Service Stations: They Don’t Design Them Like They Used To

I’m continually repulsed by generic gas stations that are commonplace today yet I find those from an earlier time so appealing.

Look at the solid masonry construction, nicely varied. Yes, the building is pushed back on the lot but at least the lot isn’t huge.

With all the cars on the road it would take a ton of these sized stations to meet demand. Still it seems odd that our 1940 population was over 816,000 people and we managed with fewer gas pumps than today with half a million less residents.

 – Steve Patterson

The Big Picture: City Block #1013

The development process in St. Louis is all wrong. The city maintains 1940s suburban zoning codes (with absurdly high parking demands) and doesn’t attempt to connect the dots. Development isn’t about eventually having nice corridors that are pleasant to walk down. No, development is viewed as being in a vacuum — my block is completely unrelated to the blocks around me. Work the political system and you might be granted a variance to build something other than what made sense in 1950.

City block 1013 is one example out of many.  The block, bounded by Washington, T.E. Huntley (formerly Ewing), Locust & Garrison, is owned by the Salvation Army.  The Salvation Army, like any property owner & developer, has just gone with the flow.

From my view city leaders should have been figuring out what it would look like to connect downtown to Midtown Alley to Grand Center along four corridors: Olive, Locust, Washington & Delmar This isn’t about designing specific built;dings for specific parcels. It’s about building massing and frequency of windows and doors.

As I pointed out yesterday, I’m not a fan of just asking folks what they want — they likely don’t know what is possible. In depressed neighborhoods the idea of visioning vacant lots as active businesses (with jobs) and the sidewalks as busy & safe places just doesn’t come to mind. Vision takes leadership — something city hall is lacking.

I didn’t attend the open house but those who did said the proposed project was billed at being 75% veterans. Anyone who knows Fair Housing laws knows affordable apartments (48 in this case) can’t be restricted to veterans.

Last week I met with Gary Busiek of the Salvation Army and Andy Trivers of Trivers Architects to discuss the project. It became clear they had to work within the codes of the city and the low income tax credits for financing. The financing being used for the project doesn’t allow any retail space, something that would continue the storefronts from the blocks of Locust to the west.

The site plan I was shown shows the block would eventually have four buildings — one on each corner. The NW & SE corners are just conceptual right now — but the concept showed a community center gym at the NW corner. Blank walls would face Washington & Garrison. Instead of mandating massive quantities of parking, we need to require non-black blank walls — especially at corners.

The big picture is we should be looking at all our corridors where development will happen in the future. What form do we want future buildings to take? A one story McDonald’s on such a block would be absurd but I can see such proposals happening on other similar sites. Can we completely eliminate minimum parking requirements?

I care very little about the use of a building — I know use changes with time, The form, however, doesn’t. The form must be correct from the beginning, or at least be easily modified down the road.

 – Steve Patterson

Can Urban Planners Learn From Steve Jobs?

I’ve been a Macintosh fan since first using an SE/30 in a college computer lab in the late 1980s. I’m also a huge fan of Steve Jobs, the Apple c0-founder who died last week.

In watching old videos and reading quotes since Wednesday I began to think some of what Jobs was saying could be applied to Urban Planning. Specifically to public participation.

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. “So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A faster horse.” ‘ ” (Fortune)

We do tend to ask people what they want and we get the faster horse type of answer. Still, you can’t ignore the end user.

“I think really great products come from melding two points of view—the technology point of view and the customer point of view. You need both. You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them—not something they’d want now.” (Inc Magazine)

But focusing solely on the customer won’t create the best product.

“But in the end, for something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they’re supposed to be on top of these things.” (Businessweek)

In the past architects & planners would come into areas and completely redesign it (Urban Renewal). In the backlash to Urban Renewal the opposite has happened — the few remaining residents were the only persons to have any say about what an area should become.

To Steve Jobs design wasn’t just superficial:

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” (Fortune)

Steve Jobs, however, was far from being a Jacobsonian urbanist. No, the Jobsian planner is very much a Californian. Steve Jobs’ last public appearance wasn’t an Apple keynote — it was a presentation to the Cupertino City Council for a new Apple building & campus not from from their longtime campus nearby.

