Profitable funkiness in Toronto

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The conventional wisdom doubts that space for really funky stores could ever be financed. Well, one interesting experiment in doing so appears to be under way in Toronto, where the the developers of the Distillery District, a brownfield complex near downtown, have filled their buildings with cool local artisans. Sure, many cities have Artspace projects for subsidized studios downtown, but the Distillery District “is an initiative of private entrepreneurs on privately owned land with no public support.” Seems to get good reviews, too.

The same model appears to work for the Urbanspace Property Group in the office market, as well — notably the Centre for Social Innovation shared space for small nonprofits, but also in their pioneering rehab of 401 Richmond and its activation of the King-Spadina area.

Jetting off to global warming

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[posted to “gristmill”:http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/6/13/115230/255%5D

This week’s “The Economist”:http://economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7033931 (paygate, although you may be able to get a “day pass”) carries a special report on aviation’s contribution to carbon emissions:

bq. [F]lying a fully laden A380 [super-jumbo jet] is, in terms of energy, like a 14km (nine-mile) queue of traffic on the road below … Aviation is a relatively small source of the emissions blamed for global warming, but its share is growing the fastest. The evidence is strong that emissions from jet engines, including the streaks of cloud (called contrails) they leave behind in the sky, could be especially damaging … You can buy a hybrid car, switch to low-energy light bulbs in your house and eat locally grown organic food. But the dozen daily decisions on which you base your husbandry are trivial compared with the handful of yearly choices about that holiday or this business trip.

Even worse, air travel demand has grown by 75% since 1980 (my brief lifetime) and shows no sign of abating: Airbus projects that in 2020, just the increase in miles flown will equal all air travel worldwide in 1969.

Measuring the “true” fuel (and thus carbon) efficiency of aviation depends on many assumptions, including load factors aboard planes and the distance of trips. (As with car trips, longer trips are more efficient.) Measuring on a per-mile basis ignores the fact that few people drive 10,000 miles a day; measuring per trip ignores the fact that most people fly infrequently. However, the best-case scenarios show that flying is no more carbon efficient than driving; the worst-case scenarios show emissions three times higher than driving.

The obvious solution to these externalized costs would be a carbon tax of some sort, and naturally the European Union would be the first the propose one: the European Parliament will vote in July on whether to add flights at European airports to its “emissions trading scheme” (ETS), a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Yet this would constitute a first-ever tax on jet fuel: currently, tolls (landing charges and passenger fees) pay for airports, quite unlike how the gas tax pays for roads.

Furthermore, the financially teetering airline industry can’t agree on anything. American carriers say they’d be exempt, as the U.S. is no longer party to Kyoto; European “legacy” and low-fare carriers disagree about how to allocate the initial carbon cap.

Worse yet, few alternatives exist to Jet A kerosene. New aircraft offer incremental efficiency improvements, but few breakthroughs are on the horizon. Alternative fuels and fuel cells are too heavy for use aboard planes, and alternative travel modes are far slower. (One exception is high-speed rail over short and medium hops, but even the best such services worldwide face stiff competition from low-fare bus and air routes, and besides, trips under 1,500 km account for only 20% of aviation carbon emissions.) Operational efficiencies, like reducing congestion at busy airports, could reduce emissions, but not by a whole lot.

I’ll admit I feel vastly more guilty about the carbon emissions of the taxicab ride to the airport than the plane ride from the airport. I’ve often chosen cheap short-hop flights instead of overnight Amtrak trips, and the notion of offsetting that choice by buying carbon credits doesn’t really cross my mind when the flight attendant hands over those pretzels. But perhaps higher prices might be the ticket: “fuel surcharges” of $100 atop already pricey transoceanic trips did partially dissuade me from a recent long-distance getaway.

Descending the ivory tower

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On my way down to the University of Chicago campus recently to give a tour, I realized that the tremendous socioeconomic change that has taken place on the mid-South Side could really open up Hyde Park to the rest of the city. From an “artist colony in Bridgeport”:http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/travel/19surface.html (written up in the NY Times!) to the rapid infill of formerly bombed-out “Bronzeville”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/photos/chi-060205kenwood2-story,1,460184.story?coll=chi-photos-utl, Hyde Park is no longer the island it once was. Sure enough, brochures on campus touted “Arts & Culture in Hyde Park”:http://arts.uchicago.edu to tourists, and placards on trains throughout the city trumpeted the new Hyde Park Arts Center. Scores of people, mostly Chicagoans, showed up at the tours — many more than I was expecting, even with the lovely weather.

Perhaps most interestingly, the university has started a Experience Chicago site which _recommends_ that students use the Garfield bus and Red Line to get across town, and even lists gay bars in South Shore. Big, big difference.

