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6/29/2003
Country Comforts "Forever England"
6/28/2003
The Modern Roundabout It is not the low speed which makes urban driving so maddening. It is the herky-jerky stop-and-go nature of urban traffic. The Modern Roundabout provides the opportunity for a low-speed but continuous flow.
What is a Modern Roundabout?See also RoundaboutsUSA Posted 6/28/2003 07:32:54 AM by David Sucher Does it offer any guidance except thunderingly abstract pieties? THE NEW CRITERION is an interesting and learned journal of a conservative bent. It writes encouragingly often and smoothly on the built environment, and I appreciate that. I have a sense that I would agree with its authors on specifics, if they ever got down to specifics.
Perhaps I am overly-enthusiastic for practical solutions, so I when I read an article such as Architecture & ideology by Roger Kimball, my reaction is to ask "And? Yes? What is to be done? How does this essay inform a local government writing a new comprehensive plan or zoning code? How does it help a developer build more urbanely?" Of course, it doesn't. It's engaging, to be sure; but where does one go with an insight such as: There is a large retrospective, even autumnal, ingredient in the current celebration of work by Peter Eisenman and Leon Krier. We are invited to look back a couple of decades or more to explore the work of two energetic architects whose words and whose work helped set the agenda for important aspects of contemporary architectural theory and practice. It is, in all senses of the word, heady stuff, full of breath-taking ideas. Are they, for all that, good ideas? Well, I will leave you all to answer that question; or to leave it unanswered if that course seems more expedient. Leaving it unanswered, I suspect, is what Brendan Gill would have done, if for no other reason than that he wanted to keep the fun of architecture going as long as possible. Fun is nice. I like fun. But fun remains most fun when it keeps to its appropriate place. The ambition to transform all of life into a playground is a prescription for the ruin of fun. Brendan knew this, too, fortunately. I am convinced that he would have approved of my concluding quotation, from the nineteenth-century American historian William Hickling Prescott. "The surest test of the civilization of a people," Prescott wrote, "is to be found in their architecture, which presents so noble a field for the display of the grand and the beautiful; and which, at the same time, is so intimately connected with the essential comforts of life." It's a lot to live up to. But the alternative is having a lot to live down.It's fabulous stuff but it is so far removed from the daily issues that face a planning commission or city council in their decisions on physical development as to be comical. Does it offer any guidance except thunderingly abstract pieties? It is indeed the mirror image of what it detests the most: abstractions meant to guide the concrete. Even when Kimball tries to get into specifics, he leaves one hanging: The third admonition concerns what we might call the 'pudding test': architecture must be not only looked at but lived with, indeed lived in, and so what works marvelously on paper may fail utterly on the street. The proof of architecture is concrete, not abstract. Seductive theories do not necessarily produce gratifying buildings.And I happen to agree with him, very strongly in fact, (to the degree I can interpret his words and translate them into rules for the job site.) But if you substitute the term "architectural criticism" for "architecture" --- and that's a fair test, I think --- what do you get? The third admonition concerns what we might call the 'pudding test': architectural criticism must be not only looked at but lived with, indeed lived in, and so what works marvelously on paper may fail utterly on the street. The proof of architectural criticism is concrete, not abstract. Seductive theories do not necessarily produce gratifying buildings.(italics added)Kimball is on the right track but he needs to follow his own advice --- get concrete --- before his criticism will have the punch it deserves to have. Posted 6/28/2003 02:00:08 AM by David Sucher
6/27/2003
Paris by Ear Stumbled on this at Stumbling Tongue
Paris by Ear 
Posted 6/27/2003 01:18:16 PM by David Sucher Books in Transit Of glancing relevance to the ongoing discussion at 2Blowhards about The Book-Besotted is this post about Books in Transit:
Reykjavik: Iceland's capital city has a decent bus network, as is expected in Scandinavia, with an interesting twist: On several seats on each bus, there is a popular paperback book attached by a cord to give passengers something to read on their daily commute. Of course, in a less law-abiding country I can't imagine the books lasting long, but it's not very costly and a brilliant effort if you ask me!"I'd prefer it if it was not the transit authority (as appears to be the case) which chose the book. Posted 6/27/2003 08:42:49 AM by David Sucher Look what I built As if she actually turned a spade of dirt.
I could never understand why "colorization" of old B&W films was at the discretion of the director, only. As if there was no one else involved in making a movie, such as maybe a cameraman or editor or maybe even a scriptwriter etc etc. Just like a movie, a building is above all a team effort. Oh I guess except if you are a genius, marketing or otherwise. Read yet another article on Ms. Hadid: "Zaha looks at the screen, and notices some pictures hung on the wall behind the Ice Storm. Turning to another of her staff, Woody Yao, she wanted to know what this 'rubbish' was doing on the wall. Within seconds she was suggesting he should 'get on a flight' and remove them at once. As for any thought that she might be hard to contact, 'What do you think you have a mobile phone for?'Oh, the old "genius" excuse for poor manners. Here applied to the "architect auteur." Hadid is now the "architect du jour." How these fashions come and go. Mind you, I think I even like this Hadid design. But to speak of its designer as some cartoon out of an Ayn Rand novel is curious. I'm wondering if the fascination with star architecture is simply because the public, and even some architecture critics, simply don't know what to say about buildings. I wonder how many of them have experience (besides as a user, and not to diminish that) in building them. Any role would do to add unique insight: architect, structural engineer, land use attorney, municipal zoning official, etc. etc. Maybe even general contractor. I remember reading a Paul Goldberger piece in which he spent half the article describing who "went to school" with whom and who was wearing what color shirt (and tie) before he got to the building itself. It was as much People gossip as serious crit. But maybe that's what the readers want because it is too difficult to comprehend a building. Of course that's what critics are supposed to do: help their readers to comprehend. So, too, The Guardian desn't overlook the obligatory clothing review: Clad in a great swirl of black designer wear, she's wearing a ring you probably couldn't board a plane with nowadays and seriously high-heeled shoes, secured, as the Cincinnati Enquirer duly notes on its front page, with "lime green Day-Glo straps". Posted 6/27/2003 07:12:01 AM by David Sucher Parking is the tail that wags the building Vulgar as it may be to actually say it in public, and except for the unusual circumstance in which there is no required parking (definitely rare in North America) urban design starts with parking. You may not want to believe it, but that is the cold hard reality.
I was chatting with an architect. We were discussing a small condominium project. Very large buildings came up. I happened to ask him if he had worked on one. "Yes when I a young associate at a big firm." "Oh, they must be exceedingly difficult to design." "No not really." "Really?" "No it's true. For one thing most of the work is done by the structural engineer and contractor who lay out the basic grid. The architect's fundamental job is getting the cars onto and off the site. You can route people up ramps and stairs and so forth. But cars are much more difficult. There are consideration of grades and transitions and turning radii. The real design turns on parking." "Amazing!" "No, look at it with this project, here. What's the very first thing we did? Long before we even started to look at the apartment layouts? We looked at how we would get cars onto and off the site...and how we could arrange the parking layout. Only then did we look at the building itself. Parking is the tail that wags the building." Posted 6/27/2003 07:07:33 AM by David Sucher Modern urbanism starts with parking I have been fascinated that no one ever hires a starchitect to design a parking garage as it is obvious that modern urbanism starts with parking:
"One of the stars of the downtown regeneration is, of all things, the New Street Parking Garage. The design for the garage, by Staunton-based Frazier Associates, came out of an inclusive team approach: the designers worked closely with government officials and local citizens (in a city known for its resistance to change) through an intensive public design process.Indeed, why not? Posted 6/27/2003 06:50:59 AM by David Sucher
6/26/2003
the architecture critiC According to a report from the National Arts Journalism Program at the Columbia University School of Journalism on the architecture critiC (though I don't get the capital C at the end of critiC) here are the built environment's
Ten Most Influential Writers and TheoristsDefinitely more on this later. Posted 6/26/2003 12:03:16 PM by David Sucher "Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth" People are intrigued (nothing new) with large scale geographic changes:
"The Israel and Jordan governments are planning to link up the Dead sea to the Red sea. The main reason for this is because the dead sea is dying- water levels have dropped as much as 8 m below average levels. Also the two governments plan to desalinate water as well as use the pressure difference (the dead sea is also the lowest point on earth) to generate electricity (click here for a detailed description of the plan). The dead sea is itself an anomaly, and whenever i drive to the Arava Valley, i see traces of its presence everywhere. The surrounding area has such a bizarre landscape that it seems to belong only at the bottom of some water body. The Israeli Govt had a plan to connect the dead sea to the Meditteranean but the plan was dropped. I am most worried about the ecological impact. The salinity of the dead sea will decrease and there is no saying how it will affect the surrounding region. Maybe floating in the Dead Sea will be a thing of the past. Apart from that the canal will also probably affect the entire Arava valley unless they use pipelines.Read the book Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. I read it as a graduate student in geography and it was mind-changing. I highly recommend it. Posted 6/26/2003 11:40:28 AM by David Sucher "Open space" I dislike the term. It is one of the vapidisms of urban planning babble.
"Open space" is not "park" or "preserve" or anything of substance. It is the absence of something i.e. human buildings (and usually a real rasion d'etre as well.) It is the product of disliking buildings, or of allowing such awful buildings to be built that "nothing" is better than more of them. Don't misunderstand. I love parks and preserves and "forests." I usually vote my tax dollars for them and I am all for putting as much of the North American continent as possible in a "lock box" until we can do a better job of building in already-developed areas. It's just the language I find empty. Of course there is good reason for it when the public is too cheap to authorize its government to simply pay for land for public use. "Open space" is a deliberately-vague term when used as a zoning requirement. "No sir. We don't have any requirement to make some of your land into park. It's just an 'open space' dedication." To be fair, such requirements usually do NOT also require that the public be allowed on the property...right now. Posted 6/26/2003 07:53:44 AM by David Sucher The "default position" is a rebuttable presumption A friend asked me if every good urban building had to come up precisely to the property line i.e. the sidewalk, in accordance with the Three Rules. I can understand his concern.
The answer is "No." Can there be any setbacks and small plazas here and there? "Absolutely yes." The Three Rules outline a "default position." In legal terms (and since we assume the continued existence of zoning etc etc., that's not an inconsiderable consideration) Rule #1 ("build to the sidewalk") is a "rebuttable presumption." That means that the expectation is that a building will adhere to a consistent streetfront. But if the developer wants, for his own reasons, to set back from the property line to create a plaza, the legal burden will be on him to show that such a deviation from the default position will create a successful pedestrian environment. Sounds legalistic and bureaucratic. And it is. No way around that. But it lays out a clear expectation of how a streetfront is to be built, makes permitting "as-of-right" under that condition, and reasonably places the effort on anyone who wishes to do something different. Doesn't mean you can't create an open space of some kind but you certainly don't get any bonus points and you actually have to demonstrate why and how it works to create a better streetfront. The end result will be fewer huge plazas (most of which were created to satisfy a "bonus" program in which the developer was able to build a bigger building in exchange for providing the public with useless "open space") and thus a more traditional pedestrian environment. Posted 6/26/2003 02:09:18 AM by David Sucher in medias res Idealists make me somewhat nervous. I become especially nervous when it comes to city planning and when I read of someone's desire to "design a city from the ground up." Clean slate thinking can lead to awful things, if the actor is an evil genius. Or because the world is such a complex place, it can lead to frustration of the majority of us, the well-intentioned mediocrity. Only under despotic rule are societies able to make dramatic changes. To hope for dramatic change leaves one open to the lure of dictatorship.
