Messy Diversity

Oh good lord

2006-06-23T12:40:00.000-04:00

Dubai then (1991)...

and now (2005)...

Photos taken from the great BBC coverage of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver.

Cities of the World

2006-06-19T23:28:00.000-04:00

A graphic from BBC News nicely illustrates a statement I read in an urban geography textbook somewhere: "the problems of rich, western cities are, on a global basis, quantitively unimportant."

The article mentions that 1/3 or the world's urban population lives in slums, and that the world's population is at or past the 50% urban mark.

Check out the article, here, and the interactive graphic, here.

Rapid Transit and Economic Growth

2006-06-19T12:26:00.000-04:00

Interesting article today in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about development along Rapid Tranist Lines. ( I found the article through the bus chick blog.)

The article discusses (mainly) the negative side of development associated with rapid transit development. In casting the new rapid transit line as the enemy of engrained local, ethnic businesses, the article presents rapid transit as an unstoppable force of gentrification.

Historically, no developer would touch economically distressed Rainier Valley (the location of the new rapid transit line): The last privately financed apartment building was built in 1974, according to the city.

With light rail and a beautified street on the horizon, that's likely to change, once the pioneers building complicated housing and retail projects demonstrate some success. [...]

"All it takes is for money to start coming into a neighborhood," [one neighbourhood resident] said, "and it's almost like an infection, the way it spreads."

Frankly, while I do see the downside in gentrification completely altering the face of a neighbourhood, I really must say I hope and pray that rapid transit does cause investment to act "like an infection." What hope that would offer to depressed neighbourhoods all across America.

There seems to be others who share that hope. There is something of a "Streetcar Renaissance" going on in North America that I've recently been reading about. Check out an excellent overview available from the City of Toronto website:The Streetcar Renaissance

Great Urban Design?

2006-06-18T23:21:00.000-04:00

Two seemingly contradictary reviews of the new Four Seasons Centre for the Peforming Arts in Toronto appeared this weekend in the same publication, The Globe and Mail. One, written by Lisa Rochon and published in the Review section has the headline "Outside blah, inside awe" and starts

While the exterior brick wrap is mean to the street, the interior of the new opera house is nothing short of triumphant [...]

and continues

A building is not a one-walled affair. And yet, from the outside, this is what we are expected to believe of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. So regular, so hard, so profane are the brick elevations running along Queen Stree West, Richmond Street and York Street in downtown Toronto that the building and its significance as Canada's first opera house disappear from civic consciousness. The monumental glass wall is an exhilarating addition to University Avenue, but it can hardly be expected to forgive all.

Most of the article concentrates on the interior of the building but we're definetly left with the impression that the building fails the streets that surround it by presenting a lifeless blank wall to the pedestrian. In terms of urban design, this sounds like a terrific failure. See regular posts at City Comforts for good critiques of buildings that fail to address the street. For example, here with regards to Disney Hall.

The other article, appearing in the Toronto section, presents the Four Seasons as the epitome of good urban design.

Once again, architect Jack Diamond has shown himself to be a master place maker. The Four Seasons Centre is designed more to be looked into and looked out of than merely to be looked at. It presents itself less as an object than the completion of a tableau that was scarcely detectable before it arrived. It is a hall rather than the palace our plutocrats once imagined - rigorously modest and, in the context of the four corners it completes, brilliantly evocaticve of this city's essentially civic spirit.

Are they discussing the same building? I'll have to take a closer look before I can weigh in on the issue.

Politics and the Suburbs

2006-06-16T19:22:00.000-04:00

Interesting article today in the NY Times on the correlation between suburban age, density and voting patterns. Conclusion: as suburbs get older, denser and more diverse they tend to vote increasingly democratic. The corollary being that the further out and newer the suburb, the more likely it is to vote Republican. They seem to have a lock on that "over 80 miles away from the CBD vote"...

Controlled Growth in Southern Ontario

2006-06-16T18:48:00.000-04:00

The Toronto Star has a front page piece about efforts to manage the expected influx of 4 million new residents to southern Ontario by 2025.

some highlights:

The province says cities — many of which are already choking on traffic congestion and have discovered how expensive it is to provide services to far-flung housing developments — want to make this work.

The province has a bag full of sticks and carrots just to make sure.

To start with, the province is vowing it will put its infrastructure money — $3 billion to $4 billion a year — only into communities reaching their targets.

