« October 2006 | Main | December 2006 »
30 Democratic Legislators to Governor Gregoire: New Seattle viaduct is better than costly tunnel.
But the Governor's legislative liaison said that
the governor's choices aren't limited to a new viaduct or a tunnel. "It's feasible she could say 'I don't think any of these things are financially viable, look again,' " Brown said, adding, "I don't know she's going to do that."
In an article by Donald Kuspit on Edward Hopper:
"Hopper’s office buildings and domestic housing are hardly...life-facilitating environments.'
The paintings (used to illustrate the article) don't show that at all. In fact most of the exteriors and interiors are nicely-detailed. human-scaled and pleasant. The street-scapes are what is correctly-understood to be pedestrian-oriented. Even the gas station is one of those 40 MPH jobs. I read the article with growing puzzlement as Kuspit's words had so little to do with the paintings he uses to (supposedly) prove his point. For example:
That's not "life-facilitating?" Looks like a fairly pleasant restaurant.
And if anything the other paintings would indicate the very opposite — the lack of environmental-determinism in human relations: you have these pretty spaces and you still have loneliness and alienation.
Of course I am not big from the get-go on people who write (as Kuspit does in this article) sentences like "Buildings are man-made constructions of geometrical space, and as such inherently abstract and autonomous." so maybe I should not even bother with art crit as it seems to be filled with that sort of basically meaningless statements.
Let's take apart that sentence "Buildings are man-made constructions of geometrical space, and as such inherently abstract and autonomous."
"Buildings are man-made constructions..."
Fine. True. Obvious.
"...of geometrical space,"
Not really. Buildings create spaces as they fulfill their function but they are made of matter.
"...and as such inherently abstract..."
I just don't know what that means. I don't think it means anything. Buildings are NOT abstract. They are quite real. The spaces formed by a building are not abstractions — they are simply places where there is no building but are quite real. Ask Virginia Woolf?
"...and autonomous."
Not true at all. Buildings depend on human beings; they will disintegrate if not maintained and they cannot do that by themselves.
Here's another painting (not used in Kuspit's article) from An Edward Hopper Scrapbook:
It looks like a pleasant-enough place to live. If there is isolation there it would seem to me to be independent of the physical environment which looks about as idyllic as possible.
•••
Via 3quarksdaily which I enjoy because it brings me into contact with so many good and also (as here) nonsensical writings. I wish they would mark them more clearly as to which they think is which.
Rich towne wants to condemn even richer Deepdale Golf Club for use of its 1,800 residents, which I assume includes some number of infants, aged and servants.
The litigation combines several of my particular interests: golf, eminent domain and black humor.
Why do people live in cities?.
Some say it is "just sex."
I am back trying to learn to play golf. (I quit about six years ago after I attained a 'plateau of frustration' which seemed to stretch on into the never-ending distance.) So of course I peruse golf blogs. I wouldn't mention it here as I suspect many of my readers are somewhat anti-golf — I was too, before I wasn't. But some anonymous guy is on a quest to play the Top 100 Golf Courses in The World and writes charmingly about his 'quest' -- and quixotic it is and probably of little interest to most people. But his post on a course in Las Vegas — Shadow Creek — offers a striking photo and a sage observation. Here's the photo:
(click to enlarge)
That is an accurate photo of the course and its environs. The same one appears its from designer's own (what I take to be) puff book: Golf Course Designs...just a little bit of Merry & Damp Old England plunked down in the middle of the American Desert. Not exactly what one would call 'designing with nature' or 'minimalist' golf course design. Such sensitivity to the landscape is what gives golf a bad name. Then again, it's Las Vegas and so excess is the norm. Here's what Mr. Top One Hundred has to say:
The bottom line is that there is not enough water in the Western United States to support all the Sunbelt cities in the manner they currently exist in. It is conceivable that the water bill needed to maintain the course will not be economical over time or the novelty of the experience will wear off. When that happens the conglomerate that owns it will one day find the land is worth more for another use. That's the downside of no tradition. My advice is to play Shadow Creek while it still exists. Building this type of course in the middle of the desert is madness and the course most certainly will not exist to celebrate its centenary.
