Tag: sociology

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Business News Politics

Historic urban churches beginning to face new set of problems

Reverend Clarence Wallace has been with Carmel Presbyterian Church (map) in Avondale for 32 years. As an African-American growing up in the south during the civil rights movement, he experienced both segregation and integration first-hand. These life experiences helped to mold the high level of social consciousness that is still with him today.

“I’ve worked as a drug and alcohol counselor, witnessed Klan rallies, and was working in Harlem when Martin Luther King was stabbed. I could tell you many stories.”

Today, however, it is the story of the modern day ‘urban church’ that keeps him occupied. An unfinished story filled with both hope and adversity.

In Avondale, it is virtually impossible to miss the diverse collection of historic churches that line the streets of the neighborhood. However, while their stunning architecture is viewed as an asset, there are also challenges that these places of worship face including competition from mega churches, declining parish sizes, tight economic conditions, high maintenance and utility costs, and growing social needs from their members.

Built in 1890, Carmel Presbyterian brings along with it a unique set of financial challenges. Upkeep of the historic building is extremely expensive, and high utility costs are placing a burden on the church which is already devoting most of its resources to social and community development. These challenges, together with an economic recession that has hit neighborhoods like Avondale particularly hard, have created a difficult financial situation for ministers like Reverend Wallace.

“The poor continue to come in with more social needs than spiritual needs, and the costs keep rising. The urban church is being challenged as never before with this economic recession,” explained Wallace. “What would be viewed as a cold in a suburban church can be viewed as pneumonia here in the urban core.”

The church’s situation is complicated further by the fact that 75 percent of the congregation comes in from outside of the neighborhood. The group, most of which are originally from Avondale, has stayed loyal to the church over the years. The church has been seen as one of the few constants in the neighborhood during otherwise troubling times, and Wallace views the emigrating parishioners as part of the solution to helping bridge both the economic and social divide.

“We serve different people with different needs and sometimes it becomes difficult to meet these needs, but whether affluent, working class, or poor, they all worship one god and this is the common factor that brings them together…and with time this can help to benefit the entire community.”

Wallace emphasizes that while it is extremely challenging during these economic times, giving up is not an option.

“Is it easy? Certainly it’s not easy, but leaving would never cross my mind.”

Categories
News Politics

Putting the Food Cart Before the Horse

Yesterday, Cincinnati Enquirer editor Tom Callinan wrote an opinion piece about Cincinnati’s growing street food scene. The column discusses his past experiences with street food and elaborates on how Cincinnati’s street food scene has changed since he arrived in Cincinnati some eight years ago.

Personally I appreciate the comments shared by Mr. Callinan and his apparent enthusiasm for the Cincinnati Streetcar project he mentioned four times in his relatively short op-ed piece about street food. The reason for this response piece is not to challenge his experiences with great street food (I too love street food), or his passion for the Cincinnati Streetcar project (also a passion of mine), but rather to explore his explanation of cosmopolitan cities and experiences.

Mr. Callinan explained how the growing street food options are making Cincinnati a more cosmopolitan place much like the Cincinnati Streetcar will. This however is putting the food cart before the horse. Street food options are not a driver of cosmopolitan behavior, but rather the result of a city becoming more cosmopolitan and craving such offerings. Likening this to the Cincinnati Streetcar which will actually drive additional lifestyle changes that make Cincinnati more cosmopolitan is inaccurate.

For example, when people living at The Banks development along Cincinnati’s riverfront ride the Cincinnati Streetcar to Findlay Market for their weekly shopping needs it is not the businesses that sparked this behavioral change, it is the streetcar that enables this, as Mr. Callinan would put it, cosmopolitan lifestyle. The lifestyle changes influenced by the streetcar system will create additional demand for cosmopolitan offerings like the street food vendors Mr. Callinan details as more people, instead of cars, begin to populate our streets.

You could almost view something like street food as an indicator species for the liveliness of a city. William H. Whyte’s groundbreaking research in New York City examined the social behaviors and usage of public spaces, and he discovered that people do in fact have a tendency to cluster around street food vendors. This is for two primary reasons: 1) the street food attracts people to the vendor for the product, and 2) people are attracted to other people and have a tendency to self-congest. But without people on the streets to begin with, there is no demand for a street food vendor. So the question is really how to increase the number of people out on the streets if we are trying to figure out how to grow the number of street food vendors in a given area.

