The Urban Path

Human navigation is a key component in the organization and form our cities take on. Whether we choose to walk, bike, take public transport, or drive, we are making choices that shape our experience of the city and that will transform the city itself over time. Two great examples of this are taking shape in New York right now: the opening of the High Line park and the pedestrianization of Times Square. Both show how infrastructure and space can be transformed over time based on the alternating use and neglect of transient spaces. As we move forward in a period of increasing transportation curiosity and alternate means of transport, these physical experiments become very relevant and thought-provoking. Everyone is eagerly anticipating billions of dollars for infrastructure investment and reconfiguration, but what kind of infrastructure changes should we really seek? Wider bridges and highways, more bike lanes, light rail, pedestrian access?


Alongside these physical experiments lie also a set of mapping or tracking statement experiments which aim to bring attention to the ways in which people use space and how they use that space. One is the Contrail project which aims to apply a line of chalk behind bikers, like a constant skidmark tracing their path throughout the cityscape. On a large scale this could reveal some very interesting patterns as well as draw attention to the number of bikes that actually occupy the roads. It might even encourage people to break out the old two wheeler and go for a spin. In addition to this hack like experiment there is an increasing amount of gps devices floating around our city sidewalks and roadways, all of which can generate useful information about how our current infrastructure is being used. Hopefully, when it really comes time to invest, the powers that be will heed these experiments and gather appropiate information to make informed decisions about the ways in which people will move over the next 50 years...


(Photo from Gothamist and Make. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Considering Programmed Housing

The old abandoned St. Joseph's School is a sturdy old building; a four-story block of red brick and arched windows -- every smart developer's dream. The surrounding neighborhood, Arbor Hill, is a bit run down, but the quality of the housing stock is high, and prices are still relatively low. The potential for an attractive, walkable community is high. To the southwest is downtown Albany and the stunning New York State Capitol; to the southeast, the Hudson River. Conditions being what they are, gentrification and displacement seem inevitable. And then, of course, comes the news: someone is going to turn the old school building into artists lofts. It's an all-too-familiar story.

But this telling has a twist: the artist housing, to be called Academy Lofts, is not an island unto itself; the plans call for the school's former gymnasium to be converted into a community art center where classes would be taught by the building's residents. These artists, who would qualify for the rental units only if they required affordable housing to make a career of their work, would be moving into a programmed housing development, where their residency required active participation in the cultural and social life of the neighborhood.

At the heart of the gentrification problem is the challenge of getting new residents with different sociocultural backgrounds moving into a neighborhood to engage with their neighbors -- and, on the flip side, convincing often very tightly-knit communities to open themselves up to new residents and see them individually as potential partners instead of a combined, faceless threat. If artists are the stormtroopers of gentrification, the set-up at Academy Lofts is particularly ingenious in that it quickly embeds the artists moving into the neighborhood into the existing community, directly connecting new residents with their new neighbors through free or low-cost community programming.

Listening to a Smart City interview with author Sean Safford a few months ago, I was struck by the author's explanation of why some Rustbelt cites in the US have fared better than others, and what this might mean for urban neighborhoods like Arbor Hill. In his book, Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown, Safford compares the steel towns of Youngstown, Ohio, which he describes as having had a very densely-woven social network during the decline of the steel industry, with Allentown, Pennsylvania, which had a looser, more flexible social network. His argument is that Allentown has fared better in the long run specifically because its loose network of connections was more amenable to creating the kind of broad coalitions that were able to adapt to change rather than resist it, whereas Youngstown's extremely dense network was too closely tied to the status quo.

Neighborhoods that are dealing with gentrification -- often places where ethnic or racial enclave communities exist -- the standard scenario over the past few decades seems to have been that of a very tightly-knit community resisting encroaching development. Safford's research, if it can be applied at the neighborhood level (and I don't see why it can't), suggests that these communities might be much better off accepting that the neighborhood will change, and working to build broad community coalitions to try to help the existing community adapt to these changes rather than fight them.

Urbanists around the country are abuzz with chatter about how the Obama Administration's stimulus plan could revitalize American cities and metropolitan areas. Check back tomorrow for more on why programmed housing developments like Academy Lofts should be a key part of that national conversation.

Q&A with the “Mayor” of Opportunity City

MILWAUKEE, March 32, 2010 (IP*) – Ronald Dykes is executive director of Opportunity City, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting poverty in Milwaukee. Housed in what was once a sprawling steel fabrication plant in the heart of one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, the organization is generating lots of buzz in policy and academic circles across the country for its innovative initiatives.

Q. Opportunity City isn’t a city; it’s a non-profit group. Everyone calls you “mayor,” but your title is executive director. What’s up with the city shtick?

A. We are like a city. Inside this old factory space, we house staff for the 27 different anti-poverty programs that we run. A few are big programs; many are small. About 475 people work here, and we get about the same number of clients and visitors coming through every day. There’s a lot of human bustle in here. The office cubicles are arranged in blocks like a street grid. There’s a big thoroughfare we call Main Street, and there’s Coffee Alley and an area we call The Park where we have big staff meetings. And…


Q. So, you’re like a city because you’ve arranged your cubicles a certain way? That’s a pretty shallow metaphor isn’t it?

