Planning for Sustainability: Six hours with Price Hill Will ... and beyond

Last Saturday afternoon I spent six hours roaming the neighborhood streets of Price Hill. The Census officer never showed up at the Corryville Branch Library, so my contention for a temporary job would have to wait. Thus I got an earlier start to working for Price Hill Will (PHW), a non-profit development corporation in East Price Hill. Through my current co-op with Community Building Institute, I connected myself to various organizational partners through the place matters Comprehensive Community Initiative they manage. My volunteer opportunity spawned from several visits to PHW Eco-neighborhood Community Action Team (CAT) meetings. Emily Horning, a community organizer for PHW, regularly mediates and delegates at meetings. The neighborhood business district is due for streetscape improvements in the summer, so this presented a perfect opportunity for some first-person fieldwork.

PHW’s Beautification CAT identified several projects that would benefit from my initial mapping of the business corridors. These included:

1. Old, painted municipal waste containers along Warsaw are fading and falling into disrepair. I was to map them and show examples of those in poor shape. The mapping would be use to identify redundancy with other municipal waste facilities and where they are current lacking.

2. The Beauty CAT is working with Metro to consolidate bus stops with benches and shelters in Price Hill. Once again though, there may be a problem with advertisement benches in locations not zoned for them. Some are zoned; some are not (“parasitic as in nature,” as Emily put it). I was to map and photograph the benches in Price Hill, who owns them, and if they are authorized. Those that are not can be relocated or eliminated altogether. This may reduce eyesores in the community and augment Price Hill’s reputation as a “Cincinnati’s greenest community”.

3. Compile a photographic inventory of each block from Warsaw and Grand through Glenway and Crookshank.

So, what were some of my findings?

• There is an unusual oversupply of bus stops throughout East Price Hill. I would venture to say that every other stop could be eliminated. Every block?
• Advertising benches are not as plentiful as I expected, which could be a good or a bad thing. Many bus stops simply do not have seating for waiting. However, in higher traffic areas—as I mentioned Emily stated—they are “parasitic,” abundant and redundant.
• Near one pocket park I found unnecessary duplication of waste facilities. Four were located on park property, while two were found immediately off park property on the sidewalks. There were even recycling containers for plastic + glass and aluminum cans on park property. When the park closes, are we no longer allowed to legally recycle?
• As I mentioned in recent business association and community council meetings throughout the city, public recycling drop-offs seem to be located in very auto-oriented areas. In Price Hill these resources are especially sparse. Behind Holy Family School are two ABITIBI Paper Retriever containers, a clothing drop, and one Rumpke Recycling ommingled container. In this case, however, the drop-off location is quite walkable by comparison.
• No systematic scheme is apparent in the placement of municipal waste cans. Some are midblock; others are at corner bus stops. And, as stated earlier, style and condition of the facilities are inconsistent.
• In one specific case, there is a defunct bus stop on Seton Avenue, afront the long-abandoned KFC location at Five Points (Warsaw, Glenway, Seton, and Quebec). A bare signpost still remains without a Metro route sign badge. Its corresponding municpal waste can was empty on a Saturday, even though Emily and I both believe that trash is pick up on Mondays. Many other trash facilities are located at Five Points.

The sidewalk redo on Warsaw Avenue should be underway in Summer 2010. Hope is that bus stop consolidation, augmented litter control, and bus stop safety measures will conincide with the project. I will provide you all with an update when the comprehensive inventory, survey, and index are complete.

You are always invited to any of Price Hill Will’s Community Action Team meetings. The next Beautification CAT meeting is this Thursday, March 11th at 6:30pm at Price Hill Chili. The next Eco-neighborhood CAT meeting will be held tonight at 5:30pm at PHW, as last week’s meeting was rescheduled.

Sustainability on Crack: The Trash Diaries

Ahem, make that "trash diary".

So, as some of you know, I am pursuing a degree in urban planning as well as a minor in sustainability. Even though I am on co-op (a paid internship) this quarter, I am taking a introductory sustainability course in DAAP, which is not necessarily going to count toward any of my goals. The director of the Sustainable Urban Environments program is usually missing in action, over in Africa or some other exotic location. Thus, I'm not certain whether this course will actually work in substitution for the Intro to SUE. *However*...

In the course requirements, there are five projects from which we must choose two to complete. While it's a risk in itself that I am taking this class, it's another that I will overcompensate by completing all five projects. I mean, how could someone *not* give me credit for the course, after I go apeshit on five projects in ten weeks?

I will own this class.

