Walker Evans, FORTUNE, November 1960
Because it isn't Manhattan! New York Metro's cover story on new development in Brooklyn is dead on:
"It shouldn’t take towers along the waterfront to recenter our mental maps of New York on the East River, not at Central Park. Brooklyn is already different, inextricably linked, but equal. It shouldn’t be back-office territory, but front-office space for smaller businesses."
Roger K. Lewis takes on form freaks.
I don't know about the actual discussion about triangular geometry and all of that, but it does seem that when trendiness takes over, the idea can only die out all the more quickly. That is the nature of trends (think about last season's ubiquitous poncho!). But a building sticks around for a long long time...
PBS's "Flag Wars," a movie about the gentrification of Olde Towne East (I think) in Columbus, Ohio, sounds fascinating, and unfortunately, I missed it. Please air again!
This USA Today article has some nice comments from people on the street...but what's up with that last factor about religion?
The Brookings Institute takes on conventional wisdom about convention centers.
Sports stadiums hopefully up next?
Coffee shop at train station in Taipei
The Washington Post reports on a new study by the FHWA on how extra trips to the coffee shop before going to work has increased traffic congestion. The study gives examples of how businesses choose to locate depending on commuter vehicular traffic flow and more men, instead of women, are making daily short trips for a single purpose - like getting a cup of coffee.
What isn't discussed is that perhaps people are going out of their way to seek places to gather and simply BE before having to go to the office or work and becoming a worker. Case in point: I just moved closer to my office, and can now walk to work, but I still cherish my morning coffee from the corner coffee stand, not because of his coffee per se (I actually prefer my own at home) but because it's nice to start the day with a friendly exchange and to see some of my fellow pedestrians on the way. I hate to admit it, but Starbucks has brought the pleasure of drinking coffee and sitting in a cafe back to the mainstream.
This is not just about transportation, it's also a community development issue. I think this is more like a Third Place syndrome, and as access to Third Places diminish (e.g., coffee shops, the local pub, the park bench, etc) or just require more travel, this study shows that people will make the trip to fulfill a social craving.
For other cities, how about locating cafes and newspaper stands in public transit hubs? There aren't nearly enough of those amenities at bus and train stations, and both things, while small, make the trip so much more pleasant.
To P.J. O'Rourke's claim that the Minneapolis light rail system was too expensive with its $700 million price tag, and that every citizen might as well lease a BMW SUV for the same price, an industrious ground logistics military officer offers this analysis, which ultimately shows that while public transit would cost taxpayers $17 million per year, BMWs with all its associated costs of ownership and service (parking spaces, highways and roads to drive on, gas, and more...) would cost taxpayers $166 million per year.
via Civic Strategies
Preservation Magazine gets the details.
More from New York Times and the NY Daily News.
Donald Shoup has loads of statistics to share in his recent book, the "High Cost of Free Parking," all of which are surprisingly interesting to read. For drivers everywhere, parking is a paramount issue, and municipalities have tried to accommodate drivers to instituting policies that require parking spaces per something built.
We've been bantering around some much less scientifically founded statistics recently, just based on presentations we've seen or what we heard talking to transportation engineers. For example:
the number of parking spaces per car in Seattle - 8
the percent of land in average size cities paved by asphalt - 50%
the subsidy per parking space in Midtown Manhattan - $18
(feel free to dispute these claims)
There are working alternatives to providing parking and braving the anger of irate drivers. Missoula, Montana has a terrific parking management program. Instead of subsidizing parking (which they've calculated to cost the city $20,000 per space), they poured their resources into transit incentives, employee transit card subsidies, even picking up the cab fare if you're stuck somewhere and transit doesn't get you back to where you want to go. It's called Missoula in Motion, and I love it.
To help you fend off the convenience of that Starbucks coffee around the corner, the Delocator finds independent coffee shops close by, based on your zip code. While it remains a mystery how the listings are organized (certainly not by distance, at any rate) this is a handy little tool to help you stay local.
We spent hours looking at old addresses, childhood homes, and neighborhoods of farflung family members on Google Maps last week, but this combination of Craigslist apartment postings and Google maps turns it a critical application.
Wow. I always felt Google and Craigslist were kickass. Thanks be to the hacker that figured out to combine the two.
Unable to afford to buy a home close to their jobs, people in the Washington DC area are now sinking money into a RV and paying monthly rent on space in a RV park.
If that's not depressing enough, there is a recent report that homebuyer's investment for the future could be less an investment than they thought. It shows how escalating real estate prices have spawned appraisal and re-financing fraud, putting homeowners at risk. Is this a bubble, or are all the real estate service companies collaborating (even indirectly) to make money off of hopeful home owners?
...and THAT's is why I love the Williamsburg-Greenpoint community. The community will not go down without a serious fight, and they're organized.
The comprehensive plan completed through 10 years of collaboration with community stakeholders and city government was scraped for this recent Department of City Planning proposal. I have yet to see a reason why the community's plan was originally rejected. Or why the Department took it upon themselves to come up with a plan on their own. How about involving the community, tweaking the plan they've already invested in, if economic pressures indeed have changed? This process doesn't have to be as painful as it has become.
On the homefront, we traded a beautiful place in a great neighborhood, though somewhat remote, for a smaller though nice place in a much more central location. Actually, the new location is where we always wished we could live, but now that we're here, it's interesting what we miss. This coming year is going to be a big experiment.
...enough said.
For some serious news, visit Planetizen or read this posting on Megachurches at theboxtank.
For some fun, check out Faking Places from Project for Phony Spaces.
Back on Monday!
There's been a lot of speculation that immigrant communities are more adept and better at using public spaces, in whatever condition they may be, to create vibrant places. Examples abound, from the Chinatown public markets to Latino soccer tournaments in fields long overlooked by city parks departments.
The Barr Foundation just released this report, focused primarily on Boston, on immigration and open public spaces. It is the first step in understanding how individuals who have many more challenges in becoming part of a new society improve the very place where they're treated as strangers.
The Flatiron Building was issued 9 violations today by the Department of Buildings for its huge H&M ad. (courtesy of the Municipal Art Society)
I first visited the Fulton Fish Market last fall with a public markets expert who could point out all the intricacies of the economics of running the place. Those details have faded, but the experience of being at the market - all the different fishes, the friendliness of the fish sellers, the loudness of their selling - is unforgettable.
newyorkmetro.com's great last images of Fulton Fish Market.
