City Comforts, the blog

What's the proper question?

Reader Joe Wilson points me to Witold Rybczynski's review of a book on sprawl, wherein Witold offers:

What this iconoclastic little book demonstrates is that sprawl is not the anomalous result of American zoning laws, or mortgage interest tax deduction, or cheap gas, or subsidized highway construction, or cultural antipathy toward cities. Nor is it an aberration. Bruegmann shows that asking whether sprawl is "good" or "bad" is the wrong question.

Witold hints that there is a right question. Yet he neglects to suggest — and I know that he knows — its precise formulation. Of course readers of this blog know the question. And even  a bit of the answer. So no point repeating it...

UPDATE: Benjamin Hemric asks and answers nicely, in comments. Here's my own test:

Suburban expansion is ok so long as what you build out there at the urban fringe is something you can walk to and in.

UPDATE 2: The more I consider the test, above, the better I like it.

Free wi-fi over a five-county area

A High-Tech Hot Spot in Oregon's High Desert.

Maybe LeCorbusier does indeed bear some responsibility

Do the statistics support the theory of Revolting High Rises:

Meanwhile, people in Marseille, which has one of the heaviest concentrations of immigrants' children in France, were relieved that their city was left mostly unscathed when those children staged a nationwide uprising. What is different about Marseille, residents say, is that it is too hemmed in by mountains and sea to ship its poor to the outskirts. Executives, entrepreneurs and others who don't have to punch the clock are the ones who live farther out - in Aix-en-Provence, for instance, which is reachable by fast trains. Marseille is not like most French cities, where the urban core is made up of neatly tended architectural treasures and the disorder is pushed to the periphery. It is turned inside out, so that "inner city" and "suburbia" retain their American connotations. That may have spared Marseille a lot of problems.

I'd like to hear more about the connection between the riots and their venues.

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Link thanks to Benjamin Hemric

Goldberger on Gawthmey

Even the small controversy around the Astor Place building was enough to interest me in accepting John Massengale's suggestion that I read Paul Goldberger's analysis. (Like almost everyone else, I too am tempted to stop at the scene of the accident.)

I have pulled out what I think are Goldberger's key passages:

Gwathmey's site, at the corner of Astor Place and Lafayette Street, is nearly as free and open as that of the Flatiron Building. Framed by streets on three sides, it faces a large, open intersection containing one of the city's best-known pieces of public sculpture: Tony Rosenthal's black cube, "Alamo." The site dominates this part of downtown the way the Plaza anchors the southeast corner of Central Park.

Gwathmey responded to this opportunity with a piecemeal design: a four-layer cake. A chunky trapezoidal base is topped by a twenty-one-story section of curved glass; above this rests a boxy minitower, which is crowned by another curved section.

To some degree these comments parallel my own reactions -- though only from glancing at a few images on-line, I confess -- except for one thing: Goldberger seems to gloss over the manner in which the building meets the sidewalk i.e. it does.  Goldberger should have paid far more attention to the "chunky trapezoidal base" because its existence is the important thing about the project. I haven't seen it, of course, but what must be hammered home time and again is that what's important about an urban building is what happens within 30 feet (or so) of the property line and how people respond to it as pedestrians. Goldberger of course, far more than the fellows who followed him at The New York Times, is sensitive to the building as a piece of urban planning but I am surprised -- from a great distance -- that he doesn't seem to give it any credit for even being on the path of good urban design.

Too complicated to have legs

I am dubious that projects which require so much planning can have a significant future. Complexity is the enemey of the good.

The idea seems common-sense, to build housing on top of park-and-ride lots so residents can just zip downstairs and get on a bus and go.

Yes. But...

Read the article.

Astor Place's Gleaming New Face:

Madame de Sevigne once remarked that young people, as long as they are not positively deformed, have something attractive about them. And new buildings, as long as they are in conformity with the regnant style of the day, have some provisional interest by virtue of their contemporaneity. But once that style has passed, how paltry those buildings seem that can boast no other aesthetic value than that they were once of their day.

Here's an image -- does it have any relation to what is built? -- which I pulled down from Google and which shows a decent urban building:

Update: See the comments.

Unfortunately the retail space was rented (I gather) to a bank but that is not an architectural issue but a flaw in the zoning code etc etc.

Speaking of simplicity

Veritas et Venustas.

