City Comforts, the blog

Pretty interesting

Climate Change Case to Justices.

The Supreme Court entered the debate over global warming Monday, agreeing at the urging of environmentalists to rule on whether emissions from new cars, trucks and power plants must be further regulated to slow climate change.

The court's action gave a surprising, if tentative, boost to 12 states, including California, and a coalition of environmentalists who say the federal government must restrict the exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming. Their appeal accused the Environmental Protection Agency of having "squandered nearly a decade" by failing to act.

Is creativity still "in?"

Robin Hanson says that "Creativity is 'in' ".

But I don't think the word "in" is still "in" and hasn't been for years. No? And so I wonder about his whole argument.

People are blogging about

Social Isolation in America. Some want to frame it as Sprawl and Isolation. Having lived in both city and suburb, I tend to favor the view that isolation is independent of settlement patterns. But who knows.

Bush Backs Kelo

Another Failure of the Kelo Backlash - President Bush's Executive Order on Takings

Prof. Somin makes the point that the putative benefits of eminent domain "...can usually be achieved by methods other than coercion..."

I happen to agree. Many people argue for eminent domain when it is not even essential (and in fact is usually counterproductive when you are talking about neighborhood revitalization.)

The larger legal issue interests me as well as it seems to me that the Professor is in essence arguing for an extension of a "least intrusive means test" to all government action and to breaking down the wall between "fundamental rights" and economic rights and the special, heightened review given by Courts to the former.

But such a move would reverse 80 years of Supreme Court decision-making. No? It could involve Courts in reviewing the efficacy of every local zoning ordinance. In theory, some Environmental Policy Acts (Washington State's) do something similar when they require a review of "alternatives to the proposed action" but I am not aware that our Courts have ever stepped in to require the adoption of a "least impacting alternative."

At least so far as architecture and urban planning are concerned...

...words lose their meaning when formed to state:

"...people whose primary framework is modernism are by definition liberals.

The implication might then be that the big-box store is one of the triumphs of liberalism. Or it might be that the work of Gehry, Koolhaas and Hadid is "liberal." Such a statement, to me, is a complete degradation of language, completely arbitrary, and making "liberalism" anything you like or don't like.

The writer also says:

In post-war architecture, there are some splendid buildings, such as the Seagram Building in New York City, yet these buildings have broken with the Western Tradition. In the past, the Tradition went through all kinds of changes, for example, Victorian was succeeded by Beaux Arts which was succeeded by Art Deco. Yet each of these very different styles was, in its own way, based in and continuous with the Tradition. Modernist architecture breaks with the Tradition; it conveys nothing of the past.

True and that is because it is automobile-oriented. The stylistic differences (e.g. no columns) are not the critical elements which separate the modern from the traditional city. The big difference between the traditional city is that the modern one is built around the car. So if you want to call Henry Ford a liberal, go ahead. But at that point words really have no meaning.

•••

via  2 blowhards.

Focussing on what counts in urban design

Walkable Eastwood (Syracuse, NY)

(I mean the location of the parking lot, of course.)

Assessing Zaha Hadid

Witold Rybczynski sums up Zaha and her crowd.

Instead of order out of chaos, they have strived mightily to create chaos out of order. The result is dissatisfying.

Recommended to me but not by my compatriot-in-arms for beauty and truth, A.C. Douglas.

Glorying in the unpleasant

Does CultureGrrl let slip the sensibility and expectation, prevalent in certain cultural circles, behind all that ghastly shockitecure?

But am I parochial in thinking that a museum known for displaying edgy American art might have sought to engage an edgy American architectural firm?

Uh...bad comparison

In determining whether a former Guantanamo detainee was a Jihadist or Victim, a former military interrogator put it this way:

"We compared him to somebody who went off to Spain during the civil war — more of a romantic than some sort of ideologically steeled fighter."

