via How to be a Retronaut; photos by John-Paul Palescandolo and Eric Kazmirek.

The train station was built in 1904, during what is called the City Beautiful movement. It was an era when planners believed that creating the most beautiful and ornate public infrastructure would make their cities cultural beacons, drawing the elite into the city center. City Beautiful is characterized by Beaux Arts architecture, expansive lawns; the large buildings were meant for government or cultural organizations, such as a university, museum, or theater. The expansive lawns and buildings with enormous domed atria were meant to counteract the conditions of urban tenements of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. The miasma theory of disease–in which disease spreads through unhealthy air–was alive and well, and planners designed these lawns to create a sort of “cordon sanitaire” to alleviate these purportedly harmful vapors.

Although the City Hall station is underground, and therefore most definitely not a contributor of healthy, healing vapors, in the context of City Beautiful, the domed ceilings with stained glass skylights do indeed make sense as a sort of restorative from the underground subway.

The City Beautiful movement grew in part out of anti-immigrant sentiment, related spacially to the structure of the tenement.  Many people continue to enjoy these structures to this day,  marveling at their beauty and wondering at the political will to conceive and execute such a project.

And truthfully, projects of this scale do not get built unless motivated by fear. As I was contemplating what type of commitment to public transportation could have spawned such a beautiful subway, it occurred to me that indeed the government is still in the business of building projects of this scale, only through the intermediary of the public-private partnership. Fear continues to be a motivating factor, except that currently the fear of urban blight, rather than the fear of disease, is motivating designers. Showcase buildings are being built in every city, alongside revamped convention centers and pedestrian-friendly zones of commerce. Problematic fixes to class disparities, now spatially related to under-crowding (divestment/urban abandonment) rather than overcrowded tenements, motivate current urban development in many of the same ways they did during the City Beautiful movement. The difference now is that it is impossible, politically speaking, to imagine the construction of a train station such as the well-preserved City Hall station, or of, say, bus shelters designed by famous artists and architects. City Halls must be understated and humble, in recognition of the new state of things: government is secondary to business. Showpiece buildings and statement architecture are not, as many think, a thing of the past. We still build museums, yes, but mostly we build condominiums that use the signifiers of museums in order to create profit.

In the meantime, we’re breathing in the vapors of designs past and present.

Since trees are different sizes, it would be difficult to say how much paper comes from one tree. According to one paper manufacturer, however, a cord of wood measuring 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet—or 128 cubic feet—produces nearly 90,000 sheets of bond-quality paper or 2,700 copies of a 35-page newspaper.

This information was taken from the Boise Cascade Corporation website. The Mead Corporation website also has useful facts and information about papermaking.

Of course, the source of the information is a corporation. Hmm…  Here is what Howstuffworks.com says:

I know that in manufacturing paper, the wood is turned into pulp. The yield is about 50 percent — about half of the tree is knots, lignin and other stuff that is no good for paper. So that means a pine tree yields about 805 pounds of paper. I have a ream of paper for a photocopier here and it weighs about 5 pounds and contains 500 sheets (you often see paper described as “20-pound stock” or “24-pound stock” — that is the weight of 500 sheets of 17″ x 22″ paper). So, using these measurements, a tree would produce (805/5 * 500) 80,500 sheets of paper.

They created an equation involving the volume of the tree, weight of the paper, and some other variables. I don’t care enough to check if their math makes sense or not. The number of sheets of paper is roughly the same as the answer from the corporate website.

So I can rest assured that I have not used (wasted) even one entire tree’s worth of paper in the last two semesters. I constantly have to remind myself that things like conserving paper, energy, and water are important, but that the waste does not happen on the consumption side of things, but that industry wastes or uses these resources in excess. So I can feel less guilty about the paper and more guilty about all of the waste that went into the computer I’m typing this blog entry on. Phew.

But of course, to say that all of the spaces dominated by bridges are vacanted and catalyze neighborhood deterioration is a gross generalization. Yesterday, I went to DUMBO in Brooklyn with a friend of mine who is creating a Sound Walk. For his walk, he chose a waterfront park that sits between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and is skirted by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The Manhattan Bridge carries four different subway lines across the East River (N,Q,B and D), which means that there is constantly a train roaring across the tracks, drowning out everything but the person closest to you, who is straining to be heard.

