When the Bank of America Tower opened in 2010, the press praised it as one of the world’s “most environmentally responsible high-rise office building[s].” It wasn’t just the waterless urinals, daylight dimming controls, and rainwater harvesting. And it wasn’t only the Leadership in Energy
Created by world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid, the highly anticipated Heydar Aliyev cultural center in Baku, Azerbaijan is nearly complete and set to open in September 2013. The project was started in 2007 with hopes of becoming a landmark and source of beauty for the city of Baku. The multipurpose building will house a library, museum, conference rooms, small galleries, and act as a hub for Azerbaijani culture.
At CNET, Declan McCullagh reports that the U.S. government has demanded that large Internet companies provide them with users' stored passwords, which are typically encrypted. The move represents "an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed," he writes. "If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user." [CNET News]
DC will pay by trading some properties, so the transactions--not unlike Enron or other financial engineering stratagems, stay off the books.
The stadium will be located in Southwest DC at Buzzards Point, which is a mostly industrial area. The site is roughly equidistant from both the Waterfront and Navy Yard Metro Stations (about 0.8 miles).
I am torn, generally, about these kinds of deals, especially after DC agreed to such a one-sided deal with professional baseball--the city spent $700 million on the stadium--for some rent payments.
At the metropolitan scale, professional sports teams aren't "economic development," they merely trade one form of entertainment spending for another.
On the other hand, for the jurisdictions where stadiums and arenas end up being based, the facilities can be a net positive economically, depending on:
• how the contracts are structured between the city and the team and whether or not the city shares in certain revenues; • where the facility is located, especially • whether or not the facility is integrated into the city outside of the stadium grounds, in a manner that contributes positively to economic revitalization in adjacent parts of the city; • whether or not the facility is mostly reached by automobile or by other means; • whether or not the facility is used for many events (football stadiums generally have about 10-15 events per year, baseball stadiums 81-100, arenas as many as 150 days, depending on how many teams operate there, soccer stadiums up to 40 maybe); • if admissions taxes are assessed on ticket sales (DC is giving up some of this money to Verizon Center for improvements there); etc.
This facility won't be terrible on those elements. So maybe it's worth doing. But it comes at a great cost, in any case.
In the thread on the topic on Greater Greater Washington ("To build a soccer stadium, DC will swap the Reeves Center") there is spirited discussion about whether or not sports facilities contribute to economic development, with the Nationals Stadium being listed as one positive example, along with others.
For many years I have argued that Verizon Center wasn't essential to the economic improvement of what had once been called Downtown Washington's East End, and I still agree with that assessment overall, because development was going to move east anyway, because there was nowhere else to build in the Downtown core.
However, I have to admit that the arena was crucial for one reason and remains key for another.
First, the choice by then team owner Abe Pollin to move the basketball and hockey teams back to the city from a suburban arena was a very important decision that said--especially at that time when DC was pretty f*ed up financially and politically--the city is important and worth investing in. This perhaps stabilized the economic calculus in the city at that time, with developers, and set the stage for a big increase in development velocity once Anthony Williams was elected mayor.
Second, the arena brings in lots of suburbanites into the city to attend events. And they end up, some of them at least, re-sampling and re-visiting the city. This effect isn't as good as I'd like, because Verizon Center schedules events early, making it difficult for workers to eat at local restaurants before events. Instead, they go directly to the Arena and eat on the premises. Still, the arena is a visitation anchor.
That's the case also for the Nationals Stadium. In and of itself, it's not why there is a great deal of development going on in the M Street SE corridor--and the development started long before the city decided to put a baseball stadium over there too.
There's development there because of the height limit and the constant expansion of office districts east and south of the core of Downtown, as well as the movement to various Navy Dept. functions to the Navy Yard over the past 10 years.
But with 81 events, minimum, each year, and like Verizon Center, most people who go to Nationals Stadium go by transit, it means that people are on foot, exploring the area, and some spend money here--even if they have to go to Barracks Row (8th St. SE) to do it. That helps the city, even if it doesn't contribute any benefit to the overall economy at the metropolitan scale.
Right: rendering of one of the options for a new DC soccer stadium.
Opportunity cost is the big question
The issue is can the city get more economic return by spending money on other things?
The cost of the deal is more than $150 million, when you figure that the agencies moving from the land sites that will be traded will go into new buildings that have to be paid for out of the city budget.
And arguably, other "investments" could potentially net a better return.
It does set the stage for doing something different with the RFK site. The Kennedy Family though is committed to keeping the stadium, even though it is obsolete, because it is named for Robert F. Kennedy and they consider it a great memorial.
And the site has environmental issues (see the RFK Stadium Site Redevelopment Plan by the National Capital Planning Commission) and currently there is a recreation easement on the property, so to re-develop it for other purposes, the city would have to pay the National Park Service to extinguish the easement. On the other hand, we don't need acres and acres of parking lots there either. (See the past blog entry "Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River East" corridor.")
Why don't local governments get an ownership interest or a revenue interest in sports teams, for their financial contributions?
For years I have argued that Congress needs to step in and produce laws that protect local governments from themselves vis-a-vis deals with sports teams. But that won't happen so long as Congressman and Senators get tickets for football, baseball, hockey, basketball, and soccer games.
The National Football League made it illegal for communities to own teams, grandfathering in permission for the Green Bay Packers, which are owned by a community corporation.
Maybe the Packers are the exception that proves the rule. But why not give the local government a profit participation right in the value of the sports team, not unlike how royalties work for intellectual property or mineral resources.
Why shouldn't a city get a hefty chunk of the increased value of a team when they build a $700 million stadium?
In any case, DC needs an open and transparent capital improvements planning and budgeting process
Finally, the biggest problem here is that DC doesn't have an overt public process for capital improvements planning and budgeting.
Trading properties so you can keep debt off the municipal financing books--to stay under the debt ceilings negotiated with municipal bond/financing firms--are the kinds of transactions that need the utmost scrutiny.
Yes, capital budgeting occurs, but only in the context of the annual budget. We need a more rigorous and public process where the opportunity costs could be measured and considered outside of wheeling and dealing behind closed doors.
That’s ‘after’ and ‘before’ as proposed by CH2MHill in 1999.
Note to engineering consultancies: just because you add people to your drawings, doesn’t mean people will actually go there. Those pedestrians are still between parking lot and high traffic stroad.
Looking at this stroad, it occurs to me that the access lane design of multi-way boulevards has two big advantages over faux-complete streets like these.
One, the tree-line helps to “claim” and enclose pedestrian space, even if it’s still used for parking. Two, I think the narrow sidewalk actually helps to cluster people, making lower foot-traffic times feel livelier. At high-traffic times, pedestrians happily spill out into the access lane.
Also, that turn lane is obviously a car-first design. Pedestrian-first great streets would have a refuge island there, and force cars to turn back on themselves at the next major intersection, probably round a roundabout.
Studying, working, or just sitting around inside can get pretty boring and stifling. Moving out onto a balcony can provide some relief, and that’s why designer Michael Hilgers created the Balcony Table. His little plastic stand hooks over the railing of a balcony to provide a handy outdoor space.
The table/desk lets you do all kinds of things outside that you would normally confine to indoors. Take your laptop out to the balcony and finish that report you’ve been working on, or use it as a table to hold your drinks while you enjoy the sunset.
The small balcony table comes with a space at the back that can be used as a planter, letting you grow lovely flowers or tasty herbs right on your portable balcony working and relaxing space.
Of course, you could always simply put a small table on your balcony to hold your desk or drinks. But the balcony table takes up no floor space at all, giving you more balcony space to stretch out and enjoy your little corner of the great outdoors.
Keep Going - Check Out These Great Related Dornob Articles:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/07/google-street-view-knows-why-some-neighborhoods-just-feel-safe/6326/ Something like trash on the street can rejigger our entire sense of a place.
Last week I was able to head over to Milwaukee, Cheeseland with my best friend Mike to catch a Paul McCartney concert. I grew up on the Beatles and Mike and I spent years of our lives playing Beatles music (until we grew up and had kids -- now we are a little rusty). The concert was amazing, but Miller Park was a MAJOR disappointment. WTF, John Norquist? It was STROAD central surrounded by a sea of parking. What kind of public investment is that? We got out of the stadium and saw that it would clearly be an hour before we got out of the parking lot (it took at least that long to get in) and we were hungry/thirsty, but there was no place to even walk to have a bite to eat. I saw they had a nature trail, however. Nice feature to "green" it up a little, I suppose (not). Makes me really proud that we have a park like Target Field here in Minnesota where I can not only bike, walk, light rail, heavy rail or drive in, but I can meet some friends and hang out without having to pretend tailgating with mosquitos and car fumes is fun. Border Battle: Minnesota 1, Cheeseland 0.
