Sometimes I listen to The Urbanist on Monocle Radio when I’m puttering around my place, but generally speaking I don’t consume a lot of content in this format.
Part of this might be because I don’t have a commute (commuting sucks) and I don’t drive enough that I feel the need to fill my time with stimulating things.
Sometimes I also find it hard to do other meaningful things at the same time. I just want to sit and listen attentively. (That probably speaks to my multitasking abilities.)
But every now and then I feel like I should be taking more advantage of all the information embedded in podcasts.
So below are three that I’m going to try and listen to more often and that you might also enjoy. If you know of any great podcasts, please share them in the comment section below.
If you can’t see the embedded podcasts below, you’ll need to visit this blog post on the web.
Sometimes I listen to The Urbanist on Monocle Radio when I’m puttering around my place, but generally speaking I don’t consume a lot of content in this format.
Part of this might be because I don’t have a commute (commuting sucks) and I don’t drive enough that I feel the need to fill my time with stimulating things.
Sometimes I also find it hard to do other meaningful things at the same time. I just want to sit and listen attentively. (That probably speaks to my multitasking abilities.)
But every now and then I feel like I should be taking more advantage of all the information embedded in podcasts.
So below are three that I’m going to try and listen to more often and that you might also enjoy. If you know of any great podcasts, please share them in the comment section below.
If you can’t see the embedded podcasts below, you’ll need to visit this blog post on the web.
In 1933, the United States Congress created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). With foreclosures rising as a result of The Great Depression, the task of the agency was to provide new low-interest mortgages to both homeowners and private mortgage lenders. Between 1993 and 1936, the agency served about one million households.
By 1935, the parent company of the agency (the Federal Home Loan Bank Board) decided to initiate something called the “City Survey Program.” The idea was to look at local real estate trends – including the racial and ethnic composition of the country’s largest cities – in order to get a better understanding of how to manage all of these outstanding loans.
One outcome of this program was the creation of the HOLC’s infamous “residential security maps.” (Philadelphia’s is shown at the top of this post.)
These were maps that categorized city neighborhoods according to 4 grades. Grade A neighborhoods (green) were the best ones. They were ethnically homogenous and had room to be further developed. Grade B neighborhoods (blue) were the second-best ones. They were already completely developed, but were still considered desirable. Grade C neighborhoods (yellow) were starting to decline and showed an “infiltration of a lower grade population.” And finally, grade D neighborhoods were considered “hazardous” and colored in red. These neighborhoods had low homeownership rates, old crappy housing, and an “undesirable population”, which, at the time, largely referred to Jews and African Americans.
Some have argued that the HOLC and their “residential security maps” are what kicked off systematic mortgage discrimination in America’s inner city neighborhoods – later referred to as “redlining.” This was the practice of denying credit to people who lived in these undesirable neighborhoods (and even to real estate developers who wanted to build in these undesirable neighborhoods).
But University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Hillier has argued that these maps simply reflected the ethos of the time period. Using a sampling of HOLC mortgages, she found that 62% of them were issued to grade D (red) neighborhoods. The agency, itself, was not actually redlining in practice.
Furthermore, she also looked at private mortgages issued in Philadelphia between 1937 and 1950 and found that security grade rating actually had no impact on the total number of loans issued. She did, however, discover slightly higher interest rates for properties located near and in the bottom security grades.
All of this is to say that “redlining” is likely not the only culprit for inner city decay. There are other factors at play.
“Our preferred estimates suggest that white flight was responsible for 34 percent of the increase in segregation over the 1910s and 50 percent over the 1920s. Our analysis suggests that segregation would likely have arisen in American cities even without the presence of discriminatory institutions as a direct consequence of the widespread and decentralized relocation decisions of white urban residents.”
In other words, it wasn’t just mortgage discrimination; it was also just general discrimination. That actually makes a lot of sense, because, if you think about it, the former couldn’t have occurred without the latter being present.
Here’s how the research paper puts it (via CityLab):
“Policies that reduce barriers faced by blacks in the housing market may thus not prevent or reverse segregation as long as white households have the ability and desire to avoid black neighbors.”
