City Comforts, the blog

Empirical question?

"Market failure precedes regulation." Pithy way to put it by JM Roth. True? Seems likely to me and since it appears to be a matter of fact, it would a useful way to forward this discussion as it gives us something firm upon which to base our opinions.

The only proviso I have is that zoning emerged as a way to systematize and apply broadly the results of many discrete nuisance law cases as much as from market failure i.e. the courts were analternative but it appeared more efficient to zone an area for so that the sresult which would come after a court case could be applied before there was a problem. That's my understanding, anyway.

But in general, it seems like a pretty plausible theory. In fact, by way of exception, can anyone think of a regulatory regime which has developed in the absenece of market failure. (Of course I imagine we can now push back the matter and debate where and when there is indeed "market failure.")

More research

I will try to blog later but I am off on another research trip and may not have on-line access. In that case, Happy New Year!

UPDATE: Internet access is ok but somewhat inconvenient. There is Wi-Fi -- I can see the icon -- but the staff doesn't know the password! So I have to sit in the lobby and connect by cable.

What's my bark?

I rarely glance at Spam but this one (and I assume that it is some sort of complex hoax) about the The Dog Translator hooked me:

With the Bow-Lingual dog translator, you can know what your dog is saying to you every time. Bark Translation: uses the exclusive AEAS system to analyze your dog's barks Home Alone Mode: records up to 12 hours of barks and emotions while you are away Data Analysis Mode: shows the 100 most recent barks, Home Alone summary, and Man's Best Friend score (a fun way to measure your dog's happiness)

Body Language Guide: helps you interpret your dog's behavior to help you understand your dog.

Now I just need a dog.

And speaking of dogs, do you ever use magazine/news stands to keep up with what is happening in your own culture? I do. And I am constantly amazed at what I find: a never-ending and constrantly-growing stream of new periodicals which appeal to the narrowest market-segments...such as this one titled, appropriately, The Bark.

Wilderness expanding?

UPDATE: Don't miss this comment and perspective on "new wilderness" at Muck and Mystery.

Interesting. I'd be curious to get a sense of some numbers.

•••

Greg Easterbrook's notes

The Beast in the Garden by David Baron. In 1991, a mountain lion attacked and ate a 14-year-old boy jogging in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado. Five more people have since been killed in the United States and Canada by mountain lions, and dozens mauled. Baron explores what it means that lions are repopulating developed areas--with pollution declining, wilderness acreage expanding, and lion hunting forbidden, there will be ever-more bobcats, cougars, and panthers in American and Canadian exurban areas.

Italics added indeed!

What an interesting idea! I find it totally counter-intuitive and (I suspect) a mis-statement. Yes, the amount of forests in the Northeast is far higher now than it was in 1900 because so many farms have disappeared. A number of US National Forest areas, too, looking at the Seattle area for instance, are no longer being logged but used for recreation. And thank god there is a sufficient national consensus about the value of wilderness that even Bush & Company are having a hard time destroying it; so new "Wilderness" (that can be a legal term in US Federal law) is still being designated.

But I find it highly unlikely that with all the increased demand for outdoor recreation, second homes and general economic development etc etc that true "wilderness acreage" is expanding. Mountain lions may indeed be learning to live in close proximity to humans. But that doesn't mean that we have more wilderness but only smarter cats.

I gave a quick glance at the estimable and worthy Wilderness Society (you know I should join) but to be rigorous about it, I doubt very much if any advocacy group of any stripe is able to loudly announce that its goals are being met and impliedly it can soon shut-down.

Anyone up-to-date?

I just hope it has extra-wide parking spaces!

As Europe Ages, a Grocery Chain Extends a Hand

If Walter Fischer forgets to take his glasses when he shops for groceries at the Adeg supermarket on the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria, it is not a problem.
....
The Adeg Aktiv Markt 50 is Europe's first supermarket designed for shoppers over age 50. The labels are big; the aisles are wide; the floors are nonskid, even when wet; and there are plenty of places to sit down.

The market, which opened in May, is the first attempt by Adeg, a subsidiary of the German food company Edeka, to address Europe's most pressing demographic trend: an aging population. ...

Kurt Erlacher, the project manager with Adeg who oversaw creation of the new market, sees some distinct advantages in pursuing the older shopper. "This group has a lot of buying power," said Mr. Erlacher, who is 44. "They have already paid off their homes and cars. Their children are out of the house. Their disposable income is higher."

We really don't need codes; the market will take care of it.

Dangerous buildings, lax rules: why Bam death toll was so high

Many of those killed by the earthquake in Bam died only because of poor building methods and a lack of proper regulation, an expert on the devastated city said yesterday.

In Iran, as in many developing countries, tremors that ought to be survivable often bring human tragedy on a vast scale because buildings collapse on top of people.

UPDATE: Aaron Armitage (and I was just about to shut down the machine and go do some research but I'll take a moment to respond just in case I am not able for the next few days) suggests that:

...while we do really need codes, the market is capable of providing those codes. The fact that it didn't in that case hardly proves that it can't as a matter of abstract principle.

I agree entirely and my first post on the subject specifically allowed for the possibility of a free-market equivalent to government building codes (which actually are usually government-adopted codes as the code-writing agencies are all NGOs; but it boils down to the same thing: a government requirement.)

Anyway, I think that the operative phrase is "as a matter of abstract principle." Sure, it might be theoertically possible to have another system. I could offer Lloyds as an example of what I think is a private standard-setting agency. But why bother? As a matter of "abstract principle?" From a legal and historical perspective, building and fire codes are a police power. And the police power belongs to the people.

Moreover, I think the building code system that we have now actually works fairly well. Very few builders would complain about it, I believe. (Zoning and land use codes are entirely separate matter.) Sure there are always some provisions which seem and even might be excessive; all human organization is in constant need of reform. But with all the real, serious problems in the world, I just can't get too upset about building codes, except when they don't exist or are ignored and people die.

