Three Scenarios, One Community (Part 2)

by Stephen Ostrander
4/27/09

Last week, I discussed the Community Design Workshops CMAP is holding across the region in support of its GO TO 2040 plan, focusing on my work with the Village of Streamwood. This community’s historical commercial hub, unattractive and underused, has seen better days. Through the Community Design Workshop, CMAP is working with Streamwood and a team of architects to visualize a better day, in 2040, for this site via three regional “scenarios” we are considering for the GO TO 2040 plan.

In the April 13th meeting with the team of architects, the Streamwood advisory committee was not shy in their assessment of the site under consideration. Two fundamental themes emerged: the need for an activity center for Streamwood’s teens, and the need for senior housing.

The committee believed that the site offered a great opportunity to create a center for activities for teens and young adults. While more than one older member of the committee prefaced their comments with “Well, I won’t be around in thirty years,” everyone seemed unanimous in their concern over the lack of things for young people to do in town—thirty years from now, and today.

In addition to suggestions of new aquatic facilities and a skatepark, recommendations included a coffeehouse where young people could gather and socialize. Actually, most of the adults around the table seemed interested in having a place within Streamwood to gather and socialize (it’s remarkable how unremarkable it is that, even in a community where most residents seem to know each other, such a place doesn’t already exist).

Another concern was the lack of housing options for Streamwood’s senior residents. In addition to attracting new residents, Streamwood is a community where residents generally choose to stay, which means that it would be wise to begin thinking creatively, now, about what would fulfill the needs—perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the expectations—of the next generations of senior residents, which are likely to be quite different from the needs, often unfulfilled, of today’s seniors.

Whether thinking of the needs of pre-driving teens and post-driving senior residents in 2040, or themselves today, everyone assembled agreed that the site has great potential. It’s well-located, at a crossroads in the center of Streamwood, with good access to the rest of the community, including immediately adjacent parks. And there appears to be little on the site which residents would want to preserve, permitting us a great deal of latitude to visualize a comprehensive resolution, via our scenarios, which begins to fulfill the site’s potential.

I’ll report back in the coming weeks with the results of the design team’s visualization of what this site in Streamwood might look like in 2040.
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Three Scenarios, One Community (Part 1)

by Stephen Ostrander
4/23/09

Last month I wrote about the GO TO 2040 Community Design Workshops that CMAP is conducting throughout the region, which will add a visual dimension to the development of the GO TO 2040 plan.

A crucial step in the development of the GO TO 2040 plan is choosing a preferred future scenario. “Scenarios” are combinations of actions (policies, strategies, and investments) that represent alternative paths that the region could take toward reaching its desired future, as expressed in the Regional Vision. Three regional scenarios we are considering have been suitably-titled “Preserve,” “Reinvest,” and “Innovate.” In the Community Design Workshops, we are taking these three scenarios and visualizing them at the local level. In about fifteen different communities around the region, we have chosen a specific site to which we will apply each scenario, visually, in essence asking: If we choose this path over the coming decades, what might this site in this community look like in 2040?

This month, a few of my colleagues and I have been leading meetings between small teams of architects, who will produce visualizations of the three scenarios, and local advisory committees (made up of planners, elected officials, and other members of the community), who are providing the design team with background information and context about the chosen site.

One of the communities that I am working with is the Village of Streamwood. Last week we held the primary meeting between the design team and the advisory committee representing this community of about 40,000. We evaluated the current problems, assets, and opportunities that exist in the chosen site, roughly a half-mile in diameter, which was once Streamwood’s commercial hub. Located smack dab in the middle of the community, the site has seen better days. It’s a fairly common story: commercial development has grown at Streamwood’s periphery over the past few decades, along wide arterial roads, while its pedestrian-accessible, smaller-scale commercial crossroads has declined. One of the site’s dilapidated strip malls, once home to Streamwood’s main supermarket, has been literally sinking over the years—an apt metaphor.

As the advisory committee helped the design team—and me—better understand the site, I realized that its decline occurred mostly over the past thirty years, which is, coincidentally, the same period of time that we were looking forward, as we imagine three different paths to its renaissance by 2040.

