Health Reform

        After watching the video clip on the vital, life-altering impacts that exercise can have on overall health, my previous opinions were only strengthened. I believe that an agenda promoting and rewarding physical activity would be really beneficial to the country as a whole. As mentioned in the film, simply exercising 30 minutes a day can have major preventative disease impacts. This means that if more people were active, many health issues, heart attacks and high blood pressure for example, would be deterred. This clearly could save taxpayers money. No matter what health reform is instituted and what its agenda includes, by having more active healthy residents, the state of the country can only improve. The improvements in metal health and depression/anxiety could really make a difference as well.

        

         All of this sums to my conclusion that, if I had the power, I would propose a policy agenda in which company’s would be rewarded through tax abatements to install gyms for their employees or to provide programs that standardized exercise. The simple tax abatements would definitely be outweighed by benefits of exercising. I do not think that government should be as involved as to punish people for not exercising, but rewarding businesses and companies that do promote/require exercising employees would be really effective.

         Most of the major concerns that I saw over the new health care reform were over administrative functioning of getting the reform started. One of the major concerns I read about was that rather than increase employment for medical professionals; it would require a larger number of administrative staff employees. I don’t see how that could be viewed as a problem. There are plenty of able-minded unemployed individuals who would jump at the opportunity to have an administrative position behind the medical program.  With baby-boomers aging, the medical field is currently one of the most in-demand fields and there is no evidence that the health reform would deter this from continuing, it simply says that it may not increase to more of a demand.

      

        Overall, it is disappointing to see that these major proponents to the health care reform don’t really seem to be concerned with the health of our nation’s citizens. It sounds like the economical and administrative portions of the bill seem to be more of a concern than actually improving the quality of life for women men and children all over the nation. Hopefully, these antagonistic views aside, we can work to instill more active healthy lifestyles into our nation. 

Portland's Economy

As the Portland director for economic development, I would be proud of the ingenuity and creative drive that my residents possessed. As mentioned in the film, Portland not only stayed strong during the economic recession, but also was one of the few cities able to grow and I strongly believe this is due to their Creative Class. Young, educated, and driven individuals who are motivated to see change in our society and also to work hard for it define the Creative Class. They are not simply artists, but work in many fields such as technology, science, and education. Portland can pride its success in its strong ability to attract the Creative Class. As mentioned in the film, companies are drawn to locate in Portland because of this strong pool of employees.

An additional economic development strength of Portland is that it has not had to deal with the de-industrialization that many Midwestern and East coast cities have. Simply by not having to deal with this, numerous problems have been alleviated. Not to say that Portland does not have problems that are seen on the East coast as well, because they do; they simply can focus more closely on these problems without the overbearing issues of deindustrialization.

I feel that Portland has done a pretty solid job of enticing business to their area. I do not feel that Portland needs an economic proposal addressed to the city, they are doing really well and growing as is. Technology and sustainability have meshed really well and feed off of each other.  The economy is set up for success if left as is. As mentioned, not having the burdens of deindustrialization helped tremendously; while other cities had to battle through these challenges and finally see the “silver lining” with post-industrial economies of service and technology, Portland was able to focus on this type of economy all along. These are all reasons why a huge overhaul proposal to the city about economic growth would not be needed. The only proposal I would consider would be for helping local small businesses start up easier. While it is not as difficult as some cities, it is always a challenge to start up small businesses and I think that a tax abatement program or start up cost leniency format would really benefit small business.

I strongly support the idea of applying for a HOPE IV grant. I think that providing mixed-use mixed-income housing is much more promising than designating a block of apartments as low income. This way, low income residents are surrounded with higher income residents and can see the possibilities and potential for growth. The whole system is designed to benefit human well-being much better.

