Lux et Veritas

Who Minds The Store?

Monday, February 25, 2008

The recent sub-prime meltdown got me thinking about this question more forcefully than I have in the past. If anyone with a calculator could have taken a look at the risks at the outset of this madness, they would have discovered that the mortgagees could not pay their mortgages when their balloon mortgages' interest rate doubled. Or, further, did anyone consider that because a lot of the buyers had marginal incomes and insecure jobs, loosing their jobs or taking on more debt to live that lifestyle for sure would help them to lose their homes? Where was the fed in all this? Did they not study the data or read the tea leaves that this momentum toward failure produced?

How this event got me thinking more directly about "minding the store" relates to planning and urban design was a reference one of the trad-arch subscribers provided to an article in "City". The  article presumably a critique of a new Bob Stern building ended up at as rant against modernism, other buildings nearby designed by decon starchitects. What the article should have been about is the state of urban design in New York City. The article mentions a question Vincent Scully put about a whole street of Gugenheim Museums; and what would be the effect. Is there anyone at the New York City Planning Commission that reviews and approves building permits for new development who has some guideline, let's say an urban design, by which to judge appropriateness? Or, to make my question easier, does the reviewer ever think about whether the new development adds to or detracts from the city's fabric, near and far?

How could New York have gotten itself to draw up a comprehensive 3D land use/urban design plan? In a city that is so dense and filled with many different urban design models and architectural styles that do or do not contribute to the city's fabric, for want of a better and less pompous word, there are a lot of starting points for such a plan. Let's take three good and one very bad model as a starting point: Rockefeller Center, the Mies Tower and plaza, Lever House's urban garden as the good ones.  And a real bad one: Lincoln Center. To these let's throw in the continuous and connected fabric of open spaces in Rome. Simply, an urban design plan for Manhattan emerges from decisions about how a fabric of a public realm, open spaces and streets and all of the stuff in the public right-of-way, is realized. Further, what type of massing of buildings with specific uses is appropriate to not only enclose but make active the public realm?

Of course, this plan has to be flexible to encounter changes of all sorts in building styles and specific needs for vertical and horizontal spaces. How they would enhance or detract from this urban design is the job of the New York City Planning Commission planners.

An example of what I am talking about is the plan for Battery Park City. You may not like the plan or the architecture, but a great deal of oversight was in place to monitor it. There was a whole approval process for all built things. And adjustments to the plan were made, to take into consideration different and/or better ideas. If there had been a form based code in place, that much more would have been added to the strength of "minding the store".

Yes, Battery Park City was a giant real estate development effort. And the participants, including the City, had the financial resources to provide oversight. Perhaps it was impossible to overcome the emotional upheaval that gave way in preparing a plan for Ground Zero, but the same care could have been applied there.

"Minding the store" is a pretty boring thing to do day-after-day. And most planners, not trained in urban design or 3D land use planning, and too many architects, who think they are urban designers. are not really good candidates for this job. But somebody's got to do it; or we get the kind of ranting I described above, which is absolutely useless after the fact. And, moreover, ranting does not make a plan.

Of course, the architecture and planning schools have got to produce these kinds of professionals. And they have to be politically directed to do this kind of work. Examples: The Philadelphia Planning Commission in the Ed Bacon days had a staff devoted to not only reviewing plans for the center city and preparing a concept for it. They also spent a lot of time platting vacant land and areas outside Center City for new development. The Boston Redevelopment Authority in the Ed Logue/Mayor White days had a similar staff, though they concentrated on those projects under development and left the rest of the designated urban renewal projects without the same kind of attention paid by the planners in Philadelphia.

I have read many stories on the various city planning lists to which I subscribe that amount to: "How could they approve............fill in the blanks. Perhaps these jurisdictions had some sort of "general plan" that is so general, almost anything is ok. Of course they had Euclidian zoning to enforce these generalities. Let's imagine that they got smart and hired DPZ, as an example. There would have been charrettes and workshops and a final vision would have been born. But when they leave town, whose left to make sure the vision or plan is implemented? Yes, any so-called "town architect" would be helpful, but there has to be an undestanding of what that kind of oversight means; and there has to be active support. Or, maybe it's not an architect, perhaps a firm hired on a retainer to provide those kinds of services.

What this post is all about is you get financial meldown and awful buildings, if there is no plan and risk analysis and noone to "mind the store". 

Dressing Appropriately and Observation

Friday, February 22, 2008

Have you noticed how badly Americans dress? This in contrast to the vast fashion industry in the US. Is it only the very rich or the quirky who buy and wear this stuff? What happened to looking pretty and handsome? Or, is that "so then" that it is offense to dress well? This blog entry is not just about the disappearance of appropriate dress. It is about how we see ourselves and how we see things in general, i.e. the talent to observe.

