flynn050

What transportation service is free but costs taxpayers $25 billion a year? That is a great pop quiz question. It could be augmented with all kinds of other surprising numbers around transportation and education. School buses: Dead capital sitting around most of the time Yes, this is right. The topic is school transportation in the US. It has a hefty price tag: Try this:  More than have of all students nationwide are shuttled to school on public expense every day at an average cost of somewhere around at least $700 bucks per year (costs vary widely by state), that is 6.5% of the total education cost per student. It is about 1/3 of what the average US household spends on car fuel per year and about 14 times what the average American spends on books. In summer when the roads are much less clogged, we realize how much real estate all those school buses and all those helicopter parents driving their kids to school really occupy. With the kids on summer break, this is a great time to as...

With the events of the last three days in Atlanta, St Paul and Dallas no other city topic seems possible. You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity. Bobby Seale White people in the US who stayed silent when black people got killed by police in stairways in New York, while hawking CDs in Atlanta or standing in the street in Ferguson, or after running away from police in Baltimore (to name only a few instances) because they couldn't relate and imagine it could ever happen to them, were probably right, it wouldn't.  pro Publica graphic Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater i, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings. (Pro Publica ) But as far as relating to a driver being pulled over by a cop for whatever infraction? This has happened to almost anybody. But getting shot in the process with...

... differences in civilization are not due to differences in individuals or races, but rather to differences in social organization. Progress is always kindled by association. And civilization always declines as inequality develops (Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Fourth Edition 1880) As an architect who works with community development corporations, non-profits, government and private developers alike, I often feel like I am standing on top of a deep chasm that goes right through our cities and probably the country. On one side of the chasm is cyniscism, despair, anger and activism.On the other is giddy exuberance about startups, the many cranes in downtown, or the sharing economy.   chasms Or anger, xenophobia and frustration on the one and delight in diversity and multiculturalism on the other.  However one draws the lines, one thing is certain: There are always those who express indignation about the actions of the other and are sure what is right and what wrong. That...

In 1995, renowned urban scholar and expert David Rusk wrote   Baltimore Unbound , a booklet in which he declared Baltimore to be "beyond a point of no return" (along with 33 other American cities).  His assessment was based on the same theory as his book Cities without Suburbs, namely that cities that can't grow and expand through annexation are doomed.  Baltimore's last annexation happened in 1918 and ever since it was an   inelastic city.   So there you go: surrounded by affluent and growing suburbs the city in the center is suffocating, the public housing project of the burbs. Rusk   wrote  in 1993 in the Baltimore SUN: Rusk book 1995 Forty percent of America's cities are programmed to fail. Gary, Camden, East St. Louis are already clinically dead. Bridgeport, Newark, Hartford, Cleveland, Detroit are on life-support systems. New York, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia are sinking. Though seemingly healthy, Boston, Minneapolis, Atlanta are ...

"We believe that the advancement of architecture is not a goal in itself but a way to improve people’s quality of life" (Aravena) the slightly elevated view: Biennale poster There seems to be so much that is more urgent than writing about the artistic joys of architecture, even when  this year's architecture Biennale in Venice itself conveys urgency with its rather breathless title "Reports from the Front". This isn’t a report from Venice nor is it my intend to write a critique. Instead, this article assumes that the front is everywhere, especially in Baltimore. The article, then, is intended as an exploration of the tension between artistic impetus, user participation, pragmatism, crisis management, social pragmatism and long-term visionary thinking.  It looks as if Biennale Director Aravena himself and the US Pavilion with its exhibit about Detroit are good cases for this inquiry. I will explain why. Pritzker Prize winner and Biennale Director: Aravena First a...