line + box

In the past 6 months many dates have been thrown around as being “the BIG day”. I’ll explain the saga:

March 27, 2013- first official date. I was told by the owner of Three Points Ranch this day was available, but was told a couple weeks later that someone else had reserved it and she had forgotten.

March 9, 2013- this was official official saved on the calendar and everything. It was at Three Points Ranch but it also landed on Liz’s 30th birthday. We decided to change it mainly because of fears that the venue was completely outdoors. This March 9th was rainy and cold.

February- was about to book for February but Alex’s birthday is one weekend,  Valentine’s another, and Alex’s mom is going out of town as well.

January 26, 2013- FINAL date. We’ve paid the deposit (too big of one to turn back now). So that’s that! We aren’t sure how long we will be in Austin after I graduate in December so it makes more sense to just get it over with. haha. We also didn’t want to wait!

On one of the few sunny days in London, a few of us visited the market at Knotting Hill.

So I’m going to be honest. The weather while in London was HORRENDOUS. The average day was approximately 50 degrees (which is cold in case you can’t remember while living in Texas). Most of the day was spent wandering through horizontal rain that permeates clothing and shoes. Very uncomfortable, even when coming from hot hot Texas. I don’t know how they do it in London. The locals kept telling us “this is unusual” but somehow I do not believe them based off the number of warm, cozy pubs that seem to be thriving in this weather.

Many days were spent indoors at art galleries. Definitely not complaining. The Sachi Gallery had an interesting photography exhibit as well as a room covered in 6″ of motor oil creating a mirror-smooth surface. Luckily I love museums because London has more than a couple.

A couple weeks ago, I went on a school trip to London, England to study the Victoria Train station. The rest of the semester home here in Austin, we will be redesigning the station to make it uh…. hopefully at least bearable.

So I arrived at 6:20am and we started right away on our little tour of London. My professor is British so led us around to some of his favorite parks and sites. We started at the British Museum with its glorious atrium space by Foster + Partners. Simon surprised us with a visit to the John Soane Museum. No photos were allowed inside but photos wouldn’t have done it justice anyway… That guy was crazy. The multi story row house was packed with relics, stained glass, mirrors, and antiques.

We checked out the Tate Modern briefly but not really long enough to see any of the exhibits so I had to take a trip back there. We ended the day with some modern asian food and I went home and passed out, half-way delusional at 10pm. I had been awake a whopping 44 hours straight. That’s a new record for me.

Otilie enjoying the wind in her hair, errrr fur… She makes me appreciate the little things. Sigh. Then she poops on the floor and I’m snapped out of the bliss her puppy smile brings me.

Across the US one can find small towns similar to Mart, satellites from medium sized cities such as Waco. My mother is from one of such teeny towns that feel untouched by modern technology as well as dilapidated. I imagine Mart to be the same way. Is it the town that is so resistant to change or is it its isolation that prevents change from occurring. Probably both.

I looked around at other blogs online to see an insider’s perspective. One blogger, Joanne Steele, believed her town to be resistant to revitalization because of two main reasons. The first was that using outside experts sets up resistance from the beginning. She states, “the normal process toward change is for some organization to get a grant. They hire experts, usually from afar, to come in and assess the current situation and create the plan. They present the community with a picture of how bad things are, with statistics to prove it, and offer a solution that is often brilliant, expensive and a little hard for locals to wrap their thinking around. Then they leave… and the plan is shelved, never to be seen again.” While I’ve never had first hand experience with this situation, I agree that this is probably the case for most places. Insider input is critical to the adoption of these new revitalization ideas. It seems to me that the Mart revitalization project has done better in this aspect because the locals are quite involved with the changes occurring and understand the slow process of revitalization.

Steele’s second reason that resistance occurs is because the wrong people are involved in the planning process. In small towns, residents are often so involved with their one aspect of the town, for example the Garden Club maintains the park, that these volunteers are already too busy with maintaining their small part of the town that they can’t handle another, even larger change.

To have successful revitalization, perhaps it would take a small team of volunteers from the community who come from many social groups of the town. This small team would get input from their clubs/church/friends and act as their liaison. Maybe at the head of this group a planner or consultant can give advice throughout the process, but not directly interact with the town as a whole.

Alex and I got a little crafty this weekend. Had some failures but also some moderate success.

-wall mounted knife block made from book bound with string

-string pendant lamp made by wrapping glue soaked string around a wine bottle

-strung buttons hung on wall

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2012-04-13/spare-that-tree/

After reading this article on the fate of an enormous oak tree at the corner of Lamar and MLK, I find myself straddling the line between feeling appalled and pretty tickled. The amount that citizens get involved in local issues is obviously connected to how much the issue affects them personally, and on a daily basis. Whether a tree gets cut down or not is an easy issue to take sides on, whereas (in my mind) more pertinent issues such as public education and sustainability seem to be much more difficult to get involved in. Why is this?

PROXIMITY- I drive by this tree every day. I know this tree. I feel strongly for things I know and understand. Environmental racism on the East Side, however, is outside my daily stream of consciousness and therefore, it is less likely that I will notice daily changes and injustices.

SIMPLICITY- Cutting down a tree is a fairly simple issue. There are concerns that the tree is unstable, but yet it is a long time resident and loved by neighbors. That’s about all the facts one needs to know about it to fully comprehend the issue. Underperforming schools in low-income neighborhoods, is on the other hand an extremely complex issue. There are many factors that affect this problem: lack of funding, violence in schools, lack of parental involvement, etc. My understanding of the issue doesn’t begin to fully encompass the issue; therefore I am less likely to take a clear stand on this issue. Which makes me less likely to act on this.

