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When gasoline is $10 a gallon, you'll love this idea
June 9, 2008
Here's an idea to give the local Sultans
of Sprawl a well-deserved case of indigestion, to say nothing of
acne, athlete's foot and gout: Maybe San Antonio should require all new
subdivisions (above some small minimum size) to meet the standards of
the LEED-ND (neighborhood developments) rating system.
LEED refers to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a U.S.
Green Building Council rating system for energy efficiency, use of
recycled materials, etc., in new buildings. LEED-ND, hatched jointly
with the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources
Defense Council, extends green thinking beyond individual buildings and
lots to the design of whole new neighborhoods. For good reason: No
matter how green a house might be, it's still degrading the
environment, wasting natural resources and contributing to global
warming if the only way to go from there to work, school, shopping or
recreation is to drive, or if substantial new public
infrastructure has to be built to service it, or if the development
it's a part of threatens water resources or agricultural land. In
general, LEED-ND encourages compact, walkable, transit-friendly,
mixed-use, mixed-income development.
In the recently concluded pilot program, LEED-ND prerequisites relating
to location included a range
of options, but sprawl as we know it was not one of them. Gated
subivisions were verboten. (Hallelujah!) The post-pilot standards are
expected to be released next year.
You can learn all about LEED-ND
on the U.S. Green Building Council's web site.
Would a LEED-ND requirement be possible in San Antonio? A year ago, no
way. Today, with gasoline closing in on $4 a gallon, the idea could
start to gain significant support. And a year from now, when gasoline
is $6 a gallon? Or $10 a gallon? Those who like the culture of sprawl
-- a lot of folks do -- might realize they can't afford it. And even
the Sultans of Sprawl might realize that they'll go broke if they keep
regurgitating their development plans from 1970.
Before long -- probably within five years -- something like LEED-ND
standards are going to be mandated by the federal government in order
to address critical energy shortages and climate change. It'll be a
matter of national survival. The cities that will be in the best
position to cope with -- maybe even profit from -- that seismic shift
are the one that adapt early. Shouldn't San Antonio be in that group?
In a rut in Main Plaza
May 1, 2008
This being San Antonio, city officials staged the
dedication and ain't-it-grand opening for the renovated Main Plaza back
on April 13, even though the project was then -- and is still --
several weeks from completion. Thus a full and fair evaluation of the
design and its execution isn't possible yet.
One thing is clear, however: The new Main Plaza is not friendly to
people in wheelchairs. The space has been equipped with lots of movable
chairs and tables, but they've all been placed on areas of crushed
stone. Yesterday afternoon I observed an elderly gentleman trying to
drive his motorized wheelchair on the soft surface so he and two
friends could sit and chat in the shade. His wheels just made a deeper
and deeper rut, and he finally gave up. His companions had to stand.
Unlike the $5 million worth of "interactive" fountains that turned out
to be inactive, this problem is easily solved. Someone with the
city just needs to have enough sense to move some of the chairs and
tables to the edge of the crushed-stone area, where it meets solid
stone paving. That way, a wheelchair could pull up to a table on
one side. (Probably five or six tables would have to be moved, to
make sure that at least two of them are in shade at any time of day.)
I pointed that out to one of three Centro San Antonio "Amigos" who were
languidly picking up litter around the plaza. He told me the men
were welcome to move chairs themselves. That was awfully kind of him.
The tables, he noted, take two people to move. They're very heavy, to
prevent theft. It did not occur to him to grab one of his colleagues
and offer to arrange appropriate seating for the three men, despite my
strong hint and even though none of the "Amigos" appeared to be
overworked. Maybe our "Amigos" need to learn something about hospitalidad.
Oh, by the way, the man in charge of the "Amigos" for the
Downtown Alliance is Bernie Cantu. If you spend much time
downtown, you're likely to see him. In his wheelchair.
Tempest over River North
April 18, 2008
To give credit where due, the leaders of the newly organized San
Antonio River North Improvement Assn. have
not claimed that the River North Master Plan will cause cancer or
poison the milk of little children. But one can't predict what might be
said at the next meeting.
A sizable gathering of property owners stood among the Cadillacs
in the Cavender showroom on Broadway on April 17 and heard a
litany of complaints against the plan and the process that produced it.
