Should Architecture Shock Us?

(Image from The View From Rome)

Should architecture shock us?

No.

No, no, no.

Over at The View From Rome, the great Steven Semes explores the work of Daniel Liebeskind as it relates to historic architecture. It is a great post and I recommend that you check it out. Liebeskind has made a name for himself by, among other things, creating jarring, jagged, harsh Modernist additions to historic structures. Semes handily dismantles this approach.

However, this discussion brings up a larger issue in my mind. He quotes Liebeskind as saying " We must create a new context and puncture past beauty with raw, powerful contemporary architecture—buildings that shock and amaze..." 

City Manager as Placemaker?

Mountain View, California (Photo by Bruce Liedstrand)

Bruce Liedstrand is one of the San Francisco Bay Area's great urbanists. In the early 2000s he was coaxed out of retirement by Redwood City, and he served as the Community Development Director during a critical period of time. His tenure with that city (from 2001 to 2006) put in motion a dramatic renaissance, including many streetscape improvements, the creation of a cinema which served as an important catalyst to revitalization, Courthouse Square, and the Downtown Precise Plan. Bruce was kind enough to recruit me to help him in these efforts and it has been a great experience. 

Prior to that, though, he was City Manager of Mountain View, California. You may know Mountain View as the home to Google and other tech titans. Under his leadership many great improvements were made to that city, including the transformation of Castro Street, their main downtown street, into a highly successful shopping and dining destination.

In an interview at the Urbanism Speakeasy, Bruce shares some of his stories from the Mountain View days. This interview shows how important competent municipal management is to placemaking. Listen to the interview here. The top of the page has text excerpts from the discussion, but I recommend that you scroll to the bottom and listen to the whole thing. Good stuff.

In Defense of (Some) Skyscrapers

(Photo by Bruce Liedstrand)

I love all kinds of cities, so picking a favorite is difficult. But if I had to, I would probably pick Paris. My time there has been minimal, but it was enough to infect me with a deep admiration if the place. Paris is eminently enjoyable and delightful, and in this era of megacities it is an excellent model for places that strive to be sustainable, successful, and happy. 

Paris is admired across the globe for its architectural beauty, its civic grandeur, its vibrant range of shopping, culture, and entertainment, and its walkability. Another defining characteristics of central Paris, at least for now, is a conspicuous lack of skyscrapers. For a modern city of its large population and economic output this is a rare feature in the world. Is the a case of cause and effect, or correlation without causation?

Balconies, Patios, and Porches

Balconies are a great amenity for urban apartments. They allow the residents to get immediate fresh air without having to go down to the courtyard or the street. They also give a building legibility; balconies say "people live here!" A bay of balconies can also break up a long facade and give it some rhythm and visual interest.



However, at the ground floor this amenity is sometimes treated as a fenced-in private patio. While this is fine within a courtyard, I strongly recommend against this adjacent to a street. The patios, which sometimes have high fences right at the back of the sidewalk, create a tunnel effect which makes the street feel very unfriendly. 

An Oldie but a Goodie: Don't Pick on Portland

Back in 2002 I wrote an op-ed for the great urban planning website Planetizen about planning innovations undertaken in Portland, Oregon, and some of the unfair criticisms that had been hurled at them. I hope you like it. 

[Note: this was published eleven years ago, and unfortunately many of the links don't work. I will try to track down the intended targets and will provide new links if/when I find them.]

Don't Pick on Portland

We should not dismiss the bold planning experiment in Oregon just because it runs counter to current orthodoxies.

In the world of urban and regional planning, Portland, Oregon is a unique place. In the early 1970s the state of Oregon set out on a bold experiment in an attempt to preserve and enhance their environmental, agricultural, and urban assets in the presence of mounting growth pressures and sprawl. Along the way they made some mistakes, and they made some great decisions, and they have developed a legacy that we can all learn from. However, a small number of sprawl apologists have began to attack Portland, and it is important to set the record straight.

One of the common assaults on Portland says that their urban growth boundary (UGB) on making housing unaffordable by artificially constraining the supply of land. Any serious academic study of this subject either outright rejects this claim or says that an absolute correlation cannot be determined. In a recent study on the subject, Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution concluded that UGBs can’t be proven to increase home prices. Recent studies by Lewis and Clark College and the Journal of the American Planning Association came to similar conclusions.

