Monthly Archives: December 2009

600,000

2010 Census Mug - CC image from flickr

2010 Census Mug - CC image from flickr

Ryan Avent takes note of some joyous holiday news for the District:

I always love looking through new population estimates from the Census Bureau. New numbers, estimated as of July 2009, have just come out, and it appears the District is just a few hundred people short of crossing the 600,000 threshold. From 2008 to 2009, the District was the fifth fastest growing state, in percentage terms.

The full dataset is available here.  DC’s estimate from July 2009 puts the population at 599,657.  This obviously puts the 600,000 number within reach for the 2010 Census.  However, crossing that threshold isn’t a given, as the methodology from the Census’s population estimates in the intervening years between each decennial census vary quite a bit from the forms everyone will be filling out in March of 2010.

With that in mind, it’s vital that DC achieve a complete and accurate count in 2010.  600,000 isn’t just a nice round number to pass, as it shows a real growth and reinvestment in both DC specifically and urban areas in general that’s taken place over the past few years.

snOMG

So, when I asked if DC could have as much fun in the snow as they did in Madison a few weeks ago, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind:

City PaperDCist

You don’t bring a gun to a snowball fight.

According to an eyewitness, a D.C. Police detective (pictured above w/ gun) went nuts after kids pelted his Hummer with snowballs at 14th and U Streets NW this afternoon. The veteran detective got out of his car and eventually grabbed for his gun, displaying it to the crowd. He did not immediately identify himself as a police officer. He calmed down once his fellow uniformed cop arrived. Apparently, someone called 911 to report a man with gun.

So, yeah – that kinda harshes the mellow a bit.

But, in more fun news, Tommy Wells has the right idea – as Mike DeBonis Sven Frostington shows:

Layers, indeed.  Dress like an onion, Tommy.  Also, nice hat.

Ridin’ the storm out

I can’t resist.

Riding the storm out
Waiting for the fallout
On a full moon night in the Rocky Mountain winter
Wine bottle’s low
Watching for the snow
I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been missing in the city

Other fun items as I sit around with nothing else to do.

Having been outside, I must say that this isn’t the greatest snowball packing snow – it’s a little on the dry side.  Would be great for skiing, however.

Snow day

We got the illest weatherman in the biz on storm watch…dilated peoples

What remains to be seen is if DC can have as much fun as Madison, WI did in their recent snowstorm:

The giant snowball

Snowball fight, Braveheart style: (you’ll have to excuse the foul mouths of the Badgers…)

More videos from Madison from their alt weekly, the Isthmus.

Gehry to Planners: Drop Dead

From Catherine V on flickr

From Catherine V on flickr

Can’t help but mention this – from the UK’s Independent, a conversation with architect (but not a fucking starchitect, damn it) Frank Gehry: (hat tip – planetizen)

“I don’t know who invented that fucking word ‘starchitect’. In fact a journalist invented it, I think. I am not a ‘star-chitect’, I am an ar-chitect…” Just 10 minutes into the interview, Frank Owen Gehry, the world’s most feted building designer, is already a bit irate. A short, owlish man, who looks younger than his 80 years, he speaks quietly when left to his own devices, and meanders, never quite finishing one train of thought before it segues into the next. When he is tackling something more contentious, though, he relaxes and becomes animated. His head rises and so does his voice. He even smiles. This is a man who likes a scrap.

Fiesty!

But other charges are a little harder to dismiss – or at least they rile him rather more. Shouldn’t he make some more socially relevant buildings? Aren’t his designs too extravagant? Times are tough, after all. This lights the touchpaper as effectively as the s-word. “We are architects … We serve customers!” he barks. “I can’t just decide myself what’s being built. Someone decides what they want, then I work for them. Look, I went to city planning school at Harvard and I discovered that you never got to change a fucking thing or do anything. Urban planning is dead in the US.”

So that’s urban planning dealt with. Gehry doesn’t really do discussion.

