Should environmentalism promote pristine wilderness or more urban parks?

Posted on by

Debates over the legacy of John Muir pose an interesting question for environmentalists: to support pristine wilderness or more urban parks?

Christensen and others see Muir’s beliefs as antiquated in the face of 21st century environmental challenges that the bushy-bearded Scot could not have imagined: population growth, urban sprawl, demographic shifts, climate change.

The debate boils down to Muir’s primary ethic: The wilderness is a temple to be left undisturbed, so man occasionally can experience nature in its purity. That precept helped shape a century of conservation, ensuring that there would be unspoiled wilderness for succeeding generations…

To Christensen and others, however, Muir’s notion that immersing people in “universities of the wilderness” — such as Yosemite — sends the message that only awe-inspiring parks are worth saving, at the expense of smaller urban spaces…

Critics also see a correlation between the emotional, biblical language of Muir’s writings and the demographic makeup of national park visitors and the ranks of the largest environmental organizations — mainly aging, white Americans.

The Sierra Club, which Muir founded, and the Audubon Society are struggling to connect with California’s diverse population, particularly Latinos, who polls show are among the most devoted environmentalists in the state. A strong and diverse membership in California, where Latinos are expected to become a majority by 2050, is important to influencing political decisions and raising funds to support missions of conservation and environmental education.

Interesting issue. A few thoughts:

1. One could argue that there really aren’t many natural places completely undisturbed by human activity. Even the supposed “pristine wilderness” of the New World discovered by Europeans was really land that had been cultivated and altered by people for a long time.

2. The majority of people in the United States and in many countries now live in urbanized areas where they may have little time or resources for “pristine nature.” But, urban nature is a very human-altered form: for example, the design of Central Park in New York City is very intentional with its rock formations, water features, and set of paths and pedestrian areas (let alone space for vehicles and large buildings).

Preserving the Beatles modest post-World War II childhood homes

Posted on by

The Beatles grew up in modest homes outside of Liverpool but because of the stature of their former residents, the U.K. National Trust has preserved the dwellings:

A recent feature in the Liverpool Echo details how the U.K.’s National Trust restored the dwellings where Beatles songs like “Please Please Me” and “I Saw Her Standing There” were written. The childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney have been warped back to the ’50s, using “photographs and eyewitness accounts” as a guide to restoring fixtures and sourcing identical furniture.

Both homes are located in Liverpool, and are currently owned by the National Trust, which operates public tours four times a day. Lennon’s house, called Mendips, was purchased by Yoko Ono in 2002, who donated it to the Trust, requesting they “restore the house to what it once was, and tell John’s story.” (Paul’s has been owned by the Trust for 16 years.) Today, Mendips still has the creaky floorboards that Lennon once had to tiptoe around when returning from late night gigs. There’s also a replica of his bike leaning by the side of the house.

Notable details in McCartney’s former home include a replica of his first guitar and a stack of eggs tray in the kitchen, which his father used for noise insulation when the boys rehearsed in the dining room.

From what I have gathered in reading over the years, these homes aren’t terribly different from many homes in Britain after World War II. The Beatles came from working-class to middle-class families who cast normal aspirations for their sons. Of course, the Beatles moved beyond those aspirations though there was an interesting period between the start of their musical careers and before they hit it big when it wasn’t clear whether they were going to be stuck in normal lives. While it is hard to imagine a Paul McCartney or John Lennon living mundane lives in office jobs or manual labor or hustling to get by, this could have happened.

I suspect one question that people would ask when walking through these homes is how such music could have been developed in such settings. Perhaps it even helps drive home the point about the unusual success of the Beatles compared to many others.

Naperville mayoral candidates concerned about teardowns, infill development?

Posted on by

A quick overview of the six candidates interested in running for mayor in Naperville suggests at least a few are concerned with teardowns and infill development:

Councilman Doug Krause, a 66-year-old real estate broker, has been serving on the City Council since 1989 and ran unsuccessfully for the city’s top spot in the past. He said the city needs to be careful with infill developments, “making sure (they’re) compatible with the surrounding neighbors.”…

Retired Carol Stream firefighter Marty Walker agreed, saying the city must support both large and small businesses. Walker, 62, has been volunteering with Naperville events like Ribfest and Last Fling and said taking on the job of mayor would be a way to “continue to help people.”