A few points were well taken, but much of what was said by the
organizers was disinformation, sometimes slopping over into egregious
fear-mongering. One fellow, a full-of-himself attorney who ought to
have known better, asserted that if the owner of an existing business,
of a kind not allowed by the plan, so much as "puts up a new ceiling
panel," he will be "deemed non-compliant." What rubbish. (An
exasperated Beth Bender Wells, president of a design firm in River
North and one of several people at the meeting who demanded some
honesty from the organizers, corrected him on the facts of
non-conforming rights.)
Several organizers lodged the bizarre complaint that the master plan's
proposed form-based code and regulating plan would reduce the
development potential, and thus the financial value, of River North
property. The opposite is the case. Most River North property now is
zoned industrial, with much tighter restrictions than those
contemplated by the River North Master Plan. It turned out what the
organizers meant was that the master plan wouldn't raise the value of
their property as much as the nearly-anything-goes Downtown zoning
designation would, if City Council would be stupid enough to grant it.
In other words, if you give me $10 out of the blue, you're harming me
because you didn't give me $20.
To judge from comments made by attendees, the most common concern of
property owners has to do with the plan's height limits. I'll give
partial support to their position. As I wrote in response to a
question from one River North property owner -- not associated with the
River North Improvement Assn. -- I believe that the most
important urban design consideration is what happens at street level
and one or two stories above. If the sidewalks on all four sides of a
block are animated with visible retail, restaurants, offices,
galleries, light industry and other productive human activity,
and if there's a good rhythm of facade articulation, preferably
including balconies, then I don't much care about vertical scale,
except in certain specific contexts. One such context is the area that
includes a number of 19th-century Irish Flats buildings, some restored,
some not. Tall buildings should not be allowed to crowd those historic
resources. But I don't think Broadway would be harmed by a few tall
towers, if their street frontages are properly designed -- that's part
of what a form-based code is meant to guarantee -- and if
transportation needs can be met without overloading the area with
urbanistically inert parking garages. (That second "if" is a big one.)
One of the stranger complaints by the new group's organizers is that
the planning process should have been initiated and managed by the
city, and thus fully open to public participation, rather than by the
private non-profit Downtown Community Development Corp., a creature of
the Downtown Alliance. The group is right to want greater access to the
process, but it has taken aim at the wrong target.
As managed by the CDC, the design charrette that produced the initial
draft of the plan was entirely open to public view and participation.
The consultant team, led by Moule & Polyzoides of Pasadena, Calif.,
was highly responsive to ideas and criticism from all comers, though
not all were satisfied with the results. In contrast, the subsequent
process of city staff review and redrafting has been mostly opaque --
as is nearly always the case with the city's
internal reviews of planning documents. A few changes from the January
draft have been posted on the city's Web site, but without explanation
of how and why those changes came to be. One such change is highly
troubling: The section setting forth objectives for affordable housing
and policies to achieve it has been eliminated. That's a very bad
sign.
The city needs to find a way to
let the public watch as the sausage is made, and no part of the plan
should be adopted without a round of serious public hearings, with real
opportunities to effect further change.
Feast from the Food Bank
March 30, 2008
I mean no disrespect to the expert speakers at the
Transportation Choices Forum on March 28, but the best part of the
event was lunch -- catered by the Culinary Arts Program of the San
Antonio Food Bank. The barbecued brisket was outstanding, but even more
impressive were the intelligently seasoned potato salad and beans, both
of which rose far above the generic norm. Great work!
Paris and Vienna?
March 20, 2008
An Austin American-Statesman reader, Ricardo Acevedo, posted the
following comment on statesman.com, March 19:
On Friday evening, the 21st at The
Vicotry Grill and Sunday
afternoon, the 23rd at the Hyde Park Theatre, Spike Galespie and a
troupe of mostly women will perform “THE DICK MONOLOUGES”
Why “Dick” and not “P***s” as like
“V****a Monologues”
I see this as retro-feminist
sexism… I thought we’d moved past this
crap people… I find this simular to subtle racism. A rising tide should
raise all ships. Progressive modern people should be past oppressing
someone else for their own empowerment.
