Jenny Walty

As a New York City resident, this topic is of particular interest!

Cities have succeeded in concentrating economic and political power because they provide the best social and physical environment for the reproduction of capital and labor, and their growth has been exponential in the last century. As Blumenfeld argued, the specialization and cooperation of labor that emerged in the 20th century across the globe has produced a universal urban form found in all economic systems. (Angotti, 1995) New technologies have simultaneously supported the centralization of corporate management in global cities and the extension of colonial profit structures.

New telecommunications technologies and the intensification of global trade have used certain cities as key nodes in their network of transactions. The complexity of global markets requires intense coordination of professional services including technical, legal, financial, marketing and headquarters in a new type of production process that must be centralized and place-bound to get the work done. “It is precisely because of the territorial dispersal facilitated by telecommunication advances that agglomeration of centralizing activities has expanded immensely.” (Sassen, 1999) Global cities serve as the central nervous system of hierarchical command and control for international trade and investment. These professional services and others that support the professional workforce cannot be provided remotely and require local providers. “Goods and services produced within a city for local consumption… are likely to remain a very significant percentage of the total.” (Mitchell)

In this new system, global cities have been provided an alternate legal framework that exempts from national laws, for example New York City’s international financial zone, thereby ceding national territory (Sassen, 1999). Nations are allowing capital to move freely, without regulation, but have not provided the same legal structures to the people who provide the necessary services. Both rich and poor people in the cities—both transnational professionals and migrant workers—have a transnational identity rather than a territory-based identity. No longer place-based communities, cities are more dependent on the global network than the region or nation they ostensibly belong to.

This new, networked colonialism concentrates the working population into urban centers, and creates competition between service workers and the more valorized professional sector. Low income service workers are the losers in the contest, subject to wage exploitation, cost inflation for housing and basic needs, informal economies and ghetto-ization. The result could be seen as a “dual city”—a shining central district and a peripheral slum—as in Rio de Janeiro and the favelas. Approximately two-thirds of the world’s metropolitan population lives in mass poverty (Angotti, 1995) while the managerial technocratic political elite create exclusive spaces in city centers. Investments in city infrastructure continue to be concentrated in the center to serve the needs of global capital.

The result is cities made up of spatially coexisting but socially exclusive groups and functions that live in increasingly uneasy tension and defensive spaces, and identities being defined by the appropriation of space (Castells, 1993). In addition to the concentration of working poor in global cities, “those who are least integrated into modern society…are concentrating within the highest-density portions of the large metropolitan centers,” (Webber, 1968) disconnected from the capital/labor markets.

The costs of being a global city have not been examined in relation to the benefits. The benefits are that cities collect huge revenues from the global financial industry and the service complex that supports it. New York City tax revenues generated by Wall Street in 2006 were roughly $2 billion, but to put that in perspective, the City’s budget was $41 billion dollars in fiscal year 2007 (Budget Summary, Fiscal Year 2008). The costs to maintain the amenities of central business districts are high and include seemingly unrelated expenses like world-class cultural attractions and entertainment; heavy traffic and transportation needs including regional rail networks, highway systems, air travel, and the resulting congestion and wear; delinquency, property damage and an urban war of the disenfranchised; and the security requirements of a vulnerable infrastructure in the context of constant border crossings.

Policy and planning impact the equity of global cities through form, and planners can consider form with the goal of increasing equity and access to resources. The coordination of the global production process requires actual infrastructure, so transportation planning is needed for international airports and regional railways and highways. Regional transportation is particularly important as it provides a foundation for the growth of global support complexes as well as a diverse economic base for the metropolitan area. The concentration of communications infrastructure, built alongside transportation infrastructure, can be utilized by diverse economic nodes to support regional economic growth, development and competition.

Social services planning is urgently needed in migrant and low income populations in the cities. In addition, changing cultural norms are creating different demands for the delivery of services; for example childcare is as important as housing to utilize the workforce efficiently. The people who are disconnected from the global market and ghetto-ized in inner cities or suburbs need to be reconnected to the labor market through job training and workforce development. Planners can support social capital by protecting and expanding public space. Social capital is a key component for successful democratic dialog as well as the creative capital that gives cities a competitive edge.

Planning speaks to infrastructure and communities, but at the most common level planning is embodied in policy and law. Planners are well placed to engage the social and economic policies that support globalized trade by assessing and reporting on the local effects of these policies. In addition to informing policy making, planning is a function of local government, and local authorities have some power over the place-bound infrastructure of globalized markets.

