People Matter

People Matter: The Human Impacts of Planned Development, a global symposium held at MIT this weekend, was a welcome conversation held on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Marc Fried's landmark paper, "Grieving for a lost home." Fried's paper had a major influence on my work. It was the basis for my argument that place attachment was a fundamental psychological process linking people to their near environment, and that the disruption of that connection could lead to the psychiatric illness, nostalgia. The fifty years of work since Fried and others demonstrated that people suffer when they lose their homes has brought extensive corroboration of those observations, but no let-up in the pace of displacement, and all the psychiatric and medical complications that follow. This has serious implications for the future. The UN predicts that we will build 900 billion square feet in the next 15 years. As Don Chen of the Ford Foundation put it, 60% of the built environment we will have in 2030 has not yet been built. That building will move people one way or another. We urgently need this discussion of the implications for human communities, which are fragile and do not tolerate moving very well. It's all well and good to proclaim that people are "resilient," but in fact, they really prosper in communities that are swathed in generations of connection to the land. Generations means decades -- time -- in place. That can't be bought or manufactured -- it has to be lived, together with other people, and in light of the intricacies and particularities of place. Given such massive shifts as global warming and massive construction, we need an equally massive interdisciplinary conversation, based on a real respect for ecology. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us about the "interrelated nature of reality" which means that "I can't be what I ought to be unless you are what you ought to be." We have a lot of homework to do to really master this lesson and to bring every profession, every religion, every community, every person into this ecological conversation for the 21st century.

Architects find our way

William Morrish, professor at Parsons The New School for Design, told me that, while in La Jolla at the American Institute of Architects' Board Meeting, I should see Rudolph Schindler's Pueblo Ribera. The AIA was taking us to see The Salk Institute, Louis Kahn's masterpiece and surely a wonderful place to do science. Schindler's project was down the way, along the beach. Not a "Cathedral of Our Culture," as apparently Robert Redford, himself a sufferer from polio, has dubbed Salk's Institute, but some modest houses, close to the rocks and surf. I needed a ride and asked Julia Donoho AIA, an avid architectural historian and critic, if she might like to go. Carl Elefante FAIA, whose practice focuses on historic preservation, joined us. I like traveling with architects, as they know how to pack cars, find their way, get to the best restaurants, and interpret buildings. As we drove up to Gravilla Street, I was searching for the number on the left. Julia, looking to the right, said, "I see architecture." Schindler's buildings were definitive and distinct. Its pleasant neighbors were cast in the shade by its cool design. Carl explained that Schindler, working in the 1920s, had a great influence on the emergence of American modernism. When other modernists arrived from Europe, Schindler was already busy showing the way, working with new forms and new materials. His use of teak, concrete and open spaces overlooking the ocean foreshadow the essence of Salk, although Salk is meant as a grand statement, and Schindler's Pueblo Ribera was an inexpensive set of beach shacks. But both mean to be rich in space for living and in celebrating the ocean.

We walked a block down to the ocean, where huge flat, smooth rocks served as the beach. We started looking for ice cream, but found a section of La Jolla Boulevard that Carl said reminded him of Route 22 in New Jersey. I agreed -- wide, car-oriented, slightly downtrodden -- which was surprising, given that the houses just steps away were selling for millions of dollars. Carl and Julia proposed going back to the area around the restaurant where we'd eaten Friday night - George's at the Cove in La Jolla. Mostly Julia followed her instincts about space, with occasional assists from Carl, looking for a restaurant overlooking the ocean. Somehow -- I would say by magic but they would say by architecture -- we got to the Terrace Restaurant at La Valencia, a hotel on Prospect Street, overlooking the ocean. We had sumptuous food while watching the sunset and debating the contributions of various architects to the modern world.

Get the military off Main Street!

