A PLAN REVIEW

What started out as a plan review became a policy question when all the detailed distraction was removed. The plan represented an isolated battle. It was not linked to a municipal strategy of land use allocation, shelter capacity, development intensity, and economic performance. This made it one of a series of endless conflicts representing little progress. The risk was potential decline and sprawl beyond a single lifetime.

POLICY QUESTION

Incorporated land is a city’s capital. This low density residential proposal represents a low yield investment with a high degree of risk-associated with operating, maintenance, and improvement expense over time; even though it appears to be new revenue without expense at the moment. The question is relatively simple:

Does the city wish to invest its capital in a low-yield return that will reduce its average yield per acre when its average expense per acre will inevitably increase over time?

The question becomes more significant when future annexation to correct a revenue deficit is recognized as a withdrawal from the only bank that matters. It is a limited source of life I’ve chosen to call the Natural Domain, and it is being consumed by a Built Domain that has evolved to become a second world on a single planet.

The answer will remain a matter of emotion and opinion until architectural algorithms, geographic modeling, and relational databases are correlated to address the physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic issues that affect our quality of life.

The goal is to shelter growing populations within geographic limits that are economically sustainable without excessive intensity; and to protect their source of life from excessive consumption beyond these limits.

Implications

This development proposal represents increased institutional cost for the services that will be needed. These costs increase as a project ages and inflation reduces the value of money. What appears to be new revenue at little cost must represent adequate revenue over time. If it doesn’t, offsetting revenue will be needed to prevent potential decline and blight. When new revenue does not cover its expense over time, a Ponzi scheme of annexation ensues to provide new money with no better idea of future expense. The result is urban form we call sprawl. This mistake has been repeated in countless cities across the nation and continues because our methods of evaluation are still inadequate. The problem of deficient revenue becomes more acute for surrounded cities with inadequate land use allocation that have no room to grow.

There is no institutional obligation to assume the costs of a proposal and no freedom to impose these costs.  It is an institutional decision that must be carefully considered, but is hampered by the lack of tools, knowledge, evaluation, and correlation available.

Unfortunately, emotion and opinion fill every void in knowledge. The result has been sprawl with a leading edge of active consumption and a heart of decline. It feeds on the Natural Domain without symbiotic guidance.

The long range answer involves design categories, architectural algorithms, and relational databases that can model city planning options and implications within geographic limits. Land use allocation, development capacity, and intensity decisions will be hampered by the default to opinion until cities decide to build these models. The issue is simply too important to remain in the hands of emotion and opinion. It is a matter of shelter and survival.

 

COMPETITION

Education, credibility, relevance and value improve when explicit knowledge is distilled from tacit instinct, awareness and talent. The challenge is to define the topics that can be refined to accomplish the objective.

Competition distracts from a focus on knowledge until research is established as a separate endeavor. I composed a few paragraphs in rebuttal to the financial contention that competition is adaptation and it occurred to me that you might find it useful.

COMPETITION

We adapt to survive competition. When the principle is reversed, competition within the family of man becomes predation based on deception disguised by ethics. Adaptation requires anticipation. It can be obscured by the dust of competition.

A culture that glorifies athletic competition glorifies deception until it becomes a cultural tradition. The look-away pass in basketball and the double reverse in football are examples of deception in this competitive context.

The next time you hear or proclaim that “winning isn’t everything - it’s the only thing”, consider the implications when athletic reality is adopted by cultural opinion.

Darwin meant that a species adapted to survive an unstable natural environment. This morphed into phrases like the one above and others like "only the strong survive" to justify predatory behavior within and beyond our species. We have created many unnatural parallels to Darwin's unstable natural environment. The economic system is one example that thrives on instability to justify predatory behavior in an artificial environment. We are deluding ourselves if we believe that growth, consumption and competition represent adaptation on a planet that does not compromise with ignorance when responding to universal forces beyond our comprehension.