In the "good old days", women wore dresses or elegant slacks with appropriate shoes that hopefully didn't hurt their feet, and the men wore ties and jackets or suits. This mode of dress was then taken to extremes. IBM insisted that the men wore only white, button down shirts, a striped tie, and a grey or blue suit that could have pinstripes. The women could not look sexy or provocative; and the men could not "stick out" by wearing loud patterns and brown. Woman looked in the mirror a lot to see if their makeup and hair were perfect; and the men sneaked looks in store windows and used their reflection ostensibly to fix their ties and pat down their hair to prevent fly-away.

There was elegance and appropriatness in the architecture and graphic design by well known designers. You had Mies and SOM and some of the risk taking architects like Saarinen. But you also had Paul Rand who set the standard for classic graphic design. These professionals were held in very high regard. The suburbs were rather bland, but not cheap looking yet, though we had blander Levvittown; and the shopping centers were fewer, no less ugly, but smaller. Main street and leafy grided local streets were still in high demand, but curvilinear streets and culs de sac were coming in practice. In sum, people looked at themselves and each other and the special parts of the built world around them. They were models that were emulated.

Now Americans laud the "casual". They also like new things, fads to play with. They look like they were about to dig in the garden, work on the car, or go to a golf game. And this description applies to lawyers who also have a dull grey suit and black shoes when there are client meetings. Traveling abroad you notice or can easily identify Americans: they wear jeans, awful sneakers, warm-up suits, and their hair looks like it was cut by a lawnmower. It used to be that the worst dressed group were the Russians and Eastern Europeans with their funny shoes and seeming always brown outerwear. It is not clear that Americans are looking at themselves or the built and non-built environment.

To make my point here, architectural and graphic design, also photography today bears a strong resemblance to the way Americans dress and observe each other and the world around them. More than ever architects want to build buildings that are so unique that they stand out from the crowd of the past they disdain. Is Louis Kahn turning over in his grave? To justify this weirdnes, which in some cases is also brilliant, they give out architect-speak about their position in the forefront of a new paradigm. Grafic design is either of the junk variety, though I think that is now passe, or very retro, back to the bad taste of the 50's. Paul Rand where are you. The photographers that are being pushed by the galleries are lauded for taking trees and posing some unwashed or weirdly dressed person in the foreground of some messy or dilapidated scene.

I look at this whole scene of bad, read ugly, dress and designer weirdnes and retro models being rehashed, and I say to myself, "25 years from now are we going to look at photographs of this time, and say stuff like, 'Did I dress like that, how ugly?', or 'Where did those weird, twisted, mishapen, leaning buildings come from?' I get the same feeling when I look at my family back in the twenties: Men wearing spats and winged collars; women in breast flatening dresses with coiled hair dos and strapped shoes that resemble "mary janes". And, of course, I say: "How could anyone look like that?"

This is a rather superficial and overly generalized comment on the present scene, but I just felt like writing about it. 

Confusion and Revisionism

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Today's New York Times Arts and Leisure Section provides credible evidence that its architectural critic the Great St. Nic and its front page article, "Rehabilitating Robert Moses" have done a great disservice to Times' readers and harm to the cause of urbanism. I am also led to the conclusion that the Times' claims - "all the news that's fit to rint" - these days has the ring of sensationalism.

St. Nic reports more than critiques and provides the least amount of understanding in connecton with Gehry's design for Grand Avenue, downtown LA. First of all the birds eye view of the hard model, serveral eye level photographs of the same, and an accompanying site plan seem totally unrelated to explain what the evolution of Gehry's design was and whatever point St. Nic is trying to make. The following is Nic's bow to contextualism and urbanism: "In an early version of the design, the two residential towers were set at the site's northeast and southwest cornerrs, visually framing the complex and anchoring it into the surrounding skyline." Further: "Over the last year, as Mr. Gehry struggled to contain rising construction estimates, his box-like forms became more static, lending the design a more formal symmetry. The proposed facades of the two towers....., which orginally included fractured planes of glass that gave the impression that they were coming apart at the seams, are also less dynamic, forming a polite backdrop to Disney Hall across the avenue."

Looking at what I can make of the plans, I cannot see how the two towers frame the site, when the other forms look like they have been smashed up. Is he talking about context? I think not. And I cannot see how they anchor it to the surrounding skyline. If anything, the plan adds to the cacaphony of Disney Hall and the more stiff other buildings surrounding it. All of these contradictory words aside, and if Nic had just stuck to describing Gehry's evolving plan, some much better graphics showing the original, the altered plans, and a diagram about the impact of the evolution would have given the article the kind of clarity readers and the trained eye need.

If Gehry's plan is the beginning of a "new urbanism", I'm moving to the space station where at least form follows function.