Jim Haselhorst, a 54-year-old dental office manager who volunteers through the Naperville Jaycees, said he is entering the race because he feared several of candidates may not be as committed to the job as Pradel has been. He too, listed development as a major issue, especially in light of teardowns and rezoning in recent years.

“It’s a challenge to maintain a family-friendly environment in a way that keeps the nature of the city, the character of the city, intact,” he said.

While it is still early in the process, I believe these comments are quite indicative of the state in which Naperville finds itself today. It is built-out, meaning that there is little to no open land available for development. The city is large but has a high quality of life, as indicated by its recent ranking as the 33rd best place to live in the United States. The downtown is quite attractive – with plans underway to expand across to the south bank of the DuPage River – and there is still a thriving high-tech corridor along I-88.

Given these conditions, the statements by the mayoral candidates make a lot of sense: how can a mature community encourage growth (enough to pay for the good quality of life without having to raise taxes too much, keep its reputation as a thriving place) in such a way that its good character (wealthy, lots of good-sized single-family homes, family-friendly) is preserved? This will be a delicate balance but one that will go a long way to determining the Naperville of the next 50 years.

“An urban slum in the countryside” marked by a lack of McMansions

Posted on by

McMansions may be everywhere (including Iraq) but one writer notes their conspicuous absence in the suburbs of Cardiff, Wales:

“Out on what were the squelchy red muds, bluebell woods, beech-clad hillocks and bosky blackberry hedgerows of the ancient parish of Llanederyn, prices have collapsed and nothing sells. Few want to live in a no man’s land 40 minutes by bus from the city centre, an unloved, invisible of executive Mcmansions, roundabouts and superstores, sagging lintels and dripping gutters.”

We also learn that Trowbridge is “shabby and lacklustre” and that Llanederyn’s Maelfa indoor precinct is “a post-apolcalyptic boarded-up no-go zone, spurned by market forces uninterested in poor people.

“Thus was created an urban slum in the countryside.”

Some vivid descriptions that evoke a bleak image. It is interesting to compare this description of bleakness with how such things are discussed in regard to American McMansions. Outside of depictions of “zombie subdivisions” due to unfinished developments or suburban neighborhoods ravaged by foreclosures, American critics of McMansions tend to emphasize their emotional bleakness. Having McMansions implies having plenty of money or resources (or at least the means of acquiring debt). Yet, critics suggest neighborhoods with McMansions lack community, are lonely, project images of power but are empty inside. In the future, all those McMansions may suffer the fate of many homes: people who have moved on to newer and better things, the need for many home repairs, and a lack of exterior sheen due to age. The bleakness is not class-based or like urban blight with empty and boarded-up buildings but rather is based on a lack of soul.

Making something out of hundreds of unfinished subdivisions

Posted on by

The economic crisis of recent years had broad effects including stalling the construction of hundreds of suburban subdivisions across the United States:

There are hundreds of zombie subdivisions like this one scattered across the country. They’re one of the most visible reminders of the housing boom and bust, planned and paved in the heady days where it seemed that everybody wanted a home in the suburbs, and could afford it, too. But when the economy tanked, many of the developers behind these subdivisions went belly-up, and construction stopped. In some cases, a few people have moved into homes in these half-built subdivisions, requiring services to be delivered there. In others, the land is empty, except for roads, sidewalks, and the few street signs that haven’t been stolen yet. In some counties in the West, anywhere from 15 to 33 percent of all subdivision lots are vacant, according to the Sonoran Institute…

But if roads have been paved or a developer has installed infrastructure improvements, it’s very hard to just revert the space back to farmland. Local governments who try to stop building—even if there is little demand—can be sued for preventing development where it had once been approved…Still, some developers  have come up with creative ways to turn zombie subdivisions into something other than rows upon rows of empty McMansions.

Maricopa, Arizona, for instance, had issued about 600 residential building permits a month during the boom, and then saw many of these developments stall. Rather than just wait to see if demand would ever return, the city hooked up a Catholic church with the owners of an empty development. The church had been looking to erect a new building, and was searching for a site with existing water and infrastructure services. The developer had been looking for someone willing to build. With a little bit of rezoning help from the city, the church could start building on the land…

And in Teton County, Idaho, population around 11,000, where the Sonoran Institute estimates that 68 percent of land parceled into subdivisions was undeveloped, local officials passed ordinances that would allow subdivisions to be rezoned. One development, called Canyon Creek Ranch, changed its plans from a resort with 350 lots to a community project with only 21 lots, shrinking the infrastructure price tag by 97 percent and reducing the environmental impacts.

