Across the Great Divide

Environmentalism as Guilt Management.

The “be less bad” environmental approaches to industry have been crucial in sending important messages of environmental concern— messages that continue to capture the public’s attention and spur important research. At the same time, they forward conclusions that are less useful. Instead of presenting an inspiring and exciting vision of change, conventional environmental approaches focus on what not to do. Such proscriptions can be seen as a kind of guilt management for our collective sins, a familiar placebo in Western culture.

In very early societies, repentance, atonement, and sacrifice were typical reactions to complex systems, like nature, over which people felt they had little control. Societies around the world developed belief systems based on myth in which bad weather, famine, or disease meant one had displeased the gods, and sacrifices were a way to appease them. In some cultures, evens today, one must sacrifice something of value in order to regain the blessing of the gods (or god) and reestablish stability and harmony.

Environmental destruction is a complex system in its own right — widespread, with deeper causes that are difficult to see and understand. Like our ancestors, we may react automatically, with terror and guilt, and we may look for ways to purge ourselves — which the “econ-efficiency” movement provides in abundance, with exhortations to consume and produce less by minimizing, avoiding, reducing, and sacrificing. Humans are condemned as the one species on the planet guilty of burdening it beyond what it can withstand; as such, we must shrink our presence, our systems, our activities, and even our population so as to become almost invisible. (Those who believe population is the root of our ills think people should mostly stop having children.)

The goal is zero: zero waste, zero emissions, zero “ecological footprint.” As long as human beings are regarded as “bad,” zero is a good goal. But to be less bad is to accept things as they are, to believe that poorly designed, dishonorable, destructive systems are the best humans can do. This is the ultimate failure of the “be less bad” approach: a failure of the imagination. From our perspective, this is a depressing vision of our species’ role in the world.
— Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough & William Braungart

I’ll confess: there’s just a bit of the eco-purgative in my cycling, recycling, composting and ratcheting down consumption. And I agree with McDonough that it all falls short as an effective strategy for redirecting entire global systems — just as prayer, smaller government or “drill more” are inadequate responses to impending collapse. Such acts soothe individual souls and perhaps stave off doom for a moment, but do not separate us from its grim trajectory.

McDonough aims for new principles of eco-effectiveness — and more important — putting them into systemic practice. If we were to believe the salvation doctrine of the free market, this new sustainability is where energy company profits, venture capital and government policy should be fast converging.

It may yet. Right now, 12 new cities are being designed to apply McDonough’s ideas. In China.

Too Bad for America: Plymouth is No. 1 Small City.

When Money magazine published its annual list of Best Places to Live and the No.1 Small City in the whole US of A turned up just miles away, I had to take a photo ride!

I waffle between ridiculing, deconstructing and ignoring these rankings. Bob Collins has already covered the preponderance of bland suburban settlements in this list under the category Surveys That Don't Mean Anything. He lives in Woodbury, and he asked only half seriously: What's Plymouth got that Woodbury doesn't?

The answer is available on the site: Higher income, taxes, home values, math test scores and rates of kids in public schools; lower job growth and reading test scores; worse air quality, more libraries and movie theaters, fewer bars...

Wait. Why am I doing Collins' work for him? Let him demand the recount. This is about honoring the winner.

I regularly bike through No.1 Plymouth, Minnesota, and when I saw the magazine's ludicrously sanitized Ralph Lauren version of the good life in Plymouth, I also considered lampooning all of suburbia and the entire Money methodology.

But after 11 years or so in Golden Valley, I've mellowed on the 'burbs.

True, without real cities nearby, none of the top 10, except for Ft. Collins, Colorado, would amount to much. These places are seriously deficient in public spaces and lack any architectural distinction beyond the private home. If you are seeking a foodstuff, article of clothing, houseware or entertainment experience that is only available in your town, good luck.

Speaking of cultural life, Money cited the Hilde Performance Center and the Fire & Ice Festival as amenities, to which, as a next-door neighbor, I can only say, Wha-a-a-a?

I suspect Plymouth's biggest boost comes from simply being in Minnesota, because of our state's higher than average incomes and below the median cost of living. A relatively prosperous suburb like Plymouth scores a $25k+ family purchasing power premium over the average for the Best Places.

