Month: June 2011

A problem of plenty: Parks without people

Central Hall, a public market building, restored 11 years ago

Sofia, Bulgaria – Can a city have too many parks and green spaces? Most people would say, of course not. But after a Saturday afternoon walk through central Sofia, I began to wonder. I saw numerous parks, many with almost no people in them, a few of them well-maintained but others with knee-high weeds and in trashy ill-repair.

To be sure, it was a chilly day for June, with a few spittings of rain. Yet tour buses were parked at the  gold-domed Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and I walked past at least a half-dozen weddings at churches around the center of town.  After a bit of wandering I found a great shopping street, Vitosha, jammed with people. So people were in central Sofia. They just weren’t in many of the parks.

I’m here for a conference of the International Urban Fellows Association of Johns Hopkins University, a yearly gathering of architects, urban planners and scholars from around the world. This year’s topic is public spaces, and how the city of Sofia should design and manage them, a concern for cities around the world. (Disclosure: the university has paid my travel expenses.)

Lack of maintenance and calf-high grass are problems in U.S. cities, too, as they’ve whacked park maintenance budgets more efficiently than they’ve been whacking their weeds in recent years.

But more is going on than money problems. Poorly designed public spaces are a problem plaguing many cities, Sofia and Charlotte among them. (And here’s a clever online tour of some Seattle-area places that aren’t as welcoming as you’d want.)  Though Charlotte and Sofia’s histories have almost nothing in common, they seem to have arrived at some common problems: Lack of money to maintain existing public spaces. Open spaces surrounded by monumental-style and unwelcoming urban redevelopment – problems that arose in the U.S. from misguided urban “renewal” and bad private development, and in Sofia from Communist governments apparently reading the same bad-design manuals as U.S. planners and architects, and then similar bad private development. And a shortage of public will when government funds run short.

Central Sofia has multiple parks and squares in the center of town. But reread Jane Jacobs on what parks need to succeed: A diversity of uses around them, so that people walk through them at all hours of the day and evening, going to work, to stores, to school, walking the dog, taking kids to playgrounds, and so on. Sofia’s mammoth institutional buildings in the center seem, to my eyes, to make that important diversity of uses harder to achieve at some of the parks. Not to mention that traffic patterns aren’t welcoming to pedestrians.

You’ll find similar problems throughout suburban-style American, as well as in center cities that were too aggressively “renewed” (one of those terms that describes the opposite of what it really did, like subdivisions named Quail Ridge or Meadowood, which memorialize natural features they destroyed).

Some quick background: Bulgaria is a country of 7.3 million – fewer than North Carolina’s 9.5 million, and shrinking into the bargain. It’s north of Greece, south of Romania and east of Albania. Sofia, the capital, is in the western part of the country, in a plain surrounded by mountains, with a beautiful Vitosha mountain looming in the south, offering skiing in winter and hiking in summer. Sofia’s population is about 1.2 million. It is expanding its subway system and has, at least in the center of town, a large network of streetcars, as well as bus service.

Under communism (1945-1989/1990), people had little need to take any private interest in “public” domains, such as parks. The government did all that, and public spaces were well-maintained, if somewhat forbidding (you didn’t walk on the grass, noted one speaker, who described his amazement the first time he saw people picnicking on the grass at New York’s Central Park). And the government certainly had no interest in providing public spaces where the public was going to interact with one another and possibly decide to do something like rally for democracy, a la Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Today the municipal government simply can’t keep up with the maintenance and restoration needed. Sidewalks are cracked and treacherous. I’m reasonably sure-footed and I can’t count how many times I’ve stumbled. Cars park on sidewalks, apparently with impunity, causing the pavement to crumble and sending pedestrians into the streets to dodge traffic. Yet the concept of nongovernmental agencies and citizen activism is in its infancy. After all, under Communism one didn’t want to take that kind of risk. Things are changing, but slowly.

We’ve heard from a number of Sofians who are working to improve their city, through private nonprofit groups, with art and cultural programs, and through new city plans. Some of what we’re hearing can apply to many U.S cities, not just in Bulgaria or Eastern Europe. More to come. 

