Brand Avenue

Bourgeois Bohemia, Minus Bourgeois

Nowadays it's a challenge to imagine the irrational exuberance that swept places like Los Angeles' Eagle Rock neighborhood several years ago. Emblematic of all the overlooked urban neighborhoods poised for transformation that this blog has long followed, Eagle Rock seemed to have, in plain view, all the raw ingredients for a seismic shift.

The suggestive tone of this 2007 NYTimes article demonstrates the euphoria of a moment that has definitely passed:

But as real estate prices have risen over the last five years, home buyers have been migrating east to discover a group of neighborhoods known collectively as Northeast Los Angeles, or NELA. They are enticed by Victorian homes dating back to the 1890s, Craftsman and Mission Revival homes from the turn of the 20th century and newly desirable midcentury homes, designed with an orientation toward the outdoors....

“The sunsets are absolutely spectacular,” said David Spancer, who with his wife, Apryl Lundsten, fell in love with a midcentury modern home that sits high in the hills of Eagle Rock. Their 2,100-square-foot house with three bedrooms and two and a half baths cost $495,000 in 2003. Built in 1966, the house still has much of its original detailing, as well as a built-in bar and stools, a barbecue and rotisserie, and a large old-fashioned Chambers refrigerator.

But the real treat is a 1,500-square-foot west-facing balcony that runs the length of the house, offering views from the Pacific Ocean to the Hollywood Hills on a clear day. “And most of my work is at Universal Studios, which is only a 20-minute drive,” Mr. Spancer said.

Fast forward to the anguish and lethargic pace of the present day. The NYTimes takes another look at Eagle Rock (above):

When Emily Cook, a screenwriter, bought a house four years ago in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood on the Northeast side of Los Angeles, she fantasized what the area might look like in a year or two, with cafes and boutiques replacing tattered old businesses. “It was like fantasy football,” said Ms. Cook, 38, who also sings in a band named Fonda.

A sad flower shop on the corner, she thought, could become a miniature Whole Foods. An upholstery store could be a gastropub where she and friends would grab a beer, and a neglected 1940s diner could become a retro spot for a quick meal.

But Ms. Cook has stopped fantasizing about what might be, and started worrying about what might shut down. The flower store has closed; no gourmet market is moving in. Lucy Finch, a vintage boutique, folded last month. That Yarn Store, a hangout for crochet-heads, didn’t survive a bad winter.

It sounds totally specious, but it's actually an interesting question: what happens to the Eagle Rocks (ie., the Northern Liberties, the Bucktowns, the Hoxtons) when the economics that supported them shift, again? I'll admit that I'm not old enough to remember any examples of "de-gentrification," or even if it was identified as such. In any event: what's next when hip is no longer economically viable?

It is easy to sniff at such urban affectations. But the downturn endangers more than precious shops; residents worry that as stores close, the fabric of a bohemian utopia — with its Jane Jacobs mix of commerce and public spiritedness — will also unravel.

The new residents brought prosperity and, the locals say, a little arrogance as well. “They sounded the trumpets and announced a vision of something like Silver Lake or Los Feliz,” said Bob de Velasco, who runs Commercial Printing Network, a copy shop. “But it’s not going to happen. Eagle Rock wasn’t meant to have that. Eagle Rock is an old-fashioned, atmospheric town.”

Indeed, in this downturn, Mr. de Velasco’s printing shop doesn’t seem to be hurting, nor is Tritch Hardware. The shops at risk are the ones playing the Decemberists in a continuous loop.

Behind the issue of what constitutes the right retail mix, though, there's a larger question about the body of ideas, that underpinned trends, that remade places like Eagle Rock. On the one hand, the construction of lifestyle, as per expensive, aspirational boutique shopping and home renovations, is awfully precious, and its cache lies somewhat in how inconvenient it can be. On the other hand, there is wisdom in an economic and planning focus on a local scale, and making sustainability--whatever it ultimately means--the goal.

So is this just a "natural" correction? Is a packaged experience of place--neighborhood as product--actually done for?

“The problem is this,” said D. J. Waldie, a historian of Southern California, “if we truly believed that patronizing these places enlivened our neighborhoods, why aren’t we there — eating the omelets or shopping at the boutique?”

“Those places are important — they dissolve some of the cruel anonymity of everyday life,” he said. “They’re part of the equation of making the local real to us. But they’re not the whole equation. They’re not enough.”

Mr. Waldie added: “I’ve got enough handmade soap. I don’t need anymore.”

Ain't that the truth.

Four More Years

Well, readers, George Washington's 276th birthday is upon us, as is Carnaval, and Purim is in just a couple of weeks. While unrelated, these things remind me that Brand Avenue turns four years old this week! So it's my time once again to thank you sincerely for your interest, your input, and your support of a project that I continue to enjoy.

