Not Built in a Day

Years ago, I don't remember exactly when, I learned about redlining , disinvestment in America's cities, and how African American families were denied the opportunities given to white families to buy homes in new suburban neighborhoods throughout the early to mid 20th century.  But I thought these racist practices were pursued by individual banks and maybe local governments; I didn't think much about the widely-heard statement that de facto segregation (that is, individual or socially-enforced segregation, not government-enforced segregation) was the common practice during the Jim Crow era (1870s-1960s) .  But it turns out I was wrong, as historian Richard Rothstein persuasively argues in The Color of Law (2017), and it was actually de jure , government-sponsored and enforced, segregation that afflicted American cities across the country.  It was not just the racism of specific banks or bankers that created redlining and white flight, but government policies, at the ...

Just when you thought this year could get no more strange, difficult, or unexpected... hurricane season hits with a vengeance.  This post won't have any real focus, but my head is buzzing with so many thoughts that I needed to write some of them down, to share with others who may also need a moment to reflect (or just to distract themselves). I should start with the note that I am very grateful that my family came out of Hurricane Irma unscathed, but grieve for everyone affected by both Irma and Hurricane Harvey, including Puerto Rico, the Antilles and the Virgin Islands.  If you want to donate to relief efforts, the best suggestion I've heard thus far is to donate directly to local organizations, like the local chapters of the Red Cross, since they can use the funds immediately.   Or if you just don't want to donate to the Red Cross, but still want something that goes to local communities, try Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.   And don't forget there are many ot...

The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by Jane Jacobs is a classic of urban planning and urban design, and I really have no excuse for getting around to reading it so late in the game.  I knew about it for ages, knew everyone quoted Jacobs whenever possible, and yet it took me until I was about to teach an introductory class on architecture & urbanism to get a copy for myself.  I finally finished it and definitely recommend it.  It's fascinating both for her foresight to what was coming in city planning, and her recognition early on of the factors and problems that we've taken decades to face in the academy.  Her understanding of cities was deep, built on personal experience, research, and speaking with planners, city officials, and academics.  Without formal academic training in urban design, which at the time was focused on then-radical theories of superblocks, towers-in-the-park, and "urban renewal" (neighborhood-scale building demoliti...

Last October, I had the chance to visit New Orleans for the first time.  The city felt unique among American cities I've visited: it had the historic district charm of Charleston, but with a modern, skyscraper-filled downtown just a few blocks away, all surrounded by variously well-kept or decaying suburbs that have experienced different amounts of recovery from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  I was intent to see everything for myself, including cool new buildings, cool historic buildings, and everything in between.  Extra special thanks to my college friend who served as my guide, "local knowledge," transportation, host, and restaurant recommend-er throughout our trip! The French Quarter This is a place that you have to see at night, when the gas lamps are lit and the darkness hides some of the imperfections and later additions.  Overall, it's astonishing how consistently the historic architectural style has been maintained here, with the wrought iron balconies...

Dear Proponents of Tiny Houses , First off, I respect what you're trying to do here . Today's average American single-family houses are gigantic compared to houses only 40 years ago (and getting bigger)! Why are we wasting all this money, energy, time, and effort on giant homes? Let's return to smaller footprints, cheaper mortgages, fewer rooms to clean, less stuff to worry about, lower bills to pay, more time to spend with our families. However. I would like to point out that even the tiniest, cutest, most DIY-est tiny homes might not be the amazing panacea that you seem to think they are. (Not to mention that there are some hurdles to face even to build them in the first place.) Let me explain. I consider myself an urbanist, someone who's interested in cities and thinks that density is an important tool we have to make better places to live and work. Based on my studies in graduate school of housing density, the environmental impact of buildings, ...

A few weeks ago I visited Detroit for the first time while in the area for a friend's wedding.  We hear so much about Detroit these days, as the poster-child for urban decay , that I must admit I was pretty interested in seeing it for myself, and wondered what I would find there. My impression is that it's a fairly small city, with a small, well-developed core but extensive, decaying suburbs.  We drove a short ways out to visit the Heidelberg Project , and saw some of the crazy inner-ring suburban emptiness near there (countless vacant lots, overgrown fields that used to be houses, etc), but most of what we saw in the downtown area wasn't too shabby.  We missed getting to experience the Eastern Market by arriving about an hour too late, which was disappointing, but instead got some very tasty ice cream at Neveria la Michoacana .  That was definitely an adventure for us and really fun! All around the downtown area we saw signs of new buildings, construction, ...

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I have pretty weird taste in movies.  I like action and adventure films, but I also like animated films from Disney and Studio Ghibli.  Well, this one from Studio Ghibli (more specifically, the English dub version by Disney), takes the cake for weirdness.  To quote one imdb user review, it was "very, very, very strange." Very strange indeed. "Pom Poko" is from Studio Ghibli, but is not a Miyazaki film, directed instead by Isao Takahata.  The movie follows a group of magical  raccoon dogs ( tanuki but misleadingly called "raccoons" in the movie) living in the Tama Hills outside Tokyo as their forest is turned into a giant housing development project ( Tama New Town ), one of the largest developments in Japan.  It felt like the director was deeply conflicted about the entire subject of the film.  The tanuki of the film are the same ones of Japanese folklore, and able to shapeshift, so they do everythi...

We've had a whirlwind couple of months since my graduation, and have finally settled down now in Mountain View, California, a town as suburban as they come, and a new challenge for me to navigate as a fledgling urbanist.  Three years in New York has changed the way I see urban environments, and so as I figure out how to find the grocery store, get up to speed on my new job, and finish unpacking from our move, I'm also trying to figure out how to grapple with our new environment.  I can't feel smug any longer in my relative lack of carbon footprint.  Our new circumstances mean that we are now car-owners and I have been driving to work every day.  But I think we've been successful in at least a few areas, so far, to reduce the impact of our new less-dense lifestyle. While we do now own a car, we plan to have only one, in an area where almost everyone drives alone.  We chose our new apartment carefully based on location: Justin can walk to work (15-20 minutes) a...

Of the three Gary Hustwit documentaries I've seen, this being the third and last, I thought Urbanized was the best by far.  It's like a primer on the most-discussed issues of urbanism today.  So while I can't say I learned much from the movie, Urbanized is a great introduction to this range of topics, and I'm supposed to know this stuff anyway as part of my profession.  The visuals are also great: if you're an urbanism buff, you'll enjoy trying to figure out which city is being shown before the titles are given; the aerial views comparing cities are pretty spectacular; and there are some fun interviews with people around the world, including government officials in Santiago, Chile; Bogota, Colombia; and in New York City.  I should warn the urbanism buffs, though, that you may get impatient sometimes with the pacing, since so much will already be familiar.  But it's still worth a viewing.  For everyone else, you will probably learn a lot, including some thi...

This fall, my studio course is with Richard Plunz, head of the Urban Design program here at Columbia, and our subject is "Aalborg, Denmark: New Paradigms for Global Suburbanization."  I spent the past week in Aalborg at the invitation of the municipality as part of the Urban Design Studio collaborative workshop between the University of Aalborg and Columbia University.  Together with 30 international students in various planning and management fields, the fifteen of us from Columbia (architects, engineers, and urban planners) researched the suburban fabric of East Aalborg and brainstormed solutions to problems of social isolation, inadequate housing stock, lack of accessibility, unemployment, and environmental impact.  In teams of 8 or 9, we developed strategies to address one or more of these problems using urban design, architecture, and planning interventions. My group's theme was "sustainable business," which we tackled by proposing a distribute...