urbanter

Last Friday Gerad blogged about the challenges inherent to interdisciplinary programs. The Urban Studies program deals with an issue rather than a discipline, and it is often difficult to fit professors trained and classes developed within a narrow discipline to encompass the major’s range of interests.  This Friday, however, I would like to provide an example of an interdisciplinary forum that reinforces the need for the collaborative format. The forum, “The Sustainable Transportation Seminar on Systems and Policies” is not an official subset of the Urban Studies major, but is extremely relevant to theissue we study.  The seminar is hosted by MS&E (a fellow interdisciplinary program) and is open to the public every Friday from 2:30 to 4 in Y2E2 RM101.

During the first meeting, we all introduced our area of work or study.  The breadth was astounding from professors in civil engineering, to members of the Stanford Energy Club, to director of Stanford’s P&TS, to graduates at the law school. Every meeting features a different presenter, who is usually the world’s leading expert in his or her niche of sustainable transportation, followed by at least an hour of informal question and answer.  I say niche, because while these people are experts about their topic it would virtually impossible to know all there is to know about the interdisciplinary issueof sustainable transportation.  Without fail, the question and answer period has supplied the group and, more importantly, the presenter with a fresh perspective on the day’s topic.  Someone from another discipline predictably offers up a comment to which the presenter responds, “I hadn’t thought of that. I’m excited to run through my tests again with that adjustment in mind.”  You may think that world experts (and they truly are) should have thought of everything.  This puzzled me after the first couple seminars, until I realize that a majority of the academic world operates in disciplinary spheres, which rarely overlap.  This seminar is special…Urban Studies and the other IDS on campus are rare.  I wasn’t aware that urban studies was something I could take for granted, but after witnessing the excitement in the seminar interactions, I see my mistake.

Today’s seminar (5/13) was a bit more action packed than normal and solidified my appreciation for the interdisciplinary aspect.  The group of us met at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (the CARS lab) for a presentation on GM’s new Chevy Volt.  We were greeted by opening remarks from former Secretary of State and Secretary of Treasury, George Shultz. What does he have to do with the Chevy Volt? Well, nothing directly although he was on the Board of Directors at GM during the 70’s (man, this guy’s got a packed résumé).  He was really there for the same reasons that everyone else came to the presentation—sustainable transportation is just as much an engineering issue as it is a political issue, as it is a social issue, as it is a economic issue and so on. I’m beginning to see that some issues require great minds that don’tthink alike.     

~Taylor McAdam

Via SF Streetsblog:

“You see a vision right in front of your door,” Mayor Lee told an audience of residents and agency officials who collaborated on the project. “A vision that’s going to bring about slowing the traffic, trees, permeable landscaping - all kinds of things that you see other neighborhoods get.”

Read the full story here.

- Elizabeth Titus

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Image: Newcomb Avenue conceptual plan diagram, via SF Streetsblog (PDF)

It turns out that we here in the Bay Area will witness an incredible transformation in land use and transportation over the next two years.  The 34^th America’s Cup, the prestigious international yacht race, and associated regattas are to be held in San Francisco between July and September of 2013.  Confirmed in December 2010, the city has just released its People Plan, which describes the transportation strategies they plan on implementing to accommodate for the 20,000 daily visitors they expect at the event. They plan to augment service along key bus, cable car, and rail lines as well as create secure bike parking. This will be a key event to showcase the effectiveness of the Bay Area Regional Bicycle Sharing Pilot Program, a project that a group of students in Urban Studies 164 (Sustainable Cities) is actively working on for the Redwood City component, and is set to launch in spring of 2012.

One interesting component will be the larger-scale launch of their SFpark program (which is currently in its pilot phase). This smartphone application and web interface will show real-time updates for the 25,000 parking spaces in 20 City-owned parking garages. SFpark also has the capability to set demand-based pricing to encourage drivers to go to underused lots.  They are looking into the possibility of incorporating other real-time data, like the number of spectators at the event, so that visitors can make informed travel decisions based on congestion.

This is an impressive effort on the city’s part to incorporate technology in the digital age. SFpark plans to provide its data to application developers, companies like Google and vehicle navigation systems so that it can be easily distributed. It will give drivers the ability to make real cost-benefit analyses when choosing to drive, walk, or take transit, and will endure far beyond the America’s Cup.  Even implementing the best and most efficient transportation infrastructure will not allow the Bay Area to meet its 2035 greenhouse gas emissions target as defined by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Demand pricing is a key component to behavior change, which will contribute to further reductions.  Transportation change facilitated by technology will appeal to an ever-wider public—because of its cool factor and convenience—and serve as a model for other cities overhauling their transportation systems. 

VIDEO

Finding myself with some free time this past weekend, I ended up on Netflix browsing recommendations for my instant viewing pleasure. The very first result was “Brick City,” billed as a 2009 documentary series about Newark, NJ, with a Netflix synopsis that reads “a sort of nonfiction companion to HBO’s crime drama The Wire.” Considering I had heard of Newark mayor (and Stanford alum) Corey Booker from his dealings with Mark Zuckerberg last year, I clicked play. The video above is the first 10 minutes of said episode. 

While the show is undoubtedly dramatized - with shots of old, white policemen laced with hip-hop beats - it does a great job of documenting the intricacies of municipal governance in a city with real problems. For those of us interested in equitable community development, there is no better in-progress case study than that of Newark. A show like this makes clear the delicate nature of progress: in the first episode, a shooting threatens to derail months of progress in the crime-ridden city. It also underscores the reality that the things we care about, the areas in which of us feels our cities can improve - whether it be affordable housing, crime, education, etc. - are intricately linked. Working towards a more equitable world requires the coordination of holistic action by the key players in municipal governance - local governments, nonprofits and individual community leaders.

