Urban 2001 Fall - The Globalization Issue by Columbia University - Historic Preservation & Urban Planning

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY URBAN PLANNING PROGRAM NEWSLETTER

The Globalization Issue

vOL.5 + nO.1 + fALL 2001

911: “Either You’re with Us or You’re Against Us.”

FELLOW PLANNERS, The unforgivable tragedy of September 11th has clearly impacted the world at many levels. Individuals from all over the globe have been killed. The families they have left behind grieve. New York has lost one of the greatest expressions of its excess and power. New Yorkers’ lives will continue to be disrupted by fears, limited transportation access, and security measures. The United States has gone to war with an almost invisible enemy. The international order is polarizing into pro- and anti-American alliances, even as past US foreign policy decisions are being questioned.

Table of Contents

From ReBuilding Towards Transformation [jULIE bEHRENS + jENNIFER sUN]

Planning is also being altered by this event. We must question the relative value of concentrating human and physical capital in high-density developments. We must determine if a new balance between business travel and telecommunications will be struck that requires a reallocation of municipal resources and land use.

Thoughts on Planning after the Disaster [pROFESSORS + sTUDENT]

Build? Yes! Rebuild? No! [tED bARDACKE][

The Need for Urban Governance: How Will Clustering Occur Now? [mARIA pAMOUKIAN]

Gentrifying Sex [nICK sALAS]

Floating in China [pUI sI nATALIE hON]

Hypermarkets and Changing Land Use in Budapest and Surroundings [mARY bEATON]

Planner Interview— Kamil Khan Mumtaz [hUMA dAHA]

The Roof of the World is Collapsing: Hazard Mitigation Internship in Nepal [jULIE bEHRENS]

Trading Places with Asia [jAY sHUFFIELD]

URBAN STAFF

Kinne Report: Greece [cARA mCaTEER]

mYRNA iTON + cUZ pOTTER [eDITORS]

Urban Planning Students [bRENDA cHO]

Kinne Report: 2000 Miles of Texas and Mexico [aDAM wOLFF]

This issue of URBAN looks at some of these questions in the global planning context. We also present the thoughts of some members of the Urban Planning Program’s faculty and student body on how the tragedy is affecting New York and planning in New York. The disaster could also be construed as an attack on global capital, which brings this localized event into the global realm… and within the original scope of this issue: Globalization. A handful of other interesting articles consider sex and globalization, international migration within China, and the incompatible patterning of hypermarkets in Hungary. We have rounded out this issue with an interview of a Pakistani planner and introductions to our international student body. Stay safe and plan ahead.

cUZ + mYRNA

lISA fISHER [aRT dIRECTOR]

hUMA dAHA

jULIE bEHRENS

dAVE kANTOR

bRENDA cHO

jENNIFER sUN

Next Issue: Localization

Cover images: “Cities and Surpluses in Developing Countries,” a summary of Friedmann’s core-periphery model [Friedmann, 1966]. “Global Network of Cities” [adapted from Friedmann, 1995] from The City in the Developing World, Potter and Lloyd-Evans, 2000.

From ReBuilding Towards Transformation jULIE bEHRENS + jENNIFER sUN As the world tries to come to grips with September 11 and the subsequent events following that fateful day, the immense significance of the situation has slowly begun to sink in. The attack on the World Trade Center was no mere blip on the radar screen. And while it is still too early to comprehend the enormity of these events, there is no doubt that the consequences will be both deep and far reaching. The fall of the Twin Towers marked the end of the world as we know it. Only time will tell how much the events surrounding the World Trade Center attack will alter the course of history in the world, but in New York, we know already that physically, socially and spiritually things will never again be quite the same. Still rubbing the dust from its eyes, even before the smoldering wreckage has been cleared from the site, this forward-looking city has begun to speculate about the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan.

New York is a global city. One can even argue that it belongs more to the world than to the United States. Indeed to many in the world, New York is America. The attacks on the World Trade Center are so central because of the symbolic and very real importance of New York City in the world. But New York City is local as well. The big deals and bigger money get made here, but at the same time 8 million people call this high-powered place home. And the vast majority have very little to do with the high powered financial negotiations happening on Wall Street. We go to work or to school, we do our grocery shopping, pick up the dry cleaning, go out to dinner, have lunch in the park, ride the train, and take the bus. New Yorkers need affordable housing, good jobs, efficient transportation, office space, decent schools, hospitals, and safe streets. And precisely because New York exists at these two levels—the global and the local—and because the disaster that now drives the need to rebuild Lower Manhattan was hugely significant on all fronts, there is an opportunity to transform New York City into a global city that is planned by democratic, participatory processes and built on an integration of international functions with diverse, local needs.

HOW MIGHT NEW YORK REBUILD? Suggestions have been made across the board from the very concrete, to the highly conceptual. Barbara Krueger, an artist based in New York City, says, “I would like to have the World Trade Center site as a park, a beautifully landscaped park with an amphitheater for concerts…” Bernard Tshumi, Dean of Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation offers, “Of course one has to rebuild, bigger and better. There should be offices and a mix of activities, both cultural and business. Yes, there should be a place to mourn, but that shouldn’t be the main thing. It must be a place looking into the future, not the past.” While there will certainly be a memorial of some type incorporated into the project, there are larger questions at hand. Beyond the symbolic significance of Wall Street and the skyscraper, New York has to decide upon a vision for rebuilding Lower Manhattan, both as a global city—a symbol of strength, wealth, power; and the local city—one where the needs of New Yorkers must be met. Can the city balance local needs with the desire to make a political statement through the rebuilding of New York City? At the two ends of the spectrum, New York can either try to recapture its largely lost or displaced financial sector, bringing them back to their former home in Lower Manhattan, or they can choose to diversify the area to accommodate some of the pressing local concerns like affordable housing, improved transportation access, and office space. Though to the outside world, the Twin Towers were the ultimate symbol of wealth in America, the Financial District in which they stood has been in a steady decline for close to two decades. The World Trade Center itself was difficult to rent and was in the process of being sold at the time of the tragedy. Since the mid-’80s, there has been a steady exodus of financial firms from lower Manhattan into other spaces on the island or to outlying parts of the New York metro region. Swiss Bank in Stamford, Connecticut and Morgan Stanley in Jersey City, NJ are but two examples of important firms

From ReBuilding Towards Transformation [ continued ] that have relocated outside of Manhattan. Most back offices, and an increasing number of headquarters, have migrated. In response, three consecutive New York City Mayoral administrations have handed out obscene amounts of money in direct cash, free land and tax abatements in an attempt to keep the financial sector in town. Some of the more notable were the $900 million dollar deal struck in 1998 with the New York Stock Exchange to prevent it from packing up and moving to New Jersey. Dinkins doled out $255 million to keep Bear Stearns and Prudential, and Guiliani continued the tradition with $122.3 million to eight insurance companies, among other similar deals. Presumably, these resources would be better served by maximizing the locational advantages and amenities of New York City that maintain its competitiveness, such as transportation, schools and affordable housing. It may no longer be acceptable, nor sustainable, for the city to expend huge amounts of resources to try and lure a hesitant financial industry back downtown when there are so many other needs pressing down upon the city. But defenders of the tax abatement strategy claim that the tax revenue and prestige generated by the finance industry is still worth spending the money on. H. Claude Shostal, president of the Regional Plan Association says, “People use the phrase Wall Street around the world. It’s a brand name and a marketing image. It’s Coca-Cola, it’s Scotch tape.” Obviously the image is important enough for the city to spend millions maintaining.

kind of place for commerce and residents to thrive. Will lower Manhattan be rebuilt, or should it be transformed, built as another sort of place—still powerful, still significant—but at the same time more representative of New York as a 21st Century global city. What price are we willing to pay for symbolism and branding? Or is it still more than that? The process by which these questions are discussed and decisions made is an integral component of the rebuilding strategy, yet it may be given short shrift by public officials determined to produce immediate and impressive results. The World Trade Center did not belong to the city or to the financial community exclusively. Not only did financial consultants work there, but artists and low-wage, immigrant cooks, janitors, and maintenance workers as well. The rebuilding of

So as New York begins the visioning process for rebuilding what has been destroyed, we have to consider the context of Lower Manhattan pre-September 11th. It will be at least 3-5 years before Manhattan can offer them a new home. How many resources will be expended to draw in a sector that was leaving even before the attacks, and how much does it matter if they are located in Lower Manhattan or Jersey City? Many argue however that it very much matters, and that maintaining the former status of Lower Manhattan as the financial center of the globe is critical if New York is to move forward. To rebuild the same, and even bigger, is a sign of victory, that we have survived and that we will not let terrorism alter our way of life. Wall Street, the World Trade Center, and Manhattan in general are seen as one of the most powerful and important financial centers on earth. It is worth maintaining that place even at a high cost. If Manhattan does not return to business as usual in the same location, it could be perceived as admitting defeat, that things are not the same. Yet most everyone has already admitted that things will never be quite the same following September 11, 2001. And though the towers came crashing down on that fateful Tuesday morning, the financial industry did not. The markets paused, they are weaker, but they did not stop. Bruised and battered perhaps, the players regrouped, found another physical space in which to operate, and activities continued. Technology now allows markets to continue to function even when a huge spatial concentration of the industry is suddenly displaced or lost. So it becomes a question of whether New York will try to recapture what has been lost, and what it was losing even before the attacks last month, or if it will instead take this opportunity to envision another

Lower Manhattan will determine the opportunities and livelihoods of thousands of residents in the metropolitan region, yet the only role that public officials have designated to the public is to decide how the victims and survivors should be memorialized. The tasks of physical reconstruction and economic development, on the other hand, are being entrusted with public officials and private developers. They are the ones who are being designated, implicitly, the “experts” and endowed with extraordinary powers. There is no reconstruction authority yet, but both Democratic mayoral candidates have proposed the creation of a super-agency that brings together city, state, and federal officials with the private sector to rebuild office space with minimal community and environmental review. While keeping businesses in the City may be crucial for maintaining economic health, circumventing review processes may incur higher social costs. Already, providing assistance to small business owners and low-wage workers has been relegated to the sidelines of the rebuilding discussion, even though they are crucial to the long-term health and stability of the city’s economy. Residents must have a more substantive role in the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. The city has multiple uses, and it depends on the informal economy to fully function. Its definition, therefore, cannot be determined by market needs alone. The rebuilding process

needs to be open, democratic and inclusive. Taking the time to promote civic dialogue and participation will be crucial for addressing economic stratification, providing opportunities for all, and building on the spirit of community as the foundation for a vibrant, diverse, and safe city. Real security is created through democratic process, political empowerment and civic participation. Engaging residents in the visioning and decision-making processes for rebuilding Lower Manhattan would cultivate a sense of personal investment and responsibility to help each other, and the city, recover. Since the tragedy, the most profound affirmations of humanity have come from conversations and random acts of kindness between people across racial lines. A community of shared vulnerability, grief, and humanity has emerged from the tragedy, transcending the physical, class, and racial boundaries by which community has been defined typically. A participatory process would carry this deeper recognition of our interconnectedness forward and build upon the collective spirit, cooperation, and diversity of local residents. Public officials, however, are looking to proposals that would increase security by increasing border controls, restricting immiSite plan for the original World gration, combining crime control Trade Center [left] with anti-terrorism in local police forces, installing surveillance cameras, and reducing access to public spaces. Since the war against terrorism will be a protracted and indefinite one, it is unlikely that new security measures will be temporary. Rather, they may solidify into permanent features of urban life and landscape. Britain’s response to terrorism in the early 1990s offers insights into what our future may look like should we choose to rely on technology and physical boundaries to increase the safety of our cities. A network of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras mounted in London after two terrorist bombs exploded in the financial district have multiplied into multiple systems and more than 2.5 million surveillance cameras throughout the U.K. Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Center [above]

Beyond the sheer proliferation of surveillance cameras throughout the country, the use of CCTV has expanded from fighting terrorism to day-to-day surveillance, policing, and racial profiling. “Operators… tend to focus on young men, especially those with dark skin… In Hull and elsewhere, rather than eliminating prejudicial surveillance and racial profiling, CCTV surveillance has tended to amplify it.”1 While surveillance and increased police presence may be implemented with the intention of increasing the safety of residents, these measures, in practice, may create a culture of distrust and deepen social divisions. Racial profiling has already been extended from blacks and Latinos to include Arabs, South Asians, Muslims, and Sikhs. The racial hierarchy has become even more complex with the additional dimensions of ethnicity and religion; further polarization between communities, then, would be likely—not peace.