As far as ways to make "smart growth" (for lack of a better term) work, this one seems pretty reasonable. If you want to make sprawling single family subdivsions out in the middle of farmland, fine. But don't ask us to provide roads, sewage, power lines, etc. People calling for a "free market" in real estate should welcome the opportunity to assume all the costs of said development. See my post about roads in NC below.

Trends in housing purchases show people want other options besides surburban sprawl, Caplan said, pointing to Toronto real estate data showing half of new home sales are in high-rise condominiums.

Not shocking stuff, really. It seems to me that demand for beautiful, fully functioning neighborhoods never really died. It's just that we forgot (or were unwilling to invest the time) how to build great places like, for example, the Annex in Toronto. The "Bloor West Village" in Toronto, near where I live, has a lively streetscape that is bustling at all hours of the day. It's a great place to live and housing prices are exorbitant; condo development is just about everywhere. Anyway, I've always had the feeling there were far more people who wanted to live in a neighborhood like the Annex, there just hasn't been enough supply to meet demand. Incidentally, Jane Jacobs made the Annex her home during her decades of living in Toronto.

As soon as I recover my digital camera I'll be out trying to capture some of what makes the neighborhood great.

Overtaxed Roads in NC

2006-06-15T16:59:00.000-04:00

Another item from the Raleigh News & Observer about the use and abuse of rural roads in the triangle (the area encompassing Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill).

One striking quote:

Riggsbee, 18, a senior at Wakefield High School, lost control of the 1988 Honda she was driving about 2:30 a.m. April 25. [...] Riggsbee was the seventh Wakefield student to die in a car crash since late 2004.

It's amazing how little people talk about the outrageous number of car accident deaths there are in the US. It's a Vietnam's worth of casualties every year. Seven students at one high school in two years? Boggles the mind.

At any rate, the article mainly discusses how rural roads that weren't designed for heavy commuter traffic are being strained beyond their limits. Yet another example of developers puting up huge subdivisions without anyone considering the cost to the local infrastructure.

You know you're lacking public spaces when..

2006-06-15T14:56:00.000-04:00

The Raleigh News & Observer has an absurdist story about the proposed Stanley Cup celebrations should the Carolina Hurricanes win the NHL championship. The proposal: hold the parade in the arena parking lot. What better symbol could their be of the decline of American cities than holding a parade in a parking lot? I've got a better idea: let's just have the parade stay still and everybody can drive by in their cars and pretend the parade is moving. That way, we can keep the A/C on.

Just one more reason I'm rooting for Edmonton...

Street Vendors = Street Life

2006-05-24T11:13:00.000-04:00

Street Vendors are just about everywhere in downtown Toronto.

Seems to me street vendors are a classic Jane Jacobs institution: they provide "eyes on the street" in a very definite way, and also provide a spontaneous meeting point for people of all sorts of different backgrounds. Just the other day, grabbing a hotdog on my lunch break, a conversation broke out between me - a twentysomething student - 3 high school students, a 70 year old woman recently returned to U of T to get a Master's degree, and a young professional couple out for a hotdog. It was a lively way to safely meet "strangers".

It's also great that the street vendors take great pride in their little piece of the Toronto public realm. You'll never see garbage or debris piling up around a street vendor. It's bad for business - but that's what's great about small businesses in big cities. Things that make sense for them on an individual basis also seem, often enough, to be good for the city as a whole.

My home town, Montreal, banned street vendors for some incomprehensible reason a few years before my time. I've heard rumblings about trying to get them back and now that I've seen how well they work in Toronto I fully support the effort.

Making Transit Cool?

2006-05-24T10:08:00.000-04:00

Spacing, a great urban publication in Toronto, has put out a button collection that includes every subway stop in Toronto. I'm not quite sure why I find that so appealing, but any effort at marketing public transport (in this case by someone other than the transit authority) seems like a great thing to me. Check out the buttons here.

Relocating

2006-05-14T10:31:00.000-04:00

In light of a warm welcome from blogs I've come to know and respect - here, here and here, this blog has been officially launched.

On that note, I'd like to make an important announcement - I've relocated from Delft, The Netherlands to Toronto, Ontario. I'll be working at the University of Toronto for the summer, as a research assistant in the civil engineering deparment, working with transporation issues.

