The Babuk Report

Category: Current Affairs

Cars with Lots of Real Estate

A friend wrote in reply of my 4 July 2009 post “Big People. Little Cars. Tiny Houses. The Scale of our Neighbourhoods”, which spoke of our neighbourhoods being sized around our mode of personal transportation which, in modern day North America, tends to be our cars. To quote Alex:

“There are a couple of arguments against the move to smaller-more-sustainable automobiles in particular. I’ll coin it “larger-and-more-survivable”.

Not that I have anything against the cute and vulnerable Cooper Mini nor it’s reincarnation, the 21^st Century BMW Mini, it’s just that with the striking deterioration of our public highways, a larger vehicle with adequate ground clearance is soon to become an advantage. By the way, it strikes me that the sudden downfall of public infrastructure is very much mirrored by the downfall of print media. I have a hard time seeing my younger nephews and nieces with their passels of kinder and requisite accoutrements actually fitting into the current generation of mini-vehicles. Indeed, with three or more small children in a vehicle, your old Mini Clubman just couldn’t hold the child seats, let alone the toys, diaper bags, etc that – at least – the younger generation of my family is saddled with. I don’t think that your Mini could even hold an SUV – Stroller Utility Vehicle!”

I’ve always maintained that we design our neighbourhoods around our cars. More succinctly, we design our neighbourhoods around the prevalent mode of personal transportation. We always have – for the longest of times, that mode was on foot – walking. Not until the Machine Age / Post Machine Age has transportation become so notable in our neighbourhoods, because the type of transportation we’ve invented is so different than what we as humans are capable of on our own.

The type of neighbourhood that I live in was built around people walking to a rapid transit or commuter train station, so the buildings and landscape look the way they do to reflect this. Since then and quite suddenly, we’ve built entire cities around the automobile – the prevalent method of personal transportation currently used in North America. Not only would it be difficult to “retrofit” an automobile neighbourhood to be function “walkably”, but trying to get around one of these automobile neighbourhoods by another method becomes challenging, if not dangerous. I know of someone who drives a perfectly restored 1969 Fiat 500 with a bumper sticker that reads “…my other car is a race car…”; he drives it on the expressways of Chicago fearlessly, leaving everyone breathless. The rest of us could never achieve this talent without intense professional training!

So becomes the quandary of dodging potholes and 18 wheelers at high speeds. Part of the format of automobile oriented development is to have an abundance of supply of transportation routes. Abundant infrastructure becomes very expensive to maintain properly.

Personal. mobile spaces within a larger, very public space, both quite flambouyant – "Superdawg", Chicago IL

Now, I do have this thing about the automobile and its allure. As architecture, automobiles are highly sculptural, display the personality and identity of their owners. Automobiles are not just personal spaces with their own environmental hierarchies and transitions, but they are personal space that moves, taking its occupants from place to place while experiencing the space within, and the spaces outside – in motion, in sequence no less. It’s a very contemporary, Machine Age experience – quite exhilarating, since it removes mankind from the need to have ties to the earth.

Although Frank Lloyd Wright was apparently an automobile enthusiast. Oddly, this notion of automobile as architecture goes against his philosophy of architecture being part of the earth. Two very exciting, diametrically opposed concepts.

July 27, 2009
Traditional Media vs Social Media, and it’s Similarity to Urban vs Suburban Design

The recent passing of Walter Cronkite and the commemoration of the Apollo 11 lunar landing spawned much commentary about how as a culture, we’ve lost not just trusted voice and a collective goal, even the ability to dream. There are many indicators supporting this notion, even some directly related to the design of our cities.

I recall a physics professor describing the theory of entropy. No matter how hard we may try to bring about order, things will always fall into disorder. An evenly manicured lawn will grow into an unkempt shag. A machine in good upkeep will fall into disrepair if left untended. And on.