TACIT KNOWLEDGE

I've been out of touch working on a new book that I hope will be complete by the end of this year. I'm including the first two paragraphs of the Introduction. They represent a synopsis that I've been seeking for a long time. I'm blogging them to stay in touch during this effort.

 

------Walter 

A growing population cannot survive without shelter on a planet with limited resources. The threat is shelter sprawl that consumes our source of life and shelter intensity that destroys our quality of life. The question is how to shelter these populations and protect their quality of life within a limited Built Domain that does not threaten their source of life -- the Natural Domain.

The answer will require symbiotic solutions to save a parasite that does not recognize it is human. This book introduces a classification system, vocabulary, and equations built on architectural logic. The logic is tacit knowledge that has been verbally transferred over centuries. It must become explicit before it can grow. The transition will permit research, comparison, debate, and the accumulation of knowledge in a measureable language that can add to the conversation.

Scoundrels in Law

I was surprised by the book Scoundrels in Law by Cait Murphy. It's about the trials of legal firm Howe and Hummel in the last half of nineteenth century New York City and the beginning of the twentieth. If you ever wondered what was going on during the architectural evolution, this explains some of the social activity. It includes the highly public trial of Harry Thaw, Stanford White's murderer, since they represented the defendant. (Stanford White was an architect and partner in the prestigious New York firm McKim, Mead and White.)

It you ever wondered what the word "tenement" actually meant during those times, this book paints a picture you will remember.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS

This is a contribution to a string of comments regarding traffic lights in the Regional and Urban Design Committee of the AIAKnowledgeNet.

A traffic light is a symptom of a much greater disease in my opinion.

An urban composition is created with a street system euphemistically called a public right-of-way. The result is hardly a symphony. I’m not surprised that the term “quality of life” is gaining traction as the public begins to recognize that protection of its welfare involves more than a ribbon of sidewalk adjacent to parking and a torrent of traffic in the city it calls home.

This result represents a collision of opinion related to city design. Opinion began with a belief that a land owner had every right and a neighbor’s right did not extend beyond his property line. A tenant had no rights and the Reform Movement began as we left the farm to live in cities with no public sanitation; safety; or light, air, and ventilation. Modest improvements were made but the individual prevailed and the population was thrown into the street with a sidewalk as its companion.

I’m not suggesting that the problem can be solved in many lifetimes. It is simply too vast. I’m simply pondering the role of a traffic light in the cities we have created.

Sustainability & First Ring Suburbs

A first ring suburb is an encircled city that has little or no expansion potential.

Every acre within every city/suburb produces revenue that sustains the whole. Every acre also has an average operating and maintenance expense that is a function of activity and age. This is critical to an encircled suburb with no land to annex. If it doesn’t understand the implications of its land use allocation it can’t plan for the future and learn to live within the limits imposed.

Think of it this way. Each land use category is a field. A crop has a yield per acre of field allocation. Income is a function of field area, crop yield in bushels per acre, and the value per bushel. In city planning, field area is land use allocation. Crop yield is the square feet of building area constructed per acre. Income is revenue potential per square foot of building area constructed.

Gross building area per acre of land consumed is development capacity. Development capacity and revenue potential can be measured at existing locations to understand the economic implications of a land use allocation pattern.

At the present time many cities have not done the homework and cannot forecast development capacity options. They know past income and expense but this is balance sheet accounting. It is not city planning. It means that a city may know its revenue and expense per acre but have no ability to forecast the adjustments required.

In these cases a fringe suburb will pursue the annexation of land to add new revenue, but it won’t know if the revenue will be adequate to meet its expense over time. It only knows that new revenue is needed to meet old expense and that new construction has little maintenance cost. The city’s economic future is wishful thinking at best under these circumstances and an unintended Ponzi scheme at worst. The result can be sprawl that consumes the environment or the decline of an encircled city.

There is a bigger picture that I should also mention. Our cities combine to form a Built Domain. The capacity, context, composition, and intensity of land use allocation and shelter construction within the Built Domain affects our quality of life, but sprawl threatens to consume our source of life – the Natural Domain. From this perspective we live in one world, threaten another, and must learn to live within limits to protect the gift we have been given.