Living in Holland was a fabulous adventure. I think that the Dutch experience with city life and land use hold innumerable lessons for anyone interested in that great beast of a topic known as "the city". I heartily encourage everyone to visit the country. The wonderful mesh of dutch cities and countryside is, at least in part, what prompted the creation of this blog.

At any rate, that great year of my life is now past. I have a lot of material to write about vis-a-vis my experience in Holland, and I'm hoping to post it ASAP. In the meantime, I've begun to explore Toronto and will start to post on this great city just as soon as I overcome my jet lag and find my digital camera.

Persistence of Poverty in Chelsea

2006-05-12T07:34:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in The Economist about the changes (or lack thereof) in socioeconomic status of different parts of London. Speaking of the generally now-gentrified upmarket Chelsea they write:

poverty has not been altogether banished from this part of Chelsea, nor has it moved much. Most of the poorest areas in 2001 were also poor in 1898, and in almost exactly the same places. The reason is that the worst Victorian slums have been knocked down and replaced with tracts of social housing. Some of this housing was built by charitable trusts in the early 20th century; a nastier, post-war edifice just north of Draycott Avenue is the responsibility of the council.

When Chelsea's mean streets escaped the wrecking ball, they invariably went up-market. The houses of Caroline Place were “poor and rather rough”, with “some Irish” inhabitants, in 1898. Two- and three-bedroom houses in the street, since renamed Donne Place, now sell for £1.5m ($2.8m), according to Nick Boden, a local estate agent. (He describes the neighbourhood as “prime, prime, prime”.)

The same trend can be seen in many parts of the capital. Dubious areas that kept their housing stock have often improved. The terraced streets of Islington, which were patchy in Booth's day and later became patchier still (in 1971, fewer households had exclusive use of a bathroom than anywhere else in London), are now notoriously middle-class. But where vertical social housing replaced slums, poverty has been fossilised. So has some of the viciousness that Booth found.

In light of Jane Jacobs recent passing, I think it's worth pointing out that this research repeats just about the same thing that she was saying in 1961: that old gritty neighborhoods were inherently much more liveable places than the urban renewal projects replacing them. Also, like she argued for the North End of Boston, 'slums' have an amazing capacity for renewal on a samall scale without massive demolition.

I know that in Montreal there was a similar situation whereby a beautiful old (but at the time rundown) neighborhood now known as the McGill ghetto was almost torn down. Luckily the demolition effort was beaten back and the neighborhood has endured as one of Montreal's most liveable, walkable neighborhoods. I know there was a movie made about the development and ensuing protest, but for the life of me right now I can't remember the title.

At any rate, all this seems, in some ways, to prove that the physical shape and layout of the city seems, as Richard Layman puts it, to be its most enduring quality.

"Artificial" Growth Boundaries

2006-05-10T08:39:00.000-04:00

I was reading a Wall Street Journal Piece about Jane Jacobs that I found through City Comforts and I came upon this description of the Urban Growth Boundary in Oregon.

the results have been dismal and dramatic. The city's "smart growth" policies effectively created a land shortage, constricting the housing supply and artificially inflating prices. By 1999, Portland had become one of the 10 least affordable housing markets in the nation, and its homeownership rate lagged behind the national average.

It seems to me that this article is presenting rising land prices and reduced supply as a "dramatic" and unanticipated consequence of the Urban Growth Boundary. Clearly that can't be true. I am no expert on the Oregon situation, but anybody who establishes a growth boundary and doesn't expect land prices to rise is dreaming in technicolour. We've all seen supply and demand graphs.

The real question is about priorities. Knowing that setting aside some land for agricultural or natural preserves will put a strain on land prices, are we still prepared to do it? The question is really relevant to me because I'm living in The Netherlands, where the country has weighed those issues and set aside huge portions of land for strictly agricultural use. A large portion of that unbuildable land is right smack dab in the middle of the densest part of Holland. It's called the Groene Hart - agricultural land encircled by the largest cities in Holland - Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague (among others). It creates the interesting situation of a having a reverse donut - ubrban areas encircling countryside.

As a result of this sort of policy, housing in the Netherlands is notoriously difficult to find. On the other hand, dutch cities have remained compact, liveable places that are in close contact with "nature" - and by that I mean both agricultural land and nature preserves. As an anecdote, in early spring I was walking in the middle of downtown Delft - a city of 100,000 people - when I very clearly smelled manure being used on agricultural fields. I will post pictures soon, but have a look at this picture from outside Rotterdam.

