Pres. Obama: "Sprawl is Dead"

Said today at an appearance in Ft. Myers, FL:

http://cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-15317

"We get a D in infrastructure all across the country. We saw what happened in Minneapolis. A bridge collapsed and resulted in tragedy. And not only do we need to rebuild our roads and our bridges, our dams and our levees, but we also have to plan for the future...this is the same example of turning crises into opportunity. This should be a wake up call for us. You go to Shanghai, China right now and they've go high speed rail that puts our railroads to shame. They've got ports that are state of the art. Their airports, compared the airports we've got, you go to Beijing Airport and you compare that to Miami Airport (laughter, scattered applause). Now look, this is America (applause). We always had the best infrastructure, we were always willing to invest in the future. Governor Chris mentioned Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, in the midst of all this danger and peril, what did he do? He helped move the intercontinental railroad. He helped to start land grant colleges. He understood that even when you are in the middle of crises, youve got to keep your eye on the future, so transportation, when it is not fixing our old transportation systems, it is also imagining new transportation systems. Id like to see high speed rail, where it can be constructed. Id like for us to invest in mass transit, because potentially thats energy efficient. I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally. The days when we were just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, that that is not a smart way to design communities, so that we should be using this money to help spur this kind of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation, thatll make a big difference."

Yet Another Sign of the Changing of the Guard?

Obama and basketball, not quite the global game, but close. Definitely, the urban game of the people.

Presidents have often played sports. Teddy Roosevelt liked to ride in Rock Creek Park and exercise vigorously. Eisenhower played golf. Richard Nixon bowled (and had an alley installed at Camp David). Jimmy Carter famously jogged. Clinton jogged and played golf but never tried basketball again as president. George W. Bush rode his mountain bike and had a daily workout. But these were all relatively solitary (or perhaps elitist) sports. Basketball is more social -- an urban game -- and it has become a truly global sport. For years, Michael Jordan, not the U.S. president, was the best known American in China. World class players from all over the globe try to make the NBA. Having a U.S. president who is a serious hoopster is great public diplomacy -- but the man needs a decent place to play. The current outdoor court on the White House grounds doesn't cut it.

Monday Link Impound

Is it just me or is the current debate over the stimulus dominated on both sides by a return to a previous status quo, either the Bush years pre-complete collapse of the illusory house of cards, or as Kunstler put it today:

hallucinated "wealth" rushing into the cosmic worm-hole of oblivion

...or the 90s Clinton-era as some sort of perceived Valhalla. Neither of which is possible and any attempts at returning to such a place (which as it seems to me, the infusion of cash seems intent on maintaining that status quo) will only exacerbate the problems. In poor times, you need to be smarter than ever about where spending goes.
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On to today's links:

A most excellent pictorial case study from Vancouver showing the disastrous effects of a clover leaf/highway and the positive efforts to return it towards a more context-sensitive solution:
One Last Loop

Starting to get scared that I'm agreeing with David Brooks more and more or maybe it is a good thing that there is a growing voice for sanity:

The committee staff took the kernel of President Obama’s vision — infrastructure programs to create jobs — and surrounded it with an undisciplined sprawl of health, education, entitlement and other spending. There’s money for nurse training, Medicare, Head Start, boatyard support, home weatherization and so on. Eleven of the programs in the bill account for the vast majority of the actual job creation. The rest may be worthy or not, but they have little to do with stimulus. The total package is so diffuse, it costs $223,000 to create a single job.

I admire Obama's willingness to bring everyone under his umbrella, but this is what happens when they're nothing but dinosaurs, relics with their mind on the past system that "worked"...for a while.

TreeHugger on the holocaust occuring every year on the World's highways. And no, I'm not hyperbolizing:

In one year, it is estimated that 1.2 million people are killed in auto-related accidents around the globe. That equates to slightly more than 3200 traffic deaths EVERY DAY. These mostly preventable deaths, in casualties alone, exponentially surpasses the number of casualties from higher profile, more newsworthy, less common tragedies. Yet, the horrific daily toll receives little attention by political leaders and the media .

["The driver must've been huge. Notice the seared fat that burned into the seat. Very modern art." ~ movie quote.]

And now for the email FWD that I received today, didn't laugh at it, but simply knowingly nodded:

Subject: Important info on the Stimulus Payment


"This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format."

"Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
"A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

"Q. Where will the government get this money?
"A. From taxpayers.

"Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
"A. No, they are borrowing it from China. You children are expected to repay the Chinese.

"Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
"A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

"Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
"A. Shut up."


Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:

If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China.

If you spend it on gasoline it will go to Hugo Chavez, the Arabs and Al Queda

If you purchase a computer it will go to Taiwan.

If you purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala (unless you buy organic).

If you buy a car it will go to Japan and Korea.

If you purchase prescription drugs it will go to India.

If you purchase heroin it will go to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

If you give it to a charitable cause, it will go to Nigeria.

And none of it will help the American economy.

We need to keep that money here in America. You can keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales, going to athletic events, or spend it on prostitutes, beer (domestic ONLY, note: Budweiser is foreign owned) or tattoos, since those are the only businesses still in the US.

A New Era of Responsibility

"...the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward.

Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government. "

Now President Obama dancing with both sides of the aisle during his inaugural address before landing on an entirely higher plane than the petty discourse of the previous generation of politics. This is his power.

See the full transcript, here.

Rise and Shine!

It's a new day as the sun sets on Dark Years (with a ticking time bomb waiting to go off) as I've got the inauguration running in the background while I work today.


As for the article that I linked above regarding the gloomy forecast for the retail industry, once again I look at this positively. Despite being wary of the pain for some industries, especially in the architecture/real estate fields, to me the falling of the House of Cards was always viewed as a good thing. It would wipe out the pretenders. Those who don't really know what they were doing and were in it, whatever it was, for a quick buck.

Not to diminish the necessity of the profit motive, but IMPROVEMENTS should be profitable. NOT anything that makes us all the worse for the wear...i.e. Sprawl, meaning the system was broke.

To me, the optimism of the day is underscored by transparency. Open government, but also as this article points out, one where all the dirty secrets and rotten economies get a bright flashlight shone upon them:

“In the midst of all this doom and gloom, it's hard to imagine it getting better... But keep in mind, what happens in strong downturns is there's a hefty pent-up demand. It's wrong to extrapolate these conditions for the next year or two."

But Mr. Niemira is probably wrong. There is no pent-up demand. Americans have bought everything they’ve desired for the last twenty years. The over-spending and over-leverage will take a decade to unwind.

According to the ICSC, about 150,000 stores are anticipated to shut down in 2009, in addition to the 150,000 that closed in 2008 and 135,000 in 2007. Normally, 110,000 to 125,000 new stores open per year. At least 700,000 of retail jobs will be lost. The opening of new stores will grind to a halt in 2009.

The author is correct. We as a country are horrendously over-retailed. It doesn't take a Mathematics degree from MIT but it probably takes an MBA from the Wharton School to convince you it makes sense to figure that out. Dare I call it a recess(ion) of the ideological high tide of qualitative growth over quantitative. At some point, everyone being in debt can't possibly finance more stuff - without potential of future earnings - which doesn't appear to be on the horizon (on the whole) any time soon without some nationwide elbow grease.

Why could this "restart" be such a good thing (for the purposes of this discussion, I'll keep it limited to retail format and its cause/effect relationship with urban form)?

For one, there will be a grand contraction (Ya think so professor?). Retailers will prune back their stores, there business models will shrink and that will open room for smaller and start-up businesses to find their niche.

Second, retail still requires synergy of other retailers. To borrow a term, it is about complementarity. That is, the synergy created by complementary uses. For retail, they need other retailers, large and small, usually best coordinated via a business partnership.

They ALSO need people and this happens in two ways: 1) via nearby residents, i.e. "live above the shop" and mixed-use buildings/neigborhoods, and 2) the spatial relationship to the "movement economy." You see it all the time currently, except that movement is typically always via car, on roads built solely for the car, which means they are hostile to any other form of transportation and, in turn, actually repel visitation.

[Does this look like a place you want to be?]

The movement economy is important for retail clusters because it means greater amount of people than just the neighborhood, which can only support neighborhood scaled retail, i.e. a corner store, a dry cleaners, and maybe a deli/cafe/or pub. You get the point. But, the transportation system has to be multi-modal (meaning more people) and better "people-friendly" environment (thus being further inviting).

