PHOTO BY EDDIE SEAL/SPECIAL TO THE CALLER TIMES
The couple’s master bath features a wonderful spa tub under a barrel ceiling and tile walls and flooring and room to spare.

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The first transformation was economic: the death of the great industrial city that flourished from the late nineteenth century until the end of World War II. The decimation of manufacturing evident in Rust Belt cities resulted from both the growth of foreign industries, notably electronics and automobiles, and the corporate search for cheaper labor. Cities with economic sectors other than manufacturing (such as banking, commerce, medicine, government, and education) withstood deindustrialization most successfully. Those with no alternatives collapsed, while others struggled with mixed success. Some cities such as Las Vegas built economies on entertainment, hospitality, and retirement. With manufacturing withered, anchor institutions, “eds and meds,” increasingly sustained the economies of cities lucky enough to house them; they became, in fact, the principal employers. In the late twentieth century, in the nation’s twenty largest cities, “eds and meds” provided almost 35 percent of jobs. As services replaced manufacturing everywhere, office towers emerged as the late twentieth century’s urban factories. Services include a huge array of activities and jobs, from the production of financial services to restaurants, from high paid professional work to unskilled jobs delivering pizza or cleaning offices. Reflecting this division, economic inequality within cities increased, accentuating both wealth and poverty.

The second kind of urban transformation was demographic. First was the migration of African Americans and white southerners to northern, midwestern, and western cities. Between World War I and 1970, about seven million African Americans moved north. The results, of course, transformed the cities into which they moved. Between 1940 and 1970, for example, San Francisco’s black population multiplied twenty-five times and Chicago’s grew five times. The movement of whites out of central cities to suburbs played counterpoint. Between 1950 and 1970, the population of American cities increased by ten million people while the suburbs exploded with eighty-five million.

The idea that the white exodus to the suburbs represented “flight” from blacks oversimplifies a process with other roots as well. A shortage of housing; urban congestion; mass-produced suburban homes made affordable with low interest, long-term, federally insured loans; and a new highway system all pulled Americans out of central cities to suburbs. At the same time, through “blockbusting” tactics, unscrupulous real estate brokers fanned racial fears, which accelerated out-migration. In the North and Midwest, the number of departing whites exceeded the incoming African Americans, resulting in population loss and the return of swaths of inner cities to empty, weed-filled lots that replaced working-class housing and factories—a process captured by the great photographer Camilo Jose Vergara with the label “green ghetto.” By contrast, population in Sun Belt cities such as Los Angeles moved in the opposite direction. Between 1957 and 1990, the combination of economic opportunity, a warm climate, annexation, and in-migration boosted the Sun Belt’s urban population from 8.5 to 23 million.

A massive new immigration also changed the nation and its cities. As a result of the nationality based quotas enacted in the 1920s, the Great Depression, and World War II, immigration to the United States plummeted. The foreign-born population reached its nadir in 1970. The lifting of the quotas in 1965 began to reverse immigration’s decline. Immigrants, however, now arrived from new sources, primarily Latin America and Asia. More immigrants entered the United States in the 1990s than during any other decade in its history. These new immigrants fueled population growth in both cities and suburbs. Unlike the immigrants of the early twentieth century, they often bypassed central cities to move directly to suburbs and spread out across the nation. In 1910, for example, 84 percent of the foreign born in metropolitan Philadelphia lived in the central city. By 2006 the proportion had dropped to 35 percent. New immigrants have spread beyond the older gateway states to the Midwest and South, areas from which prior to 1990 immigrants largely were absent. Thanks to labor market networks in agriculture, construction, landscaping, and domestic service, Hispanics spread out of central cities and across the nation faster than any other ethnic group in American history. This new immigration has proved essential to labor market growth and urban revitalization. Again in metropolitan Philadelphia, between 2000 and 2006, the foreign born accounted for 75 percent of labor force growth. A New York City research report “concluded that immigrant entrepreneurs have become an increasingly powerful economic engine for New York City…foreign-born entrepreneurs are starting a greater share of new businesses than native-born residents, stimulating growth in sectors from food manufacturing to health care, creating loads of new jobs and transforming once-sleepy neighborhoods into thriving commercial centers.” Similar reports came in from around the nation from small as well as large cities and from suburbs.