From zombie pedestrians to zombie subdivisions. It sounds like communities have to hope that someone wants the land – whether a residential developers or some other user – so they can do something with it. As noted, communities might be able to speed that up by rezoning the land for other uses. Perhaps this might lead to some ultra-flexible zoning where these spaces could be residential, commercial, industrial, or other as long as somebody has a plan.

I do wonder how many of these subdivisions would have legitimately filled up. Where were all the people going to come from? If they moved to the new homes, they opened up other units. Are there so many people rooming together or living with family to create the demand for all these new houses?

My suggestion for what these settings can be used for: sets for all of the post-apocalyptic or dystopian TV shows and movies. Studios could likely get cheap long-term deals on these properties and use them however they wish.

The first McMansion nursery rhyme?

Posted on by

I see a lot of material about McMansions but have never read a nursery rhyme about such homes. Here is the first I’ve seen:

As I was trading up on spouses, I became a man with SEVEN houses
Each house has seven acres,
Each acre has seven servants,
Each servant makes $7,
Acres, servants, dollars and spouses,
Why are the underclass such grouses?

There is not a whole lot here regarding the specifics of McMansions outside of vague ideas about wealth and seeing such homes as deserved. These are ideas often tied to McMansions but could apply to a broad range of big houses (such as mansions rather than McMansions) or even big-ticket consumption items.

I’m not the one to write such things but I imagine someone could come up with a better nursery rhyme involving McMansions…

Black congregation in Seattle follows its members to the suburbs

Posted on by

Here is one illustration of the demographic changes in American suburbs: an African-American church heads for Seattle’s suburbs.

The Rev. Leslie David Braxton saw the writing on the wall in 1999. Members of his former congregation at Mount Zion Baptist Church in the Central District were moving south, and in Seattle, the black middle class was already starting to shrink…

A data junkie and sociologist by training, the reverend rattles off statistics effortlessly. In 1999, he gleaned that in 20 years, the Central District wouldn’t be the epicenter of the black community…

He pushed for Mount Zion to open a satellite campus south of the city. After some internal conflicts, he resigned and, in 2005 started his own church, New Beginnings Christian Fellowship, south of Seattle…

“We’re sitting on 8½ acres. There’s no way you’d be able to get that kind of property in the city.” And, if a similar building existed, he said, “it certainly wouldn’t be affordable.”

To Braxton, there’s an upside, however. For many black families, the suburbs offer an opportunity to live out the American dream — good schools, the house with a two-car garage and a spacious yard — far more easily than the city. It’s a reversal, he says, of white flight, common in the East Coast.

Churches can often go where a majority of their members go. The pattern described here sounds similar to that of numerous white urban churches after World War II: as whites moved to the suburbs, so did a number of the congregations. Such moves weren’t necessarily immediate; it took time for some established institutions to leave buildings and neighborhoods where they may have been for decades and/or served multiple waves of white immigrants.

But, the suburbs today have a wider range of residents including more non-whites, immigrants, and lower- and working-class people. Suburban religious congregations already reflect some of these changes and will likely demonstrate these further in the future.

Teaching student tech designers to treat users more humanely

Posted on by

Here are a few college classes intended to help future tech designers keep the well-being of users in mind:

The class, which she taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and the MIT Media Lab, attempted to teach a sense of responsibility to technology inventors through science fiction, a genre in which writers have been thinking deeply about the impact of today’s technologies for decades. “It encourages people to have that long-term version that I think is missing in the world of innovation right now,” she says, “What happens when your idea scales to millions of people? What happens when people are using your product hundreds of times a day? I think the people who are developing new technologies need to be thinking about that.”

Students in Brueckner’s class built functional prototypes of technologies depicted by science fiction texts. One group created a “sensory fiction” book and wearable gadget that, in addition to adding lights and sounds to a story, constricts the body through air pressure bags, changing temperature and vibrating “to influence the heart” depending on how the narrative’s protagonist feels. Another group was inspired by a dating technology in Dave Eggers’s The Circle that uses information scraped from the Internet about a date to give suggestions about how to impress him or her. They created an interactive website about a friend using his public information to see how he would react to the idea. A third group imagined how a material that could transition from liquid to solid on command like the killing material “ice-nine” from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle could be used as a prototyping tool…

