ITSRG is sponsoring an Earth Day Tweetup on Wednesday, April 22, 2009. The aim of the event is to raise awareness about environmental issues, actions and research related to Philadelphia, PA. 

The event is being organized with Temple University researchers, students enrolled in Environmental Studies Senior Seminar course who have developed social media projects this semester, with Philadelphia area environmental researchers, advocates, and citizens and with animal activists on Twitter. 

The event will begin at 12 am on Aprill 22 and continue for 24 hours. Prime Tweetup hours are from 8 pm- Midnight on the evening of April 22. We will post a schedule of activities that will comprise the Tweetup on this blog, along with a list of environmental social media projects developed at Temple University.

There are two Twtvites available to mark your interest: 

http://twtvite.com/4aznab

http://twtvite.com/teyj3j

You can follow and engage the discussion by using #greenphilly #earthtweet #templeu in your twitter messages. Follow us here:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=greenphilly

Stay posted to our blog for more information in the coming days.

Michele Masucci
Director, ITSRG
Temple University

We're pretty excited here at the corner of Broad and Oxford Streets. Over the last few weeks, we've watched the final demo of the old strip mall Progress Plaza to make way for the new and LONG promised grocery store in North Philadelphia. 

Progress Plaza has a long and storied history on North Broad Street. Progress Plaza, the brain child of Leon Sullivan, a Baptist minster, civil right leader and social activist, was the nation's first black-owned and developed shopping center.

It has served as a field trip for the students involved in ITSRG's BITS program as they explore and document their community. One of the students favorite stories about Progress Plaza has been how the Leon Sullivan got the project started in the 1960s. 

Sullivan suggested the development of the strip mall to address two major needs he saw in the community. First, the need for black-owned businesses and the need for jobs.

The story goes that when Sullivan approached the chairman of the bank to request a construction loan. He was told that Sullivan needed some equity and  to, "think about it," and come back in two, three of four years. Sullivan then presented the chairman with $400,000 in cash raised from the community.

The shocked bank chairman quickly changed his story and told Sullivan he could work with him. The strip mall opened to the community in 1968 and has been home to a variety of stores and  community services since its opening.

The story always brings a smile and a laugh to the students faces and a new appreciation for the plaza and the sometimes hidden treasures found in North Philadelphia.

Today, Progress Plaza is currently undergoing a 16-million dollar renovation. The plaza is soon to be anchored by a 42-thousand square foot Fresh Grocer. Earlier this year, it served as a campaign stop for President Obama.

Caroline Guigar
ITSRG - Temple

In his Stuff White People Like blog, humorist and cultural critic (to use both terms rather loosely) Christian Lander sarcastically sings the praises of 'raising awareness.’ Tongue held firmly in cheek, Lander defines ‘awareness’ as ‘the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.’

Now, awareness isn’t all bad; in fact, it really is an important thing, an essential component to any kind of major movement for change. Lander’s point, and my own, is that awareness in isolation is pretty useless. A nice gesture, sure, but so was that 'Mission Accomplished’ banner we had flying over in the Persian Gulf a few years ago—and we all know how well that worked out.

National PARK(ing) Day, as it currently exists, is all about raising awareness. It’s a powerful communication tool, taking advantage of the high visibility of its PARKs to help engender a re-imagination of the urban landscape. And to that extent, it’s fantastic. The way a message is communicated is often as valuable as the message itself (as any post-Inconvenient Truth convert to climate change activism will no doubt confirm for you), and a PARK is a pretty memorable medium.

The problem, however, is that communication—even especially effective communication—can only get you so far. The message matters, obviously, but so do the various uses to which that message is put.

Ostensibly, PARK(ing) Day is supposed to be about making our cities greener, and thereby more livable. For a number of the participants in Philadelphia’s PARK(ing) Day, however, making our cities greener means making them more money. Of approximately 35 “official” participants in PARK(ing) Philly, more than fifteen were architecture, landscape architecture, design or engineering firms for whom “the greening of Philadelphia” also means the greening of their wallets. While it’s not my place to say whether the various national and international firms that participated in Philadelphia’s PARK(ing) Day truly did so altruistically, it’s also impossible to deny that for such firms, a purely monetary interest in greener cities most definitely does exist.

Whether or not much of Philadelphia’s “official” PARK(ing) Day event (organized, it must be noted, by the American Institute of Architects) violated the philosophical spirit of PARK(ing) Day, numerous aesthetic violations most definitely did occur, as “official” participants dispensed with possibly the most poetic aspect of a real PARK(ing) Day celebration—the meter itself.

Talking the Parking Authority into extending the two-hour time limit on a space is one thing; talking the Parking Authority into actually bagging off the meters is entirely another. As if the corporatization of Philadelphia’s PARK(ing) Day hadn’t done enough to kill off the anarchic spirit of the initial event, the AIA and PPA felt it was necessary to deliver this coup de grace. Working within the law to perform an act the legal establishment might not necessarily love (but can’t legally do anything about) is different from asking the same legal establishment to allow you, just this once, to “break” the law—with official sanction. It’s like shoplifting something you’ve already paid for: for all intents and purpose, an empty gesture.

Later in his entry on ‘awareness,’ Lander makes another interesting point: ‘Raising awareness is also awesome because once you raise awareness to an acceptable, arbitrary level, you can just back off and say, “Bam! did my part. Now it’s your turn. Fix it.”’ The humor in Lander’s statement, unfortunately, stems from its truth. For many of its participants, PARK(ing) Day 2008 is likely to be an isolated event; awareness raised, they can now go back to living their lives, and perhaps expecting a little more business to trickle in as a result of their “involvment.”

For the Temple students involved in this event, however, September 19th was just the beginning of a process about more than just “awareness.” It’s about investment, it’s about involvement, it’s about imagining our future.

And we’re not poised to make a cent out of the whole thing.

Peter A. Chomko
Temple University