What struck me walking around the Quarter was how simple the beautiful urbanism and architecture are. The streets are primarily a simple grid. The buildings have simple massing and common and inexpensive materials and details. New Orleans is one of the greatest and most unique American cities, but in terms of the streets and buildings, designing a place like the Quarter is not difficult, and neither is building it.

"They all want to get credit for creating something really astounding."

In China, Wholesale Urban Flight.

Perhaps only in a country like China are such large-scale urban projects even possible. That's because local officials enjoy the same sweeping powers held by the government's top central planners.

While much of the world marvels at China's manufacturing prowess, what is more striking is the physical renaissance rolling across the urban landscape, led by city planners, architects, housing crews and construction companies.

Old urban centers - most of them frozen in time since the Communist Party took over in 1949 - are being demolished, millions of residents are being relocated, and construction crews are fanning out to build the cities of tomorrow.

In Shanghai, the government is clearing 1,300 acres of riverfront land and relocating about 50,000 residents and more than 270 factories, including the country's largest shipyard, to build a site for the World Expo to be held in 2010.

Out west, in the city of Kunming, there are plans to create three new areas that will ring Dian Chi Lake, doubling the city's size to five million by 2020.

In Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, the city hired a Japanese designer to develop a master plan for a new 58-square-mile town.

And in Changchun, the capital of Jilin Province in the north, the city government and the central business district are also being relocated to a new city center.

"Every government wants to do big things, and they want them done fast, while they're still in office," says Eva Wang, who runs EWS, a Shanghai-based architecture firm. "They all want to get credit for creating something really astounding."

No wonder they hire people like Rem Koolhaas.

Uh...yes

So now what?

After rejecting the monorail project, and in reflecting on how to serve the transit needs now left unmet, we may realize how much sense it made to try to build a monorail.

That's the Seattle P-I posing a question which I wish it had shouted over the past 3 months.

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In the wake of the defeat of the monorail, the new fad is bus-rapid transit (BRT). The Stranger starts to explain why it's a Fast-Lane Fallacy, at least insofar as urbanized Seattle is concerned.

One flaw: dedicating lanes on existing arterials to BRT -- which would most likely be the curb lane on Seattle's narrow arterials -- means that any street with BRT can not have on-street parking. Thus such an arterial can never be a pedestrian-oriented place. Imagine the delights of sitting at a sidewalk cafe with buses rushing by at 40 miles per hour. Not. It will become an urban highway.

The Dialectic is insatiable

The Slatin Report.

Such virtuosity begins to ring hollow, because it solves no problems and addresses addresses no issues beyond its own composition and construction.  Assessing a design problem requires an open mind, taking the largest possible view of both the immediate site and the urban-design implications for surrounding buildings and spaces. But Gehry can only design in one mode, and that is the starring role, belting out show stoppers at the top of his lungs. He is the Ethel Merman of architecture.

The problem with starchitecture is (at least) two fold:
1. It diverts public attention/discussion from the mundane elements of the street -- the details which actually count in creating the urban experience.
2. It encourages a suspension of critical thinking because of the presumptive and well-touted "genius" of the designer.

Ringing phrases...but some examples, please.

From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...:

The thrust of local government in cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver has been social engineering and the politics of victimology, rather than excellence in service delivery for taxpaying property owners.

Cutting edge is not good enough.

Western Architects Push the Envelope in Beijing: "Whatever people think of the design, most agree that it's on architecture's cutting edge."

It gets Stranger

I was puzzled, even astonished, at The Stranger's odd passivity and silence in the run-up to the recent vote in Seattle on whether or not to go forward with the monorail. Go back and look at the issues: not much there; no cheer-leading etc etc. Now that the election is over, however, and the monorail lost, it makes good press. Very good press indeed.

What's really strange -- and suggests whole lot of crocodile tears on the part of The Stranger -- is that while it slams the Mayor now, just three weeks ago -- knowing full-well his stance on the Monorail -- it endorsed him for re-election. What kind of games go on here?

Brad DeLong is worried...

...that we have too many houses and don't have enough factories, office buildings and schools.

The argument against the mortgage interest deduction (for housing) is that it skews the market....encourages people to buy a residence (free-standing or attached.) The test offered is that we don't have enough "factories, office buildings and schools." I haven't noticed a particular lack of any of those structures.

It could well be that the mortgage interest deduction is not a good idea in some ultimate sense -- but there are far higher priorities: the politics are so intractable that why even discuss it? Except as a purely academic exercise?

