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The City as Art

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Wesminster_Hall_and_Bridge_edited.jpg

Westminster Hall and Bridge: Augustus Pugin & Thomas Rowlandson (1810).

Earth hath not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

— William Wordsworth: Poems, in Two Volumes: Sonnet 14

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Cease and Desist?

Someone posted Exit Through the Gift Shop on YouTube, in its entirety.

Ironically, because it requires a decision to break the law, street art is one of the few ways that individuals still shape the visual fabric of their cities. And then it’s gone. But the bad economy of the last five years seems to have decimated the funding for graffiti removal, making the works less ephemeral. The blank concrete walls that frame Interstate 280 as it cuts through the aging blocks of Newark and the Oranges have become a semi-permanent exhibit.


Reminds me of those high walls on New York’s West Side Highway in the 80s.

Posted in Art
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A New Look at American Migration Patterns

Restless America, by Chris Walker at Vizynary.

A snapshot of Restless America, by Chris Walker at Vizynary.

Chris Walker at Vizynary has a very interesting project, Restless America, that shows the migration pattens between American states. It looks like Florida and Texas are still the main destinations for domestic migration. It’s interesting that both states have a lot of buildable land around their economic centers; and the largest city in Texas — Houston — even lacks formal zoning laws. I’m fairly sure that the lower cost of living in those states has been a major factor in people’s relocation decisions. And, of course, better climates.

I’d like to see a version that also includes net immigration, by state. Immigration accounts for the lion’s share of population growth in the states that are losing US-born residents, but still growing, overall. My guess is that as people from certain countries settle in particular regions, those regions become magnets for new migrants from the same places, bringing new waves of residents who seek out familiar people, customs, and languages, in their new country. But this new concentration of people who live in, say, New Jersey by choice drives up the generic cost of living here beyond what the native-born locals think is fair. So, a lot of US-born residents respond to migration-driven growth by relocating to states that have a lower cost of living, as well as what they perceive (or hope) to be more familiar cultural surroundings.

I think the interplay between land use policy and migration is the major factor that determines a region’s housing costs: Land use policies largely determine a region’s real estate supply, and migration patterns (including the purchasing power of those who come or go) largely determine regional demand. I think it’s strange that planning discussions tend to spend very little time on the nexus (and contrast) between semi-permanent land use patterns and the very fluid migration patterns of places like North America and Western Europe. I can’t think of any part of the real estate equation that’s more central to questions about sustainability, affordable housing, and infrastructure than this dynamic. The more we can learn about who is going where, and why, the more intelligently we can address the whole host of land use planning topics. Restless America is a good start.

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What on Earth are These Land Parcels?

In contrast to the orderly subdivisions of East Coast cities, or the predictably square farms that dice up the countryside of the rural Midwest and Texas, variations on the above mish-mash can be found on tax maps throughout the Intermountain West: long, rectangular parcels — some overlapping others — with no apparent rhyme or reason. Apparently, these parcel patterns are the legal remnants of old mine claims. Here’s a map showing claims in the Leadville, Colorado vicinity as of 1880:

COLeadvilleMines

1880 mine claims around Leadville, Colorado. Source: David Rumsey Map Collection.

This map makes you realize how intense the American mineral rushes really were. Claims covered every inch of land in the promising places, and even overlapped each other as new claims supplanted abandoned ones — or maybe the claims just conflicted with one another in the legal vacuum of the old West. The names claimants gave their mines are usually funny — names like Dead Broke and Legal Tender, Last Chance and Grand Prize.

Apparently, the similarities between the dimensions of different miners’ claims is not coincidental: Legislation at both the federal and state levels had attempted to standardize the rules for mining claims on a number of occasions; these efforts culminated in the U.S. General Mining Act of 1872.

