The Street Tree Considered

Years before creating his award-winning designs for urban plazas and parks, legendary landscape architect Lawrence Halprin studied trees. Street trees, to be precise. In a meticulously detailed article for an architectural magazine, he sketched the patterns, colors, and shape of their canopies, leaves, and seeds, noting nuisances or special features in loving detail. In a way, I find it fitting. Trees are an important component to the construction of outdoor urban space, a living framework to the city itself.

The urban tree can be an irreverent challenge to city order: obscuring our beloved buildings, taking root where they are unwanted, and up-heaving our delicate sidewalks with their persistent growth. Else, they can be embraced by the hardscaping, celebrated as landmarks.

Their form itself contains an architectural quality, the branches supremely evolved supports for a delicate canopy of leaves, the city’s ceiling.

A tree can be a memory of a past pattern or time: in Cape Town, South Africa, an effort to eradicate a mixed-race neighborhood during apartheid was survived by a hardy date palm, surviving to the present day amid acres of grassy wasteland. In Georgetown, the rhythm of trees seen below documents the former route of a street long cut short.

The tree provides shape and structure to the street; an unpleasant street and a treeless street are nearly synonymous, a point not lost on a Greensboro, North Carolina urbanist who finds trees the major difference between a desolate street an an inviting one. Here, the lived experience of an urbane street is revealed to contain a highly regular rhythm of trees in plan view.

The tree takes on additional burdens in the suburban context, defining the very boundary of the street. Is this a street lined with homes, or lush foliage?

Trees have been recognized as indispensable to livable cities: they are natural air conditioners and purifiers, and perhaps necessary to help combat global warming. The organization Casey Trees has gone so far as to assign dollar values to the trees in Washington, D.C.: according to their formula, a Willow Oak outside my front door is worth $12,226.

Many cities celebrate their trees with surveys and press releases announcing their calculated value. Their benefits come with one caveat - at least one allergist fears the over planting of male trees may boost pollen levels in urban areas.

The subtle impact of trees on cities can extend far beyond aesthetics and air. One researcher found that people are willing to spend more in business districts with trees than without them. Another found that, among 28 architecturally identical high-rise apartments, residents of buildings with trees had better relations with neighbors and experienced less violence.

As central as trees are to a city’s life, they have a role to play in death. Ailanthus altissima, made famous at Betty Smith’s tree growing in Brooklyn, can grow in highly polluted soils with no human care. In Detroit, German artist Ingo Vetter found the trees (known locally as “ghetto palms”) helped him understand the decaying cityscape: “… from their height, you could guess about the time these places were left abandoned.”

One imagines when our cities shrink, in forested areas it will be our garden and street trees who will repopulate the place, obscuring the remnants of our industry with their quiet canopy.

Street Liquor Economics

What does one of the country’s best selling beers have in common with a label of vodka so obscure it barely registers two dozens mentions in Google? Turns out, judging by the large number of empty containers on the street, they’re both top sellers in my neighborhood.

After its launch in 1997, Steel Reserve High Gravity Lager (actually a malt liquor) has seen a meteoric rise to the top of the discount malt liquor world. For the launch the Ramones completed three short songs to use as advertisement and the company kicked up a controversy with billboards in New York City showing animals copulating. Today the Ramones tunes are still available to download today on the brand’s nearly text-free website.

Steel Reserve has been flying off shelves every since. In 2005 the beer ranked #7 among all beers in supermarket sales, ahead of nearly every major beer including Coors Light, Blue Moon, Miller Lite, and Heineken. According to this source, the company sold the rough equivalent of 225 million 24 ounce cans that year. The stunned author of a beer blog reported it was “the only malt liquor to break into the top 50 best selling beer brands in grocery stores in over twenty years,” commenting the company was “moving juice.” Although the beer had slipped to #25 on the 2006 rankings, it was still ahead of such established brands as Beck’s and Coors Light. Plus, who buys malt liquor at a supermarket, anyway?

This malt hotshot drew the attention of one of the world’s largest beer companies. The SABMiller company (formed after South African Breweries purchased Miller in 2002) purchased the Steel Reserve High Gravity brand for $215 million in cash, crowing to investors the brand was the leading malt liquor in the U.S. and had boasted 35% annual sales growth between 2003 and 2005.

Velicoff Vodka, on the other hand, is relatively obscure, registering just 24 mentions on the web according to Google. It seems to be a big seller in the nation’s capital: a 2006 Washington Post story called it “the alcoholics’ choice,” and three of the four photos mentioning the brand on Flickr were taken in D.C. (Including this shot by Flickr user Terecico) The bottle’s label provides little information — there’s almost nothing on the web about the bottler, Grosscurth Distillers Company located in the tiny town of Bardstown, Kentucky. While perhaps a greater story exists behind this enigmatic spirit, today I’ll consider these two beverages wild popularity.