What an odd way to compare an accused-Jihadist i.e. with people who went to help the Republican loyalists fight Franco's Fascists. I don't know if the people who went off to fight the Fascists in Spain were particularly naive. In fact, they obviously weren't and they knew that Franco and his Nazi backers were a danger to civilization. They were the correct ones and had taken an accurate measure (as if it took a great deal of intelligence) of the impending danger.

It's actually quite easy to understand if you've seen Disney Hall

An open letter to Frank Gehry, by Jonathan Lethem:

I've been struggling to understand how someone of your sensibilities can have drifted into such an unfortunate alliance, with such potentially disastrous results.

Surprise!

Transportation officials say 520 bridge in jeopardy.

"This bridge is in jeopardy. This bridge is aging. This bridge needs to be replaced," said Dave Dye, urban corridors administrator with the Washington state Department of Transportation, in a tour with politicians, media and community members.

More than 6,000 feet of cracks in the walls of the bridge were the most obvious signs that the structure, now in its fifth decade, is reaching the end of its useful life. (italics added)

They sure don't build things the way they used to in the great days of American craftsmanship in the 1950s and '60s.

"The Fort Knox of seeds."

World's Agricultural Legacy Gets A Safe Home:

The "doomsday vault," as some have come to call it, is to be the ultimate backup in the event of a global catastrophe -- the go-to place after an asteroid hit or nuclear or biowarfare holocaust so that, difficult as those times would be, humankind would not have to start again from scratch.

Even the cathedral has a drive-in entrance

Someone is Nuts about Brasilia.

Born at a time when fuel was cheap and plentiful, Brasilia is a city where the car is king and pedestrians regularly have to cross six-lane highways. Monumental avenues spin off into seamless slipways shaped like four-leaf clover, deeming traffic lights unnecessary. My car didn't stop once on the journey from airport to hotel. Even the cathedral has a drive-in entrance. In the Palácio do Itamaraty, built in 1962 for Brazil's Foreign Ministry, there is an exclusive internal ramp that allows top brass to motor right up to offices on the upper floor.

The 1950s were a bad time to build a new city.

This is a residential superblock:

I guess I will have to see it for myself.

Dear Bill...

...I'd start by making sure that your new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters manifests — in every obvious and subtle way — your goals.

Its physical presence is a not some frill, besides the point in your real work, but is an immediate manifestation of the foundation's essence. So far as I understand it, your focus is global health. So if you want to shake things up, consider the design of your buildings as a part of the task of making healthy cities.

To cut to the chase. Do not build an isolated suburban campus. You've already made the right decision to locate in the heart of Seattle. Now take the next step and take part in the city. Provide an example of how a major institution can integrate itself into the fabric of a city. Go beyond "green" buildings — which I think are de rigeur these days for any deep-pocketed organization — and into urban form:  the way your buildings are arranged and designed to either take part in the city or to turn away from it. (I've also posted on this issue here.)

The connection is of course that urban form relates intimately to environmental "sustainability" and natural resource use and thus to global health which is so much more than vaccines, not to diminish their importance, of course. Your headquarters — which will be visited by people from all over the globe —  should offer the best possible example of how to do things right. An isolated suburban-style automobile-oriented "campus" doesn't cut it anymore.

Instapundit is easily persuaded when he wants to be

Glenn says:

WITH WAL-MART SELLING ORGANIC FOOD and fair-trade coffee, what new reasons will the haters find for hating 'em? I'm sure they'll come up with some.

Tunnel's a loser

Viaduct Poll Numbers show Tunnel about even with the Viaduct — and they haven't even told people how much they'll have to pay in new taxes. Lots of interesting comments at the link.

Yes!

Quieter I-5 asphalt to be tested.

Only Tyler Cowen would ask such a question

When should you show up to a party early?

Often the contrarian. Often correct.

Local politics is land use politics all around the globe

Paris Planning.

The future of one of the world's most visited and most admired cities will be shaped today by an acrimonious meeting of the Paris city council.