Given the likelihood that energy costs will continue to increase and that taxpayers will balk at funding massive infrastructure upgrades for lightly populated suburban areas, America’s pattern of suburban and exurban development feels increasingly like a house of cards. Add in the changing tastes of younger Americans, who are opting for more walkable, more bikeable neighborhoods, and an increase in suburban blight seems almost inevitable.
I also want to give a shout out to the Rochester Subway blog. Even thought they got our name wrong, I appreciated the quote and respect what you are trying to do. You might lose this battle, but understand that I've lost them all here in my hometown. Keep trying. The tide is turning and you'll be there with answers in the future when they need you most.
This article from Aaron Renn on the Illusion of Growth Economics was the most emailed my direction over the past week. It was a very solid piece that captured succinctly the transition that America's cities are going through. The concept of local government transitioning from managing rapid growth to operating a complex system is key. Highly recommended.
This is not to say that Charlotte is poorly managed. But the transition from thinking about managing rapid growth to thinking like an operator is a tricky one. Even many companies fail to make it. Retailers, for example, frequently fall on hard times when they reach the point where they can no longer simply open new stores to meet financial targets.
Cities that are benefitting from strong growth have the wind at their backs. But it would be naive to assume that they must be doing something better than everyone else just because of that. Places like Chicago and New York were the Charlottes and Houstons of their day, right down to their laissez-faire economies. But they eventually hit the limits of growth and had to wander in the wilderness while trying to reinvent themselves.
Perhaps the most tragic story I've read this month is about Sandstone, Minnesota, and how they left their historic school to rot after they built the trendy, new, remote campus (here's what the new site looks like - makes me want to bash my head through this screen). I'm sure the school administration justified that on a pro forma somewhere that excluded any analysis of transportation costs (they always do -- it's just so inconvenient when you want the shiny new toy). The article is from MPR so listen to it or read it. I'm not going to give you an excerpt but instead a picture and this question: what kind of culture would allow this building to be abandoned to thieves and vandals?
I just can’t get over this book. It haunts me. Living nearly my entire life in Akron, I am familiar with the Rust Belt and with urban decline. I am a regular visitor to Cleveland, to Youngstown, and to Pittsburgh. I’ve been to Detroit itself several times and have walked and driven around. I’ve seen the tragic art exhibits documenting the decay, and I’ve leered at the ruin porn.
But nothing prepared me for this book. Hard-bitten skeptic and cynical Northeast Ohioan that I so often am, I was still flabbergasted by what I was reading here: frozen corpses; burning houses; corrupt, thieving politicians; strung-out derelicts; murdered children – as common and as unremarkable to the jaded denizens of Detroit as the pallid sun that rises each morning behind a steel grey sky.
Paul Krugman and I don't see eye to eye, although I'll give my standard Krugman disclaimer than only one of us has a Nobel Prize in Economics (and it's not me). Even so, I found his insights on Detroit interesting. He stops short of making the connection between "sprawl killed Detroit" and the centralized economy goosed with easy credit that allows cities to kick the can way past the redemption stop on the road to ruin that he dogmatically advocates for. Nonetheless, thanks Paul.
It’s hard to avoid the sense that greater Pittsburgh, by taking better care of its core, also improved its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. In that sense, Detroit’s disaster isn’t just about industrial decline; it’s about urban decline, which isn’t the same thing. If you like, sprawl killed Detroit, by depriving it of the kind of environment that could incubate new sources of prosperity.
A proposal by one councilmember to erect a wall around the suburb of Hamtramck to keep out Detroit residents is rich in irony. The ship is taking on water and listing to port and they sit at the stern wanting to keep those port-siders out. Dude, your fates are intertwined. You're on the same damned ship! It might go down port side first, but the whole thing is going to be resting on the bottom eventually. That you have not realized that yet -- and that you think perhaps a wall will help you -- demonstrates how screwed you are.
With a population just over 20,000, Hamtramck is surrounded by the city of Detroit — except for a small portion on the west side that borders the similarly surrounded city of Highland Park.
Fabiszak has said such a tall wall would repel “outsiders” — from Detroit and Highland Park — who are committing crimes and vandalizing the city.
And in what is perhaps the most insane thing you are ever likely to hear, less than one week after the city of Detroit declares that it is bankrupt, that it will not be able to pay its debts or make good on its pension obligations, it was announced that $450 million in bonding was approved to build a new stadium in Detroit for the Red Wings. That's right. A full $284.5 million of that will come from property tax receipts in the redevelopment area. I'm not making this up. If there is one place where build-it-and-they-will-come stadium projects should have ZERO credibility, it is Detroit. Yet, try, try again. Our collective delusion and hubris continues to plumb new depths that astound even me.
In a statement today touting the project, Gov. Rick Snyder said construction of the arena alone will create 2,900 direct construction jobs and the ancillary development would mean another 1,480 construction jobs. Under the deal, half those jobs must be filled by Detroit residents, Snyder's office said in a statement.
Snyder paid a visit to the Strategic Fund board moments after it approved the deal and said the new arena is very exciting for Michigan. "Detroit's really on a comeback path," he said. "I think Detroit is absolutely poised for a bright exciting future. This is just another proof point in that exercise."
He said he can justify the use of tax dollars on the project, given Detroit's finances, because it is about investing in the city's future.
"This is a catalyst project," Snyder said. "This is going to be where the Red Wings are. Who doesn't get fired up in Detroit about the Red Wings? Come on now, the people that are criticizing are people from outside of Michigan. This is something that is important to all of us."
The antithesis of the $450 million stadium-as-catalyst approach is Tactical Urbanism, but does it work? Here's a great article about one community that has seen real progress with a broad embrace of New Economy principles.
Today, Hamiltonians are using cornstarch to paint safer crosswalks on their neighbourhood streets. They're showing up en masse at council meetings with signs and slogans. They're commenting on blogs and websites and reaching out to councillors, media, and the public on Twitter.
Hamilton residents are becoming more engaged in municipal affairs than ever before. From the CasiNO campaign, which lobbied against a downtown gaming facility, to the tactical urbanism movement that stages guerrilla traffic-calming interventions, to rallying to save buildings from demolition, Hamiltonians are taking a more active role in city politics.
And for those of you doubters, take a gander over at Seattle where the city's traffic engineer, Dongho Chang, responded proactively to some "reasonably polite Seattleites" by adopting, and then improving on, the demonstration project they recently undertook. When bureaucrats fear losing ground more than losing control, great things can happen. Chang's response is a model for this country's next generation of engineers who (when working productively) will be primarily concerned with right-scaling, adapting and sometimes dismantling what has been bequeathed them.
To recap, the anonymous group installed the pylons under the cover of night this spring. They then sent an email to Seattle Bike Blog and SDOT explaining why they did it and pointing out the fact that they used a simple adhesive to make them easy to remove should SDOT choose to do so.
In many other cities, such acts are met with scorn and threats of legal action from city officials. But Seattle’s Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang did not. Instead, he wrote an equally polite email back apologizing for the fact that they needed to remove the pylons, but thanking the group for making a statement about road safety.
Well, now Chang and the city have gone a step further. They have installed permenent pylons with safe clearance space for bike handlebars and extra buffer space on the roadway. They also completed a safer connection to First Hill by installing a bike lane on 7th Ave between Cherry St and Marion, which is a signed bike route across First Hill that will soon connect to the Broadway Bikeway when it is completed.
And when Tom Friedman is writing about it in the NY Times, well....you know at that point it has passed beyond being a rebel activity and is now a well accepted main stream notion. Someone tell our local governments.
Airbnb has also spawned its own ecosystem — ordinary people who will now come clean your home, coordinate key exchanges, cook dinner for you and your guests, photograph rooms for rent, and through the ride-sharing business Lyft, turn their cars into taxis to drive you around. “It used to be that corporations and brands had all the trust,” added Chesky, but now a total stranger, “can be trusted like a company and provide the services of a company. And once you unlock that idea, it is so much bigger than homes. ... There is a whole generation of people that don’t want everything mass produced. They want things that are unique and personal.”
