cities – A Jumbled Little World

Baltimore – Some communists and some coffee

Baltimore is quite similar to many other cities in the US. It has a city core that has seen some successful development, where any yuppy can walk around feeling safe and content, there are some bastions of blue collar urbanity, and some areas where no one with other options would live (or even visit). The last aspect of the city was featured in the HBO crime drama

P1010399 — Even benches speak the truth in Baltimore.

The Wire (which is pretty amazing). But I won’t talk about the last group of places, because I typically try to stay away from them (and anyway, they usually have disappointing espresso offerings). However, on a recent trip to Baltimore, Taryn and I checked out a few parts of Baltimore, and I learned a few things about the place. The most important being, that communists make pretty bad coffee (but I’ll get to that part soon).

In DC most of the large “classic” markets are dominated by yuppies and other upper-middle/upper class types. This is not the case in Baltimore. So if you are in Baltimore, go to Lexington Market (Open since 1782! – as their sign proclaims) to see what a non-yuppified market looks like. It is especially worth going to Faidleys fish market inside of Lexington. Their crab cakes are quite good, and if you order a fish sandwich they give you an entire fish on two pieces Wonder bread – good stuff.

But that all sounded like a plug for a tourist trap. We first checked out a communist coffee

shop located in the Mt. Vernon area. Red Emma’s features all of your favorite leftist books and pamphlets, including a rather impressive section of books extolling the virtues of Fidel Castro, Mao, Lenin and other communist revolutionaries. Strangely, Stalin was less well

represented; given that he was at least as good at executing capitalists and other enemies of the state as Mao, I think he deserved some more attention. Maybe I should send them a note. Anyway, I suppose history can be rather cruel to perfectly effective leaders. Oh well.

Although Red Emma’s certainly has an interesting book selection (and I’m being honest here), this socialist experiment fails in the way that matters…their coffee isn’t good at all. Being a socialist (or so I’m told), this fact frightens me a bit. I guess I had always assumed that the alienation of a barista from what she produced was behind the terrible coffee at capitalist coffee shops like Starbucks, and that the elimination of this alienation would bring about a superior drink. My experience at Red Emma’s seems to disconfirm this. Perhaps Red Emma’s needs a bit of the fascism that other socialist states have used for “quality control” purposes. Who knows; well at least they are nice enough to have several computers that just about anyone case use, whether customer or not. So, as with any socialist state, it is probably best if you don’t contribute anything but use the goods the state provides.

We then hopped on the trolly to check out the Hampden neighborhood, which is adjacent to John’s Hopkins University. The neighborhood is well known for people saying “hon” to each other (as well as the certain type of people who are called “hons” – they have really tall blue hair apparently), and they even have a Honfest every June. But hipsters have also invaded. As you walk from the trolly stop, you will walk past modest homes with (at this time of year)

P1010397 — So you know where the money is at.

awesome Christmas decorations out front. It has a definite blue-collar feel that is terribly lacking in many cities. But as you walk east, you eventually reach a decidedly hipper part of town. The stores sell expensive home-goods and clothing, and cafes sell $3 coffee. However, we had heard about a coffee shop here that many think serves the best coffee in Baltimore, and we eventually stumbled upon the little pretentious coffee house that we were seeking.

Spro coffee boasts the most impressive selection of coffee types and brew methods that I have ever seen. You can have your cup made by Aeropress, Chemex, Clever, Eva solo, french press, pour over, Vac Pot, or espresso. However, it is quite expensive; a cup of one o f the more exotic roasts can range anywhere from $3-$7. We passed on the fancy brews this time; I ordered a cappuccino and Taryn ordered a spiced chai latte. The place is tiny, but we luckily were able to get a table.

Our drinks took a while, and the baristas seemed rather disorganized, without an efficient system for making drinks. I found this rather odd, given that people seemed to be mostly ordering espresso and pour over, and there were three people working behind the counter. My cappuccino came eventually and looked beautiful, but Taryn was given a normal latte instead of a chai latte. Although the latte was good, for a latte, she told them about the mix-up and they seemed quite confused.

Eventually Taryn’s chai latte came out, and it was quite good, with an interesting spice combination. The cappuccino had excellent art, and the foam consistency was very good. This foam added a good body and sweetness to the drink that any good foam should. However, the espresso itself seemed a bit flat, without any interesting characteristics of its own. It simply had some basic chocolate elements, but even those were not very vibrant. So the cappuccino was ok, but I expected more from a place as pretentious as Spro. However, because I didn’t try a non-espresso drink (which seems to be their specialty), I’ll not pass judgment for now. I’ll certainly be back next time I’m in Baltimore. And I will be back; this is a cool town.