An alternative strategy for creating safety in our cities is to promote the diversity of its people and the vitality of city streets and public spaces. It is the dynamic, spontaneous, and open social interaction that occurs in these intersections of urban fabric that have contributed to the revitalization of New York City. They are its most valuable assets. “Real community… is bred in cities more strongly than suburbs. The street as a site of interaction, encounter, and the support of strangers for each other; the square as a place of gathering and vigil… These spaces, without romanticism or nostalgia, still define an urban culture, one that resists all efforts to ‘secure’ it out of existence.”2 Not only do public spaces build community, but they also have a significant role in the political discourse and actions that are required by a democratic society. In the days and weeks immediately following the tragedy, Union Square Park became a gathering place for collective mourning, as well as for expressing doubts, concerns, and dissent with the government’s decision to go to war. It became the center of a growing peace movement in the city, and because public spaces protect the fundamental concept behind democracy—popular political participation—they must remain accessible to the public, and they must continue to serve as places for assembly, dialogue, and protest. New York City has a huge task ahead. As we try to comprehend what exactly happened here nearly one month ago, try to understand why there is a hole in the skyline where the Twin Towers used to be, as we mourn for both lost loved ones and for strangers, we also begin to envision how to rebuild our city. Rebuilding Lower Manhattan gives New York City the opportunity to transform the definition of what the Global City should be for the 21st Century. The process through which this takes place must be inclusive, democratic and participatory. It must include all residents of New York City alongside political and

People use the phrase Wall Street around the world. It’s a brand name and a marketing image. It’s Coca-Cola, it’s Scotch tape. [ S h o s t a l , R P A ] < business leaders. Global cities are dependent upon the ethnic and cultural diversity of communities for their vitality, ingenuity, and resiliency. A transformed global city, then, is one built with local needs and liberal democracy as its foundation. As Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Center, expressed more than thirty years ago, “The World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.” Rosen, Jeffrey. “A Cautionary Tale for a New Age of Surveillance.” New York Times. October 7, 2001. 1

Vidler, Anthony. “A City Transformed: Designing ‘Defensible Space.’” New York Times. September 23, 2001. 2

Urban Planning Professors’ Thoughts on Planning after the Disaster

URBAN LIFE WILL CHANGE There will also be major impacts on New York City in particular, and perhaps high-density big cities generally, in the direction of decentralization and further divisions and walls. I would guess a reduction in personal travel, more emphasis on electronic communication. Employment patterns will change; hyper-concentrations of jobs in service-center-oriented office buildings (and both the high and the low-paying jobs associated with them) will shrink. The benefits of the agglomeration economies that have accounted for the strength of select financial centers will be counter-balanced by new political considerations, in which overagglomeration is equated with danger. I suspect the global status of at least the central business district(s) of New York City but perhaps of other global cities will change, as multinational businesses change their spatial strategies in the search for security in more outlying areas. The focus will initially be within the same metropolitan regions (e.g. American Express, Lehman Brothers, others, renting—on long term leases—spaces in Jersey City, Stamford, etc.). Many major firms already had large satellite offices in fringe locations, to which they quickly moved on September 11; in some cases decisions to move more operations out of New York City to those locations may simply have been accelerated by the attack. Over time the effects may lead to an even wider dispersal to other regions or urban enclaves. Larger cities will benefit, smaller will suffer: air connections, for instance, will be comparatively strengthened, and protected, among major centers, curtailed among others. The construction of glamorous ever-higher trophy skyscrapers will stop; the towers in Kuala Lumpur and Frankfurt have already felt the threat, closing and evacuating the day after the World Trade Center collapse; workers in the Empire State building in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago are already reported afraid to go up to their offices, At Sear tower taxis are not allowed to idle at the entrance and lunch deliveries may not be made to offices.

The social consequence will include the tendency to exacerbate polarization, with those able to move where they live or work out of town doing so, those unable to do so remaining behind. The difference between the two groups will be both income and race related. The polarization will be both between city and suburb and within the city, with the focus of upper-income disproportionately white households concentrating in more tightly controlled citadels and others more and more excluded and segregated, with sharper dividing lines between and among groups. Lay-offs will disproportionately affect those (both high and low end) involved in global-related businesses; those without accumulated resources will be particularly hard hit. Many of these tendencies pre-existed the World Trade Center attack; where they did, they will be substantially augmented. And “security” will become the justification for measures that can threaten the core of social and political life, even though one conclusion that might be drawn from what has happened is that physical measures can never provide real security in the presence of deep social, including international, differences. Despite that, surveillance will increase and the uses of public space will be more tightly controlled (Mayor Guiliani has pioneered this with his restrictions on assemblies near City Hall, and attempts to limit the use of streets for parades, in the name of security). And we may expect the almost unlimited funding that the FBI and CIA are likely to receive to result in massive invasions of privacy; Senator Trent Lott has already called publicly for a reduction in the weight given civil liberties in the interests of security; the White House press secretary says “people should watch what they say.” “Public space” will become less public; free access and free use will be severely limited. By contrast, controlled spaces, such as malls, will increase their attraction, It doesn’t look good.

pETER mARCUSE PLANNING PRINCIPLES 1. Disaster planning experience in other contexts

can offer some help, but this disaster has particular implications absent in others. It is similar in the devastation created, the need for relief, the necessity for re-planning. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique causes however involve different planning considerations from other cases. In bombed cities in Europe after the war, replanning could be done without concern for a revisit of bombing attacks. Where the disaster was a hurricane, an earthquake, or a fire, replanning involves primarily physical measures dealing with the standards for construction to resist future such disasters. This disaster differs from all of these in its causes and likely consequences.

Openness, participation, democracy, must remain central principles of planning. < 2. Openness, participation, democracy, must remain

central principles of planning. Clearly the move to recover and rebuild must be expedited, and the solidarity, good will, and enthusiasm of the response to the disaster should be harnessed. That does not mean that normal standards of good planning should be abandoned, or that czars or commissions should be given extraordinary planning or decision-making powers (as opposed to powers of implementation). We should move with all deliberate speed, but not in haste, and not at the expense of long-range planning. 3. Long range planning is particularly important

in the aftermath of this particular disaster, because it is likely to have long range consequences. It will affect the demand for office space in the Financial District, in Manhattan, and in the region; it will affect the desirability of various residential locations; it will affect the level and distribution of land values; it will affect commuting and other transportation patterns; it will affect the desirability, in economic development terms, of support for global vs. local, services vs. manufacturing, productive vs. financial, cultural vs. business, tourist-oriented vs. domestic-oriented, activities.

4. Security needs to be a greater concern, but

it cannot be provided simply by physical means. Concern for security has costs and must remain only one among many concerns in planning, and perfect security can never be guaranteedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;indeed, security is not what attracts people to cities. The level of security provided is not a matter for engineering decision, not solely a matter for those in charge of security. 5. Civil liberties issues now being debated in

legislative halls have their urban planning ramifications. Public spaces must remain accessible and free for diverse uses, streets must remain open for multiple activities, controls on entry to public buildings must not be off-putting, racial or ethnic profiling practices cannot be built into provisions for security, surveillance must be balanced against the requirements of freedom and privacy. 6. Every decision dealing with rebuilding has

distributional implications. Subsidies can go to firms or to employees; to major multi-national corporations, or to small local businesses, to central business areas or to outlying districts, to the insured or to those without coverage, to low-income renters or high-income condominium owners. Distributional equity must be a continuing consideration in every planning decision. 7. Hesitancies about the role of government can

be reconsidered. The recent events leave no doubt as to the critical importance of government, and no one is likely to argue that the market should be allowed to determine what happens at the sites of destruction, nor that those suffering from the disaster be left to their own devices. Developers must be important participants in the decisionmaking process, but not the decisive ones. Planning and the institutions and organizations of planning can afford to, and should, take, a strong public leadership role in what happens next.

Urban Planning Professorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Thoughts on Planning after the Disaster [ continued ] lANCE fREEMAN New York City will never be the same. New York City will remain the cultural, financial and media capital of the world. These two contradictory visions are likely to define the future of New York City in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11. The terrible attacks have cast a long shadow over the city that will not be receding anytime soon. The tremendous loss of life and scenes of destruction have been etched in our minds permanently. New York City, known for its hustle and bustle, bright lights and majestic skyline, will also come to symbolize a national tragedy like other tragic scenes, such as Pearl Harbor and Gettysburg. This tragic memory will be compounded by a fear of future terrorist attacks. A fear made stronger by the

fact that many of the things that make New York City greatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;high density, cultural diversity, and a high concentration of important institutionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;also make it an inviting target for terrorism. The City will undoubtedly change in many ways because of this fear. Perhaps foremost among those changes will be those related to increasing our security. New Yorkers, who have been willing to sacrifice the civil rights of young black and Latino men in name of increased safety will be confronted

with the choice of sacrificing some of their own and those of Middle Eastern descent, also in the name of safety. It is unclear how much of our civil liberties will be sacrificed, but it is almost certain that the City will not be as free as it was before the attacks. Simply being able to travel anywhere in the City without being under surveillance or passing through some type of checkpoint is a freedom we may no longer be able to take for granted. People and businesses that were on the fence in terms of their decision to be in the City may find September 11 the decisive factor that pushes them out of the City. Especially in the short term, New York City is likely to be a quieter, less crowded, less busy place. In the long run, however, the forces of fear are likely to be overwhelmed by the forces of urban agglomeration that made New York City great in the first place. For people who need or want to be in a city with high densities, cultural diversity, a concentration of important institutions and an abundance of human capital, New York City is sure to remain a magnet. Urban history is replete with examples of cities that were destroyed, only to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. London after the blitz, San Francisco after the Great Earthquake, and Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871 all recovered and remained important cities. Disasters whether natural or man made tend to interrupt the trajectory of cities rather than alter their course. Much more important are the macro level economic, social, political and demographic trends that shape cities. Indeed, the most enduring scenes of urban devastation in America have not been the result of natural or man made disasters, but forces like white flight and disinvestment. Thus, in the future we can expect New York to be a deeply scarred city. People and activities that do not need to be near a dense core may leave. But for the foreseeable future the characteristics of New York that made it great, immense size, density, and diversity are likely to continue to do so and allow the city to return to its pre September 11 trajectory.

