... have been greatly over exaggerated. Hannah and I have just been through the torrent that is southern California and somehow survived intact. We picked up a bunch of material on the way south from San Francisco and heading east towards Texas. Regular updates will resume next week.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Portland - Overview
Portland is an elegant city, the product of decades of smart planning and community involvement. You can't walk around this city without noticing the differences--big and small--that set it apart. The street murals that slow down traffic, the prevalence of co-ops, the enormous light rail system, the pleasant side walks, a serious commitment to cycling... the list goes on and on. The intense community involvement is what facilitates the thousands of little differences. The result is an increasingly good reputation for the city. The growth that followed may have stretched Portland to the limits.
Portland is facing an identity crisis. The city is coping with rapid growth while trying to maintain its distinctive character. The pressure to develop seems postponed only by the current economic downturn. The walkable streets, bicycle culture and unique businesses were made possible by a level of community involvement that isn't always matched by the legions of "young professionals" that developers are luring into the condos that are sprouting downtown. On the other hand, Portland is a place designed for internal growth.
I strongly believe that growth is healthiest and most sustainable when it is done in small increments at any level. In a community, this means building one small building at a time, at a restaurant it means adding one more item to the menu. Many builders in Portland seem to understand this concept and many establishments in Portland are very much on the human scale because of it. The built environment of Portland is designed to allow small enterprises to start up, flourish and grow.
The lowest rung on the development ladder is often missing in cities due to excessive cost. It keeps some of the best ideas out of the marketplace. In most cities, the lowest rung on the ladder is the one story building. These buildings are seen as temporary, just put up to get some economic value out of the land. In cities where parking is in high demand, parking lots replace small buildings, eliminating that rung on the ladder.
But Portland adds another rung even farther down the ladder than the one story buildings. Tiny restaurants that operate out of trailers in converted parking lots are scattered throughout the city. In other cities, this is generally disallowed by health departments and made economically impossible by the preference that highly profitable parking lots receive. Not only does the health department in Portland allow this lowest form of development, but hosting a parking lot is less profitable than hosting several small businesses. This is no accident, Portland has a comprehensive strategy to devalue parking that works for small businesses. Their chief method? The bicycle.
I haven't seen a city that takes biking more seriously than Portland and I don't expect to anywhere else in the US. The number of bike shops and co-ops are astounding. Everybody bikes in this town and many don't mind the weather. The city is at the forefront of bicycle promotion. They have amazing bike maps and signage all over the city marking low traffic streets that serve as bicycle highways. The city provides street parking for bikes in lieu of car parking. It is a further indication that Portland is keenly aware that bikes need promotion, cars don't.
Without parking in the way young, innovative businesses should be able to get their foot in the door. But in a successful community, this is often not the case. Real estate speculators stampede in and buy up vacant lots. They sit on these properties until the maximum economic value can be squeezed from them. The development below is one such example. This project was in no way designed or funded by the people that live in the area. Their organic growth looks like the image above. Across the street from the formula development, a garbage strewn and fenced off vacant lot sits on the market for $100/sf.
Local control over development is incredibly difficult while working within the confines of the capitalist system. Developers who are not forced to work towards the best interests a place will cut every corner they can. They are out to make a quick buck and will gladly do so by trading in the community's vitality. They have a penchant for overkill, if one developer is successful with a project, then a dozen identical projects will spring up around it.
Developers aren't interested in slow, careful and organic growth. It doesn't pay the bills. Check out this instant pedestrian development below.
Looks nice. And just a couple feet away...
Belmont Dairy is used as a positive example by organizations as disparate as the NAR and the EPA. The project has won a number of awards but as one former resident puts it[the] layouts of the apartments are lame with cheap construction so if you're into a bland dorm room experience again then I suggest you live here.
This is the problem with big projects. There is no way that designers will spend enough time on particular rooms to make them look cared for, charming, or interesting. Instead, you get endless cookie cutter repetition. Plus, the city is in no position to insist on construction quality, since they are always afraid of a big developer pulling out. Around this development was one of the only places in Portland where parking was hard to find.
I could go on and on about Portland, their near-sufficient public transportation, their tri-country metro government, their climate protection plan... But as in any place, it's the people that make this place whir. Not many places are as happening as Portland. 
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Weekend Update
Hannah and I have been enjoying the wonders of southern California and the year round growing season. Our plan is to visit Los Angeles and perhaps San Diego as well. Check below the fold for some interesting reads around the internet.
