Monthly Archives: January 2010

Adaptation in housing, organically

A few housing-related tidbits that I’ve accumulated over the past week.

Richard Layman laments the lack of quality development, noting the difficulties involved with larger scale infill projects, especially when compared against smaller scale renovation projects of single rowhouses or small apartment buildings. The smaller scale renovations take on a more organic character, while the scale of the larger projects necessitates more centralized planning and development.

As for your point about “organic” development, in my experience, which I admit is relatively limited, my sense is organic (re)development that includes significant amounts of new construction is more about adaptive reuse of extant places, complemented by (hopefully high quality) infill.

Along similar lines, Rob Holmes over at mammoth points to a great discussion of housing in Haiti (Incremental House, Wired), with a particular focus on adaptation and organic elements. This isn’t the first time mammoth has mentioned the idea of incremental housing development, which Rob touched on in his very interesting list of the best architecture of the decade (including more infrastructural/engineered spaces like the Large Hadron Collider). Quinta Monroy, an incremental housing project in northern Chile, has a fascinating approach to both building shelter and also growing and adapting with the residents:

Quinta Monroy is a center-city neighborhood of Iquique, a city of about a quarter million lying in northern Chile between the Pacific Ocean and the Atacama Desert. Elemental’s Quinta Monroy housing project settles a hundred families on a five thousand square meter site where they had persisted as squatters for three decades. The residences designed by Elemental offer former squatters the rare opportunity to live in subsidized housing without being displaced from the land they had called their home, provides an appreciating asset which can improve their family finances, and serves as a flexible infrastructure for the self-constructed expansion of the homes.

Elemental’s first decision was to retain the inner city site, a decision which was both expensive and spatially limiting: there is only enough space on the site to provide thirty individual homes or sixty-six row homes, so a different typology was required. High rise apartments would provide the needed density, but not provide the opportunity for residents to expand their own homes, as only the top and ground floors would have any way to connect to additions. Elemental thus settled on a typology of connected two-story blocks, snaking around four common courtyards, designed as a skeletal infrastructure which the families could expand over time:

We in Elemental have identified a set of design conditions through which a housing unit can increase its value over time; this without having to increase the amount of money of the current subsidy.

In first place, we had to achieve enough density, (but without overcrowding), in order to be able to pay for the site, which because of its location was very expensive. To keep the site, meant to maintain the network of opportunities that the city offered and therefore to strengthen the family economy; on the other hand, good location is the key to increase a property value.

Second, the provision a physical space for the “extensive family” to develop, has proved to be a key issue in the economical take off of a poor family. In between the private and public space, we introduced the collective space, conformed by around 20 families. The collective space (a common property with restricted access) is an intermediate level of association that allows surviving fragile social conditions.

Third, due to the fact that 50% of each unit’s volume, will eventually be self-built, the building had to be porous enough to allow each unit to expand within its structure. The initial building must therefore provide a supporting, (rather than a constraining) framework in order to avoid any negative effects of self-construction on the urban environment over time, but also to facilitate the expansion process.

Obviously, applying this idea to a western city (as opposed to a slum) raises a whole different set of issues, but it’s a particularly interesting idea when contrasted against the highly planned and professionally designed structures Richard Layman notes. It provides a jumping point to look at the continuum between several of the elements that the Incremental House mentions in their self-description:

Much of the housing around the world occupies a space in between the planned/unplanned, formal/informal and the professional/non-professional, offering people a small space space to negotiate the tremendous shifts taking place in the urban landscape.

DC’s stability provides less of an opportunity to shift between those poles, but the idea is nevertheless interesting. Rob Holmes expands on what this means:

Elemental, in other words, have exploited the values and aims of ownership culture (which mammoth has suggested understands the house to be first a machine for making money and only second to be a machine for living) not to support a broken system of real estate speculation and easy wealth, but to present architecture as a tool that can be provided to families. While the project is embedded with some of the assumptions of the architects (such as that faith in the potential of ownership culture, for better or worse), this tool is primarily presented as a framework, a scaffolding upon which families are able to make their own architecture.

Framework is a good way to put it – much of the work in planning seeks to establish frameworks (legal, physical, financial) around which cities and grow, evolve, and adapt – Layman’s point shows there is more we can do on that front.

Unhappy hipsters

Taking photos from Dwell and other such modern housing magazines and subverting their meaning with snarky captions can be quite entertaining.

It was comforting to know that the neighbors had stopped speaking.

You can come out when you can properly explain the differences between Modernist architecture and postmodern ornamentation.

