path at every intersection, allowing commuters to easily enter or exit. The system creates constant pedestrian traffic, which has led to the development of a rich commercial strip along the escalators resulting in concentrated bustling districts. The restaurants and storefronts are active throughout the length of the escalators in commercial, business, and residential

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Th e Cata l y ti c E s c al at o r s o f H o ng Ko ng

MOSQUE STREET

H O L L Y W O O D AV E N U E

LY N D H U R S T + G AG E

F ig ure 2 T he e scal at o rs’ pat h. buildings, as shown in the illustrations of a few intersections along the path. Closer to the base of the mountain, the Lyndhurst and Gage intersection is home to office and commercial buildings, and it is more active during daytime hours. Near the Hollywood Street intersection, the SOHO (South Hollywood) district is filled with restaurants, small shops, and larger retail.

Toward the top of the escalators’ path is Mosque Street, a primarily residential area within the Mid-Level neighborhood. The escalators allow

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for more rapid pedestrian movement than could be achieved by simply walking, reducing pedestrian congestion that is characteristic of large metropolises, and allowing for more fluid movement throughout the districts.6 In this way, the escalators, winding through a large number of Hong Kong neighborhoods, facilitate density.

The city manages to create urban conditions that successfully foster areas of high density while

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utilizing strategies that work as antitheses of both traditional and neo-urbanistic tactics. In many instances there is disregard for the necessity to provide large amounts of daylighting deep into dwelling units,7 and buildings do not adhere to stepped back building facade requirements.8 Hong Kong’s development called for rapid growth in a small area for a large population.

This led to the division of the city into small lot sizes which, when higher density was desired, resulted in tall, slender buildings. However, not all buildings reach the heights of “skyscraper, and the resulting fabric is a vibrant and everchanging streetscape for the city. The dense network of buildings in these neighborhoods is not overwhelming in a perceived experiential

F ig ure 3 Vie w o f L y n dhu rst Te r race an d G a g e Street.

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Th e Cata l y ti c E s c al at o r s o f H o ng Ko ng

sense, even though some blocks can reach floor area ratio (FAR) values much higher than those of other large metropolises. This diversity of building type, along with relief from the built condition in the form of parks and vistas to the mountain forest above and water below, creates a unique urban environment.

The escalators and the region’s dense population are mutually dependent. Without a large

F ig ure 3 Vie w o f H o l l y w o o d R o ad.

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population, the escalators may not have been necessary infrastructure for the city, and without the escalators, the pedestrians would not have means to easily navigate the terrain, resulting in small, separated communities that would not promote the city’s growth. The escalators also work as a clearly visible means of transportation and provide a visual mark of how to navigate the city. While the escalators have a prominent role in maintaining the infrastructure of Hong Kong’s Central and Western neighborhoods, one can

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F ig ure 4 Vie w o f M o squ e S t re e t . also attribute their success to their ability to help residents and visitors navigate the city.

Hong Kong made a conscious effort to create infrastructure that supports and encourages pedestrian movement. The large populations that navigated the slopes by both vehicle and foot traffic were beginning to conflict in the

late 1980s as traffic increased in the Mid-Level neighborhood. With the implementation of the escalators, pedestrians were able to move more quickly in a separate environment than that of the vehicle. This encouraged walkability through the districts by minimizing congestion and expediting commutes for both vehicles and pedestrians.

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Th e Cata l y ti c E s c al at o r s o f H o ng Ko ng

While the escalators’ path runs from the more residential Mid-Level neighborhood to the commercial and business districts of the waterfront, it is important to note that the success of the escalators is not merely that they connect point A to point B. The escalators have encouraged the growth of multiple intermediary districts and neighborhoods, and have fostered development throughout their path. They have become a destination point for residents and tourists alike. The infrastructure has gone beyond a utilitarian purpose or solution and has become a major catalyst for the success of the district.

The escalators are successful for the specific design needs and conditions of Hong Kong, but there are a few factors that should be considered before implementing similar solutions in other metropolises. First, focusing on pedestrianoriented transportation infrastructure is an important component of the future of cities.

A focus on short rapid foot traffic is a positive asset in a city or district as densely populated as Hong Kong in order to mitigate congestion that

results from vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic interacting.

Furthermore, it is important to note that the escalators also solve the problem of negotiating the terrain of a steep mountainside that would otherwise have to be traversed through narrow, winding streets. San Francisco, California is an example of a city that might consider escalators because geography determines how people navigate the city. However, in this instance the escalators would still need to be confined to a small area where the population is dense enough to support the use and keep the escalators active through non-peak commute hours. The most important factor to consider, however, is that one cannot attribute the escalators’ success to the infrastructure alone, but also to the districts surrounding them and the districts they connect while encouraging walkability. These districts encourage the escalators’ success, and in turn, the escalators encourage the growth and continued use of the districts.

Endnotes 1. Encyclopædia Britannica (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016), s.v “Hong Kong | history - geography - administrative region, China” by Chi-Keung Leung, accessed March 27, 2016, https://www.britannica.com/place/Hong-Kong.

5. William H. K. Lam and Chung-yu Cheung, “Pedestrian Speed/Flow Relationships for Walking Facilities in Hong Kong,” Journal of Transportation Engineering 126 no. 4 (July 2000), doi:10.1061/(asce)0733-947x(2000)126:4(343).

2. John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007).

6. Ibid.

3. Sharon Cullinane “The Relationship Between Car Ownership and Public Transport Provision: A Case Study of Hong Kong.” Transport Policy 9 no. 1 (January 2002): 29-39. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0967070X01000282.

8. New York Daylighting Zoning Setbacks are an example.

4. “LCQ10: Hillside Escalator Links and Elevator Systems,” December 16, 2015, accessed January 15, 2017, http://www. info.gov.hk/gia/general/201512/16/P201512160340.htm.

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7. Work of Rudy Uytenhaak.

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Medina, Saudi Arabia by Ali AlYousefi

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Manhattan, New York by Kaya Ramirez

New Orleans, Louisiana by Meng Li

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Housing for Returning Offenders in the United States Rachel Baccile Master of Public Policy 2017 Rachel Baccile is a second-year Master of Public Policy student at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Prior to attending the Ford School, she worked on state legislative and electoral campaigns for labor issues and candidates. Her interests include urban policy, policing, and the intersection of the criminal justice system and the mental health system.

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Rachel Baccile

In the United States, individuals returning home from prison face serious obstacles securing affordable, stable housing. Without appropriate housing, applying for jobs, obtaining needed social services, and successfully reintegrating to their communities becomes nearly impossible. Furthermore, a lack of stable housing is a predictor for recidivism and homelessness, which places pressure on municipal budgets. Because no one agency or level of government sees housing for returning offenders as its responsibility, there has been little action on or attention to this problem. In this article, I first review the literature describing the barriers returning offenders face in securing housing, including legal prohibitions, limited family support, and fragmented social service delivery.

Then, I examine policy models to address these problems in Washington State, New York City, and Ohio. Based on the results of these programs, I conclude with policy recommendations, including removing barriers to public housing based on past offending, search assistance programs for returning offenders, improving coordination across the criminal justice system and post-release service providers, and revitalizing neighborhoods that support high levels of returning offenders.

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ver 650,000 people are released from prison in the United States every year, often to underserved neighborhoods with few resources to support reentry.1 For these newly released offenders, securing housing is one of the most important requirements for successful reentry, but it is also one of the most difficult to meet. If adequate, affordable housing cannot be found, people returning to their communities may end up homeless, recidivating (committing a new crime), and/or utilizing cost-intensive crisis services (shelters). These outcomes are detrimental to the individual, communities they are returning to, and government budgets; therefore, policies are needed to support reentry housing. In this article, I will begin with a literature review that establishes the difficulties returning offenders face in finding housing. I will then examine promising models to ensure housing for returning offenders from Washington State, New York City, and Ohio. Based on the outcomes of these model programs, I will make policy recommendations for local, state, and the federal government.

Obstacles to Securing Housing There is extensive literature on the challenges facing formerly incarcerated individuals when returning to their communities, and housing is chief among them. Housing also plays a role in

either mitigating or exacerbating difficulties in other areas—treating mental illness and substance abuse, securing employment and reliable transportation, reintegrating in communities, and accessing social services are all more difficult in the absence of stable housing.

Family members are a primary source of housing support for individuals upon release, but this is not a long-term solution and may not be available to many individuals.2 Family members may be unable or unwilling to house offenders upon their release, or offenders may not have family in the community they return to. Probation restrictions also often prohibit returning offenders from living with a family member if that family member has their own criminal history.3

If family is unavailable, returning offenders may then turn to public housing as a safety net.

However, returning offenders may be barred, temporarily or permanently, from utilizing public housing. Despite former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan encouraging public housing authorities (PHAs) to remove bans based on criminal history, many local PHAs still use these blanket bans.4 Even if policies do change, those with a criminal background may not be aware and thus may not reapply.

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Without family or friend support, or public housing, returning offenders have few other options. Upon release, returning offenders have little to no income to find private housing.

Those with criminal convictions face the same challenges in securing affordable housing faced by many people across the country, but with additional barriers due to their criminal backgrounds. Many cities have increasingly tight rental markets, with even fewer units available for low-income housing, and when landlords can be selective, they are less likely to choose someone with a criminal background.5 Although recent (April 2016) guidance from HUD stated that landlords who refuse to rent to someone based on a criminal conviction violate the Fair Housing Act,6 it is unlikely that discrimination in the housing market has disappeared without strong enforcement.

Difficulty in finding housing puts returning offenders at risk of homelessness, and homelessness in turn increases the risk of reincarceration.7 In a 2004 study of over 45,000 released prisoners in New York State (released to New York City), 11.4 percent utilized a homeless shelter post-release, and 32.8 percent experienced another term in prison. This proportion was even higher for black offenders at 12.9 percent and 34.6 percent respectively.8 Both previous shelter stays and periods of incarceration were associated with a higher likelihood of subsequent shelter or prison time. Interestingly, the study found that the risk for homelessness decreases after the initial two-months post release, suggesting that housing services are most needed immediately upon release.

These challenges are exacerbated by a fragmented service delivery system for the formerly incarcerated, in which no one agency views the provision of long-term housing for returning offenders, or additional services

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required by special needs populations (illiteracy, mental illness, substance abuse, etc.) among released prisoners, as part of its mission.9 This results in returning offenders falling through the social service “cracks,” and an increase in use of crisis services such as homeless shelters.

Policy Models for Housing Returning Offenders Recognizing the issues described in the previous section, many state and local governments have taken the lead on designing policies to address the challenges returning offenders face in securing housing, staying in their housing, and remaining out of the criminal justice system. However, there is little quantitative evidence on the outcomes of these programs, as many are still quite new.

In the following sections, I will examine what evaluations do exist for reentry housing vouchers and reentry supportive housing in Washington State, and Frequent Users Systems Engagement in New York City and Ohio, as three promising programs to address returning offenders’ needs.

Vouchers and Reentry Housing in Washington State Washington State has experimented with two different models for providing housing to returning offenders—a reentry housing voucher program through the Department of Corrections, and a supportive housing program called the Reentry Housing Pilot Program.

Department of Corrections Housing Voucher Program (HVP) Before 2009, inmates who were about to be released but could not establish adequate housing arrangements were held in prison past their earned release date (ERD, early release for good

Rachel Baccile

behavior) until such arrangements could be made. To address this problem, the Washington State Legislature and Department of Corrections implemented the Earned Release Date Housing Voucher Program (ERD HVP). Under the program, which began in 2009, prisoners who could not find post-release housing could request housing vouchers, which pay up to $500 per month towards rent in private housing for up to three months.10 The payments are made directly to landlords, ensuring the assistance is spent only on rent. In 2012, only 12 percent of releases (about 1,000 vouchers every year) received a voucher, due to the limited eligibility of the program.11 This program had the benefit of securing housing before the offender was released, therefore ensuring they were housed during the highest-risk period for homelessness.

Because only returning prisoners who have earned early release—and are subject to community supervision post-release—are required to have an approved release plan (with housing being an essential factor), they are the only prisoners eligible for the HVP. It was expected that this program would save the State money in holding prisoners beyond their ERD, and would also result in better outcomes for prisoners returning home.12 Because the program released prisoners to private, individual housing, participants in the HVP were subject to additional community supervision requirements to make up for the lack of resources and support present in transitional housing or living with their family.