Cincinnati’s food carts vie for the heavy foot traffic areas in downtown Cincinnati. The locations for each vendor is determined by an annual lottery held by the City.

New York City has no shortage of people walking around the city where there is a proliferation of these fantastic street food vendors. And it is no coincidence that Cincinnati’s food carts fight over the spaces surrounding Fountain Square during the annual lottery that allocates food cart locations. Those food cart spaces are located in the highest pedestrian count areas of downtown Cincinnati where each of the nearby intersections boast between 4,000 to 7,000 pedestrians per hour between 11am and 2pm.

But what about street food vendors in Portland that is the oft-cited streetcar case study for Cincinnati’s contemporary proposal?

Marisa Robertson-Textor wrote for Gourmet Magazine that, “Portland’s bustling street-food scene may soon be rivaling the hawker centers of Singapore in terms of quality, scope, popular appeal, and value for money. In other words, the Pacific Northwest is doing for street food today what it did for coffee in the 1990s.” She went on to say that picking just eight venues out of the sea of stands, stalls, carts, trucks, trailers, and even bicycles was a tough job.

Portland’s street food vendors tend to cluster around the streetcar and light rail lines…especially so around line crossings.

I spent the last week in Denver where I visited one of America’s most famous street food vendors. I got to speak with Jim Pittenger, owner of Biker Jim’s Dogs, during that time about his gourmet hot dogs that have drawn national acclaim and recent praise from food rock star Anthony Bourdain himself. Jim’s loyal assistant explained the importance of a high foot traffic location to me, and said that their prominent location at 16th & Arapahoe streets in the heart of downtown Denver has been critical to their success.

In Cincinnati we need to continue to do things like remove the hideous and life sucking skywalks, build modern transport options like the Cincinnati Streetcar to give people greater options to get out of their cars and onto the streets so that we can continue to create additional demand for the wondrous street food vendors that help make cities great.

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Development News Politics

Downtown Cincinnati needs more residents

Downtown Cincinnati has experienced tremendous progress over the past 10 to 15 years. The Aronoff Center for the Arts was built along Walnut Street which sparked the investment seen in the nearby area now called the Backstage District, two new professional sports venues were built along the riverfront along with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the convention center was expanded, the Contemporary Arts Center was prominently rebuilt, the renovation of Fountain Square sparked millions of dollars worth of spin off investment nearby, and hundreds of new housing units have been developed.

Over this same time crime rates have gone down, population has increased, commercial occupancy rates have held steady, retail spaces have filled up, and the hotels boast the highest occupancy rates in the metropolitan region. But as in any situation, one solution often creates another problem.

Case in point, the Metropole Apartments on Walnut Street are now slated to become a trendy 12c Museum Hotel which will relocate the low-income residents that currently call the building home. This will not only create a difficult situation for the large number of people living there, but it will also take away a large number of full-time residents from the downtown population.

The same situation is shaping up at the Phelps apartment building that fronts onto the picturesque Lytle Park. The 137 apartments there will more than likely be lost to an extended stay hotel that will take advantage of the downtown commercial success, but once again, another large block of full-time residents will be lost in the process.

The interest in the downtown commercial market is very encouraging, but downtown must be able to be thriving both commercially and residentially in order for it to become that 24-hour downtown we all hope it will become. The apartment conversion of the historic Enquirer Building will help offset the aforementioned residential loses, but an apartment conversion of the historic Bartlett Building would also do wonders for the residential component of downtown.

The Banks is slated to add hundreds of new residents to the urban core, but there are also great opportunities for residential density at 5th & Race, 7th & Vine, Court & Walnut, and Court & Elm/Race. A residential strategy should be employed to best maximize the use of these areas – high rises at 5th & Race and 7th & Vine, midrise at Court & Walnut, and a mixture of townhouses/rowhouses at the Court & Elm/Race area would seem to be a good strategy off-hand that would create different price points and unit options that would appeal to a wide variety of people.

