Obama Paints a New Vision for Nation's Urban Policy

By Robin Shulman
Addressing a White House urban affairs summit on Monday, President Obama called for the "reinvention" of America's cities and metropolitan areas and vowed to spark a public conversation to create a "new, imaginative, bold vision" for urban policy.

The speech was Obama's first as president dedicated to urban issues, a subject he called "near and dear to my heart."

He promised to send Cabinet members across the country this summer to engage Americans toward the creation of a national urban agenda, and he announced, for the first time in 30 years, an intensive interagency review to take a "hard look" at how federal policy impacts urban areas.

The summit was the first indication that the White House might back its newly created Office of Urban Affairs with the kind of muscle that Obama suggested during his campaign. That goal, introduced before the economic collapse, would reverse decades of federal disinterest in cities.

The meeting convened dozens of policy experts, along with mayors, county officials, governors and a half-dozen agency heads to discuss how the federal government can help build competitive, sustainable and inclusive urban areas.

Obama noted that he has lived almost all his life in cities, including studying in Los Angeles, New York and Cambridge, Mass., and founding his political career in Chicago.
But he said that he defined "urban" as not just inner cities, but also their surrounding suburbs, asserting that there is no longer a divide between the two.

"Even as we've seen many of our central cities continuing to grow in recent years, we've seen their suburbs and exurbs grow roughly twice as fast," said Obama. "It's not just our cities that are hotbeds of innovation anymore, it's our growing metropolitan areas."

He said he would send members of his Cabinet and the Office of Urban Affairs to look at innovations in cities around the country to elevate as best practices.

Obama noted Denver, for its plans to build a public transit system to handle the city's anticipated growth; Philadelphia, for its urban agriculture; and Kansas City, which has weatherized homes and built a ecologically minded transit system in one low-income neighborhood.

The president also said he has directed the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, and the Office of Urban Affairs to review federal policies impacting urban areas, in terms of infrastructure, transportation, housing, energy, sustainable development and education.

Obama acknowledged that the economic crisis has caused four out of five American cities to cut services, and 48 states to face the prospects of budget deficits in the coming fiscal year. But he said the federal government must do more than just help cities weather the current economic storm -- it must figure out ways to "rebuild them on a newer, firmer, stronger foundation."

He also presented a comprehensive effort to build sustainable communities, led by the secretaries of the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

"For too long, federal policy has actually encouraged sprawl and congestion and pollution, rather than quality public transportation and smart, sustainable development," said Obama.

He said that developing housing, transportation and energy-efficiency should "go hand in hand."

Barcelona, Urban Planning, Historic Preservation, Roman (Gothic) City

We have started learning about the history of Barcelona, and one thing we learned is that because of its location it was not a major Roman city to start out with, and to make a long history short, there was a centralled walled-in Roman city. Under Spanish rule (I believe) it became larger but was heavily fortified with Spanish military and walls around the city to limit development, because the Spanish government was worried that it might be a revolutionary threat because of the differences in the Castillian and Catalonian kingdoms.

When the city became more properous, it began to develop more, but it could not develop outside of the set borders (yet) so it developed very narrow streets and was built up high. It was very dense. Living conditions became very stratified and the lower classes lived next to the bourgeosise who decided to revamp their city's history by investing lots of money into restoring what is now considered to be the Gothic part of the city...

What we learned today is that a majority of the buildings, walls, etc in the Gothic part of the city were not in the same places they are today when Barcelona really was a Roman city. Things were rearrange, building surfaces and walls were moved brick by brick to create plazas and beautiful squares to recreate the Roman history of the city... The church that is pictured above is an intesting case because it was never finished during the period it was built in, so when Barcelona started to prosper and money came into the city Barcelonians with money researched the period quite a bit, and made the outside of this Cathedral a model example of the type of architecture and design that they wanted the building to look like...

This brings up interesting questions about what is authentic and what is not, but more importantly, why a city would chose to re-CREATE this historical part of the city, which was not entirely true to real history. The lecturer today talks about how this recreation of history is a way to create cultural community and identity. In doing to the Catalonians and Barcelonians can emphasize the history that they care to, and not emphasize what they would rather forget. I suggested that it was the commercial creation of history for tourism, however it was suggested to me that the Barcelonians really needed the re-creation of this historical identity for themselves as much as it is something nice for tourists to look at... I wonder what other kinds of historical preservation movements do the same thing. How much of the history that we see is authentic, and what was researched and restored to look more periodic in order to highlight the parts of history that we want to be prominent in our cities?