I was impressed by the members of the committee—which included the Village’s mayor, manager, parks planner, economic development commissioner, and engineer, joined by Village trustees, a police officer, a realtor, and one insightful resident. Why was I so impressed? In addition to being particularly well-organized, efficient, and perceptive, they exhibited a grounded optimism that acknowledged the site’s current problems while being imaginative and hopeful about its potential. Their pride in Streamwood is palpable, and the sad strip malls found on this site, while common to communities across the country, are out-of-sync with the community as a whole, which is healthy.

Many valuable observations and ideas were shared with the design team that evening.  Next week, I’ll discuss some of the key themes!

What Might GO TO 2040 Look Like in Your Community?

by Stephen Ostrander
3/6/09

Lately, much of my time has been devoted to preparing for the GO TO 2040 Community Design Workshops, taking place throughout the region later this spring, which aim to add a visual dimension to the development of the GO TO 2040 plan.

Words are essential, as evidenced by the GO TO 2040 Regional Vision that was defined through countless hours—in reality, days, weeks, and months—of vast discussions and meticulous wordsmithing. Now we are determining the best path to get there, through the evaluation of a handful of regional “scenarios,” or strategies. These scenarios are driven by different priorities, and defined by various combinations of strategies, including preservation, infill, and innovation.

But to use that admittedly over-used expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” As the 1909 Plan of Chicago is perhaps best remembered for its extraordinary illustrations of the city to come, we need to give form to the ideas of GO TO 2040, making them real to the people of the region.

Therefore, the aim of the Community Design Workshops is to take the different regional scenarios being considered for the GO TO 2040 plan, and visualize them at the level that we probably best understand –that of the local communities that we call home. So in a variety of municipalities and Chicago neighborhoods — large and small, urban, suburban, and rural — we seek to visually answer the following: If we choose this path over the coming decades, what might this community look like in 2040?

For each community, CMAP is providing a small team of three or four architects and urban designers, who will take one chosen site in the community and visualize what it might look like in 2040 under each one of the scenarios. They’ll be guided at the outset by a local advisory committee (made up of planners, elected officials, and other members of the community), that will provide needed background and context to this somewhat unusual exercise, which unlike typical community design “charrettes” looks forward three decades rather than ten years, five years, or even one year.

I’m the CMAP liaison for four of the eighteen communities in which we’ve chosen to hold Community Design Workshops: Grayslake, the Rogers Park neighborhood, Streamwood, and an unincorporated area in Will County, located just south of Lockport Township. Over the past few weeks, I’ve enjoyed getting out of my office at the Sears Tower, and visiting the sites in each community that will serve as the testing ground for our regional scenarios. Each site will offer the assigned design team both challenges and opportunities. For example, at one site the design team will apply our regional scenarios for 2040 to the community’s historical commercial hub, today a grab bag of dilapidated strip malls, but also nicely located in the center of the community—primed not just for redevelopment, but redefinition, over the next three decades.

In May or early in the summer, the final visualizations of the scenarios will be exhibited for the general public in a local community venue, such as its village hall or its library. The plan is to have a kick-off event that will both focus attention on the project, as well as serve as a means for CMAP to begin gathering feedback on the scenarios from the community’s residents—what they liked, and what they didn’t.

These scenario visualizations will also be added to those from Community Design Workshops occurring in other municipalities and neighborhoods across the region, and highlighted on CMAP’s GO TO 2040 website (www.goto2040.org). Our hope is that this will allow all of the region’s residents, whether or not a workshop occurred in their community, to better understand what the different scenarios might mean for them, by exploring the visualizations for communities similar to their own.

I’ll share more as the GO TO 2040 Community Design Workshops get started this spring. Stay tuned!

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Sustaining Chicago as a City of Immigrants: The Argyle District (Part II)

by Stephen Ostrander
1/29/09

In my previous blog entry, I considered the counterintuitive reality of many of America’s cities, in which our “nation of immigrants” is not found within the city, but out in its sprawling suburbs. I noted that Chicago, by contrast, has both: while many of Chicagoland’s foreign-born residents choose to make their home out in the suburbs, the City of Chicago has remained a city of immigrants. The Argyle Street District, the heart of Chicago’s Vietnamese-American community (and home to a wide variety of Chinese and Southeast Asian residents and businesses), is a good example. But while Argyle has retained its identity within a somewhat challenging, highly-urban area, the current state of the district doesn’t match its extraordinary potential—which presents an opportunity that fueled the recent Technical Assistance Panel (TAP) led by the Urban Land Institute and the Metropolitan Planning Council.