First ring suburbs are being forced to live within limits. They have no annexation options and this has enormous implications. At the present time many slowly decay from within because they have not recognized that a city is a farm; but a farmer can change next year’s crop to improve his income. A city does not have this luxury, and any change is fraught with negative terms such as urban renewal, redevelopment, eminent domain, confiscation, and so on.

A new highway has an easier time because the objective is clear. The purpose of redevelopment is often debatable because the homework has not been done to build credibility. The immediate assumption is that redevelopment has nothing to do with public benefit and everything to do with private gain. This may be true for an individual project based on criminal intent, but in general the assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth in a free market economy. Revenue is needed to support public benefit shared by all. Suspicion concerns the justification of expense until the deficit becomes visual blight.

There is also an underlying political issue that prevents progress. A city’s budget problems become exacerbated when redevelopment is not an option and annexation is not a possibility. This raises the specter of property devaluation. Devaluation in its present form is a slow, gradual process that allows many to escape before the threshold of blight is visually obvious. This is a future that no one wishes to acknowledge before they leave, and a problem that city planning rarely has the power to address.

As if this weren’t enough, many school systems believe they protect property value with the quality of education provided. This can distract attention from the real problem. If a city’s streets are potholed; its curbs crumbling; its basements flooding; its safety compromised; its services inadequate; and its buildings in disrepair; its property value will decline. In other words, the quality of city services protects property value. A school system protects its rate of appreciation. Confusing the two benefits can distort priorities and place a city’s future at risk.

First ring suburbs represent ideal laboratories if they have the courage to undertake the relational database research and information required. Populations have the capacity to meet adversity when they recognize a challenge. A city that is able to define the challenge will inspire confidence. It is the unknown we all fear, and the reasons for sprawl and blight are a mystery surrounded by suspicion within a vacuum of knowledge.

First Ring suburbs can lead the way by helping us all learn how to live within limits without threatening our quality and source of life.

To the Phillipines & Malaysia

I've noticed that a number of readers have been coming from the two nations mentioned and I’m aware of the problems you face. I know that the book and equations I’m working on will help and have been focusing my attention on completion because I believe it will help other nations as well. I can only ask my readers to be patient since I’ve neglected blog submissions for some time. New subscribers may wonder about the gap and this is my attempt to explain.

I think the manuscript will take two to four more months and then there is the publishing process. It has a mind of its own. I hope to have all completed by the end of 2014 at the latest and can only apologize for my lack of attention in the interim. I have you all in mind and hope you find the book to be a contribution to your efforts.

Fundamental Questions

I feel guilty because I am pre-occupied with a new book and have not submitted new content. I am attaching part of the introduction (most recent version) as a result. It will give you a glimpse of my intent and hopefully justify my absence.

INTRODUCTION

We live in space among objects that were once part of the Natural Domain. These objects have changed from those that were our home. The Built Domain has become a second world on a single planet, and it is composed of cells that shelter human activity. We call these cells lots, parcels, property, projects, real estate, and so on. We define them with property lines, but I’ve chosen “cell” to make the point that each currently represents a parasite consuming its source of life. This point of view raises several fundamental questions:

1)      What limits must be imposed on shelter sprawl to protect our source of life?
2)      What is excessive intensity?
3)      What is a symbiotic cell?
4)      What combination of cells is needed to create an economically stable Built Domain?

I can’t answer these questions. I can only raise them. My intent is to give you the concepts, design categories, and equations needed to evaluate the second and fourth from my architectural and planning background. The discussion, evaluation, and language that evolve will be up to you and future generations.

I’ve called the capacity of land to provide shelter “development capacity”. Capacity is a function of the shelter design category chosen and the values assigned to topics within its equation. These choices are design specification decisions. They combine to describe the contents of a project that is a cell in the urban anatomy. The values assigned to its topics define its capacity to provide shelter.