sUSAN s. fAINSTEIN AFTER THE WTC DISASTER The Reconstruction Commission for New York will be faced with multitudinous planning issues that don’t have easy solutions. First, most obviously, will be the pressure for haste in a situation where loss of business over a prolonged period could result in a disastrous decline. Yet, the remapping of downtown is a problem that requires the input of many participants, not just the business interests that have dominated the area. Allowing open public discussion, however, is a time-consuming process. Second, and linked to the first question, is determination of the method by which planning for the WTC area will take place. There is no convincing rationale to simply replicating previous uses, but if the area is to be rethought, then an appropriate approach to deliberation needs to be established. There have

been suggestions for an architectural competition, but such competitions involve narrow criteria and privilege aesthetic criteria. Third, the crisis in New York is not just a crisis for the city but for the whole metropolitan region. Cooperation among its components requires the end of the mercantilism that has historically characterized the region and which has worsened in recent years. This is particularly the case in regard to intra-metropolitan transit, air transport, and tax revenues. Greater decentralization might, in fact, be a prudent strategy if it did not result in the loss of revenues for the city. Thus, planning now requires a fundamental rethinking of past practices and a commitment to a more open, less opportunistic approach than has previously dominated.

rICHARD bASS MOURNING I am in mourning. And I am not alone. As I walk the City, there is the reverent hush normally associated with attendance at a funeral. My subway ride is quieter, with the few boisterous outbursts frowned upon by the other passengers. The sadness permeates everything around me. All religions and cultures contain a process for mourning, including rituals for burying the dead and facilitating the effort of the surviving to walk away from the grave to continue the task of living. In Judaism, there is a seven-day mourning period, Shiva, which concludes with a walk around the block–a sort of reintroduction into the world. I find at this time, this process may be an appropriate vehicle to allow the City and its citizens to mourn our terrible loss and take the necessary steps to rebuild Lower Manhattan and other sections of the City. Even before the loss of 15 million sq. ft. of Class A office space, the City acknowledged the need for up to 60 million additional sq. ft. of office space. (Senator Schumer recently issued a report for development in Downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, and Hells Kitchen South/West Midtown). Additionally, it has long been recognized that there is a housing crisis in the City

because production has not kept pace with demand. Coupled with the potential of the 2012 Olympics, there could be building in the City on an unprecedented level. Therefore, I propose that after the City buries and mourns its dead, we, as a City and a society, should figuratively and literally walk around the World Trade Center complex and the other sections of the City that will inevitably be redeveloped. Together, we should develop a collective vision that encompasses the commercial necessity of replacing and adding to the City’s office space; of dedicating an appropriate memorial; of defining the future of tall buildings in a City of tall buildings; of replacing one memorable skyline with another; of creating civic spaces, not only at the Twin Towers’ site, but also in other areas of the City facing redevelopment. We should use this process not only to rebuild, but to heal our ourselves; that out of this enormous tragedy, we will be able to create real opportunity for a broad spectrum of our City, not only for the development community but also the host communities. This is an opportunity to make a better city, to build a better infrastructure, to create tomorrow’s landmarks—to further establish New York City as the World’s capital.

Urban Planning Professors’ Thoughts on Planning after the Disaster [ continued ] jOYCE rOSENTHAL REBUILDING THE WORLD TRADE CENTER STE Planners and designers will be focused on the recovery and reconstruction of the 16-acre World Trade Center site during the foreseeable future, though we should try not to forget other priorities. My first concern is for the process by which we discuss, evaluate and adopt redevelopment plans for this area. Before the dust had settled, there were newspaper reports saying that commercial developers and politicians want to expedite disaster site redevelopment by curtailing public and environmental review. That is not the way to honor the memory of those lost. This rebuilding process needs to be open, democratic, and inclusive. That will get messy and timeconsuming, but commercial developers and city and state officials need to accept that many communities are legitimately involved in this process. Rebuilding the city after our disaster is going to take some time. This is hallowed ground, where thousands of children lost their parents. There will be a memorial and the creation of new public space. I hope that some of NYC’s civic organizations will take the opportunity to organize series of public charettes on the design of this space, as well as more formal design competitions. I think it would be appropriate to include a museum dedicated to the history of religious tolerance and intolerance and human rights.

Will there be future demand for high-density commercial office space at the site? I think so. We also have an opportunity to encourage mixed use, private and public, commercial and residential uses, linking the land to the new residential areas built since the construction of the Twin Towers. Mass transit in the area should be optimized in conjunction with the new physical design. We also need to ensure that the city gains desperately needed affordable housing units in any new residential uses. Personally, I would like to see a more human-scaled environment in the 16-acre site. I don’t agree with those who suggest that terrorists “win” unless we rebuild as high or higher. As pointed out by others, we should ask firefighters what they think of buildings that take over an hour to evacuate.

We should ask firefighters what they think of buildings that take over an hour to evacuate. < Gone are the days of incremental planning—the catastrophe made radical changes in transportation policy suddenly possible. Single occupancy vehicles (SOV) were banned during the morning rush hour from entering lower Manhattan, and overnight, thousands of commuters arranged to carpool. We need to evaluate and build on the success of this development. We should calculate the impact of this SOV ban on air quality and fuel consumption. The benefits of an extended SOV ban at rush hour should be an impetus towards greater allocation of space to pedestrian and bicycle uses on existing city streets.

ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL POLITICS. ALL PLANNING IS GLOBAL PLANNING

In the midst of our local primary elections, the global political economy blew the lid off our world. We had imagined that if as planners we focused on local communities and institutions, the resulting planning outcomes would be insulated from the rest of humankind. Now we know better. All politics is local politics; yet, what happens in New York City, from rezoning blocks to redistributing the metropolitan economic base, will produce ripple effects that encircle the globe and create echoes that return. The core of New York City’s economic base has traditionally been trade and finance, with many key transnational corporations headquartered here. We have benefited from this arrangement but have not planned for a more equitable sharing of its fruits

tHOMAS vIETORISZ

with the poorer parts of the world. We have failed to set democratically defined social limits on the global network of large corporations. Their management practices have not only been perceived as cultural invasion in many regions, but have often also threatened to depress, or at best leave stagnant, the standards of living of broad popular groups. Apart from questions of global equity, as planners we have hardly addressed New York City’s increasing overreliance on finance and trade. We have not helped the city enough in making itself into a leading center of new knowledge generation, based on its cluster of outstanding universities. No community is an island. We need ask no longer for whom the bell tolls.

Student Thoughts aNTHONY mINNITI

NO MORE 9 TRAIN Attention ladies and gentleman... because of recent terrorist attacks... because of the events that occurred where the world trade center stood... because of what has happened... because of terrorism... because of fear of more terrorism... because of an explosion... because the fires are spreading... because the skyline is falling... because the darkness is strangling us..... because of the confusion and the crowds... because of the debris and the ash... because of the broken beams of steel and shrapnel raining down from fiery heavens and vengeful spirits... because of the danger... because of the magnitude of the tragedy... because the air is unbreathable, the darkness unbearable... because of the intensity of the fires... because of the people rushing in... because of the people dieing... painfully... heroically... needlessly... because of a main burst... a tunnel collapse... a gas leak... floods... soot... rats... fumes... darkness... despair... because life is short and reality is ruthless... because our

world is fragile and chambers st. is covered with glass and body parts and worthless papers..... because downtown is congested with terror... because of the billowing infernos and the downpours of sharp metals and the falling floors of what was - minutes ago- the world trade center... because the area has been sealed off... because more space is needed for more heroes to die... because of what has happened.... because our city has been attacked... because our world has been shattered.... because our lives’ have been terrorized... because of a cunning foe... a brutal force... a senseless god... a ludicrous possibility... a pointless universe... because of unprecedented technical difficulties.... because our creations are crushing down on us... because the city is so big and so great... because the enemy is among us... and because you never know what the next man is thinking... there will no longer be a 9 train. ...sorry for the inconvenience.

Build? Yes! Rebuild? No! tED bARDACKE The ideas and proposals for what to do with the former World Trade Center site rain down on us daily, like the bombs and bullets that have begun falling upon distant lands. This is natural; the desire to create, lying at the crossroads of ideas and emotion, is a powerful curative for the injuries we have suffered. Architects, whose vocation is to build their creations, have been among the most suggestive, as it should be. But so far, their inclinations have been banal at best, vengeful at worst. Like our tired diplomacy and our conventional warfare, few have hit the target.

Rebuilding: even the etymology implies going backward. < Read the New York Times of Sunday, September 23, 2001 (right) which quotes some of the city’s brand-name architects for a quick overview. “Bigger and better” and simply “rebuild” say the deans. “I would hope that we would not be deterred from going as high as the old towers were. We cannot retreat,” says the eclectic thinker. “The same amount of office space” and “we need office space,” say two building legends, perhaps fishin’ for a commission. Even the artsy pair, in an attempt to be unconventional, fall back on the convention of the void. It all feels tired, uninspired.

The vocabulary is one of violence, and defiance. No retreat. Big. Achieve. No defeat. Power. Victory. We show our greatness—as a city, as a nation, as a civilization—in the competitive fire to show that those who soar highest are those who fly best. Even the architects, those who can create meaning, are telling us we need to meet violence with violence. Only the curator, the one non-designer in the crowd, hints at WTC disaster’s transformative potential on the built environment. Meanwhile, museum designer and educator, raises the idea of process, albeit a particularly ordinary American one. Thankfully, these two are on to something. Instead of monumentalism, either to a destructive past or a competitive future, the WTC site needs an architecture that is creative, empathetic and forward-looking. To get it, we need to think about transforming development practice in this city in general, and for the WTC site in particular.

New York development history has told us that we will not get this kind of architecture when we rely on the responsibility of the individual developer. A private developer, or even a public agency these days, thinks first and foremost about satisfying the market, or at the most innovative level, about creating a market. In this case developers make architects their servants, ones who are limited to trying to project magnificence onto a tightly bound set of floor plates and square footage returns. Our foils are trapped by this process (no wonder many architects long for commissions from museums and educational institutions who are aware of other considerations, or at least have another view of how to satisfy their market). The market-driven process ensures that creativity is limited to physical design; creative thoughts about purpose and function are left to others. It is obvious to say that empathetic architecture has no place where competition rules, while in the central city architecture of private gain forward-looking always means upward-looking.

New York Times [ September 23, 2001 ] Rebuilding: even the etymology implies going backward. Doing it on the foundation of our current city-building process, as kniving WTC lessor Larry Silverstein already is threatening to do, will harden our city’s problems. Building a future, which will include new building of course, needs a process that considers the wider public interest, very different from the coalition of a myriad of downtown interests that appears to be forming. Yes it will be divisive, messy and slow. But such a process might conclude that the promised $20bn in federal aid (the other $20bn is allocated for military purposes) would be better spent on improving mass transit links to Upper Manhattan and the waterfronts of Brooklyn and Queens, where architects could have a freer hand and where new office space could serve the small and medium-size businesses that provide the city with much of its job growth. Or it might not. But don’t we owe it to ourselves to at least consider such things? The architects who staightjacketed themselves in the Times did so in a state of shock. Perhaps it is unfair to hold them to what was uttered in those early days— Hollywood certainly will not abide by its knee-jerk piousness of mid September. But it is often in the face of catastrophe, when physical emptiness can be filled with holistic thinking, that we create, and be convinced by, our most revolutionary visions.