Manual Castells argues that the effectiveness of political institutions, “will depend more on their capacity for negotiation and adaptation than on the amount of power that they command.” Planners are trained negotiators and are constantly challenged to adapt in situations where they command limited power; they could lead local governments in this new flexibility. Local governments should be able to connect with other municipalities and cooperate to ensure they are not being played one off of the other by global capital. Planners are already involved in regional coordination and could play a vital role in this endeavor.

Local societies and global capital must acknowledge their interdependence and enter into a new relationship. I think this is starting to happen, as corporate capitalists start to invest in equitable development. Michael Bloomberg is an example, he created a powerhouse of the networked age—Bloomberg LLP—an information service to support global capital. Now he is now earning $1 per year as the Mayor of New York City and trying to achieve some equity, meet social service needs in the City and develop human capital. To achieve these goals, local government must engage with communities in a democratic dialog to ensure representation at the table with capital and development interests. Citizen participation—on the basis of strong local communities that feed government information, submit demands and ensure the local government’s legitimacy—will be essential in managing the new urban contradictions (Castells, 1993).

Our identities and cities are no longer defined by territory, and so as planners, our attention to problems cannot be strictly local in nature. We need a vision to guide us of what we want from the global cities of the future.

When I lived in Williamsburg, I did some digging and uncovered a lot of trash in my garden. I re-use these found objects to craft installation art that toys with cultural tropes while engineering a balance between symbolic and material meaning. Seemingly whimsical juxtapositions illicit a wonderful sense of engagement, allowing time for the ideas and contradictions to sink in. My intention is to prompt people into unwitting dialog about American values and beliefs, our cultural memory. By presenting life as art, I effectively rewire the conversation to avoid the pitfalls of punditry--rancor, dishonesty, zealotry--and instead reflect on the here and now. I think it's important to consider the results of our current assumptions and imagine the possibilities if we change.

I've shifted my focus somewhat to focus on what it means for me as an artist and a professional to live in New York, so I thought it would be a good idea to get a Masters in Urban Planning. I'll be putting up some of my academic writings here and will start with this paper for my Intro to Urban Planning class: "The Failure of Planning for the 21st Century."

Following America’s victory in the Second World War, planning had to contend with unprecedented demographic and economic growth in America. After years of depression, war and lack of investment in infrastructure, industry was working double shifts to satisfy the growing American market for consumer goods. The doors of academia were flung open by the G.I. Bill to produce a new professional class. These modern men were promised fast cars and the freedom to zoom from their residential suburb to the city on a daily basis while climbing the corporate ladder.

The result of fifty years of post-war land use and transportation policies guided by this vision of individual mobility as modernity has generated profound challenges to American life in the 21st Century. Developers took advantage of generous Federal subsidies for highways and infrastructure to build extensive commuter neighborhoods on the urban fringe. The long-term effects have been traffic congestion, air pollution, costly infrastructure needs and a high-level of energy consumption, because the low densities of suburbs can’t support mass transit. Federal housing policies subsidized homogenous neighborhoods of expensive single-family housing—and with them racial and socio-economic segregation—by guaranteeing credit to home-buyers to move out of central cities. The municipal structure of planning authority was compartmentalized, leading to constant conflicts over high infrastructure costs, a lack of infrastructure, and inequitable distribution of Locally Undesirable Land Uses. (Downs, 1989)

Planners were developing and redeveloping huge areas in structural and cultural conditions that allowed them to disregard the consequences. Planners may have been successful in lowering density, but American planning failed to create the utopian cities they envisioned because the bureaucratic structure of planning authority at the municipal level did not account for long term or regional effects, and because the specialization of the field led to a cult of expertise and disengagement. As the cities decentralized and population moved to the fringe, city authorities were callously bulldozing through vibrant communities to make space for planners’ flawed craft.

Planning has always been a municipal affair, and Section 701 of the Housing Act of 1954 reinforced local authority by requiring that each municipality create a general plan to receive Federal housing subsidies. The general plan was meant to estimate future needs and advise local elected officials who retained control of the process. But there was confusion between the new requirement for a general plan and the entrenched practice of zoning (Godschalk and Kaiser, 2000). Planners were employed by municipalities primarily to administer zoning and zoning exemptions.

But zoning decisions can be made independently of a comprehensive plan. When elected officials sit down to make a decision or negotiate a plan, they are only responsible to the current citizens of their city, not future residents, and are not able to address issues that require regional solutions. For example, suburban zoning often excludes multi-family dwellings and exports development costs across jurisdictional borders (Meck, Wack and Zimet, 2000). Development planning, “is not a rational, linear process based on technical knowledge and a systematic balancing of public interests; rather it is a political process subject to influence, emotion, and interests that are not only narrow but also often transitory.” [emphasis mine] (Godschalk and Kaiser, 2000). A few states recognized the problems presented by localized development policies and subsequently restructured the planning process to take place on a statewide or regional level. But the majority of states have allowed planning to continue under municipal authority.

