The Cheapest Generation

Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissman, writing for the Atlantic, have a piece looking at the shift in preferences of the Millennials - The Cheapest Generation

Since the end of World War II, new cars and suburban houses have powered the world’s largest economy and propelled our most impressive recoveries. Millennials may have lost interest in both.

[…]

In some respects, Millennials’ residential aspirations appear to be changing just as significantly as their driving habits—indeed, the two may be related. The old cul-de-sacs of Revolutionary Road and Desperate Housewives have fallen out of favor with Generation Y. Rising instead are both city centers and what some developers call “urban light”—denser suburbs that revolve around a walkable town center. “People are very eager to create a life that blends the best features of the American suburb—schools still being the primary, although not the only, draw—and urbanity,” says Adam Ducker, a managing director at the real-estate consultancy RCLCO. These are places like Culver City, California, and Evanston, Illinois, where residents can stroll among shops and restaurants or hop on public transportation. Such small cities and town centers lend themselves to tighter, smaller housing developments, whether apartments in the middle of town, or small houses a five-minute drive away. An RCLCO survey from 2007 found that 43 percent of Gen‑Yers would prefer to live in a close-in suburb, where both the houses and the need for a car are smaller.

It’s a smart piece looking at our changing times.

What Makes a Strong Town?

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns recently gave a speech to the annual summit of lawmakers at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). The audio was recorded and the folks at Strong Towns graciously combined the audio with the video of the slides used during the presentation. I thought it was a great overview of the really great ideas advocated by Chuck and so I’m posting it here hoping you will take a look:

He touches on a lot of great concepts. One of the things I have been thinking about is the way our property tax structure disincentivizes good development - particularly good architecture. Chuck just briefly touched on this idea towards the end of his presentation but I wanted to expound on that briefly. The problem with taxing improvements is that the more the landowner invests in the structures on their site the more tax they have to pay. This is counter-intuitive as we want to encourage landowners to develop their land to the highest potential especially in areas that have already invested in public infrastructure. One of the thoughts I’ve had is that perhaps the tax system should be based on a sliding scale of sorts. Properties that are in town or in areas with great amounts of infrastructure investment should be taxed mostly on land value with a very small percentage of the tax on property improvements. Properties that are further out would be taxed more like the current system with a smaller percentage based on land value and an additional percentage based on improvements. Properties that are beyond the reach of most infrastructure would pay most of the tax on improvements and very little on the land.

This would do two things. First, it would not be punitive for making improvements that actually contribute to a better place. This includes improvements that are somewhat intangible such as fine architectural details and good quality building systems. Second it would put pressure on landowners that are in town and have great infrastructure service to actually develop their property as the tax difference between a developed parcel and undeveloped parcel would be much smaller than currently (effectively raising taxes on undeveloped land while keeping developed land at or below current levels). I obviously don’t have anything more than a rough framework but I think such a tax system would better reflect and recoup the public investment in infrastructure.

Your TV is Ruining Movies

Stu Maschwitz, writing for his blog at Prolost, comments on the sad truth of tv calibration:

Maybe you got a new TV for Christmas. Or maybe you just got one recently. Maybe you are thinking of buying one. Whichever is the case, take heed: your TV will try very, very hard to make whatever movies you watch on it look not just bad, but aggressively, satanically, puppy-drowningly bad.

When I got a new LED tv a few years ago, the first thing I did was turn off the motion smoothing as I felt it looked garish and unnatural. I also turned the color settings to “Natural”.

What's Worth Preserving?

Steve Mouzon, writing for his blog The Original Green, on what we should preserve:

Preserving the life of the tradition is a very different thing. Living things evolve throughout their lives, from infancy to puberty to adulthood to old age. And it’s not clear quite what sort of adult an infant might grow into. We are learning how to help traditions live again, I believe.

This is an interesting angle and one which sort of took me by surprise. When I started reading I fully expected Steve to make a case for the preservation of lovable places and buildings (perhaps at the expense of preserving architecturally significant but unloved buildings) but soon discovered he was actually arguing just the opposite - we should seek to preserve the traditions that brought us these lovable things rather than the artifacts themselves.

While I tend to agree, this seems somewhat idealistic to me as the very basis of the preservation movement is distrust - we (the public or at least a subset of the public) don’t trust the professionals enough to replace something tired yet wonderful with something that is better functioning yet equally as wonderful. I am reminded of the Alhambra Theatre here in Sacramento - once the “Showplace of Sacramento”. Unfortunately it was demolished in the 70’s to make way for a supermarket’s parking lot. It is a reaction against this exchange of sublime for mundane that is at the core of the preservation ethos. To that I am very sympathetic. We deserve better than to destroy something of great value for something of little value.

However, preservation can also get in the way. Our cities, towns, and neighborhoods are living organisms. They need to be able to grow, to morph, to adapt and change. The natural evolution of places occurs though various densities and typologies and that process must be allowed to happen. When we seek to save every quintessential bungalow or the rundown “Main Street” commercial building we are blocking the neighborhood’s ability to “grow up”. Sometimes that is warranted but other times a greater good is accomplished by allowing a place to evolve itself.

