I was about to write a piece arguing that Chicago should drop its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, and then went and looked back at Jason's introductory post, and said, Oh right! This is a blog for planning PhD students to share information, not a place for Jessica to rant about whatever comes into her head.
As for our Head-Blogger-in-Chief, Dr. Brody, he is presumably taking Manhattan by storm as we speak -- that would be Manhattan, Kansas, home of Kansas State's urban planning program and, I hear, an abiding hatred of jayhawks, whatever a jayhawk is. Point is, he's going to be busy, and not in a position to contribute much. And Occasional Blogger annalise has just announced she will be doing a fellowship at Claflin University (hooray!) next year, so blogging will not be her first priority either. That leaves, as best I can tell, me and a whole bunch of crickets.
Therefore, if you are a doctoral student in planning with advice to give and pithy observations to make, this blog will be the better for your participation. Look at it this way: the more people join, the better the blog gets; the better the blog gets, the more prestigious it becomes; the more prestigious it becomes, the better you will look later on for having participated.
I would suggest emailing Jason at his brand-new K-State address, jbrody at ksu dot edu, for posting privileges. If you are impatient, email me (jessica dot doyle at gatech dot edu) and I will guest-post for you. In case it does not go without saying: contributions from other brand-new faculty, or from doctoral students outside the US, are also welcome.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Gentrification, or "Demographic Inversion"?
The New Republic has an article available summarizing what the author refers to as "demographic inversion" -- namely, middle- and upper-class residents choosing to live in the city, less affluent residents, including immigrants, going to the suburbs. As you might expect, Jane Jacobs comes up a few times.
I found this paragraph particularly striking:
Nor, in general, does the scourge of urban life in the 1970s and '80s: random street violence. True, the murder rates in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cleveland have climbed in the last few years, but this increase has been propelled in large part by gang- and drug-related violence. For the most part, middle-class people of all colors began to feel safe on the streets of urban America in the 1990s, and they still feel that way. The paralyzing fear that anyone of middle age can still recall vividly from the 1970s--that the shadowy figure passing by on a dark city street at night stands a good chance of being a mugger--is rare these days, and almost nonexistent among young people.
By "young people" the author means "young professionals"; I would not go so far as to say that the majority of less affluent people, young or not, are no longer scared of crime. But if (and I would say it's quite an if) the author is right, fear of crime may also contribute to an inversion of stereotypes: the city as lively, wealthy, safe; the inner-ring suburbs as decrepit and desperate, where no one will hear you if you scream.
This assertion about fear of crime and the city reminded me of the the Atlantic piece which looked to link rising suburban crime with Section 8 vouchers (see a debunking of said article, via Randall Crane). It is possible that certain neighborhoods of certain cities will collect enough eyes on the street, and enough amenities, to establish a feeling of safety. The question then becomes, given the very different design of most suburbs, what steps can be taken to make them also feel safe -- which is not the same as actually being safe; but the feeling and the being are certainly related.
I found this paragraph particularly striking:
Nor, in general, does the scourge of urban life in the 1970s and '80s: random street violence. True, the murder rates in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cleveland have climbed in the last few years, but this increase has been propelled in large part by gang- and drug-related violence. For the most part, middle-class people of all colors began to feel safe on the streets of urban America in the 1990s, and they still feel that way. The paralyzing fear that anyone of middle age can still recall vividly from the 1970s--that the shadowy figure passing by on a dark city street at night stands a good chance of being a mugger--is rare these days, and almost nonexistent among young people.
By "young people" the author means "young professionals"; I would not go so far as to say that the majority of less affluent people, young or not, are no longer scared of crime. But if (and I would say it's quite an if) the author is right, fear of crime may also contribute to an inversion of stereotypes: the city as lively, wealthy, safe; the inner-ring suburbs as decrepit and desperate, where no one will hear you if you scream.
This assertion about fear of crime and the city reminded me of the the Atlantic piece which looked to link rising suburban crime with Section 8 vouchers (see a debunking of said article, via Randall Crane). It is possible that certain neighborhoods of certain cities will collect enough eyes on the street, and enough amenities, to establish a feeling of safety. The question then becomes, given the very different design of most suburbs, what steps can be taken to make them also feel safe -- which is not the same as actually being safe; but the feeling and the being are certainly related.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
On Storytelling, Privilege, Individual Pride, and Yes, Finally, a Work Presented in Chicago
Be warned at the outset that this post will be quite the mishmash. (The one-sentence takeaway: go hunt down Marisa Zapata and her Chicago paper; they are both very much worth engaging with.)
To start with an anecdote from the PhD Jamboree in Vancouver last year (which is how I met Jason and annalise): as a prelude to Ken Reardon's discussion of his community-empowerment work in St. Louis and New Orleans, Leonie Sandercock played a tape of an African-American woman singing a song of lamentation. Afterwards Leonie explained that the song had been recorded by a New Orleans native (if I remember correctly) after Hurricane Katrina hit, and that she herself thought the song's observation -- that, essentially, nothing had changed and the position of African-Americans in the US was just as lowly and brutalized as it had been since before the civil rights movement -- was spot-on. In the audience, I bristled. This was due less to their being wrong than to personal events the week before the Jamboree having left me in superdefensive mode. But the immediate reason I bristled was I felt that what Sandercock and later Reardon did -- compare New Orleans 2005 with Oxford 1962, and find essentially no difference -- was to conflate two different instances of societal failure, and to do so somewhat smugly. Not that I get to make the last call on the narrative of Katrina and the position of African-Americans in the US; but I wasn't willing to cede it to them, either.
I thought of that when I read this essay by Charles Johnson (via A&LD), calling for a "new narrative" for African-Americans. Johnson's argument rests, not solely but largely, on the accomplishments of individual African-Americans: doctors, lawyers, CEOs, PhDs, actors, engineers, writers, and presidential candidates. He does not mention New Orleans 2005 in his argument, and while I haven't yet gone looking for counterarguments (and The American Scholar doesn't post trackbacks), I would guess that the aftermath of Katrina figures pretty highly in the arguments of those who would tell him that the old narrative appears, unfortunately, to have a lot of life left in it.
