Category Archives: Places

Iconic image of American McMansions from Plano, Texas

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I’ve seen this picture of a Plano, Texas McMansion numerous times around the Internet:

DeanTerryPlanoTXMcMansionI’ve wondered at the origin of this photo and now I see: see this image and others from the same area as part of Dean Terry’s Flickr stream with the photos originating from his 2007 documentary Subdivided.

What makes this particular McMansion photo stand out? Some reasons:

1. The home has a “typical” McMansion design: brick exterior, multi-gabled roof, clearly a big home, lots of big windows in the front at various levels, a two-story foyer.

2. The surrounding area: the looming water tower, the big power lines out nearby, a neighborhood of similar sized houses with little evidence of anyone being around. (Some of the later photos in the Flickr set illustrate this further: the home backs up to a wide right-of-way for power lines and that water tower really is huge.) Setting the picture beneath a stop sign and lamppost seems to add to the ominousness of the photo.

3. This is Texas, a place where everything is big, including the homes, water towers, and sky. And not just any part of Texas: Plano is a booming suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area that went from just 17,872 people in 1970 to 259,841 people in 2010. That is explosive, sprawling suburban growth.

Now, I may just have to get my hands on this documentary to see more of the home and its context…

Fake Georgian office building to hide electric substation next to fake Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago

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It is not uncommon for cities to have fake buildings or facades to hide infrastructure and here is an example in Chicago where the same architect designed the Hard Rock Cafe and fake mansion next door:

The most noteworthy, a faux Georgian mansion in the River North area of downtown, was designed by perhaps the city’s most famous living architect, Stanley Tigerman, former director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“The building is somewhat tongue-in-cheek , a bit of a joke,” said Tigerman, who had first designed a restaurant just west of the site. “The Hard Rock Cafe: fake stucco, fake Georgian, nothing real about it. Then they came to me and wanted me to do the ComEd substation next door, but to be contextual, to relate it to this ersatz piece of junk.”

So rather than construct a bogus building based on a fake, albeit one he designed, Tigerman cut the other direction.

“I decided to go absolutely hard core, as classically designed as I could, done authentically Georgian,” he said. “The brick bonding is  English cross bond, the one Mies van der Rohe used whenever he used brick. It’s very expensive to to lay bricks that way, but it makes the walls sturdy and impervious to cracking. I knew the building would never receive any maintenance, so the idea was to do as good a building as I could.”

He also had to take into account the building’s true purpose — so if you look closely, what seem to be windows are actually vents, to help cool the 138 kV electrical transmission equipment inside.

Hiding in plain sight. Here is the Google Streetview image of the two buildings, the covered substation on the left and the Hard Rock Cafe on the right:

55WestOntarioChicago

This could lead to a great architecture conversation: which of the buildings is more fake or authentic? The restaurant which is about evoking a particular spirit (a museum? an imposing older structure intended to lend more gravitas to rock ‘n’ roll?) to make money? Or the fake mansion with more pure design that does nothing but hide the infrastructure that is necessary for big cities? Both could be considered postmodern for their application of old styles to new purposes, their exteriors projecting certain images that don’t match their interiors.

Demolishing public housing as spectacle in Glasgow

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Glasgow, Scotland is planning to blow up five 29-story public housing high-rises, the tallest buildings in the city, and broadcast the event live on local TV and set up a viewing in a nearby soccer stadium:

Glasgow has a novel plan for grabbing viewers for this summer’s Commonwealth Games opening ceremony: It’s going to blow up the city’s tallest buildings live on television. For the Games opener on July 23, Scotland’s largest city will demolish five towers (most over 290-foot high) in just 15 seconds, screening the explosions at the nearby Celtic Stadium.

