When a fence is more than a fence

Someone in my hometown, a leafy, liberal New Jersey suburb, put up a fence. It's a nice fence: Americana white pickets that curve gently, rising from two feet high to a little more than four feet where they meet the solid fenceposts. It stands at the property lines of a beautiful Victorian-style house. I went to a zoning board meeting to have it removed.

My problem was not the fence itself. It was the symbolic communication of the fence. Several years ago, my town required in its zoning ordinance that front-yard fences be no more than two feet high and placed no closer to the street than the building setback line. (The setback line is the marker that tells you how close your building can be to the street or your neighbors' property.) The purpose was also symbolic: to let residents and visitors know that the town is safe and welcoming. Fences send a different message: This is my property. Stay away.

Another reason: The fence was built illegally. The property owner's representative said his client was given permission by the local building official to put up the fence, but offered no proof. If the zoning board allowed the property owner to keep the fence, the board would implicitly be sending the message that it's better in our town to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Obsessing over rules and regulations may be unwise and unhealthy -- except to lawyers -- but sometimes you risk compounding a mistake by letting it go.
In his application to the zoning board, the applicant said that the fence was for safety and privacy. But this didn't make much sense. Neighbors said there were never any problems with intruders walking on the property. (A two-foot fence is not going to deter anyone anyway.) The fence has large gaps where you would expect gates to be, as well as gaps between fence posts and trees on the property. So it seems that the fence is meant to say: This is my property. Stay away.

After objections to the fence by several neighbors, the zoning board denied the applicant's request.

This story is not really about a fence. It is about the strength of objects in our built environment to be symbols. Symbols are physical objects (like fences) or conceptual objects (like logos) that convey information about the values, beliefs, customs, etc. of a place or organization.

Symbols are powerful because they give us a shorthand way of processing information about complex systems. We use symbolic communication every day in our gestures and rituals, and often convey symbolic stature on the objects in our offices and communities.

Imagine that your office is ordering new chairs. Everyone gets the same type of chair, except for the office director. Now the chairs aren't just furniture. They're symbols of the difference in status between the office director and everyone else.

Of all the land use disciplines, urban design and place marketing are most focused on symbolic communication. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that streetscaping, historic preservation and other urban design issues are just "decoration" and luxuries. These people tend to think that market forces will ensure quality design, or that no one should be told "what to do" with their property. This is an expensive mistake. People would rather go and live where they can make sense of place; in other words, where the symbols provide clearer communication.

Of course, urban design can be used as a tool for excluding people or trying to control social behavior.  That is why in an increasingly diverse world, we have to be more mindful of the symbols, and the people who determine the rules about them, in our communities.  Take a look at your community's historic preservation, zoning, and design review boards.  How much diversity do you see there?

So there has to be a balance between the community's desire to provide some sense of order and individuals' desires to express themselves and feel they have a stake in the community. In this case, the fence sent a message that was wholly inconsistent with the community's intended messages of openness and friendliness. That's why no matter how nice the fence was, it was in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. If you find yourself on an architectural review board that is deciding what colors should be allowed on residential properties, please do more than look at what colors you like. Think about who likes those colors and what they symbolize about the community.

   

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share? 

Have a question that you would like to see answered here?  

Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

Minimizing mistakes under pressure

While rushing to do other things recently, I sent out an email newsletter with the wrong title on it.  It was the kind of simple mistake that can make you look bad.  Someone might think: “If they can’t something as simple as an email headline right, how can we trust them on the big issues?”

As we are pressured to work with fewer resources and more stress, we’re more likely to make mistakes.  When they happen at work and are visible to others, they tend to reflect on our departments, divisions, organizations, or even fields.

Trying to stop every mistake can be time-consuming and expensive.  Here are some tips for cost-effectively minimizing mistakes under pressure:

*When reviewing statistical information, or any document with lots of facts and figures (such as a budget), do a random check on every third or fourth fact on random pages.  If you find errors this way, there’s a good chance there are more in the document.  You might be able to also find the cause of the errors (such as calculating figures from the wrong column).

