Category Archives: Places

Crediting New York if this year’s Super Bowl goes well, blaming New Jersey if it does not

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Gregg Easterbrook points out the interesting game of geography playing out in the upcoming Super Bowl to be played in New Jersey in a stadium used by two New York teams and with lots of media coverage of the Super Bowl happening from Manhattan:

This year’s Super Bowl will be played in New York, which, for NFL purposes, is located in New Jersey. Since the media, politicians and celebs will downplay the New Jersey angle, TMQ will play it up. In solidarity with the state of Thomas Edison, “The Sopranos” and toxic waste, TMQ will offer a weekly Road to the Swamps item during the runup to the game…

Both of the NFL’s “New York” teams not only play in New Jersey, they practice there and are headquartered there, too: neither the “New York” Giants nor “New York” Jets has the decency so much as to maintain an office in the Empire State, which today has one NFL team, the Buffalo Bills. NFL officials, media types, club-goers and politicians love New York and look down their noses at the Garden State. Should all go well, New York officials will take the credit. Should the game or the bus-based logistics be a fiasco, New Jersey will be blamed.

Three years ago, the Super Bowl was held in Dallas, which for NFL purposes is in Arlington, Texas, and ESPN’s local set was in Fort Worth, 35 miles distant. These things happen in modern life. But the “New York” Super Bowl will take cartographic challenges to an extreme. Though the game will be held in New Jersey, all three networks will report on it from across the Hudson River in Manhattan. The ESPN local set will be at Herald Square, the Fox and NFL Network local sets at Times Square. For media purposes, New Jersey will be located in New York.

Officially the Super Bowl will be played at a field called MetLife Stadium located in a town called East Rutherford, N.J. In order to encourage tourism, that town should change its name to The Swamps of Jersey, New Jersey. Springsteen fans would flock. The stadium should change its name to Somewhere Field, which has a nice numinous quality. Then as the big game begins, broadcasters could say, “Welcome everyone to tonight’s Super Bowl from Somewhere, in The Swamps of Jersey.”

The real issue here is that the game and media coverage is all happening within one metropolitan region surrounding New York City. Plenty of stadiums are located outside of the central city and media facilities are located all over the place. (Think of the world’s media sports center in Bristol, Connecticut – home of ESPN.) Yet, this particular metropolitan region crosses state lines. Yes, Fort Worth is not the same as Dallas which is not the same as Arlington or Irving but at least they are all within the same Metroplex. Moving between New Jersey and New York City (and also Connecticut – though there are no sport facilities there, perhaps for the same NIMBY reasons that didn’t allow the United Nations to locate in suburban Connecticut – and upstate New York, which probably has the same relationship with NYC as downstate Illinois has with Chicago) is a big deal. New York City, particular Manhattan, is the number one global city in the world. It is the center of media, entertainment, and the financial industry. In contrast, New Jersey is industrial, working-class, and The Sopranos.

One other question: can Chris Christie take some credit for this New Jersey Super Bowl or do the New York politicians get to take all the credit?

Suburban DuPage County to address record number of heroin deaths

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Following a record year for deaths by heroin, DuPage County has plans in motion for 2014:

The call for action in DuPage came months before the county surpassed its year-old record of 38 heroin-related deaths in 2012.Officials say there were 45 confirmed heroin-related deaths in 2013 in DuPage. And depending on the results of toxicology tests, Jorgensen said the final number could climb by one or two.

“If this was gang or gun violence in DuPage County and someone was being killed every eight days, I think the communities would be up in arms,” Wood Dale police Chief Greg Vesta said…

Heroin is more addictive and physically harmful than any other illegal drug, according to Jorgensen, who was a surgeon before becoming coroner.

That’s why, he said, it’s so important for DuPage to have a public education campaign targeted at heroin prevention. One goal of the effort will be to inform families about warning signs and where to find help. The education campaign — called “Be a Hero in DuPage” — will include a website and social media providing timely information, warning signs and resources, officials said.

