A Call for More Police Accountability

The shooting death of an unarmed teenager in North County this weekend has shocked St. Louis and brought attention from around the country and around the world. There has been a pit in my stomach since hearing of the death of Michael Brown and the subsequent response, which last night included rioting and looting by people who have no investment in the community they performed those heinous acts in. But it is not to give the violent minority more attention that I write this; it is to make whatever small contribution I can to an ongoing conversation about police and the communities they serve. 

Below is a letter I have drafted for St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay. I am a city resident and not a constituent of St. Louis County or Ferguson. But these issues touch the entire St. Louis region and I wished to contact my personal representatives. I am mailing similar copies to St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson and my Alderman, Stephen Conway.

If you are interested, you are more than welcome to use this letter in whole or part to contact your own representatives. Some relevant contact information is below the letter. 

My thoughts are with the community members who are truly affected by this. Remember that we are privileged to live in a society based on democratic representation. However imperfect, this system of government does allow our voices to be heard. Be sure to speak loudly and clearly. 

Dear Mayor Slay,

A young man named Michael Brown lost his life in Ferguson this weekend. This tragedy—and any loss of such a young life can only be considered as such—has highlighted tensions between communities and their police departments and put St. Louis on the nation’s map for the worst of reasons. I am writing to you not only to express my sadness at this death but also to call for measures that could prevent more violence and lead to swifter justice when police do use force, whether justified or unjustified.

In the twenty-first century, eyewitness accounts are increasingly being supported by audio and video recordings of events. As the technology improves, the feasibility of video recording increases as the cost plummets. Initial experiments, such as in Rialto, California, show that body worn cameras can reduce the use of force and help officers avoid unfounded complaints. Police forces like the LAPD and civil rights groups like the ACLU support the testing and use of these cameras to calm tense situations, increase mutual respect between police and their communities, and of course to provide evidence in the event of a criminal investigation or loss of life. I am calling for the St. Louis police force to assess, test, and ultimately adopt body worn camera technology.  

As a city, as a community, we condemn the violence that outshone peaceful protests this weekend. The relatively few individuals who participated in such behavior must not be given even a modicum of support.

But the wider community of Ferguson, of St. Louis, deserves answers about the shooting of an unarmed teenager. If official cameras recorded the events on Saturday, answers could be quicker to come and justice could be had more swiftly. More significantly, a culture of accountability could have prevented excessive, deadly force. New initiatives will not restore a life that was taken, but could improve our community in the future. I urge you to take action now.

Sincerely,

Eric Hamilton,

Constituent of Ward 8,

St. Louis, MO

Edit: A petition for something quite similar. Not my own.

Mayor Francis Slay

1200 Market , City Hall, Room 200

St. Louis, Missouri 63103

(314) 622-3201

mayorslay@mayorslay.com

https://twitter.com/MayorSlay

Police Chief Sam Dotson

1200 Clark Ave

St. Louis, Missouri, 63103

Internal Affairs: (314) 444-5652

https://twitter.com/ChiefSLMPD

Ward 8 Alderman Stephen Conway

City Hall, Room 230

1200 Market Street

St. Louis, Missouri 63103

(314) 622-3287

Charlie Dooley

41 South Central Avenue,

Clayton, MO 63105

(314) 615-7016

cdooley@stlouisco.com

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar

7900 Forsyth Boulevard

St. Louis, MO 63105

(314) 615-4260

cdolly@stlouisco.com

Ferguson City Council

James Knowles, MayorCity Council

110 Church Street

Ferguson, MO 63135

(314) 524-5152

Ferguson Police Department

222 S. Florissant Road

Ferguson, MO 63135

(314) 522-3100

Why I Bike

I didn't grow up biking around all that much. Sure, I had a bike. And I would use it to get around in the neighborhood. I never really went very far though, and there weren't a ton of kids in my neighborhood that all went biking to the creek or something every summer. In high school I pretty much stopped biking except for rare weekend excursions.

But since coming to St. Louis, and especially since moving to south city, I've been biking a lot for both exploration and transportation. Just as running has become a significant part of my life, cycling has grown in its impact on my daily routine.

My commute is six miles each way. Most days I make that trip by bike; it takes about half an hour with stop lights and traffic. Although I don't love losing an hour each day to my commute--I used to have a 10 minute walk to work--I sincerely appreciate the exercise. I always walk into work with a smile on my face because I just got to bike through two amazing parks, I got my heart rate up, I worked for it. When I go home I can burn off the daily stress and walk through my door out of breath and relaxed. On the days I drive to work, I almost always regret it. Dealing with traffic and highways always puts me in a bad mood and I miss the workout. Although I have to deal with the uncertainty of traffic as a cyclist (Will they see me? Do I have to stop at this stop sign?) the physical struggle is rewarding enough to push those stresses aside.

