Tag Archives: World Cup

Weekend Reading – The Group Stage

Soccer in the Circle, from M.V. Jantzen

Soccer in the Circle, from M.V. Jantzen

The World Cup is underway.

England in Roo-ins: The cup means large gatherings of fans and sweet commercials (even the older ones).

Infrastructure: Jarrett Walker takes a look at some of the transit improvements for South Africa, building off the notion that large scale events like the World Cup can provide a kind of focus for infrastructure investments and other benefits that will last well after the conclusion of the games.  Infrastructurist looks at the stadiums.

Last week’s screening on the Mall of PBS’ documentary of Daniel Burnham focused a great deal on his role in the creation of the White City at the 1893 Columbian Exposition – another special event that focused a great deal of infrastructure investment – highlights two issues: the temporary and often fleeting nature of these kinds of events, as well as the ability to focus investments in one area.  Chicago focused on a park, Vancouver’s investments in one region – South Africa’s investments are spread across an entire country.

Ryan Avent’s post on infrastructure investments in mature cities versus growing ones also gets at the comparison between Chicago in 1893 and Vancouver in 2010.

Representative Space: Mammoth takes a look at soccer as a representation of urban space – a diagram of the strategies for using space.  Very interesting.

Framing the Issue: Cap’n Transit disagrees with the idea of framing bus operating improvements in New York as a ‘surface subway.’  This is an important tension – selling a project to various stakeholders is vitally important if you ever want to actually get something done, but overselling the benefits of some projects can dangerous.

Home Ownership and NIMBYism: Ryan Avent dissects a recent paper from the Federal Reserve on home ownership and ‘investment’ in the community, both literally and figuratively.

It’s clearly right that homeowners take an active interest in local policy in an effort to protect and enhance local services and the value of their homes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that homeowners are generating societal benefits…

It’s also not clear that homeowners are necessarily maximizing the value of their properties. Homeownership, as I’ve mentioned before, is an undiversified, highly-leveraged, immobile, illiquid financial bet. Having made such a bet, homeowners become very risk averse. We can imagine situations in which new developments are likely to benefit local homeowners and increase the value of their properties, but have benefits uncertain enough that there is a small but real probability of a negative effect on local property values. Highly risk-averse homeowners may opt to oppose the project, despite the good chance that they’d benefit from it.

Balancing individual and collective interests is one of the key tensions in any urban environment.  That tension also illuminates the problems of pushing home ownership as the be-all and end-all for one’s living situation.

Politically Correct: Bike lanes?

Couch Criticism: Architecture critics take on forts made of couch cushions.

Links – bad day for the Midwest

Soldier Field, US v. Honduras World Cup Qualifier, summer 2009.  CC image from flickr

Soldier Field, US v. Honduras World Cup Qualifier, summer 2009. CC image from flickr

The US has narrowed their list of potential host cities for the US Soccer Federation’s bid to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup – and shockingly, that list does not include the Windy City.

The final cities are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, East Rutherford, N.J., Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa, Fla., and Washington.

“With Chicago, I think there was some Olympic fatigue,” Gulati said, referring to that city’s unsuccessful bid to host the Summer Games in 2016. “And in this group, Soldier Field was one of the smallest stadiums.”

Good news for DC – both FedEx Field and M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore made this cut, which almost assures the region of hosting some World Cup games should the US win the right to host. This list of 18 cities will be trimmed to a final list of 12 stadiums.

However, the exclusion of Chicago is baffling.  Chicago regularly hosts US World Cup qualifiers, Gold Cup matches, is home to an MLS team, and hosted many matches the last time the US hosted this event in 1994. Renovated Soldier Field is indeed small in terms of capacity, but this is Chicago we’re talking about here.

Only slightly less confusing is the exclusion of any stadia from the San Francisco Bay Area, but at least this can be explained by the poor quality of the extant stadiums in both SF and Oakland.  However, the San Francisco 49ers stand to get a new football stadium in the near future, certainly before 2022 rolls around.  Likewise, given Dan Snyder’s constantly rumored talks about wanting to build a new stadium for his micromanaged Redskins, DC could be looking at a new stadium, too.

Point being, 12 years is a long time from now.   Leaving off two of the US’s greatest cities from a bid that’s meant to showcase not just America’s stadiums and hosting abilities but the host cities as well is just inexplicable.

(advice to the USSF folks – it’s 106 miles to Chicago.  Hit it.)

Picture of Detroit Industry mural.  CC image from flickr

Picture of 'Detroit Industry' mural. CC image from flickr

Detroit is another city that hosted World Cup matches in 1994, but was left of this bid’s list.  That obviously isn’t the focus of Detroit’s current issues.  Mammoth directs our attention to a piece by Bruce Katz on re-industrializing Detroit.  Katz looks to international precedents (Turin, Bilbao), addresses the need to Detroit to shrink and shift – even with re-development and re-industrialization, and the huge impact this might have on the shape of the city.

Obligatory DC connection:

Detroit has to change physically because it simply cannot sustain its current form. It was built for two million people, not the 900,000 that live there today. Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston could all fit within Detroit’s 139-square-mile boundary, and there would still be 20 square miles to spare. Even more than its European counterparts, which had much less severe population losses, Detroit will have to become a different kind of city, one that challenges our idea of what a city is supposed to look like, and what happens within its boundaries. The new Detroit might be a patchwork of newly dense neighborhoods, large and small urban gardens, art installations, and old factories transformed into adventure parks. The new Detroit could have a park, much like Washington’s Rock Creek Park, centered around a creek on its western edge, and a system of canals from the eastern corner of the city to Belle Isle in the south. The city has already started on the restoration of the Detroit River waterfront, largely bankrolled by private philanthropy. The city has created a new “land bank,” which can take control of vacant and derelict properties and start the process of clearing land, remediating environmental contamination, and figuring out what to do next with the parcel, whether that’s making it into a small park, deeding it to a neighbor to create a well-tended yard, or assembling large tracts of land for redevelopment or permanent green space.

Also from mammoth, Rob Holmes takes a peek at the massive scale of some new solar infrastructure, linking to this post on the sprawling SEGS facility in California – conveniently located next to the world’s largest boron mine for scale comparisons.

Similarly, the scale comparisons remind me of a video recently shared with me about mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.  The video comes from Yale University’s Environment360. the 20 minute video is extraordinarily well shot and edited, and well worth a watch.  Given DC’s proximity to Appalachia and our (relative) reliance on coal power in this region, it’s definitely of interest to those of us in the Mid Atlantic region.

At a bare minimum, the images in the video alone are worth a watch.

When I think of tools for urban living, GMC trucks aren’t the first thing that come to my mind.  I guess using that kind of comparison is like saying a jackhammer is a tool for hanging picture frames around the house.

Portland hasn’t seen big shifts in travel modes recently, as Jarrett Walker notes.  However, Jarrett and a few of his trusty commenters seem to have a bead on to the potential cause – relatively cheap parking.

In other recent work we’ve been doing, we’ve repeatedly seen that parking price is the most powerful locally-controlled lever for shifting people out of single-occupant cars, in the absence of more direct congestion charges.  Increases in parking costs drive big shifts to transit or other options.

In my experience working on various transportation demand management programs, this is absolutely true.  Since TDM programs do not usually have the scope to implement congestion pricing, parking pricing is the single biggest contributor to mode shifts.