DEMOLITION AS A TOOL FOR REVIVAL - "DOWN-SIZING" OLD, INDUSTRIAL CITIES THE ANSWER?

GOOD URBAN DESIGN LINKS:  One of the reasons some places you always remember, and in a positive way.   "Superblocks" can be historic...and be the heart of a community!  CLUB WESTON1994.
U R B A N   D E S I G N
WITH NO SIDEWALKS AND TWO-ACRE ZONING, CAN WESTON EVER HOPE TO BE "WALKABLE?"  DOES IT RELATE TO THE "GREEN BUILDING" IDEA?
What is "urban design?"
"Urban design...is not a series of rules and standards. Rather, it is a group of concepts that, once understood, can lead to a fresh way of perceiving streets, buildings, and spaces -- and insights into why certain places are appealing and others are not. With urban design concepts in mind you should be able to better question architectural presentations and consider the impact of development proposals on your town's character."  From "An Introduction to Urban Design" by Ilene Watson (online)


(JOHN WOIKE/HARTFORD COURANT / July 12, 2009)

Guerrilla Gardening Blossoms In New Haven
By REGINE LABOSSIERE The Hartford Courant
July 13, 2009

NEW HAVEN - As a bicyclist and gardener, Lisa Anamasi notices areas that aren't as pretty as they could be.

Those fenced-in properties with overgrown weeds? Check. The patch of dirt next to the city bus stop? Check. Why would property owners — private or municipal — leave those areas blighted or bare when they could be filled with flowers and shrubs? Anamasi asked. And then she found a solution.

She started a group in May called Freed Seeds in which she and a few friends ride bikes around the city seed-bombing those areas. The hope is that the bombs — soil, clay and plant seeds molded into balls —take root and sprout.

Freed Seeds is part of a growing movement called guerrilla gardening in which groups around the world throw seed bombs or plant unauthorized gardens to beautify their communities. Active groups exist in cities such as London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles.

"The thing that got me into it is the idea of taking abandoned, weedy lots that are not being maintained," Anamasi, 32, said. "It would just be nice to add something to neighborhoods. They could have cheerful sunflowers or something growing there instead."

Guerrilla gardeners are known to work at night or be on the lookout for city officials and police since what they do potentially could be vandalism or trespassing. They may spend hours creating gardens or throwing seed bombs.

Freed Seeds started out slowly. Three people, including Anamasi, showed up to the first seed bombing in May. They hopped on their bikes and rode for miles, stopping along their bike route in the Newhallville section of the city several times to throw bombs over fences into blighted private property. Later that month, six people threw seed bombs around town during a monthly organized cycling event.

Anamasi also threw seed bombs with a friend at an old factory on Winchester Avenue Sunday.

"I like the idea of community building, beautifying spaces that aren't necessarily in your neighborhood," she said.

The concept has been around for centuries. Guerrilla gardeners claim Johnny Appleseed as one of their own. It really took root in the United States in the 1970s when a group of New Yorkers started their organization. Some say recent books, blogs and other media are the impetus for the latest upswing in the movement.

"It seems we're getting more calls and more people discussing it," said Steve Frillmann, executive director of the New York-based Green Guerillas. The New York association started out as a guerrilla movement but morphed into an organized nonprofit that builds community gardens with the city's permission.

"We think it's great, wherever it's happening, that it can be a way to plant a seed that gets people out of their apartments and out of their houses and working together. And, from that, a more sustainable movement," Frillmann said.

The appeal of guerrilla gardening, he said, is its immediacy. It's a way "for people to come together and actually green up a space and not worry about dealing with the powers-that-be or raising a lot of money or creating a formal network."

That, however, can also be a detriment, as a group in Los Angeles has learned. Some of the community gardens that L.A. Guerrilla Gardening has planted have been removed since they weren't permitted by the city, said the group's co-executive director Mr. Stamen (all of its members use plant-related names). He said, however, the message is worth the effort.

"It's getting to know the community and making the community a better place," he said. "...Most of the time the city doesn't have the money or the time to put in a garden so why not do it yourself?"

Mr. Stamen, who wouldn't give his real name, said the organization's secrecy is exciting. L.A. Guerrilla Gardening has been going out at night for the past year to plant gardens to avoid confrontation with authorities.

Guerrilla gardening is new to New Haven, and city officials have not taken a stance against Anamasi's efforts.

Mr. Stamen gave a suggestion to new groups: "Start really small and start really close to where you live. You want to be able to take care of it and get community support behind it. If it's too big or too far away to take care of it, it'll go back to what it was beforehand."

Judging by community forums on an international guerrilla-gardening website, residents in New Britain, New Haven, Hartford, Wallingford and Meriden are interested in joining groups or starting their own. Anamasi hopes her group will grow, spreading seeds and a message.

"Ultimately, I would rather see, if we do get to start digging and planting things, that those spaces would be maintained and set a precedent," Anamasi said. "It would be great if those spaces were developed."

From across our northern border...
South End towns examine their ‘walkability’ appeal
South Whidbey RECORD
By JEFF VANDERFORD
May 02 2007

CLINTON — Langley has what it takes to be considered a “walkable” city.

Clinton, on the other hand, must face its Achilles heel to becoming a destination for visitors and locals alike: Highway 525.  Today, drivers get off the ferry, gun their engines to get up the hill and before they know it they’re at Ken’s Korner with Clinton disappearing in their rear view mirror.  But community planner Dan Burden knows what it takes to change all that: political will and the power of one or two committed people with a little clout who can make it happen.

“When I visit a town, I’m always hoping that one person gets the message. If I’m lucky it’ll be a mayor or city planner, someone who cares about the future of his community,” Burden said.

“In every case where positive change occurred, there were one or two people that were serious,” he said.

That was Burden’s message this week as he examined the nature of “place” on South Whidbey in Langley, Clinton, Bayview and Freeland.

“Creating a sense of discovery is vital if a community wants to be considered really livable,” Burden said. “Clinton has to develop that keen sense of arrival that says, ‘You can have a good time in Clinton.’”

Sponsored by Island County Public Health, Burden staged walkabouts and presented a compelling slide show in each island town that focused on convenience and connectivity.

“Dan is here to offer recommendations on how to best create truly visitor and local-friendly environments,” said county public health agent Whitney Webber.  Earlier Monday, Burden told a group at Langley City Hall their city was on his list of the 100 most walkable towns in America.

“In many areas, like my home state of Florida, they dishonored their waterfronts,” he said. “Work is progressing to change that, but it takes time, money and vision.”