Proposals put forward by the Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe -- carving out a large, new park in north-western Paris and creating new spaces for offices -- will be angrily opposed by his Green and Communist allies.

The Communists believe that Paris should build upwards, allowing large forests of skyscrapers on its periphery for the first time.

The Greens and others want the city to spread outwards, rubbing away the physical and psychological barriers between Paris and its vibrant but sometimes troubled suburbs.

It's fascinating but not surpising to me that the land use battles sound so similar everywhere, both in substance and in rhetoric. And when I think back to when I served on some Design Review commission in Seattle and people from areas built largely in the same era and of the same density etc etc insisted that they needed completely different design review codes to express the "spirit and uniqueness" of their neighborhoods....I tried to explain the Three Rules but it was far too simple. There seemed to be a universal desire to make the code complicated as if adding more rules showed you cared.

Makes sense to me

The Stranger discusses what it calls "The Licata Option":

The fundamental debate here is tunnel or no tunnel. The other options share a common theme: We can afford them. (And in the case of the boulevard option—we’re going to be without the the viaduct for 3 to 5 plus years anyway, so, we’ve already got an “adapt to life without a freeway” plan in the docket.)

The tunnel, however, is a a dreamy option. It’s attractive and compelling—maintain capacity while redeveloping the waterfront and reconnecting downtown to the water. But it’s financially daunting. Estimates are between $3 and $6 billion. Voters should be asked in isolation if they want to go for it. If they do, then the Mayor and the council can move forward w a mandate to push the envelope. If the voters don’t go for it, we’re back where we started, looking at less dramatic options that we can afford and the council can sort through on their own.

UPDATE: At first glance such a vote seemed like a good idea to me. But a flaw quickly emerges. The issue "tunnel or no tunnel" can be easily re-framed so that the question appears to be "Should we have an open waterfront?" I don't think you can control the public framing of a public vote. I saw such morphing right away in comments to the The Stranger's blog post.  

And such a re-framing gets us nowhere. Even I (a tunnel opponent) agree that it would be nice to have an open waterfront. People who don't follow these matters closely — the vast majority — can be easily swayed. No, I don't think that local government is going to be able to solve this issue on its own. There is not enough money and too many options.

Framing the urban design issue

The world's largest foundation, The Gates Foundation, is starting to plan a new headquarters on twelve acres of very central urban Seattle. Its headquarters could become — both because of the prominent location and also the cachet of the Gates Foundation — a model for institutional urban redevelopment. Its headquarters could and should manifest the goals of the Foundation in its very design. To me that means it should be a part of the city fabric, not merely located in the city as an applique.

Locals are starting to anticipate the design with only tepid curiousity. (Read the comments.)

But will Seattleites understand the importance of framing the design goal? As either producing a "campus," isolated from the city, or better, a new urban neighborhood heavily-influenced by one institution? Not likely. I blogged about the question here: Why call it a campus? and I recommend that you follow the links.

Lame out of the gate

By attempting to limit debate in a manner designed to lead to only one answer — the Tunnel — the Council and Mayor now oversee a process spinning out of control. The vote planned for this coming November was a "beauty contest" — not an authorization for funding —  among two options:  the Tunnel and the Total Rebuild. The Council has been under heavy pressure to add the Surface Option and to a lesser degree, the Retrofit. They are realizing that having four options on the ballot could be a problem. The Council now debates

Should there be a public vote?

What happens if the Seattle City Council places an Alaskan Way Viaduct advisory vote on the November ballot and there is no winner? That prospect is so troubling that some council members say they should make the recommendation about how to replace the viaduct without asking the voters.

That's all very well but no one trusts the Council to make an informed decision. This is by far the single biggest financial decision the City has ever made. No matter what decision they make — three out of the four of them still unfunded — it will be met with  years of lawsuits and citizen initiatives. If they frame the decision in such a manner as to make citizen initatives impossible they merely compound their problems.

