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Thursday, July 7th, 2011

The Coolest and Best City Videos

I have posted quite a few “city videos” in the course of blogging. These are usually unofficial short pieces, often art projects, and frequently featuring time lapse, tilt shift, or other techniques to produce a very cool “music video” about a particular place. I thought I’d share a compilation of some of the coolest and very best of these today. If you have other suggestions, please post a link as a comment.

A lot of these are high quality uploads that more than justify watching them in full screen mode. Enjoy!

You’ve Got to Love London

This one was an instant classic (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

Le Flâneur (Paris)

Here’s a variant on the time lapse approach (if the video doesn’t display, click here). The creator of this video discussed his techniques over at National Geographic, but alas the post seems to have expired (or I can’t find it).

Little Big Berlin

This is such an incredible video. It doesn’t necessarily beat you over the head with the coolness of the place like the London and Paris videos, but instead gives you slices of everyday life in way that reveals the city to you. Even the classical soundtrack (Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody #2″) is awesome. (If the video doesn’t display click here).

Le Tour de France Grand Départ 2010 (Rotterdam)

This one actually is a promotional video, shot for the Grand Départ of the 2010 Tour de France. But it’s a great video about cycling and Rotterdam generally. This one I particularly love since the music is a delightful original composition by Erwin Steijlen, featuring vocals by Alma Nieto and Steve Balsamo. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

Inter // States (Tokyo)

This video by Samuel Cockedey isn’t as good as the rest of them on the whole, but if you’re a transport geek like me, you’ll definitely like it (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

New York City

The best of the city videos all seem to be from overseas cities (though interestingly the London and Paris ones were made by Americans). Here are a couple of great New York timelapses, however. First, one from James Ogle (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

And one by Mindrelic called “Manhattan in Motion” (if the video doesn’t display, click here).

A Summer Sped Up (Chicago)

Here’s a reader suggestion that I can’t believe I’ve never seen before since I live in Chicago at present. (If the video doesn’t display for you, click here).

Hope you enjoyed these.

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

The Mark of a Great City Is in How It Treats Its Ordinary Spaces, Not Its Special Ones

Cities turn to starchitecture in order to create iconic images to symbolize their city and its aspirations to the world. Famous buildings can, as with the Bilbao Guggenheim or the Milwaukee Art Museum, even come to symbolize a city itself. Such buildings or spaces also fulfill the human need for the spectacular, and for sacred space in the community.

Similarly cities create “gateways” to mark the entry to special districts, or engage in various “placemaking” initiatives around branding. We frequently see, for example, the main street, plaza, or square of a town especially beautified.

This is true of all great cities. Consider London, with its many famed iconic spaces and landmarks, such as the Tower Bridge.

The Tower Bridge – Photo Credit Flickr/wallyg

I could devote an entire post to showcasing London’s special places. Here’s Trafalgar Square:

Trafalgar Square – Photo Credit Flickr/steeljam

But these special buildings, structures, spaces, and elements are not what make London a great city. Indeed, because everyplace has these to some extent, they fail to distinguish a place. Go to any small town in America and find its Main Street nicely bricked, with old time gas lamp replicas, flower boxes, a statue or memorial, major civic buildings, etc. There’s nothing special in the special.

But leave the tourist district behind and check out the average street, the average building, the average design. Too often you will find that those are of another order altogether. It’s as if there are two separate cities. One place is the city of special events and tourists, existing inside a cordon sanitaire (whose boundaries are marked with gateways perhaps?) indicating its unique status. The other place is the city as it is actually lived in and experienced in everyday life. This latter city, that is to say, the vast majority of the city, is too often neglected. The gulf between the special and the ordinary proclaims the hollowness of these places.

The true mark of a great city is in how it treats its ordinary places and things, not its special ones. Does it invest as much care, or any care for that matter, into the ordinary, workaday aspects of the city?

Let’s again look at London, and we’ll see that what perhaps more than anything shapes our unique impression of London as a city are not those special landmarks at all, but rather the design of what in too many places are purely prosaic and utilitarian objects. It is the pervasiveness of these objects throughout the city, not just some special zones, that is one of the things that distinguishes London from the pack.

Double-Decker Buses – Photo Credit Flickr/wallgy

There is perhaps no more iconic image of London than its red double-decker buses. Even the single-floor buses are painted in the same red scheme, making them fit right in. I can’t even name one other bus livery in the world that stands out in any particular way (please send examples my way).

Something about these buses and other iconic designs of London is that they aren’t new. They go back a long way. One reason they are classics is that they’ve stood the test of time. While so many places discard the old in order to showcase some “new, improved” brand or design, London shows the value of continuity over time.

