Towards a Curated, Two-Wheeled Consumerism

Fourth Floor Distribution is a Canadian importer of classic city bicycles. The Bicycle and the New Economy: Towards a Curated Consumerism, a recent essay from their Bespoke blog, suggests that increased bicycle usage is symbolic of and perhaps catalytic to a cultural shift necessary for economic recovery and stability.

The neat thing about increased bicycle use is that it is actually good for the economy. In fact, it may well be the bicycle that saves North America, both its carbon footprint and amok economy. As the car and housing market become questionable economic indicators, consider that most businesses in North America are still small businesses. Small businesses may be difficult to quantify compared to massive globalized business, but they do represent a consistent and large core of the economy and also a way out of this mess. As an aggregate small businesses are much more difficult to measure than the performances of Wal-Mart or Chrysler, yet they are consistently taxed higher and play a much more vital role in the neighbourhoods they are part of. And, they keep money and jobs in the country. The automobile usage of the past put money out of the country, into the cheap Chinese consumer goods sold at WalMart and into the oil imported from other countries. If this money is to be shuffled back, it will have to be towards businesses that are not so globalized and that represents new jobs and opportunities to North American citizens. The huge amount of money saved by riding a bicycle can go to Sunday brunches, art, music, home renovations and many more enjoyable artifacts. Moreover, the mentality of riding a city bicycle is a mentality that values objects that represent well crafted tools that truly enhance life – most of which cannot be found at your local WalMart. The joy is no longer found in buying or even owning, but rather using. The problem with conspicuous consumerism is that people owned more and used less. And what’s the point of that?

Bu-bu-bu-Butt Drugs!

I’ve been laughing at the Butt Drugs name in Corydon, Indiana, my whole life. Now the world is. A couple hundred thousand viewings later, this family drugstore is getting free airtime in the UK. Congratulations to the Butts for this bit of social media genius.

Copenhagen: Bicycle Culture 2.0

Bicycle Culture 2.0 is more social, equitable, and sustainable than what normally passes for transportation policy in the United States. It’s also a lot more user friendly than what passes as spandex-clad cycling culture here, too. Check out this short feature from StreetFilms. Like Mikael Colville-Andersen of Copenhagenize and Copenhagen Cycle Chic who appears in the video, I hope other cities are inspired as well.

Chateau Red (Boiling Springs)

I was reading a list the other day, 10 Fascinating International Facts That Are Wrong, and discovered something amusing.

The Error: Mouton-Rothschild is a top-grade Chateau claret.

The five growths (classes) of red Bordeaux were determined in 1855. Four were considered First Class Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion. Mouton-Rothschild did not like being place in second class so their motto is “Premier ne puis. Second ne daigne. Mouton suis.” (First I cannot be. Second I do not deign to be. I am Mouton.) All I know is I certainly would not turn down a glass of it.

That Mouton-Rothschild is a second class Bordeaux is of little consequence to me. Given my chosen field, I may never be able to afford a bottle and probably wouldn’t if I could. I’m a craft beer man.

It’s what it reminded me of that matters.

Several years ago, my Great Aunt in rural Tennessee applied for a job as a supervisor at a local clothing manufacturing plant when she was in her eighties. She figured she was a cinch for it owing to the fact that she had about 20 years experience in the field. It had taken her forty years to get that experience, mind you, but that had everything to do with the state of the clothing manufacturing business in northern Tennessee and nothing to do with her.

What was built as an OshKosh plant had been the subject of numerous obituaries only to be resurrected under a different manufacturer’s name as many times.  When various investors were able to win contracts out from under whatever particular country was killing America that year, they’d buy or lease the dormant plant and equipment, reassemble a team that usually included my Great Aunt and several cousins, and get whoever was occupying the county seat reelected. I used to call them itinerant sewers. It wasn’t them who ever traveled, but the work sure got around.

Political stabilization notwithstanding, my Great Aunt did not get the job. Apparently they thought her 20 years of experience was about 10 too many on account of the stretch of life it took to get them. She was disappointed to not be working again.

A couple months later, the phone rang. It was the plant. Production was ramping up and they wanted to know if she’d be willing to do a little sewing on the side as a floater, occasionally filling in for others who took itinerant to mean something other than what I did.

Her answer? “Well, if I can’t be the tablecloth I don’t reckon I want to be the dish rag.”

I didn’t even know she was French.