This takes me back to the issue of trust. If we can trust that the changes we witness are a part of a forward evolution rather than a devolution we are much more prone to accepting the changes as the growing pains of maturing. This is, I believe, where Steve is going. He posits that it is better to work towards the preservation of the traditions that make great places as these traditions can be used to successfully evolve a place towards more value rather than less value. This is necessarily nebulous. We are talking about preserving the intangible - ideas, frameworks, techniques, and philosophies rather than the tangible - the artifacts of those ideas. This is why I mentioned it seems idealistic - I agree in theory but I’m not sure it translates to reality. As an architect, I am hesitant to put my trust in the profession coming around to this way of thinking - especially any notion that idealizes the preservation of tradition. If we, as professionals, do manage to regain the trust of public through a preservation of the traditions that make places great, we won’t have to worry about the issue of preservation except for the places that are truly exceptional or culturally significant beyond just being great. Unfortunately, for the most part, we have a pretty terrible track record for the past 50+ years of replacing things of value with things of less value.

Therefore, I think there is a delicate balance to be had. My take on preservation is a fence straddling amalgamation of the above. Some things are so significant that they ought to be saved. These structures and places are so vital to our culture and heritage that they should be protected and cared for in perpetuity. For everything else, we must weigh the value and significance of the thing we wish to save against the value and potential of the thing we wish to replace it with. Alhambra Theatre vs parking lot? I’ll keep the theater. Thriving historic neighborhood that wants to evolve vs individual historic building in that neighborhood? I think we need to let the neighborhood “grow up”. If enough right decisions are made, perhaps we can again trust that change is inevitable but it is part of growing up and we can let the newly thriving Living Traditions take over.

Uncle Jim Dissects Suburbia

James Howard Kunstler, who plays the cantankerous, crazy uncle of New Urbanism, gave a TED Talk where he looked at how bad architecture is ruining cities:

I like to call it ‘the national automobile slum.’ You can call it suburban sprawl. I think it’s appropriate to call it the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.

So starts the 20 minute rant dissecting the ills of our suburban experiment. It’s an entertaining look at the poor state of our public space.

Disclaimer: As is the wont of crazy uncles, there is the occasional colorful language in the video.

Curious George - The First Urban Monkey

I have a 2 1/2 year old son who loves Curious George which, as a parent, I approve of because it is deliberately educational as well as entertaining. This means that I, too, watch and read an inordinate amount of Curious George - certainly more than a man of my age should be willing to admit. However, it has been intriguing to me to see how George exists in a world of almost impeccable urbanism. Whether this is by design, happenstance, or merely a by-product of the time in which George was first created I don’t know. I do know that the environments George lives in makes for a much more interesting show than if George lived in your typical suburbia.

The stories of Curious George take place in two primary environments. First, there is the city. In the city, George lives in an apartment with the “man with the yellow hat” and has regular interactions with a wide variety of recurring characters. There is the doorman and his lobby dog, the chef with his wife and cat and rooftop vegetable garden, the kids down the street with their unruly dog, the professor at the museum, the pigeons on the roof including the one who is always confused or lost, and the ever helpful but can’t ever get a normal call fire department. George’s curiosity takes him all over this urban environment, almost always by foot - from the nature of the park down the street, to the alleys filled with garbage cans, to the museum where the man with the yellow hat sort of works, to the grocer down the street, and to the lobby of his apartment building. George’s experience are rich and varied as he interacts with this urban environment and the people within it.

When George is not in the city, he finds himself at “the country house” - a nice little house just on the outskirts of a tight knit little town. This is also the domain of the man with the yellow hat - perhaps his boyhood home. This is very much a rural environment with much different experiences than the city life. George gets to interact with an entirely different cast of recurring characters - the boy next door who knows there is always a proper way to do things, the farmer and his wife down the country lane, the older quintuplets who speak funny and occupy most the major civic duties of the small town, and of course the squirrel in the tree outside his window. In this rural environment, George learns about farms and plants, animals - both domestic and wild, seasons, swimming, biking, and making his own way.

What is interesting about the life of Curious George is that he thrives in these extremely divergent environments - in urban transect parlance defined by T5-T6 in the city and T2-T3 in the country. He is just as at home in the dense city where all of his daily curiosities are within walking distance of his apartment as he is in the open country where he again roams the land and finds a completely different set of curiosities. Of course, as a children’s series, the best of both environments is celebrated and the worst of both are looked over. But I think there is a good balance shown - life can be extremely fulfilling at both extremes. In actuality, it is the middle where problems begin to arise. A Curious George that occurred in suburbia wouldn’t have nearly as much diversity, nearly as much curiosity, and nearly as much autonomy. How much would Curious George change if his life revolved around being driven from activity to activity and never having the ability to explore on his own? Curious George’s stories are so much richer for being in these dynamic and interesting environments and I think that provides great fodder for the creator’s to really let George explore and learn. In so doing, our kids get to have a richly varied and intensely interesting range of experiences to behold and learn from. As much as I should be ashamed to admit, I have actually come to enjoy the tales of Curious George, the first urban monkey.