[I'm sorry not to post this earlier, but it's still important.] We were aghast by the news reported in last week's Village Voice article about the Bronx Terminal Market giving all its vendors the boot to make way for another big box economic development initiative.
"Tenants were notified on March 4 that they have until the end of the month to accept a buyout package and relocation to separate sites around the borough—or face immediate eviction."This market is pivotal to the daily life of New Yorkers - it supplies produce and dry goods for the hundreds of thousands of small business owners who are then able to keep their prices affordable for the less-privileged citizens of the city.
www.metropolismag.com
I haven't gotten to the article yet with my Metropolis Magazine, but this is a very thoughtful way of putting it (via Life Without Buildings).
There has been so much hype about the brand name architects lately that the article was simply a pleasure to read. I tried to find out more about the Chair of the Architecture Association in Shanghai and some of the city planners after last month's Harpers article about Shanghai in Harper's but didn't get too far. (And that article isn't online, I'm sorry to say). In the article, one of the city's planners was advocating for a more human scale, rather than huge mega-projects. He was worried that people wouldn't be able to walk from place to place. Worth reading if you can get your hands on a copy.
I'm not an advocate of smooshed words, but this one sure does sum this up! (via Curbed.com)
Speaking on behalf a proposal for the West Side Stadium plan, Alex Krieger, the head of Harvard's GSD, invoked Jane Jacobs, claimed her as a mentor and asserted that his proposal most closely matched her ideals.
People love to invoke Jane Jacobs to support some idea that has "mixed-use" and "public space." An intrepid reporter, Will Doig (who also wrote another story I posted a few months ago, and for which I got my first nasty comment) from New York Magazine got to the bottom of this, and managed to talk to Jacobs herself.
“The Harvard School of Design has never been much of a mentor of mine.” Why? “They’ve never respected the city street or the vitality of cities. They got terribly fond of Le Corbusier,” whose tower-in-a-park planning theories are anathema to Jacobs. “And it’s never really worn off.”Her final quote said it all:
"That’s an awful way to use valuable land in Manhattan."
This spring has brought a lot of changes, so I apologize for not posting as much as I should be. We're moving homes this week, after the office move just two weeks ago, so please bear with me. There is something irresistible though; it'll be up in a minute.
...hopefully translates into disappearing cars. This article talks about parking lot owners selling to developers.
I recently saw a presentation that turned the idea of "parking as a right" into "parking as a privilege." It was given by a professor at a university in Vienna, and to make his point, he showed pictures of parking rates in parking lots in Manhattan, and then showed what it cost to park on the street. (His agenda is that streets should be given more to pedestrians with wider sidewalks, and public transit, rather than private cars). What do land use policy makers think of this?
According to the Hyatt Foundation, the purpose of the Pritzker Prize is
"...to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture."Thom Mayne could have pushed beauty, and he obviously has vision and commitment, but looking at how his buildings meet the street, I'm hard pressed to understand how he has made significant contributions to humanity and the built environment.
I loved this, on the new I AMsterdam campaign for Amsterdam, Holland.
The site tries to give visitors a clue, and under CARS, it says,
Do you really want to enter Amsterdam by car? Know what you are getting yourself into... Traffic jams, getting stuck and a testing of your patience.
Boy, am I glad that Taichung didn't fall for Guggenheim economics!
And if anyone has visited the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, which features local artists, you can see immediately that there is not a dearth of art in Asia, but perhaps it depends on how one defines "art."
In Canada, natch.
Voting takes place between April 1 and July 31, 2005. Anyone can vote, I think.
Audubon Building
I've been out of touch lately with a recent office move (kicked) out of a 12 story building in the West Village (which will turn the small former offices of non-profits and child psychologists into multimillion dollar lofts...the place does have views on 6 sides!) into a green building, packing and unpacking, and then a subsequent modem UPS debacle. So, no internet for a few days means lots of backlogging. Hopefully I'll be able to glean quickly and catch up. Back soon!
So this is what happens when you try to grow grass in the desert. Neveda is the site of the largest growing city in the US - Las Vegas! So the water authority now needs to cope with unsuitable landscaping to keep up with the boom, and has developed an incentive program, Water Smart Landscaping, to motivate homeowners to cooperate. A couple of standouts:
I turned off the water on my grass already and it has started to die. Can I still qualify for the program?Or how about this:
Won't Water Smart Landscaping make my house hotter and run-up my power bills?Really.
No. Shade is the key to keeping you cool in the desert.
Richard Lipsky, lobbyist for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, is on a roll! He just defeated Wal-Mart's insurgence on the New York economy. I hope it keeps going. I especially like these choice words from him:
...the key is combining a left-wing populist message with a conservative populist one about neighborhood character. [That’s] the music that makes the elected officials want to dance.[Thanks Chris!]
What have we come to expect from Frank Gehry - thought-provoking architecture? Or yet another building that requires "fixing" because of its design?
Pauline Saliga, executive director of the Society of Architectural Historians, said she doubted that the changes would drastically alter the hall's look, though she was surprised designers hadn't planned better to prevent an obvious problem such as glare in Los Angeles.Read the rest of the LA Times story.
She pointed out that Gehry had to rework another landmark building, the library at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, after snow and ice slid off the curvy, stainless steel roof and crashed onto the sidewalk below.
"Even great architects make mistakes with materials and designs," she said. "I think you just have to admit it and you have to be pragmatic about it and alter that design if necessary. Architecture is a functional art form, so it really does have to function."
I'm still reeling a bit from this past weekend's conference. Some of the more choice juxtapositions between the two forces (mostly paraphrased, not exact):
"It is a shame that Jane Jacobs' work has disconnected the study of cities from cities...she has created an era of hyper-nostalgia which gets in the way of progress." -- Rem Koolhaas
"Jane Jacobs was the first real brave attempt to understand how cities work." -- Michael Sorkin
Or, how about these:
"Communities get in the way of the future, especially for architecture." -- unknown architect
"Neighborhoods prevent the imagination of architecture," Harvard professor of Architecture." -- Hashim Sarkis
vs.
