Plan Philly: Engaging in Urban Dialogue

On the topic of urban agriculture, here is an upcoming program that looks promising!

Income Opportunities in Urban Agriculture Workshops

Penn State Extension and The Enterprise Center will present two workshops on March 17, 2010: How to Write a Farm Business Plan (5:30-6:30PM) and How to Price Products for Market (7:00-9:00 PM). The workshops will be held at The Enterprise Center (4548 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19139). Each workshop costs $10. For more information, please contact Nicole Sugerman.

Penn Praxis recently released a study called Philadelphia Public Art: The Full Spectrum. Commissioned by the William Penn Foundation, it examines the state of public art in the city and the opportunities for the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE) to better promote the creation and preservation art in the public sphere. All too often we look at public art, when we deign to pay attention to it, from an artistic standpoint and not from the perspective that shows how it gets built, installed and maintained. The study is notable for its historical examination of public art and for highlighting how Philadelphia’s policies for funding, managing and maintaining public art have not evolved along with the times, arts themselves and the living city. Praxis suggests that public art often gets short shrift from city agencies due to both budget pressures and from a lack of perceived value for the departments’ own missions’. They call for the OACCEE to “meet with representatives from all relevant departments and agencies for exploratory conversations and look for collaborative opportunities. Frame the OACCE and the Percent for Art Program as a resource instead of a requirement, offering to assist in that department’s work.”

This is a far more important recommendation than one might initially presuppose because it hints at a new way the city, communities and developers can interact when it comes to negotiating the impact on the community. Before I explain what I mean, a short digression is necessary to explain some of the problems with the process of community participation in planning and development. Be it a private developer who needs the community support to appear before a zoning commission, or a Streets/Highway/Transit Department that must complete an environmental review process before building a road or transit system, the builders of our cities must sit down with the communities who will feel the brunt of the impact of their project. The fact that developers and project builders must sit down with their community is not the problem, in fact it is rightly part of the whole development process. The benefit of such a process is two-fold, it is an opportunity to educate the public about a project, and it provides the developer (private or public) the political cover for some of their decisions. Problems arise can arise however when a community makes unfeasible demands or impractical demands and expectations are created for project aspects that are simply unable to be acted upon. It is one thing to ask for a place to sit, or a set-back in the highest portion of a tower, and it is another to expect a developer either not to go as tall as financially feasible or that they will fund the ongoing maintenance of a youth center. Out of such meetings, delays, costs and acrimony arise.

This is where public art comes in. At the crux of many communities’ complaints and demands is the sense that their community, where they have grown up and raised their children, is changing and that they have no voice or place in the future of their community. However Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program has created a tried and true method of transferring the collective aspirations and values of a community and expressing it visibly on the vacant walls of the city’s many neighborhoods. By using the public art process as the main venue for public outreach during the building process developers (again, public or private) not only make the public a meaningful part of the development process, but they can act as partners to bring new identify, beauty and sense of identity to a place and project. The community sees themselves as a partner and the developer sees an added layer of investment in their project. Bringing in the OACCEE to the development process, to help encourage and steer the development of public art “tangible commitment to the public environment.” Ultimately a commitment to public art is an expression of our collective values, both for art in general and more importantly for its contributions to the city we live in.

Bit by bit, the University of Pennsylvania is emerging from its redbrick rut. For years, Penn seemed incapable of putting up a new building that didn't include heaping quantities of those little red rectangles, along with gooey allusions to Philadelphia's Colonial past. The effect was to make the Ivy League campus feel like a place stuck in time, rather than one engaged in vital intellectual pursuits.

What influences the public's perception of Market East more: The mobs of rampaging teens who have descended on the Gallery mall over the last few weeks? Or the building's gloomy fortress walls, which have weighed down Philadelphia's traditional shopping street for well over three decades?

In the hope of ending its reputation for Fortress America-style embassies, the State Department yesterday selected a Philadelphia architecture firm known for its thoughtful and environmentally rigorous work to design a new, more welcoming U.S. Embassy in London.

When the Delaware River Waterfront Corp. selected Field Operations last fall to design a new park at the Race Street pier, it was hard to shake off a certain feeling of trepidation.

Philadelphia officials are usually generous architecture critics. There's nothing that they seem to enjoy more than crowing about their latest building project. Yet, even the city's most gregarious boosters are having trouble mustering nice words for the new Family Court building, planned for 15th and Arch Streets.

Young-Hwan Choi arrived in Philadelphia from his native South Korea in August. By October, the University of Pennsylvania architecture student had devised an elegant new design for the sidewalk sheds that protect pedestrians during construction. And he was barely into his second semester when New York announced it was adopting his innovative system as its official prototype.

During the last decade, America's supermarket chains made a startling discovery: City residents have to eat, too. The chains went into expansion mode, erecting spacious, modern stores in Philadelphia neighborhoods that hadn't seen a fresh apple in decades.

Let's cut to the chase on the architectural merits of 10 Rittenhouse, the poshly proper apartment house that has lately assumed its place on Rittenhouse Square's northeast corner, as if the location were its birthright:

The television series Sex and the City debuted in 1998, the same year I began writing about architecture and cities for The Inquirer. Little did I guess back then that Carrie Bradshaw's glamorous gallivanting through the streets of Gotham signaled a major image update for America's cities, from lawless jungles to middle-class playgrounds. It's the city that's sexy now.

In the Art Museum's new Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Philadelphia has at last acquired a modern civic building that is a true Philadelphian.

IN ANNOUNCING his intention to build a casino at the Foxwoods site in South Philadelphia, Steve Wynn's introduction to riverfront residents began in choppy water. In an interview, Wynn said he wasn't aware of the city's plans for the Delaware riverfront, and said, "You couldn't do any more damage. . . This whole Penn's Landing fiction is hysterically funny... that Penn's Landing is somehow a recreation area."

It is on in Iowa as former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum jets into Des Moines to address the Iowa Christian Alliance this evening. Santorum plans to preach to the flock about fiscal and social issues along with national security and what he has called an “attack on our culture.” And that clearly has somebody worried. Iowa voters statewide yesterday received robo-calls calling Santorum a “pro-life fraud” for his previous political support of former N.J. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.

This city makes me sad sometimes.

Photo submitted by Ray Skwire.