He said Langley must work to protect what it has by simply slowing down.

“To stay walkable, you must avoid any new road projects, focus on people and remember that speed is bad — speed on roads and speed in development. Use your own good instincts and conscience to show the way.”

Burden added that cities exist for the exchange of goods, services, products, culture, history, friendships and knowledge.  A city must have a downtown. Without one, there can be no “there,” and consequently, a lack of place.

“Think Lynnwood,” he said.

So what can Clinton, or any town, do to make changes that create a sense of place?

Burden said the list includes narrower streets (and no four-lane roads), slower speeds, bike lanes brightly marked, unpaved urban trails, overhead walkways, curb extensions, lots of trees and off-set buildings that promote pedestrian flow.

“You may want to consider a plan featuring one-way streets; the evidence shows they actually promote foot traffic once the expected opposition is won over,” Burden said.

On Tuesday, Burden offered his views after an examination of Freeland and Bayview.

“It’s up to them to decide in which direction their communities go now,” Burden said.

For more details on community planning, visit www.walkability.org.

What's Wrong with LEED?
THE NEXT AMERICAN CITY
Issue 14 - Green Building
by Stephen Del Percio 
     
Last September Rick Fedrizzi, President of the U.S. Green Building Council, presented the Hearst Corporation with a gold plaque for its new headquarters building in Manhattan. Standing 597 feet above the corner of 57th Street and 8th Avenue, the Hearst Tower is only the second commercial office building in New York City to achieve a gold LEED rating behind Larry Silverstein’s rebuilt 7 World Trade Center. “Others might claim they’re in a green building,” Fedrizzi said at the presentation ceremony, “but when they see this plaque, they’ll know they’re in a green building.”

Whether that’s the case or not has been debated by design professionals, construction industry experts, and the real estate community since 2000, when the USGBC stamped twelve new buildings with a LEED seal of approval. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design, is a set of rules published by the USGBC that rate a building’s “greenness.” Greenness doesn’t always have to do with the building’s components. For example, if a building happens to be located within a half-mile of a commuter rail stop or other mass transit, it receives one LEED point. Certainly the Hearst Tower is one of America’s greenest office buildings to date, built with over ninety percent recycled steel and designed to save 1.7 million gallons of water annually by harvesting and recycling rainwater. But many critics maintain that a LEED plaque is no guarantee that a building deserves accolades for good green design. Industry professionals commonly complain that the credit system unevenly recognizes energy use. For example, because each LEED credit is worth one point (out of a possible 69), it’s possible for a building to receive 26 points - enough for a plaque - without obtaining a single point for energy efficiency. This is arguably the most important green building metric, and critics note that this loophole allows owners to slap a few green elements - from a green roof to preferred parking spaces for hybrid vehicles - on top of an otherwise conventional building in order to score easy LEED points. In 2004, the Green Building Alliance, a Pittsburgh-based coalition of environmental groups, compiled an anonymous electronic survey of architects, engineers, contractors, and others who had worked on green building projects. On a recent building, one respondent had received one LEED point for installing a $395 bike rack. For a $1.3 million heat recovery system that would help save the owner around $500,000 annually in energy costs? The same lone point. “This must be corrected,” one of the respondents wrote.

Critics also say a costly and bureaucratic certification process is responsible for the low percentage of projects that ultimately get certified. Since 2000, LEED for new construction (LEED-NC) has gotten 3,113 registered project applications. But only 403 have been certified by USGBC - a lackluster thirteen percent clip. LEED for Commercial Interiors (LEED-CI) and LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB), both introduced in 2004, have received 297 and 171 applications, with just 68 and 28 projects receiving certification, respectively. Despite the fact that they were building an exemplary green building project, the designers of the new 52-story New York Times Tower, on 8th Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets in Manhattan, did not apply for LEED certification. Architect Bruce Fowle of FXFOWLE, a leading green architectural firm, told the New York Observer that LEED was “time-consuming and costly,” and said “some of the prerequisites are not that meaningful.”

Some professionals say the rating system’s structure is all wrong. Peter Weingarten, a senior associate at FXFOWLE, describes LEED’s greatest strength - its objective evaluation of a building’s performance - as, at the same time, its greatest weakness. “LEED is a metrics-based review of a building that is performance-based and not subjective,” he says. “This essentially formulaic approach leaves no room for the broader architectural implications that the building’s design presents.” For example, a building that receives a LEED Platinum rating could be an architectural nightmare - in other words, just plain ugly. “LEED currently doesn’t address design excellence,” he says. “People need to love these buildings.”

There are other, bottom-line reasons why owners may not choose to pursue LEED. For one, adding features like a green roof or a pond (both get one point) can be incredibly expensive. Pete Atkin is an associate with GreenOrder, Inc., a Manhattan-based green building consulting firm. “On the whole, some of our clients have balked at cost,” he says. His firm works with developers to come up with certification strategies that won’t break the bank. But in the end, developers may simply use the LEED standards as a benchmark. “For some clients, because of the nature of their business, achieving a certification is not important, so they may use LEED as a design guide in developing a building, but not go through the actual certification process. The end product may be just as green.”

Still, in a recent study, the General Services Administration, a government agency that monitors other federal agencies, called LEED “the most credible” of five green building rating systems it evaluated. The other four systems were Japan’s Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE), the United Kingdom’s Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), a software program called GBTool, developed in 2000 by a consortium of sixteen nations to assess buildings’ environmental impact, and the Green Globes, a European green building rating, from 1991.

And, in the survey administered by the Pittsburgh Green Building Alliance, 59.4 percent of respondents called meeting the LEED prerequisites only “moderate” in difficulty. A whopping 88 percent said building green was similar or only slightly more costly than conventional construction. And 54.8 percent called LEED “very useful” as a guideline for their respective projects.

But people who use the system on a daily basis feel differently. Erik Olsen is an engineer and green projects administrator in Chicago, where green building has taken off. In 2004, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced all new public buildings must meet LEED standards. Surprisingly, the city uses LEED for fast-tracked permits because administering its own standards would be too expensive. But those permits aren’t always on such a fast track. Olsen, who works for the city’s Department of Construction and Permits, says he receives numerous phone calls from Chicago-based project teams who would rather turn to him than LEED professionals to answer questions about certification. “I get all kinds of interpretation questions,” he says, “ranging from extremely basic ones that I can clearly answer to very project-specific items that I certainly have an opinion on but can’t answer because the final ruling is with USGBC.”

