Articulo: Urban Renewal Through Public Art?

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Yesterday’s post on the extraordinary rice paddy art of the Japanese village of Inakadate got me thinking about the power and purpose of art, public art in particular. Japan’s well-documented generational flight from the country to the city has gutted many rural communities that will likely become ghost towns once their predominantly elderly inhabitants pass on, and forgotten completely once their buildings rot. Yet here is Inakadate, drawing 150,000+ visitors annually to a village of fewer than 9000 residents 400 miles from Tokyo to stare out a tower window at rice paddies. Such is the power of art.

A recent article on the proposed razing of the infamous Jordan Downs housing project in Watts raised some questions for me about the underlying intention, the core goal, of urban renewal. Racism, classism, and other prejudices are probably inescapable, but I don’t find them to be legitimate motivation. Isn’t the point of urban renewal—as a process, not a product—to provide a struggling area with a neighborhood it can be proud of? After all, people who take pride in where they live also take care of it. They maintain it, cultivate it, activate it, personalize it, beautify it, protect it, and adapt it to their particular needs and desires. They become a true community, the Jane Jacobs kind.

Architecture plays a major role; enormous Communist Bloc-style “human warehouses” don’t make things easy, and demolition isn’t always a bad thing. But architectural interventions are expensive, laborious, and disruptive. Artistic ones, in comparison, can be much cheaper, more inclusive, more dynamic. They can create a unique sense of place, inspiring residents to take pride in what they already have—who they already are—instead of suggesting that nothing here is worth saving, the slate should be wiped clean. The inclusion of art suggests a process of improvement, not replacement. This is certainly not novel thinking. Still, I wonder how many failed urban interventions might have been successful had public art been a genuinely considered agent of change.

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Of course, areas targeted for urban renewal (by whatever name) typically have more pressing needs than civic pride: education, opportunity, health care, nutritious food, a healthy home. Art might not feed the hungry (though Inakadate proves it can), but why should renewing dilapidated and impoverished areas be a linear process? If it requires engagement, communication, and commitment at all levels, then can’t art play a significant role? Whether it’s rice paddy art, city buses, murals, civic graffiti, chalk art, sculptures, building facades, signage, horticulture, folk architecture, or any other form, public art can help bring a community together. It can be a powerful force of renewal, without destruction, displacement, or disparagement.

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http://link.social.com/

Articulo: Driving Green

HOLLYWOOD CENTRAL PARK, PART OF PARK 101, IS THE FURTHEST ALONG OF THESE MANY CONCEPTUAL PROJECTS.

COURTESY AECOM

Plans to develop four so-called freeway cap parks have recently been announced in Los Angeles. The cap concept, which essentially covers a portion of a freeway with a planted concrete lid, has gained popularity in the last decade as an urban “greening” solution. The multibillion-dollar projects are meant to knit together previously disparate neighborhoods, theoretically creating cohesion and larger-scale community gathering places without having to destroy or displace existing infrastructures.

The four projects are spread across Hollywood, downtown LA, and Santa Monica. Hollywood Central Park would be built atop the 101 Freeway on a proposed 44-acre site between Santa Monica Boulevard and Bronson Avenue. Park 101 would be built atop the “Big Trench” over the 101 Freeway downtown. Santa Monica is hoping to cap portions of the 10 Freeway between Ocean Avenue and 4th Street, and between 14th and 17th streets, creating five- and seven-acre parks.

The cap park frenzy here can largely be credited to Don Scott, an investment banker and former chairman of the Hollywood Central Park coalition, also former chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Scott said that his inspiration for the Hollywood Central Park cap came from an article he read about Boston’s Big Dig. “I remember driving over the Hollywood freeway and thinking about the connection between the two environments.”

DESPITE THE IMMENSE COST OF DECKING OVER FREEWAYS, SUCH PROJECTS ARE SEEN NOT ONLY AS BOONS TO URBAN PLANNING BUT ALSO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. THE LOTS IN PINK ARE POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT SITES, WHICH COULD EVEN HELP PAY FOR CONSTRUCTION.

After some research, Scott discovered other freeway cap parks in various phases in Cincinnati, Seattle, Phoenix, the District of Columbia, Boston, Hartford, CT, and Charlotte, NC. In LA, a small freeway cap park was built over the 210 Freeway in La Canada-Flintridge; another is under review in Ventura County. The rest of the chamber was quick to support Scott’s idea, and it took off.

According to Francie Stefan, community and strategic planning manager for the City of Santa Monica, no two freeway caps are the same. “Some are glorified bridges, some need center supports, and some just span the whole distance,” she said. Structural design is influenced by whether you get support from outside walls or from center posts, and have mechanical or natural ventilation and lighting.

The largest and furthest along of the parks, the Hollywood Central Park project, would cover a wide swath over the 101 that currently cuts through residential neighborhoods. “The feasibility studies have just been completed,” said Scott. “Friends of Hollywood Central Park is raising money for an environmental impact report, and we’re lobbying for money in Washington.” Designed by AECOM (which has its hand in all four cap parks), the project is expected to cost about a trillion dollars, and though heavy hitters like Senator Dianne Feinstein have pledged support, it is at least several years from groundbreaking and a decade from completion.