While twentieth century media grew during the course of that era, it remained strong and focused. It was “ordered”. Print media – newspapers – were the first “gold” standard of reporting. Granted, there were “yellow” tabloids, they quickly gained an unsavory reputation. Publications with good reputations survived and grew. Radio came along, giving “live” presentations from a world away while they happened. Radio stations combining into broadcast networks emerged in order to pool the resources necessary that would allow news from a world away to find its way into our homes. Television came, doing much the same as radio but with images. In the States, there were three major broadcast networks. They took their responsibilities seriously, delivering impartial reporting.

Three networks worked to produce a collective, national consciousness. They had untold influence on society, in many untold ways. A society’s sense of taste is a good example. When I was the Managing Editor of CRIT Magazine, a story crossed my desk by a student who noted the cultural influences of television.

Note the sunken living room on the Dick Van Dyke Show stage set

His theory was that we never had “island kitchens” or “sunken living rooms” prior to the Dick van Dyke Show. Here, the stage set was arranged along a line to facilitate television cameras and an in-studio audience sitting on bleachers. The stage set portrayed a house arranged linearly for the audience and cameras to see, with bedrooms opening off either side of a living room, and with a kitchen in the middle. One would never build a real house that way. The front door leading from outside into the living was on a level slightly higher than the living room, so that the audience could see overtop anyone in the living room and focus on who was at the door. Thus came the image of a sunken living room. Likewise, Mary Tyler Moore was forever chopping vegetables in the kitchen while speaking her lines. She had to talk to the audience, not to a wall, and so was born the “island kitchen”. Her on screen portrayal of Mrs. Petrie promoted it to be quite acceptable to peel potatoes as part of dinner party entertainment – a concept previously unacceptable, or even unknown. So, a small number of media outlets wielded tremendous cultural influences.

Initially, three national networks seemed to work well. But they only had so much advertising space to sell to a rapidly expanding economy. Enter cable television, and the law of entropy. More media outlets, more choice, less uniformity of direction. One could easily argue, more quantity, less quality. In a very disparaging description, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song entitled “Fifty Seven Channels and Nothing On”.

Society has gone beyond cable television, or even any other of the twentieth century media models.

Nissan Canada, in wanting to promote its new vehicle, the “cube”, held a contest publicized only on social media – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, its website “hypercube.ca” , and the like. They gave away fifty Nissan cubes during an extended talent contest broadcast only on social media, indicating that they anticipated tremendous target-market exposure from social media.

Traditional, twentieth century media was organized around funneling a large amount of information to a few sources. This new social media takes an enormous amount of information and distributes it in many directions to people directly.

But, culture imitates art.

In the late nineteenth century, there was an accepted growth model of US cities, which became the advent of the original American suburb. It was built around controlled, major transportation – public transit – that delivered people to a specific point, supported by a much smaller scaled “scatter pattern” of individual transportation – walking. Mechanized, mass transit and walking were two very different means of transportation, and urban planning took on a very controlled appearance. Much like news delivered by three major television networks.

Sir Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City Concept

Sir Ebenezer Howard’s concept of the “Garden City” describes this urban development model. Here, clearly definable and ordered urban areas are contained and built around mass transit stations; and separated by greenbelts of more rural areas. Enter the law of entropy, and the invention of a “middle ground” of transportation – individual yet mechanized – the automobile. The automobile introduced “point to point” transportation, which allowed the previously rural areas between towns to be developed into what we know these days as ‘sprawl”.

In city planning, while there is a movement back to what’s known as “transit oriented development”, it’s all predicated on removing the automobile as a means of mass transit.

1975 Lancia Fulvia

In as much as automobiles are much like suburban buildings – works of art on their own without context – I hope we can keep them around as museum pieces, at least…

July 21, 2009
Ten Hours in Toronto

Spending ten hours in a city usually happens unexpectedly when your airplane connection is delayed. This wasn’t the case here; this was planned in advance.

I had a promotional plane ticket given for me, one that was going to expire this month. It had to be used, City of Toronto garbage collectors’ strike or not.