Robin Pogrebin's front page article on the rehab of Robert Moses, unlike that smashed up thing I talked about earlier, is a very balanced piece of reporting. Moses' overwhelming crimes against urbanism, e.g. his destruction of neighborhoods and his rejection of more mass transit, are very well documented. This description, along with comments by Robert Caro who won the Pulitizer Price a while ago that documents his reign, balances the impact of the revisionism on this history by architectural historian Hilary Bannon.

To give her credit as a historian of the  facts, she acknowledges his "anti-democratic methods and indifference to community values". But her stated reason for the show leads us in another direction: "I wanted to investigate Moses' with this emphasis on physical form". She highlights and is impressed by the majesty and durability of things like Jones Beach, Kips Bay Towers, bridge designs, and so on.  Where her goals become twisted is when Mr. Finkelpearl of the Queens Museum says about the hosting of one of three exhibits on Moses: "This show is not about Moses, the guy. It's about what Moses did." To this distinction, Robert Caro violently disagrees.

The effect of both articles is the sowing of confusion. St. Nic with his excitement about new forms and unique concepts leads the reader and too many practicing architects, planners, and urban designers to believe and then to think this is the new paradigm.

New Is the new reality and truth, the past is boring and done for. Moses' rehab turns the public away from his very wrong, failed practices and gives the impression that he was a good guy, too. Again, because of the passage of time and the deadness that accompanies Caro's 30 year old book, Moses can be turned into someone else, not the anti-urbanist he really was.

Anti-Semitism in Today's World

Sunday, January 14, 2007

The article in today's New York Times Magazine, "Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?", illuminates the confusion about persistent, world wide anti-semitism; the influence of the powerful Israeli lobby, AIPAC; the Middle East Problem; the actions of Israel as a nation-state; and the anti-semitic attitudes and behaviors of Syrian, Iran, Egypt, Palestinians, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League are dedicated to finding and outing anti-Semitic attidues and behaviors. Their political position and organizational goals come out of the Holocaust and the dedication to "never again". Foxman sees any opposition to Israel and its behavior as anti-Semitic and wrong. It doesn't matter that Israel doesn't always do the right thing. What matters is the preservation of a Jewish State. All negative attitudes and behavior toward Israel, including cross-border wars and violence by others, are viewed as a potential "holocaust". Foxman has spent time squashing the writing and lecturing of anyone that takes another and dissident line. This is Cheney-like behavior, that is, a designed campaign to quash dissident voices and to destroy reputations.

AIPAC goes beyond this and funds lobbying the Israeli position in Congress. They have also been exposed as sponsoring domestic spying on Israeli's behalf, to the point of "treasonous" acts in the name of protecting Israeli from US negative Israeli policies. Their behavior and self-denial of what is really going on in Israel and the rest of the Middle East promote continuing violence and war. This is Cheney like behavior, too.

To lump the Arab world unfairly, much of the Middle East refuses to recognize Israel, because they are not Muslims and have founded their country by grabbing what Muslims claim to be "their land". My perception, however superficial, is that in their minds, the Israelis are viewed by the so-called Arab world as no different than all of the occupiers that preceded them: the Brits, the Turks, the French, and so on. And now, the US has become regarded in the same light by the two Iraqi wars and the continuing expansion of oil interests and other commercial/political activities. It was they who divided the Middle East into countries by lines in the sand to protect their various interests, mostly oil and trading. That Israel's land claims are also based on real and biblical history only casts their objections into the extreme. Theirs is also Cheney-like behavior, that is, the refusal to recognize the impact of their policies and behavior, because their claims are the truth.

The real problem is that these participants have a complicated stake in keeping things very much the same. The US, the oil companies, members of Congress and all of the Middle East countries mentioned here, at bottom, prefer the way things are. That is because it allows them to act out their goals, whether they are long-standing tribal and religious grievances; the quest for political hegemony; the profits from nuclear proliferation and arms sales; and the control of oil. This is overlaid by the political history of these nation states, and that is the maintenance of corruption and political dominance of the ruling powers that benefit the few and enslave and engrage the many to suicidal violence. Nothing will change in the Middle East under these conditions and political stasis.

What equalizes all of the Middle East are the various acts of violence and wars on the part of Eqypt, Israel, the Palestinians, the Hamas, the Hezbollah, and the interference of Syria and Iran. Israel claims that their brand of violence is self-defensive, and in the practical sense it is when attacked. But its revenge acts of violence against the Palestinians, its illegal occupancy of their land, and its most recent war with the Hezbollah considered by most of its citizens as defensive (until it failed), nevertheless, contribute to the unending round of revenge, violence, and war. Further, the long-standing efforts to create a two nation state of the Israelis and the Palestinian are persistent failures, because of political policy, attitudes based on long-standing tribal grievances, and, on the part of the Palestinian Authority, outright corruption that indeed splits the country into victims and beneficiaries. It is this split that has enabled the Hamas to become politically viable.

