Portlandia, Heaven on Earth? Maybe. . .

There is a new show in IFC which I have yet to watch entitled, "Portlandia." Starring SNL's Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and now of Wild Flag it takes an absurdist view of life in Portland, Oregon.

http://www.ifc.com/portlandia/

I must admit, if given unlimited resources and more of a predisposition to favor consistent rain over consistent sun, I too might live in Portland.

At first glance it's darn near Utopia. Especially from a planning perspective. It seems like everyone is in harmony, working towards the greater good while consuming only local organic food. There are no NIMBYs. (Not In My Back Yards) only peace and good will. (this is all, of course, on the surface and prone to great hyperbole for dramatic effect).

Oh yeah, and no one seems to mind that the "green belt" that was mandated in the 70s has artificially inflated real estate to levels that rival San Francisco. A green belt, in a nutshell, is a no-build barrier formed around a city, established at a certain geographic point to ensure that development does not infringe on nature. Unfortunately, this means that supply is limited while demand is ever-increasing. Therefore, since supply is constrained price increases. The same thing happens in New York City. Landlords can charge an arm and a leg because if you reallllly want to live in Manhattan proper, well, you have finite options where to lay your head.

One of the biggest causes of my despair was the announcement that Portland is actually dedicating revenues to bicycling! Bicycling the ultimate in utopian form of transportation. Citations of the leisurely activity conjure up images of beach cruisers, Amelie, and safe and happy children.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/47086

And here is the Portlandia version-

http://www.planetizen.com/node/47880

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, my friends at the LA DOT (that's D-O-T, not DOT) work tirelessly on raising bike awareness and bike safety.

http://ladotbikeblog.wordpress.com

While our good Mayor of LA, out on a bike ride, breaks his elbow when a taxi pulls out in front of him!

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-mayor-villaraigosa-breaks-arm,0,318953.story

Trying to find bad stuff about Portland is like trying to find bad stuff written about Betty White. OK, both are a little overexposed (as of late), but to badmouth either of them is like saying you hate kittens and puppies and rainbows.

Joel Kotkin, of whom I possess little favor, bravely campaigns for the position of anti-Portland. He is also one of the most prolific members of the unofficial anti-anti-sprawl movement. (These are not necessarily pro-sprawl, but they don't bemoan it as the smart growth people do either). But here's his pot shot.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/18244

No one ever said that life in Portland is cheap. San Francisco is the farthest thing from cheap, but I'd still give my left arm to live there if guaranteed a well-paying job. Unfortunately, herein lies the problem- how to create nice, livable places people want to live in and interact with, but entry level isn't set at upper-yuppie levels?

Still, in a world of frustrations and backlashes at the smallest imagined slights, it's nice to know that somewhere (over the rainbow?) some one is experiencing a modicum of success.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/92

How Far Is Too Far?

I am getting a new apartment in Los Angeles this weekend, actually, hopefully, ideally, renting a room in a house that rents out all of the rooms to individual tenants- and USC grad students only if everything goes according to plan.

But the age-old question of location, location, location had me thinking- how far is too far? Points A and B being your place of residence and your consistent destination- work, school, your kid's school, your place of worship, your favorite protesting spot, whatever.

For some of you who know me, I have lived in 11, soon to be 12 places in 26 years. And for the most part my family and I have selected our dwellings within reasonable proximity to our locations that we would frequent often i.e. work, school, and church. When I say reasonable proximity I mean about 15-20 minutes. We never lived in any big, big cities, so traveling times were pretty consistent, with weather being the only variable- black ice? add at least 5 minutes for safety.

It threw us for a loop when we moved to Connecticut and people lived in different towns, but knew each other as if they were in the same zip code. Like I said, we lived in small towns and yes people from Wausau knew people from Merrill, but they went to different churches, their kids to different schools, etc., To live in Avon, but to go to church in Canton was very strange to us. The Connecticut way of life still remains very strange to me. I'm surprised no one has spontaneously combusted yet.

When I moved to Chicago on my own it took me a good hour to get to work via public transportation- bus + the Red line, not counting delays due to linework, which was a constant in the summer of 2006.

Sometimes I took my car, but during the holidays working retail in Lincoln Park made it impossible to find a spot for my car, so I relied on the ease of the public transportation. And when my car was damaged beyond repair my prior experience using public transportation made the journey less of a hassle and more of just a part of my going-to-work routine.

When I moved to the suburb of Naperville I chose an apartment whose location was only ten minutes driving time away, but unfortunately was not located on a road that was safe enough to get to on foot.

