Update on Project Activities
Since we did not have a reflection due last week, the following update will touch upon the last 2 weeks. Last Monday, 10/15, we met as a group to work on our midterm presentation and the Project Scope of Work (which we continued to tweak throughout the week before submitting it to AEMP). We also started to think more deeply about the oral history component of the project, and who we would like to interview. We wanted more clarification about the purpose of our interview, and how we could ensure that the interview would be mutually beneficial for both us (AEMP) and the interviewee(s). We were initially concerned for ethical reasons that, without a guaranteed publication/dissemination plan for the interview content, we might cause the interviewee harm (by bringing up emotional topics) without creating any tangible “good” for that person. However, we emailed back and forth with Adrienne and Magie, who clarified the AEMP model for interviewing and its purpose as a tool of empowerment for the interviewee. We decided it makes sense to approach the interview in a more open-ended way, and to allow the interviewee(s) to choose how the interview might be shared more publicly, or at all. On that note, we have scheduled an Ethical Research Training with Magie and Adrienne for November 8th to begin to help us learn the skills necessary for an effective and compassionate interview. On Wednesday, 10/17, the day of the midterm presentation, we had a Zoom call with Erin and Mary to discuss the successful grant narratives we had read and to create a plan for drafting the NEH grant. This conference call was very useful for us to catch up and get back on the same page after not having spoken for a few days. On Wednesday, 10/24, we divided up the requirements for the “narrative” component of the NEH grant application amongst ourselves so that we can find language in AEMP’s past grant applications that could be used directly or adapted for the NEH application. We intend to have this language pulled by Monday, 10/29, and to check in with one another then to discuss what we found and what language we still need to write. We will then follow-up with Erin and Mary during a Zoom call on Wednesday, 10/31. We have also been having individual meetings with each of the chapter editors to discuss what feedback would be most useful for them. Erin met with Spencer and Tony to discuss the Evictions and Speculation chapters on Tuesday 10/23, Elise met with Deland to discuss Transportation/Infrastructure on Wednesday, 10/24, and Lexi and Christian met with Mary to discuss Migration/Relocation on Friday, 10/26. Lexi and Tony will meet with Magie about the Indigenous Geographies chapter on Thursday, 11/1, and Christian and Elise will meet with Adrienne to discuss the Public Health chapter on Saturday, 10/27. These chapters are all in various stages of production, but we will all be producing a 1-2 page memo with feedback about that chapter within two weeks of our initial meetings with the editors. Because we will all have different focus areas when editing, it will be an exciting chance to think about language in several different ways (i.e. some of us will look at “big picture” thematic elements, while others will look at vocabulary and word choice, while others will look at the relationship between the text and images). What We Observed and Learned These past two weeks, we learned a great deal by looking at the past successful NEH grant narratives. These will inform our approach and our work on this component of the project, and help us craft a compelling grant narrative for AEMP, as well as inform our future grant-writing efforts more broadly. This grant specifically will be used to offset publication costs, which will keep the atlas cheap so communities can afford it. This is critical, as the t mission of AEMP is to amplify the voices of low-income communities and support their objections to gentrification with credible research. We are also learning that we play a valuable role in consolidating, interpreting, and drawing connections across the atlas, and helping to clarify details like timelines, methodologies, and vocabulary words. We bring a fresh, critically-constructive set of eyes to material, and we frequently find ourselves asking how we can make the Atlas’s content as accessible as possible. These are valuable for the NEH narrative as well as for the broader collective itself in thinking about how their work can be the most effective. We are also learning to help clarify the collective’s expectations for our experience. For instance, we requested an updated budget break-down this week and provided an example AEMP had used for other grant narratives; the feedback we received is that the process of creating the budget break-down would be helpful for AEMP, and that upon consideration Erin and Mary were more in a place to know what kind of line items were needed than we were. One thing we saw very clearly in the grant narratives is that it is important to provide exigence for the project. Many of the grant narratives seem to be geared toward projects with a sense of urgency. Why is it important, and why now? We’ve had to think about the significance of the project among other crucially-important topics that our funding might compete with, and consider how this project might implicate other broader issues in the Bay Area and nationwide. This has caused us to think critically, thoroughly, and creatively about how to situate the work and