Sustainability can be split into two fairly distinctive parts. One branch is based on a reduction or optimization of consumptive patterns while the other is centered around the capture and re-purpose of available resources. The Resource Center in Chicago is dedicated to the latter.
Cities are full of unused resources, some stand out while others often go unnoticed by the average urban resident. The most obvious waste in a city is space but most wastes are less obvious. For example, a single shipping depot in Chicago dumps 1000 tons of produce per day. The Resource Center concerns itself with any and all ways they can to re-purpose various waste streams. This post will focus on the organization and I'll throw up a post a bit later on its founder, Ken Dunn.
One of the main focuses of the organization is to connect people with nutritious foods. This is an obvious goal for the group since so much nutritious food is wasted everyday. Standard methods of diverting excess food from landfills to low-income communities are limited to non-perishable foods. The resulting poor nutrition provided by these foods only serves to exasperate deteriorating public health conditions in lower income communities.
The Resource Center works to solve this problem on two fronts; first, they help create economically viable farms on vacant lots and second, they collect perishable food and distribute it before it has a chance to rot. City Farm manages pay their farmers a living wage by selling much of their food to high-end restaurants downtown at a premium while maintaining affordable prices for neighborhood dwellers. The farms are incredibly fertile due to the enormous volume of compost they are able to collect.
The Resource Center collects two tons of perishable food per day from from caterers, shippers and grocery stores which they deliver to hungry mouths before it has a chance to spoil. A vast majority of this food is sourced from Whole Foods since they pull their perishables days before they expire.
The Resource Center does not limit its operations to nutrition. The organization finds innovative ways to deal with other potentially valuable wastes. Unwanted bicycles are delivered by the truck load to a bike shop run by at-risk youth. Proceeds from the bike shop sales fund educational resources for the children that work there. As the children age, they progress through an educational curriculum that encourages achievement. This program not only keeps bikes out of landfills, it helps develop the minds of young children, the most important and most often wasted resource that any place has.
Many retail outlets donate their unsellable goods to the Resource Center for sale at the Resource Center headquarters. They are searching for a larger space after losing their old warehouse to a university expansion.
The Resource Center once had a contract to pick up recyclables throughout the city but it was promptly canceled when Mayor Harold Washington unexpectedly died. They are now reduced to providing strategic drop-off points for recyclables. The revenue generated from sales of collected materials has been greatly reduced over the last several months due to the crashing market for many recyclables. The Resource Center is now funding some of its operations with donations.
Talking to Ken Dunn reminded me of a story about a friend's grandfather when he was very young. In the late 1910's, a Detroit businessman heard about a factory that had accidentally produced a thousand extra left shoes. For some reason, they had no way of producing matching right shoes and they planned to throw the extra left shoes away. The businessman who had caught wind of the mishap purchased the lot of shoes for a few pennies and then, with the aid of my friends grandfather, looked up every amputee--there were many due to the recent war--in town. They could offer some amputees a better deal on shoes than they could find at a store where they had to buy a pair and throw away their right shoe.
If you're living in Chicago and looking to help out the cause of urban sustainability, check out this organization. If you're in other cities, use the Resource Center as a model. Identify a resource, connect it too a need. It's a timeless way of doing things and one that we must all engage in if we're going to move towards a sustainable society.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Chicago - Resource Center
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Detroit - Part IV (Quasi-Burbs)
Quasi-suburbs are areas in a city that bare little resemblance to modern suburbs but function in much the same way. The main difference between these pre-WWII developments and their post-WWII counterparts is the lack of intended isolation. Quasi-suburbs have through-streets and easy to navigate street grids. Their commercial areas are separate from their residential areas and they emphasize greenspace and moderate density. They contain too few people for a city and too many for a suburb. 95% of Detroit was once made up of these places.
After the construction of the highway system in the 1950's, the white flight, the riots, the drugs, the attempts at "urban renewal" and the lack of money for upkeep, these neighborhoods were left decimated. The following pictures are from the Brush Park area--very close to downtown--and show three adjacent blocks.
This is a typical view in Detroit. A handful of abandoned buildings, a handful of occupied buildings, all sitting in the middle of a field. It is a stark reminder of the wealth that some in Detroit once enjoyed. We can take a look at the two development options these places face.