Photo of Argyle Street Red Line station in Chicago, IL by Flickr user puroticorico.

After over a year of planning and surveying of local business owners, in mid-November the Argyle Technical Assistance Panel led two days of discussions about design, use, implementation, and financing, with the aim of answering several questions, such as "What are the market opportunities for the Argyle District" and "In the face of growing competition, how can district merchants harness a broader market to grow their businesses?"

The multidisciplinary team of experts came up with recommendations that explored “marketing opportunities, as well as infrastructure and streetscape issues,” which were unveiled in draft form at a community meeting on January 8th. The recommendations fell under three main goals:

Goal 1: Incorporate Argyle Street into a larger Asian destination. The panel believed that there was a great opportunity to expand the Argyle District to connect with the burgeoning entertainment district found near the intersection of Broadway and Lawrence, by developing a unifying visual concept to tie the two districts together and better establish the identify of the area. Beginning with simple banners and signage, the panel recommended an aesthetic approach that reflected a “broad-based, contemporary Asian style, and not the widely-used elements (e.g. dragons and pagodas) that are the hallmark of ‘Asian-themed’ locations.”

Goal 2: Create a community of sustainable businesses that engages and attracts area residents. To achieve this goal, the panel specified a number of more formal local business leadership structures that could help upgrade the appearance of the district, improve parking options, and generally make it more inviting. The team also offered a few creative ideas to attract area residents, including developing cooking classes at the district’s Asian markets to stimulate interest in local products, as well as “mitigate the intimidation some visitors may feel when shopping in an unfamiliar environment.”

Shi Lin Night Market in Taipei, Taiwan. Photo by Kyle Mullaney, (May, 2005.)

Goal 3: Create a landmark identify reflecting the area’s diversity and appealing to a broader market. This goal encompassed some of the most popular ideas of the panel. One was to re-brand the expanded district as “Asia on Argyle” to express the range of cultures represented in the district. But perhaps the most vivid idea was to establish a night market patterned off the night markets typically found in Asian (and a few Canadian) cities – where vendors sell food and other goods in an open-air market accompanied by music and other entertainment. This market, initiated on an annual basis during the summer (but possibly growing into a quarterly celebration), seemed to be a hit as it would raise awareness of the district in a festive manner, but occurring at a time when most of the businesses along the corridor are traditionally closed. I think that it might be challenging to replicate the spirit of surprise and joyful, unordered capitalism found in abundance in many night markets in Asia, given the food safety regulations we traditionally depend upon and, well, the general litigiousness of our society. But having enjoyed night markets in countries such as Vietnam, I personally think the idea is an inspired one.

Those are but a sampling of some of the ideas—the inspired, the promising, and the modestly sensible—presented on January 8th, in draft form, to a hopeful assortment of folks from the community. The ideas themselves were hopeful, fueled by a trust that transforming and reinvigorating the identity of the Argyle district will compel the area to change, and overcome the business and quality of life challenges it faces today. It’s understandable for business owners to focus on the immediate problem of parking for their customers (a problem that does not exist for their competitors in the suburbs). It is also reasonable for residents of Argyle’s retirement community to argue that safety and litter are the most pressing priorities. But having weathered what I would call America’s anti-urban era, the Argyle District is particularly well-positioned to benefit from the return to the city that we are beginning to see slowly emerge nationwide—if it can weather the current economic downturn while also investing, today, in its inherent strengths and future potential. 

Photo from 2008 ChineseLunar New Year parade on Argyle Street by Flickr user Giant Ginkgo.

You can explore the Argyle District in Chicago and enjoy this year's Chinese Lunar New Year festivities welcoming the Year of the Ox (lunar year 4706) on January 31, 2009 from noon until 1pm. There will be a parade including Kung Fu demonstrations, traditional dragon and lion dances, fireworks, and special discounts offered by area merchants.

