The Babuk Report

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  • The Calgary Flames in Chicago

    Friday, May 1, 2009

     

    The Canadian Club of Chicago planned a Calgary Flames Pep Rally during the Calgary Flames / Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup Playoff Series.  With nary a day’s notice, the Canadian Club sent out hundreds of e-mail invitations and contacted media.  We fielded calls from the Chicago Tribune and local TV news outlets.  This became a story on three different radio stations in Calgary and a front-page headline story in the Calgary Herald.

    The thought was that we would march around around the United Center seven times at dawn and blow horns at it, kind of like the biblical story of Joshua marching around Jericho for seven days.  Then we’d go have breakfast at the Billy Goat.  Leading the charge was going to be my trusty little red and white Mini Clubman Estate, proudly flying a Calgary Flames flag from its window.  At daybreak, navigating undauntedly through the streets of Chicago’s west side, it arrived at the United Center for its appointed rounds.  On the fifth lap, a taxi cab was seen pulling up on Wood Street, east of the UC, and dropped off a well dressed fellow, it was before 6AM. Perhaps my trusty little red Mini with a Calgary Flames flag may have been a bit noticeable in that neighbourhood, that time of morning, in front of all the security surveillance cameras, but this fellow waved me down and introduced himself as Ken King, President and CEO of the Calgary Flames.

    Another fan appeared from Calgary in a similarly flagged vehicle, as did a vehicle with Consular plates and two Consular staff.

    While Mr. King noted that the smaller the turnout, the better the news story this would be, there were four television news helicopters flying overhead, fighting for the same airspace over the United Center to get an anticipated crowd shot.  We waved.

    In order to get access to the Canadian Club’s e-mail list, I had to cut a deal with their Marketing Committee, who is a Trade Attache for the delegation du Quebec in Chicago.  I could hear him loudly grinning over the phone as he commented how great my Mini would look flying a Canadiens flag at a Montreal / Chicago rally.  Paybacks can be nasty in this town.

     

  • 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.

  • Streetscapes

    Monday, June 5, 2006

    Successful streetscapes are defined by spaces between buildings. The spaces become successful places; streets where we live out our lives, nooks and crannies that create pleasant oasis, buildings that form backdrops and walls that give meter to time and space….all decidedly urban concepts.

    Let’s take the flipside to this thought and think of streetscapes that are defined by buildings between spaces.  Eye catching, exuberant buildings and identity signage set inside parking lots, or man made landscape that won’t detract from the eye catching, exuberant buildings and identity signage.  This is the essence of the suburban experience.

    The idea of negative, rather than positive space – or however you want to cast it – is something that Victor Gruen thought was America’s downfall, yet something that Robert Venturi has portrayed as a quality deserving of American pride.  Instead of abiding by the rules of being polite to our neighbours in context, we simply build as far away from our neighbours as possible, to be something individual.  One could even draw similarities between this design comparison and the way our society functions today.  Art becomes life.

    Let’s go a step further.  In the urban streetscape, one approaches places on foot, whereas in a suburban streetscape, one approaches a place while inside an automobile.  Between suburban buildings, places are populated by automobiles – in motion, or being stored.

    Beat era guru Edward Ruscha looked at parking lots and ancillary landscaping much the same way that Andy Warhol looked at soup cans.  Testing this hypothesis, the elements of suburban streetscapes aren’t buildings or ancillary landscaping – let’s get down to business here, folks – it’s our cars.  despite the advent of “dress down working environments” and “casual Fridays”, we still devote time and effort to primping our automobiles.  Though we eat potato chips,we would never fuel our cars with nothing but the best gasoline and motor oils.  We dress them up more than we do ourselves, quite often.