What I do know now, though, is that documenting those similarities from the hills of France to the hills of Tennessee is going to be central in my work. Showing them as part of a unifying process, a human process by which we identify ourselves, our livelihoods, and our heritage is worth more than a bottle of first class Chateau claret. I just hope I can find another sense of humor worth half as much. I wonder what the politics are like in Bordeaux?

More links

Research on Place and Space , coordinated by Bruce B. Janz, Associate Professor of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, at the University of Central Florida, is an extremely valuable collection of links to web sites, journals, and articles which examine concepts of place. Though there are occasional dead links, it’s organization by discipline is helpful both in exploring the multifaceted ways in which people define and respond to place and in realizing their interrelationships.

Putting People First, Daily insights on user experience, experience design, and people-centered innovation, is a compilation site as well, hosted by Experientia, an international experience design consultancy based in Italy. As would be expected, the site itself is user friendly in making available collections of articles pertaining to the many elements of successful design and interaction. The site often features articles that examine how cultural issues affect usability and values and vice versa. It’s section on creativity has been of particular interest thus far.

Copenhagenize , and the Slow Bicycle Movement in general, are valuable not so much in their representation of a particular culture but because they provide such an excellent example of how changing the perception of  a single type of residual object or activity – bicycles and bicycling in this case – from one of triviality to one of utility, recreation to transportation, can lead to more significant cultural shifts. Though this type of phenomenon is relatively common as we adapt new technology, it’s less so as a matter of readopting old.

Graduate school as life affirmation: An early project outline

Future cities will be compacted into clearly defined neighborhoods that will be smaller and more densely populated than our sprawling suburbs and ex-urbs today.  These new cities and towns will combine the best of traditional urban design with modern mass transit and communication technologies . . . Offices, stores and restaurants, housing, parks and open spaces will all be within walking distance for the people who live there. Tentacles of restored land with healthy watersheds, river banks, ravines and hills will reach into the heart of the city, while clear boundaries will honor spaces in which farms and wild lands flourish and nurture the new metropolis.

As our resurgent cityscapes mature, architecture, cuisine and the arts will re-develop regional styles and celebrate local choices, resources and sensibilities.

In this future, the differences between our cities become apparent and delightful. The joy of walking and the convenience of alternative transportation will diminish the need for the single-passenger automobile, reduce its infrastructure and restore a human scale to the cityscape.

An increasingly ”walkable” environment will allow us to cluster our important civic institutions, such as, the city hall, library, and museums, shopping and work. As a result, more and more people will find themselves drawn to the middle of our new town where they will also find a beautiful, intentional space where they feel welcome to put up their feet, play games or discuss the matters of the day. This space, the community’s gathering place, is the heart for communal identity, welcome, and social rejuvenation.  Every neighborhood will build such a space where people create together something that captures their collective talents, their aspirations and their appreciation of the many community connections. –Milenko Matanovic, Multiple Victories

1.    What is the topic that I am interested in working on in my program of study?

The heart of my topic, like the heart of my city, is Midtown, New Albany.

Like a lot of cities, New Albany flourished in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Its location along the banks of the Ohio River just west of the falls made it a gateway to the West and South and residents took full advantage. When railcars replaced steamers, New Albany’s already establishing industry made it a natural stop and growth continued. It was during those times that Midtown was built. With hills to the west and the river to the south, residential areas spread mostly eastward. Wealthy riverboat captains and industrialists had claimed Main Street overlooking the river for their own grandiose mansions early on. The merchants, craftspeople, and laborers, then, began purchasing lots just north of them, on the remaining east-west streets with homes generally moving from larger to smaller as they were located further away from the river, though building scale varies greatly even within the same blocks. Though historic records show class stratification has been a problem since the city’s earliest days, the Midtown neighborhood was a place where those of varying means lived side by side, intermingling in the streets, and successfully working in tandem to improve their respective futures.

The massive suburbanization that has plagued other parts of the country, however, did not spare New Albany in damaging once proud urban neighborhoods. Today Midtown is known as a center of poverty, with slumlords more common than craftspeople and the neighborhood school struggling to maintain test scores with an overly transient student population. Though the scope will have to be narrowed for the purposes of a MACS project, the implementation of strategic interventions to reverse those negative trends and return Midtown to a thriving neighborhood of choice, a place where it makes financial and emotional sense to invest, is my project.

