City Comforts, the blog

"Jam tomorrow" but never Jam today

I am a firm believe that "in due course" the eBook will sweep away paper for most non-fiction books, and for magazines, newspapers etc etc. but I am bit tired of reading articles like Hi-tech tome takes on paperbacks when it seems always to be just around the corner. "Soon." Like Jam tomorrow.

For most non-fiction, the eBook, "supported" on line at a blog, will be a far superior product.

What's holding it up is the Ergo-eBook hardware: good-looking, well-built, a pleasure to hold and cheap. Please. Soon!

UPDATE: Why, you ask, does this guy keep talking about eBooks? This is a blog about cities not technology. Right? Yes right but wrong. The two are one; the future of cities will be very much influenced though not determined by technology.

But the better answer is simpler. I've been thinking a lot about books as a I blog. Specifically my book ands my blog. I see the convergence of two things: my work on a book --- titled City Comforts by odd coincidence --- and my work on this Blog. Though I've just finished the book, I think of things to add to it, like a simple glossary. (I keep learning new terms like "common man.") But you can't update paper on the fly but have to go through the whole tedious process of dealing with printing, distribution and so forth when all the readers really want is the information in a permanent and easily portable form.

My conjecture is that eBook technology will foster the emergence of what boils down to a new medium: the constantly-revised book. Like a periodical, newsletter etc it will be amenable to continual refreshment and updating; like a book, it will have permanence and the reader will have to pay. The publishing industry appears to be scared --- as well it should --- by the eBook; there is absolutely no justification for book prices as they are now except the the costs of printing and marketing. Take away all of the former (of course there will still be 'pre-press' costs of research, editing, composition, design, etc.) and a majority of the latter (there will still be distribution costs but dramatically lower) and what is happening to music distribution will soon happen to publishing. As an author, I welcome this change. But it will create enormous turmoil in the publishing sector.

The key, as I perceive it, is the hardware.

I'm curious to hear the right-wing spin on this one

The basic gist of this story from Forbes that notoriously soft-hearted bastion of PC-liberalism is Drive More, Exercise Less, Get Fat.

When cities spread out, so do waistlines and rear ends. For proof, you can visit Charleston, W.Va., or Fort Wayne, Ind.--the U.S. cities with the highest obesity rates, both with less than 3,000 people per square mile. Or you can refer to recent studies published in the American Journal of Public Health and the American Journal of Health Promotion.

I visited New Zealand a few years ago. I returned via Los Angeles, deplaned and was walking down the airport corridor when I simply started to laugh. Especially by comparison with New Zealanders, I felt as if I was walking through a world populated by people out of paintings by Botero.

Bathing in Bath: a new spa for the 21st century

Hugh Pearman writes about what seems (my opinion from a tiny screen image) to be a terrific piece of urban building in Bath, England designed by Nicholas Grimshaw.

I've been to Bath, once, and besides loving the place, and learning a lot about what a city could be like, my most vivid memory is that we couldn't take a bath there, even in our shabby and expensive little B&B. Looks like things will change.

Grimshaw is keenly aware that his firm is still seen by some as an edge-of-town, supershed kind of outfit. The new 20m Bath spa, supported by the Millennium Commision and bang in the middle of an official World Heritage Site, is his riposte to that. "If you're any good as an architect," he remarks in his diffident way, "you should be able to do a modern building in any situation. It would have been very easy to do a sham Georgian building. It would have walked through the planners."

I like this design out of pure personal whimsy but Bingo! and more importantly, because so far as urbanism is concerned the design appears to illustrate the idea that style doesn't matter so long as you follow the Three Rules which Grimshaw did in spades, if I read the photo in Pearman's article correctly.

I'd post the picture here but I don't have permission (yet?) so go follow the link above and see a bit of slinky traditionalism -- selfeffacing starchictecture, if you'll allow such a thing.

One quibble: The sidewalk is awfully stingy and its unfortunate that its strewn with bollards but of course I don't know all the site constraints.

One other mild complaint: I wish architectural/urban design journalists would include very simple site plans, elevations etc in their articles so that one can truly understand the dynamics of the building and how it works with the surroundsings. I feel uneasy assessing things based on, since all I see is a screen image, precious eye candy.

Transport as Sport

Provocative posting on Transport as Sport ( at where else?) Transport Blog.

One glancing reaction:

One of the problems faced by public ---i.e. group --- transport is that it must compete with the car as fun. So mant of our sports (as opposed to games) involve movement through space: skiing, sailing, horesback riding, cycling, rollerblading, walking, white water rafting, flying, soaring --- the list is endless.

We love to be in motion, to see the landscape unfold before us, especially when we can personally direct the path. That's tough ---but I am not saying insurmountable -- competition for communal travel.

Some background on the I-670 Cap

The project architect, David Meleca, offers the following:

"I thought you might enjoy the inspiration for the architecture for the cap.

"It was the old Union Station (train station) in Columbus which was located within a stones throw from this project. It actually sat were the Peter Eisenman's convention center currently stands. The train station was designed by Daniel Burnham of Chicago and was torn down in 1978 duringColumbus's urban renewal days.

"A group of concerned citizens happened to save one of the arches from the original building and it has been erected next to our new NHL Hockey Arena. I actually went out and did scaled drawings of the remaining original pieces and used them for the proportion system on the Cap Project.

"Also, the project is now going to be officially known as The Cap."

How basic are visual preferences in landscape?

