Jane Jacobs A Legend In Urban Planning > THE PLACE OF POLITICS IN CITY PLANNING

Books

September 26, 2016 Issue

Jane Jacobs’s Street Smarts

What the urbanist and writer got so right about cities—and what she got wrong.
Link to entire review by Adam Gopnik >> The New Yorker



Now, in the year of Jane Jacobs’s centenary, with the biography out there, along with a new collection of her uncollected writings, “Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs” (Random House), and an anthology of conversations between her and various friends, “Jane Jacobs: The Last Interview and Other Conversations” (Melville House), it seems fair to pay her the compliment of taking her seriously—to ask what exactly she argued for, and what exactly we should think about those arguments now.
We can love the self-organizing street and believe in low-cost public housing, but it is an illusion to think that the street will naturally create affordable public housing, or that cheap public housing will guarantee a vibrantly self-emerging street.

That’s where planning matters and politics counts. Jacobs seldom gives a good account of the place of politics in city-making. Politics for her is Robert Moses telling moms where the expressway should run. Politics is the planners, and exists as an afterthought to the natural order of cities. And it’s true: politics isn’t a self-organizing system. It’s not a ballet. It’s a battle. But it remains essential to reconcile goods, like free streets and fair housing, that will never reconcile themselves.
 

 

2 Golden Prospector Awards from AAED Go to Mesa OED

Eleven days after the awards event, here's a presser
Office of Economic Development receives state economic development awards

Post Date:09/19/2016 4:13 PM

• Lead:   Mesa's Office of Economic Development has received two Golden Prospector Awards of Merit from the Arizona Association of Economic Development for the Santander Consumer USA project and for two Why Mesa video presentations featuring Mesa companies Ulthera and Auer Precision.

The City of Mesa’s Office of Economic Development has been honored with two Golden Prospector Awards of Merit from the Arizona Association of Economic Development (AAED) for the Santander Consumer USA project and for two “Why Mesa” video presentations featuring Mesa companies Ulthera and Auer Precision. The awards were presented Sept. 9, during the AAED 2016 Fall Forum held in Flagstaff, Ariz.

The Santander project won in the Economic Development Deal of the Year category. Nominations were evaluated on how the deals came together and their economic impact to the community. The Why Mesa videos won in the Multimedia Promotion category and were evaluated on effectiveness, quality and timeliness, innovation and creativity and visual appeal.

“I’m proud of our team’s efforts in winning the two Golden Prospector Awards,” City of Mesa Economic Development Director Bill Jabjiniak said. “The videos are an important part of positioning Mesa as a premier location for medical device companies, and the Santander project was a big win for Mesa bringing more than 970 jobs to Mesa’s Fiesta District.”

AAED’s Golden Prospector Awards were established to recognize excellence in economic development by Arizona organizations and communities.

See the “Why Mesa” videos at www.MesaMedicalDevice.com.
 
Office of Economic Development
Contact: Kim Lofgreen
Tel. 480-644-3962 kim.lofgreen@mesaaz.gov  

High Ozone Pollution Alerts This Week | HEY! It's Pollution Prevention Week

 
 



AZ Governor Doug Ducey made a proclamation last week -
Pollution Prevention Week Set 18-24 2016
Off to a good start, huh?
3 days of HPA Ozone Alerts > that's high pollution folks!
Get bulletins sent to you
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/AZDEQ/bulletins/1651e2f

Schedule This Week for City of Mesa Meetings + Events

20 7:30 AMPlanning & Zoning Study Session 5:30 PMTransportation Advisory Board Meeting 5:30 PMLibrary Advisory Board Meeting 6:00 PMHydrate Mesa: Hydrate Your Soils with Rainwater and Greywater

21 3:30 PMPlanning & Zoning Study Session 4:00 PMPlanning & Zoning Hearing 6:00 PMSmart Cycling FUN-damentals

22 Museum and Cultural Advisory Board Meeting 7:30 AMCity Council Study Session 7:30 AMSpecial City Council Meeting 6:30 PMDistrict 5 Building Strong Neighborhoods Event

23 9:00 AMMesa Community Farmers' Market 7:30 PMMexican Baseball Fiesta

24 5:30 PMMesa Feastival Forest 7:00 PMMexican Baseball Fiesta

FKN News >> Missing The Big Picture

LISTEN UP!

