Changing seasons in London

Nothing gives you the sense that London is a city in constant flux like going away for a while and trying to find the things that were there when you left. That cafe on Whitecross street with the free internet, the Citibank branch on the Strand, Lehman Brothers... where did they all go? Some spaces went down the tubes with the recession, others have just been repurposed to better effect. For example, London has been expanding its bike lane network at a rapid pace. A few things that look temporary stay on longer than the things that are built out of brick.. like the vegetable stand at Holborn Station. Taking after the Turbine Hall, London is constantly being broken down and re-staged.

E. Mattiuzzi

Cities of the future?

Climate change is a soggy reality for political leaders in the Maldives where an underwater cabinet meeting was held this week. Those computer-rendered images of what New York or London would look like with rising sea levels don't even come close for these folks.

E. Mattiuzzi

It's a long way to Copenhagen... from Houston.

I recently took a fresh look at Houston since my last visit ten years ago. Or at least, “fresh” is how I felt during the moments between air conditioned buildings and cars. While many of my coastal, post-carbon-apocalyptic prejudices about the city still hold, I also saw something new in its haphazard planning.

Houston is famous for exercising little or no municipal control over zoning and land use, which leads to a cheek-by-jowl scattering of homes, businesses, and freeways. (The Zone d’Erotica shop unabashedly occupies what is clearly a former pancake house next door to an unamused Dillards department store.) The region’s muggy climate and low gas prices make Greater Houston heavily car-oriented. Pedestrians are a low-status exception to the Ford F-250 rule. A honking Escalade at a parking-lot entrance reminded me that you still have to look both ways if you’re on the sidewalk.

From a climate-controlled vehicle, I got a glimpse of Houston life. Locals describe neighborhoods that are seven miles apart (roughly the span of San Francisco) as being “close” to one another. I gawked openly at the Chase Bank's 8-lane drive-through ATM. The California Pizza Kitchen has “curbside” service so you don’t have to get out of the car to collect your takeout order. A waiter simply walks up to your window and swipes your credit card. The multiplex has valet parking.

Central Houston’s traffic jams resemble its summer thunderstorms: clouds converge out of nowhere, and a brief but torrential downpour ensues. Drivers can be ruthless or (if you admit to being a lost and befuddled visitor) downright friendly-- a fellow motorist got out of his car to give directions after traffic inched ahead and he could no longer give them from his window.

Urbanists and demographers alike see urban centers of the future looking more like Lagos or Mexico City than the orderly grid of the 20th century prairie metropolis. I couldn’t help but think that messy, crowded Houston may actually be more representative than most US cities of the urbanism of the future. Like Mexico City and Lagos, Houston is divided between those whose air-conditioned cars bypass traffic on toll roads and those who dab their foreheads and wait for the bus. From the freeway, Houston’s commercial strips are a flipbook of tangled overhead wires, gas stations, and drive-thru Tex-Mex.

Houston is a city of intense wealth and intense poverty. Energy interests saturate Houston’s cityscape and institutions- (Ken Lay’s name is etched eerily on the Fine Arts Museum donor wall). Yet Houston’s informality gives it an intensely flexible urban landscape and a dynamic economy. It has a tremendous capacity to absorb new people- both immigrants seeking work and thousands of Katrina survivors.

Houston’s urban design possesses seemingly little coordination or regard for history and no mediation between commercial interests and land uses. The motto seems to be “if it’s not in style anymore, tear it down and rebuild.” Or perhaps, “if it’s not profitable, tear it down and rebuild.” Houston sprawls and reconstitutes itself with the vigor of a Gulf storm surge. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Houston took advantage of its flexibility to be ahead of the curve in adopting low-carbon lifestyles in the 21st century?

E. Mattiuzzi

Garden Cities, US-style

Belgium doesn't have a monopoly on cute and walkable.

Amazing Slate.com slideshow on Forest Hills, in Queens, NYC. It suggests that an attractive mix of housing types on a curvy but walkable grid can work in a US suburb. And that it did. A hundred years ago.

E. Mattiuzzi

fresh interest in Midtown alleys

Like all good things in the urban environment, the Old Soul coffee company in Midtown Sacramento wasn’t intended to be what it is now. Old Souls is tucked in a warehouse in the middle of an alleyway. The building’s high ceilings and exposed beams hint at a past life as a workshop or an auto garage.

According to the Sacramento Bee, local developers have proposed building small, affordable residential units in the alleyway where Old Soul is located at 18th and Capitol. Another alleyway near Memorial Auditorium would model a row of (expensive) seafood and Italian restaurants in San Francisco.

