Community Charrette

On my first trip to Bamberg, somehow I missed the poorly designed downtown area. When everyone else spoke about it in class, I thought to myself that it could not possibly be as bad as they are making it out to be. I found out on my second trip that, indeed it was! Downtown Bamberg is small, encompassing only one street and a few adjacent parcels. It looked as though at one time it could have been a very vibrant place, yet on the day we went there were no people there. In the thirty to forty-five minutes we spent walking the downtown strip, we passed maybe five other people also walking. On a Saturday afternoon, all of the businesses should have been open and the street and sidewalks should have been full of vibrant activity. The downtown has several positive features. Although a few of the buildings need work, overall they seem to be structurally fairly sound, and some are even quite pretty with great store fronts and unique architectural features. Although many of the businesses in downtown were already closed for the day and some closed permanently, they seem to be relevant to the needs of the Bamberg community. There are even a few antique/craft stores that attempt to bring in what little visitor traffic there is. The most disheartening feature of Bamberg’s downtown, however, is the way in which the sidewalks have recently been “improved”. Railings have been placed on both sides of the road, with only one break on either side, making it impossible to cross the street except for in one place. There has been no provision for on street parking, which is a key element in attracting people to visit the shops. The sidewalks are uneven and, in some places, slope dramatically into business entrances, making it difficult for people with limited mobility to access the businesses there. As bad as it is, I can understand why this was done. Large tractor-trailer trucks drive straight through downtown on their route from Orangeburg to Ehrhardt and Allendale. I assume these railings were put up to protect people, especially children, from the trucks on this narrow passage through town. However, they did not foresee the detrimental effects this action would have on the economic vitality and social aspects of the small downtown. In the community charrette, the citizens in my group said that there was a tremendous lack of communication among the city officials and local leaders, which is most likely what led to such poor decision-making. In fact, lack of communication was the key local issue to which my group felt there needed to be the most attention placed. They also impressed upon me the need for some form of local government or grant assistance for the business owners downtown, but realized that it might be an intricate and lengthy process.
Other issues highlighted by my group as being in need of attention included education and recreation activities for all age groups, but specifically children and teens. A mother of two said that her youngest son likes to bowl, but she has to drive to Columbia (a one and one half hour drive from Bamberg) for the nearest bowling alley. Another member of my group, an older woman, made the point that although Bamberg is a quite place to retire, even she has a hard time finding things to do; “I shop, eat, go to church, all in Orangeburg. I only sleep in Bamberg”. They also said that Bamberg needed more stores (especially a grocery store, as Piggly Wiggly currently runs a monopoly of sorts), and more businesses and industries that would supply jobs for the members of the community.

Corridor of Shame

Bamberg is located off of the I-95 corridor, which has recently been coined as the ‘Corridor of Shame’ by a group of whistle-blowing advocates of equal education in this region of the state. Bamberg, and other small, rural towns like it, suffers not only from a lack of government funding for schools and educational programs, but also from a limited amount of property tax revenues, as a large proportion of the housing in these areas is lower-income. In addition, this region of the state is prime for the location of industry, thus attracting lower paying jobs. What has been created in areas such as these is a cycle that takes children, primarily minorities who may already be disadvantaged, and provides them with less than adequate educational circumstances (i.e. out of date books, facilities in disrepair, insufficient supplies), leading to test scores that are far below the average for the rest of the state. The cycle is not easily broken, and many children remain under the same circumstances until adulthood. Those that escape the system do so at their own volition.
This seems to be a general characteristic of the south: an ever-widening gap between the urban haves and the rural have-nots. For any public service (not specifically education), more of the state’s tax dollars are allocated to the larger cities and the more affluent suburbs, often leaving the rural communities with the meager leftovers. Especially now, when funding for education for all communities across the state is being cut, rural schools have felt the crunch more then ever before. I am not saying that there is no affluence in rural communities. Clearly, some of Bamberg’s residents are well to do, however they do not endure the lack of funding in the same ways as those who cannot afford to go elsewhere for services or seek education for their children at private institutions.
This dichotomy between the haves and have-nots is deeply embedded in our society today; however, it did not always exist in the same manner. According to Cash in A Mind of the South the distinction between the haves (those who owned the property) and the have-nots (those who worked for the property owners) was at one time not that great at all, and in fact, those who where the first to venture to the States from their respective countries were not the wealthy gentlemen, but rather the laborers and the debtors. Even at the time of the Civil War, those who considered themselves gentlemen were little more than ‘superior farmers’, and many still fairly illiterate. An educated and eloquent gentry with their laidback lifestyle and hospitable nature paints a distinctive, yet decisively inaccurate vision of the Old South. When, then, did this dichotomy appear? I suspect it was when the original landowners began to die off and their progeny became heir to the ‘old money’ that began to accrue. Embedded dichotomy or not, the provision of public services can and should be offered equally to all members of a community. The gap does not have to be so apparent.