*If a “fact” doesn’t sound right, flag it.  You might be surprised by your research, but more often the data will support your intuition.

*Double-check the proper names of all places and people in documents.  Readers tend to be sensitive about these errors, and critics tend to see more than just simple mistakes in them.

*To mark that a fact has been double-checked, write CQ, ZD, <>, or some combination of characters that normally do not appear together in English.  The notation indicates to the final editor that the fact has been verified.  The notations can be easily removed through find and replace features in office programs.  Even if a notation gets published, it will look like nothing more than a harmless typographical error.

*Walk away from your document for at least an hour.  Forget about it – literally, but just for that hour.  This way you can come back to it with a fresh set of eyes.  When you have worked too hard and too long on a document, you tend to see what you expect to see, rather than what is there. 

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Principles of culturally competent planning and placemaking

Cultural competency defined

Cultural competency is a set of knowledge and skills to help individuals engage more effectively in culturally diverse environments.  Culture has many definitions, but in the realm of social sciences, it usually refers to a shared set of beliefs of behaviors exhibited by a distinctive group.  (Schein, 1992; Rice, 2008)  Culture is manifested in many ways, including through language and non-verbal communication, customs, religious exercise,  and bodies of knowledge passed on by mentors and teachers.  Objects, symbols and other elements of the physical environment reflect cultural values.  The red brick (or stamped red concrete) sidewalks in the suburbs of New York are not simply design features.  They are meant to evoke a romanticized image of what many residents might consider a simpler and more orderly period in American history.

Culture also serves as a touchstone to help individuals connect themselves to the larger world.  When someone introduces him or herself as “I’m a ___________,” that person is connecting to a group that has a distinct cultural identity.  This aspect of culture is particularly important to community-level urban design, in which physical elements of a place are either destroyed or preserved.

When cultures intersect in groups, organizations, or societies, there are dominant and subordinate cultures.  Dominant cultures tend to have the greatest array of political, financial, or other capital.  One of the privileges of dominance is to establish the frame of reference for the collective. Their cultural view becomes the “correct” view while diverging perspectives of subordinate cultures are seen as odd or deviant.  Typically, members of the dominant culture are unaware of their biases.  When that happens, they become less culturally competent.

This helps explain why multiple cultures persist, even as societies work to become more inclusive.  For people who feel disenfranchised, their group identity provides a source of validation and empowerment.  Where a society or organization imposes restrictions on individuals, culture provides an opportunity for individuals to reach their higher level psychological needs – personal growth, self-actualization (being ‘all that you can be’) and transcendence (helping others meet their higher level needs). (Huitt, 2004)  Historically, churches in African-American communities provided such opportunities.  A man who because of racism could not reach his personal or professional goals in the larger, White dominated society, could become a deacon or other position or prestige within the church.  It is not surprising, that Fox News, known for its conservative and libertarian commentators, saw ratings jump in the first few weeks after Barack Obama became the United States President. (Shea, 2009) 

The White (Non-Hispanic) American urban planner who says “If they don’t show up at the charrette, they don’t care”1 epitomizes this lack of cultural competence.  The planner bases his judgment on his own frame of reference:  If you care about your place, you participate in civic life.  The planner had not considered that some stakeholders may feel intimidated or uncomfortable expressing themselves among design professionals. 

Because all people have multiple cultural characteristics that impact the way they experience and view the world, all groups have some amount of cultural diversity.  Typically, discussions on cultural competency focus on engagement with individuals of different genders, races, ethnicities and sexual orientation.  Less discussed, but equally important, are differences among professional and sectoral cultures – such those between a public sector urban planner and a private sector civil engineer. 

Cultures are dynamic.  Individuals are challenged to rethink their beliefs and behaviors in light of changes in the environment and within themselves, especially as they work to integrate their multiple identities.  So, like defining the waves in river, it is impossible to accurately know every culture.  

