Ralph McQuarrie, Space Exploration, and Cities

Earlier this week there was a disturbance in the force.  Ralph McQuarrie, long time illustrator and the man who brought much of George Lucas' imagination to life has died.  Ralph was one of my favorite artists.  So much so that in high school I took Art 1 and Art 2 in consecutive years just to draw pictures of Star Wars characters in oil pastel, pencil, and prisma color.  Unfortunately my art teacher didn't see this as well rounded. I was constantly hounded to stop drawing Star Wars and try something else.  Ultimately the only pictures I've ever drawn that are framed (and hanging in the house) are Obi Won Kenobi in Prisma and an Imperial Royal Guard copied from Ralph McQuarrie's original thinking about the character.

Jawa Encampment via Wookiepedia

But I feel he can also have a profound impact on people's thinking about cities on our planet as well as others. I was listening to NPR's Science Friday, which happened to have everyone's favorite Astrophysicist from the Bronx Neil deGrasse Tyson, and he was lamenting the loss of the manned space program and imagination that is gained from exploration.  In thinking about Ralph's death this struck me as sad as well.  There is no doubt in my mind that both George Lucas and Ralph McQuarrie among others were inspired by our moon shot. In fact McQuarrie was an artist for Boeing and his illustrations graced newscasts covering the Apollo program.  Without their images and dreams, I probably would have never taken art.  Not that my taking art changes the universe but it shows that people can be influenced to do things through a national imagination for something greater.

And I agree with Tyson that space exploration shouldn't be a partisan issue and Newt Gingrich's idea of a moon base is quite intriguing.   If not for the foothold that it creates to explore other planets and worlds, it could start a new discussion about city design.  To which Ralph would certainly be an influence.  Just looking at a few of his images of cities, it starts me thinking, what would our cities on other worlds look like?

Would they be shining spires on an island like McQuarrie's vision of Aldera of Alderaan?

Aldera via Wookiepedia

Or more like the Crevasse city of that made its way onto the screen in Episode III as Utapau  (Also one of Tim DeChant's Favorites apparently.)

Crevasse City via Wookiepedia

Perhaps the moon would be our first version of Coruscant

Via Architizer

 Some of McQuarrie's other City Images via Wookiepedia.  Also visit McQuarrie's website for more.

Cloud City

 Coruscant Monuments

Ewok Tree City

We can always dream.  Fortunately McQuarrie's drawings will help us along.

Growing Regions Can't Be Affordable if They Don't Build Housing

Austin can keep its tax base at home.  But there are some things that need to happen first.  They aren't hard to understand, but for some reason they are a hard political sell.  At some point you have to come to the realization that the actions of those in the city who refuse to allow the construction of new housing en mass are at odds with goals of affordability and preservation of valuable tax base.  Of course it's not just Austin that has these issues, San Francisco and other cities have the very same issues of affordability and building which I discussed last month and refuse to address the core issues.

To me the largest of these issues is allowing new housing.  Economics tell us that if something is scarce, it will cost more to buy.  But local leader Brigid Shea, who's running for Mayor, doesn't seem to call out the connection between Austin's ZOMG TRAFFIC ways and the rising cost of housing, and sprawl in the region.  In fact, she leaves the point out completely in her recent discussion about affordability in Austin.

The 2010 Census showed that in the previous 10 years, 71 percent of new growth took place in Austin's suburbs. The increasingly high cost of living in Austin is not only bad for our residents, it's threatening our economic future by forcing people out of our tax base.

Where did that high cost of living come from?  And I'm assuming the high cost of living referred to is housing.  But what actually happened in terms of new housing from 2000 to 2010?  In the five county region outside of the city limits, housing units increased by 133,102 units according to the census.  72% of that growth was in Hays and Williamson Counties, just north and south of Austin.   Inside the city limits, housing units only increased 77,339 units.  As a whole region, there was a 210,501 unit increase (42% increase).  So in order to lose that growth to other parts of the region, there has to be a demand for those units that is not being met by the central city.  And people still WANT to live in Austin, so they drive the price up on a scarce good.

I know that people are tirelessly focused on affordability in Austin.  It's an important issue and they are attacking it head on, but through other interventions that should be a compliment to new housing, not a supplement.  They focused on affordable housing in the TOD zoning code.  They have programs that focus on helping build affordable housing near transit.  They even have discussed density bonuses and other methods a lot for providing that housing they need to keep costs down.  You can create tools focused on affordability all you want, but until you actually make it a priority to construct the units that will fill the actual demand in the region it's just spitting into the wind.

