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.

Reagan, the suburban president

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Peter Dreier makes the case against Reagan’s urban policy in Newsday, but doesn’t even plumb the full depths:

Reagan also presided over the dramatic deregulation of the nation’s savings-and-loan industry, which allowed S&L’s to end their reliance on home mortgages and engage in an orgy of commercial real estate speculation. This ultimately led to a federal taxpayer bailout that cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

the S&L debacle was only half of it — the Tax Reform Act increased depreciation allowances, allowing commercial real estate developers to rack up huge paper losses (really profits) on developments of dubious merit. huge swaths of countryside, especially in the Sunbelt, were scraped for the biggest construction boom in office parks, shopping malls, and garden apartments ever. meanwhile, cities cleared away thousands of city blocks for redevelopment schemes of shimmering but street life-killing office blocks.

transit subsidies stalled in the 1980s, and the retrenchment in federal urban spending stalled many a city’s true recovery. “smart growth” anti-sprawl movements had an initial flowering in the 1970s, but were pretty much discarded in the 1980s and somewhat rediscovered in the 1990s as political winds shifted once again.

Reagan’s most dramatic cut was for low-income housing subsidies. Soon after taking office, he appointed a housing task force dominated by developers, landlords and bankers. Its 1982 report called for “free and deregulated” markets as an alternative to government assistance. Reagan followed their advice. Between 1980 and 1989, HUD’s budget authority was cut from $74 billion to $19 billion in constant dollars. The number of new subsidized housing starts fell from 175,000 to 20,000 a year.

and thus was born today’s affordable housing crisis.

Public space tour of Paris

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The Project for Public Spaces has an online guided tour of beautiful, functional Parisian public spaces — so friendly to the public that even young children and seniors feel comfortable expressing affection and joy in public. PPS also warns that the unfriendly, overdesigned new parks and ever-expanding roadways threaten the vitality of

“When we compare examples of public spaces in Paris to other cities, we often get the response: ‘Oh… well that is Paris,’ meaning that no other city can compare. Our reply is that Paris is a laboratory for learning about all types of public spaces, both good and bad. Each individual public space, each building, and each street can teach us something important.”

Sure, Paris owes much of its beauty and most of its grand parks to the unprecedented investment lavished upon it by the French state, but many of its finest details cost no more than standard highway street treatments.

Market update

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The Times has a charming article in the food section about a chef who bicycles his purchases between the Union Square Greenmarket and the restaurant. Speaking of which, my recent purchases have included mushrooms, asparagus, mustard greens, and a lemon verbena plant. I’ve also planted micro greens in the garden, which have taken well — however, they’re now too big and too bitter/spicy for salads. Well, they’re still damn tasty.

Alas, the Wicker Park farmers’ market hasn’t started yet. One nice addition this year is a new evening market on Randolph in the West Loop — bringing the street back to its Market District origins in the best way. Also, I’ve found a pay-per-box CSA that delivers organic boxes just a few blocks away. Angelic was great, but the quantites really were ridiculous. Growing Power seems to offer a wider variety of goods (it’s a coop of many farms), and only when you want them.

Picnic schedule, part 1

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It’s June, so Ravinia will soon be in season — this weekend, in fact. However, I haven’t had a chance to sit down and scrutinize the schedule for days to ride out there and picnic. This summer, though, I think it’d also be fun to visit some out of the way parks within the city limits — say, Columbus Park, Ping Tom Park, or Wolf Lake. The curvilinear town of Riverside might be a fun place to get lost in, and it’s not far away.

Ideas for dates? I’ve opened up comments for this one.

“Sustainable everyday”

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At Urban Center Books last week, I picked up a book called “Sustainable Everyday: Scenarios of Urban Life” (looks like a good chunk of the text is available online) — really an exhibition catalogue from the Milan Triennial, with ideas from univerisites around the world on how to create sustainable communities. Many of the ideas aren’t all that new, but examining the common threads between them: local co-ops, skill sharing, applying smarter logistics to local passenger and freight travel, telework centers, managing the use of space (and capital, like tools) through networks — makes for a fascinating read.

Also interesting is the worldwide focus on food. I’m so darn excited about slow food/slow cities as an organizing concept for sustainability that I’m just speechless about it. I managed to write a bit yesterday explaining how slow food (in this case, a public market) embodies the new urbanism, and hope to be able to expand on that soon.
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Old North

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Good ol’ Raleigh’s deserved descent to punchline status — as shorthand for provincial dullery — passed me by while I wasn’t watching television.

Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons, several years ago: “Ah, for the days when aviation was a gentleman’s pursuit. Long before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and jet off to Raleigh-Durham.”