While the legal structure certainly had an impact on the success of planning, the profession also played an increasingly specialized role in the municipal bureaucracy lacking any connection to the various planning disciplines. As Jane Jacobs so viscerally put it, trying to explain how the city functions to experts with “fractionated” responsibility, “is like trying to eat through a pillow.” (Jacobs, 1961) Planners made decisions that affected thousands of people as well as the economic status of the city, but the profession retreated to the position of technical expertise that was protected by their municipal role. “It is impossible for [experts] to discard unfit tactics…if the alternative is to be left with confusion as to what to try instead and why.” (Jacobs, 1961)

For example, in the 1950s and 60s planners put their faith in mathematical models and a four-step process to represent current transportation behavior and project it into the future. Planners used the early computers to make computations based on the four-step model to predict travel demand and plan service improvements. But, “dependence on technical approaches can foster two false notions: first, that every … problem has one ‘correct’ solution; second, that … planning does not involve value judgments.” (Black and Rosenbloom, 2000) Under prolonged scrutiny, it became clear that the technical modeling used by planners to make decisions about traffic was based on assumptions that did not reflect the way travelers actually behave. Individual behavior varies according to a complex series of circumstances and is affected by incentives and disincentives, i.e. government policy.

Neither ordinary people nor elected politicians could understand how planners justified their projects. Planners, on the other hand, could easily dismiss objections as uninformed and unscientific (Black and Rosenbloom, 2000), and in the process failed to take into account people’s lived experience in cities and the value of social capital in their lives. Planners caused so much chaos and degradation of city life that it provoked a “highway revolt” of citizens who lobbied to re-orient the planning process to creating space for people instead of cars. When cities were faced with true crisis in the 1970’s planning finally started to change.

Oregon is an example of this change, following the 1973 Oregon Land Use Act, which requires that planning process begins at the state level. Land use in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, is determined by a democratically elected Metro Council that is responsible for growth management, transportation, land use planning, solid waste management, regional parks and green spaces, and technical services for the entire region surrounding the city of Portland. In order to limit sprawl and provide an incentive for gradual redevelopment of the central city, Portland’s Metro Council implemented an Urban Growth Boundary (Godschalk and Kaiser, 2000) and encouraged high-density development around public transportation. Portland is now regarded as one of the most vibrant growing cities in America, proving that planning authority can be successfully restructured to address the challenges facing us in the 21st Century.

A number of European cities have made ecological sustainability a primary objective, enabling various disciplines to work together and find synergies to “close the loop.” The structural differences between America and Europe are important to note. “Historically stronger planning and land use control systems are helpful, as well as generally stronger and more proactive roles afforded to [local] government.” (Beatley, 2003) Both structural and cultural differences in Europe led to sustainable cities before being extremely affected by the global climate crisis. European cities have more flexibility in the face of this challenge because they took the opportunity to invest in the infrastructure prior to the need for it.

While many American cities are ahead of Federal or State requirements to address sustainability issues, I don’t know if twenty years will be long enough to solve the twin problems of thinning suburbs and the aging infrastructure of growing cities. While technological advances will provide some solutions, planners should not solely rely on technical expertise. Planners should observe and study the innovations that well up from communities and be advocates for these solutions. As Web 2.0 changed journalism, politics and performance media, urban planning could be a site where community networks are able to access the power of the state.

pub-lic (pub'lik), adv. 1. of, belonging to, or concerning the people as a whole: public affairs. 2. done made, acting, etc., for the people as a while: public relief. 3. open to all the people: serving all of the people: a public park. 4. of or engaged in the affairs or service of the people: public official. 5. known to many or all: not private: the fact became public. 5. international: public law. ---n. 1. the people in general, all the people. 2. a particular section of the people; clientèle. 3. in public, not in private or secretly; openly. [populus the people]

Barnhardt, Clarence L., ed., Thorndike-Bardhart Comprehensive Desk Dictionary. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954.

posted by Jenny Walty  # 10:43 PM 0 Comments

This weekend the art world came to town and set up bazaars, so I went to the PULSE Art Fair to see if it was as impressive a show as it was last year. In short, no, but there was some impressive work, and several trends with legs. I saw a lot of messy painting and pop aesthetic.

