"Those that do not study history are doomed to repeat it"
That seems like a fair enough assessment given our current woes. I find it increasingly amazing that given our rapid and prolific state of inventiveness (mobile phones on which we can watch full length feature films, voice activated interactive computer systems, global information and telecommunication networks) we still fail to understand how our decisions impact our ever shrinking world.
34 years after our last oil crisis America (and much of the industrialized world) finds ourselves again on the precipice of what some are calling a complete economic breakdown. Once again we see how closely we are tied to international energy production but are unwilling to make the self sacrifice needed to alleviate the burden. I find it so strange that a country who constantly involves itself in international affairs fails to realize how our own personal actions affects said international world. Americans systematically use and discard proportionally the vast majority of our planet's resources. Cities develop massive automotive infrastructure routes to cut commute times by mere minutes which justify further deconcentration of communities resulting in more energy/fuel being needed to navigate sprawling community. We live in a society where it is easier and cheaper to throw out a broken appliance than to have it repaired, the cost subsidized by impoverished foreign workers and the goods shipped to this country with the expense of a massive consumption of energy.
It is intriguing to me how interconnected everything really is if you take the time to examine it.
For those of you with piqued interest I direct you to the 1973; Sorry, Out of Gas exhibit on view at the CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture) until April which highlights some of the architectural responses to the oil crisis of "green pioneers like Micheal Reynolds and Steve Baer".
Metorpolis magazine also acknowledges that the show is "also a warning to contemporary architects enamored with solely technological-driven solutions, and a call for societal changes to combat looming ecological disaster."
additional resources:
thestar - 35 years on, why we need another gas crisis
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Friday, November 23, 2007
Greener gifts for the holiday season thanks to Treehugger.com
Happy Black Friday United States! (I think the rest of the world celebrates tomorrow as the biggest shopping day of the year).
Granted I am against copious consumer consumption as much as I can be however with the holidays gearing up and gift giving being a way to express one's feelings and respect for another I figure I may as well pass along the 2007 Treehugger's Gift Giving Guide - Now in various shades of green! Using the site one can navigate by preferences for who will be receiving the gifts as well as gift types. I find one of the most useful parts a list of holiday tips for reducing consumption and alternative for dealing with non efficient materials (virgin gift wrapping paper). There is also a nice list of foundations one can contribute to in someones name.
All in all a fine idea for those looking to reduce their impact or make a statement with their gift giving this holiday season.
Happy holidays everyone!
Granted I am against copious consumer consumption as much as I can be however with the holidays gearing up and gift giving being a way to express one's feelings and respect for another I figure I may as well pass along the 2007 Treehugger's Gift Giving Guide - Now in various shades of green! Using the site one can navigate by preferences for who will be receiving the gifts as well as gift types. I find one of the most useful parts a list of holiday tips for reducing consumption and alternative for dealing with non efficient materials (virgin gift wrapping paper). There is also a nice list of foundations one can contribute to in someones name.
All in all a fine idea for those looking to reduce their impact or make a statement with their gift giving this holiday season.
Happy holidays everyone!
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Black Friday rears its ugly head
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope all are enjoying good times with family and friends, celebrating the important things in life, our love for each other.
Amazing how quickly fine ideas become sullied. Christmas has been an overly commercialized holiday since as long as I can remember. Halloween, well, that is all about candy, right? Easter was somehow maligned to also be a mall holiday and since Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks for what we have I suppose the only way to properly hi-jack it is to assume that after giving thanks people realize that what they have isn't enough.
Somehow 4am sales on 72" plasma screen TVs is supposed to fix all that emptiness inside?
Well, I am not sold on the idea that buying things will make me happy (actually I hate seeing credit card bills, getting rid of those would make me happier) and so once again I will not be partaking in 'Black Friday' in the usual manner.
Oh, I will enjoy my train ride into work (minus the crush of the work rush), my relatively calm day at the office (lots of people on vacation) and a quiet stroll around Cleveland at lunch. I will also celebrate Buy Nothing Day, the annual "moratorium on consumer spending". There are many reasons. After suffering a flood and losing quite a bit of my material identity I have discovered that those things are not as important as I thought. I also have come to the realization that no one is really impressed by the junk I own and all it really does is tie me to a sedentary lifestyle, locked in a single locale due to the massive amount of things I have accumulated. In fact, I find the more things I 'own' the more trapped feeling I become.