The tension here seems to be that between celebrating individual accomplishments and acknowledging the larger obstacles facing the individuals as a group. Does the average African-American child born in 2008 have a better chance of becoming the next scientist, lawyer, artist, philosopher, politician, or CEO than he or she would have if born in 1948? Either you say "yes," because so many legal and societal obstacles have fallen, or you hesitate, because so many societal and economic obstacles still exist. Your answer will spring from the narrative you subscribe to. The groups who usually hold power in the US (I originally wrote "the US" and then realized I needed to be more specific) have a long history of privileging stories of individual accomplishment; and those stories can be very useful and inspiring -- not least because it's easier to get relate to the story of an individual than of a group, on average. But one can point to, in discussions among Americans at least, a tendency to use narratives of individual accomplishment to dismiss the narratives of discrimination against the group.
Then today I read this and this (courtesy of Megan McArdle, an ex-co-worker of mine) and thought the two posts together wonderful, for the author's frank discussion of the fact that narratives of individual empowerment are... well, empowering (I did this) and when you start placing such narratives in the larger context of the group (you did this, but in part because you benefited from certain privileges that you lucked into, and not everyone gets those same privileges, and you can't swear that you would have been able to accomplish that same thing without the privileges) will almost certainly meet resistance.
When I wrote earlier that storytelling is dangerous, I was speaking from a fairly self-serving point of view. Here is a larger point: if storytelling is to become an effective planning tool, American planners (I can't speak for other cultures) will bump up against this tension time and again. A good many of us will want to tell stories to bring attention to underserved communities. But to tell such stories in ways that inspire helpful, rather than defensive or guilty, reactions, is tricky. Including stories of individual accomplishment can help inspire, but may also seduce the audience into thinking that things aren't so bad after all. And the underserved community itself may be divided as to which stories should get privileged.
I want to conclude by pointing to Marisa Zapata's work, because I got to see her presentation at Chicago and many other people didn't (it was in the last session of the last day). One point she made at the end of her talk about a planning process that deliberately sought out people from different cultures was that at the end, the white participants felt depressed and worried for the future, while the Latino participants were energized. Zapata suggested (I may be putting words into her mouth here) that this was a reflection of different cultural norms: that the Latino participants were much more comfortable with a process that focused chiefly on problems and not on easily implementable solutions. I suspect that this tension was similar to that between individual-focused and group-focused narrative; and if I'm right, that may suggest that, one, such longing for the individual-focused, inspirational narrative is not universally subscribed to in the United States, and two, there are ways to introduce other narratives, other approaches.
Finally, I will say that, to avoid overgeneralizing, I end up talking a lot in ways that put a white woman front and center ("I bristled... I felt... I read... I got to see"). Such is another danger of storytelling; but that one's more easily solved -- by making sure that other stories get space as well.
To start with an anecdote from the PhD Jamboree in Vancouver last year (which is how I met Jason and annalise): as a prelude to Ken Reardon's discussion of his community-empowerment work in St. Louis and New Orleans, Leonie Sandercock played a tape of an African-American woman singing a song of lamentation. Afterwards Leonie explained that the song had been recorded by a New Orleans native (if I remember correctly) after Hurricane Katrina hit, and that she herself thought the song's observation -- that, essentially, nothing had changed and the position of African-Americans in the US was just as lowly and brutalized as it had been since before the civil rights movement -- was spot-on. In the audience, I bristled. This was due less to their being wrong than to personal events the week before the Jamboree having left me in superdefensive mode. But the immediate reason I bristled was I felt that what Sandercock and later Reardon did -- compare New Orleans 2005 with Oxford 1962, and find essentially no difference -- was to conflate two different instances of societal failure, and to do so somewhat smugly. Not that I get to make the last call on the narrative of Katrina and the position of African-Americans in the US; but I wasn't willing to cede it to them, either.
I thought of that when I read this essay by Charles Johnson (via A&LD), calling for a "new narrative" for African-Americans. Johnson's argument rests, not solely but largely, on the accomplishments of individual African-Americans: doctors, lawyers, CEOs, PhDs, actors, engineers, writers, and presidential candidates. He does not mention New Orleans 2005 in his argument, and while I haven't yet gone looking for counterarguments (and The American Scholar doesn't post trackbacks), I would guess that the aftermath of Katrina figures pretty highly in the arguments of those who would tell him that the old narrative appears, unfortunately, to have a lot of life left in it.
The tension here seems to be that between celebrating individual accomplishments and acknowledging the larger obstacles facing the individuals as a group. Does the average African-American child born in 2008 have a better chance of becoming the next scientist, lawyer, artist, philosopher, politician, or CEO than he or she would have if born in 1948? Either you say "yes," because so many legal and societal obstacles have fallen, or you hesitate, because so many societal and economic obstacles still exist. Your answer will spring from the narrative you subscribe to. The groups who usually hold power in the US (I originally wrote "the US" and then realized I needed to be more specific) have a long history of privileging stories of individual accomplishment; and those stories can be very useful and inspiring -- not least because it's easier to get relate to the story of an individual than of a group, on average. But one can point to, in discussions among Americans at least, a tendency to use narratives of individual accomplishment to dismiss the narratives of discrimination against the group.
Then today I read this and this (courtesy of Megan McArdle, an ex-co-worker of mine) and thought the two posts together wonderful, for the author's frank discussion of the fact that narratives of individual empowerment are... well, empowering (I did this) and when you start placing such narratives in the larger context of the group (you did this, but in part because you benefited from certain privileges that you lucked into, and not everyone gets those same privileges, and you can't swear that you would have been able to accomplish that same thing without the privileges) will almost certainly meet resistance.
When I wrote earlier that storytelling is dangerous, I was speaking from a fairly self-serving point of view. Here is a larger point: if storytelling is to become an effective planning tool, American planners (I can't speak for other cultures) will bump up against this tension time and again. A good many of us will want to tell stories to bring attention to underserved communities. But to tell such stories in ways that inspire helpful, rather than defensive or guilty, reactions, is tricky. Including stories of individual accomplishment can help inspire, but may also seduce the audience into thinking that things aren't so bad after all. And the underserved community itself may be divided as to which stories should get privileged.