AC posted about Austin's density as compared to other comparable cities like Columbus Ohio and Denver Colorado and noted that Austin has a lot of work to do in order to catch up.  Even other Texas cities have greater densities.

If Austin were populated at Dallas' density, it would have an extra 258,000 people. At Houston's density, it would have an extra 289,000 people.

Putting this in context with the discussion above about housing units is important for the main fact that Austin doesn't have a place outside of West Campus and Downtown that has been allowed to ratchet up the densities.  In Houston, Midtown and the Galleria are going bonkers while Dallas' Uptown was also the construction of a new truly urban place. I also have to throw in the Pearl.

Absent of any type of intervention like the University Neighborhood Overlay (I also posted on it last year) on other parts of the city that have the market and bones to support it, I'm afraid Austin will continue to sprawl into the hinterlands.  You can't expect affordability to come down if the construction of new units is fought at every turn.

Wanting the City Lifestyle, But It Costs Too Much

I love my neighborhood.  It's walkable, close to BART which takes me to work in Oakland, and contains a grocery store just a quarter of a mile away.  Unfortunately everyone else likes it so much that prices for houses are through the roof.  Just the other day, a friend of mine sent me a listing on redfin for a probate house that was about 800 square feet and a total wreck, but the asking prices was $650,000.  A steal!  It was gone in two days.

Part of the reason for the cost of the neighborhood is its location.  For the folks that work at Apple, Google, or Genentech that want the San Francisco experience, it's close to the 101 and 280 on ramps and has numerous tech shuttle pickup locations.  As the article states, there is a line drawn in the city which leaves the northern half to the financial district and south of market workers.

We see a lot of first-time buyers from tech companies who still want to have a city lifestyle; they don't want to live in the suburbs, but they work down south. What I notice is when people from Google, Apple, Yahoo and Genentech come in for a first meeting, we literally draw a line in the city because of the commute. Noe Valley is at the top of the list, then Bernal, Mission, Dolores, Cole Valley.

A city lifestyle means a really great bakery, very nice folks at the bagel shop, and a series of pubs and restaurants where if you make an effort, they'll learn your name and have your beer ready when you sit down before you even have to ask.

The other issue is not the demand, it's the restrictions on new housing, NIMBYs, and tough financing for affordable housing.  Trying to build new units is like pulling teeth, especially in historic older neighborhoods.  And other issues like inclusionary zoning are small change when there are very few new units overall built all together. Battles over affordable housing are not uncommon.  But it gets ridiculous when it takes 9 years to build a single affordable building.

The approvals were followed by the inevitable lawsuit, filed by a group called Citizens for Better Streets but funded by nearby landowners. But the real delay was the complexity of arranging a finance package drawn from six sources - a big reason the final cost is $34 million, far above the $20 million anticipated in 2003.

Affordable housing is a complicated venture.  But even more so in a liberal city where people want to protect their own properties and think they are doing a good thing pushing for 3 affordable units in a city where the need is approximately 100,000.  If people really wanted affordable housing, they would allow greater height limits and lower parking ratios for new buildings.  Heck they would declare open season for new housing and we'd have a revolution in the city.  Unfortunately, we are just looking for ticky tack solutions.

The mayor has convened a group of sometimes oppositional figures in the housing realm, from Calvin Welch, the longtime affordable housing advocate, to Oz Erickson, chairman of Emerald Fund developers, to find ideas to create a $50 million-per-year revenue stream to help make housing available to low- and middle-income workers.

Not sure what $50m would do.  Nothing for supply of actual housing to meet the demand. 

And sure there is a need to protect historic buildings and neighborhoods. My street has this huge apartment building across from my place where two old Victorians were probably ripped out to put a 70s style apartment building.  But you also have the egregious one story buildings at the corner of the most trafficked streets in my neighborhood that could have been four, like all the other buildings around them.   You know its a perverse market when there is a one story McDonald's on top of a subway stop at 24th street and Mission.

People want to live in great places.  And unfortunately those are limited because the development restrictions all over the bay area that push towards single family housing also restrict walkable, transit accessible communities where people can like me, sell their cars and walk to the grocery store.  Perhaps some day we'll get there, but we have a lot of work to do.

