Wiley Wal-Mart

Honesty is usually a virtue, yet in this case, Wal-Mart's brutal honesty towards their "associates" (wage-based employees) benefits leaves me feeling dirty. Pointing fingers abound, especially about health care. The government thinks the private sector should take care of healthcare; employers, specifically very large employers, think healthcare has gotten so expensive it's no longer worth keeping as a benefit even if it means a healthier workforce.

And why am I getting all bothered about Wal-Mart's management policies? This business model is brutal not only to the employees, but to the environment that their employees must traverse and work in. I'm not totally opposed to all big box stores, but if a business is going to deliberately destroy local economies (from mom-and-pop stores to the local professionals like doctors, dentists, etc, essentially, the community) and then not take care of those very people whose communities have disintegrated, this qualifies as close to evil as anything else might.

Also noted is the open admission that employees are working longer with Wal-Mart, thereby costing the company more. There was some talk of Wal-Mart trying to force out seniors earlier, because they do cost so much in terms of healthcare. So, who is Wal-Mart going to off next?

For more, Robert Greenwald's new movie "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" opens in New York next Tuesday, at the Union Square Theater.

The memo (pdf) that got the tongues wagging.

Finally, for an illumination of the grind of today's working class, Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America."

The old street corner

Look at how much we have given over to our cars in New York! Read more about this at Starts and Fits.

Posts

I've been so completely delinquent with writing this week, but a quick check-in at The Dirt was reassuring. They have some great stories there this week - so go check it out!

Creating a market for home estates...

[update: I've been thinking about this article a lot, and I wish I called it "Stealing the American Dream..."]

The NYTimes Magazine covers the incredible growth of the Toll Brothers, one of the largest "home estate" (McMansion) home building companies in the country. One of the executives reported being impatient with the crticism that these types of developments cause sprawl and claims the company's only responding to market forces.

OK, Toll Brothers, you have no choice? But does the Toll Brothers have some hand in creating the market and therefore demand? Another executive chuckles, "we're like a marketing company that happens to build houses." Ah, the dirtiness of cashing in on the American Dream.

It's true, many people picture a large single-family home to call their own, a large backyard their kids can play in, the next-door neighbor, a street in front that isn't congested with traffic. The cul-de-sac developments do have that. But in choosing to live in these developments, families give up so many other aspects of the American Dream. They give up having schools nearby that their kids could bike or walk to, knowing people other than the neighbors that abut their properties, and supporting independent small businesses that invest in the town. Perhaps most importantly, they give up time which could be better spent in their lovely home with their family but is instead wasted on commuting to their job or being stuck in traffic running errands.

I'm all for development, and it's true that if the Toll Brothers didn't build on available land, some other developer would. And the Toll Brothers claim to be open to mixed-use. But it's like the West Windsor mayor, Shing-Fu Hsueh, says,

What's regrettable...was not that Toll was allowed by the courts to develop 290 acres or even that it will ultimately build more than a thousand homes here, but that the town didn't work with the company to create more of a mixed-use area - one where offices, stores and homes commingle, for example, or one where a different configuration allows more open land to be preserved.

"If I had the opportunity to see it done over again... I would have loved to see that."

Don't call it Astro-Turf!

I just LOVE this Washington Post article about Silver Spring, MD, where an innovative Public Works and Transportation employee suggested putting in a temporary grass surface over the site of a demolished parking lot so that people could use space instead of letting it lie fallow. According to the article, it's a tremendous success! I'm pretty sure that the original parking garage was strategically sited there, because it is in a central location in the middle of diverse activity. Now it's a park - what a great swap.

Next spring, when County officials may decide to seed the space with real grass, they'll peel off the artificial grass and try it out on other parking lots that aren't getting much use. Fantastic.

My office got a lot of fire for proposing the same type of solution for Occidental Park in Seattle as just one of many short-term solutions. We recommended a temporary surface that could be easily dressed up as a fun public space so people could imagine what having a good, functional park would be like in its historical downtown area. (It has been mostly taken over by homeless people witnessed during my visit there). It didn't have to be Astro-Turf, but we thought that the fake green grass and its fun texture would be great as a temporary installation.

Well. Never mind. People just hated the idea, however temporary. This just makes me all the more appreciative of the risk-taking and ingenuity of Silver Spring, MD.

Thanks Patee!

Presenting...the Vendy Awards

Photo credit

Finally, one group of unsung heros of the New York City street life experience get a chance in the limelight. Vendy Awards - it's about time!