As the reader might guess, I quickly discovered they were among the cheapest forms of alcohol for sale at my corner liquor store. At $1.35 for a 24 ounce can, Steel Reserve High Gravity was hands down the cheapest form of alcohol. At $2, the Velicoff was more expensive than many of the 24 ounce cans, and the same price as the always-popular Wild Irish Rose wine. However, when its stronger proof is taken into consideration, the liquor falls to the third cheapest per ounce of pure alcohol among the random variety of products I sampled in my unscientific study. Here’s the full table:

Readers will note that Everclear is cheaper per ounce of alcohol than Velicoff — but then again, so are a host of keg beers. No doubt sales are depressed by its undrinkability and high price.

This brings us, finally, to the question of why Steel Reserve High Gravity is a major brand worth millions and you’ve never heard of Velicoff Vodka. I suspect the difference may have something to do with the true cost of the stuff. As Kihm Winship explains in his thorough history of malt liquor, “unlike lager beer, [malt liquor] uses smaller amounts of the more expensive ingredients, malted barley and hops, and larger amounts of the less expensive ingredients, corn grits and sugar,” making it less expensive to make than beer. On the other hand, there’s plenty of vodkas selling at very low unit cost, albeit in larger quantities. Is the glass bottle more expensive than a can? Are the profit margins on cheap, small-size vodka too low to interest a corporation, or is this an undiscovered niche? Without further research or an industry source, we can only guess.

More
> The Cautionary Tale of Malt Liquor
> Wall Street Journal: Malt Liquor’s Moment
> Reviews of Steel Reserve High Gravity on BeerPal.com
> Wikipedia: Steel Reserve

Planning Underway for New Shaw Park

Design work has begun for a new Carter G. Woodson Park, located in my neighborhood one block from the Carter G. Woodson house at the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue, Q Street, and 9th Streets NW. According to the project’s manager at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who is overseeing the planning, the project has been delayed due to D.C. Department of Transportation “contracting” problems. According to the National Trust, current designs do not include any seating at the park, but will be designed with future bench additions in mind. The park will feature a larger-than-life sculpture of noted historian Woodson by sculptor Raymond Kaskey. At least one community meeting is planned to get input on the design, and the project is planned to be completed in roughly one year. Today the park is nearly entirely paved and a bus stop has been long removed, both measures I assume were made to discourage loitering and criminal activity.

> NPS: Carter G. Woodson National Historic Site
> National Trust: D.C. Artist to Create Public Art Installation at Carter G. Woodson Park
> See my previous post on D.C. triangle parks

Slums in Cape Town and Beyond

Part 5 of my South Africa series.

To begin this week’s final post on South Africa, let’s consider this satellite image of most of metropolitan Cape Town, population roughly 2.9 million. This map depicts an area some 40 miles across.

Next, this map of the economic geography of the city from a city planning document shows the economic patterns of the city. The area shaded light yellow the planners have labeled “market avoidance.” Here, joblessness and drug use are high, and many residents are living in substandard conditions.

Like most cities in the developing world, Cape Town has squatter settlements, known in the country as informal settlements, where the poor have erected shacks on vacant land. In Cape Town most of them are along the N2 freeway, adjacent existing poor areas, although some communities have been established in desirable neighborhoods with sea views. I made this map using city data, but I do not know exactly the definitions or accuracy of the data. The small scale of the map and the high density of these communities should be taken into consideration.

According to a government report (PDF), about 3.5 million people in the country live in such settlements, or 7% of the total population. As shown in the table, the government considers their government building program a direct response to informal settlements.

Many of the residents of the informal settlements and also poverty area would qualify under the United Nation’s definition of a “slum household,” which they define as “a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area who lack one or more of the following: durable housing, sufficient living area, secure tenure and access to clean water and sanitation.” South Africa is relatively well-off by African standards, as experts estimate 72 percent of sub-Saharan Africans live in slum conditions. Experts also estimated that for the first time in human history, a majority of the world’s population now lives in cities. One-third of these city dwellers live in a slum.

The 2003 UN report “The Challenge of Slums” for the first time marshaled reliable data on cities from around the world. The report estimated 928 million people living in slum conditions, and world urbanization was occurring at a rapid pace. In his book Planet of Slums, Mike Davis compared the report with those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “If the reports of the [IPCC] represents an unprecedented scientific consensus on the dangers of global warming, then The Challenge of Slums sounds an equally authoritative warning about the worldwide catastrophe of urban poverty.” He concludes that “The cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood … surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay.”