In my wanderings around downtown Toronto, it really wasn’t bad at all. I’d compare it to a clean day in New York City. A train that I took, however, passed by one of the city parks turned into a makeshift dump – a rather surreal mountain of plastic garbage bags.

There were hand sanitizing stations everywhere you could imagine. It seemed that someone was handing me a “moist towelette” wrapped in foil at every turn.

Garbage collectors’ strike or not, it really wasn’t too bad. At least downtown.

The Porter Airlines thing

I flew there and back on Porter Airlines – a “retro” airline that flies in and out of Toronto’s Island Airport. The stewardesses are decked out in pillbox hats and pencil skirts, they even offer passengers food and beverages – just like the old days. And they too handed out those ubiquitous moist towelettes in foil packages. Toronto must be the city with the world’s cleanest hands.

It’s a veritable who’s who that fly on Porter. At their gala reception in Chicago last February, I had a lengthy conversation with Mike Harris, former Premier of Ontario. Last March, who happened to take a seat opposite me in the departures lounge at the Island Airport but Paul Martin, former Prime Minister of Canada. This time, I had the pleasure of showing a reporter from the Toronto Sun how to take the El from Midway Airport into Chicago, and giving my “nickel n’ dime” tour of Chicago’s southwest side along the way.

From the Island Airport Ferry, going to the Mainland

The Island Airport is incredibly handy to fly in and out of, it’s only a couple blocks away from the Royal York Hotel and Union Station. At what other airport in the world is one required to take a ferry – across water – to the baggage check-in? Then, they drive you to the Royal York.

The Royal York Hotel (I’m not sure if it still is a Canadian Pacific owned property) is always a hoot – ever since they closed the Beehive Room and ended the perpetual Petula Clark show that was ongoing for years (I’m suspicious that she may not have had THAT many hit songs to sing), they still have Her Majesty’s portrait hanging in the lobby, looking quite excited at the prospect at camping out there once more. I could never understand.

July 18, 2009
Land Development Strategy on Autopilot

First we shape our buildings, and then they shape us”

                Sir Winston Churchill

“Motion is the aesthetic of modern man”

                Clifford Wiens

Maybe it was driving through a crowded parking lot, looking for a parking space. In amidst the row of SUV’s there appeared to be an empty space, only to come upon it and discover that it’s simply a smaller car packed between the Escalades. Or maybe it’s noticing the difference in scale between neighborhoods built at different decades; and that their scale varies directly with the size of their garages. Whether we want to acknowledge this or not, we’re designing our housing stock around our taste in automobiles.

“In the Industrial Age: first we build our cars, then build our communities around them”

                Darrel Babuk

A Forward Thinking concept at the time

Take the ’51 Ford as example. In retrospect, it might seem to be something akin to a lunchbucket on wheels; yet in it’s day, it was a Ford’s first revolutionary design of the modern automotive era. Revolutionary in more ways than one; as the embodiment of the GI Housing Bill and the Interstate Highway Act of a few years later, it conquered countless acres of former rural farmland and helped populate these territories with people and commercial strips.

Levittown was another Forward Thinking concept of its time

In 1951, the sought after housing stock was a single family home of two, maybe three bedrooms with only one gathering space not related to food. These houses were probably configured as two separate levels, one being built inside a roof attic space to conserve materials, thus price. It allowed its occupants to spend more money on other things, like fancier cars…

Cars had smiles in this era – this was our dentist’s car

Later on, by the late 1960’s, it was commonplace to expect our cars and houses to be exuberantly flamboyant. Houses had grown into sprawling ranches and split levels; despite experiments with swoopy rooflines, they still weren’t too large in floor area.

