Monthly Archives: June 2004

$3.2M teardown!

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“Charles Besser, a man with lots of money to strike a small blow against multitudinous multi-family-ism,” has purchased a 16-unit apartment building on Dearborn in the Gold Coast and plans to build a single-family house there. Never mind that, less than ten years ago, he tore down a four-flat to build his current house.

S-T columnist David Roeder makes some more snide remarks about how useless, unloved, and passe multifamily housing is:

Single-family living is under attack from the right, the developers who want to stack people like pancakes, and the left, dewy-eyed planners who think the stacking preserves precious resources.

Well then, I guess we have our coalition cut out for us.

Again, let’s reiterate that gentrification is economic growth combined with population decline. Deconversion and much larger living spaces result in fewer residents, except when there’s plentiful new construction.

Apathy strikes

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Just 17% of 22-year-old men in Chicago voted in the spring primary, compared with 55% of 66-year-old women. C’mon guys — can’t we do better than that? [Source: Trib]

Ah, and I’ll be traveling in lovely Cascadia over the next week. My bike’s already on its way across the Great Plains (via Amtrak, which turns out to be a great way to ship things across the country at little cost — and which involves descending into the bowels of Union Station), and I’ll join it on Thursday in Seattle.

Canadian nice

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“Mr. Martin [Liberal party leader] has tried to raise fears in his [negative] advertising campaign that Mr. Harper [Conservative party leader] has ‘a secret agenda’ to move the country far to the right. In one commercial, a female narrator warns that Mr. Harper would have sent troops to Iraq, and that he would resurrect a divisive abortion debate, weaken gun control and reverse Canada’s signing of the Kyoto climate control accord.”

Nowhere in the US, except perhaps the Bay Area, could anyone get away with such advertising.

CNU events this week

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Tooting my own horn, of course, but I really am excited about the conference. However it means that I won’t be blogging and probably hard to reach this week.

The twelfth Congress for the New Urbanism is rolling into town this week, and even if you can’t register for the whole shebang or aren’t a member of CNU (although you should join), there are many events that Chicagoans who care about walkable, diverse communities should consider attending:

WEDNESDAY, 6/23
– The Coalition to Lower Obesity in Chicago’s Children presents Environmental Barriers to a Healthy Lifestyle
This one-day conference will explore community-level barriers to good nutrition and physical activity, and local efforts to confront the obesity epidemic. Speakers include Katherine Kraft and Rich McClintock. information and free registration

– First Congress of the Next Generation of the New Urbanism
For one day, a group of students, young professionals, academics and practitioners will gather to discuss the future of the New Urbanism. registration

– Next Generation after-party
Join the Next Generation for an evening event following the first NGNU Congress. Cash bar. 9pm, Handlebar, 2311 W. North Ave.

THURSDAY, 6/24
– New Urbanism 101
This in-depth program is open to anyone getting a first taste of New
Urbanism. Sessions on the movement’s history and principles will be
supplemented by segments on the link between public health and urban design,
green urbanism, and a panel discussion on new urbanist retailing.
Registration includes admission to the Thursday evening opening session. information / registration

– New Urbanism 202
Professionals are invited to these advanced seminars with expert new urbanist practitioners. Choose from six sessions:
1. Financing New Urbanism
2. Real Streets: Designing, Getting and Keeping Them
3. Transit-Oriented Development: Making it Work in the Marketplace
4.Top Techniques for Successful Charrettes
5. Mixed-Use Town Centers: Tenant Selection, Programming, Planning and
Design
6. Developing the New Urbanism
information / registration

– Tours
Twelve tours, guided by knowledgeable local tour guides, offer urbanists a behind the scenes look at Chicago — from Lake Forest to Lawndale, from a mile-long walk through Wicker Park to a 40-mile circuit around Chicago. (I will be giving tours C and K.) information / registration

SATURDAY, 6/26
– Charter Awards luncheon
Join our mid-day celebration for the winners of CNU’s 2004 Charter Awards. The awards recognize exemplary projects that advance New Urbanism though diverse land uses, innovative designs, and expert planning, at all three scales of the Charter of the New Urbanism: building, neighbohood, and region. [more info /
registration]

– Saturday Night Party
Sustainable human environments include laughter, dinner, dancing, and fireworks! Join us on Navy Pier for a gala evening set against unforgettable lake and skyline views, including a special show from Second City. [more info / registration]

Exciting zoning!

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This year’s Congress will include a number of sessions explicitly about coding. Zoning codes have long fascinated new urbanists, especially in their power to set bad planning decisions into stone, but now we’re getting around to actually implementing some really great alternatives to the usual zoning regs. It’s an exciting time for zoning all around the country, and naturally many of the best innovations are covered in a new title from CNU, Codifying New Urbanism (PAS report 526, available soon from the CNU Store).