Here’s a 1928 photo of a London bus. Look familiar?

1928 Autochrome by Clifford A. Adams for National Geographic via How to Be a Retronaut

And what about these fellows?

Officers of London’s Metropolitan Police – Photo Credit Flickr/Risager

Note the nice mix of old (the classic hat) with the new (a modern reflective jacket also executed in a style recognizably London).

London Taxi Cabs – Photo Credit Flickr/StormCab

The black cabs of London are right up there with the buses. Of course, London’s cab drivers are also widely regarded as among the world’s best if not the world’s best, thanks to the requirement that they past an exhaustive test of geographic information called “the Knowledge.” London is unique in not using a medallion system regulate the quantity of cabs, rather relying on its rigorous standards of driver competency and professionalism, as well as very tough oversight of rolling stock.

London Phone Booth – Photo Credit Flickr/Shark Attacks

This is one that I believe is pretty much limited to tourist zones these days. In an era of mobile phones, who uses a phone booth anymore anyway? But the city does recognize the branding value in these.

Here again I’ll show a historic 1928 photo to compare:

1928 Autochrome by Clifford A. Adams for National Geographic via How to Be a Retronaut

Been around awhile, haven’t they?

Here might be the most famous London image of all:

Sign for the London Underground – Photo Credit Flickr/DanieVDM

And did I mention the famous map of the underground system? I’ll let you look that one up for yourself. And this one I found interesting:

London Bike Share Station – Photo via This Big City

I love how the new London bike share program, which I believe falls under the Transport for London umbrella, uses the same signage. This both adds a dash of prestige, but also signals the intent that bicycling be part of an integrated ground transport system.

Most of these items are what I’d describe as branding related. Of course there’s also functionality and many other matters of importance. It’s not all about branding and looking pretty. There are many areas where London does not live up to the high standards set by these branding items. I mercifully won’t be showing you any pictures of the queues at Heathrow T3 today, for example. London, like everywhere, has its share of problems. In some respects more than its share. And the underlying greatness of London is not to be found in material things at all, but, as with all great cities, in its people and culture. But that greatness does manifest itself into the physical world, and these are some of the ways. When you walk around London, which is not beautiful in the way of Paris or Amsterdam, you nevertheless know you are in a very unique and wonderful place, and these are some of the reasons why.

Given the overwhelming success and brand equity London has created with these items, it is a mystery to me why almost no other city has tried to replicate them. Many places enforce a common cab livery, but it’s very rare to get something beyond a standard issue yellow and black. Dittos for bus liveries, police uniforms, signage, etc. Perhaps it is because people associate these London items with the self-consciously retro traditions of royalty and such – the changing of the guard, etc. There’s no doubt that some of the same forces are at play, and that there’s more than a streak of shtick in the whole thing. But it’s effective shtick. And the principles that underlie it are available to all. It starts with caring about the ordinary elements of our urban existence, and a recognition that there’s no detail too small to be carefully considered in the urban environment.

I’ll leave you with another incredible blast from London’s past: a 1927 color film by Claude Friese-Greene. This 10 minute silent feature is pretty amazing. You can’t help but notice how many touchstones of this era are still alive today in London. While clearly of another time, there’s a certain evergreen nature to this piece that shows why London is one of the world’s greatest cities. This is also via How to Be a Retronaut, a site I highly recommend checking out if you don’t already read it. (Click here if the video does not display for you).

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Urbanoscope

Top Stories

1. Grist: Tell me again why we mandate parking at bars?

2. Errol Morris: Something is wrong but you’ll never know what it is. An interview with David Dunning, discoverer of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, in which the more incompetent you are, the less likely you are to be aware of it. I’m convinced this effect has broad applicability, even to areas of urban development.

3. Karen Heller: Stuck in Pennsylvania

4. Grist has a couple of other great pieces on Charlotte’s light rail system, that are critical reads for smaller cities looking at transit. Charlotte does light rail right and “How Charlotte’s mayor championed light rail.

5. Loving London. I don’t usually put videos in my top story list, but I’ll make an exception for this simply brilliant stop motion time lapse video by Alex Silver called “You’ve Got to Love London.” It starts with 15 seconds of pastoral bliss, then Wow. Click the link if it doesn’t display for you.

Scary Labor Market Chart

Writing at his Economist blog, Ryan Avent put up a very scary chart of US job losses:

The US is the blue line. The chart shows 1Q08 to 1Q10.

Fool Me Eight Times…..

Yes, this is a video-heavy post. I don’t normally link to Jon Stewart either, but his Daily Show monologue on the failed promises of the last eight consecutive presidents to wean America off foreign oil is priceless. (If the video doesn’t display for you, click here.)

