PARK(ing)

PARK(ing)
A temporary urban park

One of the more critical issues facing outdoor urban human habitat is the increasing paucity of space for humans to rest, relax, or just do nothing.

For example, more than 70% of San Francisco's downtown outdoor space is dedicated to the private vehicle, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to the public realm.

Feeding the meter of a parking space enables one to rent precious downtown real estate, typically on a 1/2 hour to 2 hour basis. What is the range of possible occupancy activities for this short-term lease? (. . . .)

Yikes, another defense of sprawl . . .

from: Kotkin, Joel. "Hands off my yard, Mr. Mayor!" Los Angeles Times, 13 December 2005. By Joel

IN A SERIES OF speeches around town, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has recently begun to flesh out a utopian vision for Los Angeles that gives new meaning to the idea that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The way he sees it, Los Angeles shouldn't be Los Angeles at all but should be reshaped into something that mimics the lifestyles of the great cities of the East Coast and of Europe — dense, transit-dependent cities of high-rise apartment buildings like New York, Chicago, Boston and Paris.

"This old concept that all of us are going to live in a three-bedroom home, you know, this 2,500 square feet, with a big front yard and a big backyard — well, that's an old concept," the mayor suggested in a speech last week.

Instead, he said, Angelenos need to move away from that and look at the "good life" lived in traditional, densely packed, apartment-dominated cities.

But is that necessarily a good idea? Is that what Angelenos want? To be sure, some measure of market-driven densification is probably inevitable. But what sets L.A. apart from other great cities — and what makes it so attractive — has traditionally been exactly the opposite: its pattern of dispersion and its strong attachment to the single-family home. Assault that basic form and you will turn L.A. not into Paris but something more like an unruly, congested, dense Third World city. A Tehran, if you will, or a Mexico City. . . .

Sprawl isn't bad, that's just the way we roll . . .

Another positive interpretation of sprawl from Bruegmann. I'm still not buying it, though. Just because there is a long history of folks wanting to get out of cities doesn't mean that car-addictive suburbs were (are) the right solution.

from: Timberg, Scott. "Sprawling into controversy: Professor and author Robert Bruegmann is defying conventional wisdom with his claim that suburban creep is both an ancient phenomenon and a beneficial one." Los Angeles Times, 9 December 2005.

Professor and author Robert Bruegmann is defying conventional wisdom with his claim that suburban creep is both an ancient phenomenon and a beneficial one. At first glance, Robert Bruegmann — a childless academic whose modernist apartment building sits in a dense, upscale Chicago neighborhood — seems like the kind of guy who'd hate the suburbs. His peers and predecessors have, for decades, decried the unplanned, low-density, auto-dependent growth of shopping malls and subdivisions.

But he's emerging as the unlikely champion of what we've called, at least since the 1950s, "sprawl." His counterintuitive new book, "Sprawl: A Compact History," charts the spreading of cities as far back as 1st century Rome — and finds the process not just deeply natural but often beneficial for people, societies and even cities.

The Boston Globe has called Bruegmann "the Jane Jacobs of suburbia," after the urban historian who celebrated the serendipitous, high-density warren of Greenwich Village and other old neighborhoods.

"Sprawl has been as evident in Europe as in America," he writes, "and can now be said to be the preferred settlement pattern everywhere in the world where there is a certain measure of affluence and where citizens have some choice in how they live."

Debates over sprawl and urbanism tend to be very emotional and morally tinged to the point of moralism. Another new book, Joel S. Hirschhorn's "Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money," blames sprawl not only for social isolation but also for traffic accidents and untimely death caused by sedentary lifestyles. On the other side of the aisle, libertarians often excoriate sprawl's opponents as uptight liberal "elitists."

Mazda Recommends Employees Walk to Office

The following came through one of the other lists. Funny coming from a car company. We have a similar "rideshare" program here at CSULB, where you earn points every time you use alternative transportation (bus, carpool, bike, walk), points that can be redeemed for gift cards at various retail stores (like Lowe's Home Improvement). Only recently did the State of California deem this incentive a form of earned income and made it taxable. I haven't seen the damage yet, so I don't know how less appealing they've now made ridesharing. Doesn't matter to me much anyway, since I'll walk to work regardless.

from: Mazda Recommends Employees Walk to Office
Fri Dec 2, 2005, 10:04 AM ET, Associated Press via Yahoo News

Japanese automaker Mazda Motor Corp. is recommending its employees walk to the office, rather than commute by car, as part of an effort to improve their health and protect the environment, a company spokesman said Friday.

Those meeting a set of requirements by going to the office on foot are eligible to receive 1,500 yen ($12) a month, Mazda spokesman Ken Haruki said.

Aimed at improving employees' health and to promote environment protection, Mazda introduced its "Eco-walk commutation allowance" on Thursday, Hakuki said.

Mazda, Japan's fourth-largest automaker based in Hiroshima, is the first Japanese car company to encourage its employees to walk and offer a monetary incentive, he said.