I think a better way to look at city planning is by considering the narrative technique known as "in medias res." Lynch, Literary Terms -- "in medias res" In medias res is Latin for "into the middle of things." It usually describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle -- usually at some crucial point in the action. The term comes from the ancient Roman poet Horace, who advised the aspiring epic poet to go straight to the heart of the story instead of beginning at the beginning.and Encyclopedia Britannica Online Article -- "in medias res": (Latin "in the midst of things") In narrative technique, the recommended practice of beginning an epic or other fictional form by plunging into a crucial situation that is part of a related chain of events; the situation is an extension of previous events and will be developed in later action. The narrative then goes directly forward, and exposition of earlier events is supplied by flashbacks.City planning is done "in medias res." To accept that we are plunged into the middle of things, into a raging "urban narrative," moving (per Churchill) "full force irresistible," is a useful approach with cities. We do not have the "luxury" of building and designing whole cities from scratch on some systematic basis. Thank god. We'd better get used to it and work building-by-building, brick-by-brick. That's why I have always been rather put off by Burnham's urging to "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood." I would say just the opposite. Move by increments so as to avoid the demagogues and massive error. (Of course that does NOT mean that "no change is the best change." There is a happy medium with which wise Goldilocks would be happy.) Of course building by increments is not as dramatic and exciting as starting from scratch. True. And I guess if you want urban excitement, there is always Brasilia. Posted 6/26/2003 02:05:54 AM by David Sucher
6/25/2003
Someone likes Muschamp's criticism Someone actually likes what Herbert Muschamp writes:
"No, the opinion of the common man controlling aesthetic design decisions of public moment just won't do. We need gifted specialists -- trained and qualified experts, the very best possible -- making all such decisions. And we need gifted specialists -- trained and qualified experts, the very best possible -- keeping tabs on those decision makers: encouraging, scolding, and goading them on from journalistically privileged critical positions, and offering as well trenchant, sharp-eyed, and informed public commentary in and for the public interest on their doings.I guess there is indeed absolutely no accounting for popular taste. Posted 6/25/2003 08:03:05 AM by David Sucher "...at a rate constantly updated to keep traffic moving." Playing into Planners' Hands
The idea behind congestion pricing is that you charge for the use of the road, at a rate constantly updated to keep traffic moving. No congestion = no toll; high congestion = high tolls. Those people willing to pay for the privilege of using the road under free-flow conditions during peak demand will get to use it, while those unwilling will take other routes, find other modes (the bus, carpools), or commute at other times.Murph has put his finger on one of the practical problems (besides privacy of course, for which there is always offered yet another technological fix): a congestion pricing system must be dynamically priced to adjust to changing demands. "...at a rate constantly updated to keep traffic moving." To my understanding, NO congestion pricing proposal even remotely contemplates such a structure. The mechanics are daunting. In fact the politics are daunting, too. Moreover so much of what we perceive as congestion is caused by "breakdowns" and beyond the reach of pricing. Better to have a fleet of helicopters standing by to lift broken vehicles out of the way. Posted 6/25/2003 07:51:09 AM by David Sucher The Scourge of Modernism ought to write more often FAILED ARCHITECTURE is from his archive.
"In all my years of working in the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Center, no one every said to me, “Hey, lets go get a Sam’s falafel for lunch and go sit in the shadow of the World Trade Center.” (I wonder if Sam’s is back on the corner of Broadway? At noon the frustration of the mile long line was eased by the free, deep-fried, discarded ends of pita bread. There was no better way to spend two dollars in all of New York City.) The plaza at the WTC was bleak, cold, windswept, and uncomfortably sloping towards the center fountain. In later years the management tried to enhance it with live music at lunch, but the sound bounced off the towers in strange ways and by the time it reached the ear of the listener it was distorted beyond all recognition. Now it was windswept, bleak, and noisy. They finally added a few tables and chairs off to one side, but only a few furtive smokers ever sat there. Posted 6/25/2003 05:49:14 AM by David Sucher What revolution? And the possibilities are really crazy
"I believe of the main things driving new architecture is the systematic use of computers in architectural practice. This is a really profound change that people in the profession are just starting to get the grip of. The computer can do elaborate structural calculations that are too complex to do by hand. They can simulate the daylighting and thermal performance of a building or create complex shapes and then manufacture them. Today these techniques are mostly being used to create self conciously arty buildings (see frank gehry), but the possibilites that computers open up are really crazy. For example, the Swiss Re building that Brian wrote about a couple months ago - the shape is probably designed by computer to minimize wind loads and allow controlled wind to enter the building for ventilation. The plan (i am sure) is designed to provide maximum daylight to each space. I'm not sure, but i would guess that the shape would be caluculated by computer to allow a big level of repition of the construction elements.Certainly the materials/computational revolution may have tremendous advantages for the architect/engineer. The idea of designing a building so that it ventilates itself by better computation of wind flows is a nice conceit -- "fresh air chasing away hot air". But we will absorb such changes with the same aplomb we adopt every other significant change i.e. "plus ca change etc..." (What I mean by "plus ca change..." is simple and best answered by those at least 40: "Has your fundamental feeling of being alive been altered by your daily (I suspect if not more often) use of the personal computer?" For me the answer is not at all. Life is still a total mystery; the sense of wonder, awe and terror at life is as great (and maybe higher with age). Let's not confuse remarkable changes in our material situation with something which appears to be unchangeable: our sense of self.) Will "materials/computational revolution" impact, in any essential way, the shape of our cities? I say 'No,' to the extent I understand it. (Gotta give myself an out when it comes to technology.) The "materials/computational revolution" is not even remotely as important as say, the computer in allowing distribution of organizational functions. And the computer has really had very little impact in decentralizing society; the major metropolitan areas everywhere on the globe are growing . I don't see how a swoopy building like Gehry's "Experience Music Project" here in Seattle --- which could only have been built with rapid computers ---is anything but a yawn once one has seen it a few time. So it has lots of compound curves. That's nice. Posted 6/25/2003 03:32:50 AM by David Sucher
6/24/2003
Jane Jacobs, The Anti-Planner Jane Jacobs, The Anti-Planner:
"Jane Jacobs is one of those intellectuals who seem ever on the periphery of the libertarian movement. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, can be found on the shelves of many a libertarian, though often unread. Perhaps this is because her name tends to be associated with leftish intellectuals who decry the rise of the suburbs and the decline of the downtowns, even though Jacobs strongly resists being labeled by any ideological movement, left, right, or other.Absolutely. Posted 6/24/2003 01:58:32 PM by David Sucher Parking trumps everything Beyond bricks:
"Roger Boothe, the city's director of urban design, said Cambridge has seen some ''awful'' proposals for this site. He's pleased this plan would extend streets through the site, reconnecting it to the neighborhood.I'd sure like to know more about that parking arrangement. UPDATE: Sorry about that. The link above "Beyond bricks" at the Boston Globe seems to be a "dynamic" one and has disappeared. Posted 6/24/2003 01:43:18 PM by David Sucher Slightly off topic, but not The New Criterion's weblog ARMAVIRUMQUE can't resist a little nasty fun.
"In pursuit of their ideals, the mistakes that some of those bright young people made included armed robbery, widespread kidnap, assassination and random murder. By the time the army carried out its coup in 1976, over 3,000 people had been killed in the political violence unleashed by the young idealists. The dirty war, terrible and unforgivable as it was, did not arise by spontaneous generation."This gratuitous 'blame the victim' excuse for Argentine thuggery and criminality is beastly. Between the ignorant cant of The Nation and the pompous ignorance of The New Criterion I realize how empty I find the political wings. As to the built environment as well, to a large degree I find myself swimming between the Scylla and Charybdis of the so-called left and right, each of whose intellectual underpinning has as much solidity as those "Black" and "White" parties of Florentine politics, which themselves always reminded me of teams organized to play "steal the flag" at summer camp. UPDATE: I probably should not have ascribed "ignorance" to The New Criterion. They are learned people there, indeed, which of course makes matters all the worse. The New Criterion is not the Fox Network and I expected grace and civility rather striving for "points." So perhaps, and this would have been better reflective of my initial disgust, the better term would have been "pompous callousness." UPDATE here. Posted 6/24/2003 07:18:44 AM by David Sucher
6/23/2003
Libeskind's "Spiral Extension" Expanding on earlier remarks here I'm going to use Libeskind's Spiral Extension as an example of how to handle the on-going political problem of: designing public and "institutional" buildings so that they contribute to a pedestrian-oriented city. The bottom line is simple: make even such an outrageous design as Libeskind's follow (as appropriate) the 3 Rules and thus contribute to street-life.
OK. To the building. You can't get much more shocking than the Spiral as a piece of urbanism, shown here as a Photoshop manipulation of the real street (the design is simply a proposal at this time):  It's Daniel Libeskind's Spiral Extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. My initial reaction to the image was shock and then a slow smile. It's so obviously designed to epater le bourgeoisie and it's funny. I suspect that as a New Urbanist I am supposed to dislike it. But I can't. I think it's drole, surprising. A lot of people in London don't like it at all and don't think it's funny. A building like this, dramatic and with a "name" architect, is a "raisin" in a field of "oatmeal." "Raisins" = "precious object" buildings. Very, very "special." "Oatmeal" = ordinary "background" buildings." It is not merely a "matter of taste" to suggest that too many raisins in a bowl of oatmeal and you no longer have a bowl of oatmeal. Too much of a good thing...etc. etc. The power of this design stems in large measure from its contrast with the context. A whole city of "Spirals" and it would lose its impact. New Urbanist dogma suggests that the non-commercial town hall and major religious structures are "raisins" and should have both a distinct location and shape to allow them to be easily distinguished. Such buildings should have a claim on the "higher ground," symbolically speaking and perhaps literally . Because they are "special" they are exempt from having to meet the Three Rules. Sounds reasonable except that in our society the list of potential "special" buildings expands rapidly. The hospital, the library, the "government center," the museum, the educational institution,the courts (both local, state and Federal), the fire station...The list of non-profit institutions which have a legitimate claim to a "precious object" design goes on and on. Each one can claim immunity from the Three Rules --- and tries to --- because it would like to show in 3-D that it is unique, special, not soiled by trade. But with too many buildings which strive to be unique and stand out and express the profound spiritual and artistic sensibility of their artiste designer...well you have a problem. You have the raisins overpowering the oatmeal, you have the exception devouring the rule. But the problem is not so much that precious object buildings have unusual forms. The problem is that this sort of building almost invariably turns away from the sidewalk as if to form a psychological moat. "KEEP AWAY! THIS WORK OF ART ONLY FOR THE EXCEEDINGLY REFINED!" It seems to be part of the psychology of such "precious" buildings. So there we have a political problem and Libeskind walks right into it. The Victoria and Albert is a Museum. A high-profile architect like Libeskind is hired to give an institution some visibility to aid in, among other things, fund-raising. It worked in Bilbao in spades. Many, many institutions and even private speculative builders recognize that a distinctive design is money in the bank. Such designs are indeed produced to attract attention though their designers try to gussy-up the proceedings with florid but meaningless "design theory" language. Libeskind's Spiral, it seems to me, is designed to shock, to make one stop sharp. And it does so. Within limits, that's OK. A few distinctive "raisins" are fun to have around. The ongoing and unavoidable political problem is that these non-commercial institutions have a lot of money, prestige and in fact often do good work. They are almost entirely and generally positive forces in a community. The only problem is that in general they don't know how to build. In order to further their institutional goals, they hire as "starry" an architect as they can afford. Such luminaries rarely seem (this is just empirical observation) to care about the sidewalk. And non-commercial managing boards and councils get snowed as members dream of their building on the cover of a glossy. So it's inevitable that the system of star architecture will proceed; the public relations benefit is too great. But even within that context, such buildings would simply be politically shrewd to create a positive relationship to the street. Indeed there is no reason they can't . Hadid's museum in Cincinnati is a gawker yet it looks to be a good urban building. The question which solves a great deal (but admittedly not all) of the political contention about these 'special buildings" would be How does the building meet the sidewalk? Does it activate the sidewalk? Does it follow (in an appropriate fashion) the Three Rules of Urban Design? So too with the Spiral. The photo doesn't show what is happening at street-grade. It could be terrible or it could be fine. I think it regrettable that so many people misunderstand the core elements of what makes a good street and argue against designs like the Spiral for essentially the wrong reasons. One reason to attack the Spiral would be that its neighborhood has enough "special" buildings and the exception will soon sink the rule. Too many special buildings, isolated from the sidewalk as they typically are, and you have an office-park suburb of Anywhere. The solution for Libeskind and designers of similar precious object buildings is to make the building a good urban building at the sidewalk i.e. make it enfront the sidewalk in the traditional fashion. That then gives the designer the political cover to do any weird and goofy thing that he likes and his client can afford. So I am agnostic on the Spiral right now; it's impossible to tell from the image what is happening at sidewalk grade. It could be great; it could be awful. But that's where the action is. Thirty feet is just about the magic number, as this page from the forthcoming second edition of City Comforts shows:  Adhere to the Three Rules within 30 feet or so and do whatever you like elsewhere. I've written to Libeskind's office to find out the state of the plans and to determine how his design works at the sidewalk. I hope it's good as the basic design is growing on me; the only issue is whether it is good urban building at the sidewalk. So far they have been very cooperative. (Photo above courtesy of the V&A. Thanks!) I'll report back here when I know more. Posted 6/23/2003 06:23:44 AM by David Sucher
6/22/2003
Jim Kunstler responds Jim Kunstler sets the record straight on prior post "Running out of oil":
David--As usual, I will look forward to learning the truth. Posted 6/22/2003 04:35:37 PM by David Sucher "The Modern Movement" At Samizdata, Brian Micklethwait writes interestingly about The Modern Movement (but without ever defining it). But since he is discussing a BBC TV show "High Rise Dreams" prior knowledge is reasonably assumed.
