Five years ago today: "The more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people."

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

Originally published on June 3, 2014 and just as true today as then.

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Are we bugging you with facts? We don't mean to bug you.

More Narrative (Rational Urbanism)

There are conceptual links which, somehow, form narratives in the news media, and others which don’t. Urban homicides form a narrative. Whether at a bar at closing time, a domestic dispute, a drug deal gone bad, or something gang related they are all bound together as a tale of death and the streets. That they are linked more to behavior and identity than place goes unnoticed and uncommented because it unwinds the narrative.

The story of death and the road, as distinct from death and the streets, is told much differently. It is told as a tale of behavior and identity (speed, age, drunkenness) but almost never a story of place. Place rating sites completely ignore traffic fatalities and pedestrian deaths in their calculations of livability despite the fact that there is clearly a causational link between place and fatality and injury: the more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people.

Or Market Street: "Don’t let your Main Street -- or any street -- turn in to a cartoon version of Main Street."

At least Nicolae wasn't hypocritical about it.

The following link probably is more applicable to Jeffersonville's emerging downtown building projects, but it's still worthy of note, for this phrase alone: "cartoon version."

As in, a cartoon version of downtown revitalization.

I'm waiting for a scholar somewhere to write the book about the way that a whole generation of Americans, maybe two, has mistaken Disney World for the Real World, with generic cookie-cutter plastic facades substituted for genuine essences -- and another whole generation of engineers and design "experts" making out like bandits.

When you look at HWC's plan for Market Street beautification, and witness the delighted reaction of City Hall functionaries to the merest mention of IKEA furniture, it's plain that none of it has to do with what makes New Albany unique and distinctive. It's almost like a disease, not a design.

Even the historic preservationists fall victim to this. They'll sacrifice their own credibility and lots of tax revenues to "save" the Reisz Building, then acquiesce without a murmur as HWC foists another faux street redesign on us, one that resembles what you'd expect to see at ... that's right, Disney World. 

The Kool-Aid is very strong, and evidently they're very weak. 

From McMansion to McMain Street, by Michael Huston (CNU)

Like the McMansion, the McMain Street attempts to mimic the complex roof massing of many buildings in a single building. Here are ideas on better ways to preserve or create Main Street character.

So, don’t let your Main Street—or any street—turn in to a cartoon version of Main Street! Planners and designers that want to preserve—or create—the character of the traditional Main Street should be more attentive as to the way this goal is achieved. Consider these tips:

• Whenever possible, develop with smaller lot increments (consider de-coupling parking to assist in this).
• If small increments are not possible, show restraint in the number of breaks and the way they are articulated (more up and down, and less in and out).
• Let hotels, banks, and other larger building types be expressed as single buildings with thoughtfully composed facades that more honestly reflect the true nature of the building type.
• Keep in mind that facade designs that are viewed only in 2-dimensional elevation form can be deceptively complex when viewed in 3-dimensions from the angle of the street and sidewalk.
• Postsript: A search for the term “McMain Street” turned up a similar definition in the Urban Dictionary as follows: “A new centrally planned shopping mall designed to look like a small town center but filled with big corporate chains.” In this article, the term is applied to any building that attempts to mimic multiple buildings within the structure of a single building.

100 years of Bauhaus: toward a universal language of design.

It's a three-part documentary film, and well worth the time.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

Spongebuild Squareparts: "I think accountants are designing these buildings.”

It is a recurring question.

Why do all new apartment buildings look the same? by Patrick Sisson (Curbed)

The bland, boxy apartment boom is a design issue, and a housing policy problem

A wave of sameness has washed over new residential architecture. U.S. cities are filled with apartment buildings sporting boxy designs and somewhat bland facades, often made with colored panels and flat windows.

Due to an Amazon-fueled apartment construction boom over the last decade, Seattle has been an epicenter of this new school of structural simulacra. But Seattle is not alone. Nearly every city, from Charlotte to Minneapolis, has seen a proliferation of homogenous apartments as construction has increased again in the wake of the financial recession.

