10/15/14 - 10/22/14 Arts and Urbanism Roundup

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh wins Gawker's ugliest accent contest (People Magazine)

Dear Jagoffs, Pittsburgh officially has the ugliest accent in America (Gawker)

The Pittsburgh Anthology: Call for proposals and submissions (Belt Magazine)

Pittsburgh singer Chris Jamison advances on "The Voice"  (NBC)

4121 Main, mixed use arts space opens in Bloomfield (Pop City)

Former churches blessed with new lives in Pittsburgh (New York Times)

Halloween Party planned for Carrie Furnace (The Brew Gentlemen)

Cleveland

The Cleveland Museum opens major Jennifer Bartlett retrospective 

Five reasons to visit Cleveland now (Fodor's Travel)

Looking back at the East Ohio Gas company explosion, 70 years later (Cleveland Scene)

Possible clash over Soldiers and Sailors monument could hold up Public Square redesign (Cleveland.com)

Rediscovering Cleveland poet, Russell Atkins  (Belt Magazine)

Ohio

Haunting Houses: Ohio's abandoned country houses- in pictures (The Guardian)

West Virginia and Appalachia

Morgantown police investigate post Baylor game riots

History professor's new book brings old "blood feud" back to life

A (yes) culinary road trip through Appalachia (Wall Street Journal)

Inaugural Appalachian Queer Film Festival to debut in Lewisburg (The Charleston Gazette)

Other Urbanism and Architecture News

These conservatives make the case or vibrant cities. Most of their friends ignore them. (Grist)

The redevelopment racket (The American)

More prefer public transit to road building (ABC News)

DC's new parents aren't fleeing to the burbs (Streetsblog)

Atlanta's MARTA transit agency ramps up transit oriented development (Atlanta Business Chronicle)

Federal Government releases map of proposed Houston/ Dallas bullet train route

Why no one drives to work in Hong Kong  (Market Urbanism)

Photo essay: L.A.'s architecture of insecurity (Los Angeles Times)

Can the homeless move into Baltimore's abandoned houses? (City Lab)

Norfolk's light rail choice: Embrace the city or follow the highway? (Greater Greater Washington)

Arcadia California: The U.S. town every Chinese millionaire wants to live in (Wall Street Journal)

Berlin wants to build a pool in the middle of the city's river (City Lab)

Uber can fill gaps in Anchorage area transit  (Alaska Dispatch News)

With farms fading and urban might rising, power shifts in Iowa (The New York Times)

Other Art and Culture News

Oldest Homo Sapiens DNA found (Cent News)

Another vandal hits Jeff Koons retrospective (Hyperallergic)

French President pledges support for Paul McCarthy's "butt plug" (Hyperallergic)

An Iranian-American artist revisits images from the 1979 revolution (Hyperallergic)

Can a biennial fix New Orleans? (The Art Newspaper)

How Rembrandt dressed his women for death (The Guardian)

No second coming or deflated, Paris "sex toy" sculpture  (AFP)

Ronald Perelman vs Larry Gagosian feud shakes the art world (New York Times)

The 50 greatest paintings in New England (Boston Globe)

"Outreach" is killing the American Orchestra (New Republic)

Famed fashion designer, Oscar de la Renta dies at 82 (New York Times)

The North Shore Connector: Can We Make It a Train to Somewhere?

The Post Gazette put up this promo film of the soon to be open North Shore Connector.
Powerful. Awesome. An amazing asset built at great expense. Now, let's see what we can do to make this pay off beyond linking to the stadium, casino a few events and hotels.

The North Shore is most certainly not "nowhere", but our misguided, development patterns have come close to making it so by putting cars above human based development.

I will try to come back with more thoughts soon.

What is Transit Oriented Development?

Yes, you heard right--

"In the first 6 months of 2009, 18% of all housing construction permits for the entire state of New Jersey, were in Jersey City."

"People who used to own two cars, now only own one, people who own one care only use it on occasion."

"We don't require parking in most of the development, that your looking at."

There's a maximum parking ratio for much of this development, but there's no minimum.

"A key part of it is changing the zoning."



It's not just something they are doing in New York and New Jersey.



Hopefully, a conversation about this will develop in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and other communities around the region.

Potentially Great Moment for Transit Oriented Development as The Cincinnati Streetcar Breaks Ground

Can we say it? Pittsburgh's transit situation is an epic clusterf...k with service on even the most critical core routes being cut or eliminated.

A core problem is that we have always sold transit as basically a charity item (or jobs program) and never properly connected transit investments with development. Am I excited about the opening of the North Shore Connector? Only mildly, since it mainly connects to a sports facility used a few times a year and a gambling casino targeted at a broad base of car oriented gamblers.