The park itself is beautiful. An artificial rock beach is reached by four wide concrete steps, for sitting and picnicking and playing. There are paths lined by blooming flowers, geese waddling around on the grass, and children playing on a playground. Couples sit on benches (closely so they can hear each other) and stare at the Lower Manhattan Skyline. The two bridges are gorgeous to take in, their suspension cables hinting at the dynamic energy of the city and borough. 

The most amazing thing about the park to me was the way my senses were disconnected from one another. My eyes were telling me that the park is a peaceful place to take in the city, each lunch and chat with a coworker, or sit with my eyes closed and let the sun warm me. But what I heard–a constant barrage of trains, cars, honking semi trucks–put me on edge. Sight and sound are at odds with one another in this DUMBO park between the bridges. Most people seem to have come to terms with this clash between the senses, however. Perhaps they did what I tried to do, which was to concentrate on sight, and the person next to me, and ignore the extreme noise, drown it out through sheer willpower.

And that is precisely what my friend, the sound artist, is exploring with his sound walk. It is fascinating, really, to be forced to concentrate on the noises that you typically screen out. He pointed out the different tones, and bass levels, of the trains, and requested that I listen for the sounds underneath the rumbling subway. I did, and I heard sprinklers, geese, water lapping against the pier, and restless children listening to a presentation on water ecology. These sounds were mundane, but I never would have heard them if I had not been concentrating.

One of the interesting things about this park is the very obvious clash between industrial and post-industrial Brooklyn. Along the waterfront are old tobacco warehouses, some of which are but shells of the former building. Others are still three stories, with original iron doors, but are closed off because their wooden floors have deteriorated. DUMBO was a place that burgeoned because of river commerce, and it is apparent from all of the refurbished brick lofts that merchants did pretty good business. Because the neighborhood was a warehousing center, an industrial waterfront that served as the lifeblood for surrounding neighborhoods, putting the bridges there made perfect sense. Goods go in and out easily, and the surrounding communities don’t have enough money or political clout to complain about how the bridges and highways are cutting neighborhoods off from one another. Indeed, when this infrastructure was built, there might not have been many people at all living so close to the waterfront.

What is interesting to me is that if, instead of being an industrial center, the waterfront had always been a place to play, and DUMBO had been a retail and office center with housing as it is now, the bridges and highways would never have been built there. I can hear the outraged cries of the DUMBO Improvement District now. Think about the noise! The children!  They would cry. It would decimate our community and create “no man’s lands” all around, where the propertied man is not safe to pass. So they would say.

The park between the bridges, beautiful and loud, is a place that is only possible because of DUMBO’s industrial past. It is a complicated park, one that would only be an acceptable place of recreation to city-dwellers who find peace in a place to sit outdoors. Taking the sound walk with my friend was an important exercise in accepting the city, and in realizing that the “aural environment,” as he says, can tell the history of a place as tangibly as can the building facades.

On Wednesday, a number of groups staged a sit-in at the Hennepin County Sheriff’s office last Wednesday. They were demanding an end to the sale of certain foreclosed homes and a chance to speak to the sheriff.  The coalition of groups included ACORN, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHC), Minneapolis IWW, Economic Crisis Action Group, and Homes Not Jails,

The PPEHC has also been working with a national network of activists to move people into foreclosed or otherwise abandoned homes. Their work is both direct action and social service, and in this way, is a radical and representative movement from within the effected communities. This article from the Inter Press Service describes the situation in Minneapolis:

[The] Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign recently announced on Valentine’s Day that they were moving a dozen families into foreclosed homes. 

The PPEHRC has an “underground railroad” of activists in states across the U.S. who have moved hundreds of families into foreclosed homes within the last nine months, Cheri Honkala, national organiser, told IPS. Actions have taken place in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi and Ohio, Honkala said. 

“We have 13 houses right now in the Twin Cities we’ve taken over, they’re owned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). These properties were foreclosed on and owned by the federal government,” Honkala said. 