There is something a little extra bizarre about Florida. Many Fridays we've documented the crazy highway projects taking place in a state I've dubbed the STROAD Capital of the World. This Friday I want you to watch a video, and as you watch this video, in the back of your head understand that this is the mayor and the city that recently received $42 million of federal money to build a 2.6 mile STROAD. That's over $3,000 per foot for a hunk of asphalt (greenwashed with a trail and a pond) that provides no appreciable return on investment although, according to the mayor, it was done so Cape Coral "can handle future growth".
Here in Minnesota we're doing well because we had the "courage" to raise taxes, including many regional governments that were benevolently allowed by the state to increase something known as a wheelage tax. Did we reform anything about our approach to transportation spending besides finding more money? No, although we did identify more things we want to do. Hold on....what's that I hear in the distance.....could it be.....yes, I believe it is.....the unforeseen and completely unanticipated transportation funding cliff. Good thing we reformed our approach years ago before committing to building a ton more stuff....er... Someone please make a credible argument that this is not simply a house of cards.
Due to a couple of kinds of borrowing from the state’s Trunk Highway Fund, the amount of money the state has for road construction will decline by more than $250 million a year in the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2015.
Two funding sources are set to run dry at roughly that time. One is the trunk highway bonding that was approved in the 2008 transportation funding bill that the Legislature passed by overriding Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto. The other source is advanced payments for transportation made by the state with the expectation of being reimbursed by the federal government.
Induced demand in the context of vehicle capacity simply means that building more space for cars encourages more people to use them. If I live in the suburbs and the city widens the freeway into downtown I might take a few extra trips into the city every month or decide that taking a job in the city is now feasible. The increase in average highway travel speeds also brings more distant suburbs and exurbs within driving distance, which encourages more development at the current sprawl boundary and beyond. These and other effects lead to more cars using the highway until the excess capacity is soaked up and traffic is just as bad as it ever was. According to most studies, about 80-90% of the excess capacity is soaked up within just five years.
This makes for a strong argument against highway expansion, but it ignores the impacts on local streets, which are far more severe. The problem here is obvious: unless 100% of the new highway users are bypass traffic--none of them using the highway to get into the city itself--local roads have to deal with a huge influx of additional vehicles. Many of those vehicles aren't bypass traffic, of course, so local streets (and their residents) are burdened with their presence and the congestion they bring.
And in an act of courage, transit advocate Nick Magrino called for stopping the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro Area's Southwest Corridor transit project. I tweeted my support for his article and received some Minnesota nice pushback so I can only imagine the grief Nick received. He's right, though. We need to make productive investments, even for transit.
Let’s not muck this up too much–we were told that building a tunnel through the city was too expensive, so we decided to skip the city and build what amounts to a commuter rail line (in the vein of the Northstar Line) for suburbanites. Now, three years later, we have been told that we’re probably going to build a tunnel anyway. This is crazy. Again: This is crazy. We need to start the process over.
So that whole housing comeback that is very real (not), ready to take off on its own (not) and totally justified by market forces (not) is now official because -- wait for it -- flipping is back baby! There's no way this is a sign of cheap credit propping up a housing market that is still vastly over valued, is it?
House flipping deals are on track to hit a record this year, RealtyTrac reports. Profits were up 19 percent in the first half of 2013 from a year ago and 74 percent higher than 2011. Profits are also climbing to the highest in seven years, with investors making an average $18,391 on each sale, more than triple returns in the first six months of 2012 and compared with losses of $13,206 two years ago.
Of course, a housing market in solid recovery would not be one where there are unexpected decreases in housing starts during prime construction months. If you look at the data, this market feels much more like an attempt to put air back into a deflating balloon. For reference, back in 2005 we were starting more than 2 million homes per month.
The residential real-estate rebound suffered a setback in June as housing starts unexpectedly fell to the lowest level in almost a year, curbing how much construction contributed to U.S. economic growth last quarter.
Work began on 836,000 houses at an annualized rate, the least since August and down 9.9 percent from a revised 928,000 pace in May, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The drop was led by a 26.2 percent plunge in multifamily projects, which are more volatile than work on single-family homes.
If you don't have a grasp of what is actually going on, what the root causes of this long malaise we are just getting started in here in the USA, then latch on to a straw man and beat him repeatedly. If you're not going to exercise your brain, at least you'll be exercising something.
After hearing more than an hour of impassioned public comment Thursday, the city's Board of Aldermen voted 5-0 to rezone the Frederick Towne Mall property.
Although the plan may not be perfect for everyone, the city needed to do something to spur development, said Alderwoman Shelley Aloi.
The rezoning will allow Rockwood Capital, which owns the 20 acres on U.S. 40, to move forward with a proposal to bulldoze the nearly vacant mall and build a Wal-Mart. The developers will need to bring forward a site plan before finalizing its plan.
The land is now marked solely for commercial use, rather than a mix of commercial and residential uses.
Finally, while I've now seen Paul McCartney four times in concert, I've been able to see the Dave Matthews Band five times. I got a huge smile out of this story of a couple that picked up a hitchhiking Dave Matthews on their way to the concert. He had apparently been out biking, gotten a flat, had no cell phone and was trying to hitch a ride back in time. What a cool guy. Here's one of my favorites from the McCartney concert to kick off your weekend (although if you want my favorite song of all time, here you go.)
Take care, everyone. Have a great summer weekend. See you back here Monday.
I'm going to be in the office this entire week -- such a rarity -- so you'll be sure and find me over at the Strong Towns Network. If you've been trying to email me without success (my apologies), I'm much easier to get a hold of over there, as are a lot of the people you see posting here. Please join us.
And if you'd like more, check out my book, Thoughts on Building Strong Towns (Volume 1). It is a primer on the Strong Towns movement and an essential read for those wanting to get up to speed quickly.
Courtesy of Teo Losman, here’s a two hour mix of sunny Scandenavian pop music released on Sincerely Yours, with tracks from the Gothenberg label’s beginnings in 2005, right up to today. You might be like me and haven’t listened to Air France or TTA in far too long, and you can remedy that right now PLUS listen to a bunch of other bands that sound kind of similar. This Balearic bliss-out should be played all at once, preferably near some ocean. Listen via The Fader:
Track List:
1. now that’s what i call indulgence – tta – now that’s what i call indulgence (2005)
2. silly crimes – tta – new waves (2006)
3. leg 7 – tta – escaping your ambitions (2006)
4. never content – air france – on trade winds (2006)
5. fall from a height – the honeydrips – lack of love will tear us apart (2007)
6. sailing is not a crime – n. divers & a. singer – escaping our limitations (2007)
7. afraid you told someone about us – air france – aurevoairfrance (2007)
8. hung up on a dream – tta – first class riot (2007)
9. a new chance – tta – a new chance (2007)
10. 1981 – tta – a new chance – (2007)
11. i wouldn’t know what to do – the honeydrips – i wouldn’t know what to (2007)
12. taken too young – tta – taken too young (2007)
13. new city love – jonas game – new city love (2007)
14. lucky – tta – neo violence 7″ (2008)
15. a young summer’s youth – joel lame – a master of cermonies (2008)
16. skimret – nordpolen – skimret (2008)
17. no excuses – air france – no way down (2008)
18. under – nordpolen – på nordpolen (2008)
19. my swag, my life – jj – no° 1 (2009)
20. my life my swag – jj – no° 1 (2009)
21. känslor – avner – lyssna (2009)
22. asleep at the party – memory cassette – call & response (2009)
23. gbg belongs to us – air france feat. roos – gbg belongs to us (2009)
24. things will never be the same again – no° 2 (2009)
25. bicycle – memory tapes – seek magic (2009)
26. round one (salem remix) – gucci mane – round one (2009)
27. bed for mig (kjj edit) – avner – (2009)
28. pure shores – jj – n° 2.1 (2009)
29. my way – jj – let go / my way (2010)
30. ceo birthday – jj – ceo birthday (2010)
31. let go – jj – n° 3 (2010)
32. blue moon – kendal johansson – blue moon (2010)
33. everything is gonna be alright – ceo – come with me (2010)
34. höstvisa – the honeydrips – höstvisa (2010)
35. all around – ceo – white magic (2010)
36. let them – jj – let them (2010)
37. slwhl – sail awhale – a documentation (2010)
38. halo – ceo – illuminata (2010)
39. kill you – jj – kills (2010)
40. the end – jj feat yves saint lorentz – the end (2011)
41. första hjälpen – team rockit – första hjälpen (2011)
42. no one can touch us tonight – jj – no one can touch us tonight (2011)
43. celebris – spêcial club – celebris (2011)
44. triumf – team rockit – 1988 (2011)
45. it feels good to be around you – air france – it feels good to be around you (2011)
46. ave maria – ceo – ave maria (2011)
47. vit magi – dream team rockit – white magic epologue (2011)
48. vi – spêcial club – vi (2011)
49. beautiful life – jj – n° 4 (2012)
50. när mitt blod pumpar i dej – nordpolen – när mitt blod pumpar i dej (2012)
51. 10 – jj – high summer (2012)
52. dom mörka molnen feat. ceo – nordpolen – vi är många som är vakna i natt (2013)
53. aura – team rockit – aura (2013)
54. fågelsången – jj – fågelsången (2013)
It might seem strange, but there are still plenty of people who ride bikes but don’t like the idea of protected bike lanes that much, or even bike infrastructure altogether.