World and National Roundup

Moncole magazine just released their annual list of the best cities in the world to live and work.

Andrew Manshel: Enough with Jane Jacobs already

Business Week: Top down tech clusters often lack key ingredients

The Guardian: Norman Foster at 75

Transport Politic: Barcelona metro continues its expansion at a relatively cheap price” – Yonah demonstrates yet again how US transit construction costs are way out of line.

Joe Peach: London 2010 Olympics missing an opportunity for truly sustainable development

Joel Kotkin: The Productive Economy Still Matters

Ed Glaeser: The Health of Cities

Nancy Folbre: The Sagging of the Middle Class

Silicon Alley Insider: This latest wave of New York startups is just getting started

Fred Siegal: John Linsday’s Bright, Shining Failure

Ryan Avent: Immigration and Detroit

Business Insider: California Pension Funds Assume Dow Reaches 28 Million. I’m beginning to see why they have a pension crisis.

LA Times: LA’s ‘phantom parking’ is a jam

Transport Politic: Philadelphia selling full naming rights to SEPTA station to AT&T

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Diversity a point of pride for East Point

peHUB: Chicago is not the next Silicon Valley, but at these prices, what a shame (h/t Windy Citizen)

Chicago Sun-Times: Regional transit faces $24 billion repair bill

Rust Wire asks if Ohioans are the Okies of the Great Recession. They link to an article in the Charlestown City Paper about with stories of people complaining about Ohioans. Most of it sounded like good-natured fun to me, but it’s interesting to watch.

St. Louis Post Dispatch: Sinquefield not discouraged with return on his political efforts. This St. Louis billionaire is spending millions to try to significantly change public policy in Missouri.

NYT: Fostering entrepreneurs, and trying to revive Detroit

Taking the Slide

Volkswagen did a promotion in the city of Berlin, where they installed a slide from the mezzanine to the platform level of a subway station. They call it the “Fast Lane”, and yes, adults can use it too! (If the video doesn’t display, click here.)

This is both super-fun and very cool. Alas for America’s litigious nature and the general killjoy attitude of our elected officials. h/t CTA Tattler.

Triple Lightning Strike

A severe thunderstorm in Chicago last week produced some dramatic lightning strike imagery. This short video captures an amazing moment lightning strikes the three tallest buildings in the city simultaneously. Click the link if it doesn’t display for you.

Post-Script

Continuing my Columbus, Indiana series, here are a couple of interior shots of the North Christian Church, designed by Eero Saarinen. My camera isn’t the greatest for dimly lit interior shots, but you can get the feel for this spectacular space. This building is a National Historic Landmark.

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Midwest Miscellany

Come find out what over 3,000 people already know by following me on Twitter. I send out about 10-15 tweets a day with the coolest links about urbanism and design so you can keep up with what’s going on in the world. You can also follow my Google Reader feed too. On that I usually only share less than three items per day, mostly architecture and design related.

Also, I was recently a guest on the Explore Cincinnati podcast, along with Randy Simes of Urban Cincy. So click over to listen to us talking about a variety of urban issues, not all Cincinnati related.

Top Stories

The Atlantic is doing is special project this month called The Future of the City. There’s a huge amount of great stuff there, ranging from an interview with Andres Duany that’s already stirring up trouble, to an archived piece by Robert Moses from 1962. This is a must to check out.

1. Lee Hsien Loong: Singapore and Human Capital – Mr. Lee is the Prime Minister of Singapore. This is the text of his remarks at the Singapore Human Capital Summit (via Brewed Fresh Daily).

2. John Podhoretz: New York Then and Now. This article in the conservative Jewish magazine Commentary tells an incredible tale of what it was like to grow up on the Upper West Side during its 70’s nadir. If you want to know how far New York has come, read this article.

3. KC Star: Immigrants find old careers don’t transfer to new life in America

4. Richard Longworth: Brookings and the Midwest

5. City Mayors: Top Level City Domains – Apparently the new TLD system will enable city specific top level domains (e.g., “.paris”, “.nyc”, etc). This article explores the potential of that.

Best States for Business

Chief Executive magazine released their 2010 list of the best and worst states for business. Here’s how Midwest states stacked up:

• #16 – Indiana
• #17 – Iowa
• #26 – Missouri
• #31 – Minnesota
• #42 – Wisconsin
• #44 – Ohio
• #46 – Illinois
• #49 – Michigan

Naturally Texas was #1 and California was last. Illinois has fallen 29 places in the last five years.

