Arbitrary Lines

I love cities. (Yeah, obviously). But, they’re not perfect. Especially in the US. I’ve been wondering for awhile why many American cities feel a bit off and I think M. Nolan Gray may have solved the puzzle!

M. Nolan Gray’s Arbitrary Lines investigates how zoning policies have led to segmented and inequitable cities. The subtitle explains it all: “how zoning broke the American city and how to fix it.” Gray, unpretentiously, walks us through what zoning is and how it has pushed to perpetuate segregation and sprawl in American cities. With zoning, we aren’t just talking about wanting to be able to build whatever house you want (modern box? Victorian revival? how about farmhouse chic?). We are talking about access. Access to grocery stores (I’m hungry). Access to healthcare (oh no I’m sick from eating too much food). Access to infrastructure (you want your sewers to work don’t you?). Access to jobs (got to be able to pay for the groceries). Access to public transportation (how are you getting to that job?). Access is the real deal.

Gray explains in the top of Chapter 4: “Ancient Athens, Renaissance Florence, contemporary Silicon Valley. What do they all have in common? Besides profoundly shaping the world we live in today, all three clarify the importance of place in making us more creative, innovative, and productive…genius does not seem to be randomly distributed. Rather, it clusters in particular places at particular times,” (67). Urban planners attempt to create that fostering community through a Central Business Districts (CBD). A CBD seems like a great idea. Get everyone together in the same area and foster innovation and production. We can all influence each other and work towards a greater future. And then at the end of the day, we can all get in our cars for the commute home and get stuck in traffic! Oh wait…the auto-oriented nature shoots us in our foot. So, maybe zoning isn’t that great after all…

Zoning has a dirty history that has, and continues to, perpetuate racial and economic segregation. “As African Americans moved north and west en masse as part of the Great Migration that surrounded the First and Second World Wars, the practice of strictly downzoning affluent White residential area while relegating affordable housing to the worst parts of town would also spread, stripping the poor of their right to move to opportunity,” (85).

But zoning disguises its segregation inclinations as the buzzword phrases of ‘maintaining a community’ or ‘keeping character.’ Gray explains: “Through regulations like large minimum lot sizes, apartment bans, or restrictions on manufactured housing, communities often weaponize zoning to keep the poor out of those neighborhoods and suburbs with the best access to jobs or highest quality schools,” (96). Towns and neighborhoods make it essentially impossible for non-rich people to buy or build anything. It’s a way to create a gated community without building a fence.

Zoning also pushes cities to be less efficient. Looking at some numbers, Gray explains that a city needs at least 7 dwelling units per acre to make it worth it for the bare minimum of a public transit network: a bus that stops every 30 minutes. For better service (bus rapid transit or light rail service), the city needs about 15 dwelling units per acre. For context, a single family detached residential district allows a maximum 5 dwelling units per acre. Cities are mostly made up of this type of residential zoning, which shows how zoning creates high barriers for efficient (albeit, any) public transportation.

In short, cities need to be able to organically grow. That’s how they build that ‘charm’ that I have talked about before. In theory, zoning stands as an outline for that growth, but in practice, zoning stifles that growth and turns cities into an ugly collage. There is still room for localized use designations (don’t put a glue factory next to an elementary school). A case by case scenario would (and should) work for that. But those are obvious. And, they’re objectively going to promote a better urban environment, so no one is going to fight that. So, do we need zoning administrators for that?

Nah! We don’t need the planners! Heck ‘em! Whoa, not so fast. Planners still need to exist, Gray argues, but they just need to lay down a framework of mobility (streets) and infrastructure (sanitary and transit) that promotes and supports growth. Planners can also work as meditators, helping to guide people through specific planning issues (again, case by case). There's not an obvious or direct solution to all of this, but there’s certainly a direction that we want to go.

I’m not a socialist, but this solution in Paris seems like the right idea to build a healthy urban density and diversity. The government is buying and managing properties within the city to insure that lower income families (who are the workers that keep the city functioning) can live in different parts of the city. It’s a beautiful thing when different walks of live can come together and live harmoniously. Maybe that’s why Paris is called the City of Lights - they’re proud to shed a light on their equitable, diverse city to the rest of the world.


Railroad Remnants

Knee deep in one of my Google Maps adventures (it’s a black hole), I came across a weird angled street that doesn’t exist.

YOU: A street that doesn’t exist? You mean, like, an alley? Or the L?

ME: Ehh not really, kinda. It’s N Lakewood Ave, so it’s a street. But, then suddenly at Belmont Ave, the street ends, but the buildings make it seem like it keeps going. Let me explain.

It’s show-and-tell in class today, so I brought visual aids.

Image courtesy of Google Maps

Do you see what I’m saying? That weird, angled void of building traveling southwest to northeast, basically running into the bottom of Wrigley Field. I guess it sort of looks like a street at this scale. Not doing myself any favors. Let’s zoom in.