DuPage County has long been one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. A story like this goes against that image. In a county that prides itself on suburban success, drug use that leads to death is likely viewed as more of an urban problem. Yet, the story for DuPage County and other suburban counties in the decades to come is that they will likely to see more urban concerns including poverty, crime, and more minorities and immigrants moving to the suburbs as they spread within metropolitan regions. It will be interesting to see how DuPage County tackles this issue…

Jaywalkers vs. car culture in downtown Los Angeles

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The battle for Los Angeles may not involve aliens but rather jaywalking pedestrians versus cars in downtown Los Angeles:

It is not quite “Dragnet,” but the Police Department in recent weeks has issued dozens of tickets to workers, shoppers and tourists for illegally crossing the street in downtown Los Angeles. And the crackdown is raising questions about whether the authorities are taking sides with the long-dominant automobile here at the very time when a pedestrian culture is taking off, fueled by the burst of new offices, condominiums, hotels and restaurants rising in downtown Los Angeles…

The police say they are simply trying to maintain order at a time when downtown Los Angeles, once a place of urban tumbleweeds and the homeless, is teeming with people competing for pavement with automobiles. “There’s a huge influx of folks that come into the downtown area,” said Sgt. Larry Delgado of the Central Traffic Division. “If you go out there, you are going to see enforcement.”

These pedestrians are confronting not only the police, but a historically entrenched car culture that has long defined the experience of living and working in Los Angeles. With its wide streets, and aggressive motorists zipping around corners, cutting in and out of lanes and sneaking past red lights, Los Angeles is hardly built for people who prefer to walk.

Yet times may be changing. There are an increasing number of people using bicycles, taking advantage of an expanding network of bike lanes. Los Angeles is in the midst of a major expansion of its subway and bus system. Much of the urban planning in recent years, particularly downtown and in Hollywood, is intended to encourage people to give up their cars in favor of public transit, walking or biking.

It is hard to tell what exactly is going on here without some hard data about jaywalking fines in downtown LA over time. However, it does make for an interesting narrative: while many cities and places are trying to encourage more pedestrian and bike use (for its green, health, congestion, and other benefits), Los Angeles is cracking down on walkers. The issue is that LA is perhaps the prototypical car city in the entire world. The sprawling city has traditionally not had a downtown on the scale of other major cities that people would want to crowd. The metropolitan area seems to stretch on forever, crisscrossed by numerous highways. This is home to the Beach Boys singing about driving, the rise of fast food, and lots of car commercials.

Jaywalking may be an opening skirmish but this could blossom into a longer war over the heart of Los Angeles: is it really a city about cars or can it also contain dense, walkable nodes? Critics of sprawl would see a Los Angeles full of pedestrians (at least in pockets) as a tremendous success story.

Experts suggest Illinois has no chance of landing Boeing plant

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The State of Illinois may be putting on a hopeful face but experts suggest Illinois has little to no chance of enticing Boeing to open a new plant in the state:

But Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aircraft industry analyst, is among industry watchers who don’t believe Illinois has a chance.

“Zero, zilch, nada. Worst (possible location) I’ve heard yet, apologies to Illinois,” he said.

The state, he said, has almost no aerospace production or workforce with industry experience and has a heavy, strong union presence unlikely to appeal to Boeing as it goes through tense labor negotiations in Washington.

Illinois is also short on several requirements Boeing wants any new home to provide, aerospace industry consultant Scott Hamilton of Leeham Co. said…

Those requirements include a site adjacent to a “major international airport,” one with a runway at least 9,000 feet long, according to a copy of the company’s site selection criteria obtained by The Associated Press…

The area around O’Hare has almost no available land, said Brent Pollina, vice president of Pollina Corporate Real Estate in suburban Chicago.

Boeing also wants 300-400 acres of land “at no cost, or very low cost,” and buildings totaling several million square feet under the same or similar terms.

Without offering details, the company says it would like its corporate income tax, property tax and other taxes to be “significantly reduced.”

While Boeing is asking a lot (leading to a very good question of how much states or local governments should give up to entice companies), it doesn’t sound like Illinois has much to offer for this new plant. In a global age, the headquarters of Boeing may be in Chicago but that doesn’t mean a new plant has to be anywhere near it.