Writing about place, space, and identity--a trio of thoroughly malleable concepts that, essentially, are what propelled me into architecture and urban planning, and continue to drive the content of this site--remains a valuable and gratifying exercise for me. I hope that you've enjoyed what you've seen here over the last year, and I am excited about the year to come.

A brief recap of the last year:

- In October, I attended the Creative Cities Summit in Detroit, and managed to post every day while I was there. It was fascinating, and I learned and saw a great deal.

(Above, the exterior of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit at night, with neon piece by Martin Creed over mural by Barry McGee. via)

One impression of the Summit that endures with me is the idea that "design" solutions to urban problems lie more in the creative allocation of financial, natural, and human resources, and less in any self-referential back-and-forth about architecture. But then I look around at news of collapsing economies and stimulus packages and wonder if this is, in fact, that thesis being brought to bear; or if the reality of it is that design and economics walk hand in hand, and that practitioners of both would benefit from knowing more about the other.

I hasten to add that, in retrospect, it was both eerie and poignant to hear these things pronounced in the bowels of the Renaissance Center, the overblown symbol of once-invincible General Motors, especially as time passes and economic woes permeate most everything.

- Focusing on the areas where economic forces that shape urban form are perhaps most powerfully visible--the suburbs--Brand Avenue virtually visited Buckeye, Arizona; the new shopping arcades of Glendale, California and Allen, Texas; and the big box retail rings of the postmodern metropolis. Each provided food for thought about the future of the urban edge and its ongoing, inevitable metamorphosis.

I'm reminded of something Renzo Piano said a few years ago in a Guardian interview, reacting to riots that shook the high-rise banlieues of Paris:

The big topic of today, and of the next 20 years, will be peripheries. How you can transform peripheries into a town. What is happening today in Paris is happening everywhere. It is mad, mad, and the insensitivity of people and politicians . . . They create ghettos. In Paris it is particularly bad. Now people are starting to understand that the real challenge of the next 30 years is to turn peripheries into cities. The peripheries are the cities that will be. Or not. Or will never be.

Above, "The Gardens of Gaithersburg," a plan by Daniel Rippeteau Architects that converts unused big box space to a "truck garden," wherein the parking lot becomes an orchard, and the indoor space is retooled for agricultural production. Another take, here.

- An ongoing exploration of the production of urban identity, both official and otherwise, yielded interesting results. Stretching from Houston to Belfast, Middlesbrough, Montreal, London, Curitiba, and Little Rock, examples of multidisciplinary efforts that merge marketing with architecture, preservation with economics, tourism with planning, art with transportation. Below, the book Houston: It's Worth It, the physical artifact of an unofficial marketing campaign of the same name.

- Also, I linked Brand Avenue to Streetsblog and the Sustainable Cities Collective. Check them out. Brand Avenue got a bit of press, too!

More to come soon--but in the meantime, please feel free to visit previous birthday lists. And a list of some personal favorite posts that reach back further. All book reviews from the last three years: here, here, and here. Timelapse city video posts, here and here.

Above: Liberty City, of Grand Theft Auto fame, in timelapse. Virtual urbanism, and the city as playground. File under New York City and branding.

Thanks again.

A Positive Development Strategy

San Francisco-based prefab architecture guru Michelle Kaufmann expands her vision of sustainability and order to an urban scale, seizing upon the awful economy and the collapse of the housing market to do so. Her white paper on the subject, Embracing Thoughtful, Walkable Neighborhoods, makes important connections between scale and several forms of sustainability:

The collapse of the housing market has more or less put a moratorium on the advance of our most unsustainable mode of developing new housing: suburban sprawl. With banks no longer offering easy credit and no one buying the new homes already flooding the market, there is little reason for developers to start building new ones....

We should take this opportunity to study the housing collapse and look at the lessons it offers on how and where we went wrong. Now is the perfect time to reexamine the qualities we value in our neighborhoods and hopefully shift our focus onto these qualities that are conducive to financial, environmental, and sociocultural sustainability. Doing so will be an important step toward choosing more viable development strategies for housing our growing population.

On her blog, Kaufmann highlights 10 American community developments, from North Carolina to California, that are attuned to what she calls the "10 Eco-Principles of Communities" (six of which are seen in the above image). These developments, a mix of adaptive reuse and greenfield development, generally hew to a warm, modern aesthetic and are thrifty when it comes to consuming energy and resources; but the wisdom of their design extends to a larger, community scale, with awareness of transportation issues and the strength of the social fabric. They borrow the best of New Urbanism's bent toward timelessness and sense of place, and overlay attention to pressing environmental and energy concerns.