Architectural Skin Eating Bacteria

Suzanne Labarre, writing for Fast Company, on the design of the new Sheung Wan Hotel in Hong Kong:

You’ve got to hand it to British starchitect Thomas Heatherwick: His firm never runs out of ways to make a building look downright terrifying.

That’s something to aspire to.

Their latest example: a 40-story, 300-room hotel in Hong Kong that will be covered, top-to-bottom, in giant, haphazardly arranged white boxes–a pattern echoed indoors. I can’t decide if this is channeling an explosion of Mail Boxes Etc. or some sort of architectural bacteria that’s slowly eating its way through the building. Maybe both.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

In all seriousness, though, it isn’t anywhere near the quality of his previous project which I quite liked (except for its poor location).

Brave New Hair

Mike Seymour, writing for FX Guide, on the the problem of great hair:

For Brave, the team at Pixar had to deal with a hero or rather heroine, who is on screen for almost every shot, but who needed wild, yet beautiful hair…

The Princess Merida’s hair was almost a three year process to get correct. Earlier hair such as for the characters in The Incredibles had much more groomed hair, but here the character’s hair simulation needed to solve how to get this messy, tempestuous and unpredictable look while still looking attractive and flowing nicely with the animation.

Details matter.

via Jim Dalrymple at The Loop

Architectural Myopia

Have you ever looked at a bizarre building design and wondered, “What were the architects thinking?” Have you looked at a supposedly “ecological” industrial-looking building, and questioned how it could be truly ecological? Or have you simply felt frustrated by a building that made you uncomfortable, or felt anger when a beautiful old building was razed and replaced with a contemporary eyesore? You might be forgiven for thinking “these architects must be blind!” New research shows that in a real sense, you might actually be right.

Environmental psychologists have long known about this widespread and puzzling phenomenon. Laboratory results show conclusively that architects literally see the world differently from non-architects. Not only do architects notice and look for different aspects of the environment than other people; their brains seem to synthesize an understanding of the world that has notable differences from natural reality. Instead of a contextual world of harmonious geometric relationships and connectedness, architects tend to see a world of objects set apart from their contexts, with distinctive, attention-getting qualities.

So begins an incisive and insightful treatise by Michael Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros, originally posted on Shareable: Cities. This lengthy and somewhat heavy article takes a hard and critical look at the architecture profession to assess how it can be so out of touch with the rest of humanity. The problem, according to the authors, is a fundamental difference in values which began diverging in the early 20th century. The disconnect happens at the most basic, foundational level of motivation and aspiration; modern architects celebrate the machine or, at the very least, the idea of a unique object yet people naturally resonate with a celebration of humanity. It is in this context that we find a scathing critique of modernism:

Since the early modernists saw their work as a revolution, this radical break was an important symbolic element of their agenda. Previously, architects took relatively straightforward, human-adaptive building types, and created elaborate ornamentations of them. These artistic ornamentations were fantastic, exciting, moving; yet they remained within the discipline of a human-adapted building. After the caesura of the Bauhaus, one could mutate the entire structure to create some kind of extravagant dramatic visual statement — perhaps sheer size, or daring engineering feats of cantilevers and the like. Those would show our technological prowess, our economic prosperity, or our status as enlightened moderns.

[…]

In the last half-century, the clear result of “architectural myopia” is buildings whose makers have been so concerned with the drama of their appearance that they fail on the most fundamental human criteria. They isolate people; they do not provide enough light; or provide a poor quality of light; they provide a hostile pedestrian environment at their edges; they cause excessive shade; or create winds in what is known as a “canyon effect”; or they trap pollutants in the “sick building syndrome”; they use resources wastefully; etc. Moreover, the buildings themselves are a wasteful use of resources, because they are not likely to be well-loved, cared for, repaired, modified, and re-used over many years. In short, it is not just that people find them ugly, but they represent a fundamentally unsustainable way of building human environments.

While this article takes a more decisive stand than is warranted, I think there are some important kernels of insight. There are some great points about the perils of treating architecture as purely art, the focus on crafting places that are fundamentally human, and the role of buildings in creating a human urban fabric. The latter seems to dovetail nicely with my previous thoughts about the importance of applying the concept of citizenship to buildings.

Stroads to Boulevards

Speaking of stroads, there is a great tumblr page advocating for boulevards instead of stroads. From the About section:

A stroad is a street-road hybrid that frustrates everybody who uses it. Roads connect clusters of destinations, streets are the spaces between those local destinations. Roads are fast, wide and straight; streets have intersections, crosswalks, parking, cyclists and sidewalks.

Stroads are commonly called Arterials in North America. They are an anachronism, surviving only by inertia from 1960s traffic engineering guidebooks.

The multi-way boulevard is the time-tested squaring of the stroad circle: a road with a tree-separated narrow one way street either side.

With great Rights of Way come great possibilities.

It is possible to combine the functions of a street and a road into one right of way. It just has to be done in a way that doesn’t compromise the nature of either part too much. A boulevard works very well for both as ample examples throughout the world can attest.