City Comforts, the blog

Don't the Dems know how to communicate?

They keep getting the nuance wrong.

Legislators Move to Blunt Eminent Domain Ruling. Here's what they, mostly Republicans I gather but some Democrats, too, want to do:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) said he will introduce a Private Property Rights Protection Act that will prohibit any state or municipality from using federal funds for any project in which economic development is used as a justification for exercising eminent domain.

So? Sounds OK to me. But Pelosi and Obey focus, can you believe it, on separation of powers.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at an earlier news conference that "very central in that Constitution is the separation of powers."

"When you withhold funds from enforcing a decision of the Supreme Court, you are in fact nullifying a decision of the Supreme Court," Pelosi said. "This is in violation of the respect of separation of powers in our Constitution -- church and state as well. Sometimes the Republicans have a problem with that, as well."

In opposing a Republican amendment about the issue today, Rep. David Obey (Wis.), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said on the floor today that the decision was "nutty" but that the solution is legislation or a constitutional amendment, not punitive measures.

"The idea that this House, every time we don't like a court decision, should decide that we're not going to allow federal money to be used to enforce that court decision is as nutty as the original court decision in the first place," Obey said. "So I would hope that we would recognize that the Founding Fathers created the system of separation of powers. They created three independent branches of government for a purpose."

Couldn't they at least say something like "real problem, bad solution?" Yes, Obey says something like that but it gets buried in his objection to a Republican proposal; the Dems should be out front vigorously proposing their own wise solutions rather than reacting to bad Republican ones.

And I don't even understand their objection. What's so wrong with deciding to "prohibit any state or municipality from using federal funds for any project in which economic development is used as a justification for exercising eminent domain?" That's what the Republicans suggest and it might not be the very best proposal possible (though it doesn't sound too bad at first blush) but I don't see how it interferes with separation of powers. It's simply using the power of the purse. That's what Congress is supposed to do. No?

•••

Now it's conceivable that there may be some sort of federalism issue in that the feds are telling the states what to do...I don't think so (but, aw shucks, this lawyering is way above my pay grade.) The Feds would be saying -- "You can't spend Federal money unless you meet this requirement..." Don't they do that all the time? They aren't prohibiting locals from throwing old people out of their homes so developers can put up more Wal-Mart stores....merely saying you can't spend Federal money. Do I misunderstand?

Email from Alex Marshall

In general reaction to the recent post Want a lower price? Condemn and then don't buy. Clever. I receive an email from Alex Marshall. He writes:

I moved away from Norfolk, my home town, in 2000 and I now live in Brooklyn. So I've only kept up with the project here and there, often when my family members send me news stories from The Virginian-Pilot about East Ocean View.

I thought it was an egregious situation when I wrote about East Ocean View in the late 1990s. Duany seemed quite comfortable then with his role, even though it was part of a project that involved kicking out people from their homes and building a high-income neighborhood in its stead. And a lower-density neighborhood, so arguably a less urban one. The neighborhood was hardly a paradise before, but it was also not wholly blighted. Some blocks were awful, some were fine. The area was mostly white, interestingly enough. It was a white working class beach neighborhood.

To Duany's credit, although the overall project was inhumane, his designs were artful and subtle.  The design of the new neighborhood kept homes off some of the beach front, to allow open access. And the project had a grid of streets that blended in walking paths and such.  As I understand it, most of these nicer elements have been dropped, and the project is more and more consisting of big homes plopped down on or near the beach, often consuming the views and access. The project has also gotten submerged or lost in a morass of politics and infighting on the city council. The main councilmember from that district, Randy Wright, has made the project his personal project and there have been charges that he is tied to various realtors and others with interests.

'Blight by condemnation" is actually surprisingly common, or has been.  Almost any history of urban renewal reveals it, whether in Boston or New York or Norfolk. Renewal efforts typically take years, and there does seem to be a certain calculation on the part of authorities. Sell your land to us now for whatever we offer, or watch the value drop anyway under our poisonous umbrella, as well as watch your ability to use it decline as well.

I have mixed feelings about government condemnation. On specific cases, like Ocean View, I think it's appalling. But I'm not opposed to it in all cases, even if it's just for economic development. I accept that property rights come from government, so there's no conflict with that same government sometimes putting limits on those rights, or in effect taking them back. But this should be done fairly, and for good reasons.

I think most or all of the neighborhood has now been torn down. If you did a search on www.pilotonline.com you would find a lot of stories about it.

Let's hope Alex does an indepth followup on East Ocean View. It's useful for a reporter to go back and reconsider a situation a decade later, especially a story which involves so much vivid place, personality and policy. And if it's the reporter's own home town, to boot, he is  uniquely situated and we would read a case study tinged with personal history. I like the long, expansive style of The New Yorker to explore these complex matters of social class, urban design, real estate, constutional law and human ambition.

But -- and this just my own hobby-horse -- I wouldn't be unhappy if Alex adopted even just a slightly more jaundiced view ot the historical origin of property rights as bestowed by government. But hey! that's what makes markets.

Visit to the Spiral Jetty.
It was a while ago, but so what.

I thought they had capitalism in Houston

Guess again. Thoughts on the Supreme Court eminent domain ruling.

This is another case where the arguments are pretty good on both sides. It's a dangerous slippery slope letting government buy out property owners for any "good" reason, but if a handful of recalcitrant - or even extortionist - property owners can hold up any large-scale private development, cities will certainly suffer.

"...if a handful of recalcitrant - or even extortionist - property owners can hold up any large-scale private development, cities will certainly suffer."

Interesting. "...recalcitrant - or even extortionist - property owners..." Lenin would have loved that concept. What's the point of capitalism unless you can sell at the margin? If you want to sell? Does a capitalist have an obligation to sell an asset because someone else may (arguably) make a higher return from that asset? Should we have a process where I go down to City Hall and say "Look, I can run this here apartment building better than the existing owner can. We'll paint the units, put in new carpet, add wi-fi and raise the rents. This old couple has kept 'em too low -- we can double the rents! So why don't you develop a plan in accordance with Kelo, condemn the asset, sell it to me and then I'll run it more profitably and cut you government folks in on the take? Looks to me like you can use some new carpet, too."