Plymouth has been adding affordable housing, yet when I searched for property foreclosures in this third  largest Twin Cities suburb — I found:

Does that even register? The whole rating system seems flukey. Eden Prairie, MN, was ranked in the top 10 in 2006, and though it looks even better on some scores now, it's No. 40 today. 

Plymouth residents seem to like the schools and not mind sitting next to a four-acre parking lot as they enjoy their Starbuck's. There's a mix of large and small employers representing a variety of industries. You can find plentiful open space, though it's challenging to find any sign of Plymouth's origins back to 1858.

For all its similarity to Anywheresville, Plymouth has plenty of good points. But if it's No. 1, that's too bad for America.

[As always, you can run the slide show manually by clicking for the control panel. Click the Picasa logo in the right corner or double-click the screen, and you can run the slide show larger from the Picasa site.]

Glittering Signs of the Times.

The souring condo market isn't the only blow to strike the corner of Hennepin and Washington, where a few years ago, a Whole Foods and condo tower were planned to replace the Downtown Jaguar dealership on the block.

In February, the Minneapolis Planning Commission voted to delay approval of a scaled-down development proposed.

Since Jaguar moved to a location along I-394, its former building stayed vacant, though with three floors of indoor parking, the building might've produced some revenue for its owners. Instead, it produced revenue for someone else.

Copper thieves got inside, according to a dealership employee, and stripped it. The theft went unnoticed until the City of Minneapolis investigated a mysterious drop in water pressure downtown. Inspectors found a flooded basement level that likely will guarantee the building's subfloor boiler can't be put back into service.

From selling Jaguars and Ferraris to blighted block in one year. If you want a symbol of our economy, look no further.

Meanwhile, via The Deets, Johnny Northside continues his innovative campaign to reclaim housing in his neighborhood, which is plagued by the copper bandits.

A Built-in Disadvantage.

It's not just inefficient cars or $4.00 gas or restrictions on offshore drilling. This is why we are so screwed.

Even if people want to look at alternatives, the unfortunate truth for the vast majority of TC residents is that there aren't any alternatives to the long car commute. Most people live in houses ill served by any sort of public infrastructure, far away from sidewalks, corner stores, or transit. And most jobs have moved away from the kinds of places that can be easily served by mass transportation. For example, the "third downtown" along the 494 in the Southwest Metro is composed mostly of a series of isolated office parks and stand-alone buildings. How will people ride transit to jobs at the Best Buy HQ, to give but one example?

Why So Many Roads Suck.

[Intersection near Mall of America, part of the absolute worst stretch of a four-hour bike ride through the city.]

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS) talks about the qualities of a great street and picks 10 of them in the U.S. to feature each year.

Looking at the list of qualities, it's not hard to see why our freeway-laced cities and suburbs lack greatness. An emphasis on vehicles, carrying capacity and speedy non-distraction creates vast dead zones around our streets and highways. These are not the qualities PPS is celebrating.

Attractions & Destinations. Destinations are off-ramp or set back across acres of pavement. If they're visible from the road, they're represented by over sized signs rendered in corporate-approved, back-lit plastic.

Identity & Image. See one freeway, you've seen 'em all.

Active Edge Uses. This deals with human scale and a safe, inviting transition between indoors and outdoors. The closest thing to an active edge use on a freeway is two people on the shoulder exchanging insurance information.

Amenities. Well, having a place to pee and buy beef jerky every so often is certainly covered.

Management. They don't mean Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Seasonal Strategies. Attracting people year round? I wouldn't say drivers are attracted, exactly, but we certainly do linger more in the winter.

Diverse User Groups. "Mixing people of  different race, gender, age, and income level"? Check, as long as they can go at least 50 miles per hour.

Traffic, Transit & the Pedestrian. This one is about lack of auto dominance and ease of access to places  regardless of mode. Have you looked for a place to walk or bike along a busy street lately?

Blending of Uses and Modes. This relates to blurring the edges of public spaces (like sidewalks), commercial spaces and private spaces (like front yards and apartments in upper stories). Development is slowly heading back in this direction, but the last 50 years of road building was based on a different model.

Protects Neighborhoods. They're talking about design, not sound walls and speed bumps.