TO REBUILD OR NOT: ARCHITECTS RESPOND “Of course one has to rebuild, bigger and better. There should be offices and a mix of activities, both cultural and business. Yes, there should be a place to mourn, but that shouldn’t be the main thing. It must be a place looking into the future, not the past.’” [ Bernard Tschumi, dean of the Columbia architecture school ] “We must rebuild the towers. They are a symbol of our achievement as New Yorkers and as Americans and to put them back says that we cannot be defeated. The skyscraper is our greatest achievement architecturally speaking, and we must have a new, skyscraping World Trade Center.” [ Robert A.M. Stern ] “What’s most poignant now is that the identity of the skyline has been lost. We would say, Let’s not build something that would mend the skyline, it is more powerful to leave it void. We believe it would be tragic to erase the erasure.” [ Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio ] “Whatever they take down, we’ll rebuild. I think we should provide the same amount of office space, that it’s the least we can do.” [ Philip Johnson ] “Something else has come out of this, and that is how much ownership people outside of New York feel about our city. Maybe it’s not just our decision. Maybe we should let the American people vote on it.” [ Ralph Appelbaum ] “Whatever we do in the future has got to reflect the sense that the West, its culture and values have been attacked. I would hope that we would not be deterred from going as high as the old towers were. We should not move back from that point. We cannot retreat.” [ Peter Eisenman ] “Once we get over the grieving, we should realize that this could be a defeat, or it could be like Chicago after the fire, in 1871, when they invented the skyscraper and changed the ways cities have grown all over the world. We should build an even greater and more innovative skyscraper.” [ Terrence Riley, architecture curator, Museum of Modern Art ] “It should be rebuilt. We need office space, though we don’t want to build the same towers – they were designed in 1966 and now we live in 2001. What has to be there is an ensemble of buildings that are as powerful a symbol of New York as the World Trade towers were. The life of the city depends on people living and working in the city and loving it – we want people there. We want them in a place that can be magnificent.” [ Richard Meier ]

The Need for Urban Governance: How Will Clustering Occur Now? mARIA pAMOUKIAN AFTER THE WTC DISASTER John Friedmann and Goetz Wolff defined the global city as such: “World cities lie at the junction between the world economy and the territorial nation state.” A closer examination of this definition reveals the distinct separation of the world economy and physical spaces. Three main trends of globalization identify the necessary links a given space must have in order to be considered global: internationalization of labor, advances in technology, and the concentration of power. First, due to the evolution of technology, industries now require a large number of highly skilled as well as many semi/low-skilled employees, eliminating the boundaries that previously constricted the movement of people in search of work. The technological innovations have also opened up new realms of communication that allow many different countries to exchange information and do business simultaneously. Lastly, the concentration of power is directly linked to the world city theory because cities act as nodes for transnational firms as physical pockets—in a virtual, global economy. A global city, however, is not necessarily where technological innovations occur, but rather one that can adapt the quickest to changes in technology. The capacity to acquire and benefit from technological innovations are a crucial aspect of any globalizing city, but the physical presence of this technology within a district does not alter the nature of the city’s global status, in this case New York City. David Harvey presents takes this argument a step further by qualifying the relationship between world cities and the global economy through the examples of local government actions: “Investment increasingly takes on the role of a negotiation between international finance capital and local powers doing the best they can to maximise the attractiveness of the local site as a lure for capitalist development.” Harvey’s argument juxtaposes the two opposing concepts of mobility versus fixity in relation to the flows of capital requiring a spatial realm. In order for cities to succeed in trapping capital as it floats around the global economy, first and foremost the three key components must be present, then other incentives must be offered to convince firms to locate within a particular space and generate capital and increase employment in the local economy. Saskia Sassen’s model contradicts the mobility argument by pinpointing the importance of vertical and horizontal integration in industries, which leads to clustering. She sees the reasons for physical concentration as the economic dynamic of the products and services being provided: “The accounting firm can service its clients at a distance, but the nature of its service depends on proximity to specialists, lawyers, and programmers.”

There are, therefore, two main trends: cities will become obsolete because “the computer and telecommunications are only the latest step in an ongoing process whereby physically disaggregated units are tied together through transport and communications mechanisms”, rendering cities useless as central points of convergence for firms because they are no longer needed to maintain connectivity amongst regions. The other trend is to exaggerate the importance of world cities in sustaining economic growth and viability while concentrating enormous amounts of wealth within their boundaries. The economic rationale would be to minimize risk by investing in already dominant areas because even the highly mobile and virtual world of telecommunications needs plain old infrastructure. The role of local government in supplying infrastructure and other amenities is crucial in enhancing the attractiveness of a city or region. “Although transnational capital desires maximum freedom from state intervention in the movements of finance capital, information, and commodities, it is vitally interested in having the state assume as large a part as possible of the costs of production, including the reproduction of the labour force and the maintenance of ‘law and order’.” To combat the opposing forces requiring state intervention on some aspects and state ignorance on others, urban governance has taken over the responsibility of ensuring that capitalist regimes are running smoothly. “The task of urban governance is, in short, to lure highly mobile and flexible production, financial, and consumption flows into its space.” Hence the need for public-private partnerships, and quasi-governmental organizations that can effectively bargain with the local state and city officials to improve any given area for better business quality. The New York State Economic Development Corporation— and other such agencies have already implemented several strategies to attract certain types of industry to a particular location, including Digital New York City Wired to The World, which provides incentives to regulate the growth of high-tech districts in NYC. Although the initial location where firms cluster is incidental, such economic development and tax benefits can channel investment toward particular locations. It is therefore possible to predict the clustering of certain firms and the definitive spatial pattern that will be established once a few key firms have set up shop.

Gentrifying Sex nICK sALAS The question of proximity has become an even greater issue after the tragedy of Sept. 11. Many firms are relocating from downtown Manhattan to New Jersey, Long Island City, the outer boroughs, and even to other neighborhoods within Manhattan. Will firms move back to Manhattan, and if so, where specifically? As safety and security become higher priorities, are taller buildings going to be more difficult to fill? Will the WTC tragedy spur development in other parts of Manhattan, boosting programs like Digital NYC? Can some firms, or even entire industries, locate most of their employees elsewhere in the region, and have only a small office in Manhattan to meet their clientele’s needs? How close is close enough? As many firms search frantically for new homes, vacancy rates in the NY, NJ and Connecticut regions have drastically dropped. What implications does this have for New York’s global identity? Well, not much. New York will still be considered the global city, right up there with London and Tokyo. The image in people’s minds will not be altered by the absence of the Twin Towers, so the world will always perceive NY as being global. There will, however, be a great fluctuation in the FIRE markets in Manhattan and also the surrounding regions due to the loss of office space. Permanent and temporary migration may also occur from residents leaving downtown Manhattan for more secure neighborhoods. I believe a new kind of urban governance, and a new authority, is critical to guaranteeing the continuation of the entire regions’ growth and prosperity. I’d like to call it the MRA—Metropolitan Region Authority. Although the metro region includes various parts of NY, NJ and Connecticut, and regional organizations have long played advisory roles, no official agency exists to handle the broad range of regional services that are vital for this area’s success, especially at a critical moment like this where great things can be done for the benefit of the masses. In this way, moving to New Jersey will not be considered a loss to Manhattan’s economic vitality, and vice versa. The first task of this Authority will be to thoroughly analyze the area and decide what exactly needs to be rebuilt on the WTC site, with the whole region in mind.

Mayor Guiliani is often credited or blamed, depending on one’s perspective, for cleaning up the smut from Times Square. It was his “Quality of Life” campaign after all that cracked down on the pickpockets, three-card Monty dealers, the myriad storefront and bars devoted to matters of sex—either live or recorded— and all their undesirable hangerson. His boosters and detractors alike point to the result: Disney, high-rises, MTV, theme restaurants, tourists, hyper-consumption. The former wonders at the rebirth of Times Square. The latter declares it a stillbirth and New York a city no longer in possession of a soul. Credit and blame are thrown at him gratuitously. But Times Square did not change by Rudy’s hand alone. The transformation actually began in the mid-1970s as New York City began to adjust spatially to its role in the increasingly global economy. Globalization has occurred in part because of vast improvements in telecommunications and information technology since about 1970, which have dramatically increased the mobility of capital and labor across national borders, changing the location of manufacturing, and concentrating financial markets in a few cities that serve as control “nodes” for the global economy. This, in turn has generated as Saskia Sassen states, a “demand for types of production needed to ensure the management, control, and servicing of this new organization of manufacturing and finance”. New York has lost manufacturing jobs at a rate greater than the nation as a whole. At the same time, employment in finance and business services has grown substantially

The global city is particularly unique, according to Sassen, in that it may produce a contradiction in spatio-economic arrangements. The large concentration of super-profitable financial and service sectors and the highincome jobs they produce leads to the massive development of high-rise office and luxury residential buildings in New York’s core, and to the gentrification of other residential areas in or near the core. Meanwhile, this new dominant economic sector is likely to generate greater demand for a range of goods and services. However, many of these crucial suppliers lack the bidding power to remain in the city’s core. The garment manufacturing industry is one such group of firms. They are turning increasingly to informalized labor agreements, mostly with immigrant women doing piecework at home. The firms limit their need for space, thus avoiding skyrocketing rent costs, yet remain able to supply New York’s fashion industry. The result unfortunately is a greater level of exploitation of female labor. Is the sex industry subject to a similar contradiction, and if so, how has it been resolved? It can be argued that the lifestyle of the inhabitants of the global city creates a greater demand for commercial sex. The professional/ managerial male in Manhattan on average gets married later in life and experiences a greater degree of geographic mobility both in terms of business travel and frequency of job relocation. A singles lifestyle combined with such mobility often takes a person away from their existing social continued on page 15

Gentrifying Sex network in which he would be more likely to find a non-commercial sexual partner. This could likely create greater demand for sex-related products and/or services. A similar case could be made for male immigrants and transnationals, many of whom relocate initially without a spouse or family. They work long hours and their social network consists mostly of other men. While demand has probably increased, New York’s central marketplace for sex has vanished. In the early 1970s, the storefronts of 42nd Street were occupied by highly visible pornography shops. Movie houses ran predominantly adult fare. Street prostitution was prevalent and highly visible and operated out of strip clubs and cheap hourly hotels. By the late 1970s, real estate redevelopment and supporting policing efforts began to transform Times Square. In 1976, the city created the Office of Midtown Enforcement (OME)—an intense and coordinated policing effort designed to remove prostitution activity or any other “undesirable” activity from Times Square. The OME employed a nuisance abatement law as its primary mechanism. If an arrest for prostitution or “obscene behavior” took place in an establishment, and the arrest led to a conviction, that establishment could be closed. This ordinance was used to close massage parlors, prostitution hotels, and any bars that were meeting placed for prostitutes and their clients. The ordinance also resulted in the closing or pornographic movie houses and peep shows where homosexual activity commonly took place.