Neema Moraveji, the founding director of Standford’s Calming Technology Lab and a cofounder of breath-tracking company Spire, has a different approach for teaching students to consider the human impact of what they are designing. His classes teach students to create technology that actively promotes a calm or focused state of mind, and he co-authored a paper that laid out several suggestions for technology designers, including:

  • Letting users control or temporarily disable interruptions, the way that TweetDeck allows users to control from whom to receive notifications on Twitter.
  • Avoiding overload through the number of features available and the way information is presented. For instance, a Twitter app that opens to the least-recent tweet, “gives users the sense that they must read through all the tweets before they are done.”
  • Using a human tone or humor
  • Providing positive feedback such as “Thanks for filling out the form” and “You successfully updated the application” in addition to error alerts
  • Including easy ways to interact socially, such as Likes and Retweets, which allow people to interact without worrying about how they appear to others.
  • Avoiding time pressure when not necessary.
  • Incorporating natural elements like “soothing error tones, naturalistic animations, and desktop wallpapers taken from the natural world.”

These sound like interesting ideas that may just help designers think not just about the end goals of a product but also consider the user experience. Yet, I still wonder about the ability of tech designers to resist the pressure their employers might put on them. For example, putting these more humane options into practice could be easier when working for your own startup but would be more difficult if a big corporation is breathing down your neck to push the bottom line or end product. Think the Milgram experiment: can individual designers follow the ethical path? Perhaps some of this training also needs to happen at the executive and managerial levels so that the emphasis on protecting the user is pervasive throughout organizations.

“A giant boxy McMansion is something you know when you see it”

Posted on by

A Los Angeles councilman who has taken the lead on regulating teardown McMansions describes such homes:

Los Angeles does not do what other cities like West Hollywood do, which is an extensive design review by any means, but a giant boxy McMansion is something you know when you see it, and when they are next to smaller, historic homes they have a negative impact.

I’m sure there is more to his opinion as to how McMansions should be defined. Indeed, earlier he says to those who want to sell their property and make money or who do want bigger homes that “I think [new regulations] will be a reasonable compromise.” Yet, this is an oddly flippant or shorthand way to describe a class of homes that can often look quite different. Part of the reason such regulations take time to work out is that there are a multitude of ways of restrict large houses including working with the home’s footprint on the property, setbacks from the street and property lines, height restrictions, and/or particular architectural features.

An interesting side note: this councilman gained some popular support a few years ago for banning puppy mills. His take on it:

It’s one of those issues that seem to be very positive. It’s very cool. The last time that happened to me was when I [created] regulations that said you couldn’t operate a puppy mill or purchase a puppy mill animal in the city of Los Angeles. Wherever I was in the city, people said good things about it, and this ordinance seems to be getting that same kind of response.

So—traditional housing and puppies are your things.
It’s an interesting agenda. Cats and dogs and home seem to go together.

A populist man of the people.

Smartphones can turn urban dwellers into zombie pedestrians

Posted on by

What happens when urban residents and visitors are engrossed in their smartphones? It can lead to zombie pedestrians.

But the growing ranks of these cellphone addicts are turning cities like Tokyo, London, New York and Hong Kong into increasingly hazardous hotspots, where zombified shoppers appear to be part of vast games of human pinball…

Tokyo Fire Department, which runs the ambulance service in the megalopolis, says that in the four years to 2013, 122 people had to be rushed to hospital after accidents caused by pedestrians using cellphones.

As well as the vaguely comedic incidents of businessmen smacking into lamp-posts or tripping over dogs, this total also included a middle-aged man who died after straying onto a railway crossing while looking at his phone…

Phone fidgeters dawdling along at snail’s pace, forcing cyclists and pram-pushing mums to swerve out of the way have become such an irritant in Tokyo that public notices have started to appear warning offenders to expect “icy stares”, appealing to the Japanese sense of social harmony — assuming people look up from their phones in the first place.

Smartphone apps activated by sensors that flash warning signs or display the pavement on the screen have also been developed in response to the problem.

An unintended side effect of technological advancement. Walking in a big city can be a dangerous task, particularly given the emphasis in many places on helping cars get to their destinations faster. Things that distract pedestrians – just like things that can distract drivers – can lead to negative outcomes.

It is interesting to note the last piece above that tries to solve a problem created by technology with a technological advancement: just have an app that alerts people. It’s technology all the way down! Would something like Google Glass help get rid of these issues since people would still have their eyes facing forward?