The Washington Department of Corrections (WADOC) began accepting applications in July 2009. In 2013, Hamilton, Kigerl, and Hays conducted a study that compared HVP participants to a matched control group.13 Because the HVP provided vouchers to nearly all applicants, a comparison group could not

be constructed with offenders released at the same time as HVP participants. Instead, the researchers used a historical comparison group of inmates who had ERDs in the 18 months before HVP’s implementation and were held past their ERDs due to lack of housing. The comparison group was statistically identical to the HVP participants group on key characteristics (a “quasi-experimental” design). The researchers tested both the impact of HVP on recidivism and community supervision violations, as well as the cost savings realized.

The study found that there were no significant differences between HVP participants and the control group in recidivism rates. Because the study compared HVP participants to the status-quo alternative of staying in prison past their ERD, it would not be possible for HVP participants to have lower recidivism rates than the comparison group of individuals still in prison (therefore unable to recidivate). Therefore, the researchers considered a finding of no significant differences between the groups to be a sign of success. Providing vouchers to reentering individuals, instead of additional time in prison, did not increase risks to public safety. Hamilton et al. also found that HVP was less expensive (in terms of average costs per offender) than holding prisoners past ERD—every dollar invested in the HVP program saved WADOC over $7. Because the purpose of the study was to determine costeffectiveness, not impact on housing outcomes, the broader impact that stable, independent housing has on the returning offender in terms of housing success or reintegration was not measured.

These results, while promising, have several important limitations. First, the HVP is offered only to a small subset of returning offenders.

It is impossible to estimate the program’s effectiveness if expanded to include all those

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leaving prison without appropriate housing, but this kind of analysis is important to conduct before implementation in other locations. Second, because this was not the study’s focus, we do not know the housing outcomes for HVP participants in the long term. When designing a program to meet the needs of returning offenders, it is critical to ensure that the program does not leave them in a similar, or worse, position then they would have been otherwise. WADOC asserts that HVP prevents participants from becoming homeless (because it provides housing immediately upon release), but the evaluation conducted by Hamilton et al. does not study that outcome, and there is no data to suggest the success rate of these housing placements. More research is needed to determine if the three months of vouchers was enough for participants to get back on their feet. Third, it is likely a voucher program such as this would be less effective in a tighter housing market. In a tight housing market, in which landlords can more easily reject applicants, participants will have to deal with the double stigma of a criminal history and a voucher. WADOC attempted to correct for this by paying the voucher amount directly to the landlord, thereby eliminating the possible concern that the participant will use the subsidy irresponsibly. Again, this was not a focus of the Hamilton et al. study, so we do not know any difficulties participants faced in securing affording housing. This is another aspect of the program that will need to be examined more closely before implementation elsewhere.

Reentry Housing Pilot Program (RHPP) Recognizing that “stable, habitable, and supportive housing is a critical factor that increases a previously incarcerated individual’s access to treatment and services as well as the likelihood of success in the community,” the Washington State Legislature created the Reentry Housing Pilot Program (RHPP) in

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2007.14 The program was targeted to high-risk, high-need individuals about to be released from prison without stable housing to return to. It provided up to a year of housing support for returning individuals who were willing to undergo counseling (for drug abuse, mental health, etc.) and who were willing to find stable employment and work toward independence. Failure to meet expectations in these areas resulted in termination from the program. Pilot programs were established in three counties (Clark [Vancouver], King [Seattle], and Spokane), and were operated by the counties’ existing Community Justice Centers (CJCs). The CJCs already served as a “one-stop shop” for both post-release supervision and reentry services, and therefore were able to utilize well-established relationships between corrections, law enforcement, and treatment providers to facilitate service delivery.

In the housing realm, each county identified housing units, offered renters rights courses, and coordinated safety plans to address potential issues with landlords and the community due to ex-offender behavior.15 While RHPP’s implementation differed slightly across counties based on the conditions and resources available in each location, these differences had no significant effects on program delivery. Lutze, Rosky, and Hamilton conducted an evaluation of RHPP to estimate RHPP’s impact on participants compared to a sample of community corrections (traditional parole) participants matched on key factors as a control group.16

The researchers found that participation in RHPP was associated with fewer recidivism events, and participants were less likely to experience one or more periods of homelessness (see Figure 1). The RHPP group also experienced lower rates of revocation and readmission, but those outcomes were not statistically significant.

Furthermore, their results also add to the existing

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evidence that housing instability and periods of homelessness increase the chances of recidivism, and that the RHPP program was shown to reduce the effect a homelessness event had on recidivism risk. Despite these promising results, the program was cut before its cost effectiveness was evaluated due to budget constraints caused by the Great Recession. Additionally, 41 percent of program participants were terminated from the program, due mostly to noncompliance with the RHPP rules. These participants’ outcomes were still incorporated in the RHPP treatment group outcome measures, which demonstrates that the program was successful even with many participants eventually terminated. Nevertheless, this high termination rate is problematic, and if other locations choose to implement a similar program in the future, how to increase compliance with the program will need to be further explored.

outcomes, or if it was the combination of services. This distinction may not matter to cities considering a program like RHPP, as long as it achieves its goals (reduced recidivism, etc.). But because the cost effectiveness of this program has not been studied, it may be that providing the services is more costly than the benefit they provide to society. In that case, it would be worth determining whether the housing without services could produce the same outcome as housing with services (or even service delivery alone), but with fewer costs.

Frequent Users Systems Engagement

Additionally, certain aspects of the RHPP program make it difficult to generalize the results to other locations and populations. First, it was conducted only in the three most populous counties in Washington. The resources available in these cities (financial, political, and structural) are likely higher than in rural areas; therefore, it is questionable if these wraparound services can be provided similarly in less densely populated areas.

Similarly, because an already well-established “one-stop shop” for reentry services conducted the program, it was likely implemented more seamlessly than in a city that would have to establish relationships between several agencies and nonprofit service providers. Because the program lasted only one year, long-term outcomes were not observed.

Most significantly, because the program offered wraparound services that went beyond housing, it is impossible to determine whether it was the housing itself that produced the positive

The Center for Supportive Housing (CSH) developed the Frequent Users Systems Engagement (FUSE) model to break the cycle of homelessness, recidivism, and health challenges of “super utilizers.” Super utilizers are individuals that have repeated periods of homelessness and incarceration, and may also frequently use other crisis service systems such as the emergency room and inpatient mental health or substance abuse treatment facilities.17 The model was first implemented in New York City and has since been expanded to over 20 communities across the country. Under the FUSE model, communities identify and place super utilizers in permanent supportive housing, in which health care, substance abuse treatment, and other social services (mental health, job training, etc.) are provided either on site or through coordinated scattered sites. The goal is that this supportive housing will not only result in better outcomes for those served, but also reduce costs to the crisis service systems. In 2006, CSH began the “Returning Home” initiative to support communities using the FUSE model.

Early evaluation results have shown both positive impacts for participants and cost savings to local governments. As of December 2014, Returning

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Home has created 1,500 new re-entry supportive housing units across the country, and advocated for federal and state policy changes to better serve super utilizers.18 In the following sections, I will review the outcomes of two quantitative evaluations of FUSE programs, one at the local level (New York City) and one at the state level (Ohio).

FUSE II in New York City In New York City, the FUSE program targeted individuals who had at least four jail and four shelter stays over five years, and had either received substance abuse treatment within the past 12 months, had no recent alcohol or drug use problem, or had serious mental health issues that had been treated in the past year.

Participants received permanent supportive housing and paid no more than 30 percent of their income (or housing allowance) on rent.19

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post-treatment results were 91 percent and 28 percent respectively). Furthermore, FUSE II participants spent 146.7 fewer days in homeless shelters, and the number of those with any time in a shelter over the two year study period was reduced by 70 percent on average. The study also found statistically significant and positive effects on recidivism rates, crisis care services use, and health outcomes (see Figure 1). Lastly, the researchers found that FUSE II resulted in significant cost savings to the corrections and homelessness systems, and that those costs offset over 60 percent of the public costs for the housing and services provided.

FUSE in Ohio

The program was evaluated to determine the effect on participants (retention in permanent housing, avoiding homelessness, and various health and mental health outcomes), as well as the program’s cost-effectiveness, using a treatment group of 60 FUSE II participants and 70 comparison individuals. Both groups were tracked for two years following the treatment (placement in housing) using a combination of surveys and data from the New York City Departments of Corrections and Homeless Services.

Unlike New York City’s, Ohio’s FUSE pilot program—called Returning Home Ohio (RHO)—targeted those who were about to be released from prison, had a disability (developmental, addiction, behavioral), and were homeless at the time of their incarceration or at risk of homelessness upon release. Participants in RHO received pre-release reentry planning, and upon release, were provided supportive housing (either single or scattered site) through one of nine providers in Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, or Toledo. Because RHO was run at the state level, the implementation details such as target population, housing model (single versus scattered site), and exclusionary criteria varied by community, depending on the provider facilitating housing and service delivery.21

Aidala et al. found that at both one year and two years post-treatment, FUSE II participants had statistically significant and more positive permanent housing outcomes than the comparison group.20 After two years, 86 percent of FUSE participants were in permanent housing, compared to only 42 percent of the comparison group (the one-year

Fontaine et al. used a quasi-experimental design to determine the impact RHO had on reducing residential instability and recidivism among program participants. A treatment group of 121 participants was compared to a 118-person comparison group during a oneyear follow-up period. Due to the few observed homeless incidents (measured by shelter use),

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the researchers could not conduct a multivariate comparison of this outcome. Researchers did find that RHO participants were significantly less likely to have a recidivistic event or were less likely to be incarcerated. In the cost-benefit analysis, these outcomes resulted in a decrease in the average criminal justice cost per person. However, RHO participants had much higher mental health and other service costs. This resulted in a net increase in spending of $9,500 per person per year on average. Fontaine et al. assert that these increased net costs are consistent with programs aimed at increasing human capital, as they are “by definition, more costly than business as usual, particularly in the short-term.”22 Additionally, this could have been due to the need to establish communication and collaboration between agencies and service providers that had not previously worked together, and could therefore decline in later years. Lastly, the benefits of RHO may have been understated due to inconsistency in program “benefit” (actual housing services) delivery across the different pilot locations—some locations struggled to integrate all services across providers for the participants. Therefore, the researchers posit that over a longer-term followup period, the net value of RHO may increase to a “break even” or cost-savings point.

Takeaways of the FUSE Program Similar to Washington’s RHPP program, it is difficult to determine how the FUSE model could ameliorate the challenges faced by returning offenders generally. The comprehensive services provided in the FUSE model that make it so successful at addressing the needs of super utilizers (both for individuals’ housing and health level and for cost savings) also make it unlikely to be necessary or cost-effective for the average released offender. Not all returning offenders have the serious mental health, substance abuse, or homelessness problems that require such robust services. Moreover, the differential impact

of the housing by itself, without supportive services, cannot be determined. Furthermore, the coordination it requires between government agencies and nonprofit service providers may not be feasible in non-urban locations, and establishing this coordination may be costly in the short-term. However, the FUSE model’s success does demonstrate that housing for formerly incarcerated individuals reduces recidivism, which in turn generates cost savings for, at the very least, the criminal justice system. There will likely be greater cost savings in locations with an established collaboration between service providers and the criminal justice system. These cost savings may prove to be a politically feasible avenue for funding affordable housing and services for returning offenders.

Policy Recommendations The programs in Washington, New York City, and Ohio give us several best practices for designing programs for improving housing services for returning offenders. Though these programs are narrowly targeted to specific populations, we know nearly all of those released from prison face similar difficulties in securing housing. Because the reentry population has such varied needs, from short-term housing immediately upon release, to long-term, supportive housing with wraparound services, a program aimed at housing provision for this population will require multiple components.

Therefore, it will require coordination between all levels of government; criminal justice, housing, and social service agencies; and nonprofits.

To tailor a comprehensive reentry housing program to local housing market conditions, local governments will have to be responsible for the details of program design and implementation.