In a car you lose your connection to the areas you drive through. Your windows might be down but you're still inside, walled in. You're a behemoth and your primary responsibility is making sure that nobody gets hurt as you hurtle down the road at 40 miles per hour. On a bike you're part of your world. You can go quickly enough to actually get somewhere, but you have the opportunity to look around and observe the world as it goes about its day. You notice the same cyclists on your route. You pay attention to the trees. You know what the weather is like that day and you stop fighting against it and learn to revel in the heat and the rain. On a bike, you are not an individual separate from your world; you're a member of it.


As exploration, biking can't be beat. Living in Tower Grove East, I am about a 15 or 20 minute bike ride from so many exciting, different neighborhoods. I love being able to bike to Benton Park or Soulard without worrying about having a couple drinks. I like being able to go to the Whitaker Music Festival without stressing about parking. But it's actual exploration that cycling excels at. Learning a new neighborhood by knowing roughly where you're going and having a sense of adventure. Getting a little bit lost and finding a new park or bar. Seeing the city and its architecture at a slow enough pace that you can drink it all in. I live to know my city a little bit more every week. Biking offers me that. And as others have shown me STL by bike, I always enjoy sharing this city with others by cycling around. It really is the best way to learn what St. Louis has to offer.

When you drive, you have a destination. When you bike, you have a journey. It's the journey I enjoy.

The Spirit of Cosmos

After watching the entirety of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, and rewatching some episodes, I wanted to write about how it impacted me and what it accomplished.

I was hooked from the first episode. Having such a well-produced and overarching presentation of scientific discovery, scientists, and the scientific method on prime-time television was thrilling in and of itself. For the most part, every subsequent episode only reinforced this feeling.

What you can only see when considering the series as a whole is its main narrative arc, one I hoped would be highlighted, and arguably the most important topic for this show: climate change. Particularly from the second episode on, with the unnamed chamber in the "Halls of Extinction" left for the current mass extinction perpetuated by human activity, through to the final episode where Tyson's appeal for changing course is explicit, urgent, and heartfelt, global warming was addressed from all angles. Cosmos was broadcast on Fox on Sunday evenings and again on National Geographic on Mondays. It was a major cultural force with millions of viewers nationally and millions more worldwide. The explanation of climate change, our evidence for its human origin, and the steps that need to be taken to remediate its effects is a moral imperative that Cosmos addressed head on. Yet in taking climate change seriously, Tyson still managed a carefully-chosen hopeful tone for this and other issues.

That's the second theme that shines through each episode: hope and optimism for improvement. Really the entire series focuses on humanity's potential for advancement, both in our knowledge about the universe and our application of that knowledge for benevolent purposes. And remarkably, Cosmos manages this hopeful tone without shying away from our failures and mistakes: the persecution of scientists; corporate greed; personal spats; sexism. It is this presentation of humanity as mistaken but self-correcting--a metaphor perhaps for the scientific method itself--that imbues the show with a spiritual quality that I connected with deeply. This humanistic approach is in a way very scientific. We can only rely on our own ingenuity, our own innovation, our own purposeful application of scientific knowledge to save us, and the rest of the planet, from ourselves.

From a simple and clear explanation of evolution by natural selection to Sagan's Golden Record, Cosmos was a thrilling look at why we do science, how we do science, and what scientific inquiry can offer to humanity in our search for meaning and understanding in this world. I can only hope they consider another season or that future scientific documentaries study the lessons of Cosmos to make a meaningful impact.

The Future of Transportation

"When America began moving west, we didn't add more wagon trains, we built railroads." -Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Company

"It's not about bikes over cars over buses over pedestrians. It's about providing the options people need." -Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007-2013

How do you move from Point A to Point B? 

This question seems small, but it's not. It's not trivial because for the first time in human history, more people live in cities than outside of them. And those people need to get from Point A to Point B in a confined space, alongside potentially millions of other people. As developing countries bring their populations out of poverty, forms of transportation previously unavailable, like cars, become more common. And cities can grind to a halt, turning into a traffic jam that snakes for more than 60 miles and takes more than a week to clear. 

The TED Radio Hour covered transportation this week and all of the speakers address how issues around transportation are inextricably linked to the future of urban life. And urban life is the future of humanity as the trend of urban relocation continues. 

