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Tuesday, October 21st, 2014
Chicago's Secondary Stations: Little Engines That Could…And Should by Robert Munson
This is part of the series North America's Train Stations: What Makes Them Sustainable or Not?
To describe how central stations can help us evolve toward sustainable transportation, this series uses a middle category called "Economic Engines." This category stimulates its surrounds. These three Chicago stations do that job well.
Category: Economic Engines (click for all currently reviewed stations)
Consolidated Scorecard: Click to view full scorecard
Scorecard Summary:
max pnts = 100 | 80 | Ogilvie Transportation Center (OTC) | 75 | Millennium Station (MS) | 70 | Lasalle Street Station (LSS) | |
18 | 17.0 | While OTC gets busy at rush hour, good design made this Chicago's best functioning station. | 14.0 | Despite two decades of missteps between agencies of two states, the station turned out OK … except for cost overruns. | 13.0 | Chicago's smallest terminus works well and METRA plans to add about 15% more passengers by adding a second line. |
32 | 27 | It connects just OK to other transit as well over half choose to walk. | 23.5 | Most walk to destination or one block to "Elevated." Bus connections are slighted; crowded at street level. | 23 | The building is less ped-friendly than OTC, but connects best to transit with the "El", a subway and has a protected bus station. |
50 | 36 | For redeveloping its surrounds, OTC is in America's Top 5. | 37.5 | Surrounds are the tops; one of the world's great urban park destinations, many office buildings and lots of mixed uses. | 34.0 | Surrounds to the south and west have not redeveloped as fast; being separated by expressway traffic. |
Chicagoland's twelve commuter lines constitute a system that is nearly the nation's largest. (New York's LIRR is slightly larger; while Metro North and New Jersey Transit, respectively, run a close third and fourth). But if we bite-size Chicagoland, we see an analogy to mid-sized cities. The first bite is that six lines terminate at Union Station, leaving six more at these three stations. Here are their counterparts in other cities.
1) Ogilvie Transportation Center (OTC) terminates three lines with commuter volume slightly more than Boston's South Station.
2) Millennium Station ends two lines from different states, as does DC's Union Station with similar suburban volume.
3) Lasalle Street Station terminates one large line with passenger visits at just under 30,000 daily, similar to San Francisco's Caltrain terminus.
Also strengthening comparison to other cities, Chicago's secondary stations connect poorly to one another, creating, essentially, three mid-sized rail systems. Comparing Chicago's three smaller stations shows other regions how to develop better stations and strengthen the national trend to improve suburban rail. Today, eleven systems in North America carry more than 41,000 passengers daily. Some 15 more fledgling lines are trying to catchup. Highlighting central stations' future importance, there are 28 new lines in various stages of construction and engineering.
In studying some three dozen central stations, I see many similarities to these three in Chicago and hope you find the analogy useful as well.
What Do These Three Stations Have In Common?
These stations were key parts of the eleven decade transformation from a filthy, industrial downtown to a global center today. In 1900, downtown's chaotic streets were surrounded by rail yards and warehouses. These stations' predecessors muted this roughness and provided orderly centers. But as private passenger rail collapsed during the 1960s, Chicago's downtown also lost its balance. Yet, plans boldly were made to rebuild all three stations. The new ones served as leverage for Chicago's revival from the 1980s through the 2006 real estate crash and were key to transforming the downtown. A century after Burnham's fantastic depiction in "A Plan For Chicago," today's downtown has a different beauty… but arguably, an equal of those drawings.
Transportation established Chicago as central to the nation's economy. A recent book, Terminal Town, reviews how Chicago used rails. In today's economy in which people are a key asset, ownership of passenger rails and terminals, again, is strategic.
Unfortunately, all three stations are owned by Metra; the beleaguered state agency. This challenge to Chicago's future cannot be ignored much longer. While Illinois has fiddled away the last five decades without a management scheme capable of remaking the system into a future regional asset, all three termini, somehow, got updated.
When you consider that the 1970s and 1980s saw Chicago battling its suburbs, redeveloping these stations seems amazing. That storm and fury was transcended by a simple deal; the suburbs knew these rail lines were their assets also and, as Chicago did, that they could use the rails to revitalize every municipality's downtown. For the last three decades, Chicago leveraged its land use authority well and turned eyesore rail yards and warehouses into vibrant blocks around all three stations; improving nearby real estate values in ways that only ambitious cities do.
Impressively, all three stations work well and OTC is close to great. Here's how.
Ogilvie Transportation Center (OTC): How Excellence Redevelops Surrounds
Main concourse adjoining tracks. Photo by the author.
Few stations treat the eye better. Also true of its predecessor, Chicago & Northwestern's grand concourse evoked the glories of rail travel. But, it was demolished and the new concourse adjoining a 42 story tower was completed in 1984. The new concourse spaciously evokes rail glories in a post-modern setting. Reminiscent of United's hub terminal at O'Hare Airport, OTC's main concourse also was designed by the same starchitectural firm. But OTC makes a more important statement on a daily basis: traveling with others in efficient modes makes a better future.
Also, few stations better flow during rush hour's crush. On the photo's left, 16 tracks end. In the middle (not pictured to the right) are 6 escalators eventually connecting to four street exits. Also not pictured to the left, each train shed platform has stairs so commuters have the option to exit down to a retail concourse (called MetraMarket) with two more street exits. While neither concourse has a suitable waiting area, one can while away time at some 60+ stores in three distinct malls that seem to thrive on the station's high traffic.
OTC was named for Governor Ogilvie. His leadership and staff cobbled together the deals that saved a world-class set of commuter rails while places such as St. Louis let their systems die. The Governor's public service and this station's quality explains why Chicago's downtown revival has been so much faster.
A three block radial walk (map below) depicts how a 42 story tower and tracks have leveraged redevelopment ever since. Large warehouses were converted and old low-lying railroad shacks were demolished and rebuilt into a dense urban neighborhood; mixing office and residential high-rises. To address the retail shortage, the station's ground level under the tracks was converted into the Metramarket complex (see black rectangle) and includes the destination-like French Market with two dozen gourmet food shops; making dinner easier for suburbanites and nearby urbanites alike. The French Market is not New York's Grand Central Market, but it is America's stations' second best.
OTC's scorecard rating of 80 indicates how well OTC works during its rush hour detraining of passengers to platforms and sorting them to six exits and on paths to their final destination. And OTC does all this while feeding suburbanites slices of 21st Century urban life; hopefully, so they move and add to Chicago's downtown population which has grown by over 500% since the station was built.
Millennium Station: Destination Made, But No Second Act
Millennium's main concourse. Photo by the author.
As this station's metaphor, the center-point above is where the two state agencies and their separate lines meet. Follow those lines and you get to their underground tracks. Yet, redeveloping the Illinois Central rail yard and depots into Millennium Station was not simple for several reasons; a primary one being how cost over-runs of Millennium Park, its above-ground neighbor, affected this station's construction.
More important, the station required Illinois and Indiana agencies to act like partners and mesh different rolling stock, albeit both electric since they run underground for three blocks. (Metra's other ten lines are diesel). These and other complications created a construction zone for two decades; instead of a station that welcomed suburbanites. Eventually, the collaboration got OK and passenger levels returned after completion.
Indiana's South Shore line has six tracks that terminate at the south end and Metra's former Illinois Central line terminates on five tracks at the station's north. Both sets of passengers merge into a concourse with ticketing, a decent waiting area and food shops. Efficiently, passengers distribute into three exits of Chicago's extensive underground Pedway; allowing them to escape bad weather or connect to transit.
Millennium Station's main entrance comes from the underground Pedway and contains most of the station's 10 store retail corridor. Photo by the author.
An underground station, it can look like a fancy subway stop. Serving one of the city's most intense urban areas, the station still is pleasant enough to begin one's workday and, hopefully, make it less of a grind. With limited room for growth at rush hour, this station is what it is. The scorecard rates it at 75.
Lasalle Street Station: Some Room To Grow
On the far right of this photo of the Chicago Architecture Foundation's model, you see the train shed leading into Lasalle Station and its adjoining tall Stock Exchange Building. To its left is an expressway and considerable undeveloped land. (The other two stations have almost none). Photo by the author.
This fourth remake of Lasalle Street Station had a relatively simple deal. It involved only one bankrupt line (the Rock Island) and Metra also bought the tracks; giving it more control. Much like OTC, the main entrance depends on collaboration with one large building owner. But in Lasalle's case, the Chicago Stock Exchange was not as accommodating. It is an over-imposing host and unwelcoming to pedestrians. While airy and utilitarian, the station itself works well enough to earn an overall rating of 70.
Lasalle does have excess capacity at rush hour and Metra plans to shift the Southwest Service and its 10,000 daily passengers from Union Station to Lasalle, increasing the station's usage by almost one-third.
Entrance and exit to the east-west Congress Expressway. Photo by the author.
The station's only major weakness is an east-west expressway ends under it. Eager to reach high-speeds or slow to slow down, eight lanes of traffic make it harder for urban and pedestrian life to develop. This division makes the station's south side less desirable to live and work in and has been much slower to develop. This is changing as its parking lots are being built into condos and apartments. While Chicago is adding streetscapes for urban fabric, the expressway is hard to hide.
