Hubway's Birthday Bash

            Yesterday, Hubway celebrated its first birthday. The milestone was commemorated with Hubway’s Birthday Bash, and everyone was invited to the party. I learned about the event yesterday morning from @BostonTweet (a twitter feed you should all follow). The event promised “live music, food, and fun.” How could I say no to that?

            For those of you who do not know, Hubway is Boston’s bike sharing program. Users can basically rent bikes on-demand at stations across the city. Hubway launched last year with 600 bicycles at 61 stations. Of course, you probably know all of that, because Hubway is incredibly popular.

            While I may not be a cyclist, I am a fan of Hubway. I believe that transportation is central to the future of all cities, Boston included. To continue growing, Boston needs a 21^st century transportation system that can accommodate high volume with less reliance on automobiles. Hubway is already a vital part of that transportation system. Hubway is growing in size: the system is set to expand to more than 1000 bicycles in almost 110 stations, with new stations covering Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville. Hubway is also integrating into the established mass transit system, as reported by BostInno (a blog you should all read). I am excited to see the system grow further in the coming years.

            Apparently, I am not the only fan of Hubway. The event was absolutely packed. Hundreds filled the BSA Space to celebrate Hubway’s first birthday.

This is the line for the beer.

            Aside from live music and food, the event offered an opportunity to learn about biking. The event served at the opening of an exhibit about bicycling in Boston, called "Let's Talk About Bikes." To be honest, I was not sure what to expect from an exhibit about bicycles. I certainly did not expect what I got. The exhibit mostly featured infographic stickers on the floor, with information about bicycling in Boston.

Inforgraphics in the corner of the exhibit.

The graphics were more interesting than I expected. My favorite displayed an open-source map of bicycle accidents from batchgeo.com.

The Boston Bicycle Accident Survey map, showing accident totals across the city. 

           I think this event shows how much Boston has developed a bike culture. The event was just as uncomfortable as you would expect a small, crowded space filled with people looking at the floor would be. Still, everyone seemed to enjoy the event. Mayor Menino’s quick speech was well received. Attendees were happy to network with advocacy groups like the LivableStreets Alliance and MassBike.

The exhibit had some strange fixation on hanging bikes.

[The Boston Globe also wrote about the event, so you can read that article here.]

Why the Gun Control Debate is Counterproductive

At the end of my post on Friday, I mentioned that I was afraid that the theatre shooting in Aurora would inspire another pointless gun control debate. Unfortunately, it seems that I was right. After the horrific shooting, gun control advocates rushed to demand gun control legislation in tweets, blog posts, op-eds. Gun rights advocates responded by suggesting that gun laws will not stop criminals, but will prevent law-abiding citizens from defending themselves. The debate continued on the Sunday morning political talk shows yesterday morning. Soon this debate will enter the halls of Congress: Senator Frank Lautenberg has already promised to sponsor a new gun control bill.

In light of this controversy, I would like to explain my comments. I do not believe that the gun control debate is pointless because, as some commentators have noted, it is unlikely to change policy. The problem with the gun control debate is its preoccupation with guns. The debate centers on the question of access to firearms: should access to firearms be broad, or limited? Gun control advocates note that guns facilitate deadly acts of violence. Therefore, they argue that access to guns should be restricted. Gun rights advocates counter that guns are tools that can be used for good or ill. They claim that criminals will use guns despite the law, while law abiding citizens can only use legal guns for defense. Therefore, they argue that access to guns should be broad. Add statistics, emotional anecdotes, and appeals to the Founding Fathers on both sides, and you have the gun control debate that has periodically raged in this country for decades.

I believe that the gun control debate is worse than pointless. I believe this debate prevents us from making real progress toward a society without violence. Focusing on gun use allows us to avoid a very unsettling truth: sane people choose to commit acts of violence in our society. These acts of violence include rape, assault, domestic abuse, armed robbery, and bullying as well as gun violence. Neither increasing nor decreasing access to guns will change the fact that people choose to hurt other people. Accepting this truth leads to a question I believe will garner much more productive debate: why do sane people choose to commit acts of violence? This question will require uncomfortable soul-searching, but it could lead us to identifying the systemic causes of violence in our society. With this knowledge, we could then redesign our society to disallow the use of violence in all its forms. We may never eliminate violence, but we will certainly make no progress until we look past the gun to the person holding it.

Violence in our Society

I visited Ringer Park for the first time yesterday. I had intended to write a glowing piece about the park and showcase my photography, but then I read this article in the Boston Globe. I did not realize that Ringer Park was the site of Kanagala Seshadri Rao’s murder. Reading about it again tainted my visit to the park.