impact of AEMP in the SF Bay Area in light of the housing crisis and transit struggles. This work is even more salient in the age of tech booms, with complex and sometimes paradoxical politics of technology companies. On face, these companies stand for free equitable access to information, convenience, and quality of life, while at the same time buying up affordable homes of long-time residents to build housing and workspace for high-paid employees and driving an increase in property values. They thereby contributing to displacement and inequity in their own backyards which they claim to support and advocate for. One of the strengths we believe is important to mention is how bottom-up the project is. Fields of infrastructure and planning (as well as maps in general) often run the risk of being a top-down approach both literally and figuratively, with crisp, idealized images that lack the complexity of lived human experience. The anti-eviction mapping project is an active effort to reclaim the genre and the practice to not only incorporate, but to represent the erased experiences of Bay Area residents. It is a powerful part of the narrative that the map not only depicts the end result of evictions: gentrified neighborhoods, but also the experiences of health, acts of resistance, and intersecting testimonies of residents. This helps put the area on an upward path on the citizen participation ladder -- the testimonies in the atlas frame knowledge as coming from the citizens, with verified data as support. Knowledge belonging to citizens is the first step in facilitating at least a consultation model, if not partnership or even citizen control, with regard to housing and displacement in the Bay Area. This project uplifts that knowledge through community storytelling and map-making -- two critically underutilized tools -- and empower others. We are also understanding that because diversity and social cohesion are part of social sustainability, multiple perspectives are required to understand and address these issues. These collaborations may be broad and intersect policy, economics, business strategies, urban planning, community organizing, education, public health, and human rights. It must integrate a vary of perspectives, methodologies, backgrounds, and areas of expertise, and collaboration requires empathy, trust, and understanding. We’ve already begun to see the benefits of this process In terms of writing the grant narrative. Its collaborators come from diverse fields and backgrounds, and are organized in a horizontal structure, meaning that everyone contributes a unique and crucial component to the project. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward A major thought on our minds as we continue to work to provide finalized chapter feedback and prepare the NEH grant is the relationship of the Atlas project to the current sustainability discourse in the Bay Area. As we saw in “Plan Bay Area” published in 2013, most people emphasize environmental sustainability first before thinking about people. For example, Plan Bay Area listed and prioritized Climate protection as their first goal while discussion of addressing the housing crisis seemed to be secondary considerations. Similarly Section 15382 of CEQA, clarifies that it does not even consider a social or economic change in itself significant enough to necessitate an Environmental Impact Report. These documents provide clear examples of how often environmentalists place conservation of ecosystems and natural systems over socioeconomic disparities and needs of disadvantaged communities when thinking about sustainability. On that note, we believe that the publication of the Atlas should help reassert the presence and the importance of cultural continuity. Many of the chapters we’ve been reading comment extensively on the how strong culture, history and way of life of communities have been threatened by displacement and how communities have resisted this disruption of neighborhood culture. Cultural continuity is one of the four pillars of sustainability we’ve defined in our class, and documenting gentrification and evictions are a testament to how allowing people to stay in their homes and stay in their communities. Speculators buying up properties and reselling them to the recent wave of tech workers, threaten and undermine cultural continuity and contribute to values/priorities that are born out of colonial, capitalist histories. Preserving uniquenesses and identities is critical to sustaining healthy communities, relationships, moving toward equity of people and communities and identities. But there are complex dimensions to this idea of cultural continuity. Why for example should ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, with origins to an era of intense anti-Chinese sentiment be preserved? Chinatown was formed because Chinese workers were not sold property anywhere else in the city and many buildings were men’s dormitories for an ageing male population due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. However, the beautiful culture, the unique shops and local businesses, and strong Chinese-American community that emerged over time provide strong reasons for how gentrification and change with community input should be opposed. Similarly, Oakland, with its history strongly tied to the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was the site of state-sponsored violence against black community leaders. Yet, for decades before and during this era of violence