For the communities in question, this attenuation to design at multiple scales, and concern for design issues that are external to the realm of the purely architectural, can help engender a sense of place and create a shared identity over time. Broadening the ethos that drives prefab design moves to an urban scale seems like a natural, intelligent progression. I've long appreciated Kaufmann's holistic, ethical approach to her office's work, as well as her awareness of its didactic strength, and I can't wait to see what kinds of projects could result. Perhaps something like these?

Also, implicit in any of today's prefab designers' approaches to their work is an innate awareness of marketing, which I appreciate. Expanding that inherent marketing focus toward a goal of increased economic diversity at an urban scale would be incredible and significant. More. (Via)

If you find that interesting, you might also check out Green Urbanism Down Under, a book currently on my shelf, detailing efforts to merge sustainability with urban design in Australia, full of valuable lessons for would-be designers elsewhere. Fascinating, wide-ranging reading, made all the more apropos by the country's particular environmental strains and current, disastrous weather woes.

Eponymous

It's an obvious question with a complicated answer: where is the rock that gave Little Rock, Arkansas its name? A visitor to the city might reasonably expect to stumble upon it while sightseeing, a revered local landmark, right?

Well...not really:

This capital city was named for a rock. That's clear. But ask a local to point out which rock exactly and you're likely to draw a blank stare. Once, people would have known: The city's namesake jutted into a crook of the Arkansas River from the steep south bank, creating a perfect landing spot for ferries and riverboats. But in 1872, huge chunks of the rock were blasted away to make room for a railroad bridge. The remnants soon disappeared from view, hidden by weeds and mud and, later, graffiti.

"It was never honored as it might have been," says Bill Worthen, director of the Historic Arkansas Museum....

Geologically, it's part of the Ouachita Mountain range, a chain of weirdly folded crags and peaks that stretch across west-central Arkansas. But it's the very last gasp of the Ouachitas -- "the toenail of the foothills," Mr. Worthen, the museum director, says. And its mottled gray-brown hue doesn't do much to distinguish it from the concrete and steel bridge piers all around.

"There it is," called out civic leader Dean Kumpuris, weaving his way around construction equipment to peer down at the jagged hunk. "That unfortunate little structure is the Little Rock," Dr. Kumpuris said. "Or what's left of it."

(Above: the Little Rock, past and present, via)

Kumpuris' crusade to improve the Little Rock riverfront and the adjoining River Market district has arrived at the Little Rock itself. A public-private coalition has provided money for the Little Rock's excavation, currently underway. A plaza will be built around it, featuring plaques that explain the city's history--and its relationship with the rock formation for which it is named. Proponents of the project expect a reincarnation of the Little Rock as city symbol and tourist attraction.

Some local people aren't so sure:

Even some locals who support the concept say the rock is unlikely to prove as big a draw as other nearby attractions such as the playground, where shrieking kids race through tunnels and slide down grassy slopes on cardboard sleds. "How often am I going to come and look at it?" asks Sylvia Duran, a 34-year-old registered nurse. But tourism officials have high hopes....

"I went to San Francisco and got my picture taken next to the Golden Gate Bridge. It'll be the same thing down here. You'll come and get your picture taken standing next to the Little Rock," predicts Charlie Oppedisano, who works in a souvenir shop downtown.

One wonders if the current story surrounding the Little Rock and its excavation--connecting issues of natural history and civic identity with planning and tourism--outshines that of the Little Rock's journey through obscurity; or if the effort to restore the Little Rock is really warranted. But maybe those are the exact reasons why the Little Rock and its plaza will succeed, and why Little Rock will celebrate a symbol of itself, both very old and totally new.

People will want to touch, climb, and be photographed with the Little Rock (and should be allowed to do so), regardless of how it looks. Whether its appearance is "authentic" or not is largely rendered moot by its maligned history; it will never look the way it did when French explorers first saw it in 1772, but neither do the surroundings. Instead, it can exist in a new context, illustrative as much of 2009 as any other time period.

The way it is recontextualized, in turn, could lend it a contemplative, meditative quality, even if it's also a little tongue-in-cheek. That's just fine. Think of how Waterfire transforms the downtown of Providence, RI; or how Paris Plages changes the banks of the Seine in the summer. Think of how people behave when visiting Millennium Park in Chicago, particularly "Cloud Gate" and its distortion of the city skyline (above); or how the London Eye functions as both tourist attraction and instrument for seeing.

Little Rock's Little Rock has the same potential.  People will marvel at how something as seemingly dull as a sandstone outcropping could come to possess such cultural significance, especially if the space around it is programmed well, with events that help re-establish it as the city's touchstone, both literally and figuratively.