One of the key philosophical questions with use of eminent domain (where the explicit goal of the taking is economic development) is that it muddies the distinction between government as market regulator and government as market participant. You can avoid that by setting up quasi-businesses -- with the worst characteristics of both -- such as a Port District which has no regulatory power but only acts to make money. Then of course you have yet another problem -- a business with eminent domain power, taxing power and access to cheap money.

Totally cool

Nea Polis: Urbano y Mal-Urbano.

And this is why I enjoyed law school

Suppose there is a rural township in which a public-spirited billionaire has created a "forever wild" conservancy land trust of tens of thousand of acres in order to preserve bio-diversity and wilderness values and provide his grandchildren a prestigious foundation board to run, but also significantly decreasing the tax base of the area -- though it might also be argued that his reservation helps encourage tourism, but remember this is a law schol hypo. Now the township wants to condemn the tract and give it to a logging company to economically redevelop the area and create jobs, all according to a nice plan, developed in compliance with Kelo and printed on glossy paper, with many colored charts and pictures.

What result?

•••

And the source of the hypo? Applying Kelo.

This is exactly what I am worried about

Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate endorses Kelo

...Calls Kelo Decision "A Positive"

Harold Ford Jr., a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Tennessee, has endorsed the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London, allowing local governments to seize private property and give it to another private owner for purposes of econonmic development and to increase the government's tax revenue.

Does the Democratic party have some sort of death wish? Is it sleep-walking toward yet another cliff? Can't it see a wedge issue when it stands up and is about to hit it over the head? And does Ford really believe that  eminent domain helps economic development? Probably not -- in fact he may very well have never even thought about the issue. Perhaps he is just going along with conventional thinking in the Democratic Party echelons. And I guess that's my fear.

The Party needs to come up with a principled way to deal with the issue -- it likes activist government willing to step in and solve all problems. But must it insist on using eminent domain against people's homes? So that it can transfer the property to a business? A business such as a major league baseball team? That's what Republicans do.

Want a lower price? Condemn and then don't buy. Clever.

The Kelo mistake has reminded me that some very prominent new urbanists have been on the "wrong side" of this issue in the past and of course the current attention to the matter encouraged me to refresh my memory.

About ten years ago (yes people were interested in these issues back then) Alex Marshall wrote an interesting article -- When The New Urbanism Meets An Old Neighborhood -- about the sad situation in the East Ocean Beach neighborhood of Norfolk, Virginia where Andres Duany devised a rather brilliant, I am told, scheme and had a pivotal role in the politics. Here's what Alex wrote ten years ago:

The city council approved the project a year before Duany came to town. But partly because of the controversy, city officials looked to Duany for approval of their plans to tear down the neighborhood. One official described Duany as "the doctor" with ultimate authority to decide whether to save or amputate the "diseased leg." During a week-long charrette held in a senior citizens center, Duany discussed saving a few homes, but decided against any guarantees. A completely clean canvas, Duany opined, was more valuable than saving homes for a few lucky people.

I hope Alex goes back and does an update about what has happened. Is there a delightful new urbanist neighborhood there now? How has it worked out? These were my immediate questions. Would this Norfolk situation be the "poster child" for those who consider condemnation to be an essential tool of redevelopment?

Now the story gets really interesting -- and egregious. As I was polking around trying to find out what has happened in East Ocean Beach, I ran across a lawyer's own web page. And yes, in the interests of full disclosure, he appears to be in the business of defending against condemnation. Nonetheless, he has a short post (written in 1998) on Condemnation Rights in Ocean View, Norfolk, Virginia where I was introduced to a new (for me) concept of "blight by condemnation" i.e. the very act of declaring a neighborhood under (as Justice Stevens so soothingly declares it) "a plan," and specifically subject to eminent domain, casts a pall on the area, discouraging investment and of course lowering ultimate acquisition costs. Clever indeed.

Mr. Waldo writes:

But Norfolk's East Ocean View is perhaps the classic example of how a government condemnation authority can devastate private property owners. Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority targeted 90 acres for condemnation in East Ocean View in an effort to develop valuable waterfront property. But when NRHA identified the 90-acre site five years ago, it did not have the funds to purchase the property in two to three years as announced. Five years later, NRHA has not purchased most of the targeted property and will not be in a position to do so for at least five more years, if not longer.

The result is a phenomenon known as "condemnation blight," a condition many private property owners in East Ocean View have not been able to survive. They find themselves financially crippled or ruined by the lethargic pace in which buildings are purchased, boarded up, and torn down. Many good tenants refuse to come to an area that they have read about and understand will be torn down.

The city has, in effect, put a dome over East Ocean View, imposing conditions that prohibit private property owners from acting in their own best interests. For these property owners in the path of condemnation, there is no market to sell their property because buyers will not willingly purchase property in a neighborhood targeted for demolition. The only potential buyer is NRHA, which puts NRHA in a uniquely advantageous bargaining position. Banks make it difficult, if not impossible, to refinance mortgage loans. Landlords find it almost impossible to attract quality tenants to a neighborhood featuring boarded-up buildings, broken windows, and trashed buildings, all awaiting demolition.

Assuming accuracy, it's sick. Whether the Housing Authority intended this result or not, I don't know -- let's even give it the benefit and assume "No, it was not their intention." But I think that it illustrates the dangers of this enormous power of condemnation and yet another element in reform i.e. actual purchase within some relatively short time period.

More from Alex Marshall on this issue:

An interview with Duany about East Ocean View

Alex Marshall & Andres Duany disagree -- which italics added carries the day?

ANDRES DUANY: The 100 acres of East Ocean View were half-abandoned. Indeed, the area's development had become undesirable so quickly that a good portion of the land had remained unbuilt. Most of the existing housing consists of decrepit Section 8 subsidized rental apartments, of a most degrading type...

ALEX MARSHALL: The guts of Duany's defense are that it is okay to tear this neighborhood down because it is troubled and the people are poor and the buildings aren't pretty. I disagree with this philosophy. I won't say that a government can never level a neighborhood, but the area's existing homes would have to be in worse shape than those in East Ocean View, and the people who live in them treated more fairly.