"The truth is that if (even) more money had been made available than was, the devastation cause by the Modern Movement in architecture in Britain would have been even more devastating.See the BBC's page (referenced above) for more TV on buildings. UPDATE from "Comments" Modern Movement Architecture (which should be distinguished, I believe, from Modern Architecture, which is not all bad by any means) is not the only cause of trouble, but it is one of them, and you let it off far too lightly. This is not an either/or thing. Posted 6/22/2003 12:55:02 PM by David Sucher "My Own Good News" Armed Liberal gets at the essence of City Comforts (the book) and why I so detest star architecture, urban planning mega-projects and their various, mis-directing pretentions in his post here:
"Part of the philosophical change I'm going through is an appreciation of the pleasures of this kind of everyday life; in my own life it's a true gift to have learned that I can have as much fun sitting at Little League closing ceremonies chatting with my neighbors as I can have doing the other, higher-profile things I love.Maybe another way to sum it up is "Do you prefer Tolstoy? Or Dostoevsky ?" Posted 6/22/2003 08:29:35 AM by David Sucher Robert Fulford's column about courthouse architecture I was trying to determine if Robert Campbell of the Boston Globe had a website of his architectural writings when I stumbled on (that is one of the great things about the web -- the serendipitous connection) Robert Fulford's column about courthouse architecture which contained this little gem:
"In the design symposium, Arthur Erickson, the architect of the Vancouver courthouse complex and many other structures, demonstrated once more that after he talks for ten minutes about the immense store of wisdom he has accumulated over the decades, everyone feels that something important has just happened although no one can recall anything he said."I have never heard Arthur Erickson hold forth but I use his Vancouver, British Columbia Robson Square (a sense of it at the extremely useful Great Buildings Online) as a perfect example of how good architecture (especially of the 'striving' type) can be very bad urban design. Of course such a judgment is not my own personal visual conclusion but a behavioral one based on the actions of many, many others: walk around downtown Vancouver on a sunny day and see where the people hang-out. It won't be at sterile (yes that is a conclusion) Robson Square (which will be dead) but nearby along architecturally-mundane --- but human--- Robson Street, which will be teeming. People vote with their feet when it comes to comfortable spaces. Posted 6/22/2003 08:05:28 AM by David Sucher
6/21/2003
London Congestion Charge - more "There is no safe which cannot be cracked. " Murph of Common Monkeyflower also writes about Privacy protection in congestion pricing:
"The City Comforts Blog (I found another urban planning related blog!) discusses the 1984-ish implications of congestion pricing. Implications which I kind of disagree with. The claim made is that charging for use of the road system requires tracking cars--and therefore individuals--by the government, and that this ability to track would allow (or guarantee) abuse by the homeland security type branches of government. I think that this could easily be avoid through proper system design, and I'll try to convince City Comforts' David that this is the case."Well I don't know. I was in a somewhat similar discussion last night and proposals such as yours, Murph, all involve some technological fix to a technological problem. All involve reliance on people in authority to be honest and decent. And I mean the technoids who will actually run these systems as well as the administrative officials, Remember Lord Acton. "Power corrupts." My coda is "and even small bits of power, far less than 'absolute,' can corrupt." I do see your point about spot-checking. Interesting. But it all comes down to anonymity in the transponder. No? Congestion charges, to have any oomph, are going to aggregate to a $50/month or well more. People will want to pay by credit card for both convenience and record-keeping (reimbursement, tax deductions, etc.) "You're paying cash for your transponder card? Really. That's interesting. What are you trying to hide." Again, I'll have to think about it. But I think that there is some law, at a technological "spy-vs-spy" level, which makes me dubious that an "anonymous" system can either be created or would last. The thing which convinces me is that the value of the information which could be gathered is simply too high. Someone somewhere in the system is going to be corruptible. There is no safe which cannot be cracked. Even when the government has an enormous incentive to maintain a "pure" system, such as with currency, there are still plenty of counterfeiters doing their thing. Posted 6/21/2003 05:01:41 PM by David Sucher Wikipedia as an 'open-source' encyclopedia Maybe I have missed the point. As Murph of Common Monkeyflower suggests:
You wrote in your blog the other day here that you'd like Wikipedia to have bylines so that you could account for the author's bias. It seems to me that you're missing part of the point of the wiki format...Thank you. Interesting perspective. Beyond 'bias' Wikipedia is limiting its credibility by the anonymity of its authors. No? Regarding bias/credibility, it is obviously true that you can trust information from a known source more easily than info from an unknown source. Forcing all contributions to be signed and guaranteeing that all signatures be genuine, though, would bog down the wiki with administrative overhead. The strength of the wiki model that the wikipedia is trying to tap into is that anybody and everybody can contribute, fix mistakes, and root out spin or bias. How well this works in practice, I can't say.Hmmm...Let me think about this. UPDATE: No there is something about anonymity that bothers me. I like to know who I am talking to or listening to. I've been involved with on-line discussions in which one of the discussants had a nom de web and I thought it slightly strange. What are they trying to hide? What's the big deal? We're talking about urban planning for god's sake, not nuclear weapons. (You see that's the same kind of peer-group pressure which would arise in buying transponder credits etc. etc.) Posted 6/21/2003 03:58:08 PM by David Sucher Learning to See Bubbling Brooks and Waterfalls
WATERCOLOR: Bubbling Brooks and Waterfalls Posted 6/21/2003 08:36:42 AM by David Sucher "Running out of oil" James Howard Kunstler opines on one of his major concerns: "running out of oil" and reports indirectly --- via the principal of a site where you can also learn about the dark machinations around 9-11 --- about a conference on the the Study of Peak Oil.
The message emerging from the meeting is that the world may have already entered the unchartered territory of global oil depletion -- that is, the downside of "Hubbert's Curve," the bell graph first used by Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbert in 1956 to describe the destiny of the world's oil supplies.After a recitation of indicators from the Conference that we are indeed using a lot of oil and may very well have less tomorrow than we do today, Jim asks us to "Go ahead and draw some conclusions." (I thought of how Clint Eastwood would have delivered that line.) I guess I shouldn't make light of the matter, as I love to drive my car, but barring political cataclysms, it seems to me that "running out of oil" will be a relatively gradual affair. The downside of Hubbert's Curve is a slope, not a cliff. The first indication of short supplies will be that prices will go up i.e. we will pay more for gasoline, natural gas, heating oil, etc etc--- thus giving people a --- duh --- hint and encouragement to look for new sources of energy. It won't be catastrophic. There will be years and decades of increasing prices which will give us all time to adjust through conservation, development of alternative energy sources and so forth. If we are too stupid to adjust, we will have problems. Am I missing something? Posted 6/21/2003 08:34:43 AM by David Sucher
6/20/2003
Jeffreys and Scruton’s "The future is classical" --- Yes, but site plan trumps architecture Last week I mentioned Jeffreys and Scruton’s "The future is classical". It contains so much with which I agree --- it's a very worthwhile read --- that I feel it would be churlish to raise any fundamental objections.
But I do think that their essay mixes up architectural style with site planning. The two are different. One can have a pleasant, urbane street built with "far out" modern materials; one can build a suburban "power center" with columns. Site plan trumps architecture. Unless I entirely misunderstand their essay, I suggest that Scruton and Jeffreys misstate the problem. The classical vocabulary is very pleasant but it does not dictate a certain type of city, only a certain type of building. To back up a bit, I am not positive I understand what the authors mean by modernism or classicism. in terms of town-planning. When they speak of "modernism" are they speaking of an/any architectural style which does not take as its central idea, the column, symbol of standing, bearing the architrave with a visible upthrust of rooted strength. The column can be repeated; it has an internal grammar, derived from base, shaft and capital; and also an external grammar, derived from the relations between vertical and horizontal sections, and the correspondence of part with part in a colonnade.Or are they speaking of a form of psychological governance over the building process based on star-architect artistes? Modernism and post-modernism wrongly identify the task of the architect in terms appropriate to the private arts of painting, poetry and music, where endless experiment, and the elite culture which endorses it, are entirely natural. Nobody can object to Schoenberg’s experiments in atonality or to Boulez’s crystalline sound-effects, since people do not have to listen to them if they do not want to.Or do Jeffreys and Scruton think of the modernism/classicism distinction in relation to "site planning"? But their essay does not mention that concept directly. They do state: The starting place for better development and planning must be a sea change in architectural aesthetics. Modernism should be abandoned and a return made to the classical values that created the first cities of our time.Is their call for "classical values" to be taken to mean a "classical site-plan?" Are they calling then for getting rid of cars? A "car-free" city? Such a call is not unknown. See Carfree Cities, for example. But they make no mention of such a dramatic idea. The only plausible definition of "classical site-planning" would, I surmise, be a city built around the Three Rules of urban design in which the building enfronts directly on the street and opens on to it with doors and windows. Jeffreys/Scruton may be getting at this when they say modernist buildings violate the skyline, the street-line, and the urban texture of downtown areas, with few if any compensating advantages.The classical city as I can tease it out of their essay is merely the pre-automobile city --- which is what we almost universally hold up as the ideal of "cityness." That ideal pedestrian-oriented city is not defined by architecture but by site-plan. Classical cities simply did not have to deal with the problem of the automobile. When forced upon them parking is either/and on-street or "elsewhere." The bad, "tower in the park" city of Wright and Corbusier can have columns galore. But building good walkable cities has nothing to do with architectural style per se. One can build such a "classical site plan" with the most modern materials. The classical grammar is not essential. I like classical buildings but what I like most of all is a pedestrian-oriented street and that can be designed using totally modern materials (so long as one observes the Three Rules). To put it more vividly, would a suburban strip-mall built using the classical vocabulary be better than the kind of nondescript garbage we usually see? I think not. I do agree it would be unusual and perhaps, if it didn't look too weird, it might be visually attractive. But what makes our modern cities so objectionable is not that lack sufficient "base, shaft and capital" but they are built around the automobile and ignore the Three Rules. While agree I with so much that Jeffreys and Scruton say, their critique of modern urbanism is ultimately flawed. Rather than arguing for classicism based on "architectural aesthetics" --- which is always arguable --- I suggest that what they are really after is a "classical site-planning" out of which flows measurable and empirical human behavior e.g. people walking on the sidewalks. I think I agree with Jeffrys/Scruton (as with Katherine Knorr in the earlier post on Paris) about the symptoms. But I don't hear a remedy. Well I do, come to think of it, and the remedy troubles me some for it is a remedy of religious conversion. The problem is not a matter of insufficient adherence to particular abstractions, the problem is a rather mundane one of, as I like to put it in the most banal way possible, putting the parking lot in the wrong spot. These are indeed adverse comments. I offer them because the task of city-building is indeed so important. It is critical that criticism be practical, that the reader take away some notion of "what to do." Indeed, modern land use governance offers tremendous opportunities for public comment. Such comment must go beyond a demand for classical columns. Or let me put it another way and this is indeed a serious question for the authors: In what way are classical columns a 'pattern generator' for a city? Posted 6/20/2003 05:27:43 PM by David Sucher
6/19/2003
Elliott Bay habitat restoration It's a terrific idea. I wonder if the $1 billion number figure for a new Elliott Bay seawall already includes restoring the Elliott Bay shoreline. Or is this superb but apparently new element of the program just a budget-buster?