As things progress I hope to learn more about the Cataloian identity that has been created in this region of Spain. Also, Barcelona is apparently one of the best models of modernist planning that has ever existed, which I am supposed to learn about tomorrow.

Interesting stuff, and great times in Spain.

2009 Board

(proper picture forthcoming)

Matt // president

Hometown
Lakewood, CA

Undergraduate School and Major
UC Riverside. Applied Mathematics.

Favorite City
To live and die in LA, it’s the place to be

Coffee or Tea
Coffee with a cigarette. Jasmine green tea to start off the day.

Currently Playing on iPod
Amazing how I listened to the Velvet Underground’s self titled LP for the first time this week. Splendid it is.

Last Item Purchased
Blockbuster video: American Graffiti, Zack and Miri

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
NIMBYism

Best Thing About Southern California
Lakers, Venice Canals, Hollywood Hills, Orange County beaches, the food, the people, going 80 on the 405 at 1 in the morning and a shitload of sunshine


Lucy // vp of external affairs

Hometown
Santa Ana, CA

Undergraduate School and Major
UCSB, Political Science

Favorite City
Guadalajara, Mexico

Coffee or Tea
COFFEE!!

Currently Playing on iPod
Manu Chao

Last Item Purchased
food...sangria..and stuff to make sangria

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
IDK LeCorbusier??

Best Thing About Southern California
King Taco!


Daniel // vp of internal affairs

Hometown
El Monte, CA

Undergrad school and major
UCI, Environmental Analysis and Design

Favorite city
Los Angeles

Coffee or tea
Tea

Currently playing on iPod
Michael Jackson- Human Nature

Last item purchased
Lunch

Least favorite planning terminology
Gentrification

Best thing about Southern California
Lakers!


Cheri // secretary

Hometown
Los Angeles, CA. Beverlywood to be specific :D

Undergrad school and major
UCLA. Art major. Want to buy a painting? I need the money :D

Favorite city
New York City. Awesome food and excellent public transportation outweighsangry and blunt people.

Coffee or tea
Coffee. Industrial strength.

Currently playing on iPod
The Killer's album Sam's Town. I can't get enough of it.

Last item purchased
An avocado bacon cheeseburger with fries and an iced tea. It was worthevery penny.

Least favorite planning terminology
Covenant. All I think about is witches and goblins. Don't know why.

Best thing about Southern California
The weather. Just wonderful


Sean // treasurer

Hometown
Alhambra, CA

Undergraduate School and Major
Cal Poly Pomona, English Lit

Favorite City
Paris to visit, Los Angeles to live

Coffee or Tea
Coffee, black.

Currently Playing on iPod
Don't have one..

Last Item Purchased
Flight of the Conchords Season 2 dvd

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
"Planning to Action"

Best Thing About Southern California
The food

Maha // communications co-chair

Hometown
BFE, Ohio

Undergraduate School and Major
The Ohio State University International Studies

Favorite City
Paris

Coffee or Tea
cafe au lait

Currently Playing on iPod
Okkervill River

Last Item Purchased
Waterloo Bridge dvd

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
high density, mixed-use, sustainability

Best Thing About Southern California
360 Days of Sunshine and Yogurtland


Ata // communications co-chair

Favorite City
Anything white.

Coffee or Tea
Anything black.

Currently Playing on iPod
Yellow House.

Last Item Purchased
I'm in the red.

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
Green.

Best Thing About Southern California
Pink's.

Ata ul Malik Khan studied Agent Orange and brownfields at Claremont McKenna College. He's pretty blue most of the time.


Sara // philanthropy co-chair

Hometown
Pa'auilo, Hawaii

Undergraduate School and Major
University of Oregon, Comparative Literature.

Favorite City
Kealakekua, Hawaii

Coffee or Tea
Tea.

Currently Playing on iPod
I have no iPod. But if I did, it would be playing Jason Aldean or Miranda Lambert

Last Item Purchased
Airline tickets to Canada

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
New new urbanism

Best Thing About Southern California
Theme parks. And things to do after 9pm.

Rosalinda // social chair

Hometown
Los Angeles, actual L.A. L.A.