Suburbanization became the first major force in the spatial transformation of urban America. Although suburbanization extends well back in American history, it exploded after World War II as population, retail, industry, services, and entertainment all suburbanized. In the 1950s, suburbs grew ten times as fast as central cities. Even though the Supreme Court had outlawed officially mandated racial segregation in 1917 and racial exclusions in real estate deeds in 1948, suburbs found ways to use zoning and informal pressures to remain largely white until late in the twentieth century, when African Americans began to suburbanize. Even in suburbs, however, they clustered in segregated towns and neighborhoods. Suburbs, it should be stressed, never were as uniform as their image. In the post-war era, they came closer than ever before to the popular meaning of “suburb” as a bedroom community for families with children. But that meaning had shattered completely by the end of the twentieth century, as a variety of suburban types populated metropolitan landscapes, rendering distinctions between city and suburb increasingly obsolete. The collapse of the distinction emerged especially in older inner ring suburbs where the loss of industry, racial transformation, immigration, and white out-migration registered in shrinking tax bases, eroding infrastructure, and increased poverty.

Gentrification and a new domestic landscape furthered the spatial transformation of urban America. Gentrification may be redefined as the rehabilitation of working-class housing for use by a wealthier class. Outside of select neighborhoods, gentrification by itself could not reverse the economic and population decline of cities, but it did transform center city neighborhoods with renovated architecture and new amenities demanded by young white professionals and empty-nesters who had moved in. At the same time, it often displaced existing residents, adding to a crisis of affordable housing that helped fuel homelessness and other hardships.

The new domestic landscape resulted from the revolutionary rebalancing of family types that accelerated after 1970. In 1900 married couples with children made up 55 percent of all households, single-mother families 28 percent, empty-nesters 6 percent, and nonfamily households (mainly young people living together) 10 percent, with a small residue living in other arrangements. By 2000 the shift was astonishing. Married couple households now made up only 25 percent of all households, single-mother families 30 percent, empty-nesters 16 percent, and nonfamily households 25 percent. (The small increase in single-mother families masked a huge change. Earlier in the century they were mostly widows; by century’s end they were primarily never married, divorced, or separated.) What is stunning is how after 1970 these trends characterized suburbs as well as central cities, eroding distinctions between them. Between 1970 and 2000, for example, the proportion of census tracts where married couples with children comprised more than half of all households plummeted from 59 percent to 12 percent and in central cities from 12 percent to 3 percent. In the same years, the proportion of suburban census tracts where single mothers composed at least 25 percent of households jumped an astonishing 440 percent—from 5 percent to 27 percent—while in central cities it grew from 32 percent to 59 percent. The share of census tracts with at least 30 percent nonfamily households leaped from 8 to 35 percent in suburbs and from 28 to 57 percent in cities. These changes took place across America, in Sun Belt as well as Rust Belt. Truly, a new domestic landscape eroding distinctions between city and suburb had emerged within metropolitan America. Its consequences were immense. The rise in single-mother families living in poverty shaped new districts of concentrated poverty and fueled the rise in suburban poverty. Immigration brought young, working-class families to many cities and sparked revitalization in neighborhoods largely untouched by the growth and change brought about by gentrification.

Racial segregation also transformed urban space. The first important point about urban racial segregation is that it was much lower early rather than late in the twentieth century. In 1930 the neighborhood in which the average African American lived was 31.7 percent black; in 1970 it was 73.5 percent. No ethnic group in American history ever experienced comparable segregation. Sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, with good reason, described the situation as “American apartheid.” In sixteen metropolitan areas in 1980, one of three African Americans lived in areas so segregated along multiple dimensions that Massey and Denton labeled them “hypersegration.” Even affluent African Americans were more likely to live near poor African Americans than affluent whites. Racial segregation, argued Massey and Denton, by itself produced poverty. Areas of concentrated poverty, in turn, existed largely outside of markets—any semblance of functioning housing markets had dissolved, financial and retail services had decamped, jobs in the regular market had disappeared. Concentrated poverty and chronic joblessness went hand in hand. Public infrastructure and institutions decayed, leaving them epicenters of homelessness, crime, and despair. Even though segregation declined slightly in the 1990s, at the end of the century, the average African American lived in a neighborhood 51 percent black, many thousands in districts marked by a toxic combination of poverty and racial concentration. This progress reversed in the first decade of the twentieth century. “After declining in the 1990s,” reported a Brookings Institution study, “the population in extreme-poverty neighborhoods—where at least 40 percent of individuals lived below the poverty line—rose by one-third from 2000 to 2005–09.”

