urban_renewal - Yule Heibel on Diigo

31 Jul 09

Smart Green Infrastructure: How to Grow Sustainable Cities (EnviroSpeak.tv)

QUOTE:
Andy Lipkis, Founder and President of TreePeople, describes how this organization has pioneered an integrated approach to managing urban ecosystems as watersheds in the Los Angeles region. This involves strategic tree planting, tree-mimicking technologies, and community engagement to generate multiple solutions to the environmental threats facing our cities, including ensuring a sustainable water supply, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preventing water and air pollution, fostering stronger neighborhoods, and creating jobs. For a summary of TreePeople's six demonstration projects that are now collecting 1.25 million gallons of water every time it rains 1" in Los Angeles, visit www. treepeople.org. Video Going to Green: Planting Seeds of Change with Community Forestry produced by the Media & Policy Center Foundation for PBS.
UNQUOTE
Great stuff here - fascinating to see how "silo-think" works against solving problems.

www.envirospeak.tv/327 - Preview

environment ecological_urbanism los_angeles envirospeak.tv green_technologies urban_renewal

04 Aug 08

"Trading Places" by Alan Ehrenhalt (The New Republic)

Interesting article (which incidentally puts Vancouver front & centre), blogged by Richard Florida at Creative Class: the subtitle is "the demographic inversion of the American city." It's about how the "inner city" and its "inner city suburbs" are now desirable (and expensive) places to live, creating a 24/7 downtown (desired & theorized early on by Jane Jacobs, eg.), while the less affluent (ok, the poor!) are forced to live on the outskirts (suburbs). This used to be called "gentrification," but Ehrenhalt points out that it's a much more complex process than just that.

Haven't read all the comments to this article, but it starts with some excellent ones -- intelligent observations by readers.

www.tnr.com/...story.html - Preview

cities downtown creative_cities suburbs gentrification trends urbanization urban_renewal demographics

In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be "demographic inversion." Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so.
Developments like this rarely occur in one city at a time, and indeed demographic inversion is taking place, albeit more slowly than in Chicago, in metropolitan areas throughout the country. The national press has paid very little attention to it. While we have been focusing on Baghdad and Kabul, our own cities have been changing right in front of us.
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- Before September 11, 2001, the number of people living in Manhattan south of the World Trade Center was estimated at about 25,000. Today, it is approaching 50,000. Close to one-quarter of these people are couples (nearly always wealthy couples) with children. The average household size is actually larger in lower Manhattan than in the city as a whole. It is not mere fantasy to imagine that in, say, 2020, the southern tip of Manhattan will be a residential neighborhood with a modest residual presence of financial corporations and financial services jobs. What's happening in Lower Manhattan isn't exactly an inversion in the Chicago sense: Expensive condos are replacing offices, not poor people. But it is dramatic demographic change nevertheless.
- If you want to see this sort of thing writ large, you can venture just across the Canadian border to Vancouver, a city roughly the size of Washington, D.C. What makes it unusual--indeed, at this point unique in all of North America--is that roughly 20 percent of its residents live within a couple of square miles of each other in the city's center. Downtown Vancouver is a forest of slender, green, condo skyscrapers, many of them with three-story townhouse units forming a kind of podium at the base. Each morning, there are nearly as many people commuting out of the center to jobs in the suburbs as there are commuting in. Two public elementary schools have opened in downtown Vancouver in the past few years. A large proportion of the city's 600,000 residents, especially those with money, want to live downtown.
- We are not witnessing the abandonment of the suburbs or a movement of millions of people back to the city all at once. But we are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end. For several decades now, cities in the United States have wished for a "24/7" downtown, a place where people live as well as work, and keep the streets busy, interesting, and safe at all times of day. This is what urbanist Jane Jacobs preached in the 1960s, and it has long since become the accepted goal of urban planners. Only when significant numbers of people lived downtown, planners believed, could central cities regain their historic role as magnets for culture and as a source of identity and pride for the metropolitan areas they served. Now that's starting to happen, fueled by the changing mores of the young and by gasoline prices fast approaching $5-per-gallon. In many of its urbanized regions, an America that seemed destined for everincreasing individualization and sprawl is experimenting with new versions of community and sociability.

22 Feb 08

› Ma Qingyun asked us to answer 10 questions on cities of expiration and regeneration

- fascinating question & response (Qs by Ma Qingyun) re. cities and what they mean today. "Head Curator of the biennale Ma Qingyun (who’s also Dean of the USC school of Architecture and planning consultant to the Beijing Olympics) asked all participants and exhibitors to answer 10 questions on the theme of urban expiration and regeneration. The results were published in a 32 page newspaper distributed to all visitors. I can’t find this gem of aggregated thoughts on the future of our cities, but here are our answers posted on the blog documenting our design creations and research www.regional-office.com."

www.joshuakauffman.org/...e-same-10-curatorial-questions - Preview

cities joshua_kauffman ma_qingyun urban_renewal urbanism

4. How can we maximize our needs today?

We can maximize our needs by reconsidering our wants.