Undergraduate School and Major
UC DAVIS: Native American Studies and Spanish

Favorite City
Have not toured the globe enough to determine this

Coffee or Tea
Water, but after running around Mexico City and dodging rain, coffee would be nice

Last Item Purchased
A ticket to ride Mexico City's metro

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
Cap and trade

Best Thing About Southern California
Los Angeles, The Pretty and the Gritty

Jessica // events chair

Hometown
Irvine, CA

Undergraduate School and Major
UCI, U.S. History and French

Favorite City
Paris - tons of parks and museums, and the nicest subway sustem I've ever seen

Coffee or Tea
Both...and hot chocolate too!

Last Item Purchased
I am a classical music nerd. :-P

Least Favorite Planning Terminology
Friedman

Best Thing About Southern California
Laguna Beach, Disneyland, PCH, the Getty, the food, and the weather

Shannon // philanthropy co-chair
Bonny // philanthropy co-chair

--

Very Interesting Irvine Article

Jaci Woods is having trouble getting her neighbors to sign up for her WatchMail crime e-mail alerts. There's simply not enough crime in Irvine to warrant interest in dispatches about car burglaries, purse snatchings and stolen electronics.

Woods and her husband moved to Irvine from Virginia in 1971, the year the fledgling Orange County suburb incorporated, back when just a few thousand families were settling into sparkling new homes surrounded by ranch land. But the real estate broker worried that someday, as Irvine grew, it would succumb to big-city problems: overcrowding, traffic, noise, and escalating crime. But it hasn't.

more at the LA Times...

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Climate FAIL..Not much has changed there YET!

Developing Nations Rebuff G-8 on Curbing Pollutants
Jason Reed/Reuters

President Obama and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France during a round table session at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, on Wednesday.

L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.

As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by mid-century, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities of world leaders as they gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. Mr. Obama invited counterparts from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and others to join the G-8 here on Thursday for a parallel “Major Economies Forum” representing the producers of 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. But since President Hu Jintao of China abruptly left Italy to deal with unrest at home, the chances of making further progress seemed to evaporate.

The G-8 leaders were also grappling with the sagging global economy, development in Africa, turmoil in Iran, nuclear nonproliferation and other challenging issues. On Friday, Mr. Obama planned to unveil a $15 billion food security initiative by the G-8 to provide emergency and development aid to poor nations.

The failure to establish specific targets on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging longstanding divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the specific emissions limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020, and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help.

“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”

American officials said they still had made an important breakthrough because the G-8 countries within the negotiations agreed to adopt the 2050 reduction goals, even though the developing countries would not.

And they said a final agreement with developing countries, including China and India, to be sealed on Thursday would include important conceptual commitments by the emerging powers to begin reducing emissions and to set a target date. Now negotiators will have to try to quantifying those commitments in coming months.

While the nations mapped out a general agreement to limit global temperature change, there remained differences between the level of commitment from developed and developing nations. The G-8 draft statement would have the major industrial powers “recognize that global emissions should peak by 2020 and then be substantially reduced to limit the average increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.” The statement by the developing countries would be less definitive, however, saying that scientific consensus supports such a goal.

Mr. Meyer said temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degrees and will likely rise by another 0.6 degrees just based on pollution already in the air, meaning that embracing the 2-degree goal would require major steps starting almost immediately.

While briefing reporters on Wednesday morning, Michael Froman, Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser and chief G-8 negotiator, declined to specify what would be in the two agreements, but said they would signal important progress heading toward a United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December to craft a worldwide climate change treaty.

“Our view is that it represents a significant step forward in terms of adding political momentum on the key issues to be dealt with in the U.N. process,” Mr. Froman said, “but that there is still a lot of work to be done and these are difficult issues and the negotiators will be meeting going forward to try and resolve them.”

European leaders and environmental activists have placed great hope that Mr. Obama would become a powerful new leader in the struggle against climate change after succeeding President George W. Bush, who long resisted more aggressive measures sought on this side of the Atlantic for fear of the economic impact. At a previous Group of 8 meeting, Mr. Bush agreed to a 50 percent cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but not to an 80 percent reduction in those produced by industrial countries like the United States. With Mr. Obama’s support, the House recently passed legislation intended to curb emissions, although not by nearly as much as the Europeans want. And China is another challenge.

“Europe wants avant-garde legislation but China is putting up resistance, which I sampled yesterday during my one-on-one with the Chinese president,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the G-8 host, told reporters Tuesday evening.

China, India and the other developing nations are upset that commitments to provide financial and technological help made during a United Nations conference in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 have not translated into anything more tangible in the interim.