Remember, it is now over five years since the Nisqually Earthquake. We are certainly not under construction. We don't even have a physical plan. And now, much more embarassing, we don't even have a decision-making process. I see this as yet one bit of evidence that we are moving toward the Governor choosing the option which offers the least political fallout for her and Stae-wide Democrats: a declaration of an emergency followed by work to Retrofit the Viaduct.

Governor Gregoire, are you listening?

Is there any demand for CO2 Emissions?

John Quggin offers this remark:

Given a reasonable long-run elasticity of demand for C02 emissions, there’s every reason to suppose that very large reductions in global emissions could be achieved in the long run...

I don't question the premise that we can do something about global climate change and that tax policy may have a part. I have a much narrower concern —  to make sure I understand the economics terminology.

I just can't quite get my head around the idea that there is any demand for CO2 emissions, much less an elastic one which would vary with price. No one, to my knowledge, actually desires to buy CO2 emissions. We buy particular things whose use or manufacture produces CO2 emissions. So I wonder if it is proper to speak of an "elasticity of demand for C02 emissions?"

(The notion of "elasticity" for economists is that demand for a product or commodity will vary depending on its price. Something with a high elasticity of demand — that second piece of chocolate cake — is very subject to price. If it's free, I'll be a fool and eat it. But demand for air to breathe, for example, under certain conditions is very inelastic. (At least that's my understanding.)

So yes, there is demand for products and services which produce CO2 emissions as a byproduct — like driving your car — and that demand may well be elastic. In fact I am quite sure it is from my own experience. Given enough time to adjust ones habits, you'll drive less if there is $3/gallon "environmental tax" on gasoline. But no one actually desires (aside from a small industrial market) to purchase CO2 (much less CO emissions per se. which are probably filled with all sorts of heavy metals etc etc). Right? We only buy things which produce such emissions as a byproduct. Or am I misunderstanding the economic concepts? (Just trying to tune in to the Al Gore issue.)

The rich get richer

And the already-developed areas get more developed. Rural areas, including their small towns, have been declining in population and population density for several hundred years. I think this is happening world-wide and there has been flow to the cities since the late 18th century when mechanization started to make farming less labor-intensive.

Economic growth is not spread-about equally and while, for example, the Puget Sound region of Washington State is generally booming (and not even all of it by any means) the eastern side of the state is definitely in the doldrums. A neighbor takes a weekend drive over the Cascades and notices that hope springs eternal but is sometimes dashed.

Ellensburg is currently riding out what looks like a slump on the far side of hope. A few years ago they spruced things up, painted some murals, did up their remaining Victorian building stock, and got ready for a cowtown tourist boomlet that never happened. Kind of sad, really; lots of empty storefronts, and some others that looked like they were open only because they couldn't find the keys. We bought a coffee from a hippie, possibly his only retail transaction of the day, and looked sadly around the antique stores.

The significance of this is that the USA has many small towns and cities built in the late 19th and early 20th century which are in a long-term decline. Our country could accommodate many millions of immigrants in these places -- they often have fine infrastructure, much of it "New Urbanist" before there was New Urbanism i.e. they are traditional "Main Street" places. It's too bad they are declining and it's equally too bad that any government program to help them would probably be a waste of money. They've lost their life-force. People leave because there are no jobs and because there are no jobs no one moves there. There is no government program which can reverse this trend without massive and continuing subsidy. There is no such thing as priming the regional economic pump so that it is self-sustaining over a long period of time. This long-term rural decline is bigger than both of us, baby, and no one has the foggiest idea of how to reverse it.  If there is ever a rural revival in the USA it will happen because of the actions of individuals, not agencies.