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Sustaining Chicago as a City of Immigrants: The Argyle District (Part I)

by Stephen Ostrander
1/26/09

One of the pleasures of living in Chicago is being a part of its celebrated quilt of cultures, with roots stretching around the globe, within a world-class city. This is more unusual than you might realize. While cities have an historical association in our minds with immigrants, and ethnic and racial diversity, for decades now there has been a trend among many foreign-born residents—particularly those from east and south asian countries—to bypass the city, in favor of the American Dream and "better schools" found in the suburbs. But Chicago, along with a few other cities (New York—particularly its outer boroughs—comes to mind), has remained, in essence, a city of immigrants.

Growing up within the District of Columbia, I enjoyed the benefits of what you could call the transient, official diversity of the Nation’s Capital—with folks from every corner of the globe working in the city’s embassies or foreign press. But the District was really a sleepy southern city, composed mostly of African-Americans and whites, with very small communities of immigrants from Central America and East Africa. With the considerable growth of its Latino population, the city has become a bit more diverse, and projects an image of 21st century global diversity. An apt example is provided by the inventive signage requirements applied to D.C.’s “Chinatown,” that have led to a colorful sea of Chinese characters, but which belie a neighborhood dominated by businesses such as Ruby Tuesdays, Fuddruckers, Hooters—and that is home to an exceedingly small number of Chinese-American residents.

Photo of a Hooters restaurant in Washington D.C.'s Chinatown by Flickr user h-angele.

When I went to college in California, I was astounded by the robust communities arisen from the immigration of families from China, Korea, Vietnam, and—of course—Mexico. On visits back home to D.C., I came to realize that similar communities existed in the Greater Washington area. For one, the third largest population of Vietnamese-Americans is located just outside of the District, in Northern Virginia. At odds with stereotypes of diverse, immigrant cities and "lily-white" suburbs, Washington’s "nation of immigrants," like in much of the country, was to be found in the strip malls of its sprawling suburbs.

Chicago’s suburbs boast similar global diversity (H-Mart, anyone?) But I think it’s a healthy sign for our region that that the City has retained its identity as a city of immigrants, whether it is the evolutionary transfer of ethic enclaves from one group to another (Devon Avenue and Pilsen are each good examples), or urban corridors with staying power, such as Chinatown. 

Argyle Street, long considered the heart of Chicago’s—and even Chicagoland’s—Vietnamese-American community, seems to be at an interesting turning point. Its remarkable assemblage of Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants and bakeries, pho joints, Banh Mi shops, and Asian grocery stores have long competed with some of the more-challenging realities of the Uptown neighborhood, which include it being home to a large number of halfway houses, the densest concentration of social services in Chicago, relatively-high rates of crime, and very limited parking (a particularly important issue for Vietnamese-Americans from the suburbs who wish to do their weekend shopping in the urban neighborhood). But the Argyle District is very conveniently located, with its own (albeit disheveled) El stop, and stands to benefit from the steadily-increasing interest in Vietnamese cuisine and shopping at Asian markets. 

With great timing, the Urban Land Institute and the Metropolitan Planning Council decided it was time to organize a Technical Assistance Panel (TAP) of experts for the Argyle Street District, in order “to begin formulating a plan to protect and grow its many assets.” I will detail the draft recommendations it shared with the public at a recent community meeting in my next blog entry.

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Urban Design after the Age of Oil (Part II)

by Stephen Ostrander
12.10.08

Two speakers at last month’s “Re-imagining Cities: Urban Design after the Age of Oil” were especially engaging. One was Peter Head, the Director of Arup. He spoke about his firm's Dongtan Eco-city project, which aims to be the world's first fully sustainable city, located on China's third-largest island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, adjacent to Shanghai. Dongtan is designed to produce its own energy from recycled city waste, as well as from more traditional sources, such as wind, solar and bio-fuel. With its public transport and cycle and footpaths, it expects “close to zero” vehicle emissions. The city will grow its own food on-site using organic methods.

Head's presentation wowed the generally skeptical crowd, perhaps in part because it was encouraging to see one of the world's largest engineering firms devote itself to a comprehensive, systematic approach to sustainability on this massive scale.

Dongtan seems feasible, due to the global concern over climate change and the "end of oil," coupled with China's extraordinary ability to compel epic feats of urban development. The almost unfathomable pace of development in China is filling a vacuum—whether real or perceived—that is hard to imagine in this region (or the United States). Perhaps as a result of generations of modern development and regulation, there is less space for extremes in our region: we are both spared rivers that “run black” and denied the most bold, innovative experiments like Dongtan. Then again, even in China, there are limits—Peter Head admitted that the project has been put on hold, which he blamed on the slowing pace of development worldwide.