Hopefully this helps. So, after seeing this and being confused, I decide to investigate on foot. It isn’t much of a trek, since I live very close by. Nonetheless, I threw on the trench coat and grabbed the magnifying glass. At street level, it looks like some developer or architect just wanted to put a funky angle on some of the building(s). But, I know that I saw a greater pattern when looking at the bird’s eye view. There’s more to this story. As I walk south, a set of old railroad tracks emerges in the middle of the street! Ah-ha! A break through. Just call me Sherlock. With more information at hand, I go back to my place to dive deeper.

It turns out that N Lakewood Ave is an old railroad track. (Should I have said spoiler alert earlier? Oh well). I found an old Rand McNally map of the Chicago Railroads from both 1901 and 1921. (Look at the North-South railroad line that has the “Belmont” station).

This isn’t some great revelation of history. I didn’t find the catacombs of Chicago, nor did I find the true source of the Great Chicago Fire. But, this is a small example of how design legacy is shown in our urban fabric. Our actions - our designs - can and will impact the future. The folks who laid out the network of railroads inevitably had an impact on where and how current Chicagoans live. In this instance, history allowed us (maybe forced us) to break the grid - creating an exciting and fun twist in Chicago’s latticework.

Burglar's Guide to the City

Do you ever look at a wall and say: that could be a door if I just throw my entire body through it? Yeah, I don’t either. But that’s because we’re not burglars! Retelling stories of thieves, shadowing law enforcement, training for a zombie apocalypse, and thinking through the ‘defensive’ built environment, Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh (the man behind BLDGBLOG) provides a new way to look at architecture and urbanism. The book’s scope starts big. We look at cities and their infrastructure, and then we zoom into buildings. Eventually, we asses the tools that both assist and fight burglars.

Image Courtesy of burglarsguide.com

I’m biased because I have an obsession with Los Angeles, but one of the more fascinating parts of this book is the light that it sheds on LA and its crime scene. Manaugh joins in a helicopter patrol flight, surveying the vast landscape, noting the noodled network of highways and the countless dead-end cul-de-sacs. LA is urban sprawl. It’s a huge group of smaller neighborhoods that are well connected. Racing in a getaway car, burglars use that to their advantage.

The location of a building greatly impacts its vulnerability. If you’re a burglar, looking to rob a convenience store or break into a house, you want a quick means of getting away. You look for a place that is close to a highway on ramp. But even in a denser, more urban city like Chicago or New York, you search for a potential target that is close to a public transit stop. Rob the place, hop on the subway, blend into the crowd, and never be seen again. Yet, it’s counterintuitive. As a prospective homebuyer, you want access to these transportation stops. But your desire to be connected runs parallel with a burglar’s desire to be able to get away.

On a more positive note, Jason Bourne (my favorite movie character) gets a shoutout. Manaugh mentions Matt Jones’ essay explaining why Jason Bourne is the “ultimate urbanist.” Manaugh notes: “Bourne’s superpower is simply that he uses cities better than you and I,” (258). I think that Jason Bourne is better than me at everything, not just using cities, but hey maybe that’s just me.

Ultimately, there’s a legal dialogue in what defines burglary. Burglary is the invasion of space. So, there needs to be a clear distinction of the boundaries of that space. This begs the philosophical question: what are those boundaries? Where does architecture start and end? Is it your property line? Is it the exterior edge of the cladding on your house? Is the center line of the threshold of your door? If you live in a multi-unit building, does it start in your lobby? I don’t have any answers here. I am scared of lawyers, and I don’t want to trigger a personal existential crisis. But these are important ideas to think about as we continue to shape and create buildings and urban landscapes.

Continuing on our enlightenment coffeehouse talk, we can look at our view of burglars that Manaugh brings up near the end of the book. He said that he approached the book with the hope that he could be a cheerleader for the person who flips architecture on its head, the person who keeps you on your toes, the person who stretches the ideas of architecture, the person who writes their own script. But, you can’t. Burglars are “assholes.“ They physically break architecture and emotionally destroy people’s sense of security, often scarring people for years to come.

I agree. Nobody wants to root for the bad guy (unless you watch Breaking Bad or Ozarks). But, as Manaugh shows throughout the book, there’s still an opportunity to learn. One of the big takeaways for me is this idea that burglars are some of the few people that create architecture, well after construction has ended. Most of us are purely consumers of architecture. We take the finished product and live with it. No doubt, we surely take advantage of it. It becomes a home. It becomes a place of productivity. Whatever it is for you, it becomes a collection of memories. But there’s a beauty to endlessly creating and changing architecture. Architecture shouldn’t be static, nor should our interactions be with it.

We, the normal people, approach a building and allow it to tell us what to do. Burglars are creators. They use a building to do what they (the burglars) want to do. Most people see walls as walls. The twisted few make walls into doors. Maybe we can all look at walls as more than walls. No, not as doors, but as a blank canvas, waiting to be painted.