Everyone agrees that Chicago Public Schools have to change. Yet there are fierce disagreements over what kinds of changes must be made, who should lead that change, and how it should be administered. At the helm of the warring parties are Karen Lewis, the new president of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, and Ron Huberman, the CEO of CPS installed by Chicago’s Mayor Daley.

These two opposing leaders are fighting a serious battle, one that will determine the extent to which public schools remain publicly owned and operated. It is a fight with tremendous implications, ranging from the future of charter schools in the City of Chicago, to how success is defined and evaluated.

In the backdrop of this battle, there is another struggle going on in Chicago Public Schools. This is the fight to protect the life of Chicago Public School students. As a recent New York Times article identified, 218 CPS students were shot in the last school year, and 258 the year before. The article, provocatively titled “Graduation Is the Goal, Staying Alive Is the Prize,” highlights efforts to improve the safety of simply attending public school. They focus on an unfolding intervention strategy which targets the most “at-risk” students and connects them with adult mentors and support services. Created by CEO Huberman, a former police officer, this $60 million intervention is also geared to strengthening communications between the police and school administrators. While this intervention brings in deeply needed resources, the police dimension of the program strengthens a disciplinary approach that relies heavily on law enforcement to run daily operations at schools.

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No doubt I’m the last cat who should be writing about public space.  I mean here at home in Los Angeles I rarely think about public space and congregating in same.  That is, I do congregate occasionally, I just don’t go out of my way to do it.  Because mostly I’m in my car going to and fro – and when I get to my destination, it’s rarely to a park.  I have nothing against open spaces, I like open spaces and certainly L.A., particularly our urban areas of the city, that are green poor – though this is not the only way in which gathering spaces are manifested in this city.

Lord knows people have meetings, write screenplays or work on the Great American Novel on their laptops (or playing World of Warcraft with who knows who all else online) at many a Starbuck’s or Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in this considerable town.  Maybe somebody has tracked this, but I’ve yet to see or hear about a sinewy barrista kicking somebody out for staying too long in their coffee shop.  But then, it seems these folks now and then buy a coffee, frappachino and/or bottle of water to keep the static down.

My gym, which the lovely and talented Dr. Pop pays for – as one has to have perks in this line of work – is an L.A. Fitness housed in a former Montgomery Ward department store in a mall on La Cienega near the 10 Freeway.  Okay, so already it’s not a public space, but bear with me a moment.  Given this is ethnically rich L.A. and the geography of where the gym is (located in between several distinct neighborhoods), this facility gets a cross section of its inhabitants from young sleek-muscled tatted ballers wearing just the right shoes for their hops to, what I presume to be, orthodox Jewish woman in sweat gear that includes long stretch skirts, sweat pants under that and coverings for their head.  Admittedly, you don’t generally find representatives of these two groups awaiting their respective turns at the preacher curl machine, gabbing about the latest episode of Rookie Blue.

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More than any other city I’ve been to, Berlin is the closest thing in my mind to what a city “built for the people” looks like.

East Berlin, that is. The ex-West Berlin is completely different, more typical of big western capitals with imposing, super-symmetrical, grey buildings standing starkly next to hyper-modern architecture, big monuments and chain stores strewn about large avenues that take hours to traverse – with many cars on the road and few people on the streets. The whole thing feels a bit cold and impersonal and during working hours, a bit like a giant German ghost town.

The East on the other hand is living. Its chaotic.  There is graffiti absolutely everywhere, everywhere everywhere. Paint chips off of buildings, plants grow off ledges of buildings, people whiz by on bikes and smoke in cafes, a constant stream of people occupy the streets:  talking, lounging, cooking food, playing football.

The wall might as well still be there – many, in fact would like it to be.

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Every Sunday and holiday, about 80 miles of the main streets of Bogota are blocked off from cars for most of the day so that bicyclists, runners, skaters, and pedestrians can take over the streets.  The ciclovias are used by about 2 million people – about 30% of the population and are surrounded by other events on park stages – concerts, yoga and aerobic instructions, and other performances.

And now, Los Angeles, the least likely suspect, whose endless concrete and streets have been the butt of urban critique for devoting most of the public space in the city to cars instead of people is on the verge of launching its own – CicLAvia – an event to be held on September 12 if all goes as planned.

“L.A. doesn’t have enough public space…of the largest cities in the U.S., L.A. is the most park-poor,” says Aaron Paley, CicLAvia advocate, in a video on Kickstarter, the social entrepreneur venture capital network. (What could be more Do-It-Together?  Venture capital from anyone who can give $1 a more).

“But we do have these fantastic streets.  And the streets already belong to us.  And by turning the streets over to the people on a Sunday we create temporary parks overnight without any large investment.”

Aaron is a professional animator of public spaces and runs a company that is, ironically, called CARS (Community Arts Resources).  He makes festivals, events, and turns concrete in L.A. into places where people dance, and, sing and play together.  He’s a friend and we were Stanton Fellows together (a great program that helps social entrepreneurs create their own project – sorry, only in L.A.).  He was researching and investigating and noodling about a new idea for public space, ended up in Bogota, and came back as a ciclovia evangelist.

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Last month I wrote a post about Iceland’s economic (and political) meltdown which resulted from swapping out a successful fishing economy with a short-lived reign as the Wall Street of Western Europe – complete with U.S.-style excess and exploding financial bubble.

And now there’s something new.

Last month, Jon Gnarr, Iceland’s most popular comedian’s, and his Best Party won 34.7 per cent of the Reykjavik municipal election, and along with that, six of the 15 city council seats.

Gnarr is now the Mayor of Reykjavik, where two-thirds of Iceland’s population of about 300,000 reside.

The Best Party, whose leaders largely consist of punk rockers who promote an “anarcho- surreal” politics, was initially created as a satire.

But the people of Reykjavik voted for the the parody over business-as-usual as one way to vent their anger against Iceland’s ruling elite just two months after an official report accused the government and regulators of “extreme negligence” in the run-up to the crisis.

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