Is Happiness Intertwined with Place?

Can living in a well-designed place make us happy?  Is contentment more a function of good design than of financial wealth?  Have poorly designed places been sapping our satisfaction with life?

Author Charles Montgomery tackles those questions in his book “Happy City”.  He begins with Enrique Penalosa, who in his term as mayor of Bogota, Columbia espoused the expansion of bikeways, public transit, and parks as a way of building a contentment that might exceed the contentment of financial prosperity.  Montgomery then continues into an examination of the post-World War II land-use patterns of American cities and their possible connection to a lack of American emotional fulfillment.

But Montgomery doesn’t blindly accept the hypothesis that good design will lead to happiness.  Instead, he frames the key questions around the hypothesis, such as how can happiness be defined and measured, and then begins an extended search for answers.  “Happy City” is the story of his search.

I’m not going to give away his conclusions, in part because I haven’t yet completed the book.  But I want to call your attention to the book and its likely importance to urbanism in 2014.

Long-time readers may remember that the relationship of happiness and design is a subject on which I’ve previously touched.  In “The Architecture of Happiness”, author Alain de Botton poses the question, “If our surroundings are important to our happiness, how can we ever be unhappy in a well-designed place?”  I considered it a profound question, although I don’t believe that de Botton found an answer to the question.  Nonetheless, “The Architecture of Happiness” complements “Happy City” sufficiently well that I’ll be dipping back into it as I read “Happy City”.

I hope many of you join me in following the trek of Montgomery as he considers the connection between happiness and design.

Schedule Note

The agenda for the last meeting of Petaluma Urban Chat was to select our next joint reading book.  After a fine discussion about alternatives, we selected “Happy City”, which is one reason I’ve begun reading it myself.

The next meeting of Urban Chat will be Tuesday, March 11.  If “Happy City” intrigues you, and I suggest that it should, you should join us at the meeting.  The initial reading assignment is the first five chapters.  But even if you don’t have time to secure a copy and read the chapters, you should come regardless.  I expect a fine conversation on a pertinent subject.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Public Officials Offer Hint of Urbanist Progress

Despite my roles of civic participant, consultant, and blogger, I don’t spend a lot of time chatting with public officials.  However, occasional opportunities come my way.  I had a couple of recent conversations that are worth sharing.

One conversation was explicitly off-record.  The same restriction wasn’t placed on the other conversation, but I understood an implicit expectation that I wouldn’t share the information with too much specificity.  Luckily, I needn’t offer names or quote exact words to highlight the key observation.

In the first conversation, a public official expressed frustration that some of his colleagues aren’t more willing to accept the environmental tradeoffs that come with more dense, urban-type development.

In the second conversation, a different public official acknowledged that he believed in induced traffic (the theory that traffic will expand to fill new roads, making traffic relief an impossible goal) and that the only fair and reasonable response to induced traffic was to offer development incentives for walkable settings.  The public official also cautioned that the general public would neither accept the first point nor acquiesce to the logic of the second.

Both positions, of course, are straight from the urbanist playbook and were welcome to my ears.

Knowing only what I’ve written above, one might assume that the two public officials are closely aligned in their political positions.  But that assumption would be wrong.  When there is a split vote, the two are often on opposing sides.  And there is a rumor of antipathy between the two.  They’re not political allies.

And that’s the point that opened my eyes.  Public officials from across the political spectrum are coming around to urbanism.  The game is far from won, but movement toward the goal line is a good sign.

There isn’t always a good feedback loop for bloggers.  I can see readership tallies, but I don’t know to what extent readers are agreeing with what I’ve written.  It’s exciting to have a couple of public officials indicate that they’re listening to the arguments and coming around to an urbanist way of thinking.

I’m not claiming that I’m personally responsible for their evolving attitudes.  There are many who write about urbanism with more clarity and élan.   I’m just happy to be on the team that is gradually gaining ground.

Before closing, I should comment on what the second public official said about the public not being ready to accept urbanism realities.  When I repeated the words to my wife, she was distressed, asking “So nothing is going to change?”

I appreciate her concern, but I also understand the position of the public official.  Grasping an emerging truth is difficult for public officials.  They can publicly espouse their new beliefs and risk not being re-elected, relegating their new convictions to the sidelines, or they can keep their comments off-record and work for small incremental changes in their public actions.  I understand the logic of the latter and intellectually concur with it, but it’s an approach I’d struggle to follow.  (It’s a good thing that I’m not a public official.)

The underlying problem is that we elect public officials who we expect to act in lockstep with our under-informed but firmly held opinions.  I’ve argued that we should elect public officials whose thought processes we respect and that we should value their decisions when they use the depth of information available to them to move in new and unexpected directions.  But my opinion on this point is underrepresented within the electorate.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t support democracy.  It has its shortcomings, most of which are the result of our own shortcomings, but it’s still the best option we have.  As Winston Churchill said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”  (Just to make sure that everyone understood his perspective, Churchill also said “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”)

And so we muddle along in our democracy, moving slowly toward urbanism.  And being heartened when public officials with disparate belief systems find common ground in urbanist logic.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net

Would Regional Olympics be a Better Urbanist Solution?