The larger question is one of having standards and the social/economic efficiency of having such standards when it comes to building structure. I think that there is little disagreement on that point, but only a question of whether those standards should be a requirement. No? As a person who is involved with building codes to make a living, I prefer a level playing field; I'd rather have everyone in my region have to adhere to the same codes (more or less) for the same type of structure. Whether the code is government's de jure requirement or an insurance company's de facto requirement makes little difference to me. (As a matter of social policy I don't believe that the average citizen and that includes me is capable of deciding whether #4 or #5 rebar should be the requirement in a footing so I would just as soon delegate that responsibility in general to experts; so the idea that we should leave things to individual bargaining between builder abd consumer strikes me as a bad idea from the get-go.)

On a whole other approach to the question, if the market is capable, why has it not? Do we really think that the insurance magnates of the early 20th century willingly & freely gave up a lucrative market to some pointy-headed bureaucrats? Government ends up doing a lot of stuff simply because no one actually can do it profitably.

I am endlessly fascinated by the dynamics of public behavior

Michael Jennings notes perceptively:

...I made the observation that cafes in Britain generally follow the Starbucks model and have only counter service. Generally I find this fine, but when I am working on my computer in a large cafe containing a substantial number of people, it is less so. My laptop is too valuable for me to leave it along on a table for even a short time while I go to the counter to get another cup of coffee. This is a circumstance when some table services would be a really good idea. It would reduce the nuisance factor for people like me, and it would also I think quite dramatically increase the amount of food and drink being sold to people using the WiFi service.

My comment at his blog:

There is an intermediate step: Counter-service for orders but with bussing of tables. The bus-staff could --- as a matter of informal practice --- be alert to customers like yourself (or those huddled in intense conversation) and offer to obtain refills etc etc for them.

Oops!

UPDATE 2:

"...the main worry is what to do with the waste, but it can be argued that it can be stored safely until technology allows us to get rid of it."

Lot's of things can be argued.
The question is whether it can be done within some foreseeable period.

•••

UPDATE: The discussion goes from bad to worse over at Matthew Yglesias. Some fellow thinks that nuclear waste must be "..guarded like the crown jewels..." Of course he's correct.

But:

..it's an easy idea which trips glibly off the tongue, but we are talking a ten thousand year commitment. Do you really think it's fair to saddle our descendents with a hot-potato like taking care of waste -- our waste for god's sake -- while we have alternatives?

Imagine those temples in which the "crown jewels" --- guarded by a special priestly class of soldier/scientists --- are merely garbage of the 21st century.

Seems rather shortsighted and a bit selfish.

•••

Normally very astute Matthew Yglesias thinks that

a massive redirection of US energy away from fossil fuels and toward nuclear power is worth considering, but it's a total non-starter politically.

It's also a practical non-starter until we figure out a way to deal with nuclear wastes. And I am not aware that there is anything to indicate that we are making any progress to solve the problem of how to protect these wastes over the thousands of years that they are dangerous.

"Precisely?"

Forager 23 very kindly responds to my question but I am still confused about what exactly he doesn't like about "modernism."

I happen to agree with him as to the specific images he shows. But I am wondering how he would verbalize his preferences so an architect could design something he likes i.e. what would the zoning/building codes say to give form to a building which meets his preferences (and mine as well, I should add). I suggest that something as broad as "Avoid first principles" will not do the job.

The importance of building codes

In discussing the horrendous results of the quakes in Iran, Alan Sullivan affirms (implicitly at the least) the importance of building codes (or their functional free-market equivalent should such a thing ever come into existence.)

Buildings codes provide a uniform minimum standard which offers
1. some consumer-protection assurance ---you needn't bring a structural engineer with you before you go into a building in order to determine whether it is designed safely;
2. a builder can rely on adherence to codes as a reasonable defense in cases where there are indeed structural/fire problems.

Overall, building codes are tremendously efficient means of increasing the velocity of economic transactions by relieving individual buyers and sellers of the burden of negotiating continually on "how sound is sound."

Cuddle? or throttle?

Adam Tinworth suggests you cuddle a property developer today.

I was reading through some of my occasional blog reads today, when I came across this post (excerpt below - DS) on Technovia, the weblog of former MacUser editor Ian Betteridge. He tells the tale of a developer in Brighton which has violated its planning permission and is suffering as a result. From this he draws the rather mysterious conclusion that all property developers are scum.

Now, maybe it's because I've just spent a day in a conference centre full of property developers, and maybe it's because they form a large part of the readership of EG, and thus help keep me employed, but I really don't think property developers are scum. Commercial property development is a risky game. You put all the money up front, often buying sites without the planning permission you need. You then have to run the gauntlet of the council's planning process, which can vary wildly from county to county. You have to agree a Section 106 agreement which, in essence, means you agree to give up some of your profit to improve the locality in a way the council directs, before you see a single penny of that profit. Then, once your building is done, you have to rely on the vagaries of the property letting market. Property development takes years. Misjudge your start point - or have it pushed back too far by the planning process - and suddenly you can find yourself with a multi-million pound investment with no return, as many developers in the City of London are finding right now. (Too many buildings, not enough occupiers in the market.) And you have to put up with the opinion of every member of the public and local newspaper hack who decides that just because something is big and obvious, they understand the issues involved.

Technovia might suggest a more forceful sort of contact:

Up until a couple of months ago, Brighton had a rambling set of 200 year old Georgian buildings next to its clock tower. These buildings were a bit ramshackle, contained nice little shops - and thus, at least in the local council's eyes, were ripe for redevelopment.

Thus the old nice buildings and little shops got bulldozed. Only one problem: planning permission had been given on the basis that the shop facades were preserved, but instead, the developer chose to flatten them and apply for permission for a completely different development instead.

The result, of course, is deadlock: planning permission has been refused, quite rightly, leaving a big hole slap bang in the middle of Brighton.

What amazes me is that the council were stupid enough to believe the developer in the first place. The developer clearly believes that, sooner of later, it will get its way - and in many cases like this, that's exactly what happens. Of course, what should happen iis that the law should be changed so that councils are given a right to purchase any land where the developer has deliberately violated planning permission at the same price the developer paid for it. That would stop this kind of thing from ever happening again - but it would also mean offending big business, which under a "New" Labour administration will never happen.

And here is the image which set off Technovia:

I don't know; one could easily describe it as a piece of conceptual art.

Is Bush the man to carry out the Bush doctrine?

