University of Chicago Urbanism Professor Emily Talen’s book “Neighbourhood.” Ch9 Neighbourhoods and Segregation. “The final and most significant debate about the neighbourhood: its association with social segregation."
Tweets from earlier chapters start here…
https://twitter.com/NanaimoCommons/status/1326647941927301120
Most notorious was the redlining undertaken by the U.S. Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Authority. Incredibly, the agencies used an underwriting manual that called for investigating whether a neighbourhood had a mix of “incompatible” social and racial groups.
Planners and developers aided the process by putting in place the deed restrictions, zoning, subdivision regulations, and other land development controls that created the segregated neighbourhoods of postwar suburbanization.
In Toronto between 1970 and 2005, the proportion of middle-income neighbourhoods fell from 66% to 29%, while the proportion of low-income neighbourhoods from from 19% to 53%. (@Hulchanski The Three Cities Within Toronto)
European cities have much more socialized housing, counteracting the tendency for markets to homogenize housing.
Blog post : Downtown #Nanaimo is rated medium amenity-access density. Surrounded by low population density, low amenity access density in the rest of the city. — @StatCan_eng nanaimocommons.blogspot.com/2020/11/where-…
Studies reveal the "now conventional American urban story: rich neighbourhoods stay rich, poor neighbourhoods stay poor, and middle-income neighbourhoods change up or down—with race determining to a large degree the direction of change.”
For Latinos, one author claimed, “the more dynamic the diversity” the better, neighbourhoods with the “multi” effect: multicultural, multisocial, multigenerational, multi-income, multitenure, multiuse, multihouse types, multidensity, multiarchitectural styles, multitechnology.
Ch10 Conclusion. The “everyday neighbourhood” is what a neighbourhood could be, if based on a traditional understanding that is at the same time cognizant of 21st-century constraints and demands.
It leverages physical form to enable human connection, exchange, and sense of belonging, which in turn provides the capacity to act collectively.
Traditional understanding of neighbourhood as essential infrastructure of daily life was beaten down by a century of negation—on one hand equating neighbourhood w/ any clump of housing on the other trivializing attempt to get the neighbourhood back + render it in physical form.
Attempt to plan neighbourhood back into existence was reaction to the sense it'd been lost to technological economic + social forces. Connectivity + heterogeneity pulled in opposite directions, the localized neighbourhood became a means of social sorting rather than congealing.
Talen concludes the everyday neighbourhood has eight qualities, ranging from the spatial − one or more centre, generally agreed upon edge − to amenities and services, and connectivity and “means of representation."
She writes "For everyday neighbourhoods, things like livable streets, density levels, and mixed use depend on neighbourhood definition and control; they are not listed alongside it as equal players... 1/2
In other words, the emphasis is not on the component parts—streets, coding, park design—but the contextualizing of those parts within a neighbourhood framework, without which engagement, acceptance of diversity, and collective voice would be difficult." 2/2
This conclusion surprises me, neighbourhood definition + control all else is dependent on, “a means by which residents can speak with a collective voice." I'm aware of few examples where meaningful decision making authority has legitimately devolved to the neighbourhood level.
Definition of “resident” is challenging for a start. Homeowner and renter are one component, so too shop keepers, 2nd floor professionals, etc Jacobs’ generators of diversity illustrate complexity of an urban neighbourhood.
Any given moment residents of other neighbourhoods are members of mine when they are present with a purpose, shop, job, access services, school, use amenities etc.
I’m aware of 2 initiatives that have tried to bring inclusive neighbourhood representation to local decision making. Vancouver Grandview-Woodlands Citizens Assembly and Portland Office of Neighbourhoods Involvement. Blog post : nanaimocommons.blogspot.com/2019/08/during…
I’m concerned Talen’s remedy here risks over-regulating civil society’s natural ability to cooperate and organize, settle small disputes and join in the neighbourhoods sidewalk sociability.
Revisiting Jacobs D+L Ch2 Uses of city sidewalks: safety, on “Turf.” Traditional institution of Turf, developed by “hoodlum gangs” has been “adopted widely by developers of the rebuilt city."
Talen: "The diversity goal is critical because the inability to deal with social difference at a localized level—at the scale of a neighbourhood—may be the single most significant problem facing Western cities.”
"Diversity is not for the purpose of paternalistic ideas about socialization, positive role models, or the supposed benefits of intergroup social contact. The calculus is more straightforward: resident income and wealth are positively correlated with neighbourhood investment."
"Neighbourhood-scale investment pushes back against dominance of big capital...a consolidation that has worked against local control…Supportive neighbourhood context+ constituency enables small developer, plot-by-plot retrofitter...has added benefit of supporting diversity goal"
Urban complexity — appreciated by Mumford as “social theater,” by Jacobs as “street ballet,” and by Whyte as the “urban stage...”
“The spotting and inter-relationship of schools, libraries, theatres, and community centres is the first task in defining the urban neighbourhood and laying down the outlines of an integrated city.” Mumford
"If done right, neighbourhood delineation might emerge as an effective way for planners to push back against the idea that all urban planners actually do is “mask, manage or soften” capital accumulation." Talen
And finally, this criticism: I can’t for the life of me explain how Professor Talen’s editors and proof readers could have let so many misspellings of “neighbourhood” slip through!
Join @LBeasleyyvr as he guides a walk thru Vancouver's Downtown South. A resident himself he offers both a professional + personal perspective of the many attributes and some of the missed opportunities in this now mature neighbourhood. @CanUrbanism canu.ca/_api/media-sha…
The neighbourhood was “deliberately designed. The City led the effort. The City was in the driver’s seat… “ Developer and local needs were respected but, more important, the design “met those larger needs of what the neighbourhood needed to be in the city at large."
Diversity and proximity, Jane Jacobs told Beasley and colleagues on a walkabout some years ago, are the basis of city-building.
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