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Spring 2008
Auckland, New Zealand – Letter Home
Composed by IHP Trustees Fellow Shannon Service
Dear Friends and Family,
The intrepid little land of New Zealand was the first chunk of rock to break off and set sail from Pangea—the ancient continental landmass that eventually splintered into today’s continents. This makes it the oldest country in the world. At the same time, parts of the Auckland region were formed very recently by lava shooting up from the earth’s core to form parabolic volcanoes in the middle of the Tasman Sea. New Zealand’s mix of ancient fern forests and the brand new lava cones are constant reminders of the processes of generation and regeneration that this land offers: physically, socially, politically, economically and ecologically.
As a country of only 4 million people, New Zealand is uniquely positioned to experiment. It was the first country in the world to give women the vote, to elect an open transvestite to congress, to create a Green Party and is now blazing trails in working cooperatively with the Maori to honor and implement indigenous-settler treaties. None of these advances came without a struggle, but New Zealand’s small population and spirit of experimentation seem to allow this country to respond to its citizens and to the world in very particular ways. Fittingly, our learning here revolved around innovation and the mulching of old ideas into new ones—particularly concepts of ecological and social sustainability.
We visited the city of Waitakere just outside Auckland and listened to the mayor’s presentation on how he turned his typical New Zealand town into the world’s first “eco-city” through a combination of marketing and real, innovative design. We took a tour of the city hall building that was built with recycled wood and has both a living roof that captures rainwater and a worm bin where city workers turn their old lunch scraps into fertile soil.
Auckland planners spoke on the city’s plans to implement more ecologically sound design practices to deal elastically with the impacts of climate change. Peter Horsley, our Auckland coordinator, gave a strong lecture on moving beyond sustainability and into a resilient future. It is no longer enough to sustain, he argued, we must engage in a reciprocal relationship with the planet that actively gives back to the systems that keep life on the planet going. Through all of these lectures, we gained insight into the many layers of urban ecological sustainability.
Socially, culturally and politically, Auckland is also creating and recreating its relationships with both the Maori and Pacific Islanders. Auckland bills itself as the capital city of the Pacific and hosts influxes of Pacific Island immigrants and families who contribute substantially to the culture and economy of the city. However, the relationship is complex with many Pacifika feeling locked outside the bicultural Maori-Pakeha political and economic structure (Pakeha is the name given to the descendents of white colonial settlers). Some students spent a few days at a camp with Pacifika youth from South Auckland who were struggling with feeling outside the dominant culture, but who also felt alienated from the islands their families originally came from.
Meanwhile, another part of the group spent three days at Bastion Point, the large urban Marae fought for and established through a long struggle in 1978. Maraes are communal land-holdings and sacred spaces central to preserving Maori language, political vitality and culture. After their stay, the students emerged with a sense of how, for the Maori, the land is full of story and deep relationship where ancestors and elements remind people of who they are and where they come from. What, they asked, could it mean to plan from an indigenous perspective? How drastically would our cities and sense of property change?
Auckland was also the final city in our itinerary and the place that many of the courses and ideas we collected through the semester came together into final presentations. Students gave three-minute presentations on their proposals for the problems facing cities in the 21st century and created posters displaying their findings from their semester-long survey of a specific planning topic. We taught each other as fellow learners and professors sat back and listened as students spilled the lessons upon lessons they had collected throughout our time together. It was incredible how so many people could take the “same” journey and emerge with such incredibly diverse wisdoms.
Our final week was spent at a retreat center about an hour west of Auckland. There we celebrated our successful semester together and spent some time reflecting on and integrating all we learned along the way. Students pulled the strings and stories from the different countries together into a powerful final presentation that incorporated personal narrative, dance, music and theater.
We said goodbye to each other and to this land of volcanoes and kiwi birds, Antarctic winds and snow capped peaks to board planes back to our communities and colleges where the real work will start to begin.
Looking forward,
Cape Town, South Africa – Letter Home
Composed by IHP Trustees Fellow Shannon Service
Dear Friends and Family,
Cape Town sits in one of the most biodiverse areas of the world and is home to a floral kingdom of plants called fynbos that are found nowhere else on the planet. Combine this with South Africa’s recent political upheavals and transformations and you have a city unlike anything we’ve encountered yet.
Teetering just on the tip of the vast continent of Africa, Cape Town seems both completely familiar and completely alien. One the one hand it feels very much like a balmy version of San Francisco (or so said the Californians), but spend 10 minutes in Cape Town and you come to realize very quickly that everyone seems, in some way, to be afraid of everyone else. Living in Cape Town means engaging, in some way or another, with fear.