In April, this tragedy really affected me as a Boston University student. It upsets me that a community resource like Ringer Park could be marred by crime. Ringer Park is beautiful. I very much enjoyed my visit, and I am happy with the pictures I took. Moreover, residents volunteer their time and energy to maintain the park. Crime should not prevent community members from enjoying the community resources they support.

While discussing the Boston Globe article, I learned about a more recent act of violence across the country. Everyone seems to be discussing the horrific shooting in Aurora. It certainly deserves discussion. The act ended the lives of a dozen young people, and injured dozens more. Tragedies like this should not happen. The fact that they do with such frequency is a sign that there is something wrong with our society.

I have thought a great deal about violence in the last few days. I have wondered about the source of violence in our society, and what we can do to reduce it. Violence is very difficult to unravel and analyze: violence is an incredibly complicated phenomenon which seems to manifest in every aspect of human interaction. However, I do have a few thoughts.

The institutions that shape our society fail to meet the basic human needs of our population. Our economic institutions leave many in abject poverty. Our social institutions leave people isolated and unhappy. Our healthcare system leaves people chronically ill. Our educational system leaves people ignorant and unskilled. Whichever human need you consider, there are millions of people in this country who suffer from neglect.

Faced with consistent neglect, people turn to forceful means to fulfill their needs. Our ancestors evolved many strategies to fulfill their needs, and force is one of those strategies. Today, desperate people still resort to violence. This strategy is obvious when employed to meet economic needs: poor people sometimes resort to thievery or drug-pushing for an income. This strategy is less obvious in other contexts: bullies often abuse other students to gain confidence.

We have a culture that permits violence because we have institutions that frustrate efforts to end violence. Most people would agree in principal that murder, rape, and theft are bad; many would also recognize bullying, sexual coercion, and domestic abuse as wrong. However, our institutional design makes it difficult to act on these beliefs. The problem seems so overwhelmingly large, and our options so few and vague, that many conclude they cannot make a difference. Rather than admit that there are societal injustices in which they are complicit, these people learn to avoid or even justify acts of violence. Examples of this behavior are common. Domestic abuse is avoided on the grounds of privacy ("it's none of my business what they do in their home"). Rape is justified by criticizing survivors' clothes or behavior ("she was asking for it"). Bullying is justified as a normal part of youth ("boys will be boys").

I am not sure that I am completely right, but I felt I had to say something. For all the discussion the Aurora shooting inspired, I am afraid we will only get another pointless debate on gun control and mental illness. We have already had that debate so many times. I hope this time we can get a little closer to addressing the pervasive violence in our country. I really do not want to read about another mass shooting.

Community Building at BU: Community Spaces or Community Decisions

When the Boston Herald reported on June 19^th that Boston University bought three streets from the city, I chose not to comment on the decision. While I served in the Boston University Student Union I would have spent hours discussing the purchase, but after graduation it seems relatively unimportant. Although I absolutely intend to maintain a connection to my alma mater, I must focus on my post-college life. So I just read the article, and continued with my life.

However, on Friday the BU Quad published an article about the purchase that included a tweet of mine. The tweet is quoted out of context, completely changing its meaning. I had only intended to ask a respected friend to explain her opposition to the decision, but the author misconstrued the tweet as a comment on the purchase itself. The result not only creates an impression that I support the purchase, but also trivializes student concerns about administrative decisions. This directly contradicts everything I struggled to achieve in student government. Therefore, I feel obligated to provide my actual thoughts on the purchase.

The administration has justified the purchase as a step to strengthen the “community feeling” at Boston University. I agree that building a stronger community should be a high priority for the administration. During my time in Student Union, I constantly heard complaints about the deficiencies of the community. I could write pages about the negative effects that the weak community has on students at Boston University, but for now I will just say that I believe that it affects every aspect of life at Boston University.

That said, I believe this decision is misguided at best, and counterproductive at worst. The administration plans to convert Blandford, Cummington, and Hinsdale streets into a pedestrian mall, which will provide an open space for social interaction and community activities. Apparently, the administration believes that this pedestrian mall will build a sense of community by creating a new space for socializing and community activities.