The Music & Urbanism Conflict

Wherever you lived in Texas at the time, you heard about the closing of Liberty Lunch. The iconic music venue had to close because of a redevelopment project which had taken the land. Ultimately the downtown area has boomed in part because of those developments but at what point do the new residents moving downtown have the ability to complain about noise that existed before their new residences?

For now, Austin is efforting in its drive to keep music venues downtown with a loan program that would soundproof the music rooms that made the city what it is today.  Personally, I have no sympathy for folks that decided to move right next to a music venue that plays until 2am.  To me, its just like moving next to a railroad track and complaining when they want to run more trains.  Ultimately I hope that Austin keeps its live music heritage.  With the closing of Emo's, I fear that more dominos will fall.  We shouldn't have to choose between a vibrant urban scene at night and a vibrant scene in the day.  There should be room for both.

Letters from Southeast Asia

Our good friend and sometimes guest blogger Ed recently came back from Southeast Asia.  As they often do, our foreign correspondents take wonderful transit pictures abroad.  Enjoy these beauties.

OT: I Am the Mile - All 1609 Meters

Who out there in transit land watches track and field on television?  I'm guessing not many of you.  But most of you know that there is a big football game this weekend I'm sure.  Track and Field is waning to a certain extent but hopefully last month's struggle between the Athletes and USATF on sponsorship rules will turn the tide a little bit more.

What is not waning is the short sightedness of those inside of the sport.  I was deeply disappointed to hear that after Pat Henry of Texas A&M (Yes an Aggie!) suggested that the NCAA change the 1500 meters to the Mile (1609 meters), it was rejected out of hand by distance coaches around the country. Not only are these coaches short sighted about how to gain interest in the sport, they are also spiking the dreams of all kids who have ever read Once a Runner (Only the best book about distance running of all time!) and searched for their own route to Sub 4, just like Quenton Cassidy.  For runners, the mile is now the measuring stick of history.  To not have more opportunities at running one of the most fabled races of the last century, is to me somewhat criminal.

From Once a Runner: That quarter mile oval may be one of the few places in the world where the bastards can’t screw you over, Quenton. That’s because there’s no place to hide out there. No way to fake it or charm your way through, no deals to be made. You know all that stuff. You’ve talked about it. It’s why you became a miler. The question is whether you are prepared to live by it or whether it was just a bunch of words.

This would also be a big opportunity to refresh the sport.  As someone who has moved on from track into another world and another industry, it's harder and harder for me to come back and watch.  Especially when watching with friends who weren't runners. But everyone knows what mile times are, everyone.  And if you tell them someone is trying to break 4, they'll stop and watch.

Every time people learn that I was a runner and a miler they ask my time.  It can get really annoying to go through the whole description of what a 1500 is and even I still don't quite understand why we ran it other than it's the official Olympic distance and that's what they run in Europe.  Usually I rattle off three different answers to explain myself.  3:41 for 1500(3:58 converted), 3:56 in the Austin Congress Avenue Mile (downhill), and 4:03 indoors.  So I never broke 4 minutes "officially" to get on the national sub four list.  It's one of my biggest regrets but since one could only run the mile indoors and a few select outdoor meets, it was pretty hard to see how fast you could run when you were fit. I've always told myself that I could start training and just get out there and do it.  But after 9 years of not training, it's getting harder and harder to believe.

I'm sure there are others like me that never quite made it except in theory, but could have if given a few more races to try.  And perhaps there are a few kids out there that when they get into the perfect race they close out with enough speed to dip under.  My buddy Darren broke 4, just like his pops, the first father/son sub 4 tandem ever. But he had to have the race, which happened to be the only one that spring.  And without this mile, there isn't this powerful connection.

Watch more video of 2008 Texas Relays on flotrack.org


Watch more video of Darren Brown on flotrack.org

Everyone who runs the 1500 or 1600 should have more opportunities to instead run 1609, which in my opinion would certainly make track in this country more exciting and put everyone on the same list together against their peers.  In order to support the movement to bring back the mile, folks have set up a website and twitter to push this over the top.  I fully support the effort and perhaps those of you who are interested will support it as well.  We shouldn't have to do conversions.  I am the mile.