Despite continued African American segregation, a “new regime of residential segregation” began to appear in American cities, according to Massey and his colleagues. The new immigration did not increase ethnic segregation; measures of immigrant segregation remained “low to moderate” while black segregation declined modestly. However, as racial segregation declined, economic segregation increased, separating the poor from the affluent and the college educated from high school graduates. Spatial isolation marked people “at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic scale.” The growth of economic inequality joined increased economic segregation to further transform urban space. America, wrote three noted urban scholars, “is breaking down into economically homogeneous enclaves.” This rise in economic segregation afflicted suburbs as well as inner cities, notably sharpening distinctions between old inner ring suburbs and more well-to-do suburbs and exurbs. Early in the twenty-first century, as many poor people lived in suburbs as in cities, and poverty within suburbs was growing faster within them.

In the post-war decades, urban redevelopment also fueled urban spatial transformation. Urban renewal focused on downtown land use, clearing out working-class housing, small businesses, and other unprofitable uses, and replacing them with high-rise office buildings, anchor institutions, and expensive residences. The 1949 Housing Act kicked off the process by facilitating city governments’ aspirations to assemble large tracts of land through eminent domain and sell them cheaply to developers. The Act authorized 810,000 units of housing to re-house displaced residents; by 1960, only 320,000 had been constructed. These new units of public housing remained by and large confined to racially segregated districts and never were sufficient in number to meet existing needs. “Between 1956 and 1972,” report Peter Dreier and his colleagues, experts in urban policy, “urban renewal and urban freeway construction displaced an estimated 3.8 million persons from their homes” but rehoused only a small fraction. The costs of urban renewal to the social fabric of cities and the well-being of their residents were huge. Urban renewal “certainly changed the skyline of some big cities by subsidizing the construction of large office buildings that housed corporate headquarters, law firms, and other corporate activities” but at the price of destroying far more “low-cost housing than it built” and failing “to stem the movement of people and businesses to suburbs or to improve the economic and living conditions of inner-city neighborhoods. On the contrary, it destabilized many of them, promoting chaotic racial transition and flight.”

Neither the War on Poverty nor Great Society slowed or reversed the impact of urban redevelopment and racial segregation on the nation’s cities. President John F. Kennedy finally honored a campaign pledge in 1962 with a federal regulation prohibiting discrimination in federally supported housing—an action that “turned out to be more symbolic than real” on account of weak enforcement. In the 1968 Fair Housing Act, President Lyndon Johnson extended the ban on discrimination, and the practices that produced it, to the private housing market. Unfortunately, weak enforcement mechanisms left it, too, inadequate to the task throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

For the most part, the War on Poverty and Great Society rested on an understanding of poverty as a problem of persons, or, in the case of community action, of power, but less often of place. Opportunity-based programs addressed the deficiencies of individuals, not the pathologies of the places in which they lived. This hobbled their capacity from the outset. The conservatives who seized on the persistence of poverty to underscore and exaggerate the limits of the poverty war and Great Society retained this individual-centered understanding of poverty as they developed a critique of past efforts and a program for the future, neither of which was adequate to the task at hand.

The coincidence of America’s urban slide into deep urban racial segregation, concentrated poverty, deindustrialization, physical decay, and near-bankruptcy coincided with the manifest failures of public policy, notably in urban renewal, and in the efforts of government to wage war on poverty. No matter that the story as popularly told was riddled with distortions and omissions. This narrative of catastrophic decline and public incompetence produced the trope of the “urban crisis,” which, in turn, handed conservatives a gift: a ready-made tale—a living example—to use as evidence for the bundle of ideas they had been nurturing for decades and which emerged triumphant by the late 1970s.

