Attrition, Not Displacement

I took a look at some of the research on revitalizing neighborhoods for a recent post on the Urban Land Institute blog The Ground Floor: Is Gentrification a Good Thing?

South Africa Trip Photos

So far, my trip to South Africa is going great. I won’t have the opportunity to write much here until after I return in July, but I thought I would share a few highlight photos.

Our studio class is examining housing and economic issues in a small town about two hours from Cape Town called McGregor. Its boosters claim the town is the “best preserved 19th century town” in the Western Cape, however it is also facing a serious housing crisis.

The town sits nestled in a mountain valley:

Here’s are the five studio team members, as well as some students who have been working with the South African Heritage Resources Agency to document the town history:

McGregor is something of a mecca for so-called “earth building” technology in South Africa built using adobe or cobb. This home was being built by a local business owner using local materials (the earth is from the site) and local people with experience in the building techniques.

This man is stomping cobb:

These are historic homes, perhaps 100 years old:

Here is a government-built toilet, shared by the residents of 5 tin shacks (not seen, to the right) and the home to the left. These residents are lucky, many shack residents have no plumbing whatsoever.

In McGregor, perhaps a quarter of the total population live in tin shacks and pay roughly $20 a month to the land owner as rent. Millions more live in massive shantytowns surrounding Cape Town, Johannesburg, and other South African cities. (More on this later)

We worked with the students to survey the community and consider the design and location for new government-subsidized housing:

After spending a week in McGregor, we have returned to Cape Town to start work on the report.

We took the train to Simonstown to see the famous African penguins:

As well as took a drive around the peninsula to visit the Cape of Good Hope.

Seeing More

If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen images like the one above before and chalked it up to a neat photoshop effect. However, a lot more than that separates Trey Ratcliff’s take on the Capitol Columns at the National Arboretum from my attempts. The image was produced through a process called High Dynamic Range Imaging. Originally created as a technique to create realistic objects in computer graphics, the technique essentially creates images containing more visual information than a standard, single-exposure photo. The result contains more detail in the dark and bright areas, more like how we actually see. Wikipedia explains how it works this way:

Information stored in high dynamic range images usually corresponds to the physical values of luminance or radiance that can be observed in the real world. This is different from traditional digital images, which represent colors that should appear on a monitor or a paper print. Therefore, HDR image formats are often called “scene-referred”, in contrast to traditional digital images, which are “device-referred” or “output-referred”.

This article explains some of the concepts in more detail. HDR photographs can be taken from real life by digitally combining several photos taken at different exposure settings, and the resulting photo will contain details from the lightest and darkest portions of the pictures as well as more color. The technique seems to becoming increasingly popular, and a recent tutorial published by Popular Science explains the software needed to create the eye-popping images is freely available. I also noticed a couple HDR photos have popped up as DCist photos of the day this spring.

I stumbled across the technique looking for photos of Ballston, of all places. A local resident and Flickr user sduffy had uploaded the photo to the right and several other particularly well done images.

District resident Jon Ross has created several images of D.C., including this view up 15th Street:

Another D.C. Flickr user experimenting with HDR is sunyata, who has created a set of some of his favorites. His style is a bit more subtle, as seen in this version of the fountain at Meridian Hill Park:

What’s your favorite HDR image?

More:
> Popular Science: High-Dynamic-Range Photography: A Guide
> “The Future of Digital Imaging - High Dynamic Range Photography”
> Flickr HDR pool

Analyzing Washington’s Block 450

For a recent assignment for a class in urban design I am taking, I analyzed a block in downtown Washington, D.C. The block is located at Mount Vernon Square, bounded by New York Avenue NW, 7th Street NW, and L Street NW. The block is part of the original L’Enfant plan, square 0450 in modern records. It has an assessed value for 2008 of over $93 million. I have uploaded the owners and assessments of all of the properties in the block from the city’s assessment database. What follows is a detailed analysis of the block’s shape and use.

Context

To the south is Washington’s downtown, a commercial district with tall buildings set on larger lots. Historically few people live in this area. To the north and northwest are residential neighborhoods composed of 2 and 3 story row homes. To the east, New York Avenue and the railroad right-of-way leading to Union Station have historically been major transportation arteries into the city. Immediately adjacent the block is two large institutional buildings. A wedge-shaped corner of the block fronts the northeast corner of Mount Vernon Square, the location of the city’s 1903 Carnegie Library. The block is also across 7th Street from the Washington Convention Center, which opened in 2003. This context influences both the design and function of the block.

