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The Planetizen News Brief

7 August 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

Recent figures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development show a significant drop in the number of homeless people sleeping on America’s streets. The department’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report counted nearly 100,000 fewer homeless between 2005 and 2007. There was also a 30% drop in the amount of chronically homeless, those who spend most of their lives on the streets or in shelters. But a recent article in Newsday reveals that those numbers may be a bit deceiving. Homeless advocates argue that the counts from 2005 and 2007 are not directly comparable, as the methods for counting the homeless changed between the two years. Counters used to be able to make judgment calls on whether or not people were homeless, but the new counting method requires an interview with each person to confirm. Homeless advocates say this opens the door for undercounting. And with these artificially lower numbers, they say, less federal funding will be available to help the homeless population.

Meanwhile, a lot of controversy has been brewing over a little sound. It’s a high-pitched frequency that is inaudible to adults, but incredibly irritating to people younger than their mid-20s. This high-pitched irritant has been harnessed in a device shopkeepers use to keep youths – and any potential trouble they might cause – away from their storefronts. The device, known as the “Mosquito”, has been widely used in England to combat graffiti. Business owners in Canada are now eying the device to use in their own stores. National Post columnist Daniel Goldbloom argues that the Mosquito is a violation of public space. By indiscriminately targeting a group of people based on their age – from infancy to nearly 25 – the Mosquito attacks both troublemakers and law-abiding citizens. Goldbloom says public spaces should be free of such discrimination, and that any further use of the Mosquito should be considered a violation of human rights.

And while shopkeepers are trying to shoo problems away, government officials in China are just trying to get them out of sight. As the 2008 Summer Olympics head to town, officials in Beijing are making last-minute efforts to clean up their streets. An article in The New York Times reports that officials have been building temporary walls and screens to hide neighborhoods they find to be inappropriate for the eyes of tourists and visitors. Entire neighborhoods have been shut off from the city in an effort to beautify Beijing, and residents there are not very happy about it. But they are left with little recourse except to wait until the tourists and the cameras of the Olympics have left town before they can show the true face of their homes once again.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Decline in Homeless: Figures in Question

Should Store Owners Be Allowed to Repel Teenagers?

Pay No Attention to the Neighborhood Behind the Curtain

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The areas where we have severe blight and indications of more blight to come are basically the same as they ever were. How in the world are we ever going to move our community development selves into an alternative future that thinks differently about the challenges we face in our cities and low-income suburban and rural communities?
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