Redesign the shoreline, using an innovative design for the seawall, to recreate beaches and shallow water areas, so the Sound's diverse creatures can find their niches in the bay. Imagine peering over a downtown railing to see Puget Sound's amazing seastars, octopi, birds and anemones.The appeal of habitat restoration in motivating voters could be politically significant in getting the money --- (You know the old story about the great architect who visits the graduating class at his old school? And when asked to offer some words of advice to young architects embarking on their career says simply: "get the job."So too with politicians.) --- and one has to wonder if it is introduced to create another constituency for the Elliott Bay mega-project. And from a strictly scientific "triage" approach, is Elliott Bay the best place to start on Puget Sound habitat restoration? i.e. are there other estuaries which are not nearly as degraded and where the money could go a lot further, and thus have a greater impact on Puget Sound as a whole? This essentially scientific question should be part of the debate. But probably won't be. Nonetheless, the idea of large scale habitat restoration is one whose time is overdue. Interested in the subject? Read Nigel Calder's brilliant Environment Game.(1967 and out-of-print but worth tracking-down.) Posted 6/19/2003 12:49:58 PM by David Sucher 'HOT" Lanes in offing for metro Seattle? It appears as if a Stretch of Hwy. 167 selected for study of toll 'HOT' lanes
The HOV lanes on Highway 167 between Renton and Auburn could become the region's first "HOT" lanes — open not just to transit and car pools but also to solo drivers willing to pay a toll.I am skeptical about congestion pricing. But experimentation is healthy. So let's try it. I do not see a great deal of downside risk, at this point. Posted 6/19/2003 12:27:51 PM by David Sucher Architecturally, it's a real star Sheri Olson writes that architecturally Seattle's new McCaw Hall is a real star but
As much as it is a star at night, the opera house is a black hole along Mercer during the day...Mercifully the old loading dock is gone, but the street facade is an unrelenting five-story expanse of metal siding. A row of windows at the first floor is dark spandrel glass stymieing any attempts to look into the new 400-seat lecture hall.Olson tunes in very insightfully to the enormous point of leverage in making an institutional structure into a good urban building: "programming" tyhe building so that at least some of its subsidiary functions --- gift shops, executive offices, security, purchasing, personnel, etc. etc. --- are placed at sidewalk level iso as to to activate the street. (It's also a very inexpensive technique --- simply a matter of where you place functions which you have to accommodate somewhere anyway i.e. there is no budget impact.) But institutions are almost universally reluctant to do so. Where, for example, does the Seattle Art Museum place its excellent cafe? Hidden inside the structure so that it is accessible only when the Museum is open. It could have been placed with direct access to the street, increasing the cafe's financial viability and contributing even more (than SAM already does) to a lively First Avenue. But institutions seem to hate to take part in street life. Posted 6/19/2003 07:06:19 AM by David Sucher
6/18/2003
The Library Hotel Pure Content tells us us about the Library Hotel in New York City
the first hotel ever to offer its guest over 6,000 volumes organized throughout the hotel by the DDC. Each of the 10 guestrooms floors honors one of the 10 categories of the DDC and each of the 60 rooms is uniquely adorned with a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic within the category or floor it belongs to.I love libraries. Posted 6/18/2003 09:34:54 AM by David Sucher TrafficGauge(tm) Mobile Traffic Map I wonder if one could "bid" on a trip using this Mobile Traffic Map device? (That's following up on an earlier remark that congestion pricing requires interactivity between drivers and marketmaker.)
Take back the hours you sacrifice sitting in trafficThanks to The Bus Stop Posted 6/18/2003 08:11:12 AM by David Sucher "Traffic charge an 'economic failure' " --- (if you have never run a store) Traffic charge an 'economic failure'
Last week, the Greater London Assembly was informed that the congestion charge will only raise £65m, not the £121m Mr Livingstone claimed when it was launched, and less than a third of the £210m first envisaged. The shortfall, caused by fewer private car drivers paying the charge than forecast, is another blow to Mr Livingstone's finances.Haven't they ever heard of lowering the price to sell more? They are merely charging too much. Livingstone's grand experiment has proven decisively that demand for road use is "elastic" --- that demand will vary as price varies. So now go play with it, I presume. "Setting" the price to effect their congestion & income (therein lies the rub) goals cannot be done by fiat (not to pun) but by experimentation. You wanted a market? You've got one. But is a government bureaucracy capable of subtle ongoing price adjustments? Posted 6/18/2003 12:01:54 AM by David Sucher
6/17/2003
All are welcome to reply Found on David Fletcher's Government and Technology Weblog
'Declan McCullagh reports on a proposed regulation coming from the Council of Europe:"The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those who have been criticized by a person or organization."Better be more careful on who you criticize in your blog. It might put you in prison.' Posted 6/17/2003 11:42:08 PM by David Sucher PLANETIZEN rocks PLANETIZEN is an extremely useful site. Part of its quality is based on heavy reader participation. It is rare to turn to it and not find a fascinating reference.
Here for example is the camera phone. Such a tool might well have utility for bloggers since one can post by email. Picture phones are standard cellphones with built-in lenses that enable rudimentary photography...it turns out that the picture phone's combination of simple imaging and instant connectivity also works for serious uses. It's too early to say what percentage of picture phone owners are using the technology for work, but Strategy Analytics said that in five years, as much as 20 percent of picture phone users will be using the technology for work-related purposes.Or maybe blogging. Posted 6/17/2003 12:59:28 PM by David Sucher The destruction of Paris If it ever got down to specifics, I would probably agree almost entirely with the author of The destruction of Paris. But "telling" and "asserting" that something is wrong is not as effective as "showing."
What distinguishes the most recent massacre is that, under the code words of modernity and urbanisme, what animates the many culprits, in and out of government, is the same kind of contempt for knowledge, tradition, beauty, and truth that animates the enemies of the idea of a Western canon in education and of the more time-tested values of human civilization...It's reassuring to learn that Paris is/was also having problems of urban growth; there are great many people on my side of the Atlantic who seem to think mediocre response to development problems is some special moral failing of Americans and that Europeans have it knocked cold. I do not know Paris well-enough at all to comment on the catalog of horrors which the author sets forth; I'll assume that she is dead-on right. But like many discussions of the built environment, this article from a prestige journal (The New Criterion) is full of moralistic assertions but insufficient concrete detail (and what else should an article about the built environment contain?) to show us the way. The author's understandable scorn for the use of "code words" to discuss buildings ("modernity and urbanisme" ) is hardly persuasive----even a bit grimly humorous----when she herself uses twice as many code words ("knowledge, tradition, beauty, and truth") to make her own point. Is it really plausible that the problem is that the decision-makers had "contempt for knowledge, tradition, beauty, and truth"? That would somehow imply that a person who had no familiarity with any technical issues of managing cities, but who loved "knowledge, tradition, beauty, and truth," would succeed at urban planning. I don't think so. Instinctively I view the author, as a kindred spirit, an ally in making comfortable cities, and so I urge her and others who care to drop the grandiose language and get down to physical details. It may in fact be true that Paris (as of January '98 when the author wrote) demonstrated "the triumph of vulgarity, greed, and ignorance over the enduring aesthetic of one of the world’s most beautiful cities." But isn't that a bit ahistorical? Does the author think that the builders of the 17th & 18th centuries were socialists? And therein lies the truly intriguing puzzle obscured by terms such as "vulgarity, greed, and ignorance": how did societies which were far more morally-corrupt than ours produce so much better cities? I don't think the answer lies in cant. I have no sure answer. But obviously the auto -- a serendipitous social invention --- is the major pattern generator of our era. And maybe that is the end of the story of 'why?' and there is no need for high dudgeon and moralisms. But in any case, the only way we will make any progress is by public education. The author has lots of (probably valid) complaints --- her remarks on facadisme started to go somewhere --- but many come across as simple snobbery and annoyance at change. Sneering at the hoi polloi ("Americans wearing berets") may offer a frisson but it hardly leads to enhanced public consciousness. Posted 6/17/2003 12:33:26 PM by David Sucher Designed to create conflict? Designed to create conflict? No it couldn't be.
Was the new Koolhaas-designed Public Library, read more here, deliberately designed to be an icon of divisiveness? "These new public buildings are doing what public buildings are supposed to do. Even before they are finished, they are political and controversial, sending out messages and symbolism, eliciting comment pro and con."Sure sounds like it. And those are in the words of a former Mayor of Seattle. Initially I thought his words a mere make-weight to defend a design (which may soon turn out to be unpopular). Now I am wondering if hip-conflict really was the Library Board's specific intention. The idea that public buildings should be controversial is dead wrong at its core. Public buildings are supposed to (in the cloying but accurate language Seattle knows so well) "heal" and "bring us together." Libraries in particular are supposed to be a neutral ground for even the most diametrically-opposed views. It is disturbing to think that the Library Board might deliberately invite an architect --- Koolhaas --- to design a building which would symbolize and further social divisions. But it sounds as if the former Mayor is saying just that --- Koolhaas did what he was hired to do: design a public building which would sow controversy and discord. The Scourge of Modernism states: Similarly, as last week's New York Times Sunday Magazine shows, postmodern architects are very good at achieving their goals. The stated purpose of architecture according to the post-modernists is conflict, political statement, ridicule, and satire. They want to make you feel uncomfortable and ill at ease in their buildings. This is the explicit design goal.And we are somehow supposed to welcome a Library like that as progressive, I guess. I am honestly astonished that anyone could see creating discomfort and controversy --- as if there isn't enough --- as a virtue. Surely the former Mayor, for whom I voted more than once, misspoke. Or perhaps I misjudge how far architectural obscurantism has penetrated into the liberal intelligentsia. We have enough social conflict without intentionally designing it into the fabric of the city. Posted 6/17/2003 12:16:07 AM by David Sucher
6/16/2003
Targeting biotech If it makes sense to give tax breaks for South Lake Union biotechs then maybe we should get rid of taxes completely? For every business?
Last week, the Seattle City Council endorsed redeveloping the South Lake Union area as a biotechnology hub, touting the economic benefits of Paul Allen's plan to build 10 million square feet of new office and lab space there.There are only two things wrong with this picture: 1. government does not have the wisdom to place bets on particular industry sectors; 2. government should not subsidize business in particular since such market distortion is very bad for business in general. In fact, what Paul Allen's Vulcan is doing in South Lake Union is fine with me. He's planning to build a lot of buildings and rent the space out. I hope it works out for him. Criticisms of his activities are flawed. Allen will have to follow what appears to me to be a fairly simple but straightforward plan which should produce a reasonably good urban neighborhood. By the same token, his development should stand on its own. Allen shouldn't build (and I am sure won't build) ahead of market demand. Within the very broad parameters set by zoning, let Vulcan rent to whomever it likes. Don't try to skew the demand for space into some sort of vision, such as Seattle as biotech center. It is not government's job to "create jobs," (except for WPA-type projects for which I am actually a great advocate.) The City should do an exemplary job of doing what it is supposed to do: be a government. It should enact intelligent and demanding zoning to create a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood, (which I believe it already has done), process the permit applications rigorously and quickly (it needs a bit of work there) and then get out of the way. But don't give Vulcan any special deals. Conversely, don't look at Vulcan as a big fat 'target of opportunity' and try to soak it for extra-special 'public benefits.' Both courses of action are tempting but are socially corrosive. Posted 6/16/2003 03:16:44 PM by David Sucher Eric Rohmer on city planning? In an article on The destruction of Paris (comments later on the article itself) the author opens with:
A few years ago, Eric Rohmer made a movie about the mayor of a village in the Vendée who decides that what his picturesque hamlet needs is not a new library but a médiathèque, an untranslatable word for a fashionable multimedia boondoggle.I must see this movie, which I believe is titled L' Arbre, le maire et la mediatheque. UPDATE: According to Scarecrow Video this movie does not appear to have been released in the USA. If there is contrary information or other source of availability, please let me know. D.S. Posted 6/16/2003 11:45:29 AM by David Sucher Another reason to visit Bilbao, Spain Transport Blog offers another reason to visit Bilbao.