A. Well, if you’d let me finish…We don’t just look like a city; we act like one in some important ways. We intentionally created Opportunity City to try to capture the agglomeration effects that flow from the concentration of resources and functions in cities. Everyday, there are lots of low-income people here. Everyday, there are lots of people in here helping them directly or indirectly. In house, we’ve got people working on solving child care, transportation, housing, food and health care problems for individuals. We’ve got labor market analysts, administrators and support staff, employment recruiters, job trainers and representatives from apprenticeship programs working with individuals and on policy-level changes. There are also policy designers, grant writers, program evaluators and various academic interlopers. They’re all here, everyday. In close proximity. Trouble-shooting problems. Bouncing ideas off each other. Able to shout over the cubicle wall to get help. Coordinated complexity happening in close quarters is not a bad description of what a city is, and it’s what we are doing at Opportunity City.


Q. Agglomeration effects. Coordinated complexity. Fancy talk. Please tell us in plain English what the hell you’re talking about.

A. It’s simple, really. It’s just what I said a second ago: if you can get a lot of people working closely together on a set of related problems, you can be more effective at solving problems, at being productive. Density and proximity make it easier, more likely for people to problem-solve effectively in real-time. That’s the essence of these concepts. They’ve been at the heart of understanding why people and firms locate in cities.

Q. For a non-profit, you seem very well funded indeed. Where does all the money come from?

A. We’ve been blessed with very extravagant donations from a few wealthy benefactors in town. Our policy innovations have attracted grants from national foundations. And, of course, we’ve been fortunate to get funding from the new federal block grant programs for workforce development and affordable housing.

Q. You sound excited. Knowing the history of anti-poverty efforts, aren’t you setting yourself up for disappointment?

A. First, hold on a minute. Anti-poverty efforts often get a bad rap they don’t deserve. Social Security keeps lots of elderly folks out of poverty. If that’s a failure, give me more. The Earned Income Tax Credit has helped millions of low-income working families make work pay enough to afford housing and groceries. That’s a success story in my book, and so is the fact that many low-income folks have gotten good jobs through some of the better job training and placement programs. So, no, I don’t think we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. In fact, this is one of the most exciting times in American history to be involved in the fight against poverty. Thanks to the new national health care program, every American now has affordable health insurance. This is a huge boost to low-income people. And there’s the new Skill Net program. Under this program, every American worker gets financial help to keep their job skills up-to-date and, when a job is lost, gets decent wage insurance payments to bridge over periods of unemployment without having to plunge into poverty to qualify for help. For struggling low-income workers, this new program will help keep them attached to jobs and prevent them from cycling in and out of poverty and low wage work.

Q. You like what the Obama administration has done to help fight poverty. Understood. But what are you doing locally at Opportunity City?

A. What the feds are doing is really important to our efforts. Because federal efforts will help keep many low-income families and workers from falling back into poverty so easily, at the local level we can focus on harder problems like helping people with few skills and little-to-no job experience get jobs and rebuilding distressed neighborhoods. That’s what we’re doing at Opportunity City.

Q. Nice generalities. Any specifics?

A. Sure. We’ve just launched an experimental program called Project Search and Employ. Basically, the program aims to create a group of companies with a strong profit incentive to recruit poor people with few job skills and successfully place them in real jobs with good wages and benefits. It works like this. There’s a big pot of money—all from a very generous private donor—controlled by a team of investors. The investors are a bunch of experts—experts in things like training workers, analyzing businesses, understanding industry sectors and supply chains, poverty policy, mentoring and coaching, and program evaluation. What they do is invest in proposals to create what we call search and employ companies or SECs. The SECs—each using different strategies, but all working within the same set of very high poverty census tracks—go out and find poor people who don’t have much work history, but are able to work, and hire them for a job with the SEC that involves them being trained for a real job. The SEC job is real enough, too. The recruits get paid a decent wage and benefits, and pay taxes and can be fired at the will of the employer. Anyway, if and when the SEC gets the recruit a real job—not with the SEC—then, our investors pay the SEC a big bonus. And if the recruit stays employed long enough, they get an even bigger bonus. If the SECs don’t get people good jobs for long enough, they’ll fail as businesses. Even though a program like this will work best when the labor market improves, we’re excited to get started on it because it not only gives a lot of poor people jobs right away—the SEC training jobs—but it also incentivizes lots of creative thinking about how to turn low-skilled people into stable employees.

Q. Profit from poverty. Isn’t that morally yucky?

A. Don’t try to be cute. The profits come from increasing employment and reducing poverty.


Q. Fair enough. What else are you doing?

A. Running programs is not all we do. We also try to push larger systems—like schools, chambers of commerce and city governments—to do things that help fight poverty. For example, we’re trying to create a fairly dense walkable low-income neighborhood where there are currently lots of boarded-up houses and very few businesses. To do this, is going to require help from everybody. We’ll need good schools. Grocery stores and other businesses willing to look with fresh eyes on the economic prospects in low-income neighborhoods. New zoning ordinances allowing for mixed use. And more.


