Walkable communities (was Re: WalkBoston's position on MBTA fare increase)
Exile on Market Street
Followups set to m.t.u-t and a.p.u, as we're no longer focused on New
England here.
In article <N3ld5.476$Qd5.1...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> Market Street) wrote:
>
> > This debate [over "walkable communities"] has an
angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin quality to it.
> >
> > Words are not as inflexible as you seem to want to portray them here,
> > Robert.
>
> I disagree. In these interminable transit debates we are constantly
> fighting the battle of hijacked words. It is self evident that a
> walkable community lacks the critical mass (he he) to be viable on
> its own. What we see here is an attempt to steal the term and apply
> walkable to what is in FAct transit oriented development. Transit
> has no more right to co-opt walkable than would an autocentric
> project. Walkable characteristics can be integrated into autocentric
> or transit or anyplace along the spectrum.
I see the point of your last sentence. Now our quibbles are aesthetic, and
I'll have more on that later. But first, let's deal with your basic
statement. I'll start, as I'm wont to do, with an anecdote.
A few months back, the _Inquirer_, in an article about how restaurant
owners on Walnut Street were complaining that their customers couldn't find
parking within reasonable walking distance, ran a graphic that suggested
the customers were wrong.
The illustration superimposed the Cherry Hill Mall over a map of Center
City west of Broad (which includes the Walnut Street restaurant district).
The mall building itself stretched roughly from Walnut to Market (or maybe
even JFK Blvd) and from about 13th to 19th Streets. With the parking lots,
the mall covered a territory that included many of Center City's biggest
parking garages. Yet restaurant patrons apparently considered the distance
represented by the mall building itself "too far to walk" within Center
City.
Now, people willingly drive to the Cherry Hill Mall and walk from one end
to the other -- and the mall, being a pedestrian-only space, is by
definition "walkable" even though the setting in which it exists is
autocentric. Yet these same people find walking a comparable distance
within a dense urban setting "too far". I'd prefer to get them to come to
their senses, but instead here will simply ask: "Why is that?"
However, there's a difference between autocentric development that is
hostile to all other forms of approach and autocentric development that
accommodates other forms easily. You know what shopping center I'm about
to trot out here as my counterexample, right? Now, since this particular
development envelops the parking rather than the other way 'round, it can
be (and is) incorporated into a larger environment that is itself also
walkable while still being accommodating to both auto and transit access.
[leaving my hypothetical in for the benefit of a.p.u readers]
> > Let's hypothesize a compact residential district around a train station,
> > with a shopping area around the station that includes some professional
> > offices and a library, and that the shopping area contains the kinds of
> > stores that serve the residents' everyday needs (grocery, dry cleaners,
> > drug store, etc.) The layout of the community is such that the shopping
> > area and train station are within about a 15-minute walk of the most
> > distant resident. (Some other public facilities -- a school, say, and a
> > park or athletic field -- are near the shopping area.)
> >
> > The train line from the station connects this district to a larger business
> > district 20 or so minutes away (by train), with intermediate stops in three
> > or four similarly-laid-out communities. In this larger district are the
> > big department stores, large corporate offices, and industries that serve
> > and employ many of the residents of those outlying residential districts,
> > as well as residences that house people who like to be at the center of it
> > all. The total size of this district encompasses an area roughly the size
> > of central Philadelphia (about two miles across). The train line in
> > question is one of several that converge on this hub, and all of the others
> > serve communities much like our hypothetical district as well.
> >
> > The entire urban system thus described is not, and cannot be, "walkable" by
> > design. But the places where the people actually live -- including the
> > people living in the core -- are.
> >
> > Yes, this is "transit oriented development." But are not the constituent
> > parts within this system "walkable communities"?
>
> Yes. (Excellent LeCourvisier BTW.)
It was completely unconscious channeling. Generally, I think Corbu was at
heart anti-urban. His "Radiant City" certainly turned out to be as
applied.
> But if you substitute smog belching SUVs
> for the sweet choo-choos in the above example with the appropriate adjustments
> to urban form, there will still be walkable components and autocentrism.
But again, what kind of autocentrism? The kind that acknowledges the
existence of other options, or the kind that forecloses them?
I generally don't draw lines in the sand, but I'm going to draw one here:
the Country Club Plaza or the Cherry Hill Mall. Pick one.
--
Sandy Smith, University Relations / 215.898.1423 / smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
Managing Editor, _Pennsylvania Current_ cur...@pobox.upenn.edu
Penn Web Team -- Web Editor webm...@isc.upenn.edu
I speak for myself here, not Penn http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/
"I'll have what the gentleman on the floor is having."
------------------classic line from "Shoe" by Jeff MacNelly (1948-2000)--
Ron Newman
<smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>, smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
stated...
>Now, people willingly drive to the Cherry Hill Mall and walk from one end
>to the other -- and the mall, being a pedestrian-only space, is by
>definition "walkable" even though the setting in which it exists is
>autocentric. Yet these same people find walking a comparable distance
>within a dense urban setting "too far". I'd prefer to get them to come to
>their senses, but instead here will simply ask: "Why is that?"
Bad weather?
--
Ron Newman rne...@thecia.net
http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/home.html
George Conklin
Ron Newman <rne...@thecia.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Jul 2000 17:04:07 -0400, in article
><smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>, smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
>stated...
>
>>to the other -- and the mall, being a pedestrian-only space, is by
>>definition "walkable" even though the setting in which it exists is
>>autocentric. Yet these same people find walking a comparable distance
>>within a dense urban setting "too far". I'd prefer to get them to come to
>>their senses, but instead here will simply ask: "Why is that?"
>
Malls are air conditoned, which is very important in hot
climates. In addition, malls are very popular in cold climates
where snow makes outdoors walking in the winter a real chore.
Malls are walkable. How can the pseudo-walkable city advocates
complain? In fact, those who need exercise for for health
reasons now walk set paths in the malls before opening hours and
the malls specifically open for that purpose.
--
# If HMOs ran the post office, 44.3 million Americans would get no mail. #
# Phono FAQ: http://www.pagesz.net/~henryj/phono.htm. #
# Support Medicare for All Ages. Urban Myth FAQ under development. #
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Robert Cote
The a.p.u readers almost to a person hate me. No problem but
they really don't deserve special consideration. Coddling the
underclasses is classic anti-urban behavior.
Autocentric is in no way inflexible as you contend. Rails are
even in their definition, fixed. Look at the diff between the
various systems.
...
> > > Yes, this is "transit oriented development." But are not the
> > > constituent
> > > parts within this system "walkable communities"?
> >
> > Yes. (Excellent LeCourvisier BTW.)
>
> It was completely unconscious channeling.
Yeah sure. You say that now. Except for George and Simpson
and me nobody knew what we were talking about. Scary eh?
> Generally, I think Corbu was at
> heart anti-urban.
Of course, you don't think I'd ever have heard of him IF
he weren't anti-urban? I don't read if there's a question.
>? His "Radiant City" certainly turned out to be as
> applied.
This is a common mis-extrapolation. He had an idea for
an adaptive urban environment. It is adaptive.
> > But if you substitute smog belching SUVs
> > for the sweet choo-choos in the above example with the appropriate
> > adjustments
> > to urban form, there will still be walkable components and autocentrism.
>
> But again, what kind of autocentrism? The kind that acknowledges the
> existence of other options, or the kind that forecloses them?
Look at Boston and tell me transit dependency is miore flexible.
> I generally don't draw lines in the sand, but I'm going to draw one here:
> the Country Club Plaza or the Cherry Hill Mall. Pick one.
Ouch. The Lady or the Tiger? And why would some of "us" care
even if we picked the lady?
Jim Guthrie
"George Conklin" <jep...@ntrnet.net> wrote in message
news:OnBd5.163$UL1....@news-reader.ntrnet.net...
> In article <8l56in$b...@edrn.newsguy.com
snip
> Malls are air conditoned, which is very important in hot
> climates. In addition, malls are very popular in cold climates
> where snow makes outdoors walking in the winter a real chore.
sized enclosed malls that have redeveloped as "power centres". That is free
standing big box outlets with mini malls (usually open to air) for small
shops surrounding the box.
This is because the Thursday or Friday night, or Saturday family shopping
trip is now not the routine shopping pattern. People want quick in and out,
without a long walk between stores. (Shopping malls are laid out to force
people to stroll past lots of shops when going from one destination to
another.)
> Malls are walkable. How can the pseudo-walkable city advocates
> complain? In fact, those who need exercise for for health
> reasons now walk set paths in the malls before opening hours and
> the malls specifically open for that purpose.
Some of ours have "frequent walker cards" that entitle the holdrs to free
drinks, etc. for every so many "laps" and discounts on some outlets. They
encourage such use in the mornings, when the stores are open, but not busy.
George Conklin
Jim Guthrie <jim.g...@gov.edmonton.ab.ca.delete> wrote:
>
>"George Conklin" <jep...@ntrnet.net> wrote in message
>news:OnBd5.163$UL1....@news-reader.ntrnet.net...
>> In article <8l56in$b...@edrn.newsguy.com
>snip
>> Malls are air conditoned, which is very important in hot
>> climates. In addition, malls are very popular in cold climates
>> where snow makes outdoors walking in the winter a real chore.
>Oddly enough, in spite of our severe winters, we have had several medium
>sized enclosed malls that have redeveloped as "power centres". That is free
>standing big box outlets with mini malls (usually open to air) for small
>shops surrounding the box.
>This is because the Thursday or Friday night, or Saturday family shopping
>trip is now not the routine shopping pattern. People want quick in and out,
>without a long walk between stores. (Shopping malls are laid out to force
>people to stroll past lots of shops when going from one destination to
>another.)
>
store to another. Come to think of it, that is what 'street
level' meant. Do you have some Harry Potter idea of walking
through stores and magically appearing miles away?
Cuideigian
> >
> Downtowns were laid out to force people to walk from one
> store to another. Come to think of it, that is what 'street
> level' meant. Do you have some Harry Potter idea of walking
> through stores and magically appearing miles away?
Oh, really, George? Since most cities were laid out before autos, just how
would you have done it so that people wouldn't have had to walk between
stores? Do you envision a autopia where people never get out of their cars?
John_Da...@acm.org
> Now, people willingly drive to the Cherry Hill Mall and walk from one end
> to the other -- and the mall, being a pedestrian-only space, is by
> definition "walkable" even though the setting in which it exists is
> autocentric. Yet these same people find walking a comparable distance
> within a dense urban setting "too far". I'd prefer to get them to come to
> their senses, but instead here will simply ask: "Why is that?"
Walking the mall IS too far, which is why I only go there once or twice a
year and bring a specific shopping list, all things I can't find elsewhere.
If I can possibly find something I want in a driveable location or mail-
order it, I'll do that instead.
This philosophy goes double for old downtowns that put up deliberate
barriers to driving. I'll do without before I subsidize the assholes who
want that sort of place to even exist.
John David Galt
George Conklin
Cities were small until people gave up walking and
started to use electric trolleys. NYC right now wants to
spend billions to put in a Second Avenue subway so people
don't have to walk two blocks. Now that is an anti-walking
city if ever one existed.
Cuideigian
> In article <3978e5e8$1...@news.effectnet.com>,
> Cuideigian <grua...@puca.com> wrote:
> >
> >"George Conklin" <jep...@ntrnet.net> wrote in message
> >news:jG1e5.22$pM1...@news-reader.ntrnet.net...
> >> >
> >> Downtowns were laid out to force people to walk from one
> >> store to another. Come to think of it, that is what 'street
> >> level' meant. Do you have some Harry Potter idea of walking
> >> through stores and magically appearing miles away?
> >
> >Oh, really, George? Since most cities were laid out before autos, just
how
> >would you have done it so that people wouldn't have had to walk between
> >stores? Do you envision a autopia where people never get out of
> >their cars?
> >
> Cities were small until people gave up walking and
> started to use electric trolleys.
So how many people lived in NYC before the auto and the electric trolley?
Or London? or any number of other large cities?
>NYC right now wants to
> spend billions to put in a Second Avenue subway so people
> don't have to walk two blocks. Now that is an anti-walking
> city if ever one existed.
>
Really? Or is this some amUsenet fantasy? One reason I could think of for
locating a new subway line near an existing one is for capacity. Suppose
you provide us with an actual reference instead of your mindless drivel.
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> The a.p.u readers almost to a person hate me. No problem but
> they really don't deserve special consideration. Coddling the
> underclasses is classic anti-urban behavior.
If by "anti-urban" you mean "has the effect of destroying cities," yes.
Chalk this one up to the Law of Unintended Consequences, as "anti-urban" --
meaning "openly hostile to cities" or "intent on destroying cities" -- is
probably the last thing the people who thought up these policies would
consider themselves.
> Autocentric is in no way inflexible as you contend. Rails are
> even in their definition, fixed. Look at the diff between the
> various systems.
I don't recall contending that autocentric development is inflexible;
indeed, in my earlier post, I made a distinction between two types of
autocentric development. Similarly, you can have TOD that can accommodate
cars (given the FActs on the ground, it'd have to anyway) or TOD that
pretends they don't exist at all. Same principle.
[re: Le Corbusier]
> Of course, you don't think I'd ever have heard of him IF
> he weren't anti-urban? I don't read if there's a question.
You mean you only read confirmed anti-urbanists?
> >? His "Radiant City" certainly turned out to be as
> > applied.
>
> This is a common mis-extrapolation. He had an idea for
> an adaptive urban environment. It is adaptive.
Well, from a land-use standpoint, it certainly is that -- and easily
expandable, thanks to that modular conception of the urban environment.
Sort of like Oglethorpe's original plan for Savannah, Ga., which (sadly)
the city fathers abandoned after the first few decades.
But I was thinking more in terms of the physical structures he envisioned
-- those rows of high-rises on stilts, each in splendid semi-isolation.
Certainly, it was a common vision for the mid-20th century -- ISTR that
General Motors' "city of 1960" at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair was
full of similar structures. But by taking all the activity off the street,
it removed one of the things that make cities tolerable places to live at
all.
> Look at Boston and tell me transit dependency is miore flexible.
I'll try to filter out my affection for Central Boston and suggest that (as
I remarked in general above) such development, while it frustrates the
smooth and rapid flow of automobiles through it, is not as thoroughly
hostile to other forms of movement to and through it as the "bad"
autocentric development I referred to earlier and below.
> > I generally don't draw lines in the sand, but I'm going to draw one here:
> > the Country Club Plaza or the Cherry Hill Mall. Pick one.
>
> Ouch. The Lady or the Tiger? And why would some of "us" care
> even if we picked the lady?
Some of "us" probably wouldn't, and the country doesn't seem to lack for
tiger enthusiasts. But (as Witold Rybczynski points out in "City Life")
when Americans travel to Europe, some of the things they seem to enjoy most
are the lively street environments of European cities, and then they wonder
why their own cities aren't like that. Or take Disney (please): note that
the centerpiece environment of Disney theme parks isn't a mall but a Main
Street -- an urban (small-scale division) environment. The Country Club
Plaza proves that it is possible to create similarly lively urban
environments while still accommodating (indeed, catering to) the car -- but
the Plaza wouldn't be the same if it were a large building (with or without
a roof over its central mall) surrounded by acres of asphalt. If our
cities aren't "like that", perhaps it's because we haven't been building
them that way of late?
George Conklin
Exile on Market Street <smi...@pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
>In article <qhMd5.1337$vV1.3...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
><tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
>> The a.p.u readers almost to a person hate me. No problem but
>> they really don't deserve special consideration. Coddling the
>> underclasses is classic anti-urban behavior.
>
>If by "anti-urban" you mean "has the effect of destroying cities," yes.
>Chalk this one up to the Law of Unintended Consequences, as "anti-urban" --
>meaning "openly hostile to cities" or "intent on destroying cities" -- is
>probably the last thing the people who thought up these policies would
>consider themselves.
Look at the University of Pennsylvania. It was located
at at the center of a trolley transporation hub in West
Philadelphia. Yet Penn considered that too busy and too
much noise and a disadvantage. Penn had better access
before it was so 'walkable'. It started out as a transit
center.
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <qhMd5.1337$vV1.3...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > The a.p.u readers almost to a person hate me. No problem but
> > they really don't deserve special consideration. Coddling the
> > underclasses is classic anti-urban behavior.
>
> If by "anti-urban" you mean "has the effect of destroying cities," yes.
> Chalk this one up to the Law of Unintended Consequences,
The only law the govt observes in practice.
> as "anti-urban" --
> meaning "openly hostile to cities" or "intent on destroying cities" -- is
> probably the last thing the people who thought up these policies would
> consider themselves.
Exactly. This happens a lot. Look at the people who choose to
be abusive to me in this newsgroup. They assume I don't know what I'm
talking about, that I don't have backup data, that I don't use transit.
Some of them actually don't use transit themselves, a double condemnation.
The problem seems to be the weird idea that development patterns are
a public interest. I don't see it. Public services, yes. Public
interest in response to patterns, yes. Public control, no.
> > Autocentric is in no way inflexible as you contend. Rails are
> > even in their definition, fixed. Look at the diff between the
> > various systems.
>
> I don't recall contending that autocentric development is inflexible;
Maybe I read into this too much: "However, there's a difference between
autocentric development that is hostile to all other forms of approach
and autocentric development that accommodates other forms easily."
within the context of an exception to the rule versus the rule but it
seems to me that you beleive auto-oriented precludes other transportation
options. My assertion is that of all the possibilites, auto predominence
is most capable of future adaptation. In part, I will note, that it
takes up more space in the first place.
> indeed, in my earlier post, I made a distinction between two types of
> autocentric development. Similarly, you can have TOD that can accommodate
> cars (given the FActs on the ground, it'd have to anyway) or TOD that
> pretends they don't exist at all. Same principle.
I disagree. TOD ignores every piece of evidence in the hopes that
wishing hard enough will make something so. On top of that, the
conscesions necessary to accomodate ToD absolutely precludes multimodalism.
> [re: Le Corbusier]
[there's maybe 4 people who are following this part]
> > Of course, you don't think I'd ever have heard of him IF
> > he weren't anti-urban? I don't read if there's a question.
>
> You mean you only read confirmed anti-urbanists?
Damn. You are sharp. It was a poorly expressed joke. If I
want to get any more subtle, I'll need to learn sanscrit.
Better yet, I'll stop this cultural elitism.
> > >? His "Radiant City" certainly turned out to be as
> > > applied.
> >
> > This is a common mis-extrapolation. He had an idea for
> > an adaptive urban environment. It is adaptive.
>
> Well, from a land-use standpoint, it certainly is that -- and easily
> expandable, thanks to that modular conception of the urban environment.
Thanks. This is usually a hard point to get across. Something changed
when modular was replaced with hub'n'spoke with the hub (a frequent
downtown moniker) being first among equals. Damn, there I go again
with obscure cultural references.
Look at THE new city. Los Angeles, California. A world class city
"in search of a center." Damn, another cultural comment.
> Sort of like Oglethorpe's original plan for Savannah, Ga., which (sadly)
> the city fathers abandoned after the first few decades.
I'm not familiar with the history. If you mean that an idea for planned
development was hijacked for politics, that's one thing. For profit
an entirely other thing.
> But I was thinking more in terms of the physical structures he envisioned
> -- those rows of high-rises on stilts, each in splendid semi-isolation.
The phrase freestanding is subject to many translations and more importantly
interpretations.
Doesn't the phraseology itself suggest the ideal american suburb?
> Certainly, it was a common vision for the mid-20th century -- ISTR that
> General Motors' "city of 1960" at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair was
> full of similar structures. But by taking all the activity off the street,
> it removed one of the things that make cities tolerable places to live at
> all.
I thought it transformed the landscape from one of class structured
know your neighbors of similar class and color and means to one of
a community of common interests and intellect. A proximate example
comes to mind.
> > Look at Boston and tell me transit dependency is miore flexible.
>
> I'll try to filter out my affection for Central Boston
[I had to do the same to make the comment.]
> and suggest that (as
> I remarked in general above) such development, while it frustrates the
> smooth and rapid flow of automobiles through it, is not as thoroughly
> hostile to other forms of movement to and through it as the "bad"
> autocentric development I referred to earlier and below.
I would posit that Boston suffers from lack of geography. Too damn
many swamps and rivers and Harbors and miserable weather. Remeber
the Pilgrims (with emphasis on grim) wanted Virgina where slavery
would have proved second nature to them given their cultural mores.
> > > I generally don't draw lines in the sand, but I'm going to draw one
> > > here:
> > > the Country Club Plaza or the Cherry Hill Mall. Pick one.
> >
> > Ouch. The Lady or the Tiger? And why would some of "us" care
> > even if we picked the lady?