If you take the train between Den Haag (The Hague), Delft and Rotterdam - roughly a 20 or 25 minute journey - you come upon scenes like this. Tucked between two large cities. You also see fields of cows, sheep and horses. It's really incredible to be so close to a city and so deeply immersed in the countryside all at the same time.

My point is that keeping the cities compact and keeping "nature" - both agricultural and otherwise - near their cities, the dutch have created a beautiful landscape that is not only admired by tourists but is extensively used by the population. It's what makes a country so unwaveringly dense liveable.

But it has a price. Limiting the land turned over to cities creates higher demand, and thus higher prices, for housing. But I would be quite suprised that anybody in Holland would say that that makes it a categorical failure. Most policies have downsides, but the real question is if, to be cliche, the good outweighs the bad.

That's what bothers me so much about the Wall Street Journal quote. The implication is that because growth barriers are "artificial" they are a failure. I think there are many things we do as a society that are not strictly market based that have positive consequences. All I would suggest is that it's worth considering the benefits of policies like those in Oregon - and perhaps Holland is one place to look for them.

Bikes for Transport

2006-05-01T05:02:00.000-04:00

Aaron Naparstek has a great pickup of a backhanded stab at bicycles by the New York Times.

Living in Holland, it really is refreshing to see bicycles be treated so well by society. Even though car ownership is on the rise here, bicycles get their own dedicated, obviously marked and frequently even seperated lane on every street. You also frequently see bicycles being used to pick up groceries, run errands, etc.

Queen's Birthday in Holland

2006-05-01T04:37:00.000-04:00

There's something remarkable about Holland. Even at their most chaotic they're still more sensible and organized than just about anywhere I've been. Take for example koninginnedag (the queen's birthday) which essentially transforms Amsterdam into a seething haze of orange debauchery. Yes, even Amsterdam can get crazier, and on this day it does.

That picture doesn't really convey the full extent of the partying. Picture rowdy orange clad maniacs drinking in huge crowds in every square of the city.

Anyway, the amazing thing isn't the fact that Amsterdam goes nuts, it's how well the Dutch manage this mass of chaos. For instance, on our arrival at the central train station, we were given a map of the city with all the concerts and events of the day (including sections for children.) It also included the train schedule returning that night to just about every corner of the country. The train station had been thoughtfully broken into different sections to prevent too many people from jamming together. Extra trains had been added to handle the traffic. In addition, the train ticket I bought (with my discount card) which only cost 15$ for the round trip from Delft (about one hour oneway) also included unlimited use of the tram and metro to get you safely to any part of the city. The ticket was specially created for this weekend.

Even the police were friendly. In typical dutch style, they could be seen roaming the masses of people happily helping those who needed directions, all the while frequently holding that dutch favourite - french fries with a giant glob of mayonnaise on top. Anyway needless to say that even though huge mobs can make me uneasy, I think I trust the dutch government and dutch people to handle a crowd better than just about anyone. Maybe it's all that experience living so close together. They didn't try and stop the festivities, but went out of their way to make things run a little smoother. They even set up a website:

http://www.koninginnedagamsterdam.nl

Cafes as microcosm

2006-03-22T15:15:00.000-05:00

I've basically been trying to teach myself anything I can about "urban issues" this year. I've tried taking a few classes, but seing as this is a Technical University, the focus hasn't really been what I'm looking for (ie street widths and buffer lanes.) Anyway, most of the time I get tired of my student room and venture out to different cafes in town to get some reading done.

I noted the other day that it's been a fortuitous combination: essentially, I've been learning about cities while sitting in the very establishments that really typify everything I love about them.

There's a great cafe called Locus Publicus right in the center of old Delft. When you walk in the door, it looks something like what our irish pubs look like back in North America. It's even got the requisite middle age ish locals sitting at the bar enjoying a five o'clock beer. But that's not all it has - it also has students out for an early beer, people having a coffee while they read the paper (or a book - ie me) and, i guess most unusual for my eyes, families with small children. In fact, the best bar in Delft, with over 200 kinds of beer, also has a box of lego in the corner of the room. Because the attitudes towards drinking are a little more relaxed here, cafes are allowed to become really informal social centers that, at least in my experience, the local starbuck's doesn't really compare to. Here's a little photo to describe what I'm talking about:

Richard Layman has a nice post about how bars can be open to children, too. The nice thing i see in europe is that this is the NORMAL state of affairs.