This combination of celebration and mass destruction, announced Thursday, would be unusual in any circumstances. What makes Glasgow’s plans even stranger is that the towers being dynamited – part of a huge housing project called the Red Road Flats – were once the city’s pride. By uniting a cheering stadium crowd and TV cameras with explosives, the ceremony might come off as a sort of latter-day Disco Sucks, but for social housing…

Still, the city has been moving on. From the ’80s onwards, Glasgow started an ultimately successful re-branding of itself as a cultural and business center. The Red Road and its ilk became emblems of the run-down Glasgow that the city’s promoters wanted to forget. Demolition of the first few towers started back in 2012. Now the games will dramatize its final transformation in the most eye-catching way possible.

But is it really in good taste? This video, shared by the games organizers themselves, proves that many former residents still remember the place with affection. What’s more, the project isn’t totally uninhabited, as one tower, currently occupied by asylum seekers, will remain. For these people, witnessing a ceremony that enacts their neighborhood’s destruction as unfit for human habitation while leaving them on site, should feel uncomfortable at the least. A petition is going round against the plans, and there’s a sense among locals that they, rather than just the buildings, are the targets of a ritual purge to do away with a side of Glasgow officialdom would rather forget.

The whole process sounds similar to the demolition of public housing high-rises in American cities, starting with the Pruitt-Igoe complex in St. Louis in the mid-1970s (a good documentary about it here) and accelerating with the HOPE VI program that began in the mid-1990s. Of course, the buildings tended to get blamed for the problems at the complexes when there was a whole host of other issues involved including deindustrialization and residential segregation.

But, it does seem a bit odd to make this such a spectacle. It is relatively rare to demolish large buildings so I could understand how that might be interesting. In contrast, while the demolition of Chicago’s public housing buildings drew attention (particularly the last high-rises at Cabrini-Green), it seemed like the general public wanted to move on rather than celebrate the demolition. Instead of publicizing the demolition, why not devote some air-time to showing how the city is trying to tackle the larger underlying issues (unless, of course, they are not and the demolition is meant to be a distraction from the true issues)? As the residents at Cabrini-Green who fought the city’s plans argued, what is the point of demolition if there many other options planned down the road?

Chicago rated worst city for parking – but this could have some benefits

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Nerdwallet named Chicago the worst city for parking based on the factors of price and number of car thefts:

Takeaways:

  • Chicago is the worst city for parking — and also the most controversial. Parking prices skyrocketed in 2009 after the city made a deal for a group of investors, organized by Morgan Stanley, to operate its meters for 75 years.
  • Though you’ll probably enjoy Hawaii’s capital, Honolulu is an extremely expensive city to park in; it’ll run you $42 a day.
  • There are a lot of car thefts in Oakland — 124.59% more per capita than the national average.

1. Chicago, Ill.

This city is known for its parking woes—especially the controversial privatization of the parking meters, which led to a dramatic increase in parking fees in 2009. A consortium called Chicago Parking Meters LLC operates the meters. You’ll drop $35 a day to park in the city and $289 per month. The city lists the fines you’ll receive for various parking violations on their website.

This spring, Chicago will test its new ParkChicago app, which allows drivers to pay for parking via an app rather than a meter. There are various websites that help you find the cheapest parking in the city. Chicago is one of the cities supported by SpotHero.com, which helps you find parking and prepay. However, if you want to ditch driving altogether, the city has multiple public transportation options. Bus and “L” riders will soon be able to use their phones to pay for rides.

Unfortunately, Chicago also has 33.4% more motor vehicle thefts per capita than the national average. And if you get a citation, you must contest it within seven days of receiving it or pay the fine online.

Parking is heavily dependent on the number of people and amount of space available. In other words, urban density. If you look at the bottom of the list, or “the best cities for parking your car,” they are all sprawling Sunbelt cities. Presumably, they have much more space and are less dense, driving down parking prices.

Of course, there are positives to having bad parking. Such urban densities that make parking more expensive can lead to:

1. Vibrant mixed-use neighborhoods with plenty of housing as well as businesses, stores, public spaces, and culture. Lots of people in a small amount of space can lead to some exciting urban scenes.