The usual argument behind deregulating uses and regulating forms hasn’t changed: people in urban environments expect some messiness and diversity of use, and besides, many uses (even light manufacturing) aren’t as repugnant as they might have been prior to deindustrialization. Plus, market forces do a better job of keeping heavy industry out of comparatively higher-value residential or commercial areas than even zoning ordinances do. On the other hand, providing strong directives on the form of building allows new development to take on predictable shapes — something which people genuinely appreciate, from the neighbors whose yards will be shaded to the passerby who know that the buildings will reinforce the scale of the street. The old 1910s and 1920s zoning laws read and look like today’s form-based ordinances, with their emphasis on illustrations showing particular building envelopes and lack of references to required loading docks or efficiency apartments.

One term I’m particularly fond of, but which other new urbanists haven’t seemed to notice, is dezoning — loosely form-based, incentive-driven, largely use-neutral codes written by Mark Hinshaw of LMN Architects in Seattle. The Bainbridge Island and downtown Tacoma codes are sublimely straightforward; the Tacoma ordinance, in particular, offers a sensible menu of easily understood bonuses to encourage quality development: separate FAR buckets for commercial and residential encourage residential construction, submitting to design review tacks on a few extra FAR points, a short menu of sensible pedestrian-friendly amenities gets a few more.

APA this year included a workshop on form-based coding that, by all reports, provided a good overview of the rapidly growing number of form-based codes nationwide.

One very early example in the “Codifying” book that I was dimly aware of before is Christopher Alexander’s City of Gardens apartment house zoning for Pasadena. In Edge City, Alexander (presented by author Garreau as a thoughtful and spot-on, if kooky, character) described how the zoning ordinance sought to place gardens before buildings and therefore make the new apartment houses beautiful enough to insert into single family neighborhoods. The code mandates usable, beautiful open spaces instead of mindlessly requiring front, rear, or side setbacks that too often end up as wasted space — even if the result is watered-down, as Alexander complains to Garreau. I, for one, love living in a courtyard building with negligible front, side, or rear setbacks, since it means that we all get to enjoy a lovely courtyard in the center (and at 60 dua, natch!).

One not very exciting new ordinance, unfortunately (but naturally, given City Hall’s bias towards stasis), is Chicago’s new ordinance. Sure, a few concessions to the ZTEC organizing work were tossed in, but c’mon — can’t you at least re-number the R districts instead of assigning them “X.5” designations?

an update

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I’ve been fairly scarce lately, both here and everywhere else. I have a good reason — work is reaching a fever pitch as we prepare for CNU XII, where more than 1,300 urbanists from around the world will gather in Chicago to learn about and talk about the state of the art in new urbanism. It’s all very exciting, but it’s all so much work.

I’ll take a week of vacation in Seattle and Vancouver in the first part of July, and then maybe a little more vacation to ride around northern Illinois or to visit Montr�al. Once that’s all done, there will be exciting new projects to tackle at work (on public housing, green building, rating urbanism, street design, and other emerging CNU projects) and on other fronts — canvassing for the Bloomingdale Trail, the string ensemble, the possible housing co-op (which might involve moving back to the south side and thus changing many political allegiances), etc. So it’s good to be busy.

New Wrigley plans filed

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The Cubs have once again filed plans to fill in one of the most egregious holes in the urban fabric, the block-long car wash/parking lot wasteland immediately to the west of Wrigley Field. Yes, ownership of the Seminary railroad ROW is still under litigation between the city and the Cubs, but the proposal would largely re-open it as a pedestrian walkway.

I’d be curious to know exactly how the land just west of Wrigley ever got to be such a wasteland, especially when Clark Street to the north and south are largely intact and when there’s obviously such strong market demand for pedestrian oriented retail, entertainment, and housing (oh, and parking) in the area. It may have to do with the old Lakewood-Seminary railroad (see map — the diagonal approaching from the SSW), but that’s been filled in with largely contextual residential to the south. Right at Addison and Clark, fast food restaurants have occupied the old ROW and adjacent parcels since anyone can remember.

Parking, even when structured into flatiron buildings that provide urban form and ground-level retail (as the Cubs and Philip Bess have proposed), may not be a suitable use for the neighborhood already wracked by road rage inducing traffic congestion on a daily basis. A thousand more cars may pay very profitable rents indeed, but Lakeview’s roads just couldn’t handle the additional load. The Cubs would be better off with the team-support and office uses above ground, with parking still provided off site (or not at all).

Daley’s nebulous grand green plan

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The July issue of Metropolis carries a glowing article about Mayor Daley’s green initiatives. Several mayoral staffers argue that part of Daley’s brilliance is that he’s somehow progressing along some grand plan to make Chicago environmentally friendly. Oddly enough, the only such plan that has ever been publicly hinted at — his consultations with Bill McDonough — aren’t mentioned at all in the article.