The Olympics closing ceremonies are behind us and the City of Sochi is beginning to ponder what to do with $51 billion of streets and stadiums that were built for a now concluded two-week party.

It won’t be an easy task for Sochi.  A report by a South Carolina television station provides a short summary of the fate of past Olympic host cities.  There are a few bright spots, but the overall picture is bleak.

I’ve often suggested that a rotation of Olympic sites might be a reasonable way to control costs and to minimize the civic disruptions of massive Olympic construction.  (The British Open uses a similar “rota” of golf courses and has been an admirable success for more than 150 years.)  Perhaps the four most recent Summer and Winter Olympic host cities, with one site added for geographical balance, could be the start of a conversation.  The quadrennial Olympics would return to each host city every twenty years.

But even that concept seems troublesome.  Perhaps sufficient uses can be found for the athletic venues in the twenty years between Olympics, but what about the other Olympic necessities?  How does one build an Olympic Village that can sit idle for two decades without becoming a wound in the civic fabric?  If the Olympic Villages are converted to housing, how does the host city evict the tenants for two weeks during the Olympics?  Or must new Olympic Villages be built every twenty years, stretching the urban area?

Writing in Next City, Will Doig suggests a possible solution, allowing Olympics to become more regional. 

Olympics have always been somewhat regional, particularly the Winter Games.  The alpine venues for the Sochi Olympics were about an hour from Sochi.  The same hour of travel applied to Vancouver.

But the Summer Games can also have a geographical spread.  I attended the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.  The first event I watched was a soccer game at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto.  The next was rowing on Lake Casitas in Ventura County.  I was well into my Olympic experience before I even reached the Los Angeles Basin.  And once there, I watch water polo in Malibu and basketball in Inglewood.  The only Olympic sport I watched in the City of Los Angeles was baseball at Dodger Stadium.

But Doig takes the concept to a higher level.  Among other ideas, he suggests a possible Ohio Olympics that would include events in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland.

I find great merit in the concept.  The disruption to each of the partial host cities would be reduced.  It would be a shame to lose the concept of the single “Olympic Plaza” in the host city where all can mingle, but sacrificing that element to the long-term health of our cities seems a reasonable tradeoff.

So, what might a Northern California regional Olympics look like?  And could the North Bay participate?

To begin, I would expect to have major pods of activities in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento.

The Opening and Closing Ceremonies could be at the new stadium in Santa Clara.

The last time San Francisco looked at an Olympic bid, the proposed rowing venue was Lake Natomas on the far side of Sacramento.  Perhaps gymnastics could be put in whatever basketball arena eventually results in Sacramento.

San Jose was a long-time site of a professional tennis tournament.  It could presumably host the tennis competition.

And so on throughout Northern California.

And what about the North Bay?  Could we fill a gap?  If memory serves, the Olympics include road racing and velodrome racing for bicycles.  I suspect that a fine road course could be found through the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma Counties.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if Napa could also make good use of a velodrome, perhaps complementing the wine and food attractions of the region.

And I would certain hope that a marathon course could begin in southern Marin County before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

A regional Olympics isn’t going to happen for awhile yet, probably not in my lifetime.  The current model still has too many potential host cities happy to willfully harm themselves for two weeks of glory.  But the regional model makes a lot of sense as fiscal and urbanist realities become more evident.  And it’s always good to have a new model to replace a failed model.

Meanwhile, it’s onward to Rio 2016.  Today is the official start of the “Will Rio be ready?”and “Can Brazil financially survive the Olympics?” worry fest.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Venice 2007: Venturing Inland

For a holiday respite, I devoted my Friday posts through December and January to recounting my trip to Venice in 2007. Using photos and notes from the trip, I highlighted the urbanist issues of day-to-day life in perhaps the most famous car-free city in the world.

However, I reached the end of January without exhausting the stories and insights that I’d hoped to share.  With Venice being too fascinating to leave behind with tales untold, I decided to continue with the occasional Friday post into February and beyond.  Today will be the first of those extra posts.

During my time in Venice, I took several day trips to other Italian cities.  The first outing was to Padua, only thirty miles from Venice, but far enough to become familiar with railway travel in Italy.

(Language note: The outing to Padua also alerted me to another of my language faux pas, much like “Pompa”.  The train station in Venice was called “Ferrovia”, which had a romantic sound to my ear.  I liked the feeling of “Ferrovia” on my tongue.  And then I realized that the train station in Padua was also called “Ferrovia”.  Upon cogitation, the reason became evident.   “Ferro” is the Latin root for iron and “via” is the Latin root for road.  “Ferrovia” wasn’t the cool name of the Venetian train station; it was the generic Italian word for train station.  Oops.)

Padua was a great daytrip, but not because of any one aspect of the city.  Padua has a number of points to recommend it.  The sprawling and lively outdoor market.  The sense of history in standing before the University of Po where Galileo worked on his theories of planetary motion.  The antiquity of the formerly Roman city of Patavium.  The Donatello equestrian statue that is considered a milestone of the Renaissance.  All of these add to the Paduan experience.

But ultimately what mattered was that Padua was an accessible city, fully walkable and enjoyable from the train station.  It was a walkable urban place that opened itself to the traveler in a way that too few American cities do.