November 10, 7-10:30PM, 27 East 4th Street in Manhattan.
Buy tix here.

hmmm...just thinking about chicken rice with salad...

Libraries we love

Berkshire Publishing is sponsoring a competition to find the best-loved, community libraries across the country. The top 75 will make it into a beautiful coffee table book. Check it out and nominate your favorite library.

Big Box stores adopting urban formats

They're getting better and better at infiltrating the urban environment. The stores have figured out a format to be profitable because though start-up costs are much higher, urban stores generate more revenue.

Actually, I wouldn't mind if traditional big boxes fit their aesthetics to be less intrusive in urban settings. What I worry about is that corporations say that they have community benefits in mind, but then get away with not doing so, and that they displace local merchants. What if there are no local merchants? It takes a pretty savvy and persistent city manager to be close to the project to make sure the aesthetic, functional, and economic benefits are fulfilled.

(A City planning in White Plains, NY, once told me that the developers of a mall near the train station had originally proposed pedestrian accessibility, but in fact, he has to enter the mall through the parking garage. There's actually no other obvious outlet from the street, and especially from the train station.)

Charrette for the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Veritas photo from outside the hotel where the charrette is being held

A national perspective on the charrette, and John Massengale offers a blow-by-blow account on his blog Veritas et Venustas.

Anti-growth

I've never heard such stringent anti-growth as from this little town that imposed a moratorium on new water meters since 1970, and whose residents have been tearing down highway signs that point to the town. Don't worry, I won't release your name over the Internet either.

Private investment for public infrastructure

Another comment on urban infrastructure. If we're unable to fund it, Christopher Hume at the Toronto Star offers a solution to get that critical urban infrastructure built - by the private sector. Mr. Hume cites examples in the UK, but my sense is that success depends largely on the cultural relationship between, and public perception of, the government and the private sector. Success varies across the board, from the Scandinavias, the US, to Eastern Europe, China and Southeast Asia.

So smart

I'm a bit late on the draw, but this is such a smart Polis comment about a NYTimes article that I wanted to share. I've thought a lot about the Bilbao effect and Guggenheim economics and with both, we ignore fundamentals of our cities.

The culture of SUVs

In China, 84 cities have banned small cars from downtowns, (favoring SUVs?). In France, the Paris mayor is considering a ban on SUVs while a citizen's activist group wages a quiet guerilla war, deflating SUV tires and muddying the doors. Hm.

Getting close to the community on bikes

Bikes in Copenhagen, from PPS image archive

How cool is this? Aurora, IL city inspectors have traded in cars for bikes, saying that on bikes they are able to identify violations more easily and appear more approachable to the community. And the bonus, cutting back on emissions and saving money on gas!

East Aurora - bucking the upstate New York trend

Vidler's five and dime in East Aurora, from America 24/7

I loved this article from the Buffalo, New York area. Upstate New York experiences very little economic vitality, especially compared to New York City. However, one small town outside of Buffalo, East Aurora, finds its own strengths and builds on them.

As the Village Trustee, Elizabeth Cheteny says,

"All too often, developers want to impose faceless, nameless architecture anywhere. They hit a wall here. We don't want to be anywhere; we want to be East Aurora."

So far, East Aurora has successfully kept out Wal-Mart, even beloved upstate grocery chain Wegmans, and most recently banned drive-through restaurants in its main street corridor. And,

"Talk of the drive-through restriction sparked immediate results, even before the Village Board enacted it. Starbucks Coffee and Dunkin' Donuts revised their plans, eliminating drive-throughs after the village initially rejected their proposals."

The community has been key in guiding development in a way that suits their vision for their hometown, forming a citizen's committee to define its goals while other surrounding villages were being swallowed up by generic development.

"I don't think it's a matter of development or no development, but development that's shaped for the community," Cheteny said. "A village's character erodes slowly, and you don't realize it right away. It's rarely one project. It's a series of small decisions - a gradual erosion of what makes a place special."

McCarren pool alive

I'm so glad we went to Sens Productions last performance of Agora. The line stretched from the Pool entrance to Driggs when I got there. A lot of my pre-show anticipation was wondering why it was called Agora, but what better way to convey the spirit of community in a site-specific piece than through a public market? We loved it.

CBGBs

The iconic awnings from a French site

A couple weeks ago, on a school night, a friend lured me to CBGBs late to see what she promised would be a HUGE band. Well, the back-up band to a really huge band did show up, but I was happy to go, check out CBs one last time and firmly putting my late-night-music-outings life in the past.

