January 23, 2012, 11:05 pm
 CC image from caribb Following up on yesterday’s link post regarding airports, air freight, supply chains, and manufacturing jobs: two posts from Ryan Avent at The Economist.
First, on industrial agglomerations, the impacts on jobs, and how we got to this point:
Unquestionably, Asian governments aggressively pursued manufacturing and subsidised it heavily, both directly and through advantageous exchange rates. As the story points out, Asia has capitalised on other advantages, as well. Cheap labour is one. More flexible land-use, labour, and environmental rules are another; China can erect a massive operation in no time at all, staffed with compliant labour and with little concern about the impact of the factory on watersheds, air quality, and traffic. Skill supply seems to matter as well. China is churning out engineers with basic technical competence (but less, it appears, than a bachelor’s degree) by the hundreds of thousands. It would be incorrect to point to any one of these characteristics as the driving force behind the global shift. Rather, these are self-reinforcing factors within a global economy that has multiple stable equilibria. After some level of Asian development and integration, it became more attractive for manufacturers to locate there as more manufacturers located there.
Clearly, this manufacturing agglomeration is an impressive part of the global trade network. But it’s not the only agglomeration involved in the creation of the iPhone – the design, software, and other high-value elements of the product come from Silicon Valley. More Avent:
What actually seems to have occurred is a bit more interesting. Supply chains have indeed continued fracturing, but distance has reasserted itself in two important ways. First, in the advanced world, agglomerations of the talented individuals who design these products have become increasingly important. And secondly, information technology, which allows for better coordination of production processes, has once again made proximity a relevant concern in manufacturing. It’s possible to coordinate a supply chain that’s draped across an archpelago of Asian economies. To maximise the return to this chain, however, it’s still necessary to keep plants reasonably close together. A plant located in America is too distant from Asia to make much economic sense; transit time to the rest of the supply chain in Asia is sufficiently long, in most cases, as to erode the gains to just-in-time production, or unexpected changes in designs or orders. Changing transportation and communication technologies facilitated a shift in manufacturing to Asia, then reinforced its presence there.
“Agglomerations of the talented individuals” are cities, more or less. At least, they are cities at the labor market level. As to employment, the different parts of the manufacture of the iPhone involve different value propositions, and require different levels of labor to scale up production:
Apple, it’s worth pointing out, continues to capture most of the value added in its products. The most valuable aspects of an iPhone, for instance, are its initial design and engineering, which are done in America. Now, one problem with this dynamic is that as one scales up production of Apple products, there are vastly different employment needs across the supply chain. So, it doesn’t take lots more designers and programmers to sell 50m iPhones than it does to sell 10m. You have roughly the same number of brains involved, and much more profit per brain. On the manufacturing side, by contrast, employment soars as scale grows. So as the iPhone becomes more popular, you get huge returns to the ideas produced in Cupertino, and small returns but hundreds of thousands of jobs in China.
Second, Avent looks at trade and the value of time. Distance still matters, and time is precious, as seen in the increasing usage of air cargo for shipping high value goods. Avent concludes:
The lesson, I think, is simply that there is a limit to which one can or should want to raise manufacturing employment. Having lots of well-paid manufacturing workers isn’t the way one grows rich; replacing lots of those workers with massively productivity enhancing machines is.
This is more or less the same conclusion that Greg Lindsay notes in Aerotropolis – that this agglomeration, while impressive, still isn’t the true engine of creativity and value. Nevertheless, each is an example of agglomeration shaping urban form and urban economies.
January 22, 2012, 11:08 pm
 CC image from Yutaka Tsutano Rail to Dulles: MWAA Board member Robert Brown suggests eliminating the Dulles Airport rail station and replacing it with a people mover to connect to the Route 28 station as a means to save costs. Yonah Freemark finds the concept intriguing, offering some operational considerations that could make it work.