The notion of “creative cities”, too, and the impact of creative activity on communities is a popular topic, a potential antidote to the sometimes dehumanizing affects of suburbanization and loss of urban community, and of great personal interest.  Some of the challenges lie in identifying what constitutes creativity, or at least “acceptable” creative activity, and questions around who sets the boundaries and assigns value to them, or even if there are or should be boundaries. Delineations in these areas often lead to unintentional anti-community sentiment rather than a sharing of mutual values so that what is superficially supportive of creativity sometimes actually serves to subvert or marginalize further creative endeavor. As such, a part of this project will inevitably focus on those perceptions of community and creative value, how various cultural lenses affect them, and what can be shown or done to encourage the cross-pollination rather than compartmentalization of creative endeavor, a condition which my beginning work causes me to believe is necessary for cultural and community sustainability.

2.    What background knowledge will I need in order to be successful in working on a meaningful set of projects in this area?

First, knowledge of the area’s history (including recent history) will be necessary both to place the work in a broader cultural context and for use as an educational tool in highlighting the area’s stories and possibilities for internal and external audiences.

Second, baseline data showing current demographics, real estate and educational trends, resident attitudes and desires, and other potentially actionable and measurable indicators.  I’ll also need to be connected with various creative enterprises, both institutional and individual. What’s working and not working and how do we measure that?

Third, an understanding of responsible, culturally informed intervention strategies that have proven successful elsewhere and could be replicated or adapted for use in Midtown. This is an obviously broad category that I’ll be using MACS opportunities to better accentuate and prioritize. I have some neighborhood revitalization and community development training and hope to better understand the cultural and creative underpinnings and tools of such movements as I progress both in the classroom and on the ground. The creation and/or maintenance of confidence in the neighborhood, both internally and externally, are paramount.

Fourth, competence with measurement tools and the good sense and flexibility to adapt will be required. Some interventions will work. Others won’t. I’ll need to realize that and respond positively.

3.    Why is this topic important to me?

My wife and I both have extensive family history in New Albany, quite a bit of it in Midtown. In that sense, it’s reclamation of our personal heritage. From a broader view, though, it represents the reversal of what we believe to be dangerous global trends of overconsumption, sprawl, and loss of civic and intellectual engagement. It’s an opportunity to leverage my strengths, partner with those who are strong in other ways, create an arena more conducive to achievement and sustainability in various forms, and to validate that I’m alive and contributing.

By that same token, it’s become clear that what’s been missing from my considerations of revitalization, creativity, and community is commitment to my own creative endeavors, robbing others and me of the learning opportunities offered only by direct practice. It’s by personally engaging in creative activity that I will realize and celebrate my own identity and hopefully thus be able to apply that learning in support of the same type of realization in others so that it and they, too, can be shared and celebrated as a part of the community building process.

4.    Why is this topic important to the people with whom I intend to work?

Some agree with the sentiments expressed above. Some just want to feel safe and able to better themselves educationally, socially, spiritually, or financially– to have a chance at a better quality of life. Still others just wish people with my attitude would go away because I’m quite purposely interrupting their exploitation of people and circumstances.  Unfortunately, it’s important to them, too. What’s more important, though, is that opportunities for self-realization and growth become reality for a group with potential to be intellectually, economically, and spiritually more inclusive and of greater presence.  If the interventions my project eventually encompasses are successful, the perception of their importance will change among other people as they take ownership of them for themselves.

Preservation through Production at Hatch

I rarely visit Nashville, TN, without stopping by Hatch Show Print. It’s a nice way to be.

From the Smithsonian traveling exhibition American Letterpress: The Art of Hatch Show Print, this video shows letterpress printing as done by Hatch since 1879, documenting not only a specific, historic printing process but a worthwhile approach to heritage vitality. While efforts are underway to make letterpress matter again, Hatch just never stopped.

Global local thinking

Lexington, Kentucky:

Creative Cities Summit

The Creative Cities Summit will convene in Lexington, Kentucky April 7-9, 2010.  It was announced Jan 9 at a joint press conference by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry. Previously held in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2004 and Detroit, Michigan in 2008, the 3-day Summit, an interdisciplinary conference on the 21st century issues challenging evolving communities, draws speakers and attendees from all over the world to discuss savvy economic development; how to develop environments supportive of innovation; transportation; sustainability; adaptive reuse and the built environment; the role and value of public art in a community’s quality of life; and the nurturing of local cultural assets. Keynote speakers: Richard Florida and Charles Landry.