As was true of most of my Venetian adventure, my travels eschewed rubber-tired vehicles.   Vaporetto along the Grand Canal to train to electric single-track street car into downtown Padua.  It was a fine way to travel.

Within Padua, the outdoor market is reportedly the second-best outdoor market in Italy, made even more memorable by the architecture surrounding it, including the Palazzo della Ragione, the 13th century town meeting hall.  With interior dimensions of 235 feet by 85 feet and no interior columns, the Palazzo remains an impressive engineering effort, even 700 years after its original construction.

The light inside the Palazzo was faint for photography, but I took my favorite photo of the day in the frescoed colonnade outside.  I’ve always been a sucker for a good colonnade

Moving away from the downtown core I found the Duomo for Padua.  It’s a handsome building, but plays second fiddle to the real star of Padua, the Basilica of St. Anthony.  The Basilica is a major pilgrimage destination for Catholics, many of whom want to see the tongue of the well-spoken St. Anthony that displayed in the Reliquaries.  The Reliquaries were closed when I was there, so I missed the tongue.

 

The horse statue in front of the Basilica is interesting.  It may look like town statues everywhere, but when it was cast by Donatello, it was the first life-size bronze equine casting in over 1000 years.  One more sign that the Renaissance was truly underway.

Lastly, I visited the cloisters of the Basilica.  As always, I can’t resist a good colonnade.

Becoming foot-weary, I headed back to the train station (ferrovia!) and thence Venice, thrilled by the amble around Padua and the quiet joy of a walkable town.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Cities Aren’t Quiet Places

I made my first trip into Manhattan in 2008.  It was an overnight stop in the middle of a once-over-lightly tour of east coast metropolises, traveling from Boston to New York to Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. and then back north again.

I was traveling alone, by train and with one small bag, so my lodging needs were simple.  For my night in Manhattan, I found a barebones hotel, only a block from my arrival point of Penn Station.  The hotel lacked frills, but seemed safe enough and was light on my wallet.  (I believe I was the only native English speaker among the guests, with Europeans being more tolerant of luxury-free accommodations.)

My room was 6-feet-by-8-feet, with the bed running in the short direction, making sleep challenging for my 6-foot-4-inch frame.  But the bigger threat to my slumber was the location of the window on the second floor, only feet from the continual pedestrian chatter, exhaust noise, and car horns of 8th Avenue.

The room had a window-mounted air conditioner that could, in theory, have allowed me to close the windows on the sultry New York evening, muffling the street noise.  But the air conditioner sounded like a badly-tuned ’58 Oldsmobile, so I soon decided that the light nighttime breeze and the street din was preferable.

It wasn’t the best sleep of my life, but it wasn’t bad.  There was something mildly exhilarating, but also comforting, in the shouts of 3am flower deliveries and in the clamor of a traffic jam at daybreak.

That night came to mind during a pair of recent public hearings.  A freeway- and railroad-adjacent mixed-use project within a downtown specific plan was under consideration.  Several members of the hearing bodies questioned whether the noise would be acceptable for residents.

To me, the question verged on nonsensical.  Cities aren’t quiet places.  If we’re going to forbid housing in noisy locations, we might as well bury urbanism.

I’m not arguing that we should ignore noise, but we need to have a common sense approach to it.

My list of noise regulatory standards would include the following:

·         ·         It’s reasonable to ban housing where noise would truly be excessive, such as adjoining a steel plant.  If the noise is truly beyond tolerance, there’s a risk that housing would decline in value, becoming a drag on the cities by requiring services inconsistent with the tax base.

 
·         It’s reasonable to look into the future for possible noise increases.  The aggregate plant next door may be idle today, but it might go back into operation next year.  It’s only fair that everyone understand the possibilities.
 
·         Home buyers should be alerted to noise expectations.  At the same time, they should be notified that they’re not allowed to complain at a later date about noise of which they were informed.  Many cities already have standards such as these.  This standard would be parallel to the airport or “right to farm” rules in many places.
 
·         Builders should be carefully monitored to ensure compliance with noise-related building standards.  Construction techniques are available to reduce interior noise, but they’re useless if not correctly installed.  Perhaps an incremental building permit fee should be charged for noisier settings, ensuring that cities have inspection funds adequate to inspect the noise measures.

Outside of these measures, I’m perfectly fine with a caveat emptor approach to noise.  If someone chooses to live in an urban setting with more noise, they should have that option.  And I may end up as their neighbor.  It’d probably be quieter than an open second-story window above 8th Avenue in Manhattan.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Spring is Coming, Let’s Go Play

I had the good fortune to live my childhood in climates where outside play was available year-round.  If it wasn’t actually raining, there was generally some outside activity in which to engage.  And even when it was raining, there might still be the occasional mud puddle.

Nonetheless, the approach of spring was still welcome because opportunities for outside fun became more prevalent.  More playmates would come outside and the range of possible wandering became broader.  Plus, there are few things as welcome as the first tadpole of spring, the first thwok of a baseball into a newly oiled glove, or the first cannonball into the neighborhood pool.