So, included in the list of projects is to keep a trash diary:

For 2 straight weeks, throw nothing away, and keep a diary of the trash you have generated. At the end of the 2 weeks, submit your Trash Diary indicating itemized list of trash generated with total weights of paper, plastic, glass, metal and food that you created. Follow the rules and guidelines as identified by the blog 365 Days of Trash – available here:

http://365daysoftrash.blogspot.com/2008/03/frequently-asked-questions.html

That means that from January 6th to 19th, I will be logging my trash, my recyclables, and my food scraps composted. Each piece of waste will be photographed and filed by date. The results will be tallied by weight, and will end up in an in-class, Pecha Kucha presentation. It goes without saying that this is going to be an exercise and a challenge to create the least amount of waste I can. I. Am. Stoked.

So, for today, I have only created one piece of waste: a box from the spaghetti I made tonight. Throughout the day, I carried an organic cotton washcloth for runny noses. I ate at Aquarius Star & Om Cafe, which features local and organic fare with a cloth napkin. My purchase did not require a receipt. Later in the day, I had a doughnut from the Expressmart in TUC, on UC's campus, for which I paid cash and declined to use the wax paper. So far, so good. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, which should be hell for most commuters. That means I get to work from home, eat my bulk food items, and get into a better program by drinking more water.

I will be covering more of my trash diary endeavor, as well as my other sustainability class projects, regularly. Fortunately, that will also give me more motivation to post about my neighborhood initiative....tomorrow.

"Don't let it be anymore"

As many as my friends are well aware, my efforts toward greater sustainability, community-oriented responsibility, and recycling has intensified greatly over the past year. After taking the first course installment, this past summer--called "People and the Environment I"--I began to ask myself many questions about why we do the things we do, and what comes next. Individual responsibility should and does come first when creating a social movement. My mission toward reuse, recycling, and "recollecting" refuse is a fire inside my core anymore. Look forward to reading about the internal conflicts I put myself through. I never denied that I wasn't a little crazy.

Anyway, I started reading about a small neighborhood called City Airport, outside Detroit, which has really bitten the dust since the 1960s and 1970s. It is where many auto workers once lived. But when plants began to close, whites moved out, blacks later moved out--now it's a hodgepodge of drug dealers and the dreadfully poor. Everyone is afraid to leave their hiding places; the neighborhood park and former school are abandoned and decrepit.

The following article is from a man who began writing for the Detroit News about the misfortunes and small victories in this struggling neighborhood, where only four to five homes remain on each street. There was an man who found an abandoned tire after returning from a barbecue in the park. He decided to take individual responsibility and roll it to the nearest dumpster.

http://community.detnews.com/blogs/index.php/neighborhood/2008/09/13/p449#more449

Somebody hit a ball over the backstop and across French Road during a batting-practice session at Fletcher Field last Sunday.

A little pooped from the previous day’s festivities – our second annual barbecue at the park – I was just watching from the bleachers along first base. So I got up, crossed the road, found the ball in the high grass along the City Airport fence line and then tossed it back into the park.

On my way back to the bleachers, I spotted a discarded tire near the Fletcher Field fence line and decided I didn’t want to leave it there. I put the tire back on its treads and started to roll it toward a dumpster on the Gilbo side of the park, which was put there the day before for cleaning up after the barbecue.

[More:]

It took me about 5 minutes to get to the dumpster, with the tire wobbling most of the way and falling altogether occasionally. I then picked up the tire and heaved it upward to get it over the dumpster’s 8-foot wall. Before I did this, I should have checked the interior of the tire.

It was full of dirty water, which splashed all over me – hair, face, shirt, pants. I was a mess.

As I headed back toward the baseball diamond, somebody along the route took one look at me and asked me what happened. I told him of my stupidity, that I should have known the tire was full of water.

He then offered this: “Why didn’t you just leave it (the tire) where it was?”

For some reason, what he said struck a sour note with me, really fired me up.

“That’s the problem,” I shot back. “Everybody leaves it.”

We just can’t leave it anymore.

Michael Happy is his name. He bares no resemblance to the animated character Mr. Happy, but I like this guy.

[Extended reading: http://www.utne.com/2008-11-01/Media/Bloggers-vs-Blight.aspx, UTNE Reader, "Bloggers vs. Blight: An online community beats back urban decay in Detroit"]

Now I would have rather that tire made it to a recycling facility, but in a place like City Airport, you do what you can. Anywhere else though, where resources are more plentiful, there's this:



http://www.rubbersidewalks.com/

Many cities in the United States have already started using rubber sidewalks in select areas, improving visual aesthetic in neighborhoods, prevented the razing of curbside trees in sidewalk buffers, improved walkability of the sidewalks--in terms of pedestrian health and route viability--and greatest augmented tree root health and drainage. Regional city Hamilton, OH seemed to be working towards implementing rubber sidewalks in its historic Rossville neighborhood, but I'm not sure what happened with the effort. The next time I'm in Chicago (12/31!), I'll be looking for their own rubber sidewalks, located near the Chicago Center.