"Neighborhoods are what matter most to New Yorkers, when we ask, and that is what we are trying to keep." -- Amanda Burden (for whom, I have to say, my respect grew), and
"Maybe architecture is about designing for delight, not for the potential gloom." -- Harvey Molotch
Or, how about this final coup de grace,
"Public participation is what prevents city government from getting anything done," Esther Fuchs
vs.
"Community organizing is the only way that we now have city planning trying to come up with innovative solutions." -- Ron Schiffman
Yikes. It was a ping pong game and there was no diplomacy (someone suggested that actually, there was incredible amounts of diplomacy, since there were no physical fistfights.) The New York session is the first conference of a series of six to be held around the country, and at best, it delineated for the group of urban experts the work ahead. Some of the stark differences highlighted include those between theory and practice; between city managers and community organizers; between architecture and planners; between academics and practitioners. Of course, these are the most obvious contrasts, why should this be any different? Certainly, it was a unique conference in that so many influential individuals actually tried to discuss the same topic, but in the end, what they said was not the same topic at all, but just talking past each other.
Yes, a room full of experts showed that cities are complex organisms. In fact, if you think about your favorite places, the places that make up what you might determine is a great city, you realize that it is very difficult to say what exactly makes it so great. Is it the pedestrians and bicyclists? Is it that there is a diverse group of people walking about? Is it the sidewalk, the retail mix, the housing stock, the safety, the proximity to transit, the nearness of amenities, the nearness to open space...the list can go on and on.
So when a group tries to talk about re-creating great cities, or building their cities for greatness, it is as hard to replicate as it is to replicate a human being. You can do it - clone the DNA, get all the right inputs - but you might miss the heart and soul and vibrancy. It is just too hard to try to re-create something as complex as a great place from scratch. That's why it's important to start creating places with people. The multitude of people who will have opinions will get you closer to a great place in a city than anything else.
Perhaps in cities with less attitude (the New York audience did have a chip on its shoulder, but with the "almost right" tagline, who could blame us) discussion might be more fruitful. As Tony Travers optimistically said, "If we can do it in New York, we can do it anywhere." Good luck.
I'm going to be offline for a bit, spending the next couple of days at the LSE/Deutche Bank/Rockefeller Foundation -sponsored Urban Age conference. The purpose of the discussion is global urbanization; the focus of this session is NYC. Already the hypothesis of the organizers is the title of this post: New York, almost right.
Hm....and who are these people? (Actually, the people at the reception tonight certainly reflected the image of those institutions, and since I also happened to take courses with more than a few of the presenters, it's familiar. But there's the reason I didn't continue with that path... it's going to be an interesting next couple of days). I'll update if anything significant happens.
"The Internet is no cure for suburban loneliness"
What next?
"Stay-in-car shopping"
"Next Stop: Immobility - An A to Z guide to surviving the death/pause/sunshine of the CenterLine"
A better title for non-Californians might be: understanding the car culture of the OC
Protest
aka Stop protesting suburbs and try to make them better
Nice profile of Karen Hundt, PLanning Director of Chattanooga, TN
(all via Planetizen - thank you!)
Sounds like a great idea.
But did the bill pass? A quick search on google hasn't turned anything up yet.
Listen to a short report on NPR.
Just when I posted about race and neighborhood development, USA Today published this article hypothesizing about Latinos and emerging New Urbanist communities. It's not a substantive theory by any means, but interesting to think about.
TransGas will not give up! A $700 million bid for the Westside Railyard, but with the commitment to help it built its power plant in Brooklyn and commit the city to a 20-year electricity contract. This is real estate development run amock!
It's not like the Williamsburg and Greenpoint communities don't have a vision. They even went through a community-based planning process, which resulted in a plan that won the 2001 William H. Whyte Award from the local APA chapter for innovative and creative planning! Let's revisit the plan.
stop the power plant!
Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning
Williamsburg Watch
From CNU Florida's image bank
The Times on public reception of New Urbanist ideals.
Definitely a superficial analysis of what people want. Ask people if they want safe streets, a sense of community, good use of natural resources, to be within walking distance of open space or park land with lots of amenities and see if they might answer the New Urbanism or Not question differently. Ask someone if they would mind being next to the bank and you'll probably get a really different response. (I'm not even that big of a proponent of New Urbanism, which I think focuses too much on design elements like white picket fences, but many of the principles are worth paying attention to. Just look at that image above; too sterile for my taste, but so very nice to photograph).
Looking at comparisons of new home purchases (new urbanist development vs. typical sprawl) is also too superficial. How are developers marketing these homes?
The Washington Post's column "A Crack in the Broken Window Theory" is more interesting in how it highlights why the internalization of racist perceptions, even by members of the marginalized race, can encourage or inhibit the growth of a neighborhood. This race issue is not a small thing at all, but one of the biggest things underpinning our social fabric. The decisions that affect neighborhoods are often made by a power hierarchy that favors the elite - and one not representing the neighborhoods impacted. People who are making these decisions have to be aware of this, acknowledge it, and figure out a way to stop the pattern.
On a personal level, (I guess I just need to get this off my chest) it is difficult enough that there are so few faces like mine in the field. To then deal with spoken words that are ignorantly racist, though well-meaning and unintentional, or to see colleagues stand by the use of such language, is really discouraging. Words, like perception, are small things, but they make an enormous difference.
This article about a town who thinks itself so ugly that it makes itself a candidate for demolishment makes me very uncomfortable, mostly because the razing of the town is on behalf of a TV reality show. No other creative solutions instead of demolishing it? And why for the benefit of the media?
Has anyone been watching Town Haul? The mom of a friend said the hostess's superficial and flaky demeanor, which matched her superficial and flaky town recommendations, was too much to bear. She stopped watching halfway through the show.
Thanks Jon and Carly!
As my friend in London calls it. Between Christo, Dog Show Party, and various meetings, I've been too busy to post much this week, and now I'm off to Virginia this weekend. Things should be back in order by next week, at which point I'll have to dash over to Central Park to catch the Gates before they're taken down.
Representing very opposite ends of the culture spectrum in New York City:
Here's Henry Stern's (former park commissioner under Guiliani) take on The Gates.
Here's the Salon.com article about the Dog Show Party.