All together now: “An attractive place for investment”

SOFIA, Bulgaria – I’m sitting in a conference room in an ancient Balkan city, and other than the fact that the remarks are in Bulgarian (and being translated), you’d think I was listening to any Chamber of Commerce official in Charlotte, or Raleigh, or Atlanta.

Petar Dikov, the city architect for this Bulgarian capital, is showing slides labeled, “Sofia – an attractive place for investment,” and later, one that lists the No. 1 strategic goal as “maintaining a high level of economic growth through development of a knowledge-based economy.”

Sounds like home to me.

Dikov, who was named to his post five years ago, notes that he said, “The first priority is infrastructure. The second priority is infrastructure. The third priority is infrastructure.” Also sounds familiar, especially after a series of slides showing plans for streets and roads, including what looks like a ring highway with a northern chunk missing. (Of course, I don’t know at this point whether it’s missing because it hasn’t been built, or because there’s a mountain or something in the way.)

He goes through a list of all the attractions Sofia has – dozens of theaters, universities and cultural attractions. It’s within 10 kilometers of skiing, within 20 of a large artificial lake.  Sofia is a “modern European metropolis with dynamic economy and rich cultural life.” Check. Substitute the word “Atlanta” or “Nashville” or “Houston” and the speech would be the same.

But then, he notes that corruption here is a problem. You wouldn’t hear THAT in the good old generic Chamber of Commerce talks in the U.S.

I’m here attending a conference of the International Urban Fellows Association of Johns Hopkins University – a yearly gathering of urban planners, architects and scholars from around the world, all of whom have spent a semester or a year at some point in the past, studying at Hopkins.

I’ll write more, later, on the conference’s key theme: the management of public spaces (parks, streets, greenways) in Sofia, a city where for decades people depended on the communist government to do all that.  (To be continued.)

A Ponzi scheme in suburbia?

First blog of the New Era.

First up – Is suburban development a Ponzi scheme? In “The growth Ponzi scheme, part 1” from New Urban Network, writer Charles Mahron makes this claim: The typical American pattern of development doesn’t support itself. He writes: “The great experiment of suburbanization that America embarked on following World War II has no precedent in human history. As it enters its third generation, the flawed assumptions that were overlooked are now coming back to bite us in a cruel way.”

I think Mahron is onto something, and I know he’s not alone in questioning whether the country and its governments – federal, state and local – can afford to support the immense and spread-out infrastructure we’ve created in the pat 50 years. I know that Charlotte’s Department of Transportation and its Fire Department looked at the cost-savings to be had in fire and emergency services when streets are in a connected network versus cul-de-sac-collector-type patterns.

But has anyone seen any academically rigorous studies that look seriously at this question? It’s easy to hypothesize. Which is why we all do it.

Is LEED truly leading? This article in Miller-McCune, “Is LEED the Gold Standard in Green?” tells of a lawsuit against the well-known  Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system by a New York engineer named Henry Gifford.  He contends the energy savings for LEED-certified buildings can be drastically overrated.
Why is this important? As the article notes, the building sector consumes 49 percent of all energy produced in the United States, and 77 percent of all the electricity produced in the nation is used to operate buildings.” Building more energy-efficient buildings is a huge need. And if the only real rating system available doesn’t, after all, save as much energy as it claims, well, that’s a problem.

LEED, for its part, has been addressing some of the criticisms since before the lawsuit. It has begun requiring certified buildings to track predicted energy savings versus actual savings, and it’s re-inventing its rating program.

For those of you who enjoy reading academic and professional journals, here’s an article in the NCMedicalJournal.com, “Barriers to Municipal Planning for Pedestrians and Bicyclists in North Carolina.”  The Cliff’s Notes version: There isn’t enough money, and priorities are elsewhere, and it’s worse in rural areas than urban ones.

As always, a link to an article doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with all of it – only that I think you’ll find it interesting and provocative reading.

