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The Planetizen News Brief

3 July 2008 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Transcript

This week, conservationists and timber company officials in Montana struck a deal on the largest land purchase in the history of the United States. 320,000 acres of Montana forest land will be sold to a handful of conservation groups, according to a recent article in the Missoulian. The $510 million deal will prevent the land from being sold for housing development, transferring ownership from the Plum Creek Timber Company to groups like the Trust for Public Land and The Nature Conservancy. Growing concerns about sprawl in hard-to-reach fire-prone areas had many in the state advocating for conservation efforts. The buyers say the land will remain as it was – an actively logged forest – but it will no longer face any danger of development.

Meanwhile, a new study has revealed some surprising results. Gentrification, it turns out, may not cause lower income people to move out of changing neighborhoods. A study of more than 15,000 neighborhoods across the U.S. shows that when neighborhoods experience an influx of affluent people, the pre-existing low-income non-white residents don’t actually leave. The findings by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Pittsburgh and Duke University run counter to the common perception of gentrification as an economic wrecking ball for lower income communities. Research shows that instead of gentrification driving prices up and residents out, it more commonly creates middle-class neighborhoods to which more minorities move. And when comparing the number of people moving out of neighborhoods, there was little noticeable difference between gentrifying areas and other neighborhoods.

And finally, a recent zoning meeting in New York turned from a policy discussion to a screaming match. Some attendees protested that the city needed to provide translators for the meeting, which was about zoning changes that could push high-rise developers into areas occupied primarily by Latin Americans and Asian Americans. According to The New York Times, the protestors wanted Spanish and Chinese translators at the meeting so that the people being affected by the possible zone change would be able to understand what was happening to their neighborhood. With increasing diversity in American cities, the question of whether public meetings should be translated is one that may start popping up more and more.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Largest Land Conservation in U.S. Sealed

New Report Shows Gentrification Isn't Significant Problem

Should Public Meetings Offer Translation?

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