This is hilarious.

A Twitter query seeking to name this ubiquitous style was a goldmine. Some suggestions seemed inspired by the uniformity of design in computer programs and games: Simcityism, SketchUp contemporary, Minecraftsman, or Revittecture. Some took potshots at the way these buildings looked value-engineered to maximize profit: Developer modern, McUrbanism, or fast-casual architecture. Then there are the aesthetic judgement calls: contemporary contempt, blandmarks, LoMo (low modern), and Spongebuild Squareparts.

Getting down to the particle board of the matter:

Good architecture should always respond to the local context. In the case of these buildings, the local economic context just happens to be the same in just about every major U.S. city.

“Critics don’t understand what we’re working with, the parameters and the financial constraints,” says Black. “It’s like any other business: If you’re selling autos or selling widgets, there are certain costs, and a certain profit you need to make to do business in the future.”

Not often in New Albany, but imagining "what the world might look like if the people who designed it – politicians, planners, developers and architects – were more diverse."

OMG.

Mayor Jeff Gahan's pathological need for complete civic thought control has manifested itself in the form of institutional inbreeding in building and design.

A shockingly narrow (and yes, noticeably white-male-dominated) number of engineering, consulting and contracting companies increasingly are responsible for the city's design template, which appears to have been derived from frequent Bud Light Lime-soaked vacations at Disney World.

How we pay for it is another topic, for another time.

The same old inner circle suspects are contracted, and the same tithes magically appear in Gahan's exploding slush fund. The worst part of this isn't the shameless corruption, or the Dickeyesque complicity of the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party.

It's the numbing uniformity of design results, and to make this point, consider that to this very day in a place like Italy, the eight-decade-old fascist architectural legacy is so glaringly obvious that visitors barely need to look twice before thinking, yep, that's a Mussolini building, all right.

New Albany is being designed to be New Gahania, and these principles of design emanate from the C-minus mind of a Babbitt-grade veneer salesman.

City Hall should be encouraging diversity in design, but alas, design monoculture better serves the interest of campaign finance, and so we're becoming a theme park --and this theme is dismally bland, indeed. Read this wonderful essay about diversity in design, and remember:

#FireGahan2019, and #FlushTheClique

What would cities look like if they were designed by mothers?, by Christine Murray (The Guardian)

Architecture’s lack of diversity shows in environments created by people who never need step-free access or to take a bus

 ... Lately I’ve found myself imagining what the world might look like if the people who designed it – politicians, planners, developers and architects – were more diverse. I don’t believe that men and women design differently, or that poverty and ethnicity inform architecture, but lived experience is a great teacher. The regeneration projects of the past decade are more about planters and cappuccinos than access to free drinking water, public toilets, cheap groceries and a post office. They appear to solve only the first-world problems of the monocultural illuminati who created them.

What would our cities be like if mothers had more of a role in designing them? There would be ramps everywhere, for a start. Schlepping a pushchair around makes you think differently about stairs. I cried when my nearest station was revamped without the inclusion of a lift. To stand at the bottom of that flight of steps with two kids and a newborn in a pram is to experience the kind of despair usually reserved for rat-infested dungeons. Any station or public building undergoing refurbishment should by law be made step-free.

But I’m unlikely to find many sympathisers among architects. According to a recent survey by the Architectural Review, 75% of women in architecture don’t have children. Most architecture graduates think they’re designing access ramps for the odd wheelchair, not every child under three ...

Those drab "luxury" condos and apartments? "Policymakers, pretty much across the board, don't value design."

I'm just trying to figure out why The Breakwater Lofts at Duggins Flats gets an exemption from the street spam ordinance.

Those 'Luxury' Condos Look A Little Drab (WBUR)

In cities like Seattle, Boston, Denver and Charlotte, new "luxury" condos and apartment buildings are going up to meet demand for new housing. But many of these buildings look like simple, plain boxes.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with architecture critic and author Sarah Williams Goldhagen (@SarahWGoldhagen) about what makes these buildings "poor," "boring" architecture, and how monotonous architecture actually negatively affects us.