To its credit, USGBC has recognized that LEED is not perfect. Over the past six years, the organization has rolled out new versions of the rating system to address different means of construction, types of buildings, and scope of development. Even as LEED becomes more widely used and understood, the USGBC is realizing LEED may be in for a more drastic upgrade.

One not-so-subtle clue to the USGBC that something was wrong with its rating system came in October 2005 in the form of a study, entitled “LEED Is Broken: Let’s Fix It.” Published by two Aspen, Colorado-based green building proponents, Auden Schendler, director of environmental affairs at the Aspen Skiing Company, and Randy Udall, directory of the Boulder-based Community Office for Resource Efficiency, the study made big waves in the industry. The authors did not hold back. “LEED has become costly, slow, brutal, confusing, and unwieldy, a death march for applicants administered by a Soviet-style bureacracy that makes green building more difficult than it needs to be,” they wrote. They gave, as case studies, their own experiences building a restaurant and a golf clubhouse for the Aspen Skiing Company. Their tally of costs: for initial consultation and document-gathering alone (required for certification), $68,450 for a relatively small building. They polled others in the industry about the effectiveness of certification vs. simply investing money in a building’s green features. Ken Leinbach, executive director of a new Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee, said he did not pursue certification because “it could have added as much as $75,000 to the cost, just for the paperwork.” Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, which built a new facility on Stanford University’s campus, said he decided to skip certification and invest instead in the building’s heat-rejecting windows. The authors asked: “If a global ecologist doesn’t find value in LEED, will Donald Trump?” They called on USGBC to “get to work, and reinvent LEED.”

USGBC responded. Early in 2006, it retained Seattle-based green building consulting firm Paladino and Company to begin a comprehensive overhaul of the various LEED rating systems. Paladino has been involved with USGBC since 1998. It has authored various LEED business plans and reference manuals, reviewed numerous LEED certification applications, and was responsible for administering the inaugural LEED pilot program in 2000. USGBC’s first official announcement about a next generation LEED came in September 2006. In a press release entitled “LEED Version 3.0: Foundation for the Future,” it described the new LEED as “a working title nomenclature around which to coalesce our development efforts, rather than a new product per se.” Last summer, USGBC led a series of “scoping eco-charrettes” (a concept developed in the 1990s by Paladino, basically brainstorming sessions between developers, design teams, and other project stakeholders) held at local USGBC chapters across the country. Specifically, Paladino and the LEED 3.0 committee were interested in changes to LEED’s structure that would result in more sustainable buildings, marketing LEED to a broader audience, and reducing the costs of using LEED systems. Now that Paladino has completed the charrettes, it will collect comments into short-, medium-, and long-term improvements the USGBC might make. The comment and development period will extend through the 2007 Greenbuild conference, scheduled for November 7-9 in Los Angeles.

The development process behind the next generation of LEED has been less than transparent. This could be both good and bad. The fact that no one knows what the new version will look like could mean the organization is planning for a massive overhaul of the certification process. On the other hand, the fact that it’s mainly USGBC member organizations and chapter members shaping the process gives LEED 3.0 an aura of exclusivity, rather than one of inclusiveness and accessibility. “Green building is hard, and the USGBC should be aiding and abetting green projects, not crushing them with a faceless technocracy,” Schendler and Udall wrote in their paper.

Still, from where USGBC and LEED stood five years ago, it is a remarkable accomplishment that a reform-oriented conversation is taking place. “The great thing about LEED is that it’s created a branded goal that companies can shoot for,” says Atkin of GreenOrder. “Even if the average person doesn’t appreciate energy- or water-efficiency performance, LEED is a mechanism that clearly communicates to the public that something good has been done.”  
 

Through The Looking Glass: Icon of modernist architecture opens to public for first time 
DAY
By Stephanie Reitz , Associated Press Writer    
Published on 6/17/2007
 
 New Canaan — By design, Philip Johnson's iconic Glass House evokes openness and accessibility.

For decades, however, only the late architect's friends and guests could visit the famed 1949 home and explore the surrounding 47 acres of New England countryside.

That changed when invitation-only tours of the Glass House began this spring, and the structure deemed a harbinger of U.S. modernist design opens to the public starting June 23.

The tours also include many of the property's 13 other structures — several of which are architectural showpieces in their own right — and acres of ponds, landscaped hills and walkways.

Most of the 2007 season tour tickets, ranging from $25 to $40, sold out right away, and potential visitors are already seeking spots for the 2008 season. The enthusiasm is considered a testament to the site's cultural importance and to Johnson, winner of his profession's top awards and designer of several of the most notable structures nationwide, including the AT&T Building in New York, the soaring glass Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., and the 56-story pink granite Bank of America building in Houston.

Johnson won the prestigious Silver Medal from the Architectural League of New York for the Glass House, yet always considered the transparent cube much more than a professional triumph. It was also his muse, showcase for art and the emotional refuge he shared with his longtime partner, art collector David Whitney.

Johnson died in the Glass House in January 2005 at age 98 while the 66-year-old Whitney died five months later of cancer in New York. The National Trust for Historic Preservation acquired the property under a 1986 agreement with Johnson, and both men endowed money for its preservation and operation as a museum.

The tours start at a new visitor center in downtown New Canaan, where a shuttle takes guests for a short ride to the property.

Johnson, a master of “the reveal” long before television makeover shows embraced the concept, lined his property's main walkway with white pines to obscure the view ahead. With a few steps around a curve, the full effect of “the reveal” strikes visitors with their first look at the Glass House.

Approached at an intentional angle, the rectangular home sits surrounded by a natural vista of hills and greenery — a view that Johnson affectionately called his “very expensive wallpaper.”

Containing just the minimal trappings of daily life, only clear panes separate people inside from the scenes of pastoral New England.

A brick cylinder hides a fireplace on one side and a bathroom on the other. Simple modernist furnishings by designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe provide lounging spots, and an austere marble-topped dining table at one end of the home is balanced by a leather-topped desk at the other.

Accommodations were made for pragmatism, such as the inclusion of a system to radiate heat from the floor and ceiling. It made the structure livable even in the depths of winter, although even Johnson — whose professional success and family wealth shielded him from money woes — acknowledged the bills were exorbitant.

In recent years, the site's caretakers had to make another accommodation to nature by stationing plastic coyote cutouts along the perimeter to deter the area's replenished population of wild turkeys from crashing through the floor-to-ceiling panes.