I believe this approach betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the challenge facing the Boston University community. It seems to misidentify the source of the weak community spirit it seeks to address. Four elements contribute to a “sense of community”: membership, influence, fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. This purchase presumes that the Boston University community is weak because it has too few spaces for social interaction and too few community activities. In fact, Boston University suffers from an overabundance of opportunities. BU offers an overwhelming variety of academic, extracurricular, and social opportunities to students. Students are constantly bombarded by a dizzying array of events and activities. Students cope by joining subcommunities organized around their own interest. Each of these subcommunities pursues separate activities, organizes separate events, and promotes socialization among its own members. This fragmentation weakens the general community by robbing students of shared experiences. Converting Blandford, Cummington, and Hinsdale streets into a pedestrian mall will not resolve this issue. In fact, by creating a new social space that competes with the BU Beach it may further fragment the community.

However, the existence of these subcommunities need not weaken the general community as much as they do now. These subcommunities become a problem because students have little influence over many of the decisions that profoundly shape the whole community. Communities are built on trust; they form when a group of people decide that they trust each other enough to risk their time, resources, and safety by interacting on a regular basis. This trust requires that community members have some influence over decisions regarding collective resources. If community members have no voice in the discussion about allocating collective resources, they become understandably reluctant to invest their resources, time, and emotional energy into the community; instead, they withdraw into smaller groups that do afford them influence. This process is already at work, weakening the BU community. Students as a whole are rarely informed of very important discussions about the future of the university, let alone given a chance to participate in those discussions. Whenever students attempt to participate in anything more substantial than organizing an event, administrators consistently respond that Boston University is a private institution and students are free to leave at any time. Students may not leave because of this attitude, but they do retreat to the places they can influence – their subcommunities. This retreat into subcommunities fragments the Boston University community. Therefore, the weak sense of community can only be addressed by convincing students that they can influence the general community. Unfortunately, this purchase emphasizes that students have very little influence over the decisions of made for their community.

In the future, I recommend that the administration focus their community building efforts on empowering students to act as engaged members of the BU community. I would start by personally communicating with students that express anger about the purchase. No matter the cause, anger should be addressed before it becomes a problem. Unresolved anger generates resentment, which absolutely undermines community spirit. I would continue with a mass outreach to allow the student body to shape the future use of this pedestrian mall. By offering students a chance to name or decorate the new space, the administration can give students a common experience that emphasizes their ability to influence their community.

In the long run, the administration must create mechanisms to substantially include students in university decisions. It is important that students sit on committees that make decisions about the community. Still, committee seats are not sufficient to empower students to influence university decisions. Student government already appoints representatives to committees, and these appointments have failed to significantly increase student knowledge of and participation in university decisions. Historically, three factors have undermined the effectiveness of student representatives on university committees. First, appointees come from a relatively narrow section of the student body. Second, appointees begin their short terms with no knowledge or experience of the committee’s work. Third, appointees are not required to communicate with the student body. Before appointing any students to committee seats for the coming year, student government should be required to provide plans to advertise seats throughout the student body, prepare appointees to participate in the committee, and establish an ongoing conversation between the appointees and the student body they represent. These reforms will allow students to participate meaningfully in major university decisions.

            I recognize that Boston University has improved in many ways over the past decade. Students undeniably have a better position at the university now than they did ten years ago. I recognize this progress, but I am more concerned about the future. We live in an era with a weak economy and intense competition: institutions of higher education must do more with limited resources. I believe that future progress will require that the Boston University community unite to use its resources as effectively as possible. Events like this purchase should be used as opportunities to create collaboration between students and administrators that will ensure that Boston University remains one of the greatest universities in the world.

African Festival of Boston

If you visited City Hall Plaza on Saturday, you would have seen the African Festival of Boston. Since 2010, the Shalupe Foundation has organized the festival as an annual celebration of African culture and community. From 8:00AM to 8:00PM, music, food, and African vendors drew a substantial crowd to the plaza. You could not have missed it.

You mostly likely would have missed me, though. I recently committed to volunteering once a week, but I have not yet found an organization that suits me. When I received an email from the Shalupe Foundation looking for volunteers, I offered my afternoon and evening to volunteer at the festival. I thought it would be a good way to spend my Saturday.

Unfortunately, this was one of my worst volunteer experiences ever. I am not a picky volunteer: I will do things I hate as long as I am busy and helpful. Yesterday, I was neither. I arrived just past four in the afternoon, and I stayed until just after nine at night to help break down the tables. During most of that time, I sat behind a table protecting t-shirts. Guard duty is not a satisfying volunteer activity, even if you are protecting really nice t-shirts. Soon enough, I wanted the event to end just so I could help move tables and chairs. The experience would have been a complete disappointment if it were not for the organizer. She was nice enough that I could suffer the heat and boredom.

She did give me a chance to explore the event itself. The center of the event was performance art. Throughout the day, African musicians represented their countries with music, poetry, and dance. Although the size of the audience varied throughout the day, it always seemed happy with the event.