On why there are so many of these kinds of buildings being built

"There are a lot of different reasons for it. If you separate it out into supply and demand, one is that that's what's being built, so that's what's cheap to build, because the wheels are greased for that kind of architecture. Buy in bulk. That's what the market has been giving and so it's easy to give that. The second reason is that there's a general point of view, both among real estate developers, who are building these buildings, and among clients who are buying these buildings, that good design ... is an unaffordable luxury. And we know two things now: one, it's not unaffordable. It costs just as much to build a well-designed building as a poorly designed building. And neither is it a luxury because the research is clearly showing that people actually respond very poorly to those bad buildings.

The ways most states and cities set speed limits? A study shows "how these standard practices may actually lead to more speeding-related fatalities and injuries."

Jeeebus, what a week. I believe there are a substantial number of people locally who are willing to assert that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east -- to give up their first born to the French Foreign Legion and eat durian fruit on their toast for breakfast -- just so long as they can avoid admitting that I'm right about something.

This is priceless, and it pleases me to no end.

But enough of that.

Let's talk about how speed kills. The report in question deals strictly with passenger vehicles, but the correlations with other road users are clear. Here are two excerpts.

NTSB RELEASES FULL REPORT ON SPEEDING-RELATED CRASH STUDY, by Nimotalai Azeez (Smart Growth America)

The safe system approach introduced in the report considers the vulnerability of all road users. How will the recommendations make streets safer for people like you who commute by bike, and those who walk, bicycle, use transit, and drive?

We can’t talk about speeding without talking about people who walk, bike or use transit, younger and older road users, and people with disabilities. The safe system approach, discussed in the report, incorporates the needs of all road users, especially vulnerable ones. Although this report focuses on passenger vehicles, some recommendations apply to all road users by ensuring that appropriate speeds are maintained and enforced.

How does the study treat the influence of road design on traffic crashes?

The report focuses on countermeasures that are considered less widely accepted. But it is important to note that [changing] road design to address speed-related crashes is not yet widely implemented, even if it is generally accepted as good practice. Some jurisdictions are already addressing speed-related crashes using road design, by using Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data related to infrastructure and other data-driven measures. Some states, as I have seen firsthand, are already including speed as an emphasis area in their Strategic Highway Safety Plans (SHSP). Some jurisdictions are using design manuals with features that enhance compliance for lower speed limits rather than simply lowering speed limits.

The New Jersey Swamp Dragons? "I wanted kids wearing Swamp Dragons T-shirts to Knicks games."

This one's a fun read. In reality, "Swamp Dragons" as a name doesn't seem so far-fetched in the context of international basketball's logo and design schemes.

The New Jersey Swamp Dragons? It almost happened, by Zach Lowe (ESPN)

Over the summer, I enlisted several design experts, including Tom O'Grady, the NBA's former creative director, to help me rank all 30 team logos. O'Grady sifted through his archives, and unearthed a treasure: mock-ups of all the proposed uniforms, court designs, logos, shooting shirts, and warmup jackets -- most of which have never been made public -- the New Jersey Nets conjured when they nearly changed their name to Swamp Dragons two decades ago.

Yes, this happened. It was a flashbulb moment for any NBA geek growing up in the Tri-State area -- a goof only the sad-sack Nets would try. Recovering O'Grady's trove of lost designs was the only excuse we needed to take a trip down memory lane with all the key players ...

... In 1993 and 1994, the expansion Toronto franchise was choosing its name. Dragons was among the finalists, along with Huskies and Raptors. Spoelstra liked the "Dragons" name, provided Toronto went another direction.

SPOELSTRA: The Dragon came up right away, but we needed something to identify it locally. I was sitting in my office with Jim Lampariello, our vice president, and I just said, "Every time I look out the window here, I see this swamp. And every time I think of swamps, I think of swamp rats. What about that?"