Duany also makes serious errors that undercut his arguments and suggest how little he has paid attention to the neighborhood he is replacing. Here are the most obvious:

None of the homes in this area are Section 8 housing.

•••

You can link to the City's own page here:  East Ocean View - The City of Norfolk, VA.

Tatyana suggests that I might be sympathetic:

Let this be a litmus test:

I trust that decent Democrats who are not in the pockets of public sector employee associations and who actually have at the core of their convictions the desire to help the 'have nots' against whom the system can at time be so slanted, will set aside partisan politics and join with Republicans who are not in the pockets of well funded business interests to rebel against this savage wound to the US Constitution which in effects rips out the Fifth Amendment. Let this case be the litmus test of decency against which political figures of both left and right will judged and judged harshly.

Yup. Tanyana is correct.

Now it could well be that the Court majority decided correctly from some narrow legal perspective and that the melioration must come from the political side. And that is totally consistent with the sentiments above. I still fear that Democrats are going to get on the wrong side of this issue politically.

•••

See Tat's comment here.

Alas

Google Earth!

It's enough to make me thing of getting a Windows machine.

A thoughtful pro-Kelo comment

Prof. Robert Ellickson opines here:

I happen to strongly oppose, on policy grounds, virtually all economic-development initiatives of the New London stripe.  They tend to be boondoggles that waste taxpayer money, coerce the politically weak, and corrupt the political process.  But unlike the IJ, I do not favor strong national constitutional constraints in policy arenas where state policies would not have significant interstate consequences.  On issues such as the use of eminent domain for economic development (as well as issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia), isn't it better to let states develop independent policies?  I'd prefer that the main battlegrounds on eminent domain issues be city halls, state capitals, and state supreme courts, not the federal courts.  On that important structural question, I agree in this instance with Justice Stevens, not Justice O'Connor.

Well this guy is definitely a legal expert but I still wonder why the Supreme Court cannot lay out some broad language which at least starts to raise the bar on the definition -- and this is the heart of the lagal issue -- the definition of "public use." Or is public use like pornography?

Btw, one of the policy issues which is not mentioned widely is that there are -- and no doubt someone will correct me -- thousand and thousand of bodies, school boards and port districts and water districts and sewer districts and library districts etc etc -- all sorts of special-purpose little districts here and there -- which  have power of eminent domain.

•••

Lots more very informed and interesting comment alongside Prof. Ellickson's, btw.

Worthwhile TV segment on eminent domain

Very insightful comments by John Norquist (Congress for New Urbanism) on Jim Lehrer. Watch by linking to the show here. Definitely worth the time to watch -- this guy has been mayor of a big city so he is no dreamer and makes (as I parce it) the urban design and redevelopment argument against eminent domain.  One of the money quotes:

The key to revitalization of American cities is the complexity of cities, the form of cities, the streets and blocks that were being ripped apart in the '60s and '70s and '80s. Cities have finally started to figure out that the urban form is actually valuable and they don't need to tear cities down and try to turn them into the suburbs. And that's really what this decision -- the majority opinion sort of implies, that somehow cities automatically know what adds value.

And

The small developer, the small business person, the small property owner, they're the ones that are the key to urban revitalization -- not having some big firms that's routinely hiring lobbyists and lawyers and goes down to city hall. And what Justice Stevens' decision really implies is that you're going they have this big, powerful developer come in with the city government and it's always going to be a public/private partnership and they'll automatically know how the add value to the economy.

Norquist has it exactly right: we don't lose anything -- in fact we gain -- if we forswear the use of eminent domain in urban redevelopment because it simply hasn't worked and there is no reason to think it will work in the future. Putting aside the very important legal and moral issues, we should totally reject or extremely limit (through a high legal burden) the broad-brush redevelopment facilitated by Kelo. Such big projects usually don't give us robust, broad-based investment and human-scaled comfortable cities.

Look at it this way. Which is better for a neighborhood:
• 100 discrete investments of $500,000?
or
• one investment of $50,000,000?

I say the former as it indicates broad-based confidence.If you just count the votes and consider the importance of political attention in maintaining the infrastructure, I think the greater number pf people -- the broad base of reinvestment -- provides more political attention over the long run.
For another there is lower social risk in diversifying the investment sources.
Then there is a greater variety of minds at play in developing a host of properties which will produce a more diverse urbanscape.

There is a host more reasons why lots of small development is usually better than one big development. Only if you want BIG projects is assemblage important. And big projects are of little, personally, interest to me. I am not saying that good work can't be done at a larger scale, but bad work can be done that way too and as it is a larger scale, it has more of an impact. You have fewer minds at play and so a few inept decisions have a larger impact, especially because with a larger site there is a chance you'll get a starchitect wannabee who wants to be creative and imaginative and prove to us that he is a genius.

UPDATE: Ultimately, and I don't mean to be cynical, but the most persuasive legal argument for limiting use of eminent domain in economic redevelopment is going to be an urban planning/design argument i.e. if liberals understood that we really don't need eminent domain to do a good job of urban planning, their support (even tepid as it is now with a lot of caveats and "Well, I guess we just have to...") for Kelo as legal doctrine will slink away. All of us -- of every stripe -- seem to be able to make up neat, logical explanations using whatever texts are at hand, to justify what we want to do if we think that the doing is crucial. Take away the imperative of eminent domain in economic development and it will be interesting to see how legal thinking will change.

Mapping the air

Wind map of the United States.

Wonder of wonders

I have never to my knowledge ever agreed with anything posted by Pejman Yousefzadeh except today in his thoughts on KELO AND ITS AFTERMATH:

I have no problem whatsoever with economic development. I love economic development. Economic development is a friend of mine. But this is utterly and completely the wrong way to go about it--both from a policy perspective and from a perspective of actually reading and hewing to original intent when it comes to takings.

My own sense of this -- and I will respond to JRoth's provocative comments (here) when I am not so tired -- is that Kelo is a decision with the possibility to catalyze further political realignment. Let's hope that the Democrats do some deep thinking and don't take the expected statist/big government response.