This great article on Philly is applicable to many cities. The author hits the nail on the head issue after issue.
Coming to a suburb near you. An article about the bursting bubble in suburban Florida.
I got privy to this interesting pdf on super-capacitor equipped light rail. There are some interesting implications in eliminating the need for continuous overhead wires.
An article here on the urban philosophy of the former mayor of a Bogota, Columbia. Even in our car-dominated landscape, it is possible to put people first. Now the question is why we aren't beginning to build places for people instead of cars.
Here's a good primer on residential density. I prefer the FAR measurement, but due mainly to traffic concerns, residential property is limited by the dwelling unit (DU) per acre.
Bike sharing is not dead.
Europeans seem to be building some nice places.
Good observation on sprawl but does the argument make sense?
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Portland - City Government
During my visits to Portland area organizations, I heard consistently positive reports about the efficacy of city government. The city of Portland was the first to develop a climate action plan and boasts the most effective regional government in the nation. Portland's understanding of and commitment to sustainability is a rarity among cities and they are a model for the rest of the nation.
I met with Julia Thompson, communications director for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. The recently formed bureau is a consolidation of the Bureau of Planning and the Office of Sustainable Development. The concept of combining the two departments is incredibly telling. The folks in Portland understand that sustainable development happens on building, block, neighborhood, city and regional levels. Incorporating "green" building into urban planning brings it much closer to where it needs to be. Of course, there's more to a sustainable Portland than the organization of the OSD department...
I am somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to governments having an impact on city-scale sustainability initiatives, the city of Portland caused a shift in my thinking. Government can't do all the work themselves, but they can provide inspiration and guidance. They can ensure that they stay our of the way when good things are happening. And when they stumble upon a golden opportunity, they can seize it.
The foundation of sustainable city organization in Portland seemed to be friendly people. The director of the bureau, Susan Anderson very much understood that sustainability is more about a shift in thinking than a shift in laws. At a recent conference, she told the attendees that clients of high-powered lawyers feel good when they see helmet hair on a guy making $500k a year. It doesn't hurt that she actively seeks out private grants and funds for the public department.
These shifts in public attitude take a long time to foster and Portland has been successful due to their sustained commitment to sustainability over a generation. The removal of a downtown freeway 35 years ago was the beginning of a trend towards responsible civic engagement and action. In the mid-80s, they were one of the smallest and earliest cities to install a light rail system. The early 90s brought an early curbside recycling program to residents and commercial recycling was mandated later in the decade. The total city-wide recycling rate is 63% (!) and headed towards a goal of 75%.
Portland began using the LEED standard for city buildings in 2000 and now requires that new and rehabbed city buildings meet LEED Gold. In 2003, they began running workshops to bring designers and contractors into the green building loop. They have consistently advocated the the carrot end of the "carrot and stick" metaphor but their patience seems to be running thin. Their mission is now to convince the late adopters to get on board or else... It seems that in Portland, "or else" means a stern talking to from a friendly city employee. It's enough to make even the most money grubbing polluters reform their ways.
I won't bother you with the extent of specific programs that put the rest of the country to shame or about the metro planning authority that makes other regions salivate, but I will tell you about a very interesting idea coming down the chute. After an energy audit with useful tips on improving home efficiency, residents could take out a low interest loan from a special state fund. This loan could only be used to improve home efficiency and instead of being tied to the individual, it would be tied to the property. The loan would be billed to the utility bill and would not transfer with ownership.
This is such a wonderful program. It makes sense to tie sensible property investment to the property itself. I hope other states adopt similar measures.
All in all, you know something is going right when asking residents about their government results in smiles instead of frowns.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Thoughts on the Suburbs
I came across an interesting post today titled "How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming" and read through it. The suburbs are a particularly interesting issue since we are more or less stuck with them and they seem to defy any and all solutions. Unfortunately, the man who saw the whole thing coming didn't seem to have any new ideas.
The typical thinking on suburbs goes something like this: People don't want to have to use a car, so lets make places walkable. To do that, we'll need really good public transportation. All we do is run a street car or subway into the suburbs and build some condos around the stop and presto--the problem of the suburb is solved!
To guess that the suburbs will build their way out of the boonies is utter nonsense. They lack the population and affluence to support massive public transit. More likely, bus lines will be run to the suburbs to bring in the menial labor that keeps cities up and running. This arrangement will get stale quickly as cities realize that they have plenty of sub-standard properties available for the working class.
