Cities: May 2008 Archives
The Austin Chronicle: News: 'Chronicle' Endorsements: June 14 City Council run-off
The Austin alt-weekly chooses between two good, neighborhood-friendly, urban design-conscious council candidates.
The Austin Chronicle: News: Council Packs More 'P' Into Every PUD
Austin City Council is considering a revision to the city's Planned Unit Development ordinance, involving a council subcommittee at the beginning of the PUD process, rather than keeping the council out of it until the very end. The development lobby is unhappy.
Urban Review STL: Downtown Business Not So Good for Good Works
Successful St. Louis business on the Loop tries to expand downtown but fails. Could lack of on-street parking in front of the downtown store have been a factor? "On-street parking does a number of very beneficial things for an area. First it reduces four traffic lanes down to two -- much friendlier. This also helps to slow down the traffic on the street. People parking and getting in/out of their cars & feeding the meter creates activity on the street. And finally having parking in front of the store decreases the perception that downtown has a parking shortage."
Neatorama: The Worst Cities in America
Not the worst 10 or 50, but the most worst on many different lists. Tulsa makes the list as Pollen Capital of America. (Via Evangelical Outpost.)
Oxford American: The Cult of House Worship
"There was a time when church-building and public building were rivals to residential construction. But in America, Domus has become one of the most potent gods in the pantheon of Mammon, and his temples far outstrip anything we build for church or state.... McMansions have become McVersailles and McBlenheims, McTaj Mahals." (Via World on the Web.)
Metro Transit - Hi-Frequency Network
A network of 11 key bus routes and one light rail route provides service at least every 15 minutes from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., linking downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul, the airport, the Amtrak Depot, the U. of Minnesota campus and other colleges, and Mall of America.
Sippican Cottage: Ten Dreadful Things That Have Become Housing Standards
"They are ugly; or nonsensical; or counterproductive; or wasteful; or mostly an ephemeral fad being written into concrete -- always a bad idea. The decorative stuff is going to be painted over shortly or thrown in the dumpster too quickly, and the permanent installations are going to make the owners miserable for generations because they're too expensive to get rid of." Snout houses are offense #1: "Stop nailing your house onto the a** end of your garage.... You are building a house for your car and living in a shack out back." (Via Dustbury.)
Yet Another Small Town Moment: Who was "Red" Burpo anyhow?
A touching remembrance of the town mechanic: "Every small town in the world must have one of these guys...long ago retired from the rat race of small business, the old motorhead now spends the salad days of his winding down life clock watching the world drive by, anticipating a stray customer or acquaintance of old to drop by at anytime to shoot the breeze, share a stick of Clark's Teaberry or perhaps even seeking advice of an auto maintenance matter."
Grist: An interview with peak-oil provocateur Matthew Simmons
Matthew Simmons, who deals in energy company mergers and acquisitions, and who predicted in 2005 that oil would be at $200 per barrel by 2010, says hybrids aren't enough: "We have to find, for instance, far more energy-efficient methods of transporting products by rail and ship rather than trucks. We have to liberate the workforce from office-based jobs and let them work in their village, through the modern technology of emails and faxes and video conferencing. We have to address the distribution of food: Much of the food in supermarkets today comes from at least a continent or two away. We need to return to local farms. And we have to attack globalization: As energy prices soar, manufacturing things close to home will begin to make sense again." (Via 2Blowhards.)
Veritas et Venustas: The Best Way To Develop Atlantic Yards & Hudson Yards
Megaprojects don't produce good places, and they can't find financing. Instead "we should develop [redevelopment zones] the way New York was traditionally developed. That means platting the streets and blocks, and selling lots on those blocks.... It's time to get back to the time-proven methods that have built the best neighborhoods and communities, building at the scale of the block and the lot." (Via City Comforts.)
City Comforts, the blog: Adaptive reuse of parking structures
Old garages, maybe, but modern structures don't have enough headroom, large enough level floor plates, or sturdy enough floors for other uses.