The debate about its landmark status is interesting, mostly because it is fairly unremarkable on the outside, but is chock full with incredible, tangible layers of history on the inside. Everyone recognized the iconic awnings, but other than that, the building is unremarkable. The interior is amazing however. It would spill out of the club if not for the bustle and almost-arrival of the Bowery. The NYTimes notes the richness of CBGBs lavatories (did I just write that?), but the whole club does give you that feeling of entering another period of time. It's a remarkable feeling, actually.


from a Southern Illionis alternative rock station...?

I'm split on whether or not CBs should stay (the Bowery Resident's Committee shouldn't have tried to evict it the way it did, but does it have legitimate reasons to take over space because it wants to expand its programs? if so, negotiate terms BRC and CBs can be happy with), but whatever happens, the interiors should remain intact, which would be an architectural challenge whether it stays or goes.

Hyped real estate

What greater sign of marketing hype is there than Jack Klugman signing copies of his new book at a luxury condo open house? Oh, Upper East Side - is it really that bad?

Check-in with Time Warner Center

Photo by Gotham Gazette

The NYTimes checks in with the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle and discovers mixed success. Time will tell.

New Urbanists plan for Hurricane Katrina

There will be an enormous charrette spearheaded by New Urbanist giants Andres Duany and John Norquist to re-build New Orleans and Louisiana on October 11-18.

With backing from Mississippi officials, the visiting experts--architects, urban planners, sociologists and engineers operating under the banner of the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism--will look at redesigning everything from trailer homes to fast-food restaurants to casinos.

The designers will work practically for close to free, or for free.

Despite my misgivings about New Urbanism, particularly the white picket fences output, I think their design-driven process with all of its guidelines allows them to conceptualize and plan for new towns more easily than other anti-sprawl philosophies. True?

Going to the market

I don't usually post about what's going on at work, but this month's newsletter about public markets is one of the best ones we've churned out (and I had nothing to do with it). Markets, after all, are the "original human gathering place," and it is about time that they experienced a great revival. Don't miss the fun image gallery of markets past and present. I really like the 100 tips that were dispensed by David O'Neil, one of our public markets experts who was responsible for the revival of Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. These tips could apply to other contexts, for example, to city managers' jobs. Anyone trying to put together an equation that produces economic, social and physical benefits for their cities would stand to learn from this.

A word on recent New York City developments

Yet another "bright lights, big city" rendering, this one of Coney Island.

With real estate development such a hot topic now, and so well covered by so many diverse outlets, it's clear that nearly everyone is interested in new built environment projects in our city.

Of course, I've been scanning all these articles and feeling a certain obligation to say something about them, but finding myself at a loss for words. I'm so, well, BORED, by the story that underlines everything: the Brooklyn Bridge Park, Columbus Circle, Washington Square Park, and Coney Island. All these projects seem to have the same story arc, one well-articulated by Nicholas Ouroussoff in this week's article about the Brooklyn Bridge Park. It's mostly about the tug-of-war between public (common good, community) and private (profit, developers). Reductionist? Perhaps. But what does one say?

It's not that I don't care about what gets built or how its done or anything like that, of course not. It's just that there seems to be little variation on the way things are done. After so many years of the same process creating so many similar impasses, it's feels crazy that so little has been done to improve the situation.

Where's our leadership for the space our city inhabits? We have leadership on social issues that shape our neighborhoods - homelessness, schools, small business entrepreneurship. How about some leadership specifically for our built environment? For a premiere city, it's such a shame that we have no public space vision, no collective idea on how we would want to see how city built. All our projects seem subject to the same conflicts, over and over again. It doesn't matter whether it's in the far-reaches of Brooklyn, or Long Island for that matter, or in the tony areas of Manhattan.

It's no wonder then that the New York Magazine writer entitled his article about Coney Island, "The Incredibly Bold, Audaciously Cheesy, Jaw-Droppingly Vegasified, Billion-Dollar Glam-Rock Makeover of Coney Island:
A first look at its not-preposterous future" or that master planning consultants resort to "Bright Lights, Big City" renderings. How else to spice up yet another story about something that now seems quite ho-hum.

A Vancouver - NYC comparison

Vancouver from the air

After thinking so much about urbanism in the Pacific Northwest and how it compares to New York, I was happy to see that ArchNewsNow published a well-articulated and thoughtful comparison on the very topic. No earthshattering conclusions, but several pragmatic observations.

This is for the urbanists

Me too, me too!

