The morality of high density living

I spend almost zero time in automobiles, but about an hour a day in a subway car. Cities are unnatural and bizarre, pretty damn twisted, actually. I would imagine humans are like animals with some sort of hard-wired instinct regarding personal space, which are ever bubbling just under the surface of apparantly tamed beasts. While I think cities are fucked, I actually prefer cities and I don't feel like arguing for or against them for that reason. If you could take the assholes out of the city and replace them with nice people from rural or suburban areas, that'd be even better. Hopefully, the transition from human to sardine wouldn't turn them all into a bunch of assholes, too.

And yet in Tokyo you very much are a sardine. Is it something about density which leads to consideration, or is it something specific to the Japanese character, that famed politeness and sense of obligation and even guilt? Or the 'spirit of wa' or harmony so strong here? Could the Japanese be as harmonious if their society were more diverse?

Because high density is either joy or hell, depending on whether you trust the crowd you're in, and like them, and, perhaps, think the same way. (Although Richard Sennett is making the opposite point, saying it's good for us to encounter otherness and strangers, what's good for us and what we want and seek out are not necessarily the same thing.)

the high desity they propose is illusional, and not enough to support fixed public transport without subsidy (rail, light rail, tram)

Same goes for low density

when i was in london last year i thot, this is nearly big enough, and i fell in love with the tube.

another thought you inspired me to question my blog.
i think that it is dense.
information, opinon, image dense.
unsorted dense.

i like to think of it as hong kong rather then des moines.
but part of hong kong is the two three four five sided noise.

the comments are for that noise, and they seem to be empty.
am i calling plantively into the wilderness.

is it too dense ?

hogarth gin lane

rio shanty town

council estates, london

calcutta slums

you live for free rent momus, in a borrowed flat-what does density mean for those who cannot afford it ?

how different are council flats from hogarth ?
the utopian high density visions of international style architechts have failed, they are impossible to live in, they have rotted ?
what do you want to do with that ?

In St Petersburg, Florida, there is an anti-cruising law in certain areas that prohibits just that. If you drive around the block (to show off your car) more than twice in an hour, you can be ticketed.

Drivership and citizenship, in the US, are more or less the same thing. When do cars assemble? When have you seen cars on a 'protest drive'?)

On the bridge from St Petersburg from Tampa, during morning rush hour, driving very, very, very slowly to protest when a gay anti-discrimination law did not pass.

Florida is a weird place.

There's nobody who cannot afford some form of high density!

I don't agree that the high density visions of the International school have failed. I lived next to the Barbican for three years, and that seemed (although an atrocious art centre, compared to, say, the Pompidou Centre) a des res. High rise living for affluent urbanites to rival the high rise living poor urbanites had been enjoying for some time.

Now, in Berlin, it's considered cool to live in a (preferably ex-socialist) 'plattenbau' or high rise apartment. Rents are low, but the flats are high and the views great! And they have such retro decor, dahling!

Layna: Wow! Interesting! Go slow car protests! Isn't the cruising law, though, specifically about prostitution?

No, not at all! It was aimed at teens who drove around a certain area of a few blocks, occasionally waving or honking at one another -- sort of like hanging out in the mall, I guess, but in cars. I guess it kept other traffic from getting through that area.

they are ugly, undemocratic and imposing.

and the berlin thing, i am sure is a form of slumming.

I just wrote this, which isn't related:

What's really striking here in Tokyo is how there are basically two types of zone. There are the areas around train stations, which are bright, bustling, decked with plastic blossom, full of yakitori vendors, shops, crowds, and then there are the dormitory areas, where almost windowless houses crouch along tiny alleys, almost unlit, and quiet as the grave.

Both these zones are dense, and both are anonymous, but the density and anonymity have different characters. The people in the commercial zones are 'showing', the ones in the dormitory zones are 'hiding' (or sleeping). You can be anonymous in a crowd in the first zone, and anonymous because alone in the second. You can be solitary in both; Tokyo is full of restaurants where you can slurp your noodles facing a wall, amongst similarly solitary slurpers. It's liberating.

Western cities also have 'residential' and 'commercial' zones, of course, but here the contrast is more extreme. The transition between the 'lively' areas and the 'dead' ones is so sudden, it can be shocking, exhilerating.

i am trying to work out why this surprises and upsets me, what assumption it overturns abt histories and cities

where does toyko fit in with the planning?

Tokyo certainly has the medieval bit, a feudal skeleton of roads leading to Edo Castle. It was where the circular Yamanote line crossed these that the big post houses and railway stations sprang up.

by georgia/victorian terraces I mean as they are lived in now, rather than in victorian times.

IIRC correctly the plan for the thames gateway is about 16 dwellings per hectare and that US burbs very much lower. (might have my acres and hectares back assward but I don't think so)

five points wz right down in the tip of the island, pretty much, no? what surprised me that so as early as 1838 1856, there was so much MORE grid than "organic", marching up towards what wasn't (i don't think) yet central park — and on the lower WEST side it's gridded also (ie the jumbled bit is pretty tiny)

i only got the book two days ago, i haven't read any of it

also i'm only looking at a map, where you can see street organisation but not get a clue abt the kinds of buildings that line the streets, which are presumably nothing like so uniform

Chinatown gets a bit twisty (lower Mott) and the density of streets is much greater, parallelling the Paris left bank, which is probably why Camus liked it.

(by lower east side i probably mean lower west side btw: nyc is the only city where my total left-right inability transfers to east west AND north south!!)

(why would germans and italians be the only ones who wanted to feel at home? i don't follow yr distinction)

As for Travis Bickle? Yeah, sometimes I wonder.

momus might like cecil taylor unit.

Being lazy, I hadn't sorted at all. I had a bag full of any old rubbish. I took it out knowing there is no day of the week when unsorted garbage is acceptable. I searched for, at least, the official garbage place, but couldn't find it. Japan is so tidy, there's just no way you can dump a single, small bag of rubbish anywhere without someone noticing. I walked around the block, looking for a place, and there just wasn't one. People looked at me and my suspicious sack, knowing I'd missed 'General Burnables -- 1230 Saturday' and wondering if I'd have the audacity to try and lay my sack at their front door. So I came home with my trash and hid it on the terrace. Now I will get in trouble with my flatmate. You can't win.

That was indeed dense, Julio. So dense, in fact, that my appetite for their music was entirely sated by the short extracts on Barnes and Noble's site. That's enough notes for today already! (But no lyrics.)

(good pics on this site too)

Although yes, the five points area was altered considerably in the early 1900s, and many alive today remember the WTC area ('radio row') that was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the towers.