Mr. Meyer estimated that the United States, Europe and other industrial nations need to come up with $150 billion a year in assistance by 2020 to help develop clean-energy technology for developing countries, reduce deforestation that contributes to rising temperatures and help vulnerable nations adapt to changes attributed to greenhouse gases.

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed from L’Aquila, Italy, and John M. Broder from Washington.

OC Leaders chosen to lead the CAHSR Commission

That's one way to look at the news that the California High Speed Rail Authority board has a new chair and vice-chair, and they're both from Orange County. According to the press release:

the Board elected Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle to be its
chairman, replacing Judge Quentin L. Kopp who had served two terms as chairman.
Former California Assemblymember Tom Umberg was elected vice-chairman

Pringle is the former Speaker of the State Assembly, where he represented part of
Orange County for eight years during the 1990s. He was first elected Mayor of Anaheim
in 2002 and is widely recognized for his expertise in economic development, land use
planning, transportation and government finance reform. He also serves as a board
member of the Orange County Transportation Authority. “I have long believed in the value and benefit of a high speed rail system for our great state, and to be elected as chairman of the California High Speed Rail is an honor,” said Pringle. “We have a lot of work to do on the state and federal levels, but by working together great things can and will happen. This is an exciting time for high-speed rail and I look forward to future progress.”

Tom Umberg is an attorney with the law firm of Manatt, specializing in federal and state policy and regulatory matters. He was selected as one of the “Best Lawyers in America”in the field of commercial litigation. In 1995, He was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles and Orange County. Umberg was appointed Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1997. He served three terms in the California Legislature, most recently between 2004 and 2006. In the state Assembly, he chaired the Environmental Safety and the Elections and Redistricting Committees.

Congrats to both Orange County leaders, we hope they will push for Orange County's role in further pursuing mass transit options!

President Obama: ''Honduras coup was not legal''

Obama says Honduras coup illegal

US President Barack Obama has described the removal of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as illegal.

His remarks came after left-wing Latin American leaders declared their support for the deposed leader, who was expelled by the military on Sunday.

In Honduras, pro-Zelaya protestors have been demonstrating in the country's capital, Tegucigalpa.

Mr Zelaya's removal followed a power struggle over his plans for constitutional change.

The BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Tegucigalpa says all day hundreds of pro-Zelaya protesters have been taunting the thousands of soldiers deployed around the presidential residence, accusing them of taking part in a "criminal coup".

The ousted president, who was in office since 2006, had wanted to hold a referendum that could have led to an extension of his non-renewable four-year term in office.

Expulsion condemned

Polls for the vote were due to open early on Sunday, but instead troops stormed the presidential palace at dawn, detained Mr Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica.

The military, Congress and the Supreme Court in the Central American nation had all opposed Mr Zelaya's referendum.


Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (right) and Nicaragua's leader Daniel Ortega in Managua. Photo: 28 June 2009
We cannot allow a return to the past, we will not permit it
President Hugo Chavez

In pictures: President ousted
Profile: Manuel Zelaya
Q&A: Honduras crisis

Our correspondent says that even though the international community regards the exiled leader as the legitimate leader of the country, any comeback will not be easy.

Speaking after a meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Mr Obama said Mr Zelaya remained the democratically-elected leader of Honduras.

And he said a "terrible precedent" would be set if the coup were not reversed.

Earlier on Monday, speaking in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez spelled out his opposition to the situation in Honduras.

"We cannot allow a return to the past. We will not permit it," Mr Chavez said.

He spoke after talks with Mr Zelaya, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

'Voracious elite'

After turning up in Costa Rica on Sunday, Mr Zelaya called his ouster a plot "by a very voracious elite, an elite which wants only to keep this country [Honduras] isolated, in an extreme level of poverty".

In Tegucigalpa protestors defied a curfew order between Sunday night and Monday morning, imposed by Mr Micheletti.

As Speaker of Congress, Mr Micheletti had been the next in line to the presidency. His swearing-in was greeted with applause in Congress.

In a speech, he said that he had not assumed power under the "ignominy" of a coup d'etat.

The army had complied with the constitution, he said, and he had reached the presidency "as the result of an absolutely legal transition process".

Congress said he would serve until 27 January, when Mr Zelaya's term had been due to expire.

Presidential elections are planned for 29 November and Mr Micheletti promised these would go ahead.