“It would be naïve to think that one could know the world from someone else’s shoes,” Umemoto says (2005: 187)  Nor is it realistic to think that one could become conversant in an unlimited number of cultural paradigms.  It is not unrealistic, however, to create the foundation for social learning that emphasizes multiple epistemologies2 within planning processes.”

Cultural competency focuses on three dimensions: awareness, beliefs and behaviors

Awareness is the ability to recognize and understand the reasons for the actions of individuals from one’s own and others’ cultures. Awareness elements include:                      

•  Self-awareness.  Specifically, the individual recognizes that his or her own perceptions and ability to get new information are limited by his or her own experiences and prejudices.  Individuals who are self-aware have a better understanding of how the world sees them, and how they in turn see the world.  
  
  
•  Awareness of others’ cultural beliefs and behaviors.  This also includes an awareness of the social, economic and other environmental factors that maintain or change cultural beliefs and behaviors. 
  
  
•  Awareness of power relationships among dominant and subordinate cultures, and how they manifest themselves in beliefs, behaviors, and the physical elements of a society.
  
  
•  Awareness that individuals are both distinct and have multiple cultural identities.  Every individual is a member of multiple groups – gender, race, ethnicity and profession.  The experience of having multiple identities, as well as innate characteristics – such as physical strength and intelligence – causes individuals to have beliefs and engage in behaviors that depart from the stereotype of a particular culture.
  
  
•  Awareness that because of the complexities and dynamics of multiple cultures, organizations and individuals are never fully culturally competent.  Cultural competency for individuals, groups and societies is a continual learning process.

Beliefs are the judgments about the world that shape how individuals determine what information is valid and what sources are reliable.  Individuals rationalize their behaviors through their beliefs.  Culturally competent beliefs include:

•  Valuing differences among people and groups.  Culturally competent individuals do not just tolerate difference – they seek it out because they believe that diversity will lead to better outcomes.
  
  
•  Believing that individuals should suspend judgment when examining the beliefs and behaviors of other cultures.  This is not to say that individuals should tolerate or support every behavior of every culture, but that every one should be assessed before it is evaluated.
  
  
•  Believing that individuals act rationally according to their own sets of cultural beliefs.  Individuals will act to get what they value most.  The challenge to the culturally competent individuals is to understand the value structures and hierarchies of people who differ from them.

Behaviors are actions that flow from awareness and beliefs.  Individuals demonstrate their cultural competency through a variety of behaviors, including:                   

•  Communicating effectively across cultural boundaries.  This refers to the ability to communicate effectively with others (both sending and receiving messages).
  
  
•  Seeking diversity in problem-solving and group activities. 
  
  
•  Taking actions to promote cultural competency in others.

Cultural competency and placemaking

Where cultural competency matters most is in the area of placemaking.

Placemaking is the set of processes by which a geographic area becomes more than the sum of its parts.  New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco are major American cities with the same economic and social elements.  But they are felt by many people to be different “places.”  They have distinct meanings and cultural identities.  

Neill (2004:112) identifies three key elements of placemaking:

“The first of these involves the functional city of jobs and services extending to environmental well-being.  It is strongly influenced by economic positioning and social class.  Civic identification and the feeling of stakeholding involves expressions of ‘pride in place’ and has a relationship to how local place-making decisions are made.  Such processes can entail varying degrees of fairness, equality and inclusiveness. Cultural attachment to place goes beyond the city as a container or ‘theater’ for social activity.  It involves an emotionally charged spatial imagination extending from the personal to the various collective manifestations, including spiritual and symbolic identifications.  This often involves the endowment of space with deep meaning.”

Places reflect more than the collective values of a culture.  They represent the structure of values (Lynch, 1981).  This structure includes:

•  Strong values – What a society (through its decision-makers) values most.  Objects and other resources that represent strong values get more prominence and support from a society.
  
  
•  Weak values – Other values reflected, to a lesser extent than strong values.
  
  
•  Wishful values – Stated values, which are not well-represented in a place.  
  
  
•  Hidden values – Unstated values that are well represented in a place.