The "modern" road system isn't a grid, its a heirarchical system where "local" (i.e. residential) streets feed into bigger "collector" streets and then into big, supposedly limited access "arterial" streets. The idea is that traffic is like water flowing in a pipe network - you start at a big water main, then divide into smaller pipes as you distribute water out, and finally ending in tiny pipes that lead into your house. Except traffic doesn't really work like that (for a variety of reasons), and in fact the old grid is a much more efficient wroad system.

I agree with James Kunstler in that linked article when he comments that Toronto has the kind of attractive high density street life so markedly missing from American cities. That really struck me when I visited Toronto. I disagree when he blames the impoverishment on 'the formal idiocies of Modernist urban theory and practice'. It is specifically the car, and the mindset Ned talks about, which have created the 'deadness' of so many places in the US, not Modernist theory.

You would get to look around the apartment (hmm, outside toilet this century, let's skip to the next) and also the neighbourhood. I think many of us might find the pre-car streetlife (soda fountains, horses) surprisingly attractive. We might find the post-car streetlife even better.

Then I went to live in Barcelona for 5 months. I lived in a reasonable apartment in a very, very large apartment building with three other guys. My bedroom window opened into a square interior shaft running through the center of the building. (very typically Spanish) As a result, I could hear everything and anything that anyone in the whole bloody building was doing. By the end of my stay there, I knew by heart the sequence of alarm clocks (beginning at 4:30am) that would call out every week-day and Saturday. I now appreciate the blissful peace and quiet I receive here in Australia. I don't think I've even seen, let alone heard my neighbours since I arrived home two weeks ago.

I don't mean to generalise, but one thing I noticed about many people in Barcelona is that, by and large, they don't give a flying fuck about anyone else. In simple things like attitudes towards smoking (in the Metro, for fucks sake!) or excessive early-morning noise it seemed to me that most people didn't give a single moment of thought for the dozens of people living within a five-metre radius of them. I have a theory that this is brought on because of high density living. (and in BCN there really is no alternative) When you're forced to live in such close proximity to other people, where you can hear every bloody thing that anyone says or does, how can you avoid building up an anger and resentment for other people in general?

Though I notice a burgeoning trend for Melbourne in some Japanese magazines, like Relax, where it's touted as a kind of skate culture place. Again, as in the trucker hats thread, we come back to skaters and their importance in grabbing urban streets back from car culture.

but i wonder what the reverse effect would be? (far higher noise level, surely, for example)

1. surely people aren't biologically designed to live in cities, even with all the centuries of code-rewrtiing done inside of us to make them seem more appropriate (nb: i love cities and can't wait to get out of this no-horse town)

2. surely people aren't designed to live as hermits, with the only interaction with their community being what they dictate on their own terms (nb: i hate people)

Seems a bit of an American sentiment, the more I think of it. That's not really surprising given that we've essentially duplicated their culture of suburbia, and with that their car culture. The majority are in some way reliant on cars in Melbourne. Those lucky enough to live in the inner suburbs can (and do) use public transport, but it's not quite convenient enough to deter widespread car use.

(For example, I used to drive to University whenever I could even though I could get on a tram 50 metres from my front door and arrive outside my lecture theatre.)

In both the day and early night time, park-goers, especially families, stream past my window. Only a few blocks away, there are streets with people having fun and socializing in numbers, espcially so on the weekends. At night, it's quiet, save for the very occasional bridge-and-tunneler walking back from the "irish pub."

I've lived most of my life in suburban settings, mainly on Long Island, New York. I think that's the reason why quiet and solitude (as well as trees and bird) are crucial to keeping my sanity in the city. It's also probably the reason I sort of *like* having "dead," anti-urban places in New York City. I'm thinking of the parts of Battery Park City whose commercial activity never really picked up after 9/11, or the World Trade Center before 9/11, or the government complex on the LES, or the artificial and not entirely successful mix of new commercial establishments (essentially strip malls) and old high-rises in Turtle Bay. I like them *precisely* because they don't work very well as social spaces -- they're great to roam around in unimpeded. A REAL city has to have *some* large, boring spaces that empty on the weekends, just as a real city has to have ridiculous phantasmagoria like 42nd Street, or abandoned industrial areas. Several dashes of bearable folly are important in balancing out all the various urban flavors in a city.

I don't like crowds. People in NYC seem to get stupider in crowds: in them, perhaps as a psyche-protecting measure, people stop taking their surroundings seriously and start maundering in a zombie-like glaze. So you get people who unconsciously use baby carriages as battering rams to ram through the throngs. You get people who walk while keeping their heads and eyes firmly in a 90-degree direction away from the direction they're walking. You get people on sidewalks ganged together in threes and fours, oblivious to the fact that they're blocking all opposite-direction traffic.

Re: Andrew's Barcelona point, it's surely simple:

Cramped apartment (landlord mean) => need to go out to use local services, sit in a cafe => plethora of bars, cafes, street life. This applies in Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo; it's the high density housing and specifically its inadequacies which drive people out onto the street and make the street ludic, theatrical, and a fun place to be.

In Tokyo, you have microscopic 'capsule' apartments, just enough for a bed and some shelves and a TV, basically. But the city is your apartment. Instead of a fridge you have an open-all-hours combini store, instead of a bath you have a bath-house and a swimming pool, instead of a study you have a big library, instead of a dining room you have restaurants you can frequent alone or with friends... The whole city opens out and complements your private space. I'm just waiting for widescale free access data clouds so I can be online everywhere. That's the main amenity lacking in cities, right now.

pussy! ;-)
(I actually have that record, its good)

taylor does sing on 'It is in the brewing luminous'. The unit's best record. the words are really funny too.

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer

Unfortunately, they use 1990 data. But you can map by density, ethnicity, income, all kinds of stats on your favorite American city.

This seems like a justification after the fact. When we look at high density cities, we find that nobody in them actually wanted to live cheek by jowl with other ethnicities and economic groups. But they made the best of it, and this 'making the best of it' became civic virtue. Planners and politicians (in Europe, anyway) are now trying to increase urban densities to force people to relearn such civic virtues, and philosophers like Sennett are there with the ethical justification to back it up.

But how can you force people to do something that's good for them when the virtue was only ever learned in the first place by making the best of a bad deal? It's like trying to make people eat fruit rather than smoke. People are addicted to their toxic freedoms.

How could you brand high density, if you had to promote it? You could show a picture of a car, say a sexy BMW coupe, and add the copyline: 'More alienation. More disconnection.' (That would be the stick, but it probably wouldn't work.) Or you could show a cafe with happy 20somethings flirting, and skate kids skating, with the tagline 'Remember communities?' (That would be the carrot. I mean, ultimately 'living on top of people' can be sold, not as virtue, but as sex. It's always going to be sexier than sitting alone in a car, travelling between point A and point B, and seeing only predetermined significant others; workmates, family.)

