Halfway there

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Tidbits like this are why Chicagoans love Tom Skilling: “Long term weather records reveal that, on average, as many days of sub-32 (degrees) and sub-zero cold are on the books by Jan. 18 as are likely to occur from this date forward in what remains of the cold season.”

As inane as that might seem at first glance, it interestingly follows the winter solstice, after which we can at least look forward to longer days, by exactly 28 days (one lunar cycle). It also now gives us warmer weather to look forward to, and another milestone to cross off during the darkest days of our character building winter.

Whole Foods relocation choices

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Crain’s reports that Whole Foods is examining “two properties on the west side of Kingsbury Street just south of North Avenue” for “an 80,000-square-foot store, roughly the same size as its Austin, Texas, flagship.”

A look at the site shows two vacant parcels behind the “small shopping center”:http://smith-field.com/northkings.html housing Old Navy, the Art Store (or whatever it’s called these days), and Design Within Reach. However, that’s a good block behind North Avenue and squeezed between Kingsbury and the river (with new development required to grant an access easement), with no visibility whatsoever — not that a destination retailer like Whole Foods might care, given the success (after initial problems) of nearby Trader Joe’s or its well-hidden River North location.

Relocating Whole Foods from that early strip mall might provide an opportunity for that developer to redevelop, consolidating parking entrances and improving access while increasing GLA and building under the city’s newer, more pedestrian friendly design guidelines.

Another interesting possibility: the landlord at North & Kingsbury is Smithfield Properties, which also has a development interest (along with Gordon Segal and Mid-America Retail) in the block-plus Homemakers/Expo site — with a vague plan for a 28-story residential tower on the vacant south half of that site. We’ve seen how much Whole Foods likes retail spaces below residential towers, as evidenced by recent openings/plans in Alexandria, Brooklyn, Chicago, Evanston, Manhattan, “Milwaukee”:http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/apr05/317234.asp, Miami, “Minneapolis”:http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2005/11/condomania_stri.asp, New Orleans, Oakland, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, even Sarasota — accounting for nearly a fourth of all new stores. (Interestingly, “Milliken,”:http://www.millikendevelopments.com/Overview.html the developer of the equally large Minneapolis location, also developed the Charter Award winning Safeway in Lower Queen Anne and later a Whole Foods MXD nearby.)

Boozy: Jacobs, Corbu, & Moses

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Finished reading the script for Boozy: The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses [ archive of reviews] last night — it’s reprinted in the latest issue of Duke UP’s Theater” along with a preface by Alex Timbers. The play takes an ironic, contrarian angle to Moses’ life, casting Moses as a crowd-pleasing “Get Things Done” hero. Jane Jacobs is cloaked as an archnemesis, her “bunch of mothers” in Community Board Three a cackle of scheming lovers betrayed by famed Modernist beaus. Some choice bits, excerpted to show how complex ideas of planning can be reworked as pithy stage one-liners:

* Jane Jacobs on Le Corbusier: “The city should be an organ of love, not one of order and height; my womb of Lilith shall bear profligate, winding, unnumbered streets, impossible to navigate. Oh yes, I shall attain revenge on my ex-boyfriend.”
* Jacobs again, complying with FDR, Nelson Rockefeller, and Joseph Goebbels (!): “I will curb the death of great American cities. Long live the sidewalk!”
* Moses: “I have a grander vision, for a new city. A co-operative society where man can live one atop the other in high density, residentially zoned neighborhoods. With parks all around them. People will be happy.”
* Minor character in a rare moment of un-ironic candor: “The more highways that are constructed to alleviate congestion, the more automobiles pour onto them and congest them more. That forces the building of more highways — which generates more traffic and more congestion, creating an inexorably widening spiral[!]… If [Mr Moses] continues building so prolifically and the city is increasingly getting stopped up with cars, it sounds like Manhattan will at some point become one giant parking lot.”
* Stage directions: Crossfade back to Moses at the pulpit, on the entrance to the Triborough Bridge. He is flanked by two female models, with halter tops that say Urban and Planning, respectively. Reminiscent of a photograph from Norquist’s presentation, which I’ll post shortly.

(The article is available online for a fee; otherwise, the Arts reference desk at Harold Washington library has the journal, which has a few photos and lovely typesetting.)

Sullivan church gone

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Pilgrim Baptist Church, the original “KAM synagogue”:http://egov.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/P/PilgrimBaptist.html, has been gutted by fire. This was one of Adler & Sullivan’s most important early works, contemporary with the Auditorium Building and sharing its Richardsonian heft, perfect acoustics, and interiors that blend air, light, and gravity.