On the eve of the Gates going up in Central Park tomorrow, the Gotham Gazette republished a statement from Christo and Jean-Claude about the intent of their public art piece. I thought it was quite charming, and since I've been fielding a lot of press inquiries about what we think abotu the Gates, I thought it was time to also repost it.
"Our Project for the Park"
Gotham Gazette, Jul 21, 2003
I almost forgot! Today (Feb 9) is the first day of the Year of the Rooster.
Happy Lunar New Year!!
("lunar" is much more inclusive than "chinese.")
I spent some time looking for a card I could send my parents, who live very far away, and was amazed at just how many local newspapers and media in the United States covered the holiday - every city from the largest metropolitan cities in the US to the smallest. I remember when the Lunar New Year was a holiday that my parents (who raised me here) tried to celebrate but had difficulty explaining. It was enough that I almost felt entitled to take the day off!
No luck though in finding a fun card. If anyone has a card they want to share - please do! I usually find something creative types of graphic design firms pull together - but not this year. (An odd beginning to a year that is supposed to be "full of energy and activity, you can't wait!")
Martha Schwartz's Jacob Javits Plaza
I guess someone in Berkeley finally finally got fed up about current trends in landscape architecture.
Of note, a General Services Administration employee visited us last week, and expressed concern over the Jacob Javits Plaza design in the photo above. She's under enormous pressure to increase security around federal buildings in New York, and is surprised that the loopy design isn't considered a security threat. "When I go out for lunch or a phone conversation, I always get caught in those benches and can't get out." Multiply that with a sense of emergency and hundreds of people fleeing the building...no wonder she's nervous.
Another great line from the New Yorker: "the mark of a city worth living in is that there are never enough places to park."
I guess that's why I can't move to California.
in this week's The Talk of the Town - "Too much information"
[Thanks Chris!]
Actually, this is a great idea. Jackson is sponsoring a competition for a master plan of 8 acres in its downtown - Cool City Design Competition. Not only does it get you some of the freshest ideas around from people who aren't tainted by bureaucracy yet, it also gives Jackson some great publicity. Now, if only the emphasis wasn't solely on design...
Michigan did something really similar; I couldn't tell if these were related. It's actually pretty cool.
In DC, another new stadium project is in the works. While some seasoned DC administrators for the city's built environment explain how vision is effected by reality, others hope to attract a star architect. As someone from HNTB (an engineering firm!) said, "it doesn't have to say DC or the Nationals on it..you just know it's DC." At what cost to the city, especially one already full of so many iconic structures? (The RFK stadium cost $24 million to build back in the day.)
"Getting good designers to swing at DC's pitch"
Washington Post - Feb 5
"City seeks 'Signature' Ballpark"
Washington Post - Feb 6
Christopher Hume with another insightful column in the Toronto Star.
"You're not welcome"
Toronto Star - Feb 5
Not really an accessory, but a necessity. What struck me about Santa Cruz's accessory dwelling units (ACU) ordinance was how long ago they were thinking about curbing sprawl in their city. In the 1980s they created a greenbelt around the city, with protected land. Now they're looking to build housing on existing lots (with livable units on them already) instead of developing greenfields and changing the greenbelt policy.
The only thing I wish this article did more was at least give a suggestion of what is so bad about ACUs. I can guess, but sometimes these things are unpredictably complicated.
Last week's New Yorker has a delightful portrayal of the Cleveland Orchestra, who was scheduled to play in New York this past weekend. (I wish the New Yorker kept its articles online for more than a week so you can read it!)
But really, the article was about Cleveland as a city, the strength of its cultural institutions and how they are struggling to stay afloat when the engines of its economy (big industries) have now moved overseas. I love that Cleveland Orchestra is regarded as one of the Big 5 orchestras, and the most "European" of them all - New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago (is that right?). I also love that the orchestra's audience has been "trained" to be more accepting of new classical music than many audiences in bigger, metropolitan cities.
I put Cleveland up there with Pittsburgh. Having never been to either, both strike me as those American cities with tons of culture and a lot going for it, if only you give it a chance.
In light of all the criticism about the West Side Stadium (and maybe some design pressure from Amanda Burden who said recently that she was trying to lessen the negative design impact of the stadium plan), the team's president sent the architects back to the drawing board....and came up with a smaller stadium, though same design scheme.
Hm...I think they're missing the point.
See also
"West Side Stadium: Small Enough to Fit on a Table" [curbed.com]
As the dust around the unveiling of the new MoMA settles, we'll likely hear more about how it compares to the MoMA of old.
I almost agree with Oussouroff here. The article is not really about the building per se, but about the exhibit design. There really is nothing so spectacular about how the pieces are laid out - though it is much more comfortable to walk around. I miss the attention on the art - I breeze by it.
More pix of the cute Frenchie, Sophie. Is it possible to fall in love with a dog you've never met? And, in honor of the upcoming Dog Show Party, we've been amusing ourselves with a little quiz: what dog are you?
From a NPR interview with Nellie McKay
Hot off the wire - beautiful singer/songwriter star Nellie McKay has agreed to play at Dog Show Party! Apparently she's an avid animal lover. Her prior engagement was going to be Lincoln Center, a contract she broke (because Lincoln Center will not allow her to play at a show 5 days before or after where tix are less than $60). Nellie said bye bye LC, hello DSP! She rocks!
I-Lien, Kevin and Sophie - thanks for the cute pic!
Coming up in just a couple of weeks - Dog Show Party 2005!!
What: Dog Show Party 2005
When: Tuesday, February 15, 7-11PM
Where: Tonic
I find this event one of those things I end up doing because we're in the right setting - New York City - with the right people - a bunch of aspiring performers, writers, designers, and artists. In short, the Party is a simultaneous telecast of the last night of judging at the Westminster Dog Show, which happens to be at Madison Square Garden.
What's been nice about working on it is getting into a host of spaces throughout the city that I would normally never be privy to - a dance space in Soho that is actually someone's apartment, a dance enthusiast, it turns out; a dance space 10 stories up in Chelsea, which also gives massages (yes, all these dance spaces because I am a member of the party's dance troupe); working with really nice people in the night scene. The club owner of Tonic* is helping us out with a space for the party because, it just turns out, she's also a show pug owner. You just never know when it comes down to dogs. We're making videos, choreography, designing costumes, planning games, writing commentary, finding sponsors, filling doggie bags, crowning king and queen - it's the whole works!