Lawsuit Climate

The Institute for Legal Reform – obviously an advocacy group, so caveat emptor – published their 2010 Lawsuit Climate rankings for states. Here is how Midwest states stacked up:

• #4 – Indiana
• #5 – Iowa
• #11 – Minnesota
• #22 – Wisconsin
• #29 – Ohio
• #30 – Michigan
• #45 – Illinois

Chicago/Cook County, Illinois was cited as the worst jurisdiction in the country, even worse than infamous Madison County, IL (only fifth worst).

World and National Roundup

Yahoo: Megacities of the World – a glimpse of how we’ll live tomorrow

Dan Steinbock: Shanghai: The Rise of the Global City

Ahmad Rafay Alam: Tea, Anyone? – A discussion of the impact of urban form on the cultural and intellectual life of Lahore.

George Monbiot: The case for UK high speed rail has not been made

Marketing Interactive: Can Singapore Brand Itself As a Nation?

Chicago Tribune: Battery company recharges debate about US manufacturing

Harry Moroz: Stop the War on Our Cities

Joel Kotkin: Immigration is U.S.

Dome Magazine: Brain Gain: Immigration key to future prosperity

WSJ: How Geeks and Their Transit Apps Get Us Around

Ed Glaeser: Taller Buildings, Cheaper Homes

The Economist: In Praise of Boise

WashPo: Commercial property owners may be asked to pay for part of streetcar project.

New London Doubledecker Buses

London has unveiled a new design for its iconic red double deck Routemaster buses. It’s a pretty sleek design on the whole I think:

DIY Bike Signage

I mentioned before guerrilla bus shelters, now GOOD Magazine tells us about guerrilla bike signage. Fed up with a lack of progress in making roads safer for bikes, some folks are taking matters into their own hands.

Bike Advocacy in London

Broken Sidewalk points us at a nice 40 second bike advocacy video from Transport for London. (If the video doesn’t display, click here).

If you click over to the original BS post, he contrasts this with a Chrysler minivan ad using the same music.

More Midwest

Indianapolis and Columbus – Similar Surfaces, Opposite Cores (Urban Out) – Greg Meckstroth compares the two cities in a compelling analysis.

A Brand for High Speed Rail in the Midwest (Urban Milwaukee)

Terry Schwarz on Shrinking Cities (Flint Expatriates)

What Color Ohio’s Economy? (Columbus Dispatch)

Cleveland
In Cleveland, Sports Fans Cheer Until It Hurts (NYT)

Detroit
Detroit to demolish 10,000 abandoned properties (WSJ) – Includes Mitt Romney’s boyhood home.
Ten tips for downsizing Detroit (Free Press)
Detroit leads the way in urban farming (CS Monitor)
Can Detroit Learn From the Rebirth of Grand Rapids? (CNN/Fortune)

Indianapolis
I-70 Shortcut Getting an Obstacle – INDOT is spending $450 million to make it harder to get downtown from the West Side by eliminating the preferred freeway route. I am not aware of another case in US history where a flyover ramp at a freeway-freeway interchange was replaced with a stoplight. It’s a truly stunning step backwards. It also shows that scope reductions, not efficiencies were the likely source of this project coming in under budget. Somebody was asleep at the switch bigtime on this.
Monument Circle and the Legacy of East Liberty (A Place of Sense)

Kansas City
State line status brings cooperation and competition (KC Star)
Sewer upgrade approved (KC Star) – Kansas City next up to spend billions

Louisville
They Tore the Whole Thing Down (Broken Sidewalk) – An entire 4th St. streetscape razed. Sad.

Post Script

A Broken Sidewalk photo of Operation Sidewalk Defense, a group protesting the closure of sidewalks (but not streets of course) during construction projects.

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

London and the Power of Place

Tyler Brûlé is the über-hip founder of Wallpaper magazine, founder and editor of the excellent Monocle magazine, and owner of a design agency. He also writes a weekly column for the Financial Times in which he frequently takes London to task for its poor quality of life. This week featured another installment – “London: Not As Livable As I’d Like” – in which he extols the virtues of Seoul in comparison to London.

But guess what? Brûlé lives in London and bases all of his businesses there. Despite his complaints, there must be something about the place that keeps him from packing it up for Seoul or Tokyo.

Anyone who has ever been to London can attest to its miserable transport conditions, generally unattractive streets (in contrast to, say, Paris or Amsterdam), and high costs, among other annoyances. Yet for some people, the value of being in London is so high none of that matters.

People talk about quality of life and amenities as drawing people. That’s a strategy many cities are pursuing. Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said of his city:

My goal in the changing of the face of Seoul is all related to enhancing its attractiveness. If the city is attractive, people, information and capital flow in. This in turn creates economic re-vitality and it also creates a lot of jobs.