Alas. At $500 for an 18-hole round I may put off playing Shadow Creek until I can count on breaking — do I dare admit it? — one hundred on a regular basis.
Here's a sh
ot of Shadow Creek from Google Earth:
Michael Jennings is back at it with astute observations and which oftn counter the conventional wisdom. Today he discusses his visit to Rotterdam where he saw an exhibition about cities:
Paris outside the Periphique is much more interesting.
It is fashionable to decry the ugliness of Paris' suburbs. They are of course notorious for their ghastly housing estates, and for the riots of last year that took place in some of them. The French word for suburb, banlieu, has almost become a dirty word. But the situation is vastly more complex than that. It is indeed true that some suburbs are unspeakable centrally planned and now practically ungovernable housing estates. But the first impression one gets when walking under the Periphique is that here is where the actual economy starts. One finds budget hotels, car repair stores, markets selling African masks, retail parks, Asian supermarkets, working class neighbourhoods full of ordinary people who can't afford to live in Pairs proper, all kinds of things that are discouraged in Paris itself. There is unbridled capitalism here.
And not just capitalism but I think, more importantly and perhaps more convincing to many who recoil from soiling their hands with trade, is that there is vitality, there is life
Prompted by I-933 some areSeeking a middle ground on property rights.
Nut unlikely to happen -- just count the votes. Urban voters don't care about rural property-owners' rights and probably rather like the idea of resticting urban development.
Had (and I assume that he hasn't) David Postman gone to law school then he might have written differently this post about how Daniel Schorr of NPR answered
Lynn Neary's question, "How is the rest of the world reacting to the news of this election?"
I suspect that the insurgents are probably sitting around drinking champagne, and saying, 'Hey look, we drove a cabinet secretary out of office, we got the president all upset' and so on. This must look very good in terms of the rebels in Iraq.
Postman suggests that
If Bush, Cheney, Rush or O'Reilly had said that I bet there would be outrage from Democrats.
Certainly there would have been a different reaction and rightfully so because the intention of the speakers would have been very different. The basis of law turns of two big factors -- what they did (their "manifestation") and what they meant to do (their "intention."
Here, Bush, Cheney, Rush or O'Reillly would be intending to show that Democrats are friends of the bad guys and essentially in their camp. Schorr was merely making an observation (which may or may not be true) about how certain mentalities -- mentalities for which we have little respect -- might interpret American actions as "giving in." A more rational interpretation is that Americans are fed up with failure.
I had occasion, finally, to get my hands on one of the new Sony E-Readers, and it set me thinking about the path dependency of innovation in the face of legal obstacles. If you have not seen one of these electronic-pocket-book-platform things, you will have trouble imagining how such a small change could convince many users that the world of reading is about to change. E-Readers and the Future.
Amen.
Lots of comments at the link about theft and so forth. My comment:
The degree to which people will steal ebooks is not only a function of the ease of transfer but of
• the cost of legitimate purchase and
• the benefits of having a registered copy.
If publishers persist in their foolishness of trying to sell a digital copy of a book for $18, then yes people will blithely steal. But when the price is more where it should be -- say $3-4 -- then that problem will be very much diminished. (As I publish a book I think I have sufficient expertise to opine on where the price "should" be.)
As well, I think most are looking at the book in an old fashioned way as a static finished product. The e-book (at least the non-fiction one) is a product which can be "supported" e.g. with real-time updates and links by the author and/or access to the author for questions/comments etc. It is very much a different product than the paper book and buying it for the "support" can be very attractive.
I fail to understand the social value of income diversity in any one particular residential building or even neighborhood.
Why there is such a great social value placed on it. It strikes me as prissy liberalism. Or let me put it this way: how much do you think it's worth?
And it's not free. When you force a developer to allocate some number
of units to "income restricted" (i.e. "poor" in plain English) people, you do
at least these two things:
• you decrease the profit the developer makes (whether it is rental or condo) and hence the Federal income taxes they would pay;
• you decrease the value of the building so the property tax stream from it (whether it is rental or condo).
