Global Suburbs Logo in Progress
Originally uploaded by urbanoasis

Posted at the right is step 1 of the creation of a logo for an upcoming graduate student conference I am planning. What’s that you say? “Haven’t you got enough going on, like researching and writing and teaching and finding money for next year, without another project?” That’s probably true, but I agreed to push ahead on this so here we go. The Call for Proposals is going out and the Web site should be fully functional post haste. In the meantime, this image or something like it will be emblazoned with the words “GLOBAL SUBURBS” in the creation of an indelible brand that will win doctoral students in TCAUP acclaim and admiration. The conference aims to present new research on suburbanization outside the U.S., which is really no longer setting the standard in metropolitan expansion that it was in the 20th century. Now new forms of urbanism and suburbanism are being found the world over and do not follow the American pattern, meaning that this logo incorporating images of an Arizona housing tract is…absurd. Ah, well, even still I think it gets the point across.

There was a story in the NY Times about Levittown yesterday. First, click on the link and check out the photo that accompanies the image. That is a tilt effect which you either get by tilting the lens of a view camera after you focus it or by wanking with it in Photoshop. There’s been some indication that Times photographers do still use large format, so it’s not illegitimate for sure, but why would a digital photographer for a newspaper do such a thing? Anyway, back to Long Island:

Sixty years ago this month, the first families moved into this suburban outpost, and soon there were 17,447 houses that as the song “Little Boxes” noted derisively, were “all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all looked just the same.”

The Cape Cods that first became available in 1947 — with four rooms, one bathroom and among other modern amenities a Hotpoint electric range in every kitchen — were offered for $6,990, and 800-square-foot ranch homes went for $7,990.

These days, the little boxes have been individually renovated, remodeled and enlarged beyond recognition. A decade ago, there were perhaps 200 unaltered Levitts left, but only a handful remain today. Even the Smithsonian Institution has been unable to obtain one to display.

The Madison House fridge was a Hotpoint.

Also, you may have heard about the CTA funding crisis. Not looking good. There was a surprisingly good column in the local university’s student newspaper the other day on CTA and transit.

I never appreciated Chicago as much as I did when I spent six months living in midsized cities in the South. The difference was not just culture. Oddly, I heard myself constantly bring up the lack of public transportation in cities such as Charlotte and Nashville. Until then, I never realized how something as rudimentary and unglamorous as a rail system could change the way we approach a city.
[...]
But why shouldn’t El riders bear the brunt of the cost instead of taxpayers who might not even benefit?

Public transportation alleviates congested roads, saving time and gas for people who don’t take the El. Compared to Los Angeles, which has a slightly larger but comparable population, the average traveler was delayed 26 fewer hours in 2005 and wasted 25 fewer gallons of gas, according to a report the Texas Transportation Institute released last month. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t due to Los Angeles’ sprawl. Los Angeles is actually denser than Chicago, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000). Rather, a large part must be attributable to Chicago’s mass transit. The percentage of Chicagoans who commute to work on mass transit (12.5 percent) was almost double the percentage of people who do so in Los Angeles (6.6 percent).

And then there’s air quality. In 2004, Chicago had 16 “unhealthy days” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Compare that with 88 in L.A. (although heat and altitude are also factors here) and 53 in Houston, where only 3.3 percent of commuters use mass transit.

So why should taxpayers support mass transit? Because it benefits everyone.

Of course I liked the column because it expresses ideas similar to my own. However, I think Song did quite a good job of making salient points on economic value, air quality, and the value of the CTA to drivers in what is a very short column. Wish I could have written with that kind of concision in college.