[ continued ]

While the most obvious consequence was the removal of these “undesirable” activities from areas of rising real estate value, it also encouraged the existing landowners, having been denied rent from the closed-down tenant, to sell their property. Today, the Times Square landscape is occupied by Disney, MTV, the Conde Nast building, theme restaurants, super-movie theaters (the familyfriendly kind), ad agencies, investment institutions, and numerous law firms. The greater demand for commercial sex juxtaposed against diminishing availability in the city’s core has produced a significant spatial transformation in New York sex industry. In 1975, there were 12 topless bars in Midtown Manhattan. Now there is five. Most have migrated to the outer boroughs, particularly Queens (Figure 1). However, there is a significant difference between the Manhattan clubs and those in the outer boroughs. At a significantly higher price, Manhattan’s topless clubs attract a higher-income patron than those of the outer boroughs do (Figure 2). Also, Manhattan’s clubs are relatively discreet. On the exterior they are similar to other non-adult upscale nightclubs. They are also highly dispersed—only two of the five in the Midtown area are located in the Times Square area. In general, they have a less conspicuous presence. Tracking prostitution is a bit more difficult given its underground nature. However, several pieces of evidence can be brought together to estimate trends and transformations. It is clear that

Average Price of Topless Clubs by Borough 40 $31.00

30 $18.00

20 $13.00

10 0

Manhattan

Queens

Source: Random phone surveys, Nov. 2000

Brooklyn

Source: Random phone surveys, November, 2000

prostitution, which thrived in Times Square in the 1970s, is gone from the area. Massage parlors, which had a large presence in Midtown in 1975, had been totally eliminated by 1994. Street prostitution had also been virtually wiped out. Between the years 1976 and 1983, a dozen hotels were counted in which heavy prostitution activity took place. These were cheap hourly hotels concentrated on 8th Avenue between 35th and 55th Streets. As a result of heightened policing and enforcement activity, only two or three remained by 1984. In 1990 the last reported prostitution hotel was closed. Without these hotels, street prostitution dwindled in the dense Manhattan commercial district. Evidence suggests that street prostitution has moved out to the city’s periphery: East New York, Brooklyn; Hunts Point, the Bronx; and Harlem. Massage parlor and brothel activity, commonly under the control of Asian or Latino owners have sprouted up in Chinatown, Flushing, Sunset Park, and Jackson Heights, Queens. These operations are staffed almost exclusively by Asian, South American, and Eastern European immigrant women.

nICK sALAS Distribution of Sex Clubs by Borough: 1993 100

Number of Escort Services in Manhattan by Year 200

158

69%

140

150

60 40

100

31%

24%

20 0

12% Manhattan

Outer Boroughs (Total)

Queens

Brooklyn

9% Bronx

80 50

4% Staten Island

Source: New York City Department of City Planning

1975

1980

1985

1990

Source: Nynex/Bell Atlantic Yellow Pages

1995

2000

Source: Nynex/Bell Atlantic Yellow Pages

Source: New York City Department of City Planning

Yet prostitution probably continues to occur quite frequently in Manhattan. This is revealed in the dramatic increase in the highpriced escort business (Figure 3). These services, which are easily identified in the local yellow pages, appeal to higher-income males, including business travelers. They are highly specialized, offering escorts of different races and national origin. Prices for their services range from $125/hour to $500/hour. The prostitution and topless club markets have displayed a very clear response to the spatial reconfiguration of Times Square over the last 25 years. Generally, it can be described as a displacement to the outer boroughs of the services that cater to a lower-income clientele. The higher-income services remain in Manhattan yet in a dispersed, low-visibility form. While it appears as though there has been a growth in demand for commercial sex from both high and low sector service workers, the sex industry has responded by growing more segmented spatially. By serving exclusively the larger and wealthier professional/ managerial class, the sex services in Manhattan have been able to

increase their bidding power for space. At the same time they have reduced their need for space by becoming more dispersed, less visible, and (for prostitution) to almost eliminate the need for space by outcall-only services. Through these transformation, these sex services, which are indeed a critical part of the global city’s economic core, have been able to remain in the core. The lower-priced sex service no longer have a critical need to locate in the economic core. Their clientele, while still working in the low-wage jobs in the central business district, have been displaced residentially to the periphery (either the outer boroughs or upper Manhattan). So, while it is true that the lowerpriced sex services no longer have the bidding power to remain in the economic core, neither do their customers. The sex services have mirrored the wage and residential polarization produced by globalization. As New York has become more economically and spatially polarized in response to its changing role in the global economy, the

sex industry has too. This implies an equally polarized condition for sex workers, especially prostitutes. As indicated by the high fee they charge, escorts likely earn a substantial income. Their employment in the trade is likely to be temporary or transitional— a way to make supplemental income. Working conditions, as a result, are less likely to be exploitative. The lower-end sex workers on the other hand may face greater danger and exploitation. Street prostitution now serves a much poorer clientele in relatively secluded industrial areas on the periphery of the city away from the eyes of foot traffic, increasing the level of danger for the worker. Low-wage sex work is likely to be attractive to recent immigrants, who will have a greater dependency on the trade, and be subject to higher levels of exploitation. Two policy changes need to be initiated to deal with the negative impacts of globalization. First, prostitution should be legalized. Doing so will eliminate the more exploitative arrangement of the trade assuming legalization would ensure minimum levels of health, income, and working

conditions. In addition, an area in the economic core or along its borders should be zoned as a red light district. Such a zone would act as a subsidy for the sex trades and against the higher-bidding power of producer services and would discourage the relatively dangerous practice of street walking, particularly in depopulated manufacturing zones. Commercial sex is a difficult industry to defend in the environment dominated by corporate culture. Its greatest defense however, is its continued presence in New York City since the city’s inception. It will not go away despite the dominant culture’s best efforts. Stricter laws and more zealous enforcement only push the industry into darker corners. Ironically, while globalization may put greater force behind these enforcement efforts, it also creates a greater international exchange of people who generally have more permissive views of sex than their American counterparts, possibly creating an even greater demand for sex than the City of New York is currently willing to satisfy. As if sex wasn’t complicated enough.

Floating in China Internal migration has been confronting both developed and developing countries. With one-fifth of the world’s population, China is presently confronting unprecedented migration related population pressures in its already overcrowded cities. The tremendous numbers of people migrating outside the formal registration process is one of the most perplexing issues faced by the policy-makers and the authorities in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since the implementation of the open economy in the early 1980s. It is estimated that 80 million rural migrants are working and residing in cities without permanent legal status. Unlike migration during earlier periods of Chinese history, most of the current internal migration is short-term. Most of these migrants leave their families in their hometowns, returning during the seasonal holidays and periods of unemployment.

agricultural hukou residing in rural areas. With an agricultural hokou, one cannot get access to housing, food, social benefits and education in urban areas. The only way is to transfer the household registration from rural to urban is through a complicated and costly process. While urbanites from another city can sometimes transfer their official household register among cities with official approval, ordinary peasants can almost never do so.

Unlike in most other countries, citizens in China are not entirely mobile. If they transfer to another place to reside, they have to also transfer their household registration. Residing in a place for a long period of time without official transfer of household registration does not itself mean migration; to migrate, one needs an official change of permanent registration. The transfer of household registration consists of a complex set of rules and regulations that require one to obtain permission from authorities in the home community prior to departure, in addition to getting residence and work permits in the place of destination. The fees together with all those procedures are sufficiently high and complicated to discourage compliance, and make estimating the size of the population extremely difficult. In 1991, a nation-wide survey of large cities showed that 60% of the floating population was from the rural area and the rest came from interurban flows. Floaters represented between one-tenth and one-third of the numbers of the native population in the largest cities at the end of the 1980s. The inflow of the rural population to the cities was so rapid that in some cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shenyang, and Chengdu, the population increased from 12.6% in 1984 to 22.5% in 1987 and to 25.4% in 1994 on average. Until fairly recently, China maintained heavy controls over ruralto-urban migration. This strict urban-rural segregation was mainly instituted following the devastating famine that occurred between 1959 to 1961. Under communism, government was responsible for feeding the population. If large numbers of people flooded into the urban areas, the food distribution system would collapse, and this might lead to rebellion. There are two elements that shaped the internal migration control strategy of China. One, was to impose a high opportunity cost for rural people leaving their hometown by tying them to the collective farm. The other method was to make life difficult for the non-urban population living in the urban area by using the household registration system to control employment and the allocation of housing, food, and other necessities. In the household registration system, or hukou, households are identified as agricultural or non-agricultural with majority of the

[ makeshift peasant home ]

The Economic Reform and the excessive supply of laborers in rural areas explain what pushes and pulls the floating population to a few big coastal cities. Most of the time between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s the Chinese economy operated largely in the absence of markets. Starting in 1978, the government had begun the economic reforms to rural production which were followed by attempts to open up coastal cities to foreign investors. Jobs and housing were no longer assigned by the authorities. The introduction of free markets for agricultural commodities were adopted. There are no more “iron rice bowl” for the people and the government is no longer responsible for feeding its population—people go where there are employment opportunities and high wages. The new development strategy has meant a spatial redevelopment with renewed emphasis on the coastal region and on its economic efficiency flowing from centuries of sustained human occupancy, cultural florescence, and technological leadership, alongside its geographical endowments. The open policy encourages the inflow of technology, management techniques, transformation of traditional methods of production, develops an externally oriented economy and expands foreign trade.

pUI sI nATALIE hON

Although these coastal cities make up only 10% of all Chinese cities, they account for 16% of China’s urban population, and 20% of non-agricultural labor force, 28% of the total value of industrial production, 25% of the total value of retailing, and 90% of total exports. It has been estimated that approximately 60% of the national value of industrial production is concentrated in the cities of the eastern coastal region, of which one-third is again focused on the coastal port cities which are Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Dalian, and Qingdao The open policy and concentration of development in the selected coastal cities serves to create an inflow effect, so that revenue and benefit generated on the coastal cities are redirected to the mainland. Since the potential for wealth generation in the cities along the coast is high, the central government has been providing preferential treatment to these cities and their foreign investors. These policies represented a substantial shift of infrastructure development and state investment program from the Urban Directive in 1950s. New financial arrangements after 1980 allow local governments to retain a portion of the revenues from their tax receipts. Entrepreneurs also received an increase in freedoms, including the right to keep some profits, along with less supervision over hiring practices. These various incentives propelled a feverish construction drive that cried out for extra labor. It was calculated that between 1978 and 1988 the non-agricultural employment increased at more than 6% a year. One of the policies of the economic reform was to invite foreign investors to set up production plants. This created new job opportunities for city youths such as tourism, foreign trade. The private sector and various foreign joint ventures have a high demand of cheap labor in expanding their business in China. In the first three decade of the People Republic of China, the government had highly restricted the private enterprises. In the mid-1980s, private enterprises began to reappear. However, each firm could only employ no more than eight workers. Then later in the early 1990s, private enterprises grew rapidly due to the open economic policy and by the end of 1992, approximately 7.7 million (89%) of the retail sales outlets in China belonged to private firms or individually owned businesses. With the emphasis on the urban development in the big cities, the rural areas in the western part are ignored in terms of urban development. According to Saich, “In the western hilly live the Hani, a minority people bypassed by reforms. They are among China’s poorest, the 45 million people across the land with pitiful infrastructure and virtually no resources. Eking out a living is tough, and the vagaries of climate that bring drought or floods can easily wipe away in a few days the gains of many years. Health care is limited at best and often non-existent”. Large-scale movement from rural to urban areas have destabilizing effects on the cities and towns to which the floaters migrate. The huge number of floating migrants negatively impact urban areas by creating transportation bottlenecks, and pressure on urban housing,

water, power shortages, rising crime rates, labor disputes, etc. The cost of housing in big cities is beyond the means of floating migrants. Life in a Chinese city without urban registration is rough. Floating migrants are denied free compulsory education, free health care, housing, grain, and oil supply. Their meager income is their sole support. In case of unemployment, crime has been a way to make a living. According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Public Security, China’s crime rate has increased 6% annually in the past 10 years and serious crime by as much as 18% annually. In 1992, about 1,540,000 crimes were reported, a significant number committed by members of the floating population. According to statistics recently released by Chinese authorities, 649,000 cases of crime were perpetrated by migrants in 1995, a 14% increase over 1994. In Shanghai, migrants committed 50% of the crimes. This, in turn has led to an increase in city residents’ hate-related crimes against migrants. Even more significant, social biases against migrants are widespread in Chinese cities. During a recent nation wide campaign against crime, a significant number of those executed were illegal migrants, many of them without a proper trial. The Governmental response to this situation has been to try to keep the rural population on the farms. One method that the government frequently uses to control the floating migrants is through “clean-up campaigns”. During a recent “clean-up campaign” in a district of Shanghai, the police caught over 500 migrants in a single day and immediately sent them back to their home areas. In Beijing, the government demolished more than 20 migrant enclaves and “vacuumed” the well-known Zhejiang village, a migrant settlement that at one time housed over 100,000 migrants from Zhejiang Province. And in 1995 in Shenzhen, China’s first special economic zone, the security force stepped into a dispute between 500 migrant workers from the central provinces and several hundred local residents. The security force opened fire to stop a bloody brawl during which several were killed and a dozen seriously injured. The twentieth century will be a period of rapid urbanization for China. It is imperative that policy makers and planners figure out how to balance the development the coastal cities to continue to back up the mainland while ensuring the positive transformation of villages in rural areas. Urbanization and development of rural areas into mixed urban communities with both industrial and agricultural enterprises can enhance the living standard of the rural residents. This can create a more balanced development between the urban and rural area, thereby reducing the income gap between them. In order for rural areas to attract foreign investment, the central government has to provide grants to the provincial authorities to develop basic infrastructure such as transportation networks telecommunication system, power plants, etc. which are now lacking.