A little nuance might actually be useful

One blogger notes that the Kelo decison is a bad one and then wonders (you can almost hear the chaw being moved around in his mouth)

...if I'm the only person who sometimes suspects that this whole government thing is little more than a conspiracy to rip off the public ...

Kelo is indeed a very bad decision. And precisely because it is so bad, it needs to be discussed in a way that is a bit more sophisticated than as paunchy middle-aged baseball-cap white-guy (hey! that could be me!) with cant like "...this whole government thing is little more than a conspiracy to rip off the public..." The public is real happy to go to baseball stadiums -- like GW Bush's in Texas -- which used condemnation to acquire the land. So please, no aw shucks faux populism. We need useful, thoughtful, even nuanced discussion, not Hannity/Limbaugh anti-government food-fight.

•••

As to the pro pundits, I have not noticed a whole lot of remarks on Kelo but I may have missed them. (I rarely read the Op-Ed Pages now as by and large I can get as good or better stuff in the blogosphere.)  Any MSM comments worth reading?

Wow!

Smile for the Google 3D mapping truck.

Yet more on Eminent Domain

I read no dumb bloggers but these guys have got to be amongst the most astute: Urban Cartography on Eminent Domain.

Btw, in a response to a comment left by Atrios I conceded to him a tactical point. In reconsideration, that was error. (Go and read my post which attacks Eschaton.)

Purely from a tactical perspective, it seems to me that even if the good guys had joined the basically-bad guys (i.e. the Republicans) in a majority opinion, and Rehnquist has been able to assign the opinion, the good guys would still have been able to exert enormous sway because they could have left the majority at any time. Thus the opinion would have as a practical matter reprsented liberal interests which would allow --though to a more nuanced degree -- public intervention. As it is, this decision is going to precipitate a response on par with the Massachuesetts decision on gay marriage though without the moral basis on the side of the majority decision.

Edifice Complex -- What looks to be a great read

The Gutter's Review*
New Statesman 's Review
London Times' Review

* The freshest one. And by that I mean the most interesting and even wisest one. Would that I could be as cattily-nasty as The Gutter; I certainly feel that way when faced with the great excess of stupidity I see around us.

(via Veritas et Venustas)

•••

I am indeed looking forward to reading this book --and it will be one of the few I have read in ages, btw. I'd never heard of the author before a year or so ago but he seems to have come over from the dark side at the same time as some of my new urbanist compatriots are going there.

The one thing I will look for is to see if the book discusses the language which starchitects and their satrap critics use...a sort of obscurantist, pretentious, phony "discourse"...the sort of BS which Butterflies and Wheels likes to laugh at, too, though of course not with regard to the built world.

One of the reviews, btw, refers to the necessity for a starchitect to issue a "a vacuous manifesto." What a nice turn-of-phrase! I have to concede that at least so far as I know, Mr. Gehry has had the commonsense to remain silent and simply draw.

UPDATE: I have just ordered the book from Blackwell's in Britain. While Amazon says that it won't have the book until November, 2005, Blackwell's has it now. Odd.

Can you pass the smile test?

I haven't run across very many people who favor the Majority's decision in Kelo. They are out there of course --- I'd say way out there -- and if I found one with any sophistication I'd ask him/her this key question -- and it's not a legal question but simply a practical one:

Why do you need the ability of being able to
condemn one piece of private property
and sell it to another private owner?

Not in theory because you can come up with some possible scenario of how to make the world a better place. Let's get real. What do you want to do that would be prohibited (or at least made more difficult) if you had a higher burden? And had to show more convincingly that the condemnation served a public use? What are you really giving up?  What sort of projects do you want to do -- like maybe something similar to what GW Bush did with Arlington (TX) Stadium? -- that a tightening of the rules would prevent?

As well, can you actually provide any examples of projects which you can convincingly suggest (passing what lawyers call the "smile test" -- Can you make the argument and not smile?) would not have happened but for condemnation which transferred property from one private owner to another? Anyone know of a project which died because condemnation was not allowed? (That would apply in Washington State in particular.)

I think you'll find that that we lose nothing and gain a lot if we restrict condemnation. It is simply not even remotely essential to promote economic development.

Eschaton ought to stick to things he knows about

His take on Kelo is among the most ill-informed of any I have run across:

Yes, this is a bad decision, but we must think of what the alternative might have been. I don't know what was in the hearts of the justices who ruled the way did, they may be fully on board this apparent belief in the unlimited power of eminent domain. This is not something I support. However, the alternative could've been a conservative written opinion severely limiting the power of eminent domain and the concept of public use, which would've eviscerated a truly necessary government power.

The "alternative" could've been bad. Sure. the alternative could have still allowed eminent domain but simply raised the burden of proof on local government when there is contemplation of property transfer to a third party. The long and short is that this sort of eminent domain is simply not needed from a planning perspective. Get it, Atrios? It's not needed.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised

The same corporation which presented Herbert Muschamp as a legitimate critic on urban design also likes using the government to get hold of property it can't buy on the open market.

Blue Mass also says:

IMHO, this is a hugely important decision, maybe the most important since Bush v. Gore.

I'm not too sure about the comparison but I believe that Kelo will be a very big case and I think politically more than legally. I am still waiting to see if the Democratic Party understands that it has to choose sides.

Sad. And so unneeded.

Justices, 5-4, Back Seizure of Property for Development.

The central planning notion put forward by New London, Connecticut -- that it needs to assemble large tracts to encourage development -- is simply a lie. There is no basis to demonstrate that such assemblages even work. Economic growth -- just take a look at Seattle - does not come from government intervention in the land assembly process but from the energy and enterprise of individuals trying to something crass like make a buck. That's not to dispute that government can have some key role in creating an "environment of certainty" in which people can build and trade with security. But the idea that developers need government to help them realize an opportunity could only come from people who have no experience in real estate.

The legal notion -- that a "public purpose" is anything which, say, a 5-4 majority on a city council says it is -- is truly horrifying.

