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Chautauqua Daily News Articles
 Making Sense of Place: An Ongoing Process
Film Shows Results of Land Use Studies
Making Sense of Place: An Ongoing Process
by George Cooper
Special Assignment Reporter
Making Sense of Place - Phoenix: The Urban Desert will be shown today in Lenna Hall at 4 p.m. The one-hour documentary about urban growth and change was produced by Northern Light Productions, in collaboration with the Lincoln Institution of Land Policy of Cambridge, Mass. and the Lincoln Foundation of Phoenix.
Today's screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the film's producer, Bestor Cram, and Armando Carbonell, senior fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Luther Propst, executive director of the Sonoran Institute of Tucson, and Kathryn Lincoln, chair of the board of Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
There are many scary places in the world today, but rarely do we think of them constructed from within the American Dream. One such scary place has resulted from suburban sprawl, the onslaught of development pursued in the name of individual freedom and independence, but pursued without a clear sense of planning.
In only half a century, Phoenix has expanded from a small desert town into the sixth largest city in the country. Through the eyes and voices of Phoenix residents, the film explores the interrelationships both caused by and affecting individual choices, the democratic process and market forces in the region.
Ironically, the independence that suburbs bespeak is undercut by a central lack of choice. In today's suburbs people have no choice but to own a car. Moreover, suburbs tend to be clustered in homogenous, class-bound pods that isolate people from one another. Building codes held over from the 19th century legislate against more equitable, mixed-use development as well as engaged civic participation.
Making Sense of Place seeks to educate and inspire citizens to engage in a better-informed civic dialogue about social equity, diversity, economic opportunity and environmental quality. Viewers learn about the tensions between growth, economic development and quality of life in downtown areas, local neighborhoods and surrounding regions.
While Phoenix is the case study in the film, the personal stories and narrations about the forces that shape current growth patterns are applicable to many other cities and regions.
The producers conducted in-depth interviews with citizens who live and work in the region, local officials, and experts in land use and urban planning. Their diverse voices express how their city has changed over the decades and articulate the ongoing tensions between individual dreams and community concerns in the context of the area's rapid growth.
Kathryn Lincoln is also Chautauqua Institution trustee and chair of the asset policy committee. Bestor Cram, the filmmaker, is the grandson of Chautauqua's longest serving president, Arthur Bestor, and the son of honorary trustee Mary Frances Bestor.
"Land is a local issue," Lincoln said, "and though we have a national policy of land use, it is embedded in other policies," thus undermining its influence on a local level.
"The Lincoln Institute's audience is local and state officials who try to get as much information as possible to make better decisions," Lincoln said. "We don't tell our students what to think. We provide multiple viewpoints from which to choose one that is best for them and their particular situation."
An unfortunate aspect of land development is that it is driven by market-forces without the guide from a reflective or integrated plan. Developers, environmentalists, elected officials and citizens need to share in the planning. Lincoln said, "Once a community stops planning, the community dies. Planning is a sign of a community's lifeblood."
As a Chautauqua trustee, Lincoln is involved with ongoing discussions about the Institution's growth and preservation. Having come here her whole life, Lincoln sees that there have been changes. "There are different buildings," she said, "but the soul is still the same. Built environments change to fit current needs."
Lincoln remembers being a young girl sitting on her grandmother's porch on Wiley Street. "Many places have gone, such as the Star Cafeteria, and that is OK. Development is not always the bad guy. But the community needs to take a hand in the planning of development."
To some people, the trend of development into the countryside and neglect of urban centers is intractable. Architect and urbanist, Andres Duany, however, argues that, "building patterns change about every 40 years." In catalyzing such change, Duany and his partners, along with developer Robert Davis, design walkable, mixed-use communities that are not so dependent upon the automobile.
One such community is Seaside, Fla., a traditional neighborhood development in the state's panhandle. All the houses are made of wood at Seaside, with peaked roofs and deep porches facing the street from which residents can easily greet passersby.
Admiring Seaside, James Howard Kunstler, in his book The Geography of Nowhere, said that no two houses are alike, "but all share a congruity of design that is soothing to eyeballs scalded by the chaotic squalor of the strip." Chautauquans might very well understand what Kunstler means.
Making sense of current and future development requires education and partnerships among community organizations, civic groups and other institutions. The film, Making Sense of Place, is intended to facilitate and enhance such partnerships, as well as provide a language for understanding the most pertinent issues.
The Lincoln outreach program, of which the Chautauqua film screening is a part, seeks to raise awareness of urban development processes in American cities in general, and Phoenix in particular, and inform participants about individual and collective actions to help shape their cities.
Film screenings and follow-up programs are offered in secondary schools, colleges and universities; town meetings and civic forums; museums; and other cultural and historical institutions.