This offer to Boeing should also lead to broader conversations about what Illinois does offer, not including tax breaks and financial deals, compared to other states. Chicago and the surrounding region is likely the biggest asset with a global city (particularly financially), plenty of educated employees, other important companies and organizations, and a central location in the United States with the necessary transportation infrastructure (airports, railroads, highways, and water access). Illinois has lots of space outside the Chicago area and some rich farmland. The whole state is centrally located and has access both to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. But, is Illinois perceived as good for business? How do its assets line up with those of other states?

From studying San Diego, five features cities need to grow

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A new study of San Diego’s development suggests five factors that lead to city growth:

According to Walshok and Shragge, five major characteristics of civic culture are necessary to move forward:

1) A risk-oriented culture adept at managing uncertainty. A central feature of San Diego’s experimental history and prevalence of small industries is a civic culture and business community that embraces risk.
2) Entrepreneurial talent: Civic leaders, scientists, business professional. San Diego’s long history of creating opportunities for people who want to challenge the status quo or create something new has resulted in an unusually large aggregation of entrepreneurial civic, business, and scientific leaders.
3) Integrative civic platforms. San Diego’s civic culture is highly inclusive, cross-functional and interdisciplinary. Institutions that span the boundaries between communities of ideas and practice have proliferated; in many other regions such entities continue to be siloed.
4) Multiple gateways through which ideas and opportunities can be developed. There is no one Establishment, Inc., in San Diego. There are actually many centers of gravity vis-a-vis leadership and access to resources. San Diego is characterized by an open innovation environment that allows people to easily move among social groups and within hierarchies.
5) A culture of reinvestment: Time and money. The absence of multinational corporations until recently, the century-long reliance on the federal government as a key customer, and the lack of accumulated family wealth have required a civic culture characterized by people investing significant amounts of personal time and resources to achieve civic goals. This is enhanced by the fact that those who come to San Diego stay because of their attachment to the place.

Sounds interesting for two reasons:

1. This sounds like a combination of the creative class bringing in new talent, ideas, and business and a committed growth machine of business and civic leaders. If this works in San Diego, the next question to ask is whether this particular combination and set of circumstances is generalizable to other cities.

2. San Diego doesn’t get much attention in urban sociology. Although it has the 8th largest population in the United States (and 17th largest metropolitan area), it is dwarfed by nearby Los Angeles, is all the way at the corner of the country, and doesn’t stand out for any particular reason outside of fantastic weather.

We had a chance to spend a few days in San Diego a few years ago and enjoyed some of the sights including the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and the USS Midway. Here is the view toward the city from the deck of the USS Midway:

SanDiegoFromUSSMidway

We enjoyed our visit though it required a lot of driving around.

Chicago’s once-thriving streetcar system

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Like many American big cities, Chicago once had a large streetcar system:

Those cable cars were preceded by horse-drawn streetcars, which began service in 1859, and were replaced by electric-powered trolleys, beginning in 1890. By the mid-1930s, 3,742 streetcars were running on tracks laid along 529 miles of streets in a grid that provided Chicagoans a streetcar stop within a few blocks of where they lived, worked or shopped. Trolley wires extended into vast areas of the Northwest, Southeast and Southwest sides far from the nearest “L,” making it the adventurous Chicagoan’s system of choice for exploration…

For their part, aldermen and legislators knew the value of changing a “no” to a “yes” vote on a streetcar-line franchise. Each innovation in motive power brought with it safety concerns, upon which politicians could hang a price tag for overcoming their reservations.

The advantage of streetcars compared to the “L” or railroads, both of which helped make Chicago famous, was that it could cover more land and fill in the development gaps between the more infrastructure intensive types of transportation. While the streetcars were eventually replaced by cars, which could serve the same function and allow drivers more independence and privacy, streetcars helped kick off mass suburbanization in the late 1800s.