In June, United Nations experts reported global shanty towns are growing by more than a million people every week, and estimate they will reach two billion people by 2030. Davis and others have long argued this enormous population of the impoverished will be vulnerable to religious fundamentalism and fear their political repercussions. The intellectual world is only beginning to catch up with enormous urbanization, and in English at least there are few books on the topic. The two usually discussed are Davis’ Planet of Slums and Robert Neuwirth’s Shadow Cities. Davis’ book makes clear there exists a tremendous potential for researching and understanding these places, a task that has only just begun. The relevance of urban planning to global slums will remain to be seen: what is the meaning of a regulatory discipline in a context where regulations do not exist or are not enforced? The biggest role for planners, it seems, will be overseeing upgrading of basic infrastructure and also the legal processes of documenting property and tenure necessary if these places are ever to participate in the formal economy.

More
> Forbes: “Two Billion Slum Dwellers”
> The Independent: “Planet of slums: UN warns urban populations set to double”
> UN-HABITAT: The Challenge of Slums
> UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs: World Urbanization Prospects
> Robert Neuwirth’s Squattercity blog

The Minibus Solution

Part 4 of my South Africa series

Imagine a public transportation system that combines the low cost and fixed routes of a bus, with the frequency and availability of a private taxi. The system would be idea: convenient, low-cost, and predictable. There’d be no fear the driver was taking you for a ride, and catching one would be as simple as waiting a few minutes at most on the roadside.

Sound intriguing?

If you are lucky enough to live in Cape Town, you could enjoy such a system daily. That city’s minibus taxis are the local version of a type of transportation common throughout the world Wikipedia calls a “share taxi.” According to government data the country has some 126,000 of these vehicles operating mostly in the country’s cities.

Like a train system (which Cape Town also has), the buses run along fixed routes named after their final destination. Each bus is a small Toyota van with customized seats designed to maximize the vehicle’s occupancy. Most displayed signs advertising a maximum occupancy of roughly 16, but we rode in vans with as many as 21 people. Most buses are staffed by a two man crew. The driver drives as quickly as possible and controls the music, which can range from American disco and rap to Cape Malay music, almost always played loudly. The second person mans the van’s sliding door, and carries a sack of change. Most fares are around 4-5 Rand, or roughly $0.75, and generally paid with coins. The door operator also generally leans out the open window continuously whistling or shouting the destination, and otherwise heckling passersby to convince them they really need a lift where he is going. I noticed the city had created minibus-only lanes on the street along busy routes approaching the center city.

The vans will stop to pick up or let off passengers at any point on their route, although bus stops and major landmarks like the supermarket are common points. The routes terminate at government-built transit depots. In a huge structure above the Cape Town train station, thousands of vans converge from throughout the metropolitan area on a depot organized into dozens of lanes, one for each route. The service was clearly for locals: during our month stay were unable to locate a route map.

Although riding the minibuses can be a somewhat snug experience, particularly during peak times, we found the system to be inexpensive and efficient. Despite some harrowing driving, the van operators were almost uniformly polite and professional.

There are at least a couple reasons why such a system might not work in the U.S. First, I estimated that operating at maximum capacity a Minibus crew could earn 100 Rand an hour. If they had seven hours of peak operation a day (an optimistic estimate) they could earn 700 Rand, or roughly $100 dollars. After paying for gas and the van (many are rented from a company) there’s not much money left for the driver and door man. Although the actual wages must be low, we heard of factory jobs that paid $40 a day. Clearly, such a system would have to charge much more to make sense where labor was more expensive.

Second, the system thrives in an environment with low car ownership and relatively high density along most corridors. This ensures enough riders to support very frequent service along busy routes, making the service even more attractive to riders choosing between private vehicles, bus, or train. In rural areas transport was a problem and hitching a ride was common as taxis were much more expensive.

Two South African urban scholars have recently examined urban transport in that country in a text titled “Rethinking Urban Transport After Modernism: Lessons from South Africa.” Although the book is expensive to purchase in the states, Google Books has a preview with many pages from it. They conclude that current public transportation systems are not sustainable and urge a paradigm shift in the way transport is conceived, including:
- creating a decentralized pattern of accessibility to decentralize opportunity in the city (versus the modern, radial model centered on a downtown)
- create pedestrian friendly environments
- link transport to high densities of housing and land use
- design complete streets with a full range of uses in mind, not simply roads for cars
- and link transportation planning with urban design and urban planning.