Thanks for the kind words, Frank. Infrastructurist chimes in with their thoughts:

Is urban planning in fact dead in the U.S.?

Short answer: No, but it has some serious health problems. When you consider the massive projects in areas like Tysons Corner and the efforts of New York’s Janette Sadik-Khan, it’s clear that innovation in urban planning hasn’t entirely met its demise — though granted, there are certainly problems with our accepted paradigms for city planning, such as the idea that cars should be the locus of urban design.

It’s always interesting to me to see what ideas and topics people will pawn off on the faceless profession of ‘urban planning.’  So, the field gets no credit for innovative policies and designs, yet has to bear the burden of past mistakes and zoning codes?  In the comments, BeyondDC nails the real reason planning and planners are so important:

Only an egomaniac would think Gehry’s stylistic contributions to pop culture make a bigger difference than writing the laws that guide development. Please.

It’s easy to think you’re providing real change when you’re creating shiny titanium monuments, but that doesn’t do much for the everyday spaces we inhabit and use on a daily basis.  Planning isn’t (and shouldn’t be) about doing what Gehry’s done for architecture – deconstructing buildings and making everything a bright shiny object – so it’s no wonder he thinks the profession is dead.  That’s not how cities work, nor is it how they are built.

But, if we’re in need of a new sculpture or a new monument, we know just who to ask.

Streetcars have arrived

Our first streetcars are here. DDOT’s facebook page has the pics.

Ruth Samuelson fears burnout!

Since late summer, the city has been buzzing about streetcar lines coming to Anacostia, H Street NE and possibly numerous other corridors across the city. Some people are thrilled. Others cry waste. But until Saturday, no D.C. streetcars were actually in America—they were in the Czech Republic, of all places.

I don’t know if Ruth has noticed, but the Europeans tend to build these things better than we do (at least right now).  Of course, it won’t always be that way – see United Streetcar.

Then today, news broke that the cars were here! Why this was news is kind of peculiar. Do people care when a new, updated version of the METRO car arrives?  A press release from the District Department of Transportation noted the length of the streetcars journey–4,200 miles. It detailed what kind of measures were taken—a “wax coating” was applied “over the external surface of the street car”—to prepare the streetcars for their voyage. It featured an enthusiastic quote from DDOT director Gabe Klein, suggesting that D.C. residents were just dying to see the vehicles up close and personal– as if they were the newest presidential pets.

I’ll fully admit that I’m far nerdier about this than most, but I am just dying to see these vehicles up close and personal.  And I do like riding in new Metro cars.  I’ll even throw in my two cents about their design.  I know I’m not the only one, either.

So, is this really newsworthy?  I don’t know.  But the beauty of this is how DDOT’s managed to use some social media to get the news out to a community that really wants to hear it and see the pictures.  Little things like this make a big difference.  Metro, for example, could use a little good publicity right now.  Positive waves!

Let there be light

Following up on recent discussion of Metro’s lighting, it’s important to understand how much the surface that’s to be illuminated matters in Metro’s indirect lighting scheme.  Earlier, I noted that Metro is currently going though a process of deep-cleaning several stations in the system – replacing light bulbs, cleaning the walls, etc.   The Washington Post had a great article in March on the process for each station:

Blasts of steam from the hoses they carry scour dust from train brakes and concrete away from the panels. Sensitive equipment, including pylons on the platform, is protected from the spray, but the station is warm and misty.

Once the station is cleaned, the crew will re-bronze rails, paint kiosks and repair tile, among other tasks.

A station gets enhanced about every three and a half years. The crews do two dozen stations a year, focusing on indoor stations during cold weather.

“We’ve got it down to a science,” says Tom Morrison, Metro’s superintendent of contract maintenance and station enhancement. The job begins with a lot of prep work after the Red Line shuts down at midnight. Power to the third rail must be cut and station equipment protected.

The crew must wrap up about 4 a.m. The workers will need to be gone, the equipment stored at the end of the platform or hauled away and the station dry by the time passengers arrive and trains start running at 5 a.m.