Note that the roofline of this house creates the same sort of smile as did our dentist’s car

Instead, individual houses sat on large plots of land, requiring cars to ferry their occupants back and forth. The idea of a two car family had just entered American lexicon, a two car garage proudly displayed to the street was a status symbol to behold. Cars enveloped similarly swoopy masses of sheet metal, they were difficult to manouever through city street. Chicago reverted many of its neighborhood streets to one way traffic, to accommodate these vehicles.

The freshness of sixties design got a bit tired, then mired in the seventies. Maybe it was the energy crunch, or maybe it was by a series of laws that controlled, rather than encouraged design. By the time the eighties came to be, a book by Jane Jacobs “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” came to be better accepted, and we sought ways to do more with less. A few indulgences came in small packages. Sudden interest in condominiums and townhouses were met by happy buyers in BMW 5 Series sedans. Oddly, while we learned to drive more fuel efficient cars, we started to drive more cars, it really didn’t stem our consumption of resources. We rebuilt our cities, yet kept developing new suburbs. We simply found ways to use more resources.

These days, we have McMansions and SUV’s of all sizes, though the family units that live inside the McMansions are smaller than what lived in the 50’s or 60’s tract homes. The McMansions lack design originality, though they boast rare and expensive finishes, like kitchens with granite countertops. Didn’t the original marble cladding of the Amoco Building mine out one of Michelangelo’s historic marble quaries? Our freeways are constantly choked with traffic. Our expectations have become supersized as we simply want more of everything – good design doesn’t really count, just that there be more of it! The car enveloped by a swoopy mass of sheet metal in the late 1960’s is no larger in floor area than a 21st century full size SUV, yet our SUV’s take up considerably more volume and weigh substantially more. And about the original marble cladding of the Amoco Building – once it was removed due to damage, wasn’t it pulverized and used as roadbed gravel for an extension of the Stevenson Expressway?

Would we have a different urban infrastructure design if we had started to drive vehicles like this?

It makes one wonder about the preponderance of human nature to simply go on autopilot without question: where would we be now if during the fifties and sixties, we had stuck not to the large cars but rather to concepts like the original Austin Mini or Fiat 500; the concepts being produced in Detroit as Ramblers or Crossleys. Would our cities be much more geographically compact, would we be using public transit more often, and would we be living our lives in public rather than in the cocoons of gated communities?

“How often I found where I should be going, only by setting out for somewhere else”

                Buckminster Fuller

June 29, 2009
The “Architect – Comedian” as the next new comic sensation

At a farewell party last night, one fellow picked a conversation topic started expounding on “lawyer-comedians”.

Now, I can count lawyers as being among my best of friends, however: a “lawyer – comedian” sounded as oxymoronic as would an “architect-comedian”. I somehow doubt if anyone could find comedy in issuing a change order or an Expression of Interest document.

Thinking of it, until very lately, the only architects ever depicted on prime time television programs were the likes of Mr. Brady of “The Brady Bunch”, or the owner of “Mr. Ed – the Talking Horse” – all these characters being rather contrived. For television, the images of lawyers have been dressed up by inserting a bit of drama into their daily routines – a procedural time out while appealing a stay of execution, for example. We architects could never inject excitement into a Contemplated Change Notice addressing plastic laminate countertop surfaces.

The only group less likely than “lawyer – comedians” or architect – comedians” may be an “accountant – comedian”, perhaps developing comedy in changing the standard office ledger paper from six column to five. A cost effective move, no doubt.

Fortunately, we found a more entertaining conversation topic that involved commenting on wine from Ontario vineyards.

June 27, 2009
The Rise and Fall of the McMansion, and other Midwestern Housing Trends

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

In the US market, many sense that the slumping sales of Toll Brothers Builders and Lowe’s are symptomatic of an overall declining real estate and construction market. Has all of the wind gone out of the housing market, as the housing bubble doomsday promoters predicted?

Perhaps not. Perhaps the housing market has simply changed, and that change has yet to be noticed.