There's something very eery about New Urbanism (e.g., Truman Show?). I'm not offended by Jim Kunstler, in fact, I like that he's not afraid of being crude, but I think there definitely something to the the idea of Jane Jacobs getting usurped by all types, as proposed by this blogger in Greensboro, AL.

Listening to what someone is really saying is a dying art. Nearly everyone, from ego-architects to New Urbanists, say that their vision comes from Jane Jacobs and those who repudiate her also seem to misunderstand what she's saying.

A turn...

Everything seemed super frivolous against the backdrop of the ongoing aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but the resignation of Michael Brown, director of FEMA is an indication to start hoping again.

[In the article, you'll see that Bush again defers to not having spoken to Brown or Chertoff when asked to comment..if only he would stand up for something at the time it happens!]

The weight of helplessness

I've wanted to say something about Katrina, and yet after spending hours over the last few days reading about it and committing several hours last night watching footage from New Orleans, I find myself at a loss for words. There are so many angles from which this disaster is a complete tragedy. Miss Representation expresses it eloquently. How can it be possible that we are rendered so helpless in this situation? And for now, all we can do is contribute in the small ways we can and hope that contribution materializes into tangible assistance to the people in New Orleans.

I love our National Parks

...and the National Park Service. We personally experienced the wonders of the National Park in Washington State and recently even in New York City, on Governors Island. We discovered talking to the Park Rangers that National Park Service jobs are the most coveted - and among the lowest paying - jobs in the field. Yet the workers do a spectacular job of making sure that we have access to a variety of beautiful, natural places to visit all over the country. These places are fundamental to reminding us that we are all part of something bigger, and I would go as far as saying that the National Park system is one of the greatest things about living in the United States.



And now it is under attack. The draft of the Bush Administration's new national park management policy allows for greater commercial and recreational activities that are inherently at odds with the National Park Service's mandate to protect our national parks. Yes, instead of "protect," the mandate has been shifted to "conserve," and it seems that conservation is for the benefit of humans, not of our eco-system.

As this New York Times editorial "Destroying the National Parks" eloquently states,

There is no question that we go to national parks to use and enjoy them. But part of the enjoyment of being in a place like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon is knowing that no matter how much it changes in the natural processes of time, it will continue to exist substantially unchanged.

A vote for Vancouver

My plea for tips about Seattle led to the suggestion that I visit Vancouver instead. This Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) article - sorry, it is several weeks old - makes a very compelling case. It's here in its entirety, so you don't have to pay for it online.

HEALTHY BY DESIGN
Steve Berg | Star Tribune Editorial Writer
Published July 31, 2005

VANCOUVER, B.C.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5533882.html

Any busy downtown sidewalk will reveal the mystery of why Vancouverites
are an uncommonly vigorous and healthy bunch and why their city is so
widely admired.

Stand on Robson Street for five minutes on a weekday afternoon. Count
the people walking past: 346. Note the number who are obviously
overweight: 2. Estimate the number wearing backpacks: 100. Now take
another five minutes to count the cars moving steadily and easily past:
74 (plus two trucks and three buses). Reach for your calculator: 4.5
pedestrians for every car.

There you have it. Not exactly scientific proof, but an insight into
Vancouver's formula for healthy residents and urban vitality: more
walking, less driving.

More than any North American city, Vancouver has intentionally merged
public health with city planning. The goal is not just to promote
recreation (there are plenty of bike trails and tennis courts), but to
design physical activity into the daily routine, to build a city so
compelling that people will leave their cars at home, strap on a
backpack and take up walking as their primary mode of travel.

The result is a cityscape that's breathtaking in its beauty and
impressive in its retail vitality. Thick layers of trees and flowers
have invaded the downtown district. Strips of freshly trimmed green
grass line many downtown sidewalks. Hundreds of small shops and
restaurants have sprouted among the ever-expanding supply of townhouses
and high-rise condos. You can take a beautiful and pleasant walk to
fetch almost anything you need, so why drive?

Indeed, driving has become the backup mode of downtown travel. Growth in
auto traffic has lagged far behind growth in resident population, which
has doubled to 80,000 in the last 15 years. Auto traffic actually
declined by 13 percent between 1994 and 1999, according to a city
government study, while pedestrian traffic rose 55 percent. Last year,
vehicle registrations declined for the first time in memory as new
residents began eschewing second cars. Transit ridership, meanwhile,
rose 20 percent over three years. Air quality improved. And the
Vancouver region led Canada in many health categories, including life
expectancy.

