Cornell University & Ithaca, NY

old postcard of the cornell campus


April 15 & 16 Ithaca, NY and Cornell University

We hadn’t planned on going to Ithaca, NY until we got an e-mail from a guy named David Driskell while we were on the west coast. He had received an e-mail on an urban planning listserv that he’s part of, after Ava (the urban planning student in L.A.) sent something out.

He’s part of the city and regional planning department at Cornell University. He is also the chair of the UNESCO program called Growing up in Cities. The Growing up in Cities Program is really cool. They work with urban youth around the world trying to figure out ways for youth to have a greater voice in the way that cities are run and in their own lives. Here is their overview statement: We live in an urbanizing world, in which more and more children and young people live in cities. In industrialized countries, a half to three-quarters of all children live in urban areas; in the developing world, the majority of children and youth will be urban in the next few decades. Yet across a wide range of indicators, cities are failing to meet the needs of young people and their families.
What does the process of urbanization mean in the lives of young people?
From young people’s own perspectives, what makes an urban neighborhood a good place in which to grow up?
Can cities be positive places for young people-places that support and nurture their development as constructive, contributing members of a civil society?
Growing Up in Cities is a global effort to understand and respond to these and other questions, and to help address the issues affecting urban children and youth. It is a collaborative undertaking of the MOST Programme of UNESCO and interdisciplinary teams of municipal officials, urban professionals, and child advocates around the world, working with young people themselves to create communities that are better places in which to grow up-and therefore, better places for us all.

We were so flattered to be invited to Cornell by David. He also invited us to stay at his house with us wife Neema (who also teaches in the planning department at Cornell) and their two children, Mira and Keiren. None of us had realized that it was going to be Easter on the 16th, but everything had been planned and set up, so we decided to do it that day even though it meant not as many people would probably be able to make it to the screening. Staying with them during Easter also meant that we got to watch kids do an easter egg hunt and have an easter dinner with their family and friends (instead of sitting and silently staring at each other in an interstate denny's somehwere, like we probably would have).

Allison from Syracuse had told us about the Ithaca Commons (downtown pedestrian area with shops) and told us to go to the used bookstores and the co-op grocery store. I got two books at the used bookstore: Architecture of Fear and Cradle to Cradle. The Architecture of Fear is about the way that the built environment is a reflection of how scared our society has become (by examining things like gated communities). Cradle to Cradle is an environmentalist book about ending the concept of waste and talking about everyday objects and eco-design type stuff.


We also got to walk through one of the gorges (Ithaca has a lot of amazing gorges with little walkways through them) and saw some waterfalls and it was really cool. Here is an example of what we saw (I got the picture off the internet because I forgot to bring my camera with me).

We were really surprised that about 10 people came to a film-screening on Easter, but they did. We showed it in Sibley Hall.

Sibley Hall

Cornell is an insanely wealthy campus. David told us that they fundraise $300 million dollars a year, (that is not even counting student tuition or fees which are insanely expensive). There are 500 people on the paid staff of Cornell that do nothing but fundraise. Some of them are dedicated to getting money from only a few specific insanely rich people. What do they do with all that money? Sure, the campus is really nice, but it seems like people in the administration must be getting paid really, really well.

And then we went to Montpelier, Vermont... To be continued...

(all pictures in this entry were taken off the internet).