>
> Some of "us" probably wouldn't, and the country doesn't seem to lack for
> tiger enthusiasts. But (as Witold Rybczynski points out in "City Life")
> when Americans travel to Europe, some of the things they seem to enjoy most
> are the lively street environments of European cities, and then they wonder
> why their own cities aren't like that.
The problem with "Why can't we be like that?" is the answer. European
day to day living patterns are certainly enviable. Why not ask Penn for
9 weeks vacation? You deserve it. Wait. excuse me, you would deserve
it IF you lived in parts of Europe.
> Or take Disney (please):
The new phrase for McD or Ugly American.
> note that
> the centerpiece environment of Disney theme parks isn't a mall but a Main
> Street
Two observations. One, you walk through Main St to get to the Kingdom.
The process is not unlike the American Dream.
Two, Disney's Main St IS a mall.
> an urban (small-scale division) environment.
A modern, NOT transit era urban environment. Right?
> The Country Club
> Plaza proves that it is possible to create similarly lively urban
> environments while still accommodating (indeed, catering to) the car -- but
> the Plaza wouldn't be the same if it were a large building (with or without
> a roof over its central mall) surrounded by acres of asphalt. If our
> cities aren't "like that", perhaps it's because we haven't been building
> them that way of late?
Time for my "real" second observation. Universal City's Citywalk and
cocomittant Universal Studios Theme PArk, et al.
"Nasty" is the only word that come2DF3 mind. Pay to pay is about
the kindest thing I can muster.
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> Market Street) wrote:
>
> > Chalk this one up to the Law of Unintended Consequences,
>
> The only law the govt observes in practice.
Tee-hee.
> The problem seems to be the weird idea that development patterns are
> a public interest. I don't see it. Public services, yes. Public
> interest in response to patterns, yes. Public control, no.
Well, if you accept zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power
in the public interest, then it's not all that great a logical leap to
aesthetics or patterns.
You may recall that Philadelphia spent the first half of the 1980s in a
loud public debate over whether a developer should be allowed to build an
office building taller than City Hall. Now, since the height limit was not
a city ordinance but rather an informal understanding, this is probably a
bad example of what I'm talking about, but since the city still had to
approve the permits for construction, that informal understanding could be
backed up with government power, so it's not completely off-base.
The argument essentially boiled down to aesthetics: defenders of the
height limit saw it as a sort of physical expression of the city's heritage
of Quaker modesty, while opponents pointed out that the result was a
skyline where every building went right up to Billy Penn's hatbrim, in a
sense defeating the purpose of the informal limit and producing a
boring-looking downtown to boot. The City Council sided with the
opponents, and today, the skyline's much the better for it. But it's still
a case of development patterns (or practices, in this case) being a matter
of public concern and ultimately governmental action.
> > I don't recall contending that autocentric development is inflexible;
>
> Maybe I read into this too much: "However, there's a difference between
> autocentric development that is hostile to all other forms of approach
> and autocentric development that accommodates other forms easily."
> within the context of an exception to the rule versus the rule but it
> seems to me that you beleive auto-oriented precludes other transportation
> options. My assertion is that of all the possibilites, auto predominence
> is most capable of future adaptation. In part, I will note, that it
> takes up more space in the first place.
That may be the key. Certainly, you can serve a shopping mall with buses;
it happens all across the country. You can even put a rail station in one,
as is the case with the Gallery and may eventually happen with KofP. But
there usually has to be something along the way to make the walk to/from
the mall interesting for people to want to get there on foot, and acres of
asphalt with a big windowless box in the center certainly don't qualify as
interesting. On that score, you can't blame the drivers for wanting to
park as close to a mall entrance as possible as well.
> I disagree. TOD ignores every piece of evidence in the hopes that
> wishing hard enough will make something so. On top of that, the
> conscesions necessary to accomodate ToD absolutely precludes multimodalism.
OK, I guess I'm going to have to read up on the current thinking behind
TOD, as I'd find it hard to completely preclude multimodalism in any type
of development (see above). As we've seen elsewhere, hostility can be
overcome if needs be.
> Thanks. This is usually a hard point to get across. Something changed
> when modular was replaced with hub'n'spoke with the hub (a frequent
> downtown moniker) being first among equals. Damn, there I go again
> with obscure cultural references.
You only said *you'd* stop the cultural elitism. *I'm* not giving up quite yet:
<trivial pedantry>
"The Boston State-house dome is the hub of the universe. You couldn't pry
that out of a Boston man if you had the tyre of all creation straightened
out for a crowbar." --Oliver Wendell Holmes (the author, not the judge)
And for the handful of non-New Englanders still with us, this passage is
also the origin of the word "Hub" as shorthand for "Boston" in that city's
press.
</trivial pedantry>
> Look at THE new city. Los Angeles, California. A world class city
> "in search of a center." Damn, another cultural comment.
Relative to what Downtown LA looked like in 1966, it appears to have gotten
one. Another retrofit?
> > Sort of like Oglethorpe's original plan for Savannah, Ga., which (sadly)
> > the city fathers abandoned after the first few decades.
>
> I'm not familiar with the history. If you mean that an idea for planned
> development was hijacked for politics, that's one thing. For profit
> an entirely other thing.
I don't know whether it was politics or profit -- probably the latter, as
every acre not set aside for a park can be built upon. (The Oglethorpe
design for Savannah was based on a series of four-block-square grids with a
park in the center of each; as the city grew, another 16-block grid could
be added onto an existing one.)
> > But I was thinking more in terms of the physical structures he envisioned
> > -- those rows of high-rises on stilts, each in splendid semi-isolation.
>
> The phrase freestanding is subject to many translations and more importantly
> interpretations.
True enough. A neighborhood of "freestanding" ranch houses, IMO, is nicer
to look at than a neighborhood of "freestanding" high rises. Massed
together, the high-rises become more visually appealing. OTOH, who ever
heard of ranch houses massed together? Sort of defeats the original
purpose, doesn't it?
> Doesn't the phraseology itself suggest the ideal american suburb?
Remove the part about the high rises on stilts and it does. Put it back
in, and you have the not-so-ideal Paris suburb.
> I thought it transformed the landscape from one of class structured
> know your neighbors of similar class and color and means to one of
> a community of common interests and intellect. A proximate example
> comes to mind.
Of high-rises that achieve this transformation? They seem about as
class-stratified as the rest of our housing.
> I would posit that Boston suffers from lack of geography. Too damn
> many swamps and rivers and Harbors and miserable weather. Remeber
> the Pilgrims (with emphasis on grim) wanted Virgina where slavery
> would have proved second nature to them given their cultural mores.
Hey, they had it in Massachusetts too, until the numbers didn't work properly.
Anyway, your point about geography is well taken. It seems that one
characteristic that three of the cities where mass transit is considered an
essential part of the metropolitan fabric share is that their urban cores
are completely or nearly completely surrounded by water. A fourth requires
you to cross rivers to get to it from the east or west.
> The problem with "Why can't we be like that?" is the answer. European
> day to day living patterns are certainly enviable. Why not ask Penn for
> 9 weeks vacation? You deserve it. Wait. excuse me, you would deserve
> it IF you lived in parts of Europe.
IOW, blame it on the Puritans and their damned work ethic again. The four
weeks we get -- not counting the complete shutdown between Christmas and
New Year's -- are generous by American standards.
> > note that
> > the centerpiece environment of Disney theme parks isn't a mall but a Main
> > Street
>
> Two observations. One, you walk through Main St to get to the Kingdom.
> The process is not unlike the American Dream.
>
> Two, Disney's Main St IS a mall.
Point two is well taken -- it's only a roofless one. But the visual cues
do not say "mall". Of course, neither do those in the Universal CityWalk
you revile below.
> > an urban (small-scale division) environment.
>
> A modern, NOT transit era urban environment. Right?
Not quite -- at least not on the surface. The Disney infrastructure is
most assuredly modern, but the face it presents to the world is
turn-of-the-century, at least on Main Street -- the original one at
Disneyland in Anaheim, BTW, was modeled on the main street of Walt's
boyhood home, Marceline, Mo., circa 1911 (about when Walt was born).
And ISTR it has trolleys, too, which Marceline certainly did not -- it was
too small.
> Time for my "real" second observation. Universal City's Citywalk and
> cocomittant Universal Studios Theme PArk, et al.
>
> "Nasty" is the only word that come2DF3 mind. Pay to pay is about
> the kindest thing I can muster.
When people willingly shell out for an incredible simulation of an actual
city street where they could easily experience the real thing not too far
away for free, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment.
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <DG1f5.652$of3.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
> smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> > Market Street) wrote:
> >
> > The problem seems to be the weird idea that development patterns are
> > a public interest. I don't see it. Public services, yes. Public
> > interest in response to patterns, yes. Public control, no.
>
> Well, if you accept zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power
> in the public interest, then it's not all that great a logical leap to
> aesthetics or patterns.
Zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power in the public interest,
BUT it's not permission to regulate aesthetics or patterns. The public
interest in zoning extends to protecting "quiet enjoyment" and promoting
"general welfare." General welfare means that a private land use will not
encumber the populace with obligations without their consent. That's why
I find TODs so wrong. They encumber the populace with transit subsidies
without compensating benifits.
> [fall of the city hall max height limit] But it's still
> a case of development patterns (or practices, in this case) being a matter
> of public concern and ultimately governmental action.
Interesting.
> > > I don't recall contending that autocentric development is inflexible;
> >
> > Maybe I read into this too much: "However, there's a difference between
> > autocentric development that is hostile to all other forms of approach
> > and autocentric development that accommodates other forms easily."
> > within the context of an exception to the rule versus the rule but it
> > seems to me that you beleive auto-oriented precludes other transportation
> > options. My assertion is that of all the possibilites, auto predominence
> > is most capable of future adaptation. In part, I will note, that it
> > takes up more space in the first place.
>
> That may be the key. Certainly, you can serve a shopping mall with buses;
> it happens all across the country. You can even put a rail station in one,
> as is the case with the Gallery and may eventually happen with KofP. But
> there usually has to be something along the way to make the walk to/from
> the mall interesting for people to want to get there on foot, and acres of
> asphalt with a big windowless box in the center certainly don't qualify as
> interesting. On that score, you can't blame the drivers for wanting to
> park as close to a mall entrance as possible as well.
[N.B. KofP is the King of Prussia megamall. If I had to think about it
for a minute, others probably did as well.]
This is the problem with TOD. In order to build so called human scale
they preclude enough auto accomodation to even cover their least
optimistic auto projections. There is a gap in the math. Essentially
they need to eliminate two parking places to densify enough to
encourage one transit trip replacement. They end up with not enough
transit traffic and not enough parking. (Parking is a oversimplification,
substitute the akward "sum total infrastructure necessary to accomodate
auto mobility")
> > I disagree. TOD ignores every piece of evidence in the hopes that
> > wishing hard enough will make something so. On top of that, the
> > conscesions necessary to accomodate ToD absolutely precludes
> > multimodalism.
>
> OK, I guess I'm going to have to read up on the current thinking behind
> TOD, as I'd find it hard to completely preclude multimodalism in any type
> of development (see above). As we've seen elsewhere, hostility can be
> overcome if needs be.
TOD is the proper term for what is being gussied up an sold as walkable
community. The auto theory seems to be "If we don't build it, they
will not drive." There's no evidence of this ever happening in practice.
I'm not sure about overcoming hostility. Did you see Jon Winstons' most
recent gem accusing me and my friends of hijacking the conversation?
> > Thanks. This is usually a hard point to get across. Something changed
> > when modular was replaced with hub'n'spoke with the hub (a frequent
> > downtown moniker) being first among equals. Damn, there I go again
> > with obscure cultural references.
>
> You only said *you'd* stop the cultural elitism. *I'm* not giving up quite
> yet:
>
> <trivial pedantry>
> "The Boston State-house dome is the hub of the universe. You couldn't pry
> that out of a Boston man if you had the tyre of all creation straightened
> out for a crowbar." --Oliver Wendell Holmes (the author, not the judge)
>
> And for the handful of non-New Englanders still with us, this passage is
> also the origin of the word "Hub" as shorthand for "Boston" in that city's
> press.
> </trivial pedantry>
When the suburbs start spinning off isn't the hub the part that gets the shaft?
> > Look at THE new city. Los Angeles, California. A world class city
> > "in search of a center." Damn, another cultural comment.
>
> Relative to what Downtown LA looked like in 1966, it appears to have gotten
> one. Another retrofit?
Not really. LA is multi-nodal in function. The Miracle Mile, the Westside,
Warner Center, etc. A City Hall, Cathederal and Music Hall does not make a
center for 13 million people. At least we Catholics didn't hire Gheary to
design the church.
> > > Sort of like Oglethorpe's original plan for Savannah, Ga., which
> > > (sadly)
> > > the city fathers abandoned after the first few decades.
> >
> > I'm not familiar with the history. If you mean that an idea for planned
> > development was hijacked for politics, that's one thing. For profit
> > an entirely other thing.
>
> I don't know whether it was politics or profit -- probably the latter, as
> every acre not set aside for a park can be built upon. (The Oglethorpe
> design for Savannah was based on a series of four-block-square grids with a
> park in the center of each; as the city grew, another 16-block grid could
> be added onto an existing one.)
Walkable scale and definitive communities. No wonder the city fathers
reject the concept. No chance to pick winners or concentrate political
power bases.
> > I would posit that Boston suffers from lack of geography. Too damn
> > many swamps and rivers and Harbors and miserable weather. Remeber
> > the Pilgrims (with emphasis on grim) wanted Virgina where slavery
> > would have proved second nature to them given their cultural mores.
>
> Hey, they had it in Massachusetts too, until the numbers didn't work
> properly.
The numbers were starting to fail in the South as well. Eli Whitney
freed the slaves not Abe Lincoln.
> Anyway, your point about geography is well taken. It seems that one
> characteristic that three of the cities where mass transit is considered an
> essential part of the metropolitan fabric share is that their urban cores
> are completely or nearly completely surrounded by water. A fourth requires
> you to cross rivers to get to it from the east or west.
Thus LA, Phoneix and Dallas as counterexamples.
> > The problem with "Why can't we be like that?" is the answer. European
> > day to day living patterns are certainly enviable. Why not ask Penn for
> > 9 weeks vacation? You deserve it. Wait. excuse me, you would deserve
> > it IF you lived in parts of Europe.
>
> IOW, blame it on the Puritans and their damned work ethic again. The four
> weeks we get -- not counting the complete shutdown between Christmas and
> New Year's -- are generous by American standards.
Go ahead, rub it in. You ivory tower types are all alike. ;-)
> > Disney's Main St IS a mall.
>
> Point is well taken -- it's only a roofless one. But the visual cues
> do not say "mall". Of course, neither do those in the Universal CityWalk
> you revile below.
>
> ...The Disney infrastructure is
> most assuredly modern, but the face it presents to the world is
> turn-of-the-century, at least on Main Street -- the original one at
> Disneyland in Anaheim, BTW, was modeled on the main street of Walt's
> boyhood home, Marceline, Mo., circa 1911 (about when Walt was born).
Except that there is only one store owner who is also the landlord and
the prices are fixed and the stores interconnected and...
> > Time for my "real" second observation. Universal City's Citywalk and
> > cocomittant Universal Studios Theme PArk, et al.
> >
> > "Nasty" is the only word that comes to mind. Pay to pay is about
> > the kindest thing I can muster.
>
> When people willingly shell out for an incredible simulation of an actual
> city street where they could easily experience the real thing not too far
> away for free, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment.
There's a 50s store selling pedal cars and Pez dispensers. How transparent
can you get? My wife had a better opinion. Paraphrased: "Horton Plaza (in
San Diego) catering to teenagers who have credit cards."
George Conklin
Exile on Market Street <smi...@pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
><tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
>> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
>smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
>> Market Street) wrote:
>>
>> > Chalk this one up to the Law of Unintended Consequences,
>>
>> The only law the govt observes in practice.
>
>Tee-hee.
>
>> The problem seems to be the weird idea that development patterns are
>> a public interest. I don't see it. Public services, yes. Public
>> interest in response to patterns, yes. Public control, no.
>
>Well, if you accept zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power
>in the public interest, then it's not all that great a logical leap to
>aesthetics or patterns.
The mistake we are making today is to assume that anything
planners want is in fact in the public interest since the public
is always being considered as stupid and not knowing what is best
for itself.
City politics are some of the most nasty in the world.
David Jensen
Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote in
<Zelf5.991$fd7.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>:
>The numbers were starting to fail in the South as well. Eli Whitney
>freed the slaves not Abe Lincoln.
I understood that the cotton gin made slavery profitable again.
Exile on Market Street
da...@dajensen-family.com wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 18:45:13 GMT, in misc.transport.urban-transit
> Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote in
> <Zelf5.991$fd7.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>:
>
>
>
> >The numbers were starting to fail in the South as well. Eli Whitney
> >freed the slaves not Abe Lincoln.
>
> I understood that the cotton gin made slavery profitable again.
Beat me to that observation, David. That was my understanding as well.
I also remember the author Richard Armour humorously alluding to this fact
in his attempt to Americanize the British parody history "1066 and All
That," "It All Started With Columbus." In that book, Armour writes about
Whitney "inventing a delicious drink that allowed one man to do the work of
ten. This beverage, called cotton gin, made cotton king across the South"
or something like that.
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> Zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power in the public interest,
> BUT it's not permission to regulate aesthetics or patterns.
Of course, homeowners associations in subdivisions do this all the time.
But I guess that's different; after all, nobody forced anyone to buy a
house in a particular subdivision. However, substitute "municipality" for
"subdivision" in the sentence immediately preceding and it's really no
different; plus, you can usually vote out the folks who impose rules you
don't like if enough of your neighbors agree with you, while those
subdivision pattern regulations may even be written into your deed of sale.
> The public
> interest in zoning extends to protecting "quiet enjoyment" and promoting
> "general welfare." General welfare means that a private land use will not
> encumber the populace with obligations without their consent. That's why
> I find TODs so wrong. They encumber the populace with transit subsidies
> without compensating benifits.
Okay, so you're complaining about socialized costs and privatized benefits.
(I would posit that anyone who purchases property in such a development
assumes he or she will benefit therefrom.) We've already ascertained
elsewhere that you're willing to pick up some of the socialized costs if
you think the benefits are worth it. To jump all the way to the bottom of
this post, would it be worth the subsidy if we tried dusting off the
Oglethorpe grid as a new-town model somewhere?
> This is the problem with TOD. In order to build so called human scale
> they preclude enough auto accomodation to even cover their least
> optimistic auto projections. There is a gap in the math. Essentially
> they need to eliminate two parking places to densify enough to
> encourage one transit trip replacement. They end up with not enough
> transit traffic and not enough parking. (Parking is a oversimplification,
> substitute the akward "sum total infrastructure necessary to accomodate
> auto mobility")
Well, let's see. I also gave the Gallery as an example. In aesthetic
terms, it's not something I'd want to duplicate, as it is a blank box (with
windows at the street level as a concession to its location) surrounded
(and penetrated) by city streets, with multistory parking garages adjacent
(one of which is now topped by a hotel). But it does appear to me to have
sufficient infrastructure to accommodate auto mobility while nonetheless
being extremely transit-friendly as well (it sits atop the city's busiest
subway line and one of the central regional-rail stations).
Of course, since land is cheaper out in the 'burbs, there's less incentive
to try this type of arrangement until -- as in King of Prussia -- there's
more to draw people, but less room to expand horizontally. Yep -- that
mall now sports several multistory parking garages.
> TOD is the proper term for what is being gussied up an sold as walkable
> community. The auto theory seems to be "If we don't build it, they
> will not drive." There's no evidence of this ever happening in practice.
It seems to work fine in its mirror image, which I guess is why it's so
appealing to many urbanophiles.
> I'm not sure about overcoming hostility. Did you see Jon Winstons' most
> recent gem accusing me and my friends of hijacking the conversation?
I missed that one. I guess some forms of hostility can't be overcome no
matter how hard one tries. But (and I'm sure you knew this) I was
referring to the "hostile" design I raised earlier.
> When the suburbs start spinning off isn't the hub the part that gets the
shaft?
LOL!
> Not really. LA is multi-nodal in function. The Miracle Mile, the Westside,
> Warner Center, etc. A City Hall, Cathederal and Music Hall does not make a
> center for 13 million people. At least we Catholics didn't hire Gheary to
> design the church.
Right you are about LA's multi-nodal nature. But so many of us are used to
thinking in a hierarchy of forms that it still is somewhat chafing to think
of a model with no one center dominant. I know it chafed the Chandlers;
the _LA Times_ could usually be counted on to side with the Downtown LA
boosters, and I don't think that Otis changed that bias much, for all the
miracles he worked on the rest of the paper.