The horrific scenes of civilians confronted by military might on a suburban Main Street have shocked us all. We didn't know that the military had given weapons of war to local police departments all across the nation. And we didn't know the next images of war we'd see would be on our own Main Streets. It's bad to see these horrors in Gaza or Iraq -- but Ferguson is Home! It seems to me, from looking at Main Streets over the past 6 years, that actually Main Street is where strange shifts pop up. It is the center of the city and things can't float around in the culture without bobbing up on Main Street. This is a thought I call "Main Street Beach." When I told Tony Hiss, the great writer about place, that I thought Main Street was a beach, he said, "I've thought the same thing." I pulled out my father's book, Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People's Power, and found good advice:

“In the struggle to build pure coalition we learned many lessons… Our experiences--the lessons of this book--are desperately needed in today’s world to help humankind learn to live together… We have no more time for war, or exploitation, or poisoning the earth. We must learn to live together now.. These tasks are too crucial to be entrusted to the warmongers and the profiteers. The money-changers must once again be driven from the temple so that the people can prevail, for only the people can be entrusted with their own future.”

My dad, Ernest Thompson, was an organizer with United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, and then became a community organizer in Orange, NJ, where I grew up. You can see more stories of Orange and its lessons on the Facebook page of the University of Orange. A group of us started the University of Orange so that the people's voices could be heard in making the future city. I learned from urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart that we create the city we want by finding the intersection of REASON, MEMORY and IMAGINATION.

It is our collective work, examining the city, that yields this vision of the future. In their history and day-to-day living, the citizens of the city have acquired the wisdom of ages. The city as a collection of buildings and streets and parks and statues and stores and schools embodies our past decisions -- it is the path we are walking. The path, as we see in Ferguson, is broken by injustice and oppression. If we do not throw the money-changers out of the temple, and shift our path towards equity and invention, we will be in for more of the same: quiet desperation broken by shots and shouts. "Hands up, don't shoot" will echo everywhere. But the people CAN be entrusted with their future. In 1968 -- at time where riots were rocking hundreds of American city -- the citizens of Orange faced a severe challenge. The powers-that-be opposed urgent investment in the city's schools. People mobilized and put pressure on every possible arm of government. They expressed their will that excellent schools be built. They won. Because of the volatility of the moment, Councilman Ben Jones told me that there were tanks in the high school football stadium in case a riot broke out. It did not and the schools' crisis was resolved in the best possible manner. The University of Orange, which I am proud to serve as president of the Board of Directors, sees the essential work of our era as mobilizing the citizens to grapple with REASON, MEMORY and IMAGINATION to come up with the city of future. Needless to say, we will get the military off Main Street!

What's a box, a circle, a line and The American People?

I've had the pleasure of working the Jake Izenberg -- soon to be a graduate of Yale School of Medicine -- in thinking about the Main Streets of Essex County. What variation there is! From the density and intensity of Ferry Street in Newark to the quiet emptiness of Northfield Avenue in Livingston, we've seen all sorts of variations on the theme. Yet it takes multiple lenses to sort out why we're seeing what we're seeing. While puzzling over Main Street, I realized we were trying to solve the riddle, "What's a box, a circle, a line AND the American People?" The answer: Main Street. By looking into each of these images of Main Street, we have begun to map out some solid ground, moving ever closer to the goal of understanding how Main Streets help to make healthy cities and thereby healthy people.

Hard times on the main streets named for "Dr Martin Luther King"