From Flickr account: psychofish

Soon after exiting Head’s winning, optimistic vision of the future, symposium participants were jarred by the next speaker, who began his brief remarks by saying, “Most of you probably don’t know who I am, which is fine, because I don’t know who the hell most of you are, and I don’t care” (or something to that effect). The speaker? Richard Saul Wurman, one of the most important “information architects” of the 20^th century, and the founder of TED. He confessed that he didn’t have a prepared speech, and instead delivered a flurry of cantankerous observations and remembrances that touched upon the theme of how information is traditionally shared in counterintuitive ways that do not serve the interests of the public—a problem hidden in plain sight due by convention.

One early project he cited as an example was a published comparison of the forms of different cities around the world all in the same scale which, to Wurman’s amazement, had never really been done before. Similarly, traditional USA road atlases drove him crazy, because they were organized alphabetically—“and no one drives across the country alphabetically!”—with each page offering a different state, in a wide variety of scales (in order to fit the content within its allotted space). His answer? Make a USA atlas in which each map depicted a 250 x 250 mile area (roughly the distance one could easily drive in a day), and each subsequent map representing the adjacent 250 x 250 mile area. Of course! Why wasn’t that obvious? Here’s an even better question: Why did Wurman’s atlas go out of print after only two editions?

When I received my masters in urban planning at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture, information design was just emerging as an area of interest. The first courses studying it were almost entirely filled by architecture and landscape architecture students—I was the only planner in the bunch. Many of the design students seemed interested in the “eye candy” aspects of it (something Wurman has occasionally been accused of); I felt that it was a natural concern for urban planners, since effective communication of information with the public is an essential component of our role. Indeed, what if planners explained our plans in the manner that Wurman attempted to explain healthcare? (I think it wouldn’t hurt to experiment.)

Working Towards Access and Comprehension

By Stephen Ostrander 
10.21.08

“Transparency.” One hears this word a lot, usually in relation to accountability—of government to tax payers and publicly-held corporations to their shareholders. It’s also about access to information. But what kind of access? How accessible? How transparent?

Law usually requires public notice of development projects and other planning matters under review by local government, and while the Internet is improving public access to this information, persistence is generally required. In fact, sometimes the fire hose of information unleashed by the Internet can overwhelm one’s ability to process the information. But it also has provided tools for the entrepreneurial and civic-minded to improve both access and transparency—especially comprehension.

One interesting example of this is found in PlanningAlerts.com, a non-profit, volunteer-run venture in the UK that scours local government online records of construction projects under review and then notifies citizens by email with alerts relevant to their postal (or zip) code. To test it, I signed up for the free service, designating a random postal code for downtown London, and have been receiving Planning Alerts’ efficient, easy-to-understand alerts, which include the address of the project, a brief description of the permit application details, and direct links to complete information, the location on a Google map, and where you can comment to the local government agency about this specific application.

While some have argued that this is the “perfect tool” for “Nimbyism” (“Not In My Back Yard”), a Planning Alerts volunteer has argued that their venture actually grew out of “a bit of anti-Nimbyism.” Their goal was to inform both residents immediately adjacent to the proposed project and the wider community, in order to encourage a broader assessment—and, hopefully, consensus—concerning the merits of the proposal.

Perhaps this wouldn’t be appropriate for every municipality within our region, but it’s worth checking out, at http://www.planningalerts.com/ 

The Return on Investment Model: Bridging the Divide between Municipalities and Developers 

By Stephen Ostrander 
10.3.08

Here at CMAP, we like to keep an eye out for innovative approaches to our work. As I’ve touched upon in past blog entries, the goal should not be innovation for the sake of innovation, but fundamentally transforming what can be accomplished. This can include enhancing understanding of the problem (which often begins with simply being able to see the problem), facilitating communication about the problem, and reducing the time necessary to resolve the problem.

Earlier this week, a few of us began training on a new piece of planning software CMAP is acquiring from Fregonese Associates, an urban & regional planning firm in Portland, Oregon. Called the Return on Investment (ROI) Model, the tool is designed to help municipalities understand the numbers behind the development process, and is based on the same tools that investors and developers use to evaluate a development’s feasibility. Municipalities across the country commonly use the ROI Model to determine whether their existing land use regulations allow development in which the returns outweigh the associated costs and risks for the developer, helping to identify which regulations need to be modified to achieve the type of development desired by the municipality. ROI can also aid municipal staff in their evaluation of proposed developments currently under review.