I want to conclude by pointing to Marisa Zapata's work, because I got to see her presentation at Chicago and many other people didn't (it was in the last session of the last day). One point she made at the end of her talk about a planning process that deliberately sought out people from different cultures was that at the end, the white participants felt depressed and worried for the future, while the Latino participants were energized. Zapata suggested (I may be putting words into her mouth here) that this was a reflection of different cultural norms: that the Latino participants were much more comfortable with a process that focused chiefly on problems and not on easily implementable solutions. I suspect that this tension was similar to that between individual-focused and group-focused narrative; and if I'm right, that may suggest that, one, such longing for the individual-focused, inspirational narrative is not universally subscribed to in the United States, and two, there are ways to introduce other narratives, other approaches.
Finally, I will say that, to avoid overgeneralizing, I end up talking a lot in ways that put a white woman front and center ("I bristled... I felt... I read... I got to see"). Such is another danger of storytelling; but that one's more easily solved -- by making sure that other stories get space as well.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
On Olympicized Beijing
In the runup to Chicago -- and don't forget, if you're coming to Chicago, to RSVP for the Tuesday night students' reception -- I am repeatedly distracted by interesting articles: this one, a New Republic book review, focuses on China's political culture in the run-up to the Olympics. It is only tangentially related to planning, in that the first book discussed focuses on the modernization of Beijing and the resulting changes in its urban fabric. But Andrew Nathan is a major figure in his field (not for nothing was he a coeditor of this book) and if you are not terribly familiar with Chinese politics, this could be a very useful introduction to how the state currently works, and how the central government can absorb blows such as the Tiananmen protests, the criticisms over Tibet, and the continuing efforts of pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong, and yet keep on going.
(The other reason why I was so quickly distracted is that of the three authors of Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City, one was my undergraduate advisor and chief academic mentor, and another taught me about the Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers and is responsible for my continued love of red bean cakes. So reading Andrew Nathan's praise for their book leaves me tickled pink.)
(The other reason why I was so quickly distracted is that of the three authors of Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City, one was my undergraduate advisor and chief academic mentor, and another taught me about the Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers and is responsible for my continued love of red bean cakes. So reading Andrew Nathan's praise for their book leaves me tickled pink.)
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Europe's Declining Fertility Rates, and What They Imply for Cities
Another interesting article, from the New York Times Magazine. It's more broad than deep, surveying some of the literature on why fertility rates in Europe are dropping so fast (and not reaching any definite conclusions, though some of its hypotheses surprised me), but gets particularly interesting for city planners about halfway through, discussing the plans of some German cities to shrink their urban footprints. As a bonus for those of us insular Americans: it will give us something to talk about with our new European acquaintances in Chicago, beyond "That Sergio Ramos is something, huh?"
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Some Interesting Climate Change Speculation
I know: we the DSUP cabal have been neglecting you quite seriously of late. Some of us have been looking for jobs; some of us are finishing our dissertations; and some of us have been caught up in a combination of various offline events and changing our operating system three times. (Somewhere, Commenter Nick is laughing.)
So as not to neglect you, I bring your attention to Sustainable Energy--Without the Hot Air, a work-in-progress by David MacKay, a Cambridge professor. There's also a blog and an article in The Register -- the two are related, as MacKay uses his blog to correct some of the impressions a Register reader might get. The nice part about MacKay's work is that he puts it all online, so you can download it, examine it, and argue with it at your leisure. Note that you cannot just read the four-page executive summary and get his full conclusions that way; I tried that already.
(Link originally found at Arts & Letters Daily, though, strangely, not at its sister site, Climate Debate Daily.)
So as not to neglect you, I bring your attention to Sustainable Energy--Without the Hot Air, a work-in-progress by David MacKay, a Cambridge professor. There's also a blog and an article in The Register -- the two are related, as MacKay uses his blog to correct some of the impressions a Register reader might get. The nice part about MacKay's work is that he puts it all online, so you can download it, examine it, and argue with it at your leisure. Note that you cannot just read the four-page executive summary and get his full conclusions that way; I tried that already.
(Link originally found at Arts & Letters Daily, though, strangely, not at its sister site, Climate Debate Daily.)
Monday, June 2, 2008
Plug: Lisa Schweitzer
UCLA professor Randall Crane (whose blog you have in your RSS feed just before or after ours, right?) has posted a profile of Lisa Schweitzer, who got her PhD at UCLA, spent some time at Virginia Tech, and is now at USC working on issues of environmental justice and transportation. I got to hear Dr. Schweitzer present in Milwaukee last year, and although she admitted straight off that she was presenting on research (on hazardous waste-related disasters and environmental justice) she'd just begun, it was still a very interesting presentation. Her presentation style was relaxed, friendly, and confident, which can be difficult in a conference setting; that style may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it worked well for me.
And since the Chicago schedule is now posted online, I can now tell you that Dr. Schweitzer will be presenting at 9:45 am on July 8th, moderating a panel on measurements and techniques later that day, and helping with a roundtable on environmental justice (alongside Ann Forsyth) first thing Friday morning the 11th. Even if you are neither a transportation person nor an EJ person, I would recommend you check her out at some point.
(Standard doctoral-student disclaimer: Dr. Schweitzer is not on any committee of mine and is not reviewing any papers I have written.)
And since the Chicago schedule is now posted online, I can now tell you that Dr. Schweitzer will be presenting at 9:45 am on July 8th, moderating a panel on measurements and techniques later that day, and helping with a roundtable on environmental justice (alongside Ann Forsyth) first thing Friday morning the 11th. Even if you are neither a transportation person nor an EJ person, I would recommend you check her out at some point.
(Standard doctoral-student disclaimer: Dr. Schweitzer is not on any committee of mine and is not reviewing any papers I have written.)
Sunday, May 25, 2008
On Telling Stories and Looking Professional Online
At least some of y'all read the Emily Gould Times piece and thought, "Clearly, not a graduate student." At least, not a PhD student in a field where, despite a great deal of work about storytelling, said PhD student still has to worry about the word "overshare" being used during a prospective job evaluation.