The next block over would have been better off left alone. It was cleared to make way for a new development. This is the very worst of suburban design. Fences are installed to keep people out and trees to keep their eyes out. The basement fill is dumped around the perimeter to act as a further barrier. It is as if this place is not in Detroit at all. Its inhabitants are discouraged from venturing into the city.
The only benefit these people derive from their residential location is a reduced commute. Other than the taxes they pay, they offer little to the vibrancy of the city. This is the sort of development that New Urbanism rightfully decries.
The street in the other direction is much improved but still insufficient. Decaying houses on this block have been restored to their former grandeur and new townhouses are being constructed to match the character of the existing block.
This is a special place and its residents seem well aware as evidenced by their well cared for homes and gardens. But as the area around it improves, it will become less unique and its lack of vibrancy will begin to emerge as black hole, sucking out younger generations who won't be able to avoid noticing the lack of activity.
This area is close enough to downtown that it is conceivable that it could support a healthy intermingling of commercial and residential space but it is unlikely that the neighborhood association will want anything but a return to the old days. This sort of place is the type championed by the New Urbanists--visibly urban yet functionally suburban.
There is something else going on in Detroit, something entirely different. I'll get a post up about it a bit later on tonight.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Detroit - Part III (Downtown)
The entire metro area is focused on downtown Detroit as a place of work. Downtown is an office district--approximately one square mile--framed by highways. Towering buildings casually mix with single story store fronts amongst a street layout inspired by L'Enfant's Washington DC-style radiating hexagonal spokes. A park lies at the "hub" of each collection of spokes. This hub and spoke plan didn't make it farther than the downtown limits and there are only two hub parks.
A recent renewal of the central hub park, Campus Marius, created ice skating that draws crowds throughout the winter and late into the night.
It is a dense place with roads that seem to be just the right width. They carry traffic from the suburbs and quasi-suburbs to the scores of parking garages located throughout the district.
These parking garages are some of the prettiest I've ever seen, and while that isn't saying much, it is a good indication of which sorts of business ventures are money makers in the City on Wheels.
Buses ran frequently and seemed heavily used even on a Saturday. The only other public transit is the "People Mover" which I have included a picture of below.
It circles the perimeter of the downtown area at a snails pace and I suspect the only groups of people use it are grandparents and their young grandchildren who can enjoy an amusement park ride together.
Many of the street level businesses are chains and in fact, many Detroiters brag of the Jimmy John's and Quizno's that dot downtown since they are a vast improvement over vacant storefronts. With more people beginning to take up residency in the area though, many local shops have begun to sprout up including the Urban Bean Co. shown below which sits next to a once-a-week speakeasy and across the street from a local strip club.
As soon as this district can draw a more reasonable balance between commercial and residential use, it will become a vibrant and thriving place. It does face issues though, many buildings--new and old--were not designed with pedestrians in mind, the block shown below doesn't seems too appealing for those walking by...
Places like this will need a retrofit so that they can contribute to the liveliness of the place, instead of acting as dead zones.
Enough of downtown for now, next on to the quasi-suburbs.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Detroit - Part II
I visited some of the newer suburbs of Detroit today. The camera is off line for the day so no pictures but I do have plenty to recount. For readers outside Michigan, it is important to note that the housing market crashed in Michigan well before it did in the rest of the country. This gives me the strong feeling that the behavior of (sub)urban areas in Michigan--and Detroit in particular--is leading those of the rest of the country.
Suburban designs are remarkably predictable and try terribly hard to offer any surprises. I had business at a particular strip mall that was a bit unusual in that it was oriented perpendicular to the main road that it fronted. Even stranger, it was sandwiched in between a housing project with what must have been well over 100 units and a collection of run down looking two story condos. Could this be an aberration in suburban design? Could this be mixed use?
Looking more closely...
The entire back side of the strip mall was walled off. The condo dwellers, lacking a sidewalk, would need to drive from their homes around the corner to visit the various services offered at the strip mall, parking literally 200 feet from where they had left. The front side of the strip mall faced an enormous parking lot close to the road, it was virtually empty when I was there. Farther in though, the large residential complex encroached upon the parking lot so that it was only one lane in width. Luckily another wall was constructed to prevent these hapless residents from being subjected to the scurrilous activities of those visiting the so-called "Doctor" or "Dentist" that had rented space in the strip mall.
