Category Archives: Places

Moving? Consider the walkability and transit scores

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The Infrastructurist looks at two figures that may become part of the home-buying equation in the near future: a home’s walkability and transit scores.

How much this influences homebuying decisions remains to be seen. I’m sure there is part of the population that wants such a location where daily needs, like parks, food, and transit are within a reasonable walk. But there are certainly others who would emphasize other features, like the size of the home, over the home’s context.

We know that Americans don’t want to walk much more than a quarter mile to get to things. New Urbanists use this information to guide their planning: homes should be within a 5-10 minute walk away from necessities.

Quick Review: Georgia Aquarium

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While recently in Atlanta, I had a chance to make a brief visit to the Georgia Aquarium. Some quick thoughts:

1. Overall, a beautiful facility. Well-designed with an interesting central space/lobby. Vivid exhibits. The only downside was the large crowds in some of the exhibits.

2. The best part were the large tanks. This aquarium doesn’t have a lot of individual tanks featuring a lot of different species. The emphasis is on large tanks, particularly in the Ocean Voyager exhibit. While this exhibit features some rare animals such as the whale shark (unbelievably large), this has numerous great viewing points plus a tunnel underneath the middle of the tank. The viewing theater space at the end of the exhibit was a location where I could sit for a long time just watching the animals swim by. Here is an image of the whale shark from the viewing theater:

3. There were a number of innovative ways to view the tanks. In addition to the tunnel in the Ocean Voyager exhibit, I walked through a small tunnel with glass ceilings (probably three feet tall) under a river exhibit. The penguin exhibit featured special “bubbles”: people would walk up into the exhibit from below and while surrounded by a plastic bubble perhaps four feet across, see eye-to-eye with the penguins.

4. There is a special shark exhibit that didn’t feature any live sharks but had a lot of information on fossil teeth, different shark species, and interactions with humans. One room featured a frozen giant tuna next to a large shark and talked about how sharks chased tunas in the ocean depths. On one hand, the exhibit said sharks were dangerous creatures (with a particular emphasis on their teeth and jaws). On the other hand, the exhibit kept saying that the media and Hollywood have over-hyped shark attacks.

5. The aquarium seemed pretty kid-friendly, particularly in the Georgia Coast exhibit where patrons could touch a number of animals (I touched a small shark, stingrays, along with a few other small and more fixed creatures) and kids could crawl around in some cool-looking equipment.

6. Like many museums today, it was pricey: around $31 for what I saw (and I didn’t purchase all the add-ons).

Even with the price and the crowds, this was well worth the money. I thought the Shedd Aquarium was a lot of fun – this relatively new aquarium is vastly superior.

Blagojevich wins round 1

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While sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting to return to Chicago, I saw the big news of today live on CNN: Rod Blagojevich wins round 1 as he is convicted on only 1 of 24 counts brought against him by the federal government.

Amazing.

The jurors started speaking tonight. According to the foreman:

But in the end, he said, the “lack of a smoking gun” was too much of a hurdle for jurors to reach more than the one unanimous decision.

And the charge of trying to selling the Senate seat might have been held up by one juror:

[A young juror] said a female juror who was the lone holdout on convicting Blagojevich of attempting to sell the Senate seat “wanted clear-cut evidence, and not everything was clear-cut.”

The court proceedings will continue.

And what does this mean for the State of Illinois, politics, and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald?

Behind the curtain of the Bozo show

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The Bozo show was a long-time institution on Chicago television. The clown, televised on WGN, started on the air in 1960 and spread to stations around the country.

A new book commemorates the 50th anniversary of the show’s beginning. Among the stories in the book:

The Chicago show was so popular, Susan Harmon confirmed, that mothers would sign up for tickets the day their child was born, so six or seven years later, or even longer (at one time, there was a 10-year wait), their kid could attend the show.

Now that good evidence about the local impact of the show.

I attended the show when I was younger after seeing it for years on TV. (I have photographic evidence that I will not share here.) I’m pretty sure my mom got tickets from someone at work. I don’t remember much about the experience…but it was probably fun.

Hotbed for exports is…Wichita?