J.lu, no, I'm not at all sure of that. In Asia it will be, because high density is deep in Asian culture. It's one of the great things about Asia, and something we in the west can and do learn from. But Britain and the US are lost, I think, outside of limited high density areas. I think it will take 200 years for us to recover from car culture.

I'm interested in two things about car culture:

1. The way cars are private space encroaching on public space. The more we shift from pedestrian to car culture, the more we eliminate 'public life', at least in its non-electronic form.

2. The way that, appearing less and less in public space, we devote less and less attention to our appearance and to ourselves as actors in 'the theatre of everyday life'. Look at the way chairs in Paris cafes are oriented to the sidewalk, like seats in a theatre! In high density situations, life is a fabulous spectacle, a mesh of freedom, encounters, assembly, of the constant contact with 'the other', of cutting a dash. Our private space is relatively insignificant. We spend little time there. Our life goes on in public. Judged daily by strangers, we vest a lot in our appearance. We try to look good, or interesting. Car culture makes us look daggy and go baggy. We see only significant others, and trust that they're seeing 'the real us' and not our outward appearance. But a dose of theatre -- an audience of strangers -- would actually do us the world of good. It might even change who 'the real me' actually is.

The House Builders Association add a note of caution, though: 'However, with Britons continuing to aspire to a home in the country and with the bungalow remaining Britain?s favourite home, we believe balancing the supply of flats and houses is essential.'

sez Ann Coulter. Sounds okay, really. Dirty? Liberals can't clean, then?

The thought behind this kind of statement being: 'insisting that people house themselves in a particular way restricts their freedom' or 'it's natural that cities spread out as people live in all the space they can afford.' These are tough arguments to counter.

The counter arguments are that 1) Assuming an expanding population, eventually you will run out of land and 2) Suburbia requires huge amounts of energy to sustain, and eventualy you will run out of fossil fuel energy sources. These arguments never convince anyone who enjoys suburbia because they are long term consequences - numbers one and two might not even occur in their lifetime.

Let's play a game called Time Travel Estate Agent.

Earlier centuries would have cholera and various other nasties, the future ones will have either alien overlords or the need to wrap ourselves in plastic made out of old sunglasses to prevent sunburns even at mild exposure so I'll take now.

More seriously, as I think we've debated before, I don't mind suburbia per se (where I live is a combination of small towns growing and the relentless sprawl of LA in general) and I don't have a car. Who has to make more of an effort to do certain things, you in a spot where non-car transportation to everything you need is plentiful or myself where it requires some careful planning for even short trips if I don't want to wait an extra hour or so? If the lesson is, "Well, duh, you should move to the city," I'll note I have a spot here that is close enough to work for me to get to it fairly easily and far enough away that I actually feel like I'm leaving it at the end of the day, and that in both cases I'm essentially functioning in suburbia of one sort or another. If the argument then becomes I have to get a better job somewhere else, hey, ya got me there -- can I have one that pays more than I have now and covers the benefits that I wouldn't otherwise get because there's no national health coverage in the States? Because if you're hiring...

If you're ever in Portland, bring up this topic. It's amazing how much the average person knows about urban planning issues, and how they act on their knowledge!

Most of the young people I know ride their bikes most everywhere, recognizing the poison of car culture isolation. People who drive to "feel free" are deluding themselves. By driving, you make yourself immensely more dependent; chained to the countless industries, institutions and infrastructures that are required by you in order for you to drive.

My only fear is that all the young people moving to Portland will marry, have kids, and decide they want a house in the suburbs. A shift in thinking like that could ruin the very special thing we have going here.

I found this very interesting paper while I was searching for information on Portland's urban density profile, take a look, it's worth a read:

http://www.hel.fi/tietokeskus/tutkimuksia/enhr2000/Ws01-2/WS15_Bertaud.pdf

I had a much different experience from Andrew during my time in Spain. I have a bit of experience with the types of apartments and densities that he is describing, and I found that I got used to the environment after a short time. I slept well, but the fact that I was usually coming in with the sunrise, half pissed and exhausted, probably had something to do with it.

Anyhow, I surely didn't feel that the inhabitants of my apt. buildings were trying to be "as obnoxious as possible", they were simply living their lives. People fight out loud, people make love and howl in ecstasy. When these moments of life are occurring, who thinks of their neighbors? And who is it that doesn't understand that? Walking down a narrow street at three thirty in the afternoon, under the hot Spanish sun, with the sounds of lovemaking coming from the buildings, people shouting, food being prepared. It's sort of tribal or something, it reminds you of the breadth of human existence. Always made me feel a little more awake.

Oh, and I loved the old men and women, who had walked everywhere their whole lives, and still looked like they could walk across town at a good clip. Very different from the utterly decrepit, overweight elderly I'm used to seeing in the States. The density of these cities makes walking more practical, more effective than driving.

cities freak me out, I am country mouse

After they retired they moved up into northern Ontario in a rather remote area. They found that the people there made a point to get together on a regular basis. They have a social life now and more friends than ever. You wave to people when you see them (even if you don't know them) and you always lend a hand when needed.

I've noticed older people in the city are sickly, slow, and rather vulnerable. People of the same age in the remote areas and small towns are stronger and healthier. My father is over 70 and in better health now then he's been in the last 10 years.

It seems crowded life in Japan and Hong Kong is better than in the US or Canada. People are of the same mind-set in HK and Tokyo. The norm is to be polite, and respectful. Here in Toronto, people often work hard at being jerks. I suspect that the singular culture of the asian cities helps to solidify peoples behavior.

Low Density has it's benefits. Of course you can't go out for Vietnamese food on Monday, Indian on Tuesday, etc. And I do love Vietnamese food.

Take care,
Jake

Heh, loved the comments about Radiohead, it's taken for granted in suburbia that they are musical gods. Suburban life is vague, which is a nod to the idea of privacy: If I ask you certain questions or reveal certain thoughts and feelings, we can't be on good, bland neighborly terms. People aren't fully explored, and you only see as much of them as you would a neighboring house, standing from your suburban door.

Low density/high diversity environments...college campuses perhaps? They may not count, maybe too dense, and diversity only in the sense of race, not age.

And yes, density is sexy...I can't wait to live in Japan, although my suburban tendencies may be ingrained (dammit!). Another intriguing essay Nick/Momus, thanks... (see these vague ellipses!?!!) And excuse any over generalizations, all taken from my non scientific, typically American generalized point of view/opinion/experience.

-Robyn

from the very little i know of japanese culture (mostly through novels, movies) momus's celebration of tokyo, and subsequent nods in the same direction, seem like but a small part of the story. barthe's "empire of signs" was to my understanding similarly hampered-if-fascinating.