I've often thought about the possibility of moving to some small town. Maybe even in the midwest. Iowa, say. Or the Sand Hills of Nebraska. And so long as it had a regional airport not too far away, and even more importantly, high-capacity broad-band internet, it would seem like a nice idea. Some of the towns are quite pleasant and the housing — so I gather — is amazing. You can buy a serviced nice-sized lot for $15,000. But then I think of the social life. There are so few people in a declining rural area. (Uh...yeah.) I have a tough-enough time finding simpatico people in a population of six hundred thousand. It would probably be a nightmare to live in a town of six thousand. At least so I assume. And judging by the continual influx of single people to large metropolitan areas, I am not alone in my judgment.

Making a virtue of consumption?

If you live without a car, you are a "moocher." So says Mossback. Difficult to live without a car in Seattle? Probably. But a moocher? Silly.

The odd thing about his post is that he doesn't merely suggest (as if that would be some great insight) that Seattle-without-a-car is tough. That's obvious. But he goes further and suggests that it is somehow immoral not to have a car....in fact one is a hypocrite and...a "moocher." Strange post.

My neighbors take notice and comment here, here and here.

Sometimes the comments are better than the post

It has happened to me here on this blog, and more than once.

It is terrific that The Stranger has an urban sensibility. It's has more and usually far better urban design writing than do the two Seattle dailies much less its direct media competition, The Seattle Weekly.

But it is not so terrific when one of its best writers posts in a manner which turns every building into a Very Large Scale Sculpture, a precious object.

The good news is that some of its readers are aware — in fact they should be writing for the paper, not just commenting. Here's an example, a comment on the post linked-to above:

Once again, Charles, you form all of your reactions to tall buildings by looking up, which is the least important factor in how a building works. The important thing, as another commenter has mentioned here before but which appears nowhere in your description or photographs, is how the building addresses the street. You mention a "sense of fullness" but not any actual human emotions.

Does the building address the other buildings next to and across from it? Are the entrances easy to find and to use (no "pull"-style handles on "push" doors, for instance). Does it enhance the roomlike qualities of the street, or does it oppress pedestrians? Are there blank walls? Block-long multi-story blank walls? Are the underground parking exits designed for visibility both by and from pedestrians? Is every square inch of the ground floor facade filled with retail, as it should be?

These are the kinds of things that actually matter with tall buildings, and are so often forgotten or done incorrectly.

I don't know if I even expect you to see them, Charles, since you are appear to be a big fan of alienation and anomie. But most people are not.

I'd like to hear the specifics

Growth Management Drives Up Our Housing Prices

and

The result of loosening growth management restrictions here somewhat need not be an inexorable march of densely-packed subdivisions all the way to Ellensburg. A better balance must be found than exists now.

Letter from Ted Mills

Dave,

I thought you might be interested in this "100 worst views of Japan" site. It's from Mari - diary: Bad Landscapes in Japan which says:

"The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Government of
Japan will enforce a new law about "landscape" this December. The new law will protect the landscape and will confine the disorderly new building, advertising panels, etc. Before the enforcement of the law, some specialists established an adviser group. Now they have made a site "Utukushi Keikan.net." They show 70 bad landscape samples in Japan. During the immediate aftermath of WW2, Tokyo was burnt ruins. This city was built without a clear plan during ultrarapid growth after WW2, it's just 60 years or so."

Some of Japan is beautiful (I lived there for two years). A lot of it
is complete ass, with eyesores everywhere. I thought it was
interesting that a government ministry would put out a page that reads
like James Kunstler. I have put it through Babelfish so you could have
a look: The meeting which makes beautiful view -- bad view 100 scene

Knowing the history of their corrupt construction industry and the
Japanese "let's not complain" bureaucratic attitude, this was quite
revelatory. Now let's see if they can implement anything...

Thanks, Ted.