[On to Savannah:]
> Walkable scale and definitive communities. No wonder the city fathers
> reject the concept. No chance to pick winners or concentrate political
> power bases.
Here's another problem, I guess: we seem to have problems with "everyone's
a winner" situations. "It's not enough that I succeed; you must also
fail."
> The numbers were starting to fail in the South as well. Eli Whitney
> freed the slaves not Abe Lincoln.
Dealt with separately.
> Thus LA, Phoneix and Dallas as counterexamples.
However, LA is bumping into its geographic constraint -- the mountains that
ring it on the east and north. Yes, I know that development has
leapfrogged both of the northern mountain ranges, but I hear that Palmdale
has gotten decidedly cooler property-value-wise, perhaps because it's so
remote from the LA Basin proper and hasn't the job base to sustain itself.
I'll lay you odds that as the population of the LA basin approaches that of
Greater New York, there will be some densification in the existing centers
-- perhaps enough to justify that rail line, even.
BTW, I saw an interesting report on the "Today Show" last week, when there
was a split program from LA. They ran a feature segment on the subway, and
whether Angelenos had really taken to it. One of the questions they
addressed was whether it was a timesaver for the commute to downtown, and
the report used two co-workers in the same downtown LA office who live in
the same part of San Fernando Valley -- presumably, the area near North
Hollywood Red Line station -- as their "test subjects."
One drove home via the Hollywood and Ventura Fwys; the other took the Red Line.
They quoted each about the reasons for their choices, the motorist while
driving, the rider on the train. The visuals showed the driver pulling in
to her home driveway 45 minutes after having left the office door;
"meanwhile," the voice-over said as footage of the subway rider exiting
North Hollywood Station rolled, "the co-worker reached the same point ten
minutes earlier."
Now, I suspect there are some variables the report did not take into
account, like (for instance) the total distance in miles. We really don't
know whether the motorist lived close enough to North Hollywood Station to
make it a viable choice for her (I think LA neighborhoods are sufficiently
large to make this a true statement even though "we live in the same
neighborhood"). How's this jibe with the FActs on the ground out that way?
> > ...The Disney infrastructure is
> > most assuredly modern, but the face it presents to the world is
> > turn-of-the-century, at least on Main Street -- the original one at
> > Disneyland in Anaheim, BTW, was modeled on the main street of Walt's
> > boyhood home, Marceline, Mo., circa 1911 (about when Walt was born).
>
> Except that there is only one store owner who is also the landlord and
> the prices are fixed and the stores interconnected and...
Okay, forget Disneyland. Let's try Celebration instead.
> There's a 50s store selling pedal cars and Pez dispensers. How transparent
> can you get? My wife had a better opinion. Paraphrased: "Horton Plaza (in
> San Diego) catering to teenagers who have credit cards."
I remember reading a favorable _Atlantic Monthly_ article about Horton
Plaza that also traced that development's lineage to
You-Know-What-KC-Shopping-Center. You mean to tell me that the mall rats
can't find anything to do there?
Cuideigian
"Robert Cote" <tech...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:3Erf5.88$GC6.1...@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net...
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> Market Street) wrote:
>
> > <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power in the public
> > > interest,
> > > BUT it's not permission to regulate aesthetics or patterns.
> >
> > Of course, homeowners associations in subdivisions do this all the time.
>
Why is it ok if it's the neighborhood association and not ok when it is
elected government?
>
> > But I guess that's different; after all, nobody forced anyone to buy a
> > house in a particular subdivision.
>
> It's also different because one preserves the status quo and another
> inhibits free expression.
I think you're reaching.
>
> > However, substitute "municipality" for
> > "subdivision" in the sentence immediately preceding and it's really no
> > different; plus, you can usually vote out the folks who impose rules you
> > don't like if enough of your neighbors agree with you, while those
> > subdivision pattern regulations may even be written into your deed of
sale.
>
> Agreed. HOA rules are opinions with teeth and scales. I'd rather try
> to convene a Constitutional Convention than change a "no oil changes in
> the driveway" restriction. I would note however that municipalites are
> not supposed to make value judgements. They do but that does not make
> it right or legal.
You can argue "right" (and wrong) all you want, but the government gets to
determine what's -legal-.
>
> > > The public
> > > interest in zoning extends to protecting "quiet enjoyment" and
promoting
> > > "general welfare." General welfare means that a private land use will
> > > not
> > > encumber the populace with obligations without their consent. That's
why
> > > I find TODs so wrong. They encumber the populace with transit
subsidies
> > > without compensating benifits.
> >
> > Okay, so you're complaining about socialized costs and privatized
benefits.
>
> In this case yes. In other cases I'd be willing to bitch about privatized
> costs for societal benifit. WVAs welcome stranger (coal mining) laws or
> Californias' Prop 13 or well you get it.
But you're perfectly willing to encumber the populace with road/auto
subsidies without any more "compensating benifits" than transit.
>
> > (I would posit that anyone who purchases property in such a development
> > assumes he or she will benefit therefrom.) We've already ascertained
> > elsewhere that you're willing to pick up some of the socialized costs if
> > you think the benefits are worth it. To jump all the way to the bottom
of
> > this post, would it be worth the subsidy if we tried dusting off the
> > Oglethorpe grid as a new-town model somewhere?
>
> Yes. But remember we don't make new urban areas we only add to old ones.
> Cure sprawl. Prohibit annexation. Build only new neighborhood scaled
> urban spaces.
You DO have an entertaining (an inaccurate) definition of "sprawl".
<snip>
>
> > > Not really. LA is multi-nodal in function. The Miracle Mile, the
> > > Westside,
> > > Warner Center, etc. A City Hall, Cathederal and Music Hall does not
make
> > > a
> > > center for 13 million people. At least we Catholics didn't hire
Gheary
> > > to
> > > design the church.
> >
> > Right you are about LA's multi-nodal nature. But so many of us are used
to
> > thinking in a hierarchy of forms that it still is somewhat chafing to
think
> > of a model with no one center dominant.
>
> That's essentially a political opinion. The only reason to desire
centralized
> urban influence is because you think it is advantageous to your views.
> Welcome to the halls of power Sandy.
A lot of people like centralized urban influence - even people without
"views".
> [geographic limits to 'old' cities]
>
> > > Thus LA, Phoneix and Dallas as counterexamples.
> >
> > However, LA is bumping into its geographic constraint -- the mountains
that
> > ring it on the east and north. Yes, I know that development has
> > leapfrogged both of the northern mountain ranges, but I hear that
Palmdale
> > has gotten decidedly cooler property-value-wise, perhaps because it's so
> > remote from the LA Basin proper and hasn't the job base to sustain
itself.
>
> Now you touch close to homes. Plural. Palmdale has stopped exploding.
Now
> it is merely raging. This deserves an entire thread. Start one if
interested.
Of course, Ventura County exported all it's growth to L.A.
> > I'll lay you odds that as the population of the LA basin approaches that
of
> > Greater New York, there will be some densification in the existing
centers
> > -- perhaps enough to justify that rail line, even.
>
> I think you mean "I'll lay you odds that as the population of Greater LA
> approaches that of Greater New York."
>
> We have transit viable corridors that put MOST existing NYC rail to shame.
But no transit currently on them.
Cuideigian
>
>
> The mistake we are making today is to assume that anything
> planners want is in fact in the public interest since the public
> is always being considered as stupid and not knowing what is best
> for itself.
> City politics are some of the most nasty in the world.
>
Cuideigian
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> Market Street) wrote:
>
> > In article <qhMd5.1337$vV1.3...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> > <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> >
>
> > as "anti-urban" --
> > meaning "openly hostile to cities" or "intent on destroying cities" --
is
> > probably the last thing the people who thought up these policies would
> > consider themselves.
>
> Exactly. This happens a lot. Look at the people who choose to
> be abusive to me in this newsgroup. They assume I don't know what I'm
> talking about, that I don't have backup data, that I don't use transit.
> Some of them actually don't use transit themselves, a double condemnation.
Actually, you usually start the abuse. You're simply trying to make
yourself into a victim to distract from your own flaws.
>
> The problem seems to be the weird idea that development patterns are
> a public interest. I don't see it. Public services, yes. Public
> interest in response to patterns, yes. Public control, no.
It's always about control. There's not a single law that doesn't have some
element of control. Government is all about imposing enough control so that
we don't just kill each other.
>
> > > Autocentric is in no way inflexible as you contend. Rails are
> > > even in their definition, fixed. Look at the diff between the
> > > various systems.
> >
> > I don't recall contending that autocentric development is inflexible;
>
> Maybe I read into this too much: "However, there's a difference between
> autocentric development that is hostile to all other forms of approach
> and autocentric development that accommodates other forms easily."
> within the context of an exception to the rule versus the rule but it
> seems to me that you beleive auto-oriented precludes other transportation
> options.
Auto-oriented DOES preclude all other transportation options.
Auto-accomodating (such as TOD) is a different story.
>My assertion is that of all the possibilites, auto predominence
> is most capable of future adaptation. In part, I will note, that it
> takes up more space in the first place.
Auto (POV) is most likely to become extinct like the dinosaurs.
>
> > indeed, in my earlier post, I made a distinction between two types of
> > autocentric development. Similarly, you can have TOD that can
accommodate
> > cars (given the FActs on the ground, it'd have to anyway) or TOD that
> > pretends they don't exist at all. Same principle.
>
> I disagree. TOD ignores every piece of evidence in the hopes that
> wishing hard enough will make something so. On top of that, the
> conscesions necessary to accomodate ToD absolutely precludes
multimodalism.
In the Real World (tm), every TOD includes autos. Your strawman does not
fit reality.
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <Zelf5.991$fd7.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > Zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power in the public
> > interest,
> > BUT it's not permission to regulate aesthetics or patterns.
>
> Of course, homeowners associations in subdivisions do this all the time.
And Co-ops in cities. Let's not revisit our respective biases eh?
> But I guess that's different; after all, nobody forced anyone to buy a
> house in a particular subdivision.
It's also different because one preserves the status quo and another
inhibits free expression.
> However, substitute "municipality" for
> "subdivision" in the sentence immediately preceding and it's really no
> different; plus, you can usually vote out the folks who impose rules you
> don't like if enough of your neighbors agree with you, while those
> subdivision pattern regulations may even be written into your deed of sale.
Agreed. HOA rules are opinions with teeth and scales. I'd rather try
to convene a Constitutional Convention than change a "no oil changes in
the driveway" restriction. I would note however that municipalites are
not supposed to make value judgements. They do but that does not make
it right or legal.
> > The public
> > interest in zoning extends to protecting "quiet enjoyment" and promoting
> > "general welfare." General welfare means that a private land use will
> > not
> > encumber the populace with obligations without their consent. That's why
> > I find TODs so wrong. They encumber the populace with transit subsidies
> > without compensating benifits.
>
> Okay, so you're complaining about socialized costs and privatized benefits.
In this case yes. In other cases I'd be willing to bitch about privatized
costs for societal benifit. WVAs welcome stranger (coal mining) laws or
Californias' Prop 13 or well you get it.
> (I would posit that anyone who purchases property in such a development
> assumes he or she will benefit therefrom.) We've already ascertained
> elsewhere that you're willing to pick up some of the socialized costs if
> you think the benefits are worth it. To jump all the way to the bottom of
> this post, would it be worth the subsidy if we tried dusting off the
> Oglethorpe grid as a new-town model somewhere?
Yes. But remember we don't make new urban areas we only add to old ones.
Cure sprawl. Prohibit annexation. Build only new neighborhood scaled
urban spaces.
> > This is the problem with TOD. In order to build so called human scale
> > they preclude enough auto accomodation to even cover their least
> > optimistic auto projections. There is a gap in the math. Essentially
> > they need to eliminate two parking places to densify enough to
> > encourage one transit trip replacement. They end up with not enough
> > transit traffic and not enough parking. (Parking is a
> > oversimplification,
> > substitute the akward "sum total infrastructure necessary to accomodate
> > auto mobility")
>
> Well, let's see. I also gave the Gallery as an example. In aesthetic
> terms, it's not something I'd want to duplicate, as it is a blank box (with
> windows at the street level as a concession to its location) surrounded
> (and penetrated) by city streets, with multistory parking garages adjacent
> (one of which is now topped by a hotel). But it does appear to me to have
> sufficient infrastructure to accommodate auto mobility while nonetheless
> being extremely transit-friendly as well (it sits atop the city's busiest
> subway line and one of the central regional-rail stations).
>
> Of course, since land is cheaper out in the 'burbs, there's less incentive
> to try this type of arrangement until -- as in King of Prussia -- there's
> more to draw people, but less room to expand horizontally. Yep -- that
> mall now sports several multistory parking garages.
So doesn't the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. The devil is
in the details if not in the back room of the planning department.
> > When the suburbs start spinning off isn't the hub the part that gets the
> > shaft?
>
> LOL!
Thanks. Tying three threads and making it funny is tough work.
Dave McL has been missing the old m.t.u-t humor, I'm trying.
> > Not really. LA is multi-nodal in function. The Miracle Mile, the
> > Westside,
> > Warner Center, etc. A City Hall, Cathederal and Music Hall does not make
> > a
> > center for 13 million people. At least we Catholics didn't hire Gheary
> > to
> > design the church.
>
> Right you are about LA's multi-nodal nature. But so many of us are used to
> thinking in a hierarchy of forms that it still is somewhat chafing to think
> of a model with no one center dominant.
That's essentially a political opinion. The only reason to desire centralized
urban influence is because you think it is advantageous to your views.
Welcome to the halls of power Sandy.
> I know it chafed the Chandlers;
Understatement. Remember the Cs also never saw a tax they didn't like.
They didn't pay taxes. That was for the rabble. Did you see the Allan
Sloan analysis of the recent sale of the LATimes? Devastating.
> the _LA Times_ could usually be counted on to side with the Downtown LA
> boosters, and I don't think that Otis changed that bias much, for all the
> miracles he worked on the rest of the paper.
Well gee, slavish progressive bias durring a half century of unrestrained
progressivism? How could he lose?
> [On to Savannah:]
>
> > Walkable scale and definitive communities. No wonder the city fathers
> > reject the concept. No chance to pick winners or concentrate political
> > power bases.
>
> Here's another problem, I guess: we seem to have problems with "everyone's
> a winner" situations. "It's not enough that I succeed; you must also
> fail."
Kinda describes my exchanges with Alex (re: Boston) in this same thread
doesn't it? On both sides if not equally BTW.
The concept of win-win is rare in a democratic winner take all system
such as ours. Tune into those old Richard Burton period pieces on the
the English kings. That's the old win-win model. That's how IMO the
modern politician sees it as well. Mores the pity. [Damn cultural
references again, smacks head]
[geographic limits to 'old' cities]
> > Thus LA, Phoneix and Dallas as counterexamples.
>
> However, LA is bumping into its geographic constraint -- the mountains that
> ring it on the east and north. Yes, I know that development has
> leapfrogged both of the northern mountain ranges, but I hear that Palmdale
> has gotten decidedly cooler property-value-wise, perhaps because it's so
> remote from the LA Basin proper and hasn't the job base to sustain itself.
Now you touch close to homes. Plural. Palmdale has stopped exploding. Now
it is merely raging. This deserves an entire thread. Start one if interested.
> I'll lay you odds that as the population of the LA basin approaches that of
> Greater New York, there will be some densification in the existing centers
> -- perhaps enough to justify that rail line, even.
I think you mean "I'll lay you odds that as the population of Greater LA
approaches that of Greater New York."
We have transit viable corridors that put MOST existing NYC rail to shame.
> BTW, I saw an interesting report on the "Today Show" last week, when there
> was a split program from LA. They ran a feature segment on the subway, and
> whether Angelenos had really taken to it. One of the questions they
> addressed was whether it was a timesaver for the commute to downtown, and
> the report used two co-workers in the same downtown LA office who live in
> the same part of San Fernando Valley -- presumably, the area near North
> Hollywood Red Line station -- as their "test subjects."
One channel (7?) regularly runs side by side commutes. Different routes
and such. The Red Line really only goes to the SFV for political reasons.
It should have gone to East LA first. The ridership would have made the
Hollywood extension inevitable and likely to be expanded. As it is the
way it was done means no more subway.
...
> Now, I suspect there are some variables the report did not take into
> account, like (for instance) the total distance in miles. We really don't
> know whether the motorist lived close enough to North Hollywood Station to
> make it a viable choice for her (I think LA neighborhoods are sufficiently
> large to make this a true statement even though "we live in the same
> neighborhood"). How's this jibe with the FActs on the ground out that way?
Hard to say. FActs is slippery devils. IOW I don't know.
> > > ...The Disney infrastructure is
> > > most assuredly modern, but the face it presents to the world is
> > > turn-of-the-century, at least on Main Street -- the original one at
> > > Disneyland in Anaheim, BTW, was modeled on the main street of Walt's
> > > boyhood home, Marceline, Mo., circa 1911 (about when Walt was born).
> >
> > Except that there is only one store owner who is also the landlord and
> > the prices are fixed and the stores interconnected and...
>
> Okay, forget Disneyland. Let's try Celebration instead.
I own a Wyland. Museum 46/50 A-5 Pod. Evil Koa wood frame. Why do
I menttion this trivia? Because the Wyland gallery in Celebration
is failing. Why? Glad you asked but I suspect by now you know the
answer. Celebrations' visitor mode share was unrealistically tilted
towards transit. Didn't materialize by a factor of 3! The gallery
needs more visitor traffic. Transit does not provide it. By association
MY piece of "art" is worth less. Talk about ripples of pain exending
out from bad transportation ideas.
> > There's a 50s store selling pedal cars and Pez dispensers. How
> > transparent
> > can you get? My wife had a better opinion. Paraphrased: "Horton Plaza
> > (in
> > San Diego) catering to teenagers who have credit cards."
>
> I remember reading a favorable _Atlantic Monthly_ article about Horton
> Plaza that also traced that development's lineage to
> You-Know-What-KC-Shopping-Center.
Yes. God what 1993? Some memory you have. I'll watch myself.
> You mean to tell me that the mall rats
> can't find anything to do there?
I'm not still sure about Horton. Malls are quick to change.
One of their reasons for temporary sucess I might add.
Bob Tiernan
Date: 25 Jul 2000 16:23:47 -0000
From: Cascade Policy Institute
Subject: Cascade panelist on public radio this Thursday
Cascade's environmental policy director, John Charles, will be a guest on
the live broadcast of National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" program
this Thursday discussing the Urban Environment. He will be joined by two
other panelists including Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.
National Public Radio
"Talk of the Nation"
Topic - The Urban Environment
11am to noon Pacific Time
KOPB - 91.5FM in Portland, and other NPR stations
Thursday, July 27th
From noon to 1pm Pacific Time other panelists will discuss "legislating
livability." Both segments will be provocative, with advocates of
centrally planned and market-oriented approaches to issues such as urban
growth, zoning and traffic congestion.
This show originates from radio station KOPB in Portland, 91.5FM. Check
the NPR web site for stations in your area: http://www.npr.org/members/
If you can't listen live, check the NPR Archives the next day or later for
the complete audio of the show at
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnps02fm.cfm?MM=7&YY=2000&PrgID=5
Steve Buckstein, President
Cascade Policy Institute
Portland, Oregon
(503) 242-0900
http://www.CascadePolicy.org
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> Market Street) wrote:
>
> > In article <Zelf5.991$fd7.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> > <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Zoning as a legitimate exercise of governmental power in the public
> > > interest,
> > > BUT it's not permission to regulate aesthetics or patterns.
> >
> > Of course, homeowners associations in subdivisions do this all the time.
>
> And Co-ops in cities. Let's not revisit our respective biases eh?
Fair enough. OTOH, the HOA can't stop a would-be buyer from purchasing a
house; the co-op board can keep a would-be buyer from buying a share.
"Condo owners' association" would be a better parallel.
> > But I guess that's different; after all, nobody forced anyone to buy a
> > house in a particular subdivision.
>
> It's also different because one preserves the status quo and another
> inhibits free expression.
Since the Constitution does not forbid private entities from restricting
freedom of speech, I understand your distinction, but really, both types of
rules do both.
> In this case yes. In other cases I'd be willing to bitch about privatized
> costs for societal benifit. WVAs welcome stranger (coal mining) laws or
> Californias' Prop 13 or well you get it.
Are you really sure Californians as a whole "benefited" from Prop 13?
Certainly, those who were already homeowners at the time of its passage
did, in that their property tax bills ceased to rise in tandem with their
properties' assessed values. But it would seem to me that along with
renters or post-13 property buyers, anyone with a child in a California
public school -- and maybe even a California public college or university
other than UCLA or Berkeley -- could be considered a net loser, since (at
least so it appears) the state's once-justly-famed education system went
into a steady decline afterwards.