This is something I have wrestled with for years. If you were to go to my website -- and I am most deliberately not giving you the URL -- you would find a badly formatted, sparsely updated blog I gave up on a couple months ago after being informed that no matter what tweaks I made to WordPress, the only people allowed to comment, apparently, were spammers. Clearly, it would benefit me more to have a richer and better-looking online presence, to decrease the risks that a search committee would be spending time raising their eyebrows at the number of friends I have zombiefied on Facebook.
But to be less flippant about it: the idea of "telling stories" as a method of distributing and accumulating planning knowledge is extremely attractive to me, as someone who wanted to be a writer long before she wanted to be any variety of planner. Stories are powerful. Emily Gould's story, particular as it is to her place, time, and socioeconomic situation, inspired so many comments the Times first had to close the comment thread and then had to open it back up again. Telling stories can invite confidence; open up space for similar or complementary narratives; communicate more effectively than other methods. The story can serve as warning, as inspiration, as exemplar, as lesson. Granted, it's not the easiest thing in the world to teach from story when every planning situation is unique, but people are working on it, and God bless 'em for it.
However: for women working -- not just women working in planning, or women working in academia, but women working, period -- telling stories is also dangerous. To take an example outside of planning academia, to tell a story that begins, or ends, with "I had a miscarriage" is pretty potent stuff. It can inspire sympathy. It can inspire discussions about how and why miscarriages happen, and how the American (or what have you) health care system should respond to miscarriages. It can also make your colleagues uncomfortable, and suggest that your mind is simply not on your work. (And for all we talk of work-life balance, I would suggest that any one of us wants our colleagues to have a work-life balance only up to the point that it does not harm our own work-life balance. Forgive my grammar.) And I think the negative repercussions of such storytelling-gone-awry are greater for women in the workplace than for men.
I am generally more inclined than not to tell stories about my personal life: because I'm seeking advice; because sometimes hiding the information is more trouble than just coming out with it; because sometimes I hope to be able to entertain or enlighten; because someone else has just told a story and I want to offer empathy with a similar story; because I just like telling stories by habit and inclination. But it means I am constantly running the risk of becoming Madame Overshare. And online, where oversharing once in 2002, or even 1992, will still be in Google's memory in 2010, the risk is even greater.
So for a while I have been wrestling with what I want a personal website to be. Because it is one thing to be "personal" and yet quite another to be "personal" while still being "professional." I wonder if other people feel they've been able to find a happy medium, or whether they would counsel me to screw the imagined search committee and tell all the stories I see fit, or wonder why this is even an issue.
This is something I have wrestled with for years. If you were to go to my website -- and I am most deliberately not giving you the URL -- you would find a badly formatted, sparsely updated blog I gave up on a couple months ago after being informed that no matter what tweaks I made to WordPress, the only people allowed to comment, apparently, were spammers. Clearly, it would benefit me more to have a richer and better-looking online presence, to decrease the risks that a search committee would be spending time raising their eyebrows at the number of friends I have zombiefied on Facebook.
But to be less flippant about it: the idea of "telling stories" as a method of distributing and accumulating planning knowledge is extremely attractive to me, as someone who wanted to be a writer long before she wanted to be any variety of planner. Stories are powerful. Emily Gould's story, particular as it is to her place, time, and socioeconomic situation, inspired so many comments the Times first had to close the comment thread and then had to open it back up again. Telling stories can invite confidence; open up space for similar or complementary narratives; communicate more effectively than other methods. The story can serve as warning, as inspiration, as exemplar, as lesson. Granted, it's not the easiest thing in the world to teach from story when every planning situation is unique, but people are working on it, and God bless 'em for it.
However: for women working -- not just women working in planning, or women working in academia, but women working, period -- telling stories is also dangerous. To take an example outside of planning academia, to tell a story that begins, or ends, with "I had a miscarriage" is pretty potent stuff. It can inspire sympathy. It can inspire discussions about how and why miscarriages happen, and how the American (or what have you) health care system should respond to miscarriages. It can also make your colleagues uncomfortable, and suggest that your mind is simply not on your work. (And for all we talk of work-life balance, I would suggest that any one of us wants our colleagues to have a work-life balance only up to the point that it does not harm our own work-life balance. Forgive my grammar.) And I think the negative repercussions of such storytelling-gone-awry are greater for women in the workplace than for men.
I am generally more inclined than not to tell stories about my personal life: because I'm seeking advice; because sometimes hiding the information is more trouble than just coming out with it; because sometimes I hope to be able to entertain or enlighten; because someone else has just told a story and I want to offer empathy with a similar story; because I just like telling stories by habit and inclination. But it means I am constantly running the risk of becoming Madame Overshare. And online, where oversharing once in 2002, or even 1992, will still be in Google's memory in 2010, the risk is even greater.
So for a while I have been wrestling with what I want a personal website to be. Because it is one thing to be "personal" and yet quite another to be "personal" while still being "professional." I wonder if other people feel they've been able to find a happy medium, or whether they would counsel me to screw the imagined search committee and tell all the stories I see fit, or wonder why this is even an issue.
Friday, May 16, 2008
More on Womanism (in a Different Context)
For those following Annalise's posts on womanism and planning, the "XX Factor" blog on Slate has recently begun a discussion of womanism in relation to the Clinton-Obama fight. The term is introduced in this post by Kim McLarin and the discussion continues here and here. Obviously one cannot pick up the idea of "womanism" under discussion in that context, which is considerably less formal, and snap it into planning methodology as if it were a Lego block. But it might be interesting to those just getting to know the idea.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
A Pragmatic Take On Our Use Of Data
In the course of our careers most of us have heard someone utter the misbegotten statement "The data speaks for itself." This is doubly irritating. First, we collect data because we want to find answers to particular questions, and use it as evidence to support particular claims about those questions. It is the claims that matter. On its own data could be used to support a variety of claims. Drawing in part from the following survey data: 6 American moms prefer Jif peanut butter, 3 prefer Skippy, and 2 prefer Nutella hazelnut spread, we could claim that American moms prefer Jif, or that Nutella is making inroads into the American market, or that our survey does not reflect what is known about the preferences of the population as a whole. Data is information. It is authors that speak. Also irritating is that the statement is grammatically incorrect. Data is the plural form of datum. Data wouldn't speaks, they would speak. A well-formed (but still misbegotten) statement, then, would say "The data speak for themselves."