against the black community, the city developed strong resources for art, education, community programs and more. Currently the black population has been decreasing due to gentrification. The history of both these neighborhood examples have taught us the importance of cultural context and history in discussions of evictions, displacement and neighborhood change. In chapter-editing and looking over maps, we’ve found instances of similar displacement over time, and been able to see patterns form throughout history. We’ve begun to consider the similarities between racial redlining policies in 1930’s Oakland and the racialized impacts of technology like AirBnB. This has given us a critical eye when thinking about the future, as we are careful to think about our projects amongst the broader historical context of urban planning and of grassroots organizing. Additionally, many of the chapters also highlight how social sustainability is also under threat due to the housing crisis. The tech industry accumulates wealth and capital which perpetuates income inequalities and gaps in resource provision. People are forced to live far away from their works and are subject to long commutes, expensive housing, and often the worst environmental conditions. This in turn reduces quality of life, with people in poverty bearing the physical and mental health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle associated with long commutes. Though reading through the wealth of historical accounts of neighborhood character, modern examples of resistance, data-rich maps and oral histories contained in the Atlas Chapters has been informative, our group has battled with a question about our experiences of these issues. Though we all live in the Bay Area and some of us have spent time in San Francisco and Oakland, we still are largely developing thoughts and opinions about the crisis through the recorded experiences of others in the Atlas. We all feel quite strongly about housing as a human right and not something that should be stripped from people, but we feel that there is a missing lived experience aspect of the project. Though it is easy to oppose the actions of speculators and real estate developers catering to tech-industry elites at the cost of the livelihoods of people of color, I think we would have a different perspective on these issues if it was our own door with an eviction notice taped on the front. We’re particularly excited to work more on the public health chapter, which we expect to be informative on the disparate classed and racialized impacts of housing, gentrification, and environmental damage. It will provide an entirely new area of inquiry for the project, as it examines an issue with national significance, from Flint, Michigan to Oakland and Los Angeles, and is an exciting and important new lens to view to project with. Another experience that will inform our approach to our future contribution to the Atlas is the town hall role-play that we did in class on Wednesday. In the activity, the success of the Department of Transportation relied on their ability to placate and address the needs of different stakeholders while convincing everyone of the common goal: a less congested, safer, more enjoyable, people-friendly road good for cyclists, shopkeepers, and drivers. However, what quickly became evident is that different stakeholders wanted different things and had contrasting goals, which made achieving this vision difficult. Similarly, the Atlas incorporates many different perspectives; the perspectives of planners, community members, evictees, activists, youth, retirees and more. The atlas incorporates these strengths and allows different people’s stories to interact. The Atlas helps people to speak for themselves, without a central narrator speaking for them. The stories are united by a common aspiration for more affordable housing, better transportation and a better quality of life, but the chapters sometimes address very different content. However, this means, it may be a challenge to unite the chapters, thread common themes throughout the Atlas and tell a cohesive narrative with so many different aspects. The goal is to respect individual perspectives and stories, preserving the voices and independence while also linking them and moving toward a broader narrative that is applicable beyond itself. Update on Project Activities
Last Friday, our team met in Palo Alto with Diane and Lisa, one of the main leaders in creating and managing the Green Challenge websites for multiple Bay Area cities. During our meeting, we learned about Lisa’s specific vision behind the Green Challenge and used Lisa as a sounding board for our website suggestions. In addition, we began to discuss social media strategies and methods to motivate users to stay engaged with the site in the long term. This week, we began formulating survey and interview questions for students and teachers. We were able to have our weekly conference call with Diane, and were able to talk with her about the type of information that would be most useful for her to have. Areas of importance, to be focused on in the survey, include: residents’ familiarity with climate change and the Menlo Green Challenge, actions that are feasible and attractive to complete, features that make websites appealing and easy to use, and prizes that motivate users to take on the Challenge. We also began preliminary work on the Household Success story by creating interview questions and writing a brief