Which is why I’m a little sad each spring when I see very few children playing in my neighborhood.  As Sarah Goodyear of Atlantic Cities writes, play can be a key element of building better adults.  Unstructured play, away from the influence of adult coaches or monitors, can provide lessons about personal interaction and conflict resolution that can be learned in few other places.  In the right setting, play is a chance to practice being an adult, but with a safety net.

As Michael Lewyn writes in Planetizen, drivable suburbia, although often perceived as a place where play is possible, has generally failed in that role.  Instead, it’s the urban settings that accommodate children where outside activities are more likely.  And how does Lewyn suggest that adults encourage this play without stifling the beneficial aspects of childhood play?  By walking the streets, demonstrating by their presence that sidewalks are a safe environment which children and their parents shouldn’t fear.

And so, as spring approaches, think about taking walks around your neighborhoods, chatting with the neighbors you haven’t seen since fall and sending the implicit message that the sidewalks are a safe place for kids to play.  You may do more good than you know.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Organic Versus Mass-Produced Urbanism

While wandering the internet, pondering the differences between Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014, I came across an article in the New Yorker about construction fraud.

Author James Surowiecki, specifically looking at the $51 billion spent to turn Sochi into an Olympic host city, argues that the reported financial misdoings were to be expected.  He contends that, by its nature, construction is prone to fraud, bribery, and other illegal activities.

He puts forth three reasons to support his thesis.  First, major construction is often done by government.  Second, the amounts of money spent are is often huge, making a bribe only a rounding error in the overall construction costs.  Third, many major construction projects are unique, so cost guidelines and past construction cost histories are of limited value.

I disagree with his first point, having watched corporations be equally inept at construction management as governments, but concur with his latter two.

Nor is the risk of illegal activity limited to actual construction itself.  As a former New Jersey mayor describes, the scarcity of land and the nature of the land development approval process often opens the door to bribes and other misconduct. 

Obviously, financial misconduct isn’t good for any kind of land use, whether walkable urban or drivable suburban, because it adds costs that must be absorbed by the ultimate user.  But are there particular implications for urbanism?

Previously, I’ve argued that urbanism is better done in small chunks, something I’ll call “organic urbanism”, than in large expanses, which I’ll call “mass-produced urbanism”.

My reason was organic urbanism, because each new, smaller project can learn from the experience of earlier projects, is more likely to find market sweet spots.  It also creates the fine-grain that Jane Jacobs argues is necessary for later regeneration.  In comparison, mass-produced urbanism doesn’t take advantage of marketplace trial-and-error.  Also, it wears out uniformly, inhibiting incremental reinvestment.

Following on the logic put forth by Surowiecki , it would seem the organic, small-scale urbanism is less prone to financial misdeeds.  The reasons that he noted for fraud scale sharply with project size.  If tens, or even hundreds, of small projects were built instead of a single mega-project, there would be more opportunities for honest, untainted projects to be completed, setting fair marketplace values.  Furthermore, a small project is more easily understood by a single project manager, with less confusion arising from a babble of construction committees.

So, do the benefits of smaller projects mean that we encourage small projects?  No, it’s pretty much the reverse.  Looking as an example at land use approval costs, large projects cost more to entitle than small projects, but the costs don’t scale linearly with the project size.  If a 100-acre site costs ten times more to entitle than a one-acre, the entitlement cost per acre or per residential unit is one-tenth for the larger project, which is a sizable market advantage.

I understand why the entitlement of larger projects cost less on a unit basis.  There are fixed costs to a project approval, especially as the process is governed by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and smaller projects have fewer units over which to divide those fixed costs.

But we still end up with a conundrum.  Smaller, organic urbanist projects are less prone to construction fraud and lead in the long-term to healthier, regenerating cities, but we continue to maintain an entitlement system that offer advantages to larger, mass-produced projects.

I don’t have an easy solution to propose.  But it’s a situation that needs a solution.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Urbanism 7, National Football League 0

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the rave reviews garnered by urbanism as a result of Superbowl XLVI in Indianapolis.  The game was played at a stadium within the downtown core, with many fans able to walk from their hotels.

I remain more of a World Series person, but certainly noted that the most recent Superbowl also attracted urbanist attention, although not as uniformly positive.  (Also, it was Seattle where I first fell in love with an urban setting, so writing this post is my way of saluting a city of which I hold fond memories.)

The first Superbowl story was the one out of New Jersey about the transit overloading that occurred after the game.  The initial versions of the story criticized local transit authorities for not having sufficient capacity available.  Having stood on a few BART platforms after Cal football and A’s baseball games, I was dismissive of the comments.  After all, it isn’t possible for a system sized for weekday commuter loads to cover special events.

But then the full story emerged.  The NFL had advised the transit agency of how many riders to expect.  The NFL folks assumed that as many people as possible would drive cars or ride charter buses, with only the remnant riding rail transit.

To no surprise of those who have watching the slowly growing love affair between the public, especially the younger segments, and transit, the modal split didn’t work out that way.  Many folks decided to take the train, more than twice as many as the NFL had expected.

Although not fun to the folks jammed on the platform, it was great demonstration of how a growing number of people expect to get around, even if the NFL was clueless.  After all, if the NFL is going to remain thirty years behind the times on head injuries, it’d probably be unrealistic to expect them to anticipate urbanism.