Bill Lindeke at Twin City Sidewalks says he rides with many of those folks in Minneapolis — cyclists who have been characterized as “strong and fearless.” The car-centric streets of the Twin Cities don’t deter them from riding. But these elite cyclists are only a small fraction of the general population.
The subset of bike culture that accepts status quo street design as adequate, Lindeke says, has its roots in a schism dating back to the 1960s, when proponents of bicycling as recreation and competitive sport (the “elites”) battled advocates of bicycling as transportation (the “egalitarians”):
Back in the early days, according to bicycle historian Bruce Epperson, bicycle advocates at UC-Davis wanted to adopt an “egalitarianist” approach to bicycle design. These early cycletracks were modeled after the Northern European cycling philosophy that wedded separated designs of bicycle paths with a geographic system that encouraged utility trips through urban space, in this case, through the sprawling campus of an agricultural university.
The key difference between the cycletrack approach and the status quo in the US was that cycletrack planners saw bicycling as primarily for transportation as opposed to recreational or athletic purposes. This difference meant that bicycle planners had to simultaneously design routes for the broadest possible audience (“lowest common denominator”), while placing routes through key parts of the city to link important destinations.
This philosophy provoked a negative reaction by influential bicycling advocates, who at the time were focused on working through some early attempts at guides for bicycling safety and bicyclist education. For example, one influential bicycle engineer described “transportation and utility aspects” of cycling as being “only offsprings” of recreational riding and competitive racing (Konski quoted in Epperson 2013 31). Konski was emphatic about the need for competitive bicycle racing to serve as a model for riding.
According to this philosophy, competitive (male) bicycle racing was intended to serve as a model for everyday riders throughout the nation.
The latter philosophy, while declining, still has some vocal adherents. The question is, who should we design our streets for — competitive racers, or everyone else?
Elsewhere on the Network today: Systemic Failure reports that U.S. DOT’s hard and fast “Buy America” rule are more flexible when highway funding is at stake. Better Institutions explains how extreme heat affects every mode of transportation. And Real Hartford reports that officials at the Connecticut DOT seem to be rather disdainful of public opinion.
art is velvet underground riff...guitar melody is an albert hammond jr riff
Rockophiles rejoice, the Kings of Leon are back. After a mid-tour fallout resulting in cancelled shows and an indefinite hiatus, the Talahina boys were left without new music since late 2010. Until now. The Followill family (3 brothers, 1 cousin) returns with "Supersoaker," a testament to the rugged, chunky rock that brought them so much success in the past. Caleb Followill's grungy cries, a signature characteristic of the band, reign supreme over juicy chords and infectious snares.
The single is a sneak peak to the forthcoming album Mechanical Bull, out September 24 via RCA Records. Stream the ever-consistent band's track below, and make sure to pick it up on iTunes.
The allure and mystique of a #1 album is something that most artists dream of when they get in the game. Many achieve that goal, but 100x as many don’t. Even some of the best bands never get to that point, including all the bands on this list. The research for this article was much harder than I anticipated because I wanted to make sure there were zero #1 albums on any chart in any country in any way. This eliminated a lot of acts that weren’t #1 in the US or UK, but were in, say, Norway or their home country (Tom Waits, Bjork, Sigur Rós, respectively). Eventually, I scrounged up 10 fantastic bands that never hit the top. Some make a little sense. Others blew my mind.
Pavement
In looking at bands for this list, the same trend kept popping up: the influential lose out to the influenced. It’s hard to find an act or artist more influential on rock music in the ’90s and beyond than Pavement. The California outfit only released five full-length albums in their 10 years of making music, but their sound can be heard all over rock music — even today. Without Pavement, there may not have been Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Kweller, or anything out of the Northwest indie scene in the last 15 years. There’s a reason Village Voice mastermind Robert Christgau called Pavement “the finest band of the 1990s” and never gave them a grade lower than a B+.
The band first hit moderate mainstream success in 1994 with their sophomore album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which broke the US charts at #121 and #15 in the UK, going on to be their highest-selling album. However, their highest-charting album in the US was 1997′s Brighten the Corners, which topped out at #70. When the band reissued their debut, Slanted and Enchanted, it managed to break the top five on the US Indie charts, but never reached #1. Odds are that won’t change anytime soon, as lead singer Stephen Malkmus has quashed any rumors of new music or new tours. Pavement remains the band who gave all the tools, but got no recognition for the machine.
Wilco
Wilco is a hard band to introduce to people. Each album has a different style, a different feel, hell, sometimes within the same record (remember “Less Than You Think”?). Whether you love a Wilco album right off the bat, or have to sit with it a while, you know the payoff is going to be great. Since they released their first album, A.M., in 1994, they’ve been extending the Alt. Country conventions beyond its borders, and gaining more and more fame. Their influence can be heard in rock heavy hitters like The National and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and their songs have been covered by Norah Jones, The Wallflowers, and Fleet Foxes.
Their 2002 masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is widely considered to be one of the best albums of the last 20 years and is also their highest-selling album, but not their highest charting, topping out at #13 on the US charts. The four albums that followed, all reached the top 10, with their highest — 2007′s Sky Blue Sky and 2009′s Wilco (The Album) – both peaking at #4 in the US. Here’s hoping their follow-up to 2011′s The Whole Love will change their fate.
The Flaming Lips
The pride of Oklahoma City and festival juggernauts The Flaming Lips have been releasing critical- and fan-favorite albums for years, but only one has even cracked the top 10 on the US charts. They’ve won three Grammy awards, been nominated for six total, and have three international gold albums. Their biggest radio hit, “She Don’t Use Jelly”, reached number one on the US Heatseeker charts, but that wasn’t enough to propel Transmissions from the Satellite Heart even into the top 100.
Since their resurgence with 1999′s The Soft Bulletin, every album they’ve released has charted, but only Embryonic in 2009 reached the top 10 in the US (At War with the Mystics hit #6 in the UK, but #11 in the US). After all the ass kicking onstage, and two of their albums being named on Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and NME’s Top Albums of the Decade lists, they still have yet to achieve the elusive #1 spot. Perhaps their announced collaboration with Ke$ha will fix their #1 drought for them?
Fiona Apple
With only four full-length albums, Fiona Apple has firmly established herself as one of the great voices and songwriters of the last two decades. Her debut album, Tidal, went triple platinum, won her a Grammy, and landed on Rolling Stone‘s Top Albums of the 1990s. The next two follow-ups, 1999′s When the Pawn… and 2005′s underrated Extraordinary Machine, reached #13 and #7, respectively, on the US charts. Various personal problems delayed Apple’s return to the mainstream spotlight following Extraordinary Machine, but after seven years she released last year’s exceptional The Idler Wheel…, and it immediately shot up the charts, but only to #3 in the US.
She seems to always fall into an odd pocket of music. Her jazzy, whiskey-soaked piano tone could fit into the Norah Jones realm, but her personal lyrics tend to freak out the average suburbanites who view Jones as “quirky.” On the other end, she doesn’t dabble in drum machines and heavy orchestral anthems, so the Florence Welch crowd doesn’t latch on. Instead, Apple is similar to Daniel Day-Lewis: rare, divine, and not quite the populist.