See more about Chicago streetcars here on this page about Chicago Surface Lines which operated Chicago’s streetcars until 1947. According to this, Chicago had quite the system that quickly went from peak to bust:

The continuous reorganization was finally completed by the Unification Ordinance of 1913, which stipulated that all lines would come under the management of a single operating association called the Chicago Surface Lines (CSL), and unified operations commenced in 1914. Four companies formed the CSL: the Chicago Railways Company, Chicago City Railway, Calumet and South Chicago Railway, and Southern Street Railway. At this time, Chicago had the largest street railway system, the longest one-fare ride, the longest average ride, and the most liberal transfer privileges in the world.

The 1920s saw continued growth despite the increasing competition from the automobile, and while the 1933-1934 World’s Fair and wartime demand supported ridership, the underlying companies were bankrupt. Creditors’ bills were filed against the Chicago Railways in 1926 and the Chicago City Railway and Calumet and South Chicago in 1930, resulting in the appointment of receivers and bringing their property into the custody of the Federal District Court. In 1944, the proceedings were converted to those under the Bankruptcy Act, and trustees were appointed. By 1958, the Chicago Transit Authority, which took over the Chicago Surface Lines in 1947, had abandoned the remaining trolley lines, which were “bustituted.” Before that, CSL had introduced gasoline buses for light routes in 1927,and trolley buses to the northwest side starting in 1930.

In Crabgrass Frontiers, a classic on American suburbanization, historian Kenneth Jackson gives reasons for the decline of streetcars: the automobile started taking away customers and many streetcar lines were locked into municipal contracts that didn’t allow them to raise fares even as they needed money to maintain infrastructure and compete with the automobile.

Why is Midway nowhere close to the food options of O’Hare?

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Eater rates the restaurants at O’Hare and Midway Airports and it isn’t even close: O’Hare is a lot better. Here is the top 8 at O’Hare:

1. Tortas Frontera;  2. Wicker Park Sushi Bar; 3. Wolfgang Puck Cafe; 4. Berghoff Cafe; 5. La Tapenade; 6. Big Bowl; 7. Beaudevin; 8. Garrett Popcorn.

City institutions plus big names at O’Hare. In contrast, the top 8 at Midway seem like what you would find at a shopping mall food court:

1. Manny’s; 2. Potbelly; 3. Pegasus on the Fly; 4. Harry Caray’s Seventh Inning Stretch; 5. Lalo’s; 6. Gold Coast Dogs; 7. Reilly’s Daughter

Perhaps there are some good reasons for this like more passengers at O’Hare (the 6th most passengers in the world), more space at O’Hare (more and bigger terminals plus more passengers provides more room for restaurants while Midway has one food court and then some scattered small options), and a wider range of passengers at O’Hare (Southwest dominates Midway, more first-class and international passengers at O’Hare). One way to boost Midway’s profile would be to improve these food options. It is the smaller airport and has more budget flight options but it was the first passenger airport in Chicago and has a unique place as such an urban airport in a global city.

But, knowing that this is Chicago, I wonder how much food contracts differ between the two airports. Even as O’Hare is more lucrative, why doesn’t Midway have any major name or food choice? Harry Carey’s might have the biggest name recognition (ironic it is located in the South Side airport) but it isn’t exactly known in the restaurant world for great food. Is there something odd about how restaurants at these airports are chosen?

New skinny, tall, and super expensive residential towers in NYC

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Here is a look at a new set of skinny, tall, and expensive condo buildings under construction in New York City:

One such apartment tower under construction, 432 Park Avenue, will have a top floor higher than the Empire State Building’s observation deck. Another will have a top floor higher than any in One World Trade Center, which is officially (by virtue of its spire) the nation’s tallest building.

The 432 Park penthouse has sold for $95 million; two duplex apartments at One57, now nearing completion, also are under contract, each for more than $90 million. Even a studio apartment on a lower floor at 432 Park (designed for staff — a maid or butler) costs $1.59 million…

But what’s most striking about these towers is their shape. The boxy old World Trade Center twin towers had a ratio of base width to height of 1-to-7 (209 feet-to-1,368 feet); an apartment house about to begin construction next to the Steinway piano showroom on 57th Street will be a feathery 1-to-23.