SO - please come if you can! Tickets available online now. All proceeds after expenses will go to Rational Animal, a great, volunteer-run non-profit that helps at-risk animals in NYC.
*I have to point out, in the context of this site, that Tonic is at risk of losing its lease because the landlord is interested in building condos on the lot. It's already happened to Luna Lounge. Tonic has to raise upwards of $100,000 in the next month to stay in its space. Change happens so fast in these quicksand neighborhoods that the current leasers get practically no notice before they're evicted. Please come out and support it and buy it a little more time.
Pic from Wired New York.
I have to disagree with this ArchPaper.com article which contends that the tall malls in New York have gotten more innovative with building connections to the street while ground-floor retail have gotten more bland and boring - and mall-like.
I'm not opposed to malls in theory. Remember Benjamin describing the Arcades of Paris? I confess, I didn't read all his writings, but from his descriptions, they sounded great, still set in a mall-like structure, but full of life.
Some people think the problem with malls is that they are so middle class. There's nothing wrong with being middle-class. What's wrong are the cold, unhumanlike environments that the most recent mall developments are. You don't really feel like you're in Union Square Park while shopping at DSW, as much as Vornado would like you to think. The retailers have covered up the windows with displays and the reflection from all the wattage inside the store makes being part of the park impossible. And why are malls nearly always populated by chains, regardless of location? The Time Warner Center could have chosen so many other innovative, New York-based stores (Kate Spade, instead of Coach; Bigelow's, instead of Sephora; and I guess Scoop, if you really need a J. Crew, etc.) but now we have a retail hub that we can find in any suburb outside of NYC.
The proof is not the first 2 years of the mall's operation - but whether the mal, like Time Warner Center, can sustain the pedestrian traffic flow 3-5 years down the road. I'm keeping an eye on that point in the future.
In the meantime, some great example of malls are being built by Ron Sher and his company Metrovation. He took Ray Odlenburgh's Third Place ideas to heart and have rejuvenated malls in the Seattle area into community centers, stocked with small business owners and community services. Five years since the project took off, the mall is still expanding. Now, that's a mall I'd happily go to.
Clinton Community Garden in NYC
The Guardian ran a great op-ed on how communities sometimes run public parks better than their elected officials would choose to run them. (I have to admit, this article was almost too Brit-witty for me - I had to read it at home away from the office scan-reading I do, to grasp the slight sarcasm and full meaning.) Great article! See - public spaces are owned by someone - the public!
"Commons people"
The Guarian, Feb 1, 2005
We know Hank Dittmar mostly in the context of mostly transportation and livable communities, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear, over the winter, about his move to the Prince's Foundation. The article in the Guardian paints a nice portait of Dittmar's beliefs.
Living in London, I never really experienced firsthand the effects of sprawl since I didn't own a car and was entirely dependent on public transit. But I do remember passing by some of those new retail developments on the outskirts on the train and being so surprised by the scale. People living out there love those stores.
"Royal Standard"
The Guardian, Jan 26
where the 16 story building will go...
In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, developers are hoping to pour concrete for their 16 story towers, before the City Planning Office's plan, which calls for 4-6 story buildings, takes effect. The community have been pulling together to find ways of slowing down the developers, especially when the developers haven't, of course, ignored checking in with the community in the first place. No one's terrorizing you, Mendel Brach, it seems that you have a covert operation going on yourself.
"Air War"
New York Metro, Jan 24, 2005
Image from a great article that assesses how the Cheasepeake Bay lives up to its vision set 20 years ago.
Anyone who's driven through post-war neighborhoods (Levittown, USA-types) and gawked at the McMansions on little lots, I thought this NYTimes article nicely outlined how the current economic environment encourages out-of-scale home improvements. This situation implies that people aren't just buying up land willy-nilly (they are in fact conscientious about preserving open space and farmland) but they ARE ignoring the fact that their 3-car garages containing 3 cars are burdening the very environment that they hope to save.
A meta-study, compiling all the little studies, some of which use evidence-based design, examines how the amenities in patient rooms (flora, better light, more user-friendly nurse/supply stations) do help! Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
A question we field a lot over here are about how to use web sites to promote ideas, especially ideas that are not about say public markets, but are about using art and culture centers to make a positive impact on community. Hm...
Anyway, much of my work lately involves helping state agencies change the way their people think about their work, so I scan web sites a lot. My latest favorites are:
Its your space
Set up by CABE Space, one of those rare local government agencies concerned about design and the built environment. This campaign is about getting communities to take back underused land in urban areas. Lots of nice case studies and guiding principles outlining what it means to be good to public space.
Break the Chain
The National Resources Defense Council is all about campaigns - they're the ones to really populate the understanding of global climate change into mass culture - so it's no surprise that they have this savvy campaign about breaking foreign oil dependence. This is a complex story, but they take one angle and stick to it. If you dig deeper, you can learn more about other ways of looking at the issue.
It all adds up to cleaner air
The Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Transportation partnered to come up with this site about cleaning air pollution through smarter choices about auto travel. It is pretty widely accepted that the one single thing a person can do to make the most impact on a cleaner, healthier environment is not to drive. So again, this site tackles a really complicated issue by honing in on one idea, which helps people learn more about the complexities on their own terms.
A new method of assessing the impact of design is hoping to make headway in changing the way we try to understand how design can influence health. The researchers will do "evidence-based research," which is essentially activity mapping, of 30 patients, 20 nurses and an undetermined number of doctors over 2 weeks. The information will be added to interviews and participant surveys in this $200,000 research study that will take place over 2 years. Most significant is that the subjects will be observed in one health care facility and then in another, their input compared for accuracy in terms of what they told the researchers how they would use the space and how they actually use the space.
Sounds obvious, but it's never been done before because you rarely have a chance to shadow the same group of people in two different environments.
"Architects await new research process."
The Globe and Mail
This is not your average home movie - a L.A. high schooler documents gentrification of Echo Park, which I got a chance to visit on my trip out there.
