Monthly Archives: July 2013

Architecture, Editorial, Mark David Major, Poor Richard, Urban Planning

More Poor Richard | Part 3

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More Poor Richard, Part 3
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

Courteous Reader,

I attempted to win your favor when I wrote my first Almanac for Architects and Planners, in the name of the public good and professional betterment, by way of earning some profit and a wife. I am gratified by your expression of encouragement for my tireless efforts dedicated to these aims. Alas, my circumstances still find me exceedingly poor and, unluckily, exceedingly wifeless. I am required to earn some profit to address both problems whilst now addressing a third, namely testing the proposition that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” To satisfy my own particular brand of insanity, I have written more proverbs and whimsical sayings for your benefit and, hopefully, my own.

As before on The Outlaw Urbanist, I write this new Almanac in increments of ten, according to the dictates of Moses and the Almighty. However, once published as an Almanac for Architects and Planners, the proverbs and witticisms were gathered into a number equal to the days of the week, after being reliably informed that both seven and ten are sacred numbers. My desired requirement for a wife is sufficient motive to write this new Almanac in the hope it will find your favor and retweets as a means of demonstrating the usefulness of my continued efforts but also your charity to this sane Friend and poor Servant,

Richard

On Creating and Creativity

21.       Planners with 20/20 foresight are more valuable than those with 20/20 hindsight.

22.       Organisms are machines for living. When it comes to creating machines, Nature is still infinitely superior to Man.

23.       Man assumes a God-like artifice compared to the machines he creates but, compared to the Nature of the Universe, Man is an ant.

24.       A little humility before Nature goes a long way.

25.      Creativity is a newly (re)discovered path that is often more important than the destination itself.

26.       Creativity and space flow with an energy born from the same source.

27.       For any true artist, a blank page is exciting and frightening in equal measure.

28.       Creativity is the vibrant symbiosis of courage to succeed and fear of failure. Too often, urban planners suffer from an abundance of the latter and deficiency in the former.

29.       Shame on the architect who does not design with love and builds that which is unloved by its own creator.

30.       For an architect or planner, doubt only marks the beginning of a path to wisdom. Doubt only marks hubris if it is treated as a destination unto itself. Take the path and never assume you have arrived.

Issue 4 of More Poor Richard for Architects and Planners cometh soon!

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Editorial, Mark David Major, News, Press

The Splenda Housing Market | To Be or Not to Be

To Be or Not to Be: The Splenda Housing Market
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

UrbanLand reports we finally have a ‘real’ housing recovery (see below). Trulia Trends and The Atlantic Cities report housing prices are recovering at a more rapid pace in urban neighborhoods than in the suburbs (see below). However, CNN/Money and AOL Real Estate report McMansions of suburbia are making a comeback (see below) based on recent Census data instead of national homebuilder ‘wish fulfillment’ surveys (see The Outlaw Urbanist January 24, 2013 post, “McMansions Return“). Other media outlets are reporting an explosion in rental apartment construction. What gives?

Welcome to a Splenda Housing Market, where the modus operandi is a saccharine high of easy money, taxpayer-funded bailouts, and manipulated markets!

• The Fed continues to pump easy money into the economy at a rapid rate through its bond-purchasing program called Qualitative Easing (what number are we on now?). Despite what Paul Krugman and the American government tell you (“we only measure inflation on things people don’t want to buy”), there are real inflationary pressures out there, which are transmitted into every facet of the American economy including housing. The evidence lies in the year-to-year increase in housing prices from 2011 to 2012. The appreciation of property values in the Trulia Trends report range from 7.3% in New York to an astounding 33.8% in Las Vegas! This is patently unsustainable and highly suspicious.

• Eager to return to the “good, old days” as quickly as possible, realtors and landlords are shamelessly inflating prices for home/property and monthly rents to a level far above their real value, especially in light of the next item.

• The banks have a huge amount of inventory of foreclosed homes on their books, the majority of which lies vacant and withheld from the housing market. What does it mean? Housing prices never reached their true floor.

