(Photos are of potential mixed use buildings one block from my {potentially} mixed use building)
Ian Rasmussen is not the enemy, but he is the target; the target audience for Rational Urbanism. Here’s a guy, a married guy, who loves city living, he loves the train, he loves great architecture, and the urban lifestyle, he’s on the board of Strongtowns, for goodness sake…he just needs to find that special place. New York City is out for financial reasons, but he’s looking for a place with a commute, by train, of under 40 minutes to Manhattan in a walkable/bike-able environment.
I was especially excited about Housing Week at Strongtowns not least because I knew a piece of mine about how concentrated poverty looks was going to appear on Thursday and I love it when I have such a great opportunity to reach a wider audience. I listened to every podcast last week, but I listened to Ian’s at least twice. It was great. Keep in mind that an earlier podcast with Ian had inspired my wife and me to use Amazon Prime and Peapod which enabled us to get rid of our second car, a pickup, which we gave to a local, organic farmer, which was the start of our investing in that farm owned by a former student of mine. Now, with my daughter and her husband in the market for a new place (Oh, update, Taylor took the job at the “urban medical center”) and my daughter enamored of the idea of doing something live/worky with her art; Ian to the rescue once again: no dry cleaners, and beware the financing!
Then came the amazing, revelatory podcast with Daniel Kay Hertz. I’ve only been blogging for four years, but I’ve been amateur urbanist-ing for going on thirty and it’s rare that something completely new comes to my attention. Such was the case with Chuck Marohn, Strongtowns, and the math behind the suburban Ponzi scheme, and such is the case with Daniel Hertz’s mention of Robert Sampson and his studies surrounding neighborhood stigma. As lived experience I knew that, in the case of my own hometown, the biggest obstacle to revitalization we face is the negative perception people have about us, that wasn’t new; half of the essays on my blog are dedicated to fighting it. What was new to me was that a sociologist working at Harvard had published studies confirming its importance.
I listened to that pod three times and got an email from another great urbanist, Seth Zeren, pointing me to an essay by Daniel Hertz on the topic of neighborhood stigma. And then it hit me. As illustrative of the difficulties of obtaining financing for a mixed use dwelling as Ian’s podcast had been, right from the off he had completely rejected the idea of actually helping to make a Strong Town; he was willing to move to a Town which was Strong already, sure, but Dobbs Ferry didn’t need him and Port Washington doesn’t need him. That mixed use building on Main Street in that overwhelmingly rich, overwhelmingly white community will continue to be used, and will continue to be lived in, and moving into a single family home in a community where median family incomes hover in the six figures and homes regularly sell for over a million dollars is hardly the stuff of transformation.
When he added the caveat that his new neighborhood needed to have, ahem, “good schools”, he made his parameters clear: wealth. Anyone who studies schools and outcomes knows that outcomes are controlled, in the statistical sense, by parental income. People use “good school” and “bad school” colloquially to mean either a school with high test scores and low drop out rates on the one hand, or low test scores and high drop out rates on the other, but serious consideration of educational quality requires an understanding of the underlying demographics and how a given school or school system “over performs” or “under performs” relative to those demographics. Anyplace with, ahem, “good schools” already has rich people. If it’s walkable as well you’re pretty much already there.
Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t at all hypocritical. Ian wants to live in a walkable environment, well served by transit, with good bones, fine architecture, and charm. Those are all qualities any Strong Town should aspire to, and which too few communities possess. He didn’t move to an auto-centric stroad-heavy suburb or exurb, but as steeped as he is in Strongtowns culture I wonder if he ever considered Yonkers, or White Plains, or New Rochelle? Imagine New Haven, or Bridgeport with an Ian Rasmussen and family in its quiver! Those are places ripe for the transformation Strongtowns wants to create, and with mixed use real estate, I have a feeling, Ian could manage to buy without too much worry about financing.