The evolution of the living unit concept has generated many different planning and building formats over the years. One of the most radical housing concepts occurred in that era just after the Second World War; when plentiful, convenient land supplies, a growing expressway network and inexpensive energy spawned the post-war suburban tract home. Post-war suburbs spawned this building type, requiring exposure on all sides that in turn required a rate of land consumption and ensuing density that made individual transportation – the automobile – essential. Post-war houses were efficiently planned, but small. Post-war houses also embraced labour saving devices that encouraged leisure. Growing aspirations made post-war houses larger. They became so much larger that half a century later, the same post-war tract home concept became absolutely huge.

Witness the “McMansion” housing type, nothing more than an enormous post-war suburban tract home; many times built on the extreme outer fringes of metropolitan centres, sometimes built on tear down lots in neighbourhoods that weren’t completely built out to their zoning envelopes. The post-war tract housing concept has remained more or less unchanged despite simple theme variations. All versions of the post-war suburban tract home building type have enjoyed consumer favour during their history, despite many consumer changes over the same period. That the suburban tract home building type is on the wane shouldn’t be confused as a sign of a slowing economy, rather that the market is ready for a different type of building for housing.

Consumer Reports Magazine recently reported that new car buyers rank gas mileage as important as reliability. The US Census Bureau reported more ‘extreme commuters’ who spend more than 90 minutes a trip commuting, yet average commute times in many cities are slightly less, leading one to believe that more people are living closer to their employment, resulting in shorter commutes. Close-in neighbourhoods – older suburbs that were originally self contained towns – have emerged as viable live / work options. Virtually every North American city is finding itself in some sort of urban renaissance. Some of theattraction of pre-war neighbourhoods is their convenience to mass transit, allowing the benefits of being less automobile dependent yet still seeming quite spacious. Mass transit is becoming more than merely an inexpensive method of travel. Recently, the Washington DC Metro experienced some of its busiest days in history – for no special reason.

Los Angeles has realized that freeway expansion will not positively affect traffic gridlock or commute times, and has developed a commuter rail system rivaling Chicago’s. Mass transit has become an identifiable trend, with cities as diverse as Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City developing new light rail or commuter railway systems.

While this argument describes a market segment that be open for change, there is an even larger market force ahead: housing needs to be fueled by population growth. Growing population numbers are made up of people without benefit of large, home equity financial resources, and reflect growing numbers of immigrants at levels unseen in decades. Initially, postwar housing addressed affordability; the recent McMansion craze has not. The ‘middle market’ is under-served.

A prediction of the Midwest US housing market for the near future? Smaller, more efficiently planned housing types built closer in, perhaps on redeveloped land, perhaps replacing older housing stock that requires substantial repair. ‘Age in Place’ living and renovation may become commonplace. This housing stock will be located in neighbourhoods that support denser, yet livable communities. Neighbourhoods that are prime for new housing development demand respect of existing context and zoning codes. In many locations, the building codes that support this type of housing may not promote light wood frame construction. Housing units convenient to mass transit will be most desirable. Whether people are following their employment centres or employment centres following people, people appear to be living closer to their work. The neighbourhoods that made up the original ‘pre-war’ American suburb may demonstrate how this housing type works.

Original American suburb towns have weathered market downturns, are highly desirable and tended to be built around mass transit facilities. These neighbourhoods were unattractive to McMansion development, because they were never planned to support large amounts of very low density development with underground infrastructure or municipal taxation levels.

To describe this theory another way, think of building for the ‘middle market’ by offering quality housing set in attractive surroundings, convenient to employment with viable mass transit options.

As gasoline becomes expensive and commute times increase, building large tracts in the exurbs will seem less viable, at least for those tied to employment. As for building more McMansions on existing plots? Perhaps it will remain as some sort of niche market for a while. McMansions need a steady supply of relatively large land parcels in low density neighbourhoods, the closer-in 1950’s tracts may be attractive. Yet, picture this: a very trendy real estate and consumer niche is developing around exuberant ‘mid century modern’ themes – Eichler tract homes in the San Francisco Bay area, even Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #22 that cantilevers out over the Los Angeles basin. Themes more reminiscent of the Jetson’s rather than pseudo-tudor castles may be poised to re-overtake suburbia.