Switching the scene to Seattle, the post-championship parade offered an opportunity for downtown Seattle to shine.  It succeeded admirably.  Families thronged into the city, resulting in huge absentee rates in suburban school districts.  And many used the multiple transit systems available, keeping the city functioning under extreme conditions.

The Atlantic Cities article about the parade is something of a puff piece.  Similar comments could have been made about many championship parades, including the recent World Series parades in San Francisco.  But the author was presumably intoxicated by the joy of sharing a jubilant sidewalk with fellow city dwellers.  And that kind of intoxication is perfectly forgivable.

Just wait until the Mariners win their first title.  That will truly be a party.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Allocating Sidewalk Width

For the past few months, Petaluma Urban Chat has been reading “The Smart Growth Manual” by Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon.  Unfortunately, our discussions were disjointed because we had several speakers scheduled over the same period.

It was a shame that we couldn’t focus more effectively because the book is worth the effort.  With tight and cogent one-page descriptions of 138 key elements of urbanism, it’s a marvel of editing.  It’s a book to which one can and should return frequently for quick refreshers.

It’s also hard to find a single page which doesn’t trigger insights about our built environment.

To give an example, Page 9.6 addresses sidewalk obstructions.  It proposes that every sidewalk have four distinct zones, a curb zone where bumpers overhang or car doors open, a furnishing zone where street trees, utility boxes, streetlights, and trash cans are sited, a walking zone that is be kept clear for pedestrians, and a frontage zone for benches or sidewalk dining.  It’s a commonsensical approach and, the authors do a fine job of putting common sense in a clear, concise language.

One would hope that everyone would agree with the approach.  But look at the sidewalk in the photo.  It’s a mess.

To begin, the columns for the overhang were angled inward into what should have been the walking zone.  It’s unclear why they were angled, perhaps it was an architect who valued quirky aesthetics over walkability.  But vertical columns would have put the footings in the furnishings zone, where they belonged.

Given the encroachment into the walking zone, the restaurant owner made a reasonable adjustment, putting a table in what should been the furnishing zone.  But on the far side of the awning, further tables return to what should been the frontage zone.

With the walking zone weaving back and forth, it makes pedestrians feel like broken field runners.  One of the four essential elements of walkability noted by Speck in his “Walkable City” is comfort, a sense of being in the right place and belonging there.  This zigzag walking zone surely undermines the comfort of the sidewalk.

And then there’s the bench.  Rather than being in frontage zone where sitters could look for arriving friends, it’s flipped around and placed in the furnishing zone, where sitters can only look at the diners in the restaurant and wonder if a parking car is about to jump the curb and hit them from behind.

I know that it’s only a shopping center and that a bad sidewalk allocation won’t have much impact on whether people shop there, but walkability is about getting the details right.  This is a setting in which the details are most assuredly gotten wrong.

Schedule Notes

Petaluma Urban Chat:  The next Petaluma Urban Chat meeting will be tomorrow evening, Tuesday, February 11.  We’ll convene at 5:30 at the Aqus Cafe at 2nd and H Streets.  The discussion will begin at 5:45.

With our reading of “The Smart Growth Manual’ at an end, we’ll be selecting our next book.  If you enjoy this blog, please join us.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

New Olympic Event: Toderian versus Putin

Another Olympics is underway.  For the next two weeks, we’ll be reintroduced to sports that will seem compelling while the competition is underway, only to then be forgotten for another four years.

But there is one sport that has held my interest for a long time and will continue to do so.  That is the challenge of reconciling Olympic facilities with the communities in which they’re located.

Finding a nexus between urbanism and the Olympics may seem a stretch, but over the past few decades city building has become a key selling point for many Olympic bids.  From Barcelona in 1992 to Sydney in 2000 to London in 2012, the prospect of leaving the host city a stronger and more functional place has been a factor in securing the Olympic bid and in convincing the citizens to accept the financial costs.

But blending urbanism and the Olympics is neither an easy nor a quick task.  Although it required two decades for the rips in the civic fabric to heal, Barcelona is now considered perhaps the most successful Olympics at advancing the host city.  The Sydney Games provided some civic benefits, but the location of the venues at the urban fringe limited the value of those benefits.  And it is far too early to judge how the aggressive city building aspects of the London Games will succeed.

Meanwhile, the Beijing Games of 2008, with their focus on dramatic architecture with little thought to the long-time use of the buildings, may be the greatest failure yet of Olympic city building.

Looking back at my archives, I find to my surprise that I wrote five posts around the time of the London games about the Olympics and urbanism.  In reviewing them, I find that they stand up well, mostly because I found great articles to link.  I wrote about the Olympics and the city, Olympic bidding, and three posts (1, 2, and 3) looking back at the London experience and the Olympics in general.

But all the Olympics noted above were Summer Games.  And there is a fundamental difference between Summer Games and Winter Games.  The Summer Games are the far bigger endeavor, but the sports don’t have geographic limitations and can usually be located in the larger cities that typically locate at lower elevations.  In larger metropolitan areas, Beijing’s failure notwithstanding, there are more opportunities to retask Olympic buildings to community uses.