Long Live On-Street Parking!

(Photo by Alex MacLean)

Far too much space in our cities is devoted to cars. However, in our quest to to achieve some balance by changing excess car space into much-needed people space, one of the first targets is often on-street parking. It is an easy target, because there is often little resistance to removing it. Many traffic specialists are happy to get rid of it, because capacity for traffic flow isn't reduced with such actions (in fact, you're improving it, because on-street parking interferes with traffic as cars pull in and out). Bike advocates will also like the change, becuase cyclists won't have to worry about doors suddenly swinging opening into their path.

If you are trying to improve downtowns and other walkable neighborhoods, though, this urge to take the easy way out must be resisted. On-street parking is an extremely valuable resource, and it should be removed only in rare circumstances. There are many reasons for this, and I find the following to be the most compelling:

The Dark Art of Small Lot Development

Recently I wrote a post which extolled the virtues of small lot development. While small lot development creates great urbanism and has many benefits, it can also be challenging to get built. Large projects have greater economies of scale, have an easier time living up to parking requirements and other city codes, and are more familiar to lenders. 

It is possible, though. In the video below, the great John Anderson of Chico, California shares some of the "dark arts" of developing small projects. I highly recommend that you check it out. Even if you have no plans to go into development, this is a great video for planners and other urbanists to watch in order to gain an understanding of how development works and what motivates developers, who are our indispensable partners in creating great places.

The Loch Ness Parking Space

Pictured above on the right is the Loch Ness Parking Space. I call it that because many people believe it is out there, and are searching for it... but it is a myth. Look at it though, isn't it great? It is in a beautiful downtown area, right in front of a great shop, and it is free! And no time limit! And it is empty, waiting for you to pull right in!

In reality, though, the parking space probably looks more like this...

Thoughts on the Pedestrian Mall

Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena

My favorite mode of transportation is walking. It is how I prefer to get around. It is no surprise then that my favorite parts of cities are downtowns, which are typically the most walkable areas. Pedestrians are the lifeblood downtowns, and without them they fail. If you don’t make the area comfortable, convenient, and interesting for pedestrians then nothing else you do will matter; walkers are that elemental to the success of any downtown.

It should be no surprise then that too much automobile traffic—and the danger, noise, parking lots, and fumes that go along with it—is one of the things that caused so many downtowns to become unpleasant places by the mid-20th century.

Design Duds: High Waters

(Photo from www.christinefife.com)

The fellow above looks pretty silly, doesn't he? Well, this doesn't look any better on buildings than it does on people.

Sometimes, builders do not take the cladding material all the way down to the ground. Instead, they terminate it a couple of inches early, creating a gap. I hereby dub this condition high waters.

This is a common practice these days, and it is really unfortunate. It can make an otherwise elegant building look crude. It is true that materials like stucco and wood shouldn't make contact with soil, but in an urban environment with concrete sidewalks and no setbacks, there is no justification for this. This is especially true when you consider that the ground floor of most downtown-style buildings are clad in brick, stone, precast panels, or ceramic tiles, which are all very tough materials.

Pilaster A

Pilaster B

The two photos above are from the same building. Pilaster A is done the proper way, with the cladding running all the way to the ground. Pilaster B has high waters. Oddly enough, both are from the same facade, and are about 25 feet apart. If it can be done properly in location A, it should be done properly in location B, too. This is a good building by a good developer, but high waters keep the building from looking complete.

Why is this done? I'm sure there are a variety of reasons. Perhaps there was a slight slope to the site, they they didn't want to cut the panels at an angle to accommodate the grade. In other cases, perhaps they started tiling at the top, and when they got to the bottom the gap was less than the width one full tile, so they decided to leave it. Whatever the reason for this practice, it should be strongly discouraged.