But the charm of Old Soul is precisely its unplanned nature. The Bee reports that Old Soul originally roasted beans to sell wholesale, and gradually started serving coffee and food, formalizing its operation with permits and a cash register along the way. (A sign at the counter informs regulars that Old Soul has now started collecting sales tax on walk-in orders.) No central corporate office decided on the mismatched chairs and benches, board games and books scattered about the old brick building.



Sacramento has been slowly taking notice of its alleyways. Over the past few years, the city quietly issued individual permits for a handful of new and above-garage housing units in alleyways, adding foot-traffic and life to its urban core.

The city could stand to make it easier for individual developers and businesses to set up shop in Sacramento’s alleyways. (Current code requires the city to grant an exception or variance.) But architectural re-use and creative designs should take priority over cookie-cutter redevelopment.

Neighborhoods and buildings that evolve over time create a more vibrant city than large-scale, purpose-built structures. To urbanist Jane Jacobs, this meant allowing a city block to evolve with new uses and new architectural styles one building at a time, like Old Soul Coffee has.

And one more thing. Developers and Bee reporters need not use “European” as a catchword for pedestrian-friendly streets. Midtown’s walkable blocks and alleys are as American in style as its grid of numbered and lettered streets. Those who remember a time (or live in a place like Midtown) where you don’t need to get in a car to buy a newspaper know that Midtown is full of character and surprises that reflect a rich blend of Sacramento history, not an imitation.

E. Mattiuzzi

Time to look in the mirror: Sacramento tent city attracting national media attention

Sacramento's homeless population is front page news on the New York Times website. Homelessness is not a new issue in Sacramento. Neither is the fact that the city regularly shuffles people who build temporary encampments between several locations along the Sacramento River near highway 160, Discovery Park, and the industral area near Loaves and Fishes and the Salvation Army. The homeless population is visible along Richards Boulevard and 7th Street.

Their tents, either along the river under the 16th street bridge or in the railyards, are regularly raided by police and their belongings confiscated. Ostensibly this is to keep settlements from becoming too permanent, which, in the eyes of city officials, could raise issues about tenure and code enforcement.

One idea that has been floated recently is creating a permanent shelter, basically a warehouse site with basic services like a roof and bathrooms, modeled on shelters in Portland, OR. According to the Times article and Good Morning America, this idea has gained traction with Mayor Johnson. Foreclosure rates in the Sacramento Valley are among the highest in the nation. Increases in homelessness have, apparently, become too embarassing to the city to ignore any longer. To be seen is how a "permanent shelter" would be implemented- whether homeless people with pets would be accomodated (a major barrier for many to seeking formalized shelter) how safety would be provided for, and whether people would even want to live there.

The idea that we would need a "government sanctioned tent-city" speaks to the fact that we treat homeless people as sub-citizens, criminalizing their very existance and ability to meet their own basic human needs. We exclude them from the streets with loitering laws, by removing park benches, and puting spikes on the ground under window ledges where someone might sleep. The very word "homeless" indicates that someone is deficient because they are "without a home" or "without a roof" as some romance languages put it.

As Berkeley Professor Nezzar AlSayyad is fond of saying, Americans have a "right to safe and sanitary shelter, not a right to shelter." This means that although we make sure that a "formal" housing structure meets strict codes, we don't make sure that everyone is housed. In other words, if a homeless person erects a tent or a shanty without proper plumbing and insullation, it will be torn down even if it means that the person is sleeping on the ground in the rain with nothing over their head.

There are bigger problems of inequality, a broken economic system, and government indifference that fuel homelessness and turn the problem and the stigma on the individual, rather than society. We will see if Sacramento decides to address both the immediate housing crisis and its underlying causes.

E. Mattiuzzi

operation inconspicuous: put down the phone.

Cell phones are the new cigarettes. Don't have a newspaper or a book but want to blend in standing on the corner? Text a friend. If Steve McQueen were in a film today, he wouldn't try to look casual on the streets of San Francisco or New York by lighting up. He would flip open a cell phone and pretend to check his email. On the street, a phone in hand turns a loiterer into someone who's just waiting for a text to drop out of the ether and remind them why they exist. "He's looking at his phone, so he's probably not standing on that corner preparing to execute a heist." It's like when someone double parks their car but puts their emergency lights on. "Don't worry, nothing to see here." One of the greatest pleasures in life is sitting on a bench or at a cafe table peoplewatching. Why should it be awkward to have no official occupation other than drinking a coffee by oneself and observing others? In a society that spends so much time in cars and behind gates, we are constantly allowing the right to stand on the street with no particular business to be eroded.

E. Mattiuzzi