So how do you move from Point A to Point B? In America, most trips are done by car. In 2009, more than 80% of trips were taken in a private vehicle. Our current infrastructure basically demands it. Many people live far away from work, errands, and recreation. Even ignoring distance, our roads are built for, well, cars. It's still an exciting and novel thing to have paths dedicated to biking. Many streets are not oriented for pedestrians either, without crosswalks or pleasant walking paths. And adequate and reliable public transit is concentrated in major cities (but not even all of them) and many mid-sized cities do without.

But if we're going to adapt to an increasingly urban world, our cities need to plan for and fund dramatic changes in transportation. 

As Janette Sadik-Khan, the former Commissioner of the Department of Transportation in New York, covers in her talk: It's not about one single mode of transit, but rather promoting the different options available to the best extent possible. Our cities were built in the last century on the presumption that cars were the only viable choice. We don't need to get rid of cars, but we need to reduce the necessity of cars dramatically. When a private vehicle is no longer required for every trip, many people will choose alternatives.

Or let's take the economic perspective. How much does owning a car cost you? I have a car, it's--*cough*-- a necessity in St. Louis. But it usually sits outside until I run some errands on the weekend. One or two trips a week, that's it. The rest of the time that it sits there I still pay insurance, it still loses value. What if the full cost of each car trip was really factored in? Robin Chase, the founder of Zipcar, makes that argument. Priced at $8-$12 an hour, Zipcars can replace 15 private vehicles and cut individual driving 80%. When the full costs are realized on an hourly basis, it's easier to see how expensive car transportation really is. It's harder to complain about a $2.50 light rail ticket. 

I've been biking to work lately. It's 12 miles round trip. I don't want to pay for a parking pass, the Metro takes longer, and I get a daily dose of exercise. But it's not always easy (my crappy little bike aside). I'm navigating the precarious world of bike commuting in a city that's only somewhat prepared for it. In fact, I'm pretty lucky for a St. Louis resident. Most of the route has markings for shared bike paths, and part of it even has dedicated bike lanes. But I still grapple with the ongoing question of passing on the right or staying behind? What do I do at stop signs? Can people see me, are they looking for bikes before turning? Our culture is unsure of itself with how to handle cyclists who aren't just out for a tour through the park. 

And St. Louis has a pretty good public transit system. The light rail is fantastic, wherever it goes at least. The buses are pretty good too. But the #70 bus has yet to be within 10 minutes of its scheduled time since I've tried taking it in my new neighborhood. (Bigger buses just went on this packed route this week). And the metro's population is so spread out, a lot of people have to drive to get to a MetroLink stop. 

All of our cities need to grapple with the issues of transporting their populations. Not just in the United States, but around the world. Especially around the world. As billions continue to rise out of poverty, the issues surrounding transportation will define quality of life in many major cities. And as our society addresses global climate change head on (and we sure as hell better), transportation needs to be in the cross-hairs. In the US, transportation accounts for 27% of all greenhouse gas emissions. 

So how you get from Point A to Point B will help define the future of our cities and the future of our climate. Not a small question after all. 

Bike St. Louis

New Home, New Garden

The spring garden doing wonderfully

I moved! And I presented my thesis proposal. Thus I have been absent. Struck by the all-too-common and terribly cliche bloggers absence. I expect to write more frequently, as I somehow managed to do these last few months, this summer. Exploring my new neighborhood, Tower Grove East; my new mode of transportation, biking; and everything STL has to offer when the weather is warm and the days are long.

With a new home comes a new garden! My first project over the long weekend.

But let's catch up with the spring garden. It's huge! The lettuces have already bolted, but I don't really like lettuces anyway, so they can go ahead and go to seed. But the Swiss chard is full and bushy and vibrant in its mix of yellow and burgundy. And crisp and delicious. The cilantro that volunteered from last year is doing fantastic as well. And I have peas! So many peas. I think some are supposed to be for shelling, but they're all tender enough right now to eat plain.

Future Garden

The water at the garden was AWOL for most of the spring. Fortunately we've escaped the drought that much of the country is experiencing and my plot and the others seem to have come through just fine. I packed a bag full of chard, peas, and cilantro. With some roasted farmer's market beets and some soft, creamy feta from  Jay's, I made the peas and Swiss chard into probably the best salad I've ever put together. A little oil and balsamic vinegar go nicely, but frankly are not required as the cheese adds some fat and the bright flavors of spring are plenty on their own. The roasted beets add some heft and savoriness to what could be too light of a salad. In a word: delicious. The cilantro found its way into an onion, garlic and oil base to enhance your standard rice and beans affair.

Although truly stupendous harvests like this are rare, at least in my gardening experience, this is why I do it. To nourish yourself from plants you put in as seeds...Well it's rewarding in a way few things in life are. Fortunately there's plenty more peas and chard!

