Longitudinal Slum

A Critical Approach to Sustainability

Panayiota Pyla seeks to address the importance of approaching the recent strategy of "sustainability" from a critical perspective.

Counter-Histories of Sustainability [Volume #18]

The American Lawn

Having grown up in several generic suburban developments I have always had a predisposition toward all things suburban: quaint single-family standalone houses, tree-lined streets, swimming pools in backyards, and lush green lawns. It’s how things were supposed to be. Never mind our front, side and backyard was a continually minefield of dogshit, but that sort of imperfection was indicative of the thin veneer of suburbia. It helped to feed the hunger for a greener lawn, a bigger and newer house with more dormers than the next, in a fresh development populated with people who looked and acted the same. Now all I ask is for the corner liquor store to stock some Cointreau so I can get my summer Margarita on. Through the two inch bullet-proof plexiglass the shop owner tells me its on order.

As the housing market is weakening and a number of homes sit empty with yellowing or overgrown lawns, post-foreclosure, tales of gangs and crack-heads (or meth-heads in the Midwest?) roving the streets are reported in the media as signs of a changing suburbia. Good. Should add some spice to the culture. Maybe the next Criminal Minded will come out of a Des Moines suburb.

When a neighborhood goes bad, one of the first signs is the overgrown or yellowing lawn, soon to be followed with the parking of vehicles on said lawn, or ravage dogs chained to a tree on a dusty lawn. This sign stands in stark contrast to the lush and velvety lawn held as the ideal, the standard, the crème de la crème of what a lawn should be. Home owners are judged by their ability to maintain an idyllic lawn, and any shortcomings are indicative of the home owner’s character.

A recent piece in the New Yorker, Turf Wars, and the publication chronicling the Edible Estates project focus on the history of the lawn and it's environmental and cultural impact, while suggesting alternative uses for the open or leftover space typically reserved for grass. This slowly developing shift in attitude toward the lawn is maybe the most recognizable or quickest physical representation of the forthcoming changing makeup of the traditional suburb. As suburbs become more economically and ethnically diverse, the homogenized image of what the suburb should be is likely to shift into something less recognizable and more eclectic than what many are comfortable with. As more lawns are turned over to native vegetation, or Edible Estates, the possibility of defining the suburbs as something more rich and diverse than they have been traditionally thought will become a greater possibility.

Turf War [New Yorker]

Digging These Stripmall Starbucks

As I'm sitting at an Oak Ridge Starbucks on a rather generic strip I'm beginning to see Starbucks has done something fairly obvious and smart to the strip building typology. They've included an outdoor shaded patio. It isn't much, but creates a fairly pleasent space where people can spend leisure time outdoors on a quasi public realm. It feels like it could be right on the sidewalk, if there was a sidewalk. Every other building on the strip takes a defensive posture in the form of shrubbery, solid walls, dark tinted glass, or glass plastered with advertising. The Starbucks patio bleeds into the parking lot and onto the strip itself, in this case Turnpike road.

The Starbucks itself is empty, and there is nobody else on the patio right now, but that may have to do more with the people of Oak Ridge doing their church deeds at the moment.

The remainder of this particular strip isn't too bad - lots of plush grass landscaping in need of fertilizer and watering - and I think the other side of the street has a narrow token sidewalk (I've seen one pedestrian in Oak Ridge). The Starbucks patio is a good step and maybe over time we can band-aid something good together.

And if you prefer to by-pass the patio and indoors, there's always the drive thru.

Starbucks On The Strip

A short trip to Tennessee and less than five minutes from the Knoxville airport is a conveinient roadside Starbucks complete with outdoor patio with the constant hum of traffic zipping by.

Overheard In My Deli

A man walks into my corner deli trying to sell a pair of size 34 pants. When asked what was going on he responds "I'm trying to get some bail money together, my baby got pinched last night."

Zipcar-ing to New Jersey

This weekend we hit the road for an overnight stay in New Jersey, via Zipcar. Despite my current sense of near euphoria over the pain and suffering being inflicted on those who hit the road nearly everyday, it sure does feel good to get on the freeway once in awhile. Maybe once a year is good enough. Maybe we should do it more often. Zipcar covers the gas expense, so what do I care?

I've been commuting to work primarily on bicycle for about 4 weeks now; a great change of pace from the subway which is actually a longer commute door-to-door. The increase in New York City bike lanes recently means most of my ride is in the (relative) safety of a dedicated bike lane, when it isn't also being used for double parking, a turning lane, or a passing lane. Brooklyn still feels a little bit like the wild west. It's resulted in a few changes to my daily routine. Such as no more stopping at the Bowery Whole Foods on the way home after work. From here on out it's the Bed-Stuy Bravo. And the work attire has become very casual, at least until it cools down. It is also a challenge to store the bike in the office. Alternating between two poorly organized storage rooms at the moment, but long term will likely require some overhead means of storage. At the moment I'm fortunate nobody else has decided to start riding in also.