In the years after Johnson and Whitney died, the National Trust had to replace several windows after wild turkeys broke the quarter-inch glass, perhaps spotting their reflections and rushing at the windows in a territorial act, or because they simply did not see the glass.

The fake coyotes, which caretakers rotated frequently to trick the wayward turkeys, seem to have done the trick. Other than damage from broken tree limbs and other occasional weather problems, none of the panes have needed replacement in the last few years.

A few steps away from the Glass House, a 1949 structure known as the Brick House offers in solitude what the transparent cube provides in openness. With silk-covered wall panes to block the light from its circular windows, it was often Johnson's refuge for naps or contemplation.

Guests frequently stayed in the home, where Johnson's love of blending opposites shows in the contrast between the intellectual heft of his book collection and the whimsical purple carpet in the library that houses it.

He also blended so-called “safe danger” in designs throughout the property, such as an eyebrow bridge over a shallow gorge that offers in simple aesthetics what it lacks in handrails.

Circles and rectangles also are an opposites-attract Johnson theme throughout the site, such as the round pool and its rectangular off-center deck.

A few steps away, the 3,778-square-foot Painting Gallery is built into the side of a hill, its unassuming doorway flanked by simple red sandstone panes. The tomblike doorway dampens expectations before dramatically revealing vibrant works by longtime Johnson friend Frank Stella, an Andy Warhol print of Johnson and other notable pieces.

The nearby Sculpture Gallery, built in 1970 and home to an eclectic collection of art forms and themes, was another favorite contemplation spot for Johnson and Whitney. Today, guests are limited to viewing the expansive interior from a site just inside the entry rather than traversing the series of stairs that jut at 45-degree angles from the walls.

The tour concludes at the 990-square-foot, black and red modernist structure that Johnson completed in 1995 and deemed, “Da Monsta.” Built in what he called the “structured warp,” it is inspired by Stella's work and intended to resemble a sculpture with uneven forms and no continuity to the angles.

The Glass House, the other buildings and the surroundings will start hosting a lecture series this fall, a fellowship program that launches in 2008 and other events that Johnson and Whitney supported in the name of culture.

The property, which sits behind an avant-garde entrance gate flanked by 20-foot concrete forms inspired by medieval monuments, had a 2003 market value of more than $19 million. The bulk of that value, more than $10 million, comprises the portion that includes the Glass House, Brick House and the sculpture and art galleries, according to assessment records.

New Canaan Assessor Sebastian Caldarella said it includes the value of materials and replacement costs, along with an estimate of its unique value as an architectural icon.

“How do you set a value on that?” he said. “There's no right answer and no wrong answer. It's irreplaceable.”

www.philipjohnsonglasshouse.org
 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/25/arts/2008_LANDMARK_FEATURE.html
Preserving the City: An Opaque and Lengthy Road to Landmark Status
NYTIMES
By ROBIN POGREBIN
November 26, 2008

For years, preservation advocates have pleaded with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider enlarging its protective mantle in Park Slope, one of Brooklyn’s most scenic brownstone neighborhoods. In 2000 they proposed that the commission extend the 44-block Park Slope Historic District eastward and southward, preserving 19th-century residential architecture like the handsome houses on Garfield Place, with their two-sided bays and original stoop ironwork.

The initial response was encouraging: in a June 2001 letter to the Historic Districts Council, the commission said, “We will review the material and keep you informed of the process.”

And then the preservationists waited. And waited. This month — seven years later — a State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan decided that they had waited long enough.

Ruling on a lawsuit filed in March against the landmarks commission’s top officials by a preservationist coalition, the judge called the agency’s inaction “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered it to start making timely decisions on every designation request. To allow such proposals “to languish is to defeat the very purpose of the L.P.C. and invite the loss of irreplaceable landmarks,” the judge, Marilyn Shafer, wrote.

The city says it will appeal. Still, the ruling was a significant victory for preservationists and politicians across the city who have long accused the commission of lacking the responsiveness and accountability that citizens expect from a watchdog of the city’s architectural history.

A six-month examination of the commission’s operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year.

In dozens of interviews, residents who have proposed historic buildings or districts for consideration said they were often stonewalled by the commission, receiving formulaic responses or sometimes no response at all.

“The openness and transparency — particularly in terms of requests — is a big issue among preservationists,” said Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, an advocacy group.

“I think what people would welcome is something that said, ‘We looked at this and it’s been too altered,’ or, ‘We looked at this and we find it a third-tier example of this architect’s work,’ ” she said. “Something that gave people more to go on.”

In an interview, Robert B. Tierney, who has been the commission’s chairman for five years, said he was proud of its accomplishments during his tenure. “It’s been a superb record and a lot has been done,” he said. He cited the creation of historic districts like the Gansevoort meatpacking area, despite enormous opposition from developers, and designations outside Manhattan, like Sunnyside Gardens in Queens.

To be sure, in the four decades since the leveling of Pennsylvania Station stirred a movement that led to the agency’s founding, the commission has granted protection to everything from row houses to skyscrapers to entire neighborhoods. (And the city’s economic downturn will no doubt ease some of the pressure to raze old buildings and build anew.)

In fiscal year 2007, with one of the smallest budgets of any city agency, the commission designated 22 individual structures, 3 historic districts and 3 interiors as landmarks, for a total of 1,158 buildings — the most since 1990. But dozens of cases seem to vanish into a black hole, critics say.

In 1998, for example, preservationists requested that the commission consider granting landmark status to Tiffany’s, the storied polished-granite building at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan. The commission replied in a letter that it would take the 1940 building “under consideration,” said John Jurayj, co-chairman of a preservationist alliance known as the Modern Architecture Working Group. (He also serves on the Citizens Emergency Committee to Preserve Preservation, which filed the lawsuit.)

Three years passed with no further word from the commission. In 2001 the group resubmitted its request and was told that the commission’s designation committee found it potentially eligible. But no action was taken. “It’s now nine years later and nothing has happened,” Mr. Jurayj said.

On some occasions the commission has taken so long to act that the building in question has been demolished or irretrievably altered.

In July 2007, the preservationist group Friends of the Upper East Side, concerned that the scale and charm of upper Lexington Avenue were being eroded by development, met with Mr. Tierney, the commission’s chairman, to request an extension of the Upper East Side Historic District. Among the buildings they wanted protected was the Kean residence at Lexington Avenue and East 65th Street, originally built as two brownstones in 1880 but transformed in 1922 into a Mediterranean-style stucco house with rusticated detailing, leaded glass windows and a double-height music studio.