TWO PROJECTS IN SANTA MONICA, INCLUDING ONE DOWNTOWN, REMAIN IN THE CONCEPTUAL PHASE. THEY, LIKE PARK 101 AND ONE OTHER, ARE BEING DESIGNED IN PART BY AECOM.

The Park 101 project has been given the tall order of knitting together what is one of the world’s most jumbled downtown districts. In an LA Times op-ed in June 2008, project lead Vaughan Davies, director of urban design at AECOM’s LA offfice, said, “The proposed site separates some of our most prized and appealing landmarks—Olvera Street, Chinatown, and Union Station on one side; Disney Hall, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and City Hall on the other—creating isolated pockets of activity rather than what we need: a livable, walkable, and unified downtown district.”

Unlike the other projects, Park 101 is designed to host larger events, and also includes “lots of surface parking and at least a million square feet of new development that might include educational, residential, and commercial spaces,” said Davies. The park is in the very early stages of funding and has gathered a “significant” but undisclosed portion of the funds needed for the next study phases. Officials are seeking funds from a variety of infrastructure and stimulus spending packages.

The two projects in Santa Monica, one that would tie together Main Street with downtown Santa Monica, and another that would function as a green space near 14th and 17th streets, are both undergoing preliminary feasibility studies. These too have been awarded to AECOM, but have not been started, though the site at Ocean Avenue and 4th Street would theoretically come first.

“There is no design,” said Sarah Lejeune, senior planner for the City of Santa Monica. “We are just getting the contracts completed for the design and feasibility study, and we’re beginning to build momentum and awareness.” When pressed for a projected date of groundbreaking, Stefan said, “If money grew on trees, we would start tomorrow. Right now, we are trying to figure out what we can afford.”

Greg Townsend

http://www.archpaper.com/

Articulo: Your Car & Your Meat-Eating: The Biggest Causes of Climate Change

BUZZ UP!

photo: Mark Woodbury via flickr.

A new study coming out of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that when it comes to the net contribution to climate change on-road transportation, burning biomass for cooking, and raising animals for food are the biggest culprits. Since I don't suspect many TreeHugger readers regularly use biomass stoves to cook, as do millions of people in developing nations, that leaves us with your car and your diet to tackle. But first, the study:

image: GreenCarCongress

Emissions That Slow Warming Subtracted From Those That Increase
Rather than looking at the sources of different chemicals linked with global warming, the GISS study looked at net climate impact from different economic sectors. By net impact, we're talking about emissions than contribute to warming (the usual suspects CO2, methane, black carbon, etc) minus those emissions that actually slow warming (some aerosols, sulfates, etc) by reflecting light and altering clouds.

GreenCarCongress sums it up:

In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest net contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term [...] The researchers found that the burning of household biofuels--primarily wood and animal dung for home heating and cooking--contribute the second most warming. And raising livestock, particularly methane-producing cattle, contribute the third most.

The industrial sector releases such a high proportion of sulfates and other cooling aerosols that it actually contributes a significant amount of cooling to the system. And biomass burning--which occurs mainly as a result of tropical forest fires, deforestation, savannah and shrub fires--emits large amounts of organic carbon particles that block solar radiation.

it should be noted that in that 'motor vehicles' description, that does not include aviation, which as an industry was ranked well down on the list of net climate contributors--but above the shipping and industrial activities.

So how where does that leave us as far as making technological and societal changes?

photo: ITDP-Europe

Green Cars Are Good, But No Cars is Better
Creating cars and trucks running on clean electricity is no doubt part of the solution. But we're well on our way to doing that, at least conceptually and in the public imagination. We know we need green cars. However that is really only a small part of the solution and frankly seems sometimes like a distraction from the bigger issue, which is all too often sidelined.
What we don't seem to know yet is that we need to create communities and spaces where for the vast majority of people an owning an automobile is not required in their day-to-day lives.

As Zarchary Shahan correctly states over at CleanTechnica the benefits of this are numerous:


Getting out of the automobile habit altogether would be a great step forward for our society and the world. It would address this #1 climate change (and ocean acidification) concern, but it would also help address obesity tremendously, the economy, and other things. As Alex Steffen of Worldchanging writes, "we already know that the way to solve the problem of cars is to build better cities."

It's also in building better towns and expanding multi-modal public transit options, but "build better cities" is a decent simplification.

photo: Jason Anfinsen

Changing Your Diet = The Greatest & Greenest Personal Lifestyle Choice

As far as your diet is concerned, it really isn't as complicated as creating a new urban infrastructure. And strictly from an environmental perspective comes down to this: Eat Less Meat.

Personally I recommend eating no meat at all--the health, mental, and spiritual benefits are myriad and profound--but when it comes to addressing the environmental problems of our growing meat consumption, simply consuming meat at much reduced levels is sufficient, particularly reduction of meat from ruminant animals such as cows and sheep.

TreeHugger's Graham Hill recently pitched the concept of being a weekday vegetarianat the TED conference, and that's a good goal. If the majority of people simply returned to that level of meat and dairy consumption we'd be well on the way towards a more sensible and sustainable scale of animal husbandry.

http://www.treehugger.com