Guided by Voices
Of all the bands on this list, Guided by Voices (GBV) is probably the one who gives the least amount of fucks for not having a #1 record. Not to say that they don’t want one and wouldn’t welcome the success that would entail, but for a band that has released approximately 19 albums in their roughly 26-year career—20 if you take out the six years they broke up—and drank most of the West out of beer and whiskey, the pressure to release a #1 record isn’t really a thing for them. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve it. Many of their albums have been released within months of the previous, and in between lead singer/songwriter Robert Pollard has released 19 albums of his own solo material!
Roughly 38 studio albums in 26 years? Let’s see these young kids do that.
Or be this impacting. Since their inception, they’ve influenced Eddie Vedder, The Strokes, even director Steven Soderbergh. They even have a #1 fan in the Obama White House; Press Secretary Jay Carney has dropped GBV references in many press briefings, just upping his cred even more. Charting-wise, only 2001′s Isolation Drills has come close to turning heads, hitting #6 on the US Indie charts (#168 on the Billboard 200). Regardless of the charts, GBV is going to keep chugging on, but damn it would be great to see them get the widespread credit they deserve.
The Roots
Not only are The Roots the Best Band in Late Night, but they also may be one of the most influential and hardest-working groups in hip-hop. Since Black Thought and ?uestlove started the band and then released their first album in 1993, The Roots have recorded 10 studio albums, received 12 Grammy nominations, and nabbed four Grammy wins. On top of that, members of the band have collaborated with everyone you can think of across all genres (Mos Def, Incubus, Dave Matthews Band), toured as the backing band for the likes of Jay Z, and recorded full albums with Betty Wright (Betty Wright: The Movie), John Legend (Wake Up!), and Elvis Costello (Wise Up Ghost).
One thing they don’t have is a #1 album. They’ve come close with multiple albums breaking the top 10, specifically Things Fall Apart and The Tipping Point both hitting #4. Despite all of this success and talent, however, they’ve never hit that milestone. They’ve got a shot with their upcoming & Then You Shoot Your Cousin, rumored for a late 2013 release, and the Elvis Costello record, so keep your eyes out.
The Replacements
Along with Pavement, The Replacements shaped a lot of what would become ’90s “alternative rock” and college radio rock. Turning heads for their notoriously drunken performances, Paul Westerberg, Bob and Tommy Stinson, and Chris Mars spent roughly 14 years destroying stages and releasing some of the best, straight-forward rock music to date. The band’s second and third albums, Hootenanny and Let It Be, took them out of Minnesota and into the limelight of NYC’s CBGBs/Maxwell’s rock scene. However, the turbulent relationships within their band and with their fans caused them to fizzle out faster than they should have, and they ended things after seven albums. Not one even cracked the top 50 on the charts. (Though, Don’t Tell a Soul single “I’ll Be You” did manage to top the Billboard Modern Rock and Album Rock Tracks.) Still, their honest lyrics and loose garage sound gave them a lasting impression on rock music, and their forthcoming reunion at the upcoming Riot Fests give fans new hope for new music.
PJ Harvey
Here are some credentials for PJ Harvey: four-time Mercury Prize nominee, two-time Mercury Prize winner (only artist to ever do that, and first solo female artist to ever win), Rolling Stone‘s Best New Artist, Best Singer-Songwriter, and Artist of the Year, six-time Grammy nominee, and even an MBE for contribution to British music. All of her albums have reached the top-25 in the UK–half of which hit the top-11—but one never hit #1 anywhere (Rid of Me hit #3 in the UK, and only one, Uh-huh Her, made top-30 in the US). How can someone with so many accolades and so much support never reach that pedestal? She has two albums, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea and Let England Shake, that have been named essential albums and topped year-end lists, but neither reached higher than #25 and #8, respectively. These albums have completely different feelings, one a beautiful pop relationship album and the other a dark treatise on the horrors of war, but like Fiona Apple, Harvey has an endless font of talent from which to draw, and no matter what she’ll shake you.
The Ramones
If Pavement left their mark on the ’90s, then the ’80s and everything since has belonged to The Ramones. New York City’s finest showed every rebellious kid in the US that even if you didn’t have the musical knowledge or the rock star good looks, you could still rock. Yet, the only album of theirs to be certified any sort of precious metal distinction was a compilation collection called Ramones Mania. Let’s go over that once more: Even though they’ve been named by Spin as the second greatest band of all time (behind The Beatles), and if it weren’t for them, Billie Joe Armstrong and Greg Ginn would’ve never picked up guitars, they never reached the top-10 in any country on any chart. They’ll live on as an influence, as the closest thing you can get to The Ramones is former drummer Marky Ramone and Andrew WK touring as Blitzkrieg, or Tommy Ramone playing bluegrass with his wife. Pick your poison.
The Clash
For the most part, the bands on this list didn’t strike me as a huge surprise. They’re all praiseworthy, and they’ve all released some of the best albums to date, but some are a little under the radar, so it’s understandable that they never attained that coveted #1. When it comes to The Clash, however, I was absolutely dumbstruck.
The most pivotal punk band of all time, one of the most pivotal bands period. They released one of the most important albums of the last four decades (London Calling) and changed the musical landscape forever. They’re in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, and if it weren’t for them, there would be no U2, no Billy Bragg, no Rancid, Bad Religion, Massive Attack, or even LCD Soundsystem. Hell, toss in M.I.A. or Diplo, too. Their political punk rock, their use/experimentation with dubstep (the real dubstep), and their various fusions with reggae were paramount to future groups.
On two different occasions, they almost had a #1 album: 1978′s Give Em Enough Rope and 1982′s twice-platinum Combat Rock, which both reached #2 on the UK charts. Stateside, the highest in the US was CombatRock,and not even London Calling made it past #9. Unfortunately with Joe Strummer’s death, there won’t be any chances for that #1. However, The Clash is the perfect example of how flawed these charts are and how much they don’t necessarily dictate anything resembling taste. Bottom line: A world where Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus have more #1 albums than The Clash, well, that’s a world seriously fucked.
Mythical French designer of the 70s, Pierre Paulinrevolutionized the traditional concept of furniture with an elegant, fun and utilitarian, full of shapes, curves and bright colors.
Pierre Paulin’s work has adapted to many places and circumstances, completely revolutionizing traditional furniture. Paulin invented a radically new language, full of rounded shapes, bold colors and contemporary materials. The furniture in the style Paulin, curved shapes are usually inspired elements of nature. His works are in the permanent collections of some of the world’s major museums such as MOMA in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Demisch Danant in Paris.
It's natural to associate cities with the structures that grace the front of postcards. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Colosseum in Rome, the Statue of Liberty in New York. But the things that truly mediate our relationships to a city are typically of a much smaller scale. The metro card we pluck from our wallets everyday, for instance, or the rusty fire escape that stares back at us from the bedroom window.
For a moment, at least, these underrated icons of the city are getting their place in the spotlight. A selection of 62 are being featured in a new exhibition called "Masterpieces of Everday New York: Objects as Story," running now through September at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School in Manhattan. Inspired by the British radio series "A History of the World in 100 Objects," program curators Radhika Subramaniam and Margot Bouman invited New School faculty to submit objects to go on display.
Some of the objects, like a subway token or those little buttons from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, feel quintessentially New York. Some, like Purell hand sanitizer, seem rather universal to urban (if not simply American) life. Some represent bygone eras, like pictures of the Shadowman Paintings from the Village in the early 1980s. Some seem timeless, like building-top water towers. Some, like broken umbrellas or sidewalk gum dots, represent quotidian ubiquity at its finest.
In addition to representing some part of city culture, the exhibit items are accompanied by a brief personal essay by their faculty sponsor that describes a personal attachment to the object.
"For all our talk about objects, the show in a way says that this city is composed of stories," says Subramaniam. "It's composed of people and their relationship to the place."
"Broken umbrella," submitted by Peter Wheelwright, photo by Lauren Manning and Veronica Acosta.
This idea of objects representing personal stories — I take it that's what you mean when you say the items in the exhibition will narrate a "biography" of the city?
Yes. All these very idiosyncratic individual stories compose this biography. A street corner lamppost can have a thousand tales attached to it. All that sort of sediment building together is what makes this shared sense of place.
"Water towers," submitted by Carin Kuoni, photo by Martin Seck.
You seem to have taken a pretty liberal definition of "object." I don't necessarily think of a homeless bed as an object, for instance.