UPDATE: It is truly heartening to find so many other bloggers (and, btw, only bloggers I respect in general -- no right-wing reactionary kooks considered!) who are also appalled by the Court's decision:
Marginal Revolution
The Urban Commons
Curbed
Orin Kerr
Blue Mass. Group
Todd Zywicki
Bird to the North

And I'd better stop linking as there are probably hundreds upon hundreds of others who are also outraged.

More on CNU, "the raisin in the oatmeal" and pedestrian-oriented starchitecture6/21/05 update

"The raisin in the oatmeal." The exceptional, weird, goofy, iconic structure amidst a sea of mere urban excellence. That's what the Charter is discussing and it is on this paragraph that Stefanos Polyzoides claims to justify an urban design award to Frank Gehry:

Excerpt from the CNU Charter:

The Block, the Street and the Building # 7
Civic buildings and public gathering places require important sites to reinforce community identity and the culture of democracy. They deserve distinctive form, because their role is different from that of other buildings and places that constitute the fabric of the city.

It's saying that there are special, exceptional buildings which should be allowed to vary from the default position of the pedestrian-oriented building (i.e. allow departure from the Three Rules). Putting aside the make-weight cant of "community identity and the culture of democracy," I agree entirely. The Three Rules are merely the rebuttable presumption, the default position. Should we allow exceptions to them? Absolutely yes!

But the manner in which the Charter phrases this exception is imprecise and needs clarification and tightening up. There are at least three big problems:

Not everyone is sanguine that CNU supports starchitecture

It should be fairly obvious now that some in CNU have crossed over to the dark side and supports starchitecture. The evidence? CNU gave an award for urban design (no less!) to chief starchitect Frank Gehry. But some are troubled. 

I can't find much to justify the award except these postings (below) from Pro-Urb.  Stefanos Polyzoides makes a reasonable point: yes there is a role for the exceptional building, though of course the exception will devour the rule unless you can craft some process to sort out the exceptional from the ordinary -- every non-profit (and there are many!) will claim exemption from the normal rulesof good urban building. And since it surely must be possible to find at least one piece of pedestrian-oriented starchitecture -- an iconic/goofy/exceptional building which addresses the street-level well -- why give an award to Gehry, who represents the very worst tendencies and who is not at all pedestrian-oriented. And without explaining in the clearest possible terms why you are giving the award. The whole thing -- the Award itself and the silence around it -- is very odd. Here's what's on Pro-Urb:

From: Stefanos Polyzoides

The local CNU Host Committee, with the blessing of the national Board, gave Frank Gehry a Civic Art Award for his LA Philharmonic Building.  This had nothing to do with politics or with appeasement.

He deserved it under the principles outlined in the Charter.  Monumental buildings can attain idiosyncratic form and still be significant new urbanist presences:

The Block, the Street and the Building # 7
Civic buildings and public gathering places require important sites to reinforce community identity and the culture of democracy. They deserve distinctive form, because their role is different from that of other buildings and places that constitute the fabric of the city.

It strikes others as weird, too.

The Gutter (amusing & perceptive rumor, gossip etc about architecture) takes note of Frank Gehry, New Urbanist Hero?

I'll be posting a bit more, too. I have been trying to track down some substantive statement (or even some totally lightweight statement -- that would be more fun!) from some official source at CNU which would explain "Why?" But no luck so far. At the level of the individuals with whom I have been in contact there seems to be a (wise) reluctance to embrace the award as the messenger sometimes gets tarred by the message.

The closest I have come is a post by a CNU "founder" on a very interesting list (yes email lists still flourish even in the age of the blog) named PRO-URB. I'll post the statement later and some comment on it. But suffice it to say, "That dog don't hunt."

"We will protect the housing bubble."

No, that's not what anyone said explicitly -- and of course steady readers will know that I am dubious that there is a housing bubble at all. But this story - Pension change to kick-start housing market - gives you an idea about how financial rules can be used to support/distort/manipulate markets. I had never even thought of what it describes (below) but I am sure that people who "do finance" are way ahead and this British policy idea is being 'gamed' right now at the Fed.

Basically, and so far as I understand it, and chime-in please if I misunderstand, the British government is going to let you use before-tax dollars pounds to buy a house. That is a very, very big deal -- massive -- because it immediately increases your buying power. If my understanding is correct and if this plan were applied in the USA -- being able to buy your own home through money in an IRA -- then you can forget any notion of a housing bubble. In fact, the result would more likely be a huge explosion of prices.

It's not clear to me how such a change helps further the ostensible reason behind it - encouraging people to invest in pensions (I assume) as income-producing portfolios-- but that's another matter.

Here's the story from the London Times:

First-time buyers hoping that house prices will subside over the coming year may be disappointed, as a pensions rule change by the Government could lead to a surge of interest in buy-to-let properties which could drive property prices even higher.

On April 6 next year, residential property will be allowed to be included in personal pensions for the first time. Many experts predict that the rush of investors looking to take advantage of tax breaks of up to 40 per cent could lead to a recovery in the moribund housing market.

Genius is not godhead.

I noticed a visitor from a link at Hewn and Hammered on FLW criticism so I went back and I found a comment of mine which bears repeating, as it is applicable these days to such luminaries as Gehry, maybe especially to Gehry:

I am not saying that FL Wright was not a talented architect but simply that attaching the term "genius" to him gets in the way of assessing his work and provides an answer before a question is even stated. When someone is a "genius" there is a popular tendency to abstain from critical thinking about that person's work. "Genius" does not need the moniker.

Use of the term "genius" in reference to a specific (and living) architect preempts discussion; no criticism is allowed of genius because genius is godhead. That's not healthy as well as being preposterous. You can see how a few readers reacted when I simply suggested that one  side of LeCorbusier's great chapel was so banal -- even disconcertingly ugly in photo elevation -- that it is never shown because it would interfere with Corb's reputation. The reaction was outraged and offended. Like a religious figure, people bow down to genius and lose their critical faculties.

Design

Sometimes the comment is better than the initial post

For example, here's a comment from reader David Hsu (on It's not only architects who wonder) which bears wider circulation.