How Can These Good Stations Contribute In the Future?
Each should connect better to transit. While they average about 44% of their passengers who walk to their destinations, the finite number of jobs in each station's pedestrian shed means that most new commuters are more likely to first want improved transit connectivity. This is more true at OTC, where only 33% of riders walk. To encourage transit transfers, OTC passengers should be able to enter the 'L' at the same level they detrain. But with ceaseless inter-agency bickering, de-trainers must go down to the street and up to the 'L' whereas a simple passage on the same level would encourage train passengers to use rapid transit.
Also, all stations could improve transfers to standard buses in little ways… if some agency had the authority to force Metra to obey the law and participate in the CTA's Ventra universal card. (An agency with a future would even subsidize the transfer of train passengers to CTA buses and 'L').
When the downtown Bus Rapid Transit starts in 2015, lousy transfer policies start getting better. BRT ties together Union Station, OTC and Millennium with several other key stops downtown. To visualize how the BRT works, here is a downtown map with rail termini as the large blue blocks and BRT as the double-red line.
As big an improvement as this promises to be, BRT in a congested downtown such as Chicago will only provide temporary relief. BRT is no replacement for an integrated system. (Chicago has twice failed to build an urban circulator). Agencies that squandered time and taxpayer goodwill, now, must resort to the BRT stopgap.
Even if achieved, improved connections only will cause the rush hour crush to grow. Now near capacity, the quality of two station's commute deteriorates with increased ridership. Often touted as panacea, a West Loop Transportation Center (WLTC) that through-routes Union Station and OTC will make greater efficiencies, improve rush hour capacity and speed travel between suburbs. But, a WLTC is highly improbable under Metra's regime and its poor supervision by Illinois' RTA.
Besides, the WLTC only marginally helps the core problem: Chicagoland's lines are radial and bring everyone downtown; causing congestion. So a strategic solution would use rails to bring commuters to Chicago's employment centers that are not downtown.
For example, many south-side Chicagoans and suburbanites work at the west-side medical district, one of the world's largest collection of hospitals. The former Rock Island line easily can be connected to a new medical district station two miles west of Lasalle. If successful, that train eventually could be connected to O'Hare Airport; also a non-9-to-5 employment center that requires better train service. And with service in-between the medical district and the airport, other employment centers will be stimulated.
If Metra cannot start this strategy quickly, we should organize a way around it.
Chicagoland should consider how trains increase service and stimulate redevelopment in other global cities. London's Thameslink started in the late 20th Century. It was so successful that redevelopment around its stations now stretches from the once run-down St. Pancras area for three miles through London's center and across the river (follow the yellow line) to the much more forlorn surrounds of Elephant & Castle. While hard to see in my photo, the six stations in this three miles, on average, have redeveloped over 50% of their surrounds. (The St. Pancras foreground shows new construction as the lighter shade, whereas renovations remain the darker shade).
Model is in the lobby of the London Building Centre.
As further proof of how trains stimulate redevelopment, note the purple through-line running left to right. The purple is Crossrail; still only mid-way dug. Thameslink's success signaled to developers that the surrounds of Crossrail stations also are sound investments. Both through-lines have stimulated London's building boom; one that rarely has been seen by a western city since the industrial era. Such is the leverage generated when suburban rail through-routes and becomes urban rail.
On a relative basis, Britain's passenger rail system seems flexible; being nationalized, ossified and, now, has had operations privatized. Unfortunately, we live under Uncle Sam's feeble, federated and seemingly unresponsive transportation laws. This allows Metra to be controlled by suburban mayors who tend not to view rails as a metropolitan asset. Stopped by this regime, Chicago needs a new strategy before it can benefit from London's example. However given that Illinois laws recently allow public-private partnerships (which have similarities to London's laws), we should explore how trains can redevelop urban areas. Using an asset to metropolitan benefit leads to sustainable transportation.
Getting To "Should": Lessons for Sustainability
Mid-sized American cities want what these three stations have. All three stations function well at peak hours and help redevelop their surrounds, the key goals of this series' Economic Engines category.
But, all three have limited potential to serve as a symbol that pulls their train system into a sustainable future. Chicago's "little engines that could" — owned by Metra — might improve service with a few small steps, such as improving connectivity to transit. But even if Metra were to be reformed into an adequate agency, these improvements only push the stations past their rush-hour capacity and, thus, still are not on a path for sustainable transportation.
To maximize trains' potential, strategies must increase off-peak travel and serve employment centers other than downtown. Through-routing can increase ridership and stimulate redevelopment outside of downtown. But these strategies are unlikely to emerge under an outdated, scandal-riddled agency that appears to have lost its social contract with passengers and taxpayers.
So that trains can help inspire the confidence needed to attract new public and private capital to redevelop targeted areas, this series in 2016 will explore how Chicagoland's agent for sustainable transportation "should" operate.
Robert Munson lives in Chicago and can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Thursday, October 16th, 2014
Creating a Culture of Honest Critique
City Lab ran an interesting piece about Mark Lamster, architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, called "Dallas Finds Its Voice." Lamster was brought to the city from New York by a joint hire between the newspaper and the University of Texas at Arlington. The goal was apparently to bring in a top notch out of town critic who wasn't afraid to apply the same lens to Dallas that he did to the Big Apple. He appears to have succeeded:
Mark Lamster's very first assignment for The Dallas Morning News was a bombshell. His review of the George W. Bush Presidential Center appeared on the front page of the paper in April of last year, days before the library opened to the public. It didn't pull any punches. "Everywhere competent, it nowhere rises to a level of inspiration," Lamster wrote. The newspaper's newly minted architecture critic called out the project's host, Southern Methodist University President R. Gerald Turner, for a directive that "precluded a work of more adventurous design."
"It was very embarrassing to a lot of what I'd call boosters in town," says Bob Mong, the editor-in-chief of The Dallas Morning News, who brought Lamster down from New York. Mong nevertheless put it smack dab on A1. "It got everyone's attention, let me tell you. When you stand back from it and look at what he wrote, it holds up very well today."
Readers greeted Lamster cautiously. "Must be a Democrat," said one commenter. "The review was written before the yankee [sic] got there," chimed another.
But while Johnny Football would've ruined one of Dallas's greatest institutions, Lamster is elevating the city through his reporting and criticism. "Welcome to Dallas: Paradox City," a September report on the conflicting interests driving development there, could double as a mission statement for his work as a critic. Earlier this month, he explained the function and history of a complex of jails that he describes as the "unholy gateway to our city." That report segues neatly into "Building the Just City," the title for the third annual David Dillon Symposium, a conference he is helping to host today and Saturday for the University of Texas at Arlington School of Architecture.
It's worth reading the whole thing.
Lamster's hiring seems to have filled a key gap in Dallas, namely finding a knowledgeable critic who is willing to call them like he sees them. Finding this sort of realistic self-assessment is very hard for cities that aren't in the first cultural tier. In my experience, grade inflation and softball reviews are rampant.
I've thought about the dynamics of this with regards to smaller cities for a while. One is that the audience is primarily made up of locals who aren't plugged into cultural capitals. The comparison is generally versus what existed in the local market previously – which often results in seeing marked improvement – rather than a comparison against an outside standard or a comparative benchmark. One reason I started my blog as a regional blog is that so few people were aware of what was going on in places even just a short drive down the interstate that they believed things like downtown condo construction meant something special was happening in their town – as opposed to the reality that it was simply a trend that was hitting everyone else also washing over their city. Critics, maybe because in smaller cities newspapers and such sometimes simply assign a local reporter to that beat, seem to judge by the same standards.
A second problem is social. And it's a two-fold problem. The first part is that strong critique has likely never been a part of the local culture, thus it's simply not how things are done in the town. It's hard to argue with this in a sense as a community is certainly free to adopt those values. But such a value set comes with consequences.
The other part is that even in regions as big as two million or more, the cultural class isn't that large and is very interconnected. It's inevitable that you are going to have to interact with the people you write about socially at some point. So if you write a critical review, that's going to make for some awkward moments. In a place with no culture of it, people might not react well to being critiqued, and the reviewer himself probably doesn't have a lot of experience at dealing with blowback, and so is emotionally sensitized to it.
Thirdly, there's generally a desire in these places to want to support local businesses, cultural groups, etc. A lot of the folks engaging on the field of battle culturally are those who could have left town, but elected to stay. And there's a desire to support them in their choice. In fact, the people who did make that choice can even feel entitled to that support. This isn't just in small places either as "buy local" reigns almost unquestioned as preferred among the intelligentsia.
Again, that's a valid cultural decision to make. I myself prefer to patronize local establishments where I can, and I'm even willing to pay a bit of a penalty in terms of price and quality to do it. But too often I think local purveyors of various products and services and cultural activities are basically given a free pass on quality. And often the people doing the truly best work aren't appreciated, particularly if it's innovative. By definition innovative work is contrary to the conventional wisdom, and to the extent that smaller local markets seek to boost their status by glomming on to trends, innovators can seem genuinely uncool. Additionally, people locally may not recognize or be willing to pay for true quality. For example, their definition of a luxury watches might include Rolex, but they've never even heard of say FP Journe.