Hypermarkets and Changing Land Use in Budapest and Surroundings

Hypermarkets, financed by mainly European, multinational investments, have contributed to the spatial transformation of Budapest. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines a hypermarket as stores exceeding 2500 square meters in area, while supermarkets or “large stores” are those with over 1500 square meters of area. Hypermarkets have been very popular in Europe, not to mention the United States and Japan. Recently, Budapest has experienced a focusing of its retail in shopping malls in the center city. In addition, shopping centers and hypermarkets (free-standing large block buildings, containing one chain store, often containing eating establishments) have appeared in more “distant” districts lying near the borders of the city’s borders. Certain towns lying on the immediate outskirts have attracted a great concentration of hypermarkets and the trends in retail development favor the continued building of these hypermarkets along the outskirts of the city. In order to fend off criticism that the Hungarian market is saturated, investors in Hungary often cite figures showing how the Hungarian market lags behind European markets. The average number of people per shopping center in Europe amounts to 108,000, while there are 408,000 Hungarians per shopping center. In other words, Hungarian figures are roughly 3 times greater than the European average. Hungarians would need to have at least three times the number of current shopping centers, or roughly 75 shopping centers to shop as much as other Europeans in shopping centers. The rationale for bigger is better is also explained by the OECD: “If price competition is the norm, firms need to be large to compete, as this allows them to achieve economies of scale, and scope, reduce procurement costs and improve logistics. Such large firms also offer consumers the possibility to find all their needs at one stop.” A few nations predominate in the number of retail firms that have pursued international markets, mainly Germany, France, UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, all of which are present in Hungary currently. In these countries, the domestic large retail market is highly developed and thus firms aim at expanding market share outside of the domestic market. Although domestic markets remain critical to their success, internationalizing has become important to diversify their products and processes and learn from firms in other countries’ methods in a variety of situations With these criteria in mind, firms building hypermarkets in Hungary will aim to establish market advantage, employing price cutting competitive techniques and reducing intermediate costs, such as transportation. According to the OECD, the factors affecting the size of chain outlets, besides cultural tastes and customer-service demands, are: “population density, degree of urbanization, the participation rate of women in the labour force, access to cars, as well as personal consumption expenditure.” It seems rational and inevitable, therefore, that they will settle in areas that will give them tax breaks, are close to transportation infrastructure and near a large population. In Hungary, many firms have pursued opportunities inside Budapest in the form of shopping centers. Budapest was the most logical place in terms of infrastructure, density and wealth immediately after transition. However, with a large percentage of women in the workforce (49% of all women aged 15-74 are employed) and an increasing

amount of car ownership (140% increase in cars per capita from 1980 figures, with a 6-7% annual increase), other opportunities have opened up around the periphery of Budapest. Foreign firms have built their hypermarkets in close proximity to existing roadways in areas outside of Budapest. Of those hypermarkets built within the city borders, four of the 12 are in bordering districts. Six of the twelve are in districts that have experienced or will experience increased housing development outside of the hills of Buda. A couple of them have already well established major roads and are commercial and industrial in nature. None are located in northwestern Buda, though the Budakalász developments are in the vicinity. Of the hypermarkets built outside of Budapest, there are three main centers: Törökbálint/Budaörs (SW of Budapest), Budakalász (NW of Budapest) and Fót (NE of Budapest). These hypermarkets are almost invariably built along one of the main highways (M0, M1, M7, and M3) within 2-10 km of the city. It is interesting that so far none have been built to the south along M5. Those built in Budaörs and Törökbálint are, on the whole, accessible by public transportation (roughly 25 minutes to an hour). Budakalász hypermarkets are also accessible within about 35 minutes by public transportation. However, the hypermarkets in Fót or along the Fót border have been built with the highway in mind. Although the Cora hypermarket in Fót offers a free shuttle from nearby districts, the emphasis of the development has been to accommodate drivers. In the Cora development alone there are over 3000 parking spaces (an increase of its previous stores’ spaces by 28% and 50%). Although the center of Budapest has been slated to be mainly a financial district with development centered on office space, big retail in the form of shopping malls has exploded inside the city. Shopping center development will probably decrease, however, due to the city’s limiting of the size of retail developments within city boundaries. In Budapest, traditional shopping areas are threatened with destruction from shopping malls and hypermarkets (both in and out of Budapest). The OECD acknowledges the probability that large chain stores are replacing traditional small shops that sell basic products. The OECD predicts that although small grocery stores and supermarkets will disappear because of the competition of specialty stores and large chain stores, in general this phenomenon will not affect retail employment figures and may increase efficiency.

mARY bEATON Allowing foreign firms to dominate the retail sector, however, could be dangerous for the Hungarian economy, considering that so much of the economy is funded by consistently increasing foreign direct investment (rising from $18.5 billion in 1998 to a forecasted $25 billion in 2001). Such a heavy reliance on foreign money to fuel the economy has shown to be detrimental, for example, in the case of Spain. In response to this phenomenon, the Municipality of Budapest has created a law restricting retail establishments of over 20,000 square meters within its boundaries. It seems likely, since the latest developments exceed this limit, companies will continue to build these types of stores outside of the city. Besides offering lower corporate taxes, these outlying towns are situated along or on junctions of the major highways. Many of these towns also have long-established train service. These highways and rail lines are convenient for transporting and receiving goods, and can help create lower margins for the firms. For the time being, the outlying towns are more convenient for transportation of goods than Budapest, which is experiencing a severe parking and congestion problem. Unfortunately, it seems likely that these small municipalities will not be able to afford to enhance and maintain their highway infrastructure to the extent necessary, considering the increasing utilization of these roads. The national government has also recently created legislation to redistribute a portion of the more wealthy municipalities’ taxes to poorer municipalities. These more wealthy municipalities claim that this action will not allow them to maintain and upgrade existing roadways due to lost tax revenue. Instead, building new highways seems to be a priority of the national government and of the European nations whose companies have a large stake in the efficient transportation system around Budapest. The immediate infusion of large funds in combination with the increasing divide between rich and poor, as well as weak local governments have combined to form a dangerous potential situation. Without more government initiative to calm free market forces,

Budapest may develop into an “unregulated capitalist city”, with sprawl development not unlikely. Other indications of development heading to the city’s edge are as follows. Warehouse and office park development also seems to be stretching into previously remote areas and are mainly accessible due to motorway access. Residential development in the green and quiet Buda hills area is becoming increasingly popular, as are other “greener” areas. In fact, one advertisement for the Fót Multimedia Park emphasizes its green surroundings. American-style, suburban, gated communities will appear in these areas, due to the build up of telephone, road and commercial infrastructure. With forecasts that Budapest’s population will decrease by 7% in 2010 compared to 1995, and the agglomeration belt will increase by 18% of the same period, sprawl development is not unlikely given the weak local governments. Budaörs is a possible example of the attitude other local governments will take and their resulting development effects. Although the population of Budaörs has increased by only about 1000 people (from 19,820 in 1990 to 20,875 in 2000), over 40 firms have relocated there, office complexes have been built and at least 6 hypermarkets. The recent mandate by the national government, forcing the redistribution of the municipal tax income of wealthy towns, has left Budaörs with a sum equivalent to its annual corporate tax being taken away. This money had been earmarked for transportation infrastructure improvements, as the congestion caused by huge numbers of visiting cars and trucks have not only polluted the air but also caused serious traffic headaches. The town council’s remedy for this budgetary problem will most likely be a raising of the corporate tax by 1.2%, which will keep the tax lower than surrounding towns and still retain and attract further investment. It is clear that competition among these small towns is very strong. György Enyedi indicates that Central European countries are similar when it comes to the character of local governments. The number of municipalities, lack of regional cohesiveness or government, and the independence of these municipalities in decision-making (while heavily dependent on the national government) all contribute to free market reign in decision-making. It has been demonstrated that the hypermarkets around Budapest have been built in close proximity to existing roadways. It is probable, as highway construction intensifies, that new areas will be opened up, and Budapest’s form will become more of the center of a region. Budapest could be forced to cooperate or co-opt these smaller towns in order to control the land use of its surrounding area. With the government’s municipality act, less control over taxes is concentrated in these local hands. This may necessitate regional cooperation, especially when it comes to transportation. If not, towns may face an increasing burden to update transportation infrastructure to accommodate shoppers, workers, and freight delivery prompted by new construction.

Planner Interview—Kamil Kahn Mumtaz [ Pakistan ] hUMA dAHA What is your educational background? I went to the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1957, completed my diploma and a post-graduate course in Tropical Architecture in 1963, and after working for a year with the Architects’ Co-Partnership in London, I joined the faculty of architecture at Kumasi, Ghana, as a lecturer in 1964. In 1966 I returned to Lahore as professor and head of the department of architecture at the National College of Arts, where I re-established the five-year professional course in architecture. I left the department in 1977 to devote myself to my private practice. How did you develop interest in Urban Planning? By default. Our firm, BKM Associates, landed The Lahore Urban Development and Traffic Study project as the local associates of a foreign consultant, who abandoned the project in the middle. We had to complete the assignment on our own. That was my crash course and on-the-job training in urban planning. What are the major issues in urban planning in Pakistan? Poverty, population, pollution, energy and environment conservation. These issues call for an approach based on pedestrian circulation, integrated land use, integrated income and occupational groups, high density, low rise, low tech materials and construction, and an urban settlement pattern of towns and cities with limited size of population and spatial dimensions. In other words, the traditional urban model. But the approach of our planning professionals is based on notions of the “modern” city, with motorized traffic, segregation of land use functions, dormitory “housing” schemes for separate income and occupation groups, low density, high rise, and high tech solutions, and open ended, sprawling mega-cities.

