Model for Map Analysis

The method to analyze the maps was based on Kevin Lynch’s approach to analyzing conceptual maps of particular areas, such as he collected for his seminal book, Image of the City.[1] Predominantly, this analysis counts the frequency of particular items on a map, which he found fit into one of several physical elements that constitute city form: district, path, edge, landmark, or node. The concept of a node is nebulous and ultimately not so helpful, so for the purposes of this study, it has been disregarded. Lynch’s analysis groups the frequency of these individual city features, assigns them a particular scale, and then maps them, with thick and dark lines or marks indicating higher frequency of responses.

The step of mapping the results has not been incorporated into this study, but it would be valuable for the community prior to the next stage of design toward establishing identity. In the discussion below, the initial results are described, and then the narrative proceeds with an attempt to categorize the physical elements in Lynch’s terms.

Methodology

For each map, both written and drawn marks were tallied in an Excel spreadsheet. The rows represented individual items mentioned by any one of the small groups. The columns represented the small groups, which were either one of the geographical areas, the seniors, or the business owners/developers.

Group 3: South of Montaño

Group 5: West Guadalupe

Group 6: Gavilan/Guadalupe Village/Los Poblanos

Group 7: Seniors

Group 8: Los Alamos Addition

Group 9: Montaño South

Group 10: Lee Acres

Group 11: Business Group

Group 12: Outside the Area

Rows were added as new items were mentioned by different groups, and as much as possible, the spreadsheet was queried via the “find” feature in Excel to determine whether the item was mentioned but overlooked by groups or maps previously tallied.

Any written comments accompanying the item were added to a combined comment column for each map category, whether Special Places, Good and Bad Happenings, Utopia, or Priority Actions. The maps were tallied in the order of group number for the most part. Other than this loose progression, no attempt was made to attach the particular group to the particular comment, since ultimately, the goal was to study the discussion across areas and subject positions in order to determine possibilities for the next action toward identity.

For the same reason, the tally was kept within one worksheet so that the relationship among groups and among maps would be preserved regardless of the way the information was sorted during data analysis.

For ease of entry, items were loosely separated by thematic categories as helpful, which were subsequently removed before the data were analyzed. These categories were “Green Things,” including any mention of parks, open space, acequias, trails, landscaping, trees, or other vegetation; “Housing;” “Neighborhood Stuff,” including specific mentions of neighborhood names, churches, schools, or other specific items to be found in neighborhoods; “Recreation,” including biking, walking, bowling, horseback riding; “Retail/Commercial,” including all mentions of particular businesses and/or business-related areas; “Roads,” including specifically referenced roads and streetscape elements; and “Values,” which operated as a miscellaneous list of non-place based items, such as qualities described, population groups, community events, or action steps. Again, these categories were not retained for the purpose of analysis, but they may have influenced the tally in as much as they tended to separate or group individual items.

Once the tally was completed for each map across all the groups, the rows were re-examined for consistency. Some rows were collapsed when they seemed to describe the same item or if they were actually part of a larger category. For example, three locations of flooding that were separate rows during the tally became part of the category “flooding” as part of the data analysis when it became clear that it was the mention of flooding itself, not necessarily the separate locations of flooding that was important. This process of categorization is quite important, since the analysis is primarily a frequency count.

One important example is access. Items that affected access – whether vehicular, pedestrian, horse, or bike – were counted in the access category, even if the word “access” was not specifically mentioned. For example, “No turn off 4^th Street” was counted once under “access,” once under “4^th Street,” and once under “turn lanes.” “Mature vegetation” is also a basket category that includes mentions of trees, landscaping, shade, and/or vegetation.

Other basket categories were not treated in the same way. For example, the category “acequia trails” does NOT include a tally of every time any acequia or trail was mentioned, but rather only when a generic reference to acequia trails was made. Similarly, 4^th Street businesses is not a combined total of all mention of any 4^th Street business, but rather a particular count of generic references to 4^th Street businesses. [Problematic?] It was felt that combining each individual reference would have resulted in such generic categories as to dilute the analysis of individual elements in the area.

The difference between treatment of basket categories was based on whether the emerging story required the separation of individual items or the category. Access was important as a category, as was vegetation. 4^th Street businesses needed to be distinguished to determine what it is about them people preferred. It was not necessarily their location on either 4^th or Montaño that was at issue, although when that was the issue, that tally was counted in the “4^th Street Businesses” or “Montaño businesses” category. Similarly, some acequias were more important than others for particular purposes or for particular groups. Where they were addressed generically, the tally was reflected in the “acequia trails” category.

One critique of this method might be that a more aggressive grouping of particular descriptors might have elevated the tally count, and therefore shown a greater importance of the category than the current method reflects. The full tally is provided in the Appendix for those with an interest in different category groupings and resulting analysis.

Results by Map Categories

The top items for each map category were compiled and are shown in the tables below. The tables are sorted by total and then alphabetically by descriptor. As close as possible, the top ten items were chosen. Lists were abbreviated or lengthened to match natural number breaks to accommodate repeated totals. Happenings has 11 items; Priority Actions has 9. Complete lists can be found in the Appendix.

Several items appear in multiple map categories, underlining their importance. Access, 4^th Street, and Montano are the top three items in three out of four map categories: Happenings, Utopia, and Priority Actions. 4^th and Montaño also shows up in these three maps, in fourth or fifth position . Biking appears in the top six items of three maps: Special Places, Utopia, and Priority Actions. Pedestrian-friendly also appears in the top ten items of three maps: Special Places, Happenings, and Priority Actions. 4^th Street businesses shows up in the top ten items of three maps: Happenings, Utopia, and Priority Actions. Gallegos Lateral shows up in Special Places and Priority Actions. 2^nd Streets appears in Good and Bad Happenings and Utopia.

What is clear from the maps is that resolving the issue of the 4^th and Montaño intersection is of utmost priority. Secondarily, when thinking about things they like about the area or what they would ultimately like to see for their area, open spaces and recreation rise to the top of the lists.

Special Places

For Special Places, participants were asked to discuss and indicate on the map the places or qualities in the area that are unique or special to them. This map category should indicate what residents value about the area and what they would like to see protected or enhanced in future planning efforts. In terms of identity, these items may begin to illustrate they types of qualities that already serve to make the area special for its residents that can be referenced or added to in identity-building efforts. It can be assumed that to some extent the items listed below are already working well for the community, even though in many cases they could be strengthened to work even better for more residents.

Table 1: Top Items for Special Places

As noted above, mature vegetation is a basket category that includes trees and landscaping. The sense of greenery is referenced more often than any other item, although predominantly by the business group. Additionally, three items mentioned by eight out of the nine groups – Los Poblanos and Gallegos and Harwood laterals – underscore the importance of greenery and a system of open space.

Although many residents talked about walking along the laterals, biking emerged as the most important means of using the trail system and providing a viable alternative to automobile commute. Included in the pedestrian-friendly category are streetscape improvements allowing safe access to businesses, safe play for children on residential streets, and improvements to the acequia system to allow access for pedestrians throughout the area – including safe crossings of 4^th and Montaño. One resident said one of the special characteristics of the area was the ability to “exist without a car.” For an area within Albuquerque, where most neighborhoods do necessitate a car, this is a stunning description. One might expect such a description from downtown neighborhoods with access to public transportation and in close proximity to a wide variety of uses. The sense of being in close proximity to everything residents need day-to-day underscores the description provided by several residents of feeling like a town or village.

This description is separate from more general descriptions by residents of liking the “rural feel” of the area. The rural feel is connected to physical aspects, such as the greenery, but also details like the absence of curb and gutter and “roads that curve.”

Also slightly different is the benefit listed by one resident from south of Montaño that area provides the sensation of “Escape from the City” while residents “still feel and live in the City.”

These descriptions are important windows in whether the area operates as a satellite town or village to Albuquerque – self-contained but connected to the powerful economic and cultural benefits of the “big city” or whether it is just another neighborhood. The consequences here are important. Operating as a satellite village would indicate the need for more investment to reinforce and bolster the independence they already have – shoring up the economic viability of 4^th Street, for example, and reconnecting all residential neighborhoods to each other and to goods and services via internal roads and trails. This description fits with the area’s history as self-contained community connected to Albuquerque as its main market and trading center.

If, on the other hand, the area’s self-sustainability has been degraded to the point where it operates simply as another neighborhood in Albuquerque, then it may be justifiable to let business activity on 4^th go away, as has been the trend. Similarly, justification for reinstituting the connections of individual neighborhoods now divided by 4^th and Montaño would be weakened. Instead, each neighborhood should now simply focus on gaining better access to the main Albuquerque roads and let go the smaller, internal connections to neighbors across these main thoroughfares.