I'm probably not making a big difference by commuting on bike - I've either walked or taken the subway to work in the 6 years I've lived in New York, but freeing up a seat on the subway and hopefully making a small dent in rider awareness helps somewhere along the way. I guess I should feel fortunate I live in a city where it's even possible to commute to work on a bike.

Retail Living

A LA Times visit to The Americana at Brand.

The new Mayberry? [LA Times]
image by Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times

SUV Owners Feeling The Pain

The rise in gas prices is a move in the right direction that if sustained long enough and is painful enough, could and should lead to meaningful change in how Americans approach transportation, infrastructure, and urbanism. While much of the current debate is mis-directed and focused on finding new sources for oil, hopefully attention shifts toward alternative approaches to transportation and urbanism.

At $100 for Tank of Gas, Some Choke on ‘Fill It’ [NY Times]

Suburban Change

The Atlantic looks at the continued fallout of the subprime mess and its relation to larger shifts in attitudes toward dense urban areas and surrounding suburban areas. As the number of foreclosed homes sit empty in neighborhoods increase, so has activity commonly associated with urban centers such as graffiti, gangs, and even the stripping of empty properties of precious metals such as copper. It could be argued that the suburb has finally arrived - the oldest of the suburbs have reached an age where homes will have seen multi-generations and the transfer of ownership through a handful of families. As older city neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side have seen its demographic shift from Jewish, to Puerto Rican, to gentrifying transplants from the Midwest, the suburbs are reaching an age where radical shifts in demographics and character will become part of the arc of the life of a suburb.

This is a promising change from two fronts. First, the model of the suburb and suburban living is cautiously being reexamined under the guise of New Urbanism. New Urbanist communities have begun to support denser developments with an emphasis on public transportation or walkable living. Lifestyle Centers mimic the stylings of traditional Main Street, while beginning to mix retail, commercial and housing in the same development. While neither approach is perfect, and wreak of stylistic falsities more appropriate of a Disneyworld amusement center, they demonstrate the possibilities in rethinking how suburban development is approached, as opposed to a complete abandonment or disregard / distaste for the suburbs, as practiced by close-minded city dwellers who believe the revitalization of the inner city is the only honorable direction for us to take moving forward.

And second, older suburban developments and retail strips have the potential to be re-examined, as many are falling into disrepair and in need of infrastructural improvements. The opportunity exists to think about how infill projects are approached, how existing lots can be made denser, and whether larger McMansions can be subdivided into multi-tenant homes, in much the same way older brownstones or row-houses have been in neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Rather than viewing the forthcoming change approaching the suburbs in a negative light (ie: death of the suburbs), the weakening of the rigid idea of what the suburbs ought to be and what they represent should be seen as an opportunity to examine the best and worst of the suburbs, and learn how they are to be recalibrated moving forward.

The Next Slum? [The Atlantic]

Uninventing The Suburbs

A couple of articles in the Times today featuring the environmental impact of the suburbs, and the possibility of uninventing them. One statistic highlighting the differences between suburban and city environmental impact is the emission of greenhouse gases produced by the average American (24.5 metric tons), versus the average New Yorker (7.1 metric tons).

The recent increased awareness of issues related to the environment is proving to have the potential to impact the perception and future production of the city (urban, suburban, exurban, etc...). It has taken something tangible (global warming and its consequences) rather than the intangibles that have traditionally framed the debate of the merits or demerits of suburban living, which have generally been found in the form of relative judgments decreeing the right or wrong of lifestyle choices. The immediate and easy actions taken to lessen one's environmental impact are found in compact fluorescents, smaller automobiles (maybe even hybrids), and recycling. Small things that add up, but are painless and don't require a dramatic lifestyle change. The question that should be posed is whether suburbanites are willing to accept radical lifestyle changes that have the potential of having a deep impact on greenhouse gas production, but would conversely alter the composition and make-up of housing development, or redevelopment, and deep ingrained ideas of what suburban living offers, or rewards those who choose that lifestyle. Given that the installation of clotheslines is forbidden in several neighborhoods (only poor people dry their clothes outdoors), it would seem the battle for change is nothing but uphill.

Rather than vilifying the suburbs, intellectual energy will need to be spent on both how to generate new development forged from productive agriculture land, and how to modify / alter existing suburbs. Either approach will require the buy-off of those who believe it is their God-given right to their own (brand new) single-family detached home surrounded with green lawn with enough spatial and visual separation from those who are different from them, and a radically rethinking of how to approach existing suburbs, how they are zoned, how land is parceled, and how building on this land is approached in the future. This has the potential to have the biggest impact - though it will take the most time.

Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You [NY Times]
Can We Uninvent Suburbia? [NY Times]

Manhattan

The Cruise

Road Trip

Zipcar is our new favorite service. After living in NYC for over six years we have almost no sense of what the surrounding region looks like. New York State is a big question mark, as are the other states leading into New England. So a quick road trip to New Haven followed by a night in Providence has helped to build a bit of a mental picture of some of the I-95 corridor.