Munich:

The Cities, Culture, and Society (CCS) Conference

Creating Cities: Culture, Space, and Sustainability

February 25–27, 2010

jointly organized by Japan Center, Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology, and Institute for European Ethnology, and Seminar of Economic History of Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, and Urban Research Plaza of Osaka City University

Abstract:

The conference Creating Cities: Culture, Space and Sustainability investigates the forces that shape the conditions of urban development and the creation of cities in comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. In recent years, the notion of the „creative city“ has become a guiding framework for thinking about the present and future state of cities and their capability of coping with the impact and challenges of globalization. Cities are regarded as engines of regional, national and global economic growth because they are the key centres for cultural production and consumption and target areas for mobility and migration.

They are also contested sites because of increasing cultural and social diversity. Simultaneously, cities use cultural diversity and even counter-cultures to display appealing images and representations of creativity and innovation. Many citizens aspire to live and work in the cosmopolitan global environments that only metropolitan centres seem to be able to provide, but cities also provide vital space for the challenged, homeless, and other socially disadvantaged groups. The resolution of social disparities is consequently becoming an urgent policy task.

Environmental and social sustainability, urban revitalization and amenity are major keywords of our time. The writings of Richard Florida and Charles Landry have laid the basis for a new urban agenda that focuses on innovation, cultural revitalization and the built environment, attaching great importance to the contribution of the arts and the cultural sector to the economy. To be creative, cities thus must offer a vibrant environment, cultural amenities and career choices for both men and women sufficient to attract groups with talent to build creative industries. In prominent examples of creative cities such as Berlin the marketing policy mainly focuses on the creative industry sector including tourism. But in fact, a multitude of prerequisites and preconditions is necessary for the creation of cities at all, thus laying the basis for any kind of urban development.

In this context, this conference focuses on the interactions among culture, sustainability, and space. We would like to emphasise inquiry into the dynamics of cultural creativity, industries and production, the risks and benefits of both cultural diversity and social inclusion or exclusion, the sustainability of efforts to plan and redesign the urban built environment to promote creativity, and the identity politics of representations of the city and creativity in the popular imagination as well as spaces of heritage and tourism. We recognise that there are many different groups and focal points related to creating cities, so one major purpose of this conference is to create a framework in which both practitioners and researchers of different disciplines can interact and share ideas about how urban environments are being transformed.

Foundations and Futures: Links of Interest

Cooltown Studios is a front runner in presenting new ideas for community building and the redevelopment of urban spaces utilizing the concepts of placemaking, crowdsourcing, and coworking with case studies, examples, and links to additional resources. The organization methodologies they espouse consistently challenge me to rethink the application of more traditional models of local economic development in my own community.

The Congress for New Urbanism studies and promotes New Urbanism, looking at urban planning, transportation, and other issues pertaining to the preservation and viability of both the already built urban environment and remaining green space and farmland. Among many other applicable areas, they are generally supportive of the removal of urban and waterfront freeways, a concept of particular interest and consequence in the Louisville metro area.

The Brookings Institution is an independent, nonprofit public policy organization which conducts research and provides recommendations in order to, according to them, strengthen American democracy; foster the economic and social welfare, security and opportunity of all Americans; and secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system. They’ve done consulting work in Louisville and Southern Indiana that’s alternately used as justification for projects and completely ignored in instances where their conclusions don’t fit with the political will of current elected officials.

The Neighborhood Marketing Group, created by Marcia Nedland, is a subgroup of the larger Leaders for Communities, a networking and idea exchange for community development professionals hosted by NeighborWorks America. My formal training in neighborhood revitalization was facilitated by NeighborWorks with Marcia acting as an instructor.

The Project for Public Spaces makes use of staff talents in the areas of architecture, design, planning, and arts administration to educate and advocate around the importance of public space in the life of healthy, sustainable communities. I’ve used them often as a resource when contemplating two-way street conversion, other traffic calming mechanisms, civic participation, and street life.

The Center for the Study of Art & Community, in an effort to support pioneers in the building of sustainable creative communities, has created what they call a rotary journal of creative community building known as Wild Caught Stories. As they explain: For the next year this space will serve as a discussion forum for a community of six thoughtful creative community builders who will share their differing perspectives on culture, community and current affairs. Each discussion cycle will begin with a question posed by one of the six, then, each week, one after another, the other members will write in response to both the current question and whatever has emerged in the ongoing discussion. After six weeks, we will start again with a new question.