Q. Now, it’s your turn to hold on a minute. Isn’t “walkability” code for gentrification?

A. It can be, sure. But first you need to understand that walkable neighborhoods can really help make life much easier and more affordable for low-income people. Think of the transportation costs and life-hassles you can avoid if child care, schools, grocery stores, places of employment, government offices, parks and transit stops are located within walking distance. The gentrification concern comes in because more and more of what we used to call yuppies like this stuff too and are willing to pay a premium to live in such places and drive up costs for everybody. But our plan is keep these neighborhoods affordable for the people who already live there. And we’re doing that with a range of programs including generous low income housing tax credits, land trusts, and value-latching which taps into any rise in property values to pay for programs that keep housing affordable. We’ve structured all this so that, over time, property values will be able to return to their real market values but only as long as the neighborhood maintains enough affordable housing capacity, too.

Q. You’re smiling. How is that possible with all the misery, all the failure of the American Dream you see every day?

A. Yes, poverty is terrible. And, yes, it’s heartbreaking to see what it does to people. But as I said before, this is a very promising moment for America. There’s a new sense that we’re all in this together, and a new willingness to work for the common good. For me, in the context of the fight against poverty, it’s especially wonderful to see Americans rediscover the natural strengths of cities, to see cities once more as the engines of growth and opportunity they are.

Interview confabulated, condensed and edited by Dan Lorentz.

*IP is an acronym for Imaginary Press, a wire service providing factually dubious news and feature stories to credulous media outlets worldwide.

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Note: This will be my last post as a regular Where contributor. My experience here has inspired me to continue to blog about city issues, except that now I want to concentrate on a more local project. In mid-April, I hope to launch My Athens, a blog about my new hometown, Athens, Georgia. [Note: This note and the note it’s embedded in are true, unlike most of the fiction that precedes it.]

(Photos--in the order they appear--from Flickr users craigallyn, opendemocracy, Matthew Shelley. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Holy Futuristic Automobiles, Batman

Ok...if they can make cars look like that (and not chow down on the environment to get from A to B), I'll give up my bike and start driving again, and stop complaining about how cars uglify the urban environment. I still want wider sidewalks, though. Walking will never go out of style.

Which reminds me...


Forgive the slightly vapid post, but the future is looking mighty sexy right about now...

(Both found via Core77)

Rankability

WalkScore has taken their delicious color-coded walkability maps, previously covered on Where, national. The results are...well, a bit disappointing. Perhaps I'm the only one, but I'm getting a bit tired of seeing rankings that use central city populations to determine the sample cities when metropolitan populations are far more important in determining the stature of an urban area. It makes little sense that Jacksonville, Tucson, and Oklahoma City make the cut for such rankings while St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh -- the central cities of much larger, more important metropolitan areas -- are left out because they've lost population to suburbanization.

This methodology has been a minor annoyance to me for some time, but the oversight seems particularly egregious in the case of WalkScore's ranking since it punishes densely-built urban centers for falling victim to exactly what the site is supposedly working against, and rewards cities that inflate their population counts through annexation and suburban deveopment patterns. The end result is a bit embarassing, with the overall city scores dropping under 70/100 points before you even get past the top ten on the list. Average everything out and the US gets a big fat F for walkability in its cities.

While there's a long way to go for Americans to become a more pedestrian-minded people, the idea that only a handful of our major cities are walkable is a bit absurd, and seems more like a misrepresentation than useful information. While it certainly shows the damage that suburbanization has done to our cultural understanding of urbanity, it says little about the actual state of walkability in America.

And that's too bad, because the maps look great, and the idea behind the rankings is a good one. If real estate is about location, the mantra for academic study should be "Execution, execution, execution."

The New WalkScore

The popular Gmaps mashup, which made a big splash in urbanism circles last year when it debuted, has a fantastic new color-coded map of Seattle up on their site. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. I'll be waiting anxiously for the Chicago map.

Three Short Urban Navigation Blogedankens

No prizes this time, but I do encourage you to leave comments if these exercises lead to any interesting answers...or more interesting questions. Click the links to see the inspiration for each thought experiment.


Blogedanken #1: Imagine that your city were like Venice; where would the Grand Canal be located? What streets would remain streets, and what ones would be sunken to form the city's canal network? Create a corresponding map. Does this map tell you anything about transportation and infrastructure networks in your city? How could such a map be used to plan transit lines, or a park system?


Blogedanken #2: If someone asked you to write a guide to your city for visitors that didn't want the tourist experience, where would you send them? Determine 5-10 places and/or experiences that you consider essential for the un-tourist in your city. Now create a walking-tour route that connects these spots in a way that creates a meaningful way -- a way that can direct the visitor's interpretation of your city. Compare your route to a map in a typical tourist guide. How do the two differ? What does this tell you about the way that you have experienced the city, yourself? What has your city taught you?


