Monthly Archives: February 2011

An ode to the Wisconsin State Capitol

cc image from alumroot on flickr

As painful and divisive as the recent events in Madison, WI have been, I’ve been overcome by the openness and civic use of the Wisconsin State Capitol and the adjoining Capitol Square. Mammoth recently posted an excellent piece on observations of the social action and public space as they’ve intersected at Tahrir Square in Cairo. In that same vein, I’d like to highlight the civic spaces and public buildings in Madison as another interesting case.

———————-

Madison is a planned city, home to the state’s capital and the state’s flagship university. James Doty, a territorial judge passing through the area in the 1830s loved the site so much, he purchased land, platted streets and lots, and convinced the territorial legislature to designate his paper city as the new capital. Doty selected a site on the natural isthmus between lakes Mendota and Monona for the city, designating the highest ground for a capitol building and public square. Influenced by Washington, DC, Doty planned a rectilinear grid of streets, augmented by radial avenues emanating in all directions from the new Capitol Square. The narrow nature of the isthmus cut most of those radial avenues short, but the natural setting more than made up for the truncated corridors.

image from Madison: A Model City – UW history collection

Several buildings served as Wisconsin’s capitol, occupying the same square. The state looked into expanding their current building when it was destroyed in a fire in 1904 – just five weeks after the legislature voted to suspend the Capitol’s fire insurance policy.

A new capitol arose soon thereafter. The current building was constructed between 1906 and 1917. Keeping in line with the grandiose ambitions of the city itself, the planned building would have eclipsed the US Capitol in height – though the final design brought the dome to a height of 284 feet – three feet shy of the US Capitol. The Capitol has four wings, oriented to the cardinal directions. Each wing looks towards one of the radiant streets from Madison’s original plan. The building is grandiose, ornate, and inspiring – keeping to the City Beautiful movement of the time.

cc image from kern.justin on flickr

Around the same time as the new capitol’s construction, the City enlisted the help of John Nolen, an aspiring planner and landscape architect to help beautify the city’s parks and public spaces. Nolen crafted a plan to improve Madison’s parks, connect the city to the surrounding lakes, and generally improve the city’s civic spaces.

images from Madison: A Model City – UW history collection

Nolen also offered improvements for State Street. State Street was the one radial avenue that cut across Madison’s grid without interruption from one of the city’s lakes. State Street also served as an important link between Madison’s two key institutions – the State Capitol on the eastern end, and the University of Wisconsin campus on the western end.

image from Madison: A Model City – UW history collection

Many of Nolen’s ideas, like those of many City Beautiful plans, were never fully implemented. Nevertheless, the Capitol Square remains a key civic space in Madison. State Street is still the key link between the Capitol and the University, lined with bars, restaurants, and shops. The terminal view of the Capitol Dome is a constant one for anyone in the city.

cc images from the queen of subtle and BoonLeeFamPhotography on flickr

———————-

Given the nearly constant expansion of the security impulse, the most remarkable thing about Madison’s plan, civic spaces, and public buildings is just how public and civic they remain. The Capitol Square hosts numerous events, from weekly outdoor orchestra concerts to Madison’s weekly farmer’s market.

Even the mundane daily uses are exemplary of the Capitol’s civic nature. Due to the city’s location on the isthmus, often the fastest way to get from one side to the other on foot is to walk through the Capitol. Unlike far too many civic buildings in Washington, DC, the Wisconsin Capitol remains open to the public, not fortified and protected like so many other civic buildings.

Nothing made this openness more apparent than the nearly constant protesting taking place over the past week and a half on the Capitol grounds and within the Capitol itself.

cc image from Lost Albatross on flickr

Two videos from Matt Wisniewski capture the spirit and the civic use of this particular space.

