Urban Planning: The Neighborhood as the Agent of Upward Mobility or as Merely Part of It
How might urban planning address issues inherent to place but far larger than it?
Life happens in neighborhoods. The neighborhoods where children grow up, families are forged and lives unfold, day in and day out, form the basis for a city. Just as the neighborhood has influence on how its residents live today, it also might be influencing how they will live in the future. Those influences exist for a host of reasons, due in part to and also entirely separate from the physical neighborhood itself.
Urban planning seeks to consider and answer how a space should be used to best serve its users. From the lens of upward economic mobility, or the ability for an individual to improve their economic status, the purpose of a neighborhood is then to improve livelihoods, provide opportunity and enhance a child’s chance of success.
As the New York Times article “Detailed Maps Show How Neighborhoods Shape Children for Life” shows, where poor children grow up may be influencing what incomes they make 30 years later 1. Especially notable is that stark differences were found in incomes even in adjacent neighborhoods, about half a mile from one another.
Using this study’s finding, some cities are relocating families to neighborhoods where children below the poverty line have a greater chance of succeeding. The Seattle Housing Authority, for instance, has offered families with housing vouchers additional rent money to relocate to neighborhoods where poor children have a greater chance of escaping poverty 1.
At first glance, this study might lead one to think that the neighborhood, or where someone lives is the contributing factor to upward mobility. However, there are likely other hidden elements that also, and maybe better explain how children move out or stay in poverty, including family life and access to quality education. The physical elements of a neighborhood likely only partially explain this phenomenon. In fact, studies have already shown the concrete link between receiving an education and increasing one’s economic mobility 2.
But, problems in access to quality education are largely a result of policy — how schools are funded, managed and operated. With about 45% of public school funding coming from local sources, or property taxes, schools in areas with high property values receive more funding than schools in areas with low property values 3. The funding of schools is thus not entirely needs-based — this trickles down, hurting low-income communities.
Talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not; low quality education caused by improper funding keeps children stuck in a cycle of poverty.
Thus, the results of this study may be misleading, and misdirecting housing policy. Moving families, or devising a purely physical solution serves to alleviate an immediate problem, but is a band-aid on a much larger problem.
So, what can urban planning do? How can urban planning, a domain principally tasked with forming the physical elements of a place also address systemic social and economic issues that inflict the place? Is it its duty to do so? Can it do so?
Examining upward mobility in the neighborhood serves as a microcosm to understand the planning process, its potential and its limits in solving system-wide problems.
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First, we ought to consider what the planning process includes. The typical process begins by identifying issues afflicting a site, area or community today and in the future, defining the goals of the community, and assessing existing conditions on and around the chosen area. Gaps between current and ideal state are then evaluated, a plan is created with community input, and that plan is implemented and its results are tracked. The breadth captured in the initial planning phases determines the plan — casting a wide enough net deepens understanding of a community, and ensures that the problems being addressed are the right ones.
In the context of neighborhood upward mobility, we can then ask what exactly is it about a neighborhood that helps bolster its residents? What do urban planners consider? One could say it’s a great many things — the composition of residential, recreational and commercial space, the proximity and quality of schools nearby, the access to effective transit networks, safety and low crime rates, housing affordability that can be ensured for residents today and also well into the future, a tight-knit community, forged either because or in spite of the planning process, diversity, cultural character, access to nature offering a reprieve from the urban realm, and more.
Some neighborhoods have many of these elements — others do not. Relocating folks to neighborhoods with more mobilizing characteristics is not the solution — rather, understanding what is and is not working and why that might be the case in neighborhoods trapped in a cycle of poverty, is. This is what effective urban planning does and can do.
Effective urban planning — in its assessment phase — seeks to evaluate the system that a parcel, site or neighborhood sits within. For instance, while the neighborhood amenities might be understood, so too might the proximity, access to and quality of the nearby education.
An additional layer to the planning process might ask why conditions are as they are, as opposed to simply uncovering what conditions are like. In doing so, it would not simply uncover a problem, but also uncover its roots and origins. Dissecting, understanding and daylighting system-wide issues can provide crude evidence that might motivate change, on both the chosen site and beyond — at the district, local, regional, and even national level. In education, for instance, it might reveal the effect of how schools are funded and managed, and how this proves adequate and/or inadequate for the children whose futures depend on it.
Thus, a planning project would not simply bring about change within the constraints of existing policy and regulation, but rather, and ideally, in the process, help to change it. While the pace of systemic change might frustrate many, having a body of evidence that substantiates and calls attention to certain problems can spur action.
Existing conditions of the site only inform future design plans on that chosen site; those of the system inform not only future designs but also programs and policies.
In my eyes, it is the responsibility of urban planning to more readily consider not only the physical elements of a place, but also the economic, social and political forces that shape the place and the welfare of children, families and communities that call it home. The field is interdisciplinary by nature for a reason — in wrestling with the places we all live, it really wrestles with how people live. Thus, it cannot examine a physical place without examining its people, how they live, what they aspire to, and what might be getting in their ways, however complex this might be.
The physical neighborhood, while important, likely only explains part of why a child makes their way out of poverty — or stays stuck in it. Examining the system, the neighborhood and why it is shaped the way it is proves vital to improving places and livelihoods. A full, comprehensive assessment of a system will never be possible — but it can be something to work towards.
The large, looming questions in this remains: Is this feasible? How might this be funded? Whose incentives lie in this direction? Where is it already happening? How might we encourage more of it?
And from a more practical standpoint, to what extent should a problem, or a system, be examined before implementation?
One place to start is by looking at MKThink, where our strategic planning process begins in broad discovery. For any problem we solve, from improving how spaces are used and how energy is consumed to informing how land is developed, we begin by taking a bird’s eye view. We sketch out system diagrams to ask “what” — what are all the factors affecting how an organization is or is not performing, in its external service delivery and internal operations. We do this by familiarizing ourselves with an organization’s values, and inner workings, however complex. Our assessment stage evaluates the “why” — what are the gaps that exist between the current and envisioned state, and why do they exist. This approach helps to solve core problems hiding beneath the surface.
The next article will explore the specifics — how this approach has been applied, where it has failed and succeeded in the past and how it may inform our futures.
1 New York Times, 2018. Detailed Maps Show How Neighborhoods Shape Children for Life
2 The Brookings Institution, 2009. Promoting Economic Mobility by Increasing Postsecondary Education
3 NPR, 2016. Why America’s Schools Have A Money Problem
4 Unequal Scenes, Johnny Miller (Image)
