Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

For every $10 spent on goods and services in the American economy, at least a dollar is spent in the “underground economy.” That share has trended up over the last 15 years and two recessions.

That $2.5 trillion in economic activity includes both licit and illicit activities — yes, paying the babysitter cash and buying an illegal gun are both in the underground economy. Poorer nations have higher rates, and likewise, poorer communities in the United States rely more heavily on the informal economy.

Contributing to the academic analysis, American sociologist and ethnographer Sudhir Venkatesh published in 2006 a book called Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. Backed by years he spent visiting a particular poor neighborhood in Chicago, he chronicled the interpersonal and community dynamics that related to and developed its underground economy. In some ways the book shows its age (as a trivial example, his use of the word “ghetto” feels dated), but in other ways it remains a small, specific window into one community’s underground economy.

“The underground enables poor communities to survive but can lead to their alienation from the wider world,” as the author wrote.

Another of his points I especially liked: “What some might see as a mass of Americans lying about, and out of work, is in many cases an ensemble of persons who lack of private places where they can rest.”

The author renamed his characters and locations for anonymity, but generally follows a neighborhood he calls Maquis Park, including characters like a particular gang leader and an active block leader named Eunice. Below find my notes from the book for future reference.

Continue reading Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

Gentrification is believing you are ‘Year Zero’: 100% Philadelphia at FringeArts

Neighborhoods and cities always change. Concerns about gentrification come when that change happens with such speed that those new to a place don’t even realize a community predates them.

After a special performance of 100% Philadelphia, something like an on-stage census map with real-life residents, at FringeArts, I was part of a panel discussing the issues the production brought up. The performance has been organized around the world. In each case, 100 residents of that city were selected to represent the dynamics of that place — race, location, income, politics, etc. Throughout the show, the residents are given prompted questions and move about stage to help give an in-person sense of thoughts on issues, both local and human-wide.

It brought thoughts to mind for me.

Continue reading Gentrification is believing you are ‘Year Zero’: 100% Philadelphia at FringeArts

How Spring Street could thrive: survival for small towns in a new urban age

Newton is a small town in the northwest corner of New Jersey, where preserved forests, protected open space and state-backed farm land has curtailed suburbanization to maintain the foundation of what could be a thriving community in an urban age. It has a dense Main Street corridor and the anchor institutions of a 250-year-old town, as a gateway to this beautiful rural region. It also happens to be where I grew up.

Elsewhere in Sussex County, there are lake houses and golf courses that attract vacationers and tourists (and reporters) from the New York City market — that’s where my parents and other families came from. Though I believe there are unique assets, I also think this story is one that will relate to communities throughout the country and certainly elsewhere in the U.S. Northeast.

Continue reading How Spring Street could thrive: survival for small towns in a new urban age

Why I think this parklet is misguided and other thoughts on parking

frc-parklet

This is a photo of a parklet outside of my office in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia. Parklets are essentially raised platforms put in parking spots meant to offer pedestrian-friendly seating in dense city communities. They also become something of a rallying cry for anti-car urbanism, by taking something for an automobile and giving it to pedestrians.

I am a pedestrian — I bicycle to work and use mass transit whenever I don’t. What’s more is that I sit in this parklet a lot. I benefit from it plenty — it’s very pretty — and I like and use parklets throughout Philadelphia. I think the parklet movement is a cool one. That said, I also think this particular parklet’s placement is misguided.

Continue reading Why I think this parklet is misguided and other thoughts on parking

Attract and retain new young, educated people but keep our cities distinctive [Knight Milennials]

knight-millenials

Cities want to attract and retain young educated talent to fuel their knowledge economies, drive a tax base and create a community that can continue to grow by welcoming more new people in the future. Modern markets are insatiable and indefinitely incomplete.

That’s the clearest, simplest mission I can glean from all the chirping about celebrating gains Philadelphia has made in its old brain drain problem.

But last week at a Knight Foundation session with the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, I wanted to push that thinking forward in two ways that I don’t think I hear often enough in that conversation: (a) the idea that too much change can in effect take away what is distinctive about a city and (b) that any real success would improve the lives of existing Philadelphians too, not just push them out like in other cities.

Continue reading Attract and retain new young, educated people but keep our cities distinctive [Knight Milennials]

Puritan Boston, Quaker Philadelphia: notes on 1979 research from E. Digby Baltzell

Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell. Photo from Penn Collection. Circa 1970.

Boston was built by Puritans, who celebrated civic power and class authority. Philadelphia was built by Quakers, who championed equality and deference.

Two hundred fifty years later, though considerably fewer people in those cities consider themselves a member of either group, their impact is still chiefly responsible for Boston outperforming and Philadelphia underperforming in their contributions to the greater world.

That’s the chief argument of the dense, heavily-researched, 500-page, 1979 academic classic Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, written by University of Pennsylvania sociologist E. Digby Baltzell (19151996). The core of the book is said to be based on some 300 interviews with Proper Philadelphians and Brahmin Bostonians, and part of a decades-long research focus that Baltzell had on his Protestant brethren — he has been sometimes credited with popularizing the “WASP” term.

This is a book that is a fabulous read for understanding Philadelphia and Boston, but it is also a treasure for those who love new perspectives on American culture, U.S. history and the development of cities.

Continue reading Puritan Boston, Quaker Philadelphia: notes on 1979 research from E. Digby Baltzell

Does your knowledge economy-based city of the future import or export more ideas, culture?

If we are to build cities based in the so-called knowledge economy, one of the primary methods for judging its success should be very familiar: net exports.

In culture, ideas, concepts, general intellectual capital and, yes, even businesses and organizations, it may be worth questioning whether your city is mostly taking from others or mostly giving to others. Indeed, one wouldn’t only want to export knowledge — we always want to take ideas from others to get better — but a good sign of the success of a healthy region is the clustering of smart, creative people and their creating ideas, projects, businesses, ideas that are worth being shared elsewhere.

Continue reading Does your knowledge economy-based city of the future import or export more ideas, culture?

Why are city assets shared by a region but not problems (and solutions)?

In most regions across the country, cultural assets are shared widely but problems aren’t. It’s a mindset we should try to change.

This perspective came up at an event I helped organize a couple months ago, and it’s still rattling around in my head as I try to work out its meaning.

Continue reading Why are city assets shared by a region but not problems (and solutions)?

What the suburbs will be 20 years from now

Now, the stereotype stands that the suburbs are about wealth and the cities are about poverty. The suburbs are white. The cities are black (or Latino or some other non-white group).

The reality has always been more complicated — cities have always had white populations, both rich and poor — but this is a question of our national shorthand, and I believe that in the next 20 years or so, that perception is going to change.

It’s going to have to change because reality eventually catches up to perception. Poverty is sadly surging in the suburbs, part of a wide diversification outside of cities, which, though still facing legacy violence and education issues, largely appear on a road of recovery. More poor people live in the suburbs than cities or in areas called rural, a fact that came true starting in 2005.

Simply put, in the next generation, the divide will be simply more about space: the suburbs will have space, the cities will not. Of course, it’s a simplification. I know homes in Philadelphia with big yards in the Northeast and northwest, homes with pools and driveways along the dense riverwards and deep in West Philadelphia. But that’s not the point.

The point is what the stereotype will be. And when crime, demographics and poverty aren’t the issue, what else could be?

Continue reading What the suburbs will be 20 years from now