> > (I would posit that anyone who purchases property in such a development
> > assumes he or she will benefit therefrom.) We've already ascertained
> > elsewhere that you're willing to pick up some of the socialized costs if
> > you think the benefits are worth it. To jump all the way to the bottom of
> > this post, would it be worth the subsidy if we tried dusting off the
> > Oglethorpe grid as a new-town model somewhere?
>
> Yes. But remember we don't make new urban areas we only add to old ones.
> Cure sprawl. Prohibit annexation. Build only new neighborhood scaled
> urban spaces.
Right. And as the population grows, pack 'em in tighter. I guess we could
retrofit Oglethorpe onto the Philadelphia street grid and see if the
emptied-out parts of the city start to refill. But something tells me it
would take more than just that to do the trick. For starters, there's this
wage tax...
> > Right you are about LA's multi-nodal nature. But so many of us are used to
> > thinking in a hierarchy of forms that it still is somewhat chafing to think
> > of a model with no one center dominant.
>
> That's essentially a political opinion. The only reason to desire centralized
> urban influence is because you think it is advantageous to your views.
Actually, I tend to wax hot and cold on the political issue of what a
metropolis should look like. I'm simultaneously sympathetic to the
"because the central city is the engine that produces the economic activity
that makes the metropolis grow, it should be able to annex the growth"
argument David ("Cities Without Suburbs") Rusk and others make *and* to the
"large municipal governments are too cumbersome and in the end rob
communities of the ability to shape their futures" arguments advanced by
people like you -- and Jane Jacobs, I might add.
I guess the answer is some sort of municipal federalism; I agree with
Jacobs that the Metro Toronto structure was not broken and thus didn't need
the fix it got. (And we might note -- since this thread spun off of a
thread about Boston -- that the municipal government structure of
Metropolitan Boston is about as "balkanized" as you can get, yet the area
is a wonderful place to live and functions (more or less) just fine, with
the state providing metropolitan-wide services.)
Go figure.
> Welcome to the halls of power Sandy.
I'm still pressing my nose against the entrance-door window. ;-)
> > I know it chafed the Chandlers;
>
> Understatement. Remember the Cs also never saw a tax they didn't like.
> They didn't pay taxes. That was for the rabble.
Holy Leona Helmsley!
> Did you see the Allan
> Sloan analysis of the recent sale of the LATimes? Devastating.
No. Where did it run?
Actually, I'm rather surprised to hear that the Chandlers were taxophiles.
I had understood that the family as a whole was pretty conservative and
more or less content to just take its money from the _Times_ and run -- and
that Otis' interest in the newspaper as a newspaper as well as his more
liberal views made him somewhat unpopular among his relatives.
> > Here's another problem, I guess: we seem to have problems with "everyone's
> > a winner" situations. "It's not enough that I succeed; you must also
> > fail."
>
> Kinda describes my exchanges with Alex (re: Boston) in this same thread
> doesn't it? On both sides if not equally BTW.
Let's call it "The McLaughlin Effect." (Oops, another possibly obscure
cultural reference, though far from highbrow.)
[Look for a Palmdale thread later.]
> > I'll lay you odds that as the population of the LA basin approaches that of
> > Greater New York, there will be some densification in the existing centers
> > -- perhaps enough to justify that rail line, even.
>
> I think you mean "I'll lay you odds that as the population of Greater LA
> approaches that of Greater New York."
So the LA Basin as a whole is there already? Or is greater LA bigger than
the basin? (Oh, wait. We were talking about Palmdale before, weren't we?
Never mind.)
> We have transit viable corridors that put MOST existing NYC rail to shame.
I thought that was the whole point of building the Red Line where it was
(to have been) built. If Wilshire Blvd isn't transit viable, I don't know
what is.
> One channel (7?) regularly runs side by side commutes. Different routes
> and such. The Red Line really only goes to the SFV for political reasons.
> It should have gone to East LA first. The ridership would have made the
> Hollywood extension inevitable and likely to be expanded. As it is the
> way it was done means no more subway.
I think that's more a function of how the LACMTA handled the construction
job than of choice of which segment to build first, even though I see your
point about sending it into the Valley. (No doubt a counter-secessionist
move?)
> I own a Wyland. Museum 46/50 A-5 Pod. Evil Koa wood frame. Why do
> I menttion this trivia? Because the Wyland gallery in Celebration
> is failing. Why? Glad you asked but I suspect by now you know the
> answer. Celebrations' visitor mode share was unrealistically tilted
> towards transit. Didn't materialize by a factor of 3! The gallery
> needs more visitor traffic. Transit does not provide it. By association
> MY piece of "art" is worth less. Talk about ripples of pain exending
> out from bad transportation ideas.
I don't think we can lay all the blame for this one at the feet of mass
transit, especially considering that Celebration is not tied into Disney's
internal transit system at all.
Celebration is located close to several major highways, and the visitors
don't seem to be driving there, either. Otherwise, shouldn't we have been
reading stories about people complaining that there's no place to park in
Celebration?
I think the Disney folks simply assumed that the ratio of tourists to
residents patronizing downtown Celebration would be higher than it turned
out to be, period, no matter how they got there.
Would the fact that there's a big Wyland mural on the west side of the
Marketplace Design Center, where just about everyone who comes into Center
City Philadelphia by any mode except the subway can see it, lessen the pain
any?
David Jensen
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on Market Street) wrote in
<smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>:
>Actually, I tend to wax hot and cold on the political issue of what a
>metropolis should look like. I'm simultaneously sympathetic to the
>"because the central city is the engine that produces the economic activity
>that makes the metropolis grow, it should be able to annex the growth"
>argument David ("Cities Without Suburbs") Rusk and others make *and* to the
>"large municipal governments are too cumbersome and in the end rob
>communities of the ability to shape their futures" arguments advanced by
>people like you -- and Jane Jacobs, I might add.
I think that part of the problem is that the central city isn't _the_
engine anymore. Not only do most central cities have well under half the
population of the metro area, but they aren't the parts of the metro
areas adding the jobs. David Rusk and Jane Jacobs are both right in part
because they appear to be talking about two different things.
>I guess the answer is some sort of municipal federalism; I agree with
>Jacobs that the Metro Toronto structure was not broken and thus didn't need
>the fix it got. (And we might note -- since this thread spun off of a
>thread about Boston -- that the municipal government structure of
>Metropolitan Boston is about as "balkanized" as you can get, yet the area
>is a wonderful place to live and functions (more or less) just fine, with
>the state providing metropolitan-wide services.)
If I were czar of local governments, I would have one elected government
-- the county -- which is responsible for all regional operations and
only regional operations. The counties of metro areas would continue to
grow to match the metro area. I would not tolerate appointed metro
commissions. Cities would be coterminous with "natural" neighborhoods,
with no city larger than about 250,000 people.
>Go figure.
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <0mrrnskiiep3c07om...@4ax.com>,
> da...@dajensen-family.com wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 18:45:13 GMT, in misc.transport.urban-transit
> > Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote in
> > <Zelf5.991$fd7.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>:
> >
> >
> >
> > >The numbers were starting to fail in the South as well. Eli Whitney
> > >freed the slaves not Abe Lincoln.
> >
> > I understood that the cotton gin made slavery profitable again.
>
> Beat me to that observation, David. That was my understanding as well.
>
> I also remember the author Richard Armour humorously alluding to this fact
> in his attempt to Americanize the British parody history "1066 and All
> That," "It All Started With Columbus." In that book, Armour writes about
> Whitney "inventing a delicious drink that allowed one man to do the work of
> ten. This beverage, called cotton gin, made cotton king across the South"
> or something like that.
You are both correct. I had intended to highlight the mechanization of
cotton and farming in general as the reason for slavery becoming uneconomical
but I picked the wrong poster child. Eli Whitney's cotton gin made commercial
cultivation of cotton on inland plantations profitable. That needed slaves.
It was the later inventions that made human labor uneconomical. Sorry.
It's also why the industrializing states didn't see the need for slavery.
Inasmuch as the Civil War was about slavery and the North won by weight
of manufacturing might they won and proved their point. Of course they
also warred on their fellow states for exercising their rights to cecede.
Let's hope it goes better when California goes and takes AZ, OR, WA and
BC with them. HI, NV and AK are welcome to petition if they help finance
the purchase (repurchase?) of Baja.
Rob Dubnicka
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>, smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> Market Street) wrote:
>
> > In article <0mrrnskiiep3c07om...@4ax.com>,
> > da...@dajensen-family.com wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 18:45:13 GMT, in misc.transport.urban-transit
> > > Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote in
> > > <Zelf5.991$fd7.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > >The numbers were starting to fail in the South as well. Eli Whitney
> > > >freed the slaves not Abe Lincoln.
> > >
> > > I understood that the cotton gin made slavery profitable again.
> >
> > Beat me to that observation, David. That was my understanding as well.
> >
> > I also remember the author Richard Armour humorously alluding to this fact
> > in his attempt to Americanize the British parody history "1066 and All
> > That," "It All Started With Columbus." In that book, Armour writes about
> > Whitney "inventing a delicious drink that allowed one man to do the work of
> > ten. This beverage, called cotton gin, made cotton king across the South"
> > or something like that.
>
> You are both correct. I had intended to highlight the mechanization of
> cotton and farming in general as the reason for slavery becoming uneconomical
> but I picked the wrong poster child. Eli Whitney's cotton gin made commercial
> cultivation of cotton on inland plantations profitable. That needed slaves.
> It was the later inventions that made human labor uneconomical. Sorry.
>
> It's also why the industrializing states didn't see the need for slavery.
> Inasmuch as the Civil War was about slavery and the North won by weight
> of manufacturing might they won and proved their point. Of course they
> also warred on their fellow states for exercising their rights to cecede.
> Let's hope it goes better when California goes and takes AZ, OR, WA and
> BC with them. HI, NV and AK are welcome to petition if they help finance
> the purchase (repurchase?) of Baja.
Given what we've seen in these forums, are you sure you would *want* Oregon to go with you?
David Jensen
>
>It's also why the industrializing states didn't see the need for slavery.
>Inasmuch as the Civil War was about slavery and the North won by weight
>of manufacturing might they won and proved their point. Of course they
>also warred on their fellow states for exercising their rights to cecede.
>Let's hope it goes better when California goes and takes AZ, OR, WA and
>BC with them. HI, NV and AK are welcome to petition if they help finance
>the purchase (repurchase?) of Baja.
I do believe that hell would freeze over before OR and WA agreed to be
part of a country dominated by CA.
Cuideigian
"Bob Tiernan" <zu...@teleport.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.10.100072...@user2.teleport.com...
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: 25 Jul 2000 16:23:47 -0000
> From: Cascade Policy Institute
> Subject: Cascade panelist on public radio this Thursday
>
>
> Cascade's environmental policy director, John Charles, will be a guest on
> the live broadcast of National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" program
> this Thursday discussing the Urban Environment. He will be joined by two
> other panelists including Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.
Probably as the media's attempt at "balance". For my part, the more we hear
from the CI types the easier it is to see and debunk their propaganda.
Actually, they do themselves in by ignoring reality.
Cuideigian
"Robert Cote" <tech...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:iiLf5.3463$6W3.3...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net...
> more than some misguided petty bureaucrats and a few obnoxious boosters to
> condemn a whole state. Besides we'll need more landfill space after we
start
> dredging the toxic silt in the Delta as part of a plan to dam the
Willamette
> and ship it to Palmdale.
Three-eyed fish and all.
Robert Cote
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2000 20:09:23 GMT, in alt.planning.urban
> Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote in
> <TzHf5.1387$6W3.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>:
>
>
> >
> >It's also why the industrializing states didn't see the need for slavery.
> >Inasmuch as the Civil War was about slavery and the North won by weight
> >of manufacturing might they won and proved their point. Of course they
> >also warred on their fellow states for exercising their rights to cecede.
> >Let's hope it goes better when California goes and takes AZ, OR, WA and
> >BC with them. HI, NV and AK are welcome to petition if they help finance
> >the purchase (repurchase?) of Baja.
>
> I do believe that hell would freeze over before OR and WA agreed to be
> part of a country dominated by CA
I wasn't planning on ASKING them. ;-)
Robert Cote
> Robert Cote wrote:
>
> > In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
> > smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> > Market Street) wrote:
> >
> > > In article <0mrrnskiiep3c07om...@4ax.com>,
> > > da...@dajensen-family.com wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 18:45:13 GMT, in misc.transport.urban-transit
> > > > Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote in
> > > > <Zelf5.991$fd7.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > >The numbers were starting to fail in the South as well. Eli Whitney
> > > > >freed the slaves not Abe Lincoln.
> > > >
> > > > I understood that the cotton gin made slavery profitable again.
> > >
> > > Beat me to that observation, David. That was my understanding as well.
> > >
> > > I also remember the author Richard Armour humorously alluding to this
> > > fact
> > > in his attempt to Americanize the British parody history "1066 and All
> > > That," "It All Started With Columbus." In that book, Armour writes
> > > about
> > > Whitney "inventing a delicious drink that allowed one man to do the
> > > work of
> > > ten. This beverage, called cotton gin, made cotton king across the
> > > South"
> > > or something like that.
> >
> > You are both correct. I had intended to highlight the mechanization of
> > cotton and farming in general as the reason for slavery becoming
> > uneconomical
> > but I picked the wrong poster child. Eli Whitney's cotton gin made
> > commercial
> > cultivation of cotton on inland plantations profitable. That needed
> > slaves.
> > It was the later inventions that made human labor uneconomical. Sorry.
> >
> > It's also why the industrializing states didn't see the need for slavery.
> > Inasmuch as the Civil War was about slavery and the North won by weight
> > of manufacturing might they won and proved their point. Of course they
> > also warred on their fellow states for exercising their rights to cecede.
> > Let's hope it goes better when California goes and takes AZ, OR, WA and
> > BC with them. HI, NV and AK are welcome to petition if they help finance
> > the purchase (repurchase?) of Baja.
>
> Given what we've seen in these forums, are you sure you would *want* Oregon
> to go with you?
Sure, Oregon is a nice place. Portland is a nice place. It takes a lot
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <3Erf5.88$GC6.1...@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
[Robert is bitching about public costs for private benifit]
> > In this case yes. In other cases I'd be willing to bitch about
> > privatized
> > costs for societal benifit. WVAs welcome stranger (coal mining) laws or
> > Californias' Prop 13 or well you get it.
>
> Are you really sure Californians as a whole "benefited" from Prop 13?
Absolutely certain. The benifits however have been very variable. In
part because the idea of basing municipal taxes on property values is
so variable and unconnected to both expenses and policy. Variable also
because of loopholes that sheild companies from the same rules.
> Certainly, those who were already homeowners at the time of its passage
> did, in that their property tax bills ceased to rise in tandem with their
> properties' assessed values.
Imagine that. Tying municipal costs, encumbrances and expenditures to
votes. The horror. This is a benifits part IMO.
> But it would seem to me that along with
> renters or post-13 property buyers, anyone with a child in a California
> public school -- and maybe even a California public college or university
> other than UCLA or Berkeley -- could be considered a net loser, since (at
> least so it appears) the state's once-justly-famed education system went
> into a steady decline afterwards.
</apocryphal story: on>
I'm of that special age. Thrice over in FAct. I once caused a party
guest to slink away in embarrasment. He asked why I wasn't "smart"
enough to buy property when Prop 13 first passed. I replied that
I wasn't old enough to enter into a legal contract at the time. Prop 13
is a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth in a direction never
before tried.
</apocryphal story: off>
You are confusing two (actually 3) simultaneous processes. Education
was killed when the State Supreme Court ruled (based on a Fed case) that
it was illegal to base school funding on local property taxes.
In order to "equalize" education funding now is based almost entirely
on attendance. This change in funding from local to statewide has
had a number of interesting/sad/unintended consequences. For one
California went from among the top 5 to among the bottom 5 states
in student scores in 13 years. People don't/can't vote to increase
their local taxes for school operations. Bonded indebtedness is
strangling some local distrists. Very egalitarian, every child
is brought down to the lowest common denominator while private
schools skim the best making scores even lower. The State Supe
of Schools should be named Gompers.
The two things happened at almost the same time and the changes in
funding flows further confused the issue but no, state based
attendance driven funding was seperate. Basing school funding on
local property taxes was found to be unconstitutional because poor
kids didn't get the same as rich kids. They still don't but that
doesn't matter. Everyon is now uniformly mediocre.
> > ...remember we don't make new urban areas we only add to old ones.
> > Cure sprawl. Prohibit annexation. Build only new neighborhood scaled
> > urban spaces.
>
> Right. And as the population grows, pack 'em in tighter.
You are teasing. I hope.
> I guess we could
> retrofit Oglethorpe onto the Philadelphia street grid and see if the
> emptied-out parts of the city start to refill. But something tells me it
> would take more than just that to do the trick. For starters, there's this
> wage tax...
If the neighborhood model of both control and density were followed the
high taxes would not be necessay.
> > > Right you are about LA's multi-nodal nature. But so many of us are
> > > used to
> > > thinking in a hierarchy of forms that it still is somewhat chafing to
> > > think
> > > of a model with no one center dominant.
> >
> > That's essentially a political opinion. The only reason to desire
> > centralized
> > urban influence is because you think it is advantageous to your views.
>
> Actually, I tend to wax hot and cold on the political issue of what a
> metropolis should look like. I'm simultaneously sympathetic to the
> "because the central city is the engine that produces the economic activity
> that makes the metropolis grow, it should be able to annex the growth"
> argument David ("Cities Without Suburbs") Rusk and others make *and* to the
> "large municipal governments are too cumbersome and in the end rob
> communities of the ability to shape their futures" arguments advanced by
> people like you -- and Jane Jacobs, I might add.
First Anthony Downs comes around to my way of thinking, now Jane Jacobs?
Wow, do I feel smug. (Not SMUG, BTW.)
Rusk, IMO fails to recognize the laws of diminishing returns associated
with big organizations particularly govts.
There's another Rusk failing. I'll try to explain but reserve a chance to
try again if I fail this time. Rich people are very difficult to force
into anything. In this they make excellent canaries in the coal mine.
If a city drives them out, and keeps trying to recapture them whether
with annexation or commute taxes or regional transit authorities or
MPOs, then it is doing a poor job in the first place.
> > > I know [LA lacking Downtown] chafed the Chandlers;
> >
> > Understatement. Remember the Cs also never saw a tax they didn't like.
> > They didn't pay taxes. That was for the rabble.
>
> Holy Leona Helmsley!
>
> > Did you see the Allan
> > Sloan analysis of the recent sale of the LATimes? Devastating.
>
> No. Where did it run?
Newsweek 03/13/00 IIRC. No way to access online.
> [Look for a Palmdale thread later.]
I still own a mountain cabin on the other side of Palmdale and used to
work in the Antelope Valley durring the '82 depression. I anticipate.
> > I think you mean "I'll lay you odds that as the population of Greater LA
> > approaches that of Greater New York."
>
> So the LA Basin as a whole is there already? Or is greater LA bigger than
> the basin? (Oh, wait. We were talking about Palmdale before, weren't we?
> Never mind.)
The next census may produce a problem LA may technically merge with
San Bernadino. That'll screw up their neat CMSA MSA etc pidgeonholes.
> > We have transit viable corridors that put MOST existing NYC rail to
> > shame.
>
> I thought that was the whole point of building the Red Line where it was
> (to have been) built. If Wilshire Blvd isn't transit viable, I don't know
> what is.
Technically transit needs viable. Political suicide and engineering nightmare.
> > It should have gone to East LA first. The ridership would have made the
> > Hollywood extension inevitable and likely to be expanded. As it is the
> > way it was done means no more subway.
>
> I think that's more a function of how the LACMTA handled the construction
> job than of choice of which segment to build first, even though I see your
> point about sending it into the Valley. (No doubt a counter-secessionist
> move?)
>
> Celebration is located close to several major highways, and the visitors
> don't seem to be driving there, either.
It isn't auto friendly. This has been a point I've been harping on. When
Celebration went "walkable" something had to give. Transit didn't evolve
AND there's no way to fall back on the tried and true POV draws.
> Otherwise, shouldn't we have been
> reading stories about people complaining that there's no place to park in
> Celebration?
The people in Celebration don't care. The tourists don't go. Who's
left to complain?
> I think the Disney folks simply assumed that the ratio of tourists to
> residents patronizing downtown Celebration would be higher than it turned
> out to be, period, no matter how they got there.
Possible. The whole project seems to have slowed since the inital whoop.