Thanks to my friend Darren Davis, I just recently learned about something called The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize. Named after Singapore’s first Prime Minister, the prize is a biennial award that honors cities who have made, “outstanding achievements and contributions to the creation of liveable, vibrant and sustainable urban communities around the world.” Along with the prize comes $300,000 (Singapore Dollars), which is about $287,000 Canadian as of today. The 2016 Prize Laureate is Medellín, Colombia. Over the past two decades, the city has transformed itself from one of the most dangerous cities in the world to one that has become a model for social inclusion and urban innovation. Here is a video that talks about the transformation. It’s a bit cheesy, but it does provide a high-level overview of their urban initiatives. A lot of them will serve as a reminder about the importance of urban connectivity. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may also remember that my good friend Alex Feldman (VP at U3 Advisors) wrote a guest post about Medellín after he visited the city for the World Urban Forum almost two years ago. That post was called, What cities could learn from Medellín. It’s worth mentioning that the runners-up for this year’s World City Prize were Auckland, Sydney, Toronto, and Vienna. In the case of Toronto, our “far-from-ideal transit” was specifically called out as a negative. Thankfully we are now working on road pricing, which will provide additional funding for transit. ;) Image by Jorge Gobbi
In 1933, the United States Congress created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). With foreclosures rising as a result of The Great Depression, the task of the agency was to provide new low-interest mortgages to both homeowners and private mortgage lenders. Between 1993 and 1936, the agency served about one million households.
By 1935, the parent company of the agency (the Federal Home Loan Bank Board) decided to initiate something called the “City Survey Program.” The idea was to look at local real estate trends – including the racial and ethnic composition of the country’s largest cities – in order to get a better understanding of how to manage all of these outstanding loans.
One outcome of this program was the creation of the HOLC’s infamous “residential security maps.” (Philadelphia’s is shown at the top of this post.)
These were maps that categorized city neighborhoods according to 4 grades. Grade A neighborhoods (green) were the best ones. They were ethnically homogenous and had room to be further developed. Grade B neighborhoods (blue) were the second-best ones. They were already completely developed, but were still considered desirable. Grade C neighborhoods (yellow) were starting to decline and showed an “infiltration of a lower grade population.” And finally, grade D neighborhoods were considered “hazardous” and colored in red. These neighborhoods had low homeownership rates, old crappy housing, and an “undesirable population”, which, at the time, largely referred to Jews and African Americans.
Some have argued that the HOLC and their “residential security maps” are what kicked off systematic mortgage discrimination in America’s inner city neighborhoods – later referred to as “redlining.” This was the practice of denying credit to people who lived in these undesirable neighborhoods (and even to real estate developers who wanted to build in these undesirable neighborhoods).
But University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Hillier has argued that these maps simply reflected the ethos of the time period. Using a sampling of HOLC mortgages, she found that 62% of them were issued to grade D (red) neighborhoods. The agency, itself, was not actually redlining in practice.
Furthermore, she also looked at private mortgages issued in Philadelphia between 1937 and 1950 and found that security grade rating actually had no impact on the total number of loans issued. She did, however, discover slightly higher interest rates for properties located near and in the bottom security grades.
All of this is to say that “redlining” is likely not the only culprit for inner city decay. There are other factors at play.
“Our preferred estimates suggest that white flight was responsible for 34 percent of the increase in segregation over the 1910s and 50 percent over the 1920s. Our analysis suggests that segregation would likely have arisen in American cities even without the presence of discriminatory institutions as a direct consequence of the widespread and decentralized relocation decisions of white urban residents.”
In other words, it wasn’t just mortgage discrimination; it was also just general discrimination. That actually makes a lot of sense, because, if you think about it, the former couldn’t have occurred without the latter being present.
Here’s how the research paper puts it (via CityLab):
“Policies that reduce barriers faced by blacks in the housing market may thus not prevent or reverse segregation as long as white households have the ability and desire to avoid black neighbors.”
Thanks to my friend Darren Davis, I just recently learned about something called The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize. Named after Singapore’s first Prime Minister, the prize is a biennial award that honors cities who have made, “outstanding achievements and contributions to the creation of liveable, vibrant and sustainable urban communities around the world.” Along with the prize comes $300,000 (Singapore Dollars), which is about $287,000 Canadian as of today. The 2016 Prize Laureate is Medellín, Colombia. Over the past two decades, the city has transformed itself from one of the most dangerous cities in the world to one that has become a model for social inclusion and urban innovation. Here is a video that talks about the transformation. It’s a bit cheesy, but it does provide a high-level overview of their urban initiatives. A lot of them will serve as a reminder about the importance of urban connectivity. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may also remember that my good friend Alex Feldman (VP at U3 Advisors) wrote a guest post about Medellín after he visited the city for the World Urban Forum almost two years ago. That post was called, What cities could learn from Medellín. It’s worth mentioning that the runners-up for this year’s World City Prize were Auckland, Sydney, Toronto, and Vienna. In the case of Toronto, our “far-from-ideal transit” was specifically called out as a negative. Thankfully we are now working on road pricing, which will provide additional funding for transit. ;) Image by Jorge Gobbi
