Who am I?

Where am I?
Right now, I am in Buffalo for an APA Leadership Conference. I will be here until Saturday.

Where have I been?
Like I said previously, school has started and I do not have as much time as I had in the summer to do this.
Yesterday, I was on the mall with a few dozen other people to see the final version of the Waterfront Plan. You can see my pictures of it here.

Where am I going?
If you have read the introduction to this, you would know.
However, my life took a completely unexpected, temporary detour.
Last week, Dennis Keating of MGLCUA went to his physician and found out he had to have a quadruple bypass. (He has undergone the surgery and is currently recovering.)
Last Friday, Norm Krumholz (professor and former Planning Director for the city of Cleveland) asked me to come to his office – I thought I was going to get into trouble for sending to many emails to the other students. After explaining to me the situation with Keating, he then says after consulting with a few others in the college, they would like for me to fill in for Keating in his Undergraduate Introduction to Urban Planning class.
WOW!
I was so very much taken aback by this.
Yesterday was my first full class. I spent the first hour talking about the legal basis of planning and the second hour talking about the comprehensive planning process.
So, this is what I will do twice a week for at least a month - on top of the family, school and other things I do.

Stay tuned for some pictures from Buffalo.

Pictures from Urban Design Class

The new Cuyahoga County Office Building,
originally uploaded by jsmuscatello.

Here is the photoset of pictures I am taking for my Urban Design Seminar class on Saturdays.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/muscatello/sets/924865/

Make It an Island

Finally, there is somebody making sense with what to do about rebuilding New Orleans. Former secretary of the interior, Bruce Babbit, wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times suggesting that after some careful and thorough planning, NO should be made into an island. The article states”:

AFTER the victims are interred and public officials held to account for the destruction of a great American city, Congress must determine what to rebuild and what to abandon to the encroaching waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans will survive only as an island surrounded by miles of open water. It will take a national effort, led by our best scientists, engineers and city planners, to achieve even this reduced vision of an American Venice. We must take the time to redesign the city to function as an island, with an island infrastructure, including relocated streets, highways and utilities. The island will need higher, stronger seawalls and levees sufficient to withstand new threats, including the rising sea levels and bigger hurricanes spawned in warming Atlantic waters.

Sea levels are likely to rise two to three feet in this century. Coastal maps drawn from consensus estimates show that virtually all of the delta lands south of Baton Rouge and below Interstate 10 - some 5,000 square miles - will be submerged by the end of this century.

State and local officials are understandably in denial about the impending loss of so much Louisiana land and heritage. The depth of their paralysis is underlined by a recent program to collect discarded Christmas trees from New Orleans to stack on barrier islands against the tides.

In recent years state agencies assembled a $14 billion project called Coastal 2050. One of its proposals was to cut gaps in the Mississippi River levees, which would provide outlets for the river to deposit some of its sediment onshore to help rebuild the delta. This idea may help in a few areas, but it will do little to offset the vastly larger forces of a rising sea.

Other proposals in the package include building coastal barriers, plugging delta channels dredged by oil companies and re-vegetating barrier islands. But overall the Coastal 2050 projects have as much chance of success as King Canute commanding the tides to recede.

Congress should resist the urge to appropriate huge sums for piecemeal reconstruction efforts. Restoration of the city and the delta will be a national effort, and it should be guided by a national plan. Congress should charge a commission of our best scientists, engineers and planners to asses the alternatives, draw up a regional land plan and recommend a realistic course of action.

Bruce Babbitt, a former secretary of the interior, is the author of the forthcoming "Cities in the Wilderness."

I like many others across the country, am confused about how to proceed with restoring NO to its former self – or even if we should at all. I strongly feel that no matter how well built any new levee system is, it will only be a matter of time before the inevitable happens again. Will it be worth it to spend all of our resources rebuilding the city the same way it is now? I am thinking the decisions about the reconstruction of New Orleans v2.0 should be done by qualified people throughout the whole country and not state and city officials.

A Few Random Toughts

Random Thoughts

Staying busy because of school, so here are a few thoughts based on recent happenings and observations.

$2,000 debit cards:
This is one of the stupidest things I have heard recently. That is, giving people who (for the most part) have been living in poverty a majority of their lives, $2,000 to use as they wish. Why are they in poverty? I’m sure there are a number of reasons: education, training, ignorance are just to name a few. This is not the point.
We are giving them up to $2,000 (depending on family size and whether or not they had any insurance coverage) to spend on whatever it is they need to make there lives more comfortable as a result of the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, right?
That does not make sense.
I have spoken to many others who agree.
There is nothing wrong with providing assistance to those in need. But if they are in the position they’re in now due to the fact that they don’t know how to manage their resources – don’t you think this will make things worse?
This may not be the case for many of the people… maybe most of the people. However, if 20,000 people are using this card for beer, cigarettes, trading, etc., then that is way too much… 5,000 people is too much.
Solution: Provide the survivors with $2,000 in vouchers good for housing, clothes, limited groceries (not steaks or name brand, fancy-packaged processed foods) from the local farmers markets (thus helping more then one entity), childcare – things like that.