UPDATE 3:

Skeptics out there might take a gander at Dean for America: Homeland Security where Dean says:

Homeland Security starts abroad. Governor Dean would increase military, intelligence, and police focus on offensive operations against terrorists operating overseas.

Sounds like the Bush Doctrine to me. I think Dr. Dean might surprise a lot of people.

•••

UPDATE 2: Headline from 12/25 NYT -- Dean, Under Attack, Revives Feisty Style

I like.

•••

UPDATE: I just heard Tom Friedman on public TV tonight. (Some news show; I can never remember their title.) In part he spoke about Poland. He pointed out that Poland and the Poles are among America's few friends in Europe. The Poles like the USA, he said, and for more than Coca-Cola and Nike. They even like GW. Moreover, there is an enormous population in the USA of Polish heritage. Yet the Bush team spurns Poland -- one of our few friends in Europe. It makes me wonder how good a politician GW really is.

•••

I read how the US is treating the Poles here, also noticed by this guy. Of course I don't know military isues; whether the Polish request (above) was justified etc etc is way above my pay-grade. But the underlying article which promts the posts above -- here -- raises the question whether the Bush team knows what to do with the military victory we have gained.

Then I wonder whether Dean's trump card might be that Bush lacks the gravitas for the job and is not the best President to further his own Bush doctrine i.e. "taking the war to the enemy" which I think is not a half-bad strategy at all. I like Bush but he seems to be groping. Dean is a pugnacious fellow and far tougher. Part proof? Like Clinton, Dean is already attracting the frenzy of the extreme right who fear Dean's potential. much as they feared Clinton's.

Dean's question/statement about whether we are more secure now than before the Iraq war resonates. As I tell my fellow Seattleites who never saw a public good which they didn't want to buy, "there are a thousand good things -- the test of a smart leader is to know which ones to do and in what order." The jury will be out for a while on whether we can facilitate a turn-around in Iraq. Yes, the war has had enormous benefits for the Iraquis and we should ackowledge that. Yes Qadaffi has been forced to do something.

(And btw whether Operation Freedom has had much to do with Libya's actions, is not clear. Christopher Hitchens with his typical bluster, says yes. Juan Cole who actually knows about Libya, teaches about it, says no. And here is another example of how people (and this is human nature) who really don't much about a subject will seize on the opinion of someone else who doesn't know very much to justify their own opinion. I am not really laughing at Roger Kimball so much as laughing with him as no doubt I do stuff just as self-fulfilling as he is doing here i.e. looking for people who agree with me as sources of information. I mean I hope Kimball is correct about the positive impacts of GW's Iraq Adventure but citing Christopher Hitchens on a matter of fact as opposed to opinion seems sorta humorous.)

But one undeniable fact is that homeland security is now at Orange Alert, and in the very same week as Bush is supposed to have clinched some big deals. So I just look around me and answer-- for the moment -- Dean's question based on my commonsense.

Sometimes it pays to copy?

Maybe this just demonstrates that innovators are first-in but may also be first-out and not always the survivor.

Bollywood gambles on Kazaa

Bollywood movie fans will soon be able to download full-length features with the file-sharing software Kazaa.

A deal struck between a partner of Sharman Networks Ltd, the company which owns Kazaa, and IndiaFM.com, a popular entertainment site, will allow Indian film producers to distribute movies, music and other large, rich media files online to an estimated 60 million international Kazaa users.

Not so fast

Does Alex Tabarrok jump to a conclusion? He states the fact (and it does appear to be a fact) that a lot of moonshine is not particulary dangerous and that is

"...another example of market provided quality in the absence of government law."

Could be so.

But perhaps there are other possible explanations such as that
1. the pool of moonshiners who know "healthy" distilling techniques is deepened by the existence of legal producers
or
2. the existence of a licensed market offers consumers a standard by which they can judge "moonshine" and also an alternative place to buy
or
3. much of the "illegal" liquor is in fact coming from "legal" plants but is sold "out the backdoor" on the sly to avoid government taxation or perhaps as part of employee theft.

I have no knowledge of the moonshine world. But I am quite sure that the quality of un-permitted construction is higher because of the knowledge gained by carpenters etc who have worked on legal jobs and thereby learned correct and safe technique. Maybe something of the same "spillover" dynamic exists in other fields like brewing.

•••

Executive Summary of Moonshine Markets.

Firsthand Knowledge of Capitalism

UPDATE: (BTW, doesn't it makes more sense -- if somewhat graphically awkward, I admit --- to put updates at the top of a post so that people who have already read the initial post will have a higher likelihood of actually seeing the update?)

Outer Life offers an interesting comment We're All Capitalists on this post of mine. I tried to clarify my larger point there and will continue here:

I guess all I am trying to get to is that there is a big difference between appreciating capitalism (which I surely do) and loving it unreastically and without qualifications (which I don't.) Capitalism is a tool to organize the relations between people. I think it has an awful lot of positive things. But it is not, for me, an article of faith, of belief. I "believe" in capitalism, just as I believe in a well-tested saw, as a tool and I am fully able to recognize when it can and cannot do the job. The point of my post is that I wonder how much first-hand experience with capitalism it takes to be able to see its flaws? And whether many enthusiasts actually have that experience? I am very very glad to read (below) than at least some do.

But when I look at the larger world -- at a Milton Freidman or a Bartley at the WSJ -- and I read repeatedly of the glories of the market and how everything will be solved with market-based solutions, well I have to remember that most of these academics and journalists have only been employees of capitalists and their book-learning is nice and stimulating but I wonder if their "faith" is based on seeing it from a distance, where so many things look better, and so must be taken with a grain of salt. As one commenter wisely suggested (at least I think this was the gist): "Capitalism's a bad system but everything else is far, far worse."

•••

THE ORIGINAL POST:

I was just reading one of my favorite blogs and found --- not unexpectedly --- a vitriolic diatribe against socialism. I don't mind that, particularly, though of course by the same token I have no idea exactly what they mean by "socialism." (And that particular post involved British politics that it went right over my head; so this post here is not a comment -- that's why no link -- but a more general rumination.)

Capitalism has a lot of things going for it but I am resigned to state intervention in markets (e.g. and at the very least "weights and measures," "enforcement of contracts," "nuisance law," "honest (not counterfeit) currency," etc etc.) to help perfect those markets. I very much like free enterprise but I do not believe it possible except within, bitter irony for some, a regulatory state. The meaningful debate to me can only be about the degree of regulation.