For purely political reasons we supported many suburban money losing routes with few riders which helped people think that transit is a waste of money. (when is the cost of a road ever questioned)

Cincinnati's streetcar excites me-because it actually is the product of a new way of thinking about how people get around and how land will be used. I'm not saying they will get this right, but they are thinking in the right way.

Ground Broken For Cincinnati Streetcar



Something tells me, suburban voters get it, which is why they hated this project from the start. The streetcar means the city property owners can use land for something other than storing cars.

How Transit Systems Can Make Money By Developing Real Estate

I have mentioned Hong Kong's amazing, cheap and insanely profitable transit system before, but, it seemed at the time that I was talking from another planet.

One big emerging benefit of the financial crisis is that as the seemingly endless well of government cash dries up people are rethinking the way things are done.

Unlike infrequently used sports stadiums or subsidised garages, well planned and executed transit systems add lots of value to surrounding real estate values, by allowing -taller buildings, less space wasted on parking and more sales per square foot of retail.

What if the transit system got a lot of that money? From The Infrastructurist.

The reason Hong Kong’s metro system can afford to pay its chief so much more than New York’s is that, unlike the MTA, which faces a $10 billion shortfall, the MTR actually makes money. Lots of money. Like 8.7 billion Hong Kong dollars lots, according to Bloomberg, which is more than a billion U.S. dollars a year.

This type of thinking is gathering some steam at least in New York City and increasingly is being discussed-partly cause Hong Kong's MTR just lured away the former head of NYC's MTA with a huge boost in salary and no doubt-stock options.

Several posts and related articles...

On Bloomberg

On Cap'n Transit

On WNYC (New York public radio)

New York City Asian Population Tops A Million: Images From Flushing Queens

From The New York Times

"Not so long ago, the phrase “New York’s Chinatown” meant one thing: a district in Lower Manhattan near Canal Street. Now it could refer to as many as six heavily Chinese enclaves around the city

Koreatown was well known as a commercial zone in Midtown Manhattan, but now parts of Flushing, Queens, where tens of thousands of Koreans have moved, feel like suburban Seoul. The city has spawned neighborhoods with nicknames like Little Bangladesh, Little Pakistan, Little Manila and Little Tokyo.

Asians, a group more commonly associated with the West Coast, are surging in New York, where they have long been eclipsed in the city’s kaleidoscopic racial and ethnic mix. For the first time, according to census figures released in April, their numbers have topped one million — nearly 1 in 8 New Yorkers — which is more than the Asian population in the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles combined."



This area, Flushing, Queens is one the city's emerging ethnic downtowns dominated primarily by a huge Taiwanese/Chinese community and the largest Korean population in the city. Flushing, which is not far from Laguardia Airport, now has many offices and hotels.

As you can see from the images-this is a place of considerable wealth and dynamism.

Under Bloomberg, transit and bus hubs are being rezoned to encourage the development of alternate, business districts to encourage more two way commuting. Although this trend has been going on naturally for a long time.

If you never leave Manhattan, You really don't know New York.

Ohio's Geographic Advantages: A Discussion on Urbanophile

There's a great free form talk going on Urbanophile about what should be one of the more self evident attributes of Ohio. Of course one could say the same for several bordering states, but not as much. Talk quickly turned to rail.

"One of them is that Ohio is on the trade routes. Many major transcontinental interstates pass through the place, along with tons of rails lines. This is a big contrast to Michigan, which is a peninsula. Other than Detroit and the trade links through Canada and its air hub, Michigan is almost always going to require a special trip. I noticed this when I drove to Grand Rapids for the first time. It’s a detour. You’re not going to pass through it unless you’re going somewhere else in Michigan. Whereas in Ohio, massive amounts of people and freight are simply passing through. All it has to do is convince some of it to stop. Furthermore, Ohio is a state of many large cities. In addition to the “3C”s of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, there’s also Dayton, Toledo, Akron, Youngstown etc... "

Columbus to Pittsburgh 167 miles
Columbus to Indianapolis 175 miles
Columbus to Chicago 354 miles
Columbus to Cincinnati 102 miles
Columbus to Louisville 209 miles
Columbus to Nashville 333 miles
Columbus to D.C. 409 miles
Columbus to New York 535 miles
Columbus to Charlotte 427 miles

I can't help feeling that with the region's rich array of smaller cities, perhaps high speed rail is less an answer than good commuter lines and trains running at average to(say 70-90 avg MPH) fast speeds. I do find it hard to give up a high speed, Chicago--Indianapolis--Columbus--Pittsburgh route and a fast link connecting Cleveland and Columbus. Between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, I see more value in a train that stops in Youngstown and Akron.