However, the notion that building an entirely new landside people mover system will save money is ludicrous (IAD’s AeroTrain just clocked in at $1.4 billion). Likewise, while the concept would be an interesting solution to connecting an existing airport to an existing rail link (such as between BWI and the BWI rail station), the fact that the rail line has not yet built is a perfect opportunity to ensure that the airport itself is ‘on the way,’ to borrow Jarrett Walker’s terminology.
Freemark notes that one benefit of this concept would be to reduce travel time to the core and/or Tysons, but several other concepts considered by Metro would probably provide more utility to larger areas of service.
Meanwhile, Dulles offers a connection to the world via it’s ‘accidental aerotropolis.’
iPhones and agglomerations: When I last touched on the Aerotropolis, I noted Aaron Renn’s observation that the book isn’t so much about airports and cities as it is about globalization. One such element is the extensive description of the extraordinary agglomeration of manufacturing infrastructure and firms in Shenzhen.
This weekend’s New York Times contains a lengthy article on why the iPhone and other similar devices are not manufactured in the United States. In his blog, Paul Krugman sums up that article in one word: agglomeration. Some key snippets from the article:
But by 2004, Apple had largely turned to foreign manufacturing. Guiding that decision was Apple’s operations expert, Timothy D. Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive last August, six weeks before Mr. Jobs’s death. Most other American electronics companies had already gone abroad, and Apple, which at the time was struggling, felt it had to grasp every advantage.
In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.
For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.
Since we’re talking about iPhones and not cheap Christmas ornaments, the availability of materials and the skill of the labor is more important than the cost of that labor – all benefits of the large agglomeration of technology firms in Shenzhen.
For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.
Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.
When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.
The Chinese plant got the job.
“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”
More thoughts on iPhones, agglomerations, and jobs from Matt Yglesias and Tyler Cowen.
Likewise, an interesting set of charts looking at market share for various computing platforms – starting from more traditional personal computers, but eventually adding in smartphones and tablets. While smartphones and tablets aren’t yet substitutes for a personal computer, they’re getting closer.
Station Domination: via Tyler Cowen, an interesting post from Matt Glassman on the cost of Metro station advertising and the linkages between national politics and the local transit system.
In need of a good decongestant: Housing Complex takes a look at slight optimism from COG staffers on de-congestion pricing, and makes note of a lengthy Washingtonian piece on the subject.
January 22, 2012, 9:37 pm
 Bethesda Row - note that you don't even see how tall the buildings are - CC image from faceless b Kaid Benfield’s excellent blog had a post last week on the need for better urban design and management of the public realm in our new, dense infill development. And while I certainly agree with the need for better urban design, I take issue with Kaid’s implication of an explicit trade-off between density and design – that is, the more density you get, the less human-scaled the street will feel as if this were some correlation of a natural law.
Kaid’s post shows several comparison photographs taken from Google streetview, many from the DC area. What’s missing is an actual accounting for the density embodied in those pictures (such as the visual survey posted here). Additionally, some of the photos Kaid compares are not similar photos – one example involves a view down the axis of a street, while the other is a view of a building’s first floor and the accompanying sidewalk.
For me, it’s a completely different feel. The second development, part of Bethesda, Maryland’s terrific Bethesda Row area, is not just more inviting but also a bit smaller in scale, at five or six stories tops. But that’s part of it, in my opinion. To increase density enough to make a difference, we don’t always need to maximize it. Much of the time a moderate amount of human-scaled urbanism will be far more appropriate than a high-rise. This isn’t, or shouldn’t be, just about calculations of units per acre or square footage. It’s also about what feels right to people.
The sentiment that “we don’t always need to maximize” density implies a tradeoff between human-scaled design and density that I don’t think is absolute. To a great degree, the influence of design – at the street level in particular – is the key element of a human scale. In the comments, Payton (assuming this is from Payton Chung) adds this:
I’d agree that it’s almost all about design. The low- and mid-rise floors are most important, to be sure, since humans’ peripheral vision is weakest when looking up. However, there are plenty of historic skyscraper districts that maintain a great sense of place and small scale at the street level (Broadway in Los Angeles is a thrill to walk down), and even some which maintain good sunlight at street level (just was at Rockefeller Center for the first time in a while and reminded of that crucial detail).
