Lessons about urbanism from Miami

I returned yesterday after five days in Miami.

My trip was for “work.” Not conference “work,” which (for me) isn’t really work at all but three, four, sometimes five days with soft obligations (like one 90-minute panel, sometimes two, in which my own presentation constitutes about 15 minutes of speaking) and plenty of free time for socializing and other sorts of fun. This was four very intense days of data collection for a project that I’ve been enlisted for. I’ve done very little applied research in my career, and this is very neat. I hope that I can keep this shingle hung outside my door permanently, on a part-time basis I mean. It’s all really fulfilling.

So “work” was engaging and exhausting and didn’t leave me much time- any time, really- to explore Miami. I only got to know my very nice hotel room and the route from there to the study site, which entailed perhaps 10 minutes of walking through downtown. I also had two meals at the Bayside Marketplace, which is a “festival marketplace” with all the trappings that this label implies. Hard Rock? Check. Bubba Gump? Check. Disney Store? Check. I actually had some serviceable Cuban food (stewed pork with rice and black beans) at the food court there, and it wasn’t unpleasant.

The thing is, Miami challenges some of the lessons about urbanism that planners (among other urbanists) take for granted, because the “urbanity” of downtown Miami just doesn’t seem to work. Is downtown “urban”? Most definitely. Miami has an abundance–an absurd abundance, in fact–of residential projects going up in and around downtown. It’s reminiscent of Vancouver or Honolulu (or Calgary) in that regard, and for a skyscraper geek, it’s inspiring. With this buildout, one would expect to find the street-level amenities and street life to reflect that population boom. And here’s where the story goes in an unexpected direction, and there are some concrete reasons for that.

1. Miami is overbuilt. This is probably not only the case downtown, but one can see it acutely downtown. The towers under construction are largely unsold; completed towers are largely empty; planned towers are being cancelled all over the place; speculators are losing money (LOTS of money); even developers are forced to cut prices (I saw 30% markdowns on unsold units, something I’ve never seen in Calgary except for the very last unit in an otherwise sold-out project); and the bottom line is that Miami is the centre of the US burst-bubble mortgage crisis. So, yes, there are buildings, but they don’t lend to an urban (meaning “peopled” in this case) atmosphere. It’s all surreal and kind of sad.

2. There isn’t a lot going on at the street level. We complain about this sort of thing in Calgary a lot, but I saw nothing in the way of retail, storefront, streetside retail, that was in any way commensurate with what I saw above the street. We worked on Saturday and Sunday, and I could only see open businesses in the hotels. Yes, Bayside was open, but Bayside is basically a mall. A special sort of mall, but a mall. I saw nothing inviting at street level despite the presence of huge, HUGE hotels and thousands of guests there, all seemingly scurrying for cabs and tour buses. The Starbucks in my hotel had an interior entrance in a sort of retail court in the hotel, not a streetfront entrance like at the new Starbucks in Calgary’s downtown Westin. All of this lent to a pretty much pedestrian-free, and empty and dangerous-feeling, urban environment.

3. The pedestrian experience in Downtown Miami, for the route(s) that I attempted from hotel to meeting site, was very unwelcoming, and was at times terrifying. Part of this was because of the lack of other street life, including other pedestrians. Another part, perhaps a larger one, was that pedestrians have to compete with cars in a ridiculously one-sided battle. I had no choice at several places to cross at unmarked intersections or, for heaven’s sake, to cross in the middle of the street. Then I had to race against three or four lanes of one-way traffic. Then I had to contend with the fact that those lanes of traffic are all racing- RACING- to get onto the expressway. A colleague and I once crossed one of those unmarked intersections when the coast was clear, and a left-turning car stopped to let us cross without being killed. At this point a truck behind that car laid on its horn. He could see quite clearly why the car had stopped, but the message was clear: You don’t give pedestrians the right of way, and that experience, more than any other, soured me on Miami.