In our original invitation we said, quite explicitly, feel free to interpret it as widely as possible. So someone proposed the mural on the Grand Central ceiling. The way in which that's in the show is a bottle of cerulean blue paint and Simple Green, which is a cleaning product [used for the ceiling restoration]. So there's actually nothing related to the Grand Central. We didn't want people to say, what you have is simply a picture of, or the object itself. We actually wanted to say: what gets to the core of what you mean.
"Homeless homes," submitted by Margot Bouman, photo by A. David Hill.
For your contribution to the exhibition, you chose the cup of coffee that you purchase from a street vendor every morning. I've always felt these vendors were very iconic to New York.
In a sense it's not the coffee cup — it's really the conversation that happens as you pick the coffee up. It was a coffee cup in a photograph and that's how it exists in the exhibition. In a sense that's also not the entirety of what I'm talking about, but it's how it's there. It's a way to convey a sense of the experience. The coffee cart or the food cart — I feel that is truly a New York experience.
"Morning Coffee," submitted by Radhika Subramaniam, photo by Daisy Wong.
Were there any suggestions that caught you by surprise at first, and then maybe as you thought about them more saw how someone could connect that to everyday life in the city?
I do think the broken umbrella came as a delightful surprise. The view of the Empire State Building was a pleasant discovery because it seemed very obvious, but then it was not at all about the building itself, but about the way you look at something. The bait stations was a long discussion for a multiplicity of reasons. One, we were like, yes, of course, rats are key to the city. At the same time, I thought, I don't want anything that says animals should be killed in a routine way.
Parsons is starting a new course called "Objects as History." Why is this area so important for young designers, especially those focused on the city, to consider and study?
I do think one of the ways in which people begin to understand other places is often through handling something or in an encounter with something. Objects can embody a relationship between places. The fact that these objects are here in New York as part of New York City collections tells you not only about this city, something about the place from which that object came, but also most profoundly what it is that relates New York City to this other place.
"The Shadowman Paintings by Richard Hambleton," submitted by Wendy Scheir, photo by Hank O'Neal.
What impression of New York — or perhaps city life in general — do you hope attendees will leave with that they might not have had before?
I hope they'll leave with an appreciation of the utterly ordinary. I have a longstanding interest in getting people look at everyday things as if for the first time. Even if you were a tourist coming in, it's not about the great things, it's about the greatness in everyday life, which to my mind matters above all. Even when great catastrophes like 9/11 happen, what we're trying to find our way back to is making sense of everyday living. That's where most of our life is lived.
When Swiss photographer Gus Petro took a trip to the United States last year, he was struck by the juxtaposition of "emptiness and density."
Petro is used to seeing plains and mountains (staples of Switzerland's landscape), but massive skyscrapers in the same country? "One is so full and the other so empty," he says. "One goes up, the other down."
Petro came up with a clever way to highlight this phenomenon during his visit to the Grand Canyon, one week after seeing New York City. The "contrast between the two was so strong and overwhelming that I had to express it somehow," he says. So he created a photo project he calls Merge.
To make it, Petro took the photographs he had of the two sites, matched their perspective points and lens angles, then put them through a process he calls "Photoshop magic."
And he's been surprised by the reaction. "After showing the images, most of the people who haven't been in either place thought it was real," he says. "They began questioning me where it is. I didn't expect that for sure."
We awoke to two interesting stories regarding Thom Yorke this morning, which isn't a bad way to start the week, especially considering the nature of the respective news stories.
Firstly, it appears Yorke (like many musicians) isn't a huge fan of Spotify. The news broke when Radiohead producer / Atome For Peace member Nigel Godrich announce on Twitter, "Anyway. Here's one. We're off of spotify.. Can't do that no more man.. Small meaningless rebellion… Someone gotta say something. It's bad for new music.."
This means that you'll no longer be able to find The Eraser (Thom Yorke), Amok (Atoms For Peace) and Ultraísta (Ultraísta). Radiohead's back catalog hasn't been pulled... yet.
Godrich gave the following reasons for the decision:
"The reason is that new artists get paid fuck all with this model.. It's an equation that just doesn't work. The music industry is being taken over by the back door and if we don't try and make it fair for new music producers and artists then the art will suffer. Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system. The numbers don't even add up for spotify yet.. But it's not about that.. It's about establishing the model which will be extremely valuable. Meanwhile small labels and new artists can't even keep their lights on. It's just not right. Plus people are scared to speak up or not take part as they are told they will lose invaluable exposure if they don't play ball. Meanwhile Millions of streams gets them a few thousand dollars.. Not like radio at all.. Anyway. Thems the breaks. Opinions welcome.. but discussion and new thinking necessary.. If you have a massive catalogue – a major label… for example.. then you're quids in. It's money for old rope.. But making new recorded music needs funding.. Some records can be made in a laptop, but some need musician and skilled technicians.. These things cost money.. Pink floyds catalogue has already generated billions of dollars for someone (not necessarily the band) so now putting it on a streaming site makes total sense.. But if people had been listening to spotify instead of buying records in 1973… I doubt very much if dark side would have been made.. It would just be too expensive… I think the point is – that streaming suits catalogue.. But cannot work as a way of supporting new artists work.. Spotify and the like either have to address that fact and change the model for new releases or else all new music producers should be bold and vote with their feet. They have no power without new music.."
Update: Spotify have responded to Thom Yorke's decision to pull his music from the service. A company spokesperson had this to say when speaking with Music Week:
"Spotify's goal is to grow a service which people love, ultimately want to pay for, and which will provide the financial support to the music industry necessary to invest in new talent and music," a company spokesperson said today.
"We want to help artists connect with their fans, find new audiences, grow their fan base and make a living from the music we all love.
"Right now we're still in the early stages of a long-term project that's already having a hugely positive effect on artists and new music. We've already paid US$500M to rightsholders so far and by the end of 2013 this number will reach US$1bn. Much of this money is being invested in nurturing new talent and producing great new music.
"We're 100% committed to making Spotify the most artist-friendly music service possible, and are constantly talking to artists and managers about how Spotify can help build their careers."
The other side of our Thom Yorke double-header today is the news that Interview Magazine managed to get Daniel Craig (yes, James Bond) to interview the Radiohead frontman.
They touch on topics such as starting a new band ("it's an odd situation to just sort of start again without the big Radiohead flag"), and the origins of Radiohead.
Despite starting the interview with "I've never interviewed anyone before, so if I ask anything stupid, then just tell me to fuck off," this is a pretty interesting read (do so by heading here).
The Dymaxion House was a futuristic dwelling invented by the architect and practical philosopher R. Buckminister Fuller – who would have turned 118 today. The word “Dymaxion,” which combines the words dynamic, maximum and tension, was coined (among many others) by Fuller himself.
In 1920 Fuller wished to build a sustainable autonomous single family dwelling, the living machine of the future. Although never built, the Dymaxion’s design displayed forward-thinking and influential innovations in prefabrication and sustainability. Not only would the house have been exemplary in its self-sufficiency, but it also could have been mass-produced, flat-packaged and shipped throughout the world.
More on this revolutionary design after the break…
The 100 sqm hexagonal house was an earthquake and storm resistant structure, supported by a central pole from which cables would be suspended, allowing the outer walls to be non-bearing. By grouping all permanent utilities in the central pole, and letting the rest of the interior space remain modular, Fuller created a flexible plan that would allow tenants to transform the space according to their needs. The design also shows wind turbines on the roof and an extensive system of cisterns to collect and recycle water. For the bathing unit Fuller patented the “Dymaxion Bathroom” – a shower that required only one cup of hot water, and a toilet that consumed no water at all.
The house was to be constructed from aluminum due to the material’s great strength, low weight, and minimum maintenance; as Fuller explained:
“that is the Dymaxion principle of doing ever more with ever less weight, time, and ergs per each given level of functional performance. With an average recycling rate for all metals of 22 years, and with comparable design improvements in performance per pound, ephemeralization means that ever more people are being served at ever higher standards with the same old materials” [1]
The Dymaxion was abandoned by Fuller until 1944, when the post-War housing shortage urged Fuller to revisit his previous idea of mass production of residential units. To make the house a reality, Fuller soon signed a two year research contract with Beech Aircraft industries, who held an abundance of aluminum in the aftermath of World War II. In 1946 Fuller completed two prototypes: the Barwise prototype and the Danbury prototype, though neither were assembled nor mass produced, mainly due to Fuller’s unwillingness to compromise.