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Repurposing America’s Rust Belt

The Lincoln Institute has a pretty interesting slideshow and report about what it calls America’s legacy cities — generally, old industrial cities that haven’t found their footing in a less industrial economy. Cincinnati is on the list — a mostly ungentrified old American city whose building stock looks oddly like New York’s:

One intriguing aspect of the report is how it quantifies the different assets in these older cities. Features like universities, hospitals, waterfronts, and parks are broken out and listed for the surveyed places. One takeaway seems to be that Pennsylvania’s legacy cities are coming back to life faster than some others. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are doing better than most. But I wonder if Philadelphia should even be on the list. It’s virtually a coastal city; its region has a concentration of colleges and hospitals that’s comparable to Boston’s; and Center City is fewer than 90 miles from Midtown Manhattan. That’s a pretty different game from Cincinnati’s.

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Pompeii

The New York Review of Books has a bleak piece by Ingrid Rowland about the neglect of Pompeii, and how the layers of political malfeasance are beginning to take their toll on the ancient site. Buried for about 16 centuries, Pompeii remains one of the best-preserved examples of classical planning — right down to the unique stepping stones built into its streets; and its open forum, situated squarely at the intersection of the cardo and the decumanus maximus. For a refresher on the city, its development, and its date with destiny, here is Diana Kleiner’s lecture. For a look around the present-day site (which doesn’t look too far gone), here’s the Google Street View of the Pompeiian Forum:

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Spotlight: Cripple Creek, Colorado

From Wikipedia:

At an elevation of 9,494 feet (2,894 m) and just below tree line, for many years, Cripple Creek’s high valley was considered no more important than a cattle pasture. Many prospectors avoided the area after the misnamed Mount Pisgah hoax, a mini gold rush caused by salting (adding gold to worthless rock).

On the 20th of October, 1890, however, Robert Miller “Bob” Womack discovered a rich ore and the last great Colorado gold rush began. Thousands of prospectors flocked to the region, and before long W. S. Stratton located the famous Independence lode, one of the largest gold strikes in history. In three years, the population increased from five hundred to ten thousand by 1893. Although half a billion dollars’ worth of gold ore was dug from Cripple Creek, Womack himself would die, penniless, on 10th August, 1909.

For the past 16 months I’ve been researching local business regulations around the United States. In the course of the work, I talk with police chiefs and mayors, and I read a lot of municipal ordinances. Over time, it’s become a telephonic tour of America.

Cripple Creek, the seat of Teller County, is a great example of late Victorian frontier architecture and town planning. It almost became a ghost town in the 1960s, but it’s apparently made a comeback with gambling and historical tourism.

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Sustainability After Sandy

Sustainability principles have become such a fallback in discussions about developing new neighborhoods, and redeveloping old ones, that they’ve almost become cliches. Still, I think it’s important to ask the questions that get raised by basic sustainability analysis — and I think there remains a lot of room for planners and developers to go beyond stale platitudes and explore new ways to build fairer and stronger communities. Hurricane Sandy tested each of the three big elements of the sustainability triad: environment, economy, and social equity. Now that it’s been almost a year since the storm hit, it’s an interesting time to take stock and ask: How has Greater New York responded to the post-Sandy crisis?

Post-Sandy Manhattan. Source: Hybirdd, via Wikimedia Commons.

Post-Sandy Manhattan. Source: Hybirdd, via Wikimedia Commons.

The current issue of BOMA magazine has a brief article on this question, as it relates to commercial landlords. (Flip through to page 26, where it begins.) Many of the points discussed have to do with creating workable action plans for before environmental disasters — a simple but apparently crucial adaptation measure. A lack of communications was apparently a major stumbling block in the post-Sandy period, even at the top of the city’s economic pyramid.

In a twist of irony, poorer communities sometimes benefit from the inherent sustainability of their older urban infrastructures in ways that suburban communities do not. The different proportions of residents who lost power in East Orange (a streetcar suburb whose neighborhoods mostly date from around 1900) and West Orange (more of a Gatsby-era suburb, with a lot of post-war development), in the weeks after Sandy, was a great example. There still hasn’t been much talk about finding the money to bury utility lines, though.