Now Dallas is bigger than the regions I had in mind. I speculate based on the article that they had a similar relationship to criticism, however. It would take a local to say for sure what cultural factors are at work. But it's interesting to see them stepping out a bit. I haven't done enough analysis of Lamster's work to judge, but if the comments even on City Lab are any judge, he's already stirring up trouble.
Whatever the case, this shows that the Dallas Morning News at least wanted to try to elevate the game of Dallas. As I wrote in a previous post, some in Dallas are no longer satisfied with purely commercial success and are seeking, like other boomtowns before it, for Dallas to get classy too. This would appear to be in line with those efforts. That requires a community that's willing to take a hard look in the mirror and be honest with themselves about where they don't measure up versus their aspirations (and boosterism rhetoric). When it comes to architecture, they've apparently gone in search of someone who will hold up that mirror. The question is what they are willing to do with the images they see.
Thursday, October 9th, 2014
More Praise For Boring
As a follow-on to my Guardian piece last week "In Praise of Boring Cities" I want to highlight a companion piece by Victoria and Albert Museum curator Rory Hyde called "Bollards, Bricks and Black Cabs: Why the Best Urban Objects Are Mundane." His arguments in it are in line with my old adage that the mark of a great city is it how it treats its ordinary things, not its special ones. Every city does their main street, their war memorials, etc. up right. There's no distinctiveness there. But what about the average street, space, or object? That's when the real values of a place are often revealed. As Hyde puts it:
Mundane city objects also offer a glimpse into the operational logic of a city. Pedestrian buttons, building materials or the Johnston typeface are the visible moments when vast urban systems reveal themselves. They are the hooks that invite our participation in the system. Despite or because of their mundanity, they are the city – as close as we can get to this big machine we inhabit.
Whatever you think of these projects (does it matter that the traffic light MoMu celebrates was actually designed in 1965, not 1868 as the label claims? Kind of, yes), noticing city objects "in the wild" can jolt you out of the moment to reflect on the millions of design decisions that bring the city into being. Boring objects can teach us that the city is an intentionally constructed project – and therefore a project that can be changed for the better.
Again, I'd add that by inspecting these elements, something important about the city and its people is revealed.
As I wrote previously, it's London, a city chock full of iconic buildings and such, that perhaps best embodies the notion of treating the ordinary as special. This is easily seen in its black cabs, retro telephone boxes, and police uniforms. True, there's an element of kitsch at work. But that too is a part of the city. It's just another small entry showing the why London has remained arguably the premier city in the world for so long.
Wednesday, October 8th, 2014
Moscow Timelapse
Here's a timelapse of Moscow by the same guy who did the Portugal one I posted recently. This video won various awards, and it's definitely cool. For sure watch it in full screen high definition. If the video doesn't display, click over to Vimeo.
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014
Chicago Riverwalk Construction
The Architect's Newspaper recently put up a post with a video from Sasaki Associates showing construction progress on the Chicago Riverwalk. It's mostly construction shots, but if you want to see more design renderings, check out this HuffPo piece. If the video doesn't display, click over to Vimeo.
It's debatable whether spending $100 million on a downtown riverwalk really ought to be a top priority given Chicago's problems. But spending on major civic statement projects in defiance of circumstances has a long and storied tradition in the urban world, and may in fact be a necessary part of what it means to be a city (or a human being for that matter). Getting it right is a tough challenge with no easy answer, as today's article in New Geography about Chicago by Roger Weber makes clear.
Turning Around Rhode Island
Channel 10 in Providence recently did a town hall style meeting with various civic leaders from around the state, looking for ideas to reverse the state's economic malaise. It's long and probably of specialized interest, but I wanted to include for those following the Ocean State's travails. If the video doesn't display, click over to channel 10. h/t Andy Cutler
Friday, August 29th, 2014
Cutting To Invest In Kokomo, Indiana
A whimsical fairy tale convenience store in Kokomo, Indiana
Bruce Katz at the Brookings Institution likes to talk about a paradigm called "cut to invest." The idea is to cut spending on operations and lower priority items in order finance investments in higher priority infrastructure or other projects. Nice theory, but who is actually doing it?
One example is Kokomo, Indiana. It's not the mythical tropical island paradise you may have heard about from the Beach Boys. Instead it's a small industrial city of around 57,000 people about 45 miles north of Indianapolis. After I posted a piece from Eric McAfee about Kokomo's intelligent rail trail design, someone from the city reached out and invited me to come for a visit. So that's what I did this week.
What I discovered is that Kokomo has done a lot more than just build a trail. They've deconverted every one way street downtown back to two way, removed every stop light and parking meter in the core of downtown, are building a mixed use downtown parking garage with a new YMCA across the street, inaugurated transit service with a free bus circulator, have a pretty extensive program of pedestrian friendly street treatments like bumpouts, as well as landscaping and beautification, a new baseball stadium under construction, a few apartment developments in the works, and even a more urban feel to its public housing. Like Eric, however, I wasn't just struck by the projects themselves, but they obvious attention to detail that went into their design. And especially by the fact that they've done it almost all by paying cash – no debt – in a city that went through an economic wringer during the recession.
A lot, though not all, of this has been pushed by Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight, who's gone from factory worker to politician during his career. He also appears to be an urban planning geek, as the stack of books behind his desk shows.
I sat down with the mayor and chatted about how the city pulled off this program of investment. After the jump I'll visually walk you through a number of the projects. If the audio player doesn't display for you, click over to Soundcloud.
Now let's take a look at what's going on. I mentioned the pedestrian bumpouts. Here's an example of one:
Pretty much every downtown intersection has a treatment like this, including landscaping. Taking a page from other cities' playbook, Kokomo has invested in beautification, including not only landscaping of pedestrian bumpouts, but also hanging flower planters we'll see later. These were actually put into place by Goodnight's predecessor and were a huge source of controversy at the time, though seem to be well-accepted by now.
Here's another example on a street heading out of downtown.
I'm actually of two minds about bumpouts. They do facilitate pedestrian crossings, but also can force bicyclists out of the curb lane into traffic. I've generally found them obnoxious when bicycling. The street widths through the bumpouts look ok here, but I didn't put it to the test. A number of streets have painted bicycle lanes, where this is definitely not a problem.
Eric's blog post was about the Industrial Heritage Trail. Here's a shot of that through downtown:
I think this is really attractive. It reminds me of a red brick version of the Indy Cultural Trail. This section actually has a separate sidewalk from the biking trail, but that's not the norm. Kokomo has really made a point to include some ped-bike protection wherever possible. So the landscape buffer is narrow, but effective and attractive. (It doesn't use bioswale type green stormwater detention like the Indy Cultural Trail, though). There's also ample street lighting and street furnishings.
As one nice touch, note the back side of the stop sign. It's black to match the color of the other items, not just plain galvanized steel. This treatment is done throughout downtown and adds a bit of refinement.
Here's another shot of a segment a bit south. Note the bespoke bike rack.
There aren't people in these photos, you might have noticed. I was doing this walking tour on a Tuesday morning, and it wasn't super-crowded but I did see multiple people out biking and walking on these trails.
On the south side of downtown, the IHT crosses and east-west path called the "Walk of Excellence." I love the name because reminding Hoosiers that a focus on excellence is an absolute must to survive the brutal global competition. Here's a shot:
Again, very attractive. And again, a narrow but nice buffer between the trail and the street, even though the roadway is little more than an alley or driveway. This is very consistently done, in another place even where the trail just passes through a parking lot. That's what I mean by attention to detail. There's a stream running to the left of the trail which adds to the pleasant effect of walking along it.
Here's a street crossing:
The trail has its own traffic control signs, as well as a street sign near bicycling eye level to tell users what street they are at. In my experience, that's too rare in trail design. You can also see bumpouts here along with large concrete planters that add beauty and make the crosswalk and street narrowing very visible to drivers.
Here's another crossing example, showing the different crosswalk shading as well:
Here's a bike route sign, with the city seal on it. That's another nice touch and one that shows a certain pride of place versus a generic sign.
Moving on, here's a median treatment on a major street. This goes on quite a distance:
Not only is this very nice, including more flowers, decorative street lights, etc, but the metal railings are especially unique. The railings were actually custom fabricated by the high school's shop class. Not only was this great real world practice for the students, but the city paid for the railings and the students are all ending up with $1,000 scholarships to college out of it. I'm told this was the superintendent's idea. (Kokomo's superintendent grew up in Corydon in my county and his wife actually still works part time in Laconia, the tiny town where I grew up!)
Eric mentioned the school district's International Baccalaureate program. But I don't believe he mentioned that they also run an exchange student program. IIRC, students from 15 countries attend high school in Kokomo, and a number of them are actually housed in dormitories in downtown Kokomo. This injects life into downtown and creates a more international flavor in the city. I didn't take pictures, but the school district is also renovating a 1914 vintage auditorium back to its original design that will be very cool (and also paid for without recourse to debt).