But what I wonder about --- and so many right-wing bloggers seem to speak their piece in a manner which raises this idle question in my mind --- well what I wonder about is how many of them have actually made any money as capitalists? Or even lost money as capitalists? (That's also an important milestone.) I don't mean to pry into their personal affairs but I am simply curious. They seem to idealize capitalism so much that I wonder if they have really had much contact with it.

I don't mean in terms of inheriting wealth. You'd be a fool if you didn't love capitalism if you'd just received a pile from Grandpa Horace. But of course your own practical knowledge of capitalism might still be pretty slim, even if you are a beneficiary of it, just as those "welfare moms" in their Cadillacs probably don't really understand "socialism."

And I don't mean experience with capitalism by working for a large institution, either. Sure that's capitalism but the institutional context so insulates the individual -- and the higher the job title is the better the insulation -- that I can hardly consider the president of Exxon a real capitalist. He is an employee & bureaucrat as surely as if he worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. (And I don't condemn him for it either.)

No, I wonder how many of the fervent free-marketeers out there in right-wing blogland actually have bought or sold or organized anything with their own money. And not just once or twice but on a continuing basis. I am not saying that they haven't; but I just get the sense that they idealize the process of the marketplace -- of the vaunted "market solution" -- so much that it seems as though they might have read more about capitalism than done it.

Now even if some enthusiasts don't have any direct experience with free enterprise, that doesn't even remotely make their opinions useless -- in fact they could be quite stimulating -- but it simply puts them in a different perspective for me.

Money & Emotion

Roger Kimball gets it right in his discussion of friendship and business.

The notion that friendship and business should not mix is a dangerous fantasy. It is a fantasy because they always have and always will.

How could it be otherwise? People become friends with people with whom they do business; people do business (slightly less often for a variety of good reasons) with people who are friends. Shocking!

Likewise, I am always surprised when I find Noam Chomsky pulling my sleeve and whispering conspiratorially that the rich are trying to hold on to their money.

Politics is culture in action

Terry Teachout insists that his blog is "not a political blog." Insist away Mr. Teachout but you belie yourself with your excellent post about politicians (springing off a remark of Dean's) and candor.

I happen to share your disdain for "When I am your President" puffery and would only add that candor can also be very good politics, as well as polite to the listener. (When people lied to him, Michael Corleone was annoyed primarily because his intelligence had been insulted.) I too noticed that very remark of Dean's. And I was struck by it, too. I was listening, along with a very conservative friend, the kind of guy for whom the name "Hillary Rodham Clinton" is a bright crimson flag. We heard Dean's remark and my friend's reaction was the proverbial long low whistle. "I like that man," he said. "No BS, even if he is a raving mad-dog Democrat." So for pugnacious Dean, who preppie to preppie can outpunch Bush, candor may be what tips the balance.

•••

My own introduction to the sheer effectiveness of frankness goes much farther back.

I was sitting around with my roommates listening to some of LBJ's too-honest-to-be-good-hacks on a "Meet the Press"-type show. I think it was spring of 1967.(?) The host asked about Vietnam and their answers were lame: "turning the corner," "Vietnames allies" and more cant. You could tell that even they didn't believe it. I was in a tough spot because my roommates were all fervently anti-war and I still wanted to believe that our government was wise, just, effective etc. So it made me squirm to hear the champions of LBJ's Vietnam policy act as if everything was going along totally dandy when it was clear that at the very least there were issues. They were in-credible.

Then the moderator asked LBJ's guys about race relations. And immediately the tone shifted. While defending the administration, they also freely admited setbacks and difficulties. They did not have to obfuscate, exagerate, avoid etc because they were on the side of the angels. They could admit flaws because by-and-large LBJ's team was doing the right thing with race relations and doing it well. They were credible.

So my lesson that day was to listen especially carefully when a speaker refuses to admit any problems. There is always a problem.

(Of course the more sophisticated salesman (and what are we all except salesman of some kind? & be especially vigilant around those who won't admit that one!) will bring the game to the next level and even admit a few flaws to gain your trust. So it's a never-ending quest to find truth.)

"Drought Has West in Chokehold"

UPDATE: Some useful background on the water issue at Crumb Trail.

•••

I haven't really followed this story very much so far:

Explosive population growth, environmental lawsuits to divert water for wildlife and below-average precipitation have put a strain on the big federal reservoirs that supply the West but were designed decades ago when the outlook was far different.

I don't worry too much about running out of oil and so I don't think I will worry about running out of water.

My only question is "At what price will we have just enough water?"

To my mind, what a story like this means is that water has been "too cheap" (e.g. unreasonably low/politically-motivated money costs applied to those vast Federal water projects, insufficient value placed on existing natural resources etc etc) and now, because of a host of factors, it's going to get more expensive. We'll have to pay more. How that cost, not whether, ripples though society is the question.

The gravity of the solstice

The solstice is a memorable, even grave, day for many people. This post on The Dead of Winterby Kieran Healy struck me. I recommend it.

Newgrange is a clock. The shaft leading out to the roof box is precisely aligned so that on the morning of the Winter Solstice the first light of day will run directly into the middle of the tomb. Or, at least, it was precisely so aligned. It is so old that changes in the Earth's orbit have affected its operation. When it was built, the sun would have struck the back wall of the chamber, rather than the floor, and the light would have remained in the chamber for about four minutes longer than it does now. It was very accurate. The people who built Newgrange knew what they were doing.

Andrew Sullivan falls for that

claptrap from Mark Steyn about the bike-path left.

Maybe Sullivan hate bikes too, assuming he can ride one.

•••

Or maybe he's about Banning Bikes in China

Department of Great Leads

It has taken years of analysis and reverse engineering, but the Japanese automakers are now able to build vehicles just as big and stupid as the Americans.

Thinking about the WTC Site

Lest anyone think that the obscure and confused meanderings of Herbert Muschamp have been the only thing happening in planning for the WTC (though it admittedly it is his sort of attempt at high-falutin' elitism* which dominates the issue because of his ill-deserved position at the NYT) I ran across this site about Humane Designs for the World Trade Center (via, interestingly enough this fascinating page on "Vital Communities" at the Davenport, Iowa, Public Library.)

