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With Gas Over $4, Cities Explore Whether It's Smart to Be Dense - WSJ.com

Have had this article open in a browser tab for days now -- time to bookmark. Along with posts by CEOs for Cities, or Richard Florida, this article too points to the effect that gasoline prices are having on suburban housing, and on the "sudden" desirability of urban living. (Well, I say "sudden" because I've *NEVER* understood why anyone would want to live in suburbs instead of living in cities/ densely packed neighbourhoods where you just have to walk a block or two, or less, to find social activity...)

From the article, QUOTE:
"Expensive oil is going to transform the American culture as radically as cheap oil did," predicts David Mogavero, a Sacramento-based architect and smart-growth proponent.
(...)
Even though the area's housing market has been wracked by price drops of 25% in the last year and one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, Mr. Friedman says he already has sold nine of 28 town houses near downtown that he recently completed, and three more are under contract, "which is not bad considering the dismal state of the Sacramento real-estate market."

Mr. Morris, the developer, says the housing downturn is hurting the places that have the "dumbest growth. Smart growth works when the rest of it doesn't."
UNQUOTE

Tags: smartgrowth, wsj_opinion, urbanplanning, cities, suburbia, gasoline, cost_of_living on 2008-07-14 -All Annotations (0) -About

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"Schoolhouse Rock" - WSJ OpinionJournal

- profile/ overview of Michelle Rhee, the D.C. schools chancellor who's rocking the traditional bureaucratic boat of public schooling:
"She says she keeps hearing from worried city council members that some teachers and administrators are frightened of her. They are feeling pressure and that's a problem. Her answer? Get used to it. 'I'm going to hold people accountable and I'm going to hold their feet to the fire. If they're feeling pressure--good! I feel pressure every day because I have the education of 49,000 kids in my hands.'"
- I say go for it, and damn all the complaining from some sectors. Any time a bureaucracy serves primarily itself instead of its clients/ constituents, it needs a wake up kick in its nether regions, as well as a major dismantling. You can't decentralize centrally (Marshall McLuhan, paraphrased).

Tags: education, michelle_rhee, reform, school, washington_dc, wsj_opinion on 2007-12-26 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromopinionjournal.com

Her name first came to Mayor Fenty's attention through Joel Klein, the chancellor of the New York City School system. She was known as an out-of-the-box thinker, a relentless advocate of reform. And that made her just what the young mayor was looking for.

The alliance she and the mayor formed that day is now one of the strongest cards in the chancellor's hand. Their agreement was that as long as she acted in the best interests of the kids, he would back her up no matter how loud the screaming of the unions and community groups. "And since then, he has been unwavering," Ms. Rhee says with a note of awe in her voice. "He has never ever said to me, well, we need to think of the political ramifications."
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- - that's leadership; wish we had some of that at the municipal level in Victoria.
  posted by lampertina on 2007-12-26
To be effective, Ms. Rhee believes, reforms must begin with the people closest to the children. When she first took the job, she made time to meet individually with all 159 principals in the school system. "People thought I was crazy, and it was very time consuming," she says, "but it was the best use of time . . . it was very telling."

Telling of what? Ms. Rhee quickly came to the conclusion that principals who were succeeding in their schools were her best resource. They were the ones who could tell her what she needed to do. She called in a group of top-tier principals and asked them for their wish lists: "I called them together and told them, 'You're the unsung heroes. This place creates such a bureaucracy that you can't get stuff done efficiently. Be creative, tell me what you want to do.'"

At first, the principals looked at her blankly. "They were like, what? And then when they got it, they were so excited." One principal asked for permission to run her school as a STEM school--focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And she said that she wanted to keep her kids all the way through 8th grade. She explained that if parents had a school they believed in, they'd be less likely to take them out of the public system.
Ms. Rhee says that her mission is not incremental change, and she doesn't plan on making being a school superintendent a career. "This is a one-time gig for me," she laughs, "so I can make every single decision in a way in which I think is in the best interests of the kids--without the politics, without owing people, just with that in mind."
Mayor Fenty is the first D.C. mayor to have direct control of the city schools (in lieu of a school board)--a set-up that's also been key to turnaround efforts in Chicago, New York and Boston. There's a powerful demand for quality education in the nation's capital that hasn't been met by the public school system, as evidenced by the 30% of the district's kids who attend charter schools. "For way too long in this country, choice in education was something that was reserved for rich people in the suburbs," Ms. Rhee says.
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- - or "choice" has been about people willing to put their own careers on hold (or defer forever) so they can homeschool their kids
  posted by lampertina on 2007-12-26

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With Gas Over $4, Cities Explore Whether It's Smart to Be Dense - WSJ.com

"Schoolhouse Rock" - WSJ OpinionJournal

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