It’s not easy adjusting to the schedule — five overnights in a station and two off days trying to have a real life — but workers at least get a direct view of what they’ve accomplished. “We can see the before and after,” says craft supervisor Andre Jordan.

Steam cleaning the walls makes a huge difference.  This process is currently underway at my nearest station, Potomac Avenue.  Dr. Gridlock noted earlier in the year each of the stations scheduled for a “station enhancement,” as Metro describes the process:

Major Enhancements: Dunn Loring, East Falls Church, Eisenhower Avenue, Forest Glen, Medical Center, Potomac Avenue, Twinbrook, Wheaton, White Flint, U Street, Vienna, West Falls Church.

Mini Enhancements: Ballston, Bethesda, Brookland, Court House, Foggy Bottom, Franconia-Springfield, Friendship Heights, Rockville, Shady Grove, Smithsonian, Virginia Square, Woodley Park.

The majors and the minis involve different types of work. A major takes about three months. A mini takes about 25 percent less time. I watched some of the overnight work for a “major” at Cleveland Park. During the hours the station was closed, crews on lifts power washed the station’s concrete ceiling and walls. I could see the before and after, and the difference was remarkable as they removed the tunnel dust that gathers in the station.

To get an idea of how much dirt and grime accumulates over the years, have a look at the process in action:

Potomac Ave deep cleaning, Dec 2009

Potomac Ave deep cleaning, Dec 2009

Metro initially ‘painted’ several stations in order to lighten them up a bit – but the painted surfaces don’t quite have the same warm feeling that the original concrete does.  They also show the dirt and grime more than their concrete counterparts.

Compare, side by side, the clean side of the station to the uncleaned one:

IMG_4654 IMG_4655

It’s not just the grime accumulating on the lower portions of the vault – there’s a huge difference in the dirt on the bottom edges of the coffers – that’s not just shadow (despite my crappy camera).

Infrastructure + Networks + Security

A series of (somewhat) tangentially related post/items/articles I’ve been meaning to mention here:

1. Security Theater – mammoth

There are always tensions between openness and security, and cities like DC have plenty of examples of this – everything from bollards anchored in 6 feet of subterranean concrete to jersey barriers strewn in front of building entrances.  Given these tensions, there are questions about how much is necessary, and how that which is necessary can be better designed:

Though Perlin’s project explores the former possibility, the latter fascinates me, as it reminds me of the concept of “security theater”, coined by Bruce Schneier to describe the ways in which the public apparatus of security (at airports, government buildings, schools, transit stations, etc.) exists primarily not to provide security, as those measures are demonstrably ineffective, but to provide a fearful public with the illusion of security.

This tension has serious consequences for how we use space…

2. Death of a LieDCist

The Capitol Visitors Center was built, amongst many reasons, to help enhance security for visitors to the halls of Congress.  It’s also meant the death of traditions:

Before the advent of the CVC, a visit to the Capitol meant a tour for taxpaying citizens guided by hapless interns who would straight up lie to them. Just bald-faced, outrageous, entirely untrue claims about the nation’s history and its legislative process.

Is nothing sacred? Security kills even the most benign and stupid traditions.

3. Regional Security – CSG + COG

At the Coalition for Smarter Growth’s 11/12 forum to discuss the Greater Washington 2050 plan, one attendee asked about the inherent contradiction between the agglomerations and concentrations inherent to urbanism and the desire for various federal agencies to have uber-secure campuses – or at least ones that put on that particular show in the theater.

DC’s Planning Director, Harriet Tregoning, mentioned the inherent tension between the openness of urbanism and the desired security, but also noted there were some design considerations that need to be taken into account.

All the more reason to push for the elimination of unnecessary security theater – as the built forms that result likely aren’t all that desirable.

4. Secure + Connected Infrastructure – mammoth

Mammoth again notes the challenges of updating our infrastructure, both to provide redundancy and security, as well as enhance development and feed the economy.