Despite the disclaimer -- "I'll confess I've been concerned that this post runs the risk of unseemly self-interest" -- Levinson's article reads more like an intense exercise in looking deeply, deeply into the navel of architectural criticism rather than an unfair swipe at other architecture critics, or any sort of call to arms.  Actually, navel gazing for architectural critics is to explore a navel within a navel: it's discussing how criticism of the subject is doubly pointless because architecture is not a widely considered topic.  The weak invitation to other approaches at the end of the article can't possibly be taken seriously:

"...it's time to enlarge the scope of mainstream architectural journalism, to move beyond the tight focus on beautiful and often remote objects and consider buildings and places of all sorts, and in terms not just of aesthetics but of technology, ecology, politics, economics, race, class, etc.

if only because she throws entire other intellectual disciplines and subjects in apropos of nothing.  Has she seriously considered that any of the disciplines that she mentions, such as technology and ecology, might have (a) entirely different aims, such as technological rationalism or development, ecological sustainability or restoration, and (b) have already moved this debate beyond where architects and their critics currently are?  There is a great deal of compelling discussion about green buildings and ecology (Hi, I'm global warming) occurring in the mainstream media but well outside of architecture.

I may be preaching to the choir here, but is it possible, just possible, that architectural criticism has reached its absolute nadir because the discussion of architecture among architects themselves is so poor?  Do we have any compelling examples of architectural discourse that go beyond the cult of celebrity (aka "star"chitecture), haphazardly borrowed theoretical concepts, fetishization of the image, self-published and self-glorifying monographs, and commission/job-hunting through endless post-rationalization? 

Levinson misidentifies the "categorical mismatch" as space when she says that the "buildings are far-flung or off-limits".  The problem is more likely time, in that architects themselves spend little time actually looking at buildings and cities well after the fact -- ten, twenty years down the road -- and evaluating what they dubiously 'achieved'.

I suspect it's an occupational hazard. Between being nice to other architects who might bring in more work and even nicer to clients who write checks, I think it's difficult for architects to say much useful or interesting about the built world. That's obviously not entirely true -- I just spent some time with a bunch of architects and at least a few had something to say. But I'd say that if you look at who, over the past 100 years has written brilliantly about cities, buildings, landscapes etc etc you won't find very many architects.

Query about Google Maps functionality

Is there a way to use Google Maps to compare specific areas as to physical size. For example, I was wondering whether Seattle was anywhere near the same size as Manhattan. (I think they are vaguely comparable but I'd like to see them superimposed, maybe even with their freeway grid or with any other "layers" shown.) And then I wondered how Capitol Hill (Seattle) related in size to the East Village (Calgary, Alberta). (Don't ask why I wonder -- these are just the sort of things I think about.) So it would be useful to be able to superimpose outlines of specific neighborhoods, towns etc etc in order to get a sense of their physical attributes. Maybe it's already there and I just missed it. As it is Google maps even offer a scale so you can do a simple visual comparison. You can count the bars on the map to tell which scale you are seeing but that's pretty crude; the geniuses at Google can no doubt do better.

Of interest mostly to golfers though anyone interested in beautiful landscape should read it

From Bauhaus to Golf Course: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of the Art of Golf Course Architecture.

via 2blowhards.com

UPDATE: I have changed the title of this posting to delete the word "terrific" because the use of that word use on another blog -- you know who you are and the it shouldn't matter to anyone else -- is so indiscriminate and applied to even the worst reactionary cant that it has debased the word for me. When everything is "terrific" "sensational" "inspired" "brilliant" then I know that the blogger can't really have actually read very carefully. It's nice to cheer-lead but I like a little critical discrimination as well.

CNU awards Gehry. Surely a jest

"Continuing its policy of embracing what works,
the CNU gave an urban design award to Frank Gehry."

Huh? Embracing what works? Embracing what works to get media ink, yes. Otherwise the suggestion is puzzling, at least. Gehry produces dramatic bread-and-circuses which divert attention and lead to no socially useful (or even interesting) discussion, which is exactly what a precious object is supposed to do: impress the wealth and power of the owner on the viewer. There is little to nothing one can learn from Gehry which isrepeatable -- there will never be a "school of Gehry" -- except that gimmickry sells and that if you want to be noticed do something freakish. And Gehry's very good at doing all that. So an architecture award, maybe. But an urban design award? Gehry is not about urban design so far as I can detect. Sounds weird.

But there are some bright people at CNU (Congress for the New Urbanism) so I'd like to understand their rationale -- the public one and the private one -- before I laugh too loud. And if I hear a good reason I will be happy to change my mind. And I will do so in public. But awarding Gehry for urban design strikes me initially as preposterous, pandering and a bit embarrassing (for CNU). Just go walk around Disney Hall and tell me if you think it deserves an urban design award. Of course maybe if your standard is Brasilia...

Now I can conjur up some sort of remote (and inaccurate) Time-magazine-level thinking such as "Gehry turns people's attentions back to the city." Now that's simply not so, of course -- Gehry does no such thing -- and if "city promotion" was the standard for an urban design award then Starbucks is far more worthy of an award.

Anyone have an insight into what CNU was doing? Even merely the story for public consumption? Just playing some obscure politics? Setting things up to ask Gehry to join the Board? Now that last might be a brilliant step. The cold, hard reality is that a great number of people think that Gehry is a big deal so having him on the CNU Board might well be a shrewd move. I am genuinely curious.

Now there is a definitely a possibility of pedestrian-oriented starchitecture. I have written on this possibility (Can a starchitect be a good urbanist?) and it is a very real one and it would be a very fine thing to see. But Gehry doesn't do pedestrian-oriented starchitecture. Maybe he could if any client had the gumption to demand it. But he hasn't (at least I don't think he has -- correct me if I am wrong) so I am mystified as to why he would deserve an urban design award. Urban design is about the sidewalk and, metonymically speaking, Frank Gehry takes a limousine into the underground parking garage (which may be the reason behind the excellence of the parking garage at Disney Hall, which excellence I noted in this blog last year, here: Disney Hall: The Good, The Bad and...the Beautiful?)