If a primary goal of innovation should be the transformation of what can be accomplished, the ROI Model appears to have a lot to offer. It can enhance a municipality’s understanding of a problem—in this case, how to achieve the type of development it desires. It’s possible that all that might be required is a tweak, so small that it could get lost—or be almost invisible—within layers of development regulations, which may have been “on the books” for some time.

Additionally, by getting a sense of the numbers involved, municipal staff may gain new understanding—and appreciation of—real challenges and valid concerns inherent to the work of developers. Of course, the ROI model is a two-way street, offering municipalities a view into what can seem like the “black box” of development finance, potentially enabling them to negotiate with more confidence. Either way, this is likely to aid communication about the problem, finding the “sweet spot” in which development possessing the characteristics wanted—and, in many cases, needed—by a municipality is feasible (or, put another way, profitable).

And last there’s the factor of time necessary to resolve the problem. With the model, any change results in an instant recalculation of profit and return on investment, but perhaps the greatest reduction in time is generated by the enhanced understanding gained by municipal staff. By efficiently exposing the key development regulations or financial considerations that can be targeted, and a great deal of back-and-forth can be avoided.

As I stated earlier, this is a new initiative. Here at CMAP, we are still in the process of both learning the more intricate details of the ROI Model, assessing opportunities for its practical use in the region’s municipalities, and working to identify potential improvements. Next month we expect to hold focus groups with municipal staff, who will help us “user test” this tool, along with developers; in addition, both groups will help us “ground truth” the transparent formulas that are the foundation of the ROI Model, fine-tuning them and other quantitative assumptions to be in-line with regional trends.

Once this groundwork is accomplished, we plan to offer the software free of charge to municipalities, along with the comprehensive training necessary for the ROI Model to become a valuable asset for your community.

For more information on how your community can benefit and get involved, please contact Stephen Ostrander at: sostrander[at]cmap.illinois.gov.  

The Commons: Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts—or Less? 

by Stephen Ostrander
9.5.08

Would you rather own a small plot of land, that is yours and yours alone, or would you rather share a much larger expanse with your neighbors? I was thinking of this question while assisting with research for CMAP’s strategy paper on conservation design, which was recently posted on the website for Go To 2040.

While conservation design includes several strategies, I am particularly interested in the use of clustering to generate common natural areas. By clustering, I am referring to site design strategies in which—instead of conventional designs that encourage an expansive approach—an equivalent number or residences, or commercial buildings, are clustered together, typically reducing individual yards, setbacks, and space between dwellings while expanding shared natural areas.

These strategies are on display at Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, which by almost any standard is a success, conserving prairie, wetlands, and farmland through sensitive clustering of its homes, creating a financially-successful community that offers a serene sense of place. But at Prairie Crossing conservation design fulfills its promise within the relatively-pristine periphery, which is in ever-diminishing supply. What about similar strategies for more urban areas, in suburbs and city neighborhoods?

Radburn, a “new town” founded in 1929 in Fair Lawn, New Jersey (a suburb of New York City), is well-known to students of urban design. The community’s principal feature is its common sense—but rare—separation of automobile and pedestrian traffic, made possible by beautiful green common areas which offer a textbook example of how land that is shared can provide exponential benefits to all residents.

Still, Radburn is also a testament to the weakest link aspects of community design. It is common to see children playing not on its idyllic commons, but in its utilitarian cul-de-sac streets. Why? In addition to the special allure streets seem to hold for children, the kitchens of Radburn’s homes face the street. Parents—especially, in early years, mothers—wishing to keep an eye on their kids were unlikely to be lounging in their living rooms, which afford commanding views of the safe, green areas intended for play.

Before designing Radburn, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright helped create Sunnyside Gardens, a “garden city” development located in a highly-urban area of Queens in New York City. Sunnyside Gardens asked each of its homeowners to forego control of their own backyard so that all residents of their block could share a lush green central courtyard. Parking was clustered together in a garage at the periphery of the development.