I do not want this to sound like I have always supported all HOPE IV projects though. They must be designed properly and located well. Having experienced the aftermath of Cabrini Green in Chicage being torn down and replaced with HOPE IV housing, I had a sour image of this program for a long while. When they torn down the projects, thousands of these residents fled Chicago to my hometown of Lafayette, IN which is about an hour southeast of Chicago and much more affordable. My city had no where to house these residents, so quickly built cheap low income housing on the south side of our town. The majority of residents here were post Cabrini Green residents, and it was always my understanding that HOPE IV came through, tore down their projects and built a smaller housing system that could not fit them all. In effect, HOPE IV was helping Chicago to outsource their low income residents to my hometown of Lafayette.

Because of instances such as this, I would be cautious about proposing a grant for HOPE IV. I know that when carried out correctly, they can be beneficial to the area, but I would ensure that nothing like that would happen in Portland. 

Week3 - Education

The core problems surrounding our education system today are based around the fact that our system was designed for a different era. Everything about life was so drastically different when the basis of the public education system was formed. There was a time when studying the classics and having a standard education system for the masses was beneficial. This was also a time before mass media, a global economy, and the Internet. When almost everything in our daily lives has evolved to fit the times, our education system has not. We still are putting our children into a cookie cutter system, when most success today is a result of ingenuity and creative reasoning. The test showing the decline in divergent thinking as children age truly resonates with my opinion on the public school system in the US.  We must mol our education to better fit the times and adapt to individual ways of thinking, rather than an age, or “date of manufacture” as referred to in the video.

While the videos did not have concrete or abstract solutions, they do raise very valid points that change must be made. I am not a professional in the field of education, and therefore am probably not the best to suggest resolutions to the problem, but I can recognize the fact that there is a problem. Forcing a standardized way of thinking onto children only closes their minds to their capabilities.

While I know that in passing the No Child Left Behind Act, leaders had really great hopes and intentions, in actuality it was more of a publicity act and another hindering on our public schooling. By standardizing our public school systems even further (through standardized testing) we are smothering any lingering ingenuity of our children. One system is not going to work for everyone; people learn in different ways and have different strengths and weaknesses. Instituting a standardized test for which the success of schools will be judged is completely the wrong way to go about fixing our education system.  Now, talented teachers who have the ability to help develop the minds of our young children in individualized ways are forced into this cookie-cutter system. One standardized system with this design of success or failure as a black and white system developed through math and reading, leaves no hope for divergent thinkers. This system will never work; the whole system must be restructured.

While I do not have an actual solution for this system, I know it is altogether wrong. There is so much hope and possibility in the minds of our youth. We need to help nurture those ideas and let them blossom rather than pulling what a few see as weeds, and trimming the rest to conform to an industrial revolution age’s idea of “education”.

Week 2

If I were making the decision of where to locate my middle income family of four, there clearly would be numerous influences shaping that decision. The quality of education offered in various parts of the city would be a major driver. While the quality of public schools would definitely be important, I would also take into consideration the quality of culture offered. I believe that culture is nearly as important in the education process as the actual schooling itself. I know whole-heartedly that I will raise my children in an dense urban area that can offer education on a daily basis through the culture, art, music, and diversity of residents. Suburban enclaves suffocate creativity and act as a buffer between residents and the happenings of the real world. Due to the "central place theory" there is simply more to offer in the center of a city than on the outskirts or suburbs.

In addition to providing the cultural education I desire for my children, having the option of walking down the street to the market or a few blocks to the public transit system a very important to me. To make a well thought out decision, I would need to consider the downfalls of living in the city and compare them with the option of suburban life. Realizing that often, the public school systems in cities are of lower quality than those in the suburbs, I would have to consider the cost of private education. As a middle income family, most likely the cost would be out of our budget and would require cuts elsewhere in our spending plan. I would use the bid-rent curve to my advantage in this instance; with public transit much more readily available in the city, I could put the money saved in transportation costs towards the cost of private schooling. 