The federal government delegates the distribution of housing funds, such as Section

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8 and Community Development Block Grants, because of local officials’ expertise on their communities’ needs. One step local governments can take to make securing housing easier for returning offenders is to increase access to existing units. For instance, governments can partner with landlords to implement a search assistance program that connects returning offenders and landlords willing to work with them. Such a program would look similar to the RHPP program in Washington, with service providers serving as a liaison between returning offenders and landlords (providing safety plans, unit identification, etc.). This type of program would be most beneficial for returning offenders without significant underlying issues that require more intensive wraparound services. It would be particularly valuable in the private housing market where landlords are selective and do not have a mission to serve disadvantaged groups (as opposed to a nonprofit providing supportive housing). Working to establish relationships with landlords and returning offenders could improve the community’s perception of returning offenders, thereby improving chances for successful reintegration. It may also be possible for cities to leverage these landlord partnerships to purposefully locate returning offenders in communities with more resources (jobs, transit, social services) and lower crime rates. It would be important that prisoners receive search assistance before release, to ensure that returning offenders are housed during the highest-risk post-release period for homelessness (immediately upon release to two months). For those that cannot secure private housing, but have relatively fewer needs for wraparound services, cities should remove barriers to entering public housing and obtaining housing vouchers.

Local governments could also partner with nonprofits to increase the stock of housing units, specifically for the reentry population with high needs for social services, as in the FUSE model.

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These units could be new or converted from existing units. This approach requires enlisting the nonprofit service providers to provide the wraparound services associated with the units.

Establishing permanent supportive housing is cost intensive, and may therefore only be an option for well-resourced communities that have many services available within the immediate geographic area.

Another, broader approach cities could take is to focus on revitalizing the underserved neighborhoods (with a focus on affordable housing provision) many offenders return home to.23 This has the benefit of impacting a larger group of people also in need of investment, and limiting the negative effect that stigmas around those with criminal histories can have on public support for the program. It would also go the furthest in addressing the root causes of criminal behavior, recidivism, and homelessness. However, these root causes are intractable problems cities have been grappling with for decades and will therefore require more complex policy solutions than some of the targeted interventions discussed here. And while returning offenders would likely be better off returning home to more well-resourced neighborhoods, without targeted, intensive services, many of the returning offenders with the most needs will continue to fall through the service delivery cracks. Furthermore, benefits from such development will take several years to materialize, and could accrue inequitably.

States and the federal government can act on returning offender housing in several ways. First, they can fund local governments’ efforts in increasing the reentry housing stock and neighborhood revitalization, and create incentives for doing so. Without support from the state, it is likely that the costs associated with housing returning offenders will fall more heavily on communities with large populations

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of returning offenders. This could result in services being unavailable in other parts of the state, which could then lead to concentrated populations of returning offenders in particular areas, or individuals falling through the cracks.

Therefore, efforts should be made to engage service providers, landlords, and detention centers across the whole state. Second, states and the federal government could institute broad criminal justice reform that reduces the number of individuals sent to prison each year, which will reduce the reentry population in the future.

Shifting to favoring community-based sanctions over jail or prison allows offenders to retain their current community connections such as their housing or job(s), and perhaps establish new or better ties after linking community corrections to service providers. Lastly, states and HUD should continue encouraging (and consider incentivizing) local public housing authorities to eliminate barriers preventing returning offenders from accessing public housing. Again, this is unlikely to make a large impact for returning offenders in communities with already long waitlists for public housing or vouchers, but could serve as a signal that returning offenders do not deserve to be excluded from public services.

Lastly, all of these levels of government must work collaboratively with each other and nonprofit service providers. Creating a shared data system and establishing formal and informal communication channels between the various actors is a critical component of facilitating collaboration. In the programs examined earlier, those that utilized existing partnerships between various agencies and nonprofits demonstrated better housing outcomes and cost effectiveness than those that were more fragmented. While coordination has obvious benefits, it can also be time consuming and challenging to build the interpersonal relationships and structural systems necessary to make these collaborations efficient and effective. It will therefore require patience

from stakeholders and continuous evaluation of the process to ensure goals are met.

Conclusion Given President Trump’s recent executive orders aimed at cracking down on crime24 and campaign promises to restore “law and order,”25 policymakers should prepare for an increase in incarceration and, consequently, an increase in offenders eventually returning home. Therefore, it is even more imperative to successfully reintegrate returning offenders to their communities, starting with stable housing. While the administration’s actions may exacerbate the needs for reentry services, it is unlikely to prioritize their funding.

Consequently, cities and states should take what action they can without financial or political support from the federal government. For example, steps such as partnering with landlords in a search assistance program and removing barriers to public housing can be done with limited resources.

Academic institutions should also take opportunities to conduct further research on additional reentry housing innovations to determine program impacts and costeffectiveness. The existing research is promising, but far from comprehensive. This could further discourage some policymakers from taking action when the political environment is less friendly.

Therefore, it is critical for researchers, planners, and policy experts to continue evaluating innovations to support returning offenders, and to disseminate best practices to local communities.

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Endnotes 1. “Prisoners and Prisoner Re-Entry,” United States Department of Justice, accessed April 12, 2016. https://www.justice.gov/ archive/fbci/progmenu_reentry.html.

2. Rebecca L. Naser and Nancy G. La Vigne, “Family Support in the Prisoner Reentry Process.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 43, no.1 (2006): 93-106, http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/ J076v43n01_05.

3. Caterina Gouvis Roman and Jeremy Travis, “Where Will I Sleep Tomorrow? Housing, Homelessness, and the Returning Prisoner.” Housing Policy Debate 17, no. 2 (2010): 389-418, http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2006.9521574.

4. Marah Curtis, Sarah Garlington, and Lisa Schottenfeld, “Alcohol, Drug, and Criminal History Restrictions in Public Housing.” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research.

15, no. 3 (2013): 37-52, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/ periodicals/cityscpe/vol15num3/ch2.pdf; Shaun Donovan, Secretary, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, to Public Housing Authority Executive Directors (June 17, 2011), http://usich.gov/resources/uploads/ asset_library/Rentry_letter_from_Donovan_to_PHAs_6-17-11. pdf (file removed from United States Interagency Council on Homelessness website).

5. Roman and Travis, “Where Will I Sleep Tomorrow?”; Claire W. Herbert, Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and David J. Harding, “Homelessness and Housing Insecurity Among Former Prisoners.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 1, no. 2 (2015), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/603807/ pdf.

6. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Public and Indian Housing, Office of General Counsel Guidance on Application of Fair Housing Act Standards to the Use of Criminal Records by Providers of Housing and Real Estate-Related Transactions, April 4, 2016, https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/ huddoc?id=HUD_OGCGuidAppFHAStandCR.pdf.

7. Steven Metraux, Caterina G. Roman, and Richard S. Cho, “Incarceration and Homelessness.” Paper Presented at the National Symposium on Homelessness Research, Washington, DC, March 2007, https://works.bepress.com/metraux/1/.

8. Steven Metraux and Dennis Culhane. “Homeless Shelter Use and Reincarceration Following Prison Release.” Criminology and Public Policy, 3, no. 2 (2004) 139–160, http://repository.upenn. edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=spp_papers.

9. Jocelyn Fontaine and Jennifer Biess. Housing as a Platform for Formerly Incarcerated Persons. (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2012), http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/ alfresco/publication-pdfs/412552-Housing-as-a-Platform-forFormerly-Incarcerated-Persons.pdf.

10. “Earned Release Date Housing Voucher Program,” Washington State Department of Corrections, Accessed April 12, 2016, http://www.doc.wa.gov/community/offenderhousing.asp.

11. Ibid.

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12. Zachary Hamilton, Alex Kigerl, and Zachary Hays. “Removing Release Impediments and Reducing Correctional Costs: Evaluation of Washington State’s Housing Voucher Program.” Justice Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2013): 255-287, http://www.doc.wa.gov/community/docs/ justicequarterlyhousingvoucherprogramevaluation.pdf.

13. Ibid.

14. Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 6157, Revised Code of Washington 2007 c 483 § 1 (passed May 16, 2007).

15. Faith Lutze, Jeffrey W. Rosky, and Zachary K. Hamilton.

“A Multisite Outcome Evaluation of Washington State’s Reentry Housing Program for High Risk Offenders.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Behavior 41, no. 4 (2014): 471-491, doi: 10.1177/0093854813510164.

16. Ibid.

17. “Introduction to CSH’s Fuse Initiative,” Center for Supportive Housing, Accessed April 12, 2016, http://www.csh.org/cshsolutions/community-work/introduction-to-systems-change/ fuse/fuse-overview/.

18. Karyn Feiden, Returning Home: Ending the Cycle of Homelessness and Criminal Justice Involvement through Supportive Housing.

(Princeton, NJ: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2015), http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/program_ results_reports/2015/rwjf73200.

19. Angela Aidala, William McAllister, Maiko Yomogida.

Frequent Users Service Enhancement ‘FUSE’ Initiative, New York City Fuse II Evaluation Report. (New York: Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, 2014), http://www.csh. org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/FUSE-Eval-ReportFinal_Linked.pdf.

20. Ibid.

21. Jocelyn Fontaine, Douglas Gilchrist-Scott, John Roman, Samuel Taxy, and Caterina Roman. Supportive Housing for Returning Prisoners: Outcomes and Impacts of the Returning Home–Ohio Pilot Project. (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2012), http://www.csh.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Report_ Supportive-Housing-for-Returning-Prisoners_Aug12.pdf.

22. Ibid.

23. Catherine Cortes and Shawn Rogers, 2012. Reentry Housing Options: The Policymakers’ Guide. (New York, NY: Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2012), https://csgjusticecenter. org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Reentry_Housing_ Options-1.pdf.

24. David Smith, Ben Jacobs, and Lois Beckett, “Trump Vows Law and Order Crackdown to Combat ‘Menace’ of Crime,” The Guardian, February 9, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ us-news/2017/feb/09/donald-trump-police-crime-executiveorders-taskforce-cartels.

25. Christina Wilkie, “Donald Trump: ‘I Am The Law And Order Candidate,’” Huffington Post, July 11, 2016, http://www. huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-law-and-ordercandidate_us_5783e562e4b0344d51505dde.

Hong Kong by Jeffrey Wong

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Post-Trauma Aesthetics Adam Abou-Aleiwi Master of Urban Design 2017 Adam Abou-Aleiwi grew up in Beirut, Lebanon and is fascinated by the city and post-war reconstruction. He received a Bachelor of Arts in architecture from The Lebanese University, and worked as an architect for a number of years in Beirut before deciding to pursue a Master in Urban Design at the University of Michigan.

Erika Linenfelser Master of Urban Design & Master of Urban Planning 2017 Erika Linenfelser grew up all over the United States, but considers Detroit her most recent and beloved city. She received a Bachelor of Arts in design and urban studies from Hampshire College prior to pursuing dual Master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Urban Design at the University of Michigan. Erika’s interests include cultural preservation, post-trauma reconstruction, post-industrial cities, and reconciliation.

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Adam Abou-Aleiwi & Erika Linenfelser

Cities must address the complicated aftermath of reconstruction as the front lines of wars are waged within urban areas. Nearly 20 years after the Lebanese Civil War ended in 1991, reconstruction has taken many forms, but significant efforts have attempted to ignore and move beyond the War. Thus, “accidental” monuments have sprung up in the absence of formally preserved relics of the War. Coupled with the efforts of artists, independent cultural institutes, and activists, vital histories of the War have been preserved, bringing citizens closer to acknowledging the War. To illustrate an alternative future, we suggest the transformation of what was the front line during the War, at a time appropriate for such a large-scale intervention to address the trauma of the War. In Post-Trauma Aesthetics, we argue that Beirut, Lebanon is an excellent site to test the effectiveness of applying Lebbeus Woods’ three theories of reconstruction to evaluate the effect of post-war reconstruction on the collective memory of war as represented in the built environment.

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eirut, Lebanon’s cityscape was torn apart by the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), in addition to numerous wars with Israel.

Damage caused by military operations, neglect, occupation, and terrorism have prompted different approaches to reconstruction. With the front line of war moving into urban areas, cities must continue to address the complicated aftermath of reconstruction.

Governments, private markets, and artists take vastly different approaches toward postwar reconstruction. It is well-documented that the aftermath of many of the world’s greatest tragedies are welcomed with pleas for the total erasure of the damaged landscape.

Furthermore, the opportunity for reconstruction “often trigger[s] notable forms of collective solidarity,” “an invitation to transformation,” and even “the possibility of building something better.”2, 3 Architecture physically represents social relationships, and carries the possibility of concretely impacting social change. Yet, the idea of preserving relics of the past as an essential part of societal transformation is continually met with overwhelming resistance.