Blogedanken #3: Cities are very much about paths. Numerous networks of people, information, and physical infrastructure create a massive web often referred to as the urban fabric. Almost every city has one or two once-crucial cords in this web that have faded from prominence, or even disappeared completely. Imagine that you are creating a virtual guide, using GPS and voice recordings, to one of these defunct lines in your city. How have the areas around this forgotten path adapted since its decline? If they have not adapted particularly well, speculate as to why that might be. Based on what need the path and its surrounding infrastructure originally served, what currently vibrant paths through your city could become deserted or forgotten in the future? How might this be averted?

(Photo from Flickr user Damiel. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

WEEKEND READING: April 26-May 2, 2008

It's back! Did you miss it? Hooray for Weekend Reading.

ITEM ONE: First things first -- Jane Jacobs' birthday is coming up this Sunday. In her honor several cities around the US and Canada are hosting "Jane's Walks," free guided neighborhood tours. Whether or not you are living in a Jane's Walks city, make sure to get out and stroll around your neighborhood at some point this weekend.

ITEM TWO: Attributos Urbanos presents an awesomely thorough glossary of contemporary urbanism terminology. (via atlas(t))

ITEM THREE: CEOS for Cities on how homogeneity hurts innovation.

ITEM FOUR: NASA releases spectacular high-res images of cities at night, seen from outer space. (via The Map Room)

ITEM FIVE: Straightforward title for a great Planetizen post: Neighborhoods Are Building Blocks of Civic Life.

ITEM SIX: Jetson Green takes a look at deconstruction (material salvaging) and the green benefits. Video included!

ITEM SEVEN: We'll wrap up with some more watchable goodness. 'But it's supposed to be reading,' you say? Rules are made to be broken. Check out Peter Zumthor discussing his absolutely brilliant thermal baths in Vals (pictured).



(Photo from Flickr user Bau TW. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Review: Suburban Transformations

I'll start this review off with an apology to PA Press, since they sent me a review copy of architect Paul Lukez' new book Suburban Transformations back in early November and I'm just getting around to actually reading and reviewing it more than two months later. There was NaNoWriMo, then there were holidays...it has been a crazy winter. And so, without further ado...

There is a lot of discussion these days, at least in architecture and planning circles, about what will happen to today's sprawling suburbs as people wake up to the fact that the current suburban model is unsustainable. There have been calls for a complete return to cities, though I think most everyone knows that this would be extremely difficult if not outright impossible. Cities have physical limits, and density becomes unhealthy after a certain point. Compare Paris to the infamous Kowloon Walled City for an exemplary contrast.

Still, it is widely assumed that the suburbs of tomorrow will look quite different from the beige, cul-de-sac draped landscapes that currently surround central cities throughout much of the developed world. While the speculation about the external changes that will force suburbs to shape-shift is frequent and varied, ideas (not to mention actual visualizations) of what these nouveau suburbs might look like are surprisingly few and far between. Suburban Transformations fills a unique gap in that regard, and the pragmatic novelty of author Paul Lukez's descriptions and images of prospective suburban densification and evolution is what makes them so very impressive.

Stylistically, Suburban Transformations is something of a hybrid; it is too colorful to be called an academic text, and yet a bit too dry to be read purely for entertainment. Still, the mix works well, with the text augmented generously with drawings and photos. The bulk of the book is spent discussing the methods Lukez envisions for changing the shape of traditional auto-centric suburbs as painlessly as possible; his process -- deemed the "Adaptive Design Process" -- is appropriately simple. It offers ways to examine and reshape suburban spaces characterized (ironically?) by their lack of character. If suburbs are to be criticized for their generic appearances, Lukez' process should conversely be commended for its ability to take these incredibly generic places and not only make sense of them, but also to make valid suggestions about how to take supposedly hollow, meaningless places and re-think the context to provide opportunities for site-specific design.

The bulk of the book focuses on a single hypothetical case study of the area around a mall in the Boston suburb of Burlington. Here, the author puts his theories into action, using everything from the topography to the noise levels to the freeway interchange -- yes, the freeway interchange -- to give texture and meaning to the site. The book suggests that Burlington's history as an important transportation route -- established first by Route 128 in the early 1900s and reinforced by the freeway in the 60s, can and should be used as a contextual element to guide the design process for transforming the site. The massive roadway is thoroughly and thoughtfully integrated into all of the adaptive designs that are envisioned during the second half of the book. In the end, the freeway itself becomes more closely related to the site; at the same time that it gives the site meaning, the reconfiguration of that site transfers increased significance to the road itself.