The metro system has a couple of other items of note. For one thing, rather than being at or below river level, in some cases the metro line has instead been dug inside the steep banks of the river. An interesting consequence of this is that whenever there is a side valley going off the main river valley, the metro line comes out of the side of a hill, goes through an elevated section over the tributary river, and then enters a hill on the other side of the tributary valley. It is quite spectacular.Seattle is building an (elevated) monorail system. As Seattle is a hilly city in a picturesque region (Mount Rainier etc etc) the views from the cars should be spectacular. Such a benefit should not be underestimated in creating ridership. I grew up riding the subways of Manhattan and every time I hear one of my neighbors suggest that it is too bad that we couldn't have afforded tunneling to build a subway, I have to wonder if she has ever ridden a subterranean system on a daily basis. I think that it is a grim experience and the visual stimulation of the Seattle system will be another intangible but very real benefit of elevated transit. Actually maybe not so intangible, as once we have built the system, we want people to ride it in order (among other things) to pay for it. Posted 6/16/2003 07:06:12 AM by David Sucher
6/15/2003
Koolhaas library design: Making excuses for a bad decision? I wrote earlier that I wouldn't comment on the Koolhaas design until the building was complete. And what's the rush? It will be with us for years. In fact I visited last week because I had been told that it was sufficiently finished to sense the final effect. I walked around it. I took pictures. But the lack of glazing made me hold off public comment; the glazing will have a significant impact on its appearance. And I want to be rigorous, try to drop any psychological "investment" in my adverse already-stated opinion about the building as a piece of urban design. I saw that construction still had a way to go. So I decided to, and will try to, hold-off comment on the design itself until the work is done. Fair?
But then (this morning) I read former-Mayor Charles Royer here cheer-leading for the design in such a backhanded way that I assume that there must already be tremendous adverse comment about the Library circulating in leadership circles. Mr. Royer is exceedingly well-connected and seemed to me to be making a preemptive strike in anticipation of a huge public outcry when the Library is in fact finished. (Here's a photo from the Seattle Times.) Just up the street from the new City Hall, an even riskier design is taking shape in the form of the new Central Library. Like City Hall, this building reflects the values of conservation and efficiency. But it is unabashedly designed to break new ground in architecture, to challenge and inspire.Royer appears to be trying to persuade us that hiring Koolhaas was a good idea and that the money was well-spent (so give us some more.) But you notice he says nothing nice about the building. He's an honest man and he can't express a positive opinion of the design even in an op-ed. It's called "damning by faint praise" and the "barking dog" syndrome. The idea that public buildings are supposed to be "controversial", "challenging" and elicit "comment" sounds like a make-weight to defend a foolish design which stemmed from a naive decision to hire Koolhaas in the first place. ("Well you don't like the Library? That's understandable -- few do. But that's why we built it --- so we could have something to discuss.") Public consensus that a building so visible in every way (Seattle likes its libraries) was ineptly handled undermines future appeals for public money by showing that the decision-makers were not up to the job. (Koolhaas was hired, btw, well over a decade after Royer left office.) Posted 6/15/2003 08:27:19 AM by David Sucher 12-lane freeways to ease crisis on roads :-) Surely you jest.
Britain's first 12-lane superhighway, modelled on America's freeways, is set to be built in Britain as part of expansion plan costing up to £6bn to cope with the crisis on the country's roads.Yeah right. I am a supply-sider when it comes to roads: supply induces demand. It seems empirically one of the iron laws American life. But I shouldn't get out on too much of a limb. Perhaps there are some British circumstances --- they are starting from a very, very low installed base and so forth --- which suggest that Britain needs more highways. Of course you can't really build much for £6bn. My dim recollection (1993) from driving around London is that there seemed to be plenty of "interstate-style" ring road and plenty, plenty of cars overall. Out of London (we made a pilgrimage to Portmeirion in Wales) my memory is that while the roads were narrow, which of course meant that my "hey! it's only 300 miles" meant a tiring drive, the traffic didn't seem so terrible. Of course that was vacation and everything looks different then. But Darling makes an interesting proposal: build more highways and then charge for them so not too many people will use them. Say, talking about more imports from America, we also have a very nice bridge; it will look smashing in London. Posted 6/15/2003 12:01:47 AM by David Sucher
6/14/2003
See-through glass (what an odd idea) can make a difference Urban design critic Mark Hinshaw suggests that we
[t]ake, for example, the Taco Time on Northeast 45th Street in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood. Here is a shopping street filled with small, locally owned businesses. Each has added a combination of carefully crafted storefront windows, entrances and signs - all aimed at engaging the people who stroll along the street day and night. What does this fast-food business do but thumb its nose at all this effort and build a box of mirrored glass that looks as if it wandered in from some suburban office park. The folks who designed the building should be ashamed of themselves for doing such violence to the streetscape.Two points. I'll do my best to include photos or at least a sketch whenever discussing a building. There is far, far too much conversation in words alone about objects, and this in a medium ---the TV screen for god's sake --- where it is fairly easy to show an image. So here is a picture of the Taco Time as discussed above.  I would differ slighty with Hinshaw about the Taco Time. It's a great example of how "site plan trumps architecture"--but not entirely. The site plan is good: it more-or-less follows "The Three Rules." Built to the sidewalk, the parking in back (which you can't see in this photo -- I owe myself a lunch so I'll cruise by and see if I can get a better pic.) etc. etc. But the mirrored-glass violates one of the sub-Rules and prevents the permeability/transparency which a building needs if it is to allow the inside/outside exchange which creates a pedestrian-oriented street. If the owners replace the mirrored-glass with see-through glass (what a funny idea!) the building would have a totally-different impact on the street. Furthermore, where I differ from Mark Hinshaw slightly is in his apparent stress in this article on the appearance of buildings. The point needs to be made over-and-over again --- (and it was Hinshaw who first led me to understand this very point) --- urban design rules are NOT aesthetic so much as behavioral i.e. we want the design of buildings to encourage a different civic experience and human behavior on the street. Because of its mirrored-glass, the Taco Time is a good example of "almost but not quite." But it is not the abomination many think. It's just a purchase order away from being quite nice. Posted 6/14/2003 07:10:00 PM by David Sucher Civilizing Downtown Highways I have no idea if this book Civilizing Downtown Highways is any good but it seems to be dealing with what I consider to be the central problem of our culture, this:
 I kid you not. The auto-oriented 4-to-8 lane suburban arterials are universally detested, used daily by hundreds of millions and represent the very worst of American culture. "Civilizing" them --- literally --- is an enormous challenge. While what is wrong with them is extremely simple --- they violate the Three Rules --- the social mechanics of transforming them are beset by extraordinary difficulties, not the least of which is that the idea of transforming them is hardly a glimmer in the public imagination. These abominations are generally-accepted as a necessity of modern American life. So I am curious to see what this book (a bit pricey at $32.95 for 100 pages) has to offer. The blurb from Congress for the New Urbanism, its publisher: Anyone interested in traffic calming should read Civilizing Downtown Highways. It describes how municipalities in California are using innovative designs and policies to calm the state highways that pass through downtown areas. These roads are among the toughest to work on, as state highway departments are determined to maintain throughput. But locals are equally determined to create walkable, business-friendly streets. The result is some creative collaborations that are worth imitating.UPDATE: I wrote above "...the central problem of our culture." I should have written "...the central problem of our culture besides racism." Posted 6/14/2003 08:54:17 AM by David Sucher
6/13/2003
Fine-tuning the charge The proof is in. Pricing a hitherto "free" public good is not easy. The London congestion charge has been so successful that Transport for London has an income shortfall.
"The £5 levy was so successful in deterring motorists that income from it was only half the £130m predicted."Either the price will have to go down, encouraging more driving, or general tax funds will have to be found to make up the shortfall. The latter option means that the public will also pay for decreasing congestion for those drivers still left on the road. "It is still early days for the congestion charge, but the scheme was always designed to reduce congestion and not raise revenue," he said. "It is working very well and congestion in central London has been cut by some 40 per cent.UPDATE: Why so many words here on congestion pricing? For one thing I have a friend who in this regard is an "early adopter" and has been talking to me about congestion pricing for literally ten years. So I am astonished and intrigued that what I initially thought was just a nutty academic scheme has now become a reality. Second, the more I look at it, the more concerned I am that congestion pricing will in fact become a more wide-spread reality and wreck havoc with civil liberties. But then that last concern is tempered by a third issue: the car has been and will continue to be the main "pattern generator" of the built environment for the foreseeable future. While I love to drive I also recognize that the car has been very destructive and that it is an imperative to try to find some sort of middle-ground. London, a true "world city," has embarked upon a remarkable experiment to attempt to control some of the auto's worst impacts. This experiment may not work at any level but it is both a very large and very bold experiment and deserves careful consideration, maybe even a field trip to study the natives and their wheels in situ. This London experiment is a very big story. So that's why so many words. Posted 6/13/2003 03:27:34 PM by David Sucher Some slopes are slippier than others I have a friend who will take delight that the question "Should congestion charging be extended?" is even being asked.
Should congestion charging be extended? Posted 6/13/2003 02:07:46 PM by David Sucher Defending Mediocrity In reference to Supreme Court nominations, Matthew Yglesias does a nice job of Defending Mediocrity and I would extend his approach to urban design.
Law professors seem to take it as just obvious that intellectual brilliance is an extremely important qualification for a judge and then debate as to whether or not said brilliance could be outweighed by really horrendous policy view or something. This whole approach seems wrong to me. Why should we want brilliant judges? Why not bland mediocrities? It seems to me that the lower federal courts, in particular, positively call for bland mediocrities who will adjudicate cases according to statute and precedent without doing much of anything that's remotely brilliant. Even at the Supreme Court level why should I want a judge who, like Posner and other brilliant legal theorists, has put forward revolutionary new understandings of the law?As Yglesias suggests, there is an awful lot of distance between the brilliance of a Posner and stupidity. Same in the field of design. A diverting and comfortable city --- check this out for yourself --- is not made of a series of "brilliant" designs but is a fabric woven according to well-understood rules. Some of the buildings may indeed be indifferent as pieces of architecture. But they fit together to create good streets. Posted 6/13/2003 12:37:04 PM by David Sucher Richard Pipes on 'private property' (Written a few years ago but not dated a second.)
The essential theme of Professor Pipes' Life, Liberty, Property is that private property rights are necessary for the evolution of a free society. Stipulated. Professor Richard Pipes' huzzahs for private property can hardly be disputed, when presented in the abstract as he does. But in the cauldron of local government land-use planning, such theory is next to useless. Pipes sidesteps the vast forum in which private property is most obviously managed by the public: local and state zoning. It's all very well to acknowledge the importance of private property in the evolution and maintenance of a civil society; I certainly join with him in that. But, for just the simplest example, how do we protect _my_ private property when he proposes something obnoxious on _his_ private property? The entire 'property rights' movements has retreated to theory and entirely ignores the practical problems of building cities in which we care to live. To speak of private agreements and covenants and so forth, for example, is to ignore the vast transaction costs involved which effectively preclude such bargaining. Professor Pipes gives a nod to the necessity for environmental protection : "Clearly, one cannot allow property rights to serve as a license for ravaging the environment ..."But then promptly takes it away: "But to say this is not to grant the state the authority to use the powers at its disposal to interfere with the freedom of contract, to redistribute wealth on a large scale, or to compel one part of the population to bear the costs of the government-defined "rights" of special constituencies. This is precisely the situation we now face, in particular in the form of limitations on the use of property imposed by various environmental or zoning laws and regulations.Well which is it? Of course it's a matter of degree and there is always the case that government "goes too far." But that is not a fundamental or novel critique of modern land use law. American courts have been struggling with where to draw the line for the best part of the 20th century, Like it or not, private property enthusiasts must come to grips with the majoritarian consensus that substantial public interference with private property rights is the only way in which to maintain and enhance environmental quality, especially in increasingly-dense metropolitan areas. The intellectual right rails against "the imbalance which has developed since the New Deal." But it never even tries to formulate an alternative approach in the land-use arena. It must, and sympathetically, either develop alternative mechanisms to help deal with the externalities of development or expect to see the bundle-of-rights shrivel into dust. Anything less is happy-talk trying to sing back an encroaching sea. 6/9/1999 Posted 6/13/2003 07:07:03 AM by David Sucher Why change? Brian Micklethwait has some astute thoughts on Michael Grave's designs
It's hard to tell whether these designs are really any sort of improvement on the regular versions of the various things Graves has "rethought", or just rethinking for the sake of it, which is one of the great architectural vices of the twentieth century. Posted 6/13/2003 07:00:04 AM by David Sucher
6/12/2003
Curbs versus Gossip Blogs as a form of human conversation intrigue me.
