http://patrickmichaels.com/patch

internship_summer_2007_01

well, its summertime. this summer, my last as a student, i am working in washington d.c. while i consider this 'north' it is in many ways a southern city, especially when considered relative to other nearby cities....new york, philadelphia, even baltimore is much more "northern." it mainly has to do with the people. there are people in d.c. from everywhere, but it seems that a lot of people are from the south.
so far this summer i have been exposed to a lot of large scale mixed use land development projects. it is interesting and in many ways working with these large scale developers is an effective way to change things for the better. big-idea philosophies can affect the system drastically or incrementally, either way "progress not perfection" as they say. the company i am working for seems to have a good balance of looking out for the client as well as the environment and coloquial aesthetics of particular regions or neighborhoods.
this summer i have already had the opportunity to visit and learn about one of the most interesting and progressive urban environments of the south, nashville. nashville has a civic design center which has established a 'plan' for future devolopment and infill. it has been incredibly effective in establishing progressive best practices that the community and developers have a stake in, because the development of the plan was done in a grassroots cooperative between planners, community groups..public and private. anyway i will post some images from the trip as well as the results of the charrette/workshop i took part in there. until next time...change the word...either yours or mine.

Lets try this again

To begin...., some positive affirmation. It is ok that we stopped blogging last semester. We are disciplined enough to write on the blog at least once a week. We are smart enough to contribute to the vast world of design blogs. We do have something to offer this virtual work.

Well, that may or may not be the case, but i am going to give this blog the respect it deserves, beginning now. The projects i am working on this semester are interesting and worthy of being blogged. And it may help me to emotionally vent frustrations and success...process.

So, coming soon... a blog entry from new southern growth siren, with content.

From Park to PARK

If you walked around the city of San Francisco today, you would notice some parking spaces have been converted into temporary public open spaces. Rebar, the designers and activists behind PARK(ing) Day, wanted to create an additional 24,000 square feet of public space. What better (and cheaper) way to do it then to rent on a minute-to-minute basis on a parking meter? By turning these spaces into places where people could socialize and relax, Rebar felt they can “improve the quality of urban human habitat…at least until the meters run out.”

Here’re some images of the first installations in November 2006 that have inspired PARK(ing) Days in other cities, and countries including Scotland and Italy. It doesn't have to be PARK(ing) Day for you to create your own open space. Check out Rebar's "How to" Manual on turning a parking spot into a public space.

Painting the Town...Orange?

In the June issue of Metropolis Magazine, there was an article about a group of artists known as “Object Orange”, who, being inspired by Tyree Guyton and the Heidelberg Project, began to create urban art installations in Detroit. While Guyton devoted his efforts into salvaging derelict homes and neighborhoods by painting and decorating them with bright pastels, polka dots and other junkyard fixtures, Object Orange chose to bring attention to their homes by “using [orange] paint to advocate demolition force for change.” After studying aerial maps and photographs, they were able to identify houses that have been rundown and abandoned for years, and painted them a bright, fluorescent orange that surely no one could miss. In the bigger picture, they hoped that city and government officials take notice and do something about these neglected spaces, to tear them down and maybe do something useful with the vacant lots. So far, the nine houses that they’ve painted have made people take notice, and three of them have already been knocked down.

These art installations forces the community take notice of things that they might not normally notice, even things that they might pass by everyday. Maybe sidewalk art could bring attention to poor sidewalk conditions. Or brightly colored ribbons tied around the branches of an uncared for tree could prevent it from dying. These ideas are relatively cheap and have great potential to make people more aware of what’s around them.

More on the Heidelberg Project in upcoming posts…in the meantime, check out this interactive tour of the neighborhood...

Ecological Footprints

William E. Rees and his students at the University of British Columbia developed a quantitative tool to measure sustainability, or the environmental efficiency of a population. An ecological footprint analysis measures “the total area of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems required, on an ongoing basis, to produce the resources that the population consumes, and to assimilate the wastes that the population produces, wherever on earth those ecosystems are located.” For example, the “ecological footprint” for an impoverished village town would be significantly smaller (half hectare average) than that of a larger, wealthier city such as Tokyo, which incredibly, has one the size of 142 million hectares. Large Metropolitan cities like Tokyo house millions of people, and many who live there physically are unaware that they do not live there “ecologically”. What this means is that they rely on the ecosystems of other towns, cities and countries for support and sustenance. Small towns and large cities, the world is connected in many direct and indirect ways. The pollution in a small China factory town can be a related to excessive consumption in Beijing, or even cities outside the country, such as London, New York, Vancouver, and even Baton Rouge.

Some of the statistics I found in an article Rees wrote in Briarpatch Magazine were astonishing. If the disparity between the footprints of a poor small town and a large city were not startling enough, the population growth by 2030 are. It is projected that by that time, the world will have grown by 2.2 billion people, a number greater than the world population in the 1930s! And so Rees asks, “How sustainable is city living?” Or, how sustainable will the earth be in 2030, with 2 billion more people on it? Rees’ ecological footprint analysis aims to account for sustainability in a society that is continuing to grow in number and advancing technologically, both in exponential rates. As a society, we should be aware of how we are connected, socially, culturally environmentally and economically to the rest of the world. We should be aware of our individual “footprints”, and the one we leave on the earth for future generations to follow. These "footprints" can provide people with an “ethical directive” and an understanding of Rees’ belief that “no lifestyle is sustainable if it could not safely be shared by all members of the human family.”

Post disaster disaster

The community design studio, in which I am participating, poses great challenges. We are looking to contribute progressive ideas to an area straddling St. Claude St., between St. Bernard Ave. and Press St., the neighborhoods of the Marigny and St. Roche. The emergingly relevant niche of post-disaster design will learn important and possibly painful lessons from the rebuilding New Orleans experiment.
How do you design for a community whose members are absent? How do you map a cultural landscape when the culture has changed due to a traumatic shock to its system? While much of the 'standard' literature for landscape architecture teaches the consideration of the physical, cultural, historical, ecological etc. landscapes, the new New Orleans changes the paradigm, changes the questions, and undoubtedly changes the answers.
In his article "Music-makers and the dreamers of dreams," John Hopkins refers to four disciplines, which contribute to landscape architecture: art, ecology, community, and political economy. These are the crucial elements to rebuilding New Orleans. The sense of community in rebuilding neighborhoods is abound, although vulnerable at times due to violence. The communal psyche is tired ... of seeing destruction's legacy daily. Art in New Orleans continues, and is the catalyst for the revival in many neighborhoods, including in the Marigny. The respect of ecology is something the design community to continue to push for in New Orleans. Without it, storms will continue to plague the 'city below sea level.' The most troublesome is the political economy of the area, political economy being the sum of many aspects of the government, public and political wills, resources (natural and otherwise), economy, etc. New Orleans and indeed Louisiana has an extensive, well documented history of corruptions and paying lip service to constituencies with no action benefiting the public. Inaction or incompetence will doom the process of rebuilding.
Well, with the situation in NO there is no easy answer to solving the systemic social, economic, political and infrastructural problems. Gaining an accurate perspective on NOs current situation may be impossible. Regardless of what happens in NO, lessons will be learned from the redesign process of post-disaster urban areas. Not to be a pessimist, but at some point in the future an urban area may be decimated by a terrorist attack, major earthquake, etc. Post Katrina maybe a practice run for how an American city rebuilds after large scale disaster. The answer to that question is as elusive as the ones surrounding the redesign of New Orleans.