Via 2blowhards I learn of a very interesting paper by Denis Dutton on Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology with this fascinating excerpt on Environmental Preference:

...The idea of a pervasive Pleistocene taste in landscape received support from an unusual project undertaken by two Russian migr artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, in 1993. They hired a professional polling organization to conduct a broad survey of art preferences of people living in ten countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas (Wypijewski 1997). Blue turned out to be the favourite colour worldwide, with green in second place. Respondents expressed a liking for realistic representative paintings. Preferred elements included water, trees and other plants, human beings (with a preference for women and children, and also for historical figures, such as Jomo Kenyatta or Sun Yat-sen), and animals, especially large mammals, both wild and domestic. Using the statistical preferences as a guide, Komar and Melamid then produced a favourite painting for each country. Their intent was clearly ironic, as the painting humorously mixed completely incompatible elements "America's Most Wanted," as it was titled, presented a Hudson River School scene, with George Washington standing beside a lake in which a large hippo is bellowing. But there was also a serious side to the project; for the paintings, though created from the choices of different cultures, tended to share a remarkably similar set of preferences --- they looked like ordinary European landscape calendar art, both photographic and painted. In an attempt to explain this odd cross-cultural uniformity --- which had East Africans choosing the lush calendar scenes over landscapes they might be familiar with in their own daily lives --- Arthur Danto claimed that the Komar-Melamid paintings demonstrate the power of the international calendar industry to influence taste away from indigenous values and towards European conventions. While he admits that the Kenyans preferred scenes that looked more like upper New York State than like Kenya, the polling work also indicated that most Kenyans had calendars in their homes (Danto, in Wypijewski 1997). What this does not acknowledge is the question of why worldwide calendars have the same landscape themes---the very themes that evolutionary psychology would predict. The real question is "Why are calendars so uniform in their content worldwide?" a uniformity that includes other, non-landscape, objects of attention, such as babies, pretty girls, children, and animals. It is the calendar industry that has, by meeting market demands, discovered a Pleistocene taste in outdoor scenes.

Ah! The International Calendar Industry Conspiracy. Are we to take that idea seriously? On its face it appears absurd. Is there such a thing? Publishing is very much a nation/language-centered business; and calendars come out of the publishing industry. No? But Dutton, offers Danto's criticism with a seeming straight-face.

But more seriously, I wonder if such landscape prefences apply to urban landscapes?

The question also struck Tony Nelessen and quite a few years ago. He developed a technique of Visual Preference Surveys for use by Urban Planning agencies wishing to write ordinances to control Architecture. The conclusion? In North America, the preferences are marvelously bourgeois --- and with amazing similarity everywhere you go: the preponderance of the evidence from such surveys indicates that everyone says they want the conventional urban village/new urbanist/Three Rules sort of town.

More on Nelessen's work --- pro and con --- when I find some good links. I favor both his approach and the tastes reflected by the surveys; but I am sure that there is a loyal opposition to using the preferences of the common man to design zoning codes and I am curious to hear if he has anything useful to offer.

Facilitating the serendipitous encounter

Most human events, whether short- (e.g. conferences) or long-term (e.g. college), are designed simply to facilitate the serendipitous encounter and multiply their number.

Here is some good advice on how to Attend a Conference.

Where are the land use LAW blogs?

For most people that's not exactly front-and-center as an issue of great concern. In fact some might say "Thank goodness!" I do understand.

But there must be a few fanatics around in the land use, environmental, property rights law business who also blog. But I can't find them. I have checked the law links at Crooked Timber, The Volokh Conspiracy, The Buck Stops Here...browsed a good number of their links...and I can't find anyone who is covering that beat.

As, to my mind, land use and environmental law encapsulates some of the most interesting, intriguing and relevant areas of the law, I wonder why no one is blogging it? Rhetorical question of course but if I am wrong, which I hope is so, and someone out there is doing it, please let me know.

And in fact what's even more puzzling (because a bit more realistic,) I don't see law bloggers (cursory review I concede) addressing the subject at all. Too bad. I would think that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) as one instance at least would be getting some discussion. Of course, again, maybe I've simply missed it.

Or maybe the absence of law blogs rooted in the earth parallels the seeming obliviousness of political blogs to much sense that the blogopshere is actually and literally on a sphere.

Terry Teachout illustrates the point.

I wrote a few days ago that "judging by many comments, our interest in him [Frank Lloyd Wright] is as much about celebrity as architecture)." Perhaps I should have written is "more about celebrity than architecture."

Terry Teachout's art blog (an invaluable and daily read) illustrates my point. He notes the discussions about FLW on a few blogs. Rather than furthering the discussion on the essenece of the issue --- "What if anything did FLW actually contribute to architecture, city planning etc? --- Teachout repeats the conventional thinking that FLW was a "genius" but then gets on to the interesting stuff: anecdotes about FLW's personality.

He writes here:

Devoted blogwatchers will be aware that there's a major Frank Lloyd Wright-related wrangle currently taking place all over the blogosphere (go here to start picking up the threads, which lead far and wide). Me, I think Wright was a genius and I'd be perfectly happy to at least try living in one of his houses, even if the roof leaked, but I definitely wouldn't have wanted to pal around with him. Here's my favorite Wright anecdote, from Meryle Secrest's biography:

One of Wright's many apprentices to study in that studio recalled that one day when he was buried underneath the Steinway making another of the innumerable attempts to restore its legs, he saw the master saunter into the room. Believing himself alone, Wright arranged three or four objects on the window ledge, then stood back admiringly. He walked over to the piano, still oblivious of the hidden observer, struck a few chords and pirouetted out of the room, singing to himself, "I am the greatest."

(Incidentally, I've seen a kinescope of an appearance Wright made on What's My Line? not long before his death. It's one of the more endearing examples of his rampant egomania.)

Not endearing at all but rather sad. So my preference is that we would leave the poor tortured man alone and in peace and simply consider the merits or demerits of his work without the use of conclusory terms such as "genius."

Architecture? or Uban Planning?

ACDouglas wrote a pregnant email:

"As you yourself pointed out, your opinions are concerned principally with urban planning -- with "site plans," as you put it -- not with architecture...urban planning ought NOT to be the business of architects. The business of architects is architecture -- i.e., individual buildings or group of buildings, project by project. The business of urban planning should be left to, well, urban planners who have no business messing about with matters of art. That's the business of architects."

Beguiling concept except when you get down to particulars. One minor particular is how/where do you the draw the line between architecture and urban planning?