Santa Fe's Canyon Road is an example of artists transforming a street and then managing to keep it, unlike the usual free market pattern of artists reclaiming an under-loved place, giving it charm and character, and then being pushed out by developers and the gentry who love it to death.

Some might argue that is Canyon Road today, but as a welcoming and intriguing outdoor public space, it still works for me. However, it was helped along by some interesting extant buildings — most of our suburbs have nothing worth reclaiming — early government protection and probably more than a few artists with trust funds.

If We Build it, We Will Sprawl.

I heard a policy guy today on the subject of Minnesota transportation and infrastructure investment. Because the legislature passed a transportation bill last session over the governor's veto, there may be a public perception that, okay, we fixed that problem. And legislators, who know better, have a low appetite for revisiting the battle, at least until after the election.

The public would prefer simple answers, and depending on where we sit, the answer that resonates is: more lanes or more transit, privatization or public investment, lower gas prices or higher gas prices. Land use, regional development and density also come into play.

But all that still frames what we face as an "infrastructure" problem, matters of steel and concrete. The trouble is, if we build it, we will sprawl. Eighty percent new road capacity is quickly consumed by new driving. At least, it was in the era of $2.99 gasoline that Dodge would like us to believe still exists.

We can't build or drill our way out of this. The change has to come from within us.

Although I've always been greener than most, and have never owned an SUV or a lot of gasoline powered toys, I confess to having gone through a series of fast cars that I drove as their makers intended. Until the last year or so, I broke the speed limit every time I got behind the wheel. I biked for transportation, sure, but in the words of one of my readers, it was to prove a point, not to start a chain reaction. Biking to work was as much "about me" as was driving a 5 Liter V8 convertible.

No more.

I'm planning my movement across the earth now, and driving only as a last resort. I'm staying at 55 on the freeway. I'm not sacrificing or doing it to save money; I'm just rethinking my old life.

Via Matt at Two Cities Two Wheels, I checked out the Two Mile Challenge site yesterday. Put in your address, and it draws a two-mile circle around your house. The idea is that anyone could cover two miles and back on any bicycle with a minimum of time, effort and sweat.

The first step is recognizing how much of your world is accessible within that radius without a car. As simple as it sounds, that circle was still a revelation, despite all the miles I've logged around here on foot and two wheels. It made me realize how I thought west and south in my travels, ignoring amenities to the north and east that were actually closer.

If you want to make a start, you don't have to sell your car or move your residence. Just look at your world in a new way.

There's not enough oil, concrete and steel in the world to save people who can not reconsider old habits and redraw their  mental maps.

Slippery When Built.

Bob Collins is soliciting nominations for the Worst Architecture in the Twin Cities. My nomination:

those anonymous mini-malls that ring the Twin Cities with bricked facades and green-tiled endcap towers. The Home Depot/Wal-Mart big boxes, ugly as they are, at least make no pretense of beauty or accommodation to their surroundings. Somehow, buildings that pretend to do so seem even worse to me.

I didn't have a photo handy to illustrate my nomination, but the shot at right captures the spirit.

I also left a few comments there about already nominated buildings: the former Federal Reserve Building and the Multifoods Tower, which I think both succeeded at what they intended, but failed at what they should have accomplished.

Another commenter nominated the former First Bank Place (225 South Sixth), which will be renamed Capella Tower next year. I do have a photo for that building... and a story.

First Bank Place was supposed to be a prestige address, and the developing partners brought in big names to design a landmark building. For added cachet, they commissioned Vietnam Veteran's Memorial designer Maya Lin to do a "winter garden" for the east lobby.

I wrote the leasing brochure for the project. It was a high-gloss, oversize  hard-bound book that had a spectacular center spread of the new building dominating the skyline. It was even more spectacular, because while we were creating the book, the site was still a hole in the ground. The designers, Larsen, rented a crane so the photographer could shoot from the proper angle and altitude, then they stripped in a model of the building. Not a big deal today, but to make it look realistic in 1992 was an accomplishment.

As happens, the planned building didn't exactly get built that way. The winter garden was still a sketch when we did the brochure and as I recall, it was scaled back. Here's how the architects show it on their site. But a more representative image is the next one. 

I've visited namesake clients in the building since it was built, and for a good part of the winter, these signs are installed all over the winter garden's polished granite.

