Brand Avenue

Debut of an Awkward Sibling

The New York Times features an article today on the emergence of "Noho," a new neighborhood that despite its tiny size, has established a distinct identity from the West Village to the north and west and Soho, to the south (obviously).

How is Noho at all distinguishable from Soho or the West Village? Well...

It's easy to cash a check in a hurry or buy a skateboard. To find cologne, incense, a backrub or a bong, head to the NoHo Market, a collage of open-air stands on Broadway at West Fourth Street. But for $400 sandals or contemporary art, head south.

Because NoHo has no parks, its families and children gravitate to Washington Square Park or the DeSalvio Playground at Spring and Mulberry Streets.

Turn east off Broadway, and the clamor gives way to cobblestones and quiet. "We have very few retail stores," said Zella Jones, chairwoman of the NoHo Neighborhood Association. "They're high-end furniture, artist supplies, designers' studios. Eclectic. Sleepy."

Also worthy of note is the fact that Tony Goldman, whose B3 is the most familiar of his projects to me, has had a hand in the creation of this "new" zone.

Manchurian Main Street

I'm still digesting this, but wanted to post it to get the reactions of others. I wonder where all this is headed--a sample:

What's striking to me is how good we've gotten at fashioning these kinds of places--how conscientious we've become at retrofitting meaning and burying the evidence of our mall-building years under a faux architectural narrative. It's as if we're brainwashing ourselves into believing that we can return to a time before sprawl. Jones even suggests that Victoria Gardens might someday grow up into a real city center, with bigger, taller buildings eventually replacing some of the small-scale stores: "I think it's a model for a major city in the inland empire."

For some reason the David Brooks quote about the design professions being largely about "conservative fear dressed in black" seems apropos here.

Promotional Video, Part II

Now, for something completely different...

Another video I came across when looking on the Internet for promotional videos about place:

Take a Closer Look at Shaker Heights

Interesting to see how different qualities of place are highlighted, and to think about how economics, education levels, age, etc., come into play.

I'm putting this here because I think it is funny to compare and contrast, but also because I think it could have been done better. Also because I think the approach will have to drastically change as those living in 'hip, urban' neighborhoods go house-hunting for their families in places like Shaker. (Because they inevitably will)

The Not-So-Great Divide

Guess what: suburbs and cities are much more similar than you think they are, in a lot of ways.

While young people flock to cities searching for urban lifestyle, the suburbs themselves are changing. The author of the article, who has moved to many different places in her life, prepares to sell her house in Montclair, New Jersey and move back into New York City.

She concludes that the relationship between "who we are" and "where we're from" is blurring greatly these days.

Still, in significant ways, where you are is no longer synonymous with who you are, if it ever was. Our differences are growing blurrier, subsumed by our similarities.

As I prepare to downsize into an apartment, I've come to think that which side of the border we live on has more to do with phase of life and gross annual income than with some intrinsic identification with city or suburb. Many of us could live happily in either place, and we may get the chance.

The young and single will probably always flock disproportionately to the city. The daughter we raised in Park Slope West lives on the southern fringe of the actual Park Slope and feels so at home that she hopes she can afford to stay.

If you're a parent fretting about education, on the other hand, maybe you'd rather pay $15,000 in property taxes than $20,000 in private school tuition, and you won't have to carve a nursery out of the linen closet for your next child. There's already a fair amount of shuttling back and forth, and it will probably increase as we baby boomers empty our nests.

Further evidence that the dichotomy between city and suburb is just not what it was once chalked up to be. It's naive and nostalgic. I would hope that the more that people express similar sentiments, the more broadly cities and regions can acknowledge and evaluate themselves and their issues. This extends to design professionals and planners who condemn the suburbs while extolling city virtues; it's simply inaccurate to pit the two against each other.

A Day in the Life

Maybe it's that Canadian government entities have more money to spend on self-promotion. I have no idea. In any case I was recently searching for business development and tourism videos about different cities on the Internet, and I came across one about Winnipeg, Manitoba (a place I have never been) that I actually liked:

A Day in the Life, from Discover Winnipeg

These types of promotional videos all too often miss the mark, but I think this one does a pretty good job of giving me more than just shots of a prosperous-looking skyline, a dramatic sunset, someone playing a saxophone, people holding shopping bags walking down a city street, the obligatory "nightlife" shots inside a nightclub, etc.