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The Financial Times reports that according to a Brookings Institution study, Wichita has the highest percentage of exports of any metropolitan region in the country:

Thanks to a cluster of aircraft manufacturers such as Learjet, Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft, the economic focus of Wichita – population 366,000 – is very different from the emphasis on services and consumer demand typical of 21st century America. According to a study published late last month by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, nearly 28 per cent of the city’s gross metropolitan product is sold abroad. That makes it the most export-oriented in the country, just ahead of Portland, Oregon – noted for its computer and electronics companies – and San Jose in California’s Silicon Valley.

Wichita is not who I would think is leading this list. But the article goes on to say that Wichita and some other places have figured out how to move beyond two lagging sectors of the economy, consumer goods and housing, to move forward. For the rest of the country’s economy to move forward, they may have to follow Wichita’s model.

NPR on New Orleans: Still a long way to go

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In a story that has slowly faded away, NPR looks again at New Orleans. The verdict: “the city’s health is much improved” but there is still much to be done. Top on the list of things to do: encourage economic growth that will continue to draw new residents and redevelopment.

Changing dumpsters into swimming pools

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In New York City, officials are hosting a summer program that includes swimming pools made out of dumpsters.

This is the kind of creative thinking that many cities could benefit from. Of course, it only sounds like there are a few of these pools being run by the city and they are each quite small. However, it is a clever reuse of a common object to bring some joy into summer life in the city. And the designer suggests they are cheap to put together.

Walgreens and food deserts in Chicago

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Chicago Breaking Business reports that Walgreens is about to unveil expanded food offerings in a South Side store in Chicago. The expanded food line at 10 Walgreens stores is part of an effort to help combat the city’s food deserts:

The stores will offer more than 750 new food items such as fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen meat and fish, pasta, rice, beans, eggs and whole-grain cereals. The Deerfield-based drug store chain said it was approached by Mayor Richard Daley last year to bring more healthy food to areas that the city has identified as food deserts, namely neighborhoods that lack supermarkets.

Large American cities often struggle with this issue: low-income neighborhoods that have little or no access to fresh and healthy food. If the only options available are buying food from a convenient store or gas station, it is more expensive and less healthy. In the long run, this has consequences for building wealth and public health.

The rise of “smart growth”

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Reuters reports on “smart growth” initiatives across the United States with Rockville, Maryland as a prime example. With a weakened economy, more buyers seem to prefer locations closer to downtowns where they can walk, more easily access amenities, and avoid some of the pitfalls of suburban sprawl.

From the article:

Rockville’s renaissance over the past four years shows how the shift toward urban-style living has reached the suburbs. And urban planners insist the trend has legs.

Dubbed “smart growth,” the movement favors the development of a mix of housing and businesses in and near existing cities. At the same time, it discourages the Topsy-like growth of peripheral suburbs, known disparagingly as “sprawl.”

“Sprawl” is a term commonly used to describe the suburbs. It implies automobile dependence, spread out houses, strip malls, big box stores, and a lack of open space. In contrast, “smart growth” offers something different: more dense development, mixed-use development, more thought-through development principles, and a lessened reliance on automobiles.

More suburban communities seem to desire “smart growth,” particularly to help revive their downtowns. This translates into certain development goals: building around existing transportation facilities (like railroads), constructing condos and more dense residential units, and seeking to attract dining, retail, and entertainment uses that can expand a downtown from just a place to errands in during the day.

h/t The Infrastructurist

Walking the entire Amazon

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A British man recently completed an impressive walk: the entire length of the Amazon. The journey took two and a half years and he is supposedly the first human to make the entire hike.

I am slightly amazed that there are still feats like this left to accomplish. Even as we often think of ourselves as very modern people, there are parts of the Earth that we still know little about or few people have ever seen.  The journey drew the attention of another famous explorer:

His feat earned the praise of no less an adventurer than Sir Ranulph Fiennes, a fellow Briton whom the Guinness Book of World Records describes as the “world’s greatest living explorer.”

“To do all this in more than 800 continuous days with just a backpack puts Stafford’s endeavor in the top league of expeditions past and present,” Fiennes wrote on Stafford’s website.

Remarkable – and it sounds like he had many interesting experiences along the way.