In 1948 William Graham, a former investor in the project, purchased and combined both prototypes and created the “Wichita House,” which carried a refined vision of the original Dymaxion: the hexagon was transformed into a smooth circle, and the building was set only a few inches above the ground (rather than fully suspended, as the Dymaxion would have been). Aside from the patented Dymaxion bathroom, none of the original housing elements were included in the Wichita House.
Probably prematurely abandoned, the Dymaxion house could have been a great success if brought to its full potential, providing solutions for the post-war shortage of housing due to its incorporation of new materials, implementation of sustainable technologies, and its ease of assembly and mass-production. In April 1946, Fortune magazine suggested that: “the ‘dwelling machine’ was likely to produce greater social consequences than the introduction of the automobile”. Unfortunately, the Dymaxion, would never be given that chance. However, Buckminster Fuller’s principles of sustainability and his “more with less” philosophy continue to be vastly influential in the field of sustainable design today.
More and more cities are turning to surveillance cameras as a cost-effective tool for public safety, sometimes with the specific goal of fighting terrorism, but they're still pretty far from universally accepted. Many people object to cameras on the grounds of public safety; others simply don't believe they actually prevent crimes. There is one place where urban security cameras do seem to save lives, however: taxi cabs.
That's the conclusion reached by a new study of driver homicides in 26 U.S. cities, just released in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine [PDF].
Driving a taxi has long been one of the riskiest professions in terms of personal safety, what with attention directed on the road and all that loose cash laying around. In the early 1990s, a number of cities implemented bullet-resistant partitions to disrupt potential attacks on cabbies. More recently, some cities (or, in some cases, some companies) have insisted that taxis install security cameras for their protection.
While a few studies have found some safety benefits from these measures, most of that work focused on short-term gains. The new research, led by Cammie K. Chaumont Menéndez of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, analyzed driver homicide rates over a 15-year period from 1996 to 2010. Chaumont Menéndez and colleagues split the 26 cities into three groups: camera cities, partition cities, and control cities that had taken no cabbie precautions.
(For the record, the cameras cities were Austin, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Orlando, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. The partition cities were Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia. The controls were Atlanta, Cincinnati, Columbus, Denver, Honolulu, Miami, New Orleans, Reno, Sacramento, San Diego, and Tampa.)
The researchers identified at least 216 taxi driver murders during the study period through newspaper searchers, but very few of them occurred in cities that had installed in-cab security cameras. In fact, the driver homicide rate in these eight cities was about seven times lower after installation than it had been before. Additionally, the homicide rate in camera cities was more than three times lower than the rate in control cities where no cameras were used — even after the data were adjusted for overall city murder rates.
Surprisingly, partitions provided no measurable safety benefit at all. The researchers found no statistical difference in driver homicide rates in cities that had implemented partitions compared to those that had implemented no security precaution.
Chaumont Menéndez and colleagues offer some pretty basic explanations for why security cameras were such an effective deterrent. They believe would-be assailants were discouraged by window decals advertising the presence of the cameras, and that city mandates on camera maintenance served to keep the equipment in working order. Indeed, city governance played a huge role here: while a handful of homicides occurred in "camera" cities after installation, none happened in cities with official camera mandates.
Instead, these murders took place in cities where cab companies, not municipal governments, oversaw the programs.
The work suggests that all cities concerned about taxi driver safety should consider a shift toward camera installation. On a broader level, it also points to the potential social benefits of public surveillance. There is certainly something unsettling about the idea of being watched all the time, but there can be something comforting about it, too.
With an editorial (and a mention in today's real estate section) against the big box retailer wage bill ("Every Day High Unemployment") and more importantly, with an article, "Cities Cut Parking Mandates," on initiatives by cities, leading with DC, to reduce the amount required for parking provision in new housing developments.
From the article:
District of Columbia planners intend to present the proposal to the city's Zoning Commission in late July as part of the first comprehensive overhaul of the city's zoning in more than 50 years.
The changes would allow developers to determine how much parking, if any, is needed for projects in the District's downtown and within a one-quarter-mile radius of any of its Metro stops.
It is a profound shift that several other U.S. cities have made in recent years. In 2010, Denver reduced its parking requirements near light-rail stops. Last year, Philadelphia did the same for residential projects downtown. Los Angeles last month waived parking minimums around certain transit stops. New York City in May reduced its maximum allotments of parking for residential projects in downtown Brooklyn.
Urban planners, who have pushed for years for cities to become less car-dependent, say such rules will encourage more residents to embrace mass transit, biking and walking. They also argue that freeing developers of the steep cost of parking can help reduce real-estate prices and rent levels in some cases.
It also features quotes from opponents to the change, by Nancy MacWood and Meg Maguire. From the article:
Yet some question whether that goal is realistic. Nancy MacWood, chairwoman of the Committee of 100, a citizen-planning organization that monitors District of Columbia zoning proposals, said the goal of waiving minimum parking requirements "is to try to…convince new residents that they don't need a car. But there isn't much comfort that this is actually going to be the result." .
Right: photo by Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal. Ekaterina Solovieva, who like many Washington, D.C., residents doesn't own a car, rode her bike to shop at the DC USA mall on Saturday.
And the entry and the comments illustrate the problem of dealing with one element of parking and mobility policy without simultaneously considering the other elements that shape and affect such a change.
I have argued that at the same time the city changes zoning requirements concerning parking, it needs to change other practices concerning the management of parking and curb space, including
(1) publishing a census of parking and curb space inventory; (2) creating "transportation management districts" (not "parking districts") to implement and manage multi-modal transportation planning at the sub-city scale; (3) incorporating off-street parking facilities into the parking planning mix and inventory; (4) creating integrated parking wayfinding systems; and (5) increasing the price for residential parking permits.
Changing one element without the others likely will have limited positive impact on reshaping mobility towards optimality. See "Testimony on parking policy in DC" for more discussion.
DC is two cities: the inner city core and the outer city and their respective spatial patterns and distance from activity centers shapes mobility choices
Mobility practices differ significantly in the core of the city which is best served by transit and has a traditional grid of streets and blocks that makes transit, walking, and biking efficient methods for getting around. In the core people walk, bike, and use transit more than they drive.
Outside of the core, this is less the case, and households are more likely to rely on automobiles to get around.
That doesn't mean that a car is required, but people often argue that getting around by sustainable methods is impossible, when it isn't.
Opposition to the change is centered in the outer city and opponents tend to be older as well.
DC's political environment is dominated by the outer city:and the inner vs. outer city dynamic shapes the discussion on parking policy (and everything else)
Not unlike how the State of Virginia legislature or the US House of Representatives are dominated by rural interests because of the way that political district boundaries are drawn, DC's political culture and the model of how elected officials represent the city and/or their wards tends to favor the outer city over the core.
Ward 1 and Ward 6 are fully located within the "inner city." Ward 2 is split between the inner and outer city, perhaps more attitudinally and demographically rather than spatially (Georgetown residents, lacking a Metro station, tend to have higher rates of car ownership than rowhouse neighborhoods in the core).
While they have sections that have housing patterns and transit service comparable to the inner city, Wards 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 comprise the "outer city," although Ward 8 being poorer than Ward 7, is more focused on access to transit than the other wards.
That's why despite the fact that the city is decidedly an urban place, politically it has more of a suburban shaped agenda when it comes to resident attitudes about land use, development, and transportation--fostered by the fact that most residents who weren't born here tend to have moved to the city from suburban locations, and even without realizing it, they bring the suburban planning paradigm to bear on these issues.
---------
Below is a map of Upper Northwest DC, showing 1 mile radius distances from the Takoma, Petworth, and Fort Totten stations on the eastern side (east of Georgia Avenue) and the Friendship Heights, Tenleytown and Van Ness stations west of Connecticut Avenue. (Although this is augmented by high frequency bus service on 14th and 16th Streets, plus Georgia Avenue. The 16th Street line is now the highest ridership bus line in the city, approaching 20,000 daily riders.) As you can see, large swathes of Upper Northwest--Ward 3 and Ward 4--lie more than 1 mile away from a subway station and from a decent commercial district, although they tend to be served by bus service, but it may not be be frequent.
Much has been made of President Obama’s commencement speech at Morehouse College, the prestigious school for black men that counts Martin Luther King, Jr. among its graduates. The Post’s Jonathan Capehart
Police response times average 58 minutes for worst crimes and at times only 10 of the city's 36 ambulances are in service: Detroit's woes extend far beyond its unpaid debts. Many residents are hoping emergency management will bring drastic change.
