City to River - Get Involved! 1:47 PM

Rarely do I copy a blog post and re-post it in its entirety, but I am doing so on behalf of City to River. CTR is the most exciting case of citizen activism in a city that's becoming known for it. We deserve a city for people, not just for cars, and so any Archgrounds redevelopment should remove the barrier of both the elevated and depressed lanes of I-70. Read more on their website. The blog post is below, and is linked here:

What is City to River doing to make the boulevard idea a reality?  City to River is an all-volunteer advocacy organization working on many fronts to bring the idea of highway removal to all the key decision makers in the Arch design competition.

Time is of the essence and City to River needs your help.  Here’s what we’re up to and what you can do to help:

City to River is:

• Meeting with finalist design teams to advocate for the inclusion of I-70 removal as part of the Arch grounds design competition.

• Earning endorsements of our vision from property owners, developers and other stakeholders.

• Encouraging the public to contact both Mayor Francis Slay and Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley to express their support for the removal of I-70.

• Communicating with local elected officials to express support for the removal of I-70.

What YOU Can Do:

• Contact Mayor Francis Slay, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley, and our  downtown Aldermen to express your support for the removal of I-70 (contact info below).

• Spread the word to family, friends, colleagues. Ask them to follow @CitytoRiver on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CityToRiver. Send an e-mail to your contact list with a link to www.citytoriver.org, ask them to send the link to others.

• If you have contact with downtown developers, businesses, or property owners, tell them about City to River and the boulevard idea.  If they would like to learn more, connect us with them and we will provide them with information about the effort and how they can help.

Mayor Francis Slay
Phone: (314) 622-3201
Email: mayorslay@mayorslay.com
Twitter: @mayorslay
Address: Mayor’s Office
City Hall, Room 200
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

Superintendent Tom Bradley
Phone: (314) 655-1600
Email: Tom_Bradley@nps.gov
Address: Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
11 N. 4th Street
St. Louis, MO 63102

Alderman Phyllis Young
Phone: (314) 622-3287
Email: youngp@stlouiscity.com
Address: City Hall, Room 230
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

Alderman April Ford-Griffin
Phone: (314) 622-3287
Email: griffina@stlouiscity.com
Address: City Hall, Room 230
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

Alderman Kacie Starr Tripplet
Phone: (314) 622-3287
Email: TriplettK@stlouiscity.com
Twitter: @KacieStarr
Address: City Hall, Room 230
1200 Market Street
St. Louis, MO 63103

Another Modern Infill Idea for St. Louis 3:52 PM

Take a look at what Affresol, a modular house construction company in the United Kingdom, has developed: a house made of 100% recycled plastics.

Above: Ian McPherson, managing director of Affresol, standing next to the raw material and the end product. Photo credit--Swansea Bay

They're cheap. They reuse waste. And I like the colonial-stylings of this example. As sort of a follow-up to the previous post, I'd love to see St. Louis start thinking with this bold, experimental, creative mindset when approaching infill.

Make sure to click the link to the BBC story to watch the video and get a tour of the inside--which includes panels made of smashed TVs. Awesome!

I Will Stay If... 8:06 PM

From Rustwire comes this:

I Will Stay If...



Do you think this campaign is too negative a concept for the already under fire Rustbelt?

Or, do you think this lights a fire beneath the leadership of slow-to-change Rustbelt cities like St. Louis and Detroit? Does it say to them, these are the basic quality of life issues I want to see addressed, or else? To that end, what role do citizens themselves have in shaping the environments they boldly demand on these signs?

Should it be: "I Will Stay, and I Will Make the Following Necessary Change in My City:..." ?

Sorry, I am always verbose.

Old and New in Old North 4:01 PM

Following the amazing progress of Old North St. Louis has been inspiring. One of St. Louis's most historic neighborhoods, Old North seemed consigned to a fate of perpetual, yet slow decay (see today's Hyde Park). Yet the neighborhood's historic housing stock is rising along with the population; both are outmatched by the growing enthusiasm and excitement, however.

From Old North St. Louis

Caption: This shot of the now renovated N. 14th Street "Mall" would have been unthinkable ten years ago, when this lovely row of commercial buildings was rotting into a faded memory. Photo Credit: ONSL.org

As the reviving neighborhood continues to come into its own, it will certainly face issues with how to construct new buildings to fit in to the historic context. We have already seen some new historicist construction along North Market (below).