> Would the fact that there's a big Wyland mural on the west side of the
> Marketplace Design Center, where just about everyone who comes into Center
> City Philadelphia by any mode except the subway can see it, lessen the pain
> any?
I feel better. Thanks. People still go into Center City Philadelphia?
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> Sure, Oregon is a nice place. Portland is a nice place. It takes a lot
> more than some misguided petty bureaucrats and a few obnoxious boosters to
> condemn a whole state. Besides we'll need more landfill space after we start
> dredging the toxic silt in the Delta as part of a plan to dam the Willamette
> and ship it to Palmdale.
OK, here's that opening for a Palmdale thread.
I'll start with a question:
What exactly is the employment situation in northern Los Angeles County?
Are there any major employers located on that side of the mountains?
Between the mountains and Burbank?
And another:
I understand that Metrolink regional rail service from this area was
well-used in the wake of the Northridge quake. Is it still?
And a third:
Was my prior speculation on the reason for the cooling-off of the Palmdale
real estate market correct?
And a fourth:
Do you really think you could pull a Mulholland with the Columbia? And
wouldn't that be hideously expensive?
(Yes, I know your tongue was in your cheek. But if we're going to play
what-if, why not go for broke?)
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> </apocryphal story: on>
>
> I'm of that special age. Thrice over in FAct. I once caused a party
> guest to slink away in embarrasment. He asked why I wasn't "smart"
> enough to buy property when Prop 13 first passed. I replied that
> I wasn't old enough to enter into a legal contract at the time. Prop 13
> is a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth in a direction never
> before tried.
>
> </apocryphal story: off>
And Social Security is...?
[thanks for setting me straight on the real cause of the decline of public
education in California]
> > Right. And as the population grows, pack 'em in tighter.
>
> You are teasing. I hope.
I'm a fan of dense urban communities, but there *are* limits. As the
population of an area rises, there will be a need sooner or later for the
settled area to expand along with it.
> If the neighborhood model of both control and density were followed the
> high taxes would not be necessay.
Time to reverse the consolidation of 1854, then? Turn City Hall into a
real county court house?
[FWIW, Philadelphia City Hall -- which took 30 years to complete, thanks in
no small part to the celebrated corruption of the municipal government --
is, IIRC, the largest such structure in the country. Part of the reason for
building it was as a symbol of civic pride and power -- its tower was
taller than any structure then extant in New York, and would have been
taller than any structure in the world at the time had the Washington
Monument not been completed and the Eiffel Tower constructed before it was
topped off.]
> First Anthony Downs comes around to my way of thinking, now Jane Jacobs?
> Wow, do I feel smug. (Not SMUG, BTW.)
Something-or-other Macintosh User Group?
[Red Line under Wilshire]
> Technically transit needs viable. Political suicide and engineering
nightmare.
Are the methane pockets really that much of a challenge? A bigger problem
than even Henry Waxman?
> It isn't auto friendly. This has been a point I've been harping on. When
> Celebration went "walkable" something had to give. Transit didn't evolve
> AND there's no way to fall back on the tried and true POV draws.
I guess The Celebration Corporation could build a P&R facility on US 192
outside the town boundary and run a Tourmobile-style shuttle service into
Celebration proper...
> > Would the fact that there's a big Wyland mural on the west side of the
> > Marketplace Design Center, where just about everyone who comes into Center
> > City Philadelphia by any mode except the subway can see it, lessen the pain
> > any?
>
> I feel better. Thanks. People still go into Center City Philadelphia?
Last I looked, some do. I don't think those pricey Walnut Street
restaurants could survive just on the patronage of Center City residents, a
good chunk of whom can't afford them anyway (yes, there are less-expensive
ones on Walnut too).
Exile on Market Street
da...@dajensen-family.com wrote:
> If I were czar of local governments, I would have one elected government
> -- the county -- which is responsible for all regional operations and
> only regional operations. The counties of metro areas would continue to
> grow to match the metro area. I would not tolerate appointed metro
> commissions. Cities would be coterminous with "natural" neighborhoods,
> with no city larger than about 250,000 people.
Works for me.
This also sounds a lot like the governmental structure of Greater London,
except that I think the "municipalities" are a lot smaller. The City of
London, for instance, has about 1,000 people in it.
(US analogue: Imagine if the "City of New York" still had its northern
boundary at Wall Street.)
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <waYf5.19$NE2....@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > </apocryphal story: on>
> >
> > I'm of that special age. Thrice over in FAct. I once caused a party
> > guest to slink away in embarrasment. He asked why I wasn't "smart"
> > enough to buy property when Prop 13 first passed. I replied that
> > I wasn't old enough to enter into a legal contract at the time. Prop 13
> > is a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth in a direction never
> > before tried.
> >
> > </apocryphal story: off>
>
> And Social Security is...?
Working unfortunately. It wasn't supposed to transfer wealth. You were
only supposed to live for three years after retiring. My grandfather
died in 1967 after three SSI payments. Grandmother 33 years later is
still getting a monthly check some 12 times his sum total contribution.
SS is working. People live longer. 57 used to be the start, 62 1/2 for
full benifits. Now it's 67 1/2 and climbing. I calculated that by the
time I retire it will be something like 74.
> [thanks for setting me straight on the real cause of the decline of public
> education in California]
Law of Unitended Consequences. Try to help the inner cities by transfering
all the wealth and the wealthy stop supporting the system and they pull
their kids making the scores appear lower and "we" still find ways to fund
"our" schools regardless but now we have a state level beaucracy to meddle
with something that belongs far below a city level.
Since "art and science" are the first things to go in a hidebound captive
of a Teachers Union controlled system our local school system has a
fancy dance we do. We have a nonprofit foundation and raise several
hundred dollars per pupil for arts and sciences. This brings a band
teacher and museum trips and such with direct parental control. Shhhh.
Can we vote higher taxes to go to schools operation? No, that would
disadvantage the poor kids in the inner cities. Gotta love education
logic. Makes transit accounting look like an SEC filing.
> > > Right. And as the population grows, pack 'em in tighter.
> >
> > You are teasing. I hope.
>
> I'm a fan of dense urban communities, but there *are* limits. As the
> population of an area rises, there will be a need sooner or later for the
> settled area to expand along with it.
That's how you "keep" vital rather than trying to re-annex vitality.
> > First Anthony Downs comes around to my way of thinking, now Jane Jacobs?
> > Wow, do I feel smug. (Not SMUG, BTW.)
>
> Something-or-other Macintosh User Group?
No, no. SMart Urban Growth. My pet name for the planner theory du jour.
^^ ^ ^.
> [Red Line under Wilshire]
> > Technically transit needs viable. Political suicide and engineering
> nightmare.
>
> Are the methane pockets really that much of a challenge? A bigger problem
> than even Henry Waxman?
Yes, Henry Waxman's methane pockets are formidable. That's why he's
so rabidly anti-smoking.
The problem is not just geotechnical (think the Bob LaBrea Tar Pits) but
the intense urban development. It would cost billions to do an adequate
engineering study of the effects on high rise foundations alone. Politically
the prospect of multiyear construction detours is the suicide part.
[on to Celebration]
> > It isn't auto friendly. This has been a point I've been harping on.
> > When
> > Celebration went "walkable" something had to give. Transit didn't evolve
> > AND there's no way to fall back on the tried and true POV draws.
>
> I guess The Celebration Corporation could build a P&R facility on US 192
> outside the town boundary and run a Tourmobile-style shuttle service into
> Celebration proper...
Rubber Tyre Trolley? E-ticket! Wouldn't this be admitting TOD defeat?
Hank Fung
Exile on Market Street <smi...@pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
>Are there any major employers located on that side of the mountains?
>Between the mountains and Burbank?
>
Edwards Air Force Base comes the first to mind. There's the new
development in the Santa Clarita area. The Newhall Land And
Farming Company has put up a lot of warehouses and business park
style development in Santa Clarita. Some high tech firms are
there. I'd point you to the L.A. Times about this, but Lexis-
Nexis is down (you have access to Lexis-Nexis via your university).
Stumbled upon this article, though, at the Antelope Valley Press
while researching: http://www.avpress.com/n/thsty7.hts Palmdale
is trying to attract business growth.
>And another:
>
>I understand that Metrolink regional rail service from this area was
>well-used in the wake of the Northridge quake. Is it still?
>
It's still high, but obviously not as high as it was in the "emergency"
days. Average "daily riders" is 4,992 in May 2000 (placing in quotes
to avoid semantic arguments). They have Saturday service on that
route.
>And a third:
>
>Was my prior speculation on the reason for the cooling-off of the Palmdale
>real estate market correct?
>
Actually, Palmdale isn't cooling off, at least based by school
enrollment. See http://www.avpress.com/n/westy5.hts Apparently,
some people want a development moratorium because the elementary
district enrollment has doubled within the past 8 years. If
I remember reading the Times correctly, housing prices have gone
up, though nowhere near what it once was, and no more people
camping outside to wait for a house like in the 80's.
>And a fourth:
>
>Do you really think you could pull a Mulholland with the Columbia? And
>wouldn't that be hideously expensive?
Well, there was always NAPWA: the North American Power and Water
Alliance. (I could be getting the words or letters wrong). It
was featured in the late Marc Reisner's book, Cadillac Desert.
It's near the end. Basically, the goal was to flood lots of tundra
and build multitudes of rivers and dams to bring water down to
the Sunbelt. Water would be dragged down from Canada. Of course,
this was just a construction company's pipe dream, but it's
well documented in that excellent book (the PBS series is complementary,
not a replacement).
--
Hank Fung fun...@ocf.berkeley.edu
Hank Fung
http://www.avpress.com/n/review/99/99palm.hts
As for major employers, check this out:
http://www.avpress.com/n/review/99/99top.hts
http://www.avpress.com/n/review/98/98aero.hts
--
Hank Fung fun...@ocf.berkeley.edu
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <iiLf5.3463$6W3.3...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > Sure, Oregon is a nice place. Portland is a nice place. It takes a lot
> > more than some misguided petty bureaucrats and a few obnoxious boosters
> > to
> > condemn a whole state. Besides we'll need more landfill space after we
> > start
> > dredging the toxic silt in the Delta as part of a plan to dam the
> > Willamette
> > and ship it to Palmdale.
>
> OK, here's that opening for a Palmdale thread.
>
> I'll start with a question:
>
> What exactly is the employment situation in northern Los Angeles County?
> Are there any major employers located on that side of the mountains?
> Between the mountains and Burbank?
I'll take a general stab at this. Hopefully someone with solid info
will correct me.
Palmdale and Lancaster have grown together and are frequently refered
to as Palmcaster.
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=34.5794&lon=-118.1156
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.asp?S=13&T=1&X=247&Y=2399&Z=11&W=2
They've reached a critical mass and have enough diversity to
generate their own economy to some extent. The aerospace industry
still has operations at Mojave, Edwards AFB and Palmdale although
not to the extent of the past.
> And another:
>
> I understand that Metrolink regional rail service from this area was
> well-used in the wake of the Northridge quake. Is it still?
Very much so.
Antelope Valley Line (Lancaster to Los Angeles)
May 2000 May 1999
Stations 9 8
Route Miles 76.6 76.6
Trains Operated/Day 22 12
Average Daily Riders 4,992 3,964
Average Saturday Riders 1,824 1,618
Average Speed 46 mph
Even the much improved CA-14 freeway hasn't stopped the
steady increases. It is a -very- expensive service but
there are measurable congestion benefits. That puts it
way ahead of most rail service, that's why I'm not a
loud critic. I'm also willing to let it keep adding
ridership to see how high it can/will go. Desipte the
expense, this is an experiment that is showing results.
> And a third:
>
> Was my prior speculation on the reason for the cooling-off of the Palmdale
> real estate market correct?
The RE market is an undamped oscillation. If I understood the
market I'd be rich buying low and selling high.
> And a fourth:
>
> Do you really think you could pull a Mulholland with the Columbia? And
> wouldn't that be hideously expensive?
>
> (Yes, I know your tongue was in your cheek. But if we're going to play
> what-if, why not go for broke?)
Seriously we've got 33 million thirsty people and the 7th largest world
economy including the World's Fruit and Nut Basket. (time to bite that
toungue in YOUR cheek) In other threads people seem to have no problem
with agressive municipal annexation, what's the moral diff?
Exile on Market Street
Fung) wrote:
> Here's a good review of what happened in Palmdale in 1999:
Thanks for the links, Hank. I'm going to guess that the Antelope Valley
Mall is the region's retail hub and that the downtowns of Palmdale and
Lancaster are arrested-development cases.
This item, however, caught my eye:
"Cheryl Burnham of Lancaster was ordered to pay Los Angeles County $97,972
after she made about 2,600 calls to psychic hotlines while a county
employee, running up a phone tab of $120,000."
So did the psychic come up with any tips on how to save the county money?
Maybe she could have used that as a defense.
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> Market Street) wrote:
[got another good overview of the current situation in the Antelope Valley
via Hank Fung's _Antelope Valley Press_ links]
> > I understand that Metrolink regional rail service from this area was
> > well-used in the wake of the Northridge quake. Is it still?
>
> Very much so.
>
> Antelope Valley Line (Lancaster to Los Angeles)
> May 2000 May 1999
> Stations 9 8
> Route Miles 76.6 76.6
> Trains Operated/Day 22 12
> Average Daily Riders 4,992 3,964
> Average Saturday Riders 1,824 1,618
> Average Speed 46 mph
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
> Even the much improved CA-14 freeway hasn't stopped the
> steady increases. It is a -very- expensive service but
> there are measurable congestion benefits.
Think the stat I highlighted might have anything to do with the line's
continued popularity? At peak hours, that would compare well with almost
any freeway I know of.
They must combine long station spacing with high-performance commuter
diesels to achieve that average running speed.
> Seriously we've got 33 million thirsty people and the 7th largest world
> economy including the World's Fruit and Nut Basket. (time to bite that
> toungue in YOUR cheek) In other threads people seem to have no problem
> with agressive municipal annexation, what's the moral diff?
Well, I guess the diff is more spatial than moral, and follows this logic:
Since the expansion is attributable to the existence of the city and the
jobs it generates, and since it takes place in physical proximity to the
city, then the city should be able to capture the additional benefit of the
expansion by incorporating it into its existing territory.
However, if continuing the expansion requires the use of resources that
others now need for their own use or might need to fuel their own
expansion, especially if those resources are far away from the city and
much closer to another city, then the area running up against its "natural"
limits has no "natural" right to expropriate those resources for its own
use.
Of course, there is a market-based counter to this logic: If the distant
city is willing to pay the cost of having those resources transported, then
it has as much right as the closer city to their use. But before I get
into another "what's the true cost of..." argument, perhaps I'd better read
"Cadillac Desert."
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <_nag5.2945$IA.5...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
> smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
> > Market Street) wrote:
>
> [got another good overview of the current situation in the Antelope Valley
> via Hank Fung's _Antelope Valley Press_ links]
Both good sources of information. Caution with their respective opinions
however.
> > > I understand that Metrolink regional rail service from this area was
> > > well-used in the wake of the Northridge quake. Is it still?
> >
> > Very much so.
> >
> > Antelope Valley Line (Lancaster to Los Angeles)
> > May 2000 May 1999
> > Stations 9 8
> > Route Miles 76.6 76.6
> > Trains Operated/Day 22 12
> > Average Daily Riders 4,992 3,964
> > Average Saturday Riders 1,824 1,618
> > Average Speed 46 mph
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
>
> > Even the much improved CA-14 freeway hasn't stopped the
> > steady increases. It is a -very- expensive service but
> > there are measurable congestion benefits.
>
> Think the stat I highlighted might have anything to do with the line's
> continued popularity? At peak hours, that would compare well with almost
> any freeway I know of.
Even better when compared to the CA-14. The 14 is the only other viable
route and it would be the exception to travel SFV to Antelope Valley
without at least one complete stop in the evening rush hour.
> They must combine long station spacing with high-performance commuter
> diesels to achieve that average running speed.
They designed it right. And the stops are really concentrated at each
end of the line. Geographically mandated nodal development.
> > Seriously we've got 33 million thirsty people and the 7th largest world
> > economy including the World's Fruit and Nut Basket. (time to bite that
> > toungue in YOUR cheek) In other threads people seem to have no problem
> > with agressive municipal annexation, what's the moral diff?
>
> Well, I guess the diff is more spatial than moral, and follows this logic:
Logic isn't my strong point according to Wetzel. Instead I'll resort
to SNL style "Point/Counter-Point."
> Since the expansion is attributable to the existence of the city and the
> jobs it generates, and since it takes place in physical proximity to the
> city, then the city should be able to capture the additional benefit of the
> expansion by incorporating it into its existing territory.
Since the expansion would not be possible without the existing farflung
resources the expansion depends upon, the city should leave it unchanged
rather than incorporate into a landscape form unable to grow on its' own.
> However, if continuing the expansion requires the use of resources that
> others now need for their own use or might need to fuel their own
> expansion, especially if those resources are far away from the city and
> much closer to another city, then the area running up against its "natural"
> limits has no "natural" right to expropriate those resources for its own
> use.
This is the rule not the exception. The problem is directly related to the
Palmcaster conumdrum. Las Vegas and the Colorado river are considered
recreational adjuncts of Los Angeles. Likewise Palmcaster is a residential
and airport expansion "resource" for Los Angeles.
> Of course, there is a market-based counter to this logic: If the distant
> city is willing to pay the cost of having those resources transported, then
> it has as much right as the closer city to their use.
That's what Mullholland said. Everyone who disagreed..... died.
> But before I get
> into another "what's the true cost of..." argument, perhaps I'd better read
> "Cadillac Desert."
Or you can do what we pseudo intellectuals do. Rent the PBS video or you
can take the armchair tour at pbs.org
Jim Guthrie
news:3979c0a5$1...@news.effectnet.com...> news:ffhe5.631$pM1....@news-reader.ntrnet.net...
> > In article <3978e5e8$1...@news.effectnet.com>,
> > Cuideigian <grua...@puca.com> wrote:
snip
> > >Oh, really, George? Since most cities were laid out before autos, just
> how
> > >would you have done it so that people wouldn't have had to walk between
> > >stores? Do you envision a autopia where people never get out of
> > >their cars?
> > >
> > Cities were small until people gave up walking and
> > started to use electric trolleys.
>
> So how many people lived in NYC before the auto and the electric trolley?
> Or London? or any number of other large cities?
>
Pr. Conklin is "more right" on this. The cities were populous and dense, but
they did not have a centre that corresponds to a downtown. To this day
London and Paris do not have a downtown. The same is true of Tokyo, Cairo
and many other old large cities.
snip
>
>
>
Robert Cote
<jim.g...@gov.edmonton.ab.ca.delete> wrote:
How much of Tokyo is still recognizable as pre-WWII in layout? North American
cities are somewhat unique in not having been visited by modern warfare.
Brian Allardice
says...
>How much of Tokyo is still recognizable as pre-WWII in layout?
Actually, virtually all of it. With a few exceptions, it was quickly rebuilt
on the pre-existing plan, and to my mind the results are wonderful. Almost
everywhere it retains a close-grained urban texture with many 6, 4.5 and 3
metre streets and lanes. Now it's not necessarily great to look at, but it's a
marvellous place to live (or would be were the climate not so foul)
Incidently, apart from the fact that the Japanese drive on the left, a quirk
apparently unknown to US mfgrs until recently, this goes a long way to
explaining why big US cars are rare, although the place swarms with BMW's and
Volkswagens. Working here, I use 5.5, 6.7, 5.5 metres for a typical parking
aisle. In Tokyo it was 5,5,5. Go figure....
Cheers,
dba
George Conklin
They were what is known as a cellular city. That is what
modern cities have become too. That downtown was a
temporary feature of early industrialization.
As for city size, until walking went away, cities were a
small percentage of total population and rather small too
compared to today. Walking could never be the basis of our
large cities. That had to wait for mechanical
transporation.
--
# If HMOs ran the post office, 44.3 million Americans would get no mail. #
# Phono FAQ: http://www.pagesz.net/~henryj/phono.htm. #
# Support Medicare for All Ages. Urban Myth FAQ under development. #
# Support Cygnet Horns for Edison Firesides-george conklin, KB4NCI #
Robert Cote
> In article <bboi5.867$r37.1...@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>, tech...@gte.net
> says...
>
> >How much of Tokyo is still recognizable as pre-WWII in layout?