Few activists have fought for preserving partially destroyed buildings to serve as a continued reminder of the past. The Beit Beirut Memory Museum is an example of a sincere effort to

preserve the visual results of the War. Longtime activist and museum founder Mona El Hallak fought for nearly 20 years to save the badly damaged apartment building and transform the site into a museum. Hallak states, “now the building is still there, and it will tell its story, both before the War and during it...Its preservation is important to prevent the city from being swept by amnesia about the War—and to prevent it from happening again. If I remember, then other people will remember, too.”4 Thus, efforts for preservation are grounded in the belief that reconstruction must acknowledge the trauma to prevent it from repeating.

While the causes of war and the aftermath of post-war cities is well-documented, little has been written on the decision-making process for reconstruction of post-war cities. Lebbeus Woods, a prominent architect and academic, has become one of the most influential scholars on this topic. Woods proposed fantastical designs of the reconstruction of Sarajevo, Bosnia to instigate conversation on memory and the need to preserve the wounds of war. Years after he was criticized for “aestheticizing violence,” he returned to the topic to describe what he refers to as the three principles of post-war reconstruction.5 Woods states there are two likely outcomes of post-war reconstruction: raze the land and build anew, or restore the damaged land back to its original state. Both principles follow the logic of forgetting

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evaluating the effect of post-war reconstruction on the collective memory of war as represented in the built environment.7

Most Probable Outcomes To question the effectiveness of applying Woods’ principles, we present several case studies of postwar reconstruction projects and interventions in Beirut. According to Woods, the desire for normality drives the use of his first two principles. In most cases, reconstruction takes the form of either restoring or building anew.

The first two principles are represented by the National Museum, which was restored to its original state following the War; Ajami Square, a redevelopment initiative in the center of the city; the ruins uncovered at the Historic Tel site; and the Waad Project, an unprecedented collaboration between a private organization, architecture firms, and residents.

Figure 1 Inside the Beit Beirut Museum. the tragedy while promoting a “getting back to normal” mentality. The final, less likely outcome Woods describes takes an active stance toward acknowledging the trauma by stating “the postwar city must create the new from the damaged old.”6

Beit Beirut is an exemplary illustration of Woods’ third principle. By using Beirut as a case study, we illustrate the spectrum of reconstruction as a means of exploring how cities scarred by violence are redeveloped in the aftermath of traumatic events. In doing so, we discuss the merits and challenges of preserving relics of war, the role of designers in the aftermath of a traumatic event, and speculate on an alternative future of the “Green Line,” the front line that separated east and west Beirut during the War. We argue Beirut presents an excellent site to test the effectiveness of applying Woods’ three principles as a means of

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‘Getting Back to Normal’: The National Museum The National Museum was along the front line between east and west Beirut during the War and suffered serious damage. After many years of restoration, the building was fully reopened in 1999, leaving only traces of the War from the sparse bullet holes remaining in the facades.

‘Getting Back to a New Normal’: Ajami Square in Beirut Souks Next on the spectrum is Ajami Square. While the damaged structure was left intact after the War, the entire surrounding area was razed and rebuilt.

The area does not resemble pre-war Beirut, and thus this project illustrates Woods’ second principle: Demolish the damaged and destroyed buildings and build something entirely new.

Adam Abou-Aleiwi & Erika Linenfelser

Figure 2 Example of Jad el-Khoury’s War Peace on the facade of a damaged building.

In another example in Belgrade, government officials preserved a bombed-out structure for the intentionality of retaining a physical reminder of the bombing by NATO forces. The act of preserving artifacts of the War in the built environment took an inherently political stance towards acknowledging the destruction. Thus, reconstructing Ajami Square was inherently political as the space iconically represented the city, and needed to illustrate the possibility for the

economic vitality of the city’s future. In this way, the city attempted to hide memories of the War.

‘Uncovering a New Normal’: Historic Tel Modern-day Beirut sits atop previous iterations of Beirut previously razed due to natural disasters and war. The reconstruction and redevelopment efforts of Downtown Beirut resulted in the

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Figure 3 View of “The Holiday Inn” in Beirut. discovery of several historical layers, including the site of the “Rivolli” building at the southern edge of Martyrs’ Square—a historical square in the center of Beirut that sits on the Green Line.

Revealing these centuries-old ruins returned them to the urban fabric of modern Beirut and incorporated them into the daily routines of its citizens.

‘Getting Back to a Slightly Better Normal’: Waad Project During the 2006 war with Israel, much of the urban fabric of Greater Beirut was destroyed by aerial bombardment. This 33-day conflict caused a severe demand for housing and an urgency by developers who promised to “build it ever prettier and better than before.”8 The leading organization behind the redevelopment was Hezbollah, the militant and political group recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States. Despite their reputation,

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Hezbollah led the Waad development through an unprecedented collaboration between private organizations, academics, urban planners, architects, residents, and foreign sponsor states.

Unfortunately, the project failed to address the high-density problems facing the area before the war. Many of the housing units were rebuilt hastily with minimal improvements to building structures and the urban context while all traces of the war were eradicated.

The trauma of war makes preserving residential units a controversial subject. Sensitivity toward “heritage of atrocity” is illustrated in the case of World War II (WWII) as Holocaust survivor Primo Levi once notes that “understanding the significance of trauma through material remnants came neither immediately nor easily to survivors.”9 However, despite initial resistance to preserving any traces of traumatic events, regret from residents may surface years later.

The resulting neighborhood follows Wood’s first

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Figure 4 The Green Line during the war (left) and the proposed Green Line (right).

The Holiday Inn, Beirut: ‘The Accidental Monument’

principle: Restore what has been lost to its prewar condition.

Improbable Outcomes Another set of examples found in post-war Beirut demonstrates Woods’ third principle.

These accidental outcomes were not the result of carefully crafted designs, advocacy, or implementation, but are rather dispersed accidents resulting from either neglect, minimal interventions toward adaptive reuse, or in some cases vandalism. In addition to destruction or deterioration caused by wartime activities—including non-combat damage such as abandonment by residents who fled the country, lack of maintenance, squatting by internally displaced people, and building informal additions—time and different levels of urgency often played the role of designer with outcomes as unpredictable as the conflicts that caused them. One such example is the Holiday Inn, termed an “Accidental Monument” by Gregory Buchakjian, a Lebanese artist and historian, and the controversial work of the street artist known as Potato Nose.

As the staging ground for one the fiercest battles in the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War, the Holiday Inn–designed by André Wogenscky in 1971—stands today with its bombed-out facade and its imposing brutalist architecture as a relic of that war. Located in the Hotels District—a thriving seaside district of pre-war Beirut—it stands adjacent to the historical center, which would later become the central business district.

The hotel quickly gained strategic importance in the battle for Beirut due to its height and its rigid reinforced concrete shell, turning the Hotels District into the “Hotel Front” on the eve of the War. What was once a symbol of the city’s progress became a military fortress as warring militias fought over the hotel in what became known as the “Battle of the Hotels” (1975-1976).

Following the battle, the hotel’s lavish furniture and fixtures were stripped and sold in the streets and markets of West Beirut.

The main building has changed little since the War, with only a smaller building being used as a bank. In the 1990s individuals utilized the parking deck for a potpourri of activities such as underground parties and book fairs. By the end of the War, the Holiday Inn was left out of the reconstruction project for Downtown Beirut— commissioned to SOLIDERE: a company

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People who pass by are accustomed to architectures mutilated by the War and do not even see the buildings anymore.

Some have accused me of vandalism, but they do not know that the only reason these vestiges are still standing is because of disputes between owners who linger. If they were resolved, they would either be renovated or destroyed. I tapped to allow the Beirutis to open their eyelids on these traces of war. Revive the question of what we want to do with these buildings. The soldiers did not take permission to bomb, I did not take it to bomb either.11

Figure 5 Beirut’s Green Line, 1991. created for the reconstruction, development, and management of Downtown Beirut—as it was marked just outside the limits of the project.

Today stakeholders remain divided between demolishing and building anew or renovating the structure, and the Holiday Inn remains a relic of the violent past.

According to Gregory Buchakjian, a Lebanese artist and historian, the Holiday Inn stands as an “Accidental Monument” from the Lebanese Civil War.10 Buildings such as the Holiday Inn tend to attract artists seeking an alternative, more rugged canvas. One such artist is Jad el-Khoury, better known as Potato Nose, most famous for his recent work that responds directly to the war-torn edifices throughout Beirut. In his project, WarPeace, Potato Nose painted murals on several damaged facades, including the Holiday Inn, to provoke conversation. He states:

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Potato Nose further states, “For the old generation who witnessed this barbarism, it’s time to move on. At the same time, for those who don’t know what it is to be living in a wartime, the traces should be preserved to give them an image of the craziness of the situation.”12 Potato Nose recognizes Lebbeus Woods’ key argument as a critical message for the world to understand, as “Forgetting is an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression.”13 Entirely erasing all traces of violence and corruption from past regimes allows new regimes to creep into power. Erasing important historical relics (and the emotions tied to them) is a strategy implemented by regimes for obtaining power. As George Orwell states in 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”14

Regret in Berlin Beirut’s reconstruction continues a long discussion of prior studies on the complications of postwar reconstruction. WWII provides insights toward understanding the connection between trauma, healing, and post-war reconstruction.

By the end of WWII, people cheered on the

Adam Abou-Aleiwi & Erika Linenfelser

1.Holiday Inn Hotel 2.Ajami Square

3.Historic Tel 4.Martyrs’ Square

5.Damascus Road 6. Church

7. Beit Beirut - Memory Musuem

8.National Musuem

9.Horch Beirut

BEIRUT Post-War Development Green Line

City Boundary

10.Random Bombed-out building 11.Small House with Flowers 12.Waad Project

Figure 6 Sites located along the Green Line, Beirut. destruction of the Berlin Wall, such that by 1990 only a small portion remained for the intention of establishing a memorial. While the initial reaction to traumatic events was the gut rejection of any physical reminders of the haunting past, Tumarkin states in her book Traumascapes, “After the rage many Berliners felt towards the Wall quietened down, questions began to emerge. Was the near total-destruction of the Wall, though understandable, still a serious mistake?”15

who fought to preserve its ruin rather than reconstruct the damaged building. In this case, there was no immediate desire to tear down the structure; thus the decision to preserve came over 10 years following the end of WWII. What did the Gedächtniskirche symbolize to the people that the Berlin Wall perhaps did not?

Interestingly, previous consensus had been met

by Berliners nearly 50 years prior, reflecting an attitude of accepting preservation as a part of healing. During World War I, Allied forces nearly destroyed Berlin’s Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche. Following the War, it was the city’s residents, not government officials,

While the Berlin Wall separated the east and west sides of Berlin, wartime Beirut reverted to an unintentionally ecological barrier: the Green Line. Also known as Damascus Road, this was one of the central arteries in the city that marked the demarcation line between Beirut’s warring communities. Due to the War

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An Alternate Green Line?

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Figure 7 Aerial view of the Green Line. and its lethal dangers, the once-busy corridor was abandoned by its users, resulting in overgrown stretches. Damascus Road extends south from the city’s port in its downtown to the overlaying hills in its suburbs. The Green Line became infamous for its sniper nests occupying the overlooking abandoned and damaged buildings. Roadblocks, encampments, and barricades limited access to a few checkpoints at main axes, allowing civilians to pass through during the occasional cease fires.

A couple of blocks from the demarcation line, urban life continued as close to “normal” as possible in a war-torn city.

Following the end of the War, government officials promptly cleared the road of greenery and reopened it to through traffic. Consequently, the high-speed traffic produces a new formidable divide between east and west Beirut. Rather than submitting to the urgent reaction of reverting the road back to its previous use, what would it be to speculate an alternative reality? Portions of the

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iconic Green Line could have been preserved in the spirit of Woods’ third principle. The current road, while it increases mobility, does little to address the historic division between the city and the limited exchanges between populations of Beirut’s east and west sides. As illustrated in the map on the following page, transforming the Green Line into a walking path could connect the central waterfront to the Horch—the central park of Beirut, the hippodrome, the Beit Beirut Museum of Memory, and the National Museum—the main checkpoint permitting access between east and west Beirut. All of these landmarks are located along Damascus Road.

Woods’ caution toward the “get back to normal” mentality stems from fear of recreating oppressive systems and ways of living. As one divide replaces another, has much changed since the War? Beirut’s amnesty laws protecting former conflict participants, such as warlords and snipers, from prosecution has in part contributed to a “culture

Adam Abou-Aleiwi & Erika Linenfelser

of silence” around the War.16 Perhaps it is even more relevant to propose solutions to radically alter the cityscape and its social relationships.