To wit, I recently got a party invitation set for a gallery space near 41st & State, once probably the epicenter of South Side decay. Now that the Taylor Homes are gone, it’s wide open!

“Opt out” to prevent gentrification

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A few years ago, when I worked on affordable housing policy, we (with Janet Smith of UIC) took a detailed look at Census, HMDA, abandonment, etc. figures for Chicago neighborhoods and came up with a “cluster” grouping of neighborhoods. The clusters weren’t really used in the final analysis, but they did make sense:
* a big chunk of the city was still stuck in decline, with high vacancy
* huge swaths of immigrant neighborhoods were economically healthy but suffered from overcrowding
* a few areas were (statistically) stable and balanced, but reports from the ground indicated impending gentrification
* some areas were undergoing rapid gentrification without new supply
* other areas were gentrifying, but adding supply that matched demand.

For-sale prices in the last three categories (there were seven, I’ve forgotten two) were all rising, with one exception: Chinatown, where prices were stable and indeed, fairly low. It turns out that lots of new housing was built in the 1990s. Light amounts of subsidies (TIF, 202, muni bonds) paid for infrastructure, senior housing, and community facilities, but most of the housing was built by local builders for community residents.

Earlier this year, a former coworker and I talked about Chinatown, and she found the other part of the picture: the financial ties that keep capital circulating through the neighborhood, and to a certain extent keep neighborhood property out of the hands of speculators on the general market. She wrote a neat article after that.

Similar reports from nearby Latino neighborhoods indicate that they’ve managed to avoid gentrification and keep housing affordable to working families through similar methods, keeping transactions within a local market, as opposed to the wider, Realtor-driven market.

And, for what it’s worth, the voluntary inclusionary policy in Chicago creates about 500 units a year out of 10,000 or so built every year. To ensure long-term affordability, individuals and communities can opt (perhaps partially) out of the market system of ever-inflating prices and into a system that views housing as a non-market good. Models like Community Land Trusts and limited equity cooperatives allow people to take their land, opt out of the market, and provide stable, low-cost, legal, no- or low-subsidy housing in perpetuity. The key is to enter the neighborhood at the right moment: before the big run-up of land values that accompanies gentrification (which often roughly coincides with the neighborhood’s debut on the MLS).

(posted to urbanists)

Inclusionary housing should stay so

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[posted to pro-urb]

Awarding windfall profits to those who “luck into” inclusionary housing (since nowhere near as many people end up with it as could qualify) strikes me as tremendously unfair to several groups, including:

* People who bought inclusionary units in areas that didn’t appreciate wildly. (Yes, these areas exist. A ca. 1925 Chicago bungalow that sells for $160K in a “good” south side neighborhood would sell for $360K on the north side, largely due to “the segregation tax.”)

* People who bought non-inclusionary units in the same buildings (especially for high rises). They paid $50, $100K more for their units and got something maybe a bit nicer inside. When resale time comes ’round, a buyer will look at an inclusionary unit and conclude it’s only worth $20K less — the cost of upgrading the interior, since the location is identical.

* People who didn’t buy inclusionary units, but could have, perhaps because of dumb luck or a technicality, whether not winning the allocation lottery or not having qualifying income or a sufficient down payment at that moment in time.

Affordable housing policy should seek to get people into, well, affordable housing. Similarly, a house is first and foremost a place to live, and then only secondarily an investment.

If we want policies to build household wealth, we can do that through much more efficient means — like tax credits that match savings contributions, e.g., line 48 on the 1040. Government should NOT be in the business of encouraging speculation in one investment type over another, and should not lead people to believe that they can be guaranteed better-than-market returns on any investment, housing or not.

Ogilvie Market

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“Virginia Groark”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0605130220may13,1,2838462.story?coll=chi-newslocal-hed breaks the good news in today’s Trib: the bowels of Northwestern Station will soon host an indoor, year-round public market:

bq. Operating under the name French Market of Chicago, Bensidoun USA Inc., an international operator of fresh-food marketplaces, has been selected to open the 15,000-square-foot market in the northern end of Ogilvie Transportation Center, said the firm’s executive vice president, Sebastien Bensidoun.

Apparently, Bensidoun (a contract operator of markets) runs a few markets in the USA already, including contract farmers’ markets in “several suburbs”:http://bensidoun-usa.com/list%20market.pdf (and Lakeview?) and in “White Plains”:http://www.westchestercountybusinessjournal.com/archive/041204/041204wrop08.html. Those seem like pretty standard operations; maybe we can hope for something more like the famed “Blvd. Raspail organic market”:http://www.bensidoun-usa.com/marche%20de%20raspail%20bio.html.