>
> Actually, virtually all of it. With a few exceptions, it was quickly
> rebuilt
> on the pre-existing plan, and to my mind the results are wonderful. Almost
> everywhere it retains a close-grained urban texture with many 6, 4.5 and 3
> metre streets and lanes. Now it's not necessarily great to look at, but
> it's a
> marvellous place to live (or would be were the climate not so foul)
Thanks for the succinct first hand description of another city that
most are not familiar with. How much of "not necessarily great to
look at," the high prices and "foul climate" do you think are part of
the close grained urban texture? I understand that there is a very
powerful mechantile consumers distribution and point-of-sale system
that keeps the old mom-n-pop store system in place and resists the
big box trend here in the US. When every store is a local store
maybe the close grained pattern you describe remains possible.
> Incidently, apart from the fact that the Japanese drive on the left, a
> quirk
> apparently unknown to US mfgrs until recently, this goes a long way to
> explaining why big US cars are rare, although the place swarms with BMW's
> and
> Volkswagens. Working here, I use 5.5, 6.7, 5.5 metres for a typical
> parking
> aisle. In Tokyo it was 5,5,5. Go figure....
I figure I'd get another motorcycle, centerhand drive and 0.6m spacing.
Again, thanks for adding to everyone's knowledge.
Exile on Market Street
<jim.g...@gov.edmonton.ab.ca.delete> wrote:
> "Cuideigian" <grua...@puca.com> wrote in message
> news:3979c0a5$1...@news.effectnet.com...
> >
> > So how many people lived in NYC before the auto and the electric trolley?
> > Or London? or any number of other large cities?
> >
> Pr. Conklin is "more right" on this. The cities were populous and dense, but
> they did not have a centre that corresponds to a downtown. To this day
> London and Paris do not have a downtown. The same is true of Tokyo, Cairo
> and many other old large cities.
This does raise an interesting question, though.
These cities indeed lack "downtowns", but they do have districts where
certain types of activities cluster: the fashionable shopping district, the
theater district, the financial district, the government center, and so on.
These are the "cells" George Conklin speaks of in another followup.
These districts are not necessarily adjacent to one another, and are often
separated by residential areas. And come to think of it, Manhattan can
also be described in this fashion -- "downtown" Manhattan is more a
geographic than a functional term (it's the financial district, with some
older office buildings now becoming residences).
Yet all of these cities (Manhattan a partial exception) had their forms in
place before the development of mass transit; it seems that what the
introduction of transit allowed in these cities was the concentration of
certain types of activities in certain parts of the city, as
workers/customers/visitors could now reach these parts from a wider area.
Cuideigian
> In article <3989...@champ.gov.edmonton.ab.ca>,
> Jim Guthrie <jim.g...@gov.edmonton.ab.ca.delete> wrote:
> >"Cuideigian" <grua...@puca.com> wrote in message
> >news:3979c0a5$1...@news.effectnet.com...
> >>
> >> news:ffhe5.631$pM1....@news-reader.ntrnet.net...
> >> > In article <3978e5e8$1...@news.effectnet.com>,
> >> > Cuideigian <grua...@puca.com> wrote:
> >
> >snip
> >> > >Oh, really, George? Since most cities were laid out before
> >autos, just
> >> how
> >> > >would you have done it so that people wouldn't have had to
> >walk between
> >> > >stores? Do you envision a autopia where people never get out of
> >> > >their cars?
> >> > >
> >> > Cities were small until people gave up walking and
> >> > started to use electric trolleys.
> >>
trolley?
> >> Or London? or any number of other large cities?
> >>
> >Pr. Conklin is "more right" on this. The cities were populous and
> >dense, but
> >they did not have a centre that corresponds to a downtown. To this day
> >London and Paris do not have a downtown. The same is true of Tokyo, Cairo
> >and many other old large cities.
>
>
> modern cities have become too. That downtown was a
> temporary feature of early industrialization.
>
> As for city size, until walking went away, cities were a
> small percentage of total population and rather small too
> compared to today. Walking could never be the basis of our
> large cities. That had to wait for mechanical
> transporation.
It wasn't mechanical transportation that moved the people from the farms to
the city, it was mechanical farm implements and production methods
(incidentally, made in the city by city dwellers) that freed up farm workers
and they moved to the cities (because they were no longer needed on the
farms).
George Conklin
Cities could not grow outward or upward until electricity
made that possible. Edison was inventing in a small town,
not a major city.
George Conklin
Exile on Market Street <smi...@pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
><jim.g...@gov.edmonton.ab.ca.delete> wrote:
>
>> "Cuideigian" <grua...@puca.com> wrote in message
>> news:3979c0a5$1...@news.effectnet.com...
>> >
>electric trolley?
>> > Or London? or any number of other large cities?
>> >
>> Pr. Conklin is "more right" on this. The cities were populous and
>dense, but
>> they did not have a centre that corresponds to a downtown. To this day
>> London and Paris do not have a downtown. The same is true of Tokyo, Cairo
>> and many other old large cities.
>
>
>These cities indeed lack "downtowns", but they do have districts where
>certain types of activities cluster: the fashionable shopping district, the
>theater district, the financial district, the government center,
>and so on.
>These are the "cells" George Conklin speaks of in another followup.
>
>These districts are not necessarily adjacent to one another, and are often
>separated by residential areas. And come to think of it, Manhattan can
>also be described in this fashion -- "downtown" Manhattan is more a
>geographic than a functional term (it's the financial district, with some
>older office buildings now becoming residences).
>
>Yet all of these cities (Manhattan a partial exception) had their forms in
>place before the development of mass transit; it seems that what the
>introduction of transit allowed in these cities was the concentration of
>certain types of activities in certain parts of the city, as
>workers/customers/visitors could now reach these parts from a wider area.
>
>--
>Sandy Smith, University Relations / 215.898.1423 / smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
Without mechanical transit, based on elecricity, the
overall size of the city had to remain relatively small.
And they were too. Those famous downtowns grew up a
transfer points on trolley lines and then as cities
reverted to cellular development again, downtowns lost their
extra value. Communications had a lot to do with that in
later years too. With communications today fully
distributed, those large bank buildings downtown are now
nothing more than showcases and not functional to the bank
since they clear accounts anywhere and write their letters
to delinquent customers in India where a custom letter can
be composed for pennies, not $5 each. And with satellite
transmission, they appear to come from a local bank.
George Conklin
Ross Williams <aadvocacyt...@iname.com> wrote:
>horse and carriage, had to be within walking distance of their job and
>had to walk to talk to anyone they did business with (since there were
>no phones).
That is why cities were relatively small until electricity
came along and allowed the radius to expand from about 3
miles to 12. However, by 1840 specialized land use was
apparent in places as diverse as London and Cincinatti.
Daniel M. Laenker
on New
>England here.
>
>In article <N3ld5.476$Qd5.1...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robertya02408000R19...@netnews.upenn.edu>,>> > This debate [over "walkable communities"] has an
>angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin quality to it.
>> >
>> > Words are not as inflexible as you seem to want to portray
them here,
>> > Robert.
>>
>> I disagree. In these interminable transit debates we are
constantly
>> fighting the battle of hijacked words. It is self evident
that a
>> walkable community lacks the critical mass (he he) to be
viable on
>> its own. What we see here is an attempt to steal the term
and apply
>> walkable to what is in FAct transit oriented development.
Transit
>> has no more right to co-opt walkable than would an autocentric
>> project. Walkable characteristics can be integrated into
autocentric
>> or transit or anyplace along the spectrum.
>
>I see the point of your last sentence. Now our quibbles are
aesthetic, and
>I'll have more on that later. But first, let's deal with your
basic
>statement. I'll start, as I'm wont to do, with an anecdote.
>
>A few months back, the _Inquirer_, in an article about how
restaurant
>owners on Walnut Street were complaining that their customers
couldn't find
>parking within reasonable walking distance, ran a graphic that
suggested
>the customers were wrong.
>
>The illustration superimposed the Cherry Hill Mall over a map
of Center
>City west of Broad (which includes the Walnut Street restaurant
district).
>The mall building itself stretched roughly from Walnut to
Market (or maybe
>even JFK Blvd) and from about 13th to 19th Streets. With the
parking lots,
>the mall covered a territory that included many of Center
City's biggest
>parking garages. Yet restaurant patrons apparently considered
the distance
>represented by the mall building itself "too far to walk"
within Center
>City.
>
>Now, people willingly drive to the Cherry Hill Mall and walk
from one end
>to the other -- and the mall, being a pedestrian-only space, is
by
>definition "walkable" even though the setting in which it
exists is
>autocentric. Yet these same people find walking a comparable
distance
>within a dense urban setting "too far". I'd prefer to get them
to come to
>their senses, but instead here will simply ask: "Why is that?"
>
>However, there's a difference between autocentric development
that is
>hostile to all other forms of approach and autocentric
development that
>accommodates other forms easily. You know what shopping center
I'm about
>to trot out here as my counterexample, right? Now, since this
particular
>development envelops the parking rather than the other
way 'round, it can
>be (and is) incorporated into a larger environment that is
itself also
>walkable while still being accommodating to both auto and
transit access.
>
>[leaving my hypothetical in for the benefit of a.p.u readers]
>
>> > Let's hypothesize a compact residential district around a
train station,
>> > with a shopping area around the station that includes some
professional
>> > offices and a library, and that the shopping area contains
the kinds of
>> > stores that serve the residents' everyday needs (grocery,
dry cleaners,
>> > drug store, etc.) The layout of the community is such that
the shopping
>> > area and train station are within about a 15-minute walk of
the most
>> > distant resident. (Some other public facilities -- a
school, say, and a
>> > park or athletic field -- are near the shopping area.)
>> >
>> > The train line from the station connects this district to a
larger business
>> > district 20 or so minutes away (by train), with
intermediate stops in three
>> > or four similarly-laid-out communities. In this larger
district are the
>> > big department stores, large corporate offices, and
industries that serve
>> > and employ many of the residents of those outlying
residential districts,
>> > as well as residences that house people who like to be at
the center of it
>> > all. The total size of this district encompasses an area
roughly the size
>> > of central Philadelphia (about two miles across). The
train line in
>> > question is one of several that converge on this hub, and
all of the others
>> > serve communities much like our hypothetical district as
well.
>> >
>> > The entire urban system thus described is not, and cannot
be, "walkable" by
>> > design. But the places where the people actually live --
including the
>> > people living in the core -- are.
>> >
>> > Yes, this is "transit oriented development." But are not
the constituent
>> > parts within this system "walkable communities"?
>>
>> Yes. (Excellent LeCourvisier BTW.)
>
>It was completely unconscious channeling. Generally, I think
Corbu was at
>heart anti-urban. His "Radiant City" certainly turned out to
be as
>applied.
>
>> But if you substitute smog belching SUVs
>> for the sweet choo-choos in the above example with the
appropriate adjustments
>> to urban form, there will still be walkable components and
autocentrism.
>
>But again, what kind of autocentrism? The kind that
acknowledges the
>existence of other options, or the kind that forecloses them?
>
>I generally don't draw lines in the sand, but I'm going to draw
one here:
>the Country Club Plaza or the Cherry Hill Mall. Pick one.
Cherry Hill Mall.
But... oh, God... must I pick only one? Why is it that the
better option has been formed from immoral practices until now?
And why does the option which allows me greater choice restrict
my choices at the same time?
What a sickening paradox it is, to be the libertarian urbanist.
I wonder whatever can come of a synthesis - or should I merely
shoot myself now?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Got questions? Get answers over the phone at Keen.com.
Up to 100 minutes free!
http://www.keen.com
Cuideigian
> In article
<CC5BB1BC6D19EF98.76B9D7BA...@lp.airnews.net>,
> Cuideigian <grua...@effectnet.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >It wasn't mechanical transportation that moved the people from the farms
to
> >the city, it was mechanical farm implements and production methods
> >(incidentally, made in the city by city dwellers) that freed up
> >farm workersi
>
> Cities could not grow outward or upward until electricity
> made that possible. Edison was inventing in a small town,
> not a major city.
>
harvesters that put farm hands out of work and sent them to the city in
large numbers.
Cuideigian
> In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
> >Sandy Smith, University Relations / 215.898.1423 / smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
>
> Without mechanical transit, based on elecricity, the
> overall size of the city had to remain relatively small.
> And they were too. Those famous downtowns grew up a
> transfer points on trolley lines and then as cities
> reverted to cellular development again, downtowns lost their
> extra value. Communications had a lot to do with that in
> later years too. With communications today fully
> distributed, those large bank buildings downtown are now
> nothing more than showcases and not functional to the bank
> since they clear accounts anywhere and write their letters
> to delinquent customers in India where a custom letter can
> be composed for pennies, not $5 each. And with satellite
> transmission, they appear to come from a local bank.
>
trying to wiggle out.
Exile on Market Street
<dmlaenke...@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
Seen the Country Club Plaza? I'd say that it offers every bit as much
choice as the Cherry Hill Mall, and there's plenty of free parking there,
too. But its form is that of an urban shopping district woven into the
city fabric, rather than a hermetically-sealed box surrounded by asphalt.
You can drive there easily, or you can walk there if you live nearby, or
you can take one of several city bus routes that serve it. Your choice.
How's that for a synthesis? Want to put away the gun?
--
Sandy Smith, University Relations / 215.898.1423 / smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
Bob Johnson
Laenker
> <dmlaenke...@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
>
> choice as the Cherry Hill Mall, and there's plenty of free parking
there,
> too. But its form is that of an urban shopping district woven into
the
> city fabric, rather than a hermetically-sealed box surrounded by
asphalt.
> You can drive there easily, or you can walk there if you live nearby,
or
> you can take one of several city bus routes that serve it. Your
choice.
CC Plaza is in Kansas City, right? As of right now the temperature in
KC is 91F and the heat index is 104F -- not uncommon numbers for this
time of year in that area. Seems to me that gives an enclosed mall a
significant advantage.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Exile on Market Street
<re_jo...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> CC Plaza is in Kansas City, right? As of right now the temperature in
> KC is 91F and the heat index is 104F -- not uncommon numbers for this
> time of year in that area. Seems to me that gives an enclosed mall a
> significant advantage.
I will grant the climate point. It's not too far from that in Philadelphia
right now, and such conditions do take some of the pleasure out of walking.
Daniel M. Laenker
the term "Country Club Plaza", I imagined you were talking about
a strip mall adjacent to a golf course or something. Ugh. I
didn't know Cherry Hill Mall was indoors.
I'm not terribly fond of indoor malls or parking-lot
development, BTW. But I want smart growth without goverment
interference! I'm sick of having to jump fences in transit
discussions - it seems that I'm always pulled into positions
where, if I support transit, I have to support taxes and
socialist infrastructures, and if I support small government,
I'm always in a camp filled with autocentrists. I have no idea
what I'm supposed to do to resolve this. I'm tired of having to
rip my ideals to shreds in this newsgroup.
======= | "My parents always tell me to make my life
| DML | dmla...@yahoo.com | an example of the principles I believe in,
======= | but every time I do, they tell me to stop
http://www.fairvote.org | it." - Calvin <> http://www.lp.org
George Conklin
Daniel M. Laenker <dmlaenke...@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
>the term "Country Club Plaza", I imagined you were talking about
>a strip mall adjacent to a golf course or something. Ugh. I
>didn't know Cherry Hill Mall was indoors.
>
>I'm not terribly fond of indoor malls or parking-lot
>development, BTW. But I want smart growth without goverment
>interference!
Historically when cities were walkable because people had
to walk they were also small in terms of radius. It was
only when walking was REPLACED by electric-driven trolleys
did cities have the ability to get large and house most of
the population. Urbanites hate to walk. They want
transit or a bus on every corner.
Cuideigian
> In article <2713bce7...@usw-ex0102-084.remarq.com>,
> Daniel M. Laenker <dmlaenke...@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
> >Sorry about that. I don't live in Kansas City, and when I heard
> >the term "Country Club Plaza", I imagined you were talking about
> >a strip mall adjacent to a golf course or something. Ugh. I
> >didn't know Cherry Hill Mall was indoors.
> >
> >I'm not terribly fond of indoor malls or parking-lot
> >development, BTW. But I want smart growth without goverment
> >interference!
>
> Historically when cities were walkable because people had
> to walk they were also small in terms of radius. It was
> only when walking was REPLACED by electric-driven trolleys
> did cities have the ability to get large and house most of
> the population. Urbanites hate to walk. They want
> transit or a bus on every corner.
>
electricity.
Exile on Market Street
<dmlaenke...@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
> Sorry about that. I don't live in Kansas City, and when I heard
> the term "Country Club Plaza", I imagined you were talking about
> a strip mall adjacent to a golf course or something. Ugh. I
> didn't know Cherry Hill Mall was indoors.
Gotcha. Historical trivia: The Plaza (as the locals refer to it) is
considered the first planned shopping center in the country (or one of the
first). The first development on the site occurred in 1921, and it has
grown and changed over the decades while retaining its urban -- and urbane
-- character (if not always its Spanish-themed architecture).
One of the better Auto Age suburbs, Radburn, N.J., also dates from this
period. It sort of makes me wonder what we knew then that we were so
determined to forget.
> I'm not terribly fond of indoor malls or parking-lot
> development, BTW. But I want smart growth without goverment
> interference! I'm sick of having to jump fences in transit
> discussions - it seems that I'm always pulled into positions
> where, if I support transit, I have to support taxes and
> socialist infrastructures, and if I support small government,
> I'm always in a camp filled with autocentrists. I have no idea
> what I'm supposed to do to resolve this. I'm tired of having to
> rip my ideals to shreds in this newsgroup.
Got bad news for you (or perhaps good news given your ultimate desire) --
as long as we have government, someone will try to get it to interfere in
order to achieve a desired result.
And it may not necessarily be for nefarious reasons.
Switching gears slightly: the 8/6 _LA Times_ ran a fascinating and
revealing interview with Eli Broad (the "Broad" in Kaufman and Broad),
tract-house developer extraordinaire-turned-urban booster. Among the
things he says in the article is that while his style of homebuilding made
homeownership affordable for the many, it was also bad planning, and that
the growth on the fringe it represented often didn't pay for itself,
leading to what the writer of the piece refers to as a "municipal Ponzi
scheme" in which cities had to keep adding subdivisions in order to pay for
the costs of the ones already approved:
<begin excerpt>
"I am very proud of the fact that we provided the dream of homeownership to
several hundred thousand families and 90% of their net worth is the
appreciation in the value of those homes," he said. "But as far as land
planning, there's no question that it left a lot to be desired.
"You just keep going out until you find land that's cheap enough, and
that's not right. It shouldn't be this pattern, but whose fault is it? I
don't feel the home builder created the system. That was the politicians.
Maybe we took advantage, but the city, the county--those were the folks
asleep at the switch."
He now concedes that the growth often didn't pay for itself. The costs of
bringing new tracts sewer, water, police and fire service amounted to more
than the sales and property tax revenues they brought in. Cities kept
growing new suburbs just to cover the losses of the old suburbs--a
municipal Ponzi scheme that created overnight communities like Moreno
Valley.
"You'd buy a piece of land, present a subdivision map and they'd approve
it," he recalled. "They hadn't developed the kind of sales tax or
industrial base they should have. It wasn't balanced."
<end excerpt>
(Registered members of latimes.com can view the article for free through 8/20).
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
He was also explicit in that he was not apologetic and (IMO) his general slant
was that politicians and the planners they relied upon were completely
incapable of rational behavior. To some extent the places he developed
were more and more untenable because every time he tried a municipally
riskier (and personally profitable) project the planners and pols always said yes.
Aidan Stanger
> >> "Cuideigian" <grua...@puca.com> wrote...
> >> >
> >> > So how many people lived in NYC before the auto and the electric
> >> > trolley? Or London? or any number of other large cities?
> >> >
> >> Pr. Conklin is "more right" on this. The cities were populous and
> >> dense, but they did not have a centre that corresponds to a downtown.
> >> To this day London and Paris do not have a downtown. The same is true
> >> of Tokyo, Cairo and many other old large cities.
> >
What is your definition of a "downtown", then?
AIUI London does have a downtown, but it might have been too big for you
to notice!
> >This does raise an interesting question, though.
> >
> >These cities indeed lack "downtowns", but they do have districts where
> >certain types of activities cluster: the fashionable shopping district, the
> >theater district, the financial district, the government center,
> >and so on.
> >These are the "cells" George Conklin speaks of in another followup.
> >
> >These districts are not necessarily adjacent to one another, and are often
> >separated by residential areas. And come to think of it, Manhattan can
> >also be described in this fashion -- "downtown" Manhattan is more a
> >geographic than a functional term (it's the financial district, with some
> >older office buildings now becoming residences).
> >
> >Yet all of these cities (Manhattan a partial exception) had their forms in
> >place before the development of mass transit; it seems that what the
> >introduction of transit allowed in these cities was the concentration of
> >certain types of activities in certain parts of the city, as
> >workers/customers/visitors could now reach these parts from a wider area.