The Conservative Ascendance

The growth of urban poverty did not rekindle compassion or renew the faltering energy of the Great Society. Instead, a war on welfare accompanied the conservative revival of the 1980s. City governments, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, cut social services; state governments trimmed welfare rolls with more restrictive rules for General Assistance (state outdoor relief); and the federal government attacked social programs. As President Ronald Reagan famously remarked, government was the problem, not the solution. The result of these activities reduced the availability of help from each level of government during the years when profound structural transformations in American society increased poverty and its attendant hardships.

Several sources fed the conservative restoration symbolized by Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980. Business interests, unable to compete in an increasingly international market, wanted to lower wages by reducing the influence of unions and cutting social programs that not only raised taxes but offered an alternative to poorly paid jobs. The energy crisis of 1973 ushered in an era of stagflation in which public psychology shifted away from its relatively relaxed attitude toward the expansion of social welfare. Increasingly worried about downward mobility and their children’s future, many Americans returned to an older psychology of scarcity. As they examined the sources of their distress, looking for both villains and ways to cut public spending, ordinary Americans and their elected representatives focused on welfare and its beneficiaries, deflecting attention from the declining profits and returns on investments that, since the mid-1970s, should have alerted them to the end of unlimited growth and abundance.

Desegregation and affirmative action fueled resentments. Many whites protested court-ordered busing as a remedy for racial segregation in education, and they objected to civil rights laws, housing subsidies, and public assistance support for blacks who wanted to move into their neighborhoods while they struggled to pay their own mortgages and grocery bills. White workers often believed they lost jobs and promotions to less qualified blacks. Government programs associated with Democrats and liberal politics became the villains in these interpretations, driving blue-collar workers decisively to the right and displacing anger away from the source of their deteriorating economic conditions onto government, minorities, and the “undeserving poor.”

Suburbanization, the increased influence of the South on electoral politics and the politicization of conservative Protestantism, also fueled the conservative ascendance. “Suburbia,” political commentator Kevin Phillips asserted, “did not take kindly to rent subsidies, school balance schemes, growing Negro migration or rising welfare costs. . . . The great majority of middle-class suburbanites opposed racial or welfare innovation.” Together, the Sun Belt and suburbs, after 1970 the home to a majority of voters, constituted the demographic base of the new conservatism, assuring the rightward movement of politics among Democrats as well as Republicans and reinforcing hostility toward public social programs that served the poor—especially those who were black or Hispanic. The “middle class” became the lodestone of American politics, the poor its third rail.

Prior to the 1970s, conservative Christians (a term encompassing evangelicals and fundamentalists) largely distrusted electoral politics and avoided political involvement. This stance reversed in the 1970s when conservative Christians entered politics to protect their families and stem the moral corruption of the nation. Among the objects of their attack was welfare, which they believed weakened families by encouraging out-of-wedlock births, sex outside of marriage, and the ability of men to escape the responsibilities of fatherhood. Conservative Christians composed a powerful political force, about a third of the white electorate in the South and a little more than a tenth in the North. By the 1990s they constituted the largest and most powerful grassroots movement in American politics. In the 1994 elections, for the first time a majority of evangelicals identified themselves as Republicans. Although the inspiration for the Christian Right grew out of social and moral issues, it forged links with free-market conservatives. Fiscal conservatism appealed to conservative Christians whose “economic fortunes depend more on keeping tax rates low by reducing government spending than on social welfare programs that poor fundamentalists might desire,” asserted sociologists Robert Wuthnow and Matthew P. Lawson. The conservative politics that resulted fused opposition to government social programs and permissive legislation and court decisions (abortion, school prayer, gay civil rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, teaching evolution) with “support of economic policies favorable to the middle-class”—a powerful combination crucial for constructing the electoral and financial base of conservative politics.