Trails and bumpouts have a fairly limited cost, but the city is also doing some bigger ticket items including two recently-constructed fire stations, a million dollar renovation of city hall, a parking garage, and a baseball stadium. Pictures of those in a moment but it's worth ask how the city was able to pay for them without debt.
The first is that there was no legacy debt. I'm not anti-debt in all cases, but if a mature city like Kokomo is saddled with heavy debt repayments, that's not good. By not having any legacy debt, the city's tax base isn't encumbered by repayments. A good part of our federal deficit these days is simply interest on our gargantuan debt load. That's a dynamic Kokomo avoided. (The city does have some utility debt, but it's revenue bond type stuff).
Secondly, the mayor says that he was able to reduce the city's workforce by close to 20%, going from 521 employees just before he took office to only 415 today. That's a significant reduction, especially given the fact that during that time the city annexed seven square miles and added 11,000 new residents (though some of them were already receiving some city services). Some of this was achieved through efficiencies. For example, the city went to single side garbage pickup, where all garbage is collected on one side of the street, eliminating the need for trucks to traverse each street twice. The mayor, council members, and department heads have also had a pay freeze during that time, with at least some time in there in which all city employees had their pay frozen during the recession. Keep in mind, the city experienced a severe revenue crunch during the auto bankruptcies, and Chrysler, the town's largest employer, failed to pay its tax bill. This created an urgent need for cuts.
It's possible the cuts and freezes have gone too far. I don't know the full history of what has happened to services. But I speculate that having something like this can potentially act like a forest fire. It allows for longer term, healthier growth, whereas continuous growth in employees and compensation over time leads to serious fiscal problems.
In any case, these reductions freed up cash flow as the city recovered, letting Kokomo allocate a decent chunk of its revenues to capital investment. This is running at about 5% of the overall budget, plus an additional sizable sum (for a city of that size) from an economic development tax. This is an example of the cut to invest strategy in action. Without the cuts and tight budget management, there would be no money to invest. Indeed, some other Indiana community have found themselves asking questions like "what fire station should we close?" as they feel the sting of decline and tax caps.
Here are a few more photos, then some additional observations. Here's that parking garage I mentioned. (This was originally debt financed, but the city paid off the bonds early when it decided to borrow for the baseball stadium).
This supposedly has some all day free parking, designed to attract downtown employees. There's also going to be apartments on the top floor. It looks like there's no ground floor retail, however, which will create a bit of a dead zone.
Here's the YMCA construction site across the street. You can see the old Y in the background:
A painted railroad viaduct on Sycamore St. heading into downtown:
An alley treatment:
The baseball stadium under construction:
Here's a picture of an older style public housing building. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's done in a traditional duplex style reminiscent of early suburbia.
Here's a new development in a more urban form next door:
I think the fenestration is poor which gives the design a public housing look. Nevertheless, I appreciate that the city is even thinking about the design of public housing downtown as part of its strategy. After all, why shouldn't public housing residents get to take advantage of high quality urbanism downtown like everyone else?
Overall, I think they've done a number of good things, and I especially appreciate the attention to detail that went into them. You clearly get the feel of them walking downtown streets. I would say the commercial and residential development lags the infrastructure, however. That's to be expected. They do have an Irish Pub, a coffee shop, a few restaurants, and other assorted downtown type of businesses. This will be an area to watch as some of these investments mature.
When I talked to the mayor about this he took the long view, saying that Columbus, Indiana has been at its architecture program for decades, that Indy's sports strategy is 40 years old, etc. Substantive change takes time. For example, Mayor Goodnight says it isn't realistic to think that older workers who commute in to Kokomo will uproot themselves out of their established lives in other communities and relocate. But he's more hopeful that as workers retire and are replaced, he'll capture the "next generation" labor force.
That's obviously a more realistic ambition. But will an impatient public buy it? We'll see. Clearly Goodnight has his critics. More than one of them has dubbed him the "King of Kokomo." A newspaper article fretted about gentrification (level of realistic concern about that: zero). I didn't do a deep dive into the other side, so keep that in mind reading this. But the baseball stadium would appear to be the most controversial item as near as I detect.
Regardless of any controversy, when you look at the downward trajectory of most small Indiana industrial cities, the status quo is not viable option. Kokomo deserves a lot credit for trying something different. And regardless of any development payoffs, things like trails and safer and more welcoming streets are already paying a quality of life dividend to the people who live there right now. It's an improvement anyone can experience today just by walking around.
Thursday, August 14th, 2014
Why Contemporary Protestant Church Architecture Is So Poor
New Life Church Worship Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Photo: myamericanodyssey.com
Visit a city in Europe or even an older American town and see that the church building is often one of the most prominent and architecturally distinguished buildings there. Yet today your typical new Protestant church building, say a suburban mega-church, is dreadful. Why is that?
When speaking at the conference where I talked about suburban sacred space, I ran into architect Duncan Stroik, a professor of architecture of Notre Dame and someone you turn to when you want to build a church that looks like a church. His book on the subject of church architecture is "The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence, and the Eternal," which you can learn more about in the review of it in City Journal.
Stroik is also the editor of a semi-annual magazine called Sacred Architecture. Unsurprisingly, its emphasis is on Roman Catholic architecture, but other traditions are included as well. After an invigorating discussion on the topic, I agreed to write an article about the Protestant church architecture question, which is now online in the most recent issue. Called "Erasing Distinctions," it looks at eight theological trends in contemporary Evangelical Protestantism that tend towards placing a low value on architecture. Here is an excerpt:
1. Low view of the church and place. The Roman Catholic tradition emphasizes the big-C Church—the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of the creeds—with the local church as a mostly standardized operating subsidiary. By contrast, most Protestants emphasize the small-c church, their local congregation. This is truer than ever, as demonstrated by the rise of non-denominational churches.
This produces a system with no theology of place. Protestants feel a sense of duty to the place and community where they personally live. But if the majority of church members move, say, from the city to the suburbs, then a new church building can be constructed, the old building sold, and the duty transferred to the new place where the members now reside. The original building only served a pragmatic purpose as meetinghouse for the members.
The Roman Catholic Church views its remit as covering the entire globe. So when there is population change in a locale, the church is not relieved of responsibility for it. The church building is an outpost of Christianity in a particular place (the parish concept), not just to a group of people. In short, Protestants see place as ephemeral, while Roman Catholics see it as permanent.
You can click through to read the whole thing.
Tuesday, August 12th, 2014
Why Modern Architecture Struggles to Inspire Catholics by Julien Meyrat
[ Today architect Julien Meyrat looks at why modern architecture, even when excellent and profound, so often fails to engage with Catholics when used for their churches – Aaron. ]
La Tourette Monastery by Le Corbusier in Eveux, France
Inspired by a recent visit to a Le Corbusier-designed Dominican monastery near the French city of Lyon, I've been thinking a lot about the interaction between Catholicism and modernist aesthetics. It has little to do with whether the Church affects what designers create beyond filling the program. Instead, I've tried to examine how the architect's religion influences the Church's own self-image. I've concluded that the Church, an institution that has been the guardian tradition and the patron artistic and architectural development in the West for almost two millennia, never could reconcile itself comfortably with Modernism.
I was reminded of this when I shared with my brother news on the opening of a new convent and Visitor Center buried into the hill on which sits Le Corbusier's famous Notre Dame-du-Haut Chapel at Ronchamp. The convent was but the latest creation of the contemporary master Renzo Piano, featuring architect's trademark manipulation of natural light, spatial simplicity, open views of nature and elegant detailing. My brother seemed to shrug at these qualities, writing:
Seems more like a fish tank with Ikea finishes than a cloister. I know natural light, rectangles, and windows are nice, but its openness and simplicity feel like some vapid unbearable lightness than a place of spiritual reflection. Zen monks might appreciate it more.
I replied that he seemed to have a very narrow idea of what constitutes a proper place for spiritual reflection, and that lightness and simplicity had a place Catholic doctrine. I referred to him to a series of pictures I had taken of Le Corbusier's monastery, wondering what he thought of his more 'Brutal' approach. My brother elaborated:
Ugh, these architects have no god. That thing (by Corbu) is hideous. Look, meditation takes place in the mind, but more in the soul. Christianity places the priority on man's soul transcending his surroundings, not blending with it (a la Zen). Man is large, not small. Churches should be ornamented and highly symbolic, teeming with life, not stark and barren. It all has to do with Being not Nonbeing. The church is a foundation, it's heavy, it imitates the eternal. It's not some flimsy plates of glass and concrete garnished with random primary colors here and there.
Bedroom of Convent by Renzo Piano Workshop at Ronchamp, France
Though there are indeed gaps in his argument that can be exploited, I think his overall opinion is respectable and shared by many of the Catholic faithful who possess a sophisticated understanding of their beliefs and how to translate them into sacred art. Often such views completely contrast from many members of the clergy, who have more of an interest in revitalizing the church by embracing contemporary artistic trends than by responding to wishes of their flock. The Dominican monastic order prizes scholasticism above all else, and finds it fully consistent to hire a leader at the forefront of architectural progress like Le Corbusier. The nuns were probably thinking along the same lines, wondering less about how sacred life can transform architecture, but rather how architecture can transform sacred life.