Protesters continue to occupy this public space, designating one corridor as a sleeping area, neatly organizing sleeping bags along corridor walls. They’re surviving on generous pizza donations from around the world. Obviously, the Capitol wasn’t designed as a residential structure and the constant use is taking its toll – however, police officers dispatched to move the protesters out of the public space so janitorial staff could clean decided to join the masses in the civic space instead.

———————–

I can’t imagine a similar event taking place in any of the public buildings in DC. None of them remain as open as the Wisconsin State Capitol. Philip Kennicott warned of the implications of closing the Supreme Court’s main entrance, symbolic of a larger issue with our civic and public buildings:

All across Washington, the doors, terraces and plazas of our essential public buildings have been closed off to the public, likely forever. But the closing of this front door, which will now be used only for exiting the building, is not just another front door lost to paranoia. It is the loss of what may be the nation’s most important portal.

…

By a thousand reflexive cuts, architecture loses its power to mean anything. The loss to the citizens of the United States is enormous. We are becoming a nation of moles, timorous creatures who scurry through side and subterranean entrances. Soon, we will lose our basic architectural literacy. The emotional experience of entering a grand space has been reduced to a single feeling: impatience in the august presence of the magnetometer.

Madison’s alt-weekly newspaper (appropriately titled for the city as The Isthmus), like many weeklies, has had some of the best coverage of the ongoing political saga unfolding in Madison. Bill Lueders stepped back on Thursday, offering perspective on the past two weeks, and their implications on the future of life and politics in the state of Wisconsin:

But as a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, I’m saddened — truly and deeply saddened — by what Walker has set in motion. It will change the state forever, causing profound and lasting damage, no matter how the budget stalemate plays out.

Scott Walker’s declaration of war against Wisconsin’s teachers, nurses, social workers, 911 operators, prison guards, park rangers, sanitation workers, snowplow operators, engineers, police officers and firefighters — and their inevitable decision to join the battle — could be for Wisconsin what the attacks of 9/11 were for the nation. It will create a deep before-and-after divide, between a time of relative innocence and a time of perpetual conflict and insecurity.

The difference is that the attacks of 9/11 were external, and stirred a sense of national unity. What has been fomented in Wisconsin is a rupture among ourselves, one that will ensure acrimony and contention for many years, perhaps decades. The dispute will be not just between Walker and his tens of thousands of newly impassioned enemies, but between the state’s citizens — worker against worker, neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member. (Personally, I think a colonoscopy without anesthesia might be less painful than the next get-together of my extended family.)

Regardless of how the Wisconsin budget situation plays out, how the political winds shift in response, I hope these events have not provided the security apparatus with the opportunity to restrict access to the Wisconsin State Capitol. I hope these events are not the first reflexive cut of many that Philip Kennicott warned of. The scars from this particular budget fight will last for a long time in Wisconsin, but I hope this “perpetual conflict and insecurity,” as Lueders puts it, does not claim the openness and civic purpose of the Wisconsin State Capitol as one of its victims.

The direct damage will be bad enough.

Vestiges of DC’s streetcar network

700 Block, 8th St SE

Winter’s freeze/thaw cycle chipped enough asphalt away from 8th St SE to expose the remaining vault of DC’s old streetcar system. The rails themselves are gone, but the underground vault that provided power for the system remains, as does one of the square access panels in the street. The rest of 8th Street contains discolorations and visible stress in the asphalt where more of the square access panels would have been, indicating more of the vault structure remains just below the surface.

New York’s streetcars used similar conduit technology. The extensive website nycsubway.org has some fascinating pictures from New York’s streetcar infrastructure remnants, as well as this handy explanation of the system:

This isn’t your basic track of two rails and wooden crossties. The track structure extends some two and a half feet into the earth. Under the paving blocks are cast iron yokes 5 feet apart, the trapezoidal shape shown here and in the previous line drawing. The yoke holds the shape of the lengthwise pieces, keeping the rails the right distance apart and keeping the conduit open.