History provides the lesson that the present refuses to acknowledge, and that is that political corruption, the absence of viable economies, violence, war, and the settling of long-standing grievances between countries, religions, and tribes always lead to more violence and continuing wars. Any nation that continues to repeat history in these ways, regardless of the temporary advantages - even that period is centuries - they provide is in self denial. And this is regardless of their claims to want peace and promote democracy but is still in the political hegemony mode. As the US has discovered but fails to acknowledge is the impact of the second Iraqi War and what that has contributed to distrust and the enlistment of more retrobutive violience. Condi Rice's recent peace-reviving trip to Israel was naive and a denial of things as they are that will probably never change without the willingness, mostly by the most powerful US, to engage in long-standing, failure accepting, incremental deal-making (quid pro quo of course), and unremitting international diplomacy.

Unremitting international diplomacy in my terms is not a series of dangerous quid pro quos, but the careful working out of positions that provide mutual benefit in the short term to match temporary conditions. In the long term, it also requires the surrender of acts of political hegemony in favor of mutually beneficial contributions to the creation of real economies in all nation states, eventually resulting in the sharing of wealth by all citizens. It appears to be impossible in the face of things as they are. But what is the long term benefit of continuing violence, revenge management, and fear?

Yes, Abe Foxman's fight against anti-semitism should continue because there is still much world-wide anti-semitism. Yes, Abe Foxman's squashing of any opposition to his and the US's unflinching support of Israel is both wrong and undemocratic. By its ignoring of world-wide competing interests, it contributes to violence and war in the Middle East.

The Arab-Muslim refusal to recognize and its desire to eliminate Israel are unrealistic and maintain war and violence there. Israel is a political reality and good sense and a desire for peace and prosperity would logically lead to its recognition by its enemies. But Israel is going to give up some important stuff in order to gain that recognition. The violent behavior and outright racist oppression of the Palestinians is contrary to the highest democratic goals of that Israeli nation-state. And Israel's nation-state status does not automatically give them the right to repeat history's lesson of the futility of violence and war, and, in the end, outright racism.

Anti-semitism is alive and well and it should be fought against, just as racism of all kinds should be eliminated. The power and sustaining of Judaism and the political and economic dominance of Jews world-wide has always been a threat to the dominant Christian and Muslim ruling classes. "They don't belong! And this analysis does not ignore the power of the claim by Christians and Muslims, too, that Jews are Christ killers. But anti-semtism, as defined by Abe Foxman, the American Jewish Community and other true believers, that is thought of as a precursor to a new holocaust is less real than the genocide that is going on in Africa, as one example. And what is more an issue in the Middle East than anti-semitism is the political and economic investment in keeping things the way they are, or adjusting them in such a way that the oil extractive industries, as one prominent set of actors, can proceed without serious security threats.

The China example, the creation of a capitalist state that continues to labor under the illusion of being communist, is a way for the Middle East to get around dealing directly with the complexities and violence I have described. What would happen if all of these waring nation states built real economies and trading relationships with each other and the rest of the commercial world? Would the sharing of wealth by everyone and supplanting of goals for revenge with economic ones eventually wash out current and past history and result in a sort of stability? Who knows? We might just gain the illusive peace if we tried it.

Who Runs The Country: "The Good Shepherd"

Sunday, December 24, 2006

I recommend highly the new DiNiro film, "The Good Shepherd". Not only for the superb directing and the exceptional acting, but also because it is a look into the longstanding and prevailing culture that underpins our national politics. It explains in very subtle ways why we are where we are in this country politically, regardless of party affiliations. But, in the case of the film, the why and the how the Republicans have prevailed. It's about how certain privileged people are trained to recognize and give loyalty to each other, feel entitled, and see as their mission the control of the political and the competitive industrial world.

"The Good Shepherd" starts examining the roots of creation of a so-called power elite. In the first scene Matt Damon is first humiliated and then, having proven his loyalty, then inducted into Yale's Skull and Bones. This is approximately 1934. In pre WW II days at Yale and later into the 50s and 60s, Skull and Bones invested its members with the goal of loyalty to each other first, then to America - their country! - and an allegiance to something mystical that is the spirit of Bones. As individuals and members of a group for life, they see their mission in life to lead America in every kind of endeavor. Every other parts of their lives, families no exception, are surrendered to this cause.

And so begins the tradition of recruiting Yale seniors and Bonesmen into the OSS and its successor Central Intelligence Agency. And it is the building of a cadre of elites who see the Jews, the Blacks, the Italians, and most Catholics as only visitors in their country - the elites country. These are Damon's parting words film.