The site was the former headquarters of Hewlett-Packard, all existing buildings would be razed:

Notwithstanding Jobs’ emphasis on heavy landscaping and subsurface parking, Philip Langdon has criticized the proposal in urbanist circles for its fenced, office park setting of glass and the auto-centric suburbia of old. Familiar architectural critics have also cross-examined the premise of London’s Foster+Partners’ design. The Los Angeles Times’ Christopher Hawthorne termed it nothing short of a “retrograde cocoon,” while Paul Goldberger in The New Yorker last month questioned whether the building’s enormity would leave Jobs’ last contribution to his company as the least meaningful of his career. (The Atlantic w/video) 

Cupertino doesn’t have a small-block street grid but even one existing through street would be removed. So I’m not suggesting we emulate this campus plan — please don’t. Instead, think about his approach to design. Thinking about the user experience — making it simple and intuitive. A direct pedestrian path — not a complicated journey from A to B.

– Steve Patterson

Open Streets Event Today Highlights Cars Dominate St. Louis Streets Rest of the Year

Today, Saturday October 8, 2011, St. Louis will block off a few streets so that pedestrians and cyclists can safely traverse them:

October 8, 2011, from 9:00 AM – 1:30 PM:
This Open Streets route will wind through Old North St. Louis. Connecting to the Old North Farmers’ Market and the Riverfront Trail, this route is excellent for serious cyclists as well as those who simply want to visit Crown Candy Kitchen, stroll through the marketplace, or see the community’s acclaimed revitalization of historic properties. This event will feature Healthy Living activities such as yoga and Zumba, as well as some of St. Louis’ favorite food trucks, live music, and art, active living, and culinary demonstrations. View the Old North St. Louis route at http://bit.ly/nNJOpx 

The other 364 days a year just drive.

The Open Streets events are somewhat interesting, gives me a chance to photograph buildings and streets from a position I might get only from within my car.  Still it would be nice seeing more people out walking and biking all year.

The two I did last year had starting points in downtown — one right outside my front door. Today I must travel to reach the route. Naturally the MetroBus I take to get to Old North has a reroute because of the event:

#30 Open Street- 14th closed at St. Louis Ave and 13th closed at N Market

DETAILS

Due to Open Street, 14th street will be closed at St. Louis Ave. and 13th street will be closed at N. Market. The following reroutes will be in effect Saturday, October 8 from 9 a.m. unil 1:30 p.m.

REROUTE DETAILS

#30 Soulard NORTHBOUND

Regular route to 13th and Monroe, left on Monroe, right on N. Florissant, left on St. Louis Ave to regular route.

SOUTHBOUND

Regular route to St. Louis Ave and N. Florissant, right on N. Florissant, left on Monroe, right on 13th to regular route.

I’m a visual person to I had to look at a map to figure out the reroute. OK, I can get within a couple of blocks of the Jackson Circle, one of the endpoints of the event.

It would be nice if they showed the bus routes on the map. From the “getting there” page:

Since Open Streets closes streets off to cars, we recommend alternative methods of transportation:

Mass Transit: Open Streets is conveniently accessible by MetroLink and MetroBus.

They provide a link to “Get to the Oct 9th Open Streets via public transportation” which targets 14th & St. Louis Ave — Crown Candy Kitchen. The #74 isn’t affected by the event but the reroute isn’t shown on Google Maps.  This intersection is over 2 niles from the nearest MetroLink station! That means anyone wanting to participate using mass transit will ride the #30 or the #74, both of which can be boarded at the Civic Center station. But for novice bus riders it would have been nice of them to spell it out clearly.

I’m not yet sure if I will go but I am interested in photographing along the route.

– Steve Patterson

Observing the Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

Last year I wrote a short post about plazas (Public plazas part one: people sit where there are places to sit), referencing the classic book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by the late William H. Whyte.  In 1979 Whyte produced a film of the same name, the book came out a year later in 1980 documenting what was shown in the film.

I wanted to write a post about the film at the time, I was going to include it in 4-6 parts someone had uploaded to YouTube, but they were removed before the post was finished. But the recently that changed:

“Probably one of the most well-regarded films about urban planning is now available online in its entirety. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, a 1979 documentary by William H.  “Holly” Whyte, explores the successes and failures of public spaces in New York City. It was made as part of a research effort spearheaded by The Street Life Project in conjunction with the Municipal Art Society of New York.” (The Atlantic Cities)

To design the best public spaces it is critical to know how people use space. Whyte showed us how to study, document and analyze urban spaces and the behaviors of people using spaces.

The film is an hour long and very dated and dry — but worth every minute. Watch it in segments if you have to:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKf0inm5Pu8

Whyte goes through the following elements:

1. Sittable Space
2. Street
3. Sun
4. Food
5. Water
6. Trees
7. Triangulation (external stimulus that prompts strangers to talk)

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this film now or referenced the book, very valuable information. I’d like to see an update for current times. Do people act differently now? Would they move to get a stronger 3G or Wi-Fi signal?

– Steve Patterson