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Btw, the permalinks at Brad DeLong's site don't seem to be working, at least I couldn't figure them out. So you'll have to scroll down to try to find the post.

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Here's another point. It seems to me that if we get rid of the home mortgage interest deduction we are disadvantaging buyers versus renters...Which I do not think is a good idea. I think that there is in fact a real social benefit from having people invested in their neighborhood.

Btw, that disadvantage assumes continued deductibility of interest payments for business investments (e.g. an apartment building).  And to even consider so enormous a change in our economy -- interest payments not deductible as a business expense -- that I can't grasp the consequences. But it would seem to go along with some deep libertarian notions of getting rid of government and taxation entirely.

Silver lining?

New Orleans: New Urbanism?

New Urbanism will be the salvation of post-Katrina New Orleans. Or perhaps it will lead to the Big Easy's complete demise. When planning pundits discuss the future of this battered city, New Urbanism is the dominant concept.

No irony in its name today.

Beware the many errors in this post about the Seattle monorail at Two, Many Blowhards.

The Seattle monorail (existing and erstwhile) is a worthy topic; it illuminates a host of urban planning issues and problems; there is much to learn from the mistakes made in our local Seattle effort and plenty of blame to go around for what has turned out to be a fiasco. But the author (above) freely admits that he really doesn't know much about the subject -- yet he has firm opinions about it. (Of course isn't that a decent definition of a blowhard? One who has scant knowledge but nevertheless has a firm opinion?)

Torture as American policy

If you haven't been following Andrew Sullivan and his posts on torture as the current basis of GW Bush foreign policy, you should. Every real American should be concerned.

I went to the movies last night

Capote.

Well-worth watching. Philip Seymour Hoffman should get (at least) an Academy Nomination for his portrayal of Capote, who was very human, though not a particularly nice person. (Or am i being redundant.) Everyone else was excellent, too. Catherine Keener was especially terrific as Harper Lee.

More food for thought on the French riots: Blame it on LeCorbusier?

There is certainly more to the riots than bad design but consider this story from The Toronto Star:

Why Caravelle escaped riots.

"They didn't burn any cars — it was really surprising. Maybe they've changed their whole way of thinking. The place is certainly not as wild as it used to be," he added yesterday.

Bellouti credits the dramatic shift in attitude to a major change in Caravelle's physical appearance — a transformation touted as central to solving troubles plaguing France's isolated public housing compounds.

Racism against French citizens of immigrant backgrounds, along with unemployment and dropout rates significantly higher than the national average, had much to do with the anger that triggered the worst French riots in decades.

But the layout of many of France's public housing complexes, particularly the 1 million rent-capped apartments in impoverished suburban zones, is recognized as a contributing source of alienation and crime

....Driving many of the designs were the modernist views of legendary Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who urged the building of "mass production houses," describing them as "machines for living.

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Link courtesy Hans in Toronto.

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Of course there is no question that there is a stream of anti-Semitism in French society  -- and has been for centuries -- and now manifest by many French Muslims and to the degree that that is part of the riots, it's preposterous to lay that at the drawing board of LeCorbusier.

Same old tune?

More on the East River site: "...what's planned seems to be towers in a park.".

Another dog that didn't bark?

Josh Feit offers a brief but provocative perspective in The Stranger:

What's interesting to me about the French riots is that they strike a totally different note than other instances of Muslim dissent that have erupted in the 21st Century. In this instance, America isn't the villain, but seems, in fact, to be the ideal.

I have no idea how much basis there is to this view -- Feit offers only one quote and that from a Spanish Muslim -- but as Feit points out "the rioters aren't burning American and Israeli flags and blaming all their problems on the West."

So this POV -- very much a surprise to me -- is certainly worth investigating. Are there any more facts which would support (or weaken) Feit's suggestion?

Some very pleasant news

Estimable Arts & Letters Daily has just added City Comforts Blog to its weblog list.  (Scroll down the left-hand weblog column and look for my name: David Sucher.) I take the linking as high praise and I am flattered.

Inveterate pessimist that I am, however, my second thought (after the great pleasure of the acknowledgment) was that now I have to take City Comforts Blog a bit more seriously: check the spelling, straighten my tie/polish my shoes and offer fewer wild and/or harsh remarks, etc etc. After all, more people may be reading and why offend perfectly-nice-though-misguided persons etc etc...