A clarification

Don't take my support for the Retrofit to reflect a belief that getting rid of the Viaduct is not a nice idea. But there are lots and lots of nice ideas in the world and we can't act on all of them. So my opposition to the Tunnel (I am less opposed to the amorphous and vague "Surface Option" simply because it is so unclear) should not suggest that removing the Viaduct is a "bad" as opposed to "nice" idea. It's possible to think that something is a "good idea" and still decline to do it because there is an even better idea on which to spend the money.  It's like dating: just because I decline to date you doesn't mean that you are not a fine person.

As I have stated many time, the issue is one of priorities. If the Tunnel were free, I'd say fine — we'll take five of them. In fact I have written here that one of the problems with the Mayor's Tunnel plan is that it doesn't go far-enough north. Literally. (It should extend to Mercer Street.)

Now, if the people who live and work and own property downtown wish to tax themselves extra to pay for the marginal cost of the Tunnel, I'd say that changes the game. But as for my own priorities, it's not the Central Waterfront. Or putting it another way, I care about it, but I care about other things more.

I think my view is shared by the vast majority of the voters of Seattle; and that's why you don't see the Mayor and City Council going to them with a request for the extra $2 -3 billions which the Tunnel would cost. They know they would lose big-time, or else they would have put it on the ballot 3 years ago.

As to M1EK's specific question here about what we should do to make the Retrofit more palatable, should we find we have to keep it, a good start would be to clean it, paint it bright colors, and police it 24/7/365. We might mount really good lighting on it. We might let ivy grow on it so that extensive parts of it are 'greened.' (There are structurally-sound ways to do so.) We might put up some sort of transparent sound-barrier on the deck levels. There are dozens and dozens of simple ways to make it a more pleasant presence and we have lots of fine designers in Seattle. We might even use the area under the viaduct between the existing cross-streets for something besides parking such as this Model from Paris.

Again, M1EK, I am not saying you should support keeping it. I don't really support keeping it in a positive sense (it's just a matter of priorities) but at any rate I don't think any of us have much choice. The contradictions within the political dynamics are so powerful that I believe that there is only one plausible solution; I am not even saying it's the best solution. But I think the politics are such that there is only one path forward. If you think me wrong — and I have been wrong plenty often — just please explain the flaw/errors in my post The Retrofit is the only politically-realistic solution.

But what are they actually wanting to do?

At The Volokh Conspiracy there is yet one more (and very welcome — there can never be too many!) post about land law, this one on Town-Gown Conflicts over Property Use at Notre Dame. I left a remark about the importance of presenting the facts.

Does anyone have any specifics on Notre Dame's plans? i.e. what does it mean that ND is trying to foster a "new urbanist" neighborhood adjacent to its campus? No, I happen to be extremely familair with New Urbanist thinking and support it. I am just at a slight loss to understand what ND is proposing to do.

The larger issue is that I am a strong believer in the importance of discussion of the built environment. So I believe that posts like this one and the one by Garnett on Universities and Redevelopment are of critical importance. But they would gain a great deal if they offered some physical basis to the discussion. In the case of Columbia's expansion, discussed here a few days ago, at least we had a start — the University was simply attempting to acquire land for a new campus.

Here, the only thing I can get from Garnett's post is that 'ND would like to develop the area as a mixed-use “college town,” with houses, townhouses and small businesses.  The non-university-affiliated neighbors (who are mostly working class and African-American) are deeply skeptical.  They worry about gentrification, and, more importantly, an influx of students into the neighborhood.'

Fine. But what is the area like now? And what does ND propose? What are the competing visions? It does not appear as if the competing visions differ physically but only that the existing residents are (naturally) concerned with change because newcomers will move in. But is that so?

Anyway, it's not a big deal but I wish these discussions of land use issues and the law started on the ground, and then arose as we all added our own hot-air.

Eminent Domain is so convenient

There is an interesting series of posts at The Volokh Conspiracy on Universities, Public Benefits, and Eminent Domain.

Of particular interest to me is the puzzling desire by my undergraduate alma mater —Columbia University — to use eminent domain to acquire more land for campus expansion.

More later.