Target, Home Depot, and now, NY Times food critic, Frank Bruni, weighs in on the Time Warner Building - from a foodie's perspective, natch. (I have to say that this may not be so surprising to those who think that he inadequately fulfills his responsibility for setting the foodie standard appropriately for NYC - is his real strength in the impact of new restaurants on a city, not on the contributions of NYC restaurants?) On the whole, he finds the experience of going through a mall to the 4th floor where the restaurants - Per Se, Masa, Cafe Gray- "disconcerting:" having to go through the mall-like building, the cold, inhuman 4th floor where the restaurants are, and the disorienting wayfinding system.
Simply accepting the fact that the type of real estate provides the kind of economic shelter that would persuade chefs like Thomas Keller and Jean-Georges Vongerichten to open a restaurant is a cop out. As Patric Kuh, author of "The Last Days of Haute Cuisine," aptly said, "the malling of Midtown Manhattan has already happened...The Time Warner Center simply puts it under a roof."
It happens to be that economics hold the real power in real estate decisions - but timing is also key. Hot neighborhoods come and go, after all, and the economic climate changes. But decisions about a building designs have a relatively longer life. The retail area of Time Warner have infinitely less possibility than they would had they not been enclosed by a roof and polished to become like every suburban mall in America.
To the manager of Per Se who are having trouble juggling the demands of unwanted tourists - tourists could comfortably peek into your restaurant without undue attention if you were out on the street. Now, after trekking up 4 flights of escalators, they feel justified in wanting more than just a fleeting glimpse of what's going on in the shiny, blank building.
from Cinema Scope
"Chain," about the face of urban sprawl and globalization, is now opening in London (it made its debut in NYC in 2002). The acclaimed director Jem Cohen shoots big boxes and multinational chain stores in seven countries and 11 States in the US over seven years. In the Guardian article, he says that as a director, he realized that he was constantly blocking out big box stores or chain restaurants from what would otherwise be spectacular views. (It seems like it should be a documentary, but there's a subtle storyline.)
"All the world's a car park"
The Guardian, January 25, 2005
Chain Reaction: Jem Cohen
Interview with Jem Cohen in Cinema Scope by Tom Charity
photo from adventurist.net
Caveat - this is a dull report, and its methodology doesn't sound tight. BUT, these types of reports are rare, so I make a point of collecting them. Just putting up the money to try to understand how a particular type of building (other than a store) and its programs can make an impact is news. Anyway, here it is (link takes you to a PDF).
"The Impact of Science Centers/Museums on their Surrounding Communities"
A report by the Association of Science Technology Centers
Monderman's PR people must have gone all out with a publicity blitz. A very similar profile on Hans Monderman and Ben Hamilton-Baillie appeared last week in the Toronto Star, (before the NYTimes Jan 22 profile), again about how no road rules make for safer streets.
From New York Magazine
We went sledding in Central Park yesterday, a divine time of good-natured jostling with fellow New Yorkers of all ages. On the way to Cedar Hill, we picked our way through the snow with paths demarcated by tall orange studs. In patches where movement have removed some of the snowfall, we realized that the orange studs actually marked the bases for the posts of Christo's The Gates.
Central Park is terrific in the snow - it is beautiful and display all park goers in a dramatic way, transforming ing all the colors of people, with their coats, hats, scarfs, boots, hair and rosy cheeks, into little works of art. I got a sense for how the Gates will turn out, walking through the paths marked by the posts, and I must say, I now have eager anticipation.
I also just loved this profile of the artists in the New York Magazine. "No one sees Christos unless they are buying!" How New York is that?
I took last Friday off to spent some quality time at the new MoMA (and alas, forgot my camera!) so here's the backlog.
"Planning our places around our people", Scotsman
An editorial about Edinburgh, Scotland's new outlook on creating places, not just designs.
"A path to road safety with no signposts", NY Times
Profile of a leading traffic engineer in Netherlands, who espouses the technique of no rules as the ultimate way to guide traffic for safer and less congested roads
"In praise of strip malls", Globe and Mail
Praising the vibrancy of strip malls, where multiple services are provided and many people congregate. This article is a direct refute of the longstanding opinion against the aesthetics of strip malls, but I personally find the actual buildings to be OK, only that they usually are fronted with parking lots, and also sit side by side along multiple lane highways, creating a certain contextless blandless, thereby affording passersby, who may not know about the Jamaican roti inside, little information about what the supposedly vibrant places offer.
Another great commentary on Toronto, the second this week by Christopher Hume. I don't always agree with what he says about architecture, but the stuff about the goods on the ground, he's spot on.
Empire State Chrysler Building in the morning fog
Thanks Brian! (I feel rather sheepish...we took this photo for a project last year, and I was always told that it was the Empire State Building! Bad of me, not noticing!)
NY Times: Empire State Building to Update Its Tourist Experience
This is a good way of using entertainment to improve experience - it's in context, fits the goals, but doesn't impose entertainment on other tenants in the building.
TheStar.com - Aquarium won't end tourism woes
If not a sports stadium, and not a museum, then how about an aquarium? Another take on how to create destinations for a city. Outside of Las Vegas, where billion dollar casinos and completely fake destinations are tailored to provide maximum entertainment experience, I feel most cities, including Toronto should focus less on creating destinations through large-scale capital intensive projects and focus on some of the smalled things, like making its neighborhoods delightful destinations for both residents and tourists.
I've said before that I like what they're doing in Turin.
Francis Morrone reports from the Art Dealers Association of America panel on new museums with some recent stars and critics. On the panel were Daniel Libeskind, Glenn Lowry, director of MoMA and in charge of its recent mass renovation, Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Victoria Newhouse, architectural historian, and moderated by Paul Goldberger, New Yorker architecture critic and dean of the Parsons School of Design.
Morrone got it right: when the panelists were asked to name their favorite museums, none of them named a star architect building. For all that cities expect museums to be and do (e.g. economic engine), then, this highlights the disconnect between architectural dreams and the realities of the building function.
Other museum news:
Hard Hat Tour at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Mail and Guardian, South Africa) lets you take a peek at renovations
MoMA's new restaurant (Newsday)
Fascinating profile, but still no answer to my question - why did Related drop Morphosis for L.A.'s Grand Avenue project?