Consider a city in which the master plan calls for increased equity through more affordable housing.   Only about half of the amount of housing called for in the plan is built.  The units are in isolated and undesirable pockets of the city.  Residents of the city have to travel farther and longer than wealthier residents to get to jobs, shopping and schools.  “Increased equity” is a weak, or even wishful value.  The hidden value in this example would be a preservation of economic privilege.  The culturally competent planner would know how to assess the value structure within the community.   

In downtown Detroit, near the City Council offices, there is a statue of a large black fist swinging in a triangular frame. In a predominantly African-American city facing a significant amount of crime, underemployment, and resident anger, the statue is not merely an aesthetic representation of a human body part.  It is an expression of African-American power.  (Neill, 2004)

Culturally competent planning and placemaking

Thus, culturally competent planning and placemaking would include the following knowledge and behaviors:

Awareness:                 

•  Of one’s own theories of what “good planning” is, and how one’s own experiences and biases shape those theories.
  
  
•  Of the cultural beliefs and behaviors of one’s own professional and sectoral cultures.
  
  
•  That stakeholders are likely to have experiences and biases about planners and planning that will affect how they relate to planners.  In other words, stakeholders may be responding more to the position than to the individual.
  
  
•  Of the impact of land uses on people of different cultures, in particular members of low-income and disenfranchised communities.
  
  
•  Of the roles planners have historically played in promoting and institutionalizing the interests of dominant cultures within communities.
  
  
•  That members of cultures which have had little positive experience with urban planners are less likely to participate in collaborative planning engagements.  As a result, planners may inadvertently prepare reports and plans that serve the needs of dominant groups within an environment.
  
  
•  Of the distinct and overlapping cultures within a study area, and the ability to see the “cultures within cultures” (for example, national origin in Latino or Asian communities).
  
  
•  Of the norms of different cultures, as a way of demonstrating respect and knowledge.
  
  
•  Of the relationships of power among planning professionals and other actors in the development and maintenance of the built environment, and among planning professionals and the various communities with which they interact.

Beliefs: 

•  Planning is about making choices, and all choices in planning are normative.  In other words, a choice is neither right nor wrong, but a better (or worse) way to further values.
  
  
•  Cultural beliefs and behaviors have significant impacts on urban planning from the neighborhood to the regional levels.
  
  
•  Cultural beliefs and behaviors are important sources of data to be ascertained prior to preparing a plan.
  
  
•  The best ways to understand how people of different cultures would be impacted by planning is to engage them in collaborative planning practices.
  
  
•  The best teams are diverse, and are led by individuals who value diversity and inclusiveness and have the skills to manage the conflicts that arise from diversity.
  
  
•  Planners and planning organizations should seek to model the same kind of cultural competency they hope to see in communities.
  
  
•  Planners should seek to be both more self-aware and aware of other cultures as part of their own professional development.
  
  
•  Planners must have the courage to reconsider and change beliefs and behaviors that are counterproductive or inefficient in the context of cultural competency.  

Behaviors:  

•  In culturally diverse environments, significant amounts of resources are focused on engagement and collaborative practice.
  
  
•  Planning directors and managers habitually build culturally inclusive organizations and teams.  Directors and managers develop skills suited to lead such organizations and teams.
  
  
•  Planners work to understand and be understood by culturally diverse audiences.  Where planners are limited by their own communication skills, they engage others (individuals, organizations) to bridge communication gaps.
  
  
•  Planners prepare documents that can be understood by as many people as is reasonably feasible.
  
  
•  Planners and planning organizations engage in continual reflective practice so that they can become more aware and better adapt to new information and changing conditions.

Implications for planning education

Various authors have written about cultural diversity and communicative practice (Umemoto, 2005).  These authors include Sandercock, Thomas, Forester, Healey, Baum and Friedmann.  While the topics appear to be a growing part of the literature of planning, many planning skills do not require students to demonstrate their ability to work effectively across cultures. 

