I just saw a great documentary by Sanjay Kak, called Words on Water (2003).  It focuses on longstanding resistance to the construction of giant dams in India’s Narmada Valley. The footage is captivating,  including a scene in which Arundhati Roy is arrested and taken to jail in an SUV owned by a dam construction company. In another scene, James Wolfensohn (during his tenure as president of the World Bank) talks through a chain-link fence to a crowd of protesters. I found the activists very inspiring, although I know there are other ways of viewing this conflict. There must be a way to safeguard against abuses of power, and I think it starts with this kind of organized community action.

Credits: Image of a scene in Words on Water from magiclanternfoundation.org.

[Originally posted to Where] Aesthetics seem completely subjective. Although some people have similar tastes (based partially on shared experience?), variation is more the rule. So when it comes to the look of common spaces, attempting to please everyone may not be the best approach.

Quality might be a better standard. By quality I’m thinking of things like healthy environments, strong materials, ease of use, sound construction, and responsiveness to changing needs. Maybe quality can be attended to by governing bodies, but the direction must come from those who live in an area.

Shared space reveals distinct and often conflicting values. There are many who aren’t concerned with the quality of urban settings. They may be more interested in maximizing profits, or just surviving from day to day. At the same time, they may have a high degree of influence over the way cities take shape. This combination often leads to inhospitable environments.

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[Originally posted to Where] Does it matter how a city or neighborhood looks? Many would say it does, though much less than, say, health or safety. So if it matters to some extent, what makes a place visually attractive? Are there any common characteristics, or is it only in the eye of the beholder?

Maybe “looks” is the wrong word. How about the way a place feels? This would include all the senses — the different variables that make an area appealing. Of course, people have unique tastes and I don’t know if there are any qualities loved by everyone. However, there are places generally considered attractive. They are usually in wealthier districts, but should extend to poorer communities as well. If we work towards achieving this throughout our cities, without displacing low-income groups, we might look back some day and wonder how we ever lived in some of the neglected areas we know today.

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The Municipal Art Society of New York has sponsored an exhibition titled “Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York” at the Urban Center in Manhattan. It focuses on Jacobs’s life, work, and enduring influence on civic activism. The accompanying website contains pictures, multimedia, and a great deal of information from the exhibition.

Exhibition website, includes an interactive map, videos, and podcasts:
http://www.futureofny.org/multimedia

Related article, a different perspective on the Jacobs legacy:
Outgrowing Jane Jacobs and Her New York by Nicolai Ouroussoff of the NY Times

The Pacific Institute is doing exceptional work in environmental conservation and sustainable development. They are currently cosponsoring a lecture series on water conservation with the Commonwealth Club of Northern California.

Quoted: The Pacific Institute is dedicated to protecting our natural world, encouraging sustainable development, and improving global security. Founded in 1987 and based in Oakland, California, we provide independent research and policy analysis on issues at the intersection of development, environment, and security. Our aim is to find real-world solutions to problems like water shortages, habitat destruction, global warming, and environmental injustice. We conduct research, publish reports, recommend solutions, and work with decision makers, advocacy groups, and the public to change policy.

Muhammad Yunus details his experience developing practical solutions to extreme poverty in Bangladesh and throughout the world. A very inspiring book.

Photo appears on Muhammad Yunus’s Banker to the Poor website.

Jane Jacobs’s observations on city neighborhoods are so insightful, including her early advocacy of mixed-use communities where people can live, work, walk, and shop at viable local businesses. She is critical of modernist planning that placed low-income people in “projects” and uprooted urban neighborhoods in favor of highways and sterile civic spaces. Her ideas on the benefits of local economies, population density, and decreased reliance on automobiles are very well aligned with sustainable development and environmental conservation.

Synopsis from Powells Books: A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century. The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy. Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs’s monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.

Photo credit: things magazine

Sustainable South Bronx was founded by Majora Carter of Hunts Point. SSB addresses issues of land-use, energy, transportation, water/waste policy, and education in order to advance the environmental and economic rebirth of the South Bronx and other urban areas around the world. The pictures above show “before and after” plans for the South Bronx Greenway, courtesy of SSB.