newsletter for Diane to send to the site mailing list early next week. What We Observed and Learned Before going over our suggestions, Lisa outlined her previous work with the Palo Alto Climate Action Plan and how it contributed to the creation of the Green Challenge. Specifically, she discussed how she channeled her passions for activism and climate policy to lead a neighborhood sustainability effort and the strategies she tried during this period. For example, she advised us to promote discussions regarding the impacts and actions people choose in order to help them visualize their carbon footprint and encourage competition between teams. As these discussions became more prevalent in her neighborhood, it became difficult to track their process without a metric. Therefore, Lisa created an online platform to gage a city’s specific carbon footprint and estimate personal energy use while also involving an aspect of competition. Since Lisa crowdsourced her website through each stage, she wanted us to give feedback on a few of her future updates for the site. First, she mentioned the addition of new options to sort the grid categories by preference, such as allowing users to filter out actions they would never pursue. Her two largest proposals, however, were the addition of a student-specific action category for students and younger participants, and the rollout of a community submission page with a status feed and like/comment features. The goal of the latter is to prompt people to post pictures of their own actions, encourage friendly competition amongst household teams and facilitate the creation of a Green Challenge mobile app. Next, our team was able to make thoughtful recommendations to improve the user-friendliness of the site. Lisa explained to us that the difficulty levels combine time and money considerations, and that the survey is missing some energy and travel averages that would facilitate the process for students unable to contact their parents for help. We believe that these clarifications and tools should be made available on the site in the form of a question mark or alternative pop-up bubble. Unfortunately, we realized that a few of our suggestions are not feasible. For example, adding source citations to all the action pages, or filtering actions based on the survey answers provided would require structural changes to the website that are extremely time intensive. Unfortunately, Diane also alerted us that the City of Menlo Park does not necessarily endorse Menlo Spark’s 2025 target for climate neutrality, and that the goal cannot be publicized on the Green Challenge website. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward As this week comes to a close, we assess that we are in a good position in our task timeline heading into Week 6. We have come up with a draft for surveys we’d like to hand to students and residents of Menlo Park. We also came up with important questions for the teachers that have run the Challenge before in their classrooms, and we’ve reached out to these teachers to set up interviews. Moving forward, we’ll send the survey and interview questions to Diane so she can look over them and give us feedback, and we’ll look forward to setting concrete dates to meet with teachers at La Entrada Middle School and Menlo Atherton High School. Assessing Future Housing and Transportation Patterns in the City of Palo Alto | Week 5 Reflection10/27/2017
Project Update
This week, our team finalized our transportation and housing surveys. After meeting with Hillary last Wednesday, our team updated our written and online surveys to better reflect the concerns of people rather than researchers. Our questions were often too impersonal, and made the reader feel as if he or she were a number rather than a voice. This input, as well as the feedback given from numerous test-survey takers this past weekend allowed us to produce our final survey. We recently emailed Adina and Elaine on our survey progress, and they were thrilled to see the changes we had made in the past week. Our survey is 23 questions long, split into two sections. The first section is comprised of simple, multiple choice housing and transportation questions, as compared to the ladder section, containing more open ended, preference questions. We are realizing that the slightest variation in word choice can make or break a reader’s ability answer a question. Over the past two weeks, we have been refining our question types to eliminate any ambiguity or confusion. We recognize we cannot produce a perfect survey, that is both clear and unbiased. However, we believe that our final survey will at least provide usable, coherent data on housing and transportation in Palo Alto. Upcoming Plans Friday and Saturday, our team will head out to the Caltrain station and the Farmers’ Market to distribute the final paper survey. We plan on collecting the pop up park equipment from Elaine on Friday afternoon and setting up around the station 5-7PM. The following morning, we will setup at the market around 9AM. We are excited to finally interact with our stakeholders and community members, but are also eager to collect definitive data on housing and transportation preferences. We are also meeting with Adina and Elaine this Monday (30th) to discuss our surveying experience and begin to send the online surveys out on email servers. Predicted Issues Not everyone is interested in speaking to complete strangers on the street. In fact, their knee jerk reaction is often the