High Speed Rail, For THIS Generation

I recently read a Burlingame Patch article where a local officials said this:

“What I would like to see…is for us to take a position saying not just that we think the current plan does not make sense…but to say what we do need for transportation,” said Councilmember Terry Nagel.  “If we could start a plan to have the money reallocated…that would make more sense.”

 and

"However, Baylock countered that as long as high-speed rail exists, all transit money will go towards it, and a ballot measure would be necessary to unfund the project and redirect funds towards local transit."

There have also been other places where really strong transit supporters such as Huffington Post writer Joel Epstein have suggested that the money be reallocated to local transit as well and that HSR should be killed on spot.

After reading the Patch article and remembering the Epstein post I wrote the following tweet:

"Sorry, but defunding HSR won’t make local agencies $10b richer."

My thinking behind this was that while local folks and advocates might feel that killing HSR will benefit local transportation funding, the truth is that the money will just disappear.  There won't be a $10B bond measure for local expansion and even if there were it wouldn't come back to the voters for at least another 5 years to a decade, or perhaps even a generation.  At 31 I'm becoming acutely aware of the fact that if I live to be as old as my 99 year old Gramma, I'm a third done with my life and would like to spend the next third building things that I will use in my final third.

But in response to my tweet, blogger Market Urbanism tweeted "But it might start a long-overdo convo on costs" and wrote a post on Forbes about how my thinking was wrong because if we lower the costs and fix the construction we can actually build the line faster.  In my opinion this ignores political realities about these types of large projects and a little how California is operating at this time.  This probably gets us more into the technicals vs politicals discussion that Alon Levy brought up a few months ago, but I feel like we can still have the cost or design discussion without killing the project outright or thinking we can redistribute the funding to local projects.  Stephen goes on to admit that the first segment is likely well designed but that folks are rightly spooked about the somewhat vague project funding realities and future possibilities of value engineering.  I don't think we should be too worried since these projects have a way of moving along as they should and people like Stephen are always going to be pushing those buttons.

I feel that there are a lot of things that could be fixed or fleshed out about the project.  People who know more about these types of issues than me (ie Clem).  But also, if we kill the project now, it's dead for a generation.  I'm a huge fan of fixing the issues of hand rather than putting them off for a later date.

Now full disclosure, I have a personal stake in this project.  My sister and her family live in Bakersfield.  I live in San Francisco.  I also hate driving I-5.  So this project would directly benefit me by getting me there faster and likely more often.  Some people think this project is just about San Francisco and LA and that the Central Valley is nowhere.  I beg to differ and this is why.

The Two Sides of Punishment

There are two sides to the phrase "my sport is your sports punishment".  On one hand the 80 - 90 miles a week I ran in college are enough to make people gasp when I tell them.  "You ran more than I drove my car" is the response that I often got from folks.  I guess you could say I had really high PMT (personal miles traveled).

But at the same time I cringe when sports coaches use running laps as a punishment.  This does not teach the joys of running or the personal accomplishment and fulfillment that occurs when you finish a marathon or a long run.  Rather it instills a hatred of running, often life long, that in my opinion steals away something that could be beneficial and dare I say, enjoyable if someone at least gave it an honest try.

So you can imagine how I feel when a humble mode of transportation is used as punishment. Had you heard this one?  The one where the Virginia Tech football coach decided to send his kicker home on a Greyhound Bus from the Sugar Bowl because he had stayed out past curfew.  I'm not against punishment for violating team rules, but does it have to be a mode of transportation?  Does it have to further stigmatize the only option that some Americans have?  This seems to me to be more windshield perspective from the wider world.

It was even the cover of the playbook.  "The Greyhound Experience" and ESPN proudly showed it during one of its talk breaks during the game. Perhaps I have it wrong though. Is this the free market at work? Maybe it is proof of how bad our transportation system is that it takes a whole day of travel and three transfers to get between two US cities when according to Google Maps, which is generally extra time, the trip should only take 13 hours in a car, or half the time of the bus trip.  In other words, we've handicapped trips on alternative modes so much that anyone going by bus would have to be crazy.  Or poor. Or punished.  And we wonder why we can't convince people that there's a better way.

Thin Slicing Major Transit Planning

While I haven't been posting much I still think about all of these issues every day. It doesn't matter whether it's a book I'm reading for fun or even for work when thoughts flood into my head that I would love to write about. I just wish I had more time, and was better at getting my points across.

