Wiggly and rude
College student (urban studies, UW-Milwaukee). My roommate is a pretty cool old lady.

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Crab apple blossoms in the street



massurban: “The New Suburban Poverty By Lisa McGirr. March 19, 2012 In many of America’s once pristine suburbs, harbingers of inner-city blight — overgrown lots, boarded up windows, abandoned residences — are the new eyesores. From the Midwestern rust-belt to the burst housing bubbles of Nevada, California and Florida, even in small pockets of still affluent regions like Du Page County, Ill., the nation’s soaring poverty rates are visibly reclaiming last century’s triumphal “crabgrass frontier.” In well-heeled Illinois towns like Glen Ellyn and Elgin, unkempt, weedy lawns blot the formerly manicured, uniform and tidy landscape. The Brookings Institution reported two years ago that “by 2008 suburbs were home to the largest and fastest growing poor population in the country.” In the previous eight years, major metropolitan suburbs had seen poverty rates climb by 25 percent, almost five times faster than cities. Nationwide, 55 percent of the poor living in the nation’s metropolitan regions lived in suburbs. To add insult to injury, a new measure to calculate poverty — introduced by the Census Bureau just last year — darkens an already bleak picture: nationally, 51 million households had incomes less than 50 percent above the official poverty line, and nearly half of these households were in suburbs. Why is poverty soaring in the suburbs? Part of the answer, according to the Brookings Institution, is simple demographics: More Americans live in the suburbs, so there are more poor people there, too. But the recent downturn has also had an outsize impact on suburbs, with the decline in certain categories of jobs and an end to the housing boom that drew many urbanites and immigrants to the suburbs in the first place. While suburbs have always been more diverse economically and culturally than popular imagination would have it, soaring poverty rates threaten the very foundations of suburban identities, suburban politics and the suburb’s place in the nation’s self-image. “Keeping up with the Joneses,” the midcentury caricature of suburban conformity, materialism and consumption has given way to a new suburban normal of making ends meet, with many formerly middle-class families in detached single-family homes struggling to pay mortgages and utility bills, and to repair aging cars.” Via: The New York Times Photo:  In a development in the Cleveland suburb of Warrensville Heights, seven of 14 homes were in foreclosure and boarded up last fall. Dustin Franz for The New York Times

Eighty percent of everything ever built in North America has been built in the last 50 years and most of it is brutal, depressing, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading.
James Howard Kunstler (via postmodernista)







Urbanist humor

(Source: maridethrex)



“Edge city” is an American term for a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional urban area in what had recently been a residential suburb or semi-rural community.  It must be characterized by more jobs than bedrooms. It must be perceived by the population as one place. It must have had no urban characteristics 30 years earlier.

thiscitycalledearth: by Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek, location unknown.

There is a place.  In the empty retail space on the corner of E. Wisconsin Avenue and N. Broadway Street, there lies the potential for something great.  All it would take is a ton of capital, buckets of sweat equity, a love for Americana and food, social media savvy, endless stamina, and the will of the people to become faithful customers. Read more here I fully support this idea. Not everyone can afford to stop at some of the places downtown. And with the foot traffic at this particular location (beneath the Milwaukee Film office and on the 30 bus line), I see no reason why a home-grown diner couldn’t be opened here. Hell, I’ll even work there when it gets up and running.

smartercities: “Regional Planning Is the New City Planning by Jackie Rangel  12.10.2011 The ripple effects of a new downtown skyscraper or suburban development are now felt far beyond any one neighborhood or even one city, extending to surrounding counties and metro areas. An ideological shift is underway as we understand the interconnectedness of the communities in which we live. Collectively, we’re rethinking our society’s developmental future. Cue regional planning. It’s not a new concept, but it’s quickly gaining in popularity as cities learn the importance of working together to build sustainable foundations for growth. For example, San Diego recently adopted the first Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) as part of its larger Regional Transportation Plan. While the plan accounts for a long-range vision for the logistic development of the area’s transport and travel infrastructure, the SCS component adds a necessary emphasis on the environmental impact of each decision.” Via: GOOD Magazine Photo: (cc) Flickr user La Citta Vita. via massurban:


urbanfoodproduction:

A young man from Watsonville, California talks about food deserts, food insecurity, what it’s like to have nothing but unhealthy food within your prioximal and financial means, and the health and financial investment of growing some of your own food when in that sticky situation.



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