2. Plentiful and efficient mass transit. This is difficult to provide when there are a limited number of riders and the transit has to cover a lot of ground.

3. A lot more people walking and riding bikes. This is good for health, limiting pollution, and livelier streets.

4. The space that might be devoted to cars (wider streets, on-street parking, parking lots and garages) can be devoted to other things. For example, see this analysis of snow plowing on Philadelphia city streets that reveals the potential space.

Big differences in life expectancy across American counties due to income differences

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Here is an update on the “longevity gap,” the differences in life expectancy, by county in the United States:

Fairfax County, Va., and McDowell County, W.Va., are separated by 350 miles, about a half-day’s drive. Traveling west from Fairfax County, the gated communities and bland architecture of military contractors give way to exurbs, then to farmland and eventually to McDowell’s coal mines and the forested slopes of the Appalachians. Perhaps the greatest distance between the two counties is this: Fairfax is a place of the haves, and McDowell of the have-nots. Just outside of Washington, fat government contracts and a growing technology sector buoy the median household income in Fairfax County up to $107,000, one of the highest in the nation. McDowell, with the decline of coal, has little in the way of industry. Unemployment is high. Drug abuse is rampant. Median household income is about one-fifth that of Fairfax.

One of the starkest consequences of that divide is seen in the life expectancies of the people there. Residents of Fairfax County are among the longest-lived in the country: Men have an average life expectancy of 82 years and women, 85, about the same as in Sweden. In McDowell, the averages are 64 and 73, about the same as in Iraq…

Since the 1980s, “socioeconomic status has become an even more important indicator of life expectancy.” That was the finding of a 2008 report by the Congressional Budget Office. But dollars in a bank account have never added a day to anyone’s life, researchers stress. Instead, those dollars are at work in a thousand daily-life decisions — about jobs, medical care, housing, food and exercise — with a cumulative effect on longevity.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/15/business/higher-income-longer-lives.html

This is part of a growing body of research that links demographics and social forces, including social spaces, to different health outcomes. Wealthier counties can offer a wide range of health and social services as well as have more higher class residents while poorer counties have different social structures.

While the county level data is interesting, I would assume there would also be some wide differences in life expectancy within counties. Fairfax County, Virginia is one of the wealthiest U.S. counties but income levels there are not uniform. Cook County, Illinois could include some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago as well as Kenilworth, Illinois, one of the wealthiest suburbs with a median household income of over $247,000. Check out these maps from VCU’s Center on Society and Health on life expectancy in metro areas. Here is what they found in Chicago:

So the contrast between a county in Virginia versus one in West Virginia might be notable but one doesn’t have to travel that far to find big differences in life expectancy.

Paris bans half of its cars from the streets in attempt to reduce smog

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Certain places like Chinese cities or Los Angeles might have reputations for smog but Paris had to take drastic measures this week to try to reduce smog levels:

Paris on Monday banned all cars with even number plates for the first time in nearly 20 years to fight sky-high pollution but opted not to extend the measure after an improvement in air quality.

About 700 police officers were deployed to man 60 checkpoints around the French capital to ensure only cars with plates where numbers end with an odd digit were out on the streets, infuriating motorist organisations.

Public transport has been free since Friday to persuade Parisians to leave their cars at home, and at rush hour on Monday morning, authorities noted there were half the usual number of traffic jams as drivers grudgingly conformed to the ruling…

The government decided to implement the ban on Saturday after pollution particulates in the air exceeded safe levels for five straight days in Paris and neighbouring areas, enveloping the Eiffel Tower in a murky haze.

As the article goes on to note, this is likely a longer-term issue. Just how many cars and factories and other sources of air pollution can a large modern city handle before smog is inevitable? With over 12 million residents in the metro area, Paris has a lot of potential car owners.

It is interesting to note that there are motorist organizations in Europe. Such groups were particularly influential in the United States in the first half of the 1900s by advocating for the construction of roads and highways. In an era before the federal government was involved much in highway construction, some local governments responded more to motorists groups.