Outside a few rare examples such as Ronchamp, I sense that Modernism has failed to deliver an architecture that connects with most Catholics and other traditional Christians. Much of this has to do with fact that Modernism as a cultural movement is inherently atheistic as it is based on a secular materialist philosophy. Even Renzo Piano admits as much, describing his client from the convent: "She has a profound love of architecture, of landscape, of sacred space – and even of people without religion, like me. She wanted a place of silence and prayer. I said: 'I can't help you with prayer, but perhaps I can help with silence and a little joy."
Chapel at Convent by Renzo Piano Workshop, Ronchamp, France
And therein lies the crux of the problem: When one has done away with symbols, theology, and the act of worship, there's little else to inspire a credible work of sacred art or architecture. Piano, like any committed Modernist, is left with little more than a preference for abstraction, technology and some vague nostrums about nature and space. For a Modernist, the point of architecture is to convey an image of maximum clarity, in which all elements are related by function and little else. As long as a space is adequately sheltered and functions for the use of its occupants, there is no need for decorative flourish. Piano is reduced to checking off boxes for the client's wish list, from the number of rooms, to furnishings, and to achieving a quality of 'silence'. There's nothing all that particular about an architecture of silence–maybe a dark room secluded from more socially active spaces. Given the right palette of materials and details, any space can be turned into something contemplative. But can this generic approach to design evoke much meaning beyond mere emotional states such as peace?
Sacred spaces achieve much of its effect by emphasizing mystery. This is at the core of any religion, in which divine truth is revealed beyond any logical or rational framework. As is often said, God is revealed in mysterious ways, and the purpose of any sacred space is to embody this reality. It is inherent that a secular space is completely counter to this and thus adopts an architectural language devoid of mystery or even ambiguity. Secular spaces instead embrace the language of the engineer, someone who works outside the world of art, poetry, and indeed of mystery, by solving problems with the most rational tools of math and science. There is a lot of work that goes into making successful settings for secular activities, much of it having to do with the science of building, such as lighting, acoustics, and visibility. There is also a tendency for generating phenomenological effect through technology, such as making walls highly transparent or reflective, surfaces either smooth or deliberately rough. To the Modernist who puts its faith in technological progress, the more an effect can exceed what can be done by the human hand, the better.
La Tourette Monastery by Le Corbusier, Eveux, France
Such attention to a material's effects point to Modernism's essentially materialist philosophy on architecture. In sacred architecture, the building and the spaces within serve to connect users to a deeper reality that transcends its walls. They function as a gateway from the material world to a spiritual realm–the focus is on the eternal, not the object that portends to represent it. In a secular context like Modernism, the object is the thing itself, and all meaning is tied directly to that object. Walking into a exemplary Modernist space, one is supposed to marvel at its lightness, smoothness and simplicity, attributes that are commonly summarized as 'machine-like'. If one desires a more 'humanist' look and feel, the designer can instill a quality of 'roughness' by texturizing concrete, oxidizing steel, and inserting warmth by using natural materials such as wood and stone. Industrialization gives us that much more control to generate a precise effect, and empowers the designers unlimited opportunities in experimenting. At the same time, it diminishes the role of the craftsman, who throughout most of human history was the guardian in generating material effects, and in many ways assumed the role of architectural detailing. Machines take the human factor out of the art of making, thus producing something devoid of passion, feeling that imbues every man-made object.
Piano singles himself better than most of his contemporaries by his ability to reinsert the human touch in his design process. His architectural details are truly works of art and are usually the result of a distinct craftsman-like approach in generating them. The name of his firm, The Renzo Piano Workshop, harkens back to the time when architecture was realized by stone masons, who would accumulate specialized design knowledge in the development of style details and templates. Where Piano departs is the end result of his craftsman-like approach: highly refined, ultra-precise, machine-polished building systems and parts. The structural connections in his projects are beautiful and poetic pieces of engineering, much like Apple products, but like most industrial artifacts, they cannot express the ancient, primordial aspects of our humanity. Is that necessary to fully immerse oneself the Catholic experience?
I believe so. A fundamental assumption in Catholicism is that history is linear and that God was incarnated in the human form of Jesus Christ at a precise point in history to the point that the period before and after this event are neatly divided (BC vs. AD). Its doctrines and liturgy are part of an evolutionary process that have taken place in the world for two thousand years, and followers actively partake in this history by participating in the mass. For most Catholics, weekly mass is the only time that they are reminded that they are tied to humanity in throughout the ages, both in the past and the future. This goes against 'modernity', or the idea that the times are so new and different that prior truths or solutions are irrelevant. In Christianity, Truth is eternal, and the problems that afflict humanity are no different during the time of Christ than they do now. There is no 'new and improved'. Rather, the ideal was was established two-thousand years ago (the life of Christ) and no amount of social or technological advance (or regression) can change this.
View of Crypt inside the La Tourette Monastery by Le Corbusier
In addition, Christianity relies on communicating its ideas through allegories conveyed verbally in the Bible, musically in its music and visually illustrated in its art and architecture. These are designed to make the message accessible to all people, as opposed to keeping revelations close to a self-selected elite. The message has to be clear, the context must be provided and the characters believable. Visually, this requires the use of lines and recognizable figures placed in a narrative relationship. These demands don't lend themselves well to abstraction, the modus operandi of the Modernist. Abstraction is by nature open to individual interpretation; Christian revelation is not. Abstraction is deliberately exercised by an individual, driven by their own desire to create original content; Christian subjects and themes are the content, with the artist sharing his visceral imaginings of truths he does not question (like most European art before the 19th Century).
This probably explains why many Catholics feel a certain frustration with the role played by modern music, art and design in today's church. The music uses irregular folk beats, vulgar melodies and harmonies, and seem composed to bring attention to the songs themselves rather than acquainting singers to a more transcendent reality. In contemporary Christian art, Christ is portrayed as a non-descript figure, and often times and rendered in an abstracted archaic style that is flat and lacks feeling. The cross is abstracted to emphasize its iconic nature as a symbol, detached from any literal representation of what actually happened on the cross. In most modern churches, seating is arranged as a theater in the round, focusing the parishioners' attention to the the priest, or the choir, rather than to God as manifested in an elaborately decorated apse wall or a ceiling pointed to heaven. This was vividly brought to my attention when watching the broadcast of Christmas mass from the Vatican–most of the camera shots showed details of the sanctuary's glorious interior and symbolic art, with the occasional view of the Pope. Catholic worship is not about the mere men (priests) who help conduct its rituals but is instead is about how God is revealed in them by means of humanity's most outward expression of what lies within its soul: Art. When there is nothing meaningful or moving to look at, one is resigned to paying attention to a charismatic individual standing on a stage, transcendent beauty is loss, and the Christian message takes on a banal delivery.
Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut by Le Corbusier, Ronchamp, France
Architects, a growing number of whom fall into agnosticism and atheism, often seem to forget this when visiting sacred yet Modern masterpieces. Just because Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel makes some of my colleagues cry doesn't mean it fulfills its ecclesiastical responsibilities particularly well. They are likely overwhelmed by the chapel's poetic mastery of form and light and how it provokes a profound yet undefinable emotional response. I succumbed to this response myself when I went to Ronchamp as well when I toured Le Corbusier's monastery of La Tourette. I was taken aback by his buildings' abstract forms, its play with light, its vivid use of color, its sophisticated relationship to its site. In the end, I didn't develop a more profound appreciation of Christian revelation, but a greater respect for mathematical proportion, abstract formal metaphors, primary colors and geometries–transcendent things nonetheless, but a bit too esoteric for most people. La Tourette was clearly a more regulated composition compared to Ronchamp, which is probably why is probably why the latter provokes a more emotional response. In a sense, the chapel is Le Corbusier at his least 'modern' and more archaic, while his monastery is likely intended to feel more academicized due to that typology's tradition of being repositories for knowledge. Ronchamp's form sweeps up to heaven, its dark sanctuary enclosed in thick walls reminds one of a cave evocative of early Christianity, while its rounded towers mimick Mary in her veil, sheltering the church below. Though these moves aren't literal, there is just enough reference to the symbols and ideas of Catholic church that make this more approachable to average followers.
Church on the Water by Tadao Ando, Tomamu, Japan
This isn't to suggest that modern architecture can't achieve successful spaces for spriritual contemplation. Tadao Ando's Church by the Water is especially powerful, manipulating natural light and framing views that heightens the senses and fuses nature into the act of worship. The church is stripped of traditional Christian decoration, illustrations of bibical stories or saints, or any other reference to the history of the church. It works for those who wish to understand God through nature's primal elements and how they change through the passage of time. There is a sense of ignoring the human presence altogether, as it invites one to blend into the natural surrounding (as my brother's comment on zen indicates), which may work in more minimalist strains of Christianity and even Catholicism, but will leave many believers hungering for a place rich in narrative objects and a more fully enclosed communal response among people. There is no altar to focus on, only a highly abstracted cross standing in a reflecting pond, which could have all sorts of meanings, but not one that concentrates the mind of the believer on Christ and his passion.