It's a bit off topic, but all this made me wonder what it's like for Japanese people when they travel to other countries. I can guess that it's probably very difficult for them to figure out what the hell is going on when they go on their vacations to New York, London, or LA. Really: how do people get by without local convenient stores stocking 60 fashion magazines, imported wines, tickets for under-and-above-ground cultural events, and blank DVD-R discs? When Japanese people travel, do they actively search out the "other" that can be found in diverse western urban centers? Are they fascinated by the peculiarities of low density environments that are found all over America? Any native Tokyoites reading this thread care to respond?

Aside from the tickets aspect you just described the 7-11 kitty-corner from my apartment complex.

"Falling Apart" by Elaine Morgan (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/081282167X/qid=1056964074/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/102-7943732-4843302?v=glance&s=books)

Talks about the evolution of cities. Is generally critical but understands their attraction.

Christopher Alexander's classic "A Pattern Language" has plenty of tips on how to make cities work.

I lived in a town called Kisarazu about 90 minutes train ride from Tokyo. It was not a big city, by a lot of the points in the essay ring true. It was compact and the station was at the centre. I had no need for a car. Not having a car I interacted with people all the time. There were local yakitori bars, sushi bars, akachochin, and sake bars. There is an excellent Jazz bar... People know each other in these places - Who needs a lounge in your apartment when there are a selection of them just outside? In the sushi place, I could step in off the street and sit at the bar, and the "master" would just start serving.

I remember a discussion with a cherry tomato grower in that town. He was a member of the Lions club or something. I was staying in a house connected to a shop near the station. He said that the landlord should really pull that house down. People should live in the suburbs and the central area should be for businesses. I'd send him a link to the essay if I had his e-mail address.

On the topic of marriage and its tendency to push a couple into low density living, I wonder if it is not so much a desire to cut down on superficial relationships with many people in favour of a deeper relationship with one person, as a desire to stop the hunt for a partner. A marriage probably feels safer in the suburbs where the couple mostly spend time either with each other, alone in the car, or at a single place of work - that office situation painted in the essay where they don't even have to dress up. Let loose in a vibrant high density area where you meet new people all the time a person is more likely to form relationships that threaten the marriage. Is there a sense of danger / excitement in high density living that is not attractive for those about to nest?

London is pretty high density, and the public transport is great - whatever Londoners say. Tokyo has a very different feel though. It is more than just the fact that it feels safe. It is that strange "many villages making up a city" structure that Tokyo has. Perhaps London used to have something like that with its squares of houses, all facing the centre. Many of these squares have now been taken over by businesses. I used to work in Fitzrovia, and I'm pretty sure I never saw any Fitzroy Square residents relaxing on the benches in Fitzroy Square. With the Time Travel Real Estate Agent, I'd be checking out flats in the London of the past (1960s?) and the Tokyo of the present and future.

Now I live in Auckland. It's an old suburb - about 15 minutes drive from the city. Auckland used to have a pretty good tram system decades ago, but now everyone commutes by car. I miss the assault to the senses that you get with a Tokyo commute. In a train packed full of people - dressed with care, reading a newspaper article on a PDA, stopping at a platform noodle shop for a 5 minute breakfast on route. The number of people pass through Shinjuku station is about the same as the whole population of New Zealand. The sound of a train at night feels relaxing to me.

I'm heading over to Japan again in about a month. I'll really enjoy it. I'm wondering what gadget I should get at Akihabara - I'm considering a USB flash memory MP3 player. I might try to go to a Guitar Wolf gig. They (incredibly) played in Auckland last year. I'll soak it all in, and then return. Our second child will be born later in the year. S/he will be born into our low density nest, have the occasional holiday in high density Japan, and no doubt go high density full time at about 18. I'll recommend Tokyo when the time comes.

some bits of tokyo if you have an extra moment Tokyo/Photo/Markal

I just had a conversation with my mom about renewing my lease this week, and she was asking when I was going to move out of the city & buy a house- seeing renting an apartment downtown as very much a short blip in my life before I settle down. She's convinced that it's hard to get groceries (not at all, esp. with the Market so close), sleep at night (Seattle's pretty quiet, really), exercise my dog (Green Lake & Myrtle Edwards are huge parks & very close), and city living is generally ugly & unpleasant. So I didn't try convincing her otherwise, but I was thinking that probably Seattle today is far different from the cities she's mostly experienced (largely westside NYC in the 60s and 70s).

And for city manners- I've grumbled elsewhere abt tourists talking to me on the bus when I'm wearing headphones. AARRGGHHH!

I've loved Portland whenever I've been there, the way that it has a compact centre (and even a Chinatown!). I'm sure people are very aware of urban issues there. San Francisco is somewhat the same. Today I saw a book (in the excellent Cow Books, a chic yet serious secondhand bookstore / cafe by the river in Nakameguro themed around freedom and radical thinking) called 'Walking Tours of San Francisco'. You just couldn't imagine there being books with similar titles about Detroit, Atlanta or LA. (New Orleans, yes. Thanks to the French!)

Am I being orientalist, and using Tokyo as a stick to beat the west with? Possibly. I could write quite a lot about the downside of Tokyo. I do, in fact, in the essay, talk about the neutron bomb element; the fact that there's Brazilian music but no Brazilians. Tokyo's biggest fault is lack of pluralism. And official policy is to keep it that way. At immigration at Narita I saw a couple of Africans being hauled away for super-severe interviews. I saw the way the passport officials were treating them. Don't stand behind Africans at Japanese immigration. You'll be there all day.

haha there should be a japanese momus who romanticizes scotland!

That's already happened, in a sense. The album I recorded in Tokyo is full of tribute songs to Scottish vaudevillians, songs about 'Scottish lips' and the Higland Fling. My inner Scot comes to the fore in Tokyo. I could write a whole essay about the grass always being greener on the other side. It would contain a potted auto-geography-biography:

When I was in Scotland I dreamed of London, when I moved to London I dreamed of Paris, when I moved to Paris I dreamed of New York, when I moved to New York I dreamed of Tokyo, when I moved to Tokyo I dreamed of... Scotland. Which means I must surely perish soon, for my dreams have come full circle. I feel dizzy.

But this assumes all cities are equally faultable, and that isn't the case. Berlin, for instance, has very few faults. Not enough immigrants, no big airports, brief shopping hours. That's about it. Actually that's quite a lot. Oh shit, I'm going to have to move again.

http://www.hel.fi/tietokeskus/tutkimuksia/enhr2000/Ws01-2/WS15_Bertaud.pdf

It touches on the relationship between ideology and city shape, and how any given ideology can have the opposite of the intended effect. For instance, Portland's environmental ideology can actually damage the environment.

This makes sense to me. I live in an extremely ideological place in Berlin, a Stalinbau on an avenue rebuilt by the ideologues, propagandists and planners of the DDR to provide a showcase for the high living standards enjoyed by East German workers after the war. But I'm not sure if the massive triumphalist boulevard where I live is really about celebrating working class life. I'm sure the former high density slums built by greedy capitalists bred much more genuine socialism, whereas the avenues that replaced them were much more about getting Soviet tanks into East Berlin to crush workers revolts like the one that happened exactly 50 years ago, in summer 1953.