Encouraging both smaller parcel sizes — for exactly that granularity, and to ensure greater diversity — and mid-rise heights both ask huge concessions from our current bigger-is-better development paradigm. Of course a developer will build out to whatever envelope the regulations will allow to recoup their costs, will charge high initial rents that only the most reliably profitable (i.e., bland) retailers can afford, and often won’t spend a premium on the sort of pedestrian-scale details that really create a great sidewalk environment. Yet other factors also result in these squat, boring buildings. Occupants will pay a premium for “ground-related” space or for high-rise space with a view, but not for the mid-rise floors. (Compare that to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the 2nd floor commanded the highest rent as it were above street dust but not a long walk up.) High-rise life safety and structural requirements make a 6-story building almost as expensive as a 12-story building. Requirements for exit stairs (like restricting scissor stairs), and tenants’ desire for reconfigurable spaces, both fatten floorplates. Municipalities set build-to lines for bases (correct) and, fearful of oddly height-obsessed NIMBYs, set unrealistically low height limits.
For things like sunlight at street level, the more important considerations would be the orientation of buildings on the site and the setbacks rather than absolute height – issues of design of a different sort than the street level scale.
November 28, 2011, 10:31 pm
Time to dump some tabs that I’ve accumulated in the browser over the past few weeks:
You can never go down the drain:
This week’s City Paper cover story is a short piece on DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility (arrange your own tour here!). The accompanying photographs show the infrastructural landscape in all of its glory.
For an incredibly in-depth tour of the facility (without the smell), check out this mammoth post from September, showing the entire process in excruciating detail. Mammoth notes the fundamental process of cleaning the water mimics the existing natural processes that rivers use, albeit concentrated and accelerated.
The two basic tracks are to separate liquids and solids, while making the liquids more liquid and the solids more solid at each step in the process. The end result of one process is water back into the Potomac (cleaner than the river it enters); and the other result is ‘concentrated biosolid’, also known as the concentrated crap of Washington, DC.
The biosolid is sold as fertilizer for agricultural applications for non-human consumption. Waste nothing. For an in-depth tour of how such a facility works, I can’t recommend the mammoth piece enough.
On the water delivery side (as opposed to the sewage disposal side), Atlantic Cities has a piece on why your water bill must go up to help finance the replacement of the infrastructure we’ve taken for granted. Both the delivery and disposal networks are in need of investment.
JD Land has a set of photos from the new Yards Park-Diamond Teague bridge, including one of the historic pump house that sends sewage from the District south to Blue Plains. Another shot shows the bridge’s informational signage from DC Water, documenting the agency’s own long-term control plan for management of DC’s combined sewer system.
It’s all about jobs:
The remarkable takeaway from the Blue Plains phototours is the role of natural processes in the system (minimizing pumping in favor of gravity, for example) to maximize efficiency via infrastructure. Thus, it was curious to see the Washington Post writing about the expansion data centers in old manufacturing towns to serve as the physical location of cloud computing servers, but noting that such infrastructure doesn’t provide many long term jobs.
Granted, jobs are the narrative of the Great Recession, but using the data center seems like an odd place to focus. Using a similar infrastructure investment like Blue Plains as an example, a better comparison would be to the economic activity enabled by clean water and sewage disposal – just as the data centers should look at the indirect effects of internet connectivity and activity, not direct employment via the infrastructure that sustains the internet.
Mammoth has a few thoughts on IT infrastructure, aesthetics, and the return of light industry to mixed use urban environments.
Here comes the sun:
Some solar powered notes – the cost of PV cells is coming down. Some thoughts on the implications for the climate (Joe Romm), for the economy (Paul Krugman) and for DC (Lydia DePillis).
Is transportation too expensive?
David Levinson proffers a few hypotheses as to why transportation investments are so expensive. Many are interesting, (thin markets and insufficient economies of scale trigger thoughts of rolling stock protectionism; project scoping and organizational structure are similarly compelling) though I’d take issue with a few of them.
