Around the City

Urban affairs, neighborhoods, subways and the people who are affected by them all.

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January 7, 2011 | 2:44 PM | By

Workers in the East, Management in the West?

Flickr: Laura Padgett

Restaurant in D.C.'s West End

From “Why are the East of Cities usually Poorer?”, this is interesting:

Many older cities rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, as workers flocked to the urban centers. As the towns and cities expanded, the residential areas for the workers tended to be in the east, with the middle and upper-classes in the west.

The reason for this is that in much of the northern hemisphere, the prevailing winds are westerlies – blowing from west to east. The massive, unchecked pollution from these early industries would therefore drift eastward, making the air quality much lower in the east end of cities, lowering the desirability (and price) of the housing. Middle classes preferred the cleaner west ends.

The issue was probably even pre-Industrial Revolution, as smoke from personal chimneys would still have caused problems to the east.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Privilege, Race and Class, West End
January 7, 2011 | 1:01 PM | By

Gentrification and the LGBT community

Flickr: kate.gardiner

Now reading: Amanda Hess’ piece on “Gay bars, gentrification, and homophobia” in TBD:

LGBT establishments have a complex history with the gentrification of cities. At a glance: In response to discriminatory zoning laws and social ostracization, gay bars traditionally set up shop in underdeveloped urban areas with lower rents and looser regulations. Around these establishments, LGBT neighborhoods formed, later attracting more well-to-do members of the community—and eventually, more affluent straights, too. The gentrification of a gay village signaled a certain mainstream social acceptance of gays—but it also meant pushing less affluent members of the LGBT community back on the social fringes. Straight gentrifiers of gay villages may be willing to tolerate wealthy gay yuppies, but they can also facilitate the marginalization of others in the LGBT community.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Gentrification, LGBT
January 7, 2011 | 10:49 AM | By

UnChocolate “By 2020, if not sooner”

Flickr: vpickering

This brief but information-packed blurb from DCist’s On this day in 2010-feature caught my attention this morning, via their roundup, even if the numbers are a year old:

D.C. Wire reported some new census figures earlier today that show that Washington, D.C.’s African-American population continues to dwindle, while the presence of whites, Latinos and Asians continues to grow. The city is now about 54 percent black, 40 percent white, 4 percent Asian and 9 percent Hispanic. Those figures compare to 61 percent black and 34 percent white in 2000, which translates to 27,000 African-American residents moving out and 40,000 whites moving in over the course of 2000 to 2008. Some estimates predict that pace could mean D.C. would cease being a majority African-American city by 2020, if not sooner.

FILED UNDER: Around the City
January 6, 2011 | 2:48 PM | By

A Tale of Two DCentric Comments

Flickr: amberley johanna

A sign from the Rally to Restore Sanity which seemed apposite for this post, as well.

My post from December 28th, “More on Brown-on-Black Racism” may be the most “popular” piece I’ve ever written on DCentric, if we’re using comments and retweets as metrics. I am shocked (shocked!) and elated that it has nine whole comments, and I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their contributions before wading in to the discussion and making a request for mutual respect. You’ve done a great job of being courteous to each other and I’d love to see that continue. My ultimate goal for this website is for it to become a trusted space for civil discussion of issues which usually inspire incivility.

Let’s look at one comment from that thread, from reader TL:

Oh how truly good it is to be Black. Black as night and no one can join us.

Of course, I don’t know AJ and I’ll assume she is a well meaning Indian woman. But when she’s not blogging, she’s probably out in the world being part of the problem. Reality: Asians, Indians and Hispanics generally want to be white. “Don’t say that!” “That’s ridiculous!” Behind closed doors (sometimes in public) the majority is the group they want align with. No problem. It’s survival to want to ride with whoever has the power. It’s a little gutless, but hey tough choices to be made in this life.

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FILED UNDER: The People, DCentric
January 6, 2011 | 12:57 PM | By

The Salvation Army Collected Less, This Year

DCentric

A Salvation Army Red Kettle at "Social Safeway", in Georgetown.

WaPo has an update on Giant’s move to limit the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign outside of its grocery stores, via this article: “Limited collection time at Giant fueled drop in donations, Salvation Army says“. The charity collected 60% less money than it did last year:

Giant’s policy change irked some advocates for the needy.

“It’s hard times like these when we need our corporate partners to step up and do more rather than less,” said Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations. “A lot less people are going to get a lot less help when they most need it. And that’s tragic.”…

Terri Lee Freeman, president of the Community Foundation, which makes grants to local groups, said nonprofits have been further hurt because local governments facing declining tax revenue are less able to hire the organizations as contractors.

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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Non-profits, Philanthropy
January 6, 2011 | 10:53 AM | By

“Go and do likewise.”

I saw this video on YouTube yesterday, but didn’t want to link to it because of the profanity and a few other reasons…I’m grateful TBD has more information that I can point you to, instead. This whole story just makes me want to shake my head. No one helped. Everyone filmed. This city’s social fabric is fraying everywhere and in some spots, it is worn through:

On Sunday night, Allen Haywood was randomly and viciously attacked by two kids on the platform of the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station. Dozens of people witnessed it. Several people filmed it. Nobody helped.

Haywood was trying to transfer to the Yellow Line around 7:15 p.m. when the assault happened. He was headed home to Fort Totten after working out at Results on Capitol Hill, a gym bag slung over his shoulder and a book in his hands. As he read with his back to the station wall, “all of a sudden someone whacked me on the back of the head really hard,” he recalls…

Haywood looked to strangers for help, but all he saw were other kids with their cell phones out, recording the scene and laughing. Judging from his voice-over, the man shooting the YouTube video above doesn’t appear to be part of the group. The video showed up yesterday on Unsuck D.C. Metro, which posted an anonymous account of the attack Tuesday.