The invisible city, and the visible journalism artifacts on my desk

I’ve written my farewell column for the Charlotte Observer, “My not-so-secret addition to news” and I’m packing up artifacts from a lengthy career in newspapers (the recycled paper bin is overflowing). But in a nostalgic way I’m enjoying finding some quotations and other snippets that remind me of why the job matters – or that make me chuckle.

For instance, I’ve always loved this quotation from Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” sent to me courtesy of artist Linda Luise Brown:
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”

This inspirational quote from artist Georgia O’Keefe:
“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.”

That quote lived on my cubicle wall for years, next to photographer Nancy Pierce’s snapshot of roadkill (possum) she came across that – I am not making this up – had been painted with a double-yellow stripe by some not-so-observant road crews.

I found my notes from an Oct. 15, 2003, editorial board interview with then-candidate Kaye McGarry, who was running for an at-large seat on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School board.  Someone (notes aren’t clear) asked which of the sitting school board members she’d emulate if sh were elected.  McGarry answered: Molly Griffin and Lee Kindberg.

If you follow the school board you will understand that regardless of how you feel about her school board service, McGarry has not in any way resembled Molly Griffin or Lee Kindberg.

Of course, amid the very nice notes we all occasionally get from readers, you sometimes get emails like this one to me (from 2006): 
“let me say first and foremost that you are the signpost for stupidity…i can go further you ignorant slut..”  And the writer did, including phrases like …. “by the way i pray daily that williams [former Editorial Page Editor Ed Williams] will be called to a higher calling somewhere other than charlotte …..”

I found an old headline from The State in Columbia –
Death Toll 3.5 Million
In Fire At Cricket Farm

And, from the Testy Copy Editors website, this poem.:

Roving bands of youths
limped into port
after an intensive manhunt
by a disgruntled postal employee
in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood
of modest red-brick single-family homes
off tree-lined streets
in a shallow grave
in a densely wooded area
and were rushed to the hospital
in a firestorm of protest
by the Texas billionaire
and the slain civil rights leader
and the financially ailing tabloid.
In the hushed courtroom
the defendant showed no emotion
at the all-important loss column.

After Friday, I’ll still be blogging but at a new site: nakedcityblog.blogspot.com.   It’s still under construction but should be operational by early next week.  See you at the new site.   

Guerrilla tree planters, here’s a project for you

(See note at end about where to find this blog after Friday.)

Today was a sunny morning, unseasonably cool for mid-June, and so I took my last 4-mile walk to my job at the Observer (Friday is my last day after 17 years on the editorial board). Only had one vehicle nearly hit me – a white SUV at Morehead and Kenilworth. At least I made him squeal his brakes.

I’ve chronicled some of my pedestrian adventures in my weekly op-ed columns, such as (“The foot challenge for Sun Belt cities” and “City walkability goal hits an icy patch” and “Walk this way. If you can.”

This morning, I thought – not for the first time – about the possibility of a little guerrilla,  tree-planting campaign. I tend to think of this as I walk up South Tryon from Morehead Street to the Observer building at Stonewall Street.  The N.C.-owned right-of-way alongside the I-277 bridge, where those odd witch-hat/Klan-hood sculptures sit, is bare grass. It’s a bleak trek across that bridge, let me tell you, and once you get past it, you sure could use some shade. What you get, though, is grass. And some “art.”  (To be fair, the sculptures do offer a bit of shade at the right time of day.) But what about it? Someone want to sneak onto some of our fair city’s spots-that-need-shade-trees and just plant some trees? Come December, if you see someone out there with a shovel and some oak or maple saplings, it might just be me.    
 
After June 17, if you want to read The Naked City blog, don’t look for this URL (marynewsom.blogspot.com) because it will be disabled when I leave the Observer.  Instead, seek out nakedcityblog.blogspot.com. Right now it’s in the process of being designed (using the word “design” quite loosely). That’s where you’ll find me after my last day at The Charlotte Observer. 

Mime troupes a new secret weapon?

