Makers of Things

Woody Guthrie would surely have been pleased with this line from President Obama’s inaugural speech yesterday:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given.  It must be earned.  Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less.  It has not been the path for the faint-hearted – for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.  Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

 

How true, though that common sense history has been largely ignored in the economic policies that have existed throughout most of my adult life, a reality articulated well by the union boss in season two of The Wire:

 

You know what the trouble is…? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket.

 

Indeed. Remind me again how that’s worked out.

 

So let’s invest in making things in America, green things, and restore a measure of prosperity to the many, rather than the pick-pocketing few.

 

More Real Than Real

The Times today has an impressive obituary of Andrew Wyeth, who died yesterday in Pennsylvania at age 91.

 

His work has always hit me in the existential gut and seems to capture my childhood ennui growing up in the rural Midwest, feelings I can’t easily articulate but recognize when I see them on his canvas.

 

Of his work, Wyeth said:

 

“Let’s be sensible about this. I put a lot of things into my work which are very personal to me. So how can the public feel these things? I think most people get to my work through the back door. They’re attracted by the realism and they sense the emotion and the abstraction — and eventually, I hope, they get their own powerful emotion.”

 

For me, that “eventually” has always been immediately and I feel many must get to his work like that, right through the front door, which he seems to have left so invitingly open.

 

RIP Andrew Wyeth.

 

[And PS to MoMA: please find a better place for Christina’s World, than the cramped exit to the fourth floor gallery. It’s an inhospitable place to appreciate such a profound work.]

 

It Really Happened

After waiting a whole day to see if we might devastatingly wake from this remarkable dream…it seems like it all actually happened!

 

We did it, America!

 

Now the hard work begins.

 

An Historic Day

Do the Right Thing America!

 

(Speaking of America, Ira Glass voted right behind us this morning at our polling place)

 

Climate Change 101

Um, Governor, how can you fix the problem, if you don’t accurately assess the causes?

 

I don’t want to argue about the causes,” she said in St. Louis. “What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?”

 

To Biden, a Democratic senator from Delaware running with Sen. Barack Obama in the November 4 election, knowing the cause is critical to finding a cure.

 

“If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution,” Biden said. “We know what the cause is. The cause is man-made. That’s the cause. That’s why the polar icecap is melting.”

 

Are we really still having this argument? My god…

 

Sedum America Style

I for one would welcome a green roof-a-thon here in the States, and it seems like Cincinnati may be throwing down the gauntlet:

 

Officials want to see more green roofs on building tops in Cincinnati.

 

The City Council on Wednesday became the first in Ohio with a plan to channel grants and loans to residents and businesses to replace tar and shingles with vegetation.

 

Supporters of the idea want to see Cincinnati become a leader in green roofs, a European-born movement that has spread to only a few U.S. cities, including Chicago, Milwaukee and Seattle. […]

 

A report by the Green Roof Research Program at Michigan State University estimates that 12 percent of all flat-roofed buildings in Germany are covered with vegetation. It noted several barriers to widespread acceptance in the United States, including lack of government incentives or tax breaks.

 

”What the city of Cincinnati is doing is the largest effort I have heard of,” Monsarrat said. ”It will be interesting to watch that and see how it works.”

 

Hey Portland, are you going to let Cincy get away with that? How about you Chicago? Mayor Mike? Let’s up the ante here…

 

Building Bust

And the slow, steady decline of the New York City building boom officially begins:

 

After seven years of nonstop construction, skyrocketing rents and sales prices, and a seemingly endless appetite for luxury housing that transformed gritty and glamorous neighborhoods alike, the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York’s real estate boom to an end. […]

 

It is hard to say exactly what the long-term impact will be, but real estate experts, economists and city and state officials say it is likely there will be far fewer new construction projects in the future, as well as tens of thousands of layoffs on Wall Street, fewer construction jobs and a huge loss of tax revenue for both the state and the city.