For months there was no formal reply from the commission. Then in March, a letter arrived. “Staff will review the material and keep you informed of the process,” it promised.

Worried that time was running out, the group filed a request in June that the house itself receive landmark status. The same month, the building’s owners applied for permits to start work on the house. Scaffolding went up, and the building’s leaded glass windows were removed along with its carved doors, leaving boarded-up holes.

In July, said Seri Worden, executive director of Friends of the Upper East Side, a commission staff member told her that “the Kean house was ineligible, partly due to demo permits.”

Asked about the construction work at the Kean residence, Mr. Tierney said that a survey was under way on the Upper East Side after talks about extending the historic district. “Oftentimes when the complaint is made, it’s because they haven’t gotten a yes,” Mr. Tierney said. “We set priorities and we can’t survey the entire city based on all the requests we get.”

Among the pleas submitted for which no public hearing was held are the Beekman movie theater on the Upper East Side, a 1952 Streamline Moderne design that was demolished in 2005; Mott House in Rockaway, Queens, an 1800s mansion in the Greek Revival style that was torn down in 2004; the Donnell Library Center on West 53rd Street in Manhattan, which is to be demolished to make way for a hotel; and Edward Durell Stone’s 1964 “lollipop” building at 2 Columbus Circle, which reopened in September as the Museum of Art and Design after a radical alteration that was fiercely opposed by preservationists.

Both Justice Shafer’s decision and a bill circulating in the City Council would require that the commission make decisions on any formal nomination of a landmark, known as a Request for Evaluation or R.F.E., in a timely fashion. In her ruling, Justice Shafer also ordered that any request for designation be submitted to the commission’s request committee within 120 days of receipt.

But the commission is opposed to setting deadlines. In its formal response to the lawsuit, the commission said that if it were required to respond to each Request for Evaluation, “the agency would not be able to set and pursue its own priorities and would spend all of its time researching and pursuing R.F.E.’s, many of which are of questionable or marginal significance.” Defenders and detractors alike agree that, with 16 researchers, the commission does not have the manpower to accede to that demand.

Yet in 2007 Mr. Tierney declined a budget increase of $750,000 approved by the City Council; instead the commission ended up getting an increase of just $50,000 for a total Council allocation of $300,000. (The current budget is $4.7 million.)

Mr. Tierney said that he didn’t want to add staff members that he might not be able to keep beyond a year, should the budget subsequently be cut back. “One-shots in an agency of this size is not good government,” he said.

Preservationists say the larger issue is the manner in which Requests for Evaluation are handled at the agency. Currently they are funneled through the commission’s staff and Mr. Tierney, a former counsel to Mayor Edward I. Koch, who was appointed in 2003 despite having no background in architecture, planning or historic preservation. (Mr. Tierney, whose second three-year term ends in June 2010, earns an annual city salary of $177,698; the other commissioners are unpaid.)

Mr. Tierney and the staff decide what proposals should be forwarded to the 11 commissioners — by law they include at least three architects, one historian, one city planner or landscape architect, one real estate agent and one resident of each of the five boroughs — for informal consideration. “All the final calls are his,” said Donald Presa, a commission researcher.

At hearings, the commissioners hear public testimony and ultimately take a vote. The majority rules.

In its lawsuit, Citizens Emergency assailed what it describes as the chairman’s “absolute power” over the landmark process.

“He’s a guy who’s had no demonstrable interest in historic preservation, who has the most important preservation job in New York City,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks” (Routledge, 2008), and a party to the suit.

Also troubling to critics is the fact that the commission does not document the resolution of each nomination or even quantify how many it defers or rejects. Asked how many Requests for Evaluation they received in the last fiscal year, commission officials said they fielded roughly 200 in addition to nominations generated by the agency itself and its neighborhood surveys. They add that about one quarter never reach the commissioners (other than Mr. Tierney).

Mr. Tierney conceded that record-keeping was inadequate and said that a new $1.5 million project would allow the commission to create a new information database to better track the disposition of requests. “It’s going to be addressed,” he said, adding, “The large data integration system will, I believe, dispense with all these problems.”

The commission also points out that the bulk of its time is taken up with whether to approve alterations to existing landmarks. A homeowner may want to install modern double-hung windows in a landmarked Art Deco building, for example. The number of applications for such alterations has more than doubled from 3,914 in fiscal year 1990 to 10,106 in fiscal 2008.

In a practice that ended in 2004, a designation committee consisting of a group of commissioners once evaluated proposals and recommended which ones should be forwarded to the full commission for consideration at a public hearing. In something of a paradox, the committee was abolished after it was challenged by the Historic Districts Council, which argued that its closed-door meetings violated the Open Meetings Law.

Preservation advocates argue that the members are now at a remove from vital decisions about what comes before them. “The culture of the commission has changed so much from a body where commissioners were allowed to be independent voices,” Mr. Wood said.

Even some commissioners say they feel they have become too distanced from citizens’ requests for evaluation. “If every discussion about what should be designated were at an open hearing, it would be untenable,” said Stephen F. Byrns, an architect on the commission.

Still, he added, “we used to be more involved with designation. Now, the research staff calendars it, and we hear it and designate it. The critical and probably political thinking that goes on prior to that is something we’re not involved with.”


Op-Ed Columnist - note that Seattle is one of the five most popular metro areas!  Those who live in Seattle drink a lot of coffee (it rains a lot - few truly sunny days, except in July and maybe August)
I Dream of Denver
By DAVID BROOKS
February 17, 2009

You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living.

Those dreams have been aroused over the past few months. The economic crisis has devastated the fast-growing developments on the far suburban fringe. Americans now taste the bitter fruit of their overconsumption.

The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They’ll move back to the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community — and maybe even superior beer.

America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam.

Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don’t seem to want the Dutch option.

The Pew Research Center just finished a study about where Americans would like to live and what sort of lifestyle they would like to have. The first thing they found is that even in dark times, Americans are still looking over the next horizon. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would rather live in a different type of community from the one they are living in at present.

Second, Americans still want to move outward. City dwellers are least happy with where they live, and cities are one of the least popular places to live. Only 52 percent of urbanites rate their communities “excellent” or “very good,” compared with 68 percent of suburbanites and 71 percent of the people who live in rural America.

Cities remain attractive to the young. Forty-five percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 would like to live in New York City. But cities are profoundly unattractive to people with families and to the elderly. Only 14 percent of Americans 35 and older are interested in living in New York City. Only 8 percent of people over 65 are drawn to Los Angeles. We’ve all heard stories about retirees who move back into cities once their children are grown, but that is more anecdote than trend.