•••

Does anyone know anything about this award? The source of the information has commented here on this blog but has provided no more suggestion, elaboration, report, surmise, guess, conjecture about why CNU would do something so seemingly odd -- except that CNU likes to "embrace what works" which seem to be a pretty empty criterion (without some refinement). It would allow awards to the designers of a Wal-Mart. Google has nothing on the award. No announcement on the CNU site. Was the award privately bestowed?

The Circus Maximus Syndrome

John Tierney gets it right about the lack of wisdom of most big city public works. Most of them -- like the Koolhaas designed Seattle Public Library -- are just bread and circuses to divert attention from building what I believe voters want: as Tierney puts it: "... a neighborhood with homes and businesses and street life."

Part of the problem is that big works like a stadium or concert hall are far simpler to foster/facilitate than a neighborhood, whose creation is by and large beyond the reach of government, coming as it does out of the voluntary transactions of individuals, both residential and business. Government's only realistic role is create an environment of certainty and predictability in which individuals can live their lives. That covers a lot of ground, from basic cop-on-the-beat policing to development regulations which thread a delicate line between simultaneously encouraging new constructiona nd neighborhood stability. The deconstructivist fetish for uncertainty seems to me can only come from people who are sheltered and out of touch with the ordinary lives must of us lead, in which every day is somewhat of a new struggle. People like college professors. More on what one noted design critic said, later.

I can contradict myself.

In thinking about my prior post on mixed-income neighborhoods, I was having an internal dialog and was asking myself, "So you'd be against Seattle's Scattered Site Housing Policy?"

Now for those of you who don't know, about thirty years ago or so public housing planners realized the concentrating subsidized housing for poor people in one area was not a good idea, for anyone. So they decided to scatter the sites around the city. (Of course they didn't put such housing in the wealthy areas -- which are largely single-family, anyway -- but what they did do is a whole lot better than create enclaves of "projects.")

So to my answer my own question: "No, I wouldn't be and am not against scattered-site strategies. They do make sense. At least to me as a middle-class policy wonk."

Obviously there would be more housing for the dollar if we bought the cheapest suburban land and built huge buildings to warehouse poor people -- and that would seem to be consistent with my skepticism in the previous post about "mixed-income neighborhoods." But then we might end up with the sort of suburbs which surround Paris where even the police prefer not to go. I don't think it would be a good idea to build all the subsidized housing in one neighborhood. So in practice I support policies which lead to mixed-income neighborhoods. I guess it's just a matter of emphasis and how things are phrased. Intention is important. And the goal of scattered-site programs is not to create "mixed-income" neighborhoods per se, so far as I understand but simply to create better living environments so poor people can somehow climb up the economic ladder...by having models? By feeling part of society? Or is scattered-site housing aimed to benefit the middle class? I actually have no idea but it feels right, even though having the goal of "mixed-income" neighborhoods strikes me as an prissy excess of social guilt.

Who said I need to be consistent? It's my blog.

•••

To what degree such scattered-site programs actually work to aid anyone seems to be a subject of academic research. For example: A Comparison of Chicago's Scattered Site and Aggregate Public Housing Resident's Psychological Self-Evaluations.

Barnum would be smiling.

Brad Pitt's new career - artist:

Pitt, the 41-year-old star of movies such as Fight Club, Ocean's Eleven and Troy, is designing a restaurant and a penthouse as part of architect Frank Gehry's controversial £250m redevelopment of the Hove seafront. The actor is not a qualified designer; he studied journalism at the University of Missouri before embarking on a film career. But in interviews he has often talked about his passion for architecture and the work of leading practitioners such as Gehry and Rem Koolhaas.                                                       
Pitt and 76-year old Gehry met in 2001 and have become close friends. The actor has even taken time out from the movies to study computer-aided design during an "informal apprenticeship" at the Canadian-born architect's Los Angeles offices. In an interview with Vanity Fair last year Pitt said: "I'm really into architecture, structure and design. Give me anything and I'll design it. I'm a bit nutty with it." Pitt added: "I've got a few men I respect very much and one would be Frank Gehry. He said to me, 'If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.' That's become like a mantra for me. That's the life of the artist."

In the interests of kindness, I have closed comments.

Rich and poor in urban propinquity

The issue of rich and poor in propinquity - at least that's how I see it - has come up twice in just the past few days:

One reader wrote:

"In any case, I had just wanted to ask what you thought of Paris. I don't know the economic/aesthetic details of that city and, of course, it's not American which makes it a different model. Nonetheless, it's a city that was always devoted to insuring that a certain percentage of low income people could afford to live in each arrondissement (in attic studios, etc). I always thought that was such a great idea and have often wondered why more cities wouldn't be committed to mixed economic housing. "

Then a friend from Calgary asked:

"You mentioned social/affordable housing developed in conjunction with high-end market housing  -- in the same building or same area. Two cities were mentioned - San Fran and Seattle. Can you direct me to any info in Seattle on this initiative?"

For me, there are two separate questions here.

1. Is mixed-income housing a good idea?
2. Is mixed-income housing sustainable?

My response:

Out-of-staters...

...curious about Washington's extremely close race for governor might take a look at this piece on the Republican's pathetic Fraudulent Finish.

 

Apple: a software company? or hardware company?

The same old issue:

Mr. Jobs made it clear that he had no plans to sell Apple software to run on Windows computers. But several analysts said that because the Apple and Microsoft operating systems will be running on similar hardware, he would not be able to stop users from retrofitting Apple software to run on Windows computers.

This one has always puzzled me. And just having picked up a friend's gorgeous Dell Latitude laptop, it's obvious that Apple is not the only company able to design nice objects. So why wouldn't Apple, if it is technically possible, seize the opportunity to sell the Mac software to the 98% of the world using  Windows? Maybe the answer is obvious to people that understand the technologies.

Calgary East Village

For the past year or so I have visited Calgary, Alberta as a bit player in the development of Calgary's East Village Plan, which you can download here. It's a good plan, maybe even better than good and into visionary if you like subtlety and don't get seduced by starchitecture. To be sure, however, the Plan allows goofy buildings so long as they support street life, which is not as much of an impossibility as it sounds. (Read this post of mine about pedestrian-oriented startchitecture.)