Events and Lee Acres/Solar Avenue are also described often as contributing to the special character of the area. Specifically referenced were faralitos at Christmas, trick or treating at Halloween, the Lavendar Festival in Los Ranchos, fireworks at 4^th of July, and the Corn Maize during the fall harvest at Los Poblanos field. The concentration of events is in the northern portion of the area and were only referenced by the Lee Acres group. In subsequent map categories, more groups list events as being important to building community identity. It is interesting but not surprising that events do exist that neighborhoods farther away and without access to are not aware of. These neighborhood events are literally “off their maps,” even though residents recognize the importance of events in building and celebrating community.

Good and Bad Happenings

For Good and Bad Happenings, residents were asked to note what is happening or going on in the area that is good or bad. Residents were encouraged to talk about what has happened in the last few years to improve things or what has happened that has diminished the quality of the area.

Facilitators prompted residents to think about their concerns and also their successes. The maps were supposed to be color coded for good versus bad happenings, but groups were not consistent. Maps and the full list of items with comments can be viewed in the Appendix.

The top items listed below were all described negatively, which is consistent with the main motivation of the workshop in responding specifically to negative occurrences in the area. The predominance of 4^th Street and Montaño in “bad” happenings provides validation of the 4^th Street and Montaño Area Coalition’s assessment of area opposition to events that would further strain access to nearby residential areas and businesses.

Table 2: Top Items for Good and Bad Happenings

Access is the top item, and overwhelmingly, it is associated with bad happenings, predominantly involving either 4^th or Montaño for autos, pedestrians, and bikers. One group put it this way: “Access to 4^th Street and Montaño Road (at all points) – bad.”

Poor access from 4^th and Montaño negatively affects local businesses. Car access to shopping at Guadalupe Plaza and the strip shopping center on the northeast corner of 4^th and Montaño is specifically referenced as bad. Businesses along Montaño cause conflict between pedestrians and cars. Businesses south of Montaño suffer due to traffic backups. On 4^th Street, cars have difficult access to businesses. New development along Montaño east of 4^th Street has added to traffic problems.

Car access to residential streets east and west of 4^th Street is particularly bad. Los Alamos Additions streets were specifically referenced. The lack of access to 2^nd Street for these streets (they dead-end at the Gallegos/Alameda Drain) means their only ingress/egress is 4^th Streets. In their own words, they “add to traffic problems” on 4^th Street.

Residents decry the lack of pedestrian and bike access north and south across Montaño at Guadalupe Trail and the Harwood Lateral, which would be the natural north-south connectors for the area west of 4^th Street. Neighborhoods north and south of Montaño could be easily re-connected by providing safe crossing at Montaño. One group reported that when Guadalupe Trail was cut off for the Montaño Bridge, residents “stopped using and coming to the area” south of Montaño. Another resident put it more dramatically: “Montaño’s divided the valley.”

Pedestrian access to shopping, even for residents immediately adjacent to 4^th Street, is undermined because of the impossibility of crossing 4^th Street safely and the lack of safe sidewalks on either side of 4^th Street. One resident said 4^th Street is “suicide lane.” Another group referenced the bad design of 4^th Street – “too many curb cuts, ramps every 50 feet” – make pedestrian access all but impossible. One resident complained that she can’t walk to church, even though it is close, because she can’t cross 4^th Street.

In addition to safety issues involving pedestrians and bikes, residents listed access for emergency vehicles as a significant safety problem. Because so many neighborhoods are cut off from access to Montaño, 4^th Street provides the only access, and traffic backups present a life and death hazard for emergency vehicles to respond to emergencies. Dead-end subdivisions also prove confusing to emergency responders, impacting response time.

Vacant properties along 4^th Street represent both good and bad happenings. Vacancies represent failed businesses and the lack of a hot market for redevelopment. In this sense, they represent the disinvestment and absence of interest in the 4^th Street as a viable commercial market. While these lots are currently used by transients and filled with weeds and litter, which are seen negatively by residents, they also represent the greatest opportunity for potentially community-building items and activities suggested in the utopia maps, including a plaza, museums, a community center, a senior center, and a visitors center.

Utopia

For Utopia, residents were asked to describe what the area would be like if it were perfect, without limits to money, resources, political power, or time. The idea was to get a sense of residents’ vision for the area, without factoring in regulatory, legal, political, or economic restraints.

The results tend to show the preferred solutions for the problems listed in Good and Bad Happenings, but they also show ultimate goals for the area.

Table 3: Top Items for Utopia

* Streetlight as included here is usually referenced in terms of street lighting, a few references may be to traffic lights. See comments section in the full list included in the Appendix.

Access remains the top item. As included here, it responds to most of the complaints listed above in Good and Bad Happenings. 4^th Street is listed more than twice than Montaño, indicating its relative importance for residents. While Montaño and its bridge are ultimately the cause of the traffic issues, because most residents have no access to it anyway, 4^th Street is utmost in residents’ concerns. Changes to 4^th Street will have the highest immediate impact for area residents. As such, streetscape improvements, including those to provide safe car and pedestrian access, but also aesthetic improvements like pedestrian-scale streetlights and buried utility poles become important.

2^nd Street is most often listed as a solution for the traffic problem of back-up on 4^th Street due to west-side commuters trying to turn onto Montaño. Residents suggested commuter traffic should be moved to 2^nd Street, perhaps prohibiting left-hand turns from 4^th Street to Montaño at least during commuting hours.

Biking, as in Special Places, becomes important as recreation and also as a secondary mode of commuting.

Business revitalization is also important to residents in their utopia, both along 4^th Street and centralized at Guadalupe Plaza. Not only will locally-owned, local serving businesses thrive, they will be able to be accessed easily and safely by foot, bike, and auto. Streetscape improvements are important to this goal, including reducing 4^th Street to one lane in either direction, as is reducing the volume of traffic on 4^th Street by shunting it to 2^nd Street. Mixed-use development along 4^th is mentioned by some groups as a welcome possibility.

Priority Actions

For Priority Actions, residents were encouraged to factor back in political and economic restraints and assess what should be done first and most importantly. Given the utopia map, if the area is to move in that direction, what should the priority actions be? Where and how should the area spend its political capital?

Accordingly, the complete list of items included in these maps is shorter and represents a paring down by residents of their concerns to the items that should be addressed. This list can perhaps be considered an indication of what residents believe can be done feasibly, given political and monetary restrictions. In another sense, the list can be seen as a starting point to accomplish the things that will have the most immediate and important impact on the area.

Table 4: Top Items for Priority Actions

The top items on the list are remarkably consistent with the Utopia maps and reinforce the importance of those solutions, including easy and safe access to 4^th Street for pedestrians, bikes, and cars and improvements for the viability of 4^th Street businesses.

Acequia trails, with the Gallegos Lateral mentioned the most often, reemerge from the Special Places maps as a priority for action. Residents described aesthetic improvements, such as cleaning up weed and litter, safety improvements, including the absence of transients, and access improvements, including the linking of all acequias into a trail system for residents north and south of Montaño.

Results by Small Groups

In order to analyze the results and gain understanding of how different neighborhoods within the area and different subject positions view the area and prioritize the actions for its improvement, results were also tabulated by small group.

Totals for each item in a row (descriptor) by map category within each small group (represented in separate columns) were added to come up with a complete total of how many time each item came up in that small group. For example, Group 1 mentioned access once on the Special Places map, six times in Happenings, six times in Utopia, and four times in Priority Actions, combining for 17 times across map categories, as represented in the table below.

This analysis aims to examine the relative importance of items from group to group. Do residents from different areas experience the same problems to the same degree? Do they prioritize the same issues? Do they have the same vision for this area? If not, how does it differ?

The total across all groups for all maps is represented in the following table, which can be used as one baseline against which to analyze each group in turn. The total figures represent the totals of the columns in the map analysis tables above.

Table 5: Group Item Totals for All Map Categories

The tables below list the top fifteen or so concerns of each small group across map categories. Some tables may have slightly more or slightly fewer items based on natural breaks between item totals. They are listed in order by small group number, which was assigned randomly at the first workshop.

Table 6: Top Items for Group 3 (South of Montano)

15 items

Much like the other groups, the South of Montaño residents are more concerned about 4^th Street than Montaño in terms of immediate impact to their neighborhood. 4^th Street businesses are second in the number of times mentioned. 4^th Street south of Montaño hosts a preponderance of fast-food chains and a higher density of locally-serving businesses than north of Montaño, where they spread out more and therefore there are fewer of them impacting the adjacent neighborhoods. The neighborhoods west and east of 4^th Street south of Montaño are highly impacted by 4^th Street businesses, as reflected by the group’s prioritized concern. The importance of nearby businesses may also reflect either a high degree of patronage or desire for that option.

Guadalupe Plaza is next on the list, underlining the importance of business and retail activity for this group. Some suggestions for this shopping center include improvements to the selection at Smiths to carry more staples for Hispanic recipes, improvements to parking, and the conversion of part of the parking lot for a community plaza or gathering place. Guadalupe Plaza is most often mentioned as a good candidate to become this area’s central space.