Shelter cells combine to form organisms we call neighborhoods, districts, cities, and regions. These grow into a pattern we call sprawl. The sprawling area, including agriculture, is our Built Domain. It contains four divisions: Shelter, Movement, Open Space, and Life Support that are slowly consuming the Natural Domain. This is happening because we don’t know how to provide shelter for growing populations within a geographically limited Built Domain; and we can’t define this domain with our current political, social, legal, and economic opinions. Even if we could, we would not be able to forecast the capacity of this limited land area to provide shelter for growing populations; and to protect their quality of life from excessive intensity.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the Built Domain consumes energy and discharges waste. It is polluting the planet, changing its climate, and destroying its ecology. This is why I’ve written about the need for symbiotic solutions. The term applies to a parasite that survives by providing mutual benefit. In our case, symbiotic solutions include the shelter we need for survival. At the present time this is a foreign concept. We do not think of ourselves as parasites, but our shelter solutions are driven by decisions that continue to consume our source of life with inadequate justification.

My objective is to explain the shelter design categories, topics, equations, and values that must be correlated within a limited Built Domain. I do not have the geographic and geologic knowledge to define these limits. I simply believe they must be introduced to protect our source of life. My goal is to help you visualize the concept of design categories and give you a mathematical vocabulary that can be used to pursue the question:

How do we provide shelter for growing populations within a limited Built Domain that protects their quality and source of life?

REPOSITIONING

This essay began with the following inquiry: “…I am a newly appointed AIA Repositioning Ambassador…I am curious to hear your thoughts, and any insights you may have to share.” 

Repositioning implies that a solution has been found. I'm not sure we understand the problem.  

A practitioner, including partners, must earn a living. I’m not surprised that they resist change when the benefits are not immediately apparent. 

The problem from my point of view is the relationship between profession and practitioner. The distinction between professional research and practical benefit became clear to me after reading James Herriot’s book, All Creatures Great and Small, years ago. He pointed out that his practice ability was limited by the tools and knowledge provided by veterinary education and science. His job was to apply the tools and knowledge. He wasn’t expected to create them. This wasn’t his area of interest and proficiency. He provided “intelligence” from practice. (I use the term based on its military definition.) Science converted intelligence into goals and strategy focused on the problems defined to give him the new tools he needed. 

The knowledge required to practice architecture is so vast that it cannot be mastered with the current format, and it often takes a lifetime to achieve the humility needed to reach this level of awareness. The term “repositioning” implies to me that the army will move to a new location. I don’t think this is the problem. The army must be reorganized. 

James Herriot lived during the introduction of veterinary science that began to translate experience into knowledge. This led to practical new tools for the practitioner. Strangely enough, I’m currently reading The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel with Bret Witter. It describes a similar transition in the artistic community. In the beginning it was a collegial collection of power and privilege that discounted art conservation. George Stout joined a small art conservation department at the Fogg Art Museum in 1928 (p.25) and proceeded to turn the topic into a scientific research effort. The result was knowledge with practical applications in the campaign to save looted art during WWII. It is another example of the continuing human effort to translate talent and experience into knowledge. 

I don’t think architecture can “reposition” without “reorganizing” to introduce a centralized scientific effort. I have been out of touch for too long, so I’ll simply ask if the National Institute of Building Sciences NIBS is performing a scientific function that is useful to practitioners. If it isn’t, I believe architecture must reorganize to include a centralized effort for mutual benefit. Increased credibility will be based on convincing scientific research. This will lead to a new position for architecture within the nation and on the planet, since we cannot survive without shelter and will not survive without symbiotic solutions. 

So what shall we study? We often jump to conclusions without adequate homework. Programming wasn’t even taught when I was a student. Neither was logic and research even though it is at the heart of every design solution. I don’t mean to enter the world of curriculum, however, since what we teach is a function of what we know; and what we need to know is the question in my opinion. 