 

Ominous Ripples

I have, at best, a marginal understanding of the varied sources cities tap to fund services, expand infrastructure, etc, but it appears the municipal bond market was another overly clever Wall Street “product”, making money where none existed. (See “Big Shitpile”)

 

Analysts said the dysfunction in the municipal bond markets appeared to signal the end of an era of relatively cheap money for governments and, probably, the start of an era of tough choices for communities. When the market starts moving again, they said, it will look a lot like the municipal bond market of 10 years ago, before the arrival of financial wizardry in the form of structured-finance products, which lowered borrowing costs but added big new risks. […]

 

Municipalities will probably be able to function, but may not expand services, said John V. Miller, chief investment officer at Nuveen Asset Management, a municipal bond investment firm. “For some, the level of service they provide will decline.”

 

Some governments, already straining to balance their budgets, will have to cut payrolls, he said, and others may decide to raise taxes. […]

 

Looks like the beginnings of some un-fun times for American cities, and quite a challenge for our next President. Going to be interesting times…

 

Less Parking

Apropos to the post below, it seams as though some cities are beginning to rethink the unhelpful and backward urban policy of minimum parking requirements for new construction.

 

Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or a doctor’s office — a minimum number of parking spaces must be included. The spots at the curb don’t count: These must be in a garage, a surface lot or a driveway.

 

D.C. is now considering scrapping those requirements — part of a growing national trend. Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development. […]

 

Parking requirements — known to planners as ”parking minimums” — have been around since the 1950s. The theory is that if buildings don’t provide their own parking, too many drivers will try to park on neighborhood streets.

 

In practice, critics say, the requirements create an excess supply of parking, making it artificially cheap. That, the argument goes, encourages unnecessary driving and makes congestion worse. The standards also encourage people to build unsightly surface lots and garages instead of inviting storefronts and residential facades, they say. Walkers must dodge cars pulling in and out of driveways, and curb cuts eat up space that could otherwise be used for trees. […]

 

”We’re forcing people (through parking requirements) to invest in spaces for automobiles rather than in spaces for people,” she said. ”There’s no way to recover that use.”

 

Excess off-street parking is insidiously destructive public policy; it’s bad for the environment (more greenhouse gases), bad for cities (more traffic), bad for neighborhoods (dangerous and inhospitable curb cuts) and bad for buildings (less space for people).

 

As a resident of a dense urban neighborhood, I can confidently say that neighborhoods (and blocks) are safer and more vibrant when stoops and storefronts are active and cars stay on the street.

 

That’s not to say there should be no off-street parking whatsoever, just that it should be geared toward appropriate scale development and, as the article suggests, should stipulate reasonable maximums rather than minimums.

 

This is a good step, and other creative driving disincentives, along with an imperative policy towards better transit, would go a long way to creating healthier, happier and more pleasant communities for people outside of their cars.

 

Parking Space

It’s quite possible you missed it, but yesterday was Park(ing) Day here in New York City. That’s “Park”, as in public green space.

 

The concept is simple: find an empty parking spot on your local street and feed the meter, but rather than steer your ride into the spot, roll out some sod, unfold a lawn chair, open a book and…relax. Voila, instant park!

 

Part activism, part installation and part good use of space, this gesture cleverly illustrates just how much of the public urban fabric is dominated by the automobile, to the detriment of various constituencies.

 

To be fair, New York City has made some promising moves in this regard by requisitioning a few lanes of traffic here and there for use by pedestrians and bicycles, as well as actively promoting the occasional closing of streets for better public use; all of which is hopefully part of a broader civic trend in recognizing that cities exist, first and foremost, for the convenience, pleasure and welfare of citizens, and policies favoring automobiles often run counter to those needs.

 

You and Whose Money

Exciting architecture!  But, who’s going to live in it?

 

A Constructive Example?

China seems an awfully problematic place to turn when looking for inspiration to jumpstart the still shameful rebuilding efforts in New Orleans.

 

However one feels about its other policies, the Chinese government is clearly not afraid to invest in the future of its cities…

 

Meanwhile, three full years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, much of the city remains a wasteland…

 

…

 

Yet the kind of visionary urban plan that could address these issues in a bold and thoughtful way has yet to materialize. Instead, some of the country’s greatest architectural minds are inventing the future in cities like Beijing, Shenzhen and Dubai, where their talents are more appreciated

 

You’d think forced evictions, inadequate compensation, repression of dissent and official corruption would be enough to disqualify China as an model example of anything, much less the monumental physical, economic and social task of rebuilding a predominantly poor and black American city.