We spent our initial days in the center of Cape Town where people told us we shouldn’t go to the townships. We then moved to the townships, where people told us we should be very careful about the downtown. We spent the remainder of the time in the Muslim quarter where the community was tightly-knit and nervous about the outsiders moving into their neighborhood. Cape Town might look like one city from the top of Table Mountain, but the landscape shifts dramatically depending on where you find yourself on the ground.
As Americans, we became ambassadors and often found ourselves describing entire sections of Cape Town’s city and population to Cape Town residents who would never dare enter that portion for fear of x, y or z. In some ways, our traveling band of foreigners got to know more of Cape Town than many Cape Tonians.
After a couple of days recovering from jet lag, we moved in with families in Langa, a township outside of Cape Town. Townships were created during the apartheid era to separate working-class black Africans from the white city center. Transportation between the two was made very difficult so blacks weren’t tempted to linger after their work was done and, even though apartheid was ended in 1994, Langa residents still don’t stay long after their work is done. Even though the two places are only 20 minutes apart, the city’s center and the township are completely different realms.
Of all the places we’ve traveled so far, Langa was certainly the strongest community. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone knows what’s happening in each other’s homes. Life is social with people sitting on porches and friends always stopping by. Families cook meals for themselves and always a bit extra for the expected unexpected guests.
Structurally the township has what it needs, but apartheid’s legacies remain obvious in the dramatic social and economic differences between Langa and the city-center. We engaged both academically and personally with all the reasons why. We met with a wide variety of guest lecturers who gave us insights into the transportation policies, political upheavals, social programs, and economic structures that laid the foundation of the city. With the help of professors from the University of Cape Town and many local experts, we began to understand the built environment as a reflection of its very recent past, its current tensions and its aspirations for the future.
Since Langa is relatively inaccessible from the downtown by public transportation, we mostly stayed inside the township during this period, slowly sinking into the rhythm of daily life. We enjoyed traditional Xhosa cooking, and we were able to sample local specialties like samp (a corn mixture of sorts) and sheep's head (including the eye, cheek, and tongue).
After ten long, full days in Langa we headed for a portion of the city that gave us our second vantage point into the life of this complex place – the Bo-Kaap. The Bo-Kaap is a gentrifying, traditionally Muslim district located only 10 minutes away from the center of the city. Our families were predominantly Cape Malay, a term used to describe Malaysian families that emigrated to the Cape generations before. They cooked incredible curries and engaged us in long conversations about religion, politics, and the other residents of Cape Town.
Since the Langa portion of the trip featured solid academic grounding and lots of lectures, we were ready and able to explore Cape Town in a more self-directed way. A weighty portion of our academic program was dedicated to three-day "case studies" where the group divided into smaller teams and investigated various themes shaping the city of Cape Town. With the help of Lynn and Gray, our dynamic mother-daughter city coordinating team, we delved deep into the visible and invisible structures giving rise to this complex place: the media landscape; perceptions and realities of crime; the innovative ways waste is dealt with; the urban-rural food connections; and the plans for District Six, a formally vibrant, multi-ethnic neighborhood destroyed during apartheid.
Through the classrooms and the homestays we emerged from our time in Cape Town with lessons we’ll carry with us for a long, long time. Our learning was thick in Cape Town – and our attempts to make sense of everything we learned continues with us in our new home: Auckland, New Zealand.
Sao Paulo and Curitiba, Brazil – Letter Home
Composed by IHP Trustees Fellow Shannon Service
Dear Friends and Family,
We have landed safely in Cape Town after the end of the first leg of our three-country journey. We’re settling deeper and deeper into the pace of this city nestled on the southernmost tip of Africa, but our thoughts still turn to Brazil and everything we learned and explored there.
Our weeks in Sao Paulo were full and fast. Glenda and Patricia, our city coordinators, presented us with an itinerary that included a number of planners responsible for the current trajectory and shape of this mega-metropolis as well as housing and education activists who are reshaping communities and lives one by one.
We learned about the samba schools and their connections to the health and vitality of their surrounding communities. Sao Paulo organizes its Carnaval celebration to an impressive degree and, instead of general rollicking in the streets, Paulinistas create a gargantuan stadium and boulevard-sized runway where samba schools compete with thousands of dancers, floats and live music. The competition is a VERY big deal—it’s broadcast live, nationally with commentary and background information on the schools. The winning school, Vai Vai, works with children in the favela they’re located in to use music and dance as a stepping stone to more formalized education and community empowerment.
Our formal classes included multiple journeys into various parts of the city in small groups to explore and chart our observations. Equipped with pens and pads we acted as urban stenographers—working to both record the city around us and shed our own preconceptions that might get in the way of truly seeing the landscape.
Through our visits, lectures and discussions we learned that Sao Paulo is a complex and pulsating city. We also came to understand the importance of the informal economic sector, both in terms of creating jobs and in maintaining the vibrancy of the overall city.