I mean hell, there weren’t any guys
doing the “V****a Monologues” I
mean what do guys really know about “Vaginas”…? They don’t have one!
And pardon my assumption, this
being 2008 and all, but I’m guessing none of these women have a
“P***s”….
But Ric, we'll always have P***s ....
World-class groaner
March 6, 2008
I'll suspend judgment of "Luminaria," Mayor Phil
Hardberger's March 15 showcase of local visual and performing arts,
until it happens.
I can't, however, suspend judgment on the botched syntax, barbaric
style and hick-town grandiloquence of the language its organizers use
to promote it. From the Luminaria Web site:
"Luminaria is the first annual
all day and evening celebration of San
Antonio premiere artists and art organizations giving citizens of the
community a chance to experience the city’s diverse cultures through
observing and participating in our world-class artistic heritage.
Through visual, performing, multi-media, theatre, dance, music and
other artistic forms, audiences will be engaged throughout San Antonio
in a free, world-class celebration of the arts."
Apart from the gangly clunkiness of the writing, you will note that
"world-class" makes two appearances in this introductory paragraph. I
will concede the likelihood that some small fraction of the talent to
be exhibited during "Luminaria" has earned favorable notice far beyond
the borders of Bexar County, or is worthy of being so noticed. But to
describe our whole "artistic heritage" as "world-class" is patent
nonsense, and whether the celebration will be "world-class" is yet to
be determined. Anyway, only podunk cities call themselves
"world-class."
I have a hypothesis about the use of "world-class" by city officials.
If we're already "world-class," we don't need to invest the time,
effort, thought and money it takes to get that way.
Then again, maybe "world-class" is sort of like "large olives." By that
reasoning, if San Antonio is world-class, then Austin must be
supernova-class. Houston is galaxy-class. And New York is
billions-and-billions-of-galaxies-class. The Luminaria self-promotion
continues:
"Luminaria is intended to be a
cohesive celebration of the arts
through a creative atmosphere showcasing San Antonio’s diverse artistic
community.
"An artist-driven celebration of
the arts, Luminaria is an
unprecedented collaboration of over 40 non-profit organizations that
will come together for 1 day to celebrate the dynamic vitality of San
Antonio’s creative spirit."
The "world-class" quota having been met in the first
paragraph, the writer dives into the "creative" quota. Never mind that
"creative atmosphere showcasing" is gibberish, and "dynamic vitality of
etc." is fatuous, and "artist-driven" is arguably contrary to fact. But
wait! There's more!
"Based on the success of other
international celebrations such as Nuit Blanche in Paris
and Noche
Blanca in Madrid,
no other city in Texas has attempted to coordinate continuous artistic,
educational and innovative programming for a city-wide arts
celebration. To further highlight the name of this event, the
traditional role of the luminaria is a clever small light that conjures
up creative ideas which inspires waves of innovation."
Aha! The third "creative" shoe drops. The first sentence is
syntactically challenged, and the second a complete mess. Was it
translated by Google from the Latvian? But why just garden-variety
"waves of innovation"? Shouldn't they be "waves of world-class
innovation"?
The language we use to describe things is a map of the way we
think about those things. A random grunting of gee-whiz adjectives does
not indicate thought. Even if San Antonio's arts product is not
altogether "world-class," it deserves better than this.
Prescient
January 22, 2008
Remember that big New York bank's "Live richly" ad campaign from a few
years ago? The ad agency Fallon Worldwide launched the campaign for
Citigroup's Global Consumer Group in January 2001. The simple all-text
messages, ubiquitous for several years on the streets of New York and
other major Citi markets, elaborated on the unbankerly theme that money
isn't everything.
Cynics may have suspected that, at the same time, Citi execs
overlooking Park Avenue were singing "The Best Things in Life Are
Fees," but the messages on the ground did seem to contribute to the
general wave of caring and friendliness that swept New York for a year
or two after Sept. 11, 2001.
Last May, Citi changed course with a new theme, "Let's get it done." As
in "You can stick a fork in it," apparently. Last week Citi reported it
had taken an $18.1 billion write-down in the fourth quarter of 2007,
thanks mostly to sub-prime mortgage exposure. And the stock market's
plunge suggests that investors would have been wise to interpret some
of the old "Live richly" sentiments literally. Like, "The best blue
chips to buy are the ones you dip in salsa."
