DESIGN STANDARDS

New York tried design standards many years ago. The result was numerous buildings that, from a distance, looked like a collection of stairways not quite up to heaven. New Yorkers tired of this and repealed the design rules. New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable said “Alas, good zoning doth not great architecture make.”

As in New York, design standards here will probably result in cookie cutter buildings downtown. Few if any developers will sue. It costs too much and takes too long. Instead they will design to copy some other building recently approved. Is this what we really want?

The promoters of these standards say they are “flexible”. Isn’t flexible a euphemism for arbitrary, or subjective? Should planning commissioners and city council members determine the shape, color and texture of future buildings? Perhaps it would be better to leave this to trained professional architects. Are we so afraid of an occasional goof that we must stifle creativity?

The Loch Gallup Monster

More About Storm Water and Fertilizer

City Hall asserts that most river pollutants from storm water come from the first half inch of rain in a storm. Could it be that the river would be less contaminated if more water was mixed with these pollutants? If so, why is the city trying to reduce the amount of storm water entering the river? Could more water clean up both the river and our back yards?

Until 1968, most of the area now called Gallup Park was a big water-cleaning swamp. The 1968 flood cause the Dixboro Dam to fail. The swamp dried up and all the wetlands vegetation died. It was several years later that the dam was repaired. Meanwhile, the city dug a huge trench through the former swamp, installed a new sewer main, and regraded the land to replace most of the swamp with the islands and open water, thus creating a lot of the park area. Would it be a good idea to undo some of this and create some more swamp to clean up the river? Could we do the same thing above Argo dam and get more swamp while improving the area for the rowers at the same time? Does anyone at the Larcom Building ever think about anything other than more regulations and charges?

Storm Water Fees

Hot on the heels of the fertilizer ordinance comes a new system for setting storm water fees. The basis under the new system is "usage". we are told that different properties have different usage.

It should be noted that properties do not use anything. People use things, like water, energy, and booze. God is also a user, but He (or She), doesn't pay bills from the city.

The city arbitrarily measures usage by the area of impervious surface on a property. There are other things which affect the amount of storm water coming form a property. Most of Ann Arbor has clay soil which doesn't absorb water in a reliable fashion. However, parts of the city have sandy soil which absorbs water easily, unless frozen. Another pertinent factor is the slope of the land. Water runs off hillsides much faster than flat land. The faster the water runs off the less the amount absorbed. Another pertinent but ignored factor is the area of the property. A house on a lot of an acre will ordinarily absorb a lot more of the water than the house on a postage stamp lot. Still another relevant matter is the amount and type of vegetation on the property. Tall grass is better than short grass at holding water until it is absorbed or evaporates. Willow trees are notorious heavy drinkers. There are probably other significant matters.

The method of computing impervious area is badly flawed. The map of the property I live on shows an impervious area in the middle of the yard. A close examination of the map shows that it is yellow. The system sees this as concrete and calls is impervious. Actually, it is a large clump of forsythia that happened to be in bloom at the time the picture was taken.

For some reason all gravel driveways are called impervious, despite the fact that tons and tons of gravel are used for base material in most road building around here because gravel provides excellent drainage.

The whole notion of permeability is unrealistic because of the fact that for several months during most winters the entire county is impervious because the ground is frozen.

So, under a guise of fairness, we have substituted one arbitrary system for another. No doubt the "take" from the new system will be a lot larger, and they will "take" it from us.

The old system was automatic. The new one will require a lot of effort on the part of city employees to deal with and say no to the residents. Thus, unlike the old system, the new one will make a substantial contribution to the orderly growth and development of the city hall bureaucracy.

FORM BASED ZONING

FORM BASED ZONING

This new catchword describes an effort to stifle creative architectural efforts and insure that there is no change in the cookie cutter appearance of many city areas. Would we ever have known the Eiffel Tower or the Chartres Cathedral if form based zoning had been in effect? How about the Empire State building, or consider the pyramids in Egypt? The public interest does not lie in stifling architectural ingenuity and technical progress. Building a home or other building of a style different than that of its neighbors isn’t evil. We have lots of very inviting streets in Ann Arbor that have a rather random mix of architectural styles.

MORE ON CHENEY FOR PRESIDENT

The Knights of the Jackass in North Carolina are smarter than those around here. Their signs read IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST.

WALKABLE CITIES

WALKABLE CITIES

The idea has some appeal. It is pleasant to think of families living close together, in apartments, townhouses, or single dwellings on small lots. They could walk to work, to school and to play. They could buy what they need at small, friendly shops instead of big box stores. The so-called new urbanism communities tend to conform to this pattern.

However, there are certain limitations. The small shops cannot compete with the prices that the big stores can offer. That is why little shops keep disappearing and why we often hear that Wal-Mart, etc. are driving them out. However, it is obvious from the amount of business done by the big stores that a lot of people opt for low prices instead of quaint shops. The result is that the new urban communities are usually luxurious and expensive.

The continuing abandonment of downtown retailing in Ann Arbor, despite the building of significant additions to the nearby housing stock and the plans for a lot more, suggests that walking to everything, or even to most things, is not a goal for very many people. But that is not a reason to ignore possibilities to increase walkability and thus make better use of land while reducing traffic congestion.

There is an opportunity that has been little noticed. There are a number of huge stores in the area with enormous parking lots. Under Michigan law, the owners of these properties own them all the way up to the sky. However, only the bottom 30 feet or so is in use. The rest sits up there doing nothing, as if it were an abandoned farm.

Supposing that several stories of apartments were constructed above part of the parking lots; perhaps an office building or two in addition. Think of the goods and services that would be close at hand if such development took place at a Meijer store.

It has been done. In Malmo, Sweden, I checked out Caroli City, a shopping center with 6 stories of apartments built right up tight against it except in one corner where there is a parking structure. The shopping center has a partly green roof that serves as park and playground for the residents of the apartments.

Not bad. But later I visited Caracas, Venezuela. Gas was going for 13 cents a gallon and people were driving big cars all over. Some, however, could largely avoid autoaggression. They lived in Parque Central, in the heart of town. This consists of a 3 story shopping center equipped with a movie theatre, church, park, and the Caracas Hilton Hotel. There were several 30 story apartment houses and office towers of 40 stories or more. Some of these towers were connected by enclosed footbridges about 30 stories up. There was a parking structure along one side of the shopping center but, as in Caroli City, no surface parking lots.

Take a look at a few of the towers of Parque Central and think about it.