How much hope is there when, quite literally our best and brightest, our best and brightest with a bullet, and with a love of urbanism, and on the board of directors of Strongtowns is considering a transformative move and the very first thing he does is reject the idea of being part of the transformation of America’s struggling legacy cities?
There are perhaps four currents of Strongtowns: The first, and easiest, is keeping the few places in this country which are already strong, strong; next is making sure that any new places that are built conform to Strongtowns’ principles; third, and least promising, is taking portions of the car-centered American automobile slum and making them sustainable; and finally, the real need, the real hope, and, according to no less experts than Ian Rasmussen and Chuck Marohn, the area where the greatest transformation can be achieved, the reactivation of America’s forgotten traditional core cities and towns. And if Ian Rasmussen won’t do it, who will?
You ask “if Ian won’t do it who will?” The answer might have to be: people who don’t make as much money as he does. I know you are a living example of a middle class person moving into a poor neighborhood, but his income is presumably way higher than yours, and part of the reason you are so upbeat about your situation is that it seems like a great deal. The more money you have, the less that great deal means… I think? Anyway, at Strong Towns, people always talk about “incrementalism,” and that is a useful concept here too, maybe, in lots of ways. Thanks for the interesting post, as always.
Absolutely, a bit more in income can mean one doesn’t need to compromise! Thanks for the kinds words.
(technical feedback: I like the new sire template, and it looks great on mobile devices and the RSS anchors work just fine now. However, posts are appearing without titles on their header or anywhere else)
As for who will move to places and change with some promising background infrastructure in place and change them for the better, my bet would be on those for whom the downsides mean less in face of the impact of (mostly) financial marginal improvements. Your daughter’s situation description is probably a good fit – someone starting out living as a couple, independently. I think the cycle is more established and better described in relate to urban-core gentrification, maybe it’s time for Richard Florida to formulate some explanatory models for smaller urban agglomerations as well?
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I do agree with most of your arguments about school quality being often a proxy for social, economic and educational background of students’ families much more than for quality of instruction. Nonetheless, I’d like to read, sometime, your thoughts on non-academic environment factors also associated “lower quality” schools, such as more serious forms of student-on-student violence, too-close-to-comfort proximity with students whose immediate relatives are involved on dangerous activities (drug dealing, gangs), and peer effects of all of that on more impressionable middle and high schoolers.
Listen to my podcasts with Xela. You’ve hit the nail on the head; it’s not in the academic realm, but in the social that urban schools are particularly difficult.
Dobbs Ferry desperately needed Ian Rasmussen. His buying and renovating 121 Main Street was the key to a renaissance. We have stumbled forward without him, but each of the other projects has suffered in terms of ease of entitlement because Ian decided to turn his back on Dobbs Ferry’s Main Street. If we cannot get Ian Rasmussens interested in living here, I fear all is lost.
I can see your perspective, but compared to my hometown, or Bridgeport, or (the list goes on) Dobbs Ferry looks like a mix of Mayberry and Beverly Hills. I am sad that the DF plan didn’t work for Ian, seemed (seems)like an awesome place to raise a family!
Understood. Springfield, Bridgeport, Portchester – these are places with larger populations and the problems tend to be larger, but the issues tend to be the same. One of the reasons that Dobbs needed Ian is that it is a diverse community with people that are struggling financially, as well as people who have resources. It is a compact, complete, and complex place with a high degree of connectivity promoting a convivial community – but it is fragile and it is teetering on a delicate balance. If the right decision are made over the next five years, it bodes well for a sustainable future. At the moment, we are suffering the NIMBY backlash to having adopted a new zoning ordinance in 2010 that makes bad development difficult, but promotes good development. Now that there are things actually getting approved and built, people afraid of change and freaking out. We needed Ian in Dobbs Ferry. But I can easily understand how he could have helped Portchester, Bridgeport, and Springfield, too. Unfortunately, we all lost him to Port Washington.
Well said.
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