Education

“He who pays the Piper calls the tune” (Urban Experience 247). This statement speaks to one of the major causes of the problem we witness today in the educational system here in the US. Money determines a large majority of the educational decisions made in today’s world. Teacher’s salary, books and supplies, and programs offered are all aspects of finical expenditures that ultimately impact the students of our countries educational system. “Education is a money problem …. but its not just a money problem” (Clinton, Waiting for Superman). This is a perfect way to say that a lack of funding is being put towards improving the education system, but the educational system produces problems beyond financial. The children that are placed in the failing system are the future of our nation. With out improvements to the way that we implement the institution of education, many of the children of this country will be lost with no future. In the reading Wilson's Truly Disadvantaged, it gave a great example of how education has impacts beyond the classroom. With the fight for civil rights equality and preferential treatment policies have been created to 'even the playing field' so to speak. However, no matter what number of positions are available or what hiring practices are in place, individuals that are not educated or trained will not have the opportunity to compete for those position. This all starts because of a lack of opportunity to gain the education necessary for the career needs.

Changing the educational system doesn't have a cut and dry solution. The paradigms that have been set for education in the US have lead us down a road similar to an industrial plant. Producing Two types of individuals; educated professionals and uneducated workers (RSA -Animate). I feel that we will continue to loss some of the brightest and innovative people of this country if the paradigms do not change. One of the major factors that make creating a change of this size possible is the involvement of government. With the implementation of standardized testing and centralized educational systems, it is very difficult to break away from the 'old world' train of thought . I feel that a decentralized educational system is not the answer to solving the problem. However, why does having a centralized government administrated system have to equal 'same'? Is it possible for the government to allow local school systems to evaluate the different learning styles and behaviors of children, and develop educational programs based on this information? Could the government evaluate these suggested programs and create minimums for each program type?

January 17

This week has been another one of those, ‘I’m glad it is over’ weeks. After what seems like days upon days of reading, I have come to the conclusion that I had really no idea about Gentrification. Needless to say I knew even less about how important gentrification was to urban policy. I thought of this concept as simply rich/wealthy moving into a low income area and pushing the local residence out. Man, was I wrong. There is much more to it then that.

The areas of the reading that resonated with me the most are the affect that gentrification has on the central city areas, the types of people responsible for the movement, and the impacts that it has on the value of property. Three kinds of developers are responsible for revitalizing neighborhoods: professional developers that resale property, occupiers that reside in the residences and landlords that place property for rent (Neil Smith pg82). All of these are need to ensure that the efforts placed into renovating an area with low equity and be sustained for future years. It is not enough to simply have home ownership, rentals and investors are needed to keep the drive of improvement moving forward. I feel that if you insulate an area of revitalization with only one demographic, the area will continue in the aging cycle and the attractiveness of the area will fade. As homeowners age many factor will being to plague the area; owners physically unable to perform maintenance or vacant properties due to death of placement in living facilities.

Gentrification transitioned downtown development, by increasing private sector involvement and decreasing public sector presents. Also, construction changed from large scale buildings to small renovations (Sharon Zukin pg38). I feel like that perfect example of this is the initiative that the City Of Phoenix has been pushing to entice small business owners to utilize existing building in the course urban are for the purpose of there business. Phoenix has even put a catchy name on it ‘adaptive reuse’. Exceptions to building codes and zoning regulations are given to these properties to make them more desirable from a cost perspective. I feel that these types of policies will motivate residence to move into these areas of low equity. Downtown Manhattan was revitalized on the triumph of an artist’s and historic preservationist’s coalition (Sharon Zukin pg39). This seems to be taken from a page directly out of the First Friday’s book. If you ever have a chance to go to First Friday’s, you should definitely go. It is a true illustration of what can be accomplished with a coalition of that nature.

Well, I’m out of here. I have a ton of more reading to do, and I would like to actually be able to drink a beer and watch football next weekend.

Jan 5-10

One thing from the reading that interest me most was the concept of suburbanites feeling that they are insulated from urban issues.  In the reading the main point that is giving for why the suburban areas should be engaged in urban issues, is due to the cost benefit of providing infrastructure.  Providing infrastructure to fringe cities and rural areas is very expensive and not very cost efficient.  Urban areas with high densities have less cost to provide these services, but also create a larger users base to spread fixed cost.  One of the examples used in class was the idea of someone not  using the highway system, thus feeling that they should not have to pay taxes for this form of infrastructure.  Even if a person is not themselves driving on the highway system, we ALL still receive a benefit from it.  Highways are used to transport goods that are essential for life.  Things like clothing, food, and chemicals needed to treat the potable water that we use are brought to us with the use of highways.  I feel that this is most interesting because every decision has an out reaching impact.  I am excited to learn more of how this is kept to a minimum when creating policy and how it is evaluated before hand.

INTRODUCTION

Hello, my name is Markus Coleman.  I am in my senior year of college and second year here at ASU.  I have work for the City of Phoenixfor a total of 16 years.  A majority of this time has been with the Development Services Department.  I have mostly worked in the civil field of development.  I have reviewed, approved and issued permits for civil construction.  Working on minor and major commercial project such as Happy Valley Towne Center to Master Planned Communities such as Desert Ridge, has allowed me to see several aspects of construction policies. I currently work for the Public Transit Department, I have the duty of managing the contracts in which the City of Phoenix sells transit service to other cities/agencies.  As we experience economically hard times, transit service is being eliminated and/or consolidated to become more efficient.  Deciding what transit services to modify and how in turn that will impact the citizens that utilize these services required knowledge of planning and policy.  I am hoping that through this course I will gain a better understanding of the variables that are considered when creating policies.