One is #5, discussing incorrect scope. David mentions big buses serving few passengers, but as Jarret Walker notes, the real cost is in operations; the real cost is the driver.
The idea of standards run amok is intriguing, but I think a more relevant point is asking if standards make sense.
Nitpicks aside, the idea is a great one – this is a conversation that needs to happen.
November 17, 2011, 11:05 pm
 In the comments from yesterday’s post on Norman Foster’s aerotropolis (and the idea of the aerotropolis in general), author Greg Lindsay dropped a note in the comments asking for me to expand my own thoughts on the idea and the book. So, here goes.
Lindsay did note one specific comment from Aaron Renn’s review: “this is one of the best overviews of globalization I’ve read.” I can’t disagree, and would certainly recommend the book to anyone interested in cities, infrastructure, globalization, economics, or any number of related fields. The challenge is to separate the various threads that weave through the book. There’s the descriptive element, providing the overview of today’s airborne flows of commerce; there’s the proscriptive element, taking Kasarda’s ideas and baking them into tangible proposals; and there’s the analytical element that assesses the implications of these trends and ideas. Most of the negative reactions to the book I’ve read seem to conflate these elements together instead of teasing them apart – and for whatever flaws the aerotropolis-as-business-plan might have, the descriptive and analytic elements of the book are invaluable.
The book’s descriptive elements are fantastic. BLDGBLOG’s interview with Lindsay highlights one example of the book’s explanatory power, showing how these systems work in our day to day lives: “One of the things I tried to touch on in the book is that even actions we think of as primarily virtual lead to the creation of gigantic physical systems and superstructures without us even knowing it.” The descriptions of the logistics operations in Memphis and Louisville for FedEx and UPS are fascinating.
 UPS WorldPort, from Bing maps
The accompanying narrative of aggolmerations of air freight reliant businesses near those hubs is equally fascinating. I write this having just placed an order from Amazon that I need delivered tomorrow, knowing the intricate dance that order will trigger. Knowing the physical processes behind a shoe order with Zappos is revealing, particularly given the level of automation and coordination required for fast delivery. The ‘cool chain’ explanation is equally intriguing. Simply from a standpoint of understanding how things work, the book does an excellent job of pulling back the curtain.
Beyond just the work behind the consumer’s experience, Lindsay and Kasarda do a great job of explaining the clustering and agglomeration of various industries around these nodes of connectivity – the physical mark they leave on a place. The explanation of what an ‘organic’ aerotropolis looks like is fascinating, offering a tantalizing description of something we’ve all seen many times with our own eyes.
The proscriptive elements of the aerotropolis are less convincing. There’s an element of the worst parts of civic boosterism built in. Others have hinted at the tendencies towards authoritarianism. Perhaps the more concerning aspect is the seeming simplicity of the application of the idea. The book’s own cover art evokes the simplicty of SimCity, even after the preceding detailed explanation of the various exceedingly complex networks and agglomerations of the aviation system. To be fair, neither Kasarda nor Lindsay advocate for a ‘build it and they will come’ approach, yet it’s hard to not come away with that mindset from some of the Chinese ‘instant city’ anecdotes.
The formulaic nature of Kasarda’s concept almost seems to be a deliberate misunderstanding of the powers of agglomeration and networks. It’s clearly not a matter of just building it and they will come, no matter how much transportation might be able to shape development and growth. As critical as trade may be, there’s more to it than just that. Likewise, as mammoth notes, airborne trade is but a small fraction of the overall flows. Even if the flows of capital, knowledge, and skills matter a great deal, there is still a physical component to all of this – and the dominant mode of that flow is still the intermodal container.
Problems with the aerotropolis aside, Lindays’s analytic discussions of the shortcomings of air travel are robust. The discussion of peak oil and climate change is particularly compelling, given the frequency of this critique. Assertions that the aerotropolis is irrelevant because of peak oil and/or climate change is just as absurd as the denigrations of high speed rail in the US based on some notion that any American system must also be a transcontinental one – neither critique expresses an understanding of the comparative advantages of the technology.