2^nd Street is mentioned as one traffic solution for 4^th Street. Public transportation on 2^nd and 4^th Street is also important to this group. Similarly, light rail is proposed for Montaño and secondly along 4^th Street to downtown. This is the only group to mention light rail.

Acequia trails are important for their historical, recreational, and connective aspects, but none specifically mentioned by name appear in the top list of priority items. The group south of Montaño expresses a desire to be reconnected to neighbors north of Montaño through reinstituting the Harwood lateral and Guadalupe Trail connections across Montaño, but as they exist now, residents find them of limited importance.

Important to the South of Montaño group is the idea of this area functioning as a district, partly from encouraging and bolstering local businesses, partly by capitalizing on the historical value of 4^th Street, and partly by strengthening physical interconnection of divided neighborhoods (through trail connections and public transit).

Safety is mentioned in terms of drug dealing in the immediate neighborhood and slow emergency vehicle response time due to traffic issues on 4^th Street, with no access to this neighborhood from Montaño.

Smiths is mentioned positively as a “close grocery store,” although access by foot should be improved with sidewalks and safety measures for 4^th Street and trail connections across Montaño. Residents appreciated the recent renovation and the defeat of the proposal to add a Smith’s gas station in Guadalupe Plaza.

The concern with public transit and nearby shopping may indicate the importance of secondary transportation for families with only one car. Residents south of Montaño have lower incomes on average than residents to the north. The physical layout of this neighborhood, with smaller lots and houses closer together than the northernmost neighborhoods, may also encourage or inspire a desire for walkability.

Table 7: Top Items for Group 5 (West Guadalupe)

14 items

General access is the most important for the West Guadalupe group, specifically regarding the issues surrounding 4^th Street. Biking is the third-most mentioned item, a higher ranking than any of the other groups. Montaño is still near the top of the list.

Most items deal with green space or open space, including Los Poblanos and the park at Guadalupe Trail and Montaño (a “useless park”). The Guadalupe Trail acequia and the Harwood lateral are also mentioned multiple times.

4^th Street businesses and pedestrian and car access to them are also important items. More than the previous group, the overwhelming sense is of a rural area connected by interior trails and Guadalupe Road, with services in walkable distance and safety along 4^th Street.

Table 8: Top Items for Group 6 (Gavilan/Guadalupe Village/Los Poblanos)

15 items

The Gavilan/Gudalupe Village/Los Poblanos Group shares many of the same top priority concerns involving 4^th Street, general access, and Montaño as other groups. Biking is also important to this group, as with the West Guadalupe Trail group.

Parks, open space, and connecting trails are important to this group, much like Group 5, and more so than the South of Montaño group. Grecian and Columbus Parks, north and south of Montaño respectively, are mentioned multiple times. Grecian needs improvements, and Columbus Park works well for these residents. The high number of Grecian references may be linked to its proximity to these neighbors. This is the only group to have these parks among its priority concerns.

Three acequias are mentioned specifically by name – Gallegos lateral, Gallegos Lateral/Alameda Drain, and Hackman Lateral – and walking along the lateral is an important activity. It is interesting to note that Hackman and not Harwood is the acequia mentioned, which again may be explained by proximity. This group is the only one to have Hackman among its top items.

The idea of this area as a district is mentioned more often in the Gavilan/Guadalupe Village/Los Poblanos Group than any other.

4^th Street businesses are referenced often, but Guadalupe Plaza is only mentioned once (see full list in Appendix), despite its proximity to the neighborhoods included in this group.

Table 9: Top Items for Group 7 (Seniors)

11 items

Seniors share the top concerns of the other groups, including 4^th Street, 4^th and Montaño intersection, and access. 4^th Street businesses are of central concern. Montaño itself as a boulevard does not make the top of the list of concerns, which is unique to this group. This may indicate that seniors avoid traveling on Montaño – either they do not experience it on a daily basis, somehow it does not immediately impact them, or they do not find it to be a concern.

Gallegos and Harwood laterals are prominent concerns, along with other green attributes, such as Los Poblanos, trees and landscaping, and wildlife. Streetscape improvements involving pedestrian safety and pedestrian-scale lighting are also important.

Taken as a whole, the concerns of the seniors as represented by the list of items that appear on their map are narrow compared to other groups. Their maps focus on main thoroughfares, main laterals, and Los Poblanos field. This may reflect the relative limited mobility of seniors.

Table 10: Top Items for Group 8 (Los Alamos Addition)

14 items

Access and 4^th Street are the dominant concerns. Vacant properties, because of their proximity and immediate impact, are mentioned third-most often. Biking is near the top of the list, much like Groups 5 & 6.

Los Poblanos is mentioned next most often as a community asset, as was Guadalupe Village, although access for these residents is minimized because of the difficulty of crossing 4^th Street by car and impossibility of crossing it by pedestrians, especially children.

These neighbors very much enjoy their tree-lined streets and would like to see the historic tree-lined Guadalupe Trail restored.

Los Alamos Addition is the only group to have the Community Farm in Los Poblanos among its top items. Gallegos Lateral/Alameda Drain is a top priority, which is not surprising given its immediate proximity.

As a whole, this group’s priority items seem to include more inward-looking items than other groups, although the South of Montaño group also has predominantly internal concerns. This may indicate the relative isolation of these two neighborhoods, who more than the others, have limited mobility within the area or even within their neighborhoods, relying solely on 4^th Street for egress/ingress.

Table 11: Top Items for Group 9 (Montano South)

17 items

Unlike the other South of Montaño group, the Montaño South group (which were separated arbitrarily during Workshop I because of the number of participants, not based on geography) mentions the Harwood lateral by name.

The rural feel of the area is important to this group, which was the only one to have this quality among its top items. The absence of curbs and gutters is indicative of the rural character of the area to this group.

Like the South of Montaño group, safety is a top concern, including traffic, emergency vehicles, and drug activity.

Speeding, which is a primary concern for the Montaño South group, does not appear in other groups’ top items.

Nearby businesses are very important to the Montaño South group, including 4^th Street businesses, restaurants, and local services.

2^nd Street makes this group’s list of top items, as it did the South of Montaño Group. These two groups stand to gain the most immediate benefit from the transfer of commuter traffic from 4^th Street to 2^nd Street, since the backup that occurs on 4^th Street during the afternoon/evening commute blocks access to their homes.

Table 12: Top Items for Group 10 (Lee Acres)

13 items

Lee Acres shares concerns with the other groups surrounding access and 4^th and Montaño. Gallegos Lateral, which runs between Lee Acres and neighborhoods to the south, also tops the list, as does Los Poblanos which is close by. Acequia trails in general and as the location for recreational walking are also important.

Events are important to Lee Acres, many of which take place in Lee Acres or very close by. Specifically mentioned are faralitos at Christmas, trick-or-treating at Halloween, the corn maize at Los Poblanos during the fall harvest, the Lavendar festival in Los Ranchos, and fireworks at the 4^th of July.

“Daycares,” specifically the conflict between pedestrian and car traffic, is mentioned exclusively by this group, perhaps indicating a higher number or percentage of families with children or working parents, or perhaps simply that one person in the group was especially concerned.

Table 13: Top Items for Group 11 (Business)

The business group has several unique top items, including diversity of population, kids, and neighborliness. This group describes the area as having a “small-town atmosphere and feel” and expresses a desire for the area to be a place where “grandchildren return to live.”

Many of its top concerns surround 4^th Street and its safe use as a commercial corridor, easily accessible by cars and pedestrians.

Vacant properties near Alamosa and 4^th, at the edge of the Los Alamos Addition, represent a significant opportunity to this group to create a community center that can anchor business activity and jump-start the revitalization of 4^th Street.

Table 14: Top Items for Group 12 (Outside the Area)

Because this group is made up of residents and politicians who live outside the area, it provides a different perspective that can shed light on what greater Albuquerque might prioritize for this area, as well as how they perceive it – or fail to perceive it.

Like the other groups, access, 4^th Street, and Montaño are top concerns, as are 4^th Street businesses. 2^nd Street is mentioned as a regional solution for traffic problems. Public transportation is also mentioned as an important large-scale measure to address traffic. Pedestrian safety and access are top concerns, as are the system of acequia trails – Guadalupe Trail, Gallegos Lateral/Alameda Drain, and Harwood specifically.

Events and Los Poblanos are reasons to come to this area. Trees and open space add to the distinct character.

---

[1] Lynch, Kevin. Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1961.

Writing Break

It's going well!

I am flooded with well-being.

The writing is coursing along. Writing's not hard; it's just tedious! But I can do it! One little idea at a time. Check it off. I don't know if you can possibly understand what a difference of mindset this represents for me. I have a thriving fear of writing, an absolute horror at the possibility that I might not be able to describe my ideas in words. And an ultimate fear that I won't be able to say anything important in this thesis and therefore FAIL to write it.