A truly inspiring space that uses a modern architectural language for catholic worship is extremely difficult to find. While many architects simply choose to employ a historicist style for even newest churches, it is possible to address the particular characteristics of a catholic church while maintaining a modernist sensibility. I submit a Cistercian chapel located not far from where I live in Irving outside of Dallas designed by Gary Cunningham. Long an admired designer in the area, Cunningham's work can be characterized as simple, straight-forward, and sensitive to materials. His award-winning residences follow a rather conventional contemporary style but he also is very accomplished in the art of adaptive reuse, in which he repurposes an existing building by carefully juxtaposing old and new elements. This consciousness of how time plays a role in the way a building expresses itself is strongly manifested in the Cistercian chapel. The space is enclosed in rough quaried limestone, cut in massive blocks and stacked in traditional running bond, which instantly strikes any visitor as reminiscent of the Catholic church's earliest Romanesque sanctuaries with their thick walls and small windows. Its wood roof floating above the nave takes the shape of a traditional ceilings found in these churches, while also resembling the underside of a ship (which is where the word 'nave' comes from). Spans are short, further emphasizing the weight of the stone, even as they maintain familiar rhythm suggestive of the old ambulatory aisles with the repetitive row of vertical windows. It follows more of a classic basilica typology than the popular theatre-in-the round, which indicates a desire to focus on the liturgy as opposed to the priest. But more than merely echoing the churches of the past, this chapel appears as a direct architectural metaphor for the creation of the church itself: "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church…(Matthew 16:18)" While obviously an abstract design, Cunningham manages to endow the chapel with an important phrase from the Gospel and thus Christian revelation. Sleek details and delicate connections between the roof and walls betray its contemporary origins, but the way it highlights the split-faced texture of the rock wed the chapel to the church's long institutional history, and the countless number of people who dedicated their lives in building structures fitting to God's glory.
Cistercian Chapel by Gary Cunningham, Irving, Texas
And that, to me, is what is necessary for a compelling Catholic worship space–a connection not only with the divine, but just as importantly with an institution comprised of people throughout the ages. Its walls should reveal human intent, either through a man-made texture or through an ornament that is the work of genuine human input. Machine-smooth de-personalizes this experience. As any human institution that is an essential part of catholic identity, it carries a rich artistic and architectural heritage that brings with it a kind of unassailable authority not found in Protestantism, which devalues the human institution in favor of interpreting directly from the Bible. The result of of relying on scripture, however justifiable from a theological standpoint, seems to lead towards a breaking down of a rich visual language and an embrace for abstraction. A small cultural vacuum subsequently takes root, which grows to consume what's left of symbols, music, and eventually the walls. The ultimate result is either a television studio black-box with no windows preferred by evangelicals or a zen-like meditation space with no walls and a subtle symbolic indication that it's even Christian (such as Ando's church).
I'm sure that Piano's and Le Corbusier's clerical clients were pleased with the result, and fans of high-design with no opinion on proper Catholic aesthetics are moved by their examples, too. But I wonder if these exercises in abstraction, lightness, and trying to stay relevant in fast-changing contemporary culture win much in the way of converts. People who seek the church want their souls nourished by the church's message in as many forms as possible. When many of these forms are abstracted or simplified to an incomprehensible level, it leaves such people feeling unfulfilled, and causes many of them to leave the church for a place that offer a richer, more visually arresting environment of the older historic sanctuaries. At least these modern ecclesiastical masterpieces continue to open their arms to the perennial pilgrimage of people most interested in them: architecture students.
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014
Incrementally Transforming Kokomo Without Debt by Eric McAfee
[ Kokomo, Indiana is a small industrial city about an hour north of Indianapolis. It is one of the rare ones whose industry remains largely intact, with two large auto-related plants. This makes them different from the type of community that really has deindustrialized. Yet they fret that those who earn decent incomes in their town too often decide to live in the Indianapolis suburbs. Hence a program to upgrade quality of life in the city. It should be noted that while they've managed to do this without incurring debt, Kokomo arguably benefited more than any city in America outside Detroit from the massive federal auto bailout. Their civic improvements have in a sense been financed by a unique external windfall unavailable to others. Nevertheless, lots of places have received windfalls and spent them poorly. Cities may not be able to control our circumstances, good and bad, but they at least have some control over how they respond to them. This piece from American Dirt takes a look at Kokomo's response. Keep in mind it ran in 2012 and there are likely some anachronisms by now – Aaron. ]
Across the country—but particularly in the heavily industrialized Northeast and Midwest—smaller cities have confronted the grim realities of the unflattering "Rust Belt" moniker, and all of its associated characteristics, with varying degrees of success. With an aging work force, difficulty in retaining college graduates, and a frequently decaying building stock, the challenges they face are formidable. Cites from between 30,000 and 80,000 inhabitants typically boomed due to the exponential growth of a single industry, and, in many cases, the bulwark of that industry left the municipality nearly a half century ago, for a location (possibly international) where the cost of doing business is much cheaper. Essentially, everything the smaller Rust Belt cities had to offer is completely tradable in a globalized market; the resources that provided the town's life blood are either depleted or are simply to expensive to cultivate further.
Reinvention is the only condition likely to save many of these cities from persistent economic contraction, but, with an overabundance of retirees and older workers, these towns lack the collective civic will that could be expected in larger communities with more diversified economies. An absence of young people intensifies (and, to a certain extent, justifies) the low level of civic investment in one's own community; after all, if a resident is six months from retirement, how likely is it that he or she would support public investments intended to improve quality of life for twenty or thirty years into the future? For that matter, how likely will a population of retirees remain engaged to encourage or challenge major private sector investments as well?
By no means am I intending to denigrate needs and ambitions of the senior population; I'm merely observing that a stagnant Rust Belt city with this demographic profile will demonstrate vastly different priorities from a city rife with young families. While every Rust Belt city large and small must avoid obsolescence that results from the spoils of globalization, the smaller cities—which have tended to be dominated in the past by a single thriving industry—are less likely to claim alternative sectors and labor pools if their primary manufacturing lifeblood fails. A dying city of 80,000 may not exert the same impact within a region (particularly in the densely populated Midwest and Northeast) that a city of 500,000 would, but it is far more of black eye for the state than a town of 2,000 that has lost its raison d'être. This conclusion is obvious. Many of these small cities must reordering of their economies comprehensively; while the state, the county, or private foundations may offer some outside help, the constituents of these cities themselves are typically the best equipped to understand how their city should evolve. Unfortunately, many of these communities aren't yet even aware of the need for this reinvention, let alone which avenue to pursue in order to achieve it.
It is with no small amount of reassurance that I can assert that Kokomo, Indiana is not one of these latter cities.
No Rust Belt complacency on display here in the City of Firsts. Though as recently as 2008 it was on Forbes' list of America's Fastest Dying Towns, a recent visit shows much more evidence than I've seen of some comparably sized cities in the region that the civic culture is neither resting on its laurels nor wringing its hands about how much better things used to be. In fact, one of the Indianapolis Star's leading editorialists, Erika Smith, recently visited the city, and, after receiving a tour from the Mayor, was pleasantly surprised by how proactive it has been in implementing precisely the type of quality-of-life initiatives largely perceived as necessary to help a historically blue-collar city stave off a brain drain or descend into irrelevancy.
I, too, recently received the Kokomo tour, followed by a meeting with Mayor Greg Goodnight, and I can also recognize some of the city's most impressive achievements at shaking off the post-industrial malaise that saddled the city with double-digit unemployment rates as recently as a few years ago. Since then, the city has introduced a trolley system at no charge to users; prior to this initiative, the city had had no mass transit for decades. The Mayor pushed successfully to annex 11 square miles in the town's periphery, therefore elevating the population by about 10,000 people. The Mayor's team worked to convert all one-way streets in Kokomo's downtown to two-ways, recognizing that accommodating high-speed automobile traffic in a pedestrian-oriented environment only detracts from the appeal. The team has restriped several miles of urban streets to incorporate bike lanes, and it has converted a segment of an abandoned rail line into a rail-with-trail path, branding it by linking it to the city's industrial heritage. They have deflected graffiti from several bridges and buildings through an expansive and growing mural project. They have upgraded the riverfront park with an amphitheatre and recreational path. They have introduced several sculptural installations, the most prominent of which is the KokoMantis, a giant praying mantis made entirely of repurposed metal and funded privately. And my personal favorite: with the support of the City, the school superintendent has integrated a prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) program to the public school system, including an international exchange program for young men from several foreign countries (a girls' program should arrive in the next year or two) who live in a recently restored historic structure in Kokomo's walkable downtown, attending demanding courses that bolster their chances of admittance in a coveted American university. Most impressively, the City of Kokomo has achieved all of this without incurring any public debt in the past year.