Finally.

September 5, 2006
Parking Lots

Saturday, November 19, 2005

A recent article by Paul Kaihla in BUSINESS2.0 Magazine brought me to think about the parking lot as a prolific, yet endangered landscape feature of the post war era.

The article, entitled The Next Real Estate Boom (November 1, 2005) spoke of a coming wave of expansion, growth and redevelopment of American cities, of a scale not seen since the decade immediately following the Second World War, to accommodate 70 million more people. It congealed several concepts that aren’t terribly out of the realm of imagination – “megapolitans” infilling the areas between cities, such as one urban unit consisting of Seattle and Portland; in a way, not unlike how Baltimore / Washington are being reported as a single census unit today. It predicted that existing neighbourhoods may be infilled, perhaps densified, to allow for energy conservation. In my estimation, this type of growth would require a similar movement to preserve agricultural lands, in order to feed the additional hordes of people. A quirky snippet from the article is what caught my eye, concerning the redevelopment potential of surface parking lots in American cities.

They paved paradise / And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique / And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone
They paved paradise / And put a parking lot

Joni Mitchell, big yellow taxi

Parking lots have been somewhat of a fascination, if not an icon of post war growth. More people became mobile, we came to expect large, convenient surface areas where we could park our flamboyantly styled yacht of sheet metal, as if to put of symbol of status on display for all to see while we engaged in some activity of commerce within close walking distance. Like them or not, parking lots were an important component to the generation of gross national product. While many times they were our bane – like when Life Magazine declared a hillside completely paved in asphalt as being one of the worst urban eyesores of the year; they achieved an undercurrent of recognition and appreciation in other, equally artistic circles.

"The Spike" car sculpture that graced the parking lot of the Cermak Shopping Plaza has since been demolished.

“Thirty Four Los Angeles Parking Lots” by Beat Era guru Edward Ruscha elevated expanses of empty pavement to high art – a quite random pattern of oil spots that were actually well organized. One winner of the 1978 “McDonald’s of the Future” design competition if the American Institute of Architecture Students realized their design was to place a building seen behind a backdrop of cars in a parking lot, so that parked cars were arranged with the same care and fashion as one would expect to see soup cans placed in a supermarket display. Even our own Cermak Shopping Plaza in Berwyn, Illinois turns a parking lot into a glamorous art gallery.

Quite properly, some may begin to wonder just what has happened to our sense of art, if we see surface parking lots as being our highpoint of artistic expression.

True, the sort of vehicles we park these days all tend to look like everyone else’s, even automotive interiors are rarely offered in vibrant colours like they once were. It’s imaginable that the want to display our vehicle has gone by the wayside. Perhaps lengthening commutes have made driving more drudgery than pleasure, we’re not as attached to our automobiles as we once were. And perhaps time has come to rethink the parking lot. The Chicago area has several examples of what can be done if a portion of the parking lot is developed into a parking garage that can hold at least as many vehicles as once parked on the surface, and the remainder of the site redeveloped as something else. The parking lot’s sense of scale is what’s most intriguing; by tract standards, they are relatively small, lending themselves to development by smaller, private groups, much the same entrepreneurial spirit that saw to their initial development. What’s more, parking lots are usually well located, their location is handy to urban amenities.

Joni Mitchell’s lyrics bring to mind a quote Prince Charles once made about London tabloid newspaper; how they took perfectly wonderful wooded forests, and cut down all the trees to process into pulp newsprint that in turn became Fleet Street tabloids that printed stories of dubious gossip. In our case, the original landscape that was turned into surface parking lots may not be salvageable. However, the integration of parking lots into worthwhile neighbourhoods is akin to turning the proverbial sow’s ear into a silk purse.

November 19, 2005