For example, consider The Three Rules (and please do consider them, either in long form--a 500k PDF or short form--a 45k PDF)...well, are those Rules urban planning rules? or architectural ones? Of course I think that they are both. They operate as architecural constraints for a specific building in order to create a piece of urbanism.

So I question whether there is a reasonable, practical method to separate "architecture" from "urban planning" along the lines suggested above. No?

UPDATE: Murphs weighs in sensibly on Architecture vs. Urban Planning.

Our great-grandparents saw it too.

Panchromatica reminds us with two cartoons (from Punch via book by one of my particular heroes --- a British architect/builder who had the wisdom to create a marvelous place --- Portmeirion --- so that one of my other heroes could be kept there as "The Prisoner") that we are not the first generation to be aware of the physical environment and that there is a History of bad design and it did not start with Post World War 2 America.

One of my own favorite gripes is that there is, subterranean or not so deep, an ongoing idea (which sounds like a hope from some mouths) that the abysmal condition of the our built environment can be attributed to some sort of particularly American moral failing. I hear that from the left and I hear that from the right. With both ears I hear not-harmless error.

The difficulties we face have two interrelated sources:
1. new technologies (cars in particular) which we have not fully learned to use;
2. enormous material success from forming our society around those technologies (cars in particular.)

The task we face in re-forming our cities will not be aided by feelings of moral inferiority or superiority. The job calls for well-wielded tools, not hand-wringing moralisms.

A reasonable proviso

A blog named Abstract Dynamics links to the post on Columbus' I-670 Cap, Healing Freeway Scars, praises the project and has the following reasonable proviso:

Of course we'll need to be on the watchout for any potential draw backs. I'm a little concerned about the viability of a freeway overpass as a place of business. The fumes can not be good. Rents a presume will be lower, which might be a good thing. Perhaps these can be used as urban incubation spaces, where new business can experiment with low overhead? Overall this is a good thing I think, but it still needs study.

me, my life + infrastructure

Via the just-renamed me, my life + infrastructure I learned about what might have been a lovely exhibit (and with much to discuss) titled Me, Myself and Infastructure which of course I just missed. The link says that the show:

...explores the relationship of the public to its civil engineers. Civil engineers are the experts who design and manage infrastructure-the technological networks that define modern life.

The behavior and values of individuals shape infrastructure: the location of a pedestrian crosswalk, the taste of drinking water, the durability of a bridge. At the same time, infrastructure shapes everyone's lives-the ability to drive anywhere at any time, take half-hour showers, and discard computers after a couple years of use. Me, Myself and Infrastructure looks at public expectations and the everyday experience of infrastructure while considering the role of civil engineers as designers, builders, and managers.

If you have never seen the site for this show, (now gone) please do. It is the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. and its main hall is truly a marvelous, fantastic space; it should be on the top of the list of must-sees for anyone who visits the Global Center. I'd say that, exhibits aside -- and who these days except real art buffs goes to a museum for the ART? --- the National Building Museum far and away, moment for moment, more moving than, say, the boring, sterile, new wing of the Smithsonian.

"Urban Repair"

TMLutas comments about the Columbus overpass/street concept: "This may be a unique approach but it still doesn't save it necessarily from white elephant status."

I'm not sure I follow the "white elephant" reference. I mean I do know the expression, I just don't see how these shops would fit that definition. As I understand it, the developer already has tenants lined up for a number of the spaces.

In terms of the overall economics, certainly, widening the deck won't be cheap. Some of the cost is offset by the fact that one is creating more urban land and often, as here in the Columbus example, in a fairly central location. Nonetheless, there will likely be a marginal cost attributable to the wider deck for the shops as construction over a freeway is very expensive because of, I am told, the long spans involved, special measures needed to keep traffic moving, and who knows what else. Perhaps with practice the costs of this type of construction can come down.

Then again, widening an urban freeway imposes enormous burdens on neighboring property owners and residents and so people who drive on that freeway should absorb that cost, that is unless one wants to subsidise drivers. To my mind, it seems fair that mitigation of impacts should be charged against a project; I know that's an inexact set of accounts, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore those costs since they are quite real.

And I am not suggesting that every freeway overpass is an immediate candidate but I would imagine that there must be several thousand, spread over an urban population of hundreds of millions, where this sort of "urban repair" might well be suitable.

Time will tell; this is a fabulous attempt and we'll see how it works out.

Fire is Hot

From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site (thanks to and via Panchromatica) is this stunning photo of a Forest Fire:

Credit: John McColgan

It's somewhat off-topic except that it is an astonishing image and offers a nice segue to one of my favorite topics: the role of fire, and I don't mean in the sense of Robert Frost's famous little ditty about how the world will end:

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great and would suffice."

No, I mean as a subject for political as well as ecological inquiry, fire is hot. Smoky Bear needs to cool it, so far as I understand. Fire has had a key role in forming our landscapes and is a (potential) tool for maintaining them today. Here's a link from Florida, USA (yes we don't usually think of Florida as having forests) about The Natural Role of Fire. As well, I never think (mere ignorance) of Australia as a forested nation but apparently there is interest there too in fire as a part of Landscape Politics.

Of course if one has developed-property near a forest, one probably might not want to hear about the libertarian approach to forest fire management.

I-670 Cap -- 2 notes

One. The plans call for parallel parking on-street., (on what could have been merely a freeway overpass but is appropraitely actually named "High Street.) That's a critical element of the design, I believe, and wise. The photos don't show the on-street parking of course because the project is still under construction. But such parking will both aid the retailers and provide a buffer for pedestriamns from what is still, I suspect, a fairly high-volume street.

Two. I have not actually seen the project in person. I am leary of ever commenting on a piece of environment unless I have actually experienced it directly, live, unmediated. I try to make it a rule to never, ever make a comment on a building etc unless I have been there or unless ---as will be inevitable --- I make it very clear that my opinions are based on photos, drawings etc etc and should be regarded with due caution, if only on that point alone. Too much of our public discussion is already based on magazine stills. I will however, as I do in this case, feel free to comment on the concept behind a work as I do with the the I-670 Cap.