The Winter Games, which require convenient access to an alpine area, offer a more restricted pool of civic candidates.  And the smaller size of many cities in the pool makes the assimilation of the Olympic structures more problematic.

Nowhere is this challenge more clearly delineated than between Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014.  Vancouver, favorably located close to world-class Whistler ski area and with a metropolitan population of 2.3 million was able to mount the Olympics for a cost of $7 billion and was able to absorb the Olympic facilities with only a few hiccups.

In comparison, Sochi also had good alpine proximity but had a population of only 350,000, barely larger than Santa Rosa here in the North Bay.  Over $51 billion was required to ready Sochi for the Olympics.

Nor are cost and population are the only differences.  Vancouver committed to doing the Olympics on a financially frugal basis.  Existing settings were touched up where possible.  And every newly constructed structure had a post-Olympic use determined before the first shovel of dirt was turned.  Brent Toderian, who was the Vancouver Planning Director during the Olympic planning and who has often been cited in this blog, is perhaps the best spokesman for the Vancouver approach.

In an article published in the days after the London Olympics, Toderian lays out much of what made the Vancouver effort successful.  He provides a roadmap to civic involvement, creative re-use, and planning processes that should have informed all future Olympic efforts.

But the roadmap described by Toderian seems to have been misplaced by Vladimir Putin, who instead decided to use the Sochi Olympics to showplace the return of a post-Soviet Russia to the world stage.  If his goal was to show grandiose but unevenly executed visions, cronyism, and missed deadlines, he succeeded brilliantly.  And at only seven times the cost of the Vancouver Games.

This photo survey of seven years of site development illustrates the mixture of success and misdirection.  Overall, the sense is that the Sochi facilities are more likely to go the way of the Beijing Bird’s Nest than of the Vancouver Convention Center, pictured above, which was a key Olympic venue and remains in daily use.

And early stories coming out of Sochi about the incompleteness of many new facilities further illustrates the Sochi missteps.  As Katie Baker of Grantland writes, many of the early arrivals in Sochi are reporters who are accustomed to the occasional rough edge.  But as spectators begin arriving, expecting a first-class Olympic experience and finding some of the Sochi shortfalls, the spotlight may be further shifted away from the athletes.

Overall, the conclusion is unavoidable that Vancouver played the game well, further cementing the city in the firmament of urbanism.  Sochi is nowhere close.

I don’t expect to approach the five posts that I wrote about the London Games, but I will return to the Sochi Games at least one more time.  And, my concerns about the city planning aspects notwithstanding, I also expect to enjoy much of the competition.  Who’s willing to provide my quadrennial reintroduction to curling?

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Embracing Interesting Times

Many years ago, I belonged to a golf club in a Central Oregon town.  The course had a solid pedigree, with the layout for the first nine holes having been done by famed Northwest golf architect Chandler Egan.

But the course hadn’t been maintained well over the years.  The grass had been mowed and the bunkers raked, but the long-term needs had been neglected.  As is typical of golf courses, even in semi-arid places like Central Oregon, trees had grown, altering the strategic elements planned by the architect.  What had once been a tight driving hole became a hole for which the only reasonable play was a long iron off the tee.  The risk-reward balance had toppled sideways.

Most of the membership understood that the course had slipped.  The board made plans for a major remodel, one that would restrict golf play for more than a year.  As nine holes and then the other nine holes were remodeled, the members could only play the open nine, plus a few makeshift holes that the maintenance staff would create in waste areas.

Most of the membership accepted the trade-off, finding the prospects of a better course to be worth more than the loss of a golf season.

But there were some, largely the elderly members of the club, who objected.  They argued that, at their age, they had only a few golf seasons remaining to them.  They contended that it would be more fair to wait until their generation was gone before undertaking the remodel.

Even setting aside the fact that this was the generation largely responsible for the decline of the course, it was a flawed argument.  If the board waited until the current geriatric golfers had passed away, there would be a new group of seniors making the same argument.  There would never be a right time to upgrade the golf course.

Although I was among the younger members, I could empathize with the older golfers.  I was the engineer for a new golf course being planned on the other side of town.  Within a couple of years, I’d be moving my membership to the new course.  Much like the older golfers, I’d lose a golf season in exchange for only a short time of play on the remodeled course.

Nonetheless, I believed in the concept of the greater good.  The golf course remodel was needed for the coming generations of club members, whose benefits outweighed the inconveniences to a few of us.  Along with the majority, I voted for the remodel and the work began.

This story offers an urbanism lesson.  Urbanist development often disrupts the pattern and rhythm of existing neighborhoods.  Many neighbors object to that disruption, arguing that they deserve to live out their lifetimes with their neighborhoods as they’ve known and loved them.  The neighbors of the Maria Drive Apartments in Petaluma, a project I described in my previous post, are only the most recent among of many examples.

Those who are discomfited by the approach of urbanism may offer arguments about privacy, protecting existing businesses, traffic, or noise, often making valid points, but the underlying argument for many is a simple “Leave us alone.”

As I was with the senior golfers at the Oregon golf club, I can sympathize.  But the concept of the greater good still applies.  Sometimes we must accept changes to our comfortable status quo for the good of the community.