By reframing the term cultural diversity as ‘cultural competency,’ it can be established as a knowledge base as critical to the planning practitioner in the 21st century as urban design, demography, or qualitative research skills. This primer is also designed to help readers and educators operationalize cultural competency by providing measurable goals that educators and practitioners can use to test their knowledge and mastery of the cultural issues in planning. 

References:

Huitt, William. G. 2004. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University.  http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html 

Lynch, Kevin. 1981.  Good City Form. Cambridge: MIT Press

Neill, William. J. 2004. Urban Planning and Cultural Identity. New York: Routledge.

Rice, Mitchell F. 2008. “A Primer for Developing a Public Agency Service Ethos of Cultural Competency in Public Services Programming and Public Services Delivery,” in Journal of Public Affairs Education. Volume 14, No. 1.  Spring 2008.

Schein, Edgar. 1992.  Organizational Culture and Leadership.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Shea, Danny. 2009.  “Fox News Ratings ‘Crazy High’ During Obama Administration, #2 Channel in All of Cable,” in The Huffington Post. March 24, 2009. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/24/fox-news-ratings-crazy-hi_n_178615.html

Umemoto, Karen. 2005. “Walking in Another’s Shoes: Epistemological Challenges in Participatory Planning,” in Bruce Stiftel and Vanessa Watson (eds.), Dialogues in Urban & Regional Planning. London and New York: Routledge

Footnotes:

1 Yes, this was actually said to the author by a nationally-known American non-Hispanic planner.

2 Epistemology is a field of thought focused on how knowledge is produced and validated. 

For more information:

Only a few authors in the planning field have explored this issue in ways that are useful to practicing planners.  The best sources of more information are the works of Leonie Sandercock (especially Towards Cosmopolis) and John Forester (especially The Deliberative Practitioner  and Planning in the Face of Power).  Another excellent source of wisdom is Kenneth Reardon, who as an academic and practitioner promotes culturally competent planning practice. 

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Speaking truth to false dilemmas

"Either build that toll road to lessen congestion or let traffic speeds go down to 10 miles an hour during the rush." "The debate about global warming is about letting the free market take its course or making regulations that will hurt our economy." "Either I take this job that I'm going to hate, or just not have any income coming in for six months." These are examples of false dilemmas, a rhetorical tool that blights productive conversations. False dilemmas make us less creative and more prone to making bad choices.

A false dilemma is a statement that creates the impression that there are only a few real options, when there may in fact be many more. In the first example, there may be other realistic options to reducing congestion besides a toll road -- such as more public transportation, improvements to existing roads, etc.

There are two main causes for false dilemmas: either the speaker is not aware that other realistic options exist, or the speaker is trying to manipulate us into accepting the speaker's preferred alternative. A classic example is the case of residents of a low-density suburb who oppose townhouses or apartment buildings on the grounds that these buildings will turn their community "into a city." Assuming there are no ulterior motives, this is an example of an innocent false dilemma. To these residents, a "suburb" and a "city" are completely different, and there is no way to combine the best of both worlds.

What should you do when confronted with a false dilemma? The best approach is to name it and show that there are a number of reasonable choices. But this is easier said than done.

• If you're in a position of authority, you can simply make the speaker aware that other possibilities exist, and should ask the speaker to investigate other options.
  
  
• If you're in a subordinate or peer relationship (such as with a colleague or client), you have to be more artful.
• First, try to understand why the speaker is making the false dilemma. Does it appear to be a lack of awareness? Or is something more going on there?
• If your relationship with the speaker is already tense, avoid naming the false dilemma. This may aggravate the tension and cause the speaker to dig in on a position.
• Ask non-threatening questions, such as "what would happen if..." "have someone considered..." These may help to expand the thinking of the innocent speaker. The manipulative speaker may still dig in, but other members of the audience might start to think differently.
• Create learning opportunities. To help residents think differently about higher density houses, planners and architects use charrettes and other public forums to show how many communities can add different types of buildings and stores while protecting their character.
  

If you have a professional development tip you'd like to share, please send your tip to Leo Vazquez at vazquezl@rci.rutgers.edu.  Please also give us your full name, title and affiliation, so we can give you proper credit.