The Revitalist

The Greenbush line serves the South Shore.

The MBTA's Greenbush commuter rail line started rolling into South Station yesterday morning. WBUR chronicled one of the first rides, noting that it took their reporter an extra 1/2 hour to get to the office (connecting via the Red and Green lines). The Globe has a nice summary of the roughly 25 year, $500M saga of the Greenbush line.

From Dockside Green's website: water reduction features.

Now that we're all comfortable with thinking about building green and measuring our carbon footprint, CoolTown Studios wants us to think about building blue. Building with an eye towards conservation of water resources, that is. The ULI has published an article called Is Water the Next Carbon? that got CoolTown thinking about it. They rounded up two example projects, the Wungong Urban Water Project in Western Australia and Dockside Green in British Columbia, that are serious about reducing water consumption, recycling storm and gray water, and educating users. In some ways, building blue is already on the table because features like low-flow shower heads and toilets are some of the easiest green features to incorporate. But more elaborate systems like storm water recycling and gray water systems aren't out of reach. Since water is a hot topic for many US communities these days, I bet we'll be seeing a lot more chatter on this issue.

Today is a quiet day at AHF – most of us are at the NH&RA Fall Forum. If you don't know about the National Housing and Rehabilitation Association, they are a great resource for those of us in the preservation, development and housing business. Their content is geared towards development professionals and can be heavy duty on tax and finance issues. But, by the time you've heard the session on tax credit structuring or how to combine HTC and NMTC three or four times, it really starts to sink in.

A columnist in the NY Times writes to say that the 2008 Presidential campaign should be a moment to talk about urban issues, but the candidates aren't (via CEOs for Cities). (We're hitting the op-ed pages lately.) As he points out about 80% of the US population lives in cities or suburbs. So aside from the big picture, easy soundbite topics like terrorism and health care, the candidates ought to address issues that are on the minds of urban dwellers. That would be transit, pollution, homelessness, public infrastructure, police and municipal services, among others. I suppose the candidates are afraid of turning off those fabled middle America primary voters who don't relate to New York City in all its concrete and steel weirdness. It would make for an interesting debate theme, though. What questions would you want asked?

A recent op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle elaborates on a recent discussion: density (and affordability) of housing v. green space and low-rise neighborhoods (via Planetizen). Now, the President and CEO of the Home Builders Association of Northern California is hardly an unbiased observer of the situation, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't make a good point. His point is that if Bay Area environmental groups are going to insist on putting more land into conservation, then housing prices are going to continue to go up. It's a classic case of demand increasing faster than supply. This is not to say that environmental activists don't also have a point about preserving greenspace for future generations and livable communities. But there is a conversation here that we need to have. Our kids are going to have to live somewhere when they grow up; and cities like San Fran, which is amongst the most desirable and expensive in the country, are going to need to provide more housing at more affordable rates to meet the demand. Where is it going to go? Density is an obvious answer, but we need to talk about priorities and what kinds of cities/neighborhoods we want to build for the future.

The Globe snaps one of the gobblers on Beacon Street.

The Globe reports on what my husband and I, and especially my dog, have noticed over the last year: Brookline's wild turkey population is growing. Last year it was just a few, one male and two females, that we would occasionally see. Then came breeding season. We counted at least 12 poults (baby turkeys - thanks, Wikipedia) in our little neck of the "woods." They were adorable when they were little gray/brown fluff balls following along after mama turkey. Now they are all 3 feet tall and still roam around in packs (or whatever you call a group of turkeys). We're wondering what's going to happen this spring when it's mating season again (will they eventually get to be like the Canada Geese?). They are beautiful and striking birds, and I'm generally enthusiastic about urban wildlife. It's just a little startling to turn a corner and see 14 of them grazing in one yard. I felt really sorry for that woman who had spent a lot of time over the summer on her flower beds.  

My own pic: strutting down the street, 1/2 block from Beacon Street.

Roosting on someone's doorstep. Imagine opening the door to that.

Historic streetcar photo from the City's feasibility study.

The City of Cincinnati is considering a streetcar system (via Planetizen). The project is estimated at $102 M, according to a recent feasibility study commissioned by the city. The city is banking on the streetcar attracting investment in the downtown, including the storied Over-the-Rhine neighborhood where the streetcar would stop at the historic Findlay Market. The proposal is meeting some resistance from people who point out that the city is already carrying a deficit of $29M. So question is if you build it, will the people, businesses, investments come? The streetcar idea worked great in Portland and Tampa, will it work for Cincinnati?

In the wake of this past year's exhibitions on Robert Moses, the Municipal Art Society of New York has put on an exhibition entitled Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York, which in turn prompted this musing by Andrew Blum (via CEOs for Cities). Blum is very eloquent about the dilemma that he sees facing our big cities: how to resolve the conflict between the desire for Jacobsian neighborhoods and the push for greater density. He writes,

We are wedging ourselves between a rock and a hard place: between the pleasures of medium-density living (Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Toronto’s Annex) and the ecological necessity of even more density.

We can resist the extremes of modernism and all its failures; but that does not free us from facing up to the same challenges and inequities that modernism sought to rectify. I don’t know that Jane Jacobs fully accepted this. 

Read the whole article—it will give you something to ponder this weekend. 

This photograph from the WBUR Flickr pool demonstrates the striking beauty possible in City Hall. Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood Architects.

WBUR had a piece this morning on the BSA's campaign to reimagine and preserve City Hall. This month's issue of Architecture Boston focuses on the Modernist hulk and features concepts from six young architecture teams that work with the building's assets and rework its flaws. The teams put out some interesting ideas. One offers to bring the Waterfront to City Hall, instead of the other way around, and convert the Plaza into a wading pool/ice rink. Another proposes to wrap the structure in a way that brings the public to the building with a new interface off the plaza. These proposals worked off the same set of "sins" that need to be addressed: too opaque, too big, too mute, too ugly, too dark, too empty, too costly, too aloof.

The Plaza as wading pool. Studio Luz and c2|studio.

The wrap concept. Howeler+Yoon.

But what I find more interesting are the similarities that point to today's architectural trends. (I suppose it's inevitable.) There are a lot of rooftop gardens and "green-ness," sweeping ramps that funnel pedestrian traffic, undulating and faceted forms, large windows/walls with sheets of open glass, and canopies/wraps/sleeves galore. It's kind of like every dish on Top Chef featuring some unexpected vegetable prepared in a "confit" – everyone is speaking in the same vernacular. Even the renderings all have the same mash-up style of photography, CAD and those weird semi-cartoon people (I have to confess that those people leave me cold).

The Housecall Heat/Electric page.

When you combine the latest in web interface design with the low tech field of building management, you get something like Housecall, a new service in the UK that lets residents request repairs online (via Springwise). The website uses pictures to help residents who may not have any clue about the mechanical systems in their apartment to point out where the problem is. The system then sends an email to appropriate member of the service team. Because this service is obviously most useful for managers of a large number of units, it seems to be targeted at public and affordable housing. The site is also accessible in several languages and in a text-only format. Seems like a really great idea and one that could be easily scalable to smaller buildings that want to offer a more high-tech interface.

As the Springwise article points out, this is a similar system to Neighbourhood Fix-It, also offered in the UK, that gives residents a way of informing their municipality about needed repairs. I wonder if the web interface of both services would encourage more repair requests because people feel less intrusive about submitting an email than phoning in a complaint.