Further exploration of the Adaptive Design Process is helpful to understanding its versatility. As a result, Lukez also takes time at the end of the book for three shorter case studies of Amsterdam, Dedham (another Boston suburb), and Shenzhen. Illustrations are plenty and the ideas presented exciting. In fact, this is perhaps the book's greatest strength: its ability to turn a seemingly dire problem (the proliferation of soulless suburbs) into a golden opportunity. Suburban Transformations envisions the dramatic altering of the suburban landscape. And whether or not the process described in the book is ever widely used, the true value of this book is how effective it is in dramatically altering the reader's perspective.


Links:
Suburban Transformation (Powells.com)

Paul Lukez Architecture

The Suburbanization of Walt Disney World

"It was really nice. I loved being able to walk around to everything and not have to worry about traffic or parking. We could just leave the hotel and catch a bus and ride it right to the parks, and then if we wanted to go somewhere else we could take the monorail. Everything was just really easy to get to."

That is an (imperfectly reproduced) comment from my mom during a conversation we had about y family's recent trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I've been home for the holidays, and it was the first chance I'd had to really hear about their trip. It's certainly not the first time they've been to WDW -- in fact, it was their fourth (I was along for the first two trips, for the record). But this time -- and I have a feeling that blogging over this past year had something to do with this -- I found renewed interest in hearing about the same parks I'd visited and heard described so many times before.

What struck me, as you may have already guessed, was how very...urban WDW sounded in her description. For those who aren't familiar with the resort, the Disney corporation's largest theme park is located on a sprawling megalot southwest of Orlando. Four theme parks, three water parks, a huge shopping center, golf courses, a sports complex, and an obscene number of hotels are sprinkled around this huge land reserve, with everything of interest to tourists being conveniently connected to public transit. Well, "public" for paying resort guests.

WDW is often considered a poster child for the kind of dull, controlled, paternalistic environments that urbanists rail against. The word "Disneyfication" refers to a renovation which scrubs up and de-authenticates an existing place. Disney is soulless, and its theme parks are the most blatant manifestation of this. There is a megalomaniacal insistence -- nearly palpable when you're visiting the parks -- that your every move is being anticipated and manipulated.

Still, there are some interesting parallels between these theme parks and the urban environment. The walkability and transit connectivity certainly mimic the benefits of urban areas. There is also a diversity of experience that is often lacking in suburban places. As mentioned above, Disney is extremely careful to make sure that you only see and hear what they want you to see and hear in their parks, but that is not to say that there aren't variables in what you decide to do and see. In a way, this is true of all cities. Cities offer a wider range of experiences than a theme park, but there is always a limit on what you can see and do, whether they are legal, physical or otherwise. You can't climb a mountain in Chicago; the city is as flat as paper.

It was interesting, then, to hear that Disney had implemented yet another constraint on guests' experiential variety and the experience of some very loyal guests -- the 'rents, again -- had been less satisfied with their overall experience. While they still had a great time, the resort's new pre-paid meal plan system was apparently taking some of the excitement out of this already super-controlled environment. Mom again:

"With the meal plan, you have to reserve your spot in a lot of restaurants, especially for dinner. We saw a lot of people getting turned away from restaurants because they were booked up months in advance. It used to be fun, when we'd go, to be able to just walk around and enjoy the park and, if we found a place that looked interesting, just eat there. Now, you have to book your meals 180 days in advance, which isn't as exciting."

In an effort to make things easier for guests, Disney has actually made their parks a little less pleasant. Especially with a theme park, controlling a guest's experience of a place -- through as many of the five senses as possible -- is important to creating a memorable themed experience. But if there is too much effort on the part of the party controlling that experience, it can actually be detrimental to the guest's overall impression. It's a delicate balance that urban designers and planners could likely learn from. For certainly, the same thing must apply to cities. So how much of a city should be controlled (through zoning, height restrictions, traffic controls, and other legislation) and how much should be left up to residents to shape? Cities are a much more participatory place than theme parks; this only makes this question of balance more important.

Medellín: a City Planned for the Other 90% (Guest Post by Juliana Rincon)

Medellín, Colombia, is a city that I've fallen in love with, and it loves me back. Whenever I walk its streets, ride the metro, or take a bus, I feel that the city was planned with me, and with all the thousands of others who, like me, don't own a car and depend on public transportation to move around, in mind.

An example: Carabobo used to be a chaotic avenue full of seedy joints and the constant rumble of old buses expelling diesel fumes. The beautiful art deco buildings along the avenue were left unnoticed as people rushed to their destinations enclosed in the safety of a vehicle. At the far end of the street was a no-man's land where you could see homeless people warming their hands with bonfires made in steel drums, and where everything and everyone had a price. Beautiful buildings were abandoned, scavenged and then abused as crack houses, businesses where struggling to maintain customers, and something had to be done.

Nowadays, no buses run through this main avenue; only people are allowed here. Instead of the sky being overcast by clouds of combusted fuels, it is shaded by trees and palms. The former crack house is a cultural and educational center, and the architectural jewels along the way are lit up to showcase their details, while thriving businesses inhabit their spaces. It is a complete pleasure to travel up and down this public space, designed to be fully accessible for every type of citizen.