Someone unfamiliar with Calgary's East Village could do no better than to start in with this article. I think that the author, Christoper DeWolf, makes a bit too much of the "social" issues of the East Village but it's a solid article overall.

As I blogged from Calgary last week, I was there to take part in an excellent symposium on the nature of the campus in the city. The event was sponsored by the University of Calgary which is making loud and pleasant noises about building a presence in the area -- an expansion from its traditional "campus" environment on the (relative) outskirts of Calgary.  There is a very good PDF on this "Urban Campus Initiative" somewhere on the University of Calgary web site but I can't seem to find it right now. The other speakers were terrific -- I  impressed myself that I was in such company: no joke -- and there was much spirited discussion -- some of it informed and some imaginary -- both in the formal presentations and in the interstices. The event was extremely well-organized from the  moment of invite to the hour of departure and yet without being dictatorial or over-programmed in the least. (My compliments to School of Architecture Dean Brian Sinclair and his consultants, particularly Ms. Brenda Barootes, for everything and I wish them well in th next stages of development.)

The basic issue, for me, is once again Why should and how can a major institution take part in building a walkable mixed-use neighborhood?  More later. Maybe I will post my presentation here as while it was wrtitten for Calgary and its East Village, the ideas have applicability to many cities.

Good to see that they notice

I find it interesting when non-specialists write about the built environment. Eschaton says rather insightfully:

What puzzles me is the fact that there are relatively minor changes to how we construct our suburbs which would both allow some people (not everyone probably) to reduce their degree of auto dependency while simultaneously adding a bit of nearby "small townness" for the rest of the nearby residents. One can transform an absolutely tiny piece of land into something more resembling a town - build a few blocks of mixed residential/commercial development with street level shops - without fundamentally transforming the way most people live.

Kevin Drum also notes the city.

Both posts received so many comments that I couldn't even start (to read them.)

UPDATE: I think a lot of the issues raised by these bloggers (and their commenters) would dissolve if they really got The Endless Loop Parking Lot Movie. (Be patient it's a fairly big Quick Time movie and may take up to 30-40 seconds to load but I do think it is worth it.)

I am convinced that the lessons of this movie are the key to transforming our built landscape; some people say it is "too simple." My response is that many people make city planning even more complicated than it is. (Of course if you are in the business of managing the regulatory system which manages the built environment, then complexity is a good thing.)

"...reticence becomes almost shocking..."

Alternative icons: get your new cultural buildings by stealth.

There's a bit of a civil war going on in architecture at the moment about icon buildings. The roundheads don't like 'em, the cavaliers do. When every new cultural venue aspires to be a new Guggenheim or Sydney Opera House, then reticence becomes almost shocking, like smashing statues and closing down theatres. But there is another way. You don't build new at all. You just recycle an icon building from an earlier time.  It doesn't have to be a power station. How about a redundant town hall or church?

Indeed there seems to be a demand for the spectacular, for bricks-and-mortar bread-and-circuses, for evermore stimulating frissons of architectural daring. Pearman's idea is good except that in western North America we simply don't have all that many old buildings to recycle. Reticence will have to start with the footings.

 

Idle thoughts -- that's what a blog is for, no?

In a more global vein, I have long thought that the long-term increase in housing values (and I do not use the term price because I want to get across the idea that it is not a one-way street dictated by sellers) is because of some deep awareness, stemming from the late 60s and Earth Day etc etc, that there are some limits to growth. And that, in Jacksonian terms (the historian Jackson) we have "closed the frontier" and that certain resources are finite. Market values are as much a matter of perception as reality and I think that the environmental movement transformed perception. This change has by-and-large been quite positive with the one exception that for some reason the environmental perspective tends to leave human ability to respond out of the picture. By this I mean that the self-correcting, "cybernetic" mechanisms of society -- both regulatory and market-based -- are too often put by the side and straight-line projections allowed to dictate the discussion.

Let them move -- another contrarian view.

A lot of well-meaning people are wringing their hands about the lack of affordable housing in the hot cities like Seattle, San Francisco etc etc. Of course the dramatic increases you see (at least judging from Seattle) are pretty localized to an amazingly few neighborhoods. Other areas in the region get carried along by reference to the "100% corners" but it is my observation that if you get out of Seattle the house values drop dramatically. If you go across the Cascades to small towns in Eastern Washington, many of which with full urban infrastructure, houses look "free," at least in relation to what you can buy in Seattle.

So why not stop trying to play King Canute? Don't spend public money trying to subsidize housing in major metro areas so that people can live in them. Let people move and be part of the process of revitalizing small (and even large) towns. If business has to pay higher wages in order to allow blue-collar service workers to live in the hot areas, so what? That is the market reacting. The creation of affordable housing in major cities is a hopeless task, and impossible, so don't bother. Let demand for housing help to revitalize towns and cities now oeverlooked.

Just take it to an extreme. Suppose there was a movement afoot in NYC to provide affordable housing on Sutton Place...the theory running that we need "income balanced neighborhoods" and so upper middle-class people in Queens should have some of their tax money go to subsidize lower middle-class people so they could live on Sutton Place. Idiotic idea, of course. But take it out to the regional level. Why should upper middle-class Seattleites pay to subsidize lower middle-class people? Why not let them move to Bremerton or Tacoma etc etc?

Ok. Only one tomato per reader.

Mapping the bubble: where are the biggest ones?

Some Bubbles are just Good Enough.

...the price of my house is higher not simply because the demand for my house is higher, but because the demand for houses in the general area is higher, and that demand is due to several factors, not the least of which is the limited supply of houses in walkable neighborhoods. (italics added)

That's an interesting suggestion.

Has anyone mapped the bubbles? What are the environmental characteristics of bubbles? Is it true (above) that the walkability of a neighborhood is an indicator of recent value increase? It seems to me that any forecast about whether we are in a bubble and whether it will end in a burst has to pay some pretty close attention to the location and character of bubble neighborhoods. If there is a correlation between big increases and unique physical circumstances well that's a pretty good indicator that there will probablynot be a burst. Morningstar, the fund/stock analyst, pays a lot of attention to "barriers to entry" in a particular industry. The same thing applies to real estate markets.