“Photos of the damage”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/pilgrimbaptistchurch/ are up on Flickr.

Sublimated

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“I think panic over gentrification is usually sublimated panic over risk or unfairness in the economy as a whole. We just think we can control the local housing market.”

Comment by clew at Cascadia Scorecard

I’ve been posting retouched Vancouver photos to Flickr, finally fixing some of the extreme shadow/highlight problems in the originals. (I took them late one afternoon near summer solstice; the high latitude means that the sun sets late, after many hours at a low angle. Further, I was trying to get shots catching both the gleaming towers above and the then-shadowed streets below. Quite a challenge, and they turned out pretty poorly.)

In any case, some research finds that the West End may not even be Canada’s densest neighborhood: although Statistics Canada won’t give me easy access to that info, Vancouver’s planning department says 31,360 per square mile for the entire downtown peninsula, including the West End; Montréal’s planning department says one census tract there (can’t tell which) nears 113,000, and the overwhelmingly low-rise Plateau arrondissement 33,918 per square mile. It pales compared to the densest tracts in Manhattan (200,000+) and Chicago (91,000), or neighborhoods (Upper East Side, 108,000; Near North Side, 48,500).

Further, Vancouver’s towers are tiny compared to those in Chicago, much less Manhattan. Their planning department cites new developments there as averaging a floor-to-area ratio [Yanks say “color” and FAR, Canucks say “colour” and FSR] of 2-4; in downtown Chicago, home of a famously lenient City Hall, many new towers reach 20 FAR, and we don’t even get the parks or schools or social housing that Vancouver demands of its developers. Sure, our apartments are larger, but not ten times bigger!

Anyhow, useful links:
* Atlas démographique et socio-économique de Montréal
* Overviews of housing development in Vancouver’s former industrial areas
* Photos of Vancouver’s skyline compared, 1978-2003
* A Seattle Times series on urban growth in Cascadia
* Alan Loomis’ essay on other urbanisms, a 2000 conference at Berkeley co-convened at CNU that partially explored West Coast urbanisms

And while we’re on a Cascadia kick, Marian Burros of the Times writes about New Seasons Market, a small supermarket chain in metro Portland which focuses on service and — surprise — locally grown food, sourcing 27% of its items from within the bioregion. Not too surprisingly, its second store is at Orenco Station, “considered a leading example of ‘New Urbanism.‘”

Doc Hatfield, a rancher, has a heartwarming quote: “Most of the ranchers are rural, religious, conservative Republicans. And most of the customers are urban, secular, liberal Democrats. When it comes to healthy land, healthy food, healthy people and healthy diets, those tags mean nothing. Urbanites are just as concerned about open spaces and healthy rural communities as people who live there. When ranchers get to the city, they realize rural areas don’t have a corner on values. I think that’s what we are most excited about.”

PARK(ing)

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A group in SF called Rebar planted a small park — complete with bollards, 15′ tree, and iron bench — in a parking space for two hours. Sounds like a good “installation” for the CCM art show, although maybe with a Bike Winter edge: I’m thinking of a BBQ.

More sprawlways ahead

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Greg Hinz in Crain’s breaks news of a possible deal for $3 billion in state infrastructure bonds, funded largely by growing gas tax receipts. The state requires Republican support since bonds need a 60% supermajority in the General Assembly, so the plan is naturally to buy Republican votes with gold-plated suburban roads.

bq. The unofficial chief negotiator in the continuing talks, House Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Hoffman, D-Collinsville, met late in December with Mr. [Frank] Watson [R-Greenville] and is expected to meet soon with House GOP Leader Tom Cross of Oswego. Inevitably, most of the road money will be spent in GOP areas Downstate and in the Chicago suburbs, he says.

Happy New Year

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A succinct summary of the brewing economic storm, from Paul Kasriel’s “15 November 2005”:http://www.northerntrust.com/library/econ_research/weekly/us/pc111505.pdf economic commentary:

* McMansions and SUVs ^1^ will not make us more productive in the future.
* Foreign creditors^2^ could start to question how we will be able to pay future interest and dividend payments without resorting to “printing” dollars.
* If foreign creditors should question our ability and willingness to repay them without resorting to the currency printing press, there could be a run on the dollar.
* A run on the dollar would lead to sharply higher U.S. interest rates.
* Sharply higher interest rates would do great harm to household finances and the housing market.
* A sharp decline in the housing market would result in a spike in mortgage defaults.
* A rise in mortgage defaults would cripple the banking system.^3^
* A crippled banking system would render Fed interest rate cuts less potent in reviving the economy.