Damon and his fellow Bonesmen and non-Yale colleagues learn all of the dirty tricks and they need for their continuing sense of distrust and paranoia, necessary to defeat the enemy and maintain the superiorty of the US against the Russian menace thereafter. It is ultimately about maintaining their superiority. What is also inculcated is the need to periodically santize the agency of disloyal agents, moles, and spies, all in the name of protecting America. Power and control are invested in this very small cadre. People are commodity.

"The Good Shepherd" is not about the very much hackneyed "conspiracy theory". It is about the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of people who have power, money, and influence so strong that they can use government and intimidate a large chunk of the population into believing that this is the order of things. References are very often made to "the powers that be", as if they are the final decision makers whose decisions may be contested on the one hand, but given great respect and status regardless of their negative impacts. "They" are up there and we are "down here".

The film's message is the we others are only (wage) servants to these powers. And fear of job loss and the status jobs in corporate settings proivide prevent any kind of sustained protest and disobedience. And now in a volitale economy with layoffs and outsourcing of everything out of the country for cheap wages, cheap land to build factories, and friendly government elites, fear, personal survival, and isolation become the prevailing and all-encompassing emotions. Loyalty to the order of things and the moral guidelines this order spreads are more important than cooperation and mutual respect. Whereas the middle class and unskilled workers were previously protected by unions, now there is no protection. 

While DiNiro is weaving this very shopisticated picture about how things got to be where they are, he is, by extension, commenting on the way this country is being run. In the first case, President George Bush is a Bonesman. His accolytes believe as he does that they know how to run the country and without very much attention given to how the citizens feel and express. He is waging a war he still believes can end in victory of some sort. He can underfund or choose not to implement programs he initiated. He can push for the privatization of Social Security, at great long term costs to everyone over a long period of time. It is because he believes that people should own their own lives by making choices and not leaving it up to government. This is the continuing fantasy of bootstrapping, which Bush never had to do.

The other message is a more universal one that has nothing to do with Yale, Skull and Bones, or rule by some self-sustaining elite. And that is the old saw that power, money, and status corrupt us ultimately, because we must maintain that position. Those who do not have it are regarded as lesser beings, as Matt Damon says, "visitors in our country".

Why we enoble wars, live with sprawl, take pollution for granted and discredit global warming, deny universal health care, displace experienced workers for cheaper substitutes, and confuse media sources of the news as truth can be largely explained by the natural "order of things" as I have described it. Change and improvement of conditions only follows the political need and profit to be derived to "the powers that be". And that is the maintenance of hegemony locally and world wide.

Why Rome is an enduring model of Urbanism

Why Rome is an enduring model of urbanism

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

This photograph underlines some of the many reasons why Rome is Rome. Rome is more its classical architecture. It is its great diversity of its architecture. It is the many colors and the different building materials. But what really makes Rome's urbanism universal is the rhythm of projecting windows, arches, doorways, columns, and cornices that direct the eye along a building wall from one piazza to the next.

This is the fifth time that I have been in Rome. Like most photographers/city planners I was overwhelmed by the beauty, its historic sites of many millinea, the faultless food, the traffic, the dust and dirt, and the incessant noise of Vespas on every street and pedestrian way. My wife and I are wanderers with cameras walking endlessly and without a plan; and, of course, we missed some of the important things that not only make Rome unique but a universal model of urbanism applicable in any time and place. On our previous trip 4 years ago, on the last day of our time in Rome, we stumbled into the Piazza Colonna and followed the pedestrian paths from one piazza to another stopping to have lunch with a wedding party, ending up at the Tiber River. I wanted to see more of the parts of Rome hidden behind its major streets.

The following is a list of characteristics that I think summarizes Rome's urbanism. All of them, I strongly believe, are transferrable to cities in the United States.

Paving Stones: Most of the paving stones are approximately 4 inches square. They connect all buildings and "pull" Rome together. But is more than their connection. It is also the eye making the connection, because it follows not only the pattern and direction of the stones, but also the lines of mortar between them.

Parking on Paving Stones: So strong is the pattern of paving stones that even when a car is parked on them the eye does not perceive it as a parking lot.

 

 

 
When parking spaces are striped in a piazza, it becomes a parking lot.

 

 

 

As a comparison, though there are many cars parked in this piazza, it seems less of a parking lot than was the case in the previous photograph. Because there is still so much paved space without cars, the feeling of a piazza is maintained.

Piazzas: Lead to

shopping streets that both pedestrians and the occasional small, and sometimes large, cars share. These lead to:   

 

         .

other piazzas that have restaurants and shops in them.

Churches in street wall: They give a relief to the continuous shops. And they mark a special place just by the church architecture itself: the columns, color, and flat steps leading up to the entrance. More prevalent is a church with a piazza of some size in front of it.