• For every home foreclosed, the banks not only get the home but also file an insurance claim on the mortgage debt, usually with AIG (i.e. the American {Insurance} Government). What does it mean? The banks get to have their cake courtesy of dispossessed homeowners and they get to eat it too funded by American taxpayers by double dipping on the value of the home and the mortgage.

• As home/property values continue to appreciate at a steady pace, the banks will systematically release their massive inventory onto the market to capitalize on rising housing prices. What does it mean? The value of your home/property is artificially suppressed as increased inventory enters the market;

• The longer home/property values appreciate and the more inventory released on the market by the banks, then the more the initial gain in the recovery rate of housing prices in urban neighborhoods touted by The Atlantic Cities and others will evaporate. These stable, urban neighborhoods tended to be the last to experience the crashing wave of falling housing prices during the Great Recession, so naturally they are the first to recover their real value. However, this is an ephemeral comeback for urban neighborhoods. The longer the Splenda Housing Market is in effect, then the more attractive becomes cheap land at the periphery of our cities and the ‘old way’ of doing things. Welcome back, suburban sprawl! We hardly could stand you the first time around!

What does it mean for you? The long and short is this: unless you possess the equity at hand to pay cash for a property/home now, then you’re totally screwed. Too bad, suckers. Remember friends: the only reason the shit rolls downhill is because of who is squatting at the top and taking a dump.

Excerpt from June 27, 2013 article, “Housing Recovery Strengthens, but Credit Remains an Issue” by Bendix Anderson on UrbanLand:

“The housing sector is finally helping the U.S. economic recovery, rather than holding it back. But more Americans than ever now spend more than half their income on housing, according to The State of the Nation’s Housing 2013, a report released June 26 by the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University. “Clearly, we are in a strong housing recovery now,” said Eric Belsky, managing director of JCHS.

Read the full article here: Housing Recovery Strengthens, but Credit Remains an Issue | UrbanLand.

Excerpt from June 25, 2013 article, “Home Prices Rising Faster in Cities than in the Suburbs – Most of All in Gayborhoods”by Jed Kolko on Trulia Trends:

“Here’s the punch line: urban neighborhoods had faster price growth in the past year, while suburban neighborhoods had higher population growth. The median asking price per square foot was up 11.3% in urban neighborhoods, versus 10.2% in suburban neighborhoods. (The overall national increase, including urban and suburban neighborhoods, was 10.5%.) But despite faster price growth in cities, the suburbs are where people are moving: suburban neighborhoods had faster population growth than urban neighborhoods did, 0.56% versus 0.31%.”

Read the full article here: Home Prices Rising Faster in Cities than in the Suburbs – Most of All in Gayborhoods | Trulia Trends.

Excerpt from June 5, 2013 article “McMansions Are Making a Comeback” by CNN/Money on AOL Real Estate:

“As the economy recovers, America’s love affair with the oversized McMansion has been reignited. During the past three years, the average size of new homes has grown significantly, according to a Census Bureau report released Monday. In 2012, the median home in the U.S. hit an all-time record of 2,306 square feet, up 8 percent from 2009.”

Read the full CNN/Money article here: McMansions Are Making a Comeback | AOL Real Estate.

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Urban Patterns

Urban Patterns | London, United Kingdom

“London calling, yes I was there too,
An’ you know what they said — well some of it was true!”
— London Calling, The Clash

Urban Patterns | London, United Kingdom
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

London is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the southeast of the island of Great Britain, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. It was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London’s ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its +square-mile medieval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, “London” has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which today largely makes up Greater London, governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. London is a leading global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism, and transportation. London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. The estimated mid-2015 municipal population (corresponding to Greater London) was 8,673,713, which is the largest of any city in the European Union, and accounting for 12.5% of the UK population (Source: Wikipedia).

Archaeological discoveries in the London area have found evidence of structures that date back as far as 4,500 B.C., indicating humans have occupied the area far longer than previously thought. However, the founding of London by the Romans in 43 AD still marks the first large-scale settlement in the area. This settlement was founded in the location of the modern “Square Mile” of the City of London (to the right of the below satellite view, north of the River Thames where there are five bridges).