This last weekend I went to Denver to hang out with some friends over the weekend and on the plane I decided that I would read a book that's been sitting on my shelf for a while. I should probably do that more often as the shelf is filling with books faster than I can read them. Sorry Peter Calthorpe, Ed Glaeser and Ryan Avent. I have the books, just not the time.  This time it was a book that I had picked up cheap a few years ago. Many of you have likely read Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker or picked up one of his quick read books The Tipping Point or Blink. They drive me a little crazy with their internal repetition but ultimately it makes you think a bit more about certain subjects than you would without the 'priming'.

So I started reading Blink and read the chapter about John Gottman and his love lab.  By looking sitting down a couple to have a conversation about something relatively important for two hours, he claims to predict with 90% confidence whether that marriage will last.  What did it boil down to?  In the end he felt that the most important predictor was contempt.  Out of all those emotions and interactions and issues that couples go through, is it really just one or two that predict accurately whether they will stay together?  If Gottman's theory is true then yes.

Gladwell goes on to discuss the idea of Thin Slicing, or taking pieces of experience to develop a quick hunch or theory. The first example given in the book is museum curators who spotted a fake statue right away by just looking at it even though all the testing would seem to say that it was an actual antique. And when people have gut reactions to things and end up being correct, making them explain why if they are untrained to do so often muddles the initial right answer.  Perhaps a common case of over-thinking.

But going back to transit and transportation as I do, a thought immediately shot into my head.  Let's call it my gut reaction.  Transportation planners are looking for infinite ways to gain higher ridership and fill seats.  Transportation modeling in the United States is a huge industry with tons of engineers working to figure out how to predict travel behavior.  So much so that they are always trying out new inputs that might account for every single situation that could possibly happen.  I know some are probably thinking about how the brick paving affects walkability to the station.   Now as a disclaimer I'm not super knowledgeable in travel demand modeling, and only have cursory knowledge about how the tables work and issues with origins and destinations, but I feel as many people do that its mostly a black box.

But as much as people around the country are often outside of the wonks when it comes to transit planning and designs, it seems to me that they are often right on the money when it comes to thinking about transit and transportation policy.  The phrase "it doesn't go anywhere" is probably the most overused in the lexicon of citizens thinking about transit planning.  But we do know from research that when a line does go somewhere it actually has riders, lots of them. 

My main motivation moving along this train of thought (i see what you did there) is to think about how we can open up those black boxes that are travel demand models such that people who's first thought is "where does it go" understand why they should or shouldn't support a line.  Perhaps it would make the FTA's life easier as well when they have some city thinking about spending money on a line that, well, doesn't go anywhere.

And this is where my thinking might be starting to change on this subject.  Perhaps instead of a million different factors like connections to households, zoning changes, whether there is a station canopy, brick sidewalks or small block sizes, we ask where does the line go. My metric of choice would probably be jobs or even intensity (workers+residents).  If you connect places with high intensity, you can't lose.  Connecting places with low intensity, you do lose.  No one rides.

Ultimately what this comes to is a thin slicing of transit planning.  Everyone knows what the answer should be yet many times 1+1 is not 2.  We often get sidetracked by politics, or the idea of creating new development, a million different factors in the model, or even lack of enthusiasm because the last line failed.  But if we just focused on getting a large portion of people where they wanted to go, then perhaps we wouldn't always be fighting about funding or political will or even citizen support.  Because no one can dispute the facts if a line gets riders.  If people are using the system, everyone knows and don't need to have someone tell them if its a failure or not.

I know this is a bit of an oversimplification.  But we focus so much on the smaller details that we end up not coming out ahead in the end.  So many places want transit so bad but they think the only way to do it is to build a super cheap line on an existing freight corridor and call it a day.  Deep down people know that's wrong, and many places will end up paying because they didn't do what first came to mind.

Go where the people go.

On to Vik

I don't really want this blog to turn into my travel log and I promise that I'll write some things soon over Christmas break when I get a bit of time but I did want to share some videos that I took on my trip to Scandinavia. The clip below is North of Bergen on Highway 13 on the way to the Stave Church in Vik (See images in posts below). This was the only day we rented a car but it was a pretty amazing drive and well worth it for the waterfalls alone.