I-670 Cap -- sketch

Just in case the concept meant to be illustrated by the photos (in the post just below this one) is not clear, here's a sketch:

Hello Columbus to the I-670 Cap

This is important:

Credit Meleca Architecture and Urban Planning of Columbus Ohio

What is it?
Here it is, from street-grade:

Credit Meleca Architecture and Urban Planning of Columbus Ohio

You say big deal: a city street. Exactly. But it is a city street which is crossing a freeway. I say, yes it is a very big deal.

The American freeways changed the world through which they ran. They facilitated a vast expansion of suburbs and ripped asunder many city neighborhoods. The project (in the oval in the uppermost picture) started out, in the mind of the Ohio Highway Department as a simple widening of the I-670 as it rolls through Columbus, Ohio. But the adjoining neighborhoods put up a fight. (This is my casual from-a-distance understanding of what happened.)

The compromise proposed by some local genius was to make the new overpass (neccesitated by the wider freeway) into a city street by lining it with shops to "link rather than divide." It is under construction now.

In terms of the daily lives of potentially millions, this is architecture at its finest. This is significant, this is meaningful. This is re-building, re-forming the world. Starchitects might well pay attention. (BTW, one may or may not like the particular architectural style of the buildings --- I happen to but that's not the reason this project is so important. Look beyond the style to the larger lesson and model of reconnecting the city by discovering spaces.)

Links below for more information on this marvelous project which ought to be known by every Mayor and City Council in the nation:

Google Search: I-670 Cap

Business First of Columbus

ODOT Interstate 670 Gallery Page

July 03 CoverStory

Columbus AlivewireD

(Maybe this is how Ray Kroc felt when he sat in his car outside the First McDonalds, just observing, letting it sink in, realizing that he was seeing something very big. More here at McDonald's Corporate Information McDonald's History Page 1. The scene of Ray Kroc sitting in awe in the parking lot must be one of the most dramatic scenes from American business history.)

UPDATE: Beyond Brilliance Takes Note

In Boston, I-90 is depressed as it passes through the city, including through the Fenway neighborhood, home of the ballpark. There are plans to buy the air rights from the Mass Turnpike Authority and build a highrise. There are arguments in the neighborhood about the scale of the building and other issues, many of which are probably valid. But really, could anything be worse than a 6 lane highway canyon?

Posted by: joe on August 29, 2003 09:46 PM

The Columbus project is not a typical air-rights deal; those are fairly common. The magic of The Cap it that it creates a connection between two sides of a freeway.

A high-rise --- if it had clear public right of way for both vehicle/bike/walker at its edges -- could also function that way. The issue is not so much "air rights" as "connection."

Posted by: David Sucher on August 30, 2003 01:50 AM

Fit into the landscape?

2blowhards post on Frank Lloyd Wright prompted one reader there to comment that part of Wright's claim to fame (and BTW, I, at least, am not saying Wright was without merit --- simply that his reputation seems to have run ahead of other matters) is that he helped in promoting "[t]he idea of making a house fit into the landscape..."

That is indeed a common thought and I have heard it many times, and not only in connection with Wright, but as a general proposition, though Wright may have indeed helped that idea become popular.

But is the idea of any value? Should houses "fit into the landscape"? And indeed do Wright's houses "fit into the landscape" any better than houses by architects of his era who proclaimed their own genius not quite so loudly? And putting the drama of Frank Lloyd Wright aside (and judging by many comments, our interest in him is as much about celebrity as architecture) what does it mean for a house (or any structure) to "fit into the landscape"?

I have questions here, not answers. But my sense is that having a "fit into the landscape" is a largely meaningless idea. Or maybe a phrase with so many potential meanings that it becomes useless. Certainly one can agree that in modern terms we should build so that our impact on the environment is minimal. (At least I would hope we could agree on such a truism.) But Wright can hardly be thinking of that; Fallingwater, by its very location spanning a stream, has a high potential for adverse environmental impacts. And it's expensive construction. By both environmental impact and cost, "Fallingwater" as one instance can hardly seem to offer any larger social lessons of fitting into the landscape. In fact, building over a stream is a text-book example of brazenly imposing oneself on the landscape and would not be allowed, for example, under the Shoreline Management rules of the State of Washington. (I guess Wright could have applied for the "genius variance.")

Could "fit into the landscape" refer to tree houses or subterranean houses such one can learn about here?

Could "fit into the landscape" mean that one should plant lushly around the house? Or that one should adapt the house to the climate? Those are ancient practices, well beyond a mere "idea," and hardly something started in Wright's era.

So what is it? What does that idea ("fit into the landscape") mean? Does it mean to make the house invisible or at least visually obscured etc etc? If so, why? (Not that Fallingwater can be remotely said to do so, at least from the photos I have seen: no wallflower that house) Why would one want a house to blend in so you can't see it? I mean if that's what you want, fine; that's a personal choice. But why any imperative to make the house unobtrusive? Some of the most marvelous landscape combine the natural setting with human alteration and with human alteration which can hardly be missed. (Sackville-West's house & garden at Sissinghurst pop to mind for some reason.) Is "fit into the landscape" a different concept from "working gracefully with the natural setting"?

Honestly, I have no idea exactly what it means but if I have heard the phrase once I have heard it ten thousand times. I suspect that it's a verbalization designed to provide a rationale where none truly exists, a way of characterizing something so that when one sees it, the words supercede one's own reactions. (Calling dull, boring brown an "earthtone" would be another instance.) There is a power of words to dull our own perception of the physical world so that our conclusions follow the words which preceded. I wonder if "fit into the landscape" is one of those phrases. Somewhat like "designed by an artist" maybe it's a phrase which seeks to end inquiry rather than start it. There are a lot of awkwardly-sited and poorly-proportioned buildings but I wonder if the term "fit into the landscape" reveals much about their problems.

More later, I suspect.

Frank Lloyd Wright Trifecta

I'm curious about this guy; I'm pretty sure his is an overblown reputation (hey! maybe he was a genius at one thing at least) but I want to learn more; maybe I'm not being fair to him or to his "fans."