This proposal for the “Green Line” could radically impact social life in Beirut, as it honors the history of the space by using it to bring formally opposed populations together.

Conclusion In conclusion, Beirut contributes greatly to the field study of post-war reconstruction and cultural and historic preservation. In many ways, the prevalent rhetoric of burying the memory of the War in the hopes of rewinding to the pre-war glory that shaped post-war Beirut was tainted

with the disinterest in keeping scars of wars present in the cityscape. These instances invoke the alteration of an already altered memory. By not conforming to any typological or functional criteria, they showcase how the forces that shaped these monuments before, during, and after the trauma event were stronger than the intervention of the designer. It is imperative for the designer to understand these forces and the history of the space, as well as the reaction of the public, before staging a public intervention allowing for future alterations that reflect the future state of society. As wars continue to rupture cityscapes in places such as Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine, decisions pertaining to reconstruction must include conversations on how cultural preservation relates to collective identity.

Endnotes 11. Fay Al-Homoud. “The Man behind Potato Nose – Jad El Khoury.” Kingdome Magazine, June 20, 2016. http://kingdome. co/2016/06/20/the-man-behind-potato-nose-jad-el-khoury/.

1. Lebbeus Woods. “War and Architecture: Three Principles,” December 15, 2011. https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress. com/2011/12/15/war-and-architecture-three-principles/.

12. Ibid.

2. Mark Healey. The Ruins of the New Argentina: Peronism and the Remaking of San Juan After the 1944 Earthquake. Durham: Duke University Press. 2011 3. Gaston Gordillo. Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction. Accessed March 7, 2017. https://www.academia.edu/7622891/Rubble_ The_Afterlife_of_Destruction.

4. Robin Wright. “Beirut’s Museums of War and Memories.”

The New Yorker, October 12, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/ news/news-desk/beiruts-museums-to-war-and-memories.

5. Woods, “War and Architecture: Three Principles.”

6. Ibid.

13. Friedrich Nietzsche, and Walter Kaufmann. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books (1967), 223.

14. George Orwell. 1984. p. 314 San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/.

15. Tumarkin, Traumascapes.

16. Mimi Kirk. “The First Public Memorial to Lebanon’s Civil War.” CityLab. Accessed January 7, 2017. http://www. citylab.com/politics/2016/07/finally-a-museum-documentinglebanons-civil-war/491246/.

7. Ibid.

8. “As Lebanese Government Hesitates, Hezbollah Steps in With Offers of Cash for Rebuilding.” Accessed March 7, 2017. http://soc.culture.lebanon.narkive.com/zuVbjrPX/aslebanese-government-hesitates-hezbollah-steps-in-with-offers-ofcash-for-rebuilding.

9. Maria M. Tumarkin. Traumascapes: The Power and Fate of Places Transformed by Tragedy. vii, 279 p. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Publishing, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/.

10. India Stoughton. “The Scars of War on Lebanon’s Holiday Inn,” December 30, 2015. http://www.aljazeera. com/news/2015/12/scars-war-lebanon-holidayinn-151219082356997.html.

Figures Figure 1. Inside the Beit Beirut Museum. Beirut Report.

Viewable online at http://www.beirutreport.com/2016/05/ inside-beit-beirut.html. Domus. Viewable online at http:// www.domusweb.it/en/interviews/2016/04/12/beit_beirut. html Figure 2. Excerpt from Jad el-Khoury’s War Peace, viewable online at http://albustanfestival.com/blog/programme/ the-festival-exhibition/

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Figure 3. The Guardian. Viewable online at https://www. theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/01/beirut-holiday-inncivil-war-history-cities-50-buildings Figure 4. Beirut, The Green Line, 1991. © Chris SteelePerkins/Magnum Photos Figure 5. Beirut, up from the rubble, photograph by Steve McCurry. National Geographic, 1983.

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Sydney, Australia by Lauren Lahr

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The Application of the Internet of Things to Enhance Urban Sustainability Shufan Zhang Master of Architecture 2018 Shufan Zhang is a first-year Master of Architecture student at the University of Michigan. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in architecture and a minor in sustainable environmental design. Shufan is interested in the application of information-communication technology in the built environment.

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This article examines opportunities and challenges faced by planners when applying Internet of Things (IoT) as a tool to facilitate urban sustainable development in the context of the Smart Cities movement. As an important element in the Smart Cities concept, IoT is expected to enhance urban sustainability through the sensor network that detects and transmits environmental data. However, there are still various challenges that add a layer of difficulty to the process of using IoT to achieve this goal.

The article first identifies the concept and relationship of three key background issues: Smart Cities, Internet of Things, and sustainability. Then the article investigates the challenges of using IoT technology to assist urban sustainability in various aspects.

Next, the article proposes possible responses to those challenges through three fields of application: waste management, smart streetlights, and smart homes. It is of great importance for urban planners to understand the complexity of these challenges due to the interdisciplinary nature of such applications. Therefore, it is essential for the field of urban planning to collaborate with other sectors to better utilize IoT technologies towards sustainability.

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his article examines the challenges of applying the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in the context of the Smart Cities for the purpose of enhancing sustainability at the urban scale. Specifically, the article overviews the concept, features, and challenges of IoT as a building block of Smart Cities notion.1 The article serves as a background survey for urban planners who wish to integrate their design practice within the context of the Smart Cities and the rapid development of informationcommunication technology. The challenges posed here are inherently cross-disciplinary and cannot solely be solved by physical design. However, these challenges can still inform designers of potential directions in practice and collaboration.

Definition of Research Area The research is framed with the following key topics:

the application of information-communication technology to “engage citizens, deliver city services, and enhance urban systems” according to the Smart Cities and Sustainability Initiative by the American Planning Association (APA).3

Among the various notions associated with Smart Cities, one interpretation explains Smart Cities as being composed of three domains: technology, people, and institutions.4 The “technology” domain addresses the need to build basic infrastructure, both physical (hardware) and virtual (wireless networks), to implement information-communication technology in urban areas. The “people” domain emphasizes innovation, learning resources, and human capital that serve as catalysts to boost Smart City development. The “institution” domain indicates the importance of government support in the development of Smart Cities.5

Smart Cities

Internet of Things

The term “Smart Cities” developed within the context of rapid urbanization and the consequent challenges with economic development, resource management, energy use, and environmental pollution.2 The term contains various meanings in its political, sociological, ecological, and technological aspects. This article focuses on

Internet of Things is a concept of connecting daily objects with an interactive network through wireless communication mediums such as Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, sensors, and smartphones.6 IoT has the potential to be applied in many fields, such as industry, transportation, and civic infrastructure.7 While

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the different application fields require different IoT frameworks and technology, this article focuses on the “Urban IoT,” which establishes an information infrastructure to manage and optimize public services.8 The application of IoT technology is believed to be an important technological trend in the Smart Cities movement, as mentioned in the APA initiative.9 It is described as a “building block to realize a unified urban-scale information-communication technology (ICT) platform, thus unleashing the potential of the Smart City vision.”10 The sensor network that detects specific environmental data is a typical application of IoT in sustainable development. Its implementation requires three infrastructural components: sensing, cloud computing, and data. Although the three components are listed from the technological perspective, behind them there is a series of social demands, economic drivers, and governmental requirements.

Sustainability Like Smart Cities, sustainability is not a new term for urban planning theory and practice.

Its definition is highly contentious and debated in planning literature. Because this article aims to provide a background of research for urban planners on the application of the Internet of Things in sustainability fields, the definition of sustainability here also must tie to the urban planning field. Among the various aspects of sustainability, one of the aspects states that sustainability is a mode of development that guarantees a coherent, continuing balance between supply and demand. According to the APA, there are three specific outcomes required for sustainable urban planning:11

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A sustainable development should have a plan that ensures equality among all groups.

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The communities built based on sustainable principles should be “resilient, diverse and self-sufficient.”

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A sustainable development should contribute to a “healthy” environment, not only from the natural perspective, but also from economic and social perspectives.

From the three outcomes listed above, it is clear that sustainability for urban planning is a concept beyond just the handling of natural resources; rather, sustainability is regarded as a paradigm expected to apply to various aspects of society.

In fact, the definition of sustainability still is controversial for its vagueness and inconsistency.12 Because this article examines the application of IoT technology at an urban scale, which is primarily concerned with environmental sensor networks at this stage, this article chooses the environmental aspect of sustainability as the definitional proof for investigation and arguments.

Role of IoT in Sustainability IoT is believed to be a significant method among the information-communication technologies involved with the Smart Cities movement, particularly in the domain of sustainable development. Because the application of IoT is deeply embedded in the context of Smart Cities, which serves as a paradigm for the development of IoT technology, planners should be able to draw a link between Smart Cities and the notion of sustainability. Conceptually, the APA Smart Cities and Sustainability Initiative regards Smart Cities as an extension of sustainability in that Smart Cities seeks to maximize benefits for the most people with minimal costs and impacts, which echoes the very goal of sustainability.13 In a model that divides Smart Cities into multiple

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layers, the “green city layer” also indicates the potential that the Smart Cities concept has in improving the environment.14 An example of this can be found in the Smart Cities Initiative of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan, which seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 through Smart City implementations.15 However, there are also voices contending that the bond between the concept of Smart Cities and ecological sustainability is still weak, in that the Smart City idea is used more for marketing than for infrastructural needs.16

Challenges with IoT Technology in the Realization of Sustainability

Smart Cities, the basis for the application of IoT technology in the urban context, has established its conceptual connection with sustainability.

Before exploring the specific ways of evaluating the performance by IoT in urban sustainable development, it is essential to understand the primary position IoT has in the entire process of sustainable development. As introduced before, the application of IoT technology within the field of sustainability is primarily through a sensor network that detects certain data. The data collected by the IoT sensor network would be used to evaluate existing environmental conditions, track performance of certain devices, or optimize future actions in some environmental measurements. All these functions of IoT application are associated with information collection in the preliminary stage of problem solving. This is not to say that IoT technology is at a secondary position in the sustainable development process. Although it appears that IoT technology does not seem to be a “critical” step, the information collected through the sensor network built by IoT technology is of great importance in understanding environmental performance or resource consumption.

Span concerns the density of sensor devices and the geographical range the network covers. The span of a sensor network is dependent on three factors: physical operation, policy motive, and financial feasibility. Physical operation includes the selection of installment locations based on detecting needs, the design and running of the network system, and maintenance and development. In the case of applying sensor networks in urban sustainability infrastructure, the coverage and location of specific devices can often be a citywide matter, which requires collaboration among policy makers, urban planners, and technicians. When a sensor network becomes denser, it can reach a higher level of precision, whereas the larger scale of the network would also lead to a higher cost for building the infrastructure. Thus, the span of sensor networks is an essential factor to consider when designing the IoT system to enhance urban sustainability.

Although the design of the infrastructural system is a highly technical issue in the information technology field, the role of urban planners cannot be neglected. The specific location of installments can impact the physical form of cities and buildings. Moreover, the decision to either add external devices to existing infrastructure or embed devices within new infrastructure would also affect construction and renovation costs.

Listed below are some of the major challenges when using Internet of Things technology to enhance urban sustainability. In response to these challenges are suggestions regarding how planners can take a variety of approaches to resolve these challenges.

Span

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Span within a certain sensor network determines the coverage and strength of data detection.

In the broader planning phase of IoT projects, span can also involve the range of data needed to assess and demonstrate need. The type of IoT system deployed and the kind of data tracked are two issues closely associated with the needs and purposes of building such a system. Compared to the question of “where to install,” the question of “what to install and what to detect” is more crucial to discuss at the initial phase of the project, which in turn implies the important role urban planning professionals can play in this stage.

Fault Tolerance The extent to which the sensor network system is resilient to system failure is another issue to consider. For example, taking sensor networks at the civic level, the sensors are often not able to carry security protection methods, which makes it relatively easy to eavesdrop on important information.17 Therefore, given the relatively low information capacity of individual sensor devices, data security is an important issue.

Another problem related to fault tolerance is the questioning of optimization by Adam Greenfield. According to Greenfield, the goal of the current Smart City movement is a seamless user experience. However, the other side of such “seamless” optimization is the resulting difficulty in finding locations of defects when failure happens.18 One aspect of this issue that may be relevant to urban planners is the idea of flexibility, which not only suggests the ability to adapt based on technology, but more importantly, the role of human factors that technology is not able to address.