Third, Americans still want to go west. The researchers at Pew asked Americans what metro areas they would like to live in. Seven of the top 10 were in the West: Denver, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento. The other three were in the South: Orlando, Tampa and San Antonio. Eastern cities were down the list and Midwestern cities were at the bottom.

Finally, Americans want to go someplace new. The powerhouse cities of the 20th century — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago — are much less desirable today than the ones that have more recently sprouted up.

In short, Americans may indeed be gloomy and hunkered down. But they’re still Americans. They are still drawn to virgin ground, still restless against limits.

If you jumble together the five most popular American metro areas — Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Orlando and Tampa — you get an image of the American Dream circa 2009. These are places where you can imagine yourself with a stuffed garage — filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor lifestyle.

These are places (except for Orlando) where spectacular natural scenery is visible from medium-density residential neighborhoods, where the boundary between suburb and city is hard to detect. These are places with loose social structures and relative social equality, without the Ivy League status system of the Northeast or the star structure of L.A. These places are car-dependent and spread out, but they also have strong cultural identities and pedestrian meeting places. They offer at least the promise of friendlier neighborhoods, slower lifestyles and service-sector employment. They are neither traditional urban centers nor atomized suburban sprawl. They are not, except for Seattle, especially ideological, blue or red.

They offer the dream, so characteristic on this continent, of having it all: the machine and the garden. The wide-open space and the casual wardrobes.

The folks at Pew asked one other interesting question: Would you rather live in a community with a McDonald’s or a Starbucks? McDonald’s won, of course, but by a surprisingly small margin: 43 percent to 35 percent. And that, too, captures the incorrigible nature of American culture, a culture slowly refining itself through espresso but still in love with the drive-thru.

The results may not satisfy those who dream of Holland, but there’s one other impressive result from the Pew survey. Americans may be gloomy and afraid, but they still have a clear vision of the good life. That’s one commodity never in short supply.



Street-closings a topic "About Town" was supporting 15 years ago in Weston...read about the experiment here.


In the Future, the City’s Streets Are to Behave
By DAVID W. CHEN
May 20, 2009

Imagine narrow European-style roadways shared by pedestrians, cyclists and cars, all traveling at low speeds. Sidewalks made of recycled rubber in different colors under sleek energy-efficient lamps. Mini-islands jutting into the street, topped by trees and landscaping, designed to further slow traffic and add a dash of green.

This is what New York City streets could look like, according to the Bloomberg administration, which has issued the city’s first street design manual in an effort to make over the utilitarian 1970s-style streetscape that dominates the city.

The Department of Transportation will begin reviewing development plans to see whether they align with the 232-page manual’s guidelines, and promises that projects with these features will win approval quickly.

“Lots of things have changed in 40 years, but this part of our infrastructure hasn’t,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner. “If we’re going to be a world-class city, we need guidelines that lay out the operating instructions of how we get there.”

The manual, to be released on Wednesday, culminates nearly two years of work involving more than a dozen agencies led by the Department of Transportation. By offering “a single framework and playbook,” as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg says in the introduction, the manual promises to simplify the design process and reduce the costs for city agencies, urban planners, developers and community groups.

Urban planners say that the document is long overdue, and that it promises to be as much a map to the future as it is a handbook for the present: getting people to think about streets as not just thoroughfares for cars, but as public spaces incorporating safety, aesthetics, environmental and community concerns.

Robert Moses, Mr. Bloomberg is not.

“Moses had a sort of utopian view of orderly, suburban places that de-emphasized New York’s ‘cityness,’ while Bloomberg embraces the soul of the city itself and recognizes it as a solution to the region’s environmental, sustainability, and energy problems,” said Robert Puentes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

Some drivers, though, are reserving judgment. Taxi drivers, for one, say that while they appreciate the city’s efforts to beautify the streets, they hope that they do not lead, even indirectly, to fewer parking spots or traffic that is too slow.

“The streets are a place where many motorists need access to, in order to earn a livelihood, so what would be of some concern is if there was less space for vehicles, or drivers had to slow down to complete their fares,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

The manual does not supersede any laws or regulations and it does not portend rapid changes visible overnight to residents or visitors; rather, the effect should be gradual, and in keeping with the character of a neighborhood, the manual says.

Still, the manual stands out as an unequivocal mission statement, echoing guides issued in recent years by cities like Chicago, San Francisco, Washington and Portland, Ore. It also complements a broad push by the Bloomberg administration to make the city more amenable to pedestrians and bicyclists — with next week’s closing of parts of Broadway being one prominent, if controversial, example.

For the most part, though, the manual spells out in technical detail a wealth of choices as to what the city likes — and doesn’t like — when it comes to roadways, sidewalks, trees, lighting and benches.

A good portion of the manual analyzes the different materials deemed attractive, practical and cost-effective. These include flexible rubber sidewalk pavers, which can be shaped to avoid trees or other objects. They also include several kinds of LED street lights.

One example illustrating the difference the guide could make is a stretch of Carlton Avenue near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Years ago, it was just an uninviting ribbon of pavement, stretching into the horizon; now, it looks like an integral part of the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods, with a large white median dotted by trees.

The manual also sheds light on how cumbersome the design process for development or renovation has been, given the number of agencies or entities normally involved. On a typical street, according to one illustration, almost a dozen entities — including six city agencies — are responsible for elements ranging from sidewalk cafes (Department of Consumer Affairs) to utility poles (Department of Transportation) to facades or awnings (Department of Buildings).

“In tough times, it’s vital to pioneer new cost-efficient practices, especially when dealing with the expensive need to maintain the city’s infrastructure,” said Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler.

At times, the manual has the veneer of a vicarious travel guide, because many of the photographs depict scenes from places outside New York: a roundabout in Asheville, N.C.; a neighborhood traffic circle in West Palm Beach, Fla.; a dedicated bus lane in Paris; a raised intersection in Cologne, Germany; and a shared street in Brighton, England.

City Councilman John C. Liu, chairman of the Council’s Transportation Committee, said the important thing was to simplify the overall process of development as it relates to the streets.

“I think it’s positive, because the city has always been notorious for imposing all sorts of requirements and new standards which often take people by surprise,” said Mr. Liu, who has sometimes clashed with the Department of Transportation. “This will have the effect of encouraging people toward this kind of standard without making people jump through hoops.”