But once you’ve reached a certain level, that stuff almost doesn’t matter anymore. London’s power of place is so high, it trumps all other considerations, including quality of life, for those who can take advantage of it. That shows the magic isn’t per se in the amenities, it’s in the people and the value of them being together in a place like London.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t focus on amenities or quality of life, especially if you aren’t yet in the London league. You’ve got to prime the pump somehow. Just remember why you are doing it. And I’d suggest not losing sight of the bottom line on costs either.

By the way, a couple years ago I was privileged to spend quite a bit of time working in London. There’s definitely something about the city. It’s got an energy and edge that is just incredible. You know just walking down the streets that this is a place where important things are happening. Whatever my long list of complaints about Heathrow and such, London is still by far my favorite city outside the United States – and I’m not just saying that because they speak English.

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Midwest Miscellany

I have received some reports of badly distorted fonts with Firefox on Windows XP. If the font on this site is rendering horribly for you, I’d appreciate you sending me a screen shot, along with your browser and OS version. I’m investigating. In the meantime, you can see a cleaner version by either using Internet Explorer or using the alternate URL www [dot] arenn [dot] com. Please do not share any links using that URL, however, as I don’t want to confuse Google.

Neighbors for Neighbors

Joseph Porcelli, a friend of mine, has a very interesting project going on in Boston that I wanted to highlight. It is called Neighbors for Neighbors, a social networking platform that includes social networks for every neighborhood in Boston. This came out of his experience with his Jamaica Plain neighborhood, which was experiencing a crime wave and needed a way to organize. Fast forward, and N4N has launched, in official partnership with the city of Boston, with hyper-local based social networks that bring people together and span both the online and offline world. This is a model I think is worth checking out.

China’s Empty City

Here’s a fascinating video I found via the NYT Economix blog about an empty city in China from the Al Jazeera English language service. We keep hearing about China’s inexorable rise. Yet clearly there are massive speculative excesses built up in the Chinese economy. We just watched Dubai, another seemingly unstoppable juggernaut, suffer a debt crisis. China is obviously a much strong country, but stories like this make you wonder. (If the video does not display, click here).

Dangerous by Design

Transportation for America released a major study on preventable pedestrian deaths called Dangerous by Design. In the last 15 years, over 76,000 pedestrians have been killed in America. Here is where our 12 Midwest metros stacked up among regions of over one million people. The ranking is by most dangerous, so the top of the list is more dangerous than the bottom:

• #7 – Louisville
• #14 – Detroit
• #20 – Kansas City
• #21 – St. Louis
• #31 – Indianapolis
• #35 – Columbus
• #37 – Milwaukee
• #41 – Chicago
• #43 – Cleveland
• #46 – Cincinnati
• #49 – Pittsburgh
• #52 – Minneapolis-St. Paul (America’s safest major city)

Full data tables are available here.

Oxford Circus Pedestrian Improvements

For those of you who’ve been to London, you know pedestrians overwhelm the too-narrow sidewalks. The city has been looking at various ways to improve this, and one of the more interesting projects is one at Oxford Circus. Broken Sidewalk points us at this video (click here if video does not display).

Here’s the “Before” view:

Here’s the “After” view:

Best Performing Cities

The Milken Institute released their rankings of the best performing cities of 2009. Their index “ranks U.S. metropolitan areas by how well they are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth. The components include job, wage and salary and technology growth.”

Austin, Texas was #1 in America. Here is how the large Midwest metros stacked up. On this one, a higher rank is better, like a normal league table. The ranking is out of the 200 largest metro areas. You know your region is struggling when it can’t crack the top 50. (In fairness, Peoria, a city I generally don’t cover, was #33)

• #52 – Kansas City
• #108 – Columbus
• #109 – Pittsburgh
• #123 – Minneapolis-St. Paul
• #125 – Indianapolis
• #128 – St. Louis
• #138 – Cincinnati
• #148 – Chicago
• #151 – Milwaukee
• #153 – Louisville
• #186 – Cleveland
• #199 – Detroit

No two ways about it, that’s a pathetic showing.

Detroit Roundup

The Wall Street Journal wrote up an interesting incident here a group of people found an old dump truck on the fourth floor of an abandoned factory and pushed it out of a window. Below is the video. If it does not display, click here. h/t Rust Wire.

Also:

An American Catastrophe (Bob Herbert @ NYT)
David Bing’s last second shot (WSJ)
Michigan’s roads are in a fix. The Detroit News reports that 1/3 of the states total road miles are in poor condition.

8664: River Fields Exposed

LEO Newsweekly, Louisville’s alt-weekly paper, had a great piece recently called Burned Bridge that talks about how River Fields, once a bona-fide conservation group, has become nothing but a front for East End NIMBY’ism. They are a group opposed to the East End bridge at all costs. They so hated this article, that apparently they might have pulled issues from racks to keep people from reading.