Burns/Novick did a video about FLW for PBS. (Some video stores rent things first presented as TV.)

Here's a good reason to visit Pittsburgh: Two Wrights can't be wrong is about FLW houses you can see near there.

Pre-fab housing -- why not?

Referencing my post here of a few days ago Yankee Blogger wonders about prefab housing:

"What I wonder is why is that prefab is not more common. We all know that when you are going to buy a car, a dishwasher, a fridge, or most any durable good you go to a store, pick out the model designed by the manufacturer and produced in a factory with precise division of labour. It has been this way since Henry Ford started rolling cars off the assembly line. It has changed a bit since then, with cars being available with lots of options, lots of models, and lots of colours as opposed to Henry Ford's "any colour as long as it is black." But the fact is that it is cheaper to do manufacturing in a central location with each person doing a specific task repeatedly. It is also produces goods of a higher quality. Yet, the housing market has never adopted this model.

Here's my take, based on limited experience maybe 20 years ago in using modular housing.

What is the small-c 'conservative' thing to do?

Here's a disturbing little story titled heatwave closes Mont Blanc to tourists.

While the lower resorts do not rely on the permafrost for their lifts, they are already at risk from the steady rise in the winter snowline. A Unesco report last year quoted Swiss glaciologist Bruno Messerli from the University of Bern, who said that within 20 years low-level ski stations would be forced to close.

'Big banks will no longer give loans for new ski industry constructions,' he said..."

So how does one know if it is a swallow or a season?

Is PowerPoint a moral issue?

In reference to an article by Edward Tufte titled PowerPoint Is Evil, (yes that's the title and the sub-head is "Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely"), Signal + Noise writes here:

For the record, I don't use or particularly like PowerPoint; my particular disorder leads me to spend hours of my life creating my own formatting tools in the interest of total aesthetic control. (Coming soon to this blog; I've been restraining myself.) So being rather obsessive on the subject myself and in general agreement with him, I am naturally among Tufte's most sympathetic audience. But he loses me a bit on this one.

Loses me, too. People write dumb things with pens. PowerPoint  is a tool. One can misuse a tool and maybe lots of people are mis-using PowerPoint. So the answer is to give them better training, not to destroy the tool itself. No? I have never actually used PowerPoint; the few and boring lectures I have heard which did use it were boring because of, I always assumed, the lecturer, not the lectern, so to speak. Tufte offers an example:

Consider an important and intriguing table of survival rates for those with cancer relative to those without cancer for the same time period. Some 196 numbers and 57 words describe survival rates and their standard errors for 24 cancers. Applying the PowerPoint templates to this nice, straightforward table yields an analytical disaster. (italics added - DS) The data explodes into six separate chaotic slides, consuming 2.9 times the area of the table. Everything is wrong with these smarmy, incoherent graphs: the encoded legends, the meaningless color, the logo-type branding. They are uncomparative, indifferent to content and evidence, and so data-starved as to be almost pointless. Chartjunk is a clear sign of statistical stupidity. Poking a finger into the eye of thought, these data graphics would turn into a nasty travesty if used for a serious purpose, such as helping cancer patients assess their survival chances. To sell a product that messes up data with such systematic intensity, Microsoft abandons any pretense of statistical integrity and reasoning.

If it weren't so expensive I'd go buy a copy of PowerPoint (though Apple's Keynote is 20% of the price and 95% of the functionality, I gather) to see what Tufte is talking about.

But something sounds funny. Can't you place the table in its original form (as Tufte shows it in the article) into PowerPoint directly? Is one forced or even encouraged to place it in the manner shown as the bad examples? Tufte's last sentence is puzzling: "To sell a product that messes up data with such systematic intensity, Microsoft abandons any pretense of statistical integrity and reasoning."

I played with PowerPoint for an afternoon (I never did use it in the presentation) and it seemed simply to be a page layout program for the screen. Just as one can produce a lousy (or great) book with Pagemaker, one can produce, I would think, a lousy (or great) screen presentation with PowerPoint. No? Tufte writes: "Applying the PowerPoint templates to this nice, straightforward table yields an analytical disaster." Is it a requirement to apply and use the PowerPoint templates?

PowerPoint will accept one's own graphics; I imported images and they seemed to work fine. So maybe the problem is simply misuse of a new medium? Of course that is not an inflammatory point for a lecture.

***

UPDATE 12/21/03 : See also Crooked Timber: PowerPoint .

Sleeping in Airports

Beyond Brilliance delights with gems such as Sleeping in Airports where we learn about The Budget Traveller's Guide to Sleeping in Airports.

Is urban design a question of morality?

Several days ago I wrote with some dismay about the unwisdom of presenting our awful urban environments as an issue which can be solved through some 'contemporary version of moral re-armament.' Via Armavirumque, I stumbled upon a post at orthoblog of a talk given by Roger Kimball.

The upshot? Things are as bad or worse than I thought.

Shock art

Brian Micklethwait also directs our attention to an artistic outrage or perhaps just an outrage by a person with an art's degree. Follow the links in his post. His comment in part:

The art of outrage art is to be just outrageous enough to get that publicity flurry, but not so outrageous that they come and put you in prison or murder you or decide that you can't be in the newspapers or on the telly, or some such disaster.

The trick is to understand the shifting frontiers of respectability, the fluctuating battle lines of outrageousness, searching for that spot where the "outrageous" in the newspaper sense meets up with the truly outrageous, in the outrageous sense, and to place yourself in the exact spot that nobody else has spotted, which used to be beyond art but which has just recently come in rage, and then when they interview you, you say something emollient and completely politically correct as if you'd done nothing outrageous at all. Basically you say: "What's all the fuss about?" Which is bullshit because the capable outrage artists knows exactly what the fuss is about, and if there was no fuss, the project would have been a failure.

The WaPost link in Brian's post reflects an element of the issue which should not be overlooked: special status given to artists.