Parts of Broadway to Close to Traffic
NYTIMES
May 20, 2009

The city will begin converting part of Broadway into a major pedestrian thoroughfare this weekend, as stretches in Times Square and Herald Square are closed to vehicles.

Part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s efforts to combat traffic in Midtown and resolve longstanding complaints about crowded sidewalks, the plan has moved swiftly since it was first announced in February.

With the closings on Sunday, during the Memorial Day weekend, the pedestrian malls in Times Square and Herald Square will be open to the public for the full summer season. The areas are to be outfitted with tables, benches and other amenities and they are to play host to special events, including a simulcast of the Tony Awards on June 7. The project is scheduled for completion in mid-August.

Broadway from 47th Street to 42nd Street and from 35th Street to 33rd Street will be closed to vehicles, with all traffic diverted to Seventh Avenue. The city says that the new plan will improve traffic, because the diagonal path of Broadway creates three-way intersections in both areas that frequently pile up with cars.
Going Semi-Carless
NYTIMES
Witold Rybczynski is the Martin & Margy Meyerson professor of urbanism at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor at the Wharton School.
May 13, 2009

New urbanist communities in the U.S. are walkable, but hardly carless. For one thing, they are not nearly dense enough.

There are only six American downtown districts that are dense enough to support mass transit.

There are only six American downtown districts that are dense enough to support mass transit, which you need if you’re going to be carless: New York City (Midtown and Downtown), Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco. That’s it. The breaking-point for density and mass transit feasibility seems to be about 50 persons per acre, which means families living in flats and apartments, rather than single-family houses, even row houses. Not necessarily high-rise apartments, but at least walk-ups.

Since most Americans still prefer living in houses, this is a problem — at least as far as carlessness is concerned. A more realistic goal for most Americans would be a semi-carless community, that is, one that is walkable within the neighborhood for convenience shopping, school-going and errands, and drivable for weekly shopping, consumer purchases and so on. A combination of twins, townhouses and low-rise apartments. Think of it as a halfway house.

-----------------------------

When Expectations Were Different
NYTIMES
Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture, urbanism and American studies at Yale, is author of “Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000.”
May 13, 2009

Elisabeth Rosenthal’s front page article, “In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars,” mentions some of the ways that Vauban, Germany, is combining new apartments with car-free streets, remote garages and a tram to Freiburg. The key to this is not encouraging bicycles for every family member, but in building the tram to an urban center. Public investment in reliable, efficient public transportation is essential to reducing the use of private automobiles.

Can the majority of Americans, who live in suburban places, begin to imagine life without cars? The answer lies in imagining new suburbs with better land use as well as better public transportation. Existing American suburbs often isolate single-family houses built by private developers from other types of activities. Land uses are separated rather than integrated around daily neighborhood needs. Public transportation is minimal or missing.

The New Deal-era designers of Greenbelt, Md., did not assume that every adult owned a car or a house.
New suburban neighborhoods that might be less reliant on cars would need to include varied types of residences, good schools, parks, playgrounds, convenient shopping, a variety of jobs and public transportation. Indeed, they might resemble the kinds of places Americans planned back in the New Deal era, the 1930s, when Greenbelt, Md., was built by the federal government as a model suburban town, complete with housing, town center, schools, recreational facilities and parks.

The designers of Greenbelt did not assume that every adult owned a car or a house. They emphasized rentals and mixed small townhouses with apartments. It was a walkable community, somewhat denser that a typical privately developed suburb of the post-war era, such as Levittown on Long Island, built in the late 1940s. Levittown was built as thousands of houses to show maximum profit for the developers. Greenbelt was organized to demonstrate that long-term neighborhood quality could be achieved by investing in public infrastructure along with housing.

Unhappily, at the start both communities were accessible mainly to white, male-headed families. Race and gender discrimination prevailed in the rental policies at Greenbelt and the sales policies at Levittown. Federal policymakers, mortgage bankers and developers did not perceive that a racially integrated community with a mix of different household types and incomes might be desirable and necessary for a democratic society. Today Americans need to review the complex history of housing types and suburban development patterns in this country if we are to improve upon them, physically, socially, and economically.

For all the articles, click here: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/carless-in-america/


Today, "skid row" tomorrow Weston, CT?
Group Seeks to Open Upscale Bar in LA's Skid Row
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:44 a.m. ET
August 26, 2009

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Craby Joe's was once a joint where denizens of nearby Skid Row slouched on barstools over dirty linoleum getting soused on $2.50 mugs of Miller High Life.

Now a group of investors has a new vision for the watering hole decorated with backlit stained glass that would offer organic vodka martinis within the same walls that once housed the storied dive that closed in 2007.

The plan by Fairfax Partners is opposed by an advocacy group that insists residents of the nearby streets and single-room apartments -- many with addiction problems -- don't need a new bar in the neighborhood with the nation's densest concentration of homeless people.

At a hearing Tuesday, zoning official ordered the investors to restart the bar's permitting process because of an application problem, drawing out the latest conflict between the businesses fueling downtown's gentrification and activists who say the prosperity of the long-neglected area is coming at the expense of Skid Row's disenfranchised.

The United Coalition East Prevention Project, which is drumming up opposition to the bar to be called Haven Lounge, had filed an unsuccessful appeal to a previous zoning decision allowing a pub to open in the basement of a newly renovated loft building a half-block away.

Neighborhood groups have also fought efforts to upgrade low-rent hotel rooms in Skid Row where many people live.  A few storefronts away from the proposed site of Haven Lounge is the Cecil Hotel, where activists claim units once used by permanent residents have been converted into pricey hotel rooms.  Richard Lew, a Fairfax partner, said it was absurd to think Haven Lounge would be a temptation to Skid Row residents struggling with alcoholism.

Skid Row's impoverished were unlikely to spend their money on the bar's $12 drinks when they can buy a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor nearby for under $2, he said.

''We're not going to be cheap,'' Lew said. ''This is not going to be an establishment that's going to cater to individuals that are not willing to spend a fair amount of money to be in a nice place to get nice drinks.''

Coalition East Prevention Project director Zelenne Cardenas insisted the presence of any kind of drinking establishment would harm the community where many people struggle with alcoholism.

''The excessive availability of alcohol often makes recovery even more difficult,'' she said.

Such a dispute could not have happened a decade ago, when few bars and restaurants bordering Skid Row remained open into the evening.  Now many downtown sidewalks are packed with well-scrubbed twenty- and thirty-somethings who spill into cocktail lounges behind the stone beaux-arts facades of some of the region's oldest buildings.  The nightlife doesn't yet extend into Skid Row, but entrepreneurs keep getting closer.