The diagram above shows a double-track cable installation, but the basics are the same on Broadway. There is a yoke every 5 feet, and a pair of insulator covers around the conduit every 15 feet, and a cleaning manhole cover every 105 feet, of which every fourth one (420 feet apart) was also a slightly larger feeder manhole. It’s a lot of cast iron and concrete.

The exact diagram used here is actually for a cable car track, not a streetcar conduit – but the engineering is essentially the same. Some of DC’s old cable cars were converted to electric power.

Wikipedia also has a great image of track work at 14th and G Sts NW, showing the extensive cast iron underpinnings of these underground conduits:

GGW and PoP have also taken note of remnants of DC’s streetcar infrastructure in the past, some of the last remaining signs of a once extensive network.

Ad-hoc internet infrastructures

CC image from sarnil on flickr

In this week’s City Paper, Lydia DePillis has a story about an ad-hoc wireless broadband internet network that emerged out of community discussions in DC’s Bloomingdale neighborhood.

Finally, the group gave up on city assistance, turning to a local IT company that could get them a commercial broadband subscription. They set up “gateway” routers at Big Bear and in Rustik Tavern and then started knocking on doors to ask whether homeowners wouldn’t mind hosting a free “repeater.” For a few hundred dollars in hardware and about $800 a year for broadband, a six-block long stretch of houses now has WiFi access—for much less than the cost of individually subscribing each area household to Verizon or Comcast.

For Youngblood, wiring the neighborhood is worth it because of what he can then build on top: Through his company, Youngblood Capital Group, he hopes to develop a “smart grid” in the area that could support things like solar energy systems. “You build the network, and then you’ve got this fertile field you can grow everything in,” he says.

The application on a neighborhood basis is interesting. I can speak to plenty of anecdotal accounts of similar networks on a smaller, apartment building basis where neighbors will chip in for one internet connection and share it via a wireless router – or even less formal ones where dwellers simply ‘steal’ wireless from unencrypted networks within range.

Lydia’s follow-up blog post addresses some of the competitive concerns that the to-the-curb providers might have:

But community wireless projects in America haven’t taken off to the same extent as they have in Europe, in part because of pushback from the big carriers. (Although, as Youngblood pointed out, resistance is sort of silly: Expanding wireless to underserved areas is a good thing for cable companies, since some new users will inevitably want the stronger connection they can only get from “fiber to the curb.” In that way, free or low-cost wireless is like a gateway drug. “We get people addicted,” as he puts it. “If you want the strong stuff, go get it from the man.”)

The decentralization (and democratization) of these kinds of infrastructures is an intriguing prospect.

Thank you for not driving

900 block, M St NW

Imported from Detroit

My favorite ad from last weekend’s Super Bowl was easily Chrysler’s two-minute defense of the Motor City. The ad aired during the 3rd quarter of the game, generating lots of buzz afterward.

The dialogue that’s followed is often conflicted. Was this an ad for a new car, or was it an ad for the city of Detroit? Was it a defense of American industry?

Visually, the ad is stunning. Tightly cropped shots show active industry, graceful old skyscrapers and works of civic art, as well as Detroiters going about their days. As Aaron Renn notes, it is an amazing presentation of a civic brand, perhaps one of the strongest we have in the United States even despite the city’s downtrodden reputation:

What this really shows once again is the power of brand Detroit. Is there another city in America an ad like that could have been created about? Even in a radically different style, it’s hard to imagine someone using the power of a city’s brand to sell a product in that way other than perhaps a tourist town or in a totally facile way (“We brew our beer in Milwaukee”). If someone tried, it certainly wouldn’t be nearly as effective. There are lots of cities that have “been to hell and back,” but I can only think of two where you could pull off something like this: Detroit and New Orleans. Not even Chicago has the brand power to resonate like this, showing at least one way in which Detroit actually exceeds the Windy City.