Urbanist Lewis Mumford was representative of Sunnyside’s early residents, who cherished the ideals of the planned community. But as America’s commitment to urban life waned in later decades, the “tragedy of the commons” took hold, and many of Sunnyside’s shared areas fell into disrepair. Easements protecting the common areas came to an end in the mid-1960s, and many Sunnyside residents enthusiastically began fencing off their portion of the central courtyards and cutting driveways into their front yards, which were no longer off-limits.

Perhaps Sunnyside Gardens was ahead of its time. Assuming that trends continue and folks are drawn inward toward urban centers, will former suburban-dwellers demand their own backyard, no matter how modest, or will they try to defy the logic of the “tragedy of the commons,” in the hope of together achieving something greater than the sum of its parts?

Photos from Microsoft Virtual Earth (© 2008 Microsoft Corporation  © 2008 Pictometry International Corp. )

Posted by: Administrator on 09/24/2008

A Tipping Point . . . but Toward What Exactly? 

by Stephen Ostrander

Stop and observe an unremarkable stretch of road for a minute or two, and it will begin to tell you a story.

That was my experience the other day as my daughter and I awaited the arrival of her pediatrician, passing the time together by gazing down at the cars racing below us on Golf Road. At first, most of the cars seemed to be Toyota and Honda sedans of an average size, with a Prius and the pithy Honda Fit making an appearance as well.

But just when I found myself thinking, Gosh, I guess folks are more reasonable than I thought, a MONSTER of a sport pickup truck rolled by, towering above the others and carrying just one occupant. This triggered a memory from a visit to Houston twenty years ago, when I stood in disbelief at the size of the Chevy Suburban owned by a friend’s family. First I was wide-eyed and speechless, but then laughing, I blurted out, “Only in Texas!”

Boy, was I wrong! Over the past decade, the automotive BMI has been adjusted, rendering that obese monster merely “heavyset.” But given the looming future, it’s hard not to wonder whether mammoths such as these are destined for extinction, and given the unnerving present, it’s natural today to scan the faces of their owners and wonder, Just how enjoyable is that ride?

Those who desperately wish to unload their behemoths are finding it nearly impossible to do so, and car-makers can’t keep up with the American demand for more efficient vehicles. With the symbiotic relationship generally found between fuel efficiency and environmental concerns, there’s a definite “twofer” feeling to current trends, which is encouraging. And while the traditional automobile isn’t the origin of all of our energy and environmental problems, there is a common hope—and expectation—that some of the most significant innovations aimed at overcoming these challenges will manifest themselves in the cars of the future.

But aren’t we forgetting something? Let’s imagine a region, a nation, or even a world where all automobiles are perfectly green and “cradle-to-cradle.” Running on a free energy source (whose production has no ill environmental effects), these cars are responsible for zero emissions—in their creation, when driven, and even in their destruction or re-use (please bear with me, folks…). Sounds heavenly, right?

Well, I’m not so sure—and I’m not only thinking of traffic congestion, which could reach astronomical levels. That day when my daughter and I gazed out the window together, a jogger leisurely made her way down the treeless sidewalk below, a few feet away from streams of cars and trucks roaring by, as did a bicyclist (both passing, appropriately, in front of an abandoned Chevrolet dealership). Echoing my earlier question, I wondered something to the effect of Just how enjoyable is that landscape, shaped by the automobile? In the idealized green and energy-efficient future imagined above, we could probably expect a reinvigorated car culture to shape the world’s landscape beyond anything we’ve ever seen.

It’s no coincidence that the most satisfying urban design in the world tends to be found in cities formed before the dominance of the automobile. While I, too, own a car and wince whenever I fill it up, my hope is that one silver lining of these current hardships will be that Americans may once again be drawn inward, toward our natural urban centers, where place—and life—is not molded by the automobile. Some of the groundwork has already been laid by members of Generation X—and now the “Millennials”—who have demonstrated a greater attraction to urban life than their parents. Perhaps we are witnessing the beginning of an epic tipping point, toward that long-awaited urban renaissance, redefining the parameters of how everyday life is accomplished, and enjoyed. If so, we can hope to make better choices when, inevitably, driving becomes enjoyable again.

Posted by: Administrator on 07/16/2008

Posted by: Administrator on 07/19/2008

Posted by: Administrator on 07/31/2008