Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Question of the day? Why is Tony Hayward of BP different from the WMATA Board?

Citations received by BP for safety violations at their U.S. refineries.

Egregious Citations Issued to BP

Source: Fast Company.

BP: multiple safety failures throughout the organization, culminating in a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. CEO, Tony Hayward, makes a number of gaffes. British stakeholders say the U.S. is being mean, being xenophobic, anti-British in the statements over the the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Eventually, Tony Hayward walks the plank ("BP Set to Replace Hayward as Chief Executive" from the New York Times) although maybe not the same way as failures last summer in the S-Bahn transit system in Berlin--none of the failures led to casualties!!!!--resulted in wholesale change in the management of the transit system. See "Safety Issues Ground Hundreds Of Berlin S-Bahn Trains" from the German radio network NDR. From the story:

The executive management of S-Bahn Berlin was asked to resign this past week: included among the casualties are Tobias Heinemann (chief officer), Thomas Prechtl (head of finance), Olaf Hagenauer (personal director) and just recently hired technical director Peter Büsing.

WMATA, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority: 9 people died and 70 people were injured in a subway train crash, because of a problem with signaling systems, in a fashion similar to events in 2005 and 2009 where fortunately accidents were avoided by the train operators overriding system controls.

How is that systemic and systematic failure any different from BP's record of safety? Shouldn't there be consequences?

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