So much of urban planning & design comes down to what looks like very boring stuff: road width and curbs and parking lots. Bor-ring! It certainly can't compare for raw human emotion and drama with a Supreme Court nomination or a good Presidential impeachment, especially as, whady-ya-know!, both of those can involve sex! So that's the reason we have so few built environment blogs: no sex. Because think about it, how many "health care" blogs do you think the market could handle? Or maybe "foreign aid" blogs? The popular blogs are not about any particular subject but about the basics of life: money, sex and power. Posted 6/12/2003 10:27:21 PM by David Sucher "Context-sensitive design" "Context-sensitive design" is not a particularly attractive phrase --- in fact it's pretty icky and dry, could mean anything --- but the gist of it is correct. New urbanism has progressed to the point where it faces the problem of implementation at the staff-level and that means the detailed studies essential to bureaucracies. But why such an opaque name?
Meticulous studies of motorist behavior and accident rates are being amassed. Such studies are essential. Without them, engineers will remain fearful about potential lawsuits on behalf of people injured or killed on roads not built to conventional standards.If I were a road engineering executive I would embrace traffic-calming as, like nothing else, it ensure long-term job security since there is so very much to do. Read the whole article. Posted 6/12/2003 09:50:38 PM by David Sucher Discounting the bias The only problem I see so far with the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia is that it does not appear to identify who wrote what, which is an essential in order to be able to factor in the writer's perspective. Wikipedia's Urban planning entry is fascinating but I'd like to know who wrote it so I can discount it for their possibly known bias.
Posted 6/12/2003 05:59:51 PM by David Sucher Kudos and Brickbats I love the way Beyond Brilliance, Beyond Stupidity focuses on details, on what works and what doesn't. Intelligent imitation is the surest method of survival.
Posted 6/12/2003 01:53:53 PM by David Sucher Built-Environment Blogs -- Where? Folks at PLANETIZEN, an excellent & useful portal, sent me a list of seven other built-environment/planning blogs. Only seven! And City Comforts Blog is one of the seven! That's not conclusive but PLANETIZEN is pretty "centrally-located" on the web and so one would think that they would know, if anyone does.
It's amazing that there is so little in the way of built-environment blogs. There are a number of blogs where it is a fairly prominent element -- I've referenced a number of them here previously. But very little so narrowly focused. I wonder why, especially when compared to the seemingly vast number of extremely articulate socio-political blogs. Perhaps it's similar to the difference between skiing and golfing in the sense that golfing has (and this goes for sailing, fishing, and hunting too) an extensive and fine literature going back over a century. Skiing, however, is virtually voiceless, with little writing of worth. Is it that there is nothing to say about skiing? I think not, as skiing too can become extraordinarily important to one's psyche and writing is simply an expression of one's priorities. Are golfers smarter than skiers? Certainly not. But skiers don't write about skiing. No answers here, just questions. Is it possible that the super-blogs --- "InstaSullivan" --- are as much about gossip and personality as anything else? And many of them seemingly still yearning for past salad days of Clinton-bashing? (Of course someone might reasonably say "Well, what is there besides gossip?) As I say, no answers here. Posted 6/12/2003 12:57:58 PM by David Sucher Wikipedia Wikipedia seems to be a marvelous on-line encyclopedia which invites corrections, additions, refinements from its users. As well, it seems to have a sense of humor, at least for this one search. I asked Wikipedia about "cities" and here is where it took me....talk about editorial spin.
Posted 6/12/2003 10:08:24 AM by David Sucher Carfree Cities I don't agree with the conclusion of Carfree Cities nor its antipathy to cars but I do appreciate the basic sensibility. My terminal reservation is that I don't see how one can get from here to there. The transformation implied by the idea of cities without cars is so dramatic that "revolution" is not remotely a sufficient term.
The approach assumes that there is in a democratic nation the political ability to either build new cities or redesign existing ones in some fundamental way. Perhaps Baron Haussmann could redesign Paris for Napoleon III, but of course that was a part of a military strategy to make it easier for an authoritarian government to control the mob. I am dubious that a democratic polity can make the sort of dramatic changes which Carfree Cities advocates and do so in a democratic way. The social coordination required to "build new cities" implies, as I see it, a very centralized and powerful authority. The urban automobile can only be supplanted if a better alternative is available. What would happen if we designed a city to work without any cars? Would anyone want to live in such a city? Does it make social, economic, and esthetic sense? Is it possible to be free of the automobile while keeping the rapid and convenient mobility it once offered?I don't even share the goal any more, though perhaps I once did. Now it sounds far too dramatic and apocalyptic to be appealing. Nonetheless this is a fascinating site full of stimulating ideas. Posted 6/12/2003 08:49:50 AM by David Sucher
6/11/2003
Volvo's Urban Form Agenda, Not A good friend of mine divides people into two types: pro-car and anti-car. In fact he says it is more important than man or woman, Republican or Democrat etc. He says it is a matter of basic human sensibility; I won't indicate what sort he is. The bad news --- and it probably blows my future as a serious urbanist --- is that I really like cars. I am a car guy. I like the physical sensation of steering a vehicle and I like the ability to move through space at a whim. I am lucky enough to own a nice one.
But I guess my saving grace is that I get annoyed that so many other people also like cars and they all seem to be out there driving around, taking up my room on the streets and freeways. So you see I do have a social conscience. I recognize that too much of a good thing can end up being a bad thing. Maybe that's why I am such an enthusiast for "traffic-calming." If you don't know what that is, click here for a Google Search on traffic calming and see what looks interesting. Anyway, several years ago I started to see traffic-calming as a way to save the bacon of auto companies. I thought that the whole car industry would be under tremendous pressure and that it made natural sense for it foster traffic calming as a means to keep us all hooked on cars and yet satisfy political desires to have more comfortable cities. I learned that Volvo had what appeared to be a fairly sincere corporate policy on the environment. So I drew up this Petition to Volvo PDF and emailed it to people in their environmental department. (Just bear in mind that the year was 1997; Volvo and I have both changed.) Unfortunately I got back double-talk back from Gothenburg (Sweden). But then again, even my friends couldn't grasp the idea of a car manufacturer supporting traffic-calming. But here is the petition and through the magic of the web, I'll share it and maybe there will be 25 or 30 people who agree and I'll collect the names and send them on to Volvo. I do sincerely believe, as I say in the petition, that 1. we are going to have cars for a while 2. we'd better get better at integrating cars and cities, and I don't mean the way Robert Moses did it to New York. Posted 6/11/2003 05:54:21 PM by David Sucher Transport Blog answers Well I can't keep away from congestion pricing. It subsumes so many fascinating aspects of social life. I asked whether the London congestion charge was working and here is a response.
More sophisticated thinking on Transport Blog's London congestion charge archive What I did not expect was that that doyen of the British left and now Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, would be the man to instigate the transition to such an approach. Let me be clear, Livingstone is planning to introduce road pricing into the capital city early next year. However imperfect his plans will be (and my God, they have some glaring holes at present) and however he seeks to dress this move up with all the usual environmental waffle, the long term affect of his policy of "congestion charging" is going to lead to the commodification of public space. By pricing roads, encouraging an income stream down them and therefore deriving revenue, Livingstone will slowly become addicted to the money.Though I am not positive that "commodification of public space" is a very convincing way to put it.` Posted 6/11/2003 03:06:09 PM by David Sucher More archi-babble talk Glad not to be the only one who is fascinated by the language used by mass media architecture writers.
2blowhards dissects Paul Goldberger's approach here. I think that the essential problem of such writers --- Muschamp, Goldberger et al --- (and maybe it's not fair to lump them together as the latter is far, far superior in common-sense and sophistication to the former) is that they look at buildings as precious objects, as if they are paintings in a museum, where we gaze awkwardly, moving a few feet one way of the other to change the angle of view (or perhaps get closer to a pretty woman), trying to understand what we are seeing as a visual composition. I will be developing a list of links to all known mass-media architecture/urban design critics here so please send me your suggestions on who covers this beat anywhere in the world. Thanks. Posted 6/11/2003 08:28:31 AM by David Sucher Nothing more on congestion pricing I won't post anything more on it for a while; I am tired of it, too.
Posted 6/11/2003 08:15:45 AM by David Sucher Congestion pricing a monopolist's dream A reference at Matthew Yglesias lead me to Reason which I do not usually read, though it is seems as if it has quite a bit of currency in the blogosphere. (One aside here --- is it just my impression that the blogosphere seems to be populated by an incredible number of very smart (that doesn't mean wise), very articulate and youngish right-wingers? I wonder if it is truly so and I wonder "Where did we go wrong?")
In any case, the London experiment (it must be) is certainly bringing congestion-pricing to the fore. A lot of people on the left love it because it can be used as a tool of anti-car urban management. A lot of people on the right, as suggested by Reason, blithely believe that it is a market-based solution to congestion. As Ronald Kirby, transportation director for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, told The Washington Post , "We have no other solutions on the horizon." And you can almost hear scales fall from the eyes of Virginia's deputy secretary of transportation, Pierce Homer, when he says, "This is a serious question being asked in a lot of regions around the country: Are there market-based solutions to congestion?"A lot of conservatives/libertarians are going to be sorely disappointed when it turns out that congestion-pricing is not a market-based solution. Not even close. It is government imposition of a fee to further social goals. That does not mean it is a bad idea, just means that current schemes do not include any direct bidding mechanism by which buyers and sellers communicate, so we are not really creating a market. Nor is it likely that they will have such a mechanism because of the inherent contradiction in trying to manage a public resource though pricing when the real goal is not income maximization but a much more nebulous social goal of decreasing congestion. The seller (government) is both market-maker and a monopolist. Not even remotely a free-market. But the left and right may come together on this one as congestion-pricing turns out to be one of those social Rorschach tests in which everyone can see what they want. Posted 6/11/2003 07:24:33 AM by David Sucher
6/10/2003
Further thoughts about congestion pricing Ktsourl@mailbox.gr raises a very interesting point in an ongoing discussion on congestion pricing at carfree_cities@yahoogroups.com
Ktsourl@mailbox.gr writes that London's "congestion pricing" scheme is indeed one of the few cases, where urban road use is priced, though in a gross and unrefined manner (people just passing are paying the same price with those who move around in the priced area all day, no distinction is made according to the purpose of the movement etc).That is a very perceptive remark. But a scary one in its implications. The regulatory scheme which could adjust street charges for time and purpose is horrifying in its intrusiveness. The remark has lead me to rethink my previous sympathy for congestion pricing because I am starting to see more of the possible dynamics. The corridor inevitably becomes an area-wide system. To be effective in the USA a congestion pricing system would inevitably have to price not only freeways but also major arterials and then ultimately ordinary city streets. (Because of their isolation bridges and tunnels might be different.) These rights-of-way (and let us not forget the historic element of "right") form a system. They are interconnected. Charging for use of one major arterial will impact demand for use of adjacent and un-priced streets/roads. That is intuitively true. Examine your own behavior. "Congestion" is in itself a form a charge. When "Busy Street” is clogged, you naturally look for alternative “Free Street.\” to avoid that charge. The spillover of traffic from priced streets to unpriced ones will inevitably call forth demands to price all streets. A congestion pricing system for a single highway will inevitably become an area-wide system. No? Pricing will reflect duration and purpose Ktsourl raises yet another interesting point. When designing an area system such as London's, it is suggested, one should also consider duration inside the cordon and the purpose of the trip. Going into the core costs $X if you are dropping off someone at a hospital but $2X if at a movie, for instance. And you have to certify to the Authority the nature of the trip, presumably. Such "refinements" in the pricing system seem plausible. After all, wouldn't they allow finer tuning of the system? The intrusiveness mounts. I do not think any social goal, even the laudable purposes of decreasing air pollution, "accidents", deformation of urban fabric, noise, pedestrians hardships and delaysis worth achieving if it means keeping track of the location and activity of discrete individuals. Most concepts for congestion pricing involve some sort of tracking system. The conventional response is that "it will all be anonymous." Of course the West's first experiment --- London --- isn't anonymous at all. Users are tracked through cameras which take pictures of their license plates. It is simply preposterous to imagine that information gained by Transport for London about movement of specific cars will not (nay "should be" from the perspective of public safety) be shared with the police to track down, say, terrorists. Consider such a possibility when there is a prospective terrorist action. Or in a civil matter, suppose one wanted to defend from a charge of extra-marital dalliance (or wanted to prove it.) You've got a huge data-base of trip movements tied to specific vehicles. The idea that it will not eventually be used for a purpose other than charging for street use beggars credulity. (Of course if there is a convincing and fool-proof method for charging individuals without the identify of that individual being known, then that would change matters in my mind. I guess I just believe that there can logically ever be a truly anonymous system as congestion charging cannot, for efficiency, ever be a cash-based system so there will always be a digital trail.) Lord Acton was right. "Power corrupts." And the power offered to any organization by a database of personal trip-movements is simply not worth the possible benefit. Just remember where George Orwell set 1984. Posted 6/10/2003 09:48:19 PM by David Sucher "The future is classical" A stimulating article by Sophie Jeffreys & Roger Scruton on openDemocracy.net
Architecture, it should be remembered, is first and foremost a vernacular art, like dance and clothing. Although there are the great projects, and the great architects who succeed in them, both are exceptions. We build because we need to, and for a purpose.My own questions later. Posted 6/10/2003 09:27:41 AM by David Sucher
6/9/2003
Do architecture critics matter? The New Criterion asks a good question question: "Do architecture critics matter?"