I am more irritated by the former. In fact, I am not bothered by the grammar of "The data speaks for itself" at all. It is true that one meaning of data is that it is the plural of datum, but I don't believe that this is the way that most academics, or most people in general, use the term. When we talk about data, we are usually interested in its value for making statistical inferences. Making statistical inferences requires us to draw from a sample population large enough that we can presume that, within a finite degree of uncertainty, what we found in the sample is likely to be representative of some larger population. The key to such a "large enough" sample is that one additional or one less datum is unlikely to significantly change the inferences we make. We're not interested in data here so much as we are a dataset. The difference is a subtle one, and I acknowledge that we don't always use data in this context, and that this is a very simplistic discussion of data and statistical inference. And that I could be wrong. But I think the discussion is good enough for what I am concerned with here. A "large enough" dataset speaks as one voice, and hence using singular grammar is most appropriate.
Here are the goods: language is both full of grammatical rules and wonderfully inventive. In the case of data, we have two rules: data is the plural form of datum, and data is the shortened form of dataset. Pragmatically speaking, each rule is appropriate to a given community of speakers in a given context. Natural language is pretty good at recognizing what rules are appropriate to what context, and at inventing new rules when the context demands it. This comes, however, with a tolerance for things like ambiguity, error, and evolutionary change that technical discourses might find unacceptable.
I should add that part of the reason I wrote this post is because I think that, at least for the areas I am currently interested in (urban design, professional practice), we planning academics are too often the dowdy grammarian correcting unruly students. Research often demands that we define our terms, so that we can measure, question, and test with precision, but we shouldn't expect professional and lay communities to define the same terms in the same way. Further, I would argue that once in awhile the colloquial meaning of a term generated within a professional or lay community has a greater logic than the formal/technical meaning generated within our own academic world, regardless of whether such meanings are explicit or overt.
I am more irritated by the former. In fact, I am not bothered by the grammar of "The data speaks for itself" at all. It is true that one meaning of data is that it is the plural of datum, but I don't believe that this is the way that most academics, or most people in general, use the term. When we talk about data, we are usually interested in its value for making statistical inferences. Making statistical inferences requires us to draw from a sample population large enough that we can presume that, within a finite degree of uncertainty, what we found in the sample is likely to be representative of some larger population. The key to such a "large enough" sample is that one additional or one less datum is unlikely to significantly change the inferences we make. We're not interested in data here so much as we are a dataset. The difference is a subtle one, and I acknowledge that we don't always use data in this context, and that this is a very simplistic discussion of data and statistical inference. And that I could be wrong. But I think the discussion is good enough for what I am concerned with here. A "large enough" dataset speaks as one voice, and hence using singular grammar is most appropriate.
Here are the goods: language is both full of grammatical rules and wonderfully inventive. In the case of data, we have two rules: data is the plural form of datum, and data is the shortened form of dataset. Pragmatically speaking, each rule is appropriate to a given community of speakers in a given context. Natural language is pretty good at recognizing what rules are appropriate to what context, and at inventing new rules when the context demands it. This comes, however, with a tolerance for things like ambiguity, error, and evolutionary change that technical discourses might find unacceptable.
I should add that part of the reason I wrote this post is because I think that, at least for the areas I am currently interested in (urban design, professional practice), we planning academics are too often the dowdy grammarian correcting unruly students. Research often demands that we define our terms, so that we can measure, question, and test with precision, but we shouldn't expect professional and lay communities to define the same terms in the same way. Further, I would argue that once in awhile the colloquial meaning of a term generated within a professional or lay community has a greater logic than the formal/technical meaning generated within our own academic world, regardless of whether such meanings are explicit or overt.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
WalkScore
WalkScore is a website intended for a public audience that will rank any address you chose based on the walkability of its surroundings. Its algorithm seems to be based on proximity to a variety of uses, kind of like online yellow pages. I'll reserve further comment, except to say that 1. WalkScore is a fun timewaster, and 2. The site cites honest-to-god JAPA articles on the benefits of walking.
www.walkscore.com
www.walkscore.com
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Womanist-Consciousness and Planning Proficiencies
Recently I was asked to post something to this blog "to educate the planning community about womanist methodology." Sounds like a good idea at first, but, when I thought it over, the idea of going into detail about methodology in this blog simply did not appeal to me for a number of reasons. I have, however, attempted to provide some thoughts about womanist consciousness and how it differs from feminist consciousness. Feel free to take it or leave it.
-Emilie M. Townes (my former seminary professor), Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.
-Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd and Evelyn M. Simien, "Revisiting 'What's in a Name?" Frontiers, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2006.
-Clenora Hudson Weems, Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves. Bedford Publishers, 2003.
-Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Orbis, 1996.
-Katie Geneva Canon, Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community. Continuum, 1995.
Secondly, getting agreement on womanist methodology is not an easy thing to do. The womanist methodology that I am working on is tailored to my dissertation, which is titled, "Troubling City & Planning Discourses: A Womanist's Analysis of Forty-Five Years of Planning in Springfield, Massachusetts (1960-2005)." I might use a different methodological approach for a different project. For my dissertation, I am using womanist consciousness as a hermeneutical-analytical tool to examine and explore planning texts and discourses about the local black community. My approach is grounded in historiographical methods of late nineteenth and early twentieth century black scholars who resisted white representations of black culture and life. FYI, I am an ex-clergywoman (by choice) and my training and experience in Christian theology, with a strong interest in black liberation theology and preaching, has informed this particular methodological stance (go figure!). Since I am still writing, I am somewhat protective of unfinished works, so what I have given you here is the most that I am willing to give out at this point. On the other hand, I do have a trusted community of friends and scholars, apart from my committee, that I talk with on a regular basis. I recommend that doctoral students create these types of dialogical communities for themselves (learned that in law school).