I’m sure there are areas around Miami, maybe even in the city proper, that are wonderful and even pedestrian friendly and all of that. But what I learned from my limited experience there is not really about Miami at all. It’s about the importance of factors, sometimes unanticipated ones, in making an area walkable, and “walkability” lends to livability. For me, at least.

It’s great to be home.

The battle against NIMBY forces in Bankview

I’m an official neighbourhood activist now. There’s an application to tear down the houses across the street from ours and to change zoning to accommodate higher density (probably in the form of four-storey condos), and as soon as I saw the application posted, I knew that somebody would be knocking at my door. Our next-door neighbour is opposed, or concerned, on design principles (he wants houses that have entrances on the street, townhouse-style) but he heard me out when I said that I wanted HIGHER densities. Yes, HIGHER. No great dispute there; his concern is aesthetic, mine is “social,” and I can see a middle ground here. But then I got a letter from some purported rep for the “community association,” and it really pissed me off. So I called the city planning department and also wrote this letter:

I write to express my SUPPORT for the application named in the subject line to change zoning to allow for higher density residential development at and around 14A Street and 19 Avenue SW.

I am aware of some of the complaints about this application, but as a homeowner who lives directly across the street from the properties, I suggest that my support is important to state. The arguments of the community association are, in my view, misguided. The property is virtually on the “edge” of Bankview and so most of the dreaded new traffic will not occur in the community per se but will sweep out onto 17th Avenue and 14 Street. Parking will be no more of an issue than it is currently on 19th Avenue, since any development will provide off-street parking for residents, just as is now available for residents. 19th Avenue, on the portion to be redeveloped between the Nimmons House parking area and 14A street, is one of the least attractive sections of Bankview, with small, heavily “Eisenhowered” older homes in generally poor condition, and the development would comprise what is currently an extremely ugly pair of empty lots, on 14A and 19th (the latter directly across from my home, and a terrible eyesore that persons opposing this development do not have to witness every day as I do).

I support RM5, because as a sociologist, I understand and appreciate the importance of increasing inner-city densities as a means of curbing urban sprawl. With this property we have a golden opportunity to turn what it currently a mostly derelict corner and surrounding strip into a lively, populated block. We would lose a strip of ugly, absentee-landlorded houses. Because the proposed zoning is RM5, the new construction could contain housing that is more affordable than detached houses, semi-detached houses, or townhouses would offer. We have a new townhouse development at 19 Avenue and 17 Street where units are priced at nearly $900,000!

The community association speaks of maintaining “diversity” in Bankview, but in resisting RM5, it is only assuring that the rich, and only the rich, can purchase here. I don’t want this for my community. I want new, denser, more affordable housing. I want people; I want mixes of income; I want eyes on the street. I want more of the ingredients of a vibrant urban neighbourhood. This zoning change is part of how this might be accomplished.

In the letter I received from the community association’s representative, there was a reference to the notion that people move to Bankview because of its “character,” and the idea that opposing this zoning change would support this “character.” I contend that this is elitist nonsense. The majority, the vast majority, of Bankview residents are renters, and many are poor (by Calgary standards). They move to Bankview because of the availability of housing, especially rental housing. To insist that only single-family homes be built on sites like this, we destroy the nature of the community and impel its unfortunate transformation into a refuge for the wealthy.

This is a great opportunity. Change the zoning, please. After that, the community association can have its say with the developer about the quality of the new project, and I will be as insistent as anyone on those matters. But nothing positive will come out of refusing this application.

Thank you.

And this is the beautiful, characterful empty lot that the NIMBYs want to save:

Choked with weeds, a nice homeless campsite, makeshift parking lot, and dogshit receptacle. That’s “character” all right.

The Marginal Man

I wrote my BA thesis at Reed on Robert Ezra Park, one of the founders of the Chicago School of Sociology and not, really, all that interesting of a guy. But one of the most relevant and life-changing things I read (or skimmed, but still) as an undergrad was when I came across The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture by Everett Stonequist, one of Park’s students. A “Marginal Man” is somebody caught between cultures, and the focus of the work was persons who were racial or ethnic minorities (including new immigrants, one of Park’s and the Chicago School’s foci) and the struggles they faced when they attempted to enter the “dominant” culture.