1572 Braun & Hogenberg’s 1572 map of London showing the City of London (center) and the early origins of the City of Westminster (far left) and the Bankside area (bottom center, south of the River Thames).

The City of Westminister (west and south of St. James Park along the River Thames where it has a – more or less – north-south alignment at this location) predates the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The two distinct settlements only began to merge together during the 16th century (see above).

Satellite view of central London from 15 km (Source: Google Earth).

This created a new urban focus in what is now called the West End (the exact center of this image, which is focused on Piccadilly Circus, adjacent to Hyde Park) and, specifically, Oxford Street (the clearly visible, long east-west street at the center of the image). The City of London is characterized by a small-scale, deformed grid pattern of small blocks and short streets (in relative terms, though not nearly as small-scale as during the Medieval period).

Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover illustration of a pig flying over Battersea Power Station.

In fact, all of London has a deformed grid pattern radiating outward from center-to-edge whereby the scale of the grid became larger for street lengths and block sizes (such as in the West End) during the growth of the city in order to mediate the relationship between the center and its ever-expanding edges.

NOTE: As any Pink Floyd fan might expect, the flying pig marks the location of Battersea Power Station, currently and finally being redeveloped.

(Updated: June 16, 2017)

Urban Patterns is a series of posts from The Outlaw Urbanist presenting interesting examples of terrestrial patterns shaped by human intervention in the urban landscape over time.

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Editorial, Mark David Major, Press

Lying Statistics | Suicide in America | Atlantic Cities | New York Times

Lying Statistics | Suicide in America | Atlantic Cities | New York Times
Editorial by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist contributor

“Beware of false prophets who come to you disguised as sheep but underneath are ravenous wolves.” – Matthew 7:15

The difference between statistics and damn, lying statistics is the same as between the truth and demagoguery. In his May 8, 2013 article, Richard Florida exerts gun ownership is the ‘smoking gun’ behind surging suicide rates among Baby Boomers in the United States. He cities statistical data about gun ownership and suicide rates to make this argument. However, an objective assessment of the data reveals a more mundane truth: people who want to kill themselves are more likely to succeed if they own a gun. The key phrase here is not “a gun” but “people who want to kill themselves.” This revelation should rightly be filed under “Well, duh.”

Excerpt from “The Hidden Geography of America’s Surging Suicide Rate” by Richard Florida in The Atlantic Cities:

“While the economic crisis has clearly been a contributing factor to America’s rising suicide rate, perhaps it is not the only, or even the most important factor, behind the surge. In fact, another key factor appears to be at play: guns. Guns are the leading cause of suicide by far, according to the CDC report, accounting for nearly half (48 percent) all suicides among adults ages 35 to 64 in 2010. Slightly less than a quarter of suicides of people in this age group are caused by suffocation, and another 22 percent are poisonings, mainly drug overdoses.”

Read the full article here: The Hidden Geography of America’s Surging Suicide Rate – Richard Florida – The Atlantic Cities.

Unsurprisingly, Florida’s article appeared after 24/7 national media coverage of a series of high-profile mass shootings and, subsequently, legislative attempts by some in Congress and the present Administration to curtail constitutional protections under the 2nd Amendment. (Look at that superhero pose in the featured image via The Guardian! I wonder though if he can make the superhero landing… hard on the knees). However, in making this argument, Florida shamelessly misinterprets  statistical data to fuel a political agenda and, in doing so, does a great disservice to the real mental health issues contributing to the increased suicide rate. To paraphrase the old NRA mantra, “guns don’t kill people, people kill themselves.”

Fortunately, the New York Times did not succumb to this urge to demagogue the issue. What followed was a series of (should be award-winning) articles offering more thoughtful insights into surging suicide rates in the United States. This includes the May 2, 2013 New York Times article, “Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in U.S.” by Tara Parker-Pope (excerpt below):

“Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm.”

Read the full article here: Suicide Rate Rises Sharply in U.S. – NYTimes.com.