I will, however, offer a little more for the benefit of those who are curious about womanist-talk in general. The term "womanist" resurfaced in the 1980's with the publication of Alice Walker's book, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (1983, Harcourt Brace). It is a term that comes out of black life and culture: a "womanish" girl is recognized by her elders or other community members, i.e., "She is so womanish!" A womanish girl is perceived as mature (serious) well beyond her years. She has knowledge/insight that other girls her age don't have. Often, she might be told, "You've been here before." Perhaps, a black girl/woman will embrace this consciousness about herself, but that is not a given, she must embrace and name it for herself. Typically, feminists do not enter into feminism with this socio-critical and/or prophetic self-awareness. The identities-practices of feminism, even in its third-wave/phase, are most accessible in the academy, are often legitimized with the privileges and statuses that are associated with academic and institutional lifestyles and rhythms. These feminist identities-practices are not readily available to those who are not privy to the academy for one reason or another. Being a feminist, therefore, is often validated by the possession and/or knowledge of abstract theory that finds its most vivid expression in the academy or institutional structures. Being womanist, and the subsequent acting out of womanist sensibilities as a matter of political engagement, is born and nurtured from within and with the organic knowledge and support of trusted others; it requires no formal organization whatsoever.
Well, hope this helps. Gotta go for now.
annalise fonza,
PhD Candidate
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Number one, the "planning community," if we can call it that, lacks a language and a consciousness for womanist methodology. No one, to date, has articulated this theoretical model/methodology in theory or practice, and, unfortunatley, this blogspace is simply not an ideal or safe place for starting a serious dialogue about womanist-talk or womanist methodology. Planners and students of planning have a limited and squeamish vocabulary for discussing and demystifying gender (albeit, this same critique could be applied to many disciplines and publics). Check out planning proficiences of feminist epistemologies, methodologies and frameworks by asking a planning academician or practitioner what s/he thinks about what feminists have said about planning and you'll see what I'm talking about. For those truly interested in learning more about womanist-talk and methodology (in addition to reading my dissertation when it is done), I suggest checking out the following authors/sources on womanism:
-Emilie M. Townes (my former seminary professor), Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.
-Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd and Evelyn M. Simien, "Revisiting 'What's in a Name?" Frontiers, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2006.
-Clenora Hudson Weems, Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves. Bedford Publishers, 2003.
-Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Orbis, 1996.
-Katie Geneva Canon, Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community. Continuum, 1995.
Secondly, getting agreement on womanist methodology is not an easy thing to do. The womanist methodology that I am working on is tailored to my dissertation, which is titled, "Troubling City & Planning Discourses: A Womanist's Analysis of Forty-Five Years of Planning in Springfield, Massachusetts (1960-2005)." I might use a different methodological approach for a different project. For my dissertation, I am using womanist consciousness as a hermeneutical-analytical tool to examine and explore planning texts and discourses about the local black community. My approach is grounded in historiographical methods of late nineteenth and early twentieth century black scholars who resisted white representations of black culture and life. FYI, I am an ex-clergywoman (by choice) and my training and experience in Christian theology, with a strong interest in black liberation theology and preaching, has informed this particular methodological stance (go figure!). Since I am still writing, I am somewhat protective of unfinished works, so what I have given you here is the most that I am willing to give out at this point. On the other hand, I do have a trusted community of friends and scholars, apart from my committee, that I talk with on a regular basis. I recommend that doctoral students create these types of dialogical communities for themselves (learned that in law school).
I will, however, offer a little more for the benefit of those who are curious about womanist-talk in general. The term "womanist" resurfaced in the 1980's with the publication of Alice Walker's book, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (1983, Harcourt Brace). It is a term that comes out of black life and culture: a "womanish" girl is recognized by her elders or other community members, i.e., "She is so womanish!" A womanish girl is perceived as mature (serious) well beyond her years. She has knowledge/insight that other girls her age don't have. Often, she might be told, "You've been here before." Perhaps, a black girl/woman will embrace this consciousness about herself, but that is not a given, she must embrace and name it for herself. Typically, feminists do not enter into feminism with this socio-critical and/or prophetic self-awareness. The identities-practices of feminism, even in its third-wave/phase, are most accessible in the academy, are often legitimized with the privileges and statuses that are associated with academic and institutional lifestyles and rhythms. These feminist identities-practices are not readily available to those who are not privy to the academy for one reason or another. Being a feminist, therefore, is often validated by the possession and/or knowledge of abstract theory that finds its most vivid expression in the academy or institutional structures. Being womanist, and the subsequent acting out of womanist sensibilities as a matter of political engagement, is born and nurtured from within and with the organic knowledge and support of trusted others; it requires no formal organization whatsoever.
Well, hope this helps. Gotta go for now.
annalise fonza,
PhD Candidate
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Friday, April 25, 2008
Planning and Software: Some Curiosity
Recently a first-year master's student here at (Georgia) Tech was trying to get information from her colleagues about what software they used and needed on a regular basis. I told her I was an Ubuntu convert (although I'm going to wait until at least the end of the semester to try out Hardy Heron, the most recent version of Ubuntu) and that, furthermore, I would be happy to give some sort of tutorial-slash-advocacy presentation at the beginning of the fall in regards to open-source software for end users, if she and any of the other master's students would be interested.
But that exchange got me to wondering how rare I am in turns of planning students, in relying on open-source software. I suspect that a lot of people use a little bit of open-source software (i.e. they run Firefox) while many fewer people make the leap to Thunderbird or OpenOffice, and fewer still do what I did a year ago and stop using Windows at home. It is not, as it turns out, the easiest thing to do, especially since open-source GIS options are very limited at this point. But there may be particular rewards in turning away from a corporate-controlled operating system (i.e. Windows; Apple has opened up its software a bit) and towards software that is much more heavily dependent on a community approach.
Anyway, I'm curious if anyone else out there has had any experience with a Linux-based operating system or has tried to branch out into using open-source software more often.
But that exchange got me to wondering how rare I am in turns of planning students, in relying on open-source software. I suspect that a lot of people use a little bit of open-source software (i.e. they run Firefox) while many fewer people make the leap to Thunderbird or OpenOffice, and fewer still do what I did a year ago and stop using Windows at home. It is not, as it turns out, the easiest thing to do, especially since open-source GIS options are very limited at this point. But there may be particular rewards in turning away from a corporate-controlled operating system (i.e. Windows; Apple has opened up its software a bit) and towards software that is much more heavily dependent on a community approach.