    The British movement ‘Archigram” recognized this concept of mobility as architecture well beyond our suburban bounds. they imagined buildings that could move to new settings if one was bored with the existing one. Still others envisioned our transportation as a type of clothing, an extension of our persona – our automobiles are every bit a part of our personal image as are our clothing.  More imaginatively, one could devise a set of clothes that become our environment and transportation, all in one.  Imagine a set of trousers that sprout wheels and take one to work on a busy freeway; what about jackets that double as jet packs and rocket one to another continent for an afternoon visit…or inflatable coveralls that provide the ideal, temperate indoor environment while visiting the arctic, the jungle, or outer space…Spacesuits are clothing that provide all necessary support for life, much like any other built environment.  But, are they architecture?

    Back on earth, or at least the American suburb, we need interesting parking lots to sustain a vibrant suburban streetscape, flamboyant buildings on their own just don’t cut the mustard.  Detroit’s “Big Three” did better when they recognized this, and designed cars every bit as exuberant as were suburban buildings.  However, gasoline was cheap and abundant, we could fuel this type of environment.  Now that automobile styling is boring, dull and gray; and that gasoline is reaching record prices, it’s time to rethink.

    Suburban streetscapes are left with highly individual buildings with parking lots.  Parking lots have become prime real estate, they tend to have supported commercially successful buildings whose only direction to expand are into their parking lots.  Suddenly, these exuberant buildings that stood alone in their flamboyance are cheek and jowl with other, dissimilarly exuberant buildings.  And they’re still approached by automobiles.

    Understanding a suburban streetscape, and retrofitting it for the new century is one of our greatest challenges.

  • 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.
    "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.

  • Chicago – A Walkable City

    Thursday, August 4, 2005

    The defining American city of the twentieth century was Chicago
    Carl Schurz High School, Chicago. Dwight Perkins, Architect

    The late British architectural historian Reynar Banham was fascinated with the Industrial Era.  He charted the course of various mechanical inventions to show how they changed the architectural environment; he felt Los Angeles was the purely American city of the Industrial Era.  Quite like me, he felt an interest for North American grain elevators, and studied how they influenced development of the skyscraper.  Yet, for all of his interest in Los Angeles, there was one interest almost missed: the defining American city of the twentieth century was Chicago.  Los Angeles simply built on a very different departure away from the Chicago experience. The Los Angeles urban development model seemed to gain prominence after it had effectively dumped its mass transit system.  If the movie weren’t so tongue in cheek, the downfall of the “Big Red Train” was portrayed with almost embarrassing similarities in the 1988 film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit“.

    At the dawn of the twentieth century, Chicago must have seemed like the epicentre of the industrial universe.  Yet, for all of its new found technological advancements, Chicago was a very down to earth, if not predictable place.  Chicago’s practicality was borne of ingenuity.  It just seemed to convey a Midwestern notion of common sense.  These days, we would try to find a fancy new term for this line of thinking, perhaps calling it….. sustainable design, or transit oriented development.

    Chicago was built as a walkable city.  When that walkable limit was filled, the railways came, building stations just beyond this walkable limit, and created new towns with their own walkable limits.  Chicagoans were a highly mobile people, yet energy efficient thanks to walking and mass transit.  It wasn’t until the motor car came along that the areas between the town centres became infilled with sprawl.

    Carl Schurz High School
    Lyman Trumbull School, Chicago. Dwight Perkins, Architect

    While Chicago is chock full of bridges that go up and down and turn around, those devices that are rarely seen are as important. After departing from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park studio, Dwight Perkins came to be in charge of the Bureau of Architecture at Chicago Public Schools.  His theories about preventing disease through good design were simply revolutionary.  Lifting spaces out of pre-Deep Tunnel System basements that were prone to flooding, he went to enormous lengths to promote concepts of light and fresh air. Many of his schools – like Carl Schurz High School – used vast air plenums fed by decorative roof vent intakes to keep a constant supply of fresh air throughout the building.  In another building, the Lyman Trumbell School, the washrooms are built around strategically placed light wells, offering light and air to those same interior washrooms that were once relegated to musty cellars. Still other schools of the era after Mr. Perkins’ tenure displayed very early examples of ‘dampers’; a mechanical device that would sense hot or cool air, and direct it appropriately for the time of year. Outside of schools, many early skyscrapers demonstrated the same principles known today as ‘green design’ by providing shallow floor plan depths between exterior walls with window openings, a simple design feature that allowed natural daylight and ventilation.  Factories, industrial plants and warehouses mastered a “vertical assembly” concept: raw materials would arrive and immediately be shipped up to the top floor. The product would become more and more assembled on its trek down through the building, the finished product appearing on the ground floor, ready to be shipped back out. Compare this concept to the enormous, single level warehouses that line I-55 through Bolingbrook.