Craby Joe's, the favorite watering hole of a Charles Bukowski-esque boozehound played by Mickey Rourke in the 1987 film ''Barfly,'' closed amid allegations by city prosecutors of drug dealing and other crimes.

Regulars remember it as a cramped space with linoleum worn through to the cement beneath and a coloring-book page of Disney dwarf Dopey covering a hole in the wall.  The bar's only furniture, aside from the long bank of bar stools, were a few mismatched wooden tables and aluminum-framed chairs with tattered upholstery. The smell of crack-cocaine smoke clung to the air of the always filthy bathroom.

''It was one of those places you could go to any night of the week and any time of day and just see the crazy characters that were out on Skid Row,'' said former patron Jeremey Hansen, who remembered the management's unofficial policy of letting regulars drink on the house after they paid for their first 10 or so pours of cheap booze.

''There would be guys who would come in, and all they would do is drink -- they wouldn't talk to anyone -- and then there were crazy people who would come in off the street,'' he said.

Hansen remembered one man who walked into the bar wearing nothing but sweat shirt sleeves, briefs and sandals, and who began playing an old guitar with only three strings, using a crushed beer can as a slide.

That gritty ambiance would not carry over into the spot's incarnation as Haven Lounge, where Lew intends to install an eight-foot-high, 150-year-old stained-glass depiction of a Roman soldier that once decorated a church in Germany. He also plans to furnish the space with pew-like benches and a new bar of dark stained wood.  The bar menu would include cocktails made with organic vodka distilled in Hawaii and juice from locally grown fruits.  Lew said it's designed as a neighborhood meeting place for the community of affluent residents who have been moving downtown.

''This would be a nice little haven for those loft residents and people coming off of work,'' he said.

Cardenas said Lew's plan does not address basic needs of the community such as Laundromats and grocery stores.

''As we redevelop, we're bringing in more and more alcohol and pushing the boundaries of the community further and further back,'' she said.


Carlos Osorio/Associated Press
A burned-out house is demolished in Detroit, which is trying to reinvigorate itself by shrinking.

Shrinking Detroit Back to Greatness
By EDWARD L. GLAESER
March 16, 2010, 6:56 am

Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard.

Can Detroit shrink to greatness?

After decades of betting that white elephant projects, like the city’s monorail, would reverse decline, Detroit’s remarkable mayor, Dave Bing, a former N.B.A. All-Star and successful steel entrepreneur, has focused on right-sizing his city and its government.

At the extreme, urban right-sizing could mean bulldozing large swaths of the city.   Will the benefits of downsizing Detroit outweigh the costs?

Detroit became a great industrial hub when a city of small entrepreneurs evolved into the home of the Big Three.  Their vast factories provided good wages to hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans, but over the last 50 years, areas with abundant small companies have grown more quickly than places dominated by a few big firms.   Skilled cities have also been more successful than less well-educated places, and  only 11 percent of Detroit’s adults have college degrees.   People and companies have moved to warmer areas, and Detroit can be awfully cold.   Industrial diversity has been more conducive for growth than manufacturing mono-cultures, and Detroit practically defined the one-industry town.

Given that Detroit was on the wrong side of history with competition, education, climate and industrial diversity, it isn’t surprising that the city’s population fell from over 1.85 million in 1950 to 912,000 in 2008.

Economic and social headwinds ensured that Detroit would shrink, but public policies did little to halt the city’s decline.

Manufacturing jobs have moved disproportionately to right-to-work states, and Michigan is strongly pro-union.      Neither 1960s urban renewal nor the 1970s Renaissance Center, nor the People Mover nor the Joe Louis Arena nor General Motors’ Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly, which was built by using eminent domain to level Poletown, did much to hold Detroit’s population steady.  The city lost at least 150,000 people during every decade from 1950 to 1990.

The whole idea of saving declining cities by building more is a mistake, since the hallmark of declining cities is that they have plenty of infrastructure relative to people.   Detroit’s houses sell for a fraction of the costs of building anything new.   The monorail glides over essentially empty streets.  Indeed, there is surely more wisdom in Mayor Bing’s plan to shrink the city’s footprint than in the light rail system simultaneously being planned for Detroit.

But what does it mean to right-size a city?

As cities lose people and tax revenues decline, it often makes economic sense to close a public structure, like a school.  Kansas City has put itself in the forefront of this trend by choosing to close 28 of its 61 schools to meet the reality of declining enrollments and limited funds, which is a little odd since Kansas City’s population has been quite stable for two decades.

Closing schools, or any public facility, is never easy, but it is hard to argue that a cash-strapped municipality isn’t within its rights if it chooses to cut costs by reducing the number of public facilities.   If a district closes particularly poorly performing schools, children may end up getting a better education as a result, albeit at the cost of a longer bus trip.

A second strategy, proposed by Mayor Bing, goes beyond closing a few schools, and eliminates the provision of public services to some parts of a city.

Detroit has a large number of communities that are dominated by empty lots and vacant homes.  Mayor Bing has spoken of providing incentives for the people still living in such areas to relocate, and warned them that “if they stay where they are I absolutely cannot give them all the services they require.”

For a big-city mayor to warn that some areas will be no-service zones is radical, but our country is filled with less populated areas that lack public trash removal, bus service and water provision.   In a sense, Mayor Bing would just be treating the least dense areas of Detroit like those other less dense areas.  Of course, one might hope that if Detroit provides fewer services to some of its homeowners, then he would also cut their property tax bill.

The third, and most extreme, approach is to bulldoze buildings and turn them over to some alternative use, like parks or agriculture. Razing empty, dilapidated, hazardous structures is fairly uncontroversial, but more questions must be raised if the mayor is going to forcibly move significant amounts of people in order to physically reshape large land areas.

If the residents of largely empty areas aren’t willing to sell and move, then we are back in the same quandary that always faces large public changes in urban land use, like the construction of G.M.’s Poletown plant.  To what extent should a city put perceived citywide interests ahead of the wishes of individual property-owners?

If removing a largely vacant neighborhood really generates significant gains, then some sizable fraction of those gains can be given to the citizens who will have to give up their homes.   If generous payments, rather than eminent domain, are used to move the remaining residents, then right-sizing can be win-win.

But if Mayor Bing tries to do too much, too quickly, without giving enough to the residents who have to move, then right-sizing will justly be seen as yet another example of the public insensitivity and folly that has unfortunately marred too many past efforts at dealing with urban distress.