Of course, I can count on my fingers the suburbs that will be getting their subway stop in the next 30 years. Any suburban strategy that relies on building and growth will fail. Suburbs will decay. Cities will eventually cut off the highway connections the keep the suburbs on life support and only the impoverished will inhabit them. The big unknown is how they might decay gracefully.
I have previously speculated on a sort of post-lawn agricultural utopia for the suburbs; it fits well with the resources that the slum-suburbs will have. Small scale agriculture projects take a lot of space but not much capital, perfect for the soon to be impoverished suburbs. Enormous amounts of research have been done on intensive agriculture, and our diets are slowly beginning to shift away from row crops to vegetables that take more human labor. The proximity of the agri-burbs to the dense urban core make them the prefect place for local agriculture. The new era of the small farmer will be born.
Of course, there are other options for suburbs. Periods of mass exodus and crime certainly await those that are unable to attract new residents by offering social and economic opportunity. Suburbs closer to the urban core will likely be gobbled up by an expanding urban population, but these will be rare.
As city land becomes increasingly valuable, developers will certainly push population density to its breaking point. The amount of land required to house the new urban dwellers will be a tiny fraction of the total suburban mass.
As demand wanes for the suburban experience and supply remains constant, development after development will fall to the forces of our capitalist system. The government seems intent on preventing this trend with tax breaks for mortgages and auto payments. If this is their approach, they will only delay the inevitable. Instead, the government should help transition suburbs into the viable social and economic communities that they could one day become.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Portland - The Green Building Initiative
It seems that almost every city has some non-profit or government group promoting "green" building. They are generally organized to provide a product library of "green" materials and to offer classes and workshops on cutting edge "green" building techniques. Of course, they are always housed in a spectacular "green" building utilizing the most advanced "green" building materials and techniques. By the time I got to Portland, I finally decided it was time to interview someone at one of these "green" organizations.
I managed to hunt down Mark Rossolo, the outreach director at the Green Building Initiative, a national non-profit operating out of Portland. I learned a lot about GBI, their mission and their perspective. They're not the local shop that I assumed they were, instead, this small group operating out of rented space is the mothership for green building groups around the country. If our current building regime ever manages to pick back up, GBI will play an instrumental roll in defining "best practice," the fuzzy set of standards that mainstream builders use to justify their work. First a synopsis...
On the residential end of the spectrum, the GBI promotes the National Association of Home Builders' NAHBGreen program for new residential construction. Since it's somewhat beyond the perview of GBI, I won't go into it. On the commercial end of things though, GBI has imported the Canadian Standard, Green Globes, into the US. In addition, they have a free Life Cycle Analysis calculator. The Green Globes rating system is similar to the United States Green Building Council's LEED rating system, though there are some significant differences.
Both standards were modeled after the British BREEAM system so they are the same on substantive issues, however, the devil is in the details. LEED certification requires a lot of paperwork and is seen as a fairly bureaucratic process. Most observers saw it only as a matter of time before other, less intensive, groups jumped into the "green" building certification game. Green Globes relies on an online system which developers pay for on a project basis. There's no paperwork to fill out and no LEED consultants to hire. Green Globes is very much the poor man's LEED. Their mission is to move certain "green" building practices into the mainstream.
Neither Green Globes nor LEED are particularly geographically specific, though LEED gives points for bringing in a LEED accredited professional, which are typically local. This is one of the biggest holes in the "green" building movement. You get points for local materials, but none for locally appropriate materials, points for energy efficient design but none for locally energy efficient design. LEED already used a wide brush to paint the green building movement and Green Globes uses an even wider one, with their fully automated process.
Moreover, Green Globes does very little to address planning and its effect on energy consumption. These rating systems seem to look at the energy consumption pie of the US and see that building takes up over a third of it. What they don't seem to connect is that the transportation third of the pie is a direct result of the way we plan our built environment.
These programs have great potential to make buildings incrementally more efficient, but offer little answer for the social, environmental and economic problems that our country faces. Even worse, they risk creating a perception of "greenness" in the public's mind in places where's it's not deserved. Building a net zero energy house in the suburbs that does little to address the transportation piece of the pie--or the consumption part either--means that you're locking in unsustainable behavior for years to come.
I'm certainly not claiming that these organizations aren't part of the solution, but living in a "green" building and driving a Prius does not make for a sustainable lifestyle. We need to change more than our buildings, we need to change how we interact with them and how they force us to interact with one another.
