Planning History, Atlanta, J. Horace McFarland, Visual Culture and You

This academic year is a strange beast for me. I am officially on sabbatical, a concept that non-academic types find hard to understand. Suffice to say, after a long period of testing, my department and the college have judged me worthy for tenure. Tenure is defined as"status granted to an employee, usually after a probationary period, indicating that the position or employment is permanent." In practice, popular culture has defined tenure as "you can't be fired, so now you can goof off." It is part of the whole, "ivory tower as bad cultural motif." In practically terms, after review I was awarded tenure and took the opportunity to go on sabbatical for the academic year. This means I do not teach any classes, not that I don't do any work. Since my work is kinda intellectual in nature (keep your jeering down to a low roar) outside observers don't necessarily see me breaking my back digging ditches--so to them I'm lounging in coffee shops...goofing off.

Skeptics aside, I have been pushing my particular lines of urban inquiry forward. Yeah, I'm a urban historian, so I study the city. I do so through some exotic lens (comics), but I do it through structural lens (city planning) as well. I am currently working hard at both the comic and planning lens. Comics are interesting in part because they allow me to consider basic questions about American urban history using popular culture. Comics, as I have spoken about, tell us about how U.S. citizens perceive the urban experience. My musing on this subject are freely accessible in academic and non-academic forums, so I'm not going to repeat myself here. Still, comics touch on the powerful impact of visual culture.

Visual culture also has links to city planning in my complicated mind. Recently, an article I wrote on J. Horace McFarland, a somewhat overlooked Progressive Era planning and conservation advocate was published by Pennsylvania History. McFarland is, at a very basic level, a human Swiss army knife(you groan, but you won't forget). He did so much, reformer, photographer, rosier, writer, lobbyist, speaker, proto-feminist, and the list go on and on.

As president of the American Civic Association (ACA) McFarland championed planning and conservation throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe between 1904 and 1924. I am currently working on a manuscript on Progressive Era planning in Atlanta. This research grows out of my dissertation, but it has evolved a bit because as I have continued to find information linking Atlanta to the broader debate going on in the United States about planning in the Progressive Era. McFarland is one point of intersection between Atlanta and broader world. McFarland's experience in Atlanta, similar to his experience in other cities, was to emphasize, through visual means, the consequences of rapid, unchecked urbanization. McFarland photographed cities across the United States, combined those photos into lantern slides (think powerpoint slide) and showed them to local residents. The goal was to allow the community to see the damage created by their actions and galvanize them to support reform. This kind of documentary as activism continues today. Still, we owe a debt to photographers like Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, and McFarland for their efforts.

Recently, Rebecca Ross, made me aware of a new web based project called Picturing Place. Picturing Place is an academic research project housed primarily by two universities [U.C.L_Urban Laboratory, Bartlett School of Architecture Research Fund and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design], both accredited by the UK Higher Education Council For England (HEFCE). The goal of the project is to critically explores the role of images and image-production in processes of urban change. The project incorporates multiple forms and images of cities. Urban renderings: maps, plans, and project descriptions are all open for inclusion. Added to that, actual depictions of the city: pictures, murals, billboards and other representation that shape our perceptions of urban space are also included. The project's goal is to encourage discussion about the role that visual languages has in the production of the built environment. I understood immediately that the problems facing reformers in Progressive Era United States fit within this project's framework. So, I went through the process to get an image from McFarland's collection included on the project. It is strangely apropos that the image I contributed to Picturing Place was taken in 1911. Now in 2011, this interdisciplinary project is bringing together scholars to create an interactive relationship between images and cities. I suspect Picturing Place will grow as the opportunity to communicate the impact of urbanization visually through the web-base platform offers opportunities to promote global discussion. I can already see other images I would like to contribute the website. If you have opportunity, you should contact them to submit images as well.

I'm thinking while on sabbatical. I'm doing as well. There is more to come on Atlanta, McFarland, visual culture, and space as it relates to the urban experience.