These were my ruminations from watching the first episode of the series. I am sure I will find a way to plug through the rest of the series - all of which is on Netflix streaming, by the way - this week. I’ll keep you posted. 

This week, I want to take a look at the program like Keith did in his post about intelligent cities.

One of the challenges the Program on Urban Studies faces, as an interdisciplinary program, is the lack of a dedicated faculty.  On the one hand, this means that students are allowed to take courses that relate to urban issues in any program.  On the other, this means that the program has little influence on what courses are actually taught at the university, and, more importantly, the direction in which the program trends.

Unfortunately, this problem is endemic to the way universities are structured.  Rather than organizing around “problems” (which, by nature have interdisciplinary solutions), universities organize around disciplines, like sociology, anthropology, economics, political science (all of which urban studies utilizes), which develop paradigmatic thinking that limit perspective.  Problematically, these have been entrenched into the way each scholar new to the discipline approaches his or her interests—after all, endearing oneself to a mentor is perhaps the best way into a doctorate program.

At our annual retreat on Wednesday, Professor Rosenfeld stressed the difficulties involved with recruiting an established professor to teach courses for the program, not to mention the difficulties involved in shaping that professor’s syllabus!  Instead, he argued, it has been, is, and will probably continue to be easier to attract a post-doc who needs to build his or her résumé, and will then, of course, pursue an assistant, associate, or full professorship in a discipline that has the resources to make the addition.

I don’t think the inclusion of intelligent cities curriculum in the major is necessarily a choice that the Stanford University Program on Urban Studies can currently make.  It is rather, President Hennessy’s choice to expand the resources available to interdisciplinary programs that are already contributing to the solutions of the world’s problems.  Then the Program on Urban Studies can make its choice.

-Gerad Hanono

More on the mobile front: “Gigwalk pays iPhone users to snap photos, verify addresses and other odd jobs.” Says the co-founder:

People from other companies would always complain about how hard and expensive and time consuming it is to collect localized data … it just seemed like it made so much sense that people are out there and have smartphones and they can get the local data for you. It seemed like a real big opportunity here.

The “real big opportunity” is, of course, to monetize: businesses pay Gigwalk for data about the urban landscape, which Gigwalk in turn pays users - people with iPhones in their pockets - to collect. The company reportedly has raised about $1.7 million and is operating in seven U.S. metro areas.

That “local intelligence” has value is not new. In the Bay Area, I have watched with interest The Bold Italic, which celebrates such intelligence gathering to a distinctly artistic tune. News startup The Bay Citizen dubs some of its coverage “local intelligence” (one of the latest: “Be Love Farm, Vacaville”).

But this app is about data - specialized data, cold, hard and specific, with a price tag.  To me, it represents the larger changes underfoot in the way we experience cities in a digital age. The makers expect that these data are valuable - an expectation that, I think, drives concerns elsewhere about mobile privacy. Also nagging is the question of whether experiencing the city while “resist[ing] the urge to hang out with your cellphone” - through “unfettered eyes,” in Taylor McAdam’s words - will ever be as rich again.

- Elizabeth Titus

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Photo: Screenshot via gigwalk.com

Via Stanford Anthropology:

What: “Ecumenical Maps and Sectarian Mosques in Islamabad” with Matthew Hull of the University of Michigan

When: Monday, May 9, 3:15-5 p.m.

Where: Building 50, Room 51A

Description:

The Islamization program of the Pakistan state in the late 1970s generated new demands for mosques and conflict over their sectarian allocation in Islamabad. City planning map shave played a central role in this process, shaping sectarian claims against the government for mosques and facilitating the takeover of land. The use of maps to thwart government planning and administrative policies on the provision of mosques shows the political ambiguities of governance technologies like maps that are treated purely as instruments of state control. The role of maps in this context also highlights the importance of maps as material artifacts.

- Elizabeth Titus

On Saturday I attended the 2011 Stanford Black Law Student Association’s Conference called The Evolving City.  The morning session consisted of a presentation on the revitalization of the Hunters Point Shipyard which struck me as a vision for economic development that stands in contrast to the situation Gerad described earlier this week.  While he mentioned that Chile’s increasing prosperity has replaced historical buildings with world-class skyscrapers and shopping malls, the Hunters Point plan promises to pay homage to its cultural roots.  Kofi Bonner, Regional Vice President of Lennar Urban, the developer of the community’s master plan, highlighted their commitment to current residents by rebuilding of Alice Griffith Public Housing with no displacement of current residents, making 32 percent of its housing below-market rate, and incorporating an international-themed African Marketplace.

But how much of the final plan will actually benefit the residents?  Lennar is negotiating with the 49ers, who are considering a stadium site in the master plan. Current designs also include over 3 million square feet of R&D space targeting green-tech and clean-tech businesses.  The $1 billion for transportation and public infrastructure will certainly Hunters Point residents much needed access to other parts of the city, but it will also make it more feasible of a location for the city’s ever-expanding white-collar population.  But in the end, might gentrification be a good thing for the neighborhood, to some extent? This is the problem that seems to plague planners, community organizers, developers, and politicians alike. This project stands a better chance than most in protecting current residents, as far as I can tell, because of the incredible involvement from the Citizens Advisory Committee spearheaded by Veronica Hunnicutt, one of the panelists. In all, the project seems to be well-implemented and planned.

What also impressed me was the level of cooperation between groups that seem to have inherent tension: community, military, and development.  With one representative from each sector, the panelists walked through Hunters Point’s story as a military base, industrial shipping area, and opportunity site for the current project. Lennar has provided for an astounding number of community benefits including workforce development, scholarship funds, and homeownership assistance.  

Continue here to view the urban design plans for the Candlestick Park (stadium) alternative and learn more about the project.