A trip to Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee

276 — I knew there would be good coffee the moment I spied the fixies out front.

Taryn and I take a yearly trip back to Wisconsin from DC, and this year we decided to spend a few hours in Chicago before heading up to Milwaukee. Neither of us have spent any significant time in the city, so we thought this would be a good chance to do some exploring. The original idea was to visit one of Chicago’s northern neighborhoods (Lakeview), where Intelligentsia Coffee has its original coffee shop (at 3123 N. Broadway St.), via the L. Intelligentsia is one of the best coffee roasters in the country, and some of the best coffee shops all around the country use their beans, so their shop seemed like a good excuse to travel out of the Loop. So that was the plan. Plans don’t always work out, and we found ourselves at the downtown location instead (apparently L stations require exact change…my fault! Though I have to say that my short experience with the L made me long for the New York Subway, or even DC Metro).

But everything turned out ok, because Intelligentsia’s coffee shop at 53 E. Randolph St.is beautiful and spacious. It is really quite shocking, for someone used to the cramped coffee shops of DC, to see what reasonable rents can allow. So there was no trouble finding a seat. We both ordered cappuccinos, and the

latte art was beautiful (and unique) on both of them. The foam texture itself was nearly perfect. The espresso was quite complex, with hints of both berries and cocoa, though there was a slight bitterness that was slightly off-putting. We both speculated that a sweeter milk may have helped this a bit. I won’t give a rating but I think this cappuccino fell just short of some of the best coffee shops in DC (Peregrine) and Madison (Bradbury’s), though daily variability likely places Intelligentsia in the same league as those other places. However, from what I tasted, I certainly don’t think that Intelligentsia is significantly better than these other places (many claim that they serve some of the best espresso in the country), and it doesn’t match the phenomenal cappuccino that I had at 9th Street Espresso in New York last summer (although the latte art was exceptional, I don’t give this a great deal of weight – cappuccinos are primarily for drinking, not looking). But if you are in Chicago, go to one of Intelligentsia’s locations; you won’t be disappointed.

Skinner vs Jacobs: a project

I admit, this has a horrible title. But I wanted to get something written about a project that I would like to work a little more on…and creating good titles is not one of my strengths.

Anyone who has encountered a manifestation of B.F. Skinner’s utopian dreams (Walden II as a prime example) is made instantly aware of a certain view of public policy. Under this view, public policy is formulated by experts who mold the behaviors of citizens in such a way to lead to the most happiness possible. We should never have to ask people what sort of policies are good, we assume that certain results are desirable (pleasure, happiness, fulfillment, or whatever) and formulate policy with those as our end. This is the technocratic idea; it presupposes that people generally do not know how to achieve the outcomes we want and that experts can do so better. This is obviously undemocratic, but we do just this sort of thing for engineering problems. We don’t generally question how the engineers decide to build a bridge, for instance, once we have set the parameters. One might argue that we should aim for the same ideal in public policy; this would require an extensive understanding of sociology and psychology (which we don’t currently have) but we might still think that this is the sort of way we should develop public policy.

On the other end we find theorists such as Jane Jacobs, who thought that planners should generally leave people to their own devices and listen to their preferences. During New York City’s highway wars of the 1960s, Jacobs was one of the principal opponents of the technocrats (Robert Moses, most prominent among them) who had a vision of New York that stressed easy vehicular transportation. Such plans, however, typically involved the destruction of urban neighborhoods. Jacobs advocated mostly democratic (and localist) procedures that centered around the involvement of community members in the formation of public policy related to that community. This is similar to the messy process that is common today; there may be (and often are) grand, all encompassing plans for policy or urban design but these plans rarely see the light of day without a good deal of public debate. Of course, this approach is nearly as problematic as that advocated by the technocrats. Many questions arise as to how such a process actually works. How do we know what the goal of public policy should be? It is likely the case that what is actually better for people (what they will prefer in the end) is different from their current preferences. So, it seems that people may not even know what they want (as paradoxical as that may seem). Also, how do we make any cohesive plans if we have to listen to the chaotic preferences of the public? How do we find any commonalities or order among these preferences? It also often seems to be the case that political power overcomes truth in the formation of public policy. If political power is the determining factor of our public policy using the democratic process, such a process seems just as tyrannical as the technocratic solution.

I have a few more thoughts on this topic but I won’t share those today. I simply wanted to get some questions about this topic written down. I’ll certainly write more about it in the future.

However, perhaps I’ll post some coffee reviews next.