Tulsa urbanized area map - census.gov
The U. S. Census Bureau defines "urbanized area" in terms of a continuous area with a minimum population density. This map shows the Tulsa urbanized area as of the 2000 census; it includes most of Broken Arrow, Coweta, Catoosa, Jenks, Bixby, Sapulpa, and Sand Springs, but not Owasso, Claremore or Glenpool, which constitute their own urban clusters. The urbanized area population was 558,329 spread out over 677 sq. mi. for a density of 2135.9; Tulsa was the 64th largest in the nation.
A paper by Martha J. Bianco of Portland State University's Center for Urban Studies says don't blame Judge Doom. As automobiles became more widely available and streetcar ridership declined, buses were more economical than streetcars for serving lightly-traveled routes. (Via LA Map Nerd's comment on Matthew Yglesias's blog.)
The pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York on the "most crying need in the church" -- being effectively present in our largest cities: "Christians strengthen somewhat away from the cities and they have made some political gains, but that is not effecting cultural products much. It is because in the center cities (NYC, Boston, LA, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC) the percentages of people living and working there who are Christians are minuscule." (Via JollyBlogger.)
Matthew Yglesias (May 07, 2008) - SoCal Tragedy (Domestic Policy)
The tragedy is that an area with such beautiful year-round weather is so hostile to travel on foot. But many commenters point out walkable neighborhoods within the LA metroplex: "The places that were developed first: Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica, the beach cities, Manhattan, Redondo and Hermosa. Places like this are very livable even now. The places that came later, like the San Fernando valley and further east, are a nightmare. And places like San Bernardino and Riverside and Santa Clarita are almost certain to become ghost towns as energy costs rise out of sight." And someone calling himself LA MapNerd debunks many of Yglesias's geographical assumptions. (Via City Comforts.)
Parking Space as Living Space? - Westchester - New York Times
Where to build needed moderately priced housing in expensive Westchester County, NY? On the overly-capacious parking lots of office parks. Says developer Robert F. Weinberg, "Here we have already cut down all these trees, put in the sewer and water lines, so there's no hole to be dug, no addition of parking lots and no extra runoff. It makes sense economically and environmentally." A great way to put housing close to work and increase density without increasing infrastructure costs. (Via City Comforts.)
Urban Review STL: Lead with your strong side
Steve Patterson applies lessons from stroke rehabilitation to city revitalization: "St Louis' strong side is great urban architecture on a nicely scaled grid of walkable streets. The suburbs don't have those strong areas. Yet here we tend to lead with our weak side -- suburban anti-city stuff. The more of this we have the less of the strong side we have.... Had St Louis built up its strong side rather than coming from a weak position we would have focused on traditional storefront shops along streets. Instead we went with the suburban mall model sans the acres of free parking and it flopped big time. St Louis, like me this morning, was trying the quick route. I recovered fairly quickly but a city's mistakes are harder to recover from."
City Comforts, the blog: Break-up superblock, provide space for micro-retail
Instead of banning big boxes from downtowns, wrap them in small (maybe 30' deep) retail spaces at street grade, to give opportunities for startup retailers. An idea like this was being kicked around on TulsaNow's public forum as a better alternative to the usual blank walls on a downtown Wal-Mart.
Back Boris for Mayor of London: The boroughs
This interactive map of the 33 boroughs of Greater London lists average wait time for a bus for each; it ranges between 5 and 7 minutes. Each borough's population ranges between about 150 and 300 thousand, with most in around 200K -- so you could think of Greater London as 20 Tulsas in population all stuck together, but compressed into a sixth of the area that 20 Tulsas would take up. (Yesterday was local election day in Britain; the instant runoff votes for Mayor of London are being counted today.)
AmericanHeritage.com / "THE CITY AT THE NATION'S FRONT DOOR"
From bucolic getaway to bustling waterfront to New York's "sixth borough," the story of Hoboken, New Jersey, the Mile Square City. (Also, home to Mister Snitch!)