Two financial sources bankrolled the rightward movement of American politics. Political action committees mobilized cash contributions from grassroots supporters while conservative foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals supported individual candidates, organized opposition to public programs, and developed a network of think tanks—including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the libertarian Cato Institute—designed to counter liberalism, disseminate conservative ideas, and promote conservative public policy. Within a year of its founding in 1973, the Heritage Foundation had received grants from eighty-seven corporations and six or seven other major foundations. In 1992 to 1994 alone, twelve conservative foundations holding assets worth $1.1 billion awarded grants totaling $300 million. In 1995 the top five conservative foundations enjoyed revenues of $77 million compared to only $18.6 million for “their eight political equivalents on the left.”

As well as producing ideas, conservative think tanks marketed them aggressively. Historian James Smith writes that, “marketing and promotion” did “more to change the think tanks’ definition of their role (and the public’s perception of them)” than did anything else. Their conservative funders paid “meticulous attention to the entire ‘knowledge production process,’ ” represented as a “conveyor belt” extending from “academic research to marketing and mobilization, from scholars to activists.” Their “sophisticated and effective outreach strategies” included policy papers, media appearances, advertising campaigns, op ed articles, and direct mail. In 1989 the Heritage Foundation spent 36 percent of its budget on marketing and 15 percent on fundraising. At the same time, wealthy donors countered the liberal politics of most leading social scientists with “lavish amounts of support on scholars willing to orient their research” toward conservative outcomes and a “grow-your-own approach” that funded “law students, student editors, and campus leaders with scholarships, leadership training, and law and economics classes aimed at ensuring the next generation of academic leaders has an even more conservative cast than the current one.”

Conservative politics fused three strands: economic, social, and nationalist. The economic strand stressed free markets and minimal government regulation. The social emphasized the protection of families and the restoration of social order and private morality. Where the state intervened in the right to pray or in religiously sanctioned gender relations, it opposed federal legislation and the intrusion of the courts. Where the state sanctioned or encouraged family breakdown and immoral behavior, as in abortion or welfare, it favored authoritarian public policies. Militant anti-communism composed the core of conservatism’s nationalist strand, fusing the other two in opposition to a common enemy. It favored heavy public spending on the military and focused on both the external enemy—the Soviet Union—and the internal foe—anyone or anything threatening the socialist takeover of America. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bond holding together the social and economic strands of conservatism weakened, replaced at last by a new enemy, militant Islam embodied in Iraq and Iran and in the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Conservatives triumphed intellectually in the 1980s because they offered ordinary Americans a convincing narrative that explained their manifold worries. In this narrative, welfare, the “undeserving poor,” and the cities they inhabited became centerpieces of an explanation for economic stagnation and moral decay. Welfare was an easy target, first because its rolls and expense had swollen so greatly in the preceding several years and, second, because so many of its clients were the quintessential “undeserving poor”—unmarried black women. Welfare, it appeared, encouraged young black women to have children out of wedlock; discouraged them from marrying; and, along with generous unemployment and disability insurance, fostered indolence and a reluctance to work. Clearly, it appeared, however praiseworthy the intentions, the impact of the War on Poverty and the Great Society had been perverse. By destroying families, diffusing immorality, pushing taxes unendurably high, maintaining crippling wage levels, lowering productivity, and destroying cities they had worsened the very problems they set out to solve.

Even though these arguments were wrong, liberals failed to produce a convincing counter-narrative that wove together a fresh defense of the welfare state from new definitions of rights and entitlements, emergent conceptions of distributive justice, ethnographic data about poor people, and revised historical and political interpretations of the welfare state. This inability to synthesize the elements needed to construct a new narrative and compelling case for the extension of the welfare state was one price paid for the capture of poverty by economists and the new profession of public policy analysis. It resulted, as well, from a lack of empathy: an inability to forge a plausible and sympathetic response to the intuitive and interconnected problems troubling ordinary Americans: stagflation; declining opportunity; increased taxes and welfare spending; crime and violence on the streets; and the alleged erosion of families and moral standards.

Excerpted from “The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty,” by Michael B. Katz. Copyright © 2013 by Michael B. Katz. Reprinted by arrangement with Oxford University Press, a division of Oxford University. All rights reserved.

Stuck for gifts for gardening friends or ways to educate and entertain yourself through winter’s downtime? Think books.