Even if it not all about the accumulation of 'stuff' there is something downright uncomfortable about 1/5 of the world's population consuming 80% of it's resources. Is our consumption based society to blame on our current economic, health and enviromental crisis? Damn straight it is. Do something interesting this Black Friday; read a book, talk to friends, enjoy the outside, draw, paint, enter architecture competitions, work on school assignments, think. Think about what a difference you could make if you really wanted to, then make that difference.
Amazing how quickly fine ideas become sullied. Christmas has been an overly commercialized holiday since as long as I can remember. Halloween, well, that is all about candy, right? Easter was somehow maligned to also be a mall holiday and since Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks for what we have I suppose the only way to properly hi-jack it is to assume that after giving thanks people realize that what they have isn't enough.
Somehow 4am sales on 72" plasma screen TVs is supposed to fix all that emptiness inside?
Well, I am not sold on the idea that buying things will make me happy (actually I hate seeing credit card bills, getting rid of those would make me happier) and so once again I will not be partaking in 'Black Friday' in the usual manner.
Oh, I will enjoy my train ride into work (minus the crush of the work rush), my relatively calm day at the office (lots of people on vacation) and a quiet stroll around Cleveland at lunch. I will also celebrate Buy Nothing Day, the annual "moratorium on consumer spending". There are many reasons. After suffering a flood and losing quite a bit of my material identity I have discovered that those things are not as important as I thought. I also have come to the realization that no one is really impressed by the junk I own and all it really does is tie me to a sedentary lifestyle, locked in a single locale due to the massive amount of things I have accumulated. In fact, I find the more things I 'own' the more trapped feeling I become.
Even if it not all about the accumulation of 'stuff' there is something downright uncomfortable about 1/5 of the world's population consuming 80% of it's resources. Is our consumption based society to blame on our current economic, health and enviromental crisis? Damn straight it is. Do something interesting this Black Friday; read a book, talk to friends, enjoy the outside, draw, paint, enter architecture competitions, work on school assignments, think. Think about what a difference you could make if you really wanted to, then make that difference.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Streetscape masterplans - Clifton Boulevard Enhancement Project
Despite my tirade on masterplans the other day there are some that I do not find entirely objectionable. Take the Clifton Boulevard Enhancement Project as an example.
Granted I haven't seem the presentation documentation but from the description and public comments of the 2007 10.17 presentation I can infer some points that I felt were rather pertinent. The overall proposal is for a definitive median on Clifton Boulevard with some planted and some hardscape areas.
- The planted beds may not be effective as a gateway (if they stretch the entire boulevard course then there would be little to no need for it to act as a gateway, Clifton Boulevard itself isn't really that long and is rather distinguishable).
- The median mimics the proposed Shoreway Boulevard creating a sense of continuity.
- Hardscape areas where medians cannot be installed 'could be replicated in Cleveland'. (This was especially nice as it attempts to emphasis the symbiotic relationship of the REGION).
-Local artists would be used to supply any public art. This is important as it personalizes each area in a subtle manner. Now there can be a neighborhood distinction without the typical olde tymey signage/lamp-post/hanging plant debacle, instead each neighborhood can utilize personal creative stock to differentiate itself. Think of Fremont, Washington (north of Seattle). If that doesn't ring a bell think of the Fremont Troll.
There are more points concerning signage, pedestrian protection, demarcating the residential from commercial zones with different plantings, hardscape types and strategies and most importantly the continuity and consistency of a masterplan and its application.
Something to think about.
Granted I haven't seem the presentation documentation but from the description and public comments of the 2007 10.17 presentation I can infer some points that I felt were rather pertinent. The overall proposal is for a definitive median on Clifton Boulevard with some planted and some hardscape areas.
- The planted beds may not be effective as a gateway (if they stretch the entire boulevard course then there would be little to no need for it to act as a gateway, Clifton Boulevard itself isn't really that long and is rather distinguishable).
- The median mimics the proposed Shoreway Boulevard creating a sense of continuity.
- Hardscape areas where medians cannot be installed 'could be replicated in Cleveland'. (This was especially nice as it attempts to emphasis the symbiotic relationship of the REGION).
-Local artists would be used to supply any public art. This is important as it personalizes each area in a subtle manner. Now there can be a neighborhood distinction without the typical olde tymey signage/lamp-post/hanging plant debacle, instead each neighborhood can utilize personal creative stock to differentiate itself. Think of Fremont, Washington (north of Seattle). If that doesn't ring a bell think of the Fremont Troll.