The public to ride the mail delivery system once used under London

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The Post Office Underground Railway once used below London is set to open soon to the public:

The Post Office Underground Railway—AKA the Mail Rail—was the world’s first driverless electric railway. It launched in 1927 and was used to transport tons of post from one side of London to another, with stops at large railway hubs such as Liverpool Street and Paddington Station, where post could be collected and offloaded for transportation around the rest of the country…

The idea is to create special battery-powered passenger carriages to take people from the car depot and some of the tunnels in a one-kilometer loop. Visitors will be taken 70-feet underground, through Mount Pleasant Station, and will stop to view audiovisual displays recounting the history of the network and what it was like to work down there…

The railways have a 61cm gauge (the width of the track), on top of which small carriages traveled without drivers thanks to electric live rails. In the stations there are two tracks, with carriages going in each direction.

The service continued to operate until 2003, when it was closed down—it had become much cheaper to transport mail by road.

Looks like a cross between a Disney ride and the Tube. I suspect there may just be a tourist market for this ride…see this post from April 2011 about people exploring the system as well as the interest in looking at underground Paris.

Such lines underneath cities may not be all that unusual. Chicago had an underground delivery system as well since it was far more efficient to move some items underground away from the street-level traffic. This was also the impetus behind creating Lower Wacker Drive. How many major cities have such tunnels underground, how many of them are well secured (free from ne’er-do-wells or flooding issues), and are these all tourist opportunities waiting to be opened?

Portraying a broken-down Chicago in Divergent

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The new movie Divergent takes place in a dystopian Chicago:

And instead of a vibrant, healthy metropolis of canals and glass towers downtown, the Lake Shore Drive bridge at the Chicago River has collapsed; a few skyscrapers have fallen into jumbles of stones; a few are heavily damaged, the outcome of some unnamed catastrophe; and many more stand dormant and dark. There don’t seem to be any cars, and there don’t seem to be any people. A little water remains in the main branch of the river but not that much. And everywhere, vegetation runs riot…

Throughout the spring and summer last year, while the movie crew of “Divergent” shot around Chicago, production designer Andy Nicholson, who had recently finished work on the technologically innovative “Gravity,” often found himself driving through potholes. Every day he drove to the set, he said, and every day he would notice “a lot of Chicago roads needed resurfacing or seemed about to be resurfaced or were in the middle of resurfacing. You saw a lot of neglect in Chicago.” And when the crew ventured into old steel yards on the South Side, Nicholson noticed overgrowth not unlike what he pictured for Michigan Avenue in the film…

Said Haller: “They wanted to know what Chicago would look like 20 years in the future so they could then show its decline from there out. I told them: More tall buildings. And we don’t envision any new districts, but probably more expansion west. And we’re sort of slaves to transportation systems, so everything would continue to converge on the Loop.” He also told them about the city’s flood-fighting Deep Tunnel Project (in the film, one of the factions is headquartered in a network of massive underground tunnels). “I didn’t mean to sound optimistic,” Haller said, “but, barring ecological collapse, our dystopian possibilities are mitigated.”…

Despite seemingly intractable problems that would suggest it is a perfect 21st-century dystopian setting — perpetually heavy-handed government, gun violence, profound inequality — Chicago is, in fact, such a prosperous place that it’s likely new installments of “Divergent” will not film here. (The sequel, “Insurgent,” will shoot in Atlanta, and it is unclear what Chicago’s role will be.) The city is too expensive. Said Rich Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office: “Filmmakers understand it’s a thriving place, which makes it difficult to push everything aside to film. Chicago can read, in places, as a city in decline. Yet, sitting next door, you’re also looking at some of the highest-priced real estate in the country.”