"They built it and they live it," said Lawrence Frank, a planning
professor at the University of British Columbia and a leading expert on
the link between urban design and public health.

Both here, and earlier at Georgia Tech, Frank has been at the forefront
of research that ties obesity, hypertension, coronary disease, diabetes
and other health problems to the sprawling development and auto
dependence that dominates most cities. His and other research continues
to show that substituting even a modest amount of walking for driving as
part of the daily routine reduces the likelihood of obesity and related
diseases.

The greatest inducement to physical activity is living within walking
distance of shops, transit stops and other destinations, studies show.
In other words, urban form can induce a healthier lifestyle.

"Vancouver is the clearest example of that," Frank said. Critics suggest
that self-selection may have tilted his results -- that people who
choose to live in active cities tend already to be trim, fit and quite
literally "walking the talk." Frank acknowledges the point, but insists
that the policy implications remain valid. People will have a better
chance at a healthy life if cities build physical activity into the
urban form.

Vancouver owes its health-conscious design to a list of advantages that
most cities, including Minneapolis, don't have: a moderate climate, a
geography hemmed in by water and mountains, the relative racial harmony
among Vancouver's white and Asian ethnic groups, tax policies favorable
to renters and small business, a huge flow of Chinese investment since
the mid-1990s, and a contrarian strain of politics that engulfed the
city in the early '70s and continues to pay dividends.

"Those were the hippie-dippy days," recalls Gordon Price, an urban
planning consultant and former city councilor who says Vancouver
succeeds mostly because environmentalists kept freeways out of the
city's center.

As a result, traditional neighborhoods stayed intact; local streets
stayed vibrant and busy; crime was held in check; public schools and
small business remained strong. The city swallowed hard and accepted
high-density redevelopment as a way to preserve the wider region's lush
environment.

It was, in short, an early version of "smart growth" that ran contrary
to the trends of the day and to human nature. It would have been easier
just to acquiesce to sprawl, big-box stores and the auto lifestyle,
Price said.

Vancouver isn't without problems. Vagrants and drug addicts occupy
downtown's derelict eastern edge. Housing prices in the tonier West End
are leaving the middle class behind. Meanwhile, the outer ring is
suffering traffic woes common in most suburbs.

But what most impresses a visitor is central Vancouver's extraordinary
care for public spaces. While drivers tend not to notice, walkers are
drawn to beautiful spaces. They see their city close up. They won't
tolerate crumbling, weed-infested sidewalks or shabby neighborhood
businesses. The more walkers a city has, the more pleasant, safe and
vital it becomes. Every great city is a great walking city -- not only
through parks or along waterfronts, but along ordinary streets that link
homes and destinations.

For Vancouverites, the values of healthy physical activity, public
beauty and retail/residential success seem to have converged in a
perfect synapse.

How? A greenways program invests $1 million a year to build attractive
pedestrian and bicycle links between homes and destinations, sometimes
along "ordinary" city streets. In addition, the park system maintains
130,000 street trees as part of its impressive $80 million (U.S.) annual
budget, and the zoning ordinance requires private developers to devote 1
percent of construction budgets to public art, thus embedding scores of
sculptures, fountains and other artistic features into the walking
environment. Moreover, city planners routinely negotiate generous
landscaping commitments from private developers.

"They are expected to match the high standard that the city has set with
its landscape investments," said Sandra James, the city's chief
greenways planner.

The central idea in creating a healthy city, she said, is to make sure
that natural beauty isn't confined to parks and the waterfront but that
it invades every block.

Quoting the preamble to Vancouver's greeways policy book, she said:
"It's time to stop thinking of our cities as one place and nature as
someplace else."


Steve Berg is at sbe-@startribune.com.
(c) Copyright 2005 Star Tribune.

Don't fall for Cal Thomas!

I'm sure the planning community is going apeshit over the August 17 column by Cal Thomas. The inversion of common values/principles versus government created by conservative politics really angers me, especially when it's really about protecting a "free market." It really really bothers me that they draw on the nostalgic image of a community lost to make their point. Don't fall for it! This market being defended is one that is free only to the privileged and powerful.

New York City Council blocks Wal-Mart's entree

There's a nice discussion in the LA Times about the New York City Council's attempts to block Wal-Mart by first refusing a variance earlier this year and most recentlying passing an ordinance requiring grocers to have minimum health benefit coverage that is distinctly non-Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart was not specifically named. Bloomberg came out against the measure due to its anti-free market bent. The New York University Law School helped write the policy, concurrently with a poverty study it is conducting.