“I can understand people not wanting to get physically involved,” says Haywood, who’s 47 and works in a Friendship Heights flower shop. “But nobody pressed the emergency button or went to the booth,” as far as he knows.

One of those kids offered to sell him the video of his own beating. I used to think the scariest thing about Metro was the broken escalators (the extra long ones make me queasy); now I think it’s the terrifying lack of a response to crime, whether from the people paid to work there or the commuters who look the other way.

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Crime, Metro, WMATA
January 5, 2011 | 1:43 PM | By

GGW on Bike Behavior and Expectations

Flickr: Washington Area Bicyclist Association

Bicyclist on 14th Street.

It’s like David Alpert over at Greater Greater Washington is reading my mind– I was just thinking about why a bicyclist racing through a red light at an intersection gets more attention than a car doing it. According to Alpert’s post, “What’s our bicycle “social contract“?”, It might have to do with expectations:

With the frequent calls for cyclists to “start behaving,” it’s clear that a number of people driving and walking are unsettled by the conduct of at least some people on bikes. But people in cars speed all the time, and people walking cross against the light, and neither generates as many newspaper letters to the editor. What is the difference?

One explanation is that people naturally notice infractions by others on different modes more than those on the same mode. People driving tend to see misbehavior by people walking and cycling rather than from other people driving, for example. And since relatively few people ride bicycles while a great many drive, the outraged letters will skew toward misbehavior by those on bikes and away from that from people in cars.

Felix Salmon proposed another interesting explanation a while back. Basically, he argues that we’ve developed a clear understanding of what to expect from people walking and driving generally, but lack that consensus for people bicycling…

Alpert goes on to examine “bike behavior” and offers his opinion on whether each maneuver is good (riding in the middle of a lane) or bad (blowing through an intersection).

FILED UNDER: Around the City, biking
January 5, 2011 | 10:40 AM | By

What’s Needed: “a large attitude adjustment on both sides”

Flickr: Rhys

Shaw, D.C.

Yesterday, I wrote about caustic reactions to the news that more affordable housing is coming to Shaw. One of you left a comment in response to my post that deserves to be seen:

I think we are seeing here is the very real balkanization of urban society that stymies us. I commiserate with both sides, there needs to be affordable housing in the city, and yet it comes fraught with so many problems that makes it unpleasant for the neighbors.

I recently saw a project about The Frederick Douglass Dwellings in Anacostia, that was public housing built in the WWII boom. There were many two parent families and a community center in which the ladies who ran it really took an interest in their charges. They didn’t know they were “poor,” and there was a strong sense of community and family.

There are so many problems here: it’s true that many urban blacks that I have encountered blame their problems on the system, “the plan”, without seeking solutions, but I find this mimicked in modern society too, where many people blame “the media” without questioning their role in propagating a media more concerned with the upcoming royal nuptials than the minutae of the tax code. People do need to start taking responsibility for themselves, their knowledge base, their support of leadership, and their desires to meet and understand their neighbors. Start community watches. Volunteer with big brothers. Don’t accept or make excuses. There will need to be a large attitude adjustment on both sides for anything to change.

FILED UNDER: The People, Affordable Housing, Gentrification, Race and Class, Racial Divide
January 4, 2011 | 4:21 PM | By

“Yet another warehouse of concentrated poverty”

Flickr: M. V. Jantzen

Shaw Metro station, at 8th & R Streets, NW

So I was reading this post from the City Paper about new, affordable housing coming to Shaw:

It’s a tentative plan, but a plan nonetheless: Lincoln Westmoreland Housing Inc. is moving forward with a 50-unit apartment complex on 7th and R Street NW, right next to the 10-story behemoth constructed right after the 1968 riots.

The new building, designed by Shalom Baranes architects, could not be more ideally located: It sits directly above the Shaw metro station (part of the land will be purchased from WMATA), and across the street from the new Shaw library. It will replace a decked-over parking lot, have retail on the ground floor, and still leave some green space for a sculpture installation.

“Affordable” is the key word here, because as Lydia DePillis reported, the units would be accessible “for people making 60 percent of the area median income”. Sounds great, right? I love neighborhoods that have a range of people from all backgrounds–it’s my favorite thing about Columbia Heights, where there is everything from affordable housing to $3,000 converted condos. The readers who commented on her piece had a different, more bitter take:

Building looks nice and hopefully they will balance income levels. 60% AMI residents will be a welcome addition to the neighborhood and attract civil servants, firefighters, police, teachers etc. But if they decide to concentrate the extremely low income/AMI residents in this building, well they might as well hand over the building to the local thugs so they can have a nice shiny new HQ from which to terrorize the rest of the neighborhood from. [wcp]

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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Affordable Housing, Gentrification, Race and Class, Shaw
January 4, 2011 | 3:01 PM | By

Bearing Gifts We Traverse Afar

Flickr: Mr. T in DC

Three Kings in the Epiphany Procession in Columbia Heights, 2009.

The New Columbia Heights blog points out what I missed on Sunday (drat!):

This past Sunday was Epiphany, also celebrated as Three Kings’ Day. Latin American Catholics in the neighborhood (and around the world) celebrate it with a big procession of people dressed as the Three Wise Men, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, and more, complete with donkeys and sheep.

The procession goes down 14th and ended with a performance at the Gala Theatre, plus free churros and hot chocolate…The reader says more animals showed up a bit later.

Always like to see interesting cultural traditions like this.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Columbia Heights, Diverse City, Immigrants