The Bertaud .pdf also talks about how polycentric (multi-hubbed) cities have a flatter overall population density. That's very much the case with Tokyo, which distributes its deadness and liveliness rather well by stringing attractive commercial zones like fairy lights around subway stations. So you know that just as one of these 'lively' zones is fading, the next, just a short walk or cycle away, will be coming up.

http://www.hel.fi/tietokeskus/tutkimuksia/enhr2000/Ws01-2/WS15_Bertaud.pdf

Interesting paper. I live in Brasilia, and although I can see that there are serious problems, it's also got a lot of good design features. I guess I'm responding to both Bertaud and Momus here. And their assumptions about density of living. Bertaud's equating dispersion with polution may need to be modified by a lot of awkward detail. (Though I can't say for sure it isn't true of Brasilia)

Brasilia entirely built around road transport. You can't go to the shopping centre, cinema or CBD without driving or taking the bus. On the other hand, driving is very quick. You can drive from the edge of the city to the centre in about 10 minutes. There are very few traffic jams. (So no cars pumping out pollution while idling in them.) Brazil also has a largish proportion of cars using alcohol instead of petrol, and alcohol is available in all gas stations. So the pollution per mile travelled is probably less than for many more densely packed, conjested, petrol using cities.

Although it's a long way to downtown, the design mixes residential superquadras with "commercial districts" basically a row of shops containing bakeries, pharmacies, cafes and bars, supermarkets and other shops and offices. You're never more than 5-10 minutes walk to your local commercial district, and it can supply most basic necessities. And most have some activity at night including late bars and pharmacies. Driving to the out of town hypermarket or to a specialist shop or club is as much a matter of choice here as anywhere. And the shops are closer than in British suburbs where I grew up, or the suburbs of American cities I've seen.

Superquadras have spaces for churches, primary schools, children's play areas and sports. The roads within them are very quiet, so children can go to school and play areas with little danger from traffic. Each is made from 11 three or six storey apartment blocks, each of which has it's own function room. So each superquadra is able to support most everyday social life and requires very little driving.
Family life is localized and distributed. Because all supequadras mix a lot of green space and shading trees, the effect of living in one is rather like living on a greenfield university campus.

But Bertaud is probably right that the problem is work. The majority of people work for the government in the centre of the city. People who work in the superquadras (shop-workers, porters, cleaners, plumbers, electricians etc.) can't actually afford to live in the city, as planning restrictions prevent lower cost, higher density housing. That means they commute in by bus each day from satelites around 30 KM out of town. Meanwhile, those who live in the superquadras drive into the city centre.

I happened to notice it because it mentioned Portland, but I have to say that Bertaud's understanding of the density ideal in Portland seems slightly mis-informed.

Traditional developers, not residents, are the group I most often hear complaining about density goals and the Urban Growth Boundary, which was initially designed to protect the fertile farmland of the Willamette valley, which surrounds Portland.

Developers accustomed to building tract homes, and garish McMansions are resistant to change. They don't want to, or can't shift to building Hi-rises or converting warehouse space. This resistance to change has left some behind, while others have built amazing, award winning apartment/condo complexes in many of Portland's close-in neighborhoods.

I'll be moving to Japan in August, and can't wait to see the vastly different architecture and experience the density I've so often heard described by you and others. I've only a few days in Tokyo before I ship off to the Inaka to work, any advice on how to quickly get a feel for the Tokyo urban landscape / lifestyle?

Portland is definitely polycentric, most of the cities I really enjoy seem to be, so I'm sure I'll enjoy Tokyo as well. These centers, neighborhoods with separate nuclei, supercuadras, each with their own personalities. Discovering them is part of what makes travel so facinating.

Phil Jones makes me want to visit Brasilia very badly, I'd love to compare the supercuadras to the barrios, neighborhoods and arrondissements I've built my views of the ideal city around.

Does Brasilia have a subway or light-rail system? That seems like an ideal system for connecting a city that is designed as Brasilia seems to be. Is there a rail system connecting the outerlying areas with the CBD, or only buses and highways?

I agree with some of the views Bertaud seems to hold. Planning can become stifling, and planners themselves joke about totalitarianism and their propensity to exclude the public (the U.S. has a bad record with it's "Urban renewal programs"). However, some logical thinking can help reduce our dependence on unsustainable models, and if plans are implemented well, the public barely notices that they are changing their lifestyles around the changing city.

This is what I miss in Bermuda, a showcase of high density living (60 000 people on 20 sq km), where you have to relinquish all privacy.

But Bertaud is probably right that the problem is work. The majority of people work for the government in the centre of the city. People who work in the superquadras (shop-workers, porters, cleaners, plumbers, electricians etc.) can't actually afford to live in the city, as planning restrictions prevent lower cost, higher density housing. That means they commute in by bus each day from satelites around 30 KM out of town. Meanwhile, those who live in the superquadras drive into the city centre.

Phil is OTM here... a lot of the hellish UK council estates in the 1960s were 'sold' to the government as 'vertical villages' - but a real village requires a kind of 'hive' mentality - where everyone who works there can afford to live there. Obviously property prices in London and most other major cities make this much harder - but a lot of those 60's estates contain absolutely bugger all other than housing and the occasional school or pub, with absolutely bugger all sense of community and often with neighbours indifferent or outright hostile to one another.

But I think things are changing - one reason for this is that practically every new major residential development usually has to have some sort of shopping centre or leisure or office element bundled in to make it more profitable. Additionally, developers in this country are now required to include a certain proportion of "affordable housing" in all residential developments. The massive proposed residential tower at Vauxhall is a case in point - the idea is that it will feature luxury apartments for City workers and more modest places for public sector workers in one development. Ideally, there'd be local authority housing bundled in as well.

What "affordable" means is the key word here, obviously. The idea is that it'll be affordable to nurses and teachers and so forth, but whether it will be affordable to, say, cleaners and shop workers is another matter. But it's something to work towards - the worst aspect of any high-density development is the social segregation it encourages.

Mom and I are going to Chicago for the Fourth, and we talked about big cities. Apparently a bunch of women at my mom/aunt's work had planned a trip to Chicago and then cancelled it, and their husbands were glad it didn't work out. They were worried about the big city. I said Chicago's such a midwestern city; everyone's very friendly. Even in New York, I said, I never get panhandled. The women thought worrying about the big city was silly.

Back when I lived in Arizona, your family status was very tied to how long you had owned property, and how much. People who lived in town (pop. 3000) didn't have nearly as much political power as those who were ranchers. Many of my classmates drove 10 to 60 miles to come to school, the nearest to their ranch.