There are more points concerning signage, pedestrian protection, demarcating the residential from commercial zones with different plantings, hardscape types and strategies and most importantly the continuity and consistency of a masterplan and its application.
Something to think about.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Dick Feagler: Euclid Corridor signifies nothing, and no one will use it.
Well, that is one opinion. Of course this rebuttal landed in my in-box recently and I thought I would share.
What’s with Dick Feagler? His Sunday column on the Euclid Corridor (Nov. 18, "A corridor; how exciting") begins by saying Cleveland lacks “a certain amount of creativity” suggesting the $220 million, mostly federally-funded project isn’t innovative. Doesn’t he read his own newspaper? Did he miss the numerous Plain Dealer articles over the past 30 years chronicling the project’s evolution from “Dual Hub,” a very expensive rail rapid transit line proposal ($800+ million in 1980’s dollars), to the current bus rapid transit line (BRT)? What about RTA Board Vice Chairman Ed Kelley’s excellent letter to the editor on Friday ("A catalyst for growth") noting numerous benefits from Euclid Corridor such as the $2.3 billion of investments and 10,000 new jobs already in process within the Corridor? I don’t know about Feagler, but when I travel the Corridor, I see thousands of planning, architect, engineering, and construction jobs that wouldn’t otherwise have existed!
How could Feagler not recall the countless PD articles revealing how then-Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White, Cleveland City Council, the NOACA and GCRTA boards, and Cuyahoga County Commissioners ALL agreed at the time that a Euclid Corridor rail line wasn’t the most cost-effective use of taxpayer dollars? In scaling the project back as they did, our leaders at the time promised MORE transportation and development benefits in Cleveland’s main street by proposing to fix badly deteriorated infrastructure along the City’s main drag. Their foresight with that call afforded the region THREE brand new downtown professional sports venues, major airport expansions and huge investments in ongoing highway, bridge, water and sewer projects. Euclid Corridor dollars saved also enabled RTA to open its Waterfront Line in 1996, the region’s first rapid transit expansion since the 1968 Airport line extension. Feagler must surely remember that little innovation? You know, the one that made Cleveland the first city in North America to have a direct rail link between its major airport and downtown.
Feagler also somehow fails to acknowledge PD articles, RTA and national news pronouncing Euclid Corridor as North America’s FIRST-EVER BRT line to be built from the ground up. Hint: RTA didn’t win the 2007 American Public Transportation Association’s Best Large Transit System in North America Award just by for putting pretty new trolleys in downtown Cleveland and bike racks on all its buses.
As with the Airport rapid line extension, planners, architects, engineers, developers and city officials from around the world have already begun traveling here just to see how we're building the BRT. And once the line opens, most likely with naming rights helping to offset costs (pretty innovative for a transit line!), lots more folks will come here to experience Euclid Corridor first-hand. (Can you say “tourism dollars” girls and boys?)
Because of construction woes and whatever else, many in the region like Feagler are prematurely passing judgment on Euclid Corridor. Just as it took decades to plan and build, it will takes decades to realize the full benefits of the Euclid Corridor. But quite frankly, I already enjoy bicycling the Euclid Corridor bike lanes (rode 'em today to pick up tickets for 12 Angry Men at Playhouse Square). And RTA customers have already begun taking refuge in the fancy new Euclid Corridor shelters. But who could argue that new and renewed water and sewer lines, roads, Cleveland Browns Stadium, Jacobs Field, Quicken Loans Arena and Hopkins Airport haven’t already brought countless major benefits to this region’s residents and visitors? All that should be pretty exciting to a region making a comeback like ours, and the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project and our past and present leaders can be thanked for that!
Richard McDougald Enty
(Transportation Consultant and retired RTA planner who worked on Dual Hub and Euclid Corridor studies, on and off, from 1978 thru 2007; was principal author of three versions of RTA long range plan documents from 1993 thru 2006)
You can also read more thoughts on the article (including mine) at the new ClevelandDesignCity.