Everyone knows the River Fields agenda in Louisville. However, the National Trust for Historic Preservation allowed their name to be attached to the River Fields agenda in filing a lawsuit against the bridges project. Personally, I wouldn’t be sad to see the Record of Decision re-opened, since that is necessary for the 8664 option. But the National Trust may yet find that their own reputation ends up tarnished by linking themselves with an organization that is actually in favor of demolishing historic properties in downtown Louisville to build a bridge there. The River Fields agenda is antithetical to bona fide historic preservation. I actually asked the National Trust what their rationale was for joining the lawsuit, but wasn’t able to get much from them beyond the press release which said it was not about just the East End bridge, and the list of potentially impacted properties taken directly from the EIS. I think they ought to re-evaluate who they are getting into bed with, however.

National and International Roundup

Carol Coletta: Regionalism as identity theft for cities.

Brain Drain Report: Berlin Wall Edition (Burgh Diaspora)

Three simple rules for getting out of poverty – but how easy are they to follow? (One Story Up). Also from One Story Up, Don’t fall in the poverty trap – you night never get out. This is a great public housing oriented blog by Megan Cottrell. Worth checking out.

Housing bust halts growing suburbs (USA Today)

Paris debates plan for new subway (Yahoo News). Proposed 80 new miles of subways for inner ring suburbs at a cost of $31.4 billion.

High hopes and higher standards for Bloomberg 3.0 (Streetsblog)

LA Mayor seeks creative funding to prevent 7 MPH gridlock (Bloomberg)

Smart City Memphis offers Lessons from Great Mayors.

Grand Plans for Rail in Denver Hit a Wall of Fiscal Realities (NYT)

Salt Lake City passes gay rights ordinance with Mormon backing (USA Today)

California exploring detailed strategy for growth (SF Chronicle via @gosner)

Miami ponders whether the good outweighs the bad (NYT)

More Midwest

Chicago
Leaseback deals could come back to bite CTA unless Congress acts (CTA Tattler)
Company piles up profits from parking meter deal (NYT) – Related: Chicago’s parking meter deal a massive rip-off (Streetsblog)
What Oprah’s departure means for the Windy City (Julia Vitullo-Martin @ WSJ)
Review of Aqua (Blair Kamin @ Tribune)
5 year tollway project under budget and ahead of schedule (Tribune)

Columbus
Residents look for trees in I-70/I-71 plan (Dispatch)

Cleveland
An open letter to Cleveland (Cleveland Love via Brewed Fresh Daily)

Detroit
Detroit voters approve $500 million school bond (Detroit News)

Indianapolis
Indianapolis lands 100 more life sciences jobs (Indy Star)
Suburban counties slowly building loop roads to avoid Indianapolis (IBJ) – By the way, Urbanophile readers got the story here first – back in 2007.
Allen Plaza developer bullish on downtown (IBJ)

Kansas City
Mayor-manager system makes problems for Kansas City (KC Star)

Louisville
Would UAW wage concessions have been good for Louisville? (TNR)
Baxter Avenue elevated train station (Louisville Art Deco)

Milwaukee
A void paved over with concrete (Richard L. Birch @ J-S)
City may use water to lure business (J-S)
Republic Airways to add up to 800 jobs.

Pittsburgh
Ravenstahl at crossroads in defining his legacy (Tribune-Review)
How Pittsburgh is managing population loss (Newsweek)

St. Louis
St. Louis second worst city for crime, report says

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Midwest Miscellany

The Rise and Rise of the Chicago Loop

There’s been a string of big good news items about the Chicago Loop economy recently. Willis Group moved into the Sears Tower and dared to claim the naming rights for themselves. Then United Airlines announced it was also relocating to the Sears Tower. This one is huge news because it is a relocation from the suburbs of 2,800 employees and is a full scale traditional HQ, not just a small executive HQ. Greg Hinz over at Crain’s Chicago Business discusses the implications.

The steady flow of businesses into the Loop – companies like Boeing and MillerCoors among others – shows that the Loop is back as the premier business address in Chicagoland, period. No longer is it just for finance, law, banking, government, and tourism. It’s a full service business location.

This is fueled by many factors but among them is the flow of professionals back to the city. These people do not want to spend their lives in cars reverse commuting the burbs. I personally know people who have quit jobs specifically because they did not want to reverse commute. Also, given the spread out region and horrible congestion, the Loop is one of the only areas you can get to from anywhere.

The growth of business in the Loop looks likely to only continue growing over time.