We must commonly alter our wants so they reflect what is needed for a healthy interconnected civilization on a delicately finite planet.
6. Should a city stay in its current form forever?

No. A good city, like a good tool, should reflect its purpose and function.

Cities should be constantly learning, improving and reflecting the collective and imaged ethos of its occupants.

The physical form of a city will inspire and catalyze cultural crystallizations that will be inscribed in formless media. The content of the formless media will change the form of the city as reflected in the configurations of our past and possible experiences.
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- 8. What is the polar opposite to the city?
  
  Equilibrium.
  - Bingo! - on 2008-02-22
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- 10. Is agriculture the next form of urbanism?
  
  If we define agriculture historically as the cultivation of organisms, then some of the most profound innovations in agriculture are on the near horizon of biotechnology.
  
  The communities and buildings of cities will be the fields and fertilizer of the new age of agriculture, sprouting living things that help us find new life. Organisms will take root that produce endless harvests, including energy (food and otherwise), medicine and environmental assistance.
  
  Our deepest societal values and civilizational needs will make themselves known through our collective biotechnological agricultural practices.
  
  How we engineer the undertakings of living things will establish the next form of urbanism as a platform for the birthing and reflective pondering of life itself.

20 Feb 08

Tear down a viaduct, and then the wars really begin - Crosscut Seattle -

LOL, this sounds like Victoria, BC, too...

www.crosscut.com/...and+then+the+wars+really+begin - Preview

crosscut redevelopment san_francisco seattle urban_renewal viaduct

Once the viaduct was demolished, part was replaced by a four-block boulevard for commute and local traffic. A small neighborhood park was built, and then it came time to award four empty lots along the route to architects and developers who submittied winning designs. Those lots are still empty.
What ensued is fairly typical of cities with many well-educated, articulate, and empowered citizens. Utopian demands. "Nobody's shy about gumming up the works if he doesn't get what he wants." High-minded guidelines that keep getting higher. All kinds of hard-to-mesh visions (quality architecture, affordable housing, restrictions on parking, ever-higher developer fees) that eventually produce stalemate, fleeing developers, and glorious mud-slinging opportunities between mayor and council.
- With the exception of "mud-slinging opportunities between mayor and council" (which we don't seem to get to similar degrees because of Canada's inherent "weak mayor" system vs the "strong mayor" system in place in many US cities), this sound exactly like Victoria... - on 2008-02-20
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- The mantra for the game in San Francisco, according to the reporter, is: "Always push for more, and never feel qualms about changing the rules." Gee, we could have told them that one.
  - - That's a mantra here, too, except we often don't even bother pushing for "more," if more means "fabulous." We'll push for mediocre, because even pushing that far is too far here... - on 2008-02-20
  - Oy, that's a viral mantra here, too... - on 2008-02-20
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» The Hidden Jewel of Hull • Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape

Interview with Marc Dube, "owner of most of the parking lots in downtown Hull." Parking lots are lucrative, as Dube's start in the business illustrates: "In the mid 1980s, Dubé and two others planned to open a restaurant in downtown Hull. The financing fell through after they had already signed the lease on a building. Dubé realized an alternate source of income: he could demolish the building and put in a parking lot. Since his partners weren’t interested, he began the business on his own." Read on from there.

spacing.ca/wire - Preview

spacing.ca surface_parking_lots toronto urban_design urban_renewal

As he explained it: “We were three waiters that were supposed to renovate an old building into a restaurant…It was some kind of a deviation from the original idea.” Needless to say, his deviation was a success:

Well, 22 years ago the parking industry was not known at all here – like it was in Montreal, Toronto, busier cities, Ottawa. And now everybody knows about this business; but before, nobody. It was like a hidden jewel. It was something that nobody knew at that point and I just had the opportunity to go into that industry. And now, everybody wants to, would love to have parking because it’s a low maintenance company. Like once you add your trees and your paving and your booth you just wait for your customer to come in. It’s a simple industry. It’s not a complicated industry. And the beauty of it is that you get revenues that pay for your land, and your land keeps taking value. So then in 10, 12 years it’s a retirement fund, pension plan.
Not every parking lot he opened did well. When asked if there are ever unsuccessful lots that people just don’t use, Dubé replied, “Yes, because some of them are too far from the activity. So if you have to walk five miles after you park your car, it’s not convenient. So the people at that point are going to go to plan B, which is the bus or the train.”
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- How did Dubé manage to build all of those parking lots without intervention from Hull residents, from the city, or from anyone else?
- Dubé says his parking lot clients are “mostly government people, business people, industry surrounding the government people – like the fax, photocopiers reparation, things like that. At night restaurants, bars –that’s mostly the clientele”. Hull’s lots were not built for the neighbourhood – although local entrepreneurs and businesses feel they need parking in order to have customers.
  - Yikes, sounds like Victoria's m.o. from late-70s, into 80s and beyond, now thank heavens changing because of residential pressures. - on 2008-02-20
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- In Dubé’s eyes, parking lots are temporary spaces biding their time storing cars before being developed into condos. Parking lots are spaces that change; owners don’t necessarily conceive of them as permanent. Eventually someone turns them into something else.
  - - their silver lining, I guess (unless they displaced older heritage buildings, in which case, "no lining for you, bub'..." - on 2008-02-20
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17 Feb 08

Great cities recycle buildings, by Christopher Hume (Toronto Star)

This echoes very much what I've said elsewhere, eg., in response to "Spacing Reads: Consolation" (see http://spacing.ca/wire/?p=2773) regarding the use of natural light. Adaptability and re-use of buildings is crucial. See also my blog entry, Concrete Plans (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2008/02/04/concrete-plans/).

www.thestar.com/...303039 - Preview

christopher_hume cities toronto urban_renewal

Indeed, there are many examples of heritage properties having been adapted to new uses and becoming wildly successful in the process. Generally, the only limits are those of imagination, a quality in short supply in this city. Despite all the brave talk about Toronto, Creative City, we tend to be anything but. Developers and architects are much happier dealing with an empty site than having to figure how to rework an existing building. Owners live in fear that their properties will be designated as heritage buildings, which might lower the value.
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- At the same time, the heritage preservation community is often unwilling to compromise, to allow changes lest the integrity of the original be lost.
  However honourable its intentions, the fact remains that the best, in fact, the only way to ensure the survival of heritage buildings is to keep them in use.
  - Oh, and this is the key aspect, isn't it? Heritage advocates here in Victoria would rather see a building fall to pieces than have it be productively in use, if being in use "offends" *their* notion of "heritage." - on 2008-02-17
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- Countless old factories and warehouses find new life as lofts, offices, art galleries or restaurants. Who's complaining?

24 Dec 07

Waterfront plan: A magnet and, hopefully, model (Toronto Star)

Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze's vision for T.O.'s waterfront: "The point must be that we won't have to live on the waterfront to feel at home there." In this article by Christopher Hume, some really interesting discussion (by Geuze) about cars, how they've taken over urban spaces, why all-pedestrian zones aren't necessarily a good idea ("scary at night"), and that cities today compete with one another.

www.thestar.com/...288394 - Preview

cars christopher_hume development pedestrians toronto urban_parks urban_renewal waterfront

Relax, Toronto, all is not lost; the wheels of change grind no slower here than in any other city.
So says Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze, whose firm, West 8, is now redesigning the central waterfront in partnership with Toronto's DTAH.
"Bureaucratic resistance is normal," he says, smiling reassuringly. "It's the same everywhere."
Geuze and his team won an international competition last year to redesign the waterfront between Bathurst and Parliament Sts. It is a huge project, including the narrowing of Queens Quay from four lanes to two, the planting of thousands of trees, the construction of a boardwalk along the water's edge and bridges across various slips.
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- "Today it feels like the pedestrian is a guest on the waterfront," Geuze says. "But in the future the car will become the guest. We're going to restrict traffic to one-half of the street, but we're not going to torture it. We'll keep the flow and create a more readable situation. It's not that we don't like cars, but we need more balance."
  As Geuze explains it, Europeans love their cars every bit as much as we North Americans. The difference, he argues, is that we have gone too far.
  "Devotion to the car is the same here as in Europe," he says. "But in Europe there are some guiding cities. And we're not talking about medieval cities, but modern urban communities with large commercial centres – Strasbourg, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Zurich, Copenhagen. ... There's a competition between cities now."
  - - great point re. pedestrians feeling like guests in some parts of the city
    