Anyway, I'm curious if anyone else out there has had any experience with a Linux-based operating system or has tried to branch out into using open-source software more often.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Calling all theorists
My cohort and I are revising the reading lists for our qualifying exams for planning and public policy. I know some people on this list are in joint planning/policy programs as well. I thought this might be a good forum to share reading lists with one another and get a sense of similarities and differences in thought across programs.
Rutgers' PhD reading lists (currently under revision by us) are available on the web.
We've realized that our lists are light in policy theory, a remanent of the merger of the two programs. That's why we're looking to accomplish two tasks:
1) add significant policy theory texts to the list
2) revise the planning and social theory list, particularly the former, to include more contemporary and diverse material.
I would appreciate if any of you would be willing to share your input with us. We'd be happy to share the results with you.
Rutgers' PhD reading lists (currently under revision by us) are available on the web.
We've realized that our lists are light in policy theory, a remanent of the merger of the two programs. That's why we're looking to accomplish two tasks:
1) add significant policy theory texts to the list
2) revise the planning and social theory list, particularly the former, to include more contemporary and diverse material.
I would appreciate if any of you would be willing to share your input with us. We'd be happy to share the results with you.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Chicago Is Going to Be Expensive, Part II: Chicago Is Still Going to Be Expensive
Those of you already on the PhD Bowling League mailing list (if you're not, here's the joining information) know that there's been a fair bit of discussion as to why student fees jumped from $125 for ACSP in Milwaukee last year to $295 for ACSP/AESOP in Chicago. My guess is that the fees are probably not going to come down. And even if they do -- well, there's still a price to pay to be in a very nice downtown area of a city enjoying a renaissance.
So here are my hastily-cobbled-together tips for minimizing the non-student-fee costs of Chicago:
So here are my hastily-cobbled-together tips for minimizing the non-student-fee costs of Chicago:
- Kayak.com and SideStep can both search many flight and hotel websites at once. Both also have a Search-by-Address option, so you can put in the address of the Marriott (540 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago IL 60611) and have the site return hotels nearby.
- TripAdvisor has reviews of hotels. Take them with a grain of salt, though.
- Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity all sometimes offer special deals (I think Hotels.com can as well) so if you're not having any luck at all, try doing separate searches. My Milwaukee reservation was an Orbitz deal. (Note: if you do this, and end up changing your schedule, getting refunded any extra days is not easy to do, since you have to go through the booking site, not the hotel.)
- If you want to press your luck with Priceline: Bidding for Travel has lots of good advice as for bidding travel strategies. You will probably want to check Priceline's map -- it divides the city into "zones," and you are only guaranteed a hotel by zone, not by particular location. According to BfT's list of Chicago hotels, the Marriott is in the North Michigan Avenue - River North Area zone. Also, I believe Priceline bids are nonrefundable. If you want to get advice from the people on the BfT forum, read the forum guidelines very carefully before posting -- they have a particular format for communicating information about Priceline bids and they're sticklers for that format.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
ACSP Student Travel Awards
A word of warning: Chicago is going to be expensive. For those of you planning or hoping to attend, note that the student registration fee for this one is $295, and will go up to $345 after June 2nd. I was able to make Milwaukee a little less painful last year by scoring an Orbitz deal on a nearby hotel, but I did a Kayak search yesterday and the cheapest I could find within a mile of the Chicago Mariott Downtown was $140 a night.
If you want to go, and you know you're unable or unwilling to finance this jaunt by yourself, you still have time to submit an application for the ACSP Student Travel Awards. Applications (link is in PDF format) are due Friday. Good luck.
If you want to go, and you know you're unable or unwilling to finance this jaunt by yourself, you still have time to submit an application for the ACSP Student Travel Awards. Applications (link is in PDF format) are due Friday. Good luck.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Contemplating a World Without Planning Academia
Annalise has this odd habit of making me think. Her first post here was no exception. Namely: what if one ends up with a PhD in city and regional planning and does not become a professor of city and regional planning? To some degree, the psychological burdens of sunk costs apply: if you enter a program bound and determined to get a PhD because you don't particularly want to be a municipal transportation planner or economic development consultant (or, in my case, journalist) and end up, at the end of the road, deciding that the main thing that the additional three letters qualify you for isn't a good career move either . . . suffice to say you might at least end up with some sleepless nights wondering what those extra years of studying and lost wages got you.
Which sounds a little like pre-emptive self-pity (and if there's one thing graduate students have nailed down, it's self-pity) but is meant to prompt a thinking exercise: if tomorrow all the academic planning departments in the world were to be swallowed by a giant global-warming-enhanced land shark, what would you do? What would the PhD have taught you that a master's, or even just working in a planning-ish position, would not have? How would you take those new skills and apply them towards your goals? How would your goals change in the absence of a potential tenure-track position?
For myself I generally enjoy (a) developing ideas and then (b) communicating them to a wider audience, which is the main reason I keep blogging even at the risk of some future hiring committee doing a future Google search and then indulging in a future collective sigh of disappointment. Unlike Annalise, I started out with enough race-, nationality-, and class-based privileges, and have enough tendencies towards social cluelessness, that you generally have to hit me over the head with a thick plank to get me to notice exclusionary processes. Even so, the idea of a life without a planning faculty position leads me to wonder how else I would be able to get ideas out into the wider world, or even whether a planning faculty position is the best perch for such goals of communication.
Which sounds a little like pre-emptive self-pity (and if there's one thing graduate students have nailed down, it's self-pity) but is meant to prompt a thinking exercise: if tomorrow all the academic planning departments in the world were to be swallowed by a giant global-warming-enhanced land shark, what would you do? What would the PhD have taught you that a master's, or even just working in a planning-ish position, would not have? How would you take those new skills and apply them towards your goals? How would your goals change in the absence of a potential tenure-track position?