In the comments, Aaron Naparstek notes the inherent contradictions between Detroit the city image and Detroit as the American auto industry:

As pure TV product the ad is phenomenal. As branding for the U.S. auto industry, however, the ad is deeply, fatally flawed. After all of what has happened these last few years, it is stunning that Detroit is choosing to brand itself in the American consciousness with a “luxury” muscle sedan that gets 21 mpg on a good day.

DC, of course, is often victim to the same phenomenon, where “Washington” means the federal government, yet it also means the city of 600,000 residents along the Potomac River. Detroit, however, seems to embrace this particular association as one of hard work, quality, craftsmanship, and luxury – even if the actual success of the car the ad is selling remains to be seen.

Detroit Industry – CC image from Tobias Higbie on flickr

Nevertheless, the imagery is compelling. From Joe Louis’ fist to the Spirit of Detroit to Campus Martius to Detroit Industry, the city and its residents embrace that connection and that brand – while District residents might instead talk about the difference between ‘Washington’ and ‘DC.’

The power of skyscrapers

Chicago skyline CC image from 1’UP on flickr

Several friends have pointed me to this Atlantic piece by Ed Glaeser on the power of skyscrapers and density in shaping the city, and the role cities play in our economy. Some snippets:

On the micromanagement of zoning codes:

New York slowed its construction of skyscrapers after 1933, and its regulations became ever more complex. Between 1916 and 1960, the city’s original zoning code was amended more than 2,500 times. In 1961, the City Planning Commission passed a new zoning resolution that significantly increased the limits on building. The resulting 420-page code replaced a simple classification of space—business, residential, unrestricted—with a dizzying number of different districts, each of which permitted only a narrow range of activities. There were 13 types of residential district, 12 types of manufacturing district, and no fewer than 41 types of commercial district.

Each type of district narrowly classified the range of permissible activities. Commercial art galleries were forbidden in residential districts but allowed in manufacturing districts, while noncommercial art galleries were forbidden in manufacturing districts but allowed in residential districts. Art-supply stores were forbidden in residential districts and some commercial districts. Parking-space requirements also differed by district. In an R5 district, a hospital was required to have one off-street parking spot for every five beds, but in an R6 district, a hospital had to have one space for every eight beds.

On gentrification, growth, and the hidden costs of height limits and other restrictions:

The relationship between housing supply and affordability isn’t just a matter of economic theory. A great deal of evidence links the supply of space with the cost of real estate. Simply put, the places that are expensive don’t build a lot, and the places that build a lot aren’t expensive. Perhaps a new 40-story building won’t itself house any quirky, less profitable firms, but by providing new space, the building will ease pressure on the rest of the city. Price increases in gentrifying older areas will be muted because of new construction. Growth, not height restrictions and a fixed building stock, keeps space affordable and ensures that poorer people and less profitable firms can stay and help a thriving city remain successful and diverse. Height restrictions do increase light, and preservation does protect history, but we shouldn’t pretend that these benefits come without a cost.

On the inherent dynamism of cities and the shapes of growth:

Great cities are not static—they constantly change, and they take the world along with them. When New York and Chicago and Paris experienced great spurts of creativity and growth, they reshaped themselves to provide new structures that could house new talent and new ideas. Cities can’t force change with new buildings—as the Rust Belt’s experience clearly shows. But if change is already happening, new building can speed the process along.

Yet many of the world’s old and new cities have increasingly arrayed rules that prevent construction that would accommodate higher densities. Sometimes these rules have a good justification, such as preserving truly important works of architecture. Sometimes, they are mindless NIMBYism or a misguided attempt at stopping urban growth. In all cases, restricting construction ties cities to their past and limits the possibilities for their future. If cities can’t build up, then they will build out. If building in a city is frozen, then growth will happen somewhere else.

It’s a fantastic read. I imagine this piece is a prelude for Glaeser’s recently released book, “The Triumph of the City.” I will have to pick up a copy.

City Block

a work in progress…