What an odd headline

Another way to save the viaduct: Give it landmark status.

If no one makes the effort to repair Seattle's earthquake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct and leave it standing, preservationists might try to save it by having it declared a landmark.

Credit: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

What's odd about the head is that very very few people are arguing to preserve the Viaduct per se. The Retrofit is being urged mostly by people who simply think it's the most appropriate solution considering all the other competing priorities and impacts, This photo certainly makes it look pretty good, however.

Urban Design Cliches for any occasion

Noted by Inga Saffron:

"This is about connecting the community back to the river."
"This is the kind of project that, in ten years, is going to feel like it's been around 50 years."
"It respects the historic scale of the neighborhood."
"It connects to the neighborhood."

My own favorite:

"You can see how it's inspired by Jane Jacobs."

If you had never heard of Zaha Hadid...

...would this article by Nicolai Ouroussoff give you any sense of why she is famous, feted, notorious or whatever it is that she is? She's hot. But why? She gets an awful lot of press but no one can explain the reason except by assuming that the bizarre is beneficial, as we read in this career re-cap (there's very little in it about design) by Hugh Pearman:

She takes space in her hands and kneads it like dough, or slices it up like freshly prepared vegetables. Floors swoop, walls lean, ceilings fly away, outside and inside get all mixed up. Your expectations are confounded. "It's about seamlessness, porosity," she remarks.

Like this:

(from Pearman's site)

Convinced? Not I. Maybe if/when I visit one of her designs I might get it but neither the words nor the pictures do it. Why should it be an advantage to create a structure where "Floors swoop, walls lean, ceilings fly away, outside and inside get all mixed up. Your expectations are confounded."  It may well be so but it is hardly self-evident. It seems to me that it would be good to have expectations exceeded, delighted, charmed or maybe even surprised. But confounded suggests annoyed or angered or vexed. And I can't see why that is good except if you are into making people upset. Go figure.

It seems to me that one of the problems with architectural discourse may be that no one — neither writer nor reader — take the words with the dead seriousness they deserve. If they did, the editors at the London Times (where Pearman's article first appeared) would surely have bounced this passage back with a simple "Huh?"

 

Joel Connelly gets it right on the Viaduct

All roads lead to one big viaduct mess. He could be correct. In any case he offers the best political analysis so far of the Viaduct by any media.

However, his humorous-but-serious column ignores one small issue: Just as the danger from WMDs in Iraq was not so great as the Bush adminstration told us, the Viaduct may not be in as bad a shape as some people would like us to believe.

Aurora Avenue (SR 99 north of Denny Way) has a posted speed limit of 40 MPH. SR 99 when it turns into The Viaduct (all two miles of it) is posted for 50 MPH — as it has been for decades. When SR99 comes down to earth south of downtown the speed limit is (and I'd better check this) 45MPH.

Ask yourself: if the Viaduct is in such imminent danger of collapse, wouldn't the first thing a WSDoT engineer — sincerely and seriously concerned for public safety — would do is to lower the speed limit to minimize additional stress on the structure?

Uh...maybe so. It's common to lower speed limits whenever you have a weakened bridge; you see it all the time in rural areas where the political urgency to strengthen structures is low. Vehicles at 50 MPH create more vibration etc etc (and vibration is stress) than those going at 40 MPH. Why not on the Viaduct? Why is it business-as-usual as if there was little increased danger? The impact on the corridor's capacity — "throughput" — would appear to be minimal if you lowered the speed on just the elevated structure.

That doesn't mean that the Viaduct does not need repair but only that it strikes me as curious and a bit too convenient that we are told over-and-over that the Viaduct is failing but yet no action is taken to minimize its structural degradation. Look at it in terms of your own house. You go out one day and notice a crack in the foundation wall. So you call up your cousin the structural engineer and he takes a look and say, "Well, it looks to me that it's probably been there a long time. So why don't you just monitor it and we'll see if gets worse. There are lots of ways we can repair it." Of course, if you wanted, and you had someone else to pay for it, you could use that small crack in the foundation as a make-weight to justify tearing it down and  building a new house.