These actions and protests are turning middle-class homeowners (or people considered middle class because they own a home, but are otherwise working class) into activists willing to be arrested to get their point across. Their goals are clear, but have a wide breadth: they want a moratorium on foreclosures, to stop specific sales in their towns, and a well-formulated housing plan from the government.  As this crisis deepens, effecting more and more families, the willingness of people to squat homes and sit in at the sheriff’s office will increase. And this might be the only way to get the government to listen.

The Public Housing program wasn’t created until 1936, after a rash of wildcat sit-down strikes in shops across the country plagued business and government in 1934. Until the government feels the need to get the middle- and working-classes under control, it probably won’t react with the kind of breadth and vision that it needs to. The coalition represented by the PPEHC, Acorn, and Homes Not Jails (an inspiring group who have been housing people without homes in vacant buildings since the early 1990s) may actually represent an alliance of radicals, working-class homeowners, and the working poor. Can it be sustained?  What can I do?

“Widening roads to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity,” says Walter Kulash, the author of 86/64′s feasibility study of their proposed traffic patterns. Kulash is a prominent traffic engineer from Orlando, and buddies with New Urbanist planners. Certainly, if anyone knows anything about highways, it’s a traffic expert from Florida, an entire state of sprawl. I’m being droll, but you get the point.

At the top of My list of Things To Like About Highway Removal is the evidence that urban planners are responding to social justice activists’ calls for more equitable city development. Highways bisected, passed over, and obliterated entire communities–and, surprise, almost all the neighborhoods were minority communities. African-American neighborhoods were demolished and divided by highways, introducing hard-to-cross streets, dark underpasses, and destroying retail businesses along the underpasses.  Removing these highways is a good first step towards ameliorating these effects. 

The Congress for a New Urbanism has made a list of Top Ten Teardown Projects in an article called “Freeways Without Futures.”  Louisville’s I-64 is on this list, no doubt due to 86/64′s carefully formulated (and well-branded) position. There’s a lot that I appreciate about this project and their message, but I don’t have space to go into that here. However, I am wary of many New Urbanist projects, and I’m not sure what 86/64′s organizational politics are. For example, they don’t have a page on their website for coalition groups, so I don’t know who they are allying themselves with. 

There is a balance to be struck: how do we make our cities more pedestrian-friendly, encourage smart regional growth, but also work hard to combat the swift gentrification of neighborhoods (and displacement of their residents) that will arise from a visionary highway removal plan? Urban planning does not happen in a vacuum. If a city, such as Louisville, is going to encourage creative class development, they need to foster the development of a creative class, from the ranks of city residents. Too often, New Urbanists want to plan for a world in which political equity has been achieved; if we plan it, they will come around. 86/64 is an interesting plan, one that I will follow. Can they strike a balanced pose? 

Ok, I didn’t mean to end on such a cynical note. Here’s the video from their homepage, complete with John Prine singing “My Old Kentucky Home.”

Apparently, fiscal analysis shows that it’s a $15 million per year money pit. It only brings in $4 million per year, but costs about $20 mil to run. Public Authorities have the power to assume debt, in the form of bonds, for specific public projects. They then charge for the services provided by the facility to recoup the investment–with a return, of course–to the bond investors. Until recently, real estate bonds for public works and infrastructure projects were seen as one of the safest investments. But of course, if you invest in a convention center, and then corporations cut expenditures, you’ll have a hard time getting a return on your investment. No corporate travel, no conventions. 

So if the Cobo Hall convention center is a failed venture, why is the city so up in arms? Some columnists have admonished the city council for not taking the opportunity to relieve some of the city’s expenses.  However, many of the commenters posted on the Detroit Free Press website clearly support the Convention Center plan as a piece of the puzzle that will revitalize Detroit’s economy. 

The commentators believe forfeiting control over Cobo Hall will put another slash mark on the “suburbs” side of the board, leaving Detroit’s center city with less power than it had before. If I understand it correctly, regional planning is, politically, difficult to navigate for this very reason: control. Or, the appearance of it.