Another huge issue is price. I see a lot more value in options that are affordable to a broad range of people.

99 comments so far, comparing cities, regions, land use, density, transit oriented design and all kinds of side topics.

Famous/Infamous Michigan Sprawl Letter and Discussion On Rustwire

My personal "mission" on this blog was not just to hype the local art scene in Pittsburgh itself, but also spark awareness, debate across the wider region about ways to create and sustain a better quality of life. The former Rust Belt, is filled with areas that are spreading out dramatically, even as their populations shrink.

Michigan is pretty far, but a letter from a figure at a successful law firm that operates there has gone viral, triggering, I hope some relevant conversation.
The letter's specific topic deals with what the writer sees as the negative effects of suburban sprawl on the firm's business outlook and ability to recruit and retain employees.

Recession or no, isn’t it screamingly obvious that people with choices in life – i.e. people with money and education – choose not to live here? We are becoming a place where people without resources are grudgingly forced to live. A place without youth, prospects, respect, money or influence.

There’s a simple reason why many people don’t want to live here: it’s an unpleasant place because most of it is visually unattractive and because it is lacking in quality living options other than tract suburbia. Some might call this poor “quality of life.” A better term might be poor “quality of place.” In Metro Detroit, we have built a very bad physical place. We don’t have charming, vibrant cities and we don’t have open space.

The letter which was originally addressed to the city leaders of Troy Michigan goes pretty far in depth.

Also, the author helped create this video, offering the start of a tangible plan to better organise and link Detroit and it's northern suburbs through light rail.



One thing I like about both is that they go far beyond just denying the suburbs and smaller towns and cities exist and demanding that everyone move back into Detroit. As the video shows, some of these places have long and unique histories, beautiful buildings and even sound original street designs dating from the pre auto age. Many also happen to line up along a corridor making it possible to connect them with a single rail link.

James Howard Kunstler dedicated an entire podcast to the sprawl letter.

Car Free Saturdays In The Strip? Worth Thinking About.

OK, I am at the start of this going to predict that this is not happening any time soon.

Laura/Lolly @ Reimagine An Urban Paradise, comes to Pittsburgh with a new perspective and I find myself referring to her posts because, she sees the city somewhat like I do and also because, there just aren't many people posting on these subjects at all here, let alone actively debating them.

She, like me was inspired and envious of New York's now very popular and successful move to turn close Broadway in Times and Herald Square to cars. Something I posted about at least once. She wonders if we couldn't do this on busy Saturdays along a stretch of Penn Ave in the Strip.

"If you’ve ever walked down this packed shopping district on Saturdays in Pittsburgh you’ve noticed how crowded every spot is. Traffic moves slowly because there are so many people and those cars could easily be diverted onto the parallel streets.

If they can move cars off the main street of America, we can do it on the main street of Pittsburgh."

Yes, there are strong similarities. Both Times Square and the Strip have hectic active shopping areas in which cars, vendors and people fight for space (although we all know at other hours the Strip can be quite dead). However, the differences are also very big. Closing these small areas to cars was the easy reward New York could reap for having a dense, much more transit oriented city.

Over 1.5 million people live in Manhattan, with likely at several hundred thousand within a 30 block walking distance of Times Square. Many, millions more fill it's midtown office and shopping districts almost all of whom use a form of transit other than cars. In fact, I think, the stats show that 90% of the people in Times Square on a work day got there through some other form of Transit, from Subway, LIRR (To 34TH, Penn Station) ; Metro North (To nearby Grand Central), PATH (To Penn Station) City Bus, Express Bus, Ferry, Amtrak or by walking. Even so, the remaining ten percent was taking the bulk of space. (Although in honesty, NYC would have traffic issues just from delivery and needed service vehicles on a busy weekday)Even if I'm off on these numbers I'm not way off.

Sadly, Pittsburgh is not in that position and most people shopping in the Strip likely drove there.

While I support the idea and the thinking behind it, I'm pretty concerned that a big dead space of parking would be required around the pedestrian shopping area. If it was popular, People might demand a huge permanent amount of parking. Well, that's sort of what they are doing now anyway. But we have to move away from and make the city work for city residents and businesses.

This is part of my response to Lolly.

"If one actually wants to make lots of progress here, a lot more details and meat have to be put on these bones.