Soil!

And now on to the new.

My new place is just wonderful. Situated just one block from the bustling South Grand district, I'm in the Tower Grove East neighborhood right by the famous Tower Grove Park. I live in a duplex and I have a small front and back yard. Very homey. There were stumps from some trees and an older garden plot my upstairs neighbors had already claimed, so I told my landlord I'd put a garden in place of the stumps and that's just what I did.

Raise bed frame in place

The trees were surprisingly easy to dig out with a spade. Urban gardening often comes with tales of heavy metals and other pollutants in the soil, so I decided to put in a pretty tall raised bed. Honestly I'm not terribly worried, but it also seemed to match the existing raised bed. I decided on 8' x 4' and 10" tall.

It turns out that is a lot of volume to be filled! I picked up a lot of garden soil and then had to return a lot to buy some topsoil to mix in, per instructions I didn't read at first. I had to slice through the grass that remained after the stumps were gone, then put the bed itself together. Pretty easy, really. A few cuts with the circular saw and some screws, this doesn't need to be perfect.

Far too many bags of soil later, I transplanted some herbs and tomatoes and peppers from Washington University's greenhouse. I then stopped by a garden shop at Compton and Cherokee and picked up two eggplants and a cantaloupe! I've never grown fruit before. Speaking with Joe, the owner, who has missed only three days out of the last 365 at his shop, I was reminded to pick up carrot and beet seeds and onions to plant as well. Carrots and onions in particular make good fillers in between the taller plants.

The first transplants

So for now, it's done. The new soil seems pretty weed free so far, which is nice. Won't last of course. But nice for now. Once the seeds establish themselves I'll put some mulch over to help control the water a bit. I do hope I get enough sun for the tomatoes and other full sun plants. The sun is so high in the sky right now, I swear sometimes it seems there's more on the north side of the house than the south!

So here's to two gardens at once; to St. Louis in the summer; to bigger and better harvests!

Urban Part 2: Walkable Communities

Urban humanism suggests that when cities bring diverse groups together, communities thrive. We understand one another, even if we are different, because we live and work and play side-by-side. Our ideas bounce off one another more quickly and effectively than if we had to shout into a suburban abyss. Just as universities bring together great minds to do great works, cities pack together the raw resource of humanity, people, into bustling, jostling, fun, joyful, scary, wonderful urban cores and we are better for it.

How do we make sure that cities thrive? How can urban areas serve their residents and be served by them? By putting the policies and infrastructure in place to make strong local communities that have the right amount of autonomy over their neighborhoods. Strong local communities, connected by smart infrastructure, make strong cities.

And strong local communities are, among other things, walkable.

Walkability is a hot topic right now. Millenials (all those young people writing blogs about made up terms like urban humanism) drive less and want to live in dense urban cores. Walkability is a catch-all term for the qualities that attract anyone to an urban area: close-by necessities and luxuries; green spaces; neighbors and visitors mingling. (Obviously this all includes bikability too; alternative transit options promote the walkable mindset).

Hartford Coffee Company

How does walkability promote strong communities? By turning residents into neighbors. Walking induces those chance encounters that make cities so powerful, while driving actively prevents them. These interactions with people on the street introduce us to the people we live by, giving us a chance to realize what we have in common. Hell, just looking one another in the eye—you know, acknowledging the existence of another human being—makes both parties happier. Strong communities are strong because they are communities of individuals who know one another, help one another, and work to achieve common goals.

Blackthorn Pizza Pub

So what does a real walkable neighborhood look like? Well, this is just one example: I was spending time in the Tower Grove area and although the South Grand district is certainly walkable and bustling, I am always captivated by the corner business. South St. Louis City has a lot of existing and defunct businesses built right smack dab in the middle of neighborhoods, providing a great example of mixed-use residential/commercial areas that encourage walking. Hartford Coffee Company and Blackthorn Pizza Pub are both great examples in the Tower Grove South neighborhood.

Converted to Residential Use

Unfortunately, a lot of these have been converted to residential use, perhaps because a drop in population meant fewer businesses could be supported in the neighborhood. Population density, once again, comes up as a key resource for developing thriving urban areas. You’ll almost never see this trend of corner businesses in suburban development, but it encourages neighbors to mingle and be, well, neighborly. There is also a tremendous urban park, ample biking areas, and a busy commercial district nearby plus mixed single- and multiple-family housing. All of these amenities promote ambling about and the mingling of diverse people.

(Arsenal also recently repainted their bike lanes to the gold standard: incorporating a buffer for the door zone.)