Until these "green" building programs take the emphasis off of the building construction aspect and begin to consider the outside effects that buildings have, they'll be doing as much harm as good.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Portland - Our United Villages
After landing in Portland, it wasn't long before I stumbled upon Our United Villages (OUV), a community building non-profit that manifests itself in a myriad of ways. I was lucky enough to speak with Corinna Buchholz to gain a deeper understanding of OUV. This small unassuming group was by far the most advanced and effective organization promoting sustainable urbanism that I've seen so far. They facilitate community organization, demolish old houses, train Portland residents in various trades and operate the largest material reuse center in the country.
Though the various works of Our United Villages may seem incongruous at first glance, they are tied together by the idea of building community within cities. Their mission is beautifully simple: "Our United Villages inspires people to value and discover existing resources to strengthen the social and environmental vitality of communities."
For OUV, this means working with neighborhoods--one at a time--to address resident concerns. At no charge, they canvass neighborhoods to identify problems, and draw out natural leaders willing to work on solving them. They run workshops with these leaders to teach them the skills they'll need to address the issues that they're passionate about. OUV helps these young organizations get off the ground and provides them with tools, inspiration and connections to keep them moving forward.
Even though these services are of no charge to the individual communities, OUV does have a paid staff to organize and run all the programming. OUV's way of covering their operating expenses fits nicely within their mission. By collecting and reselling used building materials at their ReBuilding Center, they are able to make enough money to pay for their community organizing as well as provide dozens of sustainable jobs for community members.
OUV will tear down old buildings piece by piece, salvaging up to 85% of the building for re-sale. All these materials end up in their warehouses, pictured above. The somewhat ramshackle appearance of the buildings is no accident, everything except the roof and structural steel in the building was built by volunteers with salvaged materials. The OUV office interior, built with 90% reclaimed materials and designed by Orange, demonstrated the beauty that can be achieved by using salvaged materials.
Their reuse business keeps 8 tons of building materials out of landfills per day and re-directs them into the product stream. They offer classes on furniture building with reclaimed materials and sell student projects at the ReFind Center. Though using reclaimed materials does not necessitate the reclaimed look, it has become stylish in parts of Portland. It is a clear indication that the visibility of sustainability is a valuable asset.
OUV has found an interesting way to meld education, public art, reuse, story telling and interactive space into one project. At the front of their reuse warehouse, a community-built cob structure doubles as a meeting place as well as a work of art. It is adorned with reused materials that have been combined and transformed into metallic sculptures. Community members were invited to donate items of sentimental value to be inccorporated into this piece. Such personal donations reinforce the connection between this project and the community.
The same artist that did the metal work on the tree tops volunteered his labor on a railing that the city required.
The mission of OUV to strengthen community by turning waste into assets works for communities that don't have the wealth to buy community improvements. As we move into a time of great money shortages, other communities should look to this model as a way to keep their places alive. By connecting individuals in meaningful ways, OUV seeks to create community in places that lack it. They seek to utilize the biggest wasted resource of all, human potential.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Funky Fremont
Fremont is a neighborhood not so far north of downtown Seattle. It's considered to be a haven for artists and the slightly unusual.
It's also home to a slightly larger than life statue of Lenin.
Fremont is known for its frequent, playful and sometimes interactive public art. The artful streetscapes certainly define this as a well cared for place where residents enjoy spending their time.
Like all cared for places of value, Fremont takes excellent care of their alleys.
In vibrant places, a little bit of extra effort can go a long way. The biggest benefit is the sense of all encompassing safety that exists when there aren't places that should be avoided along the street because they are dark and dangerous looking.
Even many of the new buildings in Fremont have gone with the flow and adopted an artsy feel. The extra detailing helps keep the place feeling alive and in motion. Not all of the new construction in Fremont managed to do a good job though. This next image is of a building just across the street from the image above.
It takes a lot to keep a space alive and it doesn't take much to kill it. The sterile facade of a Class A office building is one of the surest indications that an area has been identified by developers as "trendy". For an area that's been lifted out of the gutter by a dedicated group of residents, it can be maddening to have no control over the way space is used.
It has been noted that Fremont has become a bit less "Funky" over the last few years. The public art serves as a lasting reminder of the sort of place Fremont was before outsiders showed up who were willing to pay for a piece of it.