From Old North St. Louis

Photo Credit: ONSL.org

It's wonderful to see North Market's unfortunate gaps filled with new buildings that respect the scale and context of the neighborhood's history. I, however, am most interested in new takes on history--new construction that challenges the historic mold without necessarily breaking it. There are some exciting rehabilitation projects that incorporate creative new uses for a building (1303 N. Market), or add a contrasting addition (1318 Hebert). But what about cutting edge new construction that references the ONSL Federal/Greek Revival/Italianate red brick heritage?


Enter the container house. Yes, people are now shipping in containers (as in the ones that you see on the back of trucks on every interstate) and are stacking them into highly unconventional living spaces. These pre-fab units are cheap, but when done well they don't look cheap.


Check out this house just outside of San Francisco.

Under Construction:

From Old North St. Louis

And Completed:

From Old North St. Louis

Source: Inhabitat


You can easily see how these stackable, incredibly affordable housing units could be done up to fit the form of a classic ONSL home with its wraparound lintels (example). Instead of limestone, they could be metallic.


If you stacked up three tall by three wide, you could recreate this lost beauty, formerly located at 1404-14 Monroe. It would have the added benefit of bringing a higher level of density to ONSL.

From Old North St. Louis

While I'm not sure what the life span of the container house is, they're brilliant nods to industrial heritage and offer a lot of breathing room for design elements. What do you think?

An Idea: St. Louis CAN 2:02 PM

I was just thinking the other day of the various impediments St. Louis faces when it comes to civic connectedness. There are physical and psycho-physical barriers, like wantonly destructive interstates and their autocentric interchanges, lost corner anchors at major intersections, overly large roads, street barriers, invisible barriers (north of Delmar, the "State Streets", etc.), and others. Many community networks were torn up during the modern era in St. Louis, and they either dispersed or never recovered.

Then there are cultural-historical impediments, too, like racism, classism, parochialism, etc.

The internet provides many of us today (true, though--not us all) with an opportunity to connect in a low-stress environment. There's an added bonus (sometimes a liability) of anonymity. We can't immediately typecast the blogger based on his or her skin color, sexual preference, etc., because these are not immediately obvious. Not even gender is known, sometimes (my apparently sexist mind assumed Toby of B.E.L.T. was male until much too recently considering how long I've perused that blog!).

This led me to an idea. We have already seen activism arise over various St. Louis bloggers' laborious work and advocacy. Steve Patterson's Urban Review has us all squinting at developers' renderings, critiquing a lack of pedestrian-friendliness and a sufficient contextual level of urbanism. Michael Allen's Ecology of Absence has introduced many St. Louisans to the notion that the blueprints for progress lie in retaining connections to our storied past.

But even these blogs are limited to an audience that returns to them for, on some levels, "entertainment", if not education. All blogs with a particular vision must limit themselves to their arena of coverage that is self-assigned.

This got me wondering if St. Louis needs a "Civic Action Network"--the St. Louis CAN.

This would be a website, with a forum, blog, blog roll, and host of links that connected people to various events going on in St. Louis. The purpose would be to highlight those that connect St. Louisans to the wider city and to their constituent neighborhood as well. This would include (in no particular order):

-neighborhood meetings
-happy hours
-parades
-protests and other civic activity (such as the newly formed City Affair group's meetings)
-house and garden tours
-real estate open houses
-new neighborhood business openings
-movies in the park, movie screenings, etc.
-farmers' markets
-speaker series and other academic events
-political forums and other discussions of politics (think, for example, the Royale's events)
-art markets
-community yard sales
-and on, and on...

Such a website could be a "one-stop" shop for events going on in St. Louis, with an eye to those that build "social capital" and enhance civic connectivity.

What do you think?

Cornerstones Project - New Orleans 11:36 AM

The Cornerstones Project in New Orleans is another innovative, civic-boosting, history and heritage honoring pioneering project of the citizens of New Orleans.

It's essentially a "National Register of Historic Places" with a couple major differences. One, this Registry covers sites of cultural importance--community cornerstones--that are uniquely meaningful to life in New Orleans. And two, any citizen can nominate a site with relative ease.