Then again, if the crack was well-advanced and needed significant work, you might ask the person managing the property (obviously not likely unless the house is Bill Gates' mansion) why they hadn't alerted you to the problem years back. And would you be likely to put repair of the foundation in the hands of the person who had been negligent in monitoring it all those years?

But read Joel's column for yourself.

One small quibble and it is not to be underestimated in the political dynamics: SEPA (our State Environmental Policy Act) exempts emergency repairs. Thus the Retrofit is exempt from SEPA — and thus lawsuits. Huge advantage to the Retrofit. And to the Governor who can step into the breach created by floundering locals, seize the initiative and appear decisive by declaring an emergency. It could be the perfect opportunity for Gov. Christine Gregoire to convince voters she is worthy or re-election.

•••

Btw, I am surprised/disappointed that the P-I didn't open Joel's column to remarks from readers. I am sure it would have stimulated a great deal of comment — and a lot of it quite fruitful and useful to the public conversation as it is so unusual to see the media "play" with ideas and scenarios. (Part of my objection to The Stranger's "advocacy journalism" is not so much with the opinions themselves but with its straight-ahead we-know-the-truth certainty which acts to limit thinking rather than promote it.)

Fiddling while Rome burns

Bush to promote gay marriage amendment.

What a waste of a President's time. And it's an area of jurisprudence — family law — traditionally left to the states. Moreover, I think that government at every level should pretty much stay out of "marriage" and sanction only some sort of civil union. Leave "marriage" as a private, spiritual and, if you will, religious matter.

The Stranger interviews Al Gore

Al Gore In the Hot Seat.

Is the "surface option" gaining support?

So suggests this report.  The question mark is because you can't really trust the reporter's stories on the Viaduct.  She is proudly and explicitly a practitioner of what she calls "advocacy journalism." A case in point is this morning's interesting news article (yes it is in the "news" section) about the City Council's wondering if it should make the decision i.e. with no citizen vote.

Of course the problem with such "advocacy journalism:" by refusing to even attempt to be fair-handed, a reporter's own personal position is undercut because one can never be sure how much of what she writes is accurate and how much is her wishful-thinking spin.

That alternative, which would reduce capacity on Alaskan Way and replace it by funding additional transit and routing traffic through the downtown street grid, appears to be gaining some political momentum as a possible "default" alternative if the city and state fail to come up with the $2 billion in additional funds they will need to finish the tunnel. "There's an interesting possibility where you wind up with the city in conflict with the state on the alternatives and you end up taking the viaduct down and just living with it," Council Member Richard Conlin says.

There is a lot going on in that paragraph.

Of course there is not enough money in hand to do what the Council thinks is the fashionable thing to do: the tunnel. So their thinking could be that if they act nonchalant-enough about the whole issue and take the surface option seriously, then maybe the State will come up with the rest of the money. I think that is too cute by half. There may well be a conflict between the City Council and the State. And in that case the Council will lose. For one thing the Viaduct is a State highway and the State interests trumps. For another, Council will not find a united city behind it. The surface option will likely be met with many time-consuming lawsuits on the environmental impacts of routing an additional 100,000 cars per days (that figure by itself a major issue in the suit) though downtown.

Of course the most interesting part is the casual aplomb with which "funding additional transit" is thrown out. Remember this is the City Council which helped kill a monorail which had already been funded by the voters to a tune of well-over a billion dollars. This Council has no competence in transportation planning and to boot, the City has limited authority. Any additional transit would have to come from other jurisdictions.

Of course maybe this is a secret prayer to the deus ex machina, Governor Christine Gregoire, to step in and make the decision. In the face of so much contention and confusion, the easy way out for her is the status quo: the retrofit.