On suburbia and sustainability 27 May 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Community planning, Disposable culture, Environmental stewardship, Furniture, Modern culture, Sustainable living.2 comments
The Passionately Alive entry I already cited this morning also contains two very interesting bits of media talking about suburbia and sustainability that are worth resposting. First, a trailer for The End of Suburbia:
And secondly, an excerpt from The Suburban Nation (pages 117-118):
The plight of the suburban housewife was powerfully conveyed in a letter we received in 1990 from a woman living outside of Tulsa:
Dear Architects:
I am a mother of four children who are not able to leave the yard because of our city’s design. Ever since we have moved here I have felt like a caged animal only let out for a ride in the car. It is impossible to walk even to the grocery store two blocks away. If our family wants to go for a ride we need to load two cars with four bikes and a baby cart and drive four miles to the only bike path in this city of over a quarter million people. I cannot exercise unless I drive to a health club that I had to pay $300 to, and that is four and a half miles away. There is no sense of community here on my street, either, because we all have to drive around in our own little worlds that take us fifty miles a day to every corner of the surrounding five miles.
I want to walk somewhere so badly that I could cry. I miss walking! I want the kids to walk to school. I want to walk to the store for a pound of butter. I want to take the kids on a neighborhood stroll or bike. My husband wants to walk to work because it is so close, but none of these things is possible…And if you saw my neighborhood, you would think that I had it all according to the great American dream.
Building a green city from the ground up 6 May 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Architecture, Community planning, Environmental stewardship, Sustainable living.2 comments
Greensburg, Kansas, a small plains community of 1,000 people, was leveled by a tornado in 2007.
The town is making the most of the rebuilding opportunity. New structures replacing the tornadic debris are being built in the style of green. “Greensburg GreenTown is a Kansas-based nonprofit organization, providing inspiration and leadership to Kiowa County in order to be a model of sustainable living for the world.”
I’ve hoped for a similar initiative here in Siloam Springs, although I haven’t yet taken the time to propose it to the city. Still, it wouldn’t be the same kind of opportunity that Greensburg has, building from the ground up. Props to Greensburg for making lemonade of the lemon it was dealt two years ago.
Among the new green buildings is the 5.4.7 Arts Center, which is the 1st LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum building in Kansas according to its website.
Image from GreensburgKS.org
First time home buyer credit bad for the economy? 24 April 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Community planning, Modern culture, Sustainable living.3 comments
Real estate isn’t really what this blog is about, but it comes up somewhat regularly in relationship to my keen interest in both residential building design and community planning. And, as regular readers will note, my wife and I have recently been thinking of selling our home and buying another.
NPR’s Morning Edition made note today of the $8,000 tax credit Uncle Sam is offering to first-time home buyers. I’m not a first time buyer and, thus, haven’t given much thought to the offer. Quite a few people have though. According to the NPR spot, lower housing costs combined with the tax break have resulted in an upward trend among first-time buyers.
My office acquaintance who just bought a home — from the utterly inane and incompetent bureaucracy that remains of Countrywide — has brought it up in our conversations. For him it was an incentive; from what I can tell it wasn’t the deciding factor. He and his wife have been looking at houses for a while. On Monday, a friend noted over breakfast that he knows of two people planning to buy a house solely because of the tax credit, people who in his opinion have no business buying a home. I trust this friend’s judgment; he’s a financial counselor, in essence, for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace program.
Could this be an unintended consequence of the stimulus, something the Obama administration failed to foresee? Will we end up with an entirely new set of individuals chained to mortgages they can’t afford, starting the vicious cycle over again — thanks to the federal government? The danger is real, although I hope it isn’t the case.
The Morning Edition spot pointed out that first time buyers’ ideas of what constitutes a starter home are less opulent than a few years ago. Wine cellars and the like have given way to practicality. “Peace of mind is the new must-have,” according to NPR.
IAM Encounter: Billy Collins on subdivisions 9 March 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Basis for designing well, Community planning.1 comment so far
United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins read a number of his works during a plenary at the IAM Encounter 2009 gathering. I was already familiar with some of his work, though couldn’t have told you that without hearing specific poems.
His reading was fantastic, a very somber and almost monotone voice conveying common yet humorous observations. “A lot of poetry is born out of irritation,” he said.
One of his poems, The Golden Years, reminded me of a personal irritation I wrote about way back in 2006 in a post titled How to name a subdivision. In that entry I ask why subdivisions seem to be so randomly named after natural phenomena that bear no relevance to that particular location. Billy Collins asks the same question.
