Mexico City’s pedestrian superhero back in the news

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Continuing to fight for pedestrians in Mexico City is “The Little Pedestrian”:

The mighty Peatonito (Little Pedestrian) pushes cars blocking the path of pedestrians, creates crosswalks with spray paint, and climbs on vehicles parked on sidewalks — though his mother has begged him to stop stepping on them.

“Pedestrians are happy because they finally have a defender,” Peatonito said, his face covered by a wrestling mask adorned with a pedestrian symbol and wearing a striped cape (sewn by his grandma) adorned with the black and white stripes of a pedestrian crossing.

“We live in a car dictatorship. Nobody had fought for pedestrian rights until some activists emerged a few years ago.”

Meanwhile, below the city streets five clowns are on a similar mission to send up urban incivility, barging into a metro carriage making monkey noises and holding a sign saying “It’s better without pushing.”…

Peatonito aims to reduce traffic deaths in a city where pedestrians account for more than half of around 1,000 annual road fatalities, according to health ministry statistics.

This is a fascinating way to draw attention to the issue. It is one thing to publish statistics or to have more road signs (read about the campaign in Illinois to post the number of driving deaths for all to see) but another for a handful of people to act in public spaces. With the line of “we live in a car dictatorship,” I’m surprised others haven’t taken up similar routines in other cities around the world (including the United States which might be as much as a car dictatorship as one can have). But, two things might be problematic:

1. I wonder if police or local officials could actually arrest them for being a disturbance. In a real car dictatorship, you don’t want fake superheros running around in the way of cars. Might it take some complaints from drivers or others who feel that these crusaders have gone too far?

2. How does one translate these activities into a broader social movement or changes in policies and regulations? If the pedestrians of Mexico City wanted to take over the roads, they certainly could. At the least, this superhero might publicly shame the city but that doesn’t necessarily lead to large-scale change.

By the way, this isn’t the first time Peatonito has drawn international news coverage. See this story from 2013 that discusses what his actions led to:

Peatónito is the alter ego of Jorge Cáñez, a 26-year-old political scientist in Mexico City who has also worked with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)…

His efforts got him invited to speak at the Walk 21 conference in 2012 and has met with officials from Mexico City’s department of public security to discuss the importance of putting pedestrians first in street design and traffic enforcement. He is hopeful about government efforts to improve infrastructure. At least, he says, they are now talking about giving pedestrians priority — which would only make sense in a city where 80 percent of the population doesn’t drive…

“Once the government has adopted the ‘pedestrian is the king’ in their speeches, I’m going to monitor and help them till the day there’s no pedestrian fatalities nor accidents, and also decent sidewalks and safety crossings in the streets. But even if the government calls me to collaborate, I will always be a non-partisan citizen hero of the public domain.” He has registered Peatónito as Creative Commons, so that anyone who wants can become Peatónito.

Perhaps there really are superheros…

How the ADA changed architecture

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The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 had a profound effect on architecture and design:

The Americans with Disabilities Act created a comprehensive civil rights approach to accessibility at the federal level. Before its passage, architects worked under a varying system of state and local buildings codes that governed design requirements. Federal laws that were precursors to the ADA, such as the 1968 Architectural Barriers Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (especially section 504) and the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, mandated better access. But since they only applied to federal properties, those built with federal money, or housing programs funded by federal sources, they didn’t address varying codes for other structures, and had no impact on privately owned buildings. People with disabilities still had to navigate on unstable terrain, legally speaking. Wright told lawmakers the patchwork of protection was akin to a “piece of Swiss cheese” spread across the country…

The battle for passage, which foreshadowed many of the issues surrounding its implementation and eventual effectiveness, boiled down to three main issues, according to Wright: civil rights, an implicit part of the debate; architects’ desire to have freedom in their choice of designs; and the cost of retrofitting buildings. While architects eventually accepted the changes as another set of guidelines, like a code change, every section of the bill encountered different forms of corporate resistance. During debates over transportation, for instance, Greyhound complained about the cost of retrofitting buses and rebuilding all their stations. During months of negotiations, Wright was assisted by her “right-hand man” Ron Mace, an architect and designer with Barrier-Free Environments, who used a wheelchair due to polio. He continually gave her facts and figures on the costs of different alternatives and upgrades, helping to assuage fears and correct inflated cost estimates from the opposition…

At first, architects greeted the ADA as just another code change, according to many in the field. Patrick Burke, a principal at Michael Graves Architecture & Design who started there in the ’70s, admits that his colleagues at the time rarely thought about people with wheelchairs. But a few years after the ADA was introduced, it quickly became “part of design DNA.” While sustainability often provided a quantifiable, monetary impact, accessibility, which almost always requires a bigger building and more money, is just the right thing to do…

“It’s changed the way we enter buildings, and the way we design for monumentality,” says Steinfeld. “The ADA has created a new way of thinking, a much more convenient, egalitarian approach. It’s no longer like the days of imperial Rome and England, with the elite of society standing up on the second floor, watching the peons go by below.”