opposite. Therefore, we are dressing and acting approachable to increase the likelihood of collecting data. This will include; pop-up park green spaces, Stanford shirts, and candy buckets. We want to come off as endearing and enthusiastic, rather than demanding or insincere. As our survey events progress, we will refine our tactics and develop a better understanding of engaging pedestrians. Even if we cannot collect physical data, we are interested in at least sharing our knowledge with the citizens and employees of Palo Alto. We will have information booklets summarizing the current housing and transportation situation around the city, as well as a reference to the Comprehensive Plan Update. When thinking about different demographics such as socioeconomic status and race, the specific areas where we are conducting our research may not be inclusive of these different groups of individuals. After our midterm presentation, we received feedback concerning the potential employment biases we were likely to encounter only surveying two sites. We are planning to survey people at the Palo Alto Caltrain Station and Farmers Markets on California Avenue. Individuals who ride the Caltrain typically are of a higher socioeconomic status, suggesting an inherent bias for higher income workers. Our team is working to find a way to incorporate the experiences and opinions of all individuals. A diverse input of opinions will be vital to making the City of Palo Alto more sustainable in regards to housing and transportation issues. Update on Project Activities
This week we made minor adjustments to our ongoing surveys as results started to roll in. First of all, we removed the requirement for surveyees to sign in with a gmail account in order to allow for increased access and thus a larger sample size of both business owners and employees. Since Julie could not officially release the surveys for business owners and employees until Tuesday via email, we do not yet possess a large enough amount of data to make conclusions. As of now, a total of 26 individuals (11 employees and 15 business representatives) filled out the surveys. We will make plans to convene with our community sponsor in the coming week in order to assess additional approaches to promoting the surveys and increasing turnout. What We Observed and Learned So far we cannot make conclusions about the impact of the minimum wage ordinance on Mountain View businesses and employees, but we do know that our current approach to surveys may prove inadequate. We did not account for the lost time making edits when we planned the surveys’ due date, so we will likely need to extend the survey period for one more week in order to amass enough data to begin our report. We may also need to explore the possibility of two more site visits in order to force the issue of surveying with more business owners. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward We made many necessary adjustments and updates to our surveys this week in order to work out the logistics of meeting Mountain View’s needs, but the lost time means we likely need to extend our surveying period for at least one more week (the original deadline ends today). We will also look to meet Mr. Andrade again very soon, either in Mountain View or on campus. Update on Project Activities
On Thursday, Jackelyn, Celine, and I travelled two hours south to attend the Alisal Vibrancy Plan Visioning Workshop, facilitated by the City of Salinas. It was held in a school auditorium. The workshop was meant to allow for residents (both in Salinas and in Alisal) to be involved in the planning process for the Alisal Vibrancy Plan. This event was our first official introduction to the Alisal community, and our first form of contribution to the AVP. We are scheduled to talk with Carol McKibben this weekend and Andrea Jany the coming week. Talking with them will prepare us for when we conduct interviews with residents. We will also be debriefing the Visioning Workshop with Jonathan over the phone this week and we will hopefully be receiving scanned copies of the documents created by the attendees in the near future. We also received the long-awaited HTMA document today, and will be working on reading, dissecting, and translating that document next week. What We Observed and Learned One of our worries was that there wouldn’t be any residents or only few residents at the Visioning session but there were actually many residents. Some not specifically from Alisal, some were from Salinas the city generally that had businesses in Alisal. There was pretty good representation of people, old, young, and disabled. They set up the workshop by three questions asked to the residents. Each overarching section had three parts they wanted to address-- strengths, weakness, and possible strategies to address the weaknesses. There were two facilitators per table and they seemed very well versed on how to facilitate discussion. They asked the questions in a way that wasn’t leading toward a certain answer. They accepted all answers and wrote them down on the large sheets of paper displaying was what said. The residents were pretty participatory and sitting with them gave us a lot of insight into their needs and wants. It was interesting to hear actual stories put to the general issues we had read about. For example, crowding was an issue we read about but sitting with the residents made it more real as one talked about how crowding was a big issue with many families living in a home and their kids