This isn’t to say that every mixed-use or higher density project is a good idea.  Some are clunkers.  But, for the long-term good of the community, it’s necessary to be open to the idea that sometimes neighborhoods must be disrupted.

This brings me around to the phrase “May you live in interesting times.”  (This phrase is often, although probably inaccurately, known as the Chinese curse.)  The underlying assumption behind the curse is that most of us would prefer to live in placid times.

At least for myself, I don’t believe that the assumption is true.  I don’t wish to live through a major war.  But neither would I want to live in a completely uneventful time.  I’m happy to be alive as we come to grips with the how our land use patterns must change to protect the climate and to better live within our means.  And I’m thrilled to be taking part in the conversation.

I embrace interesting times, as long as they aren’t too interesting.  I hope that others will come to feel the same, even if the nature of those interesting times is the conversion of a long-time neighborhood into a more urbanist configuration.

Clarifications

My last post, on the proposed Maria Drive Apartments, ran longer than I had expected.  In my rush to bring it to a belated conclusion, I omitted a couple of points that I had intended to make.  I’ll make the tardy insertions below.

Unit Count:  A primary objection by the neighbors to the project as currently proposed is the unit count.  They believed that 144 units would bring too much traffic to the existing streets.  The City Council directed the developer to consider a lesser unit count.

When the developer returned to the Council, he complied with other Council requests, but argued that 144 units were essential for financial feasibility.  The Council accepted his response and approved the project at 144 units.

Against that backdrop, I’ll argue that the unit count should have been greater than 144.  Subject to a detailed site plan, I’ll suggest that a density of 40 to 50 units per acre is reasonable for the site.  For a 5.85 acre parcel, that results in a unit count of 225 to 300.  Let’s call it 250.  And added to that number would be a few retail or office spaces.

However, 250 would be an ultimate unit count, including the redevelopment of parking fields that may become superfluous over time.  At initial construction, again subject to review of a detailed site plan, perhaps 160 to 175 units would be appropriate.  And for reasons noted below, the traffic generation for these units might be similar to the traffic projected for the 144 units now proposed.

There are at least two reasons that a greater unit count might be necessary.  First, walkable urban development works best when the uses are sufficiently close that walking is more convenient than driving.  To reach that threshold, density is required.  Second, a more urbanist configuration would likely be more expensive for the developer.  Additional units may be required for financial feasibility.

Unit size: When I suggest a more urbanist focus for the site, one of my targets is the owner description of the project as “luxury apartments”.  I understand why developers prefer to constrain projects within a narrow demographic band.  It simplifies construction and leasing.

But the sorting that results from the narrow demographic target has at least two undesirable effects.  First, it reinforces the “us versus them” mentality that already pervades too much of our world.  Second, it removes some of the fine-grain that Jane Jacobs argued was necessary for periodic regeneration.

Therefore, I’d prefer that the Maria Drive apartments include a broader range of housing options, perhaps even including a few micro-units.  As a benefit to the neighbors, the smaller units, especially the micro-units, would generate less traffic than the larger units.

If we create a place where attorneys use the same dumpsters as gardeners and where the children of accountants play with the children of laborers, we just might be building a better world.

Update: As anticipated, on Monday evening the Petaluma City Council gave the continued go-ahead to the project as currently proposed.  Four Councilmembers endorsed the project at the currently proposed density.  Two others suggested that a lower density would be preferred.  None argued for a more intense, urbanist configuration.  The lesson of embracing interesting times is still underway.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Gradations of Smart

We often think of the world as binary.  Black versus white.  Liberals versus conservatives.  American League versus National League.  Good versus evil.  Cal versus Stanford.  It’s a convenient way to organize our thinking.  But world usually isn’t nearly as binary as our brains would like to make it.

Land use also falls into the seductive trap.  The distinction between “drivable suburban” and “walkable urban” is a convenient dichotomy and certainly one that I use.  But not all drivable suburban developments are equally car-dependent or harmful to municipal bottom lines.  Nor do all urbanist projects take advantage of their urbanist potential to the same extent.

A currently proposed project in Petaluma illustrates the point.

The Maria Drive Apartments would occupy a wedge-shaped parcel of land on the east side of Petaluma.  The site is located within easy walking distance of the Washington Square shopping center and the McDowell Elementary School.  It’s also close to a Petaluma Transit bus transfer station from which buses run to all points of the city, including the regional rail station now under construction.

The site is currently occupied by aging office buildings, mostly of a single story, sparsely populated by tenants largely but not exclusively in the medical field.  The previous master plan seemed to have anticipated six buildings, but only four were built.  The buildings and pavement are now in steep decline, nearing the end of their design lives.  The project never reached full fruition and is now failing.  Replacement seems appropriate and reasonable.

The proposed apartment development would raze the existing buildings and replace them with 144 units of luxury apartments.

 

In its initial project review, the City Council asked for a reduction in the number of units and an alternative

architecture with less apparent mass.  Although claiming that any reduction in unit count would undermine financial feasibility, the developer returned to the City Council with new architecture last week.  The Council was generally pleased and directed staff, on a split vote, to proceed with the next step toward entitlement.