I hope that people don’t dismiss the book off-hand because of some notion of globalization or of climate change. The explanatory value alone is well worth the read, both in documenting today’s conditions as well as in discussing the implications of global networks more and more reliant on air travel and just-on-time logistics.
November 17, 2011, 8:35 pm
 The Gated City in action: Today’s Washington Post on the inadequacy of the region’s housing supply in meeting demand. In short, Ryan Avent called it. The region is producing jobs, people want to move here, yet it hasn’t been able to produce enough housing to meet that demand. From the Post article:
“If businesses find they can’t have their workers live near where they can work, they’re going to go somewhere else. And the workers themselves might also go somewhere else,” said Lisa A. Sturtevant, an assistant professor at George Mason’s school of public policy, who co-authored the study with Stephen S. Fuller, director of the university’s Center for Regional Analysis.
Their research showed that the Washington area, defined by 22 counties and cities, is expected to add 1.05 million jobs through 2030. More than a third of those jobs will be in professional and technical sectors, but significant growth also is expected in administrative, service and health-related jobs that often pay lower wages. If those numbers hold true, that boom will require as many as 731,457 additional units to house workers in the jurisdictions where they work, the study found.
That means the region would need to produce about 38,000 new housing units per year, “an annual pace of construction never before seen in the region and below what local jurisdictions have accounted for in their comprehensive plans,” the study concludes. Data show that over the past 19 years, the region has averaged 28,600 building permits a year; last year, about 15,000 building permits were issued in the region.
In addition, much of the new housing needs to be multi-family units (to make efficient use of available land) and affordable rentals (to put it within reach of younger workers and those with lower salaries), George Mason’s researchers argue.
For more on Fuller and his work, see Lydia DePillis’s April City Paper profile.
I must, however, take issue with the Post‘s framing of the issue. From the second paragraph in the article:
With that growth comes a vexing problem: How do you house those new workers in ways that are both affordable and don’t worsen the soul-crushing commutes that already plague the region’s residents?
The problem here isn’t vexing at all. Nor, frankly, is the solution. The solution is rather obvious: we need to grow up instead of out. We need to add density. We need infill development around existing infrastructure assets. Admittedly, implementing that solution is certainly more vexing than simply stating it aloud, but let’s not let the challenge of implementation obscure the diagnosis of the root problem.
November 16, 2011, 10:41 pm
 Image via Foster+Partners
Norman Foster is working on a concept for a massive new airport complex for London along the Thames Estuary. I first saw this (via ArchDaily) thanks to a shared Google Reader item (alas, no more) from Neil Flanagan. Yesterday, Planetizen points to an Atlantic piece on the subject, featuring new renderings from Foster + Partners posted on DesignBoom:
understanding the transportation challenges facing britain, london-based practice foster + partners, have collaborated with consulting firms halcrow (international) and volterra (UK) for a self-funded study producing the ‘thames hub vision’, a detailed report that uses scale and strategic cross-sector thinking to design an integrated infrastructure network. the masterplan proposes to replace the existing thames barrier with a new crossing that will extend london’s protection from floods into the 22nd century. it will mitigate the capital from rising storm levels, free up vital land for development and harness tidal power to generate carbon-free energy.
building on existing transportation lines to the north, east and west of london ‘the hub’ will avoid future congestion into the city. an orbital rail system with a four-track, high-speed passenger and freight route will link london’s current radial lines, with a future high-speed rail line to the midlands and the north, the thames estuary ports, high speed 1, and european networks. by minimizing the developmental impact the environmental strategy aims to provides new wildlife habitats landscaped within the spine.
This is more or less the Aerotropolis in a tangible proposal. John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay’s book spends a great deal of time on Heathrow; the inability of various cities (Chicago, Los Angeles) to build new and needed airports for various reasons; and cities that have done so through planning or via accident (Dulles, Dallas, Denver). Heathrow’s capacity constraints serve as a drag on not just London’s economy, but as a drag on key link in the global transport network.