"It's a very delicate matter. If an artist wants to warn people about the consequences of the Holocaust and she does it in this particular way, who are we to say its wrong?" museum spokesman Daniel Bouw said."

This is a perfect example in which the status (and self-proclaimed usually) of the person influences the way in which the action is seen. "Who are we" --- mere ordinary mortals without the heightened sensitivity, sensibility and soul of an artist --- "to say..."

Had a 5-and-dime store owner started selling such souvenirs, the reaction of the museum spokesman would not have been so protective. But because an "artist" is involved, we are supposed to apply different standards. Just as we are supposed to excuse allow certain architects from the norms of urban development because of their enhanced sensibility, their artistic nature, their transcendent aesthetic gift. Hmmm.

on the necessity of states to contrive and maintain "infrastructure"

Brian Micklethwait comments on some guy's ideas about the necessity of states to contrive and maintain "infrastructure" and gives him a failing grade. Fair enough. It's a rough-and-tumble out there in the blogosphere.

The gist is simple.

Rational Stereotyping

In a post on Rational Stereotyping, (which otherwise has nothing to do with cities), Matthew Yglesias makes this interesting observation.

Since gender (along with a rougher estimate of the person's socioeconomic status and ethnicity) is probably all you're going to have to go on, you'd have to be pretty foolish not to engage in a little stereotyping.

It may not work very well, but it'll work better than the alternative of doing nothing. Of course, once you get to know someone you can move beyond this sort of crude analysis, but it's been a long time since most Americans interacted only with people they know reasonably well on a daily basis.

"...but it's been a long time since most Americans interacted only with people they know reasonably well on a daily basis.

That's a vivid way to sum up one of the real seachanges in American culture over the past 50-100 years (or more?) and one which has vast spatial implications, and in fact is at its core, a spatial observation though not stated as one.

"We're not worthy!"

In reference to this post on Frank Lloyd Wright, AC Douglas writes:

I mean, it all sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn't it?

It does indeed -- if you're talking about a tract house, or a stand-alone designed and built by a builder along more or less typical commercial lines. Such bourgeois concerns, however, have no place when the house is one designed and built by an architect of genuinely transcendent aesthetic gift."

So in that case

"...you hire a good, solid, bourgeois builder to build a house for you, and leave the all-too-rare Wrights of this world free to serve those worthy of their transcendent aesthetic genius."

Too critical? or just tough love?

After reading City Comforts Blog, TM Lutas reflects:

I had a great flashback reading it as it's quite critical of the right wing and libertarianism as having nothing original of import to say on the subject of creating livable urban spaces, a criticism that used to be very common about conservative urban policy. Well, conservatives, no doubt tiring of the constant ribbing, eventually did get an urban policy and lo and behold, they started getting elected in major cities as their ideas looked pretty good compared to the liberal ones that had failed so obviously in cities across the US.

I didn't mean to be critical; I call it "tough love." Yes, I am throwing out a challenge of sorts. And I assure you that I would be delighted to hear practical, conservative alternatives which do not deny the goal of humane urban form as a way of achieving it, if you follow my drift.

Science fiction or "Life imitates art"

This one on Live Human Target is creepy:

Aiming a ball at a target to drop a clown into a tub of water is old school at the Coney Island Boardwalk. Now people eagerly shoot the Freak.

The Freak, as signs and the barker say, is a live human target.

Coney Island has seen a lot, from real-life crime to the Painproof Rubber Girl. But even in a place where trouble and cheap spectacle are the norm, "Shoot the Freak" has been turning heads.

Up to six customers at a time can stand on the Boardwalk, a few yards from Stillwell Avenue, and aim their rifles down an alley filled with trash and concrete bits. There, one finds the Freak, darting and dodging.

He is dressed in a combination of hockey, baseball and bicycling protective gear, making him look like a creature of some post-urban nightmare. Periodically, he stands still and takes one in the chest, or the forehead. The customers are firing paint pellets, and as they hit the Freak, there's a short snapping sound and a small spray of mist. Think of it as a video game come to life.

And that is putting it charitably; I would have said horror story.

Elements of Traditional Urbanism in New York

John Massengale's continuing education course on Elements of Traditional Urbanism in New York should be interesting and fun.

Four walking tours: Sundays, September 7, 14, 28, October 5
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
One evening seminar, Tuesday, September 23
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
$350 ($315 Members); 14 AIA/CES LU's
Instructor: John Massengale, Architect and Urbanist

This course introduces the traditional principles of urbanism and examines issues critical to urban design today. The focus of the course is the study and analysis of the components of urbanism, with walking tours of the Upper East Side, Midtown Manhattan, Greenwich Village, and Forest Hills Gardens to illustrate the principles in different contexts. Students will learn to recognize and study the basic components of urbanism as a design language and the impact those have on the public realm and the quality of life. Reading exercises outside of class will be required. The instructor, a well-known New Urbanist, is co-author, with noted architect Robert A.M. Stern, of "New York 1900 and The Anglo-American Suburb". This course satisfies the Certificate requirement for Theory electives.

So who did comment?

Dumb self-proclaimed environmentalists damage SUVs and the only substantive thing that Virginia Postrel can say is that there is no comment yet from anti-SUV gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington which obviously means only one thing.

"Vancouver Apartment Series"

Artnet (tm) offers a Letter from Vancouver.

"Apartment Series" has a special resonance in Vancouver...Gergley's photographs document a passing moment in the city fabric, as Vancouver's once-popular three- and four-story apartment buildings from the 1960s gradually give way to more profitable high-rise condos. As Gergley has noted, many of the apartments he's captured over the past seven years have already altered their faades and decorating concepts to improve their chances of cashing in on the next real estate boom.

Neat photos.

2blowhards dares to suggest that "Frank Lloyd Wright Is Not God"

Don't miss 2blowhards suggesting that Frank Lloyd Wright Is Not God.

I know exactly what he means.

Wi-Fi Saves Trains...

