Your household divided by a green line?

Do you diligently recycle every item in your house? Have you given up buying bottled water and even bring home bottles and food containers from places where recycling isn’t available? Have you opted for more vegetarian meals and created a plan to recycle gray water to your garden? Then you are someone who believes the planet is in trouble and are willing to make lifestyle choices to support your eco-concerns.

Then there’s your significant other: well-mannered, smart, a perfect fit, and totally opposed to giving up meat even one day a week. He/she recycles when it’s convenient, refuses to give up long showers, and doesn’t believe small personal choices have any impact whatsoever on global warming.

You are at odds. It’s a source of constant friction: he scowls at the vegetarian chili; she resents the single-ply toilet paper and the constant washing of his reusable water bottle. And worst of all is the sense of moral superiority that the significant other exudes while performing small acts of green living.

According to an article this week in the New York Times, therapists are counseling more and more couples who are having a hard time reconciling their green practices. It is their observation that:

“While no study has documented how frequent these clashes have become, therapists agree that the green issue can quickly become poisonous because it is so morally charged. Friends or family members who are not devoted to the environmental cause can become irritated by life choices they view as ostentatiously self-denying or politically correct.”

As climate change becomes an ever more divisive issue, not based on the science which is irrefutable, but on different personal values, it can lead to a parting of the ways. Some couples now look deep into their future and see different journeys and destinations as their partner adopts more green values. At stake now are differing ideas on how to live, how to invest money, what to eat, and what values to pass on to the children. There may soon be a need for a new kind of therapist: a sort of eco-therapist who can help couples and families to work out differences regarding green practices.

So here’s our question:  Does a green line divide your household? Between those who choose to live green and those that don’t?  The weekly poll is in the right sidebar.

– Deborah Moulton

Endangered species: the sidewalk newsstand

With demand for the printed newspaper decreasing I fear the loss of an already rare sight in St. Louis: the sidewalk newsstand.  You need content to have a newsstand.

I love the colorful newsstands of New York City but I don’t know that we will ever have these in St. Louis.  For a long time a stand was located at 8th & Locust, but that went away a few years ago when the current plaza was built.  The benefits to the newsstand are numerous: creates activity, vendor can offer directions, sell snacks and water to pedestrians, eyes on the sidewalk help with safety.  They do require space but smaller versions than the New York example exist.

I want to see the printed newspaper and magazine survive if only so the newsstand will also survive.

– Steve Patterson

Parks and recreation in St. Louis

Neighborhood parks were very important to St. Louis’ long-time planner (1916-1950), Harland Bartholomew.  From the Parks & Recreation section of the 1947 City Plan:

Large parks are very useful but they supply only one part of the city’s recreation requirements. There is a surprising deficiency in neighborhood parks, playfields, and playgrounds. It is always difficult to provide ample park and recreation areas after development has taken place but that is not justification for neglect of an extremely important public facility. If stability and improved environment in the various residential areas of St. Louis is to be assured, it is imperative that adequate local recreational areas be acquired.

Each of the 82 residential neighborhoods in the city should have a neighborhood park, and playground. Each should have a large playfield in reasonably close proximity. These requirements are in addition to such overall facilities as large parks and parkways. (continue reading)

While I have disagreed with Bartholomew’s thinking numerous times (multiple airports to fly around the region!?!) I wonder how the idea of places for kids to play applies in 2010?  Playground design is different.  The playgrounds of 1947 and earlier would be deemed too unsafe by today’s standards. Few parents today would even let their children out of sight anyway.

From what I’ve seen kids seem to enjoy new playground equipment. The water features at Citygarden were a big hit last year.  Thoughts anyone?  What works? What doesn’t?

Thanks to Matt Rankin for the donation of archives from his late grandparents, Lou & Georgia Buckowitz.

– Steve Patterson

Urban Review STL iPhone app now available

As of today the new Urban Review STL iPhone app is now available in the iTunes app store – the download is free (link).  The app works on all iPhone & iPod touch models.

The St. Louis Business Journal, KSDK TV and some other TV/radio stations in town have iPhone apps, however, most media outlets in St. Louis do not.   For over a year Urban Review STL has had a special layout for mobile readers using various phone so the site was easier to navigate, sites like STLtoday.com don’t even offer that!

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From the app you will be able to read posts, view tweets and watch our YouTube videos.  Features include the ability to easily email posts to friends or post them to Twitter or Facebook.  You can also save favorite posts. This app joins the Planetizen app if you search for Urban Planning in iTunes.  Apps for other mobile platforms are in development.

– Steve Patterson

Transit-oriented development finally coming to St. Louis?

St. Louis’ original light rail line, MetroLink, opened in 1993.  I was a young man back then (26).  I was so excited about the future of the city I had called home for only 3 years at that point.

The total system has been expanded several times since then but my hope of new construction clustering around the growing number of stations never appeared.  Some existing buildings around some stations were renovated but for the most part stations are surrounded by Park-n-Ride lots.

One such lot is in an older dense area, adjacent to the Forest Park Station (above, map).  Developer McCormack Baron Salazar wants to develop the surface parking lot into retail, housing and commuter parking.  Last week I attended a meeting hosted by McCormack Baron to introduce the concept to the area residents.

Richard Baron led the meeting.  McCormack Baron Associate Project Manager Cady Scott, a Saint Louis University urban planning graduate, is working on the project and was there to answer questions as was local architect Andy Trivers.

There are no fancy architectural drawings to show because this project is at the very beginning stages.  What I do know is they want street-level retail facing DeBaliviere (approximately 10,000sf), one and two-bedroom apartments above (approx 80 units) and parking for residents and commuters.  Parking was, as you might expect, one of the areas with lots of questions from those at the meeting.  Also not surprising was the opposite viewpoints raised.  Some favored little to zero commuter parking while others wanted more than the current 100+ spaces.  Scott & Baron also indicated resident parking would be segregated from commuter/retail parking.  They seek to have less than one space per unit.  All of the units would have universal design and they expect a number of residents to be car-free.  They are planning for two WeCars (car sharing from Enterprise).

Richard Baron referenced their 6 North project throughout the meeting (my 2005 review here).

Located near Saint Louis University at Laclede & Sarah (map), 6 North features retail and office space facing the street and universal design living units.  The units are rented at both market and subsidized affordable rates. Residents include the disabled and able-bodied.  To use this same model next to a transit station is ideal.

But some neighbors thought it best to wait for the market to rebound to support all market rate for-sale housing.  I disagree.  Besides the fact the site has been vacant for half a century, the disabled need more housing options near transit.  Those receiving housing subsidies are not deadbeat welfare parents with tons of kids.  They might be staff at nearby Washington University or a school teacher.  They must pay rent, just less than the market.  The 6 North project has a waiting list of people seeking a unit.

Now is the best time to develop this site.  It provides housing oriented to transit, needed for those who don’t/can’t drive, and desired by many that can drive but would rather take public transit.

– Steve Patterson