The suggestion here is that addressing accessibility led to more open, flowing, lighter designs that all people could benefit from. While the legislation may have been aimed at helping a specific group, the benefits can be shared by all. Think about the trend of having first floor master bedrooms in houses; they may have benefits for those with mobility concerns or allowing the homeowners to stay longer since they don’t have to travel up or down stairs as much but such a layout could have other benefits such as a more private space away from the other bedrooms and having closer access to the main living spaces.

On the other hand, I wonder if the normal person has noticed these changes in public places beyond seeing a ramp here or there. Many people don’t have to think about accessibility issues. Granted, it may be our often lack of attention to architecture and design in our daily lives and the inability to read/understand this architecture that is more of an issue. Yet, I suspect this is still a hidden issue.

Song invoking filling potholes with cement (which the gov’t is not doing)

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Potholes are problems in many places but it isn’t often that the issue makes it into a popular song. Here is part of the bridge for Twenty One Pilots’ “Tear In My Heart”:

You fell asleep in my car I drove the whole time
But that’s okay I’ll just avoid the holes so you sleep fine
I’m driving here I sit
Cursing my government
For not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement

Potholes are costly to the average driver but who knew that they can be detrimental to romantic relationships? Yet another reason for spending more upfront on infrastructure to keep the later potholes at bay. Plus, the artist is convinced that the government is misallocating his tax monies. Seems to be a popular American sentiment these days.

These failed romance/anti-government themes may just be popular together: at the time of writing, the song was #67 on iTunes and is #2 on the alternative radio charts. Or, maybe the reference to filling potholes with cement is the real secret…

Viewing a neighborhood differently with white vs. black residents

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A recent study asked people to look at the same neighborhood but with differences in the race of the residents:

In a study led by sociologist Maria Krysan at the University of Illinois at Chicago, people were asked to assess short video clips of neighborhoods with black and white actors posing as residents. Whites rated more positively the places that appeared to be white neighborhoods, compared to when the very same neighborhoods were shown with blacks. These two clips used in the study capture the same middle-class neighborhood in Detroit.

An interesting twist to use videos with similar scenes. But, the findings follow in a long line of studies that suggest whites and blacks are treated differently in mortgage applications, searches for rental housing, applying for jobs, buying a car, and other areas. Just having a different skin color provokes people to different perceptions and actions. Whites generally don’t want to live in neighborhoods with blacks though the opposite is not true. And just seeing blacks on the street might be enough to push whites away…

Dot maps of American jobs

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A researcher shows the geographic dispersion of American jobs through an interactive dot map:

This visualization plots one dot for every job in the United States, according to the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data. The LEHD data is based on state unemployment insurance records, and tabulates the count of jobs by census block. Here, jobs are colored by type, allowing us to see how different industries and sectors exhibit different spatial patterns–some clustering in downtowns, others spreading across city and suburbs alike.

This project was inspired by the Racial Dot Map, as implemented most recently by the Cooper Center at the University of Virginia. I’m grateful to them for hosting such a stunning visualization, and especially for their extensive methodology section, which I drew on heavily to create the map here.

Not surprisingly, jobs are concentrated in different areas. Geographic dispersion is not unusual in the United States as it includes racial and ethnic groups (ongoing patterns of residential segregation), spatial mismatches between where people live and work, and grouping by social class and other categories (like religion or cultural groups – see the books The Big Sort or Our Patchwork Nation).

Why jobs are so grouped could involve a variety of factors including zoning (communities wanting to place certain firms in certain places), economies of scale and innovation (it could make sense to concentrate large numbers of workers and/or organizations near each other), and historic patterns of businesses locating near each other.

Another issue is whether these patterns are generally good for organizations, workers, and communities.

Do you want your big city mayor to have no experience with corruption?

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Many big city residents may want mayors who stay away from corruption but what if that means the mayor is less effective at getting things down and fighting corruption?

Today, Mr. Marino finds himself under political siege in the city he vowed to save from itself. Italy’s news media lampoons him as an honest man in over his head, or as one newspaper called him, a Forrest Gump.

“His virtue is also his main problem: He is not connected to all the rotten Roman relationships,” said Carlo Bonini, an investigative journalist with La Repubblica, a daily newspaper. “He knows the world he operates in too little.”…

Perhaps most damning for the mayor has been the slow-bleeding “Mafia Capitale” investigation, which has exposed tainted bidding for city contracts on a number of services, including refugee centers and sanitation. Even for a country more than accustomed to such scandal, the revelations have come as a shock…

While the corruption revealed by the scandal predated Mr. Marino’s arrival in office, the mayor has been criticized as responding slowly and indecisively. “He has always been a step behind,” Mr. Bonini of La Repubblica said…

The corruption investigation of park maintenance contractors led the mayor to suspend their work, leaving public spaces overgrown. His order to stop sidewalk vendors from peddling near historical sites prompted protests from merchants.

Perhaps this is a situation where you would prefer to be the mayor after the crusading reformer has vigorously taken on corruption. Two other quick thoughts:

1. How much can a mayor do on his/her own to fight corruption? If other governmental bodies are not working with the mayor, it would be difficult to get much done.

2. Cleaning up corruption is a difficult task. Moving too quickly may lead to disruptions. Moving too slowly irritates residents.