Big thud
January 13, 2008
Americans who think have been wringing their hands of late
over the extinction of public intellectuals, the shallowness of public
discourse and assorted other signs of a culture that is increasingly
inhospitable to reason, inquiry and cogency. Now comes bigthink.com claiming to remedy the
situation, but falling flat on its face.
At the core of the site is a library of talking-head video interviews
with "experts," who supposedly say thoughtful things about
important subjects, semi-organized by "meta" and "physical" categories.
(Get it?) The site's users are invited to respond, or to submit their
own ideas and questions for discussion. Users also are invited to
"rate" ideas, so that the most popular ones rise to the top. Just like
on "American Idol."
The whole thing is a disaster. The "experts" -- a potentially promising
roster that includes the likes of Anna Deavere Smith, Calvin Trillin
and Stephen Breyer -- might have something interesting to say. Alas,
they don't say it on bigthink.com, probably because the interviewers
haven't asked interesting questions. (The questions are generally
excised from the videos.)
The site is poorly designed, ill-focused both graphically and
conceptually. To judge from the paucity of responses, users are few.
The site's creators, Victoria R.M. Brown and Peter Hopkin, have
evidently put a great deal of passion, time and effort into
bigthink.com, and probably a lot of money. A little thought would have
been nice.
Urban parks: A lot, or not?
January
9, 2008
During a Jan. 8 public
presentation of the latest version of
the River
North master plan, chief planner Stefanos Polyzoides said that
San Antonio has "more urban parks in your downtown than any other city
I can think of." The comment drew a murmur -- perhaps a groan -- of
protest from the locals filling the Providence High School cafeteria.
Polyzoides might have overstated the case, but the fact remains that
River North and its environs are exceptionally well equipped with urban
park space. Much of it is the legacy of a spate of park acquisitions
and donations between 1870 (the block-square Travis Park) and 1881 (the
block-square Maverick Park). In between came the twin-block greens of
Crockett Park (a few blocks north of River North) and Madison
Square. At downtown's western edge, a former Catholic cemetery was
designated Milam Park in 1883. Add the plazas from the Spanish Colonial
period, modern additions such as HemisFair Park and Columbus Park, the
River Walk and river improvements now under construction to the north
and south, and almost any location in the downtown core and River North
is within an easy stroll of a public urban oasis.
Why, then, the perception of inadequacy? I can think of three reasons:
• Urban parks gain their
sense of purpose from surrounding urban development. But the blocks
surrounding most of the 19th-century parks are not sufficiently
occupied, and they're especially lacking in high-density housing.
The
blocks around Maverick Park (shown at left), Madison Square and
Crockett Park are particularly gap-toothed, providing too few users for
these parks and an inadequate sense of place. Even Travis Park, at the
very center of downtown, has a parking lot filling most of the
block-front to its east. The Vistana apartments, a high-rise
block-front now under construction immediately east of Milam Park,
serves as a model for what ought to be happening around the other
downtown parks.
• Some of the parks are not well designed or cared for. Maverick
Park is depressing despite its rather nice rustic pavilion. Milam Park
has too much
furniture. Crockett Park and Madison Square have seen improvement in
recent years, but both still function more as places to pass through
than as places that welcome an extended visit.
• The low scale and the outright gaps in the urban fabric between the
parks on the north end (Crockett, Maverick and Madison) make them seem
farther apart than they really are. I haven't seen research to support
this claim, but my personal experience suggests that perceptual walking
distance is reduced by a continuous building line with active uses and
substantial vertical scale (more than two stories) along the sidewalk.
In San Antonio's hot climate, street trees help, too. A shady
quarter-mile walk past storefronts and apartment buildings is a stroll;
a quarter-mile walk in the blazing sun past parking lots and loading
docks is a schlep.
If the River North master plan works as intended, the gaps will
eventually fill in, the scale will rise, and activity will increase on
the sidewalks -- and the richness of downtown's 19th-century parks
legacy should become more apparent.
Mike
Greenberg
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