These principles will sound familiar to American readers as they are also commonly discussed concepts in planning circles here. Although the book rightfully describes how the transportation structure of South African cities should evolve, I can’t help but be struck by the extent to which the minibus taxi system exemplifies many of the goals they envision: providing public, low-cost, pedestrian-oriented, point-to-point transport throughout the city.

Government-Built Sprawl

Part 3 of my South Africa Series

The lack of progress bridging the social divides in South Africa has not been due to political will. In addition to a variety of political rights (many which Americans will be familiar with from our Bill of Rights), the South African Constitution includes workers’ rights to join unions, a right to education, a right to a clean environment, a right to access to government information, and a right to “adequate” housing, among others. The housing section reads as follows:

1. Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.
2. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.
3. No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions.

In order to achieve that goal, the government’s National Department of Housing has spent considerable funds to construct free or very low cost housing for citizens housed in sub-adequate conditions. Since 1997 the department has constructed 2,355,913 homes. Although I cannot find the precise break-down, I believe most of those were free homes provided first time home owners. This graphic illustrates where in South Africa most of these homes have been built.

Despite the millions of new homes, the government continues to struggle to accommodate the long lists of needy citizens. The model of housing adopted for the early phase was a 6 meter by 6 meter square house, or less than 400 square feet, located on a roughly 2,000 square foot lot. The houses are provided a small bathroom and power and the poor are provided a small allocation of power and water free of charge. These admittedly “starter” homes are intended to house the most needy, although the program has been fraught with criticism. Moralists critique the lack of privacy resulting from more than one family living essentially in the same room. Extensions to the original house often amount to little more than a tin lean-to. Finally, the mass development of these homes at the city edge, where land is cheapest, has created large communities of poor far from jobs and municipal resources. To make matters worse, most of the poor do not own automobiles, and are heavily reliant on public transit. (Luckily, unlike in America, the commuter rail system and shared taxis do service the periphery.)

During my stay in Cape Town we were able to visit a government-funded housing project under construction in the area known as Delft. Here the homes being constructed in an area known as the “Cape Flats,” beyond the airport on a vast flat sandy area miles from downtown. At the site two demonstration houses stood next to a container retrofitted as a mobile office.

We spoke to the employee of a civil engineering firm who was overseeing the construction of basic infrastructure - sewer, electrical, water pipes, and streets. Here a pile of manhole covers and drain grates (designed to have no value as scrap iron to deter theft) stood stacked waiting for installation. We were told the entire project would include some 50,000 homes when complete.

Google Earth captured a similar project under construction that conveys the scale of these developments:

The problems associated with the mass construction of these homes have sparked a sea-change in the thinking of government officials. Currently officials talk about the need to move beyond the single-minded focus on mass construction, and attempt to create “sustainable human settlements,” and this summer have issued a new official policy statement dedicated to creating sustainable communities. The current model of housing construction is also fundamentally at odds with the government’s strict approach to urban growth: each city has an urban growth boundary, and the government is attempting to pursue a policy of “densification” to focus development in already-urbanized area. Newer projects, such as the N2 Gateway project in Cape Town, have experimented with a variety of housing types (condominiums, duplexes, single-family homes) as well as tenure (rented and owned). The reason most housing to date has been small single-family homes is complex, and has to do not only with user preference and the high cost of high density housing, but also a stigma against government apartment complexes dating from Apartheid-era policies.

However, despite inspired policy documents issued from housing authorities, the simple fact remains that the cheapest land is the farthest from the city center, and a house designed at a minimal cost leaves much to be desired. While American government policies such as home loans, freeways, and the mortgage tax deduction have sparked suburban sprawl, in South Africa the government itself is the builder of impoverished, sprawling, low-density communities.

In both cases, residents and city builders are now facing a similar challenge: how to transform these landscapes into something more sustainable and urban to better serve residents’ needs.

Shaw Library Meeting Monday

UPDATE: This meeting has been canceled. If, like me, you received a post card about it in the mail please disregard it.

Next week the D.C. Public Library will start the first round of public meetings connected to the redesign of three neighborhood libraries: the Benning Neighborhood Library, Tenley-Friendship Neighborhood Library, and Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Library.

Although it is not currently on the library website, the community listening meeting for the Shaw library will be next Monday, July 23 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the recently opened Interim Library, located at 925 Rhode Island Ave. NW in front of Shaw Jr. High School.

The meeting in Benning will be on Tuesday, July 31, and the meeting in Tenley will be Wednesday, August 1.

> DCPL: Capital Projects, Community Listening Meetings
> Federation of Friends of the DC Public Library