Having read the book but never gotten around to a review, I thought I’d take this moment to highlight some of the more interesting thoughts I’ve come across regarding the importance of aviation as well as the aerotropolis concept.
Recently, Aaron Renn penned a somewhat pessimistic review of the somewhat totalitarian implications of planned aerotropoli:
A few things jumped at me out of the book. One of them is the close linkage between the aerotropolis and its boosters with authoritarianism (and by extension, similarly for globalization and its boosters). The second is that, despite vast sums of money and authoritarian rule, I didn’t come away with a sense of anyplace in the world that had fully pulled off Kasarda’s vision. Indeed, there are as many or more failures than successes. And even those successes are far from perfect ones.
Renn does highlight the fundamental issue, regardless of Kasarda’s plans and predictions: that aviation is a tremendous force in globalization and the flows of commerce. (For more on the tension between singular vision and democracy, see Alon Levy’s post on consensus and vision) Back in March, mammoth made the case that the aerotropolis is merely the symbol of globalization. Air travel might be the sexy mode, but the real work of global trade should probably be symbolized by the intermodal cargo container and all of its associated infrastructure.
It seems to me that the “aerotropolis” (particularly on the more restricted Kasarda definition) is more a symbol of globalization than it is the ultimate instantiation of globalization. Sea shipping is (and was for centuries before the invention of flight) the dominant mode of global transport. To get an indication of the difference in magnitude between sea and air shipping, just look at Shanghai, the world’s busiest cargo port by tonnage, and Memphis, the world’s busiest airport by tonnage: Memphis sees about three million tons a year; Shanghai sees around five hundred million tons a year. This is not a statistical aberration.
(As an aside, Matt Yglesias makes the point that even in the age of global trade, geography and proximity still matter.) Renn also points out that theaerotropolis is ultimately a measure of connections and networks – and the idea of the aerotropolis as a proscription isn’t nearly as strong as it is in description:
The lesson I draw is that while good air connectivity is critical for a city in the global economy – indeed, I almost draw my threshold population for what constitutes a minimum viable city in the globalized world in terms of whether or not it is big enough to support a major airport – the airport is only one ingredient needed for success, not the entire recipe. Cities that pin their hopes too heavily on airport led transformation are bound to be disappointed. And even if you go in with the best of intentions trying to do airport development right, you are far from guaranteed to have success.
Renn’s critique is well put, though I feel it ends up talking past some of the broader themes that Lindsay and Kasarda highlight in favor of deconstructing Kasarada’s specific, proscriptive vision for the future of air travel. In many ways, their main thesis isn’t anything new, just another example of transportation infrastructure shaping human development.
Also disputing the tone of telling is what we want, Kazys Varnelis disputes the book’s tag line, “the way you’ll live next.”
The answer is that the Aerotropolis is already here and it’s really not all that exciting. I went on two international flights in the last two weeks. Newark International Airport is about a half hour drive from the apartment I rent while La Guardia is about a half hour cab ride from Columbia. Do I really need to be closer? Could I really be closer, like the inhabitants of Kowloon Walled City who had jets pass by a hundred meters overhead?
No. I am far enough away that I don’t hear the noise from the planes too often, don’t viscerally experience the pollution, and don’t feel something is going to crash on my head.
Today, the City Paper linked to some great photos from the National Archives from the 1970s, including one of the District as a parking lot during a 1974 transit strike. Varnelis’ words echo the last image in the set of a DC-10 on approach into Logan Airport in Boston in 1973:
For more on Aerotropolis (the book), see this excellent interview with co-author Greg Lindsey at BLDGBLOG.
November 9, 2011, 9:44 pm
 Screencap from Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors Assorted (and tangentially related) links:
1. Stephen Smith also digs into Eric Colbert (see my previous post here):
I’m not sure I agree with her parenthetical about DC’s “historic fabric” being “so strong already” – in fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of a newer city on the Northeast Corridor than Washington – but she’s definitely right that that’s what Washingtonians, even the not-so-native ones, think of their city. Of-right development – that is, building within the zoning code in a way that does not trigger a subjective review – is on the wane everywhere in America, but in DC it’s even rarer, and therefore personal relationships like the ones Eric Colbert has (“an ANC 2B commissioner, who had worked with Colbert on previous projects, introduced him with affection”) are even more important than usual when compared to good design.