What’s with Dick Feagler? His Sunday column on the Euclid Corridor (Nov. 18, "A corridor; how exciting") begins by saying Cleveland lacks “a certain amount of creativity” suggesting the $220 million, mostly federally-funded project isn’t innovative. Doesn’t he read his own newspaper? Did he miss the numerous Plain Dealer articles over the past 30 years chronicling the project’s evolution from “Dual Hub,” a very expensive rail rapid transit line proposal ($800+ million in 1980’s dollars), to the current bus rapid transit line (BRT)? What about RTA Board Vice Chairman Ed Kelley’s excellent letter to the editor on Friday ("A catalyst for growth") noting numerous benefits from Euclid Corridor such as the $2.3 billion of investments and 10,000 new jobs already in process within the Corridor? I don’t know about Feagler, but when I travel the Corridor, I see thousands of planning, architect, engineering, and construction jobs that wouldn’t otherwise have existed!
How could Feagler not recall the countless PD articles revealing how then-Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White, Cleveland City Council, the NOACA and GCRTA boards, and Cuyahoga County Commissioners ALL agreed at the time that a Euclid Corridor rail line wasn’t the most cost-effective use of taxpayer dollars? In scaling the project back as they did, our leaders at the time promised MORE transportation and development benefits in Cleveland’s main street by proposing to fix badly deteriorated infrastructure along the City’s main drag. Their foresight with that call afforded the region THREE brand new downtown professional sports venues, major airport expansions and huge investments in ongoing highway, bridge, water and sewer projects. Euclid Corridor dollars saved also enabled RTA to open its Waterfront Line in 1996, the region’s first rapid transit expansion since the 1968 Airport line extension. Feagler must surely remember that little innovation? You know, the one that made Cleveland the first city in North America to have a direct rail link between its major airport and downtown.
Feagler also somehow fails to acknowledge PD articles, RTA and national news pronouncing Euclid Corridor as North America’s FIRST-EVER BRT line to be built from the ground up. Hint: RTA didn’t win the 2007 American Public Transportation Association’s Best Large Transit System in North America Award just by for putting pretty new trolleys in downtown Cleveland and bike racks on all its buses.
As with the Airport rapid line extension, planners, architects, engineers, developers and city officials from around the world have already begun traveling here just to see how we're building the BRT. And once the line opens, most likely with naming rights helping to offset costs (pretty innovative for a transit line!), lots more folks will come here to experience Euclid Corridor first-hand. (Can you say “tourism dollars” girls and boys?)
Because of construction woes and whatever else, many in the region like Feagler are prematurely passing judgment on Euclid Corridor. Just as it took decades to plan and build, it will takes decades to realize the full benefits of the Euclid Corridor. But quite frankly, I already enjoy bicycling the Euclid Corridor bike lanes (rode 'em today to pick up tickets for 12 Angry Men at Playhouse Square). And RTA customers have already begun taking refuge in the fancy new Euclid Corridor shelters. But who could argue that new and renewed water and sewer lines, roads, Cleveland Browns Stadium, Jacobs Field, Quicken Loans Arena and Hopkins Airport haven’t already brought countless major benefits to this region’s residents and visitors? All that should be pretty exciting to a region making a comeback like ours, and the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project and our past and present leaders can be thanked for that!
Richard McDougald Enty
(Transportation Consultant and retired RTA planner who worked on Dual Hub and Euclid Corridor studies, on and off, from 1978 thru 2007; was principal author of three versions of RTA long range plan documents from 1993 thru 2006)
You can also read more thoughts on the article (including mine) at the new ClevelandDesignCity.
Streetscape masterplans, screwing up one city at a time
Discussions of green versus regional design become interesting when compared and contrasted to the modern design typology. Concurring with Peter van Dijk's supposition that modern design (ie. a box glass or otherwise) could be built anywhere due to our building environment controls (Bauhaus in America discussion last Saturday) makes one question whether far reaching movements are responsible design regardless of how interesting they may appear. Regional vernaculars have evolved in a fashion to fit a specific culture and society and show be respected. I know this is an over reaching generalization for today but I am struck by the amount of projects that appear around the world that do not respect a native vernacular. I am not suggesting that we close up our borders and live in fear of change but rather regional design is at least investigated when large projects are being considered. It has become rather simple to build large blocks of glass because we can heat and cool the space inside, it just becomes a dialogue of what has more import, the aesthetic value or the energy used to make the space functional. I am not completely disowning 'crystal' structures because they are typically designed with an attempt to use specialized glass to mitigate the requirements of the HVAC system, I am just stating that there has to be a comprehensive understanding of the cause and effect relationships that every aspect of design involve in order to protect the integrity of the project.