And here’s the crux of what makes architecture criticism so damnably tricky. Kamin is of course right that architecture should be understandable to everyone. Only an idiot ... would fail to see that buildings aren’t works of fine art in the same sense that easel paintings are or poems or pieces of concert music. It is for the very simple reason that buildings must serve practical functions that have nothing to do with fine art and that they are utterly inescapable, unlike the paintings in museums or the books on library shelves. The urban architect simply does not possess the right to impose his aesthetic vision on the public. Or does he? Huxtable would have answered that he does and that it is the critic’s job to educate the public to understand buildings. Posted 6/09/2003 11:41:19 PM by David Sucher What I learned about urban design from Edward Said I have a narrow focus. I have an intellectual framework which is so limited as to make even me laugh. I'm a hedgehog rather than a fox (which former animal btw is not a type of porcupine. The hedgehog is part of the insectivore family; the porcupine is part of the rodent family.)
I'm simple. I see virtually all urban issues through the lens of the Three Rules of urban design. That may be a slight exaggeration but not a whole lot. I look at a street in a commercial district and the first thing I notice is whether it has on-street parking and where lies the building in relation to the sidewalk, assuming that there is a sidewalk. I look at the central problem of urbanism as how to create pedestrian-oriented cities. The key to creating such cities is understanding and applying the Three Rules. To put it another way, you don’t get pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods by having a growth management boundary (though such a boundary may very well be a good idea). You get pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods by building pedestrian-friendly buildings, which means building according to the Three Rules. Following the Three Rules will indeed precipitate a whole host of other change. For instance, state highway departments would be forced to manage those generally oppressive urban arterials (e.g. Highway 99 on the west coast and Highway 1 on the east) not as urban highways but as urban streets. Shaping the city starts with understanding and applying the Three Rules. All else is peripheral. So that is my narrow approach. You can laugh; I do. But it's not really a laughing matter; I take city-building seriously. *** My first English Composition teacher at Columbia was a guy named Edward Said. He’s famous. But then, in the autumn of 1963, he had just received his Ph.D. and stormed into our section, elegant in wide-lapelled suit, with an intensity I still remember. He was an excellent teacher, though as I look back on it now I wonder how he could possibly have found it comfortable --- and bourgeois comforts is what this blog is all about: who is fool enough to disdain bourgeois comfort? --- to be at a place with the demographics of Columbia University in the City of New York? And to have stayed there these many years? There is a story there. At any rate, Edward Said was a rigorous and interesting teacher. I took several courses from him even though I had only passing interest in English literature. (I had seized like a dog on the convenient bone that it is better to “take the teacher, not the subject.”) One of the most striking things he said was along these lines. It may not be a surprising insight for an adult but for a teenager --- and we freshmen were indeed hardly out of boyhood --- but one day that fall Said sat on the edge of the desk and asked us this simple question, and of course I paraphrase: "Have you ever had a conversation with someone who always had the answer? No matter what you say, they always can refute you. They’ve always got an answer. And what seems like a pretty good answer?" By this time we all had enough sense to nod only dimly so as to avoid attracting attention. Duh. "Yes.": "Have you ever thought about why they are so successful at debate?" "Duh." "Well it's simple. You find such people --- those who always have what looks like a cast-iron bulletproof answer --- among groups who take part in a fully-formed and rounded ideology. Catholic priests, Communist organizers, zealous adherents to an ideology --- any of them will be able to take your question, digest it within their intellectual framework and spit it back. Their intellectual system is powerful enough to handle any challenge. Or so it appears. They’re hard to talk to, hard to beat in argument because their system has an answer for every question. So when you talk with someone like that, what do you do?” Not a head moved. “Well it is simple. You examine their first principles. You determine what foots their ideology. You go to the bottom, determine the root ideas, their assumptions, their intellectual prime mover. Everything they say will flow and must in some way be consistent with those first principles and assumptions. And then you decide if those first principles have validity for you, if they make sense, then fine; you agree. If not, you fight back on the basis of whether their first principles are valid or reasonable to you or can be justified. Don’t work at the top level application. Dig down to the root. But in any case, if you understand their first principles, you are forearmed and can see through them.” *** It was obviously a striking-enough lesson --- and with a source which adds an amusing irony --- that I remember it now forty years later. So now you too are forearmed with regards to City Comforts Blog. *** Brian's Education Blog Posted 6/09/2003 11:58:49 AM by David Sucher "There they go again." Reason (July, 2002) pretends shock, yes shock! that rich liberals in Hollywood prefer Their Own Private Malibu to opening up the beach to public access.
It's a disingenuous ploy. Rich liberals are RICH and they got that way by having chosen parents who gave them money, luck or smarts. And they like being RICH. So they also enjoy benefits of wealth such as space and privacy. Of course they will defend their turf. They are RICH before they are liberal. To attack liberalism because rich liberals act like rich people is flimsy cant. Moreover, Reason also gets Nollan wrong. That Supreme Court decision did not prohibit governmental exactions; quite the contrary it endorsed them by drawing a line. It explains that the exaction is only valid if it is related, if there is a nexus, between it and the property-owner's proposed improvements. ...the condition would be constitutional even if it consisted of the requirement that the Nollans provide a viewing spot on their property for passersby with whose sighting of the ocean their new house would interfere. Although such a requirement, constituting a permanent grant of continuous access to the property, would have to be considered a taking if it were not attached to a development permit, the Commission's assumed power to forbid construction of the house in order to protect the public's view of the beach must surely include the power to condition construction upon some concession by the owner, even a concession of property rights, that serves the same end. In other words, and these were Justice Scalia's words, even a very harsh permit exaction is legitimate if it solves a problem created directly by the proposal. There has to be a connection. Government is not supposed to be a free-booting engine of social progress demanding concessions when it sees a convenient target-of-opportunity. You should only get nicked to solve specific problems created by your own actions. Posted 6/09/2003 07:54:06 AM by David Sucher
6/8/2003
Zaha Hadid's Urban Mothership Normally i just toss it off as the kind of puffery I expect from Muschamp, but today his hyperbole about Hadid in the NYTimes is just so infuriating if you see the potential influence held by a critic for the New York Times on the way Americans understand the built environment. Among other flaws, I believe that Muschamp tells about buildings as 'precious objects' but does not show how they do or do not operate in relationship with each other.
He writes about Hadid's Cincinnati design: It is an amazing building, a work of international stature that confidently meets the high expectations aroused by this prodigiously gifted architect for nearly two decades. Might as well blurt it out: the Rosenthal Center is the most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war. Here's another string of conclusory words: LET me refine (but not deflate) that opening burst of hyperbole. The Rosenthal Center defines the architectural context of the post-cold-war era. Like Hadid herself, the building links traditional cosmopolitan values with the phenomenon of globalization. Hadid's experiences as a woman and a native of the Middle East have sharpened her insights into that phenomenon. She grasps that contemporary urbanism, like current architectural practice, unfolds within a global framework. The Rosenthal Center embodies her historical awareness. Is he serious? Somehow the fall of the Berlin Wall means that there are new rules for making intriguing and interesting cities? And because Hadid was born in Baghdad and now lives in London she has some special insight? OK. tell us what it is. Show us, don't just tell us. Perhaps the imprimatur of the NYT makes his statement plausible. But even a high school composition teacher would demand more explanation. Where are the editors of that paper? "She grasps that contemporary urbanism, like current architectural practice, unfolds within a global framework." What does that mean? That there are new rules for making a pedestrian-friendly street? It strikes me as pretentious filler Now all this doesn't mean that I have an opinion about Hadid's building. As I said earlier, I haven't seen it it live (the real test) or even from plans, but only from the pictures, But I think I like it. It may in fact be a very good urban building as it follows the Three Rules. The issue here is whether the critic --- not the architect --- is doing a good job, Here's more pompous intellectualization: The building's prevailing mood is Baroque, in its play of geometric variations and, especially, in its artful arrangement of processional spaces. Like Balanchine condensing an evening's worth of choreography into a 20-minute ballet, Hadid compresses Blenheim Palace into spaces that occupy a fraction of the area Vanborough had to work with. Virtually every paragraph is like that, though I do concede that in one he makes the sensible suggestion: that we should actually experience a building rather than simply look at it. But the building's power is fully disclosed only to those who engage it with their feet as well as their eyes. Hadid's renderings have long conveyed the impression of movement. The building gives this impression concrete form. Not even Saarinen's TWA terminal draws richer spatial textures out of architecture's circulatory systems. Wandering through the building is like exploring the varied and unpredictable terrain of present time. Staring right into the present is immensely more shocking than gazing at some corny crystal ball. But then he goes and ruins it by ending with: Staring right into the present is immensely more shocking than gazing at some corny crystal ball. I can expand and I may, later. But read the whole thing. Am I too hard on Muschamp? Perhaps my expectations for the NYT are too high. The attacks on the New York Times by Instapundit, Sullivan, Samizdata et al are starting to make more sense to me. City building is important and the man the Times has anointed as its commentator is lacking in skill. I expect better of the New York Times. It is the national, if not global, paper of record and I expect more intelligent commentary from it about a subject --- city-building --- which is clearly of moment to people around the world. City-building is an extremely political process which in a democracy depends on an educated citizenry. But Muschamp misdirects the attention of the reader with pretentious cerebralization. The stakes are too high to allow such rhetoric to continue without protest. Posted 6/08/2003 10:02:49 PM by David Sucher What is a "seawall"? A seawall is a bulkhead at the edge of a body of water. It provides a straight edge where boats and ships can moor. It brings deep water closer in-shore and protects the land from erosion. It sharpens the transition between land and water, which in nature is usually fairly gradual.