> >
What exactly do you mean by "had their forms in place"?
> Without mechanical transit, based on elecricity, the
> overall size of the city had to remain relatively small.
> And they were too. Those famous downtowns grew up a
> transfer points on trolley lines and then as cities
> reverted to cellular development again, downtowns lost their
> extra value. Communications had a lot to do with that in
> later years too. With communications today fully
> distributed, those large bank buildings downtown are now
> nothing more than showcases and not functional to the bank
> since they clear accounts anywhere and write their letters
> to delinquent customers in India where a custom letter can
> be composed for pennies, not $5 each. And with satellite
> transmission, they appear to come from a local bank.
You're making the incorrect assumption that those tall buildings are
mainly used for such low value processes. Hasn't it ever occurred to you
that these buildings are where the important decisions are made?
In reality there is a high demand for buildings that are easily
accessible from all directions.
If they were nothing more than showcases then the banks would lease out
all the floors they didn't need, and the price of leasing would fall
below the cost of construction. I don't know what it's like in Carolina,
but here in London that isn't the case. Various new skyscrapers are
planned for Central London, while some of the suburban office towers
stand almost empty.
George Conklin
Aidan Stanger <st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> Without mechanical transit, based on elecricity, the
>> overall size of the city had to remain relatively small.
>> And they were too. Those famous downtowns grew up a
>> transfer points on trolley lines and then as cities
>> reverted to cellular development again, downtowns lost their
>> extra value. Communications had a lot to do with that in
>> later years too. With communications today fully
>> distributed, those large bank buildings downtown are now
>> nothing more than showcases and not functional to the bank
>> since they clear accounts anywhere and write their letters
>> to delinquent customers in India where a custom letter can
>> be composed for pennies, not $5 each. And with satellite
>> transmission, they appear to come from a local bank.
>
>You're making the incorrect assumption that those tall buildings are
>mainly used for such low value processes. Hasn't it ever occurred to you
>that these buildings are where the important decisions are made?
Tall buildings did not exist before electric transit made
possible the importation of many workers to one small area
quickly from outlying parts of the city. Also, tall
buildings were not possible before modern steel made them
practical, and the electric lifts to get people into and out
of them.
As for decision-making, that can be done anywhere. The
famous case of the Sears tower showed that when the elites
were isolated on different floors away from the staff and
customers, they made bad decisions which all but bankrupted
the company. They give up the tower and moved back to a
series of low-rise buildings where communications were
better. It is a classic case of bad urban design.
Aidan Stanger
There are some exceptions, but this is largely true. However I don't see
the relevance to this discussion.
> As for decision-making, that can be done anywhere.
Indeed it can. But much of the work is done in groups, so the company
needs somewhere within easy reach of the entire group. And it also needs
to be accessible to clients.
As commuications technology and infrastructure improves, it is likely
that a lot of people will telecommute. But it is unlikely to completely
eliminae the need to actually go into the office. It will probably just
reduce the frequency of such trips.
> The famous case of the Sears tower showed that when the elites
> were isolated on different floors away from the staff and
> customers, they made bad decisions which all but bankrupted
> the company. They give up the tower and moved back to a
> series of low-rise buildings where communications were
> better. It is a classic case of bad urban design.
That's nothing to do with urban design, it's just bad internal
communications.
Exile on Market Street
st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk (Aidan Stanger) wrote:
[Just to note: Your questions are directed to three different "you"s. I'll
take a stab at the one you asked Jim Guthrie as well as the one you asked
me.]
> George Conklin <jep...@ntrnet.net> wrote:
> > Exile on Market Street <smi...@pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
> > ><jim.g...@gov.edmonton.ab.ca.delete> wrote:
>
> > >> Pr. Conklin is "more right" on this. The cities were populous and
> > >> dense, but they did not have a centre that corresponds to a downtown.
> > >> To this day London and Paris do not have a downtown. The same is true
> > >> of Tokyo, Cairo and many other old large cities.
> > >
> What is your definition of a "downtown", then?
As used in North America, "downtown" is the district in the city center
where offices (both government and private) and shops are concentrated.
Usually, this district is exclusively given over to these types of
activities, and there is very little residential development; New York,
Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco are notable exceptions to
this latter rule. It is a single area, and compact geographically; again,
New York (read: Manhattan) is an exception to this rule, as it has two
distinct office cores and two distinct "central" retail concentrations.
I'm not absolutely sure of this, but I think the term originated in New
York, where the principal office and retail districts were once much closer
to each other than they are now, and all of them were clustered at the
southern tip of Manhattan Island, thus requiring people to travel "down
town" to reach them (based on the convention that has "up" = "north").
> AIUI London does have a downtown, but it might have been too big for you
> to notice!
How far is it from Knightsbridge or Oxford Street to the City? And what
lies between them? How do either relate to Westminster?
(New York analogue: substitute "Herald Square" for Knightsbridge,
"Rockefeller Center" or "59th and Fifth" for Oxford Street and "Wall
Street" for the City. New York City Hall is not far from Wall Street.)
[Me:]
> > >These cities indeed lack "downtowns", but they do have districts where
> > >certain types of activities cluster: the fashionable shopping district, the
> > >theater district, the financial district, the government center,
> > >and so on.
> > >These are the "cells" George Conklin speaks of in another followup.
> > >
> > >These districts are not necessarily adjacent to one another, and are often
> > >separated by residential areas. And come to think of it, Manhattan can
> > >also be described in this fashion -- "downtown" Manhattan is more a
> > >geographic than a functional term (it's the financial district, with some
> > >older office buildings now becoming residences).
> > >
> > >Yet all of these cities (Manhattan a partial exception) had their forms in
> > >place before the development of mass transit; it seems that what the
> > >introduction of transit allowed in these cities was the concentration of
> > >certain types of activities in certain parts of the city, as
> > >workers/customers/visitors could now reach these parts from a wider area.
> > >
> What exactly do you mean by "had their forms in place"?
I meant that the basic geography of the central city had already been laid
out and much of it settled. Don't most of the famous hub intersections in
London predate the advent of the omnibus?
Robert Cote
> > (Exile on Market Street) wrote:
> > > >forms in
> > > >place before the development of mass transit; it seems that what the
> > > >introduction of transit allowed in these cities was the concentration
> > > >of certain types of activities in certain parts of the city, as
> > > >workers/customers/visitors could now reach these parts from a wider
> > > >area.
> > > >
> > What exactly do you mean by "had their forms in place"?
>
> I meant that the basic geography of the central city had already been laid
> out and much of it settled. Don't most of the famous hub intersections in
> London predate the advent of the omnibus?
Is that dry English humor I detect? This is a common problem when discussing
transit in the urban experiment. Transit used to be an instrument of change
but seems to have become a bastion of preservation. IMO there was a time
when transit not only contributed to but was essetial for the vitality and
development of the urban form. Now? The word nostolgia almost applies.
When was it exactly that we decided cities should stop evolving?
George Conklin
The thread is on WALKABLE cities. Modern cities did not emerge
until walking disappeared as the main way of getting around.
>> As for decision-making, that can be done anywhere.
>
>Indeed it can. But much of the work is done in groups, so the company
>needs somewhere within easy reach of the entire group. And it also needs
>to be accessible to clients.
We are moving towards a full-distributed networked world. The
jobs today are NOT in one centralized place. The whole point was
that the last need for this was for the clerks. Bicycle
messengers went out with the fax machine.
>
>> The famous case of the Sears tower showed that when the elites
>> were isolated on different floors away from the staff and
>> customers, they made bad decisions which all but bankrupted
>> the company. They give up the tower and moved back to a
>> series of low-rise buildings where communications were
>> better. It is a classic case of bad urban design.
>
>That's nothing to do with urban design, it's just bad internal
>communications.
Those internal communications were made difficult if not
impossible by the isolation of a high-rise building. Sears saved
itself when it abandoned that kind of ecological structure and
moved back to a building which helped, not hindered,
communication.
George Conklin
Urban planning today looks back in time to an idealized form
when supposedly the perfect city existed.
Robert Cote
I forget, was influenza, polio, dysentery or social injustice, or
short miserable lives or terrible air or child labor the primary
concern of the ideal urban form?
George Conklin
Cuideigian
"Robert Cote" <tech...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:dpXl5.2341$TM6.1...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net...
> In article <8jXl5.50$lz4....@news-reader.ntrnet.net>, jep...@ntrnet.net
(George Conklin) wrote:
> > >When was it exactly that we decided cities should stop evolving?
> >
> > Urban planning today looks back in time to an idealized form
> > when supposedly the perfect city existed.
>
> I forget, was influenza, polio, dysentery or social injustice, or
> short miserable lives or terrible air or child labor the primary
> concern of the ideal urban form?
To WWII and the auto.
Cuideigian
> In article <1efd6pv.19uo3cp1whbwvuN%st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk>,
> Aidan Stanger <st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> >>
> >There are some exceptions, but this is largely true. However I don't see
> >the relevance to this discussion.
> The thread is on WALKABLE cities. Modern cities did not emerge
> until walking disappeared as the main way of getting around.
So we now have your definition of "modern cities".
>
> We are moving towards a full-distributed networked world. The
> jobs today are NOT in one centralized place. The whole point was
> that the last need for this was for the clerks. Bicycle
> messengers went out with the fax machine.
That's strange - there's lots of bicycle messengers and delivery persons in
downtown Portland - but since they don't exist in your suburban utopia (that
doesn't have congestion, just lots of cars), they must not be useful or
exist anywhere.
> >
> >That's nothing to do with urban design, it's just bad internal
> >communications.
>
> Those internal communications were made difficult if not
> impossible by the isolation of a high-rise building. Sears saved
> itself when it abandoned that kind of ecological structure and
> moved back to a building which helped, not hindered,
> communication.
>
There's actually more isolation in scattered suburban-style low-rise offices
than in a skyscraper. All you're doing is trading large horizontal
distances for short vertical distances.
Cuideigian
>
> Urban planning today looks back in time to an idealized form
> when supposedly the perfect city existed.
>
after WWII. It is only very slowly yielding to more rational, NewUrbanist,
sustainable types of planning.
Aidan Stanger
> In article <1efbcyc.146l0fv1yvl8zkN%st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk>,
> st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk (Aidan Stanger) wrote:
>
> [Just to note: Your questions are directed to three different "you"s. I'll
> take a stab at the one you asked Jim Guthrie as well as the one you asked
> me.]
>
> > George Conklin <jep...@ntrnet.net> wrote:
> > > Exile on Market Street <smi...@pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
> > > ><jim.g...@gov.edmonton.ab.ca.delete> wrote:
> >
> > > >> Pr. Conklin is "more right" on this. The cities were populous and
> > > >> dense, but they did not have a centre that corresponds to a downtown.
> > > >> To this day London and Paris do not have a downtown. The same is true
> > > >> of Tokyo, Cairo and many other old large cities.
> > > >
> > What is your definition of a "downtown", then?
>
> As used in North America, "downtown" is the district in the city center
> where offices (both government and private) and shops are concentrated.
> Usually, this district is exclusively given over to these types of
> activities, and there is very little residential development;
London is not without those: Victoria (in the Westminster area) fits
that description exactly, and Holborn also scores highly (more shops and
plenty of private offices, but I'm not sure about government offices).
> New York,
> Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco are notable exceptions to
> this latter rule. It is a single area, and compact geographically; again,
> New York (read: Manhattan) is an exception to this rule, as it has two
> distinct office cores and two distinct "central" retail concentrations.
>
Does the "downtown" include Chinatown?
> I'm not absolutely sure of this, but I think the term originated in New
> York, where the principal office and retail districts were once much closer
> to each other than they are now, and all of them were clustered at the
> southern tip of Manhattan Island, thus requiring people to travel "down
> town" to reach them (based on the convention that has "up" = "north").
>
> > AIUI London does have a downtown, but it might have been too big for you
> > to notice!
>
> How far is it from Knightsbridge or Oxford Street to the City? And what
> lies between them?
Oxford Street starts about a mile from the City. Holborn lies between
them.
Apart from Harrod's, Knightsbridge is not a major shopping area.
> How do either relate to Westminster?
Oxford Street is a similar distance North of Westminster. Knightsbridge
is NorthWest of Westminster. This is only a very rough guide, as
Westminster is rather big.
> (New York analogue: substitute "Herald Square" for Knightsbridge,
> "Rockefeller Center" or "59th and Fifth" for Oxford Street and "Wall
> Street" for the City. New York City Hall is not far from Wall Street.)
>
> [Me:]
> > > >These cities indeed lack "downtowns", but they do have districts
> > > >where certain types of activities cluster: the fashionable shopping
> > > >district, the theater district, the financial district, the
> > > >government center, and so on. These are the "cells" George Conklin
> > > >speaks of in another followup.
> > > >
> > > >These districts are not necessarily adjacent to one another, and are
> > > >often separated by residential areas. And come to think of it,
> > > >Manhattan can also be described in this fashion -- "downtown"
> > > >Manhattan is more a geographic than a functional term (it's the
> > > >financial district, with some older office buildings now becoming
> > > >residences).
> > > >
> > > >Yet all of these cities (Manhattan a partial exception) had their
> > > >forms in place before the development of mass transit; it seems that
> > > >what the introduction of transit allowed in these cities was the
> > > >concentration of certain types of activities in certain parts of the
> > > >city, as workers/customers/visitors could now reach these parts from
> > > >a wider area.
> > > >
> > What exactly do you mean by "had their forms in place"?
>
> I meant that the basic geography of the central city had already been laid
> out and much of it settled. Don't most of the famous hub intersections in
> London predate the advent of the omnibus?
Yes they do. After the Great Fire Of London (in 1666) there were great
plans for rebuilding London on a new street pattern, centered on
St. Paul's Cathederal. But these failed because people wanted to rebuild
as soon as possible, so everyone built on the location of their old
property and the road pattern stayed the same.
Since then there have been some new roads, road widenings, and (more
recently) pededstrianization. But yes, the form has stayed in place.
Aidan Stanger
> >the relevance to this discussion.
>
>
> The thread is on WALKABLE cities. Modern cities did not emerge
> until walking disappeared as the main way of getting around.
>
walking's the *main* way of getting around doesn't determine
walkability.
>
> >> As for decision-making, that can be done anywhere.
> >
> >Indeed it can. But much of the work is done in groups, so the company
> >needs somewhere within easy reach of the entire group. And it also needs
> >to be accessible to clients.
>
> jobs today are NOT in one centralized place.
A great many of them are.
> The whole point was that the last need for this was for the clerks.
The continued growth of Central London proves otherwise.
> Bicycle messengers went out with the fax machine.
>
Not the most suitable way of transporting it :-)
There are still bicycle couriere. Most goods can not be faxed!
>
>
> >> The famous case of the Sears tower showed that when the elites
> >> were isolated on different floors away from the staff and
> >> customers, they made bad decisions which all but bankrupted
> >> the company. They give up the tower and moved back to a
> >> series of low-rise buildings where communications were
> >> better. It is a classic case of bad urban design.
> >
> >That's nothing to do with urban design, it's just bad internal
> >communications.
>
> Those internal communications were made difficult if not
> impossible by the isolation of a high-rise building.
Yes, isolating them was a mistake. But high rise buildings don't always
do that, and I can't see any reason low rises are (in general) any
better.
> Sears saved itself when it abandoned that kind of ecological structure and
> moved back to a building which helped, not hindered, communication.
Do you think all firms in highrise buildings have bad communication?
Exile on Market Street
st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk (Aidan Stanger) wrote:
> Exile on Market Street <smi...@pobox.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> > In article <1efbcyc.146l0fv1yvl8zkN%st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk>,
> > st...@track73.freeserve.co.uk (Aidan Stanger) wrote:
> > > What is your definition of a "downtown", then?
> >
> > As used in North America, "downtown" is the district in the city center
> > where offices (both government and private) and shops are concentrated.
> > Usually, this district is exclusively given over to these types of
> > activities, and there is very little residential development;
>
> London is not without those: Victoria (in the Westminster area) fits
> that description exactly, and Holborn also scores highly (more shops and
> plenty of private offices, but I'm not sure about government offices).
Then London may be more like Manhattan than I had suggested earlier. The
distances you posted later also add to that.
> > New York,
> > Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco are notable exceptions to
> > this latter rule. It is a single area, and compact geographically; again,
> > New York (read: Manhattan) is an exception to this rule, as it has two
> > distinct office cores and two distinct "central" retail concentrations.
> >
> Does the "downtown" include Chinatown?
In Philadelphia, it does -- the neighborhood lies right behind the enclosed
Gallery shopping mall, and the city's convention center is its western
boundary.
But you were asking about Manhattan, right? I'm not exactly sure whether
Chinatown and Little Italy next door are considered part of "downtown
Manhattan" or not. New Yorkers?
Aidan Stanger
> Is that dry English humor I detect? This is a common problem when discussing
> transit in the urban experiment. Transit used to be an instrument of change
> but seems to have become a bastion of preservation.
Maybe you're looking for the wrong type of change.
> IMO there was a time when transit not only contributed to but was essetial
> for the vitality and development of the urban form.
Here that is still the case.
> Now? The word nostolgia almost applies.
It sounds like you need a better quality transit system!
> When was it exactly that we decided cities should stop evolving?
AFAIK no city has completely stopped evolving. However, many cities have
development controls such as heritage listing and a difficult planning
approval process. Others have height restrictions, whether for aesthetic
reasons (such as Paris) or because of low flying aircraft (there's no
absolute restriction in Adelaide, but the issue does come up when anyone
wants to build anything really tall).
Development controls were a gradual process not a sudden decision. And
of course not everywhere has them.
Robert Cote
(Aidan Stanger) wrote:
> Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > ...This is a common problem when discussing transit in the
> > urban experiment. Transit used to be an instrument of
> > change but seems to have become a bastion of preservation.
>
> Maybe you're looking for the wrong type of change.
Perhaps. If I were looking for change and found transit trying
to preserve old urban patterns instead of addressing the future
maybe I would be anti-transit. I'm not anti-transit because I
see many instances of addressing the future. I'm seen as being
anti-transit because I see manny instances of denying the future.
> > IMO there was a time when transit not only contributed to but was
> > essential for the vitality and development of the urban form.
>
> Here that is still the case.
This is where there is room to disagree. Transit is so inefficient
that it cannot EVER cover costs let alone breakeven. Unless you
are prepared to show that there are external benifits that reduce
this burden...
> > Now? The word nostolgia almost applies.
>
> It sounds like you need a better quality transit system!
No, not better different. Funny you should ask:
http://www.insidevc.com/archives/05092000/oxnard/291937.shtml
Oh, and I had something to do with this.
There will be another major story tomorrow.
> > When was it exactly that we decided cities should stop evolving?
>
> AFAIK no city has completely stopped evolving.
Except in matters of trasit eh? What other city service has roots
back 80 plus years?
> However, many cities have
> development controls such as heritage listing and a difficult planning
> approval process.
Again only 80 years old.
> Others have height restrictions, whether for aesthetic
> reasons (such as Paris) or because of low flying aircraft (there's no
> absolute restriction in Adelaide, but the issue does come up when anyone
> wants to build anything really tall).
Oh, please. When will Denver be shaving mountaintops?
> Development controls were a gradual process not a sudden decision. And
> of course not everywhere has them.
Gradual creeping socialism? Maybe. Not everywher, well Houston and a few
others say the don't have "real" zoning but have extensivepublic approval
processes instead. Big difference?
Marc Dufour
==============================================================
Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net>
écrivit le/wrote on Tue, 15 Aug 2000 23:39:15 GMT
à propos de/about Re: Walkable communities (was Re: WalkBoston's position on
MBTA fare increase)
--------------------------------------------------------------
...
>This is where there is room to disagree. Transit is so inefficient
>that it cannot EVER cover costs let alone breakeven. Unless you
>are prepared to show that there are external benifits that reduce
>this burden...
Funny that in the USA, at least, transit (in the hand of private companies)
*WAS* profitable; but everything changed once governments started to subsidize
"free" roads at great expense to the taxpayer...
Robert Cote
wrote:
> ==============================================================
> Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net>
> ecrivit le/wrote on Tue, 15 Aug 2000 23:39:15 GMT
> a propos de/about Re: Walkable communities (was Re: WalkBoston's position
> on
> MBTA fare increase)
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ...
> >This is where there is room to disagree. Transit is so inefficient
> >that it cannot EVER cover costs let alone breakeven. Unless you
> >are prepared to show that there are external benifits that reduce
> >this burden...
>
> Funny that in the USA, at least, transit (in the hand of private companies)
> *WAS* profitable; but everything changed once governments started to
> subsidize "free" roads at great expense to the taxpayer...