One of my favorite 2013 releases is Amanda Thomsen’s Kiss My Aster (Storey Publishing, $13), a wacky journey of personal gardening discovery made in the choose-your-own-adventure style, mainly for beginners. Thomsen is a whirlwind of humorous energy, and her illustrated paperback doles out such advice as to never trust a landscape architect wearing white, high heels, or a fake moustache, and to plant no more than two topiaries per yard (“more than that is just crazy to look at”).

Beyond the silliness, she gives the reader a lot to chew on regarding what we want to get out of, and put into, our gardens. Thomsen has a fun blog, too (kissmyaster.co), and a pair of flaming Felco pruners tattooed on one shoulder.

I’ve already given Amy Stewart’s The Drunken Botanist (Algonquin Books, $12) some praise in this space, but I mention it again to be sure it’s not missed. Stewart has figured out a way to make such topics as poisonous plants, deadly insects and the international cut flower trade palatable to non-gardeners, and hits it out of the park with this gem that mixes bartending with the history and science of horticulture.

Stewart herself would like you to read her friend Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel, The Signature of All Things (Viking Adult, $28.95), about a woman who is a moss expert in the world of 19th century botanical exploration. (You can read her review on gardenrant.com.) I have shied away from Gilbert’s earlier blockbuster Eat, Pray, Love, but I’ll buy this, if Amy Stewart says to — I trust her even more than Oprah.

If you’re planning to attend the Rochester Civic Garden Center’s spring symposium on March 1, bone up in advance with headline speaker Julie Moir Messervy’s brand-new Landscaping Ideas that Work (Taunton Press, $21.95),which promises strategies to combat confusion and inertia in the garden. (I could use some of those for outside the garden, too.) Better yet, buy a ticket to the symposium for yourself and your best gardening friend at rcgc.org, and if you like what Messervy has to say, buy the book there and get it signed.

Like many women who garden, I’m besotted by anything having to do with Beatrix Potter, Tasha Tudor or Miss Rumphius. So my last recommendation, another from my wish list is Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children’s Tales by Marta McDowell (Timber Press, $24.95). Rich with photographs and Potter’s watercolors, this is destined to be a coffee table classic.

Natural shoreline workshop for those living on lakes is just one educational opportunity planned to protect Michigan’s priceless natural assets.

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Bindu Bhakta, Michigan State University Extension

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Michigan is widely known as the Great Lakes state. It is nearly impossible to overlook these enormous lakes, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior, which make up the largest freshwater system on the planet and contain about 20 percent of the world’s freshwater supply.

Michigan also has more than 11,000 inland lakes and 23,500 miles of inland lake shoreline. Clean water, beautiful views, habitat that supports a variety of fish and wildlife species, and access to endless recreational opportunities such as boating, fishing and swimming are just some of the reasons that so many people like to live on inland lakes across the state. A soft approach to landscaping at the shoreline helps safeguard your waterfront property investment and allows lake residents to continue to enjoy all of the things that attracted them in the first place.

Over time, increased development along lakes has led to removal of native vegetation at the shoreline which has been replaced by lawns down to the water’s edge, beach areas and seawalls. All of these can negatively impact lake ecosystems. One way to encourage healthy lake ecosystems is through the implementation of alternative landscaping technologies, such as bioengineered erosion control and naturalized landscape design. These practices can create a stable shoreline that is protected from waves and erosion, serve as a natural filter to prevent runoff and provide suitable habitat for fish and wildlife.

Regardless of whether you know a little or a lot about inland lake management, consider attending the inaugural Michigan Inland Lakes Convention May 1-3, 2014 at Boyne Mountain Resort in Boyne Falls, Mich. The Convention presents an opportunity for lake enthusiasts, lake professionals, researchers, local government officials and anyone else interested in protecting our water resources to participate in three days of educational presentations and discussion, in-depth workshops, tours, exhibits and much more focused on Michigan’s 11,000 inland lakes.