My clarifications, drawn from statistics he presented:
# Household spending has been the basis of our economic growth in the past decade, with American consumers assuming record amounts of debt to keep up a spending spree: household deficits reached $531.5B in Q3 2005, vs a $108.7B surplus in Q3 1987; household liabilities relative to assets are up 29.8% in the same time.
# Foreign creditors, on a percentage basis, own three times more of U.S. capital stock now than in 1987, and five times more than in 1982.
# Mortgage assets comprise 62% of banks’ earning assets, more than twice the level of 1985.

Booming every day

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The Census Bureau has released “PHC-T-40”:http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/daytime/daytimepop.html, an estimate of daytime population by place. [Via “Urban Cartography”:http://www.urbancartography.com/2005/10/biggest_commute.html%5D

Places with daytime population over 500,000:

|Residents|Daytimepopulation ^1^ |%Chg ^2^ |% Localworkers ^3^ |Name|
|8,008,278|8,571,338|7.0|91.5 |New York city, NY|
|3,694,820|3,822,697|3.5|63.1 |Los Angeles city, CA|
|2,896,016|3,038,344|4.9|70.6 |Chicago city, IL|
|1,953,631|2,356,944|20.6|81.0 |Houston city, TX|
|1,517,550|1,607,780|5.9|75.4 |Philadelphia city, PA|
|1,321,045|1,417,165|7.3|69.3 |Phoenix city, AZ|
|1,188,580|1,416,135|19.1|65.3 |Dallas city, TX|
|1,223,400|1,365,327|11.6|77.7 |San Diego city, CA|
|1,144,646|1,212,635|5.9|87.3 |San Antonio city, TX|
|572,059|982,853|71.8|73.0 |Washington city, DC|
|951,270|950,611|-0.1|48.5 |Detroit city, MI|
|776,733|945,480|21.7|76.9 |San Francisco city, CA|
|781,870|903,832|15.6|81.9 |Indianapolis city (balance), IN|
|894,943|844,874|-5.6|49.6 |San Jose city, CA|
|589,141|831,233|41.1|66.4 |Boston city, MA|
|735,617|797,840|8.5|91.2 |Jacksonville city, FL|
|711,470|793,990|11.6|69.2 |Columbus city, OH|
|656,562|783,890|19.4|87.1 |Austin city, TX|
|650,100|752,843|15.8|84.1 |Memphis city, TN|
|651,154|743,779|14.2|61.9 |Baltimore city, MD|
|563,374|723,417|28.4|73.8 |Seattle city, WA|
|554,636|710,122|28.0|63.4 |Denver city, CO|
|416,474|676,431|62.4|59.3 |Atlanta city, GA|
|540,828|655,483|21.2|82.2 |Charlotte city, NC|
|545,524|651,726|19.5|83.8 |Nashville-Davidson (balance), TN|
|529,121|650,864|23.0|73.9 |Portland city, OR|
|596,974|632,838|6.0|60.5 |Milwaukee city, WI|
|534,694|609,520|14.0|61.1 |Fort Worth city, TX|
|506,132|600,777|18.7|80.7 |Oklahoma City city, OK|
|478,403|593,243|24.0|55.9 |Cleveland city, OH|
|563,662|570,680|1.2|87.5 |El Paso city, TX|
|484,674|544,478|12.3|78.2 |New Orleans city, LA|
|441,545|543,511|23.1|63.6 |Kansas City city, MO|
|486,699|530,153|8.9|79.8 |Tucson city, AZ|
|407,018|507,951|24.8|60.1 |Sacramento city, CA|

Few big surprises here, although Detroit is pretty jarring in its loss of residents each morning. As a rule, cities that import workers, and/or have local jobs for most of their residents, are generally better off economically — with the notable exception of Washington, DC, since it gains little tax revenue off the jobs it hosts.

Since that list turned out to be 35 cities, here are the top 35 cities (with daytime population over 30,000, the size of a good-sized Edge City) ranked by the percentage increase in their daytime population:

|Residents|Daytimepopulation ^1^ |%Chg ^2^ |% Localworkers ^3^ |Name (nearby central city)|
|16|30,774|192237.5|40.0 | _Lake Buena Vista city, FL_ (Orlando)|
|91|37,527|41138.5|47.2 |Vernon city, CA (LA)|
|777|52,760|6690.2|31.3 |Industry city, CA (LA)|
|12,568|57,253|355.5|21.1 |Commerce city, CA (LA)|
|8,702|39,212|350.6|14.4 |Oak Brook village, IL (Chicago)|
|11,035|46,392|320.4|27.1 |Greenwood Village city, CO (Denver)|
|18,540|72,651|291.9|22.6 |Tysons Corner CDP, VA (DC)|
|16,033|62,172|287.8|32.1 |El Segundo city, CA (LA)|
|17,438|61,265|251.3|17.8 |Santa Fe Springs city, CA (LA)|
|20,438|63,802|212.2|26.9 | _Doral CDP, FL_ (Miami)|
|12,513|38,666|209.0|23.6 | _Blue Ash city, OH_ (Cincinnati)|
|14,533|42,359|191.5|15.6 |Melville CDP, NY (NYC)|
|19,837|57,757|191.2|23.4 | Auburn Hills city, MI (Detroit)|
|12,825|36,850|187.3|25.1 | _Clayton city, MO_ (St. Louis)|
|16,500|46,947|184.5|23.5 | _Creve Coeur city, MO_ (St. Louis)|
|15,931|43,826|175.1|26.9 |Secaucus town, NJ (NYC)|
|14,166|37,534|165.0|12.9 |Addison town, TX (Dallas-Ft. Worth)|
|20,976|49,829|137.6|56.1 | *Naples city, FL* |
|17,181|40,589|136.2|17.4 |Tukwila city, WA (Seattle)|
|27,508|64,955|136.1|19.1 |Farmers Branch city, TX (Dallas-Ft. Worth)|
|18,511|42,772|131.1|27.4 |King of Prussia CDP, PA (Philadelphia)|
|15,550|35,869|130.7|21.3 | _Bridgeton city, MO_ (St. Louis)|
|22,979|51,083|122.3|27.7 | Romulus city, M (Detroit)|
|25,756|55,194|114.3|21.0 | _Maryland Heights city, MO_ (St. Louis)|
|20,100|42,695|112.4|17.1 |Hauppauge CDP, NY (NYC)|
|17,634|36,387|106.3|38.0 | _Ashwaubenon village, WI_ (Green Bay)|
|25,737|52,645|104.5|22.9 |Paramus borough, NJ (NYC)|
|45,256|91,937|103.1|40.7 |Redmond city, WA (Seattle)|
|33,784|68,476|102.7|26.3 |Beverly Hills city, CA (LA)|
|22,759|45,489|99.9|63.2 | *Myrtle Beach city, SC* |
|34,854|69,132|98.3|30.8 |Alpharetta city, GA (Atlanta)|
|25,578|50,641|98.0|56.6 | *Gainesville city, GA* |
|56,002|110,513|97.3|56.1 | *Greenville city, SC* |
|15,889|31,070|95.5|40.2 | _Greensburg city, PA_ (Pittsburgh)|
|15,600|30,493|95.5|65.8 | *Brunswick city, GA* |

*Bold* cities are the few on this list that qualify as (small) central cities. _Italicized_ cities are Edge Cities whose “host” cities don’t appear on the first list. Note the presence of multiple Detroit and St. Louis suburbs here — the super-winners in their bloody metropolitan games, with plenty of jobs to profit from and few residents to take care of — and the number of LA suburbs also listed, relative to other metros of its size. Upon first glance, many of these importing cities are Edge Cities, tourist meccas, or industrial hubs (the original Edge Cities).

*Notes*:
1. Estimated
2. Population change due to daily commuting
3. Residents of place who also work there

Socially irresponsible architects

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In a Metropolis Magazine interview with Martin Pedersen, pathbreaking architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable (and still among the best still working, thanks to her historian’s “long view” and clear style) lambasts the navel-gazing turn in architecture that has undermined its sense of responsibility:

bq. Having lost its sense of social responsibility, architecture must answer to something broader than just being the latest thing–edgy, trendy, chic. All this really turns me off. There’s something missing in architecture criticism today, which is a way of measuring the buzz against something bigger and more important. And there’s a kind of sycophantism. I find it kind of sickening, because so much is being missed that is important.

LA cottage housing

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The City of LA recently launched a design competition for prototype bungalow/cottage courts (which they’re oddly calling townhouses) called Small Lots, Smart Designs:

bq. In trying to meet the need for housing, the City of Los Angeles adopted the Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance #176354 that provides an entirely new housing option: allowing individuals or developers to purchase a lot zoned for commercial or multi-family residential use and subdivide into much smaller lots than previously required with no setback requirement between the subdivided lots.

Cottages give people the opportunity to own single family, possibly (semi-)detached housing — which, for better or worse, does carry a market premium — without the financial or time costs of a large yard. Low-rise construction is subject to less stringent building codes and potentially greater design flexibility, which could also further reduce the cost of housing.