Urban Design

When Infrastructure is Beautiful

[caption id="attachment_857" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Medium Ones"][/caption]

One of my favorite examples of design in Seattle is one that hardly garners a second look from most, should they even notice it at all. Located adjacent to the popular Burke-Gillman trail, there is a little gem of infrastructure that is an outstanding example of the modernist design aesthetic. It is a Seattle City Light sub-station, and I am completely smitten by it. Well, not the entire substation -- just the handsome pre-cast concrete structures supporting the transoformers and transmission lines (the concrete supports are the only elements that grace an otherwise banal compound). For years I have cycled by these personal icons of design, at speeds that allowed me to catch only a glimpse of their elegaence, yet enough of one  to make me feel that I had found my own private little gems, seen by thousands but appreciated by few.

[caption id="attachment_858" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Small and Large"][/caption]

This New Year's Eve, when I happened to drive past them with camera in hand, I had to stop for some pics. Imagine my surprise when I realized after so many years that the large, elegant towers (the only elements that can really be seen from the Burke-Gillman), had a supporting cast (sic) of smaller, equally elegant pre-concrete supports. Each set os supports is unique, but all  adhere to the same over-all design concept. My favorite remains the largest ones, no contempt there, with my favorite part being the pin joint in the center of the horizontal piece, revealing the tower's construction of two like halves -- so elegant.

[caption id="attachment_860" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Big Concrete Tower"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_859" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Little Ones"][/caption]

Forty Eight Hours in Astoria, Oregon

[caption id="attachment_802" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Lewis and Clark Exhibit in One of the Many Historic Sites in the Area"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_795" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Astoria Bridge over the Columbia River"][/caption]

Dear friend Bill has returned to the Pacific Northwest after ten years of living in the dusty Rockies, and his new home is the charming town of Astoria, on Oregon’s upper northwest coast. I took the first opportunity I had to visit, and came away impressed. While not bustling, I would say that Astoria has a respectable and healthy downtown, comprised mainly of local merchants offering a variety of wares, including a nice assortment of indy coffee houses and brew pubs.

[caption id="attachment_797" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Downtown Astoria, Oregon "][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_796" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Downtown Astoria, Oregon"][/caption]

Similar in size to Capitol Hill (kind of), many of the buildings would feel at home on the Pike Pine corridor. What impressed me most about the downtown was the stewardship of the buildings. The buildings appeared to be very well maintained, which must be a full time endeavor for a city built on the stormy Pacific Northwest coast. Architectural stewardship is a good metric of for gauging the relative health of a city, as is the above-mentioned variety of the locally based retail. No doubt Astoria’s economy benefits from being on one of the most beautiful coast lines in the United States, as well as being the first permanent English speaking settlement on the West coast of the country, yet the city still maintains an authenticity of place that would not be possible if it thrived solely on the tourist trade and history buffs.

[caption id="attachment_798" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Waterfront Building Astoria, OR"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_810" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Astoria Coffee House, a Great Place for Breakfast"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_811" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Astoria Coffee House"][/caption]

In addition to a fine urban center, the Astoria area is blessed with a cultural heritage and sense of purpose that surprise. Built at the tempestuous confluence of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, Astoria provides the ideal training environment for the Coast Guard’s elite Advanced Helicopter/Swimmer Rescue School. Additional evidence of the area’s maritime heritage is on display in the more sanguine environment in the Columbia Maritime Museum.

[caption id="attachment_804" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Historic Ship Outside of the Maritime Museum"][/caption]

Should one want to wander outside the confines on the museum’s walls, in-situ history is easily accessible in one of the many Lewis and Clark state and national historic sites on both the Oregon and Washington sides of the Columbia River, the terminus of their legendary Corps of Discovery. Artifacts of more recent history can also be found in the area’s state and national parks, such as the gun batteries that are remnants of the coastal defenses erected during the Spanish American and World Wars. Should your historical interests not yet be satiated, try the Lewis and Clark Visitors Center, magnificently perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific.

[caption id="attachment_800" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Fortifications, Fort Columbia State Park, Washington"][/caption]

Of course all of the above pales in caparison to the sublime natural setting. It is, after all, the natural environment that draws many of us here, and whose embrace keeps us from wanting to live anywhere else. I would like to think that it is the scenic bounty of Cascadia that is the driver of our progressive environmental and urban practices, and the fire that fuels our passion to live this magnificent area.

[caption id="attachment_807" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="View South from Ecola State Park, Oregon"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_806" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Ecola State Park, Oregon"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_805" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Pacific Coast Near Astoria, Oregon"][/caption]

Rail-Volution Recap Part 3: TOD and Quality of Life

Apologies to all should I butcher any of the following, but the intricacies of transportation and Federal policy are new to me, but quite fascinating in the way they inform urbanism.