Shorts season

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bq. “We felt the dress would overpower shorts because it was something you could wear to work,” Ms. [Stephanie] Solomon [a women’s fashion director at Bloomingdale’s] said. But many women are buying shorts instead because, she said, they too “are acceptable now at the office.” (NY Times)

And herewith, a great gripe about the North: it gets to 95F here, just as it does down South. Yet shorts are completely verboten for any sort of occasion more formal than a picnic. Now, I don’t know about courtrooms, but certainly shorts are acceptable at many a Southern church dinner, _because it’s hot_. (There’s also a certain practicality thing for cyclists, called “I don’t want to get my pants dirty.”)

One of the few things I liked about visiting Texas (although I didn’t get to take advantage of it, burdened as I was with completely impractical “work clothes” from up north) is that people have that Southern attitude towards clothing: It’s hot. Wear what you need to.

I’ve always thought women had it easy during summer: they could wear knee-length skirts, which are *much* cooler than pants. And now, they can apparently wear shorts, too. Damn.

Peak oil and YOUR city

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A site called SustainLane trumpets the Cosmo-style headline Ten U.S. Cities Best Prepared for an Oil Crisis. The ranking draws on an eclectic (incorrect?) set of criteria: “recent city commute practices, metro area public transportation, sprawl, traffic congestion, local food and wireless network access.”

Honolulu was the first city that came to mind for me: they import a lot via ship, but in terms of many of life’s basic necessities (food, water, electricity) they’ve had the advantage of having had to think very hard about whether or not a local alternative is available before importing. Oh, and the perfect climate certainly helps: fresh food, solar electricity, and no HVAC year round.

Even though I live in the North, I have doubts about whether heating and air conditioning will be easily handled post-peak. Oil and natural gas prices are closely related, and cold cities pre-oil were filthy with coal or wood soot. The most technologically advanced solutions I’ve seen advanced — district cogenerated heating & cooling, with ground source heat pumps — still rely on natural gas.

On the other hand, electric heat is common in Canada, even though it’s the largest gas (and oil!) exporter to the USA. The province-owned hydroelectric systems apparently make it cost-effective, even in their bitter cold. Similarly, maybe the Pacific Northwest, with a mild climate and lots of salmon-killing hydroelectric capacity, might weather the storm well. That’s the deciding factor on why I strongly feel that Vancouver’s high rises, in particular, are quite sustainable: beyond the embodied energy of construction, the operation of elevators there will continue unimpeded long after oil.

On that subject, someone (I don’t remember who) tied the multistory industrial loft building’s rise and fall to energy costs. Lofts are from an era when on-site power & steam generation, usually through coal, was common, and refining oil into gasoline was almost unheard of. The multistory layout of lofts powered elevators or conveyor belts directly by angular momentum from the coal turbines, with little energy lost in converting that energy to electricity or moving it off-site. Those elevators often only moved product up; gravity usually brought product down. Industrial users switched en masse to horizontal production after gas made it cheaper to drive internal combustion engines across large factory/warehouse floors. (I wonder if someone could outfit a rooftop wind turbine with some kind of flywheel, thereby storing the angular momentum for use in an elevator. Hm.)

Any peak-oil situation will impact neither renewable electricity sources (fortunately) nor coal generation of electricity and steam (unfortunately). Energy uses which can easily switch to either of those two, and high-margin uses of petroleum (like plastics) will be able to adapt. Energy uses which are reliant upon liquid gasoline, particularly cars and trucks, will be hurt.

Dubious Schmap

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Got another email from “Schmap”:http://www.schmap.com/photos/p=41813589N00/c=SC20151031 about how my CC-licensed Flickr photos have made it into their online travel guide. I’ve noticed (in the course of vanity Googling) my Flickr shots appearing at sites like “43places”:http://www.43places.com/places/view/622165 . While it’s certainly flattering, sometimes the shots chosen are rather, ah, curious at showing the actual place — they’re of tiny details or silly people or other things that I regularly photograph. Well, whatever.

Speaking of Flickr, photos from recent travels have started making their way up there. Go take a look!

O’Hare gripe

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The CTA concourse at O’Hare has four pairs of moving walkways — two from Terminal 1 (north) to the station, and two from Terminal 3 (south) to the station. (Terminal 2 is nearly in front of the station.) Let’s number these A, B, C, and D, north to south. When rebuilding the walkways, crews could shut B & C or A & D, thereby leaving one walkway in service in either direction. But… no. Last winter, when I was on a bunch of American (Terminal 3) flights, C & D were closed. This spring, when I have a bunch of United flights, A & B are closed. “Sprinting across the vast plains of terrazzo,” as the AIA Guide puts it, is no fun.