One interesting aspect of Fremont is the enormous amount of unbuilt area that surrounds the buildings. Wide roads, enormous intersections, paved transit stops and public squares act as vacuums instead of magnets. If they converted some streets and surface lots to small buildings, they'd find themselves with vibrant outdoor space year round.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Weekend Update
I've come to the conclusion that writing seven extended posts a week, while traveling, is a bit taxing and difficult to maintain. So, on the weekends, I'll be bringing you the Weekend Update. It's a collection of articles and stories that I find interesting. Since this is the inaugural post, I'll start out light.
First, we have an interesting article from Scientific American on carbon sequestering forms of cement production.
Here is an amusing article about auto exhaust causing lightning strikes from New Scientist.
For the cycling enthusiasts out there, here's a nice round-up of cargo bikes on the market in the states.
And finally, Stephen Rose gives 10 reasons why cars will become obsolete.
Feel free to drop some more links in the comments.
Thoughts on Seattle
The Pacific Northwest is a different sort of place. Urban residents would tell you that Seattle, Vancouver and Portland make up a progressive triumvirate that does battle with the rest of the world. Rural residents would tell you that the Pacific Northwest provides the building materials the make the rest of the world possible.
The transformation of a working class town into the heavy-hitter that Seattle has become was fueled by the software boom. The location and explosive growth of Microsoft outside the city lead to dramatic expansion of the suburbs which in turn, lead to vicious traffic problems.
Seattle was the first city to take recycling seriously, today they even fine those that don't play along. For many years though, they dropped the ball on transportation. They're stuck playing catch-up and are racing to improve their system.
The most visible improvement is the electrification of many of the bus lines. Power is amazingly cheap in Seattle and electrification certainly reduces operation costs, though overhead wires don't come cheap. They can be visually jarring, especially at a crowded intersection. And when buses fall off the wires, passengers are delayed.
Overall though, electrification solves some of the biggest problems associated with city buses, especially their noise and smell. The improved atmosphere that is generated when a busy bus line is electrified is certainly worth the capital cost.
Buses need especially wide streets, the sort that dominate most cities. Seattle though, has made some space for smaller streets and alleys. These carefully designed spaces increase real estate value and since they reject cars, allow a vibrant pedestrian culture to thrive.
Seattle seems to be full of these human scale places. A local business that has spread up and down the coast, ActivSpace provides artists, start-ups and hobbyists small units to get their ideas off the ground. We were lucky enough to stumble upon a free tasting at the smallest brewery I have ever seen.
The human scale also had a strong impact on the design of some parks here. This one, located at the heart of the old downtown district, was full of character without taking up acres upon acres of valuable space.
The inner pseudo-suburbs of Seattle have strips of commercial and residential areas that are fine-grained enough that at least some trips can be made without a car, though the density is totally insufficient to support truly pedestrian areas and quality public transportation. These are the sorts of places that inhibit movement towards pedestrian oriented cities.
They are a vast improvement over the suburbs, so real estate value is huge and neighborhood groups organize to preserve the "character" of the place. They have too much auto-centric inertia to allow much planned short term change. They are too spread out to support quality public transportation and I don't see any short-term path for them to move away from the automobile in any serious way.
Seattle is a cool place but I suspect it will stagnate until they find an adequate way to address the issue of mobility for their residents. Urban residents live in cities to experience the closeness of others. They don't live in cities for bragging rights or to sit in traffic jams for hours on end. Change will come eventually though, since neither the environment nor the economy seem keen on supporting our urban failures much longer.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Trip to Seattle -- Through the Moutains
Sorry for the slow posting over the last week, we've taken a bit of time for rest and relaxation on the Pacific Coast. But before we get back on track, I'd like to share a few words and pictures with you about our drive through the mountains from Denver to Seattle.
Before this trip, we weren't familiar with the "Stagnant Air Warnings" that advertised the dank, brown air that refused to leave the inhabited valleys and foothills. We finished the drive thankful that we don't live at the foot of any mountains.
The mountain culture did appeal to us though.
The last leg of our trip looked like something straight out of Dr. Zhviago. All in all, it was a long drive, but well worth the effort. Our arrival in the Pacific Northwest was a dramatic change from what we had seen on the rest of our journey. Much more to come...
Monday, February 2, 2009
Thoughts on Boulder
We left Denver early one morning and headed for Boulder. Boulder is a strange mash of outlying suburb, college town, liberal mecca and playground for the ultra-wealthy. The good weather and topography make this a surprisingly cozy community. The latte sippers take their leisure side by side with bums, mediocre artists, two-bit street performers, and obnoxious students.