Such requirements might also trigger manipulation of the zoning so
that the building becomes bigger through "bonuses," which casts doubt
on the whole logic of height restrictions i.e. if a building for rich people only should be no more than ten stories, why is it ok to build to twenty if there are poor people living in it?
It's fine if you value the creation of "income diversity" but it is not free.
Better to use a superb location and get the most tax stream from it
and then give that money to poor people. More direct and has more
integrity.
Should the Handicapped Be Banned From Express Buses?.
This morning, the ride on my express bus from the Rainier Valley, which is supposed to take 30 minutes, was delayed four times for the entry and exit of two handicapped people in wheelchairs. The first wheelchair took a full ten minutes, as the bus driver scooted a few inches forward and backward repeatedly to line up with the curb. Thus a ride that was supposed to be “express” ended up getting me (and maybe 100 other people) to work 20 minutes late.
So I’m just putting this out there: Is it fair for one or two handicapped individuals’ right to public accomodation to trump the right of dozens or hundreds of others to have reliable transit service that gets them to work on time? Is it fair for two people in wheelchairs to make everyone else on the “express” bus late?
My own take on the matter is that many young women should be banned from having any sort of public forum. It's too cruel to let them show their heartlessness.
An academic suggests that
only recently has the European standard of living surpassed that of hunter-gatherer societies.
Interesting. That implies an odd choice by all those hunter gatherers, no? Why would they step from a higher to a lower standard?
I believe that writ large, over many decades or centuries, people get the kind of societies they want and choose. So it seems to me that the transformation from hunter-gatherer to farmer must have been voluntary -- people saw advantages. They perceived a higher standard of living; they made a choice or series of choices.
So how can we assume that they were wrong? And that their "standard of living" went down?
Such a perspective certainly conflicts with a capitalist view of the world and is more consistent with the "someone is doing it to me" aqpproach. No, I am not an Ayn Rand simpleton. But I do believe that within some very large bounds humans as a group choose.
Any anyway, even if that view is not in some ultimate manner "true" I think it is a much more useful life outlook than to think that we are merely creatures of the tides of the universe.
And I would like them to identify me (if appropriate) as
• Author, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village
• former Commissioner, Seattle Planning Commission
• former Board Member, Allied Arts of Seattle.
What galls me is that so many people are sucked into the presumption that the tunnel is an important idea from an urban design perspective. I am one urban design/smart growth type who thinks that that is a crock of conventional pablum.
The letter:
NO TUNNEL ALLIANCE 4554 12th NE Seattle 98105November 2, 2006
Governor Christine Gregoire
Olympia,
WashingtonDear Governor Gregoire,
The NO TUNNEL ALLIANCE is composed of Representatives of Seattle industry,
business and voters who oppose a Seattle waterfront tunnel.According to a recent Elway poll, 75% of Seattle voters desire a solution
other than a tunnel.The voters are too intelligent to not recognize fiscal irresponsibility and
subversion of the greater public interest by the Seattle mayor and City
Council majority. In their vain pursuit of a $6 Billion tunnel, those
entities have bent and twisted the State's criteria for preserving roadway
capacity -- the very genesis of the Alaskan Way project funding. Honest
adherence to State criteria suggests:1. Unreduced roadway capacity, and functionality equivalent to the existing
SR99 Viaduct, including Downtown access for 1/3 of 110,000 daily Viaduct
vehicles (including commercial vehicles and 500 buses).
2. Construction start and completion within the shortest possible time.
3. Costs not exceeding allocated State funds + realistic inflationary costs.
4. Costs that do not endanger funding for other critical State
transportation projects, such as the SR520 Bridge replacement.
5. Preservation of a world-class view.
6. No additional burden on the State's roadway operating expenses beyond
current SR99/Viaduct expenses. The Tunnel's operating cost for lighting,
pumping out ground water and venting vehicle exhaust is estimated to be $5
million per year.
7. The least possible disruption to current traffic, neighborhood
businesses, regional industry and tourism, both during and after
construction, due to elimination of the current downtown access.