Rivaling sport stadiums as an expensive economic engine for declining cities are convention centers. (The rationale for the Jets Stadium is tied up with the Javitts Center perceived as being "too small.") Anyhow, this Brookings Institute report studies the potential economic benefits, if any, of convention centers. And what do they find? Few, if any benefits to be had, especially in this environment of local competitiveness and scarce public funds.
I like this review of DC's lost public space published by Washington City Paper, especially in its recognition that vibrant public places take time to develop, so overly deliberate though well-intentioned planning itself may limit the potential of a space.
Sports are on the mind right now. The NYTimes ran this story over the weekend, comparing the relative pros and cons for the city for its proposed areans - the Westside Jets stadium, the new Yankees baseball stadium in the Bronx, and the proposed Brooklyn Nets stadium. There's a nice chart with a snapshot of all three - and what it would cost the city.
In short, it would cost the city a lot, not just in public monies and high opportunity costs (e.g. public schools vs. pro sports), but also in public land (handed over to the stadium project with no rent). Also, the projected economic benefit significantly underwhelms the initial public investment.
On the front page of the sports section of today's NYTimes is a great article about how the town of Turin, future host of Olympics 2006, has taken lessons learned from Athens and reinvigorated use of their public and under-utilized spaces for the next Winter Olympics.
Instead of building completely new monolithic Olympic structures, part of the Turin line-up include the skating rink built around a 130 year old statue; the Olympic Village, the media and broadcasting center, now housed in a re-built industrial space; and a Mussolini-commissioned soccer stadium built in 1932 is now being rebuilt for other events.
Valentino Castellani, president of the Turin Organizing Committee, put it best:
"We gather in our piazzas, our town squares, for events and we've tried to replicate the feel of an Italian piazza in our competition venues. Our medal ceremony will be in a piazza. The lesson of the Athens Games is that there was no place for people to socialize. Most of the local people were on vacation. At our Olympics, we want the holiday going on in the city."I also like that transportation issues (winding roads to the mountains about 45 minutes away will likely double regular travel time what with Olympic level traffic volume) did not immediately mean a wider road (or more roads). Instead, officials are working hard with locals to identify enough accommodations to keep people at the mountains, rather than focusing on transporting them. For a city that was once known as the Detroit of Italy, (Turin was long-time home of Fiat, pre-globalization), these are bold decisions in the right direction. (Thanks Chris!)
Interesting, at the end of this article full of praise for Morphosis, it's mentioned that the architecture firm was dropped by The Related Cos. on the illustrious Grand Avenue project. Back story, anyone?
Not that Wal-Mart needs more publicity (bad publicity is good publicity, right?) but The Nation has a lot to say about Wal-Mart making money off of the poor, and having a hand in creating even greater poverty for their own customers.
I'm a little surprise that Wal-Mart didn't do well over the holidays. The lines people described the day after Thanksgiving sounded outrageous.
Worldwide, people continue to watch Wal-Mart warily. The BBC recently aired a segment on Wal-Mart, part of its "Outrageous Fortunes" series, profiling Wal-Mart's profit strategy. And, finally, Wal-Mart has moved into Mexico though it has long been in Brazil.
I really wanted to contribute in some way to the post-tsunami relief effort, but perhaps working for a non-profit and knowing about the ins and outs of (dis)organizational effectivemess made me wary about donating. Anyhow, it was heartening to see the Guardian profile on Architecture for Humanity and the thoughtfulness of its executive director, Cameron Sinclair. Anyhow,
On a somewhat related note, this story about elephants in Thailand warning people around them before the tsunami hit is just amazing. via City Comforts
My favorite free (or is it just the bands I'm friends with) place to hear bands, the Luna Lounge, is closing to make way for what is most likely a luxury high-rise.
"That's why Luna Lounge is going to go," said Sion Misrahi, president of Misrahi Realty. "The landlord needs to build up for the properties that he bought to have the highest and best use. It makes sense. This is what drives America."Oh, America. Now this is old news, but Gus's Place, downstairs from our office, was evicted by the new tenants, after 15 years of providing neighborly service. (We're moving to the Audubon Building. What will we be leaving behind? Anyone looking for million dollar floor-throughs with views on 6 sides, keep your eyes out for forthcoming condos in the West Village.) Everytime I had the luxury of being bought lunch at Gus's, I always saw the same lunchtime regulars.
Could this building really have increased Toronto's tourism by 2.3% (in money? or with tourists? or, with Bush-avoiding Americans?), as this breezy article suggests? I love good looking buildings, and like to think that I'm rather open minded about what constitutes a a well-designed building, but sometimes Will Alsop's designs allude me. Personally, this art school seems to cast a shadow over the neighborhood, an effect which it appears to cover up with brightly painted stilts. Is it just me?
Alsop won the Stirling Prize - a prestigious British architectural award for the Peckham library, which I lived near while I was in London.
Here it is, from Alsop Associates files. Definitely an interesting looking building, with the same stilt-like structures that characterize the Toronto art school building. But the community had a large role in helping the architects come up with their program to make it more than just a place to store books and more of a community learning center. I liked the library - though I'm out on his other designs.
Do you think this house should be replaced by a multi-unit apartment building? This LA Times article details a common story of real estate development pressure in a limited land capacity, in high demand town - in this case Santa Monica. Community activists are working hard to protect, with landmark status, their Arts and Crafts and Spanish revival buildings as developers are working outpace status designation and demolish them. Realistically, only about 6-8 houses will be granted landmark status per year.
I found the quotes from the community to be especially illustrative about this battle. On one side, you have the long-time neighbor recognizing the virtues of the old-fashioned neighborhood:
"What makes this neighborhood great is people outside, walking their dogs, making coffee together. That's how you build community."against what most would call the realists,
"Land values are high and people want to build big," Lehrer said. "That's the free market. That's capitalism."Yes, a free market means highest chance at greatest profit, but if a place can set priorities so that you profit from better communities - in this case, perhaps by protecting against the encroachment of out-of-scale houses - then that's capitalism that's beneficial in the long haul. Multi-unit buildings can be good places - but it's a challenge most developers will not have the time, or extra resources, to commit to, because it's not a priority set by the community.
I spent a good deal of time in LA talking about people talking about sports, especially since I didn't get invited to the Sixers game one Sunday afternoon while everyone else (and their acquaintances) got to go. But in NYC, we're getting more than a fair share of sports talk ourselves, especially in ways that impact public space.
