Coletta Interview Part 2: Smart cities and where we’re going

Richard Florida and Carol Coletta. Photo credit

I’ve been listening to Carol Coletta’s Smart City, a weekly public radio program, for more than a year. So full of information it is, that I archive each episode. Among other things we discussed during Friday’s interview was Obama’s infrastructure plans and the likelihood they’ll be akin to a WPA program. Her show the week of our interview just happened to be on that same subject.

But first, let’s start with what makes Carol Coletta an international name in urban planning. Coletta served as president of Coletta & Company, a Memphis-based consultancy that creates strategic community investment plans for major corporations. She’s served as executive director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Conference of Mayors and American Architectural Foundation. Carol was a Knight Fellow in Community Building for 2003 at the University of Miami School of Architecture and is currently a candidate for a Master of Design Methods at the Institute of Design at IIT. She is frequently interviewed as an expert on urban issues by national media and is an active speaker on the success formula for cities and creative communities.

What are three characteristics smart cities share?
“They have a lot of talent. That is, human capital. They know how to attract it, keep it, and develop it. They have dense connections between people and resources and money. They also understand and act on their distinctiveness. They have strong vital cores.”

And what are some examples?
“Chicago; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; Seattle and Boston.”

Obama talks a lot about a major infrastructure initiative, which might employ some 3 million people. What will that entail? Will it proliferate car-centered development or encourage public transportation or perambulation? Will it lead to some sort of WPA programming?
“If the states drive the list of projects– the shovel-ready projects– it will be business as usual. These are new roads, new bridges. We don’t need new capacity; we need to think beyond the system we’ve built for the last 50 years and say, ‘Is that really 21st-century infrastructure?’ (For Obama) the idea is to put people back to work. If the governors drive this, it’s not going to be pretty. Read Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl’s Transport Revolutions. They pointed out that electricity is a carrier, it’s not an output. You can create it with water, coal, nuclear, bio fuels… in many ways. We could retrofit autos and buses, etc. to use those alternative electricity sources. I think a WPA program would be terrific, but even that takes time to gear up, like the sustainable infrastructure plans.
“Smart Growth America (A nationwide coalition promoting a better way to grow; one that protects farmland and open space, revitalizes neighborhoods, keeps housing affordable, and more) has provided good ideas for how to find the right workers and projects…. What you could do to put people to work really fast is to retrofit schools and government buildings. We could also retrofit residential buildings with funding from projected utility/energy savings. The Clinton Initiative (for example) worked to retrofit office buildings.”

How will the recent real estate boom and its resulting economic woes help shape land planning and urban design?
“The notion that you can take any piece of land in America and build whatever the heck you want to on it is over. You can see it in increased transit use. People have more incentive to live closer in. Other means of transport won’t be seen as a sacrifice but as a preference. People will rediscover the joys of real community and look for public transportation options, living more conveniently. The age of megamansions is dead. People will stop wanting to have so much space and so much storage and so much materialism. They say, ‘Do I want a backyard or Millennium Park two blocks from my house? Millennium Park, thank you!’”

The following books and URLS served as props for the interview and/or were recommended by Coletta.
Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl’s Transport Revolutions
SmartGrowthAmerica
Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City?
Duany, Plater-Zyberk, Speck’s Suburban Nation: the Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

See part one.

View full post

Filed under: books, community, green, housing, real estate, urbanization

Building upon Sensual Literature

Photo credit of Salvador Dali piece
Check out poet/essayist Mary Oliver’s essay, “Building the House.” Originally published in the literary journal Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, it was also anthologized in The Best American Essays 1998.
An excerpt to build upon:
I know a young man who can build almost anything — a boat, a fence, kitchen cabinets, a table, a barn, a house. And so serenely, and in so assured and right a manner, that it is a joy to watch him. All the same, what he seems to care for best — what he seems positively to desire — is the hour of interruption. of hammerless quiet, in which he will sit and write down poems or stories that have come into his mind with clambering and colorful force. Truly he is not very good at the puzzle of words — not nearly as good as he is with the a mallet and the measuring tape — but this in no way lessens his pleasure. Moreover, he is in no hurry. Everything he learned, he learned at a careful pace — will not the use of words come easier at last, though he begin at the slowest trot? Also, in these intervals, he is happy. In building things, he is his familiar self, which he does not overvalue. But in the act of writing he is a grander man, a surprise to us, and even more to himself. He is beyond what he believed himself to be.