This isn't a big stumbling block though. The company is actively looking for a foothold in New York City.

"Manhattan is a particular challenge, but we are looking at all the boroughs," said the company spokeswoman. "There already are big boxes in the city … Target is already in the city … as is Home Depot … They're nonunionized [and] doing well. And we want to be a part of the market as well.

"We're looking in Staten Island, Queens, the Bronx," she said. "We're looking all over the place."

The gauntlet is thrown...

It's been too long since I last posted - there's been a few big changes at work. But I couldn't resist this: how many millions of people will rise to this challenge? John Tierney from the NYTimes says:

...I figure the long-term odds are with me. And while I'm at it, I'll extend Julian's challenge and consider bets from anyone else convinced that our way of life is "unsustainable." If you think the price of oil or some other natural resource is going to soar, show me the money.

The dawn of township cooperation?

Development pressures in NJ are forcing townships to get involved across their borders. It's about time!

This article also gives very specific examples of the types of costs a town may have to undertake in order to support new housing development. One tends to think that it does go beyond new roads and sewage systems, but things like a new ladder to reach larger and higher houses and a new firefighter building to house the new ladder? That's an interesting glimpse into a township manager's life.

Wal-Mart's quarterly earnings down...

...due to increased cost of energy (oil). Not so unusual in the world of business.

But look at this twist discussed in today's NYTimes article: Wal-Mart's big box business model depends on the customer's ability to drive to their stores (and indirectly, the government's ability to provide the transportation infrstructure to do so). Part of the reason it's earnings are down is because people can no longer afford to go to the stores.

"If you have to spend seven or eight dollars to drive to Wal-Mart, it had better be a big purchase," [Joel L. Naroff, the chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisers in Holland, Pa] said, "otherwise the savings won't be that great."

With its customers having grown accustomed to such consistently low prices, Wal-Mart could have a particularly hard time passing on the higher energy costs - both its own and those of its suppliers.

"Wal-Mart made a living jamming costs down on everyone else...Now, how much can they absorb on their own?"

I wanted to (heart) Seattle

Seattle. It was the place everyone talked about as the promised land. The land of neighborhoods, of balanced streets, of waterfronts, of inclusive, participatory local government - it was the Eden of urban living. I really really wanted to love Seattle.

Instead, surprise. Disappointment. Maybe disappointment is inevitable after a set-up like that. OK, OK, the downtown is better than most. The city government is organized around its neighborhoods. If you love recreational water activity, there's plenty to do. There are many many good things about Seattle. And I really didn't get too many days there. (For those who know Seattle, I stayed in Belltown and went to Pike Place, Pike/Pine, Capital Hill (Broadway District), Ballard, Fremont, Seward Park, Lincoln Park, Alki, Gas Works Park, Columbia City, Pioneer Square and the International District).

But I don't want to make those equivocating statements about Seattle. I want to LOVE it. The experience of actually being on the streets and experiencing the city was just not as full as I expected. People don't hang out on the streets because they all drive around. Traffic is really really bad, but you have to get right into it (by car or bus) to get around. I was often the lone pedestrian (among many many homeless), even at the height of pedestrian times, like from 5-6PM or 8:30-9AM. And I guess I just like to learn about a city by watching the people who live there. I didn't get to do much of that.

There are spectacular places, such as Pike Place Market, but walk just a couple blocks away, and it goes back to bland and boring office and condo buildings. Many recommended neighborhoods provided the same diluted effect. They seemed to consist of a main street with some cute or high-end restaurants, maybe a bar or club, and some boutiques. A pedestrian might be drawn down the street, but that experience ends abruptly at the invisible retail district line. The spillover and overlapping effect doesn't happen in Seattle.

And finally, the biggest surprise of all, is a positive one. I liked the Seattle Public Library. Compared to all the other really crappy buildings downtown that are without an iota of public space, not even a nod to their inherent participation in downtown public life, the library provided so much more. There were people waiting for the bus next to the library. The metallic looking webbing stood out among all the other buildings, sort of like a wayfinding device. I could find the entrance. I knew where to go upstairs. Could it meet the sidewalk more elegantly? Sure. The inside wasn't quite as functional as people have claimed either (lots of handmade wayfinding signs, and by the looks of them, crafted by librarians who were attempting to answer some questions before they were asked). But I sure didn't hear any other criticism about the general overall design of downtown buildings. Many of them are worse!