He just said, "I don't think that's very nice. What about Swamp Dragons?" I loved it. Dragons are mythical, and fun.

BILLY PAIGE, FORMER NETS DIRECTOR OF MERCHANDISE AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: Everybody likes dragons. Dragons are cool. They always will be.

ALAN AUFZIEN, CO-OWNER/CEO: I thought it was a very good idea. It was different.

"How East Germany influenced design."

Here's an old East German joke.

A citizen orders a Trabant car. The salesman tells him to come back to pick it up in nine years. The customer asks: "Shall I come back in the morning or in the evening then?"

"You're joking, aren't you?"

"No, not at all. It's just that I need to know whether the plumber can come at 3 p.m. or not."

But there were some positive developments, too.

How East Germany influenced design

Several household items created in East Germany have turned into nostalgic collectibles. An exhibition in Berlin explores how these objects were designed. Some are surprisingly indestructible.

Design as protest: “What does disaster capitalism look like on black women’s bodies?”

If, by chance, I'm not elected mayor, it's becoming increasingly clear to me which direction I'll be traveling in future endeavors.

A Radical Design Movement Is Growing in New Orleans, by Nina Feldman (Next City)

City zoning that supports fair housing is boring. Very few people want to jump into a casual conversation about the best way to manage blight or reduce verbal street harassment. Unless you’re with friends, it’s next to impossible for a discussion about Confederate monuments or race and policing to become anything but inflammatory. (If you need evidence of that, refer to the comments section below any online article attempting to deal with those topics.) Yet these issues of urban justice can’t be left to trolls, or even politicians, to hash out — not if we want to see progress in our cities. Change will only come as a result of public awareness, dialogue and, ultimately, political pressure.

So, the question becomes a simple one: How do we get people to pay attention?

Over the past several years, activists in cities from Cairo to Oakland to Rio de Janeiro have increasingly found answers in the built environment and the field of design. They have protested inadequate infrastructure by building their own, deployed street art as political missive and reappropriated abandoned homes. All of this can be described as design as protest.

In a sense, design as protest is a matter of branding. It is a means of broadcasting a message and drawing people in.

Still confused about "road diets" and street redesign, Irv? Take a video tour and LEARN.

What? You mean just like in this document? Wow!

Even your grandchildren can watch a video ... and comprehend facts.

A Wonderfully Clear Explanation of How Road Diets Work: Planner Jeff Speck leads a video tour of four different street redesigns, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

A road diet is a great way for cities to reclaim some of the excess street space they’ve dedicated to cars—generally preserving traffic flows while improving safety and expanding mobility to other modes. But just as food dieters have Atkins, South Beach, vegan, and any number of options, road diets come in many flavors, too. Urban planner and Walkable City author Jeff Speck, in collaboration with graphic artist Spencer Boomhower, takes us on a tour of four types of street diets in a deliciously clear new video series.

"Why are we so reliant on air conditioning?"

Our house is 115 years old, and used to have some of the design features explained herein, especially the windows. At some point the vinyl went on, and cornices and shutters disappeared.

The author's conclusion is not radical. He acknowledges the inevitability of AC in a time of overall warming, notes a few modern design trends that can help, and advocates a "balance between the old and the new."

It's sensible. However, you have to admire the acumen of the builders and designers of old.

Why are we so reliant on air conditioning? (It's not just climate change, it's bad design), by Lloyd Alter (Mother Nature Network)

A hundred years ago, a house in Florida looked different than a house in New England. The northern house might be boxy, have relatively small windows, almost always two stories with low ceilings, and a big fireplace in the middle.

In Florida, the house might have high ceilings, tall double-hung windows, and deep porches. Trees would be planted around the house to block the sun.

Today, houses pretty much look the same wherever you go in North America, and one thing made this possible: central air conditioning. Now, the United States uses more energy for air conditioning than 1 billion people in Africa use for everything.