Published on Sep 18, 2016

Views: 4,419

Pie laments the demise of the BBC...and nearly pukes on too much cake > MUCH MORE MORE TO THE STORY

Mad Transportation: Reform? Change? Re-Think of Daily Habits?

Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation

This book has enough hard evidence crammed between its covers to serve as a mini-encyclopedia for anyone with aspirations for systemic reform, broad culture change, or merely a rethink of their daily habits

 

Here's a brief synopsis of a review of this book from UrbanLand

By Martin Zimmerman

September 12, 2016

California-based journalist Edward Humes is a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of 14 books, including the popular Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash. In Door to Door he takes on another complex, resource-intensive topic: the mammoth systems that make it possible (and often frighteningly impossible) for Americans to drive 344 million miles in an hour, move $55 billion worth of goods per day, and receive a cross-country delivery to one’s front door by 10:00 the next morning. We are suffering from systemwide “overload” on a grand scale, argues the author, and while many breakthroughs for recovery are already available (or will be in the near future), the demands they will place on the public purse, corporate balance sheets, lifestyle choices, the working labor force, and human behavior are bound to be disruptive.

Armed with enough statistics to sink a supertanker, Humes reveals the inner genius of the American transportation universe while simultaneously exposing many of its most pervasive flaws. Rather than despair, he plunges ahead with some of his own crystal-ball solutions—some quite novel, others merely a recant of longstanding proposals. Robotics, the decline of China’s hegemony over consumer exports, the blossoming of shared mobility amid a sharing economy, 3-D printing, declines in rapacious consumerism and auto dependence, and many other horizons of change are all within the realm of possibility, submits the author. And everything is in flux.

Some surprises

Not only ports, but also railroads, roads, trucking, water, and pipe are at capacity. And yet no political consensus exists to fund infrastructure upgrades. Never mind that “logistics”—the transport of goods—is such a vital component of the U.S. economy that it is “a greater source of job growth than making the stuff being shipped.” UPS alone ships 6 percent of the nation’s GDP.

 

Not so surprising - when are we gonna get it?? ANOTHER SCATCHING CRITIQUE

 

Humes devotes a lot of page space to a scathing critique of America’s love affair with the automobile. Cars actually pose a “threat,” and in more ways than one. They are described as “…nothing less than rolling disasters in terms of economics, environment, energy, efficiency, climate, health, and safety.” The hidden costs of car use amount to a massive subsidy, which would translate to far greater than $10 per gallon if borne by the consumer at the pump. Ironically, cars sit idle more than 90 percent of the time, but (along with trucks) are responsible for 83 percent of the U.S. transportation component of carbon emissions.

 

ROAD CARNAGE
The author paints a dismal picture of the price paid for roadway carnage.

• He calculates the cost from motor vehicle traffic death and injury at $836 billion each year.
• That is roughly equivalent to a tax of $784 per person, not just per driver.
• And yet the vast majority of harmful incidents can be attributed to three basic categories of preventable human error: distraction, drunk driving, and speeding.
• To hammer this point home, the appendix includes an 11-page rundown of random fatal crashes beginning at 12:15 a.m. and ending at 11:55 p.m. on Friday, February 13, 2015.

Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation

Edward Humes
HarperCollins Publishers
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007;
www.harpercollins.com.
2016. 384 pages. Hardcover, $27.99.