And walkability is promoted by a few pretty simple concepts that have been set aside for several decades but are apparent in some of the most thriving communities. Designing streets (not stroads—yes that’s a term now) that provide for pedestrians over cars. Street level housing that doesn’t retreat from the sidewalk. Mixed-use residential/commercial districts that promote integrated businesses over strip malls. Public transit and bike lanes. Deceptively simple things that can all add up to a friendlier, stronger community.

The ideas behind urban humanism can be read in a city’s street grids. Walkable areas are urban, in that they rely on densely-packed areas that reduce sprawl and can support local businesses; and humanistic, encouraging us to look one another in the eye, smile, say hello and share a thought, a small piece of our time and consciousness to tap into that most important resource: other people.

Cities, Population Density and White Flight

1940-1950

Recently I happened across this series of maps that accompanied a book on urban decline. The maps tell four different stories of St. Louis’ history: typical urban “white flight”; formalized segregation; municipal zoning patterns; and “urban renewal” projects. I want to focus on the story of white flight, which is particularly enhanced by the dramatic maps.

1950-1960

White flight is many things, and it is an inherently simplistic term. But white flight is also a real phenomenon and it contributed to the decline of urban cores in most cities in America during the second half of the twentieth century. Spurred by black immigration, increased population, and the desire for space and aided by interstates and exclusionary housing practices, white Americans moved en masse from cities to suburbs or suburbs to exurbs. As a result, cities lost tax bases, blacks were literally confined to live in decaying urban cores and population density plummeted.

What we see in 1950 is a somewhat-integrated city center (adjoining neighborhoods of white and black, in reality) and a relatively tight, almost entirely white, ring of inner suburbs. Ten years later and you can clearly see the explosion of white flight with the entire city losing white populations and second- and third-tier suburbs filling out with those migrants. For twenty more years the trend continues, while black populations also spread north and west into county suburbs. By 1980 the urban center is hemorrhaging both whites and blacks and white migration continues well into exurban areas.

1960-1970

A tempting hypothesis when looking at the changes from 1970 to 1980 is that whites were continually motivated to depart the northwest county as black populations also abandoned the city center for these municipalities. Again, this story of depopulation and racial segregation is a complex sociological event. So, trying to pin it down to racial fears wouldn’t be informative, appropriate, or useful. However, where black populations increase the most, white populations decrease in kind.

1970-1980

A separate, but equally fascinating, story is hinted at here. Look at 1970, then again at 1980. In 1970, even as white flight kept ramping up, municipalities were actually constrained by land features. Namely, the Missouri River to the north and Meramec River to the south formed natural barriers to expansion. By 1980, this constraint has been done away with. White dots crop up arbitrarily where nothing existed before. Up to 70 miles outside downtown along Cuivre River to the northwest, for example.

The westward explosion of out-migration from the city continues through the 2010 census. People, especially whites, appear to continue to seek lower density areas and settle in previously unpopulated towns. The black population continues a predominantly northwestern track out of the city, which lost an additional 8% of its population from 2000 to 2010.

1980-1990

Why does this all matter? How does white flight, and out-migration in general, contribute to the decline of cities? Well, remember that cities thrive off of population density. It’s what provides those weaklinks, those chance encounters, that get ideas rolling and get stuff done. Population density supports businesses which support jobs and it fills and funds schools. The pattern seen in STL and in basically every other city in the second half of the twentieth century was one of excessive suburbanization. This not only decimated the tax base of the urban core (which, after all, is the very reason the surrounding municipalities exist in the first place) but also took away the greatest resource any city has: its people.

1990-2000

Many cities have seen their urban cores rejuvenated after this same period of suburbanization. Jobs come back to downtown, people follow, and businesses follow them. You could look at this as a rubber-banding, snapping back to the center. Not unlike the “Big Crunch” theory of the universe: gravity may pull us all back together in due time.

2000-2010

But St. Louis has not stopped this trend yet. People keep leaving the city and populating farther and farther reaches of exurbia. I look at this and I hope—and I think—that this city is just a little slower with the rubber-banding snap back to the urban core. But what happens if the gravitational energy of the city center isn’t enough to pull this crazy suburban flight back? Will we keep expanding forever into nothingness, increasing the entropy of the metropolitan area until the city dies the same heat death the universe will?

Okay, so the cosmology is hyperbolic here, but do we need to concern ourselves with the possibility of a permanently inverted city with a hollow core and continued suburban exodus? Maybe. Hopefully not. The downtown population was the fastest growing in the city in the last census. Tech firms are actively moving into the city. Wonks like to talk about how millenials are permanently urban-focused. Maybe that will be the starting point of a new focus on the urban core.