There seems to be so many good, substantive parts to the City. But they just don't link well to each other, and I found it hard to take one positive experience and continue threading it throughout the city. I had to start building the positive one place at a time.

Maybe I'll go back one day and see the light. I really want to. (By the way, our drive across Washington State was spectacular.) Send Seattle tips my way!

PPS's First Fundraiser

I'm back in NYC and in the throes of preparing for PPS's little fundraiser next Wednesday. Plase come out and support PPS if you are in NYC. If not, help us furnish our office! This is PPS's first ever fund-raiser and I know people in the office don't think people will donate. I personally think we have a good cause, even if we don't always get everything right, so come out if you agree.

Of course, I'm way behind with writing, but I have lots on what I saw out in Seattle, across Washington State, and in Coeur d'Alene. I also missed lots of great writing from NYC and elsewhere, but I'll try to catch up over the next few days.

Off line

Preparations for a trip to Washington State and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for a wedding were accomplished so last minute that I didn't get a chance to say that I'm on vacation until next week. There.

China's built environment: enormous negative impacts

I'm horrified but not surprised by this article about the terrible reslts from China's intense push on industrialization and built environment.

On our waterfront: from Sunday Times 'City'

I've become a huge fan of the City section of the NYTimes. First, I was a Style junkie (before living in NYC), then of the Real Estate section last year, but there's only so much pining I can do, so now I reach for the City section first. I love the clips from neighborhoods. There's always a genuine human angle to the stories, less "news at 10," more personable.

Today's City section highlights a couple of waterfronts: LIC and Tribeca. I especially liked what Tom Fox, the president of New York Water Taxi and founder of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, said of his effort to bring some activity to LIC's waterfront. Of the beach he set up, Fox said, "This is the kind of stuff that brings people to the waterfront...And once they're on the waterfront, they get invested and it becomes their waterfront."

Some honesty about downtown Brooklyn

(This rendering from NYC Dept of Planning makes the whole thing look more innocuous, doesn't it? Don't be fooled!)

When I read this Metropolis article about Brooklyn's proposed downtown development, I couldn't wait until the online version was released so I could share it. Kudos to Karrie Jacobs for being honest about change in her backyard.

Elizabeth at Spring

Update: I just liked this little sign with the suggested rainbow behind it. For some substance on the building, visit Personism's post, or, the granddaddy of stories behind the building, Curbed.

More on consumption

This is a little indulgent. I find that I catch stories that fit into my amateur theory (and I acknowledge, it's well explored in a much more complex manner by true social scientists) that our consumer purchasing trends and culture shape our built environment.

I just like watching how it happens. That's why I like that self-storage fluff so much. So, ta-da, a couple that fit the bill...

From the country that clings to its town squares and pedestrian linkages, a "smart mall." - Christian Science Monitor

We can't give up our cars, so let's make our cars different, how about it? - NYTimes

Self-storage: a new context?

Do you ever walk around a neighborhood with old, beautiful loft buildings, only to discover that Manhattan Mini-Storage already outfitted the entire building with hundreds of self-storage units? (Think: Hudson Street off Canal). And it's not just here. While I was on Virginia's Eastern Shore, a much less consumer-rich region, I heard that the growth of self storage buildings there now competes with the tomato crops. This NYTimes article tells us why:

"As competition for commercial real estate has intensified, investors are gravitating toward self-storage because it offers initial yields of 7 percent or more, well above apartment buildings."

Well. I never knew. And now how about some blending in:

"These are chameleon-like projects," said Ariel L. Valli, an architect in Aliso Viejo, Calif., whose firm has designed 350 storage facilities, including the elegant Spanish-style Date Palm Storage in Cathedral City, outside Palm Springs. "They need to blend in - - in size, shape, texture, color landscaping. Then they are better received."

Ah, making it easier for us to buy, store and forget about it.

New York City's public spaces

I have a backlog, but thought this was worth posting right away. Harvey Robins, former aide to Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins, offers a vision for New York that focuses on public spaces, and the funding to do that. I'm not experienced enough in city budget management to know if this would work, but I always like it when people offer alternatives, not just criticisms.

Word, Costco

Well, Costco builds ginormous stores, but at least the company offers a more livable employee policy. The folks at theboxtank offer some good insight.

Eeks! East Village, Vegas-style

The news hit last month, but these photo-sims are astounding. Need I say more?

Via Curbed, where you can view more pix.
And officially from the Las Vegas Business Press.

A smart growth and sustainable Wal-Mart?