A few points. A) I’m not sure why Stephen associates the strength of a city’s fabric with age – DC’s fabric has the advantage of being largely intact. B) Stephen more explicitly states the same thesis – that Colbert’s architecture is ‘boring,’ and boring is, by association, bad design. I would disagree that fabric is boring – on the contrary, fabric is essential. C) It’s a mistake to conflate the countable and objective measures of development (square footage, height, density, etc) with more subjective measures like ‘good design.’ Stephen conflates two key elements here – development by right, and design by right. The regulatory structures and processes that govern both are quite different.
2. Cities are all about context. Atlantic Cities discusses a review of San Francisco by John King, from iconic buildings to more mundane (boring?) elements of the urban fabric.
3. Mammoth links to another Atlantic piece, discussing “Low Road” buildings and their importance in urban economics, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
The startup lore says that many companies were founded in garages, attics, and warehouses. Once word got around, companies started copying the formula. They stuck stylized cube farms into faux warehouses and figured that would work. The coolness of these operations would help them look cool and retain employees. Keep scaling that idea up and you get Apple’s ultrahip mega headquarters, which is part spaceship and part Apple Store.
But as Stewart Brand argued in his pathbreaking essay, “‘Nobody Cares What You Do in There’: The Low Road,” it’s not hip buildings that foster creativity but crappy ones.
“Low Road buildings are low-visibility, low-rent, no-style, high-turnover,” Brand wrote. “Most of the world’s work is done in Low Road buildings, and even in rich societies the most inventive creativity, especially youthful creativity, will be found in Low Road buildings taking full advantage of the license to try things.”
Being on the low road isn’t exactly the same as being a part of the fabric – the price point and the prominence don’t always correlate – but the concept is somewhat similar. These spaces are easy to adapt and reuse. Not just easy, but cheap.
4. Where Stewart Brand discusses the space of innovation, Ryan Avent has another (follow-up) piece on the geography of innovation:
I think that the authors have basically gotten the state of innovation right: we are approaching a critical point at which impressive progress in information technology becomes explosive progress. And I think that the authors are right that the extent to which we are able to take advantage of these technological developments will hinge on how successful America’s tinkerers are at experimenting with new business models and turning them into new businesses. But I also think that there is a critical geographic component to that process of experimentation and entrepreneurship and, as I wrote in my book, I think we are systematically constraining the operation of that component.
High housing costs constitute a substantial regulatory tax burden on residence in many high productivity areas. These are the places where the tinkerers are having their ongoing innovative conversation. But if the tinkerers are driven away, the conversation loses depth and breadth, and we lose many of the combinations that might go on to be the next big company — the next big employer. That, to me, is a very worrying idea.
5. When considering both the versatility of space as well as the institutional and infrastructural momentum (as well as touching on the importance of information technology), Mammoth also links to a short documentary of the infrastructure of the internet: Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors:
November 6, 2011, 5:04 pm
 CC image from MV Jantzen Last week’s City Paper cover story, a profile of DC architect Eric Colbert by Lydia DePillis, contains several jabs at Colbert’s not-so-daring designs:
You may not remember precisely what they look like, though. They form a background blur in neighborhoods where much of Colbert’s work is clustered, blending together quietly in the mind of people walking down the street—just the way the neighbors, developers, and bankers intended.
Throughout the article, there’s an undercurrent of disappointment about this blending in that Colbert accomplishes, as if the lack of a bold design is the sign of a bad design. What’s missing in this conception, however, is the difference in scale between architecture and urban design, between the scale of a building and the scale of a city.
Colbert is now a major influence on entire neighborhoods, not just individual blocks. Nowhere is this truer than greater 14th Street, where Elinor Bacon had accorded him the status of the Creator. But unlike his more imperialistic architectural predecessors, who knew they’d get to design large chunks of the city at once (and often had their own money in the deal), Colbert doesn’t think about leaving an imprint on the built environments he’s played a huge part in shaping.