During the public hearing before the Council decision, several speakers who supported the project described it as “smart growth”.  (This is where I insert my standard disclaimer about preferring “walkable urban” to “smart growth” because I prefer not to slander as “dumb” those who haven’t yet seen the light of urbanism.  But the battle seems lost and I’m fighting a rear-guard action.)

I agree with the speakers who described the current proposal as smart growth.  Especially in comparison to the current failing office project, the apartment project is brilliant.  Putting more residents within walking distance of daily destinations while reducing pressure on the Urban Growth Boundary is always good.  But is the site plan as smart as it could be?

A hint comes in one of the actions required by the City for the project to proceed.  The General Plan must be modified to change the designation of the site from Mixed Use to High Density Residential.  Is this a necessary change?  Could the site support a mixed-use component?

I don’t see any reason why not.  Given the changing nature of retail, the site wouldn’t support a large amount of retail, but a convenience grocer and small deli would likely find a market.  Furthermore, small office spaces or live-work units might retain some of the current site tenants.

Also, I like to see a redesign to provide a parking field that could be redeveloped into more multi-story buildings in the future if the demand for parking decreases and the demand for housing increasing.  (The Petaluma Station Area includes a similar concept.)

Next, I’d suggest that the access within the site become city streets rather than private drive aisles.  I know that the increased maintenance would be a new burden on the municipal budget, but the new property value should be more than adequate to support the additional infrastructure.  Plus, the public streets would encourage additional use of the site by the public and perhaps allow the Jane Jacobs fine-grain pattern that would support periodical regeneration.

Lastly, I would ask for the new street grid to have a stub pointed toward the back of Washington Square.  It may seem puzzling to make provision for access into the service area of a shopping center, but the world of retail is changing.  I drove through Washington Square yesterday and noted three or four vacancies without counting the empty building that would be razed if a proposed gas station can secure approvals.  And with new retail developments opening elsewhere in the community, filling open spaces won’t be easy.

I can conceive of a future when a portion of Washington Square is demolished and one of the drive aisles within the shopping center converted to a public street that would connect with a public street on the Maria Drive site.  This new link would provide convenient pedestrian access to the remaining elements of Washington Square for all who live along the segment of Maria Drive, such as expanding Addison Ranch apartment complex.

At the bottom line, what’s wrong with the current proposal?  It’s not smart enough.  Except for better architecture and a better site, it’s not really very different from the first apartment I rented in my post-college days.  And that was 1976.

If I may stretch the smart analogy for a moment, the current proposal has an I.Q of 110.  Nicely above average and securely in the range of “smart”, but not nearly as good as possible.  In many parts of Petaluma, a site plan I.Q. of 110 would represent a fine step forward.  But this site can support more “smartness”.  It needs a site plan with an I.Q of 135.  The site is too good not to reach for a higher level of urbanism.

If I’d had a vote, I would have voted against the proposal, with a suggestion to the developer to seek a more urbanist plan.  It wasn’t a decision I would have reached lightly.  And I’m well aware that not a single Planning Commissioner or City Councilmember reached this same decision.  I’m fine with that.  I believe that the Petaluma of 2050 would be a better place with the type of site plan that I propose.  On this issue, I care more about those future residents than about compromising with current thinking.

As consideration is made of new projects elsewhere in the North Bay, I hope the question that is asked is not “Is it smart?”, but “It is as smart as it might be?”

Schedule Notes

Maria Drive Apartments: The apartment project described above will return to the City Council agenda this evening, Monday, February 3.  The meeting convenes at 7:00pm in the Petaluma City Hall.  However, the climactic meeting appeared to have been this past Monday.  Tonight, it seems like that the Council is prepared to move the project ahead, although still not unanimously.

River Front: On the same City Council agenda this evening is the River Front project, a mixed-use project bounded by Lakeville Street, Highway 101, and the Petaluma River.  It’s a project on which I’ve previously offered a few thoughts.  In general, I like the concept.  It has a central green adjoined by a hotel, office buildings, and retail space.  Multi-family and small lot single-family housing is further from the green, but still within walking distance.

The concept is a fine application of urbanist thinking, adjusted to fit real world site constraints.  My only concern is that the site is isolated.  By not being adjoined by other mixed-use settings, many of the daily tasks of life must still be accomplished by car, undermining the intent of walkable urban development.  However, that’s a typical growing pain of urbanism.  One project must lead the way.  As other, similar projects follow on adjoining lands, a more complete urban community will evolve.

The City Council will be considering the Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR).  It seems likely a few concerns will be raised, but probably nothing that can’t be addressed as the EIR is finalized.

Petaluma Urban Chat:  Another meeting of Petaluma Urban Chat is approaching.  We’ll meet on Tuesday, February 11.  We’ll convene at 5:30 at the Aqus Cafe at 2nd and H Streets.  The discussion will begin at 5:45.

Last month, we concluded our discussion of “The Smart Growth Manual”.  Because of a number of speakers during the latter half of 2013, our discussion of the book was rather disjointed, which is a shame because it has much information to impart.  However, it will form the basis for several posts as 2014 proceeds.

At Urban Chat next week, I propose that we select a new urbanism book for reading and discussion in the coming months.  If you enjoy this blog, please join us on the 11th.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)