We have reaped huge benefits from air conditioning, made vast areas of the United States habitable and comfortable. But as professor Cameron Tonkinwise of Carnegie Mellon School of Design has noted, “The air conditioner allows architects to be lazy. We don't have to think about making a building work, because you can just buy a box.” And we have forgotten how to make a building work.

Finance, design, suburbs and "The Growth Ponzi Scheme."

It doesn't get much clearer than this. In fact, the Strong Towns website in large measure constitutes a shovel-ready campaign platform for any candidate interested in the future of a city like New Albany.

(That's okay, Dan. you're exempt. Permanent recess for you! Yay!)

The conclusion first:

"We need to end our investments in the suburban pattern of development, along with the multitude of direct and indirect subsidies that make it all possible. Further, we need to intentionally return to our traditional pattern of development, one based on creating neighborhoods of value, scaled to actual people. When we do this, we will inevitably rediscover our traditional values of prudence and thrift as well as the value of community and place."

Now, let's read.

THE GROWTH PONZI SCHEME (Strong Towns)

(This article originally appeared in Grist)

We often forget that the American pattern of suburban development is an experiment, one that has never been tried anywhere before. We assume it is the natural order because it is what we see all around us. But our own history — let alone a tour of other parts of the world — reveals a different reality. Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual. It is only the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile.

How is our experiment working?

At Strong Towns, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization I cofounded in 2009, we are most interested in understanding the intersection between local finance and land use. How does the design of our places impact their financial success or failure?

What we have found is that the underlying financing mechanisms of the suburban era — our post-World War II pattern of development — operates like a classic Ponzi scheme, with ever-increasing rates of growth necessary to sustain long-term liabilities.

Mueller Community in Austin, Texas: "Planners minimize the supremacy of the automobile and shape the environment around pedestrians."

I'm reminded of Tempelhofer Park in Berlin, where an airport was transformed into a commons. In this instance, it's a community.

(sighs and shrugs) ... Of all the current candidates for office in New Albany's municipal elections, how many (a) would support "smart urban design," and (b) even know what it means?

Perhaps Irv Stumler can ask Jim Padgett for a one-way definition.

With Porches And Parks, A Texas Community Aims For Urban Utopia, by John Burnett (NPR)

In Texas, a state where cars and private property are close to a religion, there is an acclaimed master-planned community that's trying something different.

When Austin's municipal airport closed 16 years ago, it created a planner's dream: 700 acres of prime real estate close to the city core. What emerged from years of public/private/neighborhood collaboration was the Mueller Community — often spoken of as a masterwork of smart urban design.

Mueller is the product of the "new-urbanism" concept: the idea that a built environment can create meaningful community. Planners minimize the supremacy of the automobile and shape the environment around pedestrians.

Lower speed limits won't solve this. TRAFFIC MUST BE SLOWED BY SAFER STREET DESIGN.

Yet another essay by Marohn that is required reading for all Speck street network opinion dispensers, yay or nay, including the otherwise somnolent Bored of Works and its titular leader, Warren Naps, and every city official whose purposeful neglect of the city's streets puts the lie to their dreary protests of concern for "public safety."

A STATISTICALLY INEVITABLE OUTCOME, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

The light turned signaling it was safe to walk. A four-year-old boy took his mother's hand. Together they stepped out into the crosswalk on their way to a pre-kindergarten class at the Philip Schuyler Achievement Academy in Albany, NY. A garbage truck came around the corner and they were run down. The boy was killed, the mother's life horribly changed forever ...

 ... Let's be clear: this isn't an accident. An accident is defined as, "an event that happens by chance without an apparent cause." While there is certainly an element of chance here -- just as with Russian Roulette -- there is obviously an underlying, preventable cause. This intersection is really dangerous for people outside of a vehicle. Serious injury is statistically inevitable. The design of this space induces high vehicle speeds in a complex environment not conducive to high speeds. There is only superficial protection for pedestrians and bikers. Indeed, the reporter on the scene was able to speak to someone who had seen a similar incident in the recent past.