“You know, it’s hard, because each project comes to us individually, with a different client, a different set of neighbors,” he says, when I ask whether he thinks about molding a place like 14th and U. “We really look at the block. It never occurred to me that we would be doing four projects on 14th Street, with potentially two more in the wings. So it wasn’t possible to know in advance, and say, ‘This is how I’m going to shape 14th Street.”
“Not that I would want to be that controlling,” he adds.
Even the more “imperialistic” predecessors DePillis mentions (Harry Wardman, for example*) weren’t really ‘shaping’ their areas of the city so much as they were styling it. The shape of the city is a product of urban design and the way that the buildings frame public spaces, as opposed to architecture that operates at a smaller scale. In unpacking Colbert’s appeal, DePillis hints at the real forces shaping that design:
In Washington, where knowing local zoning codes and historic districts saves time and angst, hiring an architect remains a model of shopping locally. With the exception of Georgetown-based Eastbanc and local heavyweight JBG, who are willing to spend a bit more on a name-brand architect from out of town, most developers have a stable of local architects and rotate through them. “It’s a small town feel to it, and nobody likes outsiders,” says Four Points Development’s Stan Voudrie, who retained Colbert for his Progression Place project in Shaw. “D.C.’s a little bit of a closed loop.”
What’s Colbert’s competitive advantage? In large part, it’s that Colbert isn’t just an architect. He’s a development partner through all stages of a project, from conception to interior design to city review processes to working with contractors through the mundane details of construction—which a snootier designer might consider beneath him.
Emphasis mine. In short, the codes shape the built form of the city, if not the architectural style of the individual buildings. Building a narrative about an individual’s style and his ability to shape the city accordingly is enticing, but the more important forces are legal ones. Now, whether those codes are shaping the city as intended or not is another question.
The other question is if bold architecture is wanted. Every city needs the kind of urban fabric that provides the bulk of the buildings but tends to blend into the surrounding context (more often, it is the surrounding context). That Colbert aims to contribute to this shouldn’t be a negative. Jahn Gehl has repeatedly noted how Dubai’s emphasis on monumental architecture with no surrounding context (“birdshit architecture“) fails to create a sense of place. If every building tries to be unique, then none of them are.
*I’ve been meaning to link to this map from Park View DC, showing the development of various tracts of land over time in Park View. The key takeaway is that almost all of our cherished residential neighborhoods were once created via for-real estate development. Too often, NIMBY attitudes seem to denigrate developers, but this is merely the process of city building in action. These old rowhouses are no different, they’ve just aged over time.
November 1, 2011, 11:02 pm
Pass the crow, please.
Last week, I noted that the hullaballoo about the impending changes to Google Reader were likely overblown. Insofar as we’re talking about the sharing and social features migrating to Google+, it probably is overblown. But the new user interface stinks. From Google’s official blog:
A new look and feel that’s cleaner, faster, and nicer to look at.
Cleaner? I guess. Faster? Not in my experience so far. Easier to look at? I don’t use Google Reader to look, I use it to read.
The functionality of the old interface is completely lost. The buttons are all in the wrong place. Simple features (such as ‘mark as unread’) are nowhere to be found. The color scheme is harder to read, fewer RSS items appear on my screen, the spacing is awkward, there’s excessive and wasted blank space, the hierarchy of information is all wrong (why is the subscribe button so big and red?), etc.
What a mess.
The least Google can do is to offer users the option to retain the old interface. Gmail offers this for users (via themes), Google Docs and Google Calendar’s recent interface redesigns offer the option to switch to the older, more compact, more information-dense interface as well. Google should make the same option available for reader, or I’m going to be in the market for a new RSS feed reader.
The initial reaction isn’t good. Not that most UI changes are universally embraced, but this is more than a Garth Algar ‘we fear change‘ moment – this is a step backwards in utility.
Pass the crow. For the time being, the reader items in the sidebar won’t be updating.
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