Walking down the paved walkway, you can see people sitting on park benches and resting their tired feet, bags and bags of purchases from a variety of stores sitting beside them. Textured bricks mark pathways for the blind to follow with their canes, traffic lights with sound and vibrations assist the pedestrians who might not be able to hear or see the lights change color. You don't need to step off the curbs and onto the street -- they are both at the same level, making it easy for people in wheelchairs to enjoy this space as well. No bicycles are allowed, but riders are welcome to dismount and walk their bikes through this area if they wish to.

It seems that common sense solutions are usually completely ignored by governments in Latin American cities, and it is refreshing to see that this isn´t the case with Medellín. The government is rebuilding its city for the inhabitants: they have discovered that when people have public spaces they can enjoy and where they can relax, breathe in clean air, and stretch their legs, they work harder, better, and are generally happier. The poorer inhabitants of the city don't have time or money to take vacations to the rural areas; they don't have the means to visit beaches and certainly don't have membership to country clubs...so the city decided to give them spaces where they could take their families, where they could lay on the grass, sit on a bench and kick back on a Sunday.

The city has placed trust in the people, with the firm belief that if you make citizens take ownership of these new spaces, they'll take care of them and make sure others respect the spaces as well. Store owners and workers down Carabobo street signed an agreement stating that they would take responsibility in keeping their surroundings clean, reporting uncivilized behaviors and vandalism if, in exchange, the city would do maintenance and have enough policemen in the area to ensure shoppers' safety. These store owners now thank this project for their new situation: they have a lot more clients and shoppers now that people can walk at their leisure and window shop; they have met other store owners in their block; they don't have to deal with car fumes and the noise from honking vehicles and motors; and they have come together as a community, united with one goal: to keep Carabobo looking clean, safe and beautiful for many other generations to enjoy.

However, this didn't happen overnight. The business owners in Carabobo at first were terrified that once no vehicles could come by and park in front of their stores, sales would plummet. They didn't want to deal with the months of construction, not knowing if their businesses would survive this metamorphosis. The government decided to include these concerned entrepreneurs in the discussion and planning process so they could become involved with the project and take ownership of it. On October 27th 2006, an agreement was signed, and they first saw the butterfly emerge from its cocoon.

Last week the Hiperbarrio team headed downtown to record a little bit of our experience walking down Carabobo. We took pictures, shot videos and then sat down on one of the many benches to enjoy the day. It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning, and if you ever come to Medellín and visit, I would definitely recommend for you to do the same.

If you want to learn a bit more about Carabobo, you can see the government's plan for Carabobo Street with pictures of the transformation, before, during and after, or look through the pictures we took that day with the Hiperbarrio team. Below, you can watch a YouTube video where the Carabobo community celebrates one year since the cooperation agreement was signed. (The narration is in Spanish).


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Big thanks to Juliana Rincon, one of the organizers of Medellín's HiperBarrio project, for writing this guest post! Photo credits go to her group and the government plan sited in the post, in that order.

Addressing the Sub/Urban Divide

The following post is part of Blog Action Day 2007, in which more than 15,000 bloggers around the world are posting about the environmental challenges that we face today as a society. For more info, follow the link at the end of the post.

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These days, cities and suburbs are locked in a seemingly intractable struggle. Cities are understood to be the dense urban cores bustling with pedestrians and laced with mass transit lines, while suburbs are viewed as the stomping grounds of the wicked and immoral Sprawl Monster that devours land at alarming rates and drives up demand for auto traffic and freeway construction, adding untold millions of tons of carbon into the air and accelerating global warming. It's a typical Western dichotomy: dark vs. light; right vs. left; good vs evil.

What often gets brushed aside as a result of this oversimplification is the fact that urbanity has little to do -- especially in the United States -- with political boundaries. The average densities of American cities and suburbs are almost the same. In fact, if you look at the 43 American municipalities with a density above 10,000 people per square mile, only six of them -- New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Miami -- are the central cities in their metropolitan areas. (That number rises to eight if you include Trenton and Newark, both in New Jersey, whose smaller metros are usually absorbed into the CSAs of Philadelphia and New York). Granted, some of the suburbs that reach this density are far more auto-centric than some of the less densely populated central cities, but the point here is that questions urbanity cannot be boiled down into easy, diametrically opposed sides. Density, sprawl, city, suburb -- all of these things are involved in the equation, but they don't always line up as neatly as we might hope.

It is often said nowadays that cities produce the majority of carbon emissions (roughly 80%) and therefore these areas must be the solution to the problem. This is entirely true, but we have to realize that "city" in this instance refers not to central urban areas, but entire metropolitan regions. One of the greatest challenges that US cities face, then, is how to undo the damage that poor land use policies and auto-dependancy have done to our suburbs. Many of the suburbs in the 10K+ density range are older places that were established before or during the early years of the automobile age: Paterson and Jersey City across the Hudson from New York; Somerville and Cambridge across the Charles from Boston; Cicero and Berwyn on the western edge of Chicago. These suburbs often have their own commercial areas, neighborhood shops and restaurants, and immigrant communities priced out of central cities. They are densely populated and often less reliant on cars than postwar suburbs. Many are connected to transit systems. In short, these suburbs are very urban places.