Here is a short description from the site:

Generally in New Orleans, places have been designated as important landmarks based on their architectural significance or their role in official histories. We hope our featured cornerstones help you consider other ways spaces are meaningful to our communities, such as adding playful design and color to our streets, grounding cultural traditions, storing local histories, or offering a sense of neighborhood belonging.

Once someone nominates a site, if it's accepted, it appears on this sleek-looking city map:

From Miscellaneous Items

And here is a capture of what a particular feature of the Registry looks like. It's the Sound Cafe, where I discovered this project. Outside of the registered place, there is a cardboard sign standing to honor the place and tell of the project's intent.

From Miscellaneous Items

New Orleans' Tulane University assists in maintaining the site and adding nominated places to the Registry.


To me, this sounds like an excellent project for any willing St. Louis University urban affairs undergrads or any Urban Planning and Real Estate Development Master's Students.


Why? It celebrates the history and culture of a place that only a local would know and allows that place to be recognized for its contribution to the local scene. It bolsters small business, is potentially good for tourism and general civic image, and can foster the idea of a connected, holistic St. Louis.


I can think of several sites that would deserve recognition in St. Louis:

Crown Candy Kitchen - An Old North St. Louis mainstay that has remained open despite radical (and ongoing) neighborhood transformation throughout its nearly 100 year life span. Lots of other businesses deserve recognition for their dedication to their respective neighborhoods considering the turbulent change that St. Louis has undergone: Dad's Cookies in Dutchtown; the Carondelet Bakery in the Ivory Triangle; the South Public Market in the Patch; Hanneke Hardware on the Hill; and so many others.


Mokabe's - A gay community advocate and landmark.


The Royale - An unabashed St. Louis booster opens a bar that's a practical 3-D love letter to the city and is also the quintessential South Side hipster hangout.


Courtesy Diner - Right across the street, Courtesy is a place where everyone has a story. Staring across the street to the Royale, it is almost a statement on St. Louis's growth patterns. Itself an autocentric mid-century diner, and the Royale a turn of the century corner bar, their incongruity is a strange and somewhat uniquely St. Louis delight. Ditto for Uncle Bill's, by the way.


Plus there are those ineffable landmarks like the Bevo Mill and the Water Towers that probably need some registering as well.


And on, and on, and on. Anyone wanting to get this program started in St. Louis?

New Orleans' Harrison Avenue is a good model for parking in suburban business districts 1:00 PM

[NOTE: I'm having trouble with my pictures lately. Those shown below are a bit too large for this narrow blog layout. Please click on each picture to see its full extent, for now.]

Harrison Avenue is located in a section of New Orleans known as Lakeview. Lakeview was one of the most inundated neighborhoods following Hurricane Katrina. Always a middle class, semi-suburban area, the neighborhood has bounced back significantly and continue to rebuild.

Harrison Avenue is a five-block long business district that has a somewhat peculiar parking arrangement. New Orleans' famous wide medians are hollowed out and used for parking in this district. This might sound ugly, but I do think it accomplished a lot of things. For one, it is useful in districts where plentiful parking is expected and needed, and it mostly avoids the need to place front-facing surface lots to the street. Secondly, it screens the parking from both the automobile occupant and the pedestrian. Third, the narrow strip of parking functions almost as a calm "street within a street", very likely reducing traffic accidents.

Let's take a look at some pictures of the area and the parking set-up.



This is a look down one of the rows of in-median parking. As you can see, the median provides quite a few parking spaces--along with greenery--to the business district. The street is approximately 120 feet wide, with 55 feet taken up by the median.



This is a view from the median to the business district. If the street did not sport the median, this stretch would look like an interstate. Many of the buildings are early suburban commercial buildings. These retained urban street frontage, even as squat, one story commercial structures.



This is a photograph of a more suburban-formatted shopping center along the road. Since this was an area built up primarily post-1930, these structures truly have a context. That doesn't necessarily mean that this business district couldn't use a little reformatting to take advantage of the added parking spaces in this central median. Front lots such as this one are likely unnecessary when combining on-street parking with the median.



