Cities 07

Wheeler brings up several great ideas about how a city should look if it is sustainable. Two of his aspects are that urban sustainability should include 1) compact, efficient land use, and also 9) preservation of local culture and wisdom. I thought these two actually were quite interesting because as I have been doing my semester project on condoization I realize that the two strikingly conflict. Ecologically, the production and use of condos is really quite great. Building up instead of out lessens the lateral urban sprawl, and is a sustainable way to live. At the same time, the preservation of local culture and wisdom (and also the community participation and involvement #8), suffers. When I interviewed two business owners along Lake Street I saw this confliction right away. A small Latina business owner, Maria, was struggling to make it as an owner because of the gentrification and new taxation on her business. She made it clear that many of her friends have lost their businesses along the street (Latino businesses), and most now struggle to compete with the new Midtown Global Market. Wheeler explains that “uniqueness gibes a region vitality, helps it take advantage of particular local contexts, and make it an interesting place to live” (494) but the problem is that this local culture slips away when new bigger attractions (ie. Global market) come along. He also claims that the urban setting and planning should involve “community participation”, but far was truer in the Midtown area. Local businesses, Latino businesses in particular, were hardly given consideration when the gentrification was set into planning schedules. It really comes down to a power relationship between the upper to middle class white citizens as they fight for condoization believing it will make the city safer and more appealing and the small business owners who hold little power to begin with. It grows increasingly important for us, as a society, to think of ways that plans that involve such ideas as condos, which also involve the preservation of community and culture. This is important for many moral reasons (bumping out the ‘underdog’ is wrong) and also because creating a homogenous society is quite problematic. When we build up condos, it seems to also create enclaves of larger corporations and less local business. When the control of corporations is dominate then the power relationships are even more prominent and those who do not fit the top power mold (upper to middle class, white citizens) than their power and say in a community is jeopardized.

To bring up one more idea about condos, I want to use Wheeler’s quote that states that “It is no longer enough just to throw up cities and suburbs that are ugly, uncoordinated, automobile-dominated, and lacking in parks, sidewalks, local shops, community vitality and sense of place” (490). Jane Jacobs would be appalled with the lack of use of sidewalks in the condo community. The populations that inhabit these residences are utilizing everything within the condo but rarely venture outside of it by foot. When they want to buy grocery, instead of walking a couple of blocks to a nearby co-op, they drive their cars out to the suburbs and shop there. The use of sidewalks is indeed an important aspect to providing community in an area and the lack of use of these seems quite problematic.