Columnists like Stanley Crouch hope that Obama’s win will renovate the content and style of hip hop music. Throughout a recent article he takes hip hop modes of fashion to task and, by extension, the more identifiable affectations of urban culture. With his win, Crouch hopes that Obama will shift trends:

On the pop cultural end, Barack and Michelle Obama’s worldliness and common sense will greatly diminish the national appetite for and the defense of those who proudly commit intellectual suicide by submitting to anti-intellectual stances and the surface styles that repel across all ethnic lines.

At the same time, Obama is considering creating an Office of Urban Policy, hopefully to replace the ailing/failing HUD. Obviously the connection to urban America he developed as a community organizer in Chicago doesn’t stop at the White House.

With Jay-Z and Beyoncé rumored to be performing at the inauguration, and Obama’s now infamous hip hop mannerisms (brushing his shoulders off, the “fist-jab” – as Fox News so adeptly termed it – with his wife, etc.), and the overwhelming support from the urban music community bolstering his win, one has to wonder what role the hip hop community will play in this new office.

While Crouch is holding out for a great shift in urban culture, one has to wonder about the wisdom of that wish. Everyone can agree that Obama is a great role model to urban youth and urban culture in general, but hoping for this seismic shift is glib and doesn’t acknowledge the critical perspective that urban cultural practitioners can and regularly do bring to the discourse on cities. Obama as cultural-consensus-maker might not be in the best interest of the urban discourse. As in intellectual, he might be more interested in working with difference than in drawing it toward his position – collaboration as opposed to consensus.

University of London PhD candidate Markus Miessen examines the potential of a new type of collaboration in a phenomenal article:

An alternative model of participation within spatial practice will be rendered, one that takes as a starting point an understanding of participation beyond models of consensus. Instead of aiming for synchronization, such model could be based on participation through critical distance and the conscious implementation of zones of conflict. Through cyclical specialization, the future spatial practitioner could arguably be understood as an outsider who–instead of trying to set up or sustain common denominators of consensus, enters existing situations or projects by deliberately instigating conflicts as a micro-political form of critical engagement with the environment that one is operating in.

From a policy perspective, what does Obama need with more people like him when he’s trying to address a different demographic? Instead of encouraging urban youth and urban culture to emulate him, wouldn’t it be more useful for him and for them if on-the-ground representatives from urban culture could advise as post-consensus collaborators to help enrich future urban policy? Is there intellectual wealth in the distance between Obama and the “anti-intellectual stances and the surface styles that repel across all ethnic lines”?

And now, as always, some music.

Was anyone in Montréal this weekend? How about New York?

In both places, the code of the streets was the rule of law as autonomous zones were established where people could appreciate their city from the perspective of the pedestrian. Montréal is in fact a recognized world capital of design, participating as a design capital in UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network and so this weekend’s 6th annual Under Pressure International Graffiti Festival probably wasn’t much of a surprise to residents of la belle province. Young artists from all over the continent and beyond converged on MTL from Friday to Sunday, taking aerosol art and hiphop culture to the next level. It actually baffles me as to why the festival is not included in Montréal’s City of Design profile – it’s the arts- and design-related event that my peers look most forward to in that city, and it attracts an incredible amount of talent from outside of the region. It seemed like all of Ottawa was there or trying to get there this weekend.

Getting fully behind an idea like this seems like very simple and obvious ways for municipalities to engage not only young people, but the types of creative people that contribute to that great intangible – the “vibe” of a city. The emergence of the arts as recapitulated by hiphop culture – taking the idea of the G.O.B.S. (Gallery, Opera, Ballet, Symphony) and putting them on the street via Graffiti, Emceeing, B-Boying and DJing – has galvanized whole new ideas about the role of art in the city, and perhaps its ushered new conceptions of beauty itself. It has certainly brought us a new semiotics of the streets. Acknowledging that this change has taken place makes a municipal administration more relevant to its young contingent.

Case and Point: In New York this weekend, Mayor Bloomberg and Jeanette Sadik-Kahn, his transportation commissioner, launched the Summer Streets initiative. Quoting this New York Times article:

On a path that extended from the Brooklyn Bridge north to Park Avenue and the Upper East Side, thousands of people filled the streets, taking part in activities like street-side tai chi or salsa dancing. Others simply enjoyed the chance to stroll in normally car-clogged streets. In a city where walkers, cyclists, and motorists must share limited space, having a major thoroughfare through Manhattan free of cars created a giddy sort of excitement.

An interesting move on the part of the city of New York to be sure. In Toronto, this is a monthly event over in the historical district of Kensington Market, but it’s nice to see New York getting on board. To get the event moving on the right foot, Mayor Bloomberg and Comissioner Sadik-Kahn coordinated with a special guest. Can anyone guess who?

Click here to watch Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Sadik-Kahn and Jay-Z launch the Summer Streets Initiative

That’s right. The Jigga-Man.

Now let’s look past the fact that the mayor’s speech sounded like a passage pulled directly out of one of Richard’s books about the Creative Class, or the obvious discomfort that we all felt hearing Bloomberg make those scripted jokes about Jay, or how awkward Jay-Z actually was on the mic (for once in his life). There’s something bigger to be said here: The administration of New York City, in considering how best to communicate that the streets are for the people, looked to hiphop culture’s – and indeed New York’s – brightest star to emblemize that idea. They are making very strong statements about the culture of the street and of the city – in fact, other than the scale and location of the operation, their statement is almost the most innovative thing about the idea.

Now if the city could hire these kids to ride through various neighborhoods of New York from weekend to weekend, puttin’ it down and giving workshops, THAT would be some innovation. Word.

Was anyone in New York to see how this initiative went? How about Montréal – anyone make it out to Under Pressure? How are you being innovative on your streets in your city? What ideas do you have about what street culture means?

I’m really interested in your opinions!

And now, as always, some music.

R.I.P. Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes