ENR's Washington Bureau Chief Tom Ichniowski moderates a panel at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on building codes in the wake of earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Haitian Government Launches Housing Design Competition
House in Haiti. From http://www.malcolmreading.co.uk/BBBC/
The initial submission deadline has been extended from June 28 to July 5.
On June 17, the Republic of Haiti unveiled “Building Back Better Communities,” which invites architects and non-architects alike from around the globe to create homes for a 12-acre former sugar plantation on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Because the site was not affected by the quake and is city owned, it is an ideal place for government officials to study different housing types before commissioning them for destroyed neighborhoods, according to competition organizers.
The competition, which will have multiple winners, is divided into two parts to attract the greatest variety of ideas, officials say.
For the first, contestants are asked to create prototype houses for an exposition to be held from October to January on the northern half of the site. Those 50 or so houses will be clustered village-like around a tented enclosure that will serve as a meeting space during the exposition, which will resemble a trade show.
During the expo, Haitian officials will browse among the houses, along with representatives of foundations that will potentially underwrite their construction, and select their favorites. When the event is over, those houses could be turned over to local citizens, though details are still being worked out.
The competition’s second part invites contestants to design homes for a new 1,000-resident village that is to be constructed on the site’s southern half. This village, which will probably have 150 homes of a few different designs, is to be paid for by Digicel, a regional telecom company, and Deutsche Bank. It is to be completed by the end of this year.
To compete for either part, or both, contestants must submit a letter of interest plus a description of qualifications by Monday, July 5, to London-based Malcolm Reading Consultants, which is managing the competition, though the deadline could be extended if initial interest is weak.
Winners, who will be announced on July 2, will then travel to Port-au-Prince for meetings before actually producing homes, which should be able to cool themselves passively and store rainwater, according to details spelled out in the government’s request for proposals. The homes’ construction should also, when possible, generate local jobs.
While design firms have previously proposed houses for Haiti, where 1.3 million people are reportedly still displaced from the January 12 quake, there hasn’t yet been an effort of this size, or coordinated by the government. And it comes not a moment too soon, says architect John McAslan, founding principal of London-based John McAslan + Partners, who helped organize the competition.
“It’s the rainy season, and half a million people are still living in tents,” says McAslan, who has worked in Haiti for two years. “There is an urgent need.” (Article by C. J. Hughes)
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT
Monday, June 28, 2010
Land use and legalization of Marijuana
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetruthabout/
These are separate excerpts from the article ¨Placemaking for pot smoking¨, by Josh Stephens, for Planetizen. To make us think how far planning issues sometimes are beyond our imagination.
Make no mistake: 74 years after the film Reefer Madness cemented the connection between deviance and getting high, medical marijuana is already quasi-legal. But if the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 passes November 2, it would strip away the medicinal veneer of cannabis use and simply make it legal for anyone over age 21 to possess, grow, and use marijuana, hemp, and related products. The measure, which has been officially approved for the ballot after backers submitted the more than 400,000 required signatures, would also authorize the state to impose taxes on the sale and cultivation thereof, and would give local jurisdictions broad leeway to permit, prohibit – and tax – its cultivation and sale.
After California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996, the drug-cum-medicine gained further legitimacy in fits and starts until, in 2008, California Attorney General Jerry Brown issued guidelines confirming that marijuana collectives could in fact operate as retail establishments as long as they served only members and did not reap inordinate profits. This announcement, coupled with the proliferation of "prescriptions" that recommended the use of marijuana for everything from anorexia to anxiety to insomnia, the marijuana "dispensary" was born. Some cities, however, were not prepared to regulate a nonexistent land use.
In Los Angeles, the regulatory void was filled by equal parts compassion and profiteering. It's estimated that up to 800 dispensaries proliferated throughout the city.
Los Angeles' quick rise to the position of retail marijuana capital of the world forced the city council to play catch-up earlier this year and pass an ordinance that would close roughly 600 rouge dispensaries and place complex restrictions on those that were allowed to remain.
City planners estimated the appropriate number of dispensaries per each of the city's 35 planning areas and came up with between two and six, depending on the respective areas' populations. Dispensaries may not locate near residential areas or places where children congregate, and they may be no less than 1,000 feet from each other. They must have controlled entries and cannot use flashy signage or advertising.
"The recommendations we came up with ensured that there would be potentially medical marijuana collectives located within all the community plan areas in the city," said Alan Bell, senior planner at the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, who led the crafting of the marijuana ordinance. "We'd limit the number so that we could have a limited number that we could enforce and monitor."
Cities that choose to both regulate marijuana sales and cultivation without stifling them need not re-invent their land-use laws but can instead follow the model of bars and restaurants. Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who authored Measure F, said that Oakland’s embrace of marijuana relies in part on the issuance of special activity permits, which, she said, give the city the oversight it needs to ensure that the businesses are conforming to the city's regulations. "Which is different from something that’s handled as permit that comes with the land, which can often be in perpetuity," said Kaplan. "That has allowed us to have a level of rigorous oversight because the facilities have to come in every year for a hearing where there’s an opportunity to take that permit away."
In Los Angeles, once the City Council and City Attorney determined their optimal number of medical dispensaries the task fell to the Department of City Planning was directed to keep dispensaries away from residential areas and places where children congregate, including school and playgrounds. But, fearing that these restrictions would lead to the clustering of stores into cannabis ghettos, city planners have also required that they be spaced at least 1,000 feet apart, and they have prescribed a limited number of dispensaries per each of the city's 35 plan areas, according to the plan areas' respective populations. While this approach reflects the troublesome side of marijuana, some believe that it stigmatizes what is, ostensibly, a legitimate medicine.
Read about the perfect cannabis
Read the whole article:
Friday, June 25, 2010
Radar imaging reveals ancient Egyptian underground city
The underground city of Avaris. From Guardian.co.com
From Guardian.co.uk. June 21, 2010. (Associated Press in Cairo)
An Austrian archaeological team has used radar imaging to determine the extent of the ruins of the 3,500-year-old one-time capital of Egypt's foreign occupiers, according to the country's antiquities department.
Egypt was ruled for a century from 1664-1569 BC by the Hyksos, a group of warriors from Asia – possibly Semitic in origin – whose summer capital, Avaris, was in the northern Delta area.
Irene Müller, the head of the Austrian team, said the main purpose of the project was to determine how far the underground city extends. The radar imaging showed the outlines of streets, houses and temples underneath the green farm fields and modern town of Tel al-Dabaa.
Dr Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the computer-generated images of the city, which is still buried under the ground, show a very detailed layout of ancient Avaris. Several architectural features including houses, temples, streets, cemeteries and palaces can be seen.
The team has also been able to make out the arrangement of neighbourhoods and living quarters.
"Using such a special scientific survey to locate such a city is the only way to gain a better understanding of such a large area at one time," Hawass said.
The team has succeeded in identifying a collection of houses and a possible harbour area. A series of pits of different sizes are also visible but their function has not yet been determined.
The Austrian team of archaeologists have been working on the site since 1975. Egypt's Nile Delta is densely populated and heavily farmed, making extensive excavation difficult, unlike in southern Egypt with its more famous desert tombs and temples.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/21/radar-imaging-egyptian-underground-cityRead more
Old patterns of suburban growth and urban decline are now being reversed
Maps of foreclosures in Chicago region. See the difference between 1998 and 2008. Scary....From New Urban News
I´ve been reading an article at New Urban News, about professor William H. Lucy, who has examined America’s foreclosure epidemic in great detail and has arrived at this conclusion: Decades-old patterns of suburban growth and urban decline are now being reversed.
This is pretty obvious and you don´t need a complete analysis, though I really appreciate all the investigation.
What was left, the empty neighborhoods, ¨zombie¨ developments, are located mostly in suburban areas, in rural areas where beautiful houses were sold a couple o years ago, much bigger and cheaper than the ones in the cities. Those homeowners could enjoy lakes, landscapes, but now, it´s very difficult for any body to afford the expenses related to far away neighborhoods, beginning with access to supermarkets, long travels to work –if they were not fired-, more than one car as everybody has to drive to populated cities. Now, people look for job openings in urban areas, as always, they can find more opportunities.
And where do foreclosure former homeowners go? To rent, anywhere, obviously rental apartments are not in suburban or rural areas. Or even they relocated in another states, with their families.
This is the real city I see everyday, what is not shown in the books, properties in crowded neighborhoods, with illegal constructions ready to be rented. If somebody buys a property with illegal rooms, he can ask for a price reduction. Then, he should take care of it, demolish or legalize. But, people keep on renting them until an inspector from the City shows up. This is another attraction from cities………
Illegal construction for rent, in Los Angeles. Picture by Myriam Mahiques
People also rents motor homes in the city. What cannot be seen from the street....Picture by Myriam Mahiques
This is an excerpt from the article at New Urban News:
“The years leading up to the 2008-2009 crises may be seen in retrospect as the last hurrah of the exurban extreme of the American dream,” says Lucy, a professor of urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. Increasingly, people with choices and financial resources want to live in cities.
The residential foreclosures that spiked in the past three years have been highly concentrated. Sixty-two percent of foreclosures in 2008 occurred in just four of the 50 states: California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona. Forty percent clustered in 16 counties within 10 metropolitan areas, nearly all of them in the Sunbelt, which have more than their share of semi-abandoned tracts — referred to by Lucy as “zombie subdivisions.”
The foreclosure crisis has taken most of its toll on metropolitan areas’ edges — places that in many instances depended heavily on real estate activity for their economic well-being, according to Lucy. His findings appear in Foreclosing the Dream: How America’s Housing Crisis Is Reshaping Our Cities and Suburbs, a 208-page paperback from the American Planning Association’s Planners Press
“The years leading up to the 2008-2009 crises may be seen in retrospect as the last hurrah of the exurban extreme of the American dream,” says Lucy, a professor of urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. Increasingly, people with choices and financial resources want to live in cities.
The residential foreclosures that spiked in the past three years have been highly concentrated. Sixty-two percent of foreclosures in 2008 occurred in just four of the 50 states: California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona. Forty percent clustered in 16 counties within 10 metropolitan areas, nearly all of them in the Sunbelt, which have more than their share of semi-abandoned tracts — referred to by Lucy as “zombie subdivisions.”
The foreclosure crisis has taken most of its toll on metropolitan areas’ edges — places that in many instances depended heavily on real estate activity for their economic well-being, according to Lucy. His findings appear in Foreclosing the Dream: How America’s Housing Crisis Is Reshaping Our Cities and Suburbs, a 208-page paperback from the American Planning Association’s Planners Press
Lucy attributes much of the foreclosure crisis to these factors:
• Federal policy aimed at increasing the homeownership rate above the 64 to 66 percent range where it had stayed from the 1960s to the 1990s. President Bill Clinton boosted the rate to 67.7 percent. President George W. Bush’s goal of getting 5.5 million more Americans to own homes — pushing the rate to 71.4 percent —resulted in a further easing of financial standards.
• A long-term decline in the incomes of most Americans and an increase in the gap between the rich and the rest of the population. Many who were enticed to buy houses couldn’t afford them.
• Credit that started out cheap but jumped to a higher rate within a few years.
• The recession. “The foreclosure crisis was triggered in those states where house prices to income ratios widened the most,” led by California and Nevada and then Arizona and Florida, Lucy says.
• Federal policy aimed at increasing the homeownership rate above the 64 to 66 percent range where it had stayed from the 1960s to the 1990s. President Bill Clinton boosted the rate to 67.7 percent. President George W. Bush’s goal of getting 5.5 million more Americans to own homes — pushing the rate to 71.4 percent —resulted in a further easing of financial standards.
• A long-term decline in the incomes of most Americans and an increase in the gap between the rich and the rest of the population. Many who were enticed to buy houses couldn’t afford them.
• Credit that started out cheap but jumped to a higher rate within a few years.
• The recession. “The foreclosure crisis was triggered in those states where house prices to income ratios widened the most,” led by California and Nevada and then Arizona and Florida, Lucy says.
Back to the city
Unaffordable houses and a severe recession weren’t the only influences, Lucy says. “Something else was also afoot. … The whole pattern of metropolitan development was quietly moving in reverse.”
Through a detailed examination of census records, Lucy shows that the condition of quite a few cities stabilized by 1990 and then improved. “During the 1990s, something remarkable began to happen,” Lucy says. “Cities were attracting people with money.” In the 40 central cities of the 35 metropolitan areas ranked as America’s largest in 1980, the decline in average per capita income halted.
Why the change?
“The revival of interest in cities on the part of middle-class whites had a lot to do with a fondness for older homes,” particularly their craftsmanship and character, Lucy maintains. By 2000, neighborhoods with housing built before 1940 were no longer the poorest in their metropolitan areas. They were attracting inhabitants with greater means.
At the same time, neighborhoods made up of housing that had been built between 1950 and 1970 started to lose their privileged status. Areas developed from 1950 to 1970 were “most likely to be dominated by small houses [whose appeal was waning], far from shops and other needs.”
In other words, both the nature of the houses and their construction and their closeness to, or distance from, everyday needs and services precipitated a profound shift. Urban living gained in popularity.
Unaffordable houses and a severe recession weren’t the only influences, Lucy says. “Something else was also afoot. … The whole pattern of metropolitan development was quietly moving in reverse.”
Through a detailed examination of census records, Lucy shows that the condition of quite a few cities stabilized by 1990 and then improved. “During the 1990s, something remarkable began to happen,” Lucy says. “Cities were attracting people with money.” In the 40 central cities of the 35 metropolitan areas ranked as America’s largest in 1980, the decline in average per capita income halted.
Why the change?
“The revival of interest in cities on the part of middle-class whites had a lot to do with a fondness for older homes,” particularly their craftsmanship and character, Lucy maintains. By 2000, neighborhoods with housing built before 1940 were no longer the poorest in their metropolitan areas. They were attracting inhabitants with greater means.
At the same time, neighborhoods made up of housing that had been built between 1950 and 1970 started to lose their privileged status. Areas developed from 1950 to 1970 were “most likely to be dominated by small houses [whose appeal was waning], far from shops and other needs.”
In other words, both the nature of the houses and their construction and their closeness to, or distance from, everyday needs and services precipitated a profound shift. Urban living gained in popularity.
Keep on reading
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
London. By William Blake (1757-1827)
Image from http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/
London street. From www.flickr.com/photos/
I wander through each chartered street,Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of wakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant´s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper´s cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless solider´s sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot´s curse
Blasts the new-born infant´s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.
Paolo Soleri´s amphitheater in New Mexico may be demolished
Picture from the Architect´s Newspaper blog
From The Architect´s Newspaper blog:
An earth-formed concrete amphitheater designed by Paolo Soleri may be demolished later this summer. One of only a handful of structures built by Soleri, the open-air theater (known as the “Paolo”) is on the campus of the Santa Fe Indian School, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The school commissioned Soleri to design the theater in 1964, and though it has been used for graduations and concerts since that time, the school now believes that it costs too much to maintain, and says it brings drunken crowds onto the campus during events.
Built using student labor from the school, the structure was designed to “frame the sun and the moon,” and operate like an Elizabethan theater with bridges and ramps that allow performers to access various levels above, below, and behind the stage. A dramatically arched form over the stage covers the principal performance area, and according to Soleri was created of “trenched earth that captures the shape and consistency of the earth itself.”
On June 11, New Mexico’s Cultural Properties Review Committee urged the school to rethink its plans to raze the structure, and the Santa Fe City Council has also called for the theater’s salvation. Soleri, who will turn 91 on June 21, has been rallying admirers of the earthen structure, noting in a statement, “I am willing to do anything to support the preservation of the theater.” His Cosanti Foundation is working with a variety of organizations to prevent its demolition, as well as raising funds to help the theater continue to serve the Santa Fe Indian School students and the broader Santa Fe community.
Behind the stage. From the Architect´s Newspaper blog
From adobeairstream.com:
Soleri, whose best-known vision is the project Arcosanti in the Arizona desert, drew upon the past to design the future in the Ampitheater, planning it for the Indian School theater department as an interpretation of the Elizabethan stage. "We were hoping actors would not just use the stage, but also the area above it, and that's why we designed the bridge and other platforms ....with action taking place on different levels...," was how Soleri described the design process in a Cosanti Foundation press release made public last week.
http://www.adobeairstream.com/component/zine/article/399-why-the-paolo-soleri-must-stay-standing.html
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