After I went to university, my dad got a job on a nearby Indian reservation. (Nearby in Arizona terms, meaning a one-way 3 hr commute.) Here is one of his friends from the rez, Si J0hnson. How about this quote from the article: ' "We had a lot of water before Tucson got big...Large cottonwood trees were along the river, and we'd go out and play in the water. Now that is all gone," said Carlyle, pointing to subdivisions and shopping complexes encroaching upon O'odham lands southwest of Tucson. '

There is a definite tradition of low-density living--don't underestimate its value and place in society! And it is threatened by cities that do not practice high-density living...the sprawl overtakes their space.

So what purpose does suburbia have? It seems unfair (and unamerican) to dictate modes of living: You want a big-city job but small-town surroundings? Too bad! Shit or get off the pot! Move your children to a high-rise if you want that job so bad!

I think the kids are the big factor that we're missing in this discussion. The main reasons I hear for moving to the suburbs are about the kids: better schools, healthier surroundings, your own lawn. Of course the reason the schools are better is because you took your income/property value out of the city so the schools aren't funded as well, and the reason the air is better is because you aren't polluting it up with your commute and ridiculous zoning in the city. And the lawn?

There's a very strong drive to be a landowner in America. Perpetual renters are not valid (except in Manhattan, where all the rules are different.) Even having your own condo won't do. You've got to have your own house with a lawn, and if you have a little acreage, so much the better. Again, it's about the kids; a little security to pass down to them.

South Florida's worse--try living in a community where people don't want to build sidewalks because they don't want a bunch of people walking through their neiborhood.

I've noticed older people in the city are sickly, slow, and rather vulnerable. People of the same age in the remote areas and small towns are stronger and healthier. My father is over 70 and in better health now then he's been in the last 10 years.

That's because the small town/country ones tend to die quicker when they get sickly, because they're more isolated. I once worked private duty with an Alzheimer's patient who had been found sitting on floor of her farm house covered in filth and eating rat droppings. She had managed to get to a very late stage of the disease before anyone knew there was anything wrong.

'The truth is, there is no such thing as an optimum density, and density alone is not the key to successful housing. Many other factors contribute. Good design is one; the quality of housing management is another. In general, as density increases so does the need for intensive management to keep an area safe and clean. This increases revenue and capital costs, and is one reason why high density schemes can work for the well off (eg the Barbican), but for poorer people often fail - like in Hulme Crescents, Manchester.'

My thought process, taking off from that point:

- It's really of mutual benefit when rich and poor can live together. Cities like New York have done explicit social engineering to make this happen, keeping neighbourhoods mixed income.

- But if there is 'white flight', or 'middle class flight', the affluent neighbourhoods become a self-fulfilling prophecy, a success story. If the affluent embrace low density and ownership, they can say 'I told you so, low density and ownership make for a successful community. Look at these education / crime stats if you don't believe me.'

- This, of course, is circular logic. Wherever 'the successful' are, you will find 'success'. But when this success is based on the affluent moving away from urban areas and mixed income high density situations, it actually creates failure elsewhere. The affluent, by absenting themselves and taking their dollars with them, run down public transport and other basic services in the city. The failure they create in this way (inner urban decay) should be factored into the 'success' they find in the suburbs.

- Finally, this is a moral issue. There is a moral imperative to live together with other people. This applies as much in Israel as it does in the US. It is a moral issue with financial implications. One's choice of habitat will either lead to polarisation of rich and poor into ever greater extremes, or to greater equality and unity.

- It's clear that the Bush administration's policies almost all lead towards polarisation. They should rename the country 'The Divided States', because that's what they're creating, quite consciously.

Another point I've been meaning to make about living together is the utopian experiments in England in the 19th century. Companies such as Bourneville and Cadbury had accommodation for their staff, which were communal to the point of not allowing anyone a private kitchen, so that they were obliged to eat together with other families. Chris Coates wrote a really interesting volume on the subject of ideal living called Utopia Britannica: www.utopia-britannica.org.uk

Matt : From the estates I've seen in the UK, I'd got the idea that planning doesn't work. I've long been a fan of the organic described by Christopher Alexander's "Timeless Way of Building" and Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn". But Brasilia challenges me. To an extent it's planning works. The absurdity of the estates with lousy bus services, where the poorest are obliged to get taxis to the shops, were not a result of the inevitability of planning but the particular stupidity (or compromises forced on) planners in the UK.

Perhaps Brasilia's planning works because it started with a clean sheet. In a sparsely inhabited farming region where land was (is) cheap. There were no compromises forced on it by existing property owners.

But Brasilia is, of course, suburbia done right. It supports middle-class middle income families with young children (and only one live-in servant) pretty well. It has nothing for those who are poorer, and not much for those who are significantly richer. (They move to wealthier suburbs the other side of the lake.) Instead of middle-class flight from the city, you have a middle class island with the poor excluded by stringent planning control, which apparently the UN sponsors Brazil to keep that way.

So maybe Brasilia isn't really a city at all. Just a large puddle of suburbia on life-support from a cluster of real, impoverished cities at the perifery. There's no industry to speak of except government.

There's also very little culture. We have government, university or bank sponsored cultural spaces (rather like the South Bank centre) and art which is similarly institutional. The last big musical scene here was a copycat rock movement in the 80s, from the children of government officials who'd lived abroad. We are musically, middle class. Because we're on a confluence of lay-lines (or something) we're a focus of New Age / spiritual energy. Therefore we do have an burgeoning Trance scene with multi-day raves and international DJs (normally from Israel, France and Russia) We also have an active punk scene of middle-class kids who are rebelling.

But we have no indigenous carnival or carnival style of music. We import acts from Salvador and Rio.

SeniorCamisa : No there's no light-railway or similar. Though we could do with one, and there is space. Railways were destroyed in Brazil by car loving governments in the 50s. We do have one smallish railway that's been recently built, linking the city with one of the larger, more prosperous satelites, and there's talk of an underground. I think these will bring an improvement to the city. They may produce denser centres of activity around the stations, and a stronger sense of place.

Daniel : the central esplanade is riddiculous. 95% of the time it's deserted and only comes into it's own when there's a big festival or protest. They should grow a few trees, make it more of a park or something. The rest of the centre consists of hotels for diplomats, and shopping malls. There are bits with street vendors and small shops, but nothing worth speaking of. You really wouldn't find anything to do there if you were town for a couple of days. It reinforces my view that it's an OK place to live, but not worth visiting.

suzy : Brazil has the biggest Japanese population outside Japan. Mainly in Sao Paulo. It means we have sushi on most streets, pretty much the way there're indian and chinese takeaways in the UK. In my, very limited experience, the Japanese immigrants have got Brazilian culture rather than the Brazilians getting much Japanese.

anthony : Brasilla, the first wholly modernist designed city, was built w/o sidewalks.