Because of this, in cities like Dallas, places that are positioned to accommodate multi-modal transportation will see their value spike because these will be the only places retail (as we know it today) will work. Many strip centers will completely die off as retailers prune back the amount of stores they can keep open.

This "pruning" will leave blighted "gray fields." In Dallas, this pretty much means the retail clusters that are organized on the original 1-mile super-grid, with single family neighborhoods in between will have to find a new manner of existence.

[Typical Dallas retail with little to no relationship between land uses and entirely auto-oriented.]


For those that can survive, will need to densify as this former strip center did in Winter Park, FL. [Dover Kohl did the planning, RTKL did the architecture on the garage/retail].



This exact same phenomenon is occurring currently with malls. The biggest and best are densifying with residential and office uses, accessing public transit, and adding amenitized, outdoor public spaces. They are becoming both more people friendly AND more business friendly. Those less fortunate (if you happen to sympathize with the plight of a particular mall) are finding life as something else, if not being scraped altogether.

For those "children left behind," as in surface parking lots and empty big box stores, can turn into centrally located community centers, parks, and new schools that are designed and situated to be walked to, saving schools money and kids time from bussing all over the city (not to mention CO2 & gas); essentially, they would become neighborhood centers.

A couple of the places best positioned in Dallas are Cityplace/West Village for the urban street grid, the trolley line, the DART adjacency, the already existing density (which is the by-product of everything I've said in this article), and Central Expressway. The other, off the top of my head, is DTD. Yes, downtown Dallas. It might be struggling now, but there are few places in the city that have DART, MATA, density (from residential and office, present and future), political desire if not yet will, soon to be parks, and presumably improved pedestrian-friendly streetscapes (someday).


[The requisite economist-y chart to illustrate my point. Taken from Gateway Planning Group's Presentation to TxDOT.]

There are also many others (which must be sized and scaled appropriately and directly proportional to the level of complentarity/mobility establishing a hierarchy of mixed-use nodes or centers), but these are the two that are head and shoulders best prepared for increase density, activity, and (if we're smart) attention/care/and cultivation.

Retailers and residents will flock to be in or near these places. They are currently some of the highest value places in the city from a people and real estate perspective, but they are still operating well below their potential future ceiling. We just have to make sure the regulatory and political environment are prepared and organized to allow for this city and retail reorganization.

They are currently below the LoMac area which is a joke of tangled spaghetti arterials, deep setbacks, narrow sidewalks despite having nearby freeways and the MATA trolley line. This area is exactly the end result when getting the details right is paid zero attention and the only effort is to cynically deliver "product to the market" not places for people. This means that the value of this place is ultimately limited whereas in CityPlace and Downtown, it is infinite.


[Going from 0 babies to 1 baby is an infinite leap on the livability scale. And, as we all know, those Wharton School MBAs will tell you that infinite growth is possible.]

Of Knowing the Path and Walking the Path

WorldChanging takes on Obama's choice for Transpo Secretary, that is considerably less optimistic (and probably more accurate) than mine:

This one-time wave of funding will do one of two things: it will further entrench a broken system, or it will begin to build a new and better one. In the next six years, we'll either dump hundreds of billions of dollars into highways, roads and bridges or we'll begin to revitalize our communities and transform our economy. Sprawl or urban renaissance? That's ultimately the choice we have.

Boston.com: The End of Bilbao Decade.

All that fever now feels passe. Architecture students, I'm told, are more interested in so-called "green architecture," work that responds to the global crisis of climate and resources, than they are in artistic shape-making. They're interested in urbanism, in the ways buildings gather to shape streets and neighborhoods and public spaces. They research new materials and methods of construction. Increasingly, they're collaborating with students in other fields, instead of hoping to produce a private ego trip.

I'm not sure who "told" the author this, but if it is more than mere speculation, I am imbued by the generation of Millennial architects that "get it."

And lastly, I rather enjoyed this critique of the notorious front-runner, Thomas Friedman.

Barry Knows Jane Jacobs

She runs strong in the Appalachians

Totally unrelated, but I love when patterns emerge:

I got this from Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, not sure exactly where he found it. The purple represents districts where Hillary Clinton scored more than 65% of the vote. Not much more needs to be said.