In the same stroke, some very large cities can be very sparsely populated places. San Jose, the center of Silicon Valley, is half as dense as Lakewood, Ohio, an historic streetcar suburb of Cleveland. Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, is twice as dense as Las Vegas. And how about this one: the most densely populated municipality in the US, Union City, New Jersey, has a population density 54.5 times higher than that of Jacksonville, Florida, one of the country's largest cities.

Numbers and boundaries have never been very good ways of defining places. They're too clinical, and they often substitute statistics for the human element. This has led to a critical misunderstanding on the part of the general public in the US of terminology pertaining to the built environment. As a result, people here are having a lot of trouble figuring out how cities should address climate change. There is a consensus that something must be done, but people can't seem to agree on what that might look like. City-dwellers pat themselves on the back and blame climate change on amorphous "sprawl," anti-urbanists twist stats to try to turn the tables on urbanists who are ill-equipped to deal with public perception, and suburbanites guard their turf rather fiercely, fearing that "density" will translate to more hellish commutes and the loss of "local character" that often doesn't exist in the first place. As a result the US plods along slowly toward a drastic change in the coastline with no solution in sight.

There is a near-total lack of vision in how we deal with urbanization and development in this country. However, this is starting to change. Hopefully, a rather damning trifecta of recent reports will give urban planners and civic leaders the tools they need to redirect the conversation.

First, it was revealed by the New York City Department of Health that New Yorkers lived, on average, nine months longer than the average American -- a fact linked to New Yorkers' more active lifestyles and the city's dense, walkable streetscape. Next came a report from Smart Growth America with the claim that "the projected 59 percent increase in the total miles driven between 2005 and 2030 will overwhelm expected gains from vehicle efficiency and low-carbon fuels." Finally, the American Public Transportation Association announced that "when compared to other household actions that limit carbon dioxide (CO2), taking public transportation can be more than ten times [more effective] in reducing this greenhouse gas." It was a three-strike, rapid-fire attack on auto-centric development patterns. The message was made very clear: if we want to seriously address climate change in the United States, we must walk more, improve our public transit infrastructure, and drive much less often. All of this is reliant upon the existence of one thing: an urban environment.

At some point it must be acknowledged by a majority of Americans that if we want to change the way we impact our climate, we have to change the ways that we build and live. Making the switch from regular light bulbs to CFLs is all well and good. But understanding the way that land use and transportation actually work, and accepting the fact that we must be more responsible in these areas, is critical to finding a real solution. If the public is to come to this better understanding, recognizing and explaining the difference between straight statistics (city/suburb, density/sprawl) and genuine urbanity should be the first items on the urban agenda.

(Photos from Flickr users jimheid and mirkob. The first shows Cambridge, MA, rising across the river from Boston's Back Bay neighborhood; the second is an image of Jacksonville, FL's hollowed-out core and the sparsely populated surrounding neighborhoods.)


Links:
Blog Action Day

US Municipalities Over 50,000:
Ranked by 2000 Density (Demographia)

Why New Yorkers Las Longer (NY Magazine) (via All About Cities)

Less Auto-Dependent Development Is Key to Mitigating Climate Change, Research Team Concludes (Smart Growth America)

Taking Transit: The Most Effective Route to Cutting Carbon (WorldChanging.com)

WEEKEND READING: August 18-24, 2007

It seems like things are really hit-or-miss on the online urbanism media circuit. Some weeks are golden, and others about as interesting as watching paint dry. Luckily, this week was definitely the former.

ITEM ONE: Airoots has a great story on a pretty unconventional "artist village" development in Mumbai. (Photo at right)

ITEM TWO: Some great observations from The Economist on the past and present of one of the world's most fascinating cities, Beijing.

ITEM THREE: Want a unique way to tell your neighborhood's story? Life Without Buildings has found a fun example of how to do so...

ITEM FOUR: Want some geopolitics and developing world perspective with your architecture and urbanism? Check out Candyland, a blog from a former resident of Mexico City now living in Barcelona.

ITEM FIVE: Over at Plasticbag, one of the most interesting posts I've read on place branding.

ITEM SIX: Bill Fulton of the CPDR has no patience for Joel Kotkin. (Right on!)

ITEM SEVEN: New -- and pretty jarring -- info on the relationship between homeownership and economic success via CEOs for Cities.

ITEM EIGHT: Spacing Wire's post about psychadelic radio programs, urban soundtracks, and aimless Sunday strolls. (Conversation starter: What's the soundtrack to your city?)

So in a week overflowing with good stuff, this blogger would strongly recommend all of the above. But if you just have time to read one, make it either Item One or Item Five. And have a great weekend!

WEEKEND READING: July 14-20, 2007

There was a glut of interesting stuff to sift through this week, so I can put a guaranteed stamp of "Awesome" on all of these links.