Crowd watching a performance in the late afternoon.

The rest of the plaza was covered in tents for African vendors and community organizations. The vendors offered a wide variety of clothes, jewelry, art, and food in African styles. Walking among the vendors may be as close as I ever get to visiting an authentic African bazaar.

Tents streching across the plaza.

I must admit that I was disappointed that the festival did not present the history and culture of Africa more substantially. I understand that the festival focused on showcasing the work of African artists, but I think the event could have benefitted from a more substantial exploration of the continent. Africa is the birthplace of the human race, but many Americans know virtually nothing about the continent. By delving into the history of the continent, the festival could have offered an experience that attendees could not have received anywhere else. Not only would this draw a larger crowd to the artists displaying their work, but it also would have made the experience of African art more meaningful. When you understand the historical and cultural context of a piece of art, it transforms from an aesthetically pleasing object into an expression of the human spirit that produced it.

I would suggest that the organizers add a historical presentation on the plaza to the next festival. It seemed to me that the event emphasized the unity of African national communities and the diversity of African culture. A presentation about the development of modern African states from diverse African peoples would reinforce both themes. It would center around a map of the continent, showing the cultural groups on the continent and the date of independence for each country. Presenters would explain the transition from separate ethnic groups to modern countries. Each country represented at the festival would also receive a timeline of its major historical events. After talking about the history of the countries, presenters would direct visitors to vendors and performers to learn more about the culture of each country. This presentation would unite the various vendors and performances into one exploration of the African continent.

Such a presentation would require a great deal of knowledge, so I would recommend that the Shalupe Foundation approach nearby universities for support. The academic partner would consult on the development of the presentation, and provide presenters during the day. African studies programs at Harvard University, Boston College, or the University of Massachusetts Boston could support the historical presentation. However, I would recommend the very active Boston University African Studies Center, which included the festival on its calendar.

I would also have loved to see a traditional storyteller tell an African folktale on stage. Traditional storytelling is an amazing art that most people in the modern world never experience. It requires a storyteller to captivate an audience without the script, complicated props, cast, and editing that even low budget movies use today. Instead, the storyteller must rely on a craft honed over thousands of years, and a story. African folktales offer great stories as well. I admit that I have only heard a few African folktales, but they were all very entertaining. They were also very different from the Greco-Roman myths that I know well. It would be both entertaining and enlightening to watch a traditional storyteller share African folktales.

It also would have been nice to have  a station for people to learn from African artists. I was impressed by the style of the art on display, and I would have liked to learn from similar artists. An art station might have also entertained the restless children in the crowd. Believe me, entertainment for children was desperately needed at the festival. (One child was so bored that he spent 20 minutes trying to fight me.)

I will definitely visit the African Festival of Boston again next year, but I will probably not again. Next time, I will just go to learn about Africa. I will just talk to the vendors, listen to the music, and eat the food. It seemed to work for the crowd.

 Enthusiastic man dancing in 90 degree heat.

Community Base Neighborhood Mapping

As you can probably tell from the name of my blog, I am very interested in urban development and city planning. My family has lived in Boston for over a hundred years, so I am more than a little invested in the city. I feel a responsibility to participate in the governance of my community. I feel particularly lucky to live here now, in this period of rapid innovation. New technology has opened many opportunities to improve city life on every level, and I want to help.

So, when @raulspeaks tweeted about neighborhood mapping today, I was understandably intrigued. The tweet linked to an article entitled Mapping Neighborhoods To Create Neighborhood Opportunities. The article describes a community based initiative to map neighborhoods in Louisville, Kentucky. The initiative was launched by the Network Center for Community Change in November 2010. The Network launched the initiative in the hope that better information about the conditions of a neighborhood would allow the community a stronger voice in the development process. With this goal in mind, Network volunteers mobilized into the neighborhoods to map the vacancy rates in a way that community members could use.

I think this concept is a great idea. It reminds me of the Citizens Connect app that the City of Boston launched in 2009. That app creates an easy avenue for residents to notify the City about their service needs. Basically, users can take geo-tagged pictures anywhere in Boston and send them as a request for maintenance to the City. From everything I know, the Citizens Connect app has greatly improved the quality of city services by engaging the active participation of city residents.

I hope that someone in Boston launches a mapping project like the one in Louisville. While the Boston Redevelopment Authority already has good data, I think this sort of community based mapping would be a valuable supplement. It would directly support Mayor Menino’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program as well.

