Sunday, February 1, 2015

Embracing the Age of Disruption

This week, MIT is offering an online course on “Tackling the Challenges of Big Data.”  In pitching the course, CIO Today opines that without an understanding of what makes data good or bad, business users “may make decisions based on insight that’s fallacious.”

As they are refined, measure of such characteristics as race and income may assist in avoiding unfortunate lawsuits such as the Supreme Court’s Texas disparate impact case, New Jersey’s Fair Housing Act disputes, and the redlining cases against lenders brought in New York. Big data allows the analysis necessary to go beyond the either-or choice between neighborhood revitalization and moving to opportunity, especially in circumstances involving non-discriminatory policies and programs. 

Place-based policies and incentives will continue to evolve as we discover new ways to disrupt the status quo and avert the consequences of bad behavior – intentional or not.  Disruptions are occurring in many disciplines – energy efficiency and green construction, education and job re-training, and healthy homes and living, to name a few.  

The common thread of bringing people, resources, and communities together is another type of disruption - civic disruption - envisioned fifty years ago by planner-lawyer Paul Davidoff, and those that followed, as the foundation of progressive community planning and development.  

Davidoff was among the first wave to recognize and address the inherent problems of inner city communities and the discriminatory effects of white flight to the suburbs, later founding the Suburban Action Institute to challenge exclusionary zoning in the suburbs. A half-century later, we have abdicated much of that debate and resolve to the courts and simplistic measures of disparate impact. 

Big data and the promise of civic and economic disruption offer us new ways to influence public policy and decision-making – if we have the personal courage and moral conviction to set aside the physical isolation and socio-economic conditions that racial and class inequalities have wrought.





65 and still alive

Well, it's beyond 60 and a long time since my last post.  Long enough for my precious friends to write volumes of beautiful poetry, docu-novels worthy of Hallmark dramas, and social commentary and dissent (Woody Allen calls it dissentary) to rattle the Republican-controlled Congress.

I, on the other hand, have spent my declining years perfecting my Chinese conspiracy theory. Just check out the recent Amazon product reviews if you don't believe me. The toaster riffs alone will scare you into a bomb shelter. With all those defective parts, we are all toast - or not.

I will be 65 soon and able to ride the bus for half price - assuming, I guess, that I only have the strength to go half as far.  But they are wrong.   I am on my way to the golden years.  I only hope those golden arches I see in the distance are made by Dr. Scholls.