But today, all is sweetness and light, and I simply describe what's in all my insanely detailed and sorted Excel tables for each of the maps. What does it all add up to? Who knows! Who cares! That's tomorrow's task! Today is just paragraph by paragraph, topic by topic. And that' s okay.

Along the same lines, I've got a comforable booth at the Star, an endless (and free) source for coffee, a full glass of water with lemon, and the ultimate selection of tunes on my very own jukebox. The latest flood of elemental joy: Tori Amos' Sorta Fairytale. GodDAMN that's a good song. Up there in happiness: Ozo Matli and Manu Chao. And for variation, new (to me) hip-hop: the Chicago group Common. So good!

Keep it coming, world. I'm your scribe. Fill me up!

Oofda

Still no Christmas shopping, but I did just complete my teaching duties!

Woo-hoo!

I'm feeling good. Gotta write like the wind this weekend, but it's doable. It's all doable!

Talked with my oldest sis yesterday. Crazy because the night before I'd had this nightmare where she refused to say hello to me, and I got murderously angry, but she simply refused to acknowledge me. Not an hour after waking up, she called. Just to talk.

Watched What the Bleep Do We Know, and since then, I've been aware of all the little moments of synchronicity that happen all around me all the time.

Like my friend in Chicago sending me music files that I loved. He was going to send me the rest but never was able to. He sent me a link to the music video, which I forwarded on to my friend here in town, because I knew he'd like it somehow, which reminded me of the stack of music he'd left for me to listen to, and low and behold: there was that CD. Crazy!

I thought about a friend I haven't seen in a year and a half, and there she was at Target.

It's the season for calling in big universal awareness, and I'm doing my best to pay attention and keep my life out of the way by staying open to whatever happens, not just what I WANT to happen.

And New York draws closer and closer. The best idea given yesterday: ice skating. Yes!

Holidays Schmolidays

Maybe it's just me, but it does NOT feel like Christmas.

How can it really be December? Every year, more so the older I get, I have the sneaking suspicion that if I can just hold off shopping, Christmas can't really come.

Of course, that just means I'm one of those last-minute schmucks in the line that you people feel sorry for as you sip your lattes and laugh.

I'm running from task to task, telling myself those sneezes are just allergies. I'm spending all my "free time" working on the thesis. Work refuses to let me shake its grip. Public meetings 2 nights this week, 2 nights next week.

Starting Tuesday: a mad dash to grade papers.

All of this is very normal for my life. I'm used to being busy.

But it's Christmas! Or it's supposed to be, and yet ...

And yet.

I want a long walk alone near the Bosque.

I want time alone with a good pen and my favorite journal.

I want big sky and new moon. A conversation that doesn't end in tears.

A season of peace.

Part of the disorientation is knowing I'll be leaving the day after Christmas to go to New York City, a mecca that I've not yet seen. It's weird to be leaving my family, but I found out that my sister is leaving Christmas MORNING to visit her in-laws, so now, it appears I have nowhere to be Christmas Day. Sure, I can go to my mother's, but at the moment, she thinks (mistakenly, and I'm not sure how she got this information) that I'm leaving for Christmas, too. So I have the option to stay home, sleep in, walk my dog, watch some movies. In other words: hole up before hitting the big city. I know the mass quantities of people and surge of activity is going to be hard for me. Maybe I should stockpile solitude.

Generally, I'm just disoriented. Not sure why. What I thought I knew I've forgotten. I'm not currently headed toward any change (other than graduation, but that's been a constant for about 10 years now, so it's more of a touchstone than a turning point), I'm not unhappy with any one part of my life, and I'm not itching. It feels suspened. A space walk. Silence and void. And me, stretching to fill my life.

Meditations on Love (Cause that's what I should be thinking about right now, right? Right. Shut up. Timing is Everything.)

"I go to where I love and where I am loved, out into the snow.
I go to the things I love with no thought of duty or pity." -- H.D.

The Space Between

You need the space between Chile and here
to have enough room to love me.
With just you and me in a room
it's suddenly crowded,
and the tide of your breath
swimming out from mine
crashes against the waves of silence
that tell me the tale of your fear.
I am no shark in the water;
I have no teeth, no carnivorous plans.
I only want what is freely given -
the tangles of seaweed that float, unattached
because it has nowhere else to be,
and the space between waves and sand
is always enough.

Spring 2003


I don't want love to be mediated -- through another love, through guilt, through another woman, through pain, or through fear.

Love is not restrictive. It flows. Where it is pent, it sours.

In my mind, our job is to find the space to love the people in our lives in the fullest way we can. When the outlines of the love you have do not include romantic relationship, then physical intimacy should not be part of the relationship.

When we interact on a level that's false, we set ourselves up for an impossible situation and promise (by continuing to be in the situation, even if not in words) to be what we cannot be. It's a lie and it dishonors our connections and their love.

He asks what he can do for me. Understand yourself. Free yourself. Free your love. You're trying to box in the love you feel into definitions that don't fit.

Love is not torture. Applying false restrictions to love is.

Doing what's wrong is really just about setting up the situation in your own mind, not necessarily any particular action or "sin."

Watching him go, the best way for me to help is to not help. For my own healing, I need to see him figure this out and understand that love with me will take a change in his paradigm about relationships.

I believe in connections. You have no idea how much I believe in connections! But they are each individual and unique, which is why I don't have a problem with jealousy. The only way I get jealous is when he tries to have the same connection with someone else that he has with me.
That's NEVER POSSIBLE. It is NEVER POSSIBLE to replicate the connection between two people with any other two people. When you try, that's a deep betrayal -- of the connection and of each other but also of reality.

What that means to me is that there are an infinite number of ways to be in relationship with others. I believe the work we should be doing is to figure out how to be the most you can to each other without trying to be MORE than you can to each other based on what your connection is, and what your feelings aren't.

The pain and fear of loss comes from the false dichotomy that if you can't be everything to someone you can't be anything to them. I simply don't believe that. That's what most people do, and it's very hurtful. It's the easiest thing, don't get me wrong. But I don't think we should factor what's "easy" into decisions about people we love. It is VERY difficult and VERY challenging to continually define your connection with someone and find a way of interacting that honors it fully. It takes a lot of commitment from both people, and from everyone else close to you in your life.

But that's the way I want to live.

That's the way my partner must want to live.

If that's not in the cards for him, or not something he thinks he can sign up for, then we should probably take the moment to figure out how we can honor our connection in friendship and leave the big love for another time.

But I don't want it until he comes to me freely.

I'm still half in, half out of the boat. As much, if possible, as he is.

I want a relationship in which we are both whole and wholly choose each other, understanding that that means a commitment to also find and honor the space for all the other people we love within our circle.

"Where there is no void, there is nothing to fill."

That's why you fill up your connections with each person as fully as you can. And then we all overflow.

That's why you define your relationships to fit the connection you have, because if you try to be more, there is always a void left to fill. And it fills with other people and other feelings that end up betraying and hurting everyone.

Guilt is the sign that you need to redefine the outlines of relationship. Re-examine and adjust the contract. And then honor the new one.

Holding My Breath

Oh, I'm underwater alright, but I'm not drowning. Nope, I'm just swimming underwater!

I'm making progress, so it's not time to breathe yet.

Finished the maps last weekend, although my advisor found another pile -- but only 3 more to go! I'm thinking I can get through them tonight and tomorrow.

Last night, started and finished an entire book that got recalled to Zimmerman. AND RETURNED IT. That's Virgo satisfaction!

Even talked to my bestest pal in Chicago, who's bravely going it alone in a rough personal time. Got her to laugh, which was about all I had to offer her. Still, I think she needed it.

This weekend: the map analysis portion of chapter 3.

Next week: analysis of neighborhoods south of Montano.

Next weekend: the write-up of same.

And then grading portfolios.

And books, books, books. I figure they're all due at the end of the semester, so I've gotta get serious real fast. I'm getting better at culling what I need and disregarding the rest (not a Virgo strength -- we think EVERYTHING's important because it's all connected! It will all be useful eventually! You never know what you're gonna need!). I'll basically have from December 16 (when grades are due) to the 23rd (when I'll have to start X-mas shopping and packing for NYC -- woo hoo).

Then X-mas.

Then five glorious days in our nation's largest city. Holy cajole.

Then writing/finishing/pulling my hair out on/ the theory chapter. (Jan 2-8)

Then a conclusion. (Jan. 9-13)

Then pulling it all together and ...

Sending to committee (Jan. 13).

Totally doable, right?

Do you see why I'm not breathing? The spell could dissipate if I breathe for a single second.

But for whatever reason, it still seems doable. Hard. Excruciating. PAINful. Tight.

But doable.

Lord god halleluiah.

Evolution of Happiness

Our family gets lighter and lighter in each generation. Pictured is the natural emotional state of my grandmother.

I showed this picture to friends, and they immediately asked, "Is she German?"

Yes, with a work ethic that could kill an ox.