I’ll mention three examples to illustrate my train of thought. First, the building code is essentially a spreadsheet document based on IF / THEN statements. At one time I converted a number of BOCA chapters to this format with templates posing questions. The answers produced a complete review and conclusion that was possible in a fraction of the time. BOCA was not interested in the concept and program however, since they are in the business of explaining complex documents and publishing books. It is an architect’s interest to simplify the code review process, however; and I believe this could be a productive area of research. 

Second, I always felt that home buyers had no idea what they were buying and were unaware of the value of specifications and bidding. These were benefits they could understand, but were part of a traditional design process that was too time-consuming and expensive for most. With the advent of computers I became aware that single-family programming could be a template. Cost could be a function of the square foot summary. The square foot summary could be adjusted by changing values entered in the template. Adjustments could be used to meet a cost target before the production of expensive drawings. Specifications and short form contracts could be included for editing to protect the quality expectations of the owner. My objective was to shorten the time required for complete design services based on the delivery of benefit that could be understood by the consumer. I never completed the concept, however; because I questioned its value. 

Third, the issue of development capacity and intensity has my current attention since the intensity created directly affects our quality and source of life. Development capacity has a mathematical foundation and I’m currently preparing the equations involved for presentation. 

I’ve written about the Built Domain on a number of occasions. It must coexist with a Natural Domain that is its source of life without compromising our quality of life in the process with excessive intensity. This is the issue of symbiotic shelter that I’ve raised. I intend to give you the equations needed to address the issue at the grass roots level of practice. This is where it happens, but it can’t happen without the organization needed to do the homework. Repositioning, credibility, and public reliance on the knowledge created will follow.

PS: I should have mentioned The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. It is a terrific description of the improvement in medicine that took place in the 20th century when professional research provided new knowledge and tools to its practitioners. This began only 100 years ago.

 

The Design Decisions That Matter

When the people are considered market share we have lost touch with humanity. When price becomes a question of what they will bear we have lost touch with value. When the land becomes a commodity we have lost touch with our source of life. When the atmosphere, rivers, and oceans become a dump we have lost our senses. When we believe winning is the only thing we have lost. 

An economy reflects the decisions of a nation the way architecture reflects its level of awareness. The architecture of cities is telling us that we face sprawl, over-development, environmental ignorance, and blight. When the message is ignored we have lost touch with the decisions that matter on a planet that does not compromise. We all must adjust to a new level of awareness before it will be reflected in the architecture and economy of nations. 

The Republic 

The republic is lost in a blizzard of issues sponsored by an increasing diversity of opinion that cannot agree on common goals. This is a breeding ground for those who divide to conquer and stalk the people looking for signs of weakness.  

When threatened from within the people remain somewhat complacent. They have been deceived and defrauded on numerous occasions. In fact, they are beginning to lose faith in the intent of the republic - and that leads to Imperial Rome. 

We will remain strong as long as the people continue to believe the promise, but trust is easily broken by the repetition of duplicity and deceit. The economy is only the most recent example.  

The lesson from Rome is that a nation’s goals must deserve the people’s trust or it ceases to exist. Individual wealth is no substitute. It is a threat that leads to monarchy of the affluent until the protection of excess can no longer be purchased. 

Predators cannot live without a healthy population in the Natural Domain but their symbiotic existence has been a gift. We must learn from the gift that has been given. This is the challenge since we are all parasites who must create a new way of life or follow in the footsteps of those unable to imagine the consequences of ignoring the gift we have been given. 

The goal is survival with dignity. Democracy and free enterprise are simply a new format for debate based on a vanished Greek ideal that respected the people. It has encouraged a blizzard of issues that distract us from the goal. For instance, we debate the sanctity of life but what good is saving the life of an individual when you can’t save a population from polluting and consuming the planet? What good is free enterprise that is free to ignore the physical and social consequences of its decisions? When the concept of freedom threatens the goal of survival with dignity we need to protect the people. 

I challenge you to think about the goals that matter. Issues are simply objectives without a strategy or a goal. It’s like giving Patton the freedom to assault any objective on the plain. He wouldn’t know where he was going or what he was achieving but he would do a fine job of winning each melee.