The Ruse Has Worked

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Hal

Reading Harper’s, I came across a piece from Daniel Brook’s upcoming book, A History of Future Cities:

“Though Westernness feels like an immutable inheritance, whether a people sees itself as heir is actually a conscious decision that only later becomes an unconscious patrimony. Many of the Egyptians and Syrians of today are the descendants of Roman citizens, and yet they see themselves as non-Western. Many even consider themselves to be in a struggle against the West. Meanwhile the Germans, descended from the barbarians who sacked Rome, consider themselves heirs to Western civilization. A city such as Berlin, with its neoclassical museum buildings, is no different that St. Petersburg in its ex post facto writing of its people into the Western tradition. Berlin feels less Disneyfied than St. Petersburg only because the ruse has worked.”

Fantastic Dives

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Hal

Long ago, far away, the book Fantastic Dives by Elliott Koretz and Michael Nankin was my roadmap to much great quirky, hole-in-the-wall food in LA. As part of writing a review of The Pantry, I found this video by the authors, who look to have had a segment on KNXT back when.

It must be the holiday book season

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Hal

Not only does Christopher Alexander have a new book (The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems), Nassim Taleb does, too (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder).

Well, heck, if I’m going to mention those two, then I’ll also mention Steve Minkin has a new novel out. (Showdown At The Hoedown)

Given how rare new books are from either Alexander or Minkin, this is quite the syzygy.

Local investing and real estate

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Hal

The Atlantic Cities has an interesting post by Emily Badger about a pair of brothers — Dan and Ben Miller — who are trying to raise local neighborhood capital to build on a small basis in Washington, DC.

Reading it, Badger relays from the brothers many of the problems such advocates of local investing bump up against that are pieces of fallout from the Securities Act of 1933, and its requirement that securities only be sold to “accredited investors.”

This all sounded familiar to me. The reason for that was, I’d heard Michael Shuman give a talk in support of his book, Local Dollars, Local Sense.

What’s particularly interesting to me is, these efforts at local investing have the potential not only to completely overturn our current models about where and how to invest — they’re also a lot closer to what I would consider an authentic libertarianism.

What I mean by that is, your typical libertarian candidate today tends to have this as a program:

1) Elect me…
2) …and I’ll use the power of my political office…
3) …to completely re-shape the current regulatory regime, using the power of the state.

They may well be well-intentioned. They may well believe that radically removing regulations is what the market needs to be kick-started. But the fact remains that many of those regulations have existed for decades, if not generations. The market has responded to them, and priced them in. To use the power of the state to suddenly remove those regulations is just as much of an intervention as installing them suddenly would be. Both actions dramatically change what a fan of biology would call the market’s homeostasis, or what Hayek called the extended order. Both actions perform what Hayek calls “the fatal conceit” — sudden do-goodism to reshape the market in a manner more pleasing to the shapers.

Contrast that to what the Millers and Shuman are advocating:

1) Here are the rules
2) Here’s how you can work within them…
3) …to great profit.

In other words, rather than using the state to destroy the market in order to save it, the Millers and Shuman are proposing methods of the market, by the market, for the market to wring the most from the current extended order.

More Kent news

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Hal

Driving by on Smith today, I noticed one of the banners on the site of the former multi-story garage read, “Venture General Contracting — www.ventureseattle.com”

Ah. That explains “Venture Downtown” — although it strikes me as a bit creepy for an official city government site to use a contractor’s name like that.

Anyway, I looked at Venture’s Projects page, and found a brief listing for the building. Googling on the architects’ name led to this page, which is probably the most detailed I’ve seen so far. The view is west along Smith, with 2nd just clipping the bottom-left corner.

Generally it seems to be a Sucher three rules building of the Pacific NW idiom, and it might even allow the possibility for the café opening onto the fountain plaza that Ulrika would like.

Venture Downtown Kent

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Hal

My city, Kent, Washington, currently has a survey up on how to improve downtown. This is what I just wrote for the “What else would you like?” essay:

*^*^*

The old train station — the original Kent Station — should be renovated, perhaps into a restaurant. (I’m thinking of Bert Grant’s brewpub in Yakima — the first in Washington state — as an example.) The current parking lot could be converted into more of a square. Even turning this into a railway museum would be an improvement from the negative space it is today.

David Sucher’s “3 Rules” from his book City Comforts are applicable. “Rule 1: Build to the sidewalk (i.e., property line); Rule 2: Make the building front “permeable” (i.e., no blank walls); Rule 3: Prohibit parking lots in front of the building.” So, for example, the parking lots in an L shape surrounding the Wells Fargo building should have something else on the streetfronts. The empty space there kills the flow.

By the same token, something has to go into the SW corner of Meeker and 2nd, and it would be really good to get the building in the NW corner into use, too.

I recommend the “Walkable Town Center” posts at PlaceMakers.com. I’m also a strong supporter of design principles similar to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language.

In general, the flat “Anvil of God” desert-like parking lots have to go. Again, they’re killing the life of the place.

Downbelow

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Hal

I just saw this post about New York’s abandoned City Hall subway station. Looking around for other images, I found this one, which is particularly interesting to me because it shows how daylight is allowed down to the station through glass tiles in the sidewalk.

Why it got abandoned: Seems it’s a tight loop. The subway trains had more cars — and longer cars — added on, and they can’t take the curve any more. It’s deemed prohibitively expensive to dig a new tunnel, so… The station is left alone in its silence.

Little Libraries

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Hal

This is the cutest, and most convivial, thing I’ve seen in a while. Basically, they’re large-mail-box size “libraries.”

The Shard, London

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Hal

Shard_London_Bridge_May_2012 by halobrien

Shard_London_Bridge_May_2012, a photo by halobrien on Flickr.

1930′s Italian Futurism called, Mr. Piano, and they’d like their cinema set back.

Actually, perhaps Orwell put it best, in 1984:

“The Ministry of Truth – Minitrue, in Newspeak – was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up terrace after terrace 300 metres in the air.”

Well, admittedly, it’s glass not concrete, but aside from that…

Do as Rem builds, not as he lives…

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Hal

From an interview of Rem Koolhaas by Spiegel, back in 2006:

“SPIEGEL: Some people say that if architects had to live in their own buildings, cities would be more attractive today.

Koolhaas: Oh, come on now, that’s really trivial.

SPIEGEL: Where do you live?

Koolhaas: That’s unimportant. It’s less a question of architecture than of finances.

SPIEGEL: You’re avoiding the question. Where do you live?

Koolhaas: OK, I live in a Victorian apartment building in London.”

I think Cameron’s Skepticism applies here. That is, Koolhaas can tell me all day that more recent architecture is more convivial and a better “machine for living,” but until he’s willing to choose it for himself — even if by another architect, not necessarily his own work — I’m going to assume he doesn’t actually believe that.

Hal O’Brien – 林白山

"You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals." — Barack Obama

Category Archives: Urbanism