The story told about her this Thanksgiving came from my grandfather. He said at the time they met -- just 17 -- as the oldest of 5, she could cook a three course meal and all the pies. I said she could probably do that by the age of 12. She didn't disagree.

She never could stop working that hard.

And people wonder where I get my drive to work. Hers was relentless. I like to think that my generation adds the element of joy to balance our lives for the better.

Picture of a Racist

This is my grandpa, a smart, charming, wonderful man who would disown me if he ever knew I dated -- in his words -- non-WASP men.

Strange and heartbreaking that this harsh reality is still such a danger in our families.

Incredible that love has the potential to subsume so many differences.

News update

Jury's still out
and I struggle
to keep working.

Drowning

He's read a book on asphyxiation
tells her to keep breathing
says suffocating's the worst way to go –  
eyes bugging out -
but there is a peace before death.

He doesn't know how much like a myth
this sounds to her
how she'll think of this promise
when her body wants to stop pulling in breath
how she wonders if she can get to this place of peace
then choose again to breathe
whether she can pull the peace back through her lungs
send it racing to all her twitching extremities -
her antsy feet,
the yearning at the edges of her calves.

The silence of all but her breath
announces his absence
in a way echoed by the messages he's stopped sending,
and she imagines his fingers occupied now
typing code into another woman's elbow
the small of her back
her toe pads providing the alphabet for his sorrows.

She's deep now
and the tanks he filled
with recognition of her
are pulled down to dangerous levels
while the sails of his rescue ship
fill to billowing
racing in someone else's direction.

She paces herself to shallowness
conserves motion
chooses to face the bottom
that will be home for a while.

Strange that the ocean,
which makes so much noise,
is silent from within.
She thinks, perspective is everything,
but all she can hear is herself,
the roaring in her ears an illusion of effort.

Suspended, she wonders why she's here,
but the fish flashing by have no answers.
What else does that book say about death?
He never told her, and now he's too far away to tell her
and anyway, that's why she's here

in this metaphorical sea of silence
that sounds so much like her past
she confuses it for her future.
Understanding, they say, comes in waves,
and hers reaches crescendo just as she realizes,
there's nothing to do but float,
notice what's beautiful as it passes by,
and be thankful for each breath that sustains
the last of her efforts at love.

Grace

Just give it 5 weeks
and he’ll fall
hook
line
and sinker --
sinking her
to new lows
fresh blows
baby-breathing
themselves
from cheek to cheek
as she turns them
one
after
another
faced with his promises
that become her test.

And the line?
It snakes
around the block
for the double feature
star-studded bill:
the young star rising
and the seasoned leading man --
her father
fresh-faced from the junket
still acting this play
that long ago
changed casts
and left Broadway
for off off off Broadway
somewhere
on the right or wrong side
of her bed.

And the hook?
She still looks for it
in the soft flesh
of her cheek
where it inches its way
toward digestion
as first she eats
and then is eaten
by the monster
that lurks
just out of reach
of the shore.

On the sixth week
she’ll rest
alone
worrying the stone
that eclipsed her mountain
wondering again
how many times
this feature will play
across her face
what message waits for her
beneath the credits
rolling their way across hills
surrounding the lake
where locks nest
and hatch keys
that will open her
like the jaws
of the whale that housed Jonah
in preparation for his turning point --
God’s face revealing itself
as his test.

Life Thoughts

Isn't it strange how we move into and out of philsophical periods?

I guess I'm neck deep in a moment of life-introspection. Feels good, I guess. Surreal but good.

Camus said -- or was it Sartre? -- that life was experienced in a spiral -- you're always circling the same shit, just at different levels of integration. Whoever it was, I'm sure he said it a little more gracefully than that.

It's all familiar and yet disconcertingly new -- because I'm in a different place than I've ever been before in terms of perspective, yet the landscape is the same.

I keep getting overwhelmed at all there is to do, as though if I can just get over the hump it will all be okay. The myth of the hump. There is no hump! More exactly, there is no OVER the hump, because life just continues to pile up in all the indiscriminate moments.

The older I get, the faster life moves. I remember being an undergraduate and NOT being able to understand why so many philosophers wrote about time and space. Come on, guys, I wanted to say, it's just time! Just space! They're just the background for our lives; they don't change. No matter how old you are, it's all just minutes and days and months and years. It's neighborhoods and cities and countries and one world. Now, though, I wonder why no one's written anything SATISFYING about space and time that explains what the hell is happening all of a sudden! Why don't MORE philosophers write about space and time? And write about it more pragmatically! I need HELP.

I was at the homage to the petroglyphs this weekend at the soon-to-be-terminated termination of Paseo del Norte as it transitions into the National Park that has been a sacred space for Native peoples for millenia, as evidenced by the layers upon layers of religious art and symbols. An elder spoke about this latest battle lost. He reminded us that the earth will go one no matter what we do to it. That the signs aren't good, and we'll soon see disasters piling up on themselves. It's time to plant and store our food for the coming storms.

But he also said this: Don't forget to enjoy your life. Live and be happy. No one of us, nor any one generation, can fight all the fights to be fought. Part of the battle is adding your personal joy to the balance of the world. Rilke said, "joyfully add yourself and cancel the count."

"And the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -T.S. Eliot

Searching for the source of grace

I've got a lot to remember.

I heard this week that I must work to be more gentle, which really means to allow myself to have more fun, to be softer, to be touched by softness. This from an unlikely pairing of sources, whose distinct emotional timbre allowed me to hear the message in stark concert that resolves in stereo.

Part of this art lies in not forcing your life to happen but rather letting it wash over your awareness and feel simply ... graced. Feeling gratitude for grace.

Here to help me remember, some lines from my ole poet standby, T.S. Eliot. A hard man whose words somehow soften me:

From Four Quartets:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and love and hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
...
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well

From The Wasteland:
Shantih shantih shantih
(The peace that passes understanding.)

Full Circles and Circles

Mikaela says:
So it appears I'm in the poetry scene again. You might say, of course, look how hard you worked for the National Poetry Slam event in Albuquerque in August! And you'd be right. The amount I was willing to pour into that event does indicate my dedication to poetry in general and performance poetry in Albuquerque in particular.

But I still felt like an outsider. A visitor dropping in from the past.

But this week an old poetry friend from the time of my first forays into performance poetry was the visitor dropping in from MY past. He's probably the only person in the world who remembers being witness to the first and only time I slammed. He even remembers the poems I used and one of the lines in particular -- a slutty line, he concedes -- but a great line nonetheless.

Sitting in the Frontier with old and new poetry friends, I was struck with an overwhelming realization: I am one of them. Maybe not a performer, but a poet. A thinker. An appreciator of their art. And a friend.

All of a sudden, I'm seeing more poetry -- living more poetry -- than I have in a long, long time.

And it feels right for my life. That I've been away a long time and now have something more to offer.

We're starting to talk about yearly events -- large-scale events -- that I will help coordinate. How exciting! An end to my academic career, and the start of a life balancing work in neighborhood communities with work in the poetry community.

Do you see? Do you see how grace allows us to see the plans in the chaos of our lives?

Welcome to the circle.

Mucking around in it

The past has thickened into a fog that cuts off my perspective yet again.

These issues...these questions about how to balance the focus on what I need and what a boy needs -- moving forward with my own work and leaving room for intimacy... they're all wrapped up in two traumas from my past -- my father and the man who broke my life into before and after.

Although these things are to some extent discrete, they bleed into every other relationship. Some more than others.

Life presents me with an opportunity to heal through repetition. This time, I have more stability, but the circumstances are the same: Meeting a boy with a broken heart, he falls in love despite himself, but he's still conflicted, she comes back into the picture, there's a decision point, and because I am the ideal and she is real, the choice is always clear: He goes with the King's Daughter 'cause Aphrodite was never his and he could never live up to a god.

Yet, I'm not a god. Just a girl with a father who built a big black hole where love should be.

And being alone is safe. Being codependent is easy. The rest is academic.

Defending the Defense

Locked and loaded. Date set. Shotgun procured, and I am wed to the thesis.

The committee is signed on, belted in, and I have yet to belt one back. And won't until February 3, after which it will all seem a bad, bad dream.

Okay, it's not nearly that bad, but despite the fact that February is a matter of blinks away, I have no idea how everything that must get done between here and then will happen. Of course, I do. One step at a time. Hopping from rock to rock with blinders on inbetween so that I don't fright like a skittish horse.

Despite my outright terror, today went great. The committee met and feasted (and I do mean feasted) and talked through the data, the story, the methods. And for the most part, I felt a strong sense of what I'm doing, what it means, how it will get done. The problem is that it's too big and scary to carry around in my head all at once, so I can only think about it in tiny pieces, which leaves me feeling scared that I don't have the big picture. But today, for an hour and a half of grace with people I trust and value, who genuinely want me to succeed and want to help make it easier (or at least less tortuous), I knew what it all meant and what I had to do.