ITEM ONE: Josh Stephens has penned yet another great post for Planetizen's Interchange blog. The topic: Europerfection and the untapped potential of American surface lots.

ITEM TWO: My employer, the Corporation for National and Community Service, has a new report out that suggests that commute times affect volunteerism rates in American metros.

ITEM THREE: WorldChanging features a Q&A with Clare Lockhart and Ashraf Ghani on Afghanistan's National Solidarity Program and the future of the country.

ITEM FOUR: BLDGBLOG is taking the extra room fantasies of Manhattanites and turning them into a radio program.

ITEM FIVE: Mapping walkability = coolest mashup ever.

ITEM SIX: The witty Part IV posts a letter entitled "Dear Architects: I am sick of your shit." Hilarity ensues.

ITEM SEVEN: A book about carfree living that doesn't come across as preachy? A review on MSN claims the impossible.

Adios, compadres. See you next week.

(Photo from Flickr user shadeofmelon.)

The Sensual Experience

I've been reading it for just over a week and already completely enamoured with Spacing Wire. The most recent post from this fresh, thoughtful Toronto blog piggybacks nicely on Friday's post on dreamscapes. In it, Adam writes about Allan B. Jacobs' 1985 book Looking at Cities, which suggests (among other things) that walking is the best way to experience a neighborhood.

Re-purposing a Jacobs quote used in Adam's post: "Walking allows the observer to be in the environment with no barriers between the eyes and what is seen. The sensual experience — noises, smells, even the feel of things — is a real part of walking. There is more than you can take in: sights, sounds, smells, wondering what it might be like to live there, what it used to be like, and much more. It is an exciting, heady business."

So here's the part where several recent posts all fall together. The (Still) Made Hereseries looked at ways that neighborhoods could promote themselves effectively. So to follow up on that, how does a neighborhood convince visitors to return -- or, better yet, relocate -- once they're there? How do you make the walk worth the while?

Guerilla gardening, or just gardening in general, is one way. While urban front yards are miniscule compared to their suburban counterparts, they can greatly enhance both the house they front and the surrounding neighborhood when used effectively as a compact, colorful garden. In neighborhoods without yards, other assets can be highlighted. For an architecturally rich area, a group could post free audio walking tours as mp3s online. Ethnic or cultural enclaves could set up cross-promotional networks between businesses and organizations that add to the neighborhood's cultural cache. This could both strengthen the local business community (hopefully visually) and encourage pedestrians to continue exploring other spots that add to the local flavor.

There are plenty of ways to make a neighborhood exciting and fun to explore, which is the key to attracting people from other parts of the city (and beyond.) They key is to get visitors to slow down and take the time to experience what Jacobs refers to as "the sensual experience" of the place.

(Photo from Flickr user toshimaguy.)


Links:
Looking at cities (Spacing Wire)

Looking at Cities (the book, @ Amazon)

Walkability Map Follow-Up

I e-mailed the Sightline Institute last week when I made this post about a walkability map of Seattle to learn more about the map. Here's the response that I received:

There is more about the walkability maps in the 2006 edition of the Cascadia scorecard, which is available online here: http://www.sightline.org/publications/books/CS2006/CS06

The underlying data for that map is based on a proprietary index, developed using data on population, street connectivity, and the local mix of commercial floorspace. The creators of the data looked at all of those factors in their studies looking at the relationship between city design & active transportation. The information was developed by Dr. Lawrence Frank from University of British Columbia, and Dr. James Sallis of San Diego State University and Dr. Brian Saelens of Cincinnati Children's Hospital. It was funded by King County and the NIH.

(Thanks Leigh!)

Mapping Walkability

"Walkability" is one of the major buzzwords in contemporary urban planning. The idea is simple and makes worlds of sense: living in a neighborhood where you can walk everywhere instead of driving greatly reduces your eco-footprint, encourages a more healthy, active lifestyle, and increases neighborhood safety. It's a buzzword that actually deserves the buzz.

I've always thought that the creation of a system for mapping walkability would be a watershed moment for the urbanist movement. Walkability maps of major cities, provided in some sort of interactive format (read: a website) would not only make choosing a neighborhood easier for homebuyers and renters, but it would serve as a great informal guide for tourists--especially at a time when tourists are becoming less interested in traditional attractions. Knowing where high-traffic pedestrian areas are would be an easy way of figuring out which neighborhoods would provide the best opportunities to explore the local culture.

I found my first walkability map yesterday (there may be more of these out there...let me know if you come across any.) The Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based sustainability think tank, has developed a map of King County's walkable neighborhoods. The color-coded system is easy to understand, though it's not at all interactive and only major highways (oddly enough) are shown as far as roadways are concerned. I also couldn't find any information about how this map was developed (i.e. what factors were included in determining walkability.) Things like living essentials (grocery stores, laundromats, convenience stores), mass transit access, crime, and density are all important factors, I'd imagine. It'd just be nice to see some sort of breakdown. Still, it's a start.


Links:
Map of Walkable King County