Predicting what cities of the future will look like is difficult for many films, whether projecting American cities will look more like Chinese cities in Her or creating all new cities in The Hunger Games. It sounds like the plan for Divergent was to try to “naturally” project what a decaying Chicago might look like in a few decades. It is interesting how they looked for inspiration to some of the older industrial area of Chicago, places that once housed more businesses and people but were left behind by a shift away from manufacturing. All major American cities likely have some areas that are like this, not all that far away from the glittering downtowns where business and political leaders try to funnel tourists and businesses. In fact, this is one of the more fascinating features of modern cities (since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution): there are parts humming with culture, business activity, and sparkling features of modern life and then there are places that literally seem of a different decade or century.

At the same time, the presence of potholes in the midst of one of the worst winters on record doesn’t necessarily foretell a dystopia in the near future…

To allow Claire’s, Naperville makes ear piercing legal in the downtown

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Since Naperville’s zoning laws did not allow body piercings, it recently changed the provision about ear piercings for a new Claire’s downtown:

Naperville will now allow ear piercing to take place within its borders, but other body piercing remains prohibited.

The move came after a request from Claire’s Boutiques, Inc., which recently opened a shop in downtown Naperville. The company estimates it performs 3.7 million ear piercings annually at its stores around the world.

City councilmen voted 7-0 in favor of removing ear piercing from the definition of body piercing in city ordinances.

Zoning laws are often used to keep undesirable uses out of a community. For a relatively wealthy community like Naperville (median household income around $101,000), places that do body piercing do not project the kind of image the city desires. Many places will not allow spaces for tattoo parlors but apparently body piercing businesses also have some undesirable traits. I’m now curious how many suburbs don’t allow businesses to do body piercings, particularly ear piercings.

So why would Naperville reverse itself? Two things could be at play: a new business opened downtown that would benefit from changed rules and ear piercings don’t exactly conjure up the same negative images as other body piercings might. While it sounds like this change was because of Claire’s, a relatively non-threatening place more associated with shopping malls and young female consumers (adding to downtown Naperville’s mall-ification), I wonder if anyone else will take advantage of this change and promote a different kind of image than Claire’s.

My first experience riding Chicago’s Divvy bikes

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On a rare 50 degree Chicago day, I rode Chicago’s Divvy bikes for the first time. I made three relatively short trips: from Ogilvie Transportation Center to the Art Institute, from the Art Institute to Navy Pier, and from Navy Pier to Ogilvie. Here is evidence of my rides:

DivvyBikesChicago

My quick thoughts on the experience:

1. It is fairly easy to pay for and to get the bikes. It costs $7 for an all-day pass and rides under 30 minutes are free. There are lots of Divvy stations in the Loop so finding a stand near major attractions isn’t too hard. While it is a pain to have to wonder where other stations are when on the bike, I’m guessing $7 a day doesn’t cover a GPS with every bike.

2. The bikes themselves worked fine: big tires, nice fenders (otherwise I would have been quite splattered from all of the melting snow), good brakes, seats that are easy to adjust. The bikes only have three gears and this is limiting, but Chicago has a limited number of hills.

3. Riding near Millennium Park and Lake Michigan was easy. Riding in the Loop was not. I can handle it as I learned how to ride the mean streets of suburbia while a teenager (this may sound like a joke but we rode on a number of busy streets). Plus, traffic was pretty light in the middle of the day. However, I have a hard time imagining the average tourist wanting to do this. Some street have bike lanes but the only one I saw that was a protected lane was on Dearborn Street, a north-south street. Madison had a bike lane and I rode back to Ogilvie on Adams in the bike lane but both of these had plenty of double-parked taxis, cars, and buses. While drivers noticed me and took a wide berth, how tolerant would they be of slower groups of riders?

I would do this again, particularly in nice weather, as it is a different way to see the city and it can cut down on the time to get from attraction to attraction (less than 15 minutes biking from Navy Pier to the train). But, riding on busy streets is not for everyone and Chicago has a ways to go before having a street infrastructure that makes it easy for visitors to hop on bikes.