To me, Wi-Fi is destined to save Amtrak, or at least ensure that they never lose the Northeast Corridor business. If they put Wi-Fi on trains, business people will never bother with planes -- who cares about saving 45 minutes if you can always leave your laptop on, not have to worry about insane security nor cabs to the airport...

"Universal Design"

Cool Social Design Notes blogs below about "What is Universal Design?", which concept I think puts a lot of the sneering about architectural adaptations for the disabled in a different light.

What is Universal Design?

I was working on an item on Universal Design and realized that I hadn't actually defined what I was talking about. So from the man who coined the phrase:

"Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design." Ron Mace, founder and program director of The Center for Universal Design

Universal design has its roots in demographic, legislative, economic, and social changes among older adults and people with disabilities after World War II.

Here are some general principles for the evaluation of universal design from the Center for Universal Design. These were drafted in 1997 and refer to design in the physical world, though could be applied broadly to electronic interface design..."

Read the whole thing.
The whole subject of how to deal with people who do not have the same physical or mental attributes is indeed an uncomfortable one for most of us.

My own sensitization started when I was relating a lunch I had had that day at McDonald's. I said that I had been somewhat annoyed at lunch because I had been very busy and I wanted to get my Fishwich (or whatever it was -- maybe a "Royale with Cheese"?) but as I so gracefully put it "the counterperson really seemed like a retard." My friend, who was and is an Occupational Therapist, gave me a withering look and gently said "Maybe he or she was. McDonalds has a very progressive policy of hiring people with disabilities."

Pets are part of a comfortable city

Hotel chain sees profits in pooches

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. has decided to make room for dogs at its Sheraton, Westin and W hotels.

"Sleeping dogs finally have a place to lie," the company said in a press release filled with canine wordplay. "Not only is there finally room at the inn for man's best friends, but each of the hotel brands will also pamper pooches with luxurious dog beds and amenities like plush robes, doggie toys and canine massages."

Anti-Couch regulation --- and some people think Seattle is crazy for thinking about taxing espresso!

Forager 23 tells us about Couches and pizzerias: Random thoughts on regulation and competition. I can't say for sure that I get Foragers 23's Rule but I do appreciate the pleasures of an outdoor couch in a New England summer:

Burlington is a true college town, which means that even though residents get to take advantage of the cultural benefits the university attracts, they also have to deal with the realities of sharing their neighborhoods with students, i.e., higher rents and lower property values. One of the recurring tactics deployed by the townies is the threat of anti-couch legislation: laws that prohibit keeping a couch on the front porch--by far college students' favorite place to put their couches. Residents claim that couches on porches are just plain ugly, not to mention they contribute to the general noisiness and rowdiness of the student-infested neighborhoods.

Now, I've always opposed the proposed anti-couch laws on the principle that people should be able to put their couches wherever they want on their own property. I'm a firm believer in the importance of cultivating good taste, but I'm against any attempts to enforce good taste through coercion. However, two of my friends, who recently moved to Burlington, came up with another reason why allowing couches on porches is a good idea. My friends, a young, professional couple, with a limited budget available to spend on rent, were up here earlier in the summer looking for an apartment. They wanted to live within walking distance of the downtown, but they didn't want a place in one of the student gehttos. In this case, they used the porch couches as reliable indicators of the kind of houses they wanted to stay far away from. By allowing the students visible expression of their lifestyle, people who didn't want any part of that lifestyle were better able to avoid it.

This gives us Forager's Couch Rule: The quality of reliable information about negative values that is instantaneously accessible is inversely related to the level of regulation. More regulation means more distortion; less regulation means greater clairty.

Hmmm.

Accepting the facts as stated as 100% accurate, it seems the path is one between Scylla and Charybdis: deny the public authority (which is just other individuals, of course) to do potentially good things because it may very well do dumb things. No wisdom from me on that point; that's the age-old problem of government. As you can tell, I am torn on this one.

More importantyly, in the specifc situation described, we are not talking about a regulatory action at all but simply about a lease in which the City was a landlord and from at least Forager 23's perspective (and maybe many others), the City made a dumb decision. I don't see how it has anything to do with regulation. Perhaps it was an unwise business move. But it neither proves nor disproves that regulation is desirable, wise, etc. etc. No?

I'm puzzled

There is nothing (or very few things) which gives me greater pleasure than to sit with friends and eat and drink and talk all evening long. But I cannot quite fathom how such a desire can form the basis for a political movement such as Slowfood. Of all the human actvities which might reasonably be a matter of collective action, it would seem that something which is fully under the control of the individual and his or her family and/or companions --- how one eats one's meals --- could not possibly be a matter for organized political activity. Isn't there an old saw aboutPeople getting the kind of meal they order? (So long as they pay for it.)
Oh I can see that the length of the lunch "hour" might in some cultures be a subject of debate, with traditionalists arguing for an extended period and the moderns saying that it is a matter for negotiation between the employer and the employee. But to build a movement around the matter...I am constantly astonished at the variety of human perspective.

Amsterdam Real Time

Amsterdam Real Time offers a model of how to wire a whole population with GPS to keep track of their daily movements through a city, which of course can be the first step to charging for street use. Or more.

'bright lights, big city'

"A city without electricity is very different from the glittering and neon-lighted metropolises that we moderns are used to, as millions of North Americans discovered this week when Ontario and the Northeast United States were hit with a blackout. While we might take the phrase 'bright lights, big city' for granted, the fact is that for most of recorded history, nocturnal urban darkness was the norm, not the exception. Even after the electrification of cities started in the late 19th century, there have been significant periods when urban lighting has been disrupted, notably during wartime blitzes (such as the one experienced by London during the Second World War) as well as during previous major blackouts."

"Always saddle your own horse."

Connie Douglas Reeves, cowgirl, riding teacher, 101

In her 67 years at Waldemar, Reeves taught more than 20,000 girls how to ride. She told them her motto: "Always saddle your own horse." She explained: "You want to know that your horse is saddled properly. It establishes a good relation with the horse."

Wise words to live by.

Beyond the Guggenheim

Please do not overlook this wonderful essay by Michael Jennings on Bilbao's life beyond Gehry's Guggenheim.