To become a truly vibrant downtown beyond the hours of 7am to 8pm, Cincinnati must develop a downtown residential plan that will massively grow the downtown population base and infuse the area with a mixture of young people, families, and retired individuals. If this can be achieved, then the retail and nightlife mixture we all hope for will follow.

Phelps Apartmens photo by Mark Bowen of the Cincinnati Business Courier.

Categories
News Politics

The Separation State

Separating literally every facet of our lives is not a natural thing and, more so than anywhere else, is a uniquely American ethos. We work in one place, live in another, play elsewhere and so on. People drive in one place, walk in another, bicycle somewhere else and exercise in yet another locale. But what’s the harm in all this, if there is any?

The most obvious and troubling issue this separation causes is the “spatial mismatch” which I have written about in the past. By distributing our daily activities across our cities into separate quarters we have successfully placed an unnecessary burden on our transport networks, negatively impacted our environment and personal health, and squander limited resources (oil, personal time, and cash to name a few) on these unnecessary behaviors.

This mindset of separating virtually every facet of our lives, I would contend, goes even further as it damages our social capital and interpersonal skills. Instead of walking down the street for work, coffee, or just to enjoy the evening, we are instead stuck in our personal vehicles of transportation. Instead of mixing in physical activity throughout our normal routines, we separate our physical activities from the rest of our daily activities and then we turn on the world of the iPod where we can choose exactly our form of distraction, and at the same time, turn off the rest of the world.

On one hand you have the issue of an urban land use and planning problem that may be too much to solve, and on the other, you have a social capital problem that may be signify the end to a great society based around people and relationships that is being replaced by instant gratification and personal joy.

In Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital, Charles Putnam wrote that the decline in social capital in the United States started back in the 1950s, and that this loss of in-person social intercourse poses major threats to Democracy which relies heavily on active civil engagement for a strong society.

Looking back on things you might understand why America is where it is in terms of this situation. The rest of Europe had largely been developed and was already structurally and socially built in a way that encouraged a type of society built around social capital. American, on the other hand, suffered from modern fears of nuclear attack, smog and over-pollution from the industrial revolution, crime and social unrest, and the many other ills that go along with a growing society.

But with any society, we are learning from our past. The New Urbanism movement is working against the notion that Euclidean Zoning is still needed in a post-industrial society with its Form Based Zoning alternative. The younger generations out there seem to also be moving in a direction that is placing social capital and experiences before most other items. This can all be seen in the rapid movement of people from their previously separated suburban housing typologies back into the urban fold where they are once again falling back into the comfort of human scale at the neighborhood level.

Neighborhoods and cities where people can be people are more valuable than any quantifiable measure can judge. Social experiences are what sets the human race apart from any other animal and it should be celebrated by building communities that foster this kind of behavior, and in turn, celebrate the beauty of the human race.

Categories
Development News Politics

Planning for the complexities of the human spirit

A friend shared this link with me and it got the wheels turning in my head about something I find particularly interesting. Do we over-emphasize things in our society that should really be shaped by the people who use and occupy them instead of shaping the people who use them?

In an earlier entry I wrote about our emphasis on planning for the inanimate objects in our society (i.e. buildings and infrastructure) and leaving the living things to figure it out once everything else is in its place. In my mind this is a backwards way to plan for a society of people and living things.

An obvious example of this, to me, would be our modern day zoning codes. These well-intentioned codes were developed to help keep the public safe and healthy from the harms of the built environment. What it has also accomplished is an extreme segregation of uses and building types. This seems to be something that is counter-intuitive to the human mind and how people actually function with their surroundings.

Human beings don’t inherently look at communicating, interacting, dining, shopping, playing, working and living as being mutually exclusive. Often times these things blur together as you might play where you live, you might shop where you dine, you may work where you live, and you certainly communicate and interact with other people while you do all of these things. So it begs the question – why are we not planning our communities in such a way?

It is a bold complex proposition to plan in such a way as it attempts to plan for the limitless possibilities and extreme complexities of the human mind. It is a planning technique that would celebrate the very things that make humans so special and unique. And I believe that it is something that can be achieved through the great imagination and thoughtfulness of only the human mind.

Photo from Jayson Gomes – CincyImages