"Chautauqua is one of the beginnings of the urbanist and city-beautiful movement," Lincoln said. "It is one of those places that makes sense, but it still needs the active participation of its residents to contribute to its planning."
Film Shows Results of Land Use Studies
by George Cooper
Special Assignments Reporter
Perhaps the most important relationship in land development today is that between the individual self-interest and the larger community interest.
The film, Making Sense of Place - Phoenix: The Urban Desert suggests there are various kinds of self-interest as well as various incarnations of the common good. But to make more responsible, indeed productive, sense of living places, people need to constantly examine the interaction between their self-interest and the common good.
A gathering of nearly 300 people watched the one-hour documentary, a collaboration between Northern Light Productions and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, on Tuesday in Lenna Hall. After the film the audience stayed for another hour to listen to the panelists and ask questions.
Insofar as only a few members of the audience were from Phoenix, this might be surprising. But it was no surprise to the film's producer, Bestor Cram, or the other panelists, Luther Propst, executive director of the Sonoran Institute, or Armando Carbonell and Kathryn Lincoln of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Although Making Sense of Place focuses on Phoenix, Luther Propst said, "the film can point out the advantage of regional cooperation in every region, but this is not a prescription that what is right for Phoenix is right for other regions. Each region has to determine its own solutions."
The Phoenix region has grown tremendously in the last 50 years, unlike older metropolitan areas in the East or Midwest that have endured a slow but steady decline in population. But like many cities in the United States, Phoenix's city center has suffered economic and social setbacks as people seek newer and more attractive housing in the suburbs, pushing always to the available geographical reaches.
"This can be compared to the Cleveland city center," Carbonell said. "Cleveland is in the transition to being a 'comeback city.' It has a racially and ethnically diverse population. It has a great orchestra. Cleveland has real assets that haven't been mobilized - museums, even vacant land available for development." But the city still loses population.
The Phoenix metropolitan area includes 25 municipalities, situated in a geographical area larger than Manhattan, Rome, San Francisco and Paris combined. Communication and planning become difficult when every municipality puts its own best interests first above the sense of all the communities together.
The Cleveland metropolitan area, on the other hand, with its own centrifugal development, now extends to a six-county region that also includes the city of Akron. Making effective planning decisions in Cleveland is as difficult as it is in Phoenix.
Land development in the 21st century is governed, ironically, by 19th century conceptions of the world. In Arizona land was set aside in large plots to be held by the government and used judiciously to fund education. Education is now funded in other ways, but the state government continues to use the land for revenue as they were mandated when the state was first recognized in 1912.
In cities like Cleveland, turn of the century codes were developed to separate living spaces from industrial spaces because the pollution of early 20th century industry was so severe that it was a direct threat to human health.
Moreover, the general conception of land was that of a commodity, something to be bought and sold. The combination of these events contributed to the preponderance of sprawl that confronts developers and city planners today.
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy proposes that a new way of thinking about land must be developed. As though solutions to problems can be found at their very source, the Lincoln representatives look to Henry George, a 19th century economist who argued that land values represent monopoly power and that the tax burden should be readjusted to equalize opportunities by destroying monopoly advantage.
Carbonell explained that "Henry George was interested in land value, where it came from, and who it belonged to." The value of land, he said, "is not just a matter of buying and selling; value is part of its natural features, of the work individuals do to improve the land, and especially the way a community of people relate to each other in or on the land."
In rethinking how we value land, we must also think about how we conceive of cities. Possibly, Carbonell wondered, we equate a city too directly with population growth and loss. Consequently, we think and speak negatively of those cities that lose population. "Do we really need to bring back the same amount of population to cities that have declined in recent years?" he asked.
Better regional understandings, better and more willing collaborations between developers, planners and the citizenry are integral to re-conceiving our urban and suburban landscapes.
In response to a question from the audience, Bester Cram said that as a filmmaker entering this project he had to get to know Phoenix, but he had to be a Chautauquan at the same time.
"That is, I entered into the project with a point of view," he said, "but I also had to be open to the ideas that emerged from the various points of view I encountered."
One young audience member asked about the people who wanted more development and possibly sprawl. Lincoln said they had tried to capture both sides, especially by including the views of representatives from Del Web, the developer of Sun City.
"More than anything in making this film, we want to make a difference, to enhance dialogue, not dictate it."
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is in dialogue with representatives from Cleveland to make a documentary there. Georgia Borden, a Lincoln research assistant, said the city has a rich history, but its identity is not so easy as Phoenix's to pin down. "Phoenix has the desert," a powerful and lasting image of nature.
"What's your treasure?" Borden wants people to ask of Cleveland. The answer to the question, indeed the process of asking it of Cleveland and every other city, will be the way to preserve our urban as well as our suburban and rural cultures.
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