For myself I generally enjoy (a) developing ideas and then (b) communicating them to a wider audience, which is the main reason I keep blogging even at the risk of some future hiring committee doing a future Google search and then indulging in a future collective sigh of disappointment. Unlike Annalise, I started out with enough race-, nationality-, and class-based privileges, and have enough tendencies towards social cluelessness, that you generally have to hit me over the head with a thick plank to get me to notice exclusionary processes. Even so, the idea of a life without a planning faculty position leads me to wonder how else I would be able to get ideas out into the wider world, or even whether a planning faculty position is the best perch for such goals of communication.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Quick search tips
Particularly when exploring an area that is completely new, searching for literature can be a minor pain. Some quick and maybe obvious tips:
1. Cross reference keyword searches in your library catalog with a search on Amazon or a similar site. When you look up a source on Amazon, it suggests works that people who were interested in your source were also interested in. I find this useful for two reasons - it returns potential sources without requiring you to identify the keywords most useful to your nascent search, and it offers a way of telling which potential sources are most valued. This is useful mostly for books, of course.
2. Search the call numbers surrounding a potential source. This will help identify thematically similar sources without having to rely on a keyword search.
3. Search article by article, issue by issue for the last ten years or so in the eight or ten journals that seem most likely to relate to your subject. This seems labor intensive, but in reality does not take that much time if you pursue it in a workmanlike fashion.
4. Skim your most recent sources first. Their bibliographies will both help you identify other, older sources and help you determine which older sources are most valued by your field.
No Safety Net: A Brand New Day for the PhD in Planning (For Those Who Are Awake)!
Over the summer, I was face-to-face with Dr. Ken Reardon (Cornell) at the PhD Symposium in Vancouver, British Columbia discussing my research and teaching interests. He responded, saying that it would be too bad for me if I did not gain a job teaching within a planning department. What a pity? I don’t think so. My womanist intuition immediately kicked in and resisted the victimization. I quickly replied: I am not the victim! The sense of pity for those of us who do not “fit in,” according to the powers that be, is one way for the planning establishment and/or authorities to assert supremacy and control when in reality they are feeling anxious and inadequate about loss and/or change. Five or ten years ago, such a downward gaze may have worked to silence me, or scare me into appeasing Beauregard’s concept of the modernist planning project. To that, I can’t help but remember what my five-year old niece said to me when she got out of bed, brimming over with the energy and anticipation of a brand new day: “I’m woke now!” Indeed, I am woke (e.g., awake), and feeling sorry for myself or others with similar perspectives and worldviews is simply not an option. We are here, and there are far too many academic opportunities and venues (that will not be afraid of these differences and challenges) to feel loyal or limited to any one master, so to speak. And, thus, it is a brand new day.
As I wind up my dissertation, if it happens that I am courted to fulfill my life’s work outside of planning, then so be it. It won’t be my fault; I am not hiding somewhere under a bush for nobody to see. But the philosophy that the PhD in Urban Planning will find the best “fit” in a planning environment does not jive with the rapidly changing global economy and socio-political landscapes in the U.S and beyond. The safety net is primarily for those who need it. On the other hand, there are those of us, who because of life’s circumstances, have been learning to walk on water and have faith when there was very little, if any, evidence that hope was on the horizon. We are out here on the water because we have to, and we know the risks. Yes, we may lose the opportunity to be “Professor of Planning,” but we may, indeed, gain greater mobility and complexity by not limiting ourselves and our interests to planning structures that do not, in practice, encourage and/or support a transdisciplinary approach to teaching and research. So, when the outlook looks dim to me and my faith in myself and others begins to falter, I keep the focus on my goals, which is the prize. What makes me think, I say to myself, that planning “authorities” will be able to implement the structural changes needed to welcome and appreciate people like me? Such an embrace takes skill and power not just rhetoric. Few planners and professors, as far as I’m concerned, have demonstrated the will and the ability to be truly inclusive, i.e., how well does your town or city planning department include those who have historically been left out of the process? How about your academic department?
Well, I’ll take my chances out here on the water and stand firmly in the belief that the key to a rich, vibrant career in academia with the PhD in Planning is being content with the experiences along the way that have given me the courage and the ability to meet whatever comes my way, because as its said in black folk tradition, I know that I know that I know!!
annalise fonza, PhD Candidate
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Department of Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning
As I wind up my dissertation, if it happens that I am courted to fulfill my life’s work outside of planning, then so be it. It won’t be my fault; I am not hiding somewhere under a bush for nobody to see. But the philosophy that the PhD in Urban Planning will find the best “fit” in a planning environment does not jive with the rapidly changing global economy and socio-political landscapes in the U.S and beyond. The safety net is primarily for those who need it. On the other hand, there are those of us, who because of life’s circumstances, have been learning to walk on water and have faith when there was very little, if any, evidence that hope was on the horizon. We are out here on the water because we have to, and we know the risks. Yes, we may lose the opportunity to be “Professor of Planning,” but we may, indeed, gain greater mobility and complexity by not limiting ourselves and our interests to planning structures that do not, in practice, encourage and/or support a transdisciplinary approach to teaching and research. So, when the outlook looks dim to me and my faith in myself and others begins to falter, I keep the focus on my goals, which is the prize. What makes me think, I say to myself, that planning “authorities” will be able to implement the structural changes needed to welcome and appreciate people like me? Such an embrace takes skill and power not just rhetoric. Few planners and professors, as far as I’m concerned, have demonstrated the will and the ability to be truly inclusive, i.e., how well does your town or city planning department include those who have historically been left out of the process? How about your academic department?
Well, I’ll take my chances out here on the water and stand firmly in the belief that the key to a rich, vibrant career in academia with the PhD in Planning is being content with the experiences along the way that have given me the courage and the ability to meet whatever comes my way, because as its said in black folk tradition, I know that I know that I know!!
annalise fonza, PhD Candidate
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Department of Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning
Thursday, March 13, 2008
A Query on Post-Submission Etiquette
Here's another opportunity to shed some light for doctoral students, if you're so inclined: What is the usual time frame in terms of finding out what's going to happen to a submitted article? My understanding is that it can take months to review and render judgment upon an article; what I don't know is how much time has to elapse before the impatient writer can fire off a polite query as to how the review process is going, and when he or she can expect to hear a verdict. Two months? Three? Six? Or are such inquiries seen as too pushy no matter when they come?
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