*I'd like to emphasize that there is nothing wrong with "unapologetic cultural elitism" so long as it is grounded in real expertise, usually but not always arising out of direct experience with "the material."

I have no opinion yet about the Humane Design pages except that obviously they are very intelligent and on the right track, looking at the WTC site holistically:

Designing a building is one thing.  Designing an urban community is a separate – and vastly more difficult – art form.  Prior to World War II, almost all architects were trained to be civil urban planners.  Buildings were designed to respect context, cater to pedestrians, and line up with neighboring structures.  Post-war, generations of architects were trained in a modernist idiom and taught a dogmatic set of beliefs.  The most significant of these beliefs was that architecture must ignore context and history, ignore neighboring structures, and create stand-alone "signature" buildings.  In short, modernism is an anti-urban style. 

The proof surrounds each of us.  Modernism has had seven decades to prove that it can create humane urban communities, but even a die-hard modernist will be unable to think of a single successful and beloved community designed in a modernist idiom.  Or even a single block front of modernist buildings.  Of course, a very few modernist structures are admired (such as New York’s Seagram Building), but this rather proves the point.  Modernism is capable of producing the rare masterpiece, but when has it ever created a humane urban community?

•••

Btw, there are few examples more striking of how poor public commentary by big media really does have a deliterious impact on public policy. I cannot -- and I have followed the matter from a far and very casually, like most Americans -- remember seeing/hearing any discussion in public about how the proposals for the WTC site would work to create a neighborhood. I am sure that there have been some but by-and-large the discussion has been a purely formal examination of this or that precious object.

Bittersweet

In Princetonian's Spare Telling, Class of '33 Drifts Into Winter

Here now is the latest news from the Princeton University class of 1933, as reported by the class secretary, F. Tremaine Billings:

Bittersweet

Architecture 2003

I haven't read Attack of the blobs yet but Adam Tinworth says that I should:

Guardian architecture correspondent Jonathan Glancey has done a worthwhile round up of architectural developments in 2003.

Goodness only knows why the online version was done without pictures. How very stupid.

Adam's last throw-away question is a good one and prompts my own comment:

What puzzles me about "big media" is why it doesn't use its "out-takes" --- reporters' stuff edited-out, all those letters to editor which while not obscene are simply more than they can handle, stories for which there is no room at all, those thousands of extra photos etc etc--- as extra content to justify a fee.

Since probably 90% of everything received by the editorial desks (even letters) starts as a digital file, it seems the major marginal cost would be more hard drive space.

The stuff is there; why not make it available? If nothing else, virtually everyone wants to see his immortal letter to the editor preserved for the ages.

Light rail runs on clear plot line

For those optimists who might think that building a "light" rail line is the solution to everything, read this Op-Ed from Seattle, here

How in blazes did we get in this fix? Well, it's a long, sordid story, but it does have a clear plot line. It involves a few well-placed people, (Mayor) Nickels prominent among them, deciding that in order to be "world class" we had to have rail, no matter that BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) would give us at least an order of magnitude more "mobility for the buck." Then the Seattle City Council joined the plot. Ignoring objective analysis that favored a grade-separated system down the Duwamish (River), the council played the race card to cram at-grade rail down Martin Luther King Way. Finally the public was sold this bill of goods under the cynically false pretense that a glorified trolley would do something about traffic congestion.

A city without sidewalks, a display case for objects

Herbert Muschamp's insipid critique titled A Skyscraper Has a Chance to Be Nobler is a fine example of how to think about a building in the narrowest possible way: as a distant object, to be examined as if one is in a museum looking into a display case.

Put aside the obscurantist language such as

Let's look at the design in the context of Memory Foundations, as Mr. Libeskind's design concept was called. Freedom Tower stands at the pinnacle of the "spiral of skyscrapers," a semicircular composition of five towers of gradually increasing heights. Astute historians will inevitably recognize the spiral of skyscrapers as a version of the temple to Marduk, the Babylonian "bull calf of the sun." Hello, liberty. Begone, Babylonian bull calf. With this substitution, the message becomes: Democracy Redeems Worldly Desires. This is not an architectural language I much care for, but at least it is contextual. The financial district's skyline is already packed with pagan motifs.

(Yes, I know the guy's an easy target and it's probably not fair to bang on him as he probably just can't help himself. But he is The Architectural Critic for a Major Metropolitan Daily and wields so much influence that he is certainly fair-game for a nobody from Seattle. I believe that a person, a critic, in a position like Muschamp's has an important practical function: he/she should help the reader to comprehend more fully, not to impress us with their clever allusions.)

The key thing is to consider and the damning thing is that Muschamp writes not one word about how the building will function at the level of the pedestrian. He writes about the design of the tower (and I have no opinion about the design -- don't really care much) as it is seen from five miles away and spares not one word for what happens at the base of the structure. It's as if he is writing about a building that exists in a city without sidewalks and streets, a city absent of people.

Strange. Weird. Disturbing.

***

And, btw, don't miss the article's equally useless slide show. The slide show is a great technique and I applaud the NYT for using it so extensively. I've seen some which were terrific. But in general there would be great benefit to a closer integration of the slide show with the accompanying article. In this specific case, however, the vapidity of the slide show is appropriate to Muschamp's article.

I didn't really follow the humor ...

...because my own reaction after reading the first few paragraphs to this post was to start thinking of terms which I find most obnoxious and misleading (that's after referring to Saddam Hussein as "former President of Iraq" rather than "former dictator" --- apparently that's today's new BBC terminology) so I left this comment:

Another term which is also insidious but of course in a different way is "war lord".

It elevates people who are nothing but hoodlums and gangsters to aristocratic heights and give them a mythical, romantic air.

Words -- "artwork" is another example --- offer hidden and often dangerous conclusions and it is so easy to gloss over them. I guess we need a word czar to ensure that we all speak true.

Libertarians...

...and libertarian-wannabees should not miss this post.

Nor another perspective here.

No question, Terry Teachout is one fine critic.