St. Peter's Church is the most important church in Rome, the seat of the Vatacin and where the Pope, world leader of the Catholic Church, resides. To mark its importance is St. Peter's Square.The space, though very wide is within the peripheral vision of the observer and is contained by:

 

the Bernini Columns. If you stand on the outside of the columns you will see the same column on the other side of the square. This is the brilliance of the columns' symetrical siting.

Terminus of a street: At the end of most narrow, pedestrian streets is a terminus building. In this case it is a church. This terminus aids the observer in determining not only the length of the street, but also its end. In most cases, the terminus is a very interesting, different color, heavily articulated building.

Great and perfect squares: The Captoline Hill, designed by Michelangelo, is considered one of the most perfect squares in the world. It is the model for public squares, university quadrangles, and campus medical facilities.

Here is another view of the square. Note how the pattern in the paving stones directs the eye from one building to the other.

There many other examples of the urbanism of Rome. From my observations of the city over a period of 5 visits, I believe the urban design principles of Rome are one of the most important models of true urbansim. I disagree strongly with critics and design professionals that these are not transferrable to the United States and contemporary times. I have driven around Washington, DC since I returned and to the rural areas on the outskirts of Syracuse, NY; and I see all of the missed opportunities to arrange buildings and spaces that follow the urban design model and principles found in Rome. I do not subsribe that we can't do this. I do believe that reference to the principles of the urban design of Rome can provide inspiration to change the current model US cities and suburbs have persistently, and with great failure, followed over the last 50 years. However, it is not merely enough of following or being inspired by these principles. It is a case of truly understanding them and appreciating the result on the ground at the level of the observer and pedestrian.

Bill Clinton: Ex-President, the First Black President, Leading International Figure, and Sinner

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Ex-President Bill Clinton is a leading international figure. His grasp of issues, his friendships with world leaders, his voracious reading and deep grasp of many subjects; his ability "to feel " others' experience; to reach out and communicate with everyone he meets support this description. He is also an admitted sinner, as he defines it. It is all these qualities and contradictions that in the eyes of a segment of the Black community, and Toni Morrison in the pages of the New Yorker Magazine, that view Clinton as "The First Black President".

I recommend that anyone interested in learning more about the qualities of eadership, charisma, political vision, and the ability to practice curious judgment, read David Remnick's article in the September 18, 2006 issue of the New Yorker Magazine. His brilliant writing describes this fascinating person much better than of my observations.

It is well known that Clinton has become a world traveler and international spokesperson and fund raiser for HIV-AIDS research and treatment in Africa. Noteworthy is his recent alliance with the Gates Foundation to serve as the diplomat for this program. But what is much less well-known is that Bill Clinton openly admitted his failures as President to deal with the genocide in Rawanda and his lack of dilligence on dealing with the HIV-AIDS pandemic. This apology, repeated widely in his travels in Africa, obscures but also puts into the queue of importance his bad judgment and his almost soap opera demonstration of his uncontrolled sexual impulses.

Not unrelated to his apologies is his brush with death in 2004, when he underwent heart by-pass surgery. Clinton is now almost obsessed with his mortality, in part because of his family history of heart disease and untimely deaths. It is almost because he realizes he needs to accomplish "something else" before his life ends in what could be, according to his musings, in the next moment. Though confessions and recoveries can be the stuff that propels so-called sinners to "do good" in a very moralizing manner, it is rare that a figure with such a built-in sense of the political to come right out and say " I screwed up and I'm sorry." And, then, to spend his life after his Presidency trying to amend this record.

I was personally outraged about the amount of negative attention and political intrigue that followed Clinton's ascendency to President. The Whitewater "scandal" was so much ado about nothing. And the national moral knee jerk reaction to the Monica Lewinsky affair, and, then, an impeachment that focused more on morality than "high crimes and misdemeanors" made an exception to all of the cover-ups of other Presidents. The recent "icon" President Kennedy was renowned for his sexual addiction, about which the press of the day paid no attention. His Presidency was very much enabled by his father's money and ferocious dedicaton to the notoriety of the Kennedy family. Joe Kennedy's background of "rum running" during Prohibition with his connection to the MOB and his incessant sexual peccadillos were well known but kept undercover by the same press. And don't forget Warren Harding's illegitmate child living undercover with his mistress in New York City.

Which brings us back to William Jefferson Clinton. The imperfect man, the President held in low regard by his sinner critics. He is, nevertheless, an ex-President, the "first Black President, still an international figure, and a confessed sinner of the big issues. Clinton's high intellect underpinned by the rare ability to look beyond what is apparent for the deep issues, and who can discern where others moralize has made a positive place for himself in current history.

Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Alexander, and Incrementalism

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

I strongly recommend that all of the New Urbanism listservs subscribers, my friends, all government bureaucracies, and well-meaning do-gooders read Mountains Beyond Mountains, by the Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder. It is the story of Dr. Paul Farmer who took the Hippocratic Oath literally "to heal, not to harm". Farmer has spent his professional life mostly in Haiti and later in Peru and Russia, looking beyond mountains of ignorance, neglect, and bureaucratic rules to heal the sickest of the sick. He is a true hero, an exemplary man, a professional of professionals, obsessional, dedicated, inefficient by measures of cost and benefit, and aware that his limitations can and will be breached. Above all, he is a seeker of unseen solutions, a swashbuckling innovator, a healer, and an evolutionary thinker. He follows the same path of thinking, healing, and dedication to a "wholeness" that Christopher Alexander also treads.

Farmer's beliefs and practice are that healing each person heals everyone. When he arrived in Cange, Haiti, one of the remotest, poorest, and least healthy towns there, he found widespread suffering from diseases almost completely stamped out in rich countries and the proliferation of AIDS. He set up what became a modern hospital with Haitian doctors and health workers and with dedicated volunteers from the Harvard Medical School and the Boston hospital establishment. He enlisted the support of rich people wanting to give away their wealth for a real cause, from foundatons, the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation, and the Haitian medical community. His goals beyond treating the patient and healing them and the community were first dedicated to eradicating common infection, malnutrition, unsanitary living conditions, and, later, to wiping out tuberculosis, and providing modern drugs to stem deaths from AIDS.

From the beginning to the present, Paul Farmer made and still makes "house calls" in addition to his hospital surgeries to a long line of sick patients. He deals with patients and not sickness. He wants to know the living conditions, the culture, of his patients - in this case voodo - and to monitor their course of drug treatment.

To reach his goal, Farmer walked mountains beyond moutains. He pursued drug companies to lower their prices of TB and AIDS drugs. He recognized multiple drug resistant Tuberculosis and that much of it was created not only by patients neglecting to take their drug regimen. By the medical establishment repeating the same course of treatment that failed to cure but also increased the drug resistant population. He instituted the use of "second line" TB drugs that eventually reduced the multiple drug resistant TB population not only in Cange, but also in Peru and a Siberian prison. Finally, Paul Farmer successfully convinced a good portion of the doubters to change their point of view on triage and effectiveness. Farmer made them understand that untreated sick people no matter where they live are the agents of increasing the sick population world wide.

Is Farmer's model of healing a model for problem solving of all kinds? Is it posssible to take "little projects with big visions" and have big successes? Can theory outrun practice? The answer is yes. Can Farmer's model work without him, his dedicated staff, and his genius? The author Kidder feels that it cannot.

I tend to agree with Kidder. In order for a project of this kind, say the implementation of Smart Code and a New Urbanist Plan, a committed leader with the political savvy to negotiate with all of the major players; a dedicated staff to monitor both code enforcement and plan maintenance; and, finally, the cooperation of develoers and a zoning or planning commission are absolutely necessary. Though a very huge accomplishment, merely putting out an NU plan and having a Smart Code adopted by the zoning and/or planning commission will not guarantee long term positive results.

Also to consider is that once theory is put into practice, the practice becomes bureaucratized. Using the city planning example, it is overseen and managed by a planning staff, a zoning commission, building permitting, fine arts and historic preservation commissions, etc. Political and ideological conditions blossom. Intepretations of the new practice become personalized and often confused. The goal of the new practice often becomes lost; and the new practice is hardened awaiting a new theory. The "whole" becomes lost and the process of change ceases to be healing.

Unless....................................a Paul Farmer-like planner/administrator is on the scene to take care of the patient and heal the whole community.

Too Much, Too Soon, Too Ugly, Too Late

Monday, September 4, 2006

Finally, someone from the Washington Post staff got the balls to "tell it like it is". Read Phil Kennicot's article in the Style Section today. But very, very late, like most investigative reports that take the long view after the scope of the disaster becomes perfectly obvious. Washington's downtown Massachusetts Avenue is an architectural and urban design failure on the scale of Ocean City, MD, because DC has a great plan that should have provided a guideline to the planners and the phalanx of approvers but wasn't enough. Everyone cared too much about economic development and utilized the vaguest guidelines and employed what I call overinvolved disinterested oversight. The result is a street of slab apartments with overhanging balconies, self-contained life centers, some ground floor retail, and the feel of total impermanence reminiscent of Wilshire Boulevard in 1964, before Cesar Pelli and Gehry put some sophistication in architectural practice in LA.

