urbanSTL

Emphasizing programs the city can afford on its $760 million budget, Richmond is considering pairing every at-risk child ages 11 to 15 with an adult mentor; razing public housing and replacing it with mixed-income units with the option of homeownership; setting up an intensive manufacturing training program that would give the unemployed the skills needed to work at one of the many local companies looking for workers

The city Mr. Jones runs remains divided in many ways. New high-rises are going up downtown. There are plans for a minor-league baseball stadium. And trendy restaurants and bars attract young college graduates who are moving into the city’s new condominiums.

But across Interstate 95 on the city’s East End, vacant lots and boarded-up houses are commonplace. Poverty in the city, concentrated in the East End, is at 26.3 percent, compared with 15.9 percent nationally. Nearly half of Richmond’s population of 210,000 lives in poverty or is at significant risk of falling into it.

As the state’s hand recedes from the hinterlands, people are struggling with choices that belong to past centuries: to heat their homes with a wood stove, which must be fed by hand every three hours, or burn diesel fuel, which costs half a month’s salary? When the road has so deteriorated that ambulances cannot reach their home, is it safe to stay? When their home can’t be sold, can they leave?

“An unfit residence for any but a nomad population,” concluded one member of a U.S. government expedition dispatched around 1820 to determine whether the lands that fell roughly to the west of the 100th meridian were places where a person could reasonably expect to make a life. Nearly two centuries later, the territory formerly known as the Great American Desert remains one of the most sparsely populated regions in the country, with the counties of its collective states frequently holding more square miles within their boundaries than residents. And each year, these empty counties — radiating west from the 100th meridian across the Great Plains to the base of the Rocky Mountains — grow emptier still, as the land steadily sheds its few scattered inhabitants.

Two bodyguards trotted behind Enrique Peñalosa, their pistols jostling in holsters. There was nothing remarkable about that, given his profession – and his locale. Peñalosa was a politician on yet another campaign, and this was Bogotá, a city with a reputation for kidnapping and assassination. What was unusual was this: Peñalosa didn't climb into the armoured SUV. Instead, he hopped on a mountain bike. His bodyguards and I pedalled madly behind, like a throng of teenagers in the wake of a rock star.

A few years earlier, this ride would have been a radical and – in the opinion of many Bogotáns – suicidal act. If you wanted to be assaulted, asphyxiated by exhaust fumes or run over, the city's streets were the place to be. But Peñalosa insisted that things had changed. "We're living an experiment," he yelled back at me. "We might not be able to fix the economy. But we can design the city to give people dignity, to make them feel rich. The city can make them happier."

Their finding was seemingly straightforward: the longer the drive, the less happy people were. Before you dismiss this as numbingly obvious, keep in mind that they were testing not for drive satisfaction, but for life satisfaction. People were choosing commutes that made their entire lives worse. Stutzer and Frey found that a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40% more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. On the other hand, for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.