Meanwhile, Dan Johnson-Weinberger went to the exact same interview with Mayor Daley that Lisa Chamberlain wrote her fawning Metropolis piece from. Their different takes on the same issues were brilliantly contrasted in a WBEZ interview (RA file) of the two. DJW correctly identifies a few glaringly huge holes in the “Daley’s grand plan”: the pair of ancient coal fired power plants spilling deadly soot and sulfur over the densely populated (and 90% Latino) southwest side, for instance. Oddly, Chamberlain leads by pointing to Meigs Field, a quintessential knee-jerk power grab, as proof that the city (and particularly Daley) is thinking through environmental initiatives in a holistic way.

Any systematic look at the city’s environmental impact, though, would have addressed many other key issues that are lost amidst the many laudable micro-programs out there. (When I worked in housing, we called the city’s myriad budget options “boutiquey programs,” rather like a lifestyle center filled with tiny shops but without, oh, a supermarket.) Sure, disconnecting downspouts, permeable alleys, and the Calumet environmental center (which smells more like Bill Ford’s doing than Richie Daley’s) are all great steps forward.

But the city’s curious insistence that green roofs are the end-all and be-all of green site planning — even when said green roof is surrounded by a moat of parking, on a street which had its bus service axed in the 1997 service cuts — surely points to the absence of any thorough thinking on green issues. Despite the fact that transportation arguably has as great an impact on the environment as buildings do, the city pursues the easy greenwashing of LEED while chronically under-investing in transit. Chicago pays a paltry $3 million operating subsidy to CTA (garnered solely from its gas tax receipts, which it has state authorization to raise), and wastes its CMAQ grants on throwaway tourist trolleys that duplicate perfectly good CTA services. Meanwhile, as cities elsewhere (notably Seattle) lead the way with transportation demand management services that provide real answers to the question “but what will I do without my car?”, Chicago has yet to investigate any meaningful options besides providing a few token parking spaces in city-owned lots for car sharing. Word has it that TDM ideas were cut out of the forthcoming bicycle plan, since they weren’t “bike enough.”

Incidentally, does anyone know why David Reynolds is abruptly leaving his job at the Department of the Environment? He was due to speak at CNU XII about the city’s green initiatives, but has suddenly disappeared. Too bad; along with Abolt, he was one of the more pleasant, competent people to shape Department of Environment policy.

Will work for LUs

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Another thought on AIA: I’ve never seen another profession quite so dedicated to the acquisition of continuing education units (LUs in the trade). The sessions have little scanning stations precisely timed to make sure that you have indeed been sitting inside, absorbing that crucial information; every little tour, many of the booths, even quizzes in the back of Record give you the chance to accumulate those valuable LUs (especially those crucial HSWs). Sheesh — you’d think that people would be in it because it’s interesting, but no. It’s not even like the requirements are all that onerous: eight HSW credit hours means a total of four or five classes or seminars a year. As they helpfully point out in the conference book, you can earn all that at one stinkin’ conference.

I suppose I’m now an LU provider: take my two CNU tours on Thursday, 24 June and you’ll have earned three LUs. Who knew that my knowledge was that easily quantifiable?

Competent housing in short supply

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Thanks to a session at AIA, now I know who designed that cool-looking condo on Broadway in Edgewater. Add one more to the rather short list of cool architects doing small multifamily in Chicago. You’d think that the infill boom (~70,000 units in 10 years!) would have generated a new Chicago School by now, just as the 1880s boom brought a host of talents (from Sullivan to Wright) from the countryside to try their hand here.

Or, one would at least expect the local architects and developers to draw on the city’s rich history of stamping out perfectly good versions of our vernacular housing types: cottage, bungalow, rowhouse, two-flat, three-flat (with or without stores), corner six- or twelve-flat, courtyard, or palazzo high-rise. (As Dennis McClendon says, Chicago is a city of mass production: the same twelve buildings copied ten thousand times over; only the details ever changed.)

But no; 90% of the competent buildings I see are by a few firms: Brininstool + Lynch, Landon Bone Baker, Pappageorge Haymes (on their good days), or Sullivan Goulette.

Others have pointed out to me that Chicago’s matchbox three-flats are still a damn sight better than the equivalent ones sprouting in almost similar numbers elsewhere — say, in Lubavitcher neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Well, yeah, but mediocrity is not its own excuse.

Stockyards go loft

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The Plan Commission has received a proposal (end of agenda) to loft-convert (440 units!!) a cold storage building at Damen and Pershing — the north end of the Union Stock Yards, across from McKinley Park.

Also, a 110-unit conversion is slated for Bloomingdale and Spaulding. Time’s running out to TIF the Bloomingdale industrial district to generate funds for the trail conversion.