8. Reduction of hazards due to natural disasters, including tsunami
flooding.When judged by these criteria, the Tunnel fails miserably and fares much
worse than the other alternatives.Based upon this evaluation, we respectfully request that you oppose the
designation of a tunnel for the Viaduct replacement, but rather encourage
honest consideration of all other options.Sincerely,
to this post on Large Tables:
Rick and Ann's in California. I thought it looked charming when I drove by but I didn't have time to stop, even though I am a collector of comfortable places.
Frank Bruni of the NYT ponders large tables (large-enough for more than a couple locked onto each other's eyes) in restaurants.
My take:
We used to have a great restaurant in Seattle named "The Surrogate Hostess." (I've written about it in City Comforts and will post the relevant page as soon as I get back to my desktop.) This restaurant had ONLY large tables — minimum eight people and up to twelve (or more on a typical weekend morning.) 'The Hostess' was also cafeteria style so people were constantly in motion, not fixed to their seat and liberated only to visit the WC. The social dynamics were superb and it was an extremely popular neighborhood hang-out. While the food was excellent ("Country French"), as was the location, the truly unique and charming thing about the place was that it had only large tables and if you went there on any sort of regular basis, you got to meet your neighbors, which is a hard thing to do here.
Of course it offered little privacy. You didn't go there to close the big business deal or propose marriage. But for just about everything in between it was superb. It's unfortunate so few restaurateurs (any?) have the imagination to create such a real place.
•••
Here's The Surrogate Hostess in its glory days:
•••
From my observation of this issue over the past 20 years, one further point:
You can’t have a restaurant which mixes two-tops, four-tops etc (meant for particular parties) with large “communal” (I do detest that term) tables. It simply doesn’t work. You have to one or the other; when there are both, the large table becomes a place for castoffs who don't rate a dinner companion.
More Momentum for Surface/Transit Option.
City Council transportation chair Jan Drago and council member Peter Steinbrueck have drafted a budgetary mandate (known as a “budget proviso”) that would require the city to spend $500,000 in 2007 to study the surface/transit option for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct if the mayor’s $3.6-$5.5 billion tunnel proves “infeasible.”
Such "study" would be of use only if the Governor agrees to delay the decision. She can't. She is running for re-election. She can't make the Democratic part the laughingstock by more dithering. She must be decisive or at least appear to be decisive. Calling for another study when her own WSDOT has been declaring a Viaduct emergency for over five years will make her (deservedly) look like a wimp.
Unfortunately, she has let the Mayor and WSDOT back her into a corner where she seems to think that she has only two options, the Tunnel and the Total Rebuild. She need to create room for herself. Is this story part of climbing down from her untenable position?
In other viaduct developments, a volunteer group of civil engineers will meet next week to review a viaduct-retrofit proposal offered by retired structural engineer Victor Gray.
In August, T.Y. Lin International, hired by the state to look at Gray's retrofit plan, said it had some merit but doesn't deal with the damage an earthquake might cause to the viaduct's foundation.
A team from the American Society of Civil Engineers, working with Gray, was asked to analyze the Lin report, and that review is expected to be completed sometime this month.
Paananen said the state is reworking cost estimates for a retrofit, which it initially said would cost about 80 percent of rebuilding the structure.
He called Gray's proposal "an incomplete retrofit," and said the state is looking to see what it would take to make a retrofit structurally sound. (italics added)
"Given the public's interest in retrofitting, we need to continually satisfy ourselves that we made the right call," Paananen said.
Omar Little is clearly, far and away, the most striking character on the HBO series The Wire full of striking characters. In general, cops and gangsters and their respective lawyers are a dime a dozen. Omar is unique in our TV culture: a thug — albeit with admirable martial qualities of daring, resource — and openly gay and with not a limp wrist in sight. A gay, macho thug. Interesting twist. When he was first introduced to us in the first season and I saw him nuzzling his boyfriend and it took me aback, to the point where I rewound to make sure I had caught it correctly.
I've been surprised that there hasn't been more mention of Omar's "sexual orientation," at least in the non-gay MSM press. I'm not aware of any other gay thugs in the movies. (And no I do not mean sexual killers such as in Sinatra's The Detective.) I guess what it shows is the realization of how unimportant sexual orientation actually is: the guy may be gay but he can also be a stone-cold killer.
![[book cover]](http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/cc-cover-100w.jpg)