I think you'll find your cronology out of order. Repost to
misc.transport.road for full details. Again.
Aidan Stanger
> (Aidan Stanger) wrote:
> > Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> >
> > > ...This is a common problem when discussing transit in the
> > > urban experiment. Transit used to be an instrument of
> > > change but seems to have become a bastion of preservation.
> >
> > Maybe you're looking for the wrong type of change.
>
> Perhaps. If I were looking for change and found transit trying
> to preserve old urban patterns instead of addressing the future
> maybe I would be anti-transit. I'm not anti-transit because I
> see many instances of addressing the future. I'm seen as being
> anti-transit because I see manny instances of denying the future.
>
> > > IMO there was a time when transit not only contributed to but was
> > > essential for the vitality and development of the urban form.
> >
> > Here that is still the case.
>
> that it cannot EVER cover costs let alone breakeven. Unless you
> are prepared to show that there are external benifits that reduce
> this burden...
>
think) the entire network broke even. However, the external benefits are
high, so the case for subsidization is good.
> > > Now? The word nostolgia almost applies.
> >
> > It sounds like you need a better quality transit system!
>
> No, not better different. Funny you should ask:
>
> http://www.insidevc.com/archives/05092000/oxnard/291937.shtml
>
That kind of service is rather expensive to operate. What is the
population density in the area it serves?
> Oh, and I had something to do with this.
> There will be another major story tomorrow.
>
> > > When was it exactly that we decided cities should stop evolving?
> >
> > AFAIK no city has completely stopped evolving.
>
> Except in matters of trasit eh? What other city service has roots
> back 80 plus years?
>
I'm not quite sure what you mean here.
> > However, many cities have development controls such as heritage listing
> > and a difficult planning approval process.
>
> Again only 80 years old.
>
> > Others have height restrictions, whether for aesthetic
> > reasons (such as Paris) or because of low flying aircraft (there's no
> > absolute restriction in Adelaide, but the issue does come up when anyone
> > wants to build anything really tall).
>
> Oh, please. When will Denver be shaving mountaintops?
>
How far is Denver's CBD from its airport, and is it under the
flightpath???
I know the situation in Adelaide is unusual, but I'd be surprised if it
were unique.
> > Development controls were a gradual process not a sudden decision. And
> > of course not everywhere has them.
>
> Gradual creeping socialism? Maybe. Not everywher, well Houston and a few
> others say the don't have "real" zoning but have extensivepublic approval
> processes instead. Big difference?
That depends how the approval process works.
--
Aidan Stanger
In London, where mayor Livingstone likes tall buildings.
George Conklin
Marc Dufour <lug...@yahoo.comNOSPAM> wrote:
>
>==============================================================
>Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net>
>ą propos de/about Re: Walkable communities (was Re: WalkBoston's
>position on
>MBTA fare increase)
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>
>...
>>that it cannot EVER cover costs let alone breakeven. Unless you
>>are prepared to show that there are external benifits that reduce
>>this burden...
>
>*WAS* profitable; but everything changed once governments started
>to subsidize
>"free" roads at great expense to the taxpayer...
Transit incomes peaked out in 1915. That ended your ideal
city.
JamieT...@dfw.com
> <snip> I'm seen as being
> anti-transit because I see manny instances of denying the future.
Well, you're seen as anti-rail (by me) because of your posting history. You quote the
Wendell Cox website as if it were the Koran. You launch personal attacks
against those who (you believe) even remotely support rail.
You refuse to accept that the vast majority of people in some areas want
rail service. By the way, I noticed you've been conspicuously silent since the
DART election last Saturday.
John
In the beginning was the City,
and the City was without form and void.
Then the people formed governments according to their desires,
and the City took form and separated from the country.
And the people walked in the city.
And the City prospered and grew,
and some people road horses and carriages.
And the City prospered and grew more,
and Trolleys sprang up to carry the masses.
And the Trolley owners made great profits.
Then the City seeing those profits became greedy and demanded a share.
And the City and Trolley owners prospered and the people had a Good Deal.
And then a new invention sprang up called the automobile,
but it was young and needed help,
and the caretakers of the auto saw a chance to prosper while helping the
infant automobile.
So the City, being controlled by the highwaymen, took from the Trolley and
gave to the auto
and ignored the hurt they were inflicting on the Trolley.
And the Trolley died and the City didn't care.
Then the Auto grew up and wasn't so cute anymore,
And the City found itself choking on the waste and numbers of the auto,
Which had be come as a parasite devouring it's host.
And now the City finds that it can slow, and perhaps halt,
it's destruction by returning to the Trolleys.
George Conklin
John <jk...@dps.org> wrote:
>
>"Robert Cote" <tech...@gte.net> wrote in message
>news:mwnm5.872$Ku3.2...@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net...
More Luddites in the USA seem to be born every day.
What about destroying computers too?
Robert Cote
"John" <jk...@dps.org> wrote:
> "Robert Cote" <tech...@gte.net> wrote in message
> > Marc Dufour <lug...@yahoo.comNOSPAM>
> > > Funny that in the USA, at least, transit (in the hand of private
> > > companies)
> > > *WAS* profitable; but everything changed once governments started to
> > > subsidize "free" roads at great expense to the taxpayer...
> >
> > I think you'll find your cronology out of order. Repost to
> > misc.transport.road for full details. Again.
>
> And the people walked in the city.
> And the City prospered and grew,
> and some people road horses and carriages.
> And the City prospered and grew more,
> and Trolleys sprang up to carry the masses.
> And the Trolley owners made great profits.
>
> Then the City seeing those profits became greedy and demanded a share.
> And the City and Trolley owners prospered and the people had a Good Deal.
>
> And then a new invention sprang up called the automobile,
> but it was young and needed help,
> and the caretakers of the auto saw a chance to prosper while helping the
> infant automobile.
>
> So the City, being controlled by the highwaymen, took from the Trolley and
> gave to the auto
> and ignored the hurt they were inflicting on the Trolley.
> And the Trolley died and the City didn't care.
>
> Then the Auto grew up and wasn't so cute anymore,
> And the City found itself choking on the waste and numbers of the auto,
> Which had be come as a parasite devouring it's host.
>
> And now the City finds that it can slow, and perhaps halt,
> it's destruction by returning to the Trolleys.
So the City started walking then rode and finally drove. Sounds an
awful lot like logical maturation. And now you want to go back to
being driven. Well not really. You want the people to be driven.
I notice that you recognize that the City became greedy yet you
fail to realize that the exact same time the City got involved the
profits dried up. Hmmm. I notice however that there is tacit
acknowlegement when for one sentence you say the people had a good
deal rather than the City or the Trolleys. Nothing about 5 cent
fares in a 20 cent world before the auto appeared had to do with
the demise of mass transit as economically viable?
Unfortunately your stories' cronology of dependence still doesn't
follow history. Too bad, it such a clever tome. The first
demands for better roads were from bicyclists who receive no
mention. The Auto did not spring up and spontaneously graft a
mysterious controlling body of "highwaymen" to City governemt.
By this time regardless, Public Transit (You said trolleys but
even the advent of buses only reduced the losses) were uniformly
losing money so there was no taking from the Trolley to pay for
the auto. Notice also the complete lack of Rail based private
robber barrons and their stranglehold on certain transport in
your entertaining but inaccurate ditty.
I particulary liked the idea that the Trolley was/is an animate
object that can be loved/hurt/killed.
Lastly I took the most pleasure from your last line depicting
cities as not being able to halt their ongoing evolution but
determined to try.
Let's bring back gettoes since we are in such a nostalic mood.
crazy
I notice that you recognize that the City became greedy yet you
> fail to realize that the exact same time the City got involved the
> profits dried up. Hmmm. I notice however that there is tacit
> acknowlegement when for one sentence you say the people had a good
> deal rather than the City or the Trolleys. Nothing about 5 cent
> fares in a 20 cent world before the auto appeared had to do with
> the demise of mass transit as economically viable?
I seem to recall from my history that the city regulated the trolleys and
controlled the fares...a 5 cent fare in a 20 cent world? Perhaps the city
strangled the trolleys...did they have partners in this...probably, special
interest are not new...
Robert Cote
IIRC (real experts please jump in) this was the Post WW-I inflationary
and social unrest era . The low fares were a form of "bread and circuses."
The "special interests" were the people themselves.
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> IIRC (real experts please jump in) this was the Post WW-I inflationary
> and social unrest era . The low fares were a form of "bread and circuses."
> The "special interests" were the people themselves.
I'm no real expert, but you beat me to it.
Robert Cote
Market Street) wrote:
> In article <HQSm5.174$B64....@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>
> > IIRC (real experts please jump in) this was the Post WW-I inflationary
> > and social unrest era . The low fares were a form of "bread and
> > circuses."
> > The "special interests" were the people themselves.
>
> I'm no real expert, but you beat me to it.
Wanna take a poll? You've got my vote. The real reason I
bring this up is that it really was this nations' first
foray into the public provision of private social services
and IMO a big failure. There are similar advocates
today looking to repeat the same pattern in urban design,
airplane transportation and healthcare. Wait til you see
the mess from California's electricity deregulation. We
may be the vangaurd but this time we'll be the cautionary
counterexample as well.
CAs electric experience also speaks poorly to a longtime
transit favorite of mine, demand service. I am forced to
reconsider. It is possible that in exchange for providing
a service for well below cost, it is not unreasonable to
expect the reciepient to make accomodations. Don't let
the ADA advocates in this group hear that. Of course if
push come to shove then a new standard of "accomodation"
may be introduced. The public will pay either 80% or the
first $10 of any one way trip whichever is lower. That
would be equal access wouldn't it? In practice, if not in
fact that's pretty much what the original 5 cent fares
where intended to provide. Look how that turned out.
David Jensen
>In article <smiths-ya02408000...@netnews.upenn.edu>, smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on
>Market Street) wrote:
>
>> In article <HQSm5.174$B64....@dfiatx1-snr1.gtei.net>, Robert Cote
>> <tech...@gte.net> wrote:
>>
>> > IIRC (real experts please jump in) this was the Post WW-I inflationary
>> > and social unrest era . The low fares were a form of "bread and
>> > circuses."
>> > The "special interests" were the people themselves.
>>
>> I'm no real expert, but you beat me to it.
>
>Wanna take a poll? You've got my vote. The real reason I
Mine, too.
>bring this up is that it really was this nations' first
>foray into the public provision of private social services
>and IMO a big failure. There are similar advocates
>today looking to repeat the same pattern in urban design,
>airplane transportation and healthcare. Wait til you see
>the mess from California's electricity deregulation. We
>may be the vangaurd but this time we'll be the cautionary
>counterexample as well.
That wasn't deregulation, California sold out to the electric utilities
after destroying the necessary demand buffer. If this had happened 30 or
40 years ago when every power company had more than enough capacity to
meet the highest demand of the year, things might have been okay, but,
as in many states, demand constraints were assumed to be as good as new
capacity.
No company should be allowed to routinely deliver a product without
telling the customer in advance what the price will be. Billing policies
like that in any other industry in California would have criminal
charges. How in the world did California go from regulated to "free of
any consumer protection laws"? I actually agree with the idea of
dividing the power generators from the power delivery system, but the
customer should have a contracted rate with the power generation company
which will be responsible for paying the wheeling fees to the delivery
folks. California appears to have done it backward for the residential
customers, but not for the industrial customers. [Please correct any
misunderstandings I might have]
The biggest problem for California's alleged electricity deregulation is
that current producers now have an incentive to join with the Sierra
Club to stop the construction of new power plants to maintain a demand
surplus.
>CAs electric experience also speaks poorly to a longtime
>transit favorite of mine, demand service. I am forced to
>reconsider. It is possible that in exchange for providing
>a service for well below cost, it is not unreasonable to
>expect the recipient to make accomodations. Don't let
>the ADA advocates in this group hear that. Of course if
>push come to shove then a new standard of "accomodation"
>may be introduced. The public will pay either 80% or the
>first $10 of any one way trip whichever is lower. That
>would be equal access wouldn't it? In practice, if not in
>fact that's pretty much what the original 5 cent fares
>where intended to provide. Look how that turned out.
Madison does charge point-to-point paratransit users a premium over the
bus. They also force cab companies to run 24 hours a day and do not
allow a night or wheelchair premium. Oddly, the current cab companies
recently voted to support the 24/7 rule. Not so oddly, it keeps
independent operators from running cabs.
Robert Cote
I stand corrected. It is not deregulation. It was only called
deregualtion. The implementation makes a mockery of the word.
Electricty demand for cooling days keeps increasing as urbanization
increases heat island effects and "sprawl" invades increasingly
inhospitible areas such as San Bernadino County. Even the "dry
heat" of Palm Springs is requiring AC as people use electricity to
pump water and raise the discomfort index.
There's this nifty new construct called "stranded costs" as well.
I'll let you take on that piece of work.
> If this had happened 30 or
> 40 years ago when every power company had more than enough capacity to
> meet the highest demand of the year, things might have been okay, but,
> as in many states, demand constraints were assumed to be as good as new
> capacity.
Ventura County just got screwed. The Ormond Beach demnad plant has been
granted a waiver to overpollute so that Universal City walk can have
outdoor airconditioned dining. At least there aren't any Santana winds
to blow their pollution back as well.
> No company should be allowed to routinely deliver a product without
> telling the customer in advance what the price will be. Billing policies
> like that in any other industry in California would have criminal
> charges. How in the world did California go from regulated to "free of
> any consumer protection laws"? I actually agree with the idea of
> dividing the power generators from the power delivery system, but the
> customer should have a contracted rate with the power generation company
> which will be responsible for paying the wheeling fees to the delivery
> folks.
Edision Intl formerly SCE claims that they don't own any fossil fuel
generating capacity. They own the company that owns those plants however
and when demand rises they pay themselves exobritant prices for the
energy from their wholly own subsidiary. Hmmmm.
> California appears to have done it backward for the residential
> customers, but not for the industrial customers. [Please correct any
> misunderstandings I might have]
Large customers have negotiated long term capitated agreements. The County
itself has a 10% below bulk rate in exchange for agreeing to mandatory
reductions durring peak periods. Great, take $10 units from large
customers when the price goes to $500 at retail. Imagine a dutch auction
for seafood at "market price" and you only get to find out what the
lobster cost after you get the bill and you have to trust the waiter
that he isn't cheating you. Right.
> The biggest problem for California's alleged electricity deregulation is
> that current producers now have an incentive to join with the Sierra
> Club to stop the construction of new power plants to maintain a demand
> surplus.
Since they get paid to not run their N plants they are actually
increasing the amount of radiation. If you are on the grid now and
if you try to leave it you still get a bill for the N plants that
don't make electricy anyway.
> >CAs electric experience also speaks poorly to a longtime
> >transit favorite of mine, demand service. I am forced to
> >reconsider. It is possible that in exchange for providing
> >a service for well below cost, it is not unreasonable to
> >expect the recipient to make accomodations. Don't let
> >the ADA advocates in this group hear that. Of course if
> >push come to shove then a new standard of "accomodation"
> >may be introduced. The public will pay either 80% or the
> >first $10 of any one way trip whichever is lower. That
> >would be equal access wouldn't it? In practice, if not in
> >fact that's pretty much what the original 5 cent fares
> >where intended to provide. Look how that turned out.
>
> Madison does charge point-to-point paratransit users a premium over the
> bus. They also force cab companies to run 24 hours a day and do not
> allow a night or wheelchair premium. Oddly, the current cab companies
> recently voted to support the 24/7 rule. Not so oddly, it keeps
> independent operators from running cabs.
Everytime there's a below market service, someone is getting rich.
John
"Robert Cote" <tech...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:MgSm5.249$vJ1....@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net...
> > And now the City finds that it can slow, and perhaps halt,
> > it's destruction by returning to the Trolleys.
>
> Lastly I took the most pleasure from your last line depicting
> cities as not being able to halt their ongoing evolution but
> determined to try.
>
They called him a vampire
and stabbed him through the heart.
Others called him Jesus.
Robert Cote
Sounds more like rage against the machine. Thanks for the
on topic and original contribution.
Exile on Market Street
<tech...@gte.net> wrote:
> In article <t1oopskfo3nq4j4b7...@4ax.com>,
da...@dajensen-family.com wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 17 Aug 2000 21:11:29 GMT, in alt.planning.urban
> > Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net> wrote in
> > <5yYm5.457$vJ1.1...@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net>:
> >
[re: "the people are the special interest"]
> > >
> > >Wanna take a poll? You've got my vote. The real reason I
> >
> > Mine, too.
> >
> > >bring this up is that it really was this nations' first
> > >foray into the public provision of private social services
> > >and IMO a big failure. There are similar advocates
> > >today looking to repeat the same pattern in urban design,
> > >airplane transportation and healthcare. Wait til you see
> > >the mess from California's electricity deregulation. We
> > >may be the vangaurd but this time we'll be the cautionary
> > >counterexample as well.
> >
> > That wasn't deregulation, California sold out to the electric utilities
> > after destroying the necessary demand buffer.
>
> I stand corrected. It is not deregulation. It was only called
> deregualtion. The implementation makes a mockery of the word.
[snip]
> There's this nifty new construct called "stranded costs" as well.
> I'll let you take on that piece of work.
After following the parent thread to this point, I wonder how Pennsylvania
managed to make this same idea work.
"Stranded costs" also figured into the argument over introducing
competition into Pennsylvania's electricity market. I think the logic is
as follows: We spent all this money to build so much generating capacity
based on the assumption that we would recoup our investment based on the
rates you regulators would allow us to charge over a certain number of
years. Now you're telling us that you will let other generators sell our
customers electricity at whatever price the market will bear. Well, you
need to give us some way to recover our investment from these folks who
used to be our customers but aren't any more, since they were part of the
assumptions we used to build those plants back in the good old days."
Somehow, all the interested parties in Pennsylvania managed to sit down at
the table and work out a deal that gave everyone most of what they wanted.
And it seems to be working: I just recently read that Pennsylvania
consumers are paying about one-third less for electricity under competition
than they were under the regulatory regime. And that's even after taking
into account that most residential electricity customers have *not* shopped
for a cheaper electricity supplier than their local utility. (Since I
don't think they've broken down the figures based on the utility
responsible for transmission, I have no idea whether there are regional
variations. I would suspect that more people in Peco Energy's service area
have shopped for an alternative supplier than elsewhere in the state.)
> Ventura County just got screwed. The Ormond Beach demnad plant has been
> granted a waiver to overpollute so that Universal City walk can have
> outdoor airconditioned dining. At least there aren't any Santana winds
> to blow their pollution back as well.
Carlos' guitar is that powerful?
As for the specific complaint, this seems like a bit of overkill, though
given that CityWalk is not an actual city street but an incredible
simulation, understandable.
> > No company should be allowed to routinely deliver a product without
> > telling the customer in advance what the price will be. Billing policies
> > like that in any other industry in California would have criminal
> > charges. How in the world did California go from regulated to "free of
> > any consumer protection laws"? I actually agree with the idea of
> > dividing the power generators from the power delivery system, but the
> > customer should have a contracted rate with the power generation company
> > which will be responsible for paying the wheeling fees to the delivery
> > folks.
That sounds like the root of the problem.
I think the thing that's made Pennsylvania's deregulation work so well is
that clear, upfront consumer information was built in from the start.
Every electricity customer in the state was given a "price to compare" for
electric generation, based on the rate charged by the local utility. Other
companies could then compete on price or on other attributes (you pay more
for "green" electricity, but you are assured that none of your electricity
is generated by nuclear or coal power).
Now, not every company that's entered the competitive market has managed to
make it work; one regional utility, Conectiv (formed by the merger of
Delmarva Power and Atlantic Electric), has announced that it will drop all
its residential customers and exit the generating business. But there are
still plenty of other generators out there.
--
Sandy Smith, University Relations / 215.898.1423 / smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
Managing Editor, _Pennsylvania Current_ cur...@pobox.upenn.edu
Penn Web Team -- Web Editor webm...@isc.upenn.edu
I speak for myself here, not Penn http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/
"I have friends who live in Denver...They gnash their teeth when I tell
them that Denver is Wichita with mountains..."
-------"Captain Billy" in the _Salon_ "Table Talk" thread on Kansas City--
Marc Dufour
==============================================================
Robert Cote <tech...@gte.net>
écrivit le/wrote on Thu, 17 Aug 2000 14:41:43 GMT
à propos de/about Re: Walkable communities (was Re: WalkBoston's position on
MBTA fare increase)
--------------------------------------------------------------
>IIRC (real experts please jump in) this was the Post WW-I inflationary
>and social unrest era . The low fares were a form of "bread and circuses."
>The "special interests" were the people themselves.
Well, isn't catering to the largest "special interest" the very essence of
democracy???