Urban planners and designers can respond to the problem of fault tolerance by shifting the trajectory of thinking from the pursuit of

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sustainability towards the notion of “resiliency,” as inspired by resilience in ecological systems.

Previously defined as the aptitude of a system to go back to a constant equilibrium point after fluctuation,19 the concept of resilience has moved to a new state that measures the extent to which the system adjusts itself to a new equilibrium.20 The latter definition of resilience emphasizes the importance of flexibility and adaptability in the dynamic context. When adopting the idea of resilience within the Smart City movement, flexibility and adaptability are of great significance in considering the mechanism of the sensor network system. For instance, the span of sensor devices mentioned previously might change according to changing needs for the detection range and preciseness; consequently, the physical form of the city or building may need to meet the varying configuration of infrastructure.

Also, the devices are expected to bear multiple uses or be embedded within existing infrastructure. This raises new challenges for designers to consider new functions of furniture or building segments.

Lack of Incentive As Greenfield suggests, a significant feature of Smart Cities is that enterprises (rather than governments and institutions) are playing a crucial role in inventing technical systems and paradigms for the notion of Smart Cities.21 Such reliance on the commercial sector reflects the importance of business factors in the application of IoT technology at the urban scale. However, this characteristic of Smart Cities may lead to a lack of incentive for building a sustainable sensor network due to its limited profit potential.

One of the ways to alleviate this problem is to incorporate sustainable features with other functions, as seen in the application of smart homes. The collaboration among technological endeavors and real estate developers may also significantly contribute to the business vision of

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IoT in the sustainability field.

The need for incentives to build the IoT network at the urban scale requires collaboration among various sectors of the city, such as government, planning professionals, technical firms, and real estate developers. Existing examples suggest that there are diverse ways to address the collaboration and application of IoT technologies in urban sustainability. In the case of Padova, Italy, the Padova Smart City project contains contributions from both the public and private sectors: the municipality of Padova provided financial support for the project, the University of Padova conducted a feasibility analysis as well as data processing, and a firm called Patavina Technologies designed the software system as the technical core of the project.22

Ownership of Data Most of the literature on IoT emphasizes the significant meaning of IoT for city administrators in terms of optimized management.23 However, there arises the issue of the ownership of data retrieved from the sensor network. The administrator-centric mode is a common feature within the Smart Cities movement, neglecting the fact that a great amount of data is related to citizens and users.24 The absence of public access to data may lead to a difficulty for citizens when perceiving the benefits of a sensor network, leading to an increased difficulty in obtaining funding and public support.

In fact, the process of collecting data from the public domain in the application of sensor networks can have dualistic interpretations in terms of data ownership. On one hand, public participation in this process is a form of citizen science with a great potential of incorporating public efforts within Smart Cities movements.25

On the other hand, the monitoring relationship between citizens and environmental data remains vague. Referred to as a scientific method enacted and realized by citizens from non-scientific fields, citizen science is not believed to be a mature mechanism. It is difficult to find the balance between public participation as “raw material” and professional interference as “processing efforts.”26 In the case of IoT sensor networks’ purpose to capture environmental data all over the city, the public should have access to the knowledge of what the data collected is used for as an important means of citizen science application. In response to the concern for ownership of data collected from the sensor network, urban planners need to make a stronger effort to build a bridge between professionals and the public in order to incorporate public participation within Smart Cities movements.

This is particularly important for projects using data directly from households, such as smart home monitoring and smart grid data tracking.

Adverse Effect Although the proposed sensor network is designated to improve urban sustainability, it is crucial for system designers, administrators, and users to be aware of the possible negative consequences of the network. The energy cost of constructing such a sensor network is one of the possible adverse outcomes. Another issue is the rebounding effect, in which the raised efficiency of energy use would in turn result in increased amounts of energy use.27 This leads to the unpredictable nature of planning and policy outcomes. However, there are still ways to reduce the potential adverse effects.

For urban planning professionals, the adverse effect may take place through the renovation of current infrastructure towards IoT sensor network and other technologies. Although

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physical design may not be a determining factor of the impacts, it is still of great importance for urban planners and designers to bring efficient approaches to achieve needs. Also, even though some adverse effects can occur only after the system starts operating, there are still several ways to avoid such unwanted consequences through careful planning and evaluation. Similarly, as with the previous challenges, the alleviation of adverse effects requires collaboration among different fields.

Vision of IoT Application and Urban Sustainability Waste Management One exemplary application of IoT technology in urban sustainability is waste management.

Intelligent waste containers are installed to track waste load levels to optimize garbage processing and reduce potential pollution. For instance, a system of sensed garbage bins sends data to the control center to determine the optimal collection time and route for collector trucks.28 In another project in Seoul, South Korea, smart garbage systems have been used to reduce food waste by tracking the weight of food garbage.29

The challenges discussed in the previous section can also occur in this type of application. If the purpose of the smart waste management system is merely to optimize time and routes for collection trucks, the cost of installation may surpass the benefit. Thus, it is important to think about the scope of such a project—not only in terms of density and coverage of data tracking— but also the complexity level of the system. For instance, the smart waste management system may capture various types of data ranging from garbage filling levels to toxic substances. If the feature of waste tracking can be combined with other functions, such as toxic substance

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detection, the system can have a more thorough contribution to urban sustainability.

Smart Streetlights Another practice related to sustainable issues is the use of smart streetlights that adjust streetlight intensity according to ambient brightness. An example of smart streetlights is the Smart City Project in Padova, Italy, where public street lighting is monitored through wireless nodes which check lighting levels to optimize lighting energy cost. In addition, the streetlight poles are also equipped with multiple sensors that detect environmental data such as humidity, carbon dioxide emissions, and noise.30 Such an adaptive system can be considered an important step forward in municipal sustainability because the system can be designed and constructed based on existing infrastructure without excessive modifications of the current urban form.

A challenge related to smart streetlights is fault tolerance. Different from waste manage systems, which only capture data, public street lighting is an essential infrastructure for cities at night, and the temporary failure of the lighting control system may lead to serious safety problems.

Therefore, having an alternative system may be a solution for the fault tolerance challenge faced by the smart streetlight system.

Smart Homes and Intelligent Residential Districts The “smart home” is also a popular trend within the application of Internet of Things technology related to sustainability at the residential scale, as the central component of the Intelligent Residential District.31 This includes optimization of lights, temperature, and humidity so as to reduce energy costs. From the urban

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planning perspective, a mode of data tracking is potentially a connection to a smart grid, in which electricity resources are allocated efficiently at the neighborhood or city level.32 In fact, sustainability is believed to be only one aspect of the smart home, as today the smart home practice seeks to cover a wide range of issues beyond energy use, such as security and medical care.33 Still, the smart home is playing a significant role in the future of IoT. Different from the previous two examples, the smart home concept can be applied both at the residential scale and at the civic scale. The residential scale seeks to integrate IoT technology with household energy operations as a way of helping residents increase their home energy efficiency. At a larger scale, individual smart homes can create a larger intelligent network that tracks local performance in terms of residential energy use. Such an intelligent residential district can be an effective tool for urban planners to analyze energy use patterns at a local scale.

The potential of smart homes to form an intelligent residential network brings both benefits and challenges for urban planners. Data ownership is one of the challenges. Using the energy tracking method to reduce energy costs is a desirable feature inside the household, but there would be a greater potential to optimize the entire system if the households could connect into a larger network and share their statistics to implement the idea of the smart grid. In the meantime, communities and residents may consider such data to be private. Hence, the advantage of the smart home system is limited if the data cannot be connected in a larger network.

Conclusion This article explores the relationship between the Internet of Things and sustainable urban development, with challenges of applying IoT

technology in urban sustainable development.

The development and application of IoT technology are closely associated with the Smart Cities movement, while the ongoing trend of applying information-communication technology in cities and buildings may bring new issues and challenges for urban planners to address.

Before investigating the challenges and proposing solutions, it is important to understand the role of sensor networks as only one component of a larger system with various mechanisms. Because the function of a sensor network is capturing necessary environmental data, the network is largely a tool to gather information for further studying, processing, and responding. In the context of the Smart Cities movement, urban planners need to be aware of the role each information-communication technology is playing in order to better utilize the technologies.

The challenges of IoT are often entangled in a complex chain. Therefore, they may need to be resolved together instead of separately.

For instance, the span of the sensor network is an essential factor that determines the cost of building such infrastructure, which in turn may impact the public and private sectors’ incentive to invest in the project. The issue of security and privacy would also affect the public’s willingness to participate, and thus result in a gap between the public and decision makers. In many cases, the challenges cannot be separated and the relationship between factors must be examined in order to untangle and work past the complex series of obstacles present in the implementation process.

To resolve the entangled challenges faced by the IoT network for building a more sustainable city, the mere power of urban planners is not sufficient. As technologies of Smart Cities develop, it will be impossible to realize the framework’s potential if any sector is isolated and

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working in a silo. In the case of Smart Cities, collaboration is particularly important because of the multiple layers of the movement including business, technology, politics, and economics.

Urban planners sit at the intersection of these fields, but their impact has been limited to this

point. This article suggests that in the application of IoT technology, urban planners would do well to apprehend the importance of understanding and enhancing collaboration among various sectors.

Endnotes 1. Andrea Zanella, Nicola Bui, Angelo Castellani, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi. “Internet of things for smart cities.” IEEE Internet of Things Journal 1, no. 1 (2014): 22.

Innovation Ecosystems.” Journal of the Knowledge Economy 4 (2) (2013): 217-231.

2. Chourabi, Hafedh, Taewoo Nam, Shawn Walker, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, Sehl Mellouli, Karine Nahon, Theresa A. Pardo, and Hans Jochen Scholl. “Understanding Smart Cities: An Integrative Framework.” In System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference, 2289.

16. Anna Kramers, Mattias Höjer, Nina Lövehagen, and Josefin Wangel. “Smart Sustainable cities–Exploring ICT Solutions for Reduced Energy use in Cities.” Environmental Modelling & Software 56 (2014): 52-62.

3. American Planning Association. “Smart Cities and Sustainability Initiative.” (2015): 6.

4. Taewoo Nam, and Theresa A. Pardo. “Conceptualizing Smart City with Dimensions of Technology, People, and Institutions.” In Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Digital Government Research Conference: Digital Government Innovation in Challenging Times, 285.

5. Nam and Pardo, 286.

6. Luigi Atzori, Antonio Iera, and Giacomo Morabito. “The Internet of Things: A Survey.” Computer Networks 54 (15) (2010): 2787-2805.

7. Harald Sundmaeker, Patrick Guillemin, Peter Friess, and Sylvie Woelfflé. 2010. “Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things.” Cluster of European Research Projects on the Internet of Things, European Commision.

8. Zanella, Andrea, Nicola Bui, Angelo Castellani, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi. 2014. “Internet of Things for Smart Cities.” IEEE Internet of Things Journal 1 (1): 22-32.

9. American Planning Association. “Smart Cities and Sustainability Initiative.” (2015): 6.

10. Ibid.

11. American Planning Association. APA Policy Guide for Planning for Sustainability. https://www.planning.org/policy/guides/ adopted/sustainability.htm 12. Marino Gatto. “Sustainability: Is It a Well Defined Concept?.” (1995): 1181-1183.

13. American Planning Association. APA Policy Guide for Planning for Sustainability. https://www.planning.org/policy/guides/ adopted/sustainability.html 14. Sotiris Zygiaris. “Smart City Reference Model: Assisting Planners to Conceptualize the Building of Smart City

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15. Ibid.

17. Luigi Atzori, Antonio Iera, and Giacomo Morabito. “The Internet of Things: A Survey.” Computer Networks 54 (15) (2010): 2787-2805.

18. Adam Greenfield. Against the Smart City: A Pamphlet. Do Projects 2013.

19. Stuart L. Pimm. “The Complexity and Stability of Ecosystems.” Nature 307 (5949) (1984): 321-326.

20. Crawford S. Holling. “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics (1973): 1-23.

21. Adam Greenfield. Against the Smart City: A Pamphlet. Do Projects 2013.

22. Angelo Cenedese, Andrea Zanella, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi. “Padova Smart City: An Urban Internet of Things Experimentation.” IEEE (2014).

23. American Planning Association. APA Policy Guide for Planning for Sustainability. https://www.planning.org/policy/guides/ adopted/sustainability.html 24. Adam Greenfield. Against the Smart City: A Pamphlet. Do Projects 2013.