Cincy Streetcar Follow-Up

My post on Cincinnati streetcars got a lot of attention and many hits. Thanks to everyone who passed it around, and also to the Business Courier of Cincinnati for linking it.

While the Cincinnati Enquirer editorialized against the street car, the Business Courier supports it.

Also, the Enquirer has a long article that talks in depth about the matter.

Entrepreneur Mag Best Cities for Startups – Youngstown!

Entrepreneur Magazine named its ten best cities to start a business. Two Midwest cities made the list. One of them, Madison, Wisconsin, would come as a surprise to no one. But the other was Youngstown, Ohio. Yes, Youngstown.

Ordinarily I’d be skeptical about something like this. Youngstown is obviously a troubled city. For example, its metro area is experiencing the steepest population decline of any metro area over 500,000 in the Midwest.

But despite this, or perhaps because of it, Youngstown is a cauldron of creativity. They are famous for their planned shrinkage movement, for example, making them one of the few Midwest cities to face up to their diminished standing the world. But there is more to it than this. The challenges facing Youngstown are so huge, and the traditional approaches failed so badly, that leaders were open to innovative, even radical ideas from elsewhere. As Jim Cossler puts it in the article:

“Youngstown fell so far, traditional community leaders threw up their hands and told the younger generation, ‘You guys try,’” Cossler says. “The new generation is envisioning things we wouldn’t have talked about 10 years ago.” Cossler points to the work of the area’s dynamic congressman and energetic young mayor as examples. “They said, ‘Let’s clean the slate and start over again,’” he says. “There’s a radical transformation going on here right now.”

In city after city across the Midwest, enthusiastic young leaders find themselves frozen out by strong power structures who are not that interested in new ideas. But not in Youngstown. For example, it should come as no surprise that it was Youngstown, not Pittsburgh, that stepped up and not only adopted but funded Jim Russell’s ideas about a diaspora based economic development effort.

Youngstown has a small but enthusiastic community of activists, bloggers, etc., such as I Will Shout Youngstown. You might say, “Big deal, so does every Midwest city.” True, but in Youngstown they are helping to actually drive civic policy and development.

Defend Youngstown has a roundup of the buzz around this.

Another Indy Econdev Winner

This week we learned of another economic development winner in Indianapolis as the city decided to pull a repeat on some past successes and start targeting life sciences conventions:

The Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association is putting together an all-star corporate consortium to make the city a hub for medical and life sciences conventions, meetings and trade shows.

The ICVA began running the initiative full-speed this year and already has signed deals to bring 40 medical meetings to Indianapolis through 2015, including annual meetings for the American Association of Diabetes Educators in 2012 and the American College of Sports Medicine and American Chemical Society in 2013.

This is a great example of trying to find synergies between the different strategies Indy is pursuing. Not only are these conventions good in their own right, but it gives the city an opportunity to showcase itself to companies and people in a key target industry. I would not be surprised if, as with amateur sports and music business, Indy isn’t also targeting selected non-profit businesses associated with these conventions to relocate.

The Midwest Character and Geography

Jim Russell points us at a blog post at The Pitch in Kansas City complaining about a description of the Midwest by author Jonathan Franzen. I don’t know the reason this guy doesn’t like it, because I thought it was pretty good, so thought I’d repeat it here:

If you ask what the Midwest means to me, it’s that myth of an innocence prolonged and then abruptly lost. … And somehow this dynamic seems more like a Midwestern thing than a Lower East Side thing or a South Boston thing. I’m not enough of a social historian to have a good theory of why exactly this is true. I do know that, for a long time, you really were isolated in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, or Webster Groves, Missouri, or Oak Park, Illinois — it really was a long way from the Lower East Side. This is all rapidly changing with our new technologies, and our homogenized exurbs and suburbs, but some of the social and mental habits that grew out of isolation may persist in succeeding generations, leaving vestiges of a “Midwestern” character …

……
[On what counts as the Midwest:] Indiana is a special case. Evansville is the South. Fort Wayne is still Rust Belt, Valparaiso is definitely Midwest. That’s actually an interesting way to approach it–to define where my boundaries of the Midwest run. I think it begins around Columbus, Ohio — Thurberville — and stretches west. Anything below I-70 is basically southern. And that’s true right across Missouri. My Midwest is bounded on the south by I-70. It stretches all the way to about an hour east of Denver and includes pretty much all of the Great Plains states north of I-70. … You can take all of Kansas, some of Oklahoma, too. But not, for example, downstate Illinois. You start hearing the South in people’s voices. They don’t sound like Tom Brokaw anymore.