In the power structure centre and region, the the metropolis is both tool for dominatio

How do international issues affect your work and the plan of the city. For instance, are there special concerns in regard to the influx of refugees? “Regionalism” implies a spatial and political hierarchy in which the metropolitan centre dominates the region. It also challenges this relationship by asserting the autonomy and independence of the region. In the post-colonial discourse, the metropolitan centres are identified with Europe and North America. In the power structure of metropolitan centre and region, the architecture of the metropolis is both a symbol and a tool for domination and control. Identified with the superior culture of the centre—its superior technologies and its superior aesthetics—it serves as a tool for marketing the goods and services of the centre. Cultural hegemony of the metropolitan centre imposes a range of materials and forms that are inappropriate to the climate, culture and technologies of the region. Modernisation, progress, and development are good for business. They open up the market for the metropolitan centre, for industrial products and capitalist investment. But traditional cultures resist modernisation, progress, and development. They are amongst the principal targets, which are systematically— even violently—suppressed and destroyed. Fortunately, in our societies the process of transformation has not been thorough. The indicators of change, the islands of industrialisation, “westernisation”, may be more visible but below the surface, the dominant aspect of our societies is the survival of tradition, of traditional values, concepts, social relations and patterns of behaviour. Fortunately, because part of these traditions are the indigenous architectures of our regions. Thus our indigenous architectural theory and design principles, no less than the indigenous building materials and techniques, have been, o f m e t r o p o l i t a n and continue to be an integral a r c h i t e c t u r e o f part, a product of our own environments. The traditional a s y m b o l a n d a link however, between the professional architect and our n and control. indigenous building craftsmen has been one of the casualties of the colonial experience. As a result, the process of continuous and parallel or complementary evolution of both architectural theory and building practice has been interrupted.

As for “refugees”, this is just a special case of “migration” and urbanisation with which we have been dealing continuously for more than fifty years.

The Roof of the World is Collapsing: Hazard Mitigation Internship in Nepal jULIE bEHRENS and the southern lowlands. Population growth, migration, rapid urbanization, and infrastructure development have all placed increasing pressure on the land. As a result, Nepal has seen more frequent and more destructive disasters in recent years.

I had the unique opportunity to spend the summer working in Kathmandu, Nepal with a local NGO called the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). ICIMOD is involved in various aspects of mountain-related research in the Hindu-Kush Himal region. The project provided a perfect opportunity to explore two aspects of Planning which are of particular interest to me: cooperation between the natural sciences and Urban Planning in the area of natural disaster mitigation and opportunities for Planners in the international development sector. Nepal is a small country tucked into the Himalayas between China and India. Contained within the 140,800 square kilometers of Nepal’s borders one of the most diverse natural settings on earth can be found. From the soaring Himalayan peaks of the Annapurna Massif and Mt.. Everest to the low-lying plains of the Terai, Nepal’s natural beauty is astounding. The geology is extremely fragile however, and the country loses thousands of lives and millions of dollars each year to disaster—primarily landslides, flooding, earthquake and epidemics. Though there is no way to completely eliminate

hazard risk in Nepal, effective mitigation strategy from political, economic, and physical angles can reduce the impact of natural disasters. Formulating a comprehensive mitigation strategy for Nepal was the primary objective of our project. Socio-economic factors are central to analyzing hazard vulnerability and planning effective mitigation strategies. This is especially crucial in an extremely poor nation like Nepal. Rated as the seventh least developed nation in the world on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), the average annual per capita GDP in Nepal stands at about US$220, a figure that has not changed much over the past two decades. The overwhelming majority of the population, over 80%, is rural; most survive at or below subsistence level. Deforestation, farm mechanization, and water supply remain serious problems. Poor farming practices over the last few decades have caused severe land degradation. Development moves at a snail’s pace, and some studies have concluded that Nepal has actually moved backwards in terms of development over the past two decades. Harsh conditions in the countryside and the eradication of malaria in the Terai have caused mass migration into the cities

Careful mitigation planning is particularly crucial in nations like Nepal that are struggling to modernize. Nepal is highly dependent upon foreign aid and international lending institutions to finance public works and development projects. A full 34% of the total country expenditure comes from foreign aid, and 64%

of the development expenditure is financed by overseas development funding agencies. Millions of dollars and decades worth of development progress can be wiped out by one single event and as a result, both the major funders and the Nepali government are concerned about intensified losses due to natural disasters. The donor community is advocating for hazard assessments, much like environmental impact assessments, to be tied to funding for new physical infrastructure projects. This is

increasingly important, as rapid urbanization requires major infrastructure improvements. The project that I worked on was a UNDP sponsored initiative whose goals included comprehensive hazard mapping and vulnerability assessments at the district level and policy recommendations for designing a comprehensive hazard mitigation strategy. This internship gave me the opportunity to work with professionals from all over the world in a wide range of professional fields. I now have a much better understanding of the need for coordination between the

natural sciences and disciplines concerned with the built environment, particularly in disaster prone regions. Geology, climate, rural-urban connections, environmental protection, land degradation, deforestation, population growth, migratory patterns, and poverty are all things that Hazard Mitigation Planning must consider. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to learn this while discovering a new part of the world, new aspects of the Planning field, and a new sort of environment in which Planners are working.

Trading Places with Asia

jAY sHUFFIELD As the processes of globalization are commanding more interest in the world of urban planning, Trading Places is bringing together urban planning students and ideas from around the world. Trading Places is an informal network of planning students that fosters exchanges between planning students in the United States and internationally. People maintain contact through the internet (www.tradingplacesnetwork.org), which itself serves as a forum for ideas and discussion. This past summer, students from Asia, North America, and Europe came together in four cities in Asia and three North American cities to experience and discuss how globalization is affecting urban dynamics. Whether attending the First World Planning Schools Conference in Shanghai, touring city districts with activists, engaging one another in group discussions and colloquiums, or continuing our conversations and sharing our observations at a bar, we had a unique experience that developed our understanding of planning, that challenged our assumptions, and that filled in our studies with the real texture of the city. The diversity and quality of the sessions was truly amazing, ranging from an open question session with a yakuza who controls Tokyo’s seedy Shinjuku district, to meeting with former mayor David Dinkins in New York. In Hong Kong, Trading Places visited a squatter settlement the day before it was demolished, and on the streets of the Bronx we talked with a biker gang that was looking for a new clubhouse in the area after their old one was torn down. We also met with the largest development agency in Hong Kong, talked with an Asian developer in Flushing, Queens, and learned about the cutting-edge environmental technologies being used in Battery Park City. Other outings, like an hour-and-a-half foot massage in Shanghai and a trip to a public bath in Tokyo, looked at the cultural contexts through recreation and cultural immersion.

Given the consolidation of the global economy, we were also interested in informal economies. Either by exclusion from the formal economy, or in reaction to it, informality is the way of life for many urban residents today. City districts are defined by the type of relationship they have with the formal economy, and in many cases the built environment itself is the direct result of informal and semiformal economies. We were interested both in how this growth of unregulated activity is shaping cities, as well as what we could learn from places developed through individual and collective ingenuity, without the help (or hindrance) of planners. Finally, the Urban Nomad theme looked at how mobility and lifestyle choices affect cities. The meaning of mobility itself was the subject of much debate, and different views emerged. We are still discussing all these topics, and while there are no simple answers, we hope the series of articles we are writing and collecting in our book will shed some light on these urban and global dynamics. Trading Places is active during the school year as well. Last year, Trading Places hosted a speech by Marjetica Portc, a Czech artist whose work on informal housing was on display at the Guggenheim Museum. Columbia students also had exchanges with planning students at Cornell and MIT through Trading Places. Finally, Trading Places makes resources available for personal growth outside of the planned events. I would not have attended any of the Congress on the New Urbanism if George Proakis from MIT hadn’t stayed at my apartment when he came to New York.

The conference was organized around three themes: the GeneriCity, the Informal City, and Urban Nomads. After reading literature about the homogenization of global culture, the proliferation of standardized architecture through multinational corporations, and the way cities are becoming like theme parks, we went out to see if cities were really becoming generic. While the McDonalds in different cities occupied similar sites and had similar designs, many aspects—the shape of skylines, local neighborhoods, and even variations in fast food menus—are forcing us to develop a more nuanced explanation of this phenomenon. [ Shanghai ]

KINNE

[ Greece: In search of... The Lost City of Atlantis ]

cARA mCaTEER kELLY rOSS cHRISTINA mICHAELIAN

Students entering the second year of the Urban Planning Program are eligible for Kinne Fellowships, which fund international planning research.

During our trip to Greece we explored both a modern city and an ancient one. Our first stop was Athens, where we met with researchers at the Institute for Urban Environment and Human Resources (UEHR) at Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences. Panayiotis Getimis, professor of urban and regional development and director of the UEHR, gave us an overview of current urban planning issues facing Greece. Their list of objectives is long, but some of the major research projects include topics such as European Spatial Planning, Participatory Governance, Sustainable Urban Tourism, Environmental Conflict Resolution, and Strategic Spatial Plan for Athens Attica, 2006-2015. We also concentrated on some of the issues that were of immediate concern in Athens such as the preparations for the 2004 Olympics, the ongoing problems with air pollution and traffic congestion, and informal, unplanned growth on the periphery of the city. Overall, we got the impression that more effort needs to be focused on creating a more participatory planning process in Greece. The current system is very top-down and centralized, which has been creating tension between the people and the government. Finally, we took a tour of the University’s GIS facilities, which were fairly impressive. Some of their work can be viewed at http://www.uehr.panteion.gr/urban/. After our busy stay in Athens, we hopped on a high-speed boat to the Cyclades to relax, guzzle wine, bask on red and black sand beaches, and of course investigate the legendary ancient city of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini. Here we met with Giorgos Alexopolous, an archeologist with the Ministry of Culture in Athens, who gave us a tour (in his speedo) of this archaeological site—one of the oldest and most extensive finds in Greece. The Akrotiri site contains ruins of Early Cycladic, Middle Cycladic, and Late Cycladic/ Minoan cities built on top of one another. The most recent of these settlements came to an end around 1650 BC when a nearby volcano erupted, spewing balls of ash and pumice that filled the dwellings and buried not only the city but the entire island (giving Santorini its crescent shape). However, all of the city’s residents seemed to have evacuated the island in response to tremors preceding the eruption, as no people were found at the site. Many scholars believe that the legend of the lost city of Atlantis mentioned by Plato in some of his dialogues derives from these events on Santorini. The most recent city on the Akrotiri site consisted of building complexes along narrow winding roads, in many ways similar to the layout of the modern cities on the island. The city’s most impressive features were the large size of the dwellings and a closed sewage system made up of clay pipes that led from private toilets in each building to a main collecting pipe that led downhill toward the shore. After our stay on Santorini, we traveled briefly to the island of Naxos, where we basically just ate a lot and drove around winding mountain roads in a rental car, and then we took a late-night ferry back to Athens, where we grudgingly boarded a plane home to New York.