Perceptions of density often miss the mark

Photo from cacophony76.

Density is one of the most important elements of any city, but also one of the most misunderstood.

However, the density of a site is often not what it initially seems – people will key on things like height, design, maintenance, and context rather than actually looking at what density means to them. It’s a natural, emotional reaction – but often misses the underpinning reality. Educating people on what density looks like is vitally important, as density is a crucial element of sustainable, urban places.

In Washington, DC, like many other places, people often have a visceral reaction against density. They assume more density means taller buildings in a low-rise city, but that need not be the case. These fears of density are not unfounded, however. Complaints about density often reveal other concerns, such as traffic congestion or design.

Dan Zack is a planner for Redwood City, CA. He recently gave a presentation out in California which included the following ‘quiz,’ asking attendees to quickly assess how dense a building or development is based on a passing glance at a photograph of the site. The clip is just shy of 12 minutes long. Take a look and see how accurate your perceptions of density are:

Density often gives rise to fears from neighbors about traffic congestion, crime, environmental quality, and many other factors. Outside the immediate community, people scream about social engineering and forcing people to live in dense environments, despite the fact that increased density is a product of market forces and substantial pent-up demand. Mr. Zack’s quiz shows how density is often not what it seems.

Height, for example, is only one factor in density. Paris is almost uniformly low-rise in nature, yet has extremely high densities. For DC, the takeaway message is that the city can continue to grow and add density without fundamentally altering the low-rise nature of the city. As DC continues to grow, adding more housing supply will be of vital importance. More households can also help certain areas of the city reach a critical mass of retail buying power, enabling stores and restaurants to survive and thrive.

Just as height is only a factor in density, density itself is only a factor in the overall health of a city. Put in simple terms, a city needs the Three D’s – Density, Diversity, and Design – to thrive. As Mr. Zack’s quiz shows, diversity (of housing sizes, price points, neighborhoods) and design all factor in to how we perceive density. Each of the Three D’s is deeply interwoven with the others, and touch on all urban issues, from transportation to affordable housing.

Emphasizing the need for density at this juncture is important, as well. Cities are not static environments. They change a great deal over time. In the next 25 years, approximately 75% of the American built environment will either be renovated or built anew. Even accounting for a lull in demand from the Great Recession, American cities are in for a great deal of change.

The entirety of Mr. Zack’s presentation is well worth watching, and can be found below. His presentation is about 50 minutes long, and includes the ‘quiz’ clip above. In the remainder, he discusses at length all of the companion issues that need to be dealt with in addition to adding density, such as design, parking, transit, and walkability.

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington

Metro’s new board members set the bar…

….and other assorted links

Board games: Greater Greater Washington notes that the Feds have filled two of their four slots on the WMATA board, naming Mort Downey and Marcel Acosta to the positions.

Downey is a former executive for the US DOT under the Clinton Administration and is currently a transportation consultant. Acosta is the Executive Director of the NCPC, and formerly worked for the Chicago Transit Authority. Personally speaking, Downey is a regular commuter and rider on Metro, and Acosta lives car-free in DC.

DCist has some good quotables.

Downey, a consultant who previously served in the Clinton administration and as executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority — and a Vienna native who has ridden Metro for 20 years — has fairly modest aspirations as he takes his seat on the board on Thursday: “The federal government would like its employees to arrive at work on time, fundamentally alive.”

Can’t argue with focusing on your core mission.

Never mind the bollards: Second Ave. Sagas up in New York takes a look at some really horrendous security ‘bollards’ (using that term loosely) surrounding the new Atlantic Ave. LIRR Terminal in Brooklyn. Read up on the new terminal here (City Room, MTA press release).

When the new terminal building at Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, critics and columnists praised the light and airy nature of the building. Featuring a seemless integration of art and architecture, the new terminal building is representative of the MTA’s current approach toward offering its customers a convenient and mostly state-of-the-art facilities when it opens new structures. Outside, though, the security bollards tell a different story, one of overreaction and blocked sidewalks to a public structure that needs to be able to handle heavy pedestrian flow.

When the new building first opened, attention was focused on the inside, but the security bollards, shown above, drew some warranted criticisms. Gersh Kuntzman in The Brooklyn Paper was particular critical of their appearance and size. He noted the bunker-like mentality of the security measures and called the giant bollards “14 mammoth concrete coffins that give the beautiful new facility the look of an outpost in the Green Zone.”

Atlantic Ave station bollards - CC image from Ben Kabak on flickr.