Tonight, with library late notices and recalls piling up like newspapers on a hermit's porch, I'm feeling the pressure still. But it's okay. It will get done.

It's a good thesis.

A good process.

A good committee.

And life again is filled with grace.

Grading Done -- finally

So 8 hours later, grading is done.

Oh my god! The portfolios took at least 20 minutes each, and there are 38 students. The worse the grammar was, the longer it took. I have some ESL students, so you can imagine how long those took.

Don't get me wrong, part of the reason they took so long was because I really enjoy spending time with each student, reading their ideas, and peeking inside their understanding of planning as a result of this class. There's a certain voyeuristic satisfaction, not to mention pedagogical benefits. But in terms of me getting time to work on the thesis, holy god. UNBELIEVABLE how long this took. I should have totaled the hours, but it's gotta be in the "days" category.

I'm pretty wiped tonight, and I still have to prepare "Grade" sheets, so I think I'll do that tonight while watching a movie, and start fresh tomorrow with thesis maps.

Sigh.

Never quite as you plan, but still, I feel really good getting this major task done.

It will all be alright. It has to be!

Meeting thesis committee member Tuesday, so lots to do between now and then. And reading friends' theses, tomorrow, too. Yikes! The other Ms are getting close. Very exciting for them. Very sad for me.

Such is life.

Onward and upward.

Passion for Landscape

Alf Simon, director of the Landscape Architecture program at UNM, shared his 5 reasons for sustaining a passion about Landscape at an all-school assembly that showcased a speaker from each of the school’s 3 programs. Alf was so eloquent and moving that I got a copy of his list to share.

5 minutes and 5 things that I love about landscape architecture

by Alf Simon

Presented at an All-School Assembly, School of Architecture and Planning, University of New Mexico

October 25, 2005

1. Landscape the idea

§ Landscape (not to be confused with landscaping or plants) is a continuous cultural and environmental project

§ People and landscape transform and shape each other over time

§ Landscape and people sustain and reveal each other

2. Landscape is dynamic

§ The cycles of landscape range from minute to minute, hourly, daily, monthly, yearly and so on. It is fruitless to try and freeze a landscape in time

§ Process and form is the text of landscape

3. Therefore, landscape is about constant change, and the architecture of landscape is an architecture of transformation, change and uncertainty. That, to me, is exciting.

4. Even when you dream your dream takes place somewhere, and that place, that landscape that you conjure up in your unconscious, is absolutely interdependent with whatever crazy events are unfolding. The landscape of the conscious world is also interdependent with our movements, actions and values – with our lives; and that is why it is so important to make good landscapes that support, reinforce and inspire us.

5. The architecture of landscape, both as idea and as place, has the power to move and inspire more than anything that I have experienced.

These are 5 reasons why I love landscape architecture.

Heading to the weekend

So I made it through a tough week. Tonight: the last of the grading. Tomorrow: a play -- Clive Barker's Frankenstein in Love at the Vortex. Local performance poet Danny Solis is the lead, local columnist and personality Gene Grant is in it, as is Eric Bodwell. Some of my favorite ABQ boys!

I feel put through the ringer, and although I've spent all week cursing teaching and all it entails (grading, preparation, reading shit that' s not for my thesis), it's also been the source of ego boosts this week, too. Tuesday was a lecture/discussion on Transportation Planning -- of which I know next to nothing. Most of what I know I got from reading their textbook (through the prism of my other interests, of course!). The only advantage I have is that I'm a better student than my students. Otherwise? I'd be lost for sure. Thursday was a lecture/discussion on Community Development -- of which I know next to nothing (hmmm...noticing a theme?). What I know I know from sporadic lectures in other classes and ... you guessed it ... the textbook.

But both classes went BEAUTIFULLY. Maybe because I didn't try to say too much (not that much TO say, really) or maybe because I had to think really quickly about what it was that I wanted them to know. Mostly, I wasn't afraid to extrapolate from the information my larger points about the role of government and the underlying values that should inform all our planning (and political) decisions.

And we had a public meeting in the North Valley for a planning process that's just getting started that I got to facilitate, only because my normal project manager had another meeting in Socorro. It went GREAT. I was so ON. There is nothing like facilitating a community meeting. It's almost better than teaching. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to tell you which was better. There's certainly less post-stress from teaching. The hard part about community meetings is the work that comes after to capture and use responsibly all the information you get.

Last night was a meeting with fellow poets to choose poems for a local anthology published by the Harwood. Wading through over 150 entries. Arguing about the merit of poems. What's new? What works and why? What speaks to you? What's too important to leave out? What is lost if not included? What will only do a disservice to itself by being included among other poems that are sure to overshadow it and render it flimsy at best? SO FUN. Talking and laughing and advocating and putting your foot down and knowing when to let go. Mostly just reveling in being one of several poets supporting other poets through love of their poetry.

So this was a professional development week, disparate though it still seems to be. And now? Now time for grading and then THESIS ALL WEEKEND LONG. And the break has actually wet my appetite to get back into the mix. I actually want to do the map analysis to see what my data actually show. The story will uncover itself this weekend, and then all I have to do is write it up! Holy god let it go quickly.

All this time feels positively decadent. Now I just have to not waste it.

Turning corners

But today it seems doable. Fog clearing a little. A little.

Last night was a public meeting whereI actually got to do some facilitation. I can't even describe what a rush it is to lead community discussion. It feels like gathering power, focusing it in a prism, and unleashing it to tie people together in the cords of their own shared interest. Picture the scene from Little Mermaid where Ursula the Sea Witch stirs the water to create this huge maelstrom (my word of the week) that sucks in power and creates one swirl out of disparate elements.

Yeah, like that. Only instead of doing it for my own self-interest, it's in the interest of community. Community vision and action.

I just keep hoping to clear things away, clear time for thesis. But it's not happening, so I have to change the mindset and just do a little bit at a time. It takes so much mental energy to actually work on it that it hardly seems worth it for just a half-hour. That's the issue at the moment.

If I can get all the papers graded by tomorrow (hardly doable, by the way), then I can really spend the entire weekend on thesis. Maybe even finish with the maps by Monday and do a write up in time to share it with my committee.

I have a hard deadline of Nov. 8 to have things as pulled together as I can, and well, it's not looking good.

When will this END? Sooner if I work on it, I realize. Oh the paradox! Someone please send me some strength! I'm drowning over here!

from deep in the afternoon

Feeling underwater.

I cannot believe my life this week. So surreal.

I'm floating and disconnected and panicked all at once.

Teaching went well today, but I have no idea how. I didn't know what I would say until about a half-hour before, and even as the class was going along, I had no idea how it would play out. It turned out perfectly. The timing was divine. Asked my last question with 5 minutes to go. Made my last point with a minute to spare.

Isn't that weird?

But in the meantime managed to piss off one student enough for her to contact the Chair of our Department and ask for intervention.

Hella week. I tell you!

Public meeting tonight. Then more grading.

Poetry meeting tomorrow night. Then more grading.

I thought I would have a guest lecturer Thursday, but he just cancelled, so now I have to plan for Thursday's class, too. Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

And all I want to do is go to Juarez!

But I haven't TOUCHED my thesis in weeks, and I'm having a major meeting with committee member next week, so, not looking good for bubbles.

Pop pop pop.

Rainy check? Splashed hopes? Bleeding fantasies?

I want to scream and sink into the growing hole in my chest. Can't decide which would be more satisfying.

I just need TIME. Where can you buy extra?

Connection vs. Oneness

I just want to make the small but crucial distinction that while I do believe in connection, I do NOT believe that everything is "one" in the sense that "we're all connected, so why can't we just get along?" I think diversity remains critical to connectivity; otherwise, it's all just uniform. I think it takes a big leap of faith and strong moral stance to understand how we can be connected to un-like things and people. Advocating oneness is too ... totalizing and profoundly disrespectful of the uniqueness of each living, breathing, and non-living or breathing thing. We're made up of atoms, and beneath that connected by cosmic strings, but we add up to different people, individual stars, and crazy-real viruses that all share this universe equally.

It's the difference between acceptance of additive reality and imposition of reductive reality. Viva la difference!

Listening, Connection, and Community Design

So a while ago, I started my philosophical treatise on connection -- how connection is really the moral standard because it reflects the reality of the cosmos. It's gravity. It's chemical bonds. It's storytelling and love and family and community. All those things.

Today, reading Planning in the Face of Power by John Forester (a classic text, by the way), as he described the difference between listening and hearing, I made the connection that even this distinction is really at its heart a moral as well as practical reliance on -- connectedness.

You grant someone a hearing. It's institutional. You separate them from you. Their words fall upon your ears, and you make of them what you will. Listening means entering into relationship with the speaker. Meeting them halfway. Acknowledging your relationship in order that you may understand not just their words but their meaning. Forester advocates this kind of listening as the basis of good planning practice but also as essential community building, as well as engaging fully in all our relationships, personal as well as professional.