25. Janis L. Dickinson, Jennifer Shirk, David Bonter, Rick Bonney, Rhiannon L. Crain, Jason Martin, Tina Phillips, and Karen Purcell. “The Current State of Citizen Science as a Tool for Ecological Research and Public Engagement.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10 (6) (2012): 291-297.

26. Karin Bäckstrand. “Civic Science for Sustainability: Reframing the Role of Experts, Policy-Makers and Citizens in Environmental Governance.” Global Environmental Politics 3 (4) (2003): 24-41.

27. Jeroen CJM Van den Bergh. “Energy Conservation More Effective with Rebound Policy.” Environmental and Resource Economics 48 (1) (2011): 43-58.

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28. Andrea Zanella, Nicola Bui, Angelo Castellani, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi. “Internet of Things for Smart Cities.” IEEE Internet of Things Journal 1 (1) (2014): 22-32.

29. I. Hong, S. Park, B. Lee, J. Lee, D. Jeong, and S. Park.

2014. “IoT-Based Smart Garbage System for Efficient Food Waste Management.” The Scientific World Journal 2014: 646953. doi:10.1155/2014/646953 [doi].

30. Angelo Cenedese, Andrea Zanella, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi. “Padova Smart City: An Urban Internet of Things Experimentation.” IEEE (2014).

31. Baoan Li, and Jianjun Yu. “Research and Application on the Smart Home Based on Component Technologies and Internet of Things.” Procedia Engineering 15 (2011): 2087-2092.

32. Andrea Zanella, Nicola Bui, Angelo Castellani, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi. “Internet of Things for Smart Cities.” IEEE Internet of Things Journal 1 (1) (2014): 22-32.

33. Baoan Li, and Jianjun Yu. “Research and Application on the Smart Home Based on Component Technologies and Internet of Things.” Procedia Engineering 15 (2011): 2087-2092.

Acknowledgement Thanks to Professor Linda N. Groat for helping with my research methodology and Professor Malcolm McCullough for providing inspiration.

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The Regulation of Transportation Network Companies Deanna Dupuy Master of Urban Planning 2017 Deanna Dupuy is a second-year student in the Master of Urban Planning program at the University of Michigan, with a concentration in transportation planning. She hopes to be part of the transformation of the transportation profession by increasing community ownership of projects, reducing technical jargon, and selecting performance measures that capture effects on people rather than cars.

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The debate over Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft has become quite polarizing in recent years, leaving many municipalities unsure how to move forward regarding regulation. Municipalities can choose to enforce traditional regulations, applying the same safety standards and supply constraints to TNCs as taxi companies. Or, municipalities can view TNCs as entities different than taxi providers and allow TNCs to regulate themselves through regulatory organizations that operate outside the scope of government intervention. States and cities such as Massachusetts, Colorado, and Houston are pioneers in the regulation of TNCs. However, each city or state has implemented regulations that fall within the spectrum of complete governmental regulation and self-regulation. Ultimately, a moderate approach to regulation of both TNCs and taxi companies is a reasonable response to the TNC debate.

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n recent years, businesses have emerged that allow consumers to share assets in a new way through innovations in technology. Service providers and consumers can now arrange for services on demand through a common software platform (e.g., Uber, Etsy, or Airbnb). The rise of this digitally enabled “sharing economy” has transformed the way that many Americans travel, shop, and vacation.1 Through a mobile application or website, platform operators provide information about the service provider’s location and service history, facilitate online payment, and resolve disputes.2 The resulting “shared economy” offers alternatives—often with lower prices—to long established industries.

More specifically, advances in information and communication technologies, combined with location data from global positioning systems, has led to increased efficiencies in the provision of transportation services.3 Companies like Lyft and Uber seek to provide prearranged transportation services for compensation using online or mobile applications to connect drivers to passengers.

The growth of companies like Uber and Lyft has been explosive.4 As of March 2015, within just four years of beginning operations, the number of Uber vehicles in New York City had overtaken the number of traditional taxis within the city.5 Consumers and other advocates praise Uber and Lyft for their ability to provide new economic efficiency compared to traditional ridesharing options like taxis and car services.

These online platforms eliminate the concept of calling a dispatcher, hailing a taxi on the street, or exchanging cash.6 Many argue that the advent of Uber and similar technologies has propelled the “ridesharing” concept into the 21st century.

However, these platforms tend to be in tension with existing regulatory frameworks that ensure safety, quality, and supply standards.

Unlike a taxi company or limousine service, Uber and Lyft provide transportation service through individually owned vehicles rather than commercially owned vehicles.7 This difference allows Uber and Lyft to operate in a regulatory grey area where many state and local governments do not hold these companies to the same legal and regulatory standards as commercial vehicle services.8

For the purposes of this article, I will refer to software platforms, such as Uber and Lyft, as Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). I use this term because governments are starting to consider implementing broad regulations for TNCs with the expectation that new companies will emerge.9 I will also use the term “platform” to describe the tool created by TNCs to facilitate interaction between drivers and consumers.10

Within the literature, there is debate about the correct way to regulate TNCs. Some argue

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that traditional regulations, requiring extensive background checks, vehicle inspections, and taxi medallions to control supply, only protect taxis from competition and stifle innovation.11, 12, 13 Instead, these scholars assert that governments must rethink and address decades-old rules and entrenched interests to continue to maintain the efficiencies of the new ridesharing movement.14 Scholars suggest that instead of strict government regulation, TNCs should self-regulate in order to mitigate safety and supply concerns while preventing government failures through overregulation.15 Proponents of self-regulation do not intend to equate self-regulation with deregulation or the absence of regulation.

Rather, self-regulation is the reallocation of regulatory responsibility to parties other than the government that can provide oversight and enforce standards.16

question of how to regulate TNCs moving forward is important for municipalities as policy makers consider the future of transportation and strategies for integrating technology into municipal systems. Understanding the normative arguments for and against TNC regulation will allow municipalities to respond to the emergence of new technology and maintain public safety. In this article, I will examine the policy arguments surrounding the regulation of TNCs. I will then discuss how the regulatory debate has played out on the municipal level, highlighting various approaches that cities have taken to TNC regulation. Ultimately, I suggest that municipal and state transportation planners take a moderate approach to regulation by seeking to promote public safety without hindering innovation.23

In contrast, other scholars argue that regulatory standards serve economic and social purposes and should apply to TNCs. These scholars do not view TNCs differently than commercial transportation services, and they argue that self-regulation would not be enough to maintain the safety, quality, and supply standards that the government should protect.17, 18, 19, 20 Transportation services such as taxis, charter buses, and limousine services are all subject to specific regulations such as driver background checks, vehicle inspections, and limitations on the number of licenses issued. These regulations come at a cost to traditional transportation providers, and many scholars suggest that TNCs have been able to cut prices for consumers only because they have circumvented these regulations.21, 22

The debate over TNCs has become polarizing, leaving many municipalities unsure about how to move forward regarding regulation. At the core of the debate is the question: What type of company are software platforms like Uber and Lyft? Are they transportation providers or are they technology companies that facilitate transportation interactions? Those who view TNCs as the latter believe that traditional regulations limit the efficiencies caused by the facilitation of the interactions between a willing provider and a willing consumer. Instead of traditional regulations, these scholars argue for the creation of self-regulatory mechanisms that can correct externalities and protect consumers from potential harm without stifling innovation.24,

Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft are challenging the fundamental structures of the long-established regulatory framework for commercial ridesharing services. The

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25, 26

Self-regulation is not the absence of regulation, but it is the reorganization of the responsibility to maintain safety and quality standards to an industry-specific organization or company rather than to traditional government oversight.27

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This type of regulatory approach requires governments to envision software platforms—like Uber and Lyft—not as regulated entities but as key parts of the regulatory scheme in which the companies work as an industry to maintain standards.28 Because of the platforms’ role as facilitator, the platform can enforce quality and safety standards, balance asymmetrical information, and internalize externalities before and during the transaction, all without involving mandates from the government.

The existence of third-party software platforms and their ability to effectively verify and facilitate the correction of safety and information market failures show that self-regulation is not an impossible or ineffective policy approach.

Scholars argue that TNC business models provide them with a strong enough financial incentive to ensure a high-quality exchange between service provider and consumer.

The most compelling evidence in support of self-regulation is the way that TNCs balance asymmetrical information to assure quality of service, and the incorporation of dynamic pricing to handle oversupply of services. The growth of information technology without the constraints of regulation can provide the possibility of better consumer welfare.29 Increased information expands the knowledge exchanged between producers and consumers, and it creates strong reputational incentives for firms to improve their level of service. Self-regulation policy forms part of a broader innovation-enhancing solution by providing guidelines for TNC regulation outside of the realm of government intervention.30

Modern online feedback mechanisms have made it easier for a balanced and honest exchange of information between parties during TNC transactions. In traditional commercial

transportation services, the exchange of information does not affect the imbalance of information because it is difficult to give feedback to drivers and to disseminate that information to future consumers.31, 32 Software platforms can now assure consumers of quality through easily accessible feedback systems.33, 34 For example, a deficient vehicle is likely to receive a negative rating. The self-regulatory organization (SRO) will receive the rating and either remove the vehicle from the fleet or address it with the service provider. Research with TNC drivers show that in general TNC platforms respond to feedback effectively, and administrators follow-up with every negative comment.35 These self-regulating mechanisms, through consumer feedback, help to mitigate the market failure, reduce asymmetrical information, and ensure quality of service.

TNCs have created a platform where reputation derived from consumer feedback is crucial to the success of the company. The ability to easily exchange this feedback information allows consumers to choose between TNCs and taxi companies based on reputation.

Studies on regulating reputation show that competitive companies are more likely to point out substandard performance without the need for regulation.36 Eric Goldman refers to this as the “secondary invisible hand.” The result is a self-regulating market that provides strong checks on improper behavior and leads to a self-policing community that seeks to weed out bad actors.37

Another benefit of self-regulation is TNCs’ ability to implement dynamic pricing. Through selfregulation, TNCs adjust their prices in real time to balance supply and demand, which proponents of traditional regulation often consider an externality of taxi deregulation.38 The goal of dynamic pricing is to motivate drivers to begin work, relocate to areas with high demand, or to deter low-value trips for consumers.39 For

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example, because of the absence of geographic regulations for drivers, Uber was able to call on over 10,000 drivers in metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts when its transit system experienced delays. These drivers were motivated to work because Uber had implemented surge pricing and was charging three times the normal fare.40 This type of innovation allows TNCs to attract new drivers to areas in need.

Scholars in support of self-regulation suggest that the implementation of traditional regulation of TNCs is a result of entrenched political interests.

TNCs challenge taxi services to modernize, and the desire to regulate that service does not arise from the need to protect public welfare but from a desire to protect the taxi industry.41 Scholars assert that subjecting TNCs to commercial service regulations would ultimately hurt consumers by maintaining the status quo, artificially lowering supply, and raising prices.

Self-regulation of TNCs is not the rejection of regulation, but instead seeks to correct market failures without leading to a government failure through over-regulation. Empirical studies show SROs often are effective if participants view them as a legitimate authority with the ability to enforce rules.42 The incorporation of SROs fosters innovation while allowing TNCs to adjust to market forces with sophisticated software platforms.

Traditional Regulation In contrast, many argue that Uber and Lyft are transportation services aided by technology, and therefore governments should hold them to the same regulatory standards as taxis, limousines, and other commercial ride services.

These regulatory standards include extensive background checks, vehicle inspections,

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licensing requirements, and the allocation of taxi medallions to control supply. Traditional transportation service regulations should apply to TNCs because each regulation seeks to internalize the externalities that TNCs currently produce.43, 44, 45

The most obvious reason for taxi regulation is the mandate for safety standards and public protection. These regulations include provisions for driver, fleet, or vehicle background checks, vehicle insurance requirements, and safety inspections.46 Similarly, taxi regulations promote public safety by mandating that taxi drivers participate in additional driver training.

Moreover, in most cities regulators set taxi fares to provide price predictability, eliminate price gouging, and ensure a reasonable return for owners and drivers.47

Unlike traditional regulations, feedback loops in self-regulation systems do not capture dangers that individuals cannot see and do not account for dishonest feedback. For example, a driver may receive a five-star rating for rides and car quality from passengers. Yet this five-star rating does not encompass a problem such as the vehicle’s brakes being in poor condition.48 Feedback systems do not protect against risk that consumers cannot see, unlike the approval of a regulated in-person car inspection. Furthermore, recent studies have called into question how well the rating system works. Uber indicated that in San Francisco, California only one percent of Uber drivers received one- or two-star ratings.49 This may be perceived as an example of high quality, or as an indicator that customers hesitate to provide negative ratings because they recognize the significant penalties that drivers receive for them. Overall, the legitimacy of the ratings is questionable and should not be the only mechanism to ensure quality control.