The Golden Years
All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasant to be seen
and last time I looked, no ridge.
I could drive over to Quail Falls
and spend the day there playing bridge,
but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail
would just remind me of Pheasant Ridge.
I know a widow at Fox Run
and another with a condo at Smokey Ledge.
One of them smokes, and neither can run,
so I’ll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.
Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?
I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.
The Golden Years is from Collins’ Ballistic: Poems (Amazon link). It’s well worth owning a book or two of his poems; I bought The Art of Drowning at the conference.
Art gallery grand opening in Siloam Springs 6 February 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Business of art, Community planning, Furniture, New Urbanism, Northwest Arkansas, Siloam Springs.4 comments
It’s been a week of short posts, and here’s another.
Tonight is the grand opening of the Local Flair Art Gallery in downtown Siloam Springs from 6-9pm. The downtown gallery features two and three-dimensional works by 10 or 12 local artists including Joel Armstrong, Charles Peer, Neil Ward, John Lein and myself.
This is a significant step in the revival of downtown Siloam Springs. Another such step is getting a restaurant down there, which seems to be happening in the next six months as well. Emelia’s Mediterranean Kitchen is supposed to going into the dilapidated building on the corner of Mount Olive and University.
Other recently new retail downtown includes a Books on Broadway, Broadway Flowers and The Baby Habit. And, in conjunction with Local Flair, a furniture boutique is opening next door called Amandromeda. Amandromeda’s growing collection includes seating designed by both a Bertoia and Le Corbusier. The interior of the store below.
Another downtown building is also receiving a makeover now, although I’m not sure what’s going in it. It was formerly Felt’s Shoes before recently being used as storage by now mayor David Allen. Apartments continue to go in the second floors of two or three buildings as well.
Now we just have to hope these new businesses find some staying power.
A modern home’s lack of foresight 2 February 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Affluenza, Architecture, Basis for designing well, Community planning, Design, Disposable culture, Interior design, Modern culture, New Urbanism, Northwest Arkansas, Siloam Springs, Sustainable living.7 comments
Last week — during and following the great ice storm of 2009 — my wife and I were without power for four days, almost 100 hours by her count. We learned very quickly how inept so many modern American homes are when it comes to, well, self-sufficiency.
We toughed it out for two nights, but after seeing our own breath upon waking the second morning we decided that was enough. The house registered 43 degrees (the lowest it would get, from what we could tell).
Our little bungalow, like so many other American dwellings, lacks a fireplace (or wood-burning stove). Such a simple implement, a staple in buildings for millenia, and quite basic to everyday activities such as lighting, heating, cooking and romance and our little Hygge and Fika (as we’ve so named our cottage) falls short in this category.
Our American homes aren’t built to function without electricity. Sure we have candles and battery operated lanterns, and perhaps even portable heaters. But kerosene and gas heaters are supposed to be used in “well-ventilated” areas (which makes me wonder why I have one built into the third bedroom in my house), lest you die from carbon monoxide. A friend suggested that these function just to cut the chill. That is how I’ve used ours, but it wasn’t enough to cut the chill back from 43 degrees.
Why, pray tell, aren’t houses built in a self-sufficient manner? How difficult would it be to design for south-facing windows to capture the winter sun and westward eaves to eschew the summer heat? How difficult would it be to plan a home around a hearth? Even before my first significant brush with an ice storm, last week, I built these things into the homes in my head (if ever I get the chance to design and build my own).
The simple answer is that spec homes, which constitute the great majority of humble Stateside abodes, are built as money makers more than as places people live. It seems to come back, again, to the short-sighted culture we live in. The developers want to make money now. The buyers, first-time and otherwise, want the amenities their parents patiently waited for years to earn in their first home, even if it means the home is a cheap piece of poo.
How can we change this aspect of our culture? Please, let us change this aspect of American culture!
Image from Wikipedia.
The Gilmore Girls and community 9 January 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Community planning, Live car free, Living incarnationally, New Urbanism.4 comments
For Christmas, I gave my wife the first four seasons of Gilmore Girls.
We’ve already seen all of the episodes on DVD, but the wife has talked for a couple years about buying the series for background candy while she’s knitting or crocheting. And, as emasculating as it may be to admit this, I’m O.K. with owning the show too. Really, it’s darn good television.
Over the past week we’ve watched quite a few of the episodes already, as part of a regimen to recuperate from our trip (I’m still not completely over that evil mega-cold). Seeing the shows again reminds me of the incredible sense of community portrayed in Stars Hollow.