Yes and no. There are plenty of pedestrian paths to walk along. They just aren't alongside the roads. And when you think about it, if you have a choice, where would you prefer to walk? I'm also impressed by the fact that every Sunday, the central motorway is closed for pedestrians, who can then jog, cycle, scooter, and occasionally have stalls and concerts along it.

Wilson says that white flight and sprawl will continue and worsen in the US. He blames the Reagan-era federal funding shift which saw federal money being given to states instead of cities; a narrow political decision based on the fact that inner cities are dominated by non-whites, who tend to vote Democrat. (This year, apparently, whites are in a minority in the Top 100 American inner cities, outnumbered by the combined population of blacks and latinos.) The starvation of inner cities not only increases racial tension, he says, but is bad for the suburbs too: suburbs inevitably go into decline when the cities they surround begin to die.

The motto of low density living might be: 'Hell is other people' (Sartre)
The motto of high density living might be: 'We must love one another or die' (Auden)

But these are not incompatible philosophies. It's perfectly possible to say 'Hell is other people. Nevertheless, we must love one another or die.' In fact, that could itself be the motto of the virtuous city dweller.

High density and high diversity have usually been forced on people rather than chosen. But this enforced 'Lower East Side' made people better citizens, and perhaps happier in general, than the 'Suburbia' they spread into when they could afford it. The trick is finding out how to stop people spreading just because they can.

"The trick is finding out how to stop people spreading just because they can"-M

That would be easy if we could take out the oil lobbies and AAA (the BIGGEST, and SCARIEST lobby of them all, next to the Israeli one...). Besides autos wouldn't be so terrible if they'd switch to a decent fuel (see: Getting Rid Of AAA) .
But here's another point: American's love individuality. Autos are the most import part of your identity here (not NYC though). In NY it's your haircut, sneakers, bag, the way you walk. Everywhere else it's what make of car, what year, color, bumber stickers, rims, tires. Autos are the bodies now, complete with outfits and make-up. No wonder everyone's in sweat pants and old t-shirts. All their personality goes into the car. People know their cars better than themselves.

I wonder is this emphasized so much in other parts of the world?

Last night here in Kokura I was walking around the red light district (which happened to be where the club I was playing was located) and just had this amazing sense of safety. I had a laptop, camera and money with me and felt no sense of danger whatsoever, even when taking photos of stuff I wouldn't even think of photographing in other countries. At every corner there were groups of taisho drummers, including children. There was also a good mix of sleazy 'pink salons' and quality restaurants. Emerging from the love hotels you could see elderly and perfectly 'respectable' couples. All this in a warren of streets and covered arcades too narrow for cars. Again I'm struck by the medieval nature of Japan (its countryside looks like the background of a Da Vinci painting and its cityscapes resemble Sienna). And yet it's the middle ages (with the classic medieval high density lifestyle of the walled city) crossed with the 21st century; cramped, limited personal space is extended not only by inventions like the combini and the love hotel and the public bath-house, but also by the always-on internet which absorbs everyone as they pass through the crush of the subway, absorbed in 'electronic artificial space'.

It totally is a matter of taste how you respond to the balances and compromises of this sort of environment. Personally, I love it. I think they got it right. This is how cities should be. Ancient and futuristic at the same time. Dense and safe. Sociable and anonymous.

Also, it took me one year in Beijing to understand that a lot of people enjoy a ride on the subway or on a cramped bus. As mentioned above, it gives a sense of security, and also such a simple thing as the comfort of human touch. And you do get that a lot on a bus in Beijing.

From small circles of grassroots groups in some of the largest cities of the world, Mega-Cities has erected a great chain linking each of these together to promote new, cooperative methods of solving the urban problems which are common to these cities.

Rather than each independently striving to cure its own ills, Mega-Cities provides a forum for communication and innovation, thus speeding the process of recovery for even the most poverty-stricken areas. Cooperation, not isolationism is key.

http://applied.math.utsa.edu/~salingar/InfoCities.html

'The finger tips are the most sensitive part of any human being. It's there you'll find the highest density of sense receptors: about 2500 per square centimetre. Japan has one of the highest population densities in the world: about 350 people per square kilometre.'

http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/8174.html

Now, this means that dense cities are in some way like body parts with dense nerve networks: fingertips, hands, lips, face, genitals. If this is true, expressions like 'I have Tokyo at my fingertips' or 'I know London like the back of my hand' may be more apt than we think. It may also be that dense cities resemble well-connected brains, in which all the new connections, at a certain point, become exponential and 'events' (thoughts, transactions, interactions) can fire off all over the place.

I'm not encouraged by their website: 'This site was last updated on December 5th, 2001.' Blimey, this clock is stopped!

I thought they were building a superblazo big crazyspeed railway thing there? Not dense sounds good to me. Of course, Berlin is not dense for, erm, historical reasons... (though same could be true of Tokyo but isn't) (or East London)

but I'm too sleepy to contribute tonight
I hope I can re-find it later!

**ok I bookmarked it so I'll be back.
I'd also like to say that I hella

there we go

"That reminds me of something very perceptive someone once said on this very board about Tokyo: 'It's the one place I've been where the default position is not that people are assholes'. Consideration and responsibility are the norm here, and as a result you're trusted on a lot of stuff, as you wander around in public, and you learn to trust."

I disagree with the assertion that consideration and responsibility are "the norm" in Tokyo. Although it's definitely safer than many cities of comparable size, the myth that the Japanese are somehow inherently more polite is quite simply that - a myth. Commuting during rush hour in Tokyo you will see the same type of behaviour as any other large city in the world. I've been pushed and elbowed more than I ever was in North America and it's not uncommon for an entire bench of college students and salarymen to sit and watch a pregnant woman or senior citizen stand for a whole train ride. On the surface - yes, the Japanese are more polite, but that's due more to their tendency to hide their real feelings. When you walk into a store here you are immediately greeted by several people yelling (loose translation): "thank you for your coming!" Do you really believe that any of them give a shit that you walked into their store?

"You stop clutching your wallet, and you notice that girls are dressing as sexy as they did in the west in the 60s, and don't seem too concerned for their safety"

Violence against women is grossly underreported here and as a result most women aren't taught to be careful. For example most major Japanese cities now have women only cars on the commuter trains and subways because train groping is such a widespread problem.

I'm not trying to hate on Japan, but I do get frustrated with this image that is so prevalent in the West of a super-advanced utopia devoid of any of the problems plaguing western society. Once you spend a bit of time here, learn a bit of the language, make some friends and observe the culture from a closer vantage point; you realize that we're a lot more alike than anyone wants to admit.