And of course there is the Guggenheim museum... this is actually extremely well integrated into the city, and is designed in such a way that its pathways and doors are aligned with the streets and paths of the city itself. Plus it is positioned so that you often catch interesting glimpses of it as you walk down Bilbao's streets.

The Guggenheim is in fact a part of Bilbao and yet this post is absolutely the very first time I have read anything about that aspect of it (not conclusive I agree). I think that's symptomatic of the problem with 'starchitecture.'

And don't forget this post here about the Bilbao rail system.

The ongoing & upcoming debate

In the wake of the US blackout we'll probably hear new calls for privatization of power production/distribution (no matter that the failure appears to have started in a private system.) Some insight into the history of public power is here in this interesting blog from a rock-ribbed Republican state.

Nebraska is unique not just for its nonpartisan unicameral legislature but also for its approach to electrical utilities. As this Web site explains, Nebraska is "the only state in the country served entirely publicly owned power entities."

That's right. Public power districts have supplied the entirety of the state's electricity, without significant controversy,since the end of World War II.

As I live in a city which owns its own power production and transmission facilities, I tend to favor "the way we do it here." (At heart I am a conservative and do not like change; as a traditionalist I'll stick with the familial Democratic liberalism.)

My own particular insight was formed back in the 1970s. I was then a very junior planner with the City of Seattle and so was able to observe the process fairly closely. City Light (our electric utility and what a great name!) wanted to buy into (yet more) nuclear power plants. There was sufficient controversy (actually enormous controversy) about the potential investment so that our City Council started its own energy-planning process and to make a very long and interesting story short, declined to invest. With private power, we rate-payers/customers would have had no influence and would now be saddled with the costs (financial and otherwise) of what turned out to be failed nuclear power plants. Public ownership made the investment a political decision and thankfully took it out of the hands of the so-called energy experts.

Prefabricated homes --- every generation's dream

Hugh Pearman astutely wonders about prefabricated homes.

Three things you can depend on in architecture. Every new generation will rediscover the virtues of prefabs. Every new generation will rediscover the idea of stacking people up high. And every new generation will rediscover the virtues of subsidised housing to make cities more affordable. Combine all three - a holy trinity of architectural and social ideals - and you have the block of new flats in London's Hackney called Raines Court.

"And zen ve vill start ze practice."

Churchill had it correct: "Not a socialist before 30, no heart. Still a socialist after 30, no head."

One could rhyme a similar ditty about pre-fab housing. I know; I did it. Much as I love Buckminster Fuller, the question he asked --- "How much does a house weigh?" --- and which when I was in my twenties I thought so profound, is largely irrelevant.

Prefab components, yes. Prefab houses, no.

A Note on my Links

I have two categories:

1. Smart blogs -- often about the built environment
and
2. Not a Blog but still interesting.

The purpose is to distinguish between very personal sites, "loose," updated frequently -- "Blogs" -- which concern themselves a fair amount, but by no means exclusively, with the built environment,

and

"Not a Blog" sites which are exclusively about the built environment but which are more institutional, "bureaucratic," (in the best sense of the word), practically useful and modified less often.

(The irreplaceable PLANETIZEN -- always good for a lead -- is an unusual mixture: impersonal but constantly updated by its contributors, like an informal "wire-service" -- what a quaint phrase, that. I'll comment more about particular "Not a Blog" sites as time goes on.)

The latter sites ("Not a Blog") are terrific sources of other links, organizational momentum, contacts, group activity...you get the point. These are the people who can cohere sufficient institutional prestige to jockey into a Congressional Hearing.

The former -- Blogs -- are individualistic, anecdotal, "I'll write what I like," a bit more harum-scarum. (This is a Blog, just to clarify the location of this room should anyone ever had even the remotest question.) It's their unsubmerged personality which gives Blogs charm, or, cause for ignoring them as one's taste suggests. Blogs are less constrained by an institutional agenda.

***

My link list does not include a great number of otherwise extremely astute sites (Blogs especially) because these folks do not, either at all or even to a significant degree, focus on the built environment. (Sometime I wonder if they even know such a thing exists.)

***

The issue of whom to link is, as you can imagine, a delicate issue. "I linked to him; why didn't he reciprocate." My approach is that this is not Congress or the House of Commons; I reject the notion of "Blogrolling." (That's of course an insight into why this is a Blog and not an institutional site; and don't get me wrong -- I admire the organizational people. In our society, they are the ones who wield the power because they are able to form/maintain ongoing coalitions which can walk the corridors of power because they represent groups. I just wish I could do it.)

Some Bloggers mention the built environment now-and-again; but I decided that I had to create a bright-line of fairly regular and substantial.

Btw, the fact that not all the sites on the old City Comforts Blog site are shown here is simply a function that I haven't gotten to bringing everything over. In time I will.

***

Also, please do not be surprised if this Blog looks different from time to time. The increased functionality of Typepad (which hosts this Blog now) prompts me to keep experimenting. If it starts to get annoying, please tell me but I'll probably continue anyway.

Seattle's proposed espresso tax!

Samizdata opines on our (Seattle's) proposed espresso tax! And Yes, it is only on espresso-based drinks not on drip coffee. And Yes I think it's a dumb idea and I'll vote against it but in term of promoting Seattle and Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee and Tullys and Zoka, how could you ask for much more?

In all seriousness, the fact that there is no linkage between coffee consumption and pre-school child care is totally irrelevant. There is no connection between the property tax on my house and many things upon which City of Seattle wastes our tax money. I don't think that there is a moral or ethical (much less legal) reason why there should be a nexus between a tax and an expenditure. It's a choice. It's a tax.

As citizens, it's our money and if we are stupid enough to want to tax ourselves in a particular manner for a particular purpose (so long as the tax is fairly applied, non-descriminatory etc.) hey that's our business. I'm actually surprised to see the link (above) on a libertarian blog as I can't see how the issue is left, right or center. It's just bad public policy. But maybe I am missing something.