The RPA had put out a great assessment of the West Side Stadium last fall. Now, the Tri-State Transportation Consortium released its latest newsletter chock full of thought-provoking articles about transportation and transit impact of such large scale projects - the Jets Stadium, the NASCAR race track on Staten Island, the Nets stadium in Brooklyn, NYC's Olympic for 2012, the Yankee's proposed stadium in the Bronx, and the Giant's proposed stadium in NJ. See, NYC is just overrun with pro sports!
Sports venues can be great assets in a city, but the way that the professional sports industry has taken over the United States, it has become more of a liability, especially when a pro team's visibility is tied to a prominent stadium in a prominent neighborhood with little thought of how to expand its single use to community use.
Large-scale sports arenas are said to stimulate economy, create jobs, bring visitors, but what they hide is that happens at a large cost to a specific community. While cities sell out (through tax-breaks and long-term complex financing plans) their land and neighborhoods, the stadium developers continue to make money through fancy deals with the sports team, sponsorships, corporate ads, and all the rest of it. Because sports arenas are so huge and inflexible (typically single use, with blank walls facing the neighborhood, managed by private, highly capitalistic organizations with little ingenuity about including the community) they should be particularly difficult to commit to - anyway, that's what I think. Obviously this is not the way the city thinks. (The one exception being Fenway Park in Boston, which I absolutely love. Little and historic, it is in the middle of the neighborhood. And parking should be difficult - the ballpark is next to several T stations!)
Give me a college basketball game anytime - the fervor over watching your favorite hometown team is great, and sparks good conversation anywhere and with almost anyone. But why do we need to throw more money to professional teams, who are already making millions, charging outrageous ticket prices, and whose stadiums only drain a community of its social and economic resources? I have an especially hard time wrapping my mind around pro-football, where only 1/2 of the season's 17 games are played at a team's home stadium. Is this really the future of NYC?
See what I mean about seniors and about to be seniors? They're going to shape housing development and other land-use decisions more intensely in the future...
...not sure if this Governing article answers its own question: should planners care about broadband? I have said emphatically yes before. This article gives you the ins and outs of the debate, and how very localized it is...
During my stint at a maddeningly disorganized community development corporation, I started writing for the organization's little paper, the Greenline. Billed as the only community paper in Williamsburg-Greenpoint, it was in danger of being seriously eclipsed by more bankrolled (and I have to admit, hipper-looking) journals sprouting up all over the place in the neighborhood.
I picked up my copy (distributed for free) yesterday, and I have to say that I have so rarely felt so connected to the real happenings in the neighborhood as I did when I read this paper. Sure it's not as glossy as all the others, but I learned about the community's inclusive open space proposal, their nuanced reaction to Amanda Burden's Department of City Planning's waterfront plan for the area (not all bad as most other major papers are wont to point out), the YMCA's open house and offers, new yoga studios, an entrepreneurship class for new small business owners, local school sports results, the high school student who is going to Antarctica this winter (!), an inside look at a Polish bakery, art going-ons, etc etc. There's more!
These highly localized media outlets are important, and typically highly underrated, for giving the community a voice and connecting people to the physical and social neighborhood they occupy. Yes, sometimes there are just too many Eagle Scout pancake breakfast fund-raiser announcements, but there's nowhere else that you're going to read about the Swinging Sixties Senior Center along with a gallery opening and intermediate sports news. (Intermediate meaning not varsity, or JV).
Congratulations Greenline. After just a couple of years, you're looking great!!
The West Village is one of the most lauded neighborhoods in Manhattan, and despite having worked there for more than a year now, I still find myself surprised from time to time with a new (for me) nice cafe or coffeeshop that fits the third place bill nicely.
Today it was Doma (Perry & 7th Ave), where I ran into (and didn't acknowledge) an acquaintance's ex-boyfriend, and where two writers introduced themselves, one having recognized the other by the back flap photo of his book (which I had never heard of, "White Christmas.") Doma struck me as a place that was once hot but that has eased into sincere comfort with its cooling down.
I started thinking, since our office is up for a big move to Broadway and W. 4th, that it would be nice to keep a running list of favorite, nice places to stop into in the West Village. These are the types of places that you'll run into someone you know or have spotted around the neighborhood before.
Jack's Stir Brew - On W 10th St @ Greenwich
Joe - on Waverly Place @ Gay St
Six Twelve - on 6th @ W 12th
Grey Dog's Coffee - 33 Carmine @ Bleeker
Bar Six - on 6th Ave @ W 13th
The thing about a new year is that expectations are high. But in reality, not much has changed since last week.
A new survey published by the National Association of Realtors suggests that most homebuyers are not ready to even consider the implications of more livable communities. Topping the list of their desires are bigger lots, bigger highways, and access to highways. Reductionist, but true. Nothing has changed.
Anti-sprawl Innovations Briefs has a new report out on the political importance of micropoli (not yet posted on the site). So the US continues to sprawl.
OK then, what's new?
Kunstler's blog! I had no idea.
I spent New Year's in Los Angeles, and as much as I would like to document things, I am still not in the habit of picking up the camera. Sitting in the car so much, nothing really struck me as worth pulling out the camera for anyhow. I made people drive me to all the more walkable neighborhoods that aren't beach boardwalks, so I could get out of the car and get a better feel for what it would be like to live there.
Walkability was essentially limited to one main strip in each neighborhood. There is little to no street grid network, though sidewalks abound. I think this every time I visit, but it's interesting that in such a pleasant, temperate environment that LA remains one of the least walked around places in the United States. Also interesting is that the attitude of people there is far more relaxed and casual than the East Coast - all the more the type who would want to mingle with neighbors. But few people walk from place to place - and walking from neighborhood to neighborhood is nearly impossible.
For anyone paying a visit to LA who would like to do more than sit in cars, I went to Silver Lake (on Sunset Blvd), Echo Park (on Sunset), Larchmont (on Larchmont Blvd), and Venice Beach (Abbott-Kinney). We tried to go to Griffith Park, but the gates were closed. We also spent a day on Catalina Island, which was much more walkable and sustainable due to the stringent rules established by the Wrigley Estate. I took some photos of the cacti in the Botanical Garden, some of which are endemic to the island.