Today, in About Last Night, he writes:

Where his mouth is

I'm reading the revised edition of City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village, a book by David Sucher, who blogs, logically enough, at City Comforts. Sucher has popped up on this site before, usually in connection with modern architecture. He can be quite thought-provokingly testy, in the very best tradition of bloggers. Take a look at his blog --- and definitely buy his book. It's a manual of dos and don'ts about urban planning on a human scale, and it is immensely readable (not to mention beautifully designed).

You may not think this topic interests you, but if you live in or near a city, it does whether you know it or not, and Sucher has an uncanny knack for simplifying complicated issues by reducing them to practical essentials. I've never read anything so illuminating about what he calls "the sociable city."

To order the book, go here. I strongly recommend it.

But of course, who am I to judge?

Great Idea...

...but how does AC do it?

The book was first published in 1979, and my coming to it so late is the consequence of my ordinary practice of never reading any analysis of an artwork until I've worked things out for myself to the fullest I'm able. Only then can I be certain that my ideas were formed by a study of the artwork itself, and not by sources after the fact and external to it.

Such independence of mind is -- perhaps -- admirable. But several questions strike me.
1. How does AC know that he is coming into contact with an "artwork" unless someone has told him? How, for example, would anyone know that the Guggenheim Museum -- supposedly one of those works of quote genius unquote which truly enlightened aesthetes appreciate -- unless AC had learned that it was special from sources external to the work itself? The very word "artwork" already expresses a (social) conclusion. So the goal of analysing an "artwork" on one's own seems fundamentally impossible for one is biased from the start to believe that it is an "artwork" and something special.
2. How does AC actually know when he has come up against his own internal mental wall?
3. Does he think of these objects in English? (assuming that English is his mother tongue, which seems likely judging by his great facility with it.) Is his aim of working things out on his own even theoretically possible considering that he is experiencing the work using the words and terms of a community of ideas?

Obviously I am teasing AC a bit. But his statement is provocative -- I don't think I could possibly even start to do as he does --- and I mean my questions seriously, if a bit in fun, as is appropriate in this Holiday Season.

Don't miss...

...Salingaros on Kahn.

Even though I am slightly puzzled as to why anyone would care about Kahn very much (except for the circular reason that so many other people care about Kahn and view him as a grand-master) I liked Nikos' amiable manner of analyzing the designs. Rather than holding them up at a distance, as objects to be analyzed formally, Nikos places more emphasis on his own behavior, his own reactions to the structures, which is a far more meaty and useful approach, I think.

Chomsky on Sports

I rarely agree with Noam Chomsky on anything but here at Elliptic Blog is this terrific bit of Chomsky on Sports:

In fact, I have the habit when I'm driving of turning on these radio call-in programs, and it's striking when you hear the ones about sports. They have these groups of sports reporters, or some kind of experts on a panel, and people call in and have discussions with them. First of all, the audience obviously is devoting an enormous amount of time to it all. But the more striking fact is, the callers have a tremendous amount of expertise, they have detailed knowledge of all kinds of things, they carry on these extremely complex discussions...

I don't agree with Chomsky's dark somewhat conspiratorial conclusion but I had thought the very same thing but applied it to the built environment.

There are vast numbers of people who display diligence and perception when it comes to the ins-and-outs of professional sports. I overhear their conversations and they are lucid and articulate and well-informed. But they are blind when it comes to the built environment. So the mental energy and ability is there, I muse, but there is no interest in the real physical world around them.

More Cant

There you go again Mr. Kimball.

But this time he is quoting Michael Crichton who constructs many straw men speaking idiocies but offers no specific examples of where to find these idiots.

My point: yes there is a lot of silly environmentalism but people like Kimball and Crichton never seem to be able to actually quote them but only paraphrase nameless "environmentalists" to create foils for their own hysterical and confused views.

Yes, as in every other social/political movement, some enthusiasts get over-enthusiastic and adopt extreme positions. But you do not see mainstream environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, NRDC or the EDF taking such views. And I am not even sure who these two fellows would mean when it comes to environmental thinkers these days. Crichton's speech would have started to be a slight bit persuasive if he had offered even ONE quote from even ONE environmentalist. But as you notice, his speech is empty of specifics but full of accusations. I used to respect Crichton but this speech makes me see him as little but another aging crank on the sidewalk but with access to the Commonwealth Club.

UPDATE: And if one is going to riposte that one look no further than Bjorn Lomborg's vindication as to procedure, I'd say 'yay!'

From the sounds of it, the Danish scientist committee acted like fools and have gotten a just cumeuppence. But there we have identifiable people who it appears have acted, at the least, very unscientifically. Go ahead and attack them as buffoons. But creating anonymous "environmentalists" so that one can then shoot down their ideas is acting in parallel --- though in a different direction --- with the apparently irresponsible Danish committee. (Btw, as I understand the matter, it is not Lomborg's ideas which have been vindicated but actually the fact-finding procedures of the Danish committee which has been dismissed as inadequate.)

Maybe Roger Kimball simply hates bikes?

I have no idea but he certainly seems to know little about local politics and attacks Howard Dean for Dean's supposed support of bike paths. Oh! those NY intellectuals at The New Criterion! So out of touch with how things in the physical world actually work!

•••

I have read posts which strain mightily to find something bad to say about someone, for instance disliking Nixon because he wore wing-tips for a walk on the beach, and this one by Kimball trying to find something bad to say about Dean goes on my honor roll. It's also a prime example of bad and illogical writing. The idea that you can associate a desire to have bike paths in one's community and "Democrtaic Despotism" is a relationship which Kimball fails to connect with even one clause. (I am not even getting to whether I think he is right or not. I have spent my life around municipal land use politics and so I know better than most that the dangers are there.) What I object to is Kimball's sloppiness. Read the piece carefully. It places ideas the ideas "bike paths" and "Democratic Despotism" --- two very interesting ideas --- in spatial contiguity i.e. in one post. But it doesn't connect them. It is a shallow or even dishonest rhetorical technique.

Kimball now and then writes something of value; indeed. And I have noted that here on this Blog and praised it -- his post on telephone booths, for instance, (if I get my conservative-wannabees correct).