Another common criticism of urban living for families is that children need areas to run and play, and unless one is a tremendously wealthy and can afford a condo next to Central Park, the options are slim to none. In order to address this problem as a middle income family, again we would need to make changes to our living plan. I would choose to reside in a small modest apartment/condo within a five minute walk to a small park. I believe that the availability of museums, neighborhood parks, theaters, and events would outweigh the stereotypical suburban mansion on a full acre of green grass, and that by giving up the extra space available in the suburbs, we would gain the quality of life I would be striving for. 

While I don't know how well the concentric zone model applies to cities today, if I were to apply the model to New York City, I would suppose that the central business district would be manhattan in general, while the "factory zone" would be Brooklyn or Queens. the "zone of transition" and"working class" zones would be Jersey City and Newark, and the commuter zone would be everywhere beyond that. While I can dream of living in Manhattan in Chelsea or Harlem, in reality as a middle income family that would not be likely. I would have to most likely move somewhere such as Brooklyn. There are many really great neighborhoods there that would be ideal for my living situation and desires. It seems odd to consider these areas "factory zones" but at one time they were. Gentrification has taken its course throughout Manhattan and is spreading rapidly through these further boroughs, but using the Burgess model of concentric zoning, I guess I will have to say that I would chose to raise my middle income family in the "factory zone" (a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn). 

Week 1

I find it kind of funny how a description of what makes cities so great is given in the introduction to the first reading, and what they stress are the tourist-y traps such as the statue of liberty, golden gate bridge, etc. While these a very prominent and important sites, I don’t feel that they should be mentioned as the first reason why cities are so important. Rather, the attention should focus on what truly makes a city so special which is the connections between residents, the interactions of food, culture, music, and art all working together to create the lifeline of the city. One of my favorite quotes about this magic of cities was offered by Jane Jacobs, she referred to this interaction and connectedness as “the ballet of the street”.

I really support the idea that by attempting to put order into cities, planners and developers managed to ruin the magic of cities. As mentioned in the first reading developers came into cities with this overarching idea that order was needed and that separation of uses equaled order. Through this idea, suburbs (or the death of great American cities) were created. By designating large shopping malls, convention centers, and areas of separate uses only connected by highways, cities were meticulously being taken apart. The separation of uses developed and promoted throughout the last thirty years really created more problems than ever imagined.  Hope for the future of cities is coming back to life in recent years though. Young people everywhere are beginning to see past the “promises of suburbia” and returning to cities and therefore perpetuating their diversity and growth. Richard Florida has coined this as “the rise of the creative class.”

Many times in papers such as these, it is easy to get the impression that there are only two polar opposite options when considering the problems of cities. They mention individualist vs. communitarian communities, centralized vs. decentralized education systems, and regionalists vs. decentralists just to name a few. The problem with this outlook is that it promotes a way of thinking in which answers are either left or right, rather than comprehensively including both left and right. This then promotes the idea that one must either be pro-city or pro-rural, but the truth is that there is a place and need for all degrees of density.  Andres Duany used a concept from ecology to describe this idea, he considered it a “rural to urban transect” in which increasing levels of density could be found. Using this theory helps to please people with varying outlooks on cities. This way everyone can see that all types of land, from pure natural preserves, to farms and low density towns, to dense urban centers all have their place in society.

I just believe that is important to look at these issues seen in our landscapes today not as “America’s urban problems” but as “America’s problems”.  All densities of towns from rural to urban impact each other and feed off of each other, and in order to solve the problems in one area, we must look at the ways we are living in all areas.

Introducing Me

Hello, my name is Kali Miller and I am a senior in the School of Sustainability with a focus on Urban Dynamics and a minor in Urban and Metropolitan Studies. I am from Indiana but have lived here in AZ for three years.  I live, work, and play in downtown Phoenix with the occasional trip to Tempe for class. Currently I am a server at Pita Jungle Downtown where I can be found about 25 hours a week. I am also an intern for Roosevelt Row downtown.

When I am not in class or work, I practice yoga at Sutra Midtown, travel as often as possible, venture around on my bike, go to concerts, and kick it with my friends. Now that you know a little about me, you can follow all my exciting urban policy blogs!