Yikes. SAS continues:

The specter of terrorism and counterterrorist measures make for uncomfortable subjects. New York City’s subways are notoriously porous, and New Yorkers try not to dwell on the ways our city has become a target for America’s enemies. Still, these bollards do nothing to make a new train terminal accessible or user-friendly. They exacerbate fears about our safety while blocking the city’s sidewalks and its transit access points. There are tasteful ways to guard against terrorism, and then there are these granite blocks, seemingly dropped from a quarry onto Flatbush Ave. with no regard for purpose or appearance.

Here in DC, we have to deal with all of the same terrorism concerns. Clearly, some bollards are better than others in terms of their design and day to day function. We have some well-designed examples here in DC (the paths/retaining walls around the Washington Monument come to mind), some bad ones (the doors at the Capitol Visitors Center that are too heavy to open), and plenty of ‘temporary’ barriers scattered across town.

Fifty Nifty United States: Matt Yglesias links to a James Fallows bit on an idea from Fakeisthenewreal.com to re-draw state lines every so often as a means of ensuring a relatively equal population distribution amongst all 50 states.

Two thoughts – if this seems odd, perhaps it shouldn’t. Each state will be going through this process in the next few years after the collection of the 2010 Census data. Even in DC, we’ll re-evaluate the ward boundaries to ensure that each one has a roughly similar number of people within it.

Also, the proposal reminds me of the 70s era proposal for the 38 states of America.

Political realities would likely stop anything like this from ever happening, but it certainly is an interesting thought experiment. Furthermore, when looking at the political implications, it’s worthwhile to note how the arbitrary political boundaries have real political consequences in Congress.

Streetcars, eh? Planning Pool has a nice audio slideshow (complete with narration in a lovely Canadian accent) of Vancouver’s demonstration streetcar line. The line is using borrowed cars from Brussels, and will be evaluated during the upcoming Olympics for future, permanent installation.

“Olympic Line” Streetcar Demonstration in Vancouver, Canada from Planning Pool on Vimeo.

Perhaps some foreshadowing for DC?

Dogs and Cats living together…

Mass hysteria!

Two animal/transit notes:

Russian dogs riding the trains: There have long been packs of stray dogs in Moscow’s Metro, but a couple of them have learned to ride the trains – and do so for fun, apparently. (hat tip – Human Transit, Andrew Sullivan)

Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.”

The metro dog also has uncannily good instincts about people, happily greeting kindly passers by, but slinking down the furthest escalator to avoid the intolerant older women who oversee the metro’s electronic turnstiles. “Right outside this metro,” says Neuronov, gesturing toward Frunzenskaya station, a short distance from the park where we were speaking, “a black dog sleeps on a mat. He’s called Malish. And this is what I saw one day: a bowl of freshly ground beef set before him, and slowly, and ever so lazily, he scooped it up with his tongue while lying down.”

Much more over at English Russia:

The commercial revolution of Moscow made their usual feeding places like trash bins out of direct reach, so they had to get to know new ways of getting their piece of food. That’s how appeared those “Shawarma hunts”. Sometimes though they use more gentle methods. Young girl sits on the bench to eat her hot dog – a big cute looking dog appears from the surrounding bushes and puts her head on her knees. The girl can’t help herself sharing the hotdog with a dog.

Among some more amazing skill those Moscow dogs are the ability not to miss their stop while going on the subway train. Biologists say dogs have very nice sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”,Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car – those are less crowded usually.

And they’re savvy subway travelers, at that.

Dog in Moscow's Metro - pic from English Russia

Dog on a Moscow Metro train - pic from English Russia

Sadly, Casper the bus-riding Cat was killed in a hit-and-run incident in Plymouth. Casper liked to ride the bus, commuting with all the regular folks and even waiting politely in line to hop on. (hat tip – GGW)

The adventurous cat politely queues behind other passengers at the bus stop outside his Barne Barton home, then quietly trots on board and curls up on a seat for the ride.

…

Susan found out about Casper’s regular 11-mile round trips when he followed her to the bus stop one morning, avoiding passing vehicles by a whisker.

“The driver told me he gets on all the time,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.

“He queues up in line with people and just sits patiently in the queue good as gold – it’ll be ‘Person, person, person, cat, person, person.’

Casper. Image from the Telegraph.

Precisely.

Minneapolis LRV, a project built with New Starts before the total focus on the CEI. CC image from joelplutchak on flickr.

