Neighborhood Profile:Japantown

JAPANTOWN, ALSO KNOWN AS J-TOWN OR NIHONMACHI, IS ONE OF THE OLDEST ASIAN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES IN THE COUNTRY. Like many aging ethnic neighborhoods without significant and ongoing immigration, its future is unstable. Old and new residents and businesses co-habitate without interacting, as younger generations of Japanese Americans migrate to the suburbs. The community faces an eventual loss of culture and no place to "come home" to.

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How Are We Meeting the Needs Of the Youth Today?

SAN FRANCISCO - ON A SUMMER MORNING, MORE THAN 50 KIDS ARE BURSTING WITH ENERGY in the games room of the Excelsior Youth Center. Two pool tables in different heights accommodate the different ages of kids, so everyone who wants to play, can. At the moment, there is not an adult in sight. There does not need to be. All the kids know the rules.

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Tsunami Shock and Betrayal

Zhonnet: Yan, what brought you to Thailand during this time? Yan: Well... I was there to visit my relatives and friends you know, planning to celebrate the New Year. Zhonnet: How long were you there before the Tsunami hit? Yan: 3 days. Zhonnet: What was the reaction of Thai residents? Yan: They were shocked, you can see sadness everywhere. But people throughout the country volunteered to help out. It is one of those amazing times when people realized their potential of self-organization and did not even bother to wait for the government to step in.

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Report From Beijing

BEIJING - As gas prices rise, we see more and more news reports about how the demand from China is driving up prices. Fortune (May 3, 2005) headline screams “Energy-starved China is doing what you would expect: becoming a global oil power.” The article argues, “nearly 40% of the rise in global oil demand came from China. And it’s not just cars. Oil is China’s quick fix for generating electric power in the face of coal shortages and blackouts...To find out what going on, we decided to go and attend The Second China International Renewable Energy Equipment & Technology Exhibition and Conference (NRE2005) held in Beijing this past May. This one is their second such conference ever held. The conference is divided into 6 sessions that include:

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New Orleans Stories-June 2007

In the first week of June, I had the opportunity to come to New Orleans for a joint conference of progressive community-based urban planners and architects, the Planners Network and the Association for Community Design. In late June, I met up with my friends from PODER-San Francisco in New Orleans, on their way to the US Social Forum in Atlanta. In the two and a half weeks in between these events, I was able to contribute a small amount to the work of some of the organizations doing work on the ground here in New Orleans. Thanks to my hosts, the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF), and especially to Claudia Montesinos, an architect and educator working with PHRF and with the MLK, Jr., school in the Lower Ninth Ward, for allowing me this inside look into New Orleans. These are a few observations.

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