The 2014 Michigan Inland Lakes Convention is brought to you by the Michigan Inland Lakes Partnership, launched in 2008 to promote collaboration to advance stewardship of Michigan’s inland lakes. The Convention is a cooperative effort between many public and private organizations including the Michigan Chapter of the North American Lake Management Society, Michigan Lake and Stream Associations, Inc., Michigan State University Extension, Michigan Natural Shoreline Partnership, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the Michigan State University Institute of Water Research.

Convention sessions will cover a wide variety of topics, including aquatic invasive species management and control, natural shoreline management, Cooperative Lakes Monitoring Program training, the latest in lake research, riparian rights and water law, and much more.

One workshop scheduled on May 1, 2014 from 1:30-4:30 p.m. is designed to educate interested lakefront property owners on the importance of natural shoreline landscaping and the use of bioengineering techniques to provide erosion control. Workshop topics will include: Components of a healthy lake ecosystem, understanding the shoreline, planning a natural shoreline landscape, design ideas for a natural shoreline landscape, plant selection, planting stock and site preparation, Michigan rules and regulations and tips for natural shoreline success. This workshop will be coordinated by MSU Extension, Tipp of the Mitt Watershed Council and MDEQ. Cost of attending this workshop and other educational offerings on May 1 is $20, paid through conference registration fees.

For the latest information on the Michigan Inland Lakes Convention, including registration details, visit michiganlakes.msue.msu.edu. Registration for the conference will open January 6, 2014.

An excellent resource available for sale at the workshop is the MSU Extension Bulletin (E-3145), Natural Shoreline Landscapes on Michigan’s Inland Lakes: Guidebook for Property Owners, also available through the MSU Extension Bookstore.

Registration for the conference will open on January 6, 2014. For the latest information on the Michigan Inland Lakes Convention, visit michiganlakes.msue.msu.edu. 

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit http://www.msue.msu.edu. To contact an expert in your area, visit http://expert.msue.msu.edu, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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• What’s in your medicine cabinet? How unused and unwanted medications can affect the Great Lakes

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“What we’ve done is take the typical L.A. dingbat, which I would characterize as a four-sided doughnut of a building, and break it apart and move toward the extreme edge of the property,” Daly said. Instead of introducing a radical new form to the block, 2602 Broadway improves on what already works for the neighborhood, he said.

Community Corp. of Santa Monica, a nonprofit that serves as developer and owner of 90 projects in the city, works with local architects such as Daly to transform infill properties or push forward on adaptive reuse. These projects are not only residences but also community landmarks: A Boys’ Girls’ Club at 2602 Broadway offers after-school activities to local children. Beyond such practical aspirations, one goal of CCSM is to provide housing that enhances how a neighborhood looks, Executive Director Sarah Letts said. “Buildings that both blend in,” she said, “and stand out in a beautiful way.”

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PHOTOS: Broadway aprtment complex in Santa Monica

Daly wanted to maximize the use of quality materials for the 33-unit complex. He said the key to keeping costs down was to remember that all four walls were not created equal: One side (the “hyper-performance facade,” he said) would always be exposed to the greatest amount of sun, and that’s where he could devote the bulk of the resources.

Deep, powder-coated aluminum awnings curve around the sunniest windows, providing shade and preventing interior heat gain. They also add a lovely sculptural element.

Big environmental moves included leaving a massive quinine tree to shade the lot and installing a cistern in the garden to collect rainwater. A screen made from planks of tornillo — a fast-growing and sustainable hardwood that ages nicely — weaves its way along the walkways that connect four buildings. The staggered openings offer snippets of sightlines in a way that’s almost cinematic, creating a pleasant interior view. But the design also cleverly affords privacy, which encourages residents to have their windows and doors open, Daly said.

With these simple features, Daly hoped to offer a broader definition of affordability — not just in terms of construction costs but also in how easily residents can maintain their homes. The simple lines and sustainable materials are appreciated by resident Marina Guerrero, who lives in one of the two-bedroom units with her husband and two children.

“You can really get creative here with the space,” Guerrero said. “It inspires me.”

Four ideas to borrow from 2602 Broadway:

Aluminum window awnings: The clever shading used here was manufactured by Machineous, a custom fabrication company in Gardena. The awnings shade the sunniest sides of the complex, increase privacy and simply look cool. Powder-coated aluminum is affordable and can add a pop of color to an otherwise blank wall. Inside some apartments, the windows actually have built-in seats and storage cabinets.