One online Dictionary.com/seawall places the emphasis on erosion protection and indeed seawalls can be built for that express purpose. But the Alaskan Way seawall in Seattle was built as a way to permit ships close to the shore of Elliott Bay for easier loading and unloading. Of course the "working waterfront" has disappeared over the past 50 years almost entirely from the shoreline of Seattle's historic urban core; the Puget Sound fishing industry is virtually dead and international shipping has moved to areas with large expanses of land for marshalling of containers. But the seawall remains and there is concern that it may need substantial repair. I'll post a picture of part of the Alaskan Way seawall shortly. Posted 6/08/2003 03:44:41 PM by David Sucher Where is Seattle? I'll be writing more about Seattle, the seawall in particular, so I might as well post a Seattle map and Seattle aerial photo for your convenience.
Posted 6/08/2003 03:35:53 PM by David Sucher Isn't Houston's land-use "libertarian"? A reader wrote:
Does Houston's lack of zoning not constitute a free-market approach to land use? I don't pretend to know anything about architecture or urban planning, but it strikes me Houston is as libertarian as land-use can get. I wonder if it has any impact on the matter. As to the impact of no-zoning on Houston. I really know very little about the city---there once, 30 years ago --- and I can well-believe that its downtown is not very "urban." But the lack of zoning probably does not have a very great deal to do with it, however. The vast majority of American downtowns are as you describe --- "a dead zone from one end to the other" --- and most of them do indeed have zoning. It's just not very astute, pedestrian-oriented zoning. So zoning per se (or lack thereof) is not the key variable. And I am not advocating a specific libertarian approach to land use. Certainly, from what you say of its downtown, Houston would not be a poster-child for the success of libertarian land use. Of course in the large picture, I do not believe that "libertarian land use" exists, or at least exists in a form which --- at this point in our social evolution --- is of sufficient substance to help create interesting cities. I would love it if there was such a libertarian approach but I am not aware of one which is anything more than a stamping of one's feet accompanied by "But It's my private property." Posted 6/08/2003 01:51:14 PM by David Sucher
6/7/2003
Security takes toll on S.F.'s downtown ( as of January 2002) While we must be vigilant against terror and also vigilant against erosion of civil liberties in fighting terror, I personally have noticed very little impact in my daily life. Longer lines at airports are a very small inconvenience. Nevertheless any attempt to 'harden' society to create a defensible city will likely create deader streets suggested John King of the SF Chronicle.
But it's easier to incorporate design from the start than to double back in self-defense. In Washington, D.C., barriers and guardrails are so pervasive that a federally appointed task force last month expressed dismay at how our capital is marred by 'elements more suitable for a highway construction site. . It would be interesting to read an assessment of what has actually happened in the past 18 months with regard to design impacts of the war on terror. Such analysis can be taken several ways of course: either that 1. there is no visible change which indicates that we are not doing enough or 2. there is too much which indicates that the war on terror has already reshaped our society adversely or 3. nothing seems to impinge on our individual behavior so we must be doing it just about right. Personally, I don't have an opinion. Posted 6/07/2003 03:08:48 PM by David Sucher Charging speeds up London 37% Here's the latest on congestion charging in London 37%. Maybe the solution to I-405 congestion is to charge for its use so that people who don't use it, don't have to pay for it. Sounds fair to me.
"However, the figures are likely to fuel criticism that the charge has been so effective that it is sucking the lifeblood out of businesses in central London. The Federation of Small businesses has expressed growing concern about a drop in the number of people visiting shops in the heart of the capital. There is obviously a balance-point in pricing street use: Too high? Use goes down too much. Price too low? Insufficient impact on congestion. One large issues will be the power the public gives to the Pricing Authority to adjust prices. A real market works in daily real time. Adjust prices immediately to reflect supply and demand. Would we give a Pricing Authority the power to adjust prices on a daily or even hourly basis? There are issues such as whether the goal is maximizing income or minimizing congestion. Presumably the Pricing Authority would be set up as a regulatory body. It's goal is not to raise money per se but only incidentally as a means of fulfilling its regulatory function. For example, cities can charge for building permits but not as a way of raising money. It is an important distinction in American law and will influence the daily powers given to the Authority to raise/lower prices. But then as a purely regulatory body (not in business to make money) what is the standard for reducing congestion? No congestion at all at any time? And so forth and so on. Attempts to create a "free market" in a public good will create yet another bureaucracy. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't look into this possibility but merely that there is a real cost to creating a market. Posted 6/07/2003 10:05:28 AM by David Sucher
6/6/2003
Brian's Culture Blog: June 2003 Archives This is the very first time anyone has linked to me and it is an interesting sensation...Perhaps similar to the first sincere Hello upon arriving at a large party at which there are, at first intimidating glance, only strangers. Of course it's best to act like the haunting Mexican assassin in Maugham's Ashenden stories who said "Never fear a rebuff and you shall never receive one."
But more realistically, thank you, Brian, who has many insightful and inciteful things to say about buildings etc etc at Brian's Culture Blog: Architecture Archives Today, we were driving along a valley further inland, towards the higher parts of the Pyrenees, and when you do that you can look across to the other side of the valley and see one of European life's greatest visual glories, namely a town all built in a similar style on the side of the hill, but with each building being slightly different, at a slightly different angle, and with slightly different design decisions embodied in it. Together these buildings form, not a unified architectural design, but something far more life enhancing (because life-resembling): an architectural cluster. Posted 6/06/2003 08:01:23 PM by David Sucher Cross-post party Here is a mildly interesting discussion about "Real Cities" which seems to have been spurred by this photo-essay on Rise and Fall of Modernism. In any case, please don't miss these fascinating comments.
Posted 6/06/2003 06:21:26 PM by David Sucher
6/5/2003
"Army Engineers Wage Peace One Block at a Time" As the saying goes "all politics is local"
Thanks to Virginia Postrel for the reference. Posted 6/05/2003 08:38:30 PM by David Sucher Urban planning starts with the location of the parking lot Who says Americans are not intellectual? The blogosphere is virtually entirely virtual and intensely ideological, Yet it is rare to come across an interesting discussion like this one on Cars, Parks, and Car Parks which raises in 3-dimensional form the very same issues of power, authority, the individual, the group, how we form our societies etc. etc.
The comments include a reference to a must-read article about Tokyo from Metropolis Magazine. Posted 6/05/2003 08:01:48 PM by David Sucher
6/3/2003
Edgier Cities Though most attention has been given to revitalizing/preserving central cities, the real action in the future will be to transform the strip-mall suburbs. We have an enormous social investment in their infrastructure and each (now ugly) commercial corner represents an opportunity for repair and a potential urban village. The indication that such is happening, along the lines of Richard Florida's Creative Class will be when 'artists and bohemians' per are found in the revitalizing suburbs. Hitherto, "[o]ne of the reasons edge cities haven't attracted many artists and bohemians is that so much of it is brand-new and therefore expensive" said says Joel Garreau.
Posted 6/03/2003 08:42:49 PM by David Sucher Hugh Pearman writes about Koolhaas "All 1380 pages of S,M,L,XL are wallpapered through the ICA's gallery as a running commentary. It is a big seller. The biggest thing in it, fame wise, is a celebrated essay on "Bigness" as an architectural determinant. This is lucidly written, but all it comes down to is that some buildings are now so huge that there's room for lots of other architectures to happen inside their skins. This is absolutely true to the point of being rather obvious. It doesn't amount to much as a theory, you'd think - but it's the way he tells 'em. The presentation, the packaging, the air of myth and mystery, is a great deal to do with the success of Koolhaas..." The cult of KoolhaasHugh Pearman strikes a plausible note : treat Koolhaas seriously but not seriously i.e. see through his archi-babble as insignificant froth but leave room for his real skill as an architect. I've never seen a Koolhaas design "live" so I cannot comment on the impact. I will get my chance when Koolhaas' Seattle Public Library is finished. But my pre-construction analysis of the library design as filtered through the sieve of the Three Rules of urban design suggests that it will fail as a piece of urbanity. Of course, my focus is less on individual buildings than on how the buildings fit together to form a city. So my own preference is more in the "Jerry-Rubin-Testifies-at-HUAC" direction: humor. So many people make the mistake of treating Koolhaas' presentations as serious commentary and respond to them as if they have substance, thus elevating the man's stature as a 'design theorist.' The better approach might be to simply smile indulgently, so long as the bill for the building is not coming out of the tax-payer's pocket. For example, recently I ran across this energetic remark: "I certainly find all his theories just a tad short of Big Brother's." Personally, I can find no fault with his "theories." My criticism of his "theories" is much more basic. "There is no there, there." His ideas appear to be either too amorphous to have any juice or utility--for example, "bigness"--or too basic--for example, "flexibility"--to be a contribution of any great value. So here's the test about Koolhaas as a "design theorist": Have you ever been present when someone offered an opinion about one of Koolhaas' theories? Have you ever heard anyone say "Well, I think Koolhaas is absolutely right about..." or "Koolhaas is dead wrong on this point here." You can't be said to have a theory unless there are people around who either agree or disagree with it. Posted 6/03/2003 07:46:10 PM by David Sucher Street lives Street Lives, March 3,1999,
"It is not unusual to see a child in the street chastising a driver for going too fast in the Methleys neighbourhood near Leeds city centre. A couple of years ago, residents agreed to drive at no more than 10 miles an hour as part of a community festival. The experiment was so successful that it made residents want to change for good the power balance between pedestrians and cars." Posted 6/03/2003 07:44:17 PM by David Sucher
6/2/2003
Los Angeles Looks as New York Looks at London's Traffic Tolls Not only is London's Entrance Toll an intriguing idea and experiment by itself but it provides a fascnating case study in the diffusion of innovative ideas. Future historians will have fun with this one.
Schwartz, however, is thinking much bigger than just East River tolls. He would like to see a comprehensive "congestion-pricing" system throughout southern Manhattan that would charge people based on when and where they drive. The wider arteries along the rivers can accommodate more traffic, so they would cost less; narrower, heavily traveled streets would cost more, especially at peak times of day. Posted 6/02/2003 08:56:28 AM by David Sucher "Delight" rather than "wow" is the primary goal. The Wendell Cox -- Andrés Duany Debate has some choice words which get at the weakness of our infatuation with precious-object star-architecture.
Duany says: "We have someone, Mike Watkins here from our office in Kentlands, who said, "You know, all we do in the end is try to make people's daily lives better, isn't it?" And he was looking out the window when he phoned me and had this terrific insight, actually seeing some kids walking to school or walking to the movies. And it was obvious that their life was better because they lived in the Kentlands than if they did not. They were having a good time with their freedom, children that cannot normally get around without driving." New Urbanism and City Comforts are about application of imagination to the banal, to the prosaic everyday things, not to make them stellar in a way which would cause "oohs" and "aahhs" but merely to to improve daily life. "Delight" rather than "wow" is the primary goal. Posted 6/02/2003 07:42:07 AM by David Sucher
6/1/2003
The New Colonist...for the citizen of the new century These days there seems to be a remarkable and healthy ferment about rebuilding cities -- "repairing" them as a friend calls it --- and The New Colonist magazine from Duncansville, Pennsylvania is an interesting example. The current issue has a nice review of San Francisco's Café Society which goes right to the heart of the why and wherefore of urbanity. For me the heart of a city for me is the "third place" so insightfully described by Ray Oldenburg.
Posted 6/01/2003 04:41:25 PM by David Sucher The Sky Line Paul Goldberger also writes in this week's New Yorker about Hadid's museum design in Cincinnati and the photo is from the other elevation. (The museum is on a corner lot.) It's so difficult to make any remarks at all about a building without actually being there to experience it. Though I am definitely a "traditionalist," I like this one at first glance for the reasons mentioned below.
So I won't mention the building but simply offer that it hinders the public conversation on the urban environment for so much attention to be paid to structurse which are essentially "sports" and "freaks" and which have so little to do with the the everyday life of a city. Public attention gets led astray. Quality in the urban environment becomes having a trophy building. And of course, sadly, it works. The "Bilbao coup" --- from unknown to byword for "design" in the space of months --- is I assure you not ignored by city governments anywhere in the world. The marginal cost of a "world-class" architect -- what a pathetic phrase -- is very low and the benefit can be very high in shining the spotlight on a city or town. But I am dubious that it raises consciousness about how to make a better city for it is and is presented as a freakish event. Posted 6/01/2003 03:29:29 PM by David Sucher Copyright © 2003 David Sucher
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