I think the first-person repetition ("I live here, I work here, I play here"), the (no doubt carefully chosen) pictures of everyday people, and the time-elapsed representation of a typical day in the city greatly aid the viewer, especially the younger viewer, in envisioning themselves in Winnipeg. The acknowledgment of the temporal dimension seems to be key in filling in holes that a conventional booklet with photos often doesn't. Oftentimes universities, in marketing themselves to prospective students, include itineraries of a variety of students to give more of a 4D impression of what life in said place is like. This strategy seems to work. You get a sense of the various ingredients and variations that could make up a possible day, week, or lifetime.

The other, more conventional video about Winnipeg that's available on the same website seems to be aimed more at the visitor than the prospective resident, including split-screen shots of various hotels, convention halls, etc along with I think too much footage from other things in the city. I think the music is supposed to impart a feeling of energy and vitality to the montage but in my opinion it's intrusive and cheesy to the point of being embarrassing. I would imagine this is aimed at middle-aged business professionals with boring personalities.

Demonstrating a distinctly different approach to place marketing, and aimed at young people in the same way the first Winnipeg video seems to be, the website of Stay Invent PA tries to exude a tech-friendly image while listing various ingredients that would make up a day in the life of living somewhere in Pennsylvania. I understand that the "mood" function is supposed to impart a feeling of agency to me in my visiting the site, i.e. I can customize the site (and by extension Pennsylvania) to meet my needs...but I don't think the variations are interesting or distinct enough. The stock photography of young professionals doesn't leave much of an impression, either, and there is too much mumbo-jumbo about the way the initiative was organized.

And is this really enough to get a person to "stay invent PA"? I don't think so:

Health care, education and high technology rank among the top employment opportunities in the Pittsburgh area. Home to seven Fortune 500 companies, Pittsburgh offers big city amenities and boundless hospitality in an atmosphere that is small-town friendly. Travelers arriving by plane can enjoy the first-class service at the Pittsburgh International Airport, voted one of the best U.S Airports by Conde Nast Traveler.

Leisure Towns

There have been several articles in the New York Times over the last week describing how many traditional vacation and arts towns, such as Vail, CO and other fortunate small towns are able to capitalize on their assets, flourishing while others struggle.

Second Homes Remake the West's Resorts describes the evolving demographics of Vail and the new economic realities being borne out of the growth of these types of towns.

Meanwhile, Going for Play and Finding a Second Home describes the growth of Ashland, Oregon, which is mirrored in the recent growth of towns like Lenox, MA and Taos, NM.

It's interesting how the search for leisure is itself such an engine for urban growth--and also interesting to see how different towns are specializing in different pursuits, so that the now old-fashioned golf communities of Florida and Arizona are being joined by places like Ashland and Northampton, MA that provide opportunities for culture and continuing education--or even just proximity to the culture of college life. The old paradigm of urban growth being tied to abundant jobs is joined by one defined by the pursuit of leisure and lifestyle.

Even the post a couple of weeks back about Viroqua, WI is defined by this trend...

You're Gonna Make It After All

This recent editorial about the Twin Cities extols the excellent quality of life that they provide.

The author lists a number of provocative truisms of urban design philosophy that all bear themselves out in his experience of Minneapolis. A sampling:

Street life thrives if you give it a chance.

Convenience isn't nearly as convenient as it seems.

The more the merrier. 

Culture adds spice.

Narrow streets are better than wide ones.

Play up the local angles.

Change is good.

Cleanliness counts.

I think the point about "what's local" is especially important as major cities try to increase visibility of their unique identity versus other places. In an age when places like Minneapolis are suddenly on the same global playing field as, say, Dublin, local identity is thrown into ever sharper focus.

Adverse Effects of New Urbanism, part II

"I don't know what community means anymore," said Nancy Siler, who is retired. "Do they mean subdivision? Or can it be a group of houses spread out?"

Embellishing your typical subdivision with the trappings of "community" merely reinforces the lack of connectivity the subdivision has with its surroundings, ratcheting up the feeling of suburbia being a collection of separate little fiefdoms. There is no shared sense of anything, just the adverse effects of attempts to create "a sense of place."

Do New Urbanists realize the degree to which their ideals are being co-opted and subsumed into the flow of typical developer-driven urban growth?