Most of our focus, however, was rightfully centered on the transportation issues facing this large and expanding city. We learned the history of transportation planning and examined all the reasons why the current, car-centered system isn’t serving the needs of most Paulinistas. We also experienced the impacts of the system first hand when we were delayed in our journeys, or, sometimes never reached our destination at all. Suddenly all the implications of not being able to get to work or kids to school were illuminated and we were able to see clearly how transportation can reinforce structural poverty.
After three weeks in Sao Paulo we took an overnight voyage to the countryside to spend a night with the MST—Brazil’s landless workers’ movement. Many of our homestay families and friends from the comfortable neighborhoods of Sao Paulo warned us against the MST, repeating media stereotypes about how they’re criminals and are dangerous. We arrived and found a functional community with warm, generous people. The worldview expressed by many people within the MST directly clashed with many of our own notions, so we had very engaging conversations and debates. The experience was unforgettable for many of us. A few students even published articles about the MST’s very direct methods of ensuring food security.
We headed from there to Curitiba—a city known internationally for its innovative planning, green-focused growth and sensible transportation policies. However, many of us realized quickly that the bus system, while elegant in many aspects, is practically unintelligible to new visitors.
Our classes were held in Unilivre, a tree-house looking structure very reminiscent of something out of Swiss Family Robinson. We learned about indigenous resistance movements in the Amazon, the history of city planning in Curitiba and heard the stories of the city’s great families and founders during a tour of the city’s cemetery. The giant cemetery with enormous tombs was a city unto itself with rich families and tombs concentrated in one area and the less wealthy in smaller plots crowded on the margins. One could walk through and see the sudden influx of German and European Jews who immigrated into the city during the Holocaust or walk to the tomb of a young woman who has reached near-saint status as the helper of those with desperate causes.
At the end of several very dense weeks we said goodbye to our host families and set off for South Africa. Many of us feel “saudades” for our new Brazilian friends and families—and, of course, for our families back home.
With love from the wind-swept cape of Africa,
New York, USA – Letter Home
Composed by Joseph Fiore, Heather Fox, Sabrina Miess, Regina Pritchett, Anna Rose Siegel, Salima Tongo, Nse-Abasi Umoh, and Mollie West, with assistance from IHP Trustees Fellow Shannon Service
Dear Friends and Family,
Our group arrived in New York City a happy, hopeful, and very excited bunch. We greeted each other at a welcome reception where we introduced ourselves, said goodbye to our loved ones and began getting to know each other. Somehow this scene felt very familiar—like freshman year all over again! But this time we’re a diverse group of students embarking on a very different academic adventure.
As a group, we represent cities across the country and even the globe. IHP students hail from New York, Los Angeles and points in between—as well as Belo Horizonte, Karachi, and Potsdam. Orientation gave us the opportunity to share our hopes and fears with each other, building trust and establishing strong relationships. Excited about the richness and diversity within our group, we began our exploration of world cities by going out together in New York.
Inside the classroom, we began our IHP education by hearing about the cities we all come from. Each student prepared a poster about an issue in his or her hometown and we shared them with each other in small groups. We not only found out about each other’s backgrounds, but we also got a sense of which issues we each find important.
On Friday we split up and visited different agencies providing services in New York. Later, these same groups explored different neighborhoods in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. We were surprised by the wealth of information the residents were willing (and sometimes very enthusiastic) to share about the place they live.
The final field trip came the day before we left when we visited the United Nations. Gillian Sorenson, Senior Advisor at the UN Foundation spoke to us about the need for the U.S. to use greater diplomacy and Dr. Murali, Program Specialist at the United Nations Development Programme spoke about the (lack of) progress on the Millennium Development goals. Lastly we began our formal classes with our talented professors, enjoying the chance to add some theory to what we experienced and saw. (Now, if only we can find a way to fit all their readings into our suitcases!)
Our time in New York was not all work—though we were quite busy. The weekend provided a great chance to get a different sense of the Big Apple. Most of us took advantage of the free time on Saturday and Sunday to meet with some interesting and inspiring New Yorkers. On Saturday some of us met with Amy Goodman, host of the international radio and television program “Democracy Now!”. Others got a sense of turn of the century life for New York immigrants at the Lower East Side’s Tenement Museum. We ice skated in Central Park that night and took a tour of Harlem the next morning. The Sunday morning walk ended at a vibrant church with a wonderful New Orleans-style band. By the end of the weekend, it wasn’t hard to fall asleep.
New York was great! We’ve seen and done so much. We’ve heard amazing things about Brazil’s culture, people and food and we can’t wait to experience all of it. Some of us are a bit nervous about not understanding Portuguese, but our friend and fellow-student, Carolina, has taught us some useful phrases. The most ambitious among us hope to speak passable Portuguese by the time we leave—in just 5 weeks!
To our family and friends—we miss you all!
Tchau,
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New York City
