Letters From Here

studiox-nyc:

While we are on the subject of disappearing tree cover, we wanted to draw your attention to this article from The Washington Post correlating tree cover to income disparity. The difference inside the District is stark, with households that have a median income of $205,750 enjoying an 81…

Specifically, vibrancy transforms communities by making them more prosperous. Art- Place says its goal is not merely to promote the arts but to “transform economic development in America,” a project that is straightforward and obvious if you accept the organization’s slogan: “Art creates vibrancy and increases economic opportunity.” And that, presumably, is why everyone is so damn vibrant these days.

Consider Akron, Ohio, which was recently the subject of a conference bearing the thrilling name “Greater Akron: This Is What Vibrant Looks Like.” Or Boise, Idaho, whose citizens, according to the city’s Department of Arts and History, are “fortunate to live in a vibrant community in which creativity flourishes in every season.” Or Cincinnati, which is the home of a nonprofit called “Go Vibrant” as well as the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which hands out “Cultural Vibrancy” grants, guided by the knowledge that “Cultural Vibrancy is vital to a thriving community.”

Is Rockford, Illinois, vibrant? Oh my god yes: according to a local news outlet, the city’s “Mayor’s Arts Award nominees make Rockford vibrant.” The Quad Cities? Check: As their tourism website explains, the four hamlets are “a vibrant community of cities sharing the Mississippi River in both Iowa and Illinois.” Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Need you even ask? Pittsburgh is a sort of Athens of the vibrant; a city where dance parties and rock concerts enjoy the vigorous boosting of an outfit called “Vibrant Pittsburgh”; a place that draws young people from across the nation to frolic in its “numerous hip and vibrant neighborhoods,” according to a blog maintained by a consortium of Pittsburgh business organizations.

I loved this piece.

With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. December 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of Invisible Cities — the sublime metaphysical travelogue by author-journalist Italo Calvino. In a series of pensive dialogues with jaded emperor Kublai Khan, the explorer Marco Polo describes a meandering litany of visionary and impossible places, dozens of surreal, fantastical cities, each poetically reifying ideas vital to language, philosophy, and the human spirit. This gracefully written love letter to urban life has inspired countless tributes, but it’s just the most accessible of Calvino’s fascinating literary catalogue. Look inside for a closer look at his most remarkable works, links to English translations of his magical prose, and collections of artistic interpretations from around the web — including this treasure trove of essays, excerpts, articles, and recommended reading.

I part ways with many urbanists in that I don’t hate suburbs. In fact, I think we need to start with a basic acknowledgment of the fact that most people like owning single family homes and like living in the suburbs. I might live in the city and not own a car, but that doesn’t mean other people necessarily do. Did subsidies and public policy contribute to sprawl? Of course, as we’ve recently been examining here. But I do believe there’s a legitimate consumer preference for the suburbs.

Many in the industry are concerned for the future of fashion in New York City. Fashion is an industry that thrives on proximity, for both innovation and production. Often compared to an ecosystem, the world of fashion design depends on access to suppliers, wholesalers, sewing and cutting rooms, prototypes, and samples, as well as to the city’s retail networks, media outlets, the creative energy of other designers, and local fashion schools. Major fashion designers credit their careers to the Garment District, where a young entrepreneur can use these resources to start a small line with minimal capital, something that mass production in China doesn’t allow for. But asking rents in the area are rising, and nearby development is bringing more office, residential, hotel and retail use, much of it non-fashion related. Many see these real estate pressures as threatening the efficiencies and vitality of the Garment District.

Would you like to meet people who are engaged in their communities, tolerant of others’ differences, and more willing than most to help out those in need?

Try a concert hall, theater lobby, or art museum.

People who regularly attend arts events are more likely to embody the aforementioned qualities, even after taking into account such variables as age, race and education. That’s the key finding of a new study by political scientist Kelly LeRoux of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Tony Hsieh, the 38-year-old chief executive of Zappos, had called the 24-hour retreat as a debriefing of sorts. It was almost a year into the Downtown Project, his $350 million urban experiment to build “the most community-focused large city in the world” in downtown Las Vegas — an area dominated by bare lots and check-cashing stores about an hour’s drive away.

Christopher Leinberger, a professor at the George Washington University School of Business. Using the Washington, D.C., area as a model, Leinberger finds tremendous pent-up demand for more housing in denser, mixed-use, Walkable Urban Places — or WalkUPs, as he dubs them.

So far, that’s nothing that the average home hunter couldn’t have figured out by noting that a Dupont Circle two-bedroom costs more than whole house in Woodbridge, Va., right? Except here’s the rub: These WalkUPs don’t have to be urban at all. They can be waaay out in cul-de-sac country — and most of them are. “Only 42 percent of the WalkUPs are in the District of Columbia,” finds Leinberger. “A surprising 58 percent are in the suburbs.”

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But as much as these urban simulacra might be an improvement over the sprawl they’re  jury-rigged into, you don’t have to be Jane Jacobs to see that many are not what we’ve always thought of us “urban.” If anything, they reflect suburban ideals contorted (sometimes painfully) into vaguely urbanish form, a Frankenstein of supermarkets, outdoor dining, parking lots and mock-cobblestone sidewalks.

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Daniel Malouff, editor of the blog BeyondDC, sees these WalkUPs as more like “starter cities” for suburbanites. “A place like Reston can introduce people who have grown up with suburbia to the idea of urbanism,” he says.

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Does density and walkability alone make something urban? Though these outer-ring WalkUPs display many of the technical metrics of a city, most have an unmistakable suburban flavor. “When you go to Tysons Corner and you don’t mistake it for a real downtown, there are two reasons,” says Nathan Norris, director of implementation for the planning firm Placemakers. “One is the nature of the blocks — they’re what we call super-suburban blocks,” meaning they’re many times larger than your average city block, which has a perimeter of around 1,800 feet. Why does that matter? “Because humans, we bore easily,” says Norris. “If I have to walk too far without seeing something different, I’m going to be bored. A bit part of urbanity is not boring the humans.”

Which leads to the second problem: transparency. Many city codes dictate that as much as 75 percent of buildings’ ground floors must be non-tinted, non-mirrored windows. Parts of these suburban WalkUPs have that — especially the mall-like sections — but many do not, leaving long stretches of shrubbery-adorned blank walls facing the sidewalks (and the parking lots). “No windows has the effect of killing street life,” says Norris. Creating an urban place is about more than simply adding mixed-use density and places to stroll.

They’re also often exceedingly tidy, sometimes because they’re controlled by a single developer who manages a private maintenance crew and sets rules about behavior. And WalkUPs that are built from scratch usually have few mom-and-pop stores, thanks to high rents and contracts offered to tenants promising no competition.

For all of these reasons, many of these far-flung suburban WalkUPs resemble a suburban version of a city. You can see the identity crisis at work: The WalkUP in Reston “is ringed by parking garages,” says Malouff. “There are buses that go there, but they’re not used very widely. People drive to get there.”