 

Halal Guy Street Food Carts Expanding from MidtownManhattan Globally

The pathway to the heart of a culture is through your palate.
Forget about the constant on-air diet of hate-news and hate-politics, this is a success story for three Muslim Middle Eastern guys from Egypt who arrived in New York City over 20 years ago - like many other immigrants from all over the world - looking for opportunities.
They found it in street food carts on busy corners with a lot of food traffic. On July 16, 2016 they bought exhibit space at a franchise roadshow at the Javits Convention Center in midtown - what you're reading about now is the rest of the story . . . Just like strict food preparation for Kosher foods, Halal foods respect those from Islam.

Everyone is concerned about food safety and standards - that and the friendly-fast service are lifting the Halal food sector by giant steps as you can see in the Bloomberg chart to the right to global sales over $20 Billion.
The company's first out-of-NYC franchise was in Costa Mesa, California.
Plans were announced a couple of months for an expansion here in Arizona. Included after the report from Restaurant News are links to more videos from Bloomberg with financials from three days ago, as well as an interview with one of The hall Guys.

Tempe, AZ  (RestaurantNews.com)  After being in business for more than 25 years, The Halal Guys is expanding from New York City’s most popular food cart to multiple highly successful brick-and-mortar locations throughout the United States. The fast casual concept, known for its never-ending lines and a menu offering a mix of various Middle Eastern dishes, has already been well received in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, and California. This winter, residents of Arizona will be able to enjoy gyro sandwiches, chicken-and-rice platters and the famous white sauce.

The NYC-based concept has signed a deal with Fransmart, who is known for building other popular concepts such as Five Guys, to bring franchised units to all of the major markets of Arizona. The first location is anticipated to open in early January 2017 at 1015 S Rural Rd., Ste 104 Tempe, Arizona, 85281, near Arizona State University.
“We are excited about our Tempe location for several factors. One reason is because our brand was in-part made famous by college kids from NYU, LaGuardia, and Columbia who were looking for a filling, affordable, and tasty meal and Arizona State University is a perfect counterpart on the west coast. And secondly on a personal level, ASU is my alma mater and I have a lot of love for the school, fraternities and associations I was a part of,” said franchisee AJ Ahmad.
The Halal Guys aim to be different and encourage patrons across America to ditch burgers for something unique. They pride themselves on only using high-quality products like their chicken, which has never been frozen and is marinated and seasoned overnight, then cooked and chopped on the grill and served directly to their plate to ensure a crave worthy meal that’s piping hot. The Halal Guys’ mission is to ensure that every customer leaves happy, with a smile on their face and a satisfaction that brings them back again.
About The Halal Guys
The Halal Guys grew from its humble beginnings as a food cart on the streets of New York City to a global icon known as the largest American halal street food concept in the world. This Manhattan-based landmark was created by three like-minded men from Egypt who came to America in search of a better life. When Mohamed Abouelenein, Ahmed Elsaka and Abdelbaset Elsayed noticed many Muslim cab drivers in New York were looking for a place to buy meals in Manhattan, they created their first food cart and quickly grew into a leading tourist and native New Yorker destination for American Halal fare. In 2013, The Halal Guys were ranked the most popular food truck reviewed on FourSquare and the third most Yelped restaurant in the United States in 2014.
Among being awarded the 2014 Multicultural Award at The 5th American Muslim Consumer Conference, The Halal Guys have also been recognized by TIME Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, The New York Times and The Huffington Post. For more information, visit: www.53rdand6th.com, www.thehalalguysfranchise.com.
For updates on the Arizona locations follow them on Instagram.
Contact:
Ajenda Public Relations
Ali Sommer
ali@ajendapr.com
www.ajendapr.com

Why Halal Guys Are Hungry for Global Expansion

July 22 (Bloomberg) –- The Halal Guys General Manager Hesham Hegazy discusses the company’s iconic food carts and plans for expansion. He speaks on “Taking Stock.” (Source: Bloomberg

 

America's Growing Love for Halal Food

11:39 AM MST
September 16, 2016

In today's "Walk the Talk" segment, Bloomberg's Jeff Green takes a look at Halal food and why sales are surging