Ten years later, Lin created another Winter Garden for the three-story, glass-enclosed entry to the rather anonymous American Express Client Service Center at 9th St. and Third Avenue:

Called "the character of a hill, under glass," Lin uses birch trees, granite benches, an uneven wooden floor, a pool of water and wall of water that will freeze in subzero Fahrenheit temperatures to bring the outside environment inside.

Next January, I'll have to go see if she and her architects learned anything about winter and buildings in Minnesota.

This is Your Mind on Bikes.

At least, on a Thursday  night.

Earlier in the day, I took my first spring spin down the Midtown Greenway. It's becoming evident how the taxpayer money wasted on this reclaimed rail trench is helping to stimulate development.

Old industrial buildings are being rehabbed. New residential projects are going up and connecting directly to the trail. The community garden is inspiring other plantings along the way. Freewheel Bike is opening a new shop today right on the Greenway at 10th Avenue.

Nearby, I saw this great tandem. The rear steering wheel had cruise controls to Set Acceleration and Coast. Another style of tandem buzzed past me, this one with two bikes and one rider.

Blue Ribbons and Yellow Slips.

“We often hear in this room, and not just on this proposal but any proposal, that it should get a subsidy because they will pay taxes," [House Tax Committee Chair Ann] Lenczewski said before twirling her index finger in the air, "Well whoop-dee-do! Every business in Minnesota pays taxes; we don't give out blue ribbons for paying taxes."
— KARE 11

Rep. Lenczewski was commenting on proposed tax breaks for a Mall of America expansion that would be in her district. She has a point. All businesses pay taxes, so why should the public subsidize some private projects versus others?

A union electrical worker who's been out of work for months has a different view. His livelihood depends on new construction projects. If no one's building, he's out of  job. He's not paying taxes, and he may be collecting unemployment.

I don't care which side you're on, this stuff isn't as simple as cut taxes or no subsidies for billionaires.

Does Walkability Equal Livability?

One index of a livable community is its "walkability," how easily residents can reach on foot the amenities of daily living — schools, libraries, grocers, entertainment, coffee shops and cafes, shopping and parks. The creators of walkscore.com have developed a Google Maps-based tool that allows you to enter an address to find its relative friendliness to walkers. Locations are ranked on 0-100 scale.

Walkable but hardly lovable. Closed retailer in a Brooklyn Center neighborhood that scores the same as Vancouver's West End.

As with any such application, it's only as good as its database and algorithms that rank the various features of the neighborhood. It's more designed for real estate agents and people looking for a nice neighborhood than for promoting a healthy, low-energy-footprint lifestyle. Biking doesn't count here, and neither do sidewalks or access to transit.

The site assigns no value to street scape beauty and safety or quality of the establishments in the area, either. Also, it's hard to tell if proximity to a cooking school scores the same as being near a university campus. Is a serene park with a lakeshore walking path equal to an inner city block populated by vagrants? Or is it worth less because the water takes up space that could be occupied by businesses?

I plugged in a few familiar addresses and got quite a range of scores.

The hiking right out my semi-rural Colorado back door is spectacular, but the walkability only rates a 6.  My lightly driven suburban Minnesota street, within close range of a Byerly's, express bus service, Basset Creek, parks, drug store and a middle school, only scored a 40. Maybe that's because the nearest bar is more than mile away and the closest clothing store is a thrift shop. And since you don't go to a dentist or veterinarian every week, there are no points for being able to walk there.

Hikable but not walkable.

Most denizens of  50th & France in Edina would be terrified to walk the Northside neighborhood of Broadway and Emerson, but it scores nearly as well (65 vs. 69). Higher-scoring neighborhoods included urban Vancouver just off a wonderful avenue near the harbor and Stanley Park (75), a Washington Avenue address at the edge of new condos and the far less genteel near north side (72) and a block just off Selby & Western in Garrison Keillorville (71).

The best score by far I found was at a downtown condo on Main Street in Grand Junction, Colorado (97). I would throw in extra points for weather, art on the street, a weekly farmer's market, low population density and proximity to bike shops (three within two blocks).

We all get to decide for ourselves what best makes a place livable, but the walkable factor certainly offers a good place to start looking.