Obviously the individuals offering me this tour are going to make sure their Cinderella is fully dressed for the ball, and I recognize that not a small amount of the securing of certain infrastructural projects and transportation enhancement grants requires a political savvy that the current civic leadership has in abundance. And I don't want to rehash Ms. Smith's article, which more than effectively chronicles this approach at a macro level. In addition, Erika Smith recognizes, as do I, that very few of these initiatives (the IB foreign exchange program notwithstanding) are really particularly earth-shattering. But when most other similarly sized cities in the Midwest seem to be engaged in a race to the bottom, luring new industry through generous tax breaks (often initiated at the state level), Kokomo seems to recognize that a town lacking any amenities outside of low cost of living has to compete with dozens of other cities in Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in Indiana, that offer the exact same brand. Whether this investment yields a long-term return remains to be seen, but it certainly demonstrates the right gestures necessary to instill civic stewardship in a place whose decades of job loss have seriously scratched its mirror of self-examination.
What ultimately struck me about Kokomo—which Erika Smith only touched upon—was the level of design sophistication evident in some of these civic projects. I need only focus on a single location in the city, in which two particularly laudatory techniques are on display. At the intersection of Markland Avenue and Main Street, just south of downtown, the Industrial Heritage Trail begins its journey southward. Here's a view as the trail terminates at its junction with those two streets, looking northwestward:
Here is a view in the other direction:
Continuing a bit further in this direction, one encounters this painted wall:
And, pivoting slightly to the left, another mural that is still in progress:
This photo series identifies two amenities that stand out for the astute decision-making that apparently took place during the implementation. The Industrial Heritage Trail clearly operates in a railway corridor, but it is not a rail-trail. Unlike the more common rail-trail conversion, this Kokomo trail did not incorporate the removal of the original rail infrastructure. The Rails to Trails Conservancy would label this approach a rail-with-trail, indicating that the trail shares the railway easement, typically separated by fencing. Rail-trails such as the Monon Trail in metro Indianapolis are still the more common practice. However, a growing number of communities are embracing rail-with-trails, not only because they obviate the need for costly removal of rails, ties, and ballast, but they reserve the rail infrastructure for the possibility that a railroad company may reactivate the line in the future. If the sponsors of Kokomo's Industrial Heritage Trail had removed the infrastructure, the possibility of ever reintroducing rail along the corridor would be virtually nil. As it stands, the only conceivable disadvantage to rail-with-trails is that, in the event a rail company reintroduces train service, its close proximity to the path may prove hazardous to bicyclists or pedestrians. Otherwise, the decision to retain the railway not only helped to diversify options, it most likely saved a considerable amount of money.
The other smart decision was the site selection for those murals. The ones featured in the photos above are part of a growing mural campaign that the City of Kokomo introduced, and every one that I recall shows real foresight in the locational decisions. What makes them so good? The murals in the photos above front a public right-of-way, minimizing if not completely precluding the chance that later development will conceal them. I blogged a few years ago about an excellent mural in Indianapolis that showed wonderful care and craft in the entire implementation process…except where the conceivers chose to locate it. Not only did they paint on a cheap, cinder-block building that will likely tumble down if market pressures encourage new development in the neighborhood, but the mural also faces a vacant lot which is large enough to host a new structure that would block it completely, no doubt frustrating the community and pitting them against a developer.
Compare this to Kokomo's murals. Here's one a little further south on the Industrial Heritage Trail:
Again, it fronts the trail itself—not a chance that a developer will try to block it. And here's another along a bridge underpass for the recently completed trail along the Wildcat Creek:
The original intention of the mural was to repel vandals at spot that previously suffered from it frequently; this approach has proven successful in locations across the country. But it also sits in a park along a new greenway, so it should remain in perpetuity. Granted, Indianapolis has plenty of murals along retaining walls and buildings that front the aforementioned Monon Trail. Those, too, should survive far into the future. But in recent years, the City of Indianapolis has encouraged countless murals on the side walls of commercial buildings—sites where a blank wall faces a parking lot, where a building once stood. While these bare walls often scream for some ornamentation to help distract from what used to be there (another adjoining building), in many instances the parking lots will likely fall under increasing development pressure in upcoming years. Will the locals thwart development in order to save the mural? This remains to be seen, and I don't want to base too much of an analysis on speculation. But it's hard to deny that these public art investments seem less astute than the once I witnessed in Kokomo.
One could argue that Kokomo is merely taking advantage of the fact that it is jumping into the game relatively late; it benefits by learning from the mistakes of others. But decisions that stand the test of time also contribute their fair share to foster civic goodwill. Taxpayers are rarely too forgiving of poorly conceived projects, and several successive blunders, no matter how small they may be, demonstrate poor accountability. Only time will determine the return on investment, but Kokomo certainly has a leg up on many of its competing small cities. My suspicion is, if these projects stimulate the discussion and enthusiasm for proactive leadership that they suggest (Mayor Goodnight was re-elected last year by a landslide), the citizens of Kokomo are only beginning to stoke the fire.
This post originally ran in American Dirt on November 16, 2012.
Tuesday, July 15th, 2014
The Uniqueness of Detroit's Housing Stock by Pete Saunders
[ I've posted a number of pieces by Pete Saunders here in the past. He's not just a great analyst generally, he's particularly great on Detroit. His post laying out nine reasons why Detroit failed has more page views than any other article in Urbanophile history. (The top four posts are all about Detroit, showing the powerful hold that city has on the public consciousness). In his blog, Corner Side Yard, he's bee revisiting that post to go in depth on each of his nine points. Today I'm pleased to be able to repost his analysis of Detroit's housing stock, along with that of many other Midwest cities – Aaron. ]
A scene from the Grixdale neighborhood on Detroit's northeast side. Source: Google Earth.
Last week, as part of my series on planning reasons behind Detroit's decline, part 2 of the nine-part series was about the city's poor housing stock. I started to play with some numbers to see if there was any validity to my opinions about the city's housing, and I found some very intriguing things. Detroit's housing stock is definitely unique among its Midwestern and Rust Belt peer cities, and perhaps among cities nationwide. Let's examine.
Grouping the cities by population figures from the 2013 U.S. Census population estimates, and housing data from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey, I looked at housing age and single family detached housing data for 15 Midwest/Rust Belt cities with populations above 250,000. One city I typically include in an analysis like this, Louisville, was not included due to a lack of ACS data. Data for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were aggregated into one (sorry, Minneapolis and St. Paul) because they jointly function as the core city for their region. Here's the big table with all the data:
That's a lot to digest, so I'll take the data piece by piece. First, let's look at the cities ranked by their percentage of housing units built in 1969 or earlier:
You'll see here that, perhaps following the general national perception of Detroit housing, the Motor City has an older housing stock. Only Buffalo has a higher percentage of older housing. Generally speaking, the cities at the top half of this list have older housing because they lack redevelopment activity that replaces older housing, while cities at the bottom half consists of cities with decent levels of redevelopment activity, or more recently built housing that's been annexed into the city in recent decades. Here, Detroit does seem to fit the pattern.
But does it really? If you look at the Census' earliest category for age of structure, 1939 or earlier, Detroit drops considerably on the list:
Instead of ranking second as in the earlier table, Detroit falls to tenth. The rest generally hold the same spots they occupied from the previous table as well. The only ones ranking lower than Detroit here are smaller cities (Omaha, Ft. Wayne) and the cities that annexed large amounts of land post 1970 (Kansas City, Indianapolis, Columbus).
Next, let's look at how the cities rank in terms of their concentrations of single family detached homes:
Detroit shows up here with the second highest percentage of single family detached homes, comprising nearly two-thirds of the city's housing stock. Once again, the only comparable cities are the smaller cities and the big annexers.
Clearly, most observers believe Detroit has more in common with Buffalo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh than with Ft. Wayne, Kansas City and Indianapolis. What happened to Detroit's housing stock that gave it such an odd profile?
To understand, let's pull out a specific category on the age of structure table, the 1950-1959 category:
Here, we find that Detroit has, by far, the highest concentration of housing units built between 1950-59 of all its peer cities. Nearly one in four homes in Detroit were built during this period. In fact, Detroit, along with Milwaukee and Toledo, occupies a strange space among Midwestern/Rust Belt cities. (Side note: the more I study Detroit against other Midwestern cities, the more I find that Detroit and Milwaukee are virtually the same city. And it doesn't surprise me that Toledo, just 75 miles from Detroit, would share its characteristics as well). Detroit, Milwaukee and Toledo all added their greatest numbers of housing at the outset of the modern suburban development period, what I've called the Levittown Period in my so-called Big Theory of American Urban Development. This supports my thinking that if anyone was ever interested in establishing a Levittown-style national historic district, Detroit would be a good candidate. The Motor City has perhaps more small Cape Cod-style, three-bedroom, one-bath single family homes than any city in the nation.
How did Detroit get this way? Housing demolition likely had some role in a city that lost so much. Detroit likely lost older single family homes and multifamily buildings over the last few decades, leading to skewed numbers. The same is also true of Indianapolis, Kansas City and Columbus, cities that annexed large undeveloped areas after 1970 and built new housing there. Keep in mind, though, that Milwaukee and Toledo, Detroit's comparables, may not have had the same level of demolition loss that Detroit had, yet they still match the Motor City well.