There was also a lot of naked girls and porn art. I find the assumption of acceptability around these images offensive and think it exemplifies our cultural turn away from equality. Would you say f*** around an old lady? Sure you could, but it's disrespectful. Similarly, it is disrespectful to the 1/3 of the women in America who have been raped to sell sexual, violent, and/or exploitive images of women. I believe in freedom of expression but the market has a mechanism of cultural control built into it, and the open market is where self-censorship happens. I have no problem with the existence of niche markets and communities that "speak the language," but I do find the mainstream "trend" fundamentally regressive.

As a sculptor, I was drawn the intricate way artists are using materials. I saw some stand-out examples. This piece had a really nice undulating effect from the air currents in the room:


Devorah Sperber's work was a total revelation, transformational, spectacular! I didn't know that art could still have that effect on people. She has a show at the Brooklyn Museum from January 26–June 17, 2007.


Ivin Ballen's work at Winkelman Gallery was a great trick on the theme of materiality:

Most people walked by them thinking they were some kind of cardboard assemblage, but Ballen's wall sculptures are actually cast resin and fiberglass with a painted surface, totally archival. From far away they look like a silly mess (full disclosure-I walked by the first time as well) but have rich surfaces on close inspection, both washy and bold.

The best booth award goes to Virgil de Voldere Gallery. The booth featured DefaultProperties() by Brody Condon, a "self-playing video game," a contained but moving image that literally drew a huge crowd. It was weird but engaging.
After leaving Pulse we biked over to Fountain New York to see what our Williamsburg brethren had wrought, but sadly misunderstood the hours. The glipse through the windows looked fantastic! Marisa Olson had a great piece of her American Idol try-out, of which Patrick obtained a gold edition.
Is that you David Kesting? Rakish!

Labels: art

I was spied on by the government for political activity and it changed my ability to take "risks" as an activists. I highly recommend getting educated about the issue of privacy, this is a good opportunity:

Just Between You and Me -- and the NSA?
A Town Hall Meeting on Domestic Spying, NSA Surveillance and the Rule of Law

Get the word out about this important event! Click here to download the flyer! (PDF)

In 2001, President Bush issued a secret executive order authorizing warrantless electronic surveillance of people in the United States. In May 2006, the nation learned that the National Security Agency has been building a massive database of Americans' phone records.

A federal judge has already ruled the warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional. The Bush Administration claims that it has the inherent authority to continue it. Join the New York Civil Liberties Union and other co-sponsoring organizations for a free town hall meeting to discuss warrantless wiretapping and the threat it poses to civil liberties. Learn how you can take action to stop unconstitutional NSA spying and protect your rights to privacy and freedom of speech.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007
7.00pm
NYU School of Law
Lipton Hall (located in D'Agostino Hall)
110 West 3rd Street

Directions to NYU School of Law Campus
Map to Lipton Hall

Panelists and More Information

Protest Bush's "plan" tonight at 7:00 pm in Union Sq. or 6:00 PM at the Times Square Recruiting Station.

You can also call or write your representatives and urge them to oppose escalating this war. Make the phones ring off the hook at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

• Call the White House at 202-456-1111 and ask Bush to reconsider.
• Call your Congressional representatives at 1-800-828-0498 and ask them to sign on to Kennedy’s bill. Tell them you expect them to stop this latest effort of Bush’s.
• Send your Congressional representatives – daily (!!!) via this web-site.
• Sign on to the petitions that come in to your email in-box regarding this issue.
• Talk this up with co-workers, family & friends.
• Write a letter to the editor of your local paper(s) at this site.
• Publically protest the presidents policy tonight (INFO BELOW) and mobilize for the January 27 rally in DC on – more info can be found HERE (brought to you by United for Peace & Justice) and March 16th rally in DC to mark the 4th anniversary of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Info can be found HERE.

UFPJ-NY says NO MORE TROOPS - - Broadway & W. 43rd New York, NY
Directions: Subway: A,C,E,1,2,3,7,N,R,Q,W, to 42nd St./Times Square
Hosted by United for Peace and Justice

Say NO!! Nationwide Protests Today
TIME FOR A SURGE OF OPPOSITION TO BUSH'S WAR ESCALATION

Hard to believe, but in a primetime televised speech on Wednesday evening, President Bush announced his plans to send more troops into Iraq. We don't know for sure, but he could be planning to send at least 20,000 more troops, and the numbers could be even higher. Whatever the numbers are, the Bush administration is once again moving in the wrong direction. In November the voters elected a new Congress with a clear mandate: End this war! The people of this country want the war to end and we do NOT want more troops sent to Iraq. We need to act quickly and in large numbers to oppose this escalation. United for Peace and Justice has joined an effort initiated by Win Without War and True Majority to encourage as many local actions in communities all around the country this Thursday, the day after Bush announces his plans. We need to be visible and vocal. Our message must be heard by the White House and by the Congress. NO more troops, end this war now!