Remaking Place and Asserting Space: The Land Trust Experience in Winter Park, 1991-2010 _ Ep 4: Further Reflection on Planning

In 1902, seeking to explain the importance of city planning, Daniel H. Burnham, the foremost architect and planner in the United States wrote, In the American there is developing, a new instinct. This impulse he explained defied tradition, exploited opportunity, and strove to produce a new modern world. These attributes reflected, for many Americans, the United States place in the modern world. This new modernity framed the emergence of the Progressive Era, a period in the early twentieth century when theories of social, political, and economic efficiency seemed to promise a better society. How did the ideas of city planning change urban development? What if any of those changes relate to the urbanism today?

Planners, who comprised an amalgamation of intellectuals, social reformers, business leaders, lawyers, doctors, and government officials were driven by a progressive belief that American society could be made better, not simply better in terms of aesthetics, but better in the sense of an environmental determinism that addressed the ills of urban society. This period marks the formulation of city planning theories that allowed planning advocates to define what city planning could and should accomplish. Identified by their commitment to safeguard social unity and political cohesion that characterized the American social system, planners pursued different avenues in their search for stability. They articulated ideologies of efficiency, social welfare, and beautification in their search for the proper formula for development.

At some basic level, city planning represented a professionalization of urban development practice driven by the rise of an educated white middle-class who feared disruption rooted in the city. The push for professionalization provided this managerial oriented middle-class a tool to establish civic prominence by displacing the traditional power structure by arguing their understanding of the "new science" of city planning positioned them to make better decisions for society. Thus, from its inception, city planning established a link between middle-class social belief and regulatory standard for housing and development. The origins of the contemporary suburban experience can be traced to this period. Historian Dolores Hayden writes that the source of United States postwar housing policy grew from the need to fulfill ideas of family and work more applicable to the nineteenth century idea of home and work rapid developing in the Twentieth century.

Our research on the Hannibal Square Community Land Trust links directly to this ongoing debate in American planning literature. As we talk to people and explore the history of the organization, one clear barrier to the success of the HSCLT is the traditional desire to own a home. Let me explain. The CLT in Winter Park like CLT around the country operate by holding land in trust and selling the home. CLTs prevent market forces from raising prices and keeps homes within reach of families who could not traditional participate in the housing market.

This process however runs counter to what Americans believe should happen when they buy a home. CLT homeowners own the home and leases the land. This is not the traditional owner model and while the CLT provides a unique opportunity to buy homes, many people who may qualify resist participating. For African-American especially, the thought they will not own the land, an idea deeply rooted in the psyche as a symbol of citizenship, is troubling. I would argue that one obstacle for the HSCLT to overcome is the belief, born in the aftermath of the Civil War, that African-American must acquire and hold land to be secure in the United States. This belief, best summed up with the phrase "40 acres and a Mule" grew from the action of William T. Sherman, who issues Special Field Order No. 15 in 1865 grant land to former slaves in Georgia. The special order was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson within a year and the hopes for African-American land ownership were caught in the politics of Reconstruction. Regardless, the ideas remains a reference point for African-Americans. In the aftermath of slavery sleeking and holding land was one mechanism to demonstrate freedom.

As I have noted in earlier episodes, Winter Park was planned with African-American property owners as a goal. In the years since the town's founding, African-Americans have maintained ownership, but the value of their land has not matched their white counterparts--a clear legacy of racism. At the same time, development pressure have increasingly focused on Hannibal Square, in part because the area east of the railroad track is too expensive for new development. For African-Americans struggling to hold on land that has been in their families for generation, the pattern of recent development tells a story of African-American displacement driven by white land speculators, white businesses, and new white residents. How can those African-American residents support the HSCLT? For them the HSCLT provides homes without land, a model that counters both the history and desire promoted in the American experience.

The HSCLT can be one way to stabilize the housing market in this traditional African-American neighborhood and provide an opportunity for a new generation of low to moderate income homeowners to live in Hannibal Square, yet to achieve that goal, a new narrative of home ownership will need to be created and nurtured within the community.