First, some personal news, if you’ll indulge me:  After 17 years on the Charlotte Observer’s editorial board I was among a small group of employees offered a buyout and I accepted it. My last day of work at the newspaper will be June 17.  That means this blog will vanish from the ether that day.
I intend to keep blogging, but I don’t have a new site set up yet. Keep watching the blog before June 17 for more details about where you can find my work in the future. (And yes, I have some new job prospects but nothing to announce at this point.)

So that’s why I’ve been digging through old files and various email folders tucked here and there.  And I’ve found some tidbits of things you’ll enjoy.

I’ll do anything, officer, just make the mimes go away …: This article from a 2010 edition of City Journal (produced by the libertarian-leaning Manhattan Institute) discusses one of my favorite urban stories ever – how Bogotá, Colombia, used mimes to make people obey traffic laws.  The article tells “about former Bogotá, Colombia, mayor Antanas Mockus’s use of mimes to mock jaywalkers, reckless drivers, and other scofflaws. … The mimes had a noticeable impact on compliance with traffic laws. The mayor reported that traffic fatalities fell by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2003.”  Want to see a photo of the mimes, and more about Mockus? (He also donned a Superman costume and acted as “Supercitizen,”  using humor to get residents laughing, but behaving better.)
I wonder if Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe has considered hiring a mime troupe to enforce (or scare) misbehaving youths at uptown’s next street festival? Or would roving bands of chamber musicians serve as prevention? 

Maybe, sometimes, a pencil really isn’t just a pencil: Another fun story: “Tall buildings, short architects” from Slate magazine last December.  From what we’ve seen in Charlotte, short bank CEOs also seem to have an affection for tall bank towers.  And those tall buildings that claim to be so green? Here’s a look at evidence that after a certain point, those high-density towers are less environmentally sound than mid-rise buildings.

S.C. highway that was, then wasn’t, and maybe is again

It was the highway that was, then wasn’t, and now is again. The big story in Carolinas transportation planning in April was the Charleston (S.C.) County Council’s rejection of a planned extension to Interstate 526.  It’s notable whenever any elected officials – and especially those in reliably conservative South Carolina – say no to any highway.

But never count a highway out.  I-526 was revived with a new council vote last month that rescinded the vote to scrap it.  Its future remains unclear.  (Here’s Post and Courier columnist Brian Hicks on a mysterious pro-highway campaign.) Monday night, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley Jr. spoke to Charlotte City Council about historic preservation (talk about a day late and a dollar short, or maybe three decades late …)  at the invitation of Mayor Anthony Foxx. Riley was gracious enough to let me buttonhole him about 526.  He has been a 526 supporter, and I wanted to hear why a guy who seems to understand good urbanism would want another big ole ugly interstate boring through his city. How, I asked him, could the city prevent the typical highway sprawl if this road gets built?

Riley contends the highway is needed because of the growth in motorists trying to get to and from Folly Beach and Seabrook and Kiawah islands at the far end of Johns Island. That sends too much traffic into the neighborhoods west of the Ashley River, he said. The highway will divert that beachbound traffic.

And to control the sprawl? Riley said the city and county had adopted a plan about 10 years ago to create an urban growth boundary. They downzoned a lot of land on Johns Island – even winning a landowner’s federal lawsuit over the downzoning – and, at least inside the city limits, there aren’t any more large commercially zoned tracts available. But, I persisted, land can be rezoned. It’s not that hard. “A lot of blood was spilled,” he said, over those downzonings. “The community’s invested in this.”

Additionally, plans are that the 526 extension won’t be a typical interstate, but an at-grade, four-lane road with a tree-lined median and bike paths. It will have only two intersections, no cloverleafs, and, he said, “zero” development.

Although I’m of the belief that keeping sprawl development off a new highway is about as easy as turning lead into gold, I admit part of me thinks it would be interesting to see if this road can offer a model for a tamer way to build urban highways. It’s what I (and many others) have said for years: Don’t build highways inside cities. Build boulevards designed to move a lot of traffic but that add beauty, not ugliness. Cities need transportation connections, and that includes street networks. They don’t need interstate highways gutting them.