A Tour of TU Delft

2006-03-15T13:25:00.000-05:00

The Strip University

I'm currently studying at The Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. Even though it's the largest and oldest technical university in Holland (founded sometime around 1850) most of the buildings are obviously recent. As you can also see, the campus is essentially smeared out along one central road. Maybe the designers of the university had no other option, but if you ask me, having everything smeared out in a strip leaves the place with no center. There's no focal point to the campus, no sense of all the buildings belonging to one institution. It's really missing something like, for example, the main intersection at McGill University, pictured below.

Here's a place that people naturally congregate. In addition, that center is surrounded on all sides by fields that can be used for all sorts of things - concerts, sporting events, picnics. All things that help people feel at home on their own campus, instead of like some alien intruder.

That's not the only problem. Have a look at these next two photos of, respectively, the engineering physics and mahtematics and electrotechnology buildings.

To the first I might ask - does that parking lot have to be in front of the building? Does the building need to be as far as possible from people walking down the street? As though it might be dangerous for engineering physics to seem inviting.

To the other, glass and steel conconction which, this time, is at least close to the road, i ask: is that the most interesting face you can think to prevent to the university? A 500 m long blank glass wall? I know for a fact that that building has a cafeteria. Would it be too much to ask to bring it to the front of the building to provide some semblance of feeling invited in? Apparently.

Finally, the different faculties are all divided into their own buildings and its rare for, say, a civil engineering student to have a class in anything other than the civil engineering building. While that is convenient, I've always enjoyed moving from building to building for classes, as well as having say, a history class being taught in the room next to my "Intro to Thermodynamics" course. I've often snuck into the history classroom during a break in my own lectures. The physical layout Delft pretty much rules out that sort of casual mixing between students in different disciplines.

Fear not, the university administrators might say! We have a congress center that is shared by all faculties! Indeed they do, and it happens to be just about the worst example of a 60s-70s concrete behemoth that I have ever seen.

The Eagle has Landed

But wait! Let's not forget the stunning, inviting entrance.

Underground Parking? Or Main Entrance?

Alright let's be fair. The University has some great things going for it. For instance, you may have noticed that maroon mini-road along the main strip. That's a bike path, beautifully laid out. They're everywhere in Holland. And they're necessary. It's not uncommon for bike traffic to back up during the morning rush. It's a sight to see.

Other postivie: right behind the monstrous congress center, the University erected it's saving grace - the library. The library alleviates one of the University's problems - its beautiful green roof provides a great meeting spot for students to have a picnic or just hang out. This is the first green roof I've seen that actually continues the grass on the ground right up onto the roof. For those concerned chiefly with how a building connects with the pedestrian environment around it - look no further. This building forms a part of the pedestrian environment. How much more inviting can you be.

Is jaywalking good for cities?

2006-03-14T13:22:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in Maisonneuve Magazine addresses that typically Montreal point of pride: shameless jaywalking. This time, however, the emphasis is on whether the practice is actually good for cities. I'm inclined to agree with the author that it is. I think Jane Jacobs had a piece in Death and Life about how small blocks are more interesting to walk in and give people more options than big blocks. What better organic, democratic way is there to create smaller blocks and new paths than by cutting the existing ones in half through jay walking? Obviously, that implies that people do it safely. Having grown up in Montreal, people don't generally jaywalk without thinking about it. As long as drivers and pedestrians acknowledge that the space doesn't belong exclusively to either one of them, thins seem to run smoothly.

Sidewalks anyone?

The idea of shared street space is obviously not a new one. This shot of my current home, Delft, demonstrates this. The walkway is not evenly divded into sidewalk, parking, driving and crossing spaces. Everything coexists. Add to that the flood of bikers that you find everywhere in Holland and you have the recipe for some confusing traffic. But, as a consequence, everyone keeps their heads up, cars drive slower, and everything seems to fit into a space that no traffic engineer would accept.

First Post

2006-03-06T06:52:00.000-05:00

Alright, here it is. The first post.

I'm an undergraduate student in Civil Engineering at McGill (don't hold it against me) currently on exchange at The Technical University of Delft. This year, I've started scraping the surface of the online community of "urban issues" blogs. That, combined with a growing interest in cities generally and the unique and interesting Dutch environment, has prompted me to post some of my thoughts and observations online. Perhaps out of the vain idea that someone will read them.