What happened in NYC, came after a large consensus already existed among business and property owners that this might be OK for them. They know, their customers are not driving into Times Square. NY or at least Manhattan, has generally engaged in a series of policies which enhanced the benefits of density, and thus progressively maximized the use and value of it’s land. We have done very much the opposite.

We need to get beyond the green and traditional leftist moralising and talk about why moves like this are likely to not only improve the quality of life for city residents, but increase business, lower costs, and increase property values. Denser development that extracted more value from the land would also allow for decent city services with lower tax rates.

Did you experience last years snow? Any guess as to what it cost to plow all those remote hills? The whole situation was absurd, since it was so obvious what the problem was. Narrow streets were blocked by parked cars and couldn't be cleared. Telling people to get them off the street for even a few hours was too politically difficult. Meanwhile, much of the best flat land in the city, is wasted on stadiums, surface parking lots, or highways.

The previous car oriented policies have so clearly not worked. In spite of efforts to hide it, the difference between The South Side and The North Side should be obvious to all.

What exactly is Transit Oriented Development and why is it so smart for Pittsburgh? That’s what we need to talk about.

Still, one needs to be somewhat understanding of Pittsburgh’s history. These flat areas were the central sites of Pittsburgh’s industry and many people still equate them with jobs, jobs, jobs. Even though the number of good jobs in the few trucking depots and warehouses in the Strip today is not very significant. A lot of folks still think they should wait and a big new mill will open. (Even though modern steel mills don’t need many workers)

Also, Pittsburghers for the same reason saw most of these places as dirty and undesirable. Notice that houses become fancier and more elegant the further one gets from the old waterfront mill sites?

The North Side’s “Millionaire’s row is a partial exception because it began to develop after Pittsburgh was industrial, but before the truly giant mills came into being in the late 19TH Century."

One very good idea that might help the Strip while enhancing density and promoting pedestrian shopping and development would be a free or very low cost mini shuttle or bus circulator running from The Downtown through Lawrenceville. even if it only ran a few hour it would give people idea of what is possible.

Cincinnati Considers Lowering Minimums Within Two Blocks Of New Streetcar Line

OK, let me let you in on a little secret that most people still don't know. The empty land of surface parking, dead streets with an occasional building, we now associate with the American Downtown isn't just a product of supply and demand--in most places, it's the law.

Urbanophile, is re posting a look at what these great laws have done for Buffalo.

Of course, our great urban planners will just tell you these laws just take into account that "everyone wants to drive". Well, how would they know that, since it's now mostly illegal to even offer alternatives and since the very land (like the lower Hill) used for this parking is often taken from people who lived there without cars. It's like saying everyone in North Korea is demanding dull green clothes.

So anyway, the voters of Cincinatti and city boosters are placing lots of hope in a new streetcar line. Get the Digitalis, they are even considering limiting the minimum required parking for development within two blocks of it No, two whole blocks! Amazingly, this is progress.

"That’s why the city’s decision to reduce parking minimums would be a reassuring sign that local planners understand the necessity of designing neighborhoods to encourage transit use. Today, the city requires one to two parking spaces per housing unit, even for apartment buildings constructed right downtown. The new law, if approved as likely later this year, will halve those requirements in all new construction within 600 feet of streetcar stations, even reducing them to nil in some cases for buildings with six or fewer units.

As the Cincinnati Streetcar Blog points out, this change may have the positive effect of reducing the cost of new development in Cincinnati by allowing builders to avoid building underground garages or acquiring adjacent sites for surface parking. This will reduce not only the initial investment necessary to construct in neighborhoods near the streetcar but also the cost of individual purchasing or renting, making it more likely that there will be a market for new housing in the area.

In turn, by reducing the number of parking spaces per unit, the city is encouraging people who live in downtown areas to use transit to get around — and they’ll be getting a high-quality service through the center city with the new streetcar, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem. Though some may argue that Cincinnati could have gone a step further and eliminated all parking minimums to areas near the streetcar, the initial line is short and won’t even reach the University of Cincinnati north of downtown; if and when the system is expanded, the city council may want to reevaluate the use of parking minimums at all along this corridor."

Ever wonder why, so many new downtown developments in most cities are only for rich people? Well, a requirement to use half or more of your space for parking or build a huge garage is one huge reason. What exactly are Pittsburgh's parking requirements? How come the subject almost never comes up?

By the way, Cinncinati looks like an absolutely beautiful city. Check out this long post on Urbanophile about it. Look at the amazing unloved place called Over The Rhine.

As Lolly (AKA Laura) put it.

"If you build cities for cars, you get cars. If you build cities for people, you get people."