Blog Three- Administering the Survey

I administered surveys in the block groups south of Hwy 78 and east of Hwy 301. This area of Bamberg is comprised of a mixture of housing value and condition ranging from beautiful, well-kept historic homes, to smaller middle income and manufactured homes, to dilapidated shacks. I was surprised that the condition of the housing could have such a broad range in what seemed to be a less than one mile radius. Most of the houses were occupied with only a few abandoned homes and ‘fixer-uppers’ dispersed throughout. Except on Hwy 78, there did not appear to be any businesses in this section of the community, however, there were several small neighborhood churches. Due to the fact that the surveys were administered from 1:30pm to about 5:00pm, I thought that the results would be a little skewed, as those residents who are home between these hours tend to be house wives (generally in a higher household income bracket) and retirees. However, I was surprised when the first three surveys that I gave were to white males, two of whom were middle-aged. I was able to get a diverse sample of the population for the survey, which will be a more accurate depiction of the community and will enhance the outcome of our survey.

For the most part, the residents were willing to participate in the survey until around 4:00pm, at which point many of whom were just returning from work and did not want to spend the time. As expected, those residents who were most unwilling to take the survey lived in the upper middle-income section of the neighborhood. Perhaps it is not that this portion of the population was less willing to take the survey, but rather they were less interested, as they tend to be more satisfied with their community and less attuned to the areas in which the operations of the local government may be insufficient. Surprisingly, those living in the large historic homes were quite willing to participate, as were those residents living in the lower income section of the neighborhood. I had the opportunity of speaking with a young African American man living in the lower income section of the neighborhood who said that all he really wanted was a store: “a Wal-Mart or a Foot Locker, or something”. Although he did not want to fill out a survey, his remarks informed me that the young people in Bamberg probably have very few places to go. The middle-income minority participants seemed to be the most wary of taking the survey. Some said that their children always take care of ‘that sort of thing’, and others wanted to make sure that something was actually going to be done with the information they provided before they wasted their time. One older African American woman, in particular, was very skeptical of my intensions, and I assured her of our mission. I hope for her sake, and for the sake of the rest of the community, which seems to be eagerly awaiting something new and different, that this class will produce a plan that will really help the City of Bamberg and its people.

Blog One- My Interests in Taking Rules of Engagement

My interest in taking Rules of Engagement lies primarily in the fact that, as a student of city planning, I feel that it is essential to gain real life experience in the art of hosting a charrette. Community interaction and participation is a fundamental part of the planning process through which the planner discovers the true interests and desires of the community as a whole and can make decisions that will be most beneficial to the people of the community. In addition, charrettes may provide the planner with key knowledge of the interests of the minority and the less represented groups among the community. Although the importance of charretting and community input is made known to the planning students, there are few opportunities to actually take part in hosting a charrette in our curriculum.

In addition to learning the skills involved with charretting, I am looking forward to interacting with the people of Bamberg to affect change in their community. It seems as though the City of Bamberg has some historic infrastructure in the downtown area that they are interested in preserving and possibly reusing. The city’s website boasts of beautiful historic homes and some of the best public schools in the state, as well as being a great place for families, retirees, and industry. Additionally, Bamberg City Council’s mission is to enhance the city’s beauty, business opportunities, and overall quality of life. I hope that our project will assist the city in their mission.

One concern I do have, however, is that while I am interested in interacting with the people of Bamberg, especially those groups that tend to be more marginalized, I hope that they will be interested in interacting with us and willing to participate in our ‘school project’. Marginalized groups, especially those in rural communities, tend to have a history of being promised progress and then, in the end, there is nothing to show for it. As public participation is a key element for the success of our plan, I hope that a diverse group of the community members responds positively to our mission.