DURATION- The tree issue will be taken care of in a matter of months. It will either stay or get cut down. It’s a quick fix. I don’t have to devote an unforeseeable amount of time to follow this issue to fruition. Rehabilitating the homeless is on the other end of this spectrum. Helping someone become an independent, successful citizen, may take years and years with huge amounts of money from tax dollars. Just helping one person would require a commitment I am less likely to give, as it has no end in sight.

Reading this article on the Oak tree spurred this train of thought on public involvement, though I doubt it will have much affect on my own involvement in policy… but at least I’m aware of my motives. Awareness is the first step.

At Anna Beth’s one year birthday party, the siblings were in matching birthday suits. Adorable.

Practicing cutting a cake for our big day which is almost exactly a year from now! March 9, 2013 mark in on the calendar. Sadly this March 9th was some of the worst weather of 2012 so far. Rainy, brutal winds, and very chilly even though just the week before it was shorts weather. Makes me reeeeeeal nervous obviously.

I read an article “The Curse of the Creative Class” by Steven Malanga that provides a counter argument to Richard Florida’s popular book “Rise of the Creative Class”. In response to Florida’s books, many cities have tried to implement trendy alterations to their city to attract this Creative Class that was said to have so much influence over a city’s economy. Providence, Rhode Island, for example, “local economic-development officials are urging a campaign to make the city the nation’s capital of independent rock music.” Other cities are spending millions to build new bike paths and parks to attract this hip, young group of tech savvy employees.

Malanga brings up some very good points on why this is a bad use of money. Florida made some leaps in logic when writing his book, assuming that these cities with high populations of Creative Class had somehow attracted these particular people with amenities the city already had. In reality, much of the creative class is not entrepreneurs and moved to cities because of job offers in existing businesses.

Attention was especially paid to Austin and its appeal, “Austin, already one of the winners in Florida’s world, is working hard to keep its edge. The city sets aside taxes on hotel rooms and car rentals to support local artists. A city-council economic-development subcommittee has adopted the slogan “Keep Austin Weird” to emphasize its belief that support for offbeat culture is essential to the city’s economic future. One defining assertion of that conviction, as Florida approvingly reports, is that Austin has erected—right smack in the midst of its downtown jogging trail—a bronze statue honoring not Sam Houston or Jim Bowie, but rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

Unfortunately, it takes the potential of profit to motivate our cities to invest money in their public spaces. Money should be going equally to the citizens in need instead of all towards meager attempts to attract a trendy population. I do appreciate that, because of Florida, cities now realize the potential that parks, bike lanes, live music, and public art have in creating a thriving city.

Article:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_curse.html

Clarksville was originally established as the first freedman’s town west of the Mississippi. A plantation owner, Pease, gave his favorite slaves land in this area to establish their lives post Civil War and to meet up with lost friends and families. Clarksville was a center of African American culture in Austin, where the first Black newspaper was established, churches, and schools were built. The construction of Mopac and rising property taxes have since driven out original families of the area, and in have moved upper middle class, generally white families.

The construction of Mopac is one of the strongest causes of the deterioration of the Black neighborhood. It was built where it would slice directly through the heart of Clarksville, an example of structural racism. Soon, businesses and new development were driving up the cost of property taxes. If you’ve ever been to Clarksville, it is apparent that the original culture, houses, and race of the neighborhood have changed dramatically.

I work at Zocalo Café, a small Mexican restaurant at the center of current day Clarksville. I’ve begun to know the regulars of the area, and can say that the number of minorities I see is near zero on a daily basis. The families of the area are young, white, college graduates who are generally new to the neighborhood. I actually had no idea that Clarksville was one of the first black neighborhoods in Texas until I began researching gentrification in Austin. The remnants of the culture are almost non-existent.

Unfortunately, based on the history of Clarksville, this is probably the future of East Austin. If I knew how to combat this problem, I’d express it right about…. HERE. But obviously I do not. This blog entry is more of just a prediction based on an earlier precedent on the direction East Austin is heading. Austin should provide protection to these families by locking property taxes where they are currently. At least allowing the opportunity to stay. Will this solve the problem? No, as local businesses will also see a rise in prices and the lifestyle will most definitely change.

More on Clarksville:

http://www.historicclarksville.org/history.htm

The infamous 1928 city plan that racially divided Austin at I-35 persisted into the 21^st century even within the nightlife and entertainment spectrum. Bars catering to Hispanic populations were the norm on the East Side as recent as the 2000s.

The East Caesar Chavez Plan attempted to provide existing residents with protection from impending gentrification in the future bar-smattered area. It divided the neighborhood into three segments: residential, conditional use, and arts/culture. Protection of the existing population is to occur within the residential segment where, hopefully, housing will remain affordable.

It may appear that gentrification has been pushed upon East Austin, but the bar owner of Rio Rita (an East Side bar) says that because of the 2008 recession, many existing bars and houses were being abandoned because the local residents were having the most trouble finding work during this period. According to him, the current East Side Bar scene moved into these areas of weakness and helped revitalize it instead of the common misconception that they forced the lower class out.

Regardless, this recent moving across I-35 by middle class whites and students does present a slew of problems that Austin will need to address in the next few years, even with plans such as The East Caesar Chavez Neighborhood plan in place.

Read more on this:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2012-02-24/sixth-sense/

Keep going Alexander! Can’t wait to see the office when you’re finished. What an amazing accomplishment to actually design AND build a permanent structure at 22.

Need a hair cut? I’m practically a professional if you look from 15 feet or more and don’t mind being covered in hair during the experience.

Mine and Nik’s submission into the AC-CA competition.