I understand his pleasure. I also know the enclosure of my skills, and am no less pert than he when some flow takes me over the edge of it. . . .

View full post

Filed under: books, construction

101 Simple Things to Know about Architecture

Those interested in architecture and even practitioners might check out Matthew Frederick’s book, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School.
The book eschews dogma and overly theoretical approaches. Instead Frederick’s intuitive approach blends levity, practicality, and fundamentals, proving quite edifying and refreshing. It is instrumental in understanding the essential concept of space in architecture.
Consider some of his 101 tips:

“Architects are late bloomers,” his last tip says. “Most architects do not hit their professional stride until around age 50!” As an example he points out that Zaha Hadid was born in 1950 and has only recently become a household name.

“We move through negative spaces and dwell in positive spaces.” This is also a concept you might hear interior designers employ.
“Suburban buildings are freestanding objects in space. Urban buildings are often shapers of space.”

“A good designer isn’t afraid to throw away a good idea,” he writes. “Just because an interesting idea occurs to you doesn’t mean in belongs in the building you are designing.”

“The public doesn’t understand well what we do. I think the public sees us as these Howard Rourke visionaries, the ‘starchitect’ who walks into a room with the cape draped on the shoulders and pronounces these great truths. The rest of society sees the architect as sort of a glorified drafter. This would be the client who comes to me and says, ‘I know what I want; I just need you to draft it for me.’ We took courses in social theory, perception and consciousness, art history and structural design,” he says in AIA’s podcast Podnet: Architecture Knowledge Review.

He’s stated several times that he wrote the book because of his nebulous and confusing experience as a student of architecture and his experiences teaching it at several colleges. The book, he says, is akin to an architectural “cheat sheet.” The sometimes comedic approach is useful for anyone who likes architecture as well as practitioners.

Learn more about his Mass.-based design studio.

Buy the book through the publisher.

View full post

Filed under: AIA, architecture, books, design

Luis Barragan: Graceful Simplicity in Mexican Architecture

Casa Barragan
Originally uploaded by paula moya

Luis Barragan remains perhaps the most renown name in Mexican architecture. The Pritzer Prize recipient‘s mostly residential work bursts with color, his texture invites touch, and his massing dances before viewers’ eyes. For a while he studies with Le Corbusier in Europe, and his work displays as much vibrancy tough in different measures.

While it’s been said that his aesthetic is “a sublime act of poetic imagination,” he says: “I am only a symbol for all those who have been touched by beauty.”

Enjoy more about his poetic beauty in the book The Architecture of Luis Barragan by Emilio Ambasz. The book is a compact, most visual exploration or Barragan’s work. It doesn’t overintellectualize and is an easy grasp for those new to architecture while not simplfying it too much for even the veteran architect.

Some words to associate with Barragan’s work: composition, light, sound, color, vernacular.

View full post

Filed under: architecture, books

Not So Big Life: Sarah Susanka’s promise that less is more

Sustainability expert and architect Sarah Susanka, released her book The Not So Big Life: Making room for What Really Matters last year. She calls it a sequel to her series, The Not So Big House. Happiness is not about how large your house is, she says, indicative that she’s not interested in the Joneses down the street. The book expands beyond the material realm of design and buildings. It dances with philosophy. It will help locate the empty vessels in your life and discover means to fill them with happiness.
When interviewed on an American Institute of Architects podcast, she said, “It’s about looking at how your behavior patterns have actually limited the way you’re living your life.”

“It would be a big calming agent. It would allow people to experience more of what’s right in front of their noses everyday and what they miss,” she says of her book.

Read excerpts and full chapters and listen to Susanka’s delightful dialect as she reads from her book.

Pay a not so big price through half.com.

View full post

Filed under: architecture, books, community, green