Who’s That Person at the Next Computer? [ Urban Planning Students ]

FIRST YEAR [aUGUSTA bROWN] My interest in planning was first sparked growing up in Louisville, KY. I went to the University of Virginia undergraduate where I studied Sociology, graduating in ‘98. I moved to London after graduating from school and lived there for 7 months before moving to New York. I have been in the city for the last two years working in various unrelated fields. It is nice to finally be perusing my interest in planning. [bAYO cALLENDER] Joint-degree student—SIPA/UP Professional Interests: Community Advocacy, Public Law New Yorker, hailing from Brooklyn, USA [hSIUTZU (bETTY) cHANG] I graduated last year with a Master of Urban Design and Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. I also had my undergraduate in Architecture in Taiwan and three-year working experience in different scales of architecture, urban design and planning projects. Since I was working for a non-profit organization, I have my special interest in community planning, especially in the old city fabric. During the school year here, I would like to focus my study in implementation strategies, from planning as well as marketing, of preserving and revitalizing old city neighborhoods. [bRENDA cHO] Born and raised in New Orleans, I graduated from Washington University in St.Louis in 2000, where I studied Architecture and Social Thought and Analysis. I lived in Chicago for a year before coming to New York in August 2001. My interest in planning is mainly inspired by my studies in architecture, since I want to learn more about the larger urban infrastructure and related social issues beyond the scope of plans and models. [lISA fISHER] Howdy, I just arrived from San Francisco [worked the last few years as a graphic designer]. I have BFA in design from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [love the mid west-although the snow boarding isn’t so hot] and hesitate to admit attending high school in Texas. I am psyched to learn how to address issues I am concerned about via planning, experience real “changing seasons” and become a pseudo new yorker; any tips? [vERONICA mURPHY] I have lived in New York for about 13 years now but home is that beautiful island of Jamaica. I did my undergraduate studies at St. John’s University in Queens (Environmental Studies). I am interested in Environmental Planning and development in Third World Countries. I am looking forward to two very productive, fun years at Columbia. [aLEC tUNE] I received my Baccalaureate in Economics last spring at Humboldt State University, located in the California redwoods. There I competed for four years on the school’s cross country team. Last summer, I worked for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection fighting forest fires. Aside from a summer in Boston at the Harvard GSD, I have lived my entire life in Northern California.

[jOSE vENTURA] Born 1974 Luanda, Angola, at that time Portugal. So, Portuguese citizen. Lived in Luanda, Angola; Lisbon, Portugal; Brussels, Belgium; Sao Paulo and Brasilia, Brasil. Undergraduate in Architecture, University of Brasilia, Brasil. Studied Electronic Engineering for 2 years before that. Major interests: cities (of course), photography, travel, cave diving. [aBBE vERNICK] I was born and raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I graduated from Tulane University with a major in Political Economy. After working for a corporate law firm, I withdrew my acceptance to attend Cornell Law School this fall and rushed my application to Columbia. My minor was Urban Sociology and my father is a Civil Engineer so I guess my decision to study planning is not as random as my journey to Columbia. [bILL wALSH] I graduated in May 2001 from the University of Connecticut with a degree in Geography and a specialization in real estate and urban economics. This past summer I traveled 15,000 miles cross-country with two friends for ten weeks. My interests in planning relate to urban development issues, particularly brownfields redevelopment, and I plan to specialize in real estate development. SECOND YEAR [tED bARDACKE] Since graduating from high school in 1984, I’ve done 5-plus year stints in Mexico City, Bangkok and the New York City area. Previously a journalist, I’m now focusing on large public/ private sector development projects, complementing my languishing interests in immigration, mapmaking and international financial architecture. This past summer I worked at the Empire State Development Corporation, mostly on the historic restoration of the Apollo Theatre and on Queens West, a mixed-use development by the City, State and the Port Authority along the waterfront in Long Island City. [mARY bEATON] My background is varied. I intended to be an archaeologist while studying Classics and art history at Rutgers University and the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. I then decided to pursue a more corporate career and worked at a New York information management company. I decided to resurrect my academic life by participating at the Central European University, Medieval History Department in Budapest. Although urban studies was always an interest of mine, I became involved more seriously in urban planning issues as an editor and writer for an environmental studies think tank in Budapest. This summer I received a FLAS grant which enabled me to further my Hungarian studies and research into innovation policy in Hungary.

SECOND YEAR [continued] [jAMES gARLAND] 2nd year Masters of Science, Urban Planning Home: Lake Charles, LA; Previous School: Dillard University; B.A. Urban Studies/Public Policy; What I did this summer: This summer I participated in a research program funded by Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta GA. I worked with the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Prevention Research Center of Morehouse School of Medicine on air quality/ urban sprawl issues within metropolitan Atlanta, and other issues related to urban planning and public health. [dAVID kANTOR] I’m from Sarasota, Florida, but I call Denver my home. I graduated from Washington University (St. Louis, MO) in 1994 with a degree in English Literature. In the past 8 years, I’ve also lived in Israel, in Costa Rica, and in the separatist country of Texas. I’m interested in environmental planning, specifically brownfield redevelopment and water management. Over the summer, I traveled across Asia as part of Trading Places and worked in the New Jersey Office of State Planning’s Brownfields Taskforce. [cARA mCaTEER] I got a BA in Humanities from the University of Texas at Austin and then spent a few years knocking around from job to job before settling on planning. This past summer I continued my work at the Revson Fellows Program and also worked on a study of New York City’s baking industry for the New York Industrial Retention Network. I also traveled to Greece, London, and Mexico City. [jAIME oRTIZ] Born: Mexico City. Main interest: poetry filled rooms. Randomly filled desire: steam baths (temazcal). Current exploration: public space segregation. [cUZ pOTTER] 2nd Year, dual degree with SIPA New York is the only home I have now. I’ve forgotten about undergrad studies. I intend to work with planners in developing countries. This summer I was a scattered, wretched mess. I worked freelance on a number of interesting projects, including collecting information on human settlements with population greater than 1000 and preparing a contextual rezoning analysis for the Upper East Side. I also began and ended my career as an architect by going head-to-head with SOM. (And I assure you, they’ve got a much larger head.) [oMAR r. rODRIGUEZ] Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, 2nd year, Graduated from Syracuse U. with a major in Civil Engineering. Last summer worked for the NYC Economic Development Corp. in the Transportation Dept., with the Cross Harbor Freight Movement and Staten Island Railroad Reactivation Projects. My interests are: transportation, EIS process, physical design, infrastructure systems and urban history among others.

[jAY sHUFFIELD] He considers himself a New Yorker because New York is his home. He hasn’t lived here very long, though. Originally from Oregon, he lived on the South Side of Chicago for several years, and has lived in France and Spain. After graduating in Public Policy at the University of Chicago, Jay decided to come to New York and develop some radical theories about urban dynamics. He worked at the Department of Parks and Recreation last year writing historical signs, and then spent his summer helping prepare the Trading Places conference and working in the Land Use Office of the Department of Transportation. Currently Jay is working on his thesis and an ) article for the Trading Places book. [jENNIFER sUN] Eastern roots, No/So Cali nomad who flows to the textures of drumnbass, ethnic enclaves, inter-ethnic coalition building, social justice, and other multisyllabic concepts related to community development and grassroots organizing in immigrant communities. [aNN tOMOKO yAMAMOTO] My hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana Undergrad: Columbia College, Columbia University; East Asian Languages & Cultures major; Professional interests: Public policy research in Japan; Summer 2001: Researched local government system and urban planning in Japan through internship at Yokosuka City Hall; helped organize Trading Places conference in Tokyo [mYRNA iTON] I was born in San Salvador, El Salvador. Home is San Francisco. I spent the summer working on land use issues and mapping out union members’ voting patterns for the AFL-CIO in Stamford, Connecticut and playing with my kids. PhD [pATRICIA hOUSER] Status at Columbia: 2nd year PhD student. I came to Columbia with a background in Geography (Masters Degree from UNC Chapel Hill) and Teaching (after teaching junior high and high school social studies, I was instructing graduate students at Columbia Teachers College). While looking around for a doctoral program in geography, I discovered Urban Planning (which is really geography anyway). Today I live in Putnam County—where New York City’s Croton Watershed dominates the landscape—and am preparing to write a historical analysis of watershed issues (in the Croton system) for my doctoral dissertation. I am also teaching full time as an assistant professor of geography at Western Connecticut University. [jOHN pOWERS] My academic interests are in regional economic development, economic geography and industrialization. I am originally from New England but recently moved here from Washington, DC. I enjoy playing golf, skiing and taking naps.

KINNE [ 2000 Miles of Texas and Mexico ] kAJA kUEHL + nICK sALAS + aDAM wOLFF + tED wRIGHT Along the lonely stretches of highway that straddle the Rio Grande in western Texas and northern Mexico, political boundaries and economic policy seem of little consequence. The harsh, dry desert environment and rugged terrain dictates a difficult life for the few settlers on either side of the river, as those remaining in wilting agricultural or mining towns can attest. Yet, despite the inhospitable nature of the region, cities have emerged near the river along north-south transportation routes, producing tangible signs that the border exists. It is in these twin cities where the presence of the international boundary plays an active role in the daily lives of residents, constantly reminding them of the differences between the two countries. Our Kinne group traveled to the border region with a vague idea that something unique was taking place. We knew that perhaps nowhere else in the world could you find nations of such disparate economic standing sharing a common border. We read articles citing that the region was experiencing the highest rates of population growth in their respective countries. We knew that NAFTA had significantly altered the economy of both Mexican and American border cities. And we knew that cities were clustered in pairs, one on each side of the border, seemingly providing an ideal place to make physical and social comparisons, including those pertaining to land use and city planning. After arriving in Austin, Texas, at the end of August, we headed south through mesquite country toward the Laredos. From there, we steered our white Grand Marquis north and west, straying little from the course of the Rio Grande, until reaching El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. In all, we traveled more than 2,000 miles in eight days, accumulated three speeding tickets, and crossed the border at five different locationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, Del Rio/Ciudad Acuna, Big Bend National Park/Boquillas (by paddle boat), Presidio/Ojinaga, and El Paso/Ciudad Juarez. Our car was not inspected once.

Mexican men wait to shuttle tourists across the Rio Grande, by boat and then truck, into the tiny town of Boquillas, across from Big Bend National Park. Informal border crossings, such as this, exist at different locations along the border.

Almost from the beginning, it became obvious that the twin cities at each location were, to varying degrees, dependent on each other for their survival. In Laredo and El Paso, a constant stream of pedestrian and automobile traffic awaited entry into the U.S., presumably to shop at the discount chain stores that lined the streets in the immediate vicinity of the International Bridge. The stores on the U.S. side of the border, such as the Wal-Mart in Del Rio, provided a wider variety of cheaper and better quality household goods and clothing. At the same time, a smaller contingent of Americans crossed into Mexican cities to take advantage of lower prices at the pharmacies, dentist offices, and liquor stores that were clustered near points of entry.

aDAM wOLFF

The view of downtown El Paso from a hillside barrio in Ciudad Juarez.

As we explored further in each city, the more widespread affects of NAFTA became noticeable: large, gated, low-rise manufacturing plants (maquiladoras), were located in industrial zones at the periphery of Ciudad Juarez, contributing to the sprawling nature of that city, and a newly constructed international truck bridge was spurring land development in a sparsely populated area outside of Nuevo Laredo. Although the affects of globalization have reached deep into the heart of the Texas-Mexico border region, altering its physical and social make-up forever, the area seems to have remained somewhat isolated from the interiors of both Mexico and the United States. A unique way of life has developed in the twin cities on the border, independent of recent changes in government policy. At the same time, one can sense the feeling of abundant hope and constant tension that often accompanies rapid change. Our short, intense road-trip seemed to highlight this contradictory theme and raise more questions, rather than lead us to any firm conclusions about the development of the region.

Drivers wait in traffic as U.S. Customs agents stop cars entering El Paso from Ciudad Juarez.

Notes

LEGEND

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