Plopped at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, the local range is the Flatirons. Residents take full advantage of the wilderness parks that sit within walking distance of the city. The location of Boulder Mountain Park was more a stroke of good luck than a well thought out plan to provide nearby recreational space, but it is a critical element of Boulder and cities in general.
Most urbanized places today are totally under the control of humans. Places of decay would be the exception, and they work in the same way as wilderness areas. Cities are full of intentional space. Some of this space is draining and some of it restorative, but all of it is designed or otherwise crafted by humans. Upon occasion, you'll see a small "nature preserve" within a city, but they are typically too small to become immersed in. This keeps people from being able to forget about the intentionality of the unintentional.
Large swaths of wilderness--or in the Rust Belt, decay--provide unintentional space for people to explore. I'm convinced that not everybody needs these spaces, a dichotomy that leaves some loving big successful cities while others can't stand them.
Some people like discovery. They like to find things that someone else didn't build. They like to exercise a part of their brain that is a bit different than the rest. Boulder accommodates these people, other cities should too.
The eco-agitators have left their mark in Boulder. It has one of the most highly developed bicycle networks of any city. Above is a shot of just one of the dozens of bicycle highways that connect the various developments of the city. They didn't just stick to this high-tech (expensive) approach; Boulder was the first city where I saw signage encouraging cyclists to get off the shoulder and take up a whole lane of the road. In an auto centric city, bicycles are a good but insufficient solution to the mobility problem. Some people use them, some don't.
The bicycle highways are interesting, but I think a city with a well connected street grid does just as well without all the extra construction. For cities full of twisty, dead-end suburban streets and frantic collector roads, they make a lot of sense.
In their latest act of crazed environmentalism, Boulder County just instituted the most stringent residential building code in the country. Boulder County is plagued by incredibly rich people. They live out in the sticks and build enormous mansions. The new building code is based around the HERS rating system from Energy Star. The bigger the house, the more stringent the energy requirements are. Built homes actually need to be tested for their energy usage before they receive final approval.
Energy isn't everything that goes into sustainability, but it's a big piece. Forcing these mansion builders to be a bit more responsible is a step in the right direction. Boulder county is far and away the most progressive leader on energy issues. It's a model that doesn't necessarily merit copying in other places; not every place has the same economic and weather conditions as Boulder.
The HERS scale does offer enormous benefits though and forcing built energy inspections is a good idea. Adding an energy inspection to any standard forces contractors to be a bit more careful when they do their work so they can avoid costly fixes. When it comes to making a house incrementally more efficient, the little things add up.
At the heart of downtown Boulder lies the Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall. The Pearl Street Mall is an old place, agitations for it began in the 1960s and it was constructed over 30 years ago. Four consecutive blocks of Pearl Street were closed to vehicular traffic as a way of competing with suburban malls. Most shops along the stretch are independent though many corporate tenants have begun to creep in.
The space was originally designed for the enormous space needs of the horse and buggy. Merely closing the street to automotive traffic would have left the vast expanse between the buildings empty except during major events. The Boulder solution was to fill the space with brick, trees, playgrounds, benches and public art. Aside from the bums and buskers, the street doesn't look so much different than a walkway in an indoor mall.
Boulder has taken an effective but expensive approach to preserving a chunk of downtown vitality. The area surrounding the mall is somewhat stark compared to the rest of the downtown area. The enormous amount of parking needed for such a large pedestrian free area has mostly been housed in large structures, but overflow and budget conscious shoppers have gobbled up street parking on neighboring streets. This effect has caused many nearby businesses to use surface lots.
The Boulder Pedestrian Mall is modeled on suburban malls, and the result is the same as suburban malls. The area surrounding the mall doesn't get any boost from its presence. Instead, these places of excessive single use act as vitality vacuums. In the early morning or at night, they are almost completely empty. During the day, the surrounding area is swamped with cars.
The fact that it exists at all is a testament to the ability of Boulder residents to affect their space. The project took 15 years to accomplish, but the empowerment of a community is one of the best things a city can offer its citizens.
Slight Delay
Boulder turned out to be more exciting than I remembered so the post will have to wait just a bit longer.
Here's the view going into Boulder.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Out and About on the Intertubes
Over at CoolTown Studios, Neil has been putting up some enlightening posts on the various incarnations of outdoor cafes. The walks, alleys, squares and stage rows all play their own roles in creating vibrant outdoor spaces. The whole lot of them can be found here.
Boulder is up tomorrow. Topics include, bicycle megahighways, pleasant parks, walking malls, building codes and the problem with success.
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