I do greatly appreciate the thrust of one of those student projects, ‘The Diversity Machine and Resilient Network’2, which argues that, though Beirut’s “urban fabric… lacks consolidation… optimization or efficiency”, this is not a weakness, but a strength: “it is precisely the ‘redundancy’ of the distributed social infrastructure and relative autonomy of the neighbourhoods that lends the city its resilience.” Though made more specifically in reference to urban form and less in reference to infrastructure, this point reminds me of two things.

First, as faslanyc noted in the comments on a previous post, the impact of an infrastructure on the territory in which it resides should be evaluated not just by its scale, but also for its degree of distribution and connectivity…

Second, and directly related to that first advantage, I’m also reminded of the article Fracture Critical, which ran recently in Places and draws an interesting parallel between two ways of designing specific infrastructures, fracture-critical and fracture-resistant, and ways of designing larger systems. […] Given that the consequences of a networked super-project being fractured would be enormous, I suspect that there’s a place for being cautious about the design of such projects, even while recognizing their value.

Lots to digest here – the notion of how we perceive ‘infrastructure’ is key.  I suspect the urbanist sees it as the backbone on which a city can grow – as we see vestiges of that growth in the urban forms and fabric from various generations of housing stock, transportation facilities, etc…

5. Parcel by Parcel

It also raises the issue I noted with some of the proposed Eco City Beautiful infrastructure – how does one visually convey the vision of urban development around a core infrastructure system without dictating architecture and urbanism?  How do you convey the kind of organic growth of a city – parcel by parcel, building by building?  Mammoth again:

I’d like to think that learning to work infrastructurally (to use Lahoud’s language1) means working more flexibly (despite rhetoric which differs sharply from modernist rhetoric, the two designs presented appear to be close kin of modernist residential housing collectives and contemporary superblocks, as both take a large piece of land and develop urban fabric wholesale upon it), less directly (designing the infrastructure upon which the city grows, with an awareness of how the shaping of the infrastructure will affect the growth of the city, but not presuming to design the city itself) and accepting a degree of loss of control over the aesthetics of the resulting city fabric (which presents a host of drawing problems — how do you draw something which you are not presuming to design and still manage to communicate the importance of the work you’ve done in designing the scaffolding? — but still seems to me to be a humility worth developing).

“Accepting a degree of loss of control” is a nice way to put it.  Kostoff described the key attribute of cities as “energized crowding,” a kind of social context that can’t fully be designed.

6. But, what about scale? – mammoth + NYT + Infrastructurist

Louis Uchitelle argues that we’ve got a superproject void in the US these days – Infrastructurist responds with an impressive list of projects, if only a little disjointed – and mammoth notes the missing connective tissue:

That said, Infrastructurist doesn’t really respond to Uchitelle’s points about the relationship between scale and economic effect, as Uchitelle is arguing not just that that contemporary infrastructure projects are smaller, but that there’s something fundamentally different about the economic effect of a very large project, like the ARC Tunnel, which, while physically impressive, operates in a relatively small geographic territory, and a superproject, which connects formerly disconnected territories (as the interstate highway system did), aggregating markets. The obvious contemporary corollary to the interstate is high speed rail, but Uchitelle also rightly notes that the Obama administration project which is closest to a superproject, defined not just by impressive physical impact, but also by economic effect and ability to facilitate new connections, is the proposed integrated health care computer network.

While the idea of high speed rail has the potential for that kind of connectivity and transformation of markets, what’s missing is the systemic planning.  Looking at DC as a analogous situation, the city and region have benefited immensely from a system planned as a system – and built out in full.  Piecemeal construction on a line by line basis has been less than successful in other cities, and that pattern could hold for intercity rail, too.

7. Paying for it – The Transport Politic + Streetsblog

One place that has taken a system-oriented approach is Denver, and TTP notes the pain they’re dealing with for their foresight.

Perhaps good long term decisions like those in Denver could be vindicated with a little help from a National Infrastructure Bank?