TED – Technology, Entertainment, Design is a nonprofit dedicated to Ideas Worth Spreading. They are the sponsors of annual conferences featuring the TEDTalks, lectures and presentations of progressive thinking. With conference themes like “What the World Needs Now”, “And Now the Good News”, and “Rediscovery of Wonder”, individual talk topics aren’t always directly applicable to neighborhood culture and community building but are almost always an horizon broadening experience reminding me and millions of others exactly how powerful we are in our ability to craft the future.

The New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project is a local art project leading up to New Albany’s bicentennial in 2013. Beginning this year, five public art installations will occur each year for four years to build momentum towards a citywide celebration. Contemporary artists have been asked to respond to various aspects of the city’s heritage from physical environment to immigration, industry, and the Underground Railroad. The juxtaposition of old and new serves as a mechanism for dialogue between historic and present-day cultural and creative practices as well as a draw for diverse interests to experience the resurgence of what was once the largest urban center in Indiana.

Re: emergence

My path to the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability program at Goucher College and its first residency began with neighborhood activism in New Albany, Indiana. Like many fellow travelers, I have calluses from the trip.

I’m fortunate to have connected in those years with a remarkable community development entity, New Directions Housing Corporation. Via their support, I was able to participate in a national pilot program for place-based community and neighborhood revitalization training conducted by NeighborWorks America, further connecting me with a national network of consultants, the Healthy Neighborhoods Group among them.

Repair Affair, New Directions Housing, New Albany, 2007

My previous work at Indiana University Southeast also provided fodder for the calculation of grassroots strategies and the organization of limited resources to implement them.

I was neither without pre-residency experience nor lacking a frame of reference from which to consider notions of community, culture, and sustainability. But I still wasn’t prepared.

Gathering as a group for the first time, twelve geographically and culturally diverse students at various stages of life and advocacy, along with faculty and staff, formed a family in eight days. We not only studied truth communities as a part of our leadership and self-development coursework but became one. Conjure up whichever “we laughed, we cried” cliché you favor and it probably happened, for 12 to 14 hours a day each day. We transformed.

And then there was the question: What is cultural sustainability?

In our readings, discussions, and awful (wonderful?) rowing toward sticky principles, I came to three initial realizations that will both inform and challenge my ongoing work:

1. Commonality is more common than we generally think.
A discussion of a disappearing indigenous language in rural Kenya with a classmate, for instance, led to a comparison of the loss of urban public transportation facilities in the United States.

Though seemingly radically different constructs, both have led to devastating effects on community, interaction, and identity. Likewise, both are the subjects of growing restorative efforts. While the corporeal manifestations may differ, the psychological sense of detachment and need are the same. Perhaps intervention strategies, at least as they lend themselves to understanding of value, can be similar as well.

2. There is insufficient language to describe what we experienced as a group and what we need to experience on a larger societal scale to achieve sustainability.
Scholars much more experienced than I regularly combat the difficulties inherent in accurately defining a thing, particularly a social thing, owing to nomenclature that’s both too restrictive and too inclusive at once. Cultures (there’s an example) are easily violated by either.

What’s needed is a language, both verbal and otherwise, that highlights the aforementioned commonalities while not insisting on homogeneity. What we typically consider art in its ability to be both personally specific and universally applicable may come closest but even there we tend to focus on delineation between types as a necessity of comparison rather than on the shared aspects of creative processes that will ultimately sustain us culturally, intellectually, and ecologically.

3. Authenticity is paramount but excellence as a practitioner doesn’t have to be complicated.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) myriad ethical dilemmas surrounding both accurate and fair representation and the constantly changing dynamics of performance and audience, sustainability is still a matter of people, stories, and willingness. Personal is the root of public.

A move away from numbers as a primary measurement of power or competence to the often simpler, or at least more manageable, relationship between an individual and their ability to connect, to more fully realize themselves and their own power, is a key to community building that often gets lost in development strategies, grant applications, and compliance documentation.

An asset based community development model probably leads more in that general direction but I’m not sure it goes quite far enough in underlining the difference between attracting a larger number of people and the personal, individual power developed by the sort of engagement it seeks.

One kid with a camera is a worthwhile experience. Two kids with cameras are an organization. If an only slightly larger group of people see their photos and have a caring response, then you have a movement, whether its incorporated as a 501(c)(3) or discussed around the lunch counter.

And finally, the beginnings of a personal working definition from a practitioner’s view:

Cultural Sustainability is the acknowledgment and acceptance of our responsibility to facilitate the widespread utilization of weak socioeconomic ties to support the continued development and/or maintenance of stronger, more specific ones and vice versa.