Following up from previous discussions of precision and accuracy, Elana Schor at Streetsblog delves deeper into the subject.

While addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors, assistant transport secretary for policy Polly Trottenberg was asked by the mayor of Clearwater, Florida, to outline how the agency might “quantify livability” in its upcoming rulemaking.

“Not everything can be measured,” Trottenberg said, adding that her colleagues wanted to avoid making the “mistake of false precision.”

She also addressed the pitfalls of relying on in-house economic predictions to assess transit projects. Several local rail lines have quickly exceeded initial federal ridership projections, casting doubt on the models used for the so-called New Starts program.

“Sometimes we’ve gotten so tangled up in the perfect mathematical science — we did it in New Starts,” Trottenberg said.

Data is good. But we cannot limit our information inputs to just quantitative measures. And when we do use them, we need to understand their limits. I’m eager to see how the FTA decides to evaluate the livability criteria, but the acknowledgment that the numbers have limits is a big step forward.

Assorted Portland tidbits

Portland Aerial Tram - image from joseph readdy on flickr

Ah, Portland. Metropolis of planning, bicycling, and all things creative. A couple of things have piled up in my open tabs or in my reader.

Portland hasn’t seen huge shifts in mode share (as noted here previously – hat tip to Jarrett Walker here and here), despite large investments in light rail, streetcars, and even an aerial tram.

Picture perfect? Aaron Renn penned an op-ed piece for the Oregonian, providing a little perspective about Portland’s image as the perfect planning city. Renn doesn’t question Portland’s overall quality, just if the reputation is deserved or not – if the praise matches the performance.

Renn follows his op-ed with a blog post, delving deeper into the stats, comparing hip and cool Portland to the decidedly less cool Indianapolis.

I note as a positive that Portland was clearly ahead of other similar sized cities in understanding the importance of density, transit, bike lanes, etc. But more importantly, that the “Portland model” had a wide influence in America. Perhaps Portland has had a greater influence on America’s urban environments than any other city its relative size in history. That’s an amazing accomplishment if you think about it. And what’s more, that influence has been a good thing.Naturally, they don’t need me to just tell them “It’s all good”. So on the areas for development side I noted their underperforming economy. It’s not so much that Portland is particularly suffering in this recession, though it is, or that it is a failure in an absolute sense, which it is not. No, rather I look at it like diving. There are two aspects: execution and degree of difficulty. Portland has very low degree of difficulty, so we would expect it to perform much better.

Renn’s takeaway is that policy can only do so much. That’s true, to some extent – policy sets the rules in place, and the dynamics of the city have to do the rest. There are also factors well beyond any city’s (or any region’s) control.

Like any data set, it’s wise to look at the limitations of the data.

Putting the emphasis back on Portland’s transportation policies, Jarrett Walker looks at car ownership rates in cities across the US – and Portland doesn’t even crack the top 50. (DC checks in at #4, with a 36.93% of households owning no cars – jurisdictions 1, 2, and 3 are all in Metropolitan NYC). Walker identifies three criteria that correlate with high rates of non-auto households – age of the city’s fabric (with an anecdotal correlation to density and design), poverty, and presence of major universities.

So here’s the question: How long will it take for a city that lacks age, poverty, or dominant universities to achieve the kind of low car ownership that these 50 demonstrate? How soon, for example, will a city be able to create a combination of density, design, and mixture of uses that yields the same performance as an old city that naturally has those features?

Portland is probably the most promising such city in the US, and it’s not on the list. Only 14% of households there don’t have a car, so it’s probably well down in the second 50. Like many cities, Portland has been doing everything it can to build a dense mixed-use urban environment. It’s the sort of city that convinces the Safeway supermarket chain to rebuild their store with townhouses and residential towers on top. But while people are moving into the inner city, they don’t seem to be selling their cars when they do, nor do they seem to be going to work by transit.

For me, the takeaway from this is the long lag time and staying power of transportation infrastructure. Even as older cities, built around walking and transit, have decayed, they remain more car-less than their fellow cities built with the car, to say nothing of cities built for the car.

I recall attending a lecture in grad school (and I cannot for the life of me remember who exactly gave it), noting the staying power of our street networks and other infrastructure patterns. In short, land use changes on a big, extensive scale take a long time to happen. Walker continues:

How much are zero-car households constrained by overly abundant residential parking? It’s still hard to sell a modern tower unit without a parking space included, even though there are many such units in pre-car cities like Manhattan and San Francisco, and many are quite desirable. What would it take to replicate that desirability in new inner cities like Portland’s? Couldn’t it be done at least in the name of affordable housing?