A combination of the ease of the Zipcar and Google Maps on the iPhone reminded me how nice and liberating it used to be to own a car and take spur of the moment road trips, though when taken from Lincoln, Nebraska it usually meant committing to a biblical trek just to get anywhere worthwhile. While we could have gotten to New Haven and Providence by means of rail, having the car afforded us a certain level of freedom and flexibility that isn't possible taking the train. Maybe we should be more idealistic and commit strictly to mass transit, but flying down the Interstate in a little Mazda felt like the American dream.

A couple thoughts about Zipcar: It's a shared-car program, meaning it's users are supposed to have a certain level of care and responsibility toward the car. Of course the car we picked up was coated in cat hair, pine needles and soda syrup, while the glove compartment was filled with parking tickets. It just reinforces the notion that people are awful. Other than having to deal with other people's slop, it's an efficient and well thought through experience.

The more I use the iPhone, the more I wonder how people used to get by without it. Outside of being able to use it as a navigation device, the convenience of being able to Google 'hotels' when arriving in a city, compare their locations on Google Maps, and call the hotels displayed in the search results for rates and reservations, all seamlessly with one device is a dream.

And finally, after some confusion driving into New York City and ending up driving Myrtle Avenue from the middle of Queens to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, I'm of the opinion that Robert Moses didn't carve nearly enough super-highways through the boroughs...

How To Do A Parking Garage #2

Temple Street Parking Garage. New Haven, Connecticut. Paul Rudolph, 1962.

How To Do A Parking Garage #1

Random parking garage in New Haven, Connecticut

Nebraska's I-80 Wish List

The Nebraska Innovation Zone Commission is looking for input on the future of the I-80 corridor between Lincoln and Omaha. A brief survey is online here.

Shopdropping

Shopdropping noted in the New York Times.

Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage [NY Times]

The Strip, Visited

Does the retail strip even have a chance, when any coverage it receives focuses on its generic or even 'ugly' looks, its alienating qualities, and automobile driven planning strategies? Dan Berry writing for the New York Times visits U.S. Route 1 with Kevin Fry, President of Scenic America, and Brad Cownover, its director of scenic conservation services.

Of course we agree that it is ugly, alienating, and results from automobile infrastructure. However it is these qualities that define what this generic place is and where the opportunity lies to make the strip a better place. Focusing on the aesthetic qualities of the strip are secondary to the infrastructural or operational issues that can impact how the strip is used and engaged. Understanding the strip goes beyond 'pimping awnings' and limiting the heights of billboards.

A Place Just Like Every Other Place. Only Not. [NY Times]
above image by Ángel Franco

Fulton Street Mall Keepin' It Real

The New York Times takes a visit to Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn, a half-mile outdoor strip that can be characterized as an outdoor mall. The Fulton Street Mall comes pretty close to what the contemporary Lifestyle Center aims to be, though you would be hard pressed to find black Santa's and flier guys with teardrop tattoos in the corner of their eyes at any Lifestyle Center.

It'll be interesting to see how Fulton Street changes in the coming years - it currently balances a few name-brand retailers with a host of mom & pops, but with the changing demographics of Brooklyn it shouldn't be long before the Banana Republics and H&M's that litter New York's other outdoor mall (Soho) make their way across the East River. And in a city that is continually evolving, maybe that's not a bad thing. I certainly wouldn't mind a Duane Reade popping up somewhere near in our Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Maybe one-stop shopping is in our blood.

New York (we can even isolate Brooklyn in this case) is full of shopping strip typologies. The Atlantic Terminal Mall is of the enclosed, multi-level model. The Fulton Street Mall takes care of the outdoor strip (steps taken in the '70s such as sidewalk widening and limiting vehicular traffic (control mechanisms) formalized the strip as a mall). And sections of Brooklyn thoroughfares are packed with small, local stores serving their immediate neighborhood & demographic. Fundamentally they are all very much the same, and at the same time very different. The organization and control of space helps to define each type. The larger and more complex the type requires greater control (levels of security) which ultimately define how sanitized a place becomes. For better or worse...

Step Right Up! Brooklyn Mall Is Oasis and Anomaly [NY Times]
top image by Richard Perry

Omaha By Design Lists Great Public Spaces

Omaha by Design has listed 10 Great Public Spaces in Omaha. Naturally the intersection of 11th & Howard is listed as Number 1. Only the southwest corner of 50th & Underwood makes it in Dundee. The other three corners of this intersection must constitute bad public space.

Missing from the list is Village Pointe. Disappointing because a new Lifestyle Center should be a shoo-in for a list like this. However one of Omaha's older shopping centers, Countryside Village, did make the list.

Inaugural List of 10 Great Public Spaces Announced [Omaha by Design]