Social Justice and Transit Oriented Developments

As the automobile became the preferred method of travel in the United States during the 20^th century, car oriented development became the dominant pattern of city design. Today it is extremely difficult or simply impossible to go about ones daily life without some reliance upon an automobile. Furthermore, in most areas of the country, the lack of one makes a person a second class citizen. For a variety of reasons, there has been a resurgence in the interest for mass-transit oriented developments (TODs). Proponents of this alternative method of city organization argue for its superiority over car oriented developments in efficiency, aesthetics, and livability (to name a few).^¹ Although there is something to be said for all of these reasons, here I will concentrate on an argument for TODs from the perspective of social justice. Typically arguments from social justice have been among the more controversial because they often involved some sort of redistribution of resources; in American politics it is often unclear how much the rich should be forced to give up in order to help the poor. I hope to bypass this issue by looking at a current public policy that seems to have wide-spread public approval, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and derive from it an argument for government sanctioned support of TODs. In section 1, I describe a number of public policies, including zoning, highway, and accessibility standards for the disabled and from these derive the moral basis for the government support of TODs. In section 2, I explain my argument in detail and address a number of initial concerns. Finally, in section 3, I address the most plausible objection to widespread TOD development – that gentrification could cause the poor to lose their homes. Continue reading Social Justice and Transit Oriented Developments

Architecture is a social science

I have been reading quite a bit lately about how we could design our world to better suit the needs of people. One major debate I have come across is whether Architecture is a form of art. It seems that many architects think of themselves as artists; some of the best are known for the artistry and the revolutionary nature of the structures they design. For example, Frank Lloyd Wright is well respected mainly because of the aesthetic qualities of his structures in and of themselves. People look at the pictures of Wright’s buildings (most of them homes) and see them as works of art; however, we don’t often consider whether they are pleasant places in which to live. It is also interesting to look at the sort of projects that are deemed noteworthy by the architectural community at large, and more importantly how they speak about them. Perusing most publications will reveal that artistically bold designs are the most respected, and much of the debate about their merits happens on this artistic level; there is comparatively little interest given to how these buildings are used or how they affect the people who rely on them.

I think that we should not look at architecture as an art; rather we should consider it to be a science. First, I should probably say that this is not a new idea (J. H. Crawford has said similar things), and also that I’m not making any statement about what architecture currently is (I’m not an architect, so I think it would be odd for me to define the field). However, it seems that the clients of architects (the people who actually live and work in the buildings) would be far better served if the purpose of the profession was to design buildings and living areas that were both useful and psychologically advantageous to the users. If we concern ourselves with these sorts of issues, and leave the more contestable debates about artistic merit behind, then architecture becomes empirical. We can then decide with reasonable conclusiveness which sort of buildings and environments make people happier and allow them to go about their lives most efficiently. Of course, we need to first decide what sort of effects we want buildings to have on people and also the relative weights we should give to the concerns of those who occupy them as apposed to those people for which the building is simply part of the environment. But it seems to me that these are both solvable issues, and once we answered these sorts of questions a systematic description of the properties of ‘good’ buildings is possible. This process, of discovering which sorts of buildings produce positive outcomes for people and then designing these buildings, should be the purpose of architecture.

I don’t find the above process to be all that insurmountable; after all, most of us can discern places we enjoy being around and living in from those that we don’t like. All that architects need to do is take these feelings and systematize their study. Of course, these feelings are culturally relativistic (people in Wisconsin might not be made happy by the sort of architecture that someone in Iran will prefer), however, I would be very surprised if those within cultures had drastically different reactions to many architectural types. If such commonalities can be found, the quality of a great many lives might be drastically increased.

What makes a good bike lane?

I came across this website called Streetsblog today that shows examples of good bike lanes. If you go to the link you will notice that they are all separated from traffic by some sort of divider. This is often ignored in America; here a bike lane is just an extra small lane that is set aside for cyclists. The idea is that a bicycle belongs in the street just like any other vehicle, and that extra accommodations (beyond a slower lane) for bicycles are simply unnecessary. Madison is a perfect example of this; most bike lanes here are either in the parking lane or between the normal lanes of traffic and the bus lane. This makes one feel extremely vulnerable most of the time; either you are dodging parked cars (and their doors) or have cars and buses motoring past you on either side.

There is a feeling among many cyclists that even though there may be bike lanes on some main streets, the unsepereated traffic makes it far too dangerous to actually use the lanes. And this is considered to be an adequate bicycle accomodation by those who design streets. It seems to me that if we actually want to make cycling a practical method of transportation we need to build infastructure that makes it safe. Simply drawing lines doesn’t do that. The lines only accomodate the cars by getting the slower bicycles out of the way.