Now it takes me about half an hour (on foot) to get to my current job. Some people are horrified when I tell them how long it takes and more than three people have offered to pick me up on their way to work. But my walk not only gives me exercise, it also gives me a chance to wake up and really immerse myself in my surroundings.

But my latest relocation had me thinking. The champions of New Urbanism argue that our auto-dependent society has allowed people to live farther from their jobs- not necessarily a bad thing at the end of the day- but not great for the environment either when you consider how many emissions and pollutions one can accrue over simply a five-day work week when mass transit is possible.

Note I didn't say plausible as many people in the suburbs can attest to- I don't even want to know how few suburbs even have a bus line running through or within reasonable walking distance of the major sub-divisions.

Unlike say, Chicago (how I love their transportation department!) where one is hard pressed to find a major neighborhood that is not near some form of public transportation. And New York? Fugghedaboudit! In one ill-planned trip I managed to get from Wall Street to the West Side to midtown with the help of the NY subway system and my own dogged determination.

We have family friends who live up in the Bay Area and the father commutes two hours-each way! each day to get to his job. This is beyond crazy to me. Yes, I understand the need to have your kids be in "good schools," "safe neighborhoods," etc., But Dad has to schlep two hours each way each day? Oi. . . This is not uncommon for people in the Bay Area- my housemate's dad, when he (my housemate) was growing up- would ride his motorcycle- come rain or shine between the lanes of stalled cars (think the opening scene from Office Space)- two hours to get to his job.

I have no doubt that this is true for families across the country, especially in bigger, non-mass-transit oriented cities, especially in the South like Atlanta and Charlotte. But I think that it is a time for a revolution.

Hopefully as part of the "green" movement more funding will be devoted to mass transit, and innovative forms of it- light rail, anyone? And two hour one-way commutes will become a thing of the past. Here's hoping.

Home is Where the Heart Is?

I try to keep my postings academic in nature, but I've been thinking about what is "home" and where is home a lot lately, a subject that is more personal than professional. Permit me, if you will, a rumination.

I recently returned from Minnesota, where my parents' current home is, land of ice, snow, and inhumane temperatures. It is not "my" home as my parents only moved there a year and I'm not sure they'd enthusiastically declare it as their home either.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting I've lived in 11 places in 25 years. The majority of the time was spent growing up in Wisconsin, a short stint was in the central valley of California- between Fresno and Bakersfield, you know the (soon-to-be-voluntarily-retired) actor Joaquin Phoenix? I'm in/was in the San Joaquin Valley. I graduated from high school in Connecticuit, went to art school in Savannah, Georgia and flew to Milwaukee when school wasn't in session. I've lived in Chicago proper and Naperville, IL, a white collar suburb of Chicago. I've got my sights set on L.A. for more schooling and hopefully an eventual career. Hello Santa Monica, do you foresee an entry-level planning position in two years?

There is a saying that says home is where the heart is. I'm not sure where my heart is.

I was thinking specifically of this metaphorical heart because one of my dearest friends, after an incredibly long and drama-filled 5 year relationship decided that her heart was no longer in Savannah, GA, where we had gone to school together. She is originally from San Francisco and had considered moving to Philadelphia, but had stayed because her boyfriend was in Savannah and he was unenthusiastic about leaving for greener pastures. But then things reached an impass in their relationship and she realized that nothing was anchoring her to Savannah. So, she packed up and legged it to Boston to stay with a friend while she sorts things out.

As I was talking to her it was 23 degrees in Boston, but she sounded exhilirated. She had forgotten that so many cities have more than two movie theaters that show more than just the latest offering from Disney, diversity and culture around every corner, and there are street vendors- sorry no roach coaches in Savannah, though they'd probably make a killing with all of the hungry and harried college students rushing about on Broughton and Bull Streets.

My friend is literally one of the smartest and cultured people that I will ever meet and I'm not implying that Savannah made her stupid. But living in one place for a long time can procur a certain kind of amnesia. One can forget what the rest of the world looks like, which is a shame because there is so much that this world has to offer.

I used to consider it some sort of cosmic injustice that I constantly had to move, but now I see it as a blessing. I've had the opportunity to live in some parts of the U.S. some other people may never even get to visit in their lifetimes

But during the holidays, driving through the cozy-and-a-little-dowdy Midwest brought about a pang for me as I looked upon the rather plain but familiar ranch, Cape Cod, and salt box houses in white or beige with brown, black or green trim that populated the streets and the memories of my childhood. There were a few forlorn Spanish revival houses on my parents' block, looking like displaced transplants from California, but mainly there were small houses of modest proportions with equally modest trim.

And for a moment I wondered what I was doing on the West Coast hundreds of miles from family, a question numerous strangers have asked me. Why shouldn't I move back to these familiar sights and just, I don't know?! teach elementary art as I had considered doing in high school.