Spotted in Boston: a prominent silver unicorn

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Atop the Old State House in Boston is an unusual site in a modern city: a unicorn.

BostonOldStateHouseUnicorn

Here is a wider shot:

BostonOldStateHouse

Both the lion and unicorn were recently restored and put back in their positions:

The unveiling of the two statues Sunday morning attracted Bostonians, tourists, and members of the press. Shannon Felton, of the British Consulate General, and Greg Soutiea, a participant in the 2013 Boston Marathon, had the honor of revealing the newly refurbished statues to the public…

Over the course of a few hours, the statues were removed from their wooden crates and hoisted to the top of the Old State House. This marks the end of a six year long project to restore the statues to their original glory. The unicorn, newly plated in a palladium cover, looks completely different from its tarnished appearance when it was removed in September.

According to the Wikipedia page for the building, the unicorn has an interesting history:

Today’s brick Old State House was built in 1712–13…A notable feature was the pair of seven-foot tall wooden figures depicting a lion and unicorn, symbols of the British monarchy…

In 1882, replicas of the lion and unicorn statues were placed atop the East side of the building, after the originals that had been burned in 1776.

Read more about the unicorn present on the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom.

I wonder if there is any other American city that has such a prominent unicorn…

Historic preservation of a strip mall and parking lot

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Benjamin Ross in Dead End retells the story of a historic preservation movement to save a Washington D.C. strip mall:

It fell to a suburb-like section of Washington, DC, to test the limits of historic preservation. In 1981, the new Metro reached Cleveland Park. Riders entered down a stairway alongside the parking lot of a fifty-year-old strip mall. The owners of Sam’s Park and Shop wanted to replace it with a larger, more urban structure. But the wealthy and influential homeowners who lived nearby liked things as they were – the neighborhood had led the successful fight against freeways two decades earlier – and they didn’t want any new construction. Tersh Boasberg, the local leader, told the Washington Post that “the central question is, ‘Can an urban neighborhood control what happens to it, or is development inevitable?”…

Sam’s Park and Shop, its neighbors thus proclaimed, deserved protection as a pioneering example of strip-mall architecture. But for the historic designation to succeed in blocking new construction, it wasn’t enough for the store building to remain intact. The parking lot had to be saved as well.

The residents’ base was not an easy one to make. In front of the original Park and Shop were a gas station and a car wash (an “automotive laundry” in the preservationists’ inflated prose), later town down to make room for more parked cars. Nearby stores were built in a hodgepodge of styles, without parking of their own…

It was a long way from landmarks to human and appealing places to shop, but in 1986 the fight for the parking lot ended in victory. (p.93)

A fascinating story that illustrates the power of NIMBYism and local control. Generally, those opposed to sprawl really dislike parking lots: they are only filled at certain hours of the day (usually during business hours), often are too large (though parking at a mass transit stop may be for the larger good), they are ugly, and their surfaces encourage water runoff. Yet, in the right setting, this parking lot was viewed as a better alternative than denser construction. (And the stated concerns about such construction might have been about traffic and safety but it often involves social class and status connected to denser development.)

Early American urban planning at the Boston Common

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Several weeks ago we visited the Boston Common which has this plaque located at its eastern corner:

BostonCommonPlaque

Established in 1634, the Boston Common provided common space for grazing and later served as a military camp, site for public hangings, place for public assemblies and speeches, and a major urban park. But, it is hard to imagine central Boston without this large open space. What would it be otherwise – more space for office buildings and residences? To have it set aside at an early date and originally toward the edge of the city just like Central Park looks quite prescient today. Having the city grow up “organically” around it also helped compared to new cities and major developments where parks may be planned but have a difficult time developing a welcoming atmosphere. (Perhaps this is where Jane Jacobs’ ideas about parks needing more than just existence to be successful could be useful.)

Although this area isn’t really nature (too much ongoing human interference), it still is a welcome respite from the activity all around it. Indeed, urban parks like these really do help make cities all that they are even if they might be “negative space” in their lack of buildings.

Only 8% of new American homes under 1,400 square feet

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Even with the rise of tiny houses (with a new push by HGTV), most American new homes are nowhere near this small. According to Census data, only 8% of new homes constructed in 2014 were under 1,400 square feet. And the median square footage for new homes was 2,453 and the average was 2,657.

As noted in earlier posts, the size of the tiny house movement is unclear. They may be popular in particular situations such as cities with affordability issues (like San Francisco or New York City) or dealing with homelessness. This is the case even with a sluggish housing market for starter homes and the burst housing bubble of the late 2000s.

What is the future for tiny houses? I suspect it will continue as a niche movement. Many Americans still like larger homes and their stuff and have a hard time imagining paring down their life that much. Perhaps semi-tiny houses will become popular: the 100-200 square foot homes ask for a big sacrifice but housing units of 700-1,000 square feet are doable (and not already uncommon in denser cities). It might take the efforts of a major city or developer really getting behind smaller homes to convince a larger group of people that this is the way to go. But, outside of specialized uses, it would take a big shift to get many to build and/or buy such small houses.