Quicken and DFAS:
Almost 1000 new jobs coming to Downtown Cleveland is a very nice thing to hear these days. And with the Redroom Revolution project reveled by BFD, my gut feeling tells me this is only the beginning.
Very exciting times indeed.

Class Separation:
I went to my daughter’s open house last night at Chagrin Falls Middle School. Nice place. I was amazed at the diversity that was present in the school. I do not understand why everyone is concerned.
There were countless colors of blonde hair there. Granted, they where mostly the same style – shoulder-ish length, bangs; I did not realize blonde came in so many shades.
In no particular order, I spotted Champagne Blonde, Dark Cool Blonde, Medium Golden Blonde, Strawberry Blonde, Dishwater Blonde, Ultra Light Natural Blonde, Rich Golden Blonde, Dark Ash Blonde, Extra Light Natural Blonde, Golden Blonde, Ultra Soft Baby Blonde, Rich Golden Blonde and, everyone’s favorite, Bleach Blonde.
Seriously though, it was very scary seeing that many white people in one place like that. The only other-than-white persons seen where two faculty members: a Chinese woman who taught, er… Chinese, and young man of Middle Eastern descent who taught concert band.

As a future leader in the City of Cleveland and/or Cuyahoga County, I promise this is something I will work very hard on changing. Something must be done about the class/race/socioeconomic separation that is so prevalent in this region. The rest of the cities in the county want the water and sewer system, the lakefront, the orchestra, the international airport – all of the positive things the city has. But they do not want any of the “problems.” Especially since they have caused most of the problems. This isn’t just about education, it is the extremely unfair way that affordable housing is centralized in Cleveland… and this has been done on the knees of the Cuyahoga “County” Metropolitan Housing Association. How is it that a county run agency is so focused on putting those in need of affordable housing mostly in the city?

Enough of my ranting.
Have a nice weekend.

Sand Mandala Painting of Tibet

Sand Mandala Painting of Tibet,
originally uploaded by jsmuscatello.

Here is the photoset from the last day of iNGENUiTY 05.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/muscatello/40314244/in/set-885934/
Plus a few pics of the family near City Hall as we wait for the Thunderbirds to do their thing.

iNGENUiTY 05 - Friday Night

Olivia's favorite,
originally uploaded by jsmuscatello.

Here are more photos from the Arts and Technology Festival from Friday night.
I am not going on Saturday, but will be there on Sunday.

iNGENUiTY 2005 - Thursday

Traffic Jam 12,
originally uploaded by jsmuscatello.

Enjoy some photos from the first night of the Art and Technology Festival.
These are mostly photos from Traffic Jam.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/muscatello/sets/869700/

Where Was I?

Random thoughts:

I will not be posting as much since classes have started.
I have Statistics and Finance.
I have been amazed, devastated, shocked and (place appropriate adjective here) about the destruction from Katrina.
I have always been a news junkie in one way or another. This is different then other events, though. When 9/11 happened, I watched as much as the next person did; however, after a couple of days the news just regurgitated the same thing over and over.
Now, every time I turn on the news or refresh a web site, things keep getting worse.

I told Noelle that I had a bad feeling about this storm right after it hit Florida. Last night I told her that if order is not restore in some way soon, I could realistically see people attacking those that are trying to help. I also told her that I would not be surprised if somebody started shooting at the helicopters above. Then this morning, she sent me this: Superdome evacuation disrupted after shots fired at helicopter. Simply amazing.

Go here, here, here, here or here to see some amazing before and after satellite photos of New Orleans from Globalsecurity.org.

At least the POTUS’s cronies are going to make a bunch of money out this. The EPA has waived the “the requirement to sell “summer gasoline” which contains a lower volatility limit…” and “…also allowing the use of diesel fuel which exceeds 500 ppm sulfur content.”
So it is ok to create more pollution – cheaply – in order to satisfy the rest of the country’s thirst for gas. I think they should have left the requirement alone and the users should change their driving and spending habits. Call it a sacrifice; it’s the least the rest of the country could do.
At least the waiver is last only until September 15. Something tells me that it will be extended.

What is really nice to see is the generous outpouring of help for those who are now homeless.
Craigslist.com has a section dedicated to those who are in need of help and those who are giving.