But he fails today and his failure is that he thinks that bike paths are a "small idea." If he knew about American municipal politics (of course to begin with maybe he thinks that municipal politics are a "small idea") then he would have some vague glimmer that anything to do with local transport is not a small idea at all but influences even determines the manner in which people experience their daily lives. So their impact as objects is not small.

Nor is the politics which create them "small." Kimball implies that "bike paths" are a "small idea" politically but doesn't explain why. Of course he can't because he is simply wrong. If you have ever observed the process of creating them ---either dedicated, grade-separated ones or simply stripes on the street --- you'd know that bike paths are by no means a small idea. Whether you like them or not, they raise in our day all sorts of issues, basic issues about human habitat and the governance that form them.

It would be best if the folks at ARMAVIRUMQUE avoided discussing things about which they appear to have no knowledge. Or if they do decide to write about important questions of urban planning and liberty --- which would be admirable & wonderful indeed --- then they ought to do a thoughtful job of it and show the work. In this piece by Kimball the circle is not closed and the argument is left hanging.

Why indeed do bike paths lead to Democratic Despotism? Pray, tell. Or better yet, show.

***

UPDATE: I wonder if this Vermonter voted for Dean.

He puts it nicely

The Volokh Conspiracy offers:

We realize that the complexities of America's multi-layered semiotics (especially at the polyvalent intersectionality of military modalities and civilian cinematic / graphic novelistic signifiers) may be difficult to grasp for people who come from, shall we say, less sophisticated cultural traditions -- but if you only acknowledge our superiority, I see no reason why such minor embarrassments should interfere with our amicable cross-Atlantic relationship...

But just look around the streets

In a post which otherwise has little to do with city growth per se a reader asks Terry Teachout about the state of NYC retail here.

Isn't expecting the New York Philharmonic to be adventurous a bit like expecting a major retail chain to begin its life in Manhattan? In other words, the stakes are so high these days in NYC that one can't help but be conservative with one's choices.

That's interesting. But of course there is a difference between Manhattan and New York City (or even within parts of Manhattan) and it's my recollection that New York as a whole is absolutely filled with small business...one-off mom-and-pop operations all over the boroughs. (And Manhattan is a borough.) Few will grow into national chains but that is true of small retail which start anywhere. And there are probably more such small retail on a per-capita basis (due to the greater pedestrian nature of NYC and the difficulty that that offers many national chains) than say, Seattle, which has quite a bit of independent retail, much less (I would bet) Omaha...not to pick on Omaha.

Sure, it doesn't make sense for a start-up retail (except maybe an Apple Store) to lease prime retail space. But NYC and even Manhattan are more than just prime retail and have many locations which are far away from the 100% corner but which are quite viable because of the huge numbers of people who live there.

Take a vacation

Over the past 5 or 6 years I have been asked a few times to give a talk about the ideas in City Comforts. Besides having to get over stage-fright and the sense that I am simply a trained seal, there for the audience amusement (and of course that is true and nothing wrong with it), the experience is an interesting one. Inevitably, and sometimes after I feel that I have given a great and energetic performance, a member of the audience will get up and ask as the very first question "Why did you write the book?" What a deflating question. I always take it as "Why did you waste your time (and now ours) writing this extremely simple book?" Maybe that's not what they mean at all, but that is always my first take.

Or then someone will ask, "How did you do the research for the book?" And there I have a better answer: "I go on as many vacations as possible." By which I really mean that I take myself out of my daily grind and into new and fresh places where even the banal will strike me as extraordinary. Perhaps it's just a rationalization but I have always thought that Huizinga's Homo Ludens gave me license to play, so long as I would ultimately make something of it, which in my work, I always can.

The point was affirmed just last weekend on my research trip to Whistler, British Columbia, (no, the skiing was only incidental just as in my youth I used to buy Playboy only for the interviews) I ran across the Smart Park system. As parking -- no matter the screams of refined aesthetes -- is what drives urban design, this new technique of regulating & paying for parking immediately caught my eye, though I haven't worked out the implications quite yet.

On Monday, Whistler lawmakers authorized municipal staff to proceed with the program after Bill Barratt, RMOW general manager of community services, brought Council up to speed on the success of a recent pilot project using the hand-sized pay parking units.

Here’s how it works:

Motorists purchase one of the devices for $90 along with a rechargeable “smart” card. When drivers decide to park in municipally operated pay parking stalls, they activate the unit by swiping their card, which then deducts an amount of money from the total value of the card based on the amount of time used.

The device, known as an ICPM (In-Car Parking Meter), is then displayed on the vehicle’s rear-view mirror or dashboard for the benefit of pay-parking attendants.

Cool, eh?

Project for Public Places Newsletter

Here's a tidbit from Making Places, January 2004:

For a building that so many are touting as the savior of downtown L.A., the bringer of life back to the downtown, it does a poor job of addressing the pedestrian on the street. A group dynamics 101 student could tell you that nobody's going to want to walk anywhere near this austere, windowless, unfriendly building especially at night.

Do I need to identify the structure?

Review copy for this guy?

And there he goes again.

"Just spell my name right." Isn't that the old saw? So I must thank AC Douglas for having so kindly recycled one of his older posts titled How Doth Your City Grow? and thereby, though incidentally, at least attempting to raise the issues which I think are important.

Thanks! AC.

However, I would have hoped for more trenchant and coherent criticism. One is known by the quality of one's critics and AC's post just doesn't do the job. No doubt my perspective on building & cities is flawed, imperfect and could benefit from intelligent criticism. But AC is not doing it. He is obviously a bright though simply a bit at sea when it comes to indicating much knowledge of how buildings get built and how cities grow and evolve. There's just enough accuracy -- but just barely enough -- in his post so that it can't be dismissed completely. But he certainly has no idea in the least what City Comforts is about. He's attacking me (or my ideas -- you decide) but he obviously has no sense of what I am saying. When I hear him paraphrase me I have to smile & wonder at how wrong he gets it. I've thought about explicating his text but it would be so tediously dull (for me) to have to do so.

Oh well. Let's hope he knows more about music than he knows about buildings & cities.

•••

UPDATE: And he is at it again this morning, talking feverishly, amusingly and at length in The Devil's Way about a post by Nikos Salingaros on Louis Kahn. AC's trying to make some point -- and it might well be a good point -- but I can't figure it out. Ostensibly it's about buildings and Louis Kahn and hero-worship but beyond that it's way beyond my bourgeois philistinism.