Now that it’s politically expedient–i.e. good for the budget–state legislatures are working hard to take back forty years of fear-mongering about prisoners and the inner city. The sensationalist rhetoric still persists, of course, and these policy initiatives will certainly be controversial. One of the articles, in the Wisconsin State Journal, had the best opener ever:

Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposed prison changes would make an estimated 3,000 felons eligible for early release from prison — potentially including thieves, cocaine couriers and tax cheats — and could lift state supervision of an additional 7,000 people on probation.

That’s right, thieves, cocaine couriers and tax cheats. Oh my!

Whether or not these reforms are simply rewriting narratives of innocence, reconstructing definitions of who is deserving of freedom, these reforms will affect real lives. There are people who will get out early, and others who won’t have to go in at all. But as with any reform, we will only be able to examine the effect on the prison abolition movement in hindsight.  

Here’s the round-up of the most recent articles from midwest newspapers about reforming prison legislation and parole policies to reduce the number of prisoner. And one Slate article written by a reformist dispelling myths about prison overcrowding.

New study can be key to state prison savings–Detroit Free Press

Wisconsin Budget: Prison Proposal Defended–Wisconsin State Journal

Plan for Prison Reform–Cincinnati Enquirer

The Indy Star reports ”The $787 billion bill President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday prohibits spending any of the money on swimming pools, golf courses, zoos, aquariums or casinos.” It also, according to the article, prevents schools from spending the money on stadiums. 

Tourist- and entertainment-oriented development has for years been a mainstay of downtown revitalization, rezoning industrial areas and privatizing our public spaces. In all likelihood, these restrictions won’t force cities to reorient their priorities. But considering the bond financing problems city development and infrastructure are–or will be–facing, urban governments might be faced with a confluence of forces that will turn them away from expensive public-private partnerships. Then the question is, of course, what is the alternative? Where will people work in our service economy?

Also: Today’s Story Corps piece on NPR is a salient and experience-based perspective on ‘renewal’:

“To me urban renewal meant that they’ll dig a deep hole, and push your school, cover it up,  and it will be like your school never existed. Or you never existed.” –Rev. James Seawood.

The article quotes one neighborhood resident who says ”This is not a ‘not in my backyard’ issue, this is a ‘no more in my backyard’ issue.” 

I’ve seen this before. Residents concerned with property values aren’t afraid to speak out loudly against homeless shelters. Often, they use euphemistic language to code their class issues as concern for “public safety,” or saturation of community services in their area. The Iowa Shelter wants to relocate to be closer to jobs, transportation, and away from the abandoned buildings and dilapidated environs of its current location. A safer neighborhood means it is more likely shelter residents will be able to stay clean, get a job, seek health care, etc. All the same reasons the residents like the neighborhood. Weird, right?

One of the major failings I see with the new urbanism’s commitment to community involvement is that neighborhood associations are typically the first stop for planners, council members and developers seeking approval. But often, these groups are almost all homeowners; and certainly, neighborhood associations were historically created exclusively for the protection of property values. Not all associations are NIMBY, or classist, and some are actually doing rather radical things with their communities. More on those later.  

The current preoccupation with ‘neighborhood involvement’ creates a situation in which some residents are empowered to push others out. Renters vs. Homeowners, so to speak. When they can claim to represent the community–and assert that they are the most democratic possible form of representative government available in our country–there is a problem. 

Homeless shelters are constantly fighting neighborhood groups. Not in every community, but in many. And I’m especially referring to shelters for men, who have not been written into a narrative of innocence as women and children have (most people would not oppose, or dare to speak out against, a domestic violence shelter, for example).  Even beyond relocation problems, many shelters clash with civic groups just for the right to stay where they are, as rising home values change the up-and-coming neighborhood that the shelter chose twenty or thirty years ago to a solidly middle-class community of homeowners.

And, if all else fails and the shelter is relocated, at least they still have the power to take all of the benches out of the neighborhood’s parks, as one neighborhood in New Orleans has done.  Now that’s ingenuity.

P.S. From Cincinnati Enquirer–Report shows Ohio Charter schools to be ineffective.