Can we get some love for inner ring or streetcar suburbs, where there are yards and gardens but also sidewalks, economic and cultural diversity, public transportation, and walkable stores, libraries, etc.?

My current neighborhood (Clarendon, Arlington, Va.) is vibrant and diverse and pedestrian-friendly. It's in the midst of gentrifying but still includes holdouts of middle- and low-income housing (occupied almost entirely by recent immigrants).

Presently, the rage is for building large New Urban yuptopias: retail, apartments, and townhouses glommed together. I have mixed feelings about them, personally: on the one hand, I'm glad they're infill, mixed-use, mixed-income, street-oriented, and close to public transportation. It certainly beats mowing down a forest somewhere out in the country and slapping down another mall with a ginormous parking lot.

On the other hand, these complexes are presented as a luxury object of desire rather than a sensible way for everyone to live. The townhouses are $600,000ish and the apartments $2,500-a-monthish. The stores are Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma rather than a dry cleaner, a deli, and a post office. The hope is that this way of developing trickles down to be accessible to normal people.

Fucking awesome pictures, cozen, nice link.

There are a lot of luxury high-rises just popping up now. Expect them to have lots of fancy schmancy amenities (gym, concierge, broadband, etc.), and expect them to cost between two and three thousand dollars a month for a not-even-all-that-big apartment.

But there are still thousands upon thousands of the two- and three-story garden apartments built to meet the area's sudden need for lots of affordable housing in the runup to World War II. They're uniformly well built and generally pleasant, clustered round idyllic courtyards like this

http://www.silverwood-associates.com/Media/Q_images/Q_CrtLgCr.jpg

The cheapest, and least well-maintained, are in the Woodbury Park (Courthouse-ish) and Gates of Arlington (Ballston-ish) complexes.

In a somewhat nicer middle ground are the Sheffield Court, Colonial Village (both Courthouse-ish), and Park Ballston complexes.

There are some older high-rises near the main library that are also quite reasonable.

(Apologies to the entire rest of the universe for taking up threadspace with offtopicness.)

It's thoroughly absurd considering what my pal found right nearby. Though not as absurd as what they're charging in some parts of DC proper. Beginning to think DC is just a big joke on people who try to live within the city limits, honestly.

Try here and here and here.

(Though I should say that $1,700ish is pretty close to normal for this market.)

Well, this is because there's not a huge lived difference between a close-in suburb and something with the same general feel that happens to be inside the city limits. In what way are Silver Spring, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Arlington, or Takoma Park more "suburban" and less "urban" than Georgetown, Burleith, Tenleytown, Cleveland Park, Glover Park, or Friendship Heights?

The main difference is in where the political borders fall--in what way is a huge house with a huge yard on Foxhall Road NW "urban," while a high-rise apartment in Rosslyn is "in the suburbs"?

(Living in Maryland or Virginia also adds the bonus of having the right to vote, but I digress.)

Compare a single-family house on Staten Island with a loft apartment in, say, Newark. Which is "in the city" and which is "in the suburbs"?

Living in the Court House/Rosslyn metro area is surprisingly BETTER from my personal pedestrian standpoint than most of DC. For one thing, you're in walking distance of a lot more options for shopping and recreation. It strikes me looking at Puffin's list of neighborhoods that the real diff between 'urban' and 'suburban' by what I know is that 'suburban' must mean you can walk to TWO real grocery stores AND a major shopping area as opposed to having a half-dozen bodegas.

Within DC proper, it's only Dupont, Penn Quarter, Capitol Hill, and Woodley/Cleveland Park that hit that kind of mix of housing/office/retail/restaurant/transportation. But based on projects under construction and on the boards I think in 5 years there will be an essentially continuous neighborhood stretching from the Mall to north of U St straight from North Capitol to Rock Creek.

Michael Rennie Told You So: The Washington DC Metro Area Thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/realestate/14nati.html

This is really distressing--the hard paper had more pictures, of a really lovely, green suburban neighborhood of 50s tract houses. The neighbors want to sell the property to a developer, who will either put up mixed use condos or million dollar on a quarter acre properties.

My mom has moved back to the rural Indiana town where she grew up--she's about three blocks from her mom now--and it is weird to see how exurban sprawl has surrounded this little town (which is about 40 miles from Indianapolis). There is some development going in on a former cornfield across the street from her cousin, and he and his neighbors are doing something similar to the people in that article--banding together with three or four neighbors who face the road and trying to sell all the properties at once. They're asking a lot of money, too. He's not too thrilled about the development going in, he thinks the houses are ugly. The houses I see going up in that area have stupidly large lawns--I swear some of these places are set on five acres or more.

Uh...

robert caro still otm

Brookings says american cities are way worse than cow country:
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/05_carbon_footprint_sarzynski.aspx
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/Images/RC/carbon_footprint001_rc.jpg

Wait, no, I thought that was the other way around? Am I misreading something drastically?

This report quantifies transportation and residential carbon emissions for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, finding that metro area residents have smaller carbon footprints than the average American, although metro footprints vary widely.

city folk don't drive as far as country folk

I can't see the little map/diagram, it's too small.

the PDFs with all the good shit are at the bottom of the link

Rank Metropolitan Area
1 Honolulu, HI
2 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
3 Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA
4 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
5 Boise City-Nampa, ID
6 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
7 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
8 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
9 El Paso, TX
10 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
11 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
12 Sacramento--Arden-Arcade--Roseville, CA
13 Greenville, SC
14 Rochester, NY
15 Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI
16 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY
17 Tucson, AZ
18 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
19 Stockton, CA
20 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

but basically "green manhattan" isn't all it's cracked up to be

yeah I'm sorry, I didn't realize they left out rural averages entirely. I started with the top 100 list and then worked my way backwards

Yeah, dude, you crazy. I don't know what a quintile is (a fifth?) but the NYC usage is in the lowest slice of emissions per capita.

80 Toledo, OH
81 Des Moines, IA
82 Chattanooga, TN-GA
83 Akron, OH
84 Knoxville, TN
85 Columbus, OH
86 Richmond, VA
87 Wichita, KS
88 Springfield, MA
89 Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro, TN
90 Kansas City, MO-KS
91 Oklahoma City, OK
91 Baltimore-Towson, MD
93 Tulsa, OK
94 Dayton, OH
95 St. Louis, MO-IL
96 Louisville, KY-IN
97 Indianapolis, IN
98 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN
99 Lexington-Fayette, KY
100 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

bah. I got a 36 on the science part of the ACT, really I did

I should go back and use my mod edit powers to make myself look less of a dipshit

Can't tell you how unkeen I am to know Momus' thoughts on "Asian cramming and stacking"

this thread was one of Momus's all time great "isn't it that case that my preferences are both deeply ethical & cutting edge too" moments

yes it was at least an excellent revive even if I read top 100 lists backwards