Deanna Dupuy

Information technology cannot protect against equity-based externalities. While taxi drivers are notorious for racist practices, such as ignoring minority customers on the streets, TNCs are not much better.50 Uber drivers are required to accept 90 percent of the rides sent their way. Because of this self-regulatory rule, studies have suggested that both Uber and Lyft drivers participate in “redlining” by not providing services to poor and minority neighborhoods.51 In addition, many argue that dynamic pricing disadvantages lower-income people and violates traditional regulations against price gouging. For example, during Hurricane Sandy, Uber implemented surge pricing. As a result, New York State officials criticized Uber and have implemented regulations to prevent surge pricing during states of emergency.52

In general, for every self-regulating mechanism that TNCs implement, there are still significant limitations. Traditional transportation service regulations provide a thorough vetting of practices that assure quality and equitable service.

TNC Regulation in Practice States and municipalities are responding to the arrival of TNCs using a variety of tactics. Some cities have established themselves as “TNCfriendly,” with light regulations. Other cities have taken a firmer approach and have insisted that TNCs play by their existing rules. In practice, regulation usually falls between complete selfregulation or TNC adherence to traditional regulation. Municipal and state planners considering the extent of statutory constraints imposed on TNCs must consider an array of scenarios, goals, and needs when deciding on a course of action.

Colorado’s TNC regulations are considered some of the most flexible and least onerous in the United States. In June 2014, Colorado became the first state to authorize the use of mobile ridesharing apps.53 Governor John Hickenlooper signed the “Transportation Network Company Act,” which required either the driver to carry a personal insurance policy that acknowledges TNC activity, or for the rideshare company to provide primary insurance coverage.54 The law exempts TNC drivers from fingerprinting and criminal background checks, which are required of taxi drivers, in favor of the standard background checks performed by TNC companies.55, 56 The TNC Act in Colorado represents “ride-share friendly regulation.”

Colorado promotes public safety by requiring insurance coverage, supports TNC self-regulation of background checks, and treats TNCs as separate entities from traditional taxi services.

Massachusetts took a different regulatory approach to prioritizing public safety and recognizing transportation innovation by providing flexibility to TNCs while compensating the taxi industry. After months of contentious debate, Massachusetts passed strong TNC regulations in August 2016 that both taxi unions and TNCs support.57 The ride-for-hire bill gives the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities regulatory authority over TNCs by establishing insurance minimums, reporting requirements for TNCs, and imposing the strongest background check system in the nation.58 Taxi and livery industries are compensated by collecting a 20cent per ride fee from TNCs.59 Massachusetts set constraints on TNCs by regulating public safety standards under the control of a government entity, and leveled the playing field between TNCs and traditional transportation services by imposing a fee on TNCs that goes towards aiding innovation in the taxi industry.

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While both Colorado and Massachusetts have passed TNC legislation, Houston is still debating the extent to which it will allow TNCs to selfregulate. Houston’s existing TNC legislation requires potential drivers to complete fingerprint background checks and to pay a licensing fee of $200.60 Uber reported that since the passage of the legislation, 20,000 people (two-thirds of whom were minority and low-income people) completed Uber’s screening process but failed to finish the City’s licensing process.61 The company has threatened to leave the city, arguing that the extensive background checks discourage qualified drivers, which undermines the TNC business model. TNCs and Houston are still working to find legislation that promotes public safety goals without driving out potential jobs.

Colorado, Massachusetts, and Houston each demonstrate a unique way to approach TNC regulation. Governments can be involved in the regulation of TNCs at a minimal level, requiring that TNCs and/or their drivers meet basic insurance requirements, or governments may hold TNCs to the same standards as taxi services. The decisions municipalities and state governments are making do not fall neatly on either end of the self-regulation versus traditional regulation spectrum, but instead question how far they will regulate TNCs and/or deregulate the taxi industry.

states and municipalities consider the following regulatory approaches in the near term:

•

Minimum insurance requirements to address the insurance “gap”: Most states and municipalities that have implemented regulations for TNCs require minimum insurance requirements to protect against the insurance gap—the time that ridesharing drivers are not providing transportation services for hire but have the app open and are available to receive a trip request.62 Regulations that address this gap require either the driver to carry personal insurance that covers the gap, or require TNCs to provide coverage during this period. Either regulation option is sufficient to protect public safety, but places the burden on different parties.

•

Maintain consistent and reasonable requirements for background checks: There is significant variation in depth of background checks required for both TNC drivers and taxi drivers by government agencies. In some states and municipalities, taxi drivers undergo more extensive background checks than their TNC counterparts.63 First, government agencies should seek to equalize the process for background checks for both taxi drivers and TNC drivers. Second, governments should establish consistent and reasonable background check requirements that successfully vet individuals without causing undue burden on potential low-income and minority drivers.

•

Use data to monitor instances of discrimination: Governments should require TNCs to use their digital platform and the wealth of data it captures to prevent

Next Steps for States and Municipalities Decisions concerning the regulation of TNCs should be considered within the context of the specific government agency under which their jurisdictions falls, and the needs of the community. However, there are several moderate regulatory approaches that states and municipalities can consider to protect public safety and promote innovation. I recommend that

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discrimination. TNCs can hide the race, gender, disability, and home address of both drivers and passengers to prevent discriminatory feedback.64 Similarly, TNCs can use the data to track instances of discrimination, and governments can create policies or incentives that deter drivers who avoid or reject trips in low-income or minority neighborhoods.65

These moderate regulations seek to promote safety, correct for discrimination, and level the playing field between TNCs and taxis. However, any type of regulation will likely create winners and losers in the transportation service industry.

Planners should carefully consider what is best for their specific community and balance the variety of tradeoffs associated with each regulation with the desire to protect the public interest.

Conclusion Self-regulation and traditional regulation offer solutions for managing TNCs. Self-regulation operates on the premise that software platforms or third-party organizations sufficiently support innovation while dealing with externalities. In contrast, traditional regulation proponents argue that transportation service regulations serve a purpose, and that the government should hold TNCs to the same standard. Both arguments provide useful policy implications, but the acceptance of just one side of the debate leaves something to be desired. In practice, a moderate regulatory approach that balances the interests of TNCs, the taxi industry, and the community at large is the best way to promote transportation innovation while preserving public safety.

Endnotes 1. Christopher Koopman, Matthew D. Mitchell, and Adam D. Thierer. “The Sharing Economy and Consumer Protection Regulation: The Case for Policy Change.” The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law 8, no. 2 (2015): 530, http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1130&context=jbel.

7. Emily Dobson. “Transportation Network Companies: How Should South Carolina Adjust Its Regulatory Framework?”

South Carolina Law Review 66 (2014), 701.

2. Benjamin G. Edelman and Damien Geradin. “Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts: How Should We Regulate Companies Like Airbnb and Uber?” Stanford Technology Law Review 19 (2015), 293.

10. Molly Cohen and Arun Sundararajan. “Self-Regulation and Innovation in the Peer-to-Peer Sharing Economy.” University of Chicago Law Review Dialogue 82 (2015): 116.

8. Ibid., 701.

9. Ibid., 701.

3. Tom Slee. What’s Yours is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy. (Or Books, 2016).

4. Transportation Research Board. Between Public and Private Mobility: Examining the Rise of Technology-Enabled Transportation Services. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, (2016), 21

11. Cohen, “Self-Regulation and Innovation,” 116.

12. Koopman, et al., “The Sharing Economy and Consumer Protection Regulation.”

13. Schneider, “Uber Takes the Passing Lane” 14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 21.

6. Allison Schneider. “Uber Takes the Passing Lane: Disruptive Competition and Taxi-Livery Service Regulations.” Elements: Boston College Undergraduate Research Journal 11, no. 2 (2015), 13.

16. Ibid., 16.

17. Slee, What’s Yours is Mine.

18. Jordan M. Barry and Paul L. Caron. “Tax Regulation, Transportation Innovation, and the Sharing Economy.” (2014).

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19. Brishen Rogers, “The Social Costs of Uber.” University Chicago Law Review Dialogue (2015): 82.

20. Murtaza Haider. “To Uber or Not to Uber: That is the Question.” (2015).

22. Rogers, “The Social Costs of Uber.”

54. Catherine Lee Rassman. “Regulating Rideshare without Stifling Innovation: Examining the Drivers, the Insurance Gap, and Why Pennsylvania Should Get on Board.” Pittsburgh Journal Technology Law & Policy 15 (2014): 81.

23. Edelman, “Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts.”

55. Ibid.

24. Cohen, “Self-Regulation and Innovation.”

56. Patrick Hoge. “Colorado Becomes First State to Pass Law Embracing Uber, Lyft et al.” San Francisco Business Times (June 5, 2014,), http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/ morning_ call/2014/06/colorado-uber-lyft.html?page=all.

21. Slee, What’s Yours is Mine.

25. Koopman, et al., “The Sharing Economy and Consumer Protection Regulation.”

26. Schneider, “Uber Takes the Passing Lane.”

27. Cohen, “Self-Regulation and Innovation,” 116.

28. Ibid., 116.

29. Koopman, et al., “The Sharing Economy and Consumer Protection Regulation,” 539.

57. Shira Schoenberg. “Gov. Charlie Baker signs law regulating Uber and Lyft in Massachusetts” (August 5, 2016). Accessed 12 Feb. 2017. http://www.masslive.com/politics/index. ssf/2016/08/gov_charlie_baker_signs_law_regulating_uber_ and_lyft_in_massachusetts.html.

58. Ibid.

30. Cohen, “Self-Regulation and Innovation,” 117.

59. Ibid.

31. Edelman, “Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts,” 22.

60. Harriet Taylor. “Uber and Lyft are getting pushback from municipalities all over the US.” (September 2, 2016). Accessed February 10, 2017. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/02/uberand-lyft-are-getting-pushback-from-municipalities-all-over-theus.html

32. Koopman, et al., “The sharing economy and consumer protection regulation,” 539.

33. Edelman, “Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts,” 22.

34. Koopman, et al., “The Sharing Economy and Consumer Protection Regulation,” 540.

35. Edelman, “Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts,” 22.

36. Koopman, et al., “The Sharing Economy and Consumer Protection Regulation,” 543.

37. Ibid., 543.

38. Transportation Research Board, Between Public and Private Mobility, 73.

39. Ibid., 73.

40. Ibid., 74.

41. Schneider, “Uber Takes the Passing Lane,” 16.

42. Cohen, “Self-Regulation and Innovation,” 122.

43. Slee, What’s Yours is Mine, Chapter 4.

44. Barry, “Tax Regulation, Transportation Innovation, and the Sharing Economy.”

45. Haider. “To Uber or Not to Uber” 46. Transportation Research Board, Between Public and Private Mobility, 15.

47. Ibid., 16.

48. Edelman, “Efficiencies and Regulatory Shortcuts,” 22.

49. Ibid., 22.

50. Slee, What’s Yours is Mine, Chapter 4.

51. Ibid.

52. Transportation Research Board, Between Public and Private Mobility, 74.

122

53. Yanelys Crespo. “Uber v. Regulation:’Ride-Sharing’Creates a Legal Gray Area.” University of Miami Business Law Review 25 (2016): 79.

61. Ibid.

62. Rogers, “The Social Costs of Uber.”

63. “Uber and Lyft are Getting Pushback from Municipalities All Over the US.” 64. Rogers, “The Social Costs of Uber.”

65. Ibid.

Manhattan, New York by Kaya Ramirez

Kuwait City, Kuwait by Ali AlYousefi

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University of Michigan A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design Volume 11: 2017

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The publication of Agora 11 was made possible by the Victor Gondos, Jr. Archives Fund.

We would also like to thank the following individuals for their generous support for Agora 11: Laura Brown Dr. Lan Deng Dr. Margaret Dewar Dr. Robert Goodspeed Dr. Joe Grengs Carla Maria Kayanan Dr. Kimberley Kinder Dr. Larissa Larsen Justin Meyer Dr. Richard Norton Sandra Patton Matan Singer Ian Trivers We would like to give special thanks to our faculty advisors, Dr. Scott Campbell and Dr. Julie Steiff.