Zooming out a little, I see that this kind of engagement, this meeting halfway, this commitment to connection, is what I described below that leads to compounding interest of goodwill and good energy.

Happily, Forester's distinction serves as the basis of community design as "making sense together," which solves my biggest thesis problem, which I thought was, how can you plan a space for all these different identities? What would it possibly look like, and how can I know? According to my advisor, and now Forester, there is no prescriptive aesthetic or physical element -- there must not be. The process must be open and inclusive, and the design falls out of that earnest interaction and conversation. The design process models and begins to foster the very type of community interaction that the space should be able to support. So there.

It's all connected. QED.

Struggling to ride the wave

I had some momentum. I was writing. Things were shaping up. There's still momentum, I guess, but I'm experiencing this strange but familiar phenomenon that creeps up when things are going well. When your energy is good, it acts as this positive force-field, calling other good things to it. Suddenly you draw new connections; you have more juicy conversations with friends and acquaintances. You write poems. You meet new people. You find yourself in new situations even without trying. And it feels effortless, like when you're in the zone during a game. You're just ON.

So the trick is to let all these good things keep juicing you up while not letting you get distracted from your main goal. That's a tough optimum to achieve. Balance, people. Always about balance.

The opposite is also true, of course. When things are bad, you call negative energy to you, as well.

The difference between the good energy and bad energy always shifts as abruptly as a quantum leap -- it takes a tremendous surge to take you from one to the other. Usually from the outside.

But Newton explained that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted on from the outside. So my only job is to keep myself OUT of the way. To ride this wave of goodness for as long as it lasts. To pay attention while it carries me along, and to make the most of the productivity while it's almost effortless. Cause lord knows, it took a lot of energy to get here, and it will take a bunch to get back once I'm off track.

So ride the wave, baby. Ride it hard.

Blissful weekend

No thinking this weekend. Lots of non-thinking. Sleep. No sleep. Bad tv. Eating out. Soy ice cream. Jordan almonds.

And a book. Freakonomics. Interesting read.

And poetry. Performance poetry.

And soccer. Watching soccer.

Housesitting. Enjoying housesitting. Doing nothing but housesitting. Literally sitting. In a house. Going nowhere.

Life this weekend was simple and sweet. Much needed silence. And no work.

Talking vs. Writing

So I had a great meeting today with my actual committee chair. We walked through the map analysis (tedious and long, but not hard, it turns out, although HIGHLY interpretive and analytical, which will be ... challenging) and then talked through my findings so far and the direction I think this whole thing is headed.

And here's the thing: I think I'm headed somewhere. Who knows how lost I will be tomorrow, especially when in the maze of writing minutiae, but for today, I know what I'm saying, and it makes sense. Lord halleluia. Praise the goddess.

I think it is amazing that when I think in outline form or even just tell the story of my thesis, it's all right there. It makes sense. If someone could just interview me in order to graduate, this would be a cakewalk.

Somehow, in the writing, all my fears find me. My brain is too quick for me, and as soon as I write a sentence, I think of 3 other ways to interpret it, or 3 contradictory examples, or 3 other offshoots that will each take pages to explain. And I'm suddenly overwhelmed and lost. I lose the narrative; I lose the point; and I lose my nerve. It's exhausting and infuriating and really really scary.

For the moment, I am hopeful. This weekend for map analysis. Next week for write-up and more theory research. Next weekend for more theory write-up. That will take me close -- very close -- to the tail end. I talked through the conclusion today and the thing that was stopping me dead in my tracks turns out to not be an issue at all! I love that. My chair simply made it disappear with the application of a different theorist. Just like that! Change the criteria, and you change everything. That's quantum reality for you!

I'm adding Kevin Lynch's performance criteria for place, which neatly sidesteps the flaw in urban design theory, such as New Urbanism, that proposes the way something looks as an answer for a real problem. Lynch says, the way it looks doesn't matter. What matters is accessibility, control, flexibility, fit and ... I can't remember the last one. So I don't HAVE to know what a space for different identities will look like. There is no such thing. What I have to propose is a process that recognizes different groups will have different needs and cultural uses of the space and that is structured in such a way as to elicit and include all the disparate voices and balance them in the design. Plug in Lynch's performance criteria, and you will be able to tell whether what you're proposing at the end will work well for the different groups. Viola! It's a conclusion.

It's coming, it's coming, it's coming! What was clogged is unstuck, and I resolve to stay elusively slippery and free.

The Strangest Dream

Last night was a rich night for dreaming. Did anyone else feel it?

I fell asleep looking at the moon; maybe that set the mood.

First there was some community event -- vast fair grounds -- and a nervousness that I might not meet up with whoever I was there to see. It was a feeling of teen-ness, that unsureness of where you're supposed to be and a hyper-awareness of how you must look. I had hooked up with a bad boy/spray-paint artist type, and I was excited to see him, but when a friend finally showed up, I snuck off with her instead and felt relieved.

A turn. We're in tents now. Lots of bodies lined up. It's night. I'm feeling discomfort, so I pickup a toothpaste tube looking thing and squeeze whatever it is in my mouth. It's like power gel with chunks of stringy ginger. I chew gingerly and try quickly to swallow. I'm telling someone about it, laughing, but as I look at the tube, I see you can "dial" the medicine you want. I'd taken whatever was dialed last. I look closer. Fertility enhancer. Whoa boy! I laugh, but as I scan the list, I see there's also some natural version of RU-186. My stomach flips pancakes. I sink to my knees and begin to cry, rocking back and forth. No one understands, and I cannot explain. I get hugs. Women continue their lives around me. I'm still on the floor in the utility room off the kitchen of some shared girls house.

I wake up late for work, glad to worry about something real.

Seattle

The water only stopped at dead-end streets,
rivers hidden beside valley slums
like convicts sheltered from the rain.

Traffic ran over the city
like flash-floods in the ocean.

I tried to see my future peeking out
like Cascades behind low-slung clouds.

Instead, I found a path
through pine forests mold-blue lakes
and icicle mountains dripping down
to red arches in Moab’s desert.

All that I made and divested of myself
shared the space of one car
with the hot pants and fur-flurries of cat and dog –
friendship strewn behind
like broken yellow lines leading home.

Summer 2002

Procession

After independence day,
they're all labor days.
Try to keep breathing.

Chapter 2: Theory of Identity -- Sign and Place

Also incomplete (hmmm, sensing a pattern? Perspective, people! At least it's progress!) but gives a roadmap of where I'm headed and some language.

What can theorists tell us about this thing identity that the North Forth community wants? What are the strategies that can create the signs and symbols of community and those that will create the spaces that support community-building? In looking at the literature in various disciplines, what are the useful definitions that can help uncover potential avenues of action or possible dangers of application?

Several disciplines struggle with describing this intersection of identity and place. In addition to the planning literature, anthropology and geography also wrestle with the terms, with varying levels of emphasis on one or the other side. Anthropology tends to prioritize issues of community identity using the term “culture,” whereas geography emphasizes place. Sociologists and anthropologists both use the term “symbolic communities” in describing the way residents interact with and in place. Throwing sociology into the mix adds an emphasis on the effect on residents of the interaction between residents and a place.

Planners split their loyalty on this one, being interested in both the effects on the residents but also on the place. Community organizing literature prioritizes the residents, while urban design literature focuses on improvements to physical locations. More than the other disciplines, planning attempts to support and engender residents’ agency to effect change, usually by focusing on physical improvements to a place. While community organizing is an important and necessary prerequisite for community development, physical improvements can be a powerful motivating and reflective tool to make visible the organizing efforts of communities. Results are often more visible, immediate, and direct when focusing on specific changes to a place identified and prioritized by residents.

Cultural studies adds a strand of discussion of identity politics that helps to understand how various groups within a neighborhood interact – both in terms of how each individual is a member of multiple groups with multiplex identities and how these identities interact in space. Cultural theorists also add an awareness and explicitness about the differential of power and access that reflects the uneven playing field for different groups. Some have more resources than others and different power factors that improve their ability to assert their identity in space and plan to have spaces that reflect their identity.

While all of these disciplines touch on the elements needed to examine the 4^th Street and Montaño case, none of them alone offers definitions complete enough or relevant enough to be helpful in setting a course of action. Like a jigsaw puzzle, we must find the definition pieces that help illuminate the issues and put them together in order to see a picture of this place, the people who will use it, and steps toward action. In the end, we need to find a process that will open dialogue with disparate neighbors as they plan physical improvements that provide spaces for social interaction that over time can foster community and the possibility of shared identity through a decision-making process that includes – or at least invites – everyone to participate.