I suppose I am a little off track. I really wanted to just raise awareness of the simple exercise of walking about your city. Recently it has come to my attention that Kauffman Park in Lakewood is in danger of being developed and equally importantly that the strip mall in front of Kauffman Park on Detroit Avenue is facing undergoing the type of change that actually scares me. I don't understand where this mis-appropriation of 'new urbanism' stem from but I am finding it increasingly annoying that 'lifestyle centers (ie, malls you live at) are being billed as living the 'urban lifestyle (without the horrible city around you)' and that communities around the urban core are re-interpreting these lifestyle centers and attempting to adjust their streetscapes to match it by creating false vistas, termini and creating homogeneous, monotonous commercial districts.
Knock it off.
Design of urban (and to an extent exurban/suburban) spaces requires one to visit the idea of how buildings frame the street, creating public rooms for movement, collection, identification and experience. If every room looks the same then how do you know where you are? The worst possible answer to this would be to take a viable commercial strip (such as Detroit or Madison Avenue) and fragment it into segmented miniature districts that somehow are supposed to follow prescribed rules of intent such as an entertainment district or art district. The before mentioned commercial strips are not of such length as to necessitate the inclusion of gateways or banners for one to remember where they are. If a person cannot tell immediately and continuously locate oneself then one starts to re-evaluate the greater area as a whole. This also allows for an intermingling of commercial opportunity (without district typology restrictions) which increases walkability and pedestrian desire. I know that to some of our amazing urban designers this comes as a compete shock that the hanging baskets, lights and banners do very little to make a district successful if the commercial and residential infrastructure isn't there in the first place.
I plan to touch on this topic a little bit more in the future and hopefully include some photos and finger pointing (yes, I plan to name some names, not that anyone will be surprised at that). In the meantime there was a rather fun article in the Metroblog section of the Plain Dealer on footpaths which I found not only interesting but rather timely as one imagines how spaces are interpreted from outside of the automobile.
I suppose I am a little off track. I really wanted to just raise awareness of the simple exercise of walking about your city. Recently it has come to my attention that Kauffman Park in Lakewood is in danger of being developed and equally importantly that the strip mall in front of Kauffman Park on Detroit Avenue is facing undergoing the type of change that actually scares me. I don't understand where this mis-appropriation of 'new urbanism' stem from but I am finding it increasingly annoying that 'lifestyle centers (ie, malls you live at) are being billed as living the 'urban lifestyle (without the horrible city around you)' and that communities around the urban core are re-interpreting these lifestyle centers and attempting to adjust their streetscapes to match it by creating false vistas, termini and creating homogeneous, monotonous commercial districts.
Knock it off.
Design of urban (and to an extent exurban/suburban) spaces requires one to visit the idea of how buildings frame the street, creating public rooms for movement, collection, identification and experience. If every room looks the same then how do you know where you are? The worst possible answer to this would be to take a viable commercial strip (such as Detroit or Madison Avenue) and fragment it into segmented miniature districts that somehow are supposed to follow prescribed rules of intent such as an entertainment district or art district. The before mentioned commercial strips are not of such length as to necessitate the inclusion of gateways or banners for one to remember where they are. If a person cannot tell immediately and continuously locate oneself then one starts to re-evaluate the greater area as a whole. This also allows for an intermingling of commercial opportunity (without district typology restrictions) which increases walkability and pedestrian desire. I know that to some of our amazing urban designers this comes as a compete shock that the hanging baskets, lights and banners do very little to make a district successful if the commercial and residential infrastructure isn't there in the first place.
I plan to touch on this topic a little bit more in the future and hopefully include some photos and finger pointing (yes, I plan to name some names, not that anyone will be surprised at that). In the meantime there was a rather fun article in the Metroblog section of the Plain Dealer on footpaths which I found not only interesting but rather timely as one imagines how spaces are interpreted from outside of the automobile.
New ClevelandDesignCity!
There is a new ClevelandDesignCity which is more user friendly and can act as a place for actually discussing the various architecture and design happenings in Cleveland. Currently moderated by a fine chap (I don't know if I can release their name) it has been undergoing testing and is now ready for the big time. Hopefully this will inspire some of us to write more and to write better.The world knows we need it.
So kick your shoes off, grab a beer and join us for some talk about the city, architecture, art or whatever general questions of that realm you have on your mind. We'll leave the light on for you.
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