A Rail-Volution 2010 Plenary Session

Transportation planning has been too often been an end onto itself. For many years, transportation planners were (are) focused on efficiency as measured by the number of trips taken and speed of service.  Starting in the mid 20th Century, planning saw the automobile as a panacea for any transportation ailment; that is, until the roadways became so congested that the automobile created its own planning problems that it could no longer solve. It is true, efficiency (and I use this term in its quantifiable sense), should be an important metric; however, the funders of transit are realizing that qualifiable measurements are as -- or even more -- important.

A New Portland Park Adjacent to Transit

As an example in the emerging thinking, Federal funding mechanisms for rail transit, are being re-evaluated using a more holistic approach, one that includes quality of life as one of transit planning's highest goal. Historically, Federal grants have used a ‘one size fits all’ approach that uses the same criteria to award monies, regardless of geographical location or accounting for the externalities that often inform transit planning, such as public and environmental health or economic development. Because Federal funding is key to most all transit projects, the funding criteria (as enumerated in grant applications) have a huge impact on the design of transit, with its aforementioned traditional metrics stunting its opportunities in promoting quality of life. Applicants (transit agencies) are often forced to make ill-informed decisions that ignore leveraging transit investments in order to achieve other policy ends. Local knowledge and priorities of improving livability are sanitized or excluded, due to the Feds over-simplification of criteria to be those that can only be quantified. This results in many of the real benefits of transit remaining untapped (for instance, the improved pedestrian realm and its health benefits that usually accompanies transit corridor improvements may not factor into award criteria). Such myopic evaluation criteria is, of course, neither unique to Federal transit funding. Single or simplified criteria are easier to justify under scrutiny than those that are derivative of a policy, even when the derived benefits exceed the stated (applied for) goals of the project. This evolution of thinking, to include the many benefits of transit,  is exhibited in new Obama Administration directives such as the Sustainable Communities Initiative, that endeavor to see the linkages of the interactions of various federal departments and how their policies effect each other, promoting inter-agency coordinated in order to leverage common goals that may have previously been unidentified between departments. New questions are being raised, such as the FTA asking ‘What are the goals of the transit project, besides moving people’. How should local knowledge of health, employment, and environmental criteria be incorporated into and shape the basis of funding proposals?  Basic questions that should be asked, yet traditionally neither asked nor valued. Wording from the above mentioned directive:

[This] Partnership was conceived to coordinate Federal housing, transportation and environmental investments, protect public health and the environment, promote equitable development, and help address the challenges of climate change. Recognizing the fundamental role that public investment plays in achieving these outcomes, the [Obama] Administration charged three agencies whose programs most directly impact the physical form of communities—HUD, DOT, and EPA—to lead the way in reshaping the role of the Federal government in helping communities obtain the capacity to embrace a more sustainable future.

(http://www.hud.gov/offices/adm/grants/nofa10/huddotnofa.pdf)

By uniting theses two departments and one agency, the current administration is embracing the full possibilities presented by everything transit advocates have been lobbying for for decades.

A New Portland Park Adjacent to Transit

To many of us in the transit advocacy community (and increasingly to its funders) transit symbolizes more that rail or bus. It has become synonymous with other alternative (to the automobile) means of transportation, including walking and cycling. Both of this activities not only require no additional funding beyond the initial investment, but  also promote health, and are accessible means of exercise to all, regardless of income. What is exciting is that the health promoted by such activities can now be related in quantifiable means, satiating the appetite of planners for numerical data. One evaluate tool available is provided by the San Francisco Department of Public Health:  The Healthy Development Measurement Tool (http://www.thehdmt.org/), an on-line aid for evaluating healthful development practices. This tool has been used by municipalities such as the Denver Housing Authority to aid in their urban development projects, including TOD (Transit Oriented Development). The thinking is that transit promotes walking and cycling in several ways. First, getting to urban stations usually requires walking or cycling. Oftentimes rail corridor construction involves the redevelopment of the street cross section the tracks are set on, with the new section having enhanced sidewalks and bike lanes. Second, the compact, full service developments fostered by TOD makes walking or cycling the easiest way to get a destination,  including places of employment.  Years of research have shown the link between better sidewalks and bikeways in promoting walking and cycling. Given the nation's obesity epidemic, even the 15 minutes of walking or cycling a day goes a long way in promoting better health.

What is terribly exiting about this linking of transit and health is that it allows a robust campaign to be launched that includes powerful allies typically outside the circles of transit advocacy, such as physicians, nurses, and insurance companies; all who have a powerful voice in public policy. It also appeals to families, and especially women, who are generally the steward of their families well-being.  Healthful also better defines what quality of life means, an often ineffable term. Health is without question the cornerstone of quality of life, and a goal few can argue with.