After the fascinating discussion about politics and the use of language to frame issues in this past Sunday's NYTimes Magazine, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised to see a Wal-Mart representative frame their newest store in Texas in this way:

"We see it as a next step in evaluating the impact we leave on the environment as we look toward smart growth and sustainability in the building of our new stores," said Mike Duke, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart Stores - USA. "This store will contain many of the best resource conservation and sustainable design technologies currently available to minimize the use of energy and natural resources."

Here's what Wal-Mart is focusing on to make the store "sustainable:"

* Reducing the amounts of energy and natural resources required to
operate and maintain the stores
* Reducing the amount of raw materials needed to construct the facility.
* Substituting, when appropriate the amount of renewable materials used
to construct and maintain the facility.

Smart growth? Sustainable? Conservation? Minimize use of energy and natural resources? The most obvious breaches of those goals is the store is still new construction in the middle of nowhere, out of scale and off center.

Still, I don't want to be only the naysayer. It's good that they're monitoring the environmental impact of the store; stay tuned for more gooey factoids from this part of Texas. And this is a nuanced issue: check out the story about Vancouver rejecting a "green" Wal-Mart.

Michael Sorkin offers 10 alternate sites for NYC's "stadia"

I'm prone to just accepting Michael Sorkin's jaunty yet hard-hitting prose. There's something about it that makes you want to believe and I find myself at my most uncritical. So here, he weighs in the future NYC stadium, offering 10 alternative sites after first condemning public subsidization of big projects. See if you can resist.

Finally, the good kind of attention on Atlantic Yards

From Naparstek.com

Aaron Naparstek writes thoughtfully in the NY Press about the limelight on the Atlantic Yards...the kind of limelight that one hoped would shine on this important project.

Oil and more oil

Today's NYTimes talks about China's alarming and growing dependency on oil, NJ's crumbling transportation infrastructure and its inability to fund future repairs, and increasing oil prices against complacent consumer behavior. The sentence that stays with me is from one of the interviewees who drives an SUV:

"That's like having an obesity problem," he said, "and being told you need a smaller shirt."

This is the counterpoint to the oft-used analogy about widening roads, likening adding another lane to getting bigger pants as a means to solve a person's obesity problem.

Obesity isn't necessarily an inept analogy - afterall, the U.S. transportation infrastructure and policies are a true reflection of our habits as consumers both in our demand for it and our inability to fund it. But as any seasoned public health official can tell you, consumer behavior is one of the most difficult things to change. Uh-oh.

Rich people + McDonald's = McMansions???

This year's award for "Dumbest Column to show up in a Glossy." Among the choice phrases that helped garner the prize: "Since 80 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas, aren't they at least 80 percent guilty?" You'll recall the New Yorker article (pdf) that illustrated how people living in denser settings actually make fewer demands on natural resources. Too bad the author is so intent on pitting rural dwellers against urbanites that he misses the bigger opportunity to highlight the intrinsic interdependence that we - urbanists and ruralists and those in between - all have on our natural resources.

Seeking independent America

Two ex-television journalists, Heather Hughes and Hanson Hosein, are driving across the US, trying to take the independent route - no interstates, no chains. Here's an interview with them in Nebraska (10,800 miles into their journey) and you can keep up with their journey on their own blog.

Let's try this out in NYC

I really like this - it's nothing edgy, just a simple idea. Vienna and the merchants association allowed artists to try covering all brands on a busy shopping street.

Sure, the artists won permission by arguing that the merchants would experience an increase in shopping because everyone would be curious about the exhibit. (So persuasive were they that the Chamber of Commerce became the biggest contributor to the project's $245,000 budget).

Delete! web site

Take back the streets...

...so this is what happens when I am out playing - missed out on this great commentary by John Massengale on NYC streets last Friday. And the PPS opinion on our beloved streets.

Muggy MoMA

I finally took some vacation-at-home days and paid a long overdue visit to the MoMA. We love sitting in the cafe overlooking the sculpture garden, and we ended our visit with a few minutes in the garden, which was closed when we were last there.

The MoMA has inspired some of the most passionate dislike from my peers and friends, but I kind of like how the people rough up the spare lines of the building. It feels very modern, and the museum has become a place onto its own...there were plenty of people eating lunch in the garden that weren't there to visit the galleries. Maybe there are parts of the museum that are lacking, but on a muggy June day, it was the place to be.

An opening at SFAA

Finally, after months of walking by and wondering what it looks like open, here it is....Storefront for Art and Architecture....open.