More importantly, I expect that the project would enhance the experience of living in Boston. One of the defining characteristics of Boston is that every neighborhood has its own identity. Each neighborhood has its own character and history that provide a different experience to the resident. (I am partial to West Roxbury, the quiet neighborhood of my childhood, and Allston, a lively neighborhood of diverse residents and businesses.) I believe that the City ought to exploit this diversity in economic planning. By encouraging each neighborhood to develop its own identity, Boston could offer every resident a place to fit their lifestyle. This approach would require strong partnerships between the BRA and community organizations. From my admittedly brief experience attending the Brighton Allston Improvement Association, it seems that many community activists feel that the BRA does include them substantively in the planning process. A community based mapping project would empower residents to take a more active role in the planning process. The resulting relationship between engaged residents and planning professionals would do wonders for this city.

Campaign Tracking in American Elections

This morning, I read an article on Politico that I want to share. This article, entitled GOP unnerved by Democrats' candid camera techniques, describes a new and growing practice in American elections: campaign officials hired to intensely scrutinize the opponent’s personal life.

Most serious campaigns already employ campaign trackers to record every public appearance and statement made by the opposition. This practice allows campaigns to capitalize on gaffes that in the past would have slipped away unnoticed. Recently, campaigns have extended this scrutiny to their opponents’ personal lives. According to the article, campaigns have videotaped opponents during personal activities, like grocery shopping or visiting children at college, as well as their homes. This article focuses on the obvious privacy concerns raised by such a practice.

I have a different concern with campaign tracking: I believe it undermines the integrity of our elections. Elections are intended to select the best possible candidate for public office through rigorous competition. The competition between the campaigns provides the electorate with the information needed to choose the best candidate. In theory, more intense competition should provide more information, which in turn leads to a better result. However, this competition does not occur in a vacuum: it is shaped by laws and customs.

The nascent custom of campaign tracking the private lives of candidates inhibits the effectiveness of the electoral process. First, by exposing the private lives of candidates to certain surveillance and potential danger, the custom discourages potentially qualified candidates from entering the race. The remaining candidate pool will be filled with those best qualified to survive and exploit this tactic rather than those best qualified to govern. Second, the custom contributes to the increasing focus on nonissues in recent elections, which reduces the value of the information that the electorate receives from the campaign. The custom shifts attention away from information relevant to governing qualifications, thereby depriving voters of vital information. Third, like other negative campaign tactics, the custom suppresses voter participation. Lower participation results in less representative decisions, which leads to policies that fail to serve the public good. Therefore, the custom results in elections that do not select the best possible candidate for public office.

Of course, this custom is only one of many that collectively undermine our electoral process. Attack ads, sound bites, and increasing focus on the “gaffe” have similar effects. As far as I can tell, these customs are fueled by the 24/7 mass media. I wonder what can be done to counteract the pernicious effects of the mass media on our elections. If you have any ideas, please share them.

Introduction

Hello. My name is James Boggie. I have considered blogging for a while now, but I never felt like it quite fit into my life. That changed when I graduated from Boston University this past May. Now, I am living in Boston, searching for a job, and transitioning into post-graduate life. This summer seems like the perfect time to make blogging part of my life.

I hope that blogging will allow me to retain some of the energy of college life after graduation. My life should be a constant exploration of my world. I should always seek greater understanding of the wonders that surround me. I should perpetually search for ways to help the people around me. I should go to bed exhausted every night, and know that each day was well spent. In short, I want to live like a man on fire. Nothing less will keep me happy.

In college, it was easy for me to live this sort of life. College is dedicated to learning, personal enrichment, and service. At Boston University, opportunities were omnipresent, diverse, convenient, and free. It was easy to keep myself meaningfully busy during every moment of every day of those four years.

Now that I have graduated, I am afraid of losing my fire. The “real world” (for lack of a better term) is a tough place. There is no administration offering extracurricular activities to keep me active, and there is no learning community dedicated to supporting my intellectual growth. At the same time, there is a great deal of pressure. I am feeling the weight of my daily expenses, and I know that my college loans come due soon. Finding a job is my primary focus, which worries me. I am afraid that while I am so focused on survival, I will forget to live.

I hope that this blog will provide some structure for ongoing education and exploration. I see this blog as a place to store my thoughts about the world as I experience it - history, politics, current events, culture, art, etc. It will motivate me to continue monitoring the news, reading books, visiting sites, and thinking about my world critically as a part of my daily life. Hopefully some people will like what I write, and I will find a new learning community.

Thank you for reading my introductory post. I hope you liked it enough to return. As a new blogger, I would appreciate any help I can get. Please share any tips about blogging, suggested reading, or ideas for topics. I look forward to hearing from you.