This idea of “marginality” (which is different from the more common sense as synonymous with “powerless” as is usually implicit in contemporary sociology) really resonated with me. I was a first-generation college student, which by itself isn’t uncommon and certainly isn’t, by itself, a sign of Stonequist’s “marginality.” But I wasn’t only first generation; I was the youngest of seven kids in my family and only the second to graduate from high school. I moreover went to friggin’ REED, a liberal arts school 2000 miles from home and a school that was really a place that professors’ kids, and ONLY professors’ kids, belonged. I did not know or expect this when I was admitted; I was just looking forward to a good academic experience at a school that had a reputation for welcoming bookish outcasts, which was how I saw myself at 17.

I did fine at Reed. I graduated and got into a great grad school and am now doing what I dreamed of doing before I even knew what a “professor” was. But I never realised it when I jumped on that train to take me from Chicago to Portland in August of 1982, but I was saying good-bye to more than my mother that day: I was saying good-bye to my whole personal history, and all the people who were part of it. I wish I knew this, then.

What this has to do with today’s rant was really brought home yesterday. Every once in a while, I get on a jag where I become obsessed with contacting, or at least finding out about, people from my previous life: my life pre-Reed. And so I was sitting here with my high school yearbook propped in front of me (really!), googling name after name after name, entering names in the Facebook search bar, and nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I look at a listing in the yearbook and think, “this guy seemed to have his shit together; maybe he did something with his life.” Nope. High school alumni discussion boards? Nix. The hammondindiana.com message board is dead, and even when it was active, it was full of nothing but reminisces from the 1950s before Hammond turned into the terrifying dump that it is now. I even try to search for the haunts of my youth and find these horrifying images of Woodmar Mall, my high school stomping ground of choice. It’s been demolished after languishing in typical dead mall fashion for years.

Tom Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again.” For me, this is true, no question. My hometown qua hometown no longer exists. My mother moved to Griffith, a step up from Hammond, several years ago when it became obvious that the old neighbourhood, which had always been rough, was simply too dangerous for a 70-year-old (at the time) widow. There is no semblance of anything or anyone at “home” for me anymore, and this, combined with the fact that nobody ever, really, tries to contact me, is the bane of my existence. THE BANE of my EXISTENCE. If I had conventionally successful friends (pre-college) with what I think of, given my subsequent education, as a conventional internet presence, I could find them, no problem. But those I left behind are not like me. Well, there are some important exceptions, and you know who you are. But for the most part, I occupy a different world now, and it’s often painful to admit that. I have never once just “run into” somebody I knew from, say, high school, since I was perhaps 20 years old. Never. Not ever.

I have a great life, but damn, this Marginal Man stuff is hard to take sometimes.

If you’re reading this, and you knew me when? Drop me a line. Please.

Research ideas

Brian is in Ottawa right now, having what I’m sure is a wonderful time visiting with Belinda, Paul, Edgard, and all the other good folks who populate that wonderful city. I stayed at home, in part to get some work done that I just cannot seem to get done (or get started, to be honest, and what’s a blog for if not to post confessions for 1,800 strangers to read), partly because I have to be here for a video conference for the New York project on Tuesday, partly because I–we, both–like to have the place to myself on occasion, and partly because- well, that’s all, actually. So I’ve the had one of the hoped-for brain waves that are seeming to elude me these days, and I started work on my SSHRC grant application. I’d like this funding to, in part, support my coffee-community research, but grants have to be (well, should be) a bit more expansive with regard to topic than what I have in mind for this book, so I’ve decided to consider contemporary sociability more generically. I fell on this title for the proposal: “Community, In Spite of It All: New Sociality in an Anti-Social World.” Ta da! Titles are important. Or so I like to think.