High Speed Rail

High speed rail isn’t just a point of debate in the US, it’s also being fiercely argued in the UK. Guardian columnist Will Hutton is a passionate supporter:

Economic growth and development are driven by what innovation theorists call general purpose technologies. A general purpose technology is one that transforms economies and societies. The wheel was a general purpose technology. So was the Portuguese invention of the three-masted caravel in the 15th century that allowed ships to become ocean- going, leading to European long-distance trade, colonisation and the emergence of a rich European merchant class. So was the printing press. And so was the railway in the 19th century.

Railways did not just get passengers from A to B faster than horses. The railway consolidated nations and national markets. It created new cities and city suburbs. It allowed the European powers to open up their colonies. Rail transformed the military geography of the world. For the first time, people en masse began to move away from their home towns and villages, massively enlarging the gene pool. Railways, like the internet and biotechnology today, were a genuine general purpose technology.

The intriguing question is whether high-speed rail will be as transformative. My hunch is that it will.
…..

It has been obvious for the last 20 years that cities and city regions are emerging as the new drivers of economic growth, especially if their hinterland has a high proportion of industries requiring a lot of brainpower. These fast-growing “ideopolises” tend, as research at the Work Foundation underlines, to trade with each other rather than poorer, less creative cities.

What the European high-speed network will do is to create a network of fast-growing ideopolises, breaking down borders and exponentially opening up traffic. You need to be on the line…What is needed is political leadership, some dynamism and willingness to take risks.

India’s View on “Brain Drain” and Talent Attraction

Jim Russell points us to a great article on how India looks at the matter of talent and people leaving. While they are keen to attract talent, they take a much more sophisticated look at this than most Midwest cities and states – and have done so for 20 years. It explains a lot about the success of India:

A little over two decades ago, when the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi — during a visit to the United States to meet with President Ronald Reagan — was asked about the flight of top professional talent from India to the US, he said it was not a ‘brain drain’ as it was being dubbed, but a ‘brain bank’ for India to draw upon whenever necessary.

Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar was asked the very same question by the members of The Indus Entrepreneurs, Washington, DC chapter during an interaction.

She, too, like the former prime minister said, it was not a brain drain, but rather “brain circulation”. “What goes around, comes around, and I have seen that movement of Indians to other countries has had a very positive impact back in India.”

Expanding on this point Shankar said, once Andhra Pradesh was one of the most backward states in India. But now it is one of the most developed, thanks to the engineers, technical experts and scientists who came to the US, gathered useful knowledge and then exported that to their home state.

Shankar also pointed out that thanks to globalisation and connectivity, “no one is completely cut off. There is a two-way flow of ideas, knowledge, and investments, and all that helps to circulate rather than act as a brain drain.”

National and International Roundup

Tammi Jones has a great synopsis of the perspective on civic success put forward by CEO’s for Cities. It’s a report on a speech by Carol Coletta. Definitely worth a great. Good stuff in there about the talent dividend, etc.

City Journal reviews a couple of books discussing the legacy of Jane Jacobs (via @GenslerOnCities)

World Changing contemplates the future of the suburb (via @GenslerOnCities)

A columnist in the LA Times suggests public transit improvements will be tough sell in the US (via @OtisWhite)

An interesting look at some of the latest research on global cities. Hong Kong is coming on strong.

You’ve heard of the Internet Movie Database. Well, now there is the Internet Bike Database, with over 30,000 bicycle pictures. (via @ig_fahrrad)

The economy is derailing mixed use projects in Atlanta. (via @OtisWhite)

More Midwest

A moving story of one Elkhart family’s struggle with unemployment in this economy (via @jwalkersmith)

Can anyone run this place? – An article from Slate on the race for mayor in Flint, Michigan. For the record, Walling won. Via Politics and Place

Chicago
Illinoisans ticketed more often in Wisconsin (Tribune) – Film at 11.
Railroad projects gain steam across Chicago (Tribune)

Cincinnati
Cincinnati hub is shrinking (AJC) – via Nullspace

Columbus
City voters approve income tax increase (Columbus Underground)
Teenagers build affordable LEED Platinum home (Green Building Advisor)

Detroit
Detroit’s culture of corruption springs from the grass roots (Nolan Finley @ Detroit News)
Michigan loses if other states rebound (Nolan Finley @ Detroit News)

Indianapolis
Toll road lease tumbles in value (IBJ)

Louisville
Bon Appetit! America’s top restaurant cities (Forbes) – Louisville gets a mention (via @PossibilityCity)

Twin Cities
Cracks develop in support for Central Corridor LRT (Star Tribune)

Post Script

Here’s a nice video on the Miller House and Gardens, the Eero Saarinen designed house in Columubs, Indiana recently acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. This is one of only two houses ever designed by Saarinen (via Atomic Indy)

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