Even more interesting was a small city park that had been placed opposite the strip mall on the road edge of the parking lot. The small pavilion there would have been an ideal place for lunch if any patrons of the strip mall eateries would be willing to cross the hundreds of feet of asphalt that divided them. The residential project had decided to do some landscaping as well, a paved sidewalk meandered out from the parking lot in front of the project terminating in a grassy spot where a bench was situated facing the road. The designers chose not to continue the sidewalk on another 15 feet or so to connect it to the small city park.
Around half of the units in the strip mall were vacant, and a third of the condos had for sale signs in the windows. It was impossible to tell the occupancy of the residential project but only a small fraction had placed furniture or decoration on their outdoor patios.
All in all, it was a place designed without much thought of it being a place that people might like to use. Indeed, even the mall's closest neighbors needed to hop in their autos to visit instead of chancing a pleasant stroll. No potential for pleasant social interactions. No development of ties to the place, only to the auto. In short, this place will proceed down the path that all suburbs will eventually face: middle class replaced by poor, poor replaced by indigent, decay, condemnation, selective removal and finally agriculturalization.
Once the suburbs are no longer able to support the lavish subsidies that made their existence possible, they will slowly slide into nothingness. Only the communities that manage to retain a stable population will survive and in a country full of lures, the grass always looks greener on the other side.
Detroit - Part I
'D' IS FOR DISASTER... -- So reads the headline on Drudge Report tonight after the venerable Detroit Lions lost their 16th game of the season, setting a new NFL record. Tomorrow I'm sure we can expect the obligatory columns throughout the sports world and beyond about how the Lions are the worst team ever in the worst city ever that makes the worst cars ever. The day after will bring rebuttals extolling the virtues of the other sports franchises and how kind the people of Detroit are. They all miss the point.
I'm not from Detroit and I've never lived there. There is a great deal that I don't know about the city but even a fool could see that something amazing is happening here--provided he could be coaxed off the highways for a moment. The transformation of Detroit is so important from a planning perspective that I believe we must understand it if we are to succeed as a nation.
First a bit of background...
The development of Detroit is entirely and unsurprisingly based around the automobile. There are no substantive differences between the vast majority of the city (around 1 million) and the metro area (over 4 million) in their development schemes. The strip malls get nicer, parcels larger, houses bigger, streets more curved the farther you travel from the city center, yet the layout is virtually identical. Masses of impenetrable tract housing blocks are carved up by a tangle of highways and a mostly square grid of collector routes where commerce occurs.
Outside the small downtown core, no part of the city is in any way walkable. A bus system that offers palatable service to the few lucky enough to be on a route is the only form of public transportation. The towering remains of the old Amtrak terminal loom over the Corktown neighborhood as a lasting reminder of a by-gone era.
So here we have a city, funded by the automobile, built around it, drained by it and left to rot along with it. Yet a drive or stroll through some of the Detroit neighborhoods most drastically affected by the shift to the suburbs, the riots and the corrupt governance reveals something entirely unexpected. These places are not the slums of the outer reaches of the city (or soon the inner suburbs). Their residents are not desperate or destitute. These are some of the strongest people you will ever see and they have learned a powerful lesson that must instruct the rest of us. They have learned how to unslum the suburbs.
I am not talking about the beautifully renovated neighborhood of Woodbridge or the old money of Indian Village. I am talking about North Corktown and the east side. Places where is not uncommon to see one, two or no houses on an entire block. These developments were among the first suburbs, thrown up to house the factory workers of the early auto industry. They proved insufficient to retain the newly emergent and union backed middle class which was siphoned away to ring after ring of suburbs. They became slums, they burned in the riots, they fell victim to drugs and racism in an endless downward spiral.
But people aren't trying to leave these places anymore. The in between spaces are filling in with row upon row of vegetables. Chickens and goats now mingle with guard dogs. Pheasants (known locally as "City chickens") roam freely. The lax code enforcement and inexpensive real estate have drawn a crowd of motivated young suburbanites searching for something beyond the bland dullness of their childhood. One particularly involved suburbanite exclaimed to me that, "In my 30 years here, I've never felt that anything good was happening until now."
As the era of the ever expanding suburb comes to a close, the rings of development march towards their inevitable demise. They are no better equipped to maintain their residents than were the suburb-esque developments of interior Detroit. Yet if they pay close attention, they will hopefully learn to cope with their lot with the least amount of cost and trouble.
Stay tuned because I'll be speaking with some Detroit residents over the next couple days and hopefully have some insight to share.
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