My idea is that there are many books and articles and blogs and insights into how much post-modernity sucks ass and on how contemporary existence is an ever-worsening subterfuge of alienation, ennui, and the systematic destruction of anything resembling the traditional, Gemeinschaft-based, human-scaled, publicly-accessible, life-affirming, ORGANIC social lives that people used to enjoy, in village squares, high streets, public parks, traditional downtowns, and in cafes (in “cafe culture” no less). Youth (among other groups, of course, but the tragedy of “youth” is part of the discourse here) are increasingly remanded to spaces that are either privately owned and commodified, the milieux of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and everything that followed it, or worse, they only participate in social interaction in virtual space. Space is MySpace, and like I say, this is observed to be a tragedy. Community is dead; Disneyification, suburban sprawl and the internet are among the culprits.

My research isn’t going to challenge historical facts about the transcendance of private or commodified or controlled or virtual space. My research, as I’m envisioning it, will contend two things: One is that “community” still exists, and thrives, even in the face of the loss of traditional public meeting places. To study this, I intend to consider not only the social lives of online gamers (since this is already a growing area of research), but to consider the interface between conventional and virtual or otherwise pseudopublic settings. I’ve already done some of this in an article concerning how visitors to mall food courts make the space “their own” and even conduct subtle forms of enforcement of those claims to space. I want to expand this notion of the private-pseudopublic-public interface by doing ethnographic work at, for example, a cyber-cafe in a downtown area that provides space for gamers to play MMORPGs and engage in text or video chat. These forms of social interaction are not supposed to take place in public- they’re supposed to take place in the anti-social world of the stereotyped parents’ basement. But the new world isn’t this simple, and I contend that people aren’t as alienated as critics might think. Another example is one I experienced recently. I’m an avid reader and contributor to a website called skyscraperpage.com, which has to do with building projects, urban planning, public transit, and all sorts of other things of interest to many urbanists. It’s a vibrant online forum, but members often have “meatspace” get-togethers too, and I attended my first of these a week or so ago. It was a good time with good conversation, but what’s important to note is that the website experience is what impelled this “organic” event in the first place. This might sound trivial, but it’s a recurring thing that is completely lost on many critics of the online experience.

The second general goal is, of course, to incorporate my ideas about the third-wave coffee movement as the other side of the postmodern coin. Not only are people finding “community” in the context of new technologies and new venues for sociability, but some OLD venues and traditional social forms are still around. Some never left, and so the “demise” of the village square (or whatever) has not happened everywhere. Some are being rediscovered or reinvented. Some are using those insidious modern technologies to promote and develop their neo-traditional “communities.” The new (and new-ish) independent coffeehouse and roaster and home hobbyist subculture is part of this. It’s all about artisanship, lived sensual experiences, face-to-face communication, and “community” in one of its most traditional senses, but it’s also technologically driven (especially with the attention and prestige accorded certain sorts of equipment) and makes extensive use of the internet. There are other examples of this neo-traditionalism: crafting, knitting, folk dance clubs, wine tastings, book clubs, and many others. What’s distinctive about coffee among these is, first, that the third wave comprises businesses as important elements- not only as suppliers to practitioners (as might be the case with the new crop of trendy knitting supply shops like this one in Calgary), but as the institutional centres of the subculture and the homes of its most venerated experts; and second, that the coffee subculture, unlike folk dancing or crafting, puts great stock in one’s status as artisan and connoisseur, at the level of the grower, the roaster, the barista, the home hobbyist, and the customer. Put a bit differently, anyone can craft, anyone can read and discuss a book, and anyone can dance, more or less. The world of the “coffee geek” is a lonely one, because whereas most people drink coffee from time to time, only a minuscule minority of those people are among the ranks of aficionados. Put differently one more time: Most people drink shit coffee. Most people have horrible taste in coffee. The coffee geek subculture is defined not only by a shared “sensual” interest but also by what I term “the burden of taste.” I find this completely fascinating, needless to say.