The view down the median is impressive. It almost looks like some rural parkway with all of the pines.



The mature trees in the median-area are a welcome feature of the median.



This is a great way to both take attention off of the cars in the parking area as well as filter the emissions that automobiles bring with them.



Here's a bonus--an excellent Miami Deco/Moderne bank in the business district.



Finally, here's a shot of one of the entrances into the parking median.

I would like to see such a median placed on Hampton Avenue in St. Louis. It has a somewhat similar profile to Harrison. There are a lot of squat commercial buildings close to the sidewalk, but also mid-century retail buildings pushed back from the street with front-facing parking.


View Larger Map

Imagine the same type of median on this stretch of Hampton. The traffic here is not heavy, but does move rather quickly. The amount of roadway surrendered to the median would invariably reduce driving lines and therefore speed as well. In short, it makes for a much friendlier pedestrian environment where driving passers-by will more likely see the businesses along the street--and have convenient parking too. To me, it's a true win-win in districts of this late urban/semi-suburban profile.

Hampton is much narrower than Harrison (about 60 feet across, from curb to curb) in its southern reaches. Still, a one-lane version of Harrison Avenue's parking median could work (thereby halving the size) from Loughborough on the south up to Nottingham on the north.

St. Louis needs more neutral grounds, err...medians 1:07 AM

The story goes that, in the early 1800s, Creoles in New Orleans' French Quarter and Americans in what is now the Central Business District (then Faubourg St. Mary) had established separate cities with separate governments and separate cultures. Where the two collided, along Canal Street, the central portion of the street was the only permissible point of diffusion between the two starkly different and antagonistic cultures. The Canal Street median, as St. Louisans might call it, became known as the "neutral ground"--a designation which now applies to all medians in New Orleans.

It should also be noted that New Orleans is simply crazy about the neutral ground. Some are incredibly wide and feature walking paths. Others, even post-storm when New Orleans' Magnolia Trees were largely lost, are lushly planted and beautiful year-round thanks to the city's subtropical climate. St. Charles Avenue and yes, Canal, feature streetcar tracks in their neutral grounds. In almost all of them, spectacular Live Oaks contort above the streetscape as if inverted, their twisted roots on display instead of more orderly branches.


This is the St. Charles streetcar running through Uptown New Orleans. On days with good weather (defined as 68 degrees and up, light rain or less by native New Orleanians), you will see joggers and sightseers sharing right-of-way with the clanging streetcars.



Historic photograph of the Canal Street neutral ground, circa 1850s.



And a more current photo of Canal Street, now with streetcar tracks.



But, I digress. The point I'm trying to make is better demonstrated above (streetcars are a ways off for St. Louis). Here is an entirely doable project to improve pedestrian friendliness of St. Louis streets. Above is Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans. It may look like a full blown park, but this in fact is a center median. It's huge--and it has the effect of slowing down traffic and providing a comfortable cushion for the pedestrian from the traffic that does exist. It's also very aesthetically pleasing.


Oh, and these are Live Oaks, by the way. These have Spanish Moss growing on their branches.

St. Louis has some notable wide median streets. Private streets such as Portland and Westmoreland have them, as do public streets Bellerive, Reber Place, and Holly Hills on the South Side. Russell has a mini-median. Lewis Place, pictured below, is a prominent "medianed" street on the North Side.






If there is a lesson from New Orleans, it's that these medians, or neutral grounds, should be accessible, active public spaces, much like linear parks, rather than private gardens or mere decoration. Imagine South Kingshighway with a large, somewhat flat median (unlike the rather new medians placed on South Grand and Tucker Boulevard, which seem too tall and do not invite active use) in the center, attractively planted with greenery and walking paths. Traffic would be slowed and--gasp--pedestrians might feel safe crossing over to Tower Grove Park to the east. Instead of the street being treated as a literal highway, it might instead be a grandiose urban boulevard that both efficiently carries traffic and accommodates pedestrians. Plus, as New Orleans has also shown, these designs provide built-in opportunities for in-street light rail/streetcar transportation.

I say that St. Louis should shuck its neutrality and fully embrace the New Orleans-style neutral ground.

[Edit: (3/29/08) A New Orleanian kindly informed me that 60 degrees is, I quote, "cold."]