wouldn’t have a place to do homework. Another example was a story of how one of the resident’s friend’s landlord continued to up their rent and that it had gone up from $1,900 per month to $2,100 per month over the course of three months. One of the biggest issues they focused on was the lack of rent control and the need for policies to control this. They also emphasized the need to inform the residents of their rights. This was a general issue as well of residents not knowing where resources are. Speaking to one of the residents one on one, she told me she got most of her information on community programing through Facebook and flyers. A younger students told me she learned about opportunities through school. They are required to complete a certain number of community service hours to graduate and this is how she got involved in many of the youth councils in the city as well as internships. Knowing this information, we know in what forms our infographic would be most useful. Some of the other things they focused on where getting youth involved with different programs and with businesses in the community to gain mentors and financial assistance. Keeping the youth focused and expanding their leadership capabilities would keep them from spending time on the streets and would therefore reduce violence. Another issue was the lack of childcare facilities. It was interesting to see they focused most on the housing and the youth. It seemed that it was a general consensus that caring for the youth would eventually result in the lowering of violence and poverty. The Visioning Session was a good experience for us, not only because it was our first experience with the community, but because we were able to each establish relationships with different residents, some parents, some students, some community leaders, watch their collective thinking process as teams, listen to their ideas and see the ones that meant the most to them. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward As our next steps moving forward, we plan on meeting with Carol McKibben and Andrea Jany to get more background information and insight on how to conduct interviews with the residents. Each of us made connections with some residents and gathered contact information for the interviews. We will be working as a team to refine our interview questions and methodology, such as using video or audio recording when we speak with our interviewees. Celine took photos at the Visioning Session that we will use primarily for our presentation. We will review the photos and assess what other kinds of photos we want, such as photos of parts of neighborhoods in the Alisal. We were unable to get a tour of the area due to circumstances regarding the high amounts of traffic we experienced on the way to the session, but we hope to get a chance to explore a bit more of the area. Since we finally received the HTMA document, we are excited to comb through this information and identify any discrepancies we see, at first glance, from our experiences working with residents. We are now waiting for documents from the Visioning Session, including notes from each team’s table, to be sent to us. Once we have these, we can make more accurate comparisons with the HTMA document. Next Tuesday we will have a conference call with Jonathan to debrief and identify ways this community forum will be implemented in future planning for the project. One of the things we enjoyed about the meeting is that the forum seemed overall very well-structured. Residents were seated at different tables to form small teams and work on answering questions together. The majority of tables were “Spanish-only” that composed of many bilingual residents and some monolingual residents. A few tables were designated as English-speaking so other residents could also participate. The majority of the event was run in Spanish and translations were always provided, even the main questions were asked in Spanish. This approach seemed very effective as monolingual Spanish speakers were given the power to express their thoughts and discuss these ideas in a low-pressure environment. We noticed that language barriers still persist, as ideas like “rent control” and “grants” were terms that bilingual speakers, who were often more highly educated, could not translate to Spanish. As this is something we will come across when we translate the HTMA document, we want to identify ways to best translate these ideas so that monolingual Spanish residents can be empowered by having the language to put towards these ideas. We want to hear about other ways residents are involved besides semi-formal settings like these. We noticed that there was an issue expressed by many residents about the means of spreading information, such as community forums, to the community. We want to know how much pubbing is done in schools, local businesses, neighborhoods, and places commonly frequented by Alisal residents such as super markets. We would also like to identify who was and wasn’t present because of this issue. A few families were present, but we noticed that many adults participating were community leaders, people who work in different nonprofits or welfare agencies. One participant was a Salinas resident who is a Stanford graduate. We want to ensure that more of the general public, including the working class and undereducated demographics, are getting information about these meetings and are able to attend them. |
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