Then, after a sub-zero wind chill hit me and almost sucked the air out of my lungs I realized why. Because I dreamed of moving (back) to California. I wanted to go to grad school in L.A. and see what urban planning is like down there and now I am on my way to accomplishing this.

It may not be home, but it's definitely a place I want to get to know better, on my terms. The last time we were here I was in the 4th grade and we had come because my dad's company was attempting to start up another branch in the town we lived in.

I will probably never move back to the East Coast, above the Mason-Dixon line. The outlook and lifestyle aren't in sync with mine. Yet many people can't imagine living anywhere else. But if my friend settles into a life in Boston I will gladly visit her and the new life she may carve out there. She has too many memories of San Francisco and feels that she's experienced all that she wants to experience in the City By the Bay.

A few years ago I had considered moving back to Savannah as it was safe and familiar and frankly life after college is usually anything but. However, my friend was the last person from school that lived there and with her gone there is nothing left except the bars we frequented.

I'd lived in Milwaukee twice, in two different suburbs, but the first time I was so little I don't remember many specifics and the second time as a displaced college student, having moved there two days after high school graduation (from CT- keep up people!), it never felt like home. And the frigid temperatures didn't encourage that I stay.

Given the right mix of opportunities I may move back to Chicago some day, but over my dead body will you find me in Naperville again. Though I highly recommend it for the people looking to raise their kids in a safe town with excellent schools, at the time I was there I was single and childless, not exactly a hotbed of action for a twentysomething.

I've come to learn, there is very few things that are truly certain in life. It is not certain that I will get married, it is not certain that I will have children. There are no guarantees that I will leave this planet without a cancer cell ever marring my body or even depart with all of the limbs that I came into this world with. But that's OK.

A wise person once observed that "life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived." So even if I had a pair of ruby-red slippers to click and whisper, "there's no place like home" it's unlikely I'd wind up in one specific place. And I think I'm learning to be OK with that.

John Steinbeck once said, "I have homes everywhere, many of which I have not seen yet. That is perhaps why I am restless. I haven't seen all my homes."

Perhaps that is why I too am restless.

ps- the girl in the picture is neither me nor my friend from Savannah. But she is my bestest friend.

Gentrification

Gentrification is a seemingly benign word, but it has insidious connotations like yuppie and Barnes and Noble- about the latter I am totally kidding. I probably love the Noble Barn more than life itself.

But gentrification can be like a cancer. At first you don't notice it until you realize its sweeping effect and the prospect of returning to life as you knew it is pretty bleak.

I won't bore you with the details of the history of gentrification. But Wikipedia has a well-written article on the subject.

Suffice to say, gentrification is everywhere. Clearly, its symptoms are most manifest in major cities where there are more areas that fall into economic decline stranding the economically-challenged, making it unable for them to leave, then poor students/starving artists, who prefer cheap rent over a cool zip code move in, then the bohemians and (ugh) hipsters follow their lead, making the place all boho-chic with their restaurants and galleries. And soon Parker and Ashleigh have caught the whiff of la boheme and are snapping up condos and causing the rents to skyrocket. Meanwhile, the students and all the bohemians who are still slinging coffee at Starbucks and not able to cash in on all these nouveau money are priced out of the very areas they, unintentionally, helped revive. To say nothing of the financially poor people who were undoubtedly forced out as the beatniks were moving in with their bongos.

(a sidenote- there is an interesting book on the students and bohemians who help lend an air of bonhomie to the gentrified areas, yet are priced out of living in the areas whose atmospheres they cultivate. It's called Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City by: Richard Lloyd. I admit I haven't read it yet and the guy himself didn't actually live in Wicker Park, he was just a visiting sociologist, but he does make valid points. Available at amazon.com)

It's weird, even disorienting for people who've lived in an area long enough to remember when it wasn't advisable to be in Lincoln Park or Silver Lake after dark, and now it's the place to be seen after hours.

But this is happening in cities that frankly aren't as hip as say, Chicago or New York. In Milwaukee, for example, the downtown, slight as it may be, and frankly charming, has experienced an economic revival thanks to the reclaiming of the Historic Third Ward, which has ushered in many a chic cafe and boutique along with warehouses-turned-artists' lofts, a thought that was definitely foreign in 1970. Recommended dining: go to the Ale House on the river front. Their food and micro-brews are awesome and situated on the river makes for excellent summer dining. I also should point out that the East Side, Walker's Point, and Bay View are also all experiencing a revitalization according to local sources.

And if you're there check out Milwaukee's Art Museum, or MAM, which boasts the honor of being Santiago Calatrava's first American commission. If you're feeling especially intrepid, be there when the museum opens and the "wings" of the Calatrava addition "open."