And a more thorough 6/26/13 investigative report in the New York Times, “The Suicide Detective” by Kim Tingly (excerpt below):

“For reasons that have eluded people forever, many of us seem bent on our own destruction. Recently more human beings have been dying by suicide annually than by murder and warfare combined. Despite the progress made by science, medicine and mental-health care in the 20th century — the sequencing of our genome, the advent of antidepressants, the reconsidering of asylums and lobotomies — nothing has been able to drive down the suicide rate in the general population. In the United States, it has held relatively steady since 1942. Worldwide, roughly one million people kill themselves every year. Last year, more active-duty U.S. soldiers killed themselves than died in combat; their suicide rate has been rising since 2004. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the suicide rate among middle-aged Americans has climbed nearly 30 percent since 1999. In response to that widely reported increase, Thomas Frieden, the director of the C.D.C., appeared on PBS NewsHour and advised viewers to cultivate a social life, get treatment for mental-health problems, exercise and consume alcohol in moderation. In essence, he was saying, keep out of those demographic groups with high suicide rates, which include people with a mental illness like a mood disorder, social isolates and substance abusers, as well as elderly white males, young American Indians, residents of the Southwest, adults who suffered abuse as children and people who have guns handy.”

Read the full article here: The Suicide Detective – NYTimes.com.

If you want to solve a problem, it’s always best to start addressing the problem on the basis of scientific objectivity, not political subjectivity.

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Mark David Major, On Space, Phenomenology, Philosophy

On Space | The Geometrical City

On Space | The Geometrical City
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

The geometrical city exists in and across time and space, a quantitative and describable pattern finitely persistent in its stability and infinitely malleable in its qualitative flexibility. The spatial geometry of the city flows, never halting and without beginning, it merges together into an intricate network of limitless possibilities and strategic offerings that guide the weary traveler to his destination. It is a tradition rooted in the instinctive nature of our being, stretching back into shadowy mists of the past and striding forward into the enchanted light of a promised future, bounded by the essential truth of living on a tiny sphere floating, awashed at the edges of a universal shore. The geometric city is the hearth of the community, the fertile land gathers around it, providing both sustenance to and sustaining from the urban ideal. At its center lies a sacred space, a place to gather for all, where insider and outsider mingle and exchange freely of their valued time and goods. This is the true Pilgrims’ pride of America, that which can be independently traced to worlds and cultures of Antiquity from east to west, south to north, following the path we emerged from African jungles to cross plains and rivers, the mountains and oceans. The geometrical city is the economy of the community, goods and services are exchanged in space and carried forth into the larger, unfamiliar world. It welcomes and reassures, it is questions with answers, offering solvable riddles to the observant and the observed.

19th century America represents the urban fruition of a geometrical order, a full expression of the possibilities for street, block, square, and plan in the geometrical city. In the virgin land of this milieu, the geometrical city attains its Renaissance ideal, ultimately a Spanish model of the rational city, relentless in its magnificence as a tapestry, woven by individual hands into a common entity, holistic and worthy of an ancestral past from which it sprouted. Until, at last, radial parts emerge from within or reach forth from center-to-edge to bring a structural wonder to the urban spectacle. The formal and informal, planned and unplanned, coincide in the spatial beauty of the rationally urbane, all shaped within a Jeffersonian framework leaving marks on the landscape to this day. 20th century America demands the ruination of the geometric city in its heedless pursuit of state control and private profit; the faceless bureaucrat and masked capitalist hidden beneath self-serving rubrics, all in the name of an artificial (public and personal) welfare, which taunts the instinctive nature of urban dwelling. Stability is exchanged for unpredictability, the malleable for the rigid, the persistent for the ephemeral, and a natural pattern for the awkwardly contrived forever haunted by an unnatural entropy. It is a doctrine that demands more and more at the expense of less and less (quantity and cost) whilst ignoring the concept of the better and the best (quality). It becomes an irrational anti-city.

On Space is a regular series of philosophical posts from The Outlaw Urbanist. These short articles (usually about 500 words) are in draft form so ideas, suggestions, thoughts and constructive criticism are welcome.

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