Stars Hollow, the small fictional town of 10,000 people 30 minutes outside of Hartford, Connecticut, was loosely based on the community of Washington, Connecticut. The Hollow is a tight little ville centered around a square with a gazebo. Most — if not all — of the businesses in the show are on the town square, and pedestrianism seems to be a way of life for the program’s characters. Lorelai and Rory, the two main characters, are rarely seen driving around town. They walk to Doose’s Market. They walk to the Luke’s diner. They walk to the bookstore to watch old films in the evening.
What an enviable lifestyle in so many ways.
It’s difficult for me to imagine a modern town of 10,000 (roughly the population of Siloam Springs when I moved here almost six years ago) actually functioning like this. Particularly, it’s hard to believe that there would be such a variety of useful businesses on the town square. Wouldn’t there be a Walmart along a highway that runs through town? (There is a Walmart in Stars Hollow per a third season show.) How could Doose’s Market, a tiny little corner grocer, compete with that? (There are ways, I know, for small businesses to survive in the midst of grossly large chains. I’m speaking in stereotypes here, as well as from my own experience.)
However, Stars Hollow apparently depicts a fairly typical small New England community, at least according to a Hartford Courant writer in 2002 (quote from Wikipedia):
Unlike the Hartford depicted on Judging Amy, the Stars Hollow of The Gilmore Girls rings true. The town’s antiques shops, small businesses, schools, government and infrastructure look the part. But where Sherman-Palladino has truly excelled, despite her Clueless origins, is in her drawing of colorful Connecticut characters. The populace of Stars Hollow, from the town busybody to the town troubadour, is familiar to any Nutmegger who ever attended a town meeting.
The contemplative sidewalk 14 December 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Community planning.add a comment
Kathleen Norris’ Dakota speaks often of a contemplative life, brought about by her experiences as an oblate at a Benedictine monastery and the isolation of the Great Plains. Yesterday over lunch with my wife I reflected on past days when I made more opportunities to reflect on life, to meditate, to just be and observe.
One thing I’ve done since high school is walk. I enjoy walking. I observe as I walk, I pray as I walk and I prefer to walk after dark when there are fewer distractions. I realized, though, that it’s more difficult to walk contemplatively here in Siloam Springs than it was in Nebraska.
The reason, I decided, is that there aren’t any sidewalks. The streets in Siloam Springs are narrow and when I’m out walking I have to pay attention to traffic and ditches. I didn’t have to do that in Nebraska where sidewalks were plentiful.
117,000 employees and 17,000 residents 11 December 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Community planning, Live car free, Living incarnationally, Mass transit, Modern culture, New Urbanism, Sustainable living.1 comment so far
From an All Things Considered story on Tyson’s Corner, just outside of Washington D.C.:
“About 17,000 live here and about 117,000 — give or take — come to work here every day,” Lecos says. “So that incredible imbalance is why you have the absolute commuter nightmare of trying to get 117,000 people in, in one period of time in the morning, and out again at 5 o’clock.”
Commuter nightmare I’d say. The interview also calls Tyson’s Corner, which offers a whopping 167,000 parking spaces, a traffic engineer’s worst nightmare. The All Things Considered story focuses on a potential remodel for the community, trying to raise it’s population to 100,000 and cut down on the number of commuters. The key to that, it appears, is building up instead of out. This is a piece of advice my grandfather has suggested for years, long before the term New Urbanism was coined.
Sounds like a plan. Illustration from the Tyson’s Tomorrow website.
British architecture infantile? 5 December 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Aesthetics, Architecture, Community planning, New Urbanism, Sustainable living.2 comments
Miami planner Andres Duany has apparently teamed up with Prince Charles to do battle against modern architects and architecture in England. Duany unveiled a 64 point list of problems in British architecture this week, and referred to the country’s designers as “infantile” according to a Guardian article.
Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, conceded that “architects’ craft skills and traditional knowledge had been swept aside too easily between the 1950s and 1970s, but said architects were now building the ‘highest performance’ buildings ever.”
What are high performance buildings? I’m pretty sure they are less concerned with aesthetics — particularly contextual aesthetics, one of Duany’s complaints — than they are innovation, awards and magazine articles. There seems to be a contradiction in terms, though, because performance in a building implies solid craft, which Prasad admits his architects lack. Regardless, The president’s response, as recorded by the Guardian, is a pretty weak defense. Read the rest of the conversation in the article.