That kind of skinniness, also found in skyscrapers in Hong Kong and Dubai, is shifting the focus of high-rise construction. Twenty years ago, only five of the world’s 100 tallest buildings were at least partly residential, compared with 31 today. They include the Princess Tower in Dubai, at 1,358 feet the world’s tallest apartment house.

These towers are shaped by their clientele: a transnational nouveau riche looking for a second (or third or fourth) home. Having made fortunes in nations less regulated economically and less stable politically than the USA, these buyers want a safe investment as much as, or more than, shelter. And they don’t want to pay New York resident income taxes.

Three things I would like to know more about:

1. It would be fascinating to see who lives in these buildings – though buildings like these tend to guard that information. Is this the in form of conspicuous (sort of) consumption: the pricey and incredibly exclusive real-estate holding in the global city? Collect the full set!

2. It would also be interesting to hear more about the construction. A later part of the article mentions “super strong concrete” and new dampers but this is a sizable change from thicker skyscrapers of the past.

3. How do these buildings change the New York City skyline? Does their thinness present a different kind of image?

Chicago region produces 4th most Peace Corps volunteers

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Here is one sign of civic virtue: the Chicago metropolitan area compares well in producing Peace Corps volunteers.

Chicago, including Naperville and Joliet, again this year ranks among the top metropolitan areas for producing Peace Corps volunteers. Currently, 239 Peace Corps volunteers call Chicagoland home, making it the fourth-highest-producing metro area nationwide in 2013.

Illinois also ranks among the top states for Peace Corps volunteers. With 300 residents now serving overseas, Illinois is No. 6 among all states and No. 1 in the Midwest.

This looks good – though Chicago is the third largest metropolitan area in the United States and ranks fourth on this list. If these figures are correct, I imagine there are some politicians who would enjoy using this data for their purposes…

How do you preserve the first sports dome that voters rejected?

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The fate of the Astrodome in Houston is unclear though the National Trust for Historic Preservation still holds out hope:

Prior to Election Day, it was widely speculated that demolition would begin almost immediately if Harris County did not pass Proposition 2, a bond measure to turn the Dome into the world’s largest special events space.

Fast forward to today, and we have a failed ballot initiative, but only the building’s non-historic features have come down. The intense “should it stay or should it go” chatter has quieted, and the Dome was noticeably absent from the agenda of the county’s last meeting…

Because the Astrodome is Harris County property, all eyes are on the judge and the county commissioners — the five elected officials who, sooner rather than later, will have to make the call. Since Election Day, this group has taken great care to consider the three most likely options: private development, a public-private partnership, or demolition.

In that time, they have not only expressed disappointment over low voter turnout, but that they still want to hear from people who want to save the Dome. Still.

I have to wonder if this kind of preservation effort is similar to efforts regarding Brutalist structures or modernist single-family homes. Is the Astrodome aesthetically pleasing? Is it worth trying to make something out of a building that was primarily for sports? The Astrodome might be significant because it was the first but that isn’t necessarily a good reason for having it around even longer. One has to appeal to a bigger cause – like the idea that midcentury architecture is worth preserving:

The Astrodome’s exterior is wrapped in a steady, repeating rhythm of slender columns, the space between them filled with concrete screens in a delicate diamond-shaped pattern. Seen from the parking lot outside, the dome resembles more than a few lightly ornamented postwar buildings around the country, including William Pereira’s Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which opened the same year…

Even if its attitude toward the environment now strikes us as deeply naive, the Astrodome deserves to be protected simply as a singular monument to the American confidence and Texas swagger of the 1960s. The stadium doesn’t so much symbolize as perfectly enclose a moment in time.

I would think the biggest reason for saving the Astrodome would be that it is a big piece of Houston history, a city that has come a long way in recent decades. It could serve a function similar to the Water Tower building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago: a reminder of an earlier era amidst bigger buildings.

We’ll see if the Astrodome is preserved and then what is done with the building.