Historical Development

The odd mix of uses seen today are in fact consistent with the history of the site. Located between industrial, residential, and commercial zones in the city it is the natural place for furniture, hardware, and small warehouses. Indeed, today the block contains a furniture store, warehouses, and an art gallery called “Warehouse.” Located near major transportation routes and the busy downtown the block has been the site of liveries and carriage and car storage and repair since at least 1880. Lastly, located near instutional uses that draw visitors (first the library, now the convention center) the block has always contained small shops and today even bars. It is this unique context of both the block and specifically the wedge-shaped building at the corner that have made it attractive to political candidates looking for a high profile yet neutral headquarters for their campaigns.

Here is a brief analysis of the historical development of the block, using Sanborn maps.

I was able to find two photos of the block in the Library of Congress’s online image library. This photo from 1927 shows the livery that creates an uninterrupted facade on New York Avenue. The hardware stores in the foreground are on land now occupied by a parking lot and billboard. The women standing to the left of the truck appear to be waiting for a streetcar.

This aerial from 1992 shows the large parking lot that existed across the street from the early 1970s until the Convention Center was constructed. Both 7th and 9th Streets sustained heavy damage during the 1968 civil disturbance, and the city used eminent domain to acquire this property.

Street Analysis

Each side of the block has a distinct set of uses and physical form.

The northern edge of the block bounded by L Street NW contains a series of buildings of fairly uniform height. Some are abandoned and others are being used as warehouses, and some it is difficult to evaluate their use. The sidewalk is very wide and few trees exist. At the far northeastern corner is a 1-story building occupied by an Eritrean cultural organization. The western edge contains one abandoned structure, one building used for storage, and a parking lot.

The southern edge, along New York Avenue, contains a range of uses. The block contains parking, a restaurant, two nightclubs, an auto repair shop, and a vacant building. The three parking lots are interspersed between taller buildings. According to the historical maps these lots were used for parking as early as 1959, and before that used as livery stables for horses.

The western edge, fronting 7th street, presents the most uniform façade of buildings, ranging from 2 to 4 stories. Although the most northern half are entirely boarded up and vacant, this block also includes a furniture store, small offices, and art gallery and café. It has the highest pedestrian traffic and the width of the sidewalk, street trees, storefront scale, and even the Convention Center across the street make the space feel enclosed and welcoming to the pedestrian.

The structure at the corner of 7th Street and New York Avenue works to define both the form and character of the rest of the block. The sharp corner and tall vertical façade responds to the convention center and Carnegie Library directly, and the downtown district indirectly, and defines the form of the entire block. The roofline projects a hypothetical line down each block, unifying the varied sizes and gaps present to provide the illusion of solidity. The structure also responds to the pedestrian character of the street and the neighborhoods to the north. The prominent door and “bumped out” display windows strongly defines a pedestrian zone at the sidewalk level, inviting passersby to look in.

Flickr Puts Pictures on the Map

I think Flickr’s launch of geotagging for photos is the most exciting development in social software since the launch of Friendster way back in 2002. If you are not familiar with the site, Flickr is basically a conventional photo-sharing website like Webshots or Snapfish rolled together with a social networking site like Friendster or Myspace. The service has become very popular because users can share photos with friends and family, search for photos by keyword, or create or join groups with ease. Last week Flickr launched a feature where users can mark where a photo was taken simply by finding that spot on an easy-to-navigate map, and dragging a thumbnail of the photo to the correct spot on the map. Flickr then launched a public map allowing all users to navigate every geotagged photo, or create searches with filters for photos taken by certain people, groups, or with certain descriptions.

What’s the big deal? According to the company blog, Flickr currently stores 228 billion user photos, and that number increases by about a million a day on busy days. Since the geotagging tool launched on August 28th about 3.7 million photos have been indexed. It seems only a matter of time before GPS-enabled cameras and cameraphones become widespread, greatly accelerating the pool of geotagged photos on Flickr or other services, and reducing the inevitable amount of human error. You can see where this is heading: billions of photos of every part of earth searchable by an infinite number of variables including date, keyword, or photographer. Looking for a photo of a landmark with a Creative Commons license? No problem. Want to navigate photos of a news event like a war or crisis by the day they were taken? Enter a few keystrokes. Hoping to keep track of or share geographic scientific data? Drag and drop your images, and choose who to share with. What other uses of geotagging am I missing?

Is it Gentrification if the Lots Are Empty?

Inspired in part by Mr. Kennicott’s article, I decided to take a little tour of the Mount Vernon Triangle area, where a number of large condominium projects are either under construction or planned. See the entire set here.

National Building Museum

I thought this photo I took of the National Building Museum’s Great Hall came out well.