Whereas L'Enfant's plan was bold and clear, today's planners are unsophisticated in urbanism and timid to truly, truly and aggressively monitor a strong vision. I know because I worked as a city planner and software development consultant to the city and, specifically, to the Office of Planning. To make my point, when I worked for the city's redevelopment agency, we had total control over the urban design and architectural result of development of urban renewal projects. We had a special architectural review board that had final say as to what went down on the ground. I'm not personally proud of some of the projects in Shaw and 14th St., but I am using this monitor model as a contrast to what went on in connection with the Mass Ave. scandal. I am also a veteran of the Ed Logue era of urban renewal in Boston in the very early 60s, where architectural plans that were inconsistent with the redevelopment agency's vision got rejected and the developer didn't get the land.

No such level of vision and plan implementation and oversight exists in DC. Everyone defers to "the powers that be", the developers' "know better about the market than anyone else", the Fine Arts Commission's hands-off- hands-on review and pickiness of details with little overall city vision, the National Capital Planning Commission's follow-the-leader role as the second Fine Arts Commission, Congress, and so on and so forth.

So, while all of the "good people" in the city wring their hands after reading Kennicot's article today, the truth is that they don't care enough to make the city's planners and politicians care enough to make a truly urban DC. That sounds like the "moral high ground", but in the end it's about the absence of the Ed Logues, Edmund Bacons, and all of the visionary planners and administrators of the 60s and 70s, who, egotistical as they were and wrong as some of their decisions were, knew what they wanted and made sure it happened. We're not talking about Baron Haussmann or Albert Speer or even the corrupt Robert Moses. It's just well-trained, urban sophisticated, visionary, and committed planners and politicians doing their job to maintain and preserve urbanism. And it aint here in DC and hasn't been here for at least 3 decades or more.

Crime

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Today's Washington Post Outlook Section features an article on crime and crime statistics. It's about the realities of "the streets". One of the interesting observations is that much of the neighborhood killing is because of "slights", "grudges", and the unwitting and also purposeful ignoring of gang rules, politics, and culture. How can crime and violence be reduced when these gang social systems not only prevail, but are also a sanctury for the angry, lonely, the disenfranchised, and the unsophisctated about the conflict resolution benefits of civilized discourse and behavior? In a very extended analogy, aren't we looking at a world-wide cultural divide where these same kinds of people resort to tribalism and its attendant dedication to murder without conscience? I wonder sometimes if the surge in murder in murder neighborhoods isn't about copycat behavior of those who see the settling of scores by nation states and jihadist groups of all types?

Politicians world-wide continue the same rhetoric that we need to get to the core of the problems. But they never do. Example, the rather late European, UN, US manufactured cease fire that both the Israelis and Hezbollah are thinking about. Meanwhile, the Israelis continue their push into Southern Lebanon to "root out rocket sites" and establish a zone where a UN/Lebanese peace keeping force can then occupy and monitor. We don't know just what other strategic thinking is going on that "gets to the core of the problems": the Hezbollah and Hamas goal to wipe Israel off the map; the Israeli goal of either eliminating or controlling its enemies, and the reason every Israeli-US action creates more converts to radical Islam. Is anyone ever going to take the long view and dedicate considerable time to understand what's really going on now and find incremental ways to resolve conflicts?

The US is famous for declaring war. Remember the war on poverty. We not only have more people living in poverty than before, but we now have a middle class struggling to meet their responsibilities for shelter, food, education, a job, and access to affordable and top quality health care. This has all been said before; but what hasn't taken hold is that in order to solve these problems some government teamed with various non-governmental organizations devoted to these issues, you have to know them, pay attention to them, and have strategies that are flexible but aimed at success. The US, even in the good old "Great Society" days stuck with their bureaucratically devised "program", and failed to evaluate them and change them to follow their goals. Then, everyone tired of "the poor" and few of these programs remain.

One of the ways of defeating these problems is to stop declaring war on them, but instead just go out and do something that works. Example: the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti. With hard won and now consistent funding from philanthropic organizations, he set up a modern hospital in one of the remote areas of Haiti, and went about his business to provide quality medical care. It's the old story of "if you have your health, you have everything".

Another example. There is a charter school in Boston devoted to providing real education and counselling to poor, mostly, black kids who have been kicked out of the public school system. This population is very small, but the program, as reported in the New Yorker, works. In order for a student to stay in the program, he/she has to learn and become disciplined and civilized citizens. Key to creating discipline, each student is required to master Mandarin Chinese before graduation. This seems weird on the surface. But when you think about it, it makes sense to force young and very distressed children with no emotional grounding, to find a place where they can see their own achievement by mastering something absolutely foreign to their everyday experience.

All of these efforts at crime reduction, standard health care, and education would never be cllassified as "wars". But they are lessons to be learned and models to be repeated where civilized behavior is rarely the strategy to settling disputes and solving problems. Actually, everything I have written goes directly to the meaning of conservative. That is to preserve and maintain a civilized life and return to the "old values".