That leads me to believe that a concentration of housing development at a unique time is a crucial piece in understanding Detroit's housing stock.
Here's another way of looking at this. I grouped the cities by age and single family home concentration and came up with interesting groupings:
Here it becomes clearer that Detroit and Toledo stand alone as locations for old or moderately old structures that are largely single family. Also, Milwaukee's greater mix of single family and multifamily units begins to set it apart from Detroit and Toledo, even when it has a similar concentration of Levittown-style housing.
Finally, let's consider housing adaptability as part of the housing stock analysis. Chicago, the region's largest city and lone "global city" member of the group, comfortably rests in the middle of all tables except for the single family detached table, where it shows the lowest concentration of single family homes. My guess is that Chicago's continued desirability means more newer housing has been built, and that its lower single family housing numbers mean that other housing types (lofts, condos and the ubiquitous 2-flat and 3-flat) created a more flexible and adaptable housing development landscape.
Assuming that younger structures are more often suitable to renovation for adaptability, moderately old structures require more intense rehabs, and older types are more often subject to demolition and rebuilding, I reorganized the previous table in terms of housing adaptability:
And if I put in the cities next to this adaptability scale, it's easy to see the magnitude of Detroit's housing challenges:
Detroit is such a unique city in so many ways. The Motor City needs more research and analysis that highlights its uniqueness and adds to our understanding of the what led to its downfall, and less of our ire and contempt.
The more I study Detroit, the more I see the seeds of a similar downfall in other cities nationwide.
This post originally appeared in Corner Side Yard on July 6, 2014.


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Program on Science, Technology and Society at HarvardHarvard Kennedy School of Government | Harvard University |
Current FellowsThe Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard sponsors a small number of stipendary and non-stipendary fellowships each year at the Kennedy School of Government who conduct research and receive advanced training in Science and Technology Studies. For more information on the Fellows Program, click here. For information on past fellows, see the links on the left. Below are a list of the current fellows with the program and a brief description of their backgrounds and interests, with links to more detailed pages containing more detailed information. Lydie CabaneLydie Cabane holds a post-doctoral fellowship from the Institute for Research on Innovation and Society (IFRIS) and is affiliated with the CERMES3 (Research Centre on Health, Medicine, Science and Society) in Paris, France. Her current research focuses on how science and universities have shaped the field of 'global health'. She is visiting at Harvard for the Fall Semester, 2014. During her stay, she will conduct empirical research on how North American universities have developed 'global health' curricula, programmes and research in relation with the transforming geopolitics of the 21st century. Gabriel DortheGabriel Dorthe is a PhD student at University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and at the Sorbonne University (Paris I). Mixing philosophical and ethnographical approaches, his research aims to describe and understand how transhumanists associations explicit their hopes and formulate their expectations. During his stay at Harvard, Gabriel will meet and interview several US transhumanists and scientists in order to emphasize the specificities of European strand of transhumanism. Rachel Douglas-JonesRachel Douglas-Jones is a Postdoc at the IT University of Copenhagen. She received her PhD in Anthropology in 2013 from Durham University, UK. Her research focuses on mechanisms of research governance, with the doctoral thesis Locating Ethics concentrating of the training, accreditation and capacity of ethics review committees in Asia. While at the Harvard STS Program, she is will work on the "Biology and the Law" project. Paulo FonsecaPaulo Fonseca is a Visiting Research Fellow with the Harvard STS Program for the 2014-2015 academic year. Paulo obtained a PhD in Sociology, through the Program "Governance, Knowledge and Innovation" of the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, where he has also been a Junior Researcher. With a B.D on Physics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and a M.D on Social Studies of Science and Technology at the University of Salamanca, Paulo´s research interests have centered on the co-production of governance mechanisms related to emerging technologies in peripheral and semiperipheral countries. Mascha GugganigMascha Gugganig is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of British Columbia, and currently a visiting research fellow at the Harvard STS Program. Her doctoral dissertation deals with intersections between education and activism in regards to land use, food production, and biotechnology on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi. While at Harvard, Mascha will write about ways in which students and educators at a Native Hawaiian charter school as well as a wider public on Kauaʻi negotiate meaning of ʻāina (land) in Hawaiʻi, a place that has become a global research center for genetic engineering. Amy HinterbergerAmy Hinterberger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick (UK). Her principal research interest is at the intersection of the social and life sciences, particularly on bioscientific research and its governance. While at Harvard, Amy will be working on a Faraday Institute for Science and Religion funded project entitled "Biology and the Law." Joakim JuhlJoakim Juhl is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Program on Science, Technology & Society (STS). His current research centers on how we can better interpret the roles of models and simulations as a characteristic mode of mediation between science, technology and society. Joakim works for Sheila Jasanoff and the STS program and assists Venky Narayanamurti with his course Technology and Society. Natalie MevissenNatalie Mevissen is a pre-doctoral Visiting Fellow at the Program on Science, Technology & Society (STS) for the fall semester 2014. Her research fields are science and technology studies, innovation studies, sociology of knowledge, and organizational sociology. Her PhD focusses on how social sciences, especially sociology in Germany and the United States, relate to society. She is especially interested in the question of how sociologists deal with issues of 'applied' and 'pure' social science, focusing on the historical, epistemological and institutional level. During her stay at the STS Program she will continue her work on her dissertation, especially considering the co-production of sociology and the state. Zara MirmalekZara Mirmalek is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Her research focuses on cultural and historical studies of technology, science, and human-machine workgroups situated within contemporary organizational communities, in particular those that operate as public references for societal norms of science, exploration and technology innovation. Her interests include organization environments and lived-experiences of work-time relationships, culture and communication, and sociotechnical imaginaries of democracy, citizen identity, and public participation. Zoe NyssaZoe Nyssa is an Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment and is hosted by Sheila Jasanoff in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the Kennedy School of Government. Zoe's work tracks the emergence and contemporary practices of conservation biology in order evaluate their impact globally on human and non-human life. While at Harvard, she is comparing conservation-oriented programs in the U.S., Australia, Britain, Canada, and Germany to study the disciplinary re-organizations of conventional ecological science in different institutional contexts to support new biodiversity objectives. Arguing that these new conservation practices are remaking not just environmental knowledge and policies but materially reshaping environments themselves, this research provides a framework for evaluating the heterogeneous and often surprising consequences of conservation interventions worldwide. Sebastian PfotenhauerSebastian is a post-doctoral researcher on science, innovation, and higher education policy based at the MIT Technology & Policy Program and the MIT Portugal Program, and a fellow at the Harvard Program Science, Technology and Society. His research interests revolve around strategies for capacity building in innovation and higher education, international university collaborations, the interrelation of innovation and education, the governance of complex socio-technical systems, and the physics of lasers and plasmas. In particular, he is interested in the role of complex international innovation partnerships as instruments for economic and societal development, and the global circulation of innovation models and best practices, for example in the case of MIT's international collaborations. He also enjoys teaching graduate level classes in science and technology policy at MIT. Matthew SampleMatthew Sample is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Washington and a visiting fellow at the Harvard STS program. His current dissertation research focuses on recent experiments in socio-ethical engagement with scientists and engineers, exploring the tension between social constraints and individual moral responsibility within technoscientific contexts. This project aims formulate a notion of technoscientific accountability that can accommodate social, ethical, and epistemic perspectives. Kyoko SatoKyoko Sato is Associate Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University and Senior Researcher on the Harvard STS Program's project, "The Fukushima Disaster and the Cultural Politics of Nuclear Power in the United States and Japan"(2013-2016). The project is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, with Sheila Jasanoff as the Principal Investigator, and explores how postwar nuclear governance evolved in Japan and the United States, as well as the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. More generally, her research focuses on how culture and politics intersect in the development of sociotechnical systems in different national contexts. Her previous work examined the intersection of cultural meaning, policy frameworks, and politics in the development of genetically modified food in Japan, France, and the United States. Claire StockwellClaire Stockwell is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford's Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and is a pre-doctoral Visiting Fellow with the STS Program for the 2014-2015 academic year. Her research focuses on how knowledge is constructed to support legal arguments in climate change litigation. While at Harvard, Claire will analyze US climate case law and conduct interviews with key actors involved in the litigation. Shana VijayanShana Vijayan is a Research Fellow with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Her particular interest is in audit systems, as a form of socio-technological intervention, which stems from an established career in health management. She is concerned with the means and methods by which public health services are held to account. Her research investigates the development of performance cultures in private healthcare concentrating on how performance management is deployed in the United States. Alexander WentlandAlexander Wentland is currently a PhD student in the "Innovation society today" graduate program at the Technical University of Berlin. His dissertation deals with different aspects and dimensions of technological futures imagined for the electrification of transportation. Due to his background and personal interests in innovation studies and STS, he is also affiliated with the "Science Policy Group" at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB). |

subset: commoncrawl


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Loyd DeuPree
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Memorial services for Loyd DeuPree are at 10 a.m. Friday at the First Congregational Church. Services will conclude at the church.
Memorial donations may be made to the First Congregational Church or the Craig Lions Club in care of Grant Mortuary.
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