Every time one seems new evidence of gentrification one assumes that it will go on and on ad infinitium. But I have enclosed a link to a fascinating article called, "the Embers of Gentrification" by Adam Stenbergh, from New York Magazine, 11-12-2007, which postulates that this may not be carved in granite (countertops).

This article in an extremely well written format examines the dying out of a former hot-spot. I haven't been to Red Hook recently, so I can't attest to its current state. But it is interesting to consider that the phenomenon of gentrification may not self-perpetuating forever and ever? There may be light at the end of the Pottery Barn J. Crew yuppie tunnel? The knob on the door is probably from Restoration Hardware, but if it stops the vicious cycle, I'll do whatever it takes to knock that sucker down!

Gentrification is particularly disheartening to the people who have lived in an area and enjoy its scruffy non-homogenized charm. San Francisco, one of my spiritual homes in the US, has fallen victim to gentrification thanks to the tech boom that caused rents to reach the stratosphere and caused the literal mass exodus of hundreds of artists.

Another recommended book is Hollow City: the Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism by: Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg.

Even though we are currently facing a recession, prices for real estate in San Francisco remain astronomically high. Again, this is an example of gentrification's cancerous-like effect. I have family friends where the father commutes two hours each way (!) every day to work in the city. And it's not due to lack of good schooling, if you can afford to send your kids to school in San Francisco proper, they'll be getting some of the best education in the nation.

Chicago is another example. Gentrification has swept through at a wildfire-like pace. Only one example is Lincoln Park, which used to be a rougher section of town. Now you'd never know that walking down North Ave. (which actually runs east-west, but whatever) One is flocked by Crate and Barrel, J. Crew, Pottery Barn, Whole Foods, Victoria's Secret, etc.,- a yuppie's nirvana.

Downtown revival

There is a great book called Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities by Bernard J. Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn that I picked up completely by accident at a great bookstore on Haight Street in San Francisco. (Forever After Books, 1475 Haight St.) Although it is a little dated, (original publishing date July 1, 1991) it details how some of the downtown shopping centers and public centers came to be through public entrepreneurship and public-private entrepreneurship.
Again, a little history is in order. During/after the Industrial Revolution people did their shopping downtown, as that is where everyone lived and the suburbs were not even a twinkle in a developer's eye. But once the suburbs came to be, people did their shopping in the suburbs because that's where they lived.

In fact, people began to stay away from the downtowns- for numerous reasons. As more and more prosperous people moved away from the downtowns, people began to see the declining downtowns as dirty, dangerous, stressful to navigate, and parking was non-existent. However characteristics were absent in sunny, sterile suburbia while ample parking abounded.

People used to shop the downtown department stores, but even some of the major department stores packed up for greener pastures. And while some stores stayed, ensconced in their beautiful buildings, some never recovered from the economic blow. Chicago's beautiful Carson Pierre Scott building, designed by Chicago architect, Louis Sullivan (inventor of the skyscraper and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright) closed its beautiful iron doors last year, February 21, 2007.

My alma mater's library, the Jen Library, in Savannah, GA is housed in a former downtown department store.

And don't get some people started on what they would consider nothing short of a bastardization of their beloved Chicago institution Marshall Field's being turned into another Macy's. The building has not been altered except for cosmetic signage, but the feeling has changed.

Obviously, it need be pointed out that some flagship stores, such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's in New York never left, they only expanded. But other department stores, some of equal status, others much lower, closed their doors, even in the cities of their birth.

However, some urban planners and intrepid developers thought that they could lure the crowds back to the very places that they had fled. Part of this was due to the fact that many national stores had overextended themselves in suburbia and needed new markets.

Like I said, this book is a little dated and it's weird thinking of shopping areas like Chicago's Water Tower Place as anything but a tourist stop along the Magnificent Mile if you've been there in the past five years. But historically it's fascinating reading learning about the steps needed to be taken to bring to life some of the urban market places that seem so commonplace now, but were innovative for their time. Boston's Quincy Market is cited. As is Seattle's Pike Place Market and many other locations that thanks to these successful efforts.

This is not to say that this movement has not had its critics. (Jeff Ferrell and his work, Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy is one particularly vitrolic example. I had a hard time trying to see his side of the story I was so busy wiping the angry spittle that emanated from the pages. )

This is not to say that a new shopping center is the cure-all, Band-Aid solution for every ailing downtown in America, but say what you will about building downtown shopping centers. If nothing else it points to the enduring spirit of capitalism and its power to wrest many a city back from the edge thanks to America's never-ending quest for stuff and novelty.