“Cyclemon” is a series of very successful posters imagining types of bike users. The images “You Are What You Ride” show beautiful graphics by Romain Bourdieux and Thomas Pomarelle.
US is reaching peak car while the globally, car ownership/ridership is sharply increasing
Planners and environmentalists have applauded the seven-year decline in America's auto ownership levels with understandable enthusiasm. But around the world, automobile production has never been higher.
the monument should glow like this all the time...
Tourists still can't visit the top of the Washington Monument, but at least they can get a sweet light show.
Monday night marked the debut of 488 glowing lamps that now line America's most famous obelisk. Their origin actually dates back to the 1990s, when Michael Graves was commissioned to design a curtain-like scrim for the monument during the structure's previous renovation. That design is being used again during current renovations, a look that stands out especially in daylight. The lamps, activated by sensors, light up from behind the scrim.
The Washington Monument has been closed since August, 2011, thanks to a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit that left stones near the top of the monument chipped and cracked. The repair bill has been estimated at around $15 million, split between the National Park Service and philanthropist David Rubenstein.
The park service estimates the monument will reopen in spring 2014.
What the Washington Monument currently looks like in daylight with its scaffolding. Photo taken June 26, 2013. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
Visitors lie on the grass beneath the newly-lit Washington Monument in Washington, July 8, 2013. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
A floodlight illuminates the grounds at the Washington Monument in Washington, July 8, 2013. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
the promise of new urbanism...can you could afford it?
“There is a secret at the core of our nation. And those who dare expose it must be condemned, must be shamed, must be driven from polite society. But the truth stalks us like bad credit.” – Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates
***
With the recent Supreme Courts strike down of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was created to protect minority representation, the headline in the Huffington Post read “Back to 1964?” While some contend the title hyperbolic, the HuffPost lead, if not the strike down itself, reflects the reality of a country still tethered to its discriminatory past.
This reality is reflected in all facets of American society, including urbanism. Specifically, is the “back-to-the-city” movement destined to become 1968 inverted; that is, instead of “white flight” there’s “white infill”? If so, the so-called “game-changing” societal movement will be a process of switching out the window dressing, with the style du jour less lace curtains, more exposed brick.
While debatable, there appears to be a back-to-the-city trend, particularly the inner-core areas of America’s largest and most powerful cities. For instance, according to a recent report by the Census Bureau, Chicago’s core exhibited a 36% boom in its population from 2000 to 2010—a gain of nearly 50,000. Rounding out the top five core-growth gainers were the cities New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. The report finds that, on average, “[T]he largest metro areas—those with 5.0 million or more population—experienced double-digit percentage growth within 2 miles of their largest city’s city hall…”
Who is moving into these “spiky” urban cores?
Whites largely. For example, much of Chicago’s core gains comes from the downtown zip code 60654, in which 11,499 (77%) of the area’s 14,868 incoming residents were white, and where the median family income is $151,000. Other zip codes in Chicago’s core share similar proportions of growth, such as 60605, with 70% of its 12,423 new residents being white. Contrast this with a 5% growth rate for blacks.
As well, according to research by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute examining the zip codes with the largest growth in the share of white population from 2000 to 2010, 15 of the top 50 were located in Philadelphia, New York, and Washington D.C. Philadelphia’s downtown zip code 19123 grew its population by nearly 40%, and its proportion of whites increased from 25% to almost 50%. In D.C., the growing core zip code of 20001 increased its white share from 6% to 33% in a mere 10 years. While in Brooklyn, the zip codes 11205 and 11206 showed similar growth dynamics, with overall gains of 15% and 18% respectively, and corresponding increases in the white share of approximately 30%. Also on the Institute’s list are zip codes in not-quite-global cities such as Chattanooga, Austin, Atlanta, St. Paul, Indianapolis, Tampa, and Portland, with the vast majority of the “whitening” areas located in, or besides, the downtown core.
Now, why does it matter if whites are leading the charge into those cores frequently championed as evidence of a new social order? After all, it is a step forward, right? Or, as urbanist Kaid Benfield recently wrote:
Inner cities are growing again. People of means, especially young people, want to be in cities today. While that carries its own set of challenges, I would submit that addressing the challenges of gentrification is a far better problem to have than coping with massive abandonment and rampant crime.
While that line of argument has merit, what’s missing is a deeper examination about those “people of means”. Specifically, a recent study out of Brandeis University showed the wealth gap between blacks and whites has nearly tripled over the past 25 years. That said, the people of means wanting to be in cities is largely the same people who always had means, and they are simply taking their means from one geography to the next; that is, from the suburban development to the urban enclave.
Of course many argue that infusing affluence into an area will create broad spillover effects. Tweeted urban planner Jeff Speck:
“A beautiful and vibrant downtown can be the rising tide that lifts all ships. #walkablecity”.
Yet there is little evidence of a “trickle down” effect within “rejuvenated” space. For instance, in his piece examining the aforementioned D.C. zip code of 20001, Dax-Devlon Ross writes:
In 2011 alone, condos accounted for 57 percent of total home sales (276), most at triple the 2000 median price. The zip code now boasts an Ann Taylor, a Brooks Brothers, an Urban Outfitters, enough bars to serve several university populations at once and a mind-boggling 10 Starbucks…
…What’s telling about the zip code’s “new build” makeover is that it did not move the poverty needle. The zip code’s poverty rate is exactly what it was in 1980, 1990 and 2000 — 28 percent — and the child poverty rate is nearly twice what it was in 1990 (45 percent).
In other words, such developmental strategy is a game of whack-a-mole in which the raison d’être for the mole won’t stop until real economic restructuring happens, or until equity truly starts entering into the lexicon of our shared language. Instead, we get the apologia of the status quo that is shifting the same affluence to the same pockets, switch out the spatial aesthetics of the parking lot for the parklet.
Trump Towers Chicago. Courtesy of Northwestern Univ.
That said, there is real doubt the country has the stomach for such discourse, let alone for policy that can affect the prioritization of human and community capital. From the article “Separate, Unequal, and Ignored”, the author suggests that “[r]acial segregation remains Chicago’s most fundamental problem”, and he questions why the issue remained muted during the recent mayor’s race. Answered Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey:
“[Segregation] is a very difficult and intractable problem. Politicians don’t like to face up to difficult and intractable problems, whatever their nature”.
Unfortunately for city proponents, this same inability to face the issue by leading urban thinkers is making the “new urbanism” movement look really old. Asked about the risk of racial and economic homogeneity at the hands of the “back-to-the-city” movement, Alan Ehrenhalt, author of “The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City”, answered this way:
I think you’re going to have class segregation no matter what you do. It would be nice to have people of all classes living right next to each other in gentrified downtowns. That’s probably not going to happen. It is true that a gentrified area tends to become less diverse. Cities can’t solve all problems.
No, cities can’t solve all problems. But neither should cities be used to make existing problems worse. Re-urbanism, or specifically the opportunities it creates for equitable reinvestment, should be respected for what it is: a chance to move forward from a divided, destructive past.
Yet such will take collective will and reflective honesty. Or the ability to look deep in the mirror at the American face and know that behind us is a persistence of failed history.
Proposed site, DC United soccer team stadium, Buzzard Point. Washington Post graphic.1374611342.jpg)
1374611342.jpg)
I'm going to be in the office this entire week -- such a rarity -- so you'll be sure and find me over at the Strong Towns Network. If you've been trying to email me without success (my apologies), I'm much easier to get a hold of over there, as are a lot of the people you see posting here. Please join us.
With an editorial (and a mention in today's real estate section) against the big box retailer wage bill ("Every Day High Unemployment") and more importantly, with an article, "Cities Cut Parking Mandates," on initiatives by cities, leading with DC, to reduce the amount required for parking provision in new housing developments. 
Right: photo by Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal. Ekaterina Solovieva, who like many Washington, D.C., residents doesn't own a car, rode her bike to shop at the DC USA mall on Saturday.
Right: photo by Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal. Ekaterina Solovieva, who like many Washington, D.C., residents doesn't own a car, rode her bike to shop at the DC USA mall on Saturday.
What the Washington Monument currently looks like in daylight with its scaffolding. Photo taken June 26, 2013. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
Visitors lie on the grass beneath the newly-lit Washington Monument in Washington, July 8, 2013. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
A floodlight illuminates the grounds at the Washington Monument in Washington, July 8, 2013. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
