Friday, January 04, 2013

Poe: "The design seems better suited to simply facilitate crime than livability."

Friend and former neighbor Josh Poe is the sort of engaged and educated person who regularly challenges and improves upon my thinking; in short, the sort New Albany still tends to lose too often.

He continues the good work here, reminding that certain community outcomes are the direct result of careful planning rather than random market occurrences, often for the most egregious of reasons. If you don't think it still happens and happens here, I invite you to check out the school district mapping in western New Albany sometime.

A city divided: Louisville’s urban landscape rooted in segregation, by Joshua Poe, LEO

Author and journalist George R. Leighton visited Louisville during the mid 1930s, after which he opined in Harper’s Magazine that the River City was a place that paid great “attention to food and drink, but for the rest, let well enough alone.”

Eight decades later, the city’s dining scene continues to thrive while many of the same problems that long ago plagued Louisville’s urban landscape persist — namely, the physical barriers that isolate west Louisville, dividing this city by race and class.

2 comments:

Iamhoosier said...

Very good article. I always enjoy Josh's thoughts. Thanks for the link, Jeff.

Randy said...

For those interested in this topic, and for Josh, look for this upcoming book: Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America, by Dianne Harris, University Of Minnesota Press, releasing Feb. 1.