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To others, a garage sale was nothing more than another obvious means
to an end: a legal method of recycling unwanted consumer goods into
fast cash. But, as Stacy Harwood observed while collecting
research data for a study of land-use decision-making in
multicultural communities, not all of LaHabra's residents --
particularly the more entrenched ones who had lived there longer --
viewed clotheslines and garage sales in those ways. What some
residents saw instead were eyesores and nuisances.
"We take for granted -- assume -- there that the municipal codes
and ordinances within a community are the norm, but in reality, they
are culturally constructed," said Harwood, a professor of urban and
regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"When you have a diverse population, it begins to challenge
community standards.
"In fact," Harwood said, "there are multiple ways to live and use
space, but when the dominant norm begins to transform, longtime
residents often associate these different activities as having only
a negative outcome for their quality of life." And once residents
begin to complain about their neighbors' activities, community
leaders and planning officials are often ill-prepared to respond
appropriately, Harwood said. Frequently, solutions are motivated --
at least in theory -- by safety concerns or legal precedents, while
ignoring the big pink elephant in the living room: race and
ethnicity issues.
The question, Harwood said, ultimately comes down to one of ‘How
do you regulate and create safe environments without losing cultural
diversity?' It's a fine line -- a delicate balance -- between
healthy and unique, and creating ways for people to feed their
families and survive."
The planning field actually "emerged in response to these same
kinds of things in the late 1800s, when cities were growing fast"
and municipal officials began to recognize that they had a
responsibility for contributing to the safety, health and welfare of
their citizens, many of whom also were immigrants.
Nowhere is this clash of cultures today becoming more evident
than in areas of the country experiencing rapid demographic shifts.
Southern California is a prime example, said Harwood, who studied
land-use decision-making in La Habra and two other Orange County
communities: Anaheim and Garden Grove.
Located between Los Angeles County to the north and San Diego
County to the south, Orange County is "one of the wealthiest
economies in the world, yet also home to significant poverty and
despair," Harwood noted in her study, published recently in the
journal Planning, Practice & Research.
"The county, like its neighbors to the north as well as the
entire state of California, has a growing population of poverty,
exacerbated by the high cost of living in combination with dead-end,
low-wage jobs in the service sector," Harwood wrote.
Among the "dramatic" demographic changes cited in the journal
article: In 1990, only one city out of 33 in Orange County had a
majority of its population made up of ethnic minorities; 10 years
later, 10 cities were what Harwood describes as "majority-minority."
By 2004, 30 percent of the county's population was foreign-born, and
more than 40 percent spoke a language other than English at home.
Along with the influx of new residents -- mostly from Mexico and
other Pacific Rim countries -- have come growing tensions within
communities over land use. Hot-button issues have ranged from street
vending and curbside hiring to residential occupancy standards.
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 In her community case studies, Harwood examined controversies
over the approval process for granting a liquor license to a
Hispanic grocery store in Anaheim, the process for issuing a
conditional-use permit for a Buddhist temple in a residential
neighborhood in Garden Grove, and the process for approving
restrictions on garage sales and clothes lines (and related
standards that appeared to target low-income and immigrant families)
in La Habra.
"These cases show how people involved in intense debates draw on
deeply embedded fears, concerns and resentments about different
social and cultural groups," Harwood said. "Tensions arise as
regulations perceived by their supporters as mitigating nuisances
and maintaining property values meet claims of anti-immigrant
sentiment, unfair treatment and discriminatory behavior."
In the cases she reviewed, planners, city staff, council members
and mayors purposely overlooked the communities' changing ethnic and
cultural realities when making policy decisions, in an attempt to
remain impartial.
"In the context of a multicultural community, the notion of the
planning process as ethnically or culturally neutral emerges as
implausible," Harwood said. "Nevertheless, most of the planners
interviewed not only avoided politics and the media, but spoke only
cautiously about issues related to ethnicity, culture or
immigration."
Remaining silent, Harwood said, often does more harm than good in
many situations, including those she studied.
"These cases demonstrate how planners often fail to represent
those of their constituents who are politically unrepresented," she
said. "The cases expose how planners operate in the paradoxical mode
of claiming not to advocate any particular decision, yet
incorporating recommendations in their staff reports that contribute
to the manipulation of the planning process. Thus, in Anaheim and La
Habra, planners justified such contradictions as ‘business as
usual.'"
In her study, Harwood argues that the rapidly changing
demographics of many U.S. cities necessitates a fresh approach to
planning.
She advocates replacing the "business as usual" model -- in which
planners present "just the facts" and leave interpretations to
decision-makers -- with one that empowers planners to "bring into
the open what people do not want to hear, to serve the possibility
of community moving forward."
While change needs to be systemic, Harwood recognizes that the
place to begin is within the educational arena.
"It's important for the profession -- and for our students -- to
be comfortable dealing with diverse populations," she said, adding
that for the most part, students and practicing planning
professionals "don't recognize how much they circulate with people
like themselves." For those still learning the ropes, Harwood
promotes taking advantage of study-abroad opportunities as one means
of "opening their eyes to other cultures."
Beyond that, she said, there's a broader need for the planning
field to adapt more flexible practices.
"The way we do planning is limited," she said. "The local
government concepts about neutrality are so ingrained. It's
impossible to change without looking at ways in which to insert
nontraditional input -- from nonprofits and the media -- into the
mix of ways we can create solutions that bend the rules and are more
creative. The media and nonprofits can play a role -- unofficially,
under the radar, in many situations. The more we talk about it, we
can come up with creative solutions that support concerns and allow
people -- who are really doing nothing more than trying to feed
their families -- to coexist in the same space."
[News release
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign] |