Something about Ecocities

I’ve just finished reading a book about ecological city building by Richard Register. In Ecocities, Register proposes that the current methods of city planning, which advocate single use zoning and great distances, are horribly inadequate. The cities most of us live in are zoned such that people live far from where they work and shop; each human activity has its own area in the modern city; this makes car travel the most practical method. There are of course some exceptions (if one lives in Manhattan, for example, it would be quite easy to never leave the island) but for the most part, this is an accurate model of the suburban city.

It doesn’t take too much effort to realize the problem with the single use zoning. It is tremendously inefficient. Most people travel with their car every day to and from work; they are not using the space that the automobile provides; in order to simply move themselves, they have to bring along something that weighs a ton or so. Why do we agree to live with such an arrangement? Well, suburbs promise to be pleasant, for one; after all, cities can be rather stressful places to live. And it seems like a good idea to have a plot of land to oneself (though it seems like this land is so often wasted by planting huge tracts of grass….). Compound this with the abundance of cheap energy in the form petroleum and you get the current trend for civilization to sprawl over all the landscape. Driving to far off places is cheaper than buying land in the polluted and noisy city, so it is hard to see an argument against such a sprawl.

Register seems to think that the main problem with our current arrangement is the way it ruins lives, both animal and human. It devastates ecosystems as well as creates a dangerous and violent environment in which heavy objects (automobiles) whizz through the air at great speeds. People also become emotionally separated from each other because of their great physical distances from one another. I think these are all good reasons for hating cars (though I’m not sure the last one is so true, given how much New Yorkers despise each other) but the most pressing concern originating from the petroleum induced sprawl is the imminence of ‘peak-oil’ .

Reaching ‘peak-oil’ means that we have reached the point where petroleum production will begin to decline. This is built into the concept of a finite resource like fossil fuels; we will someday run out. This is why they are not sustainable sources of energy. Fossil fuels are truly amazing in most respects. In case you haven’t stopped and thought about it, try to imagine how much it would cost you to have your car towed across town by a team of animals. Beasts of burden are very expensive to feed and take care of, but this could be accomplished for a few dollars using an internal combustion engine. With this in mind, it isn’t a stretch to consider the cultural and technological boom of the 20^th century to be a result of petroleum. And now imagine the disaster that could ensue if it is used up.

In my opinion, Register’s most important point (one that is also expressed by other people concerned about peak-oil) is that we must re-structure our cities in order to survive after oil is gone. It will no longer be economical to drive to work if you live 30 miles away; therefore we need to build communities that are ‘walkable’, in which you could walk to work, to the store, and home again. He also would like to see extensive use of bicycles in his ‘ecocities’ but they should not be the primary method of transportation. He advocates a major movement of people from the suburbs and non-productive rural areas (places not involved in agriculture) to inside the city. This would cause the density of cities to increase dramatically, though he wishes to mitigate this problem by ensuring that architecture produces cities in which people would want to live. This includes numerous natural spaces and gardens that would also have the effect of increasing biodiversity. To get an idea of what this would entail, I calculated the density that would result from the current population of Madison moving into an area similar to (though quite a bit larger than) Register’s vision of an ecocity; I found that the density would be about 12,000 people /square mile. This is similar to the density of a city like Chicago.

Whether the sort of population density envisioned by Register would be desired by people is not clear. He seems to portray this arrangement as some sort of Utopia; I have my doubts as to whether people are capable of creating such places (there certainly are few examples in history of society working this well). However, I do not doubt that a radical increase in density will be required given the coming scarcity of transportation fuels. I don’t think it is likely that we will be able to completely replace our current levels of fossil fuel energy with sustainable sources, and therefore, a radical reduction in energy consumption is almost certainly necessary. But how do we accomplish this without displacing large populations who will be short of food and other resources? I’m not sure that we can shove density down the throats of citizens who are, for the moment, enjoying very cheap energy. Hopefully, people will slowly come to realize the unsustainable nature of suburban living and migrate to communities that have all the necessities of life within a reasonable distances. If this does not happen, and there is a sudden oil ‘crash,’ then it might be best to obtain a nice piece of land and a whole lot of guns; because if large groups of people are not prepared for the sudden drop of energy availability, and must fight to survive, things could get quite ugly. This is clearly what Register hopes to avoid.

I have many other thoughts about this topic, but hopefully this serves as an adequate introduction. There are other voices in this debate, including the more moderate ‘New Urbanists‘ who have been far more successful than Register. I’ll certainly see what they have to say as well.