 

One might even infer the ability of the Chinese to “invest” in their cities in such an impressive way may be inextricable from their “other policies”. Policies so problematic that even some of those “greatest architectural minds” often stop to consider what it means to sell their talents to an “appreciative” client like China.

 

Small Town Values

It’s long been conventional wisdom that one political party (rhymes with ublican) truly understands the “small town values” of Americans, while the elites in the other party, drunk on their chardonnay and lattes, are simply incapable of relating to the average, hard working family. This cynical and transparent (though rather useful) political maneuver has served the GOP very well, even as they have used the governing powers gained by this nonsense to systematically undermine the livelihoods of those very small town voters.

 

You’d think this long discredited trope would have faded from our discourse by now, but of course, you’d be wrong. The GOP has now dressed the meme of “small town values” up in bear skin and whale blubber and trotted it back out in front of the cameras, as if no one would notice. Thomas Frank, in today’s Wall Street Journal, calls bullshit on the charade:

 

Small town people, Mrs. Palin went on, are “the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars.” They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: “I grew up with those people.”…

 

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well…

 

…For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town’s mortal enemies.

 

…they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer’s crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called “Freedom to Farm” and loan deficiency payments — each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon’s Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, “Get big or get out.”

 

In his excellent book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan goes into some depth about the legislative undermining of the New Deal agriculture supports and the consequent devastation that continues to burden farmers and farming communities across America.

 

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the National Farmer’s Union gives Barack Obama a 100% legislative rating on issues relating to small farm agriculture, while John McCain receives 0%.

 

That’s zero. Zip. No legislative help whatsoever, from Mr. “I chose a moose shooter as my soul mate”, regarding the values and interests of farming communities; otherwise known as small towns.

 

What is it going to take for people to vote for leaders and policies that exhibit and foster the very values that everyone seems to breathlessly champion, rather than simply voting for the most entertaining teevee personality?

 

Don’t answer that.

 

Funding Transit through Energy

It’s a bit of a pittance in the grand scheme of transportation funding, but the political tide really does seem to be shifting:

 

On Monday, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said a measure that would provide as much as $2 billion in grants and other funding for public transportation appears likely to be included in energy legislation that could be voted on next week…

 

The legislative push comes as high gas prices are spurring Americans to drive less and use public transportation more…

 

The increased demand is straining many transit agencies, which are already coping with higher prices for fuel, steel and other commodities.

 

An encouraging sign, to be sure, that public transportation is finally gaining a greater appreciation from both commuters and lawmakers. Another decade or so of sustained interest (i.e. panic over high gas prices) and we might just be on our way to some first class travel options in this country.

 

Collisions for Science

So here we go – either some ambitious scientists will learn a whole bunch of really cool stuff about the universe, or all humanity will instantaneously be swallowed up by a teeny tiny black hole. It’s anyone’s guess…

 

…the Large Hadron Collider…is scheduled to rev up for the first time on Wednesday at roughly 3:30 a.m. Eastern time following 13 years of planning, $8 billion in spending and immeasurable anticipation…

 

Update: So far so good.

 

More and Faster Trains

From the (shamefully) centrist Progressive Policy Institute comes a very sensible proposal: develop a number of regional high-speed rail corridors in the U.S. to relieve pressure on both roadways and runways:

 

In the short term, passengers have two choices: fly less, or pay more for an inferior service. But if the United States is serious about fixing the air-travel mess — not to mention congestion on our roadways — there is a real, long-term solution: high-speed rail (HSR).

…

With the airline industry cutting routes and raising fares, the cost of a gallon of gas racing past $4, and the unemployment rate rising, the time for a major investment in high-speed rail may finally be here.

 

The realization of any such long term high-speed rail plan is a long way off, but there’s no time like the present for crafting ambitious policy towards that goal. However, translating that into legislation is another matter altogether, and negotiating HSR development with the intractable auto and airline industries will require clear-headed and far-sighted political leadership.

 

(PPI link via Yglesias)