Tornillo privacy balustrade: Along the walkways, slender vertical planks of the hardwood tornillo are arranged in an undulating, computer-generated pattern. The net effect is fencing that feels more like a decoration than a barrier. Residents can keep windows and doors open without seeing into one another’s living rooms. This type of fence would work well between close dwellings, architect Kevin Daly said.

Cement board exterior cladding: To add texture and color to the exterior, Daly called for durable, affordable HardiePanel vertical siding. The matte finish of the cement board panels can be any color, and they have a texture that’s different from your typical stucco.

Landscaping color accents: Color is key for small spaces, but often homeowners don’t know where to start with a palette. Daly looked to the landscaping by Los Angeles-based Dry Design for cues, pulling shades of bright green and earthy browns that gave the building a sense of nature. The light blue is inspired by a marine-layered Santa Monica sky.

home@latimes.com

Sanford Golf Design is starting a major rebuild of the Spring Run Golf Club in Bonita Springs, Florida.

Architect John Sanford and his team will replace worn out infrastructure with a new irrigation systems, establish new drainage for the course, rebuild the deteriorated cart paths, and reposition tee boxes, greens and bunkers.

Sanford recently worked alongside Jack Nicklaus’ design firm to put the finishing touches to the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Park in New York City, using his particular expertise in working on former landfill sites.

Of the Spring Run course, Sanford said: “The golf course was built 15 to 20 years ago so it’s not that old but it needs upgrading. It’s what I call a developer’s golf course. They skimped on the infrastructure, so the guts of it are falling apart.”

Mike Zigler, Spring Run’s general manager, expressed his concern that the irrigation system may have been as little as 57 per cent efficient. Green depths did not meet industry standards, and the number of daily rounds in winter months, usually in excess of 300, placed severe pressure on the greens and fairways.

“This project has been three years in the making,” said Zigler. “We were looking for a different way to go. We wanted some fresh ideas. We were thinking more in the way of graphic design to show our members what the course would look like and we’re very happy with John’s ideas, design, landscaping, and graphics.”

The 18 hole, 6,989 yard golf course is at the centre of a residential community in Bonita Springs, located on Florida’s West coast. The existing routing will remain the same due to the constraints of nearby property, though Sanford said that each hole will be different and each will have a distinct character and strategy. The club will only lose its off-season, as the project will be completed in November.

“We never looked at this project as an opportunity because the economy is improving, but rather as a project that needed to be done now,” concluded Zigler. “With the new course being ready for the winter season of 2014, Spring Run will be in a strong position to take advantage of the improving economy and housing market in Bonita Springs.”

Sanford and his team will work with dirt already on site, and the existing lakes and ponds, which handle all the storm water retention and drainage, will be unchanged. Spring Run’s fairways will be sloped inward in order to contain errant shots and speed up play.

“When we started the master plan, I said as long as we are putting in a new irrigation system, new drainage, we are going to build all new greens and bunkers, it doesn’t cost more money to give you a great course with strategic quality,” explained Sanford. “If you build a green and you put it here or over there it is the same cost. The same goes with tees and bunkers. We were able to show the club that we could not only improve the infrastructure and conditioning, but also the aesthetics and the strategic quality of the golf course. Sanford said because the club initiated the master planning process a year in advance, he was able to get the master plan approved, completed his detailed design and document stages, and put the job out to bid months ago. We were able to negotiate with the some of the best contractors and get the club very good value, for a comprehensive reconstruction of the golf course.”

Sanford and his team received particular acclaim for their work on Granite Links, a golf course reclamation of two Boston area landfills that was honoured by the American Society of Golf Course Architects with a Design Excellence Recognition award. Sanford Golf Design is also currently working on renovation projects at the Kona Country Club in Hawaii, and at Kosaido Country Club near Sapporo, Japan.

“One of the things that I’m proud of is that we are going to completely rebuild this golf course, including all infrastructure, for about US$3 million,” added Sanford. “Five or six years ago a job like this was US$5 or US$6 million bucks.”