Comedian Chris Rock made the famous joke about someone being on a street named for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. " You're where? Run!" he screamed. We all laughed because those streets are famously blighted and in disrepair. Melvin White, a 46-year-old postal worker in St. Louis has a different approach. He founded a non-profit to fix up those streets and restore them to greatness, the Star Ledger reported today. Mr. White's quest is a good one. These "Main Streets of Black America" are a useful thermometer of the state of Black America, just as Main Streets everywhere reflect the health and vitality of the surrounding urban tissue. How healthy is Black America? Here's how I see it. Last night I was at an event on Valley Street, the Main Street in my neighborhood. It was a release party for the local zine, masConsumption, edited by Patricia Rodgers. As the clock reached 9, young people dressed to impress and ready to celebrate started to pour into Hat City Kitchen. I loved the outfits and the sense of style, but what struck me was the earnestness, the dignity of these young people. Many of them, I know, work two or three jobs at minimum wage to support themselves and help their families. They struggle with terrible transportation, lack of family resources, and limited access to help when they are sick or in need. These struggles did not keep them from gathering around this expression of their hopes, the Music Issue of the zine. If we need to boil that down, we'd quickly get to, "And still I rise." This is often shortened further to buzz word of the day, "resilience," but that word irks me. People with money get a smug smile on their face and say, "They're so resilient," as if to say, "and therefore it's OK for them to work two-three jobs, with terrible transportation, no safety net, no health care." In my view, this is NOT OK. Therefore, I will avoid the people-can-take-any-amount-of-oppression-because-still-they-rise trap posed by resilience. Instead, I want to say that Black America today is fragile and hurting, hopeful and energetic. We need decent jobs, stable communities and fabulous education. We need limits on carbon emissions and corporate greed. We need clean air and water, and plans for the extremes of everything that are gathering around us. We need opportunities for expression and parties to celebrate it. We need the foot of oppression off our necks so we and those that are oppressing us can be free -- in the words of the Great Man we remember today -- "Great God Almighty, free at last!"

The local downturn

For a while, things were looking great on Valley Road near my house. I thought that the new facade on the set of stores that included the pizza place and the Chinese takeout was a very good sign. And maybe the coming of SevenEleven, which is replacing Delta GAs, was also good. But this fall things have taken a downturn with the loss of the latest iteration of the diner and the closing of Mazzi Dogz topping the list. The street is taking on a slightly desolate air. I am comforted that El Palacio del Pollo, which has magnificent Peruvian roast chicken, is well -- if well is a strong enough word to describe the number of roast birds that are sent out from there on weekend nights. Once 4.2 million hats were made in the Valley every year. Soon it will be 4.3 millions roast chickens.

"Car Brain"

Paul Salopek is walking in the path of the human diaspora, starting in the birthplace of homo sapiens and traveling to Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of Argentina. This is a long walk -- he expects to finish in 2020, after seven continuous years of walking. So far, he has walked 1,700 miles of the 20,000 he will eventually cover. He wrote in the New York Times, on Sunday 11/24/13, that, cars "...keep roaring into my awareness." Cars, he observes, have shifted our consciousness and we have lost track of what they did to us. In sum, comparing peoples in Ethiopia who still walk, to those in Saudi Arabia, who drive in cars, he finds that cars insulate us from each other and from the places we inhabit. We expect speed rather than connection, if I may paraphrase his essay. He writes, "I call it Car Brain." In studies of the psychology of place, "place orientation" emerges repeatedly as a key part of our psychological connection to the world. In fact, if we fall unconscious, when we awake a doctor will ask questions to find out if we are oriented to person, place and time, ie, "Do you know your name? Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?" In presenting us with his finding of "Car Brain," Salopek is offering us a profound contribution to the literature on place orientation. We may hypothesize that we are not oriented to place by where we are but rather by how we are moving through it. This has everything to do with Main Street. Main Streets in the US emerged before Car Brain. They were places that we walked to and around. They lay comfortably close to home, and made gathering possible, both gathering together and gathering the stuff of life, from vegetables to bed frames. As the car ascended, Main Street became something else -- one of the possible destinations of the car. The mall was another. One of the findings in my MainStreetNJ study is that Main Streets are a set of destinations, as likely as the mall to call us to come see and enjoy and gather stuff. Yet when we whisk away to the mall or to Main Streets not our own, we can lose the gathering that has to do with meeting our neighbors and getting to know strangers. Salopek describes waiting at the edge of a set of huts to be acknowledged before entering. We do not have to ask to stop at a MainStreetMall, but we don't meet anyone either. We are living in a time and place dominated by the car. For reasons of physical and mental health we need to get out and walk, but we don't exactly know how. Paul Salopek has given us a remarkable diagnosis: we have Car Brain.