Linda McClean, who has worked the morning shift at the Subway sandwich shop across Central Avenue from the crash for four years, said the intersection with Quail Street as seen through the store's wall of windows is busy with traffic and can be dangerous to pedestrians. She saw a person get hit in the same intersection last summer.

Let's look at the ways in which this design is deadly for people outside of a vehicle.

A painting project at BSB, and other NABC news.

The typical NABC weekend no longer resembles a fire drill, and there is time to catch up on a few agenda items. One of them is (finally) finishing the facade at Bank Street Brewhouse, and Tony's been chipping away at it.

Photo bomb courtesy of Mrs. Confidential.

I only wish something could be done about that unsightly "one way" sign. I'm so old, I can remember when candidate Gahan promised its removal as a priority.

Oops -- looks like a few light bulbs are burned out. We'll get to it. We have a couple of important announcements coming pertaining too NABC beer and BSB, so please stay tuned.

Is anyone interested in crafting a local platform while drinking craft beer?

On the Stroad, Ferguson and the predictability of auto-oriented decline.

And what is a stroad?

A STROAD is a street/road hybrid and, besides being a very dangerous environment (yes, it is ridiculously dangerous to mix high speed highway geometric design with pedestrians, bikers and turning traffic), they are enormously expensive to build and, ultimately, financially unproductive.

Now, on to Ferguson, Missouri. As the author observes, he cannot comment on the racial aspect, but can offer a few ideas about how we Americans so enjoy designing for decline.

Stroad Nation, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

We can’t over-simplify the dynamics of all that has happened in Ferguson, but it’s obvious that our platform for building places is creating dynamics primed for social upheaval. The auto-oriented development pattern is a huge financial experiment with massive social, cultural and political ramifications. It is time to start building strong towns ...

... What I see with Ferguson is a suburb deep into the decline phase of the Suburban Ponzi Scheme. The housing styles suggest predominantly 1950’s and 1960’s development. We’re past the first cycle of new (low debt and low taxes), through the second cycle of stagnation (holding on with debt and slowly increasing taxes) and now into predictable decline. There isn’t the community wealth to fix all this stuff -- and there never was -- so it is all slowly falling apart.

Decline isn’t a result of poverty. The converse is actually true: poverty is the result of decline.

"The more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people."

Are we bugging you with facts? We don't mean to bug you.

More Narrative (Rational Urbanism)

There are conceptual links which, somehow, form narratives in the news media, and others which don’t. Urban homicides form a narrative. Whether at a bar at closing time, a domestic dispute, a drug deal gone bad, or something gang related they are all bound together as a tale of death and the streets. That they are linked more to behavior and identity than place goes unnoticed and uncommented because it unwinds the narrative.

The story of death and the road, as distinct from death and the streets, is told much differently. It is told as a tale of behavior and identity (speed, age, drunkenness) but almost never a story of place. Place rating sites completely ignore traffic fatalities and pedestrian deaths in their calculations of livability despite the fact that there is clearly a causational link between place and fatality and injury: the more greatly a place conforms to post war auto centric design, the more injurious it is to people.

"If it's designed to make people go fast, they will."

New Albany's street grid is designed for traffic speed incompatible with the stabilization of neighborhoods and the expansion of the downtown business district, thus actively contradicting monies spent and efforts expended to improve quality of life.

If current office holders and their appointees spent any time at all inhabiting the streets by means other than autos, they'd grasp the situation fairly quickly.

But they don't, so pedestrians like me need to remind them as often as possible that their perspective is skewed. There are elements of intellectual laziness and political cowardice as well, but why pile on?

Here's another example from Rhode Island.

Nice Try, But No.

This video is from Waterfire night, and is taken from in front of the police station--if people speed with impunity there, where won't they speed?

Speaking of infill housing for those vacant lots ...

Mr. and Mrs. Confidential have decided this would be our chosen design if we were to downsize and build a house on one of the vacant lots that Dan Coffey mentioned yesterday at the redevelopment meeting.

Don't you think it's time to spice up the historic areas with some punchy, efficient modern design?

Photo credit