Daniel Drezner, quoting someone named Weatherson, reflected about such caution just after Drezner received tenure at Tufts:

While some believe tenure allows more freedom for a blogger, Weatherson said that if your audience grows, that — not tenure status — may be the factor that leads to restraint online. "The more widely the blog gets read the more cautious I am about saying something critical of anyone without quite a lot to back up the criticisms," he said. "Basically these days I can assume that anything I say critical of anyone in philosophy will get back to them, and I write as if the target of the criticism will be reading. So I probably hold back a little more than I did pre-tenure, when sometimes I would assume that the blog would just remain among friends."

Now getting linked-to by A&LD is not nearly as profitable as getting tenure. But for a non-institutionalized observer (I have no affiliation whatsoever with any large institution of any kind except that I vote in the City of Seattle), any sort of recognition by mainstream academia-types is gratifying.

Why does...

Why does Arts & Letters Daily continue to give Joel Kotkin's straw-man attacks any notice? (I think Joel, whom I have met and like personally, is one A&LD's favorites, unless I misremember.)  "There is no there, there." I challenge Kotkin to document any major city which has adopted cool-cities/creative-class policies.

"From London and Berlin to Sydney and San Francisco, civic authorities agree that the key to urban prosperity is appealing to the "hipster set" of gays, twentysomethings and young creatives. But the only evidence for this idea comes from the dot-com boom of the late 1990s—and that time is over."*

That is simply not so.  And to underscore the lack of factual basis, observe that Kotkin's article contains many broad assertions but offers NO corroboration from the cities themselves: adopted policies, budgetary data, or whatever one would use to document such a claim as he makes.

I am writing this, of course, as an observer of a blue city -- Seattle. While one can argue with the effectiveness of Seattle government response to almost any problem facing the city -- and I do -- the idea that our elected leadership has adopted a cool-cities/creative-class position is far-fetched.

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* That's the sub-head and Kotkin may not have written it but it does sum up the sense of the article pretty well.

The most telling argument againt Kelo:

Eminent domain for "economic development" doesn't work/isn't needed

...More important, they have also failed to notice that, over its long history, this practice has almost never worked. The Court's decision fails not just on moral but also on utilitarian grounds.

Polyzoides lays it out nicely.

A New Urbanist Responds to Architects' Cliches

Maybe so indeed!

More people is safer.

...maybe New Haven's solution should not be to encourage people to stay off the streets at night. Maybe the optimum is the reverse-- a subsidy program for those who walk near Yale at night, under the theory that the more people who walk, the safer the whole place will be?

More practical insights from the economists

How to ask for a hotel upgrade.

Google should link to local government records such as property surveys, building permit applications etc etc and etc

Google may do real estate:

Among the many projects being developed and debated inside Google is a real estate service, according to a person who has attended meetings on the proposal. The concept, the person said, would be to improve the capabilities of its satellite imaging, maps and local search and combine them with property listings. The service, this person said, could make house hunting far more efficient, requiring potential buyers to visit fewer real estate agents and houses. If successful, it would be another magnet for the text ads that appear next to search results, the source of most of Google's revenue.

Don't laugh. (But do check the date.)

Blair announces abolition of elections.

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Via Samizdata

And now we get to the really important question

What Credit Card Should I Choose?

And I am not entirely joking. I love these little essays on nitty-gritty middle-class topics.

Worth logging

Jumpy Enough to Chew a Chair? Try DogCatRadio.

The rise of the ivory tower lawyer

My concern about Samuel Alito -- and this would apply to a liberal nominee as well -- is that he has never held a job outside government. He is an ivory tower lawyer. Like Rehnquist and Roberts and many others, he appears to me to be a "statist." He has been "instutionalized" all his working life. That's of as much or more concern to me than his position on any one particular issue.

1976 - 1977 - Law clerk for Leonard I. Garth of the Third Circuit.
1977 - 1981 - Assistant United States Attorney, District of New Jersey.
1981 - 1985 - Assistant to Solicitor General Rex E. Lee.
1985 - 1987 - Deputy Assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese.
1987 - 1990 - United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey.
1990 - 2005 - Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
1999 - 2004 - Adjunct Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey.

Apart from the manner in which Miers presented herself, I was favorably impressed that she might have actually met and billed a real live individual client. Apparently Alito never has.

Cass Sunstein writes about "Alito's deference to established institutions.