    - also, that today cities compete amongst themselves (echoes Florida's mantra about creative economy revolutionizing the global economy) - on 2007-12-24
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- Geuze makes it clear he's not advocating the complete abolition of the car; he feels a certain amount of traffic is healthy. Besides, he adds, large pedestrian zones can "become scary places at night."
  The intention, he insists, is to establish a state of equality between cars and people: "People will be happy, shop owners will be happy, and police will be happy."
- He sees Toronto's waterfront as a perfect example of the vast potential of the city, but also of how much needs to be done. "North America is about the car," he says. "But Queens Quay can mark a revolutionary change. It will be a magnet for anyone who wants to walk, jog, cycle or stroll. It will be a place for merchants to make a living, and that will attract people."
  - - this articulates a vision based on USE, = important, vs. doing things based on "style" or "height restrictions" (Victoria) or other physical characteristics. The physical characteristics should flow from the uses planned - on 2007-12-24
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- In this respect, one can only hope the post-Geuze waterfront will become a model for the rest of the city. Though there has been much debate in recent years about the car, it's clear that Toronto has a long way to go before it catches up with Europe. Indeed, we are falling further and further behind. Worst of all, we have allowed public transit to deteriorate. For many Torontonians it is not an option; they have no choice but to drive.
- "Toronto is ready to have a waterfront with its own identity," Geuze asserts. "It's a marvellous site, a south-facing waterfront. What more you could ask for?"
  The answer, many might say, is greater public access. As well as controlling the car, we must ensure the waterfront is as inviting as possible. That's not to say people won't be living and working on the lake – they definitely will – but as Geuze likes to say, it's a question of balance. The point must be that we won't have to live on the waterfront to feel at home there.

22 Dec 07

Britain's Lost Cities by Gavin Stamp - Times Online

- review of Gavin Stamp's "Britain's Lost Cities, an engrossing, no-punches-pulled denunciation of the wilful destruction of our urban landscape since the 1930s..."

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/...article3050987.ece - Preview

architecture britain cities modernism redevelopment style urban_renewal

What the Luftwaffe began, arrogant, philistine town planners finished off. Now a new study names the guilty men, Stephen McClarence says
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- Stamp describes today's Bradford, one of the 19
  cities whose fate he chronicles, as a pale shadow of “the dense, complex and
  lively pre-war city recorded in old photographs”. Seething with elegant
  outrage, he hits out at planners who have vandalised so much of its almost
  exclusively Victorian fabric.
  
  They sent in the bulldozers and wrecking balls, replacing arcades, markets and
  warehouses with buildings that were either dreary or dreadful and which
  systematically squandered the city's dignity. “As in other cities,” he
  writes, “the inadequate and unnecessary postwar rebuilding of Bradford now
  seems a criminal waste of money, energy and materials.”
  - - I guess now we can fathom the *real* secret affinity between Victoria, BC and the UK, because similar trends were inflicted on the former, too... - on 2007-12-22
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- Until the 20th century, he points out, change in cities “tended to be
  piecemeal, occasional and organic”, even though Victorian railway companies
  ruthlessly slashed their lines through anything in their path.
  
  The religion of the motor car changed all that. Councils dismembered their
  cities to build ring roads, flyovers and car parks. They used any excuse for
  demolition — that old buildings had a limited life; that Victorian
  architecture was at best unfashionable, at worst sinfully ugly; that the
  mess left by Luftwaffe raids needed tidying up.
  
  The Nazis became convenient scapegoats for plans already under way. Coventry's
  medieval Butcher Row was razed in 1936, four years before the first bombers
  flew in. It had become, the Lord Mayor sniffed, “a blot on the city”.
  Planners in Canterbury welcomed the wartime destruction and set about their
  own.
  - - the rule of the automobile -- also sometimes characterized as the city's "suburbanization" -- certainly contributed to the vandalism of finely stitched urban fabric here, too. - on 2007-12-22
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- Naming names, Stamp tells a tale of neglect, incompetence, philistinism and
  sheer bloody-minded malice, encapsulated in a comment by Herbert Manzoni,
  the City Engineer and Surveyor of Birmingham from 1935 to 1963: “I have
  never been very certain as to the value of tangible links with the past,” he
  said in 1957. “As to Birmingham's buildings, there is little of real worth
  in our architecture. Its replacement should be an improvement, provided we
  keep a few monuments as museum pieces to past ages.”
  
  City after city was blighted with modernist buildings that, in an almost
  totalitarian way, were obsessed with function and efficiency and often
  looked like multistorey car parks, even when they weren't.
- Keith Waterhouse summed things up in
  1975 in two sentences that will resonate with anyone who has ever sat
  narcoleptically through a local council meeting: “I would put most of the
  blame on the councillors who invite and encourage the laying-waste of their
  own townships. The trouble is that many of them are not very bright.”
  - - ha!, how true... - on 2007-12-22
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- Their legacy is the desperate sense of loss engendered by Stamp's book, with
  its 200 stylishly presented archive photographs. I lost count of the number
  of pictures of smart, historic, charming streets captioned: “Every building
  in this photograph has since disappeared.”

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