The term identity as used by North Forth residents has multiple conflated meanings that are complicated to parse out but that must be untangled in order to begin thinking of concrete actions to work toward the multiple embedded goals. Only by understanding what residents hope to achieve through “identity” can proposals be made for a process to get them there and outline next steps to take. Their meanings can be loosely categorized into two emphases: 1) identity as sign/symbol or artifact and 2) identity as places that become infused with identity by providing the forum for community interaction. The first emphasis encapsulates visual or interpretive ways that residents and outsiders will be able to “see” community identity. They are the visual artifacts of community than an anthropologist could use to study the community’s culture even if the people themselves were not present to interview. In design terms, communities create this kind of identity through a name or gateways that set off the community as distinct from the areas that surround it. The second emphasis describes identity through places that can encourage interactions among residents and support community activities.

In looking at these separate but necessarily overlapping emphases, several theoretical discourses can be useful. We will use the discussion of “symbolic community” in both anthropology and sociology to look at the sign/symbol element of identity and the social science term “spatial practice” to look at the place emphasis. We will then look to cultural studies’ discussion of “identity politics” to give us a hint as to how multiple cultural groups interact in these spaces and vie for the power to infuse them with representations of culture and use them to support their own cultural activities.

Identity as Symbol

Sociology provides a body of work that looks at how various communities understand the places they live, which one would hope could be reversed and applied in a prescriptive way to form communities where none currently exist. This discussion of “symbolic communities” involves both names and boundaries, which speaks to the first of our emphases of identity.

Sociologist Albert Hunter wrote an important book in the 1970s that explored how residents identify their communities. Specifically, he studied Chicago neighborhoods, which had become the premier example of a city made up of neighborhoods, mostly due to earlier efforts of sociologists from the University of Chicago, Burgess and Robert Park. These sociologists set the theoretical groundwork for what they called “natural” communities. They sent a team of sociologist students out into Chicago’s neighborhoods and performed interviews and surveys about their neighborhoods. Based on the data they collected, Burgess and Park created a map of Chicago that carved it into 75 (a nice, round number) neighborhoods. Every few years, they would send another team of students out to gather data in these neighborhoods again in order to compare it to their previous investigations. Hunter’s contribution to this field was to start the investigation over in order to test whether the same “natural” neighborhoods would emerge. What he found was a much messier picture of Chicago than Burgess and Park’s work ever showed.

In each of the communities, he interviewed 10 residents and asked them to name “their part” of Chicago and describe the boundaries. He also gathered detailed socio-economic information (race, ethnicity, age, occupation, etc.) about those he interviewed. While his work ended up contradicting much of Park and Burgess’ claims of “natural communities,” Hunter was much less concerned with showing up shoddy and unethical sociological methodology as he was in understanding how people understand their community identity. How can anyone tell when a community exists? How can residents tell? How can researchers tell?

While Burgess set out three identifying spheres that played out and sometimes overlapped in a community – one economic, one cultural, and one political, Hunter found that communities could be described with just two dimensions: one socio-cultural and one spatial. For the first dimension, he used the presence or absence of name as his indicator of identity, and for the second, he used residents’ descriptions of boundaries (Hunter 4).

Subsequent research by a professor from Columbia, Sudhir Venkatesh, uncovered evidence that Burgess and Park’s “natural” communities were not natural at all. The communities were defined based on easily extractable data and boundaries that allowed easy study in subsequent years. The communities were as much an artifact of sociological methodologies as they were residents’ perceptions, if not more. Further, Venkatesh showed that the persistent identity of these communities was a result of a protracted campaign by the researchers in the interest of long-term study. After they carved Chicago up into neighborhoods, the sociologists approached city officials and business directories to lobby them to use the neighborhood names in their study. Their efforts were successful. Even to the present day, the Chicago white pages are organized by neighborhood, many with the original Park and Burgess names, although the boundaries have shifted somewhat. In addition, the sociologies approached the U.S. Census Bureau and lobbied that it collect information according to their boundaries, effectively institutionalizing their work and providing an on-going source for data and comparison across time (Venkatesh 2001).

Taken together, in addition to cementing Chicago as the birthplace of neighborhood study in sociology, Park and Burgess’ efforts literally changed the political landscape of Chicago. Politicians had neighborhood interests to represent where literally no recognized neighborhoods existed before. Not only were these neighborhoods made up of real people whose interests were consolidated into a name – sometimes names chosen for them by Park or Burgess – but they had regularly collected data attached to them that could be used to show progress or decline. Depending on the circumstance, this could be used to the advantage of residents, politicians, or business interests.

DISCUSSION OF NAME


DISCUSSION OF BOUNDARY


OKAY, BUT DOES IT WORK IN REVERSE?
(Discussion of relevance to 4th and Montano case)

If we put boundaries into place with gateways or other physical design measures, does that mean they work to create place? Create community where none exists? Or is fractured?

And if not, or if it's too problematic or too disparate from goals that are really more about place than identity, what if we start with a focus on PLACE?

Identity as Place

The seminal theorists in this discussion are French social scientists interested in space, culture, and how the two interact. Foucault, de Certeau, Lefebvre, and Bourdieu lay the theoretical groundwork to look at how communities interact in space to form culture, reflect culture, fight for power, and make meaning. In Lefebvre’s terms, “spatial practices” are the individual and cultural way residents use spaces. In a very real sense, spaces are only as real as the interactions that happen in them. A sidewalk isn’t really a sidewalk if no one can or does walk on it. A parking lot is working as something other than a parking lot if community festivals take place there – festivals that simultaneously build community in an active way and also reflect community that already exists. The two emphases of identity noted above match Lefebvre’s distinction between “representations of space” and “spaces of representation.” Representations of space would be gateways or names for an area that signify the community they reference. Spaces of representation are the places that allow for dialogue about community and the interaction that constitutes it.

A huge body of work comes from this theoretical foundation, including the work of geographers, Edward Soja primary among them. In planning, one thread of theoretic discourse centers on the term “spatial practice,” including Helen Liggitt and David Perry.

While these theorists do talk about power, and therefore it should be possible to apply their discussion to real-world situations, in which various cultural groups within a community have various levels of power in terms of political access, economic resources, cultural resources, traditions of community interaction and discussion, education, and racial stratification, how that actually plays out on the ground and in the design process for physical spaces is more difficult to discern. To explore how various cultural groups exert and contest power and representation in community spaces we will need to look to cultural studies’ discussion of identity politics, although again, this discussion tends to be analytical and not prescriptive. We will hope that the analysis can be applied in the 4^th Street case to ensure that multiple identities can engage in a process that recognizes multiplex identities, cultural identities, and place identities as part of an active dialogue and design program.

YES, BUT WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

The whole argument rails against modernist conception of representation of space but then can only stay in the realm of the academic. Get out of the academic and into specifics, where these relations are actually happening! As opposed to in the purely intellectual realm, where they’re NOT. Modernism is in the head on the paper. Postmodernism as presented here should start in the street. And if it’s still a paper theory only, then fuck it. Not useful!

One of the primary issues in evaluating their process and action plan is who’s been represented so far, and who will be represented in the future? How can you assure you’ll speak to the people who have access to that history/culture you want to “celebrate”?

How can you plan to represent a culture in a place moving forward?

§ Identity politics readings—space for identity can be made. Space is cultural. But the hole in the reading is don’t talk about what it looks like on the ground. Need a combo of anthropology/geography for that.

§ For physical aspect, we do have designers like New Urbanists that do certain things well. But universalist in their “humanism” that leaves out identity politics. Gendered, cultural spaces don’t factor in. Everyone will like it! Pedestrian friendly, but for whose feet? Tends to be agist and classist. Youthful yuppies, yes. Poor minority folks? not so much.

§ Successful/legitimate will be– cultural practices, community centers and meeting spaces, art spaces for LOCAL artists)

What are the dangers of trying to represent culture in physical space? (i.e. how will you know you’re doing it wrong?)

§ Disneyfication.

§ Valuing exterior more than interior (what these people will like)

§ Co-optation

§ Cultural appropriation (would involvement mitigate this?)

How will you know when you did it/doing it right?

§ Involvement. Know who there is to BE involved and then decide on an appropriate/acceptable measure

§ Spaces for cultural practices – know what people want and that there is space to accommodate. Don’t forget the NEW/ONGOING cultural development of this place as a community

§ Imagability. People from outside can recognize it. Distinguished from surrounding. Distinctive in the way you want it to be.

§ Community Use. Place works well for community. People like it. Use it. Walk on the streets. Know more of their neighbors. Have community events.

§ Lively Economy. Place works well to support level and types of business you want. 4^th Street is as lively as you want it to be and filled with people accessing it the way you want.

How do you do it?

§ Community Design Process – explain

What are some things that might come up?

§ Common things done?

Excuse my french

Bourdieu bores even god
Foucault’s faux-pas are for the birds
and de Certeau needs a breath mint with water chaser

French theorists in general
are foot soldiers
in a march

toward Antarctica
to bathe in liquid seas.
Need direction?

Follow the pointing fists
straight back to palm readers,
cause these boys?

They got nothing you need.