    Chicagoans still use one of the best and most accessible public transit systems available in North America.  We simply started with something good.  Some design choices – like mining out pine forests in our quest to build – may not have been the best practice in hindsight.  Other design ingenuity represented a “best practices” in sustainable design technology, still relevant today.

    Let’s see what else we may do.

  • Urban Infills – The Coming Wave?

    Thursday, May 9, 2005

    Much has been said about issues concerning development on the periphery of Chicagoland.  Sprawl – even the name sounds like a lethargic beast.  I’ve oft wondered what sort of commute times we’ve created for folks living in the new tracts.  Certainly, sprawl stands to diminish the quality of life by forcing one to spend lengthening times in daily commutes, by lessening the supply of agricultural land, and by investing enormous public funds into new infrastructure projects that serve the far flung reaches.

    The notion of increasing density in existing communities often evokes arguments of crowding and increasing crime.  Yet, many older communities in the Chicago area historically have been more populous, more dense. When the city of Chicago hit its population zenith in the 1950’s, many would argue that it was more livable then, than in the intervening time until today.  While Chicago experienced population growth in recent years, it has yet to recover back to this population level. Some may observe that the inner city has become a more attractive place to live with the increase in population.  Not only is it desirable to live closer to work and cultural centres, density hits on a specific social quality that Chicagoans have been known for.  We like to schmooze.  And one may say that density assists one’s ability to conduct schmoozing.

    By increasing density in established communities with well respected ‘urban images’ and reputations, wanton urban renewal would simply destroy the very qualities that are desirable.  Infill development, respectful of existing infrastructure, may be designed in such a way to maintain those very qualities that are desirable in an existing community.  For a municipality, carefully thought infill may bolster local tax bases to fund services.

    Infill development may take different shapes and sizes, and may seek many different settings to accomplish its goal.  The former Dearborn Station yards are an excellent example of large scale infill redevelopment of existing land that triggered a renaissance of the Near South Side. In Bucktown, the abandoned “Bloomingdale Line” became a pocket neighbourhood providing housing and commercial activities.  One only needs to gaze at the large tracts of vacant land seen from the CTA Green Line to envision future potential.

    Yet, these examples are all larger scaled, and sought to bring about change to existing urban context.  What about established communities looking for densification strategies? Beyond “downtown densification’ and ‘transportation corridor development’ – both excellent strategies – imagination provides a wealth of solutions done caringly with an existing context so as to not disrupt scale and urban image.

    One easy example of small scale, yet effective densification is the potential of the coach house – the ‘granny flat’.  When done properly to respect overall site coverage and setbacks from property lines and other buildings to allow sunlight and open space, the notion of an apartment over a garage on a residential alley addresses many issues.  The overall site coverage increases minimally, a neighbourhood known for open spaces and gardens can still maintain that image.  The notion of people living off of alleys helps to police those spaces by giving a full time human presence.  The notion of smaller living units addresses affordability.  As for what this may look like, one only needs to conjure images of quaint London-style ‘mews’ of flats located off of the main street on lanes.

    London-style ‘mews’ provide a further example of creative densification when applied to other neighbourhoods.  Think of the sort of artist studios that could be created along alleys.  The idea of a community having its own ‘Gallery Walk’ along its backside has an attraction.  Growing from this, some small commercial galleries could blossom along alleys.  Home offices could flourish, with addresses based on “Randolph Lane” rather than “Randolph Street”.

    I wonder….what if a neighbourhood put very small theatres and cinemas along its alleys, and used this to generate festivals for the locals…

    Urban infills offer countless creative solutions to urban problems.