I understand that this sounds like a trivial thing to focus on, but the devil is in the details, especially in parts of the building that pedestrians come into close contact with. It gives a cheap, flimsy look to the building. It looks as if the builder didn't care enough to finish the job. It makes the whole facade look like a phony appliqué. I recommend never doing it anyplace where the base of the building will be visible, especially in a downtown. Run the cladding material all the way down, and if you can't for some reason, at least backfill the gap with concrete. Don't give your building high waters.

High Waters

No High Waters here!

Small Lots and the Evolution of the City

Small lot development in Austin, Texas

Today, we tend to think of small lots as unusable scraps; nuisances which stand in the way of good development. Many redevelopment efforts focus on the assembly of these lots into workable development sites. The small, wasteful buildings can then be swept away to make room for efficient development.

Small lot development in Paris

This is not a view rooted in an understanding of how cities have historically developed, nor in a view that comes from a study of the world's most enjoyable places. Traditionally, city blocks were subdivided into multiple small lots, often just 25' to 50' wide (or about 2,500 to 5,000 square feet), which were each auctioned off and developed independently by their individual owners. Prior to restrictive zoning, these lots would incrementally change over time in response to changing market conditions. This process, which served us well for centuries, is perhaps best illustrated by the work of a fellow named Zack van Schouwen. He studied the daylights out of a single block in New York, and sketched each and every development change that it went through over the course of two centuries.

(Zack von Schouwen)

This is one of my favorite things on the web. The amount of work that went into this project is incredible. You can view the whole history of this block at Zack's website here. Go ahead and check it out. I'll wait.

Mapping Density with Dots

One of the coolest maps I've seen in a long time is the Census Dotmap, by Brandon Martin-Anderson. There is absolutely no base map at all--no roads, no topography, no political boundaries... nothing. Instead, there is simply one dot for every single person counted by the 2010 US Census and 2011 Canadian Census. As you zoom into an area, the variations in density get clearer and clearer.

It is amazing how natural features such as mountain ranges and rivers are so visible, despite the spartan nature of the map. Major population patterns are clearly visible, such as the megalopolis of the northeast, the hub and spoke pattern of big cities and small towns in the Midwest, and the dramatic drops in population in the plains, Rockies, and deserts.

It is very interesting to note how many of the densest cities are actually sparsely populated at the very center (due to the dominance of office space). Those central cores, however, are often surrounded by an extremely dense belt of population. Nuances like this are often lost in color-coded density maps based on larger geographic increments.

If I had one wish for a future enhancement, it would be for past censuses to be added. It would be really educational to pick an area and see how the present patterns vary from those of 50 or 100 years ago. Central Detroit comes to mind, as do the outer areas of metropolitan areas. If you could go back far enough in time, it would be a really dramatic and informative way to see the westward expansion of the United States. Such a project would be an enormous and daunting undertaking, though.

Kudos to Mr. Martin-Anderson on his awesome creation. This useful resource can be found here.

What is the Meaning of Suburban?

Words matter. When we speak to each other we need to understand what is meant. Language can often be ambiguous and inconsistent, but it seems to be particularly bad regarding cities. For example, which of the neighborhoods below is suburban?

Neighborhood A

Neighborhood B

My Delightful Density Presentation at the Vancouver Urban Forum

(Photo from vancouverisawesome.com)

Last year I was lucky enough to be invited by former Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan to give a short-and-sweet version of my Delightful Density presentation. I gave my talk at the Vancouver Urban Forum, which was a great event organized by his current endeavor, the Global Civic Policy Society. I had a lot of fun, and my speech was pretty well received. Sam and his team were fantastic hosts, and it was exciting to be on the roster with urban luminaries such as Gil Peñalosa, Ed Glaeser, and Gordon Price.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the presentation: 

The Vancouver Sun had a nice write-up on the event the next day, here. Vancouver has been a world leader in using well-designed density to revitalize their city, and they are consistently ranked at or near the top of most livable city lists thanks in large part to the work of people like Sam.

The bottom line is that a growing number of people prefer dense walkable urbanism, and it can be great when it is designed well and located in the proper place. Over the next few months, I plan to transcribe my Delightful Density presentation in to a series of blog posts for posterity. An extended version of the presentation, which includes a better density game and more data for folks who have yet to drink the Kool Aid, can be found on my Videos page.