The point that AC Douglas doesn't mention (it does takes real & subtle familiarity with the material to understand it) is that using the term "modernism" to describe both building form and site plan doesn't move the discussion very far forward. One can like/dislike either or both. But discussions of "modernism" in the context of urban form need to distinguish the two. One could, in fact, have an extremely "modern" commercial building with a very "traditional" streetfront.

Oh well. I hope he knows about music.

Hillary?

I liked my comment here about Hillary.

(P.S. Hillary writes about villages or something like that so she is fair game for a city comforts blog.)

And for people who refuse to click, here's what I said:

What's with the Hillary thing? Why does she call forth such bizarre and out-of-proportion reactions? The issue is not Hillary; the interesting issue is people who so intensely dislike Hillary that they leave their commonsense at the door.

Maybe this guy deserves a review copy.

He likes The comfort of the city. That's good. But he's reading the black & white first edition.

The horror!

UPDATE: Oops! Sorry. I stand corrected. She will receive a review copy poste-haste.

Jam Today -- small daily pleasures

There is an expression, now antique and rarely used, "Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today."

This blog Jam Today revives the expression and offers another interesting post in which the blogger recounts his own visit to Fallingwater.

If you walk a few yards downstream, along the left bank of Bear Run, you can find another, perhaps finer, view of the house. It is said, I don't know with what truth, that Kaufmann originally wanted the house positioned there, so that the house, perhaps a terrace or balcony, would take advantage of the fine view of the waterfall that used to be available from that point. Wright, to paint his Cubist painting in ochre, sandstone and Cherokee red, obliterated the natural, perhaps overly traditional, one in brown and green and white-topped water.

Indeed, the waterfall is not actually visible from any point in the house. One does wonder if this is because Kaufmann thought a view of the waterfall would be nice.

Whether Wright was or was not a genius is actually an irrelevant and stupid question; I apologize for even playing into the game. The useful question --- and the one which I suspect might well be answered in the negative --- is "Is there anything (useful or not) to learn about buildings and cities from Wright? Is Wright" --- not my dumb question --- "relevant?"

"You, sir, are simply not important-enough and/or predictable-enough to speak with genius."

That's my take on James Culham's attempt (described here at Useful & Agreeable) to interview Frank Gehry:

Since I was in town anyway, I kept my appointment for the group tour - along with members of nearby hotel staff. Proof positive that I was considered B-List press all along.

By coincidence I attended a house party that week where several members of Gehry's staff were in attendance. Conversation gradually turned to the new building, the MOCA exhibition and Gehry's work generally. What was discussed, off the record, by those who actually know the man - was infinitely more interesting than the genius posturing taking place in the press.

On the weekend thousands attended the opening of the retrospective at the MOCA - perhaps hoping for the chance to catch a glimpse of their hero. Not a chance - he's as isolated and coddled as any other Hollywood star.

•••

Link thanks to bountiful things magazine.

Blogs in politics, not blogs about politics

A few days ago I wondered why, at least in Seattle and at least to my knowledge, blogs are not used as part of the political/community organizing process. Someone suggested that the Wiki format might be more appropriate. Murph posts on that very subject here.

I left a comment...

...at Winds of Change and as I will be AWC ("absent without computer") for a few days doing some research, I thought I'd post-ahead so that this blog maintains appearances.

I wrote:

The issue is hardly whether the building (i.e. Disney Hall) is financed by "public funds." Even if "private' the money is tax-deductible so there is a significan public contribution in any case.

The significant issues are several:

1. The building won't do what it is supposed to do: revitalize downtown LA
because
2. it is an anti-urban & anti-pedestrian building
which
3. Grows out of a weird contemporary idea that a goofy-looking building is "great architecture"
and which
4. Furthermore has the very bad impact of diverting the attention of people who care about cities from real significant issues of how to create pleasant, comfortable and walkable places.

In almost every respect except publicity, the exterior of the Disney Hall --- the way the building interacts with the city -- promises to be a failure. It is eye-candy: a momentary rush but with little long term value or even pleasure.

We write, you click (or not)

And some of you don't like to click to continue reading a post "below the fold" i.e. on another page, so you may not bother and that bothers me.

Any feedback?

UPDATE: Everything from now on will be on the front page. Thanks for the advice.

One perspective on Disney Hall:

Winds of Change says

I've enjoyed watching the building come up, and watching the scaffolding and barricades come down has made an interesting building a wonderful one to drive past.

Pretty nice summary of the exterior.

The real source of the problem

I agree entirely, vigorously, even zealously with Nikos Salingaros as to the manifestations he mentions below --- I too think everything he notes as bad is in fact almost always very bad.

But I fear that this Comment by Professor Salingaros at Salingaros on Gomez-Davila at 2Blowhards comes dangerously-close to nominating "individualism" as the culprit.

Many if not most of the problems we are having with an alien and inhumane architecture is that the "expert" imposes his/her will on the environment, in a single arrogant action. This can be slicing a city; or plucking a skyscraper into a formerly living urban fabric; or imposing a deconstructivist horror into a historic district (or a university campus); or putting up a sheer wall next to where pedestrians would like to walk. It's the definition of non-adaptiveness.

I was struck by the Professor's own provocative statement (more interesting in fact than Gomez-Davilla himself!) and have been pondering it and have a slightly different perspective which I would like to offer.

It could be that the rules for how to build a pedestrian-oriented environment are simply not widely understood. At one time there was no knowledge of the Germ Theory of disease; it had not yet been discovered so of course people could not follow it and wash their hands etc etc. It could be that we are living in a similar time. With all the current interest in the urban environment --- and I believe that even, say, the hysteria over Gehry's Disney Hall represents a sincere if profoundly misguided search for a better Los Angeles --- there is only slowly emerging an understanding that interesting urban places are created out of only a very few relationships. The problem is simply that our society has not yet internalized those few simple Rules. So what we see as "arrogance" is often plain old simple "ignorance." Frank Gehry (and of course the people who hired him) "ignorant" of the basic rules of urban design?! Uh...yes. Sometimes the simplest explanation is a most reasonable one.<