Next Time: Partnerships Between Communites, Government, and Private Development.

Capitol Hill Building Analysis Examples 11 and 12

Well, here we are, at the end of this particular folly. With clouds a gatherin', and temperature droppin', venturing forth into the grays of our winter to document the building facades of our lovely neighborhood seems unlikely, at least until the spring thaw. This has been a great diversion, and was helpful for me to not only better understand our neighborhood, but understand why the buildings documented give me pleasure. I hope the few that have followed have profited as well. Until sunny skies return, I will delve into the inner world  . . . .

 

All Images and Text Copyright Schemata Wrokshop Inc 2010

Rail-Volution 2010 Recap Part One

I am not much of a conference attendee. Preferring to immerse myself in books and lectures, conferences have seemed to me to be more about preaching to the converted, venues for vendors to hawk there wares, and a plethora of examples of how not to use PowerPoint; all coming at the expense of being a really useful way to become educated on a topic. Sloganeering and well rehearsed positions abound, unfortunately at the expense seeing a provocateur or hearing contrarian thinking. That being said, however, conference tours are usually a highlight, and, should one be fortunate enough, attending a presentation with an impassioned malcontent can add spice to otherwise banal fare. I must admit, however, that after attending Rail-Volution 2010 in Portland last week, my cynicism has abated; or, perhaps I am gaining a critical eye and am better at divining what the  larger lessons are.

The sessions I attended seemed to be predominantly peopled by land use and transportation planners, transit agency staff and directors, and transit advocates – architects (and urban designers) - were in the minority. Regardless of background, all attendees shared a passion for transit and transit oriented development (TOD), with presentations sharing strategies on how to best plan, design, and finance transit to increase our quality of life, be that reducing CO2 emissions or lessening our reliance on the automobile and its negative impacts on the public realm. To achieve these goals, the sessions approached transit from a compelling number of perspectives, including public health and safety, the role grant writing effects route planning, and just which parameters really should define a transit overlay district. Although most of the positions taken were safe, the sum total of them (the gestalt, as it were) represents progress in urban policy. More of this in future post, for today I wish to focus on first of two field sessions I attended.

The first of two field sessions I attended was a tour of the emerging South Waterfront/North Macadam District (it goes by either name), just southeast of Portland’s downtown. Zoned the same as the city’s central business district, this neighborhood is an example of how a city’s direct investment in transit was instrumental in developing an entirely new neighborhood, one where only vacant industrial land existed until less than 10 years ago. Built on former steel and ship building sites (a small barge building operation still exists), this brown-field is the area where Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) will (and has) expand their current land-locked campus. OHSU is the anchor for the re-development of over two dozen acres, and the school’s decision to expand in this area is attributable to the city’s building and financing of two forms of transit: an aerial tram connecting the new campus to the existing (located on Marquam Hill, about a mile west and 500 feet up), as well as a new streetcar line, connecting the OHSU campus to Portland State University and downtown. The city, university, and developers entered into an agreement that bound each party to a scope of work. Essentially, the city paid for the transit improvements, and private developers paid for a good portion of the development of the streets and the new buildings (which, in addition to OHSU include mainly luxury housing). Each party’s commitment was essential for this area to be developed, with the most crucial being the construction of an 80 person aerial tram. Beyond its aesthetic triumphs and novelty, the tram delivers a highly efficient form of transit, for instead of a 15 to 30 minute commute time that a bus would have entailed (Marquam Hill is too steep for rail), connections between the OHSU South Waterfront and Marquam Hill campuses is only three minutes for doctors, patients, students, and staff. Of almost equal importance in creating the backbone for the emerging neighborhood with the tram, was the extension of the city’s streetcar line, which provides a clear and direct connection through a maze of streets and changing topography from South Waterfront to Portland State University and downtown. Unlike connecting to Marquam Hill, a bus line may have worked made the connection, but a bus would not have had the same deliberative action and financial, aesthetic, and operational commitment rail transit provides in order for this nascent neighborhood to develop.

Given the state of our economy, assessment as to the success of South Waterfront needs to be made in the future. Portland, as is the case nationwide, is in an economic slump that has curtailed the previously rapid pace of development at South Waterfront. Still, the transit aspects are impressive -- if not down right exciting (nail biting?) -- and robust applause to all party's involved in creating South Waterfront's vision is in order. Taking derelict land, and reviving it with groundbreaking (air-breaking) transit solutions, will doubtlessly reap huge dividends for many years to come.

Next: Developing Trends in Transit Oriented Development, FTA Financing, and Low Income Housing

For Further Information on South Waterfront:                    http://www.pdc.us/ura/sowa_n-macadam.asp http://www.southwaterfront.com http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/facts/history.cfm