All good questions to ask, even if only asked rhetorically.

Finally, some pretty pictures. Free Association Design has some great planning graphics from Portland. Fun stuff to look at.

Portland's public realm. Image from the City of Portland

Portland's zoning code, graphically depicted w/ height limits and mixed uses (red shading).

Good stuff.

Cost-effectiveness

Streetcar tracks, H St NE - CC image from flickr

Over the past couple of days, there have been lots of reactions to the DOT’s decision to lessen the importance of their cost-effectiveness measures in decisions on new transit starts funding (TTP, Yglesias, TNR, TOW, Streetsblog), almost all of them positive. There are, however, some key points to consider. With the emphasis on livability as opposed to cost-effectiveness, the question will now be about measuring that livability. Jarrett Walker notes:

Great news, perhaps, but I look forward to seeing how FTA is going to turn something as subjective as livability into a quantifiable measure that can be used to score projects, particularly since the payoffs lie in development that a proposed transit line might be expected to trigger, but that usually isn’t a sure thing at the point when you’re deciding to fund the line. And of course, travel time does still matter.

Measurement is indeed the key. Part of the problem of the Bush Administration’s emphasis on the CEI was an expansive definition of costs and a rather narrow definition of ‘effectiveness.’

The other problem is one that Donald Shoup talks about extensively in his book, The High Cost of Free Parking. Namely, often imprecise data points are given undue precision in a bias towards quantifiable results and numbers – precision and accuracy are two different things, and it is important not to conflate them:

HOW FAR IS IT from San Diego to San Francisco? An estimate of 632.125 miles is precise—but not accurate. An estimate of somewhere between 400 and 500 miles is less precise but more accurate because the correct answer is 460 miles. Nevertheless, if you had no idea how far it is from San Diego to San Francisco, whom would you believe: someone who confidently says 632.125 miles, or someone who tentatively says somewhere between 400 and 500 miles? Probably the first, because precision implies certainty.

This doesn’t disprove Jarrett’s point – there are still metrics that can be used for more qualitative factors – but the larger issue here is a move away from false precision and towards outcomes that are more accurate – outcomes that better reflect the true (qualitative and quantitative) nature of cities.

With that in mind, it’s interesting to read some reactions published in the National Journal (h/t Planetizen).

Anthony Shorris: The new approach laid out by Secretary Lahood should force a re-thinking of all of our evaluative tools — cost-benefit analysis, alternatives analysis, environmental impact statements — with an eye toward re-balancing them away from an excessive reliance on only those measures that can be readily quantified. This re-thinking should be inter-departmental (including other agencies and OMB) and inter-disciplinary (including the perspectives of urban planners and designers as well as economists). One thing the financial crash should have taught us is that there are limitations to even the most seemingly sophisticated financial models, and that apparently crisp spreadsheets are no substitute for the prudent exercise of judgment that the American people have a right to expect of their leaders.

William Millar, APTA: With the action taken by DOT to consider all the factors required by law, transit projects can now be looked at from a holistic perspective. By judging a project on the multiple benefits it offers (i.e. mobility, economic development, environmental impact, land use improvements etc.), a well-rounded and more informed decision can be made. By removing the barrier that the Bush Administration implemented, the process is now in alignment with how it was originally intended to be.

Projects must still be cost effective and meet at least an overall medium rating in project justification and local financing. However, now, instead of a narrow prism through which to judge a project, a wider lens will offer a larger perspective. It should encourage innovative projects to be proposed and funded.

Links – bad day for the Midwest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obligatory DC connection:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fun with maps and movies

DCist takes note of Matt Yglesias’ tweet on the New York Times’ fantastic interactive map of various metropolitan areas, broken down by zip codes and how popular each of Netflix’s top 50 rentals of 2009 was in those areas.

The geographic patterns are fascinating, and quite revealing about the social and economic geography of the DC area.

Some screenshots (click to see full size):

Tyler Perry is popular in PG County, but not so much at Andrews AFB. Also note the other cities on the right.

Milk presents an almost complete opposite map of popularity.

Role Models. Complete with spikes in popularity at couple military bases (Andrews AFB, Fort Meyer, and Fort Meade) and two colleges (Georgetown and Maryland).

Absolutely great stuff. Maps are available for 12 Metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Chicago, DC, the Bay Area, LA, Seattle, the Twin Cities, Denver, ATL, Dallas and Miami.

City Block

a work in progress…