It seems like one of the major qualifications for a career in politics is the ability to seem shocked and surprised at the self evident effects of one’s decisions and by that measure we have some pros here.

“Quite frankly, we aren’t pleased. We need to work more diligently to come up with a design that’s satisfactory to our design experts and the community and the task force,” he said.

Mr. Ford said after yesterday’s task force meeting that he is concerned about the impact the huge block-like garage, with more than 3,800 spaces, could have on views of the city skyline from Mount Washington and the Fort Pitt Bridge.

“We probably have one of the most scenic vistas and gateways into our city in the entire country. I don’t want a garage of that size to be plopped on our landscape to be visible now for the next 50 years. That’s something that is unacceptable,” he said.

“We’ve got world-class facilities over there. We don’t want any of those to be obstructed or detracted from by a 3,000- or 5,000-space parking garage.”

Nothing will speak more eloquently of what Pittsburgher’s think of their city and it’s potential than looking down one this sea of ugly garages and empty holes on some of the cities most valuable land. At least in this case, there is a chance for the casino to not be a tax hole as well. For the record, a Lower Hill location would have been even more damaging.

It’s amazing the attention the town of Youngstown, Ohio has been getting recently, for what seems to me to nothing more than taking a common sense approach to it’s current reality. Pittsburgh never fell as hard as Youngstown, and has an array of assets that bode well for a revival of growth. However, the current situation is that the region is both shrinking in population and consuming more land, infrastructure and resources at the same time. It seems to be politically unable to face change of any kind.

I found what seems to be one of the best laid out essays on Youngstown,few of the others go into as much detail.

“How to implement it is the difficult question. The long-term vision is to target the city’s efforts and resources to bringing back a dense, vibrant urban core and to eventually return some of the emptiest areas of the city to green space. In the short term, it means hard choices. For example, the city used to offer housing rehab grants to low-income residents on a first-come-first-served basis. But now they have decided not to approve them for the most devastated areas, targeting their limited resources to areas where they are more likely to have a bigger effect. For Youngstown and other shrinking cities, these hard choices are putting a new twist on the challenge of balancing the needs of places and people.”

To do that one has to face down decades of government policies that pump in new homes regardless of an areas prospects.”Trying to revitalize a city that has contracted this far can be a daunting task. Joe Schilling, of the National Vacant Property Campaign, recounts how community developers in Cleveland came to see that they were bringing 200 to 300 new housing units on line every year, but losing about 1,000 to foreclosure and abandonment. Property values in the most depopulated areas have often dropped so far that remaining owner-occupants are trapped.”

“In some neighborhoods, you could channel public dollars into those neighborhoods from now into the future and not have the kind of impact you were hoping to see,” says Schwarz. Building new low-income housing in these areas may only serve to trap people in areas of concentrated poverty.”

A big part of the concept has to do with setting aside property for park or other limited uses until actual demand for development shows up.”Youngstown, too, recognizes that it can be generous with its land. It is even looking into offering land to companies that need to create new wetlands to mitigate development elsewhere. “Maybe 10 or 15 years from now, as a neighborhood heals and the land heals, there might be an opportunity to transfer some of this green infrastructure back to housing or neighborhood commercial,” says Schilling.

A lot of this means making very hard choices about providing infrastructure to failed and isolated neighborhoods. History often shows that just trying to to deny that failure is a lot more cruel. Saying for example that, a small number of isolated houses in a fairly remote area will get the same police protection as central, populated places is either a lie or a promise that’s not realistic to keep.

The amazing and sad story in Pittsburgh is that it has policies that destroy development prospects in the core areas of the city like the Lower Hill and North Side and consign them to be little more than parking lots.

Even in the rain, the Flow Fest on Washington’s Landing today was a delight. Sponsored by PA CleanWays of Allegheny County, it’s a free art/music/eco festival celebrating Pittsburgh’s Rivers and it’s going on until 5:00 today. Great music, people to talk to, and hands-on art-making for all ages.

The City Paper printed my rant about the city’s poor record of urban planning. It’s the kind of negative stuff they sort of eat up.

I sort of feel the need to say a few words in the city’s defence. It really has done many things that most American cities have, the problem is that the city’s very small size and geographic limitations have made the effects so fatal. Also, the dark polluted industrial history of the city makes it the least likely place to have developed a pro-urban culture.

So where does your drinking water come from?

As a water main break in Oakland this afternoon disrupted water pressure in parts of Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, and Greenfield, I began thinking about the urban watershed and where my water comes from. According to the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority’s website, there are over 1200 miles of pipe carrying water around the city. I live in Friendship, and I think we’re connected to the Garfield Heights reservoir, but I’m not certain. I’d love to see a color-coded map, showing how the water gets distributed around the city.

[Update - historical context: a map showing the affected areas when the water main broke near the same intersection, seven years ago. I imagine that similar areas are affected this time.]

I got a hold of this fictional report from a future world from a great blog called, I will Shout Youngstown. The rosy picture it paints is sort of possible, if highly unlikely. It should be understood, however that the historic trend in development before the mid twentieth century was generally sustainable, so this would be just a reversion to the norm.

It starts like this.

“Last week, the EPA released its annual data on US greenhouse gas emissions. For the fifth time in a row, they announced a substantial reduction–to levels not seen since the population stood at half its current size. This represents a remarkable turnaround, one that has confounded all predictions of how catastrophic climate change would be averted.

Technology has not been the main solution–most cars still run on internal combustion. Nor have emissions declined because of widespread economic hardship–real median income has never been higher. Instead, the threat of global climate change has been met by an even more powerful force: a seismic shift in the American Dream.”

“Americans began driving less and living closer together. The ideal of a ranch home with a two-car garage and a spacious lawn gave way to something more sociable and intimate. More and more people began settling in places with a strong sense of community, where daily amenities could be found within walking distance. Somehow, the public realm had been elevated over private luxury.

As a result, many cities and towns are virtually unrecognizable compared to their former selves. Houston, to name a widely-cited example, is now served by more track-miles of light rail than lane-miles of highway infrastructure. Once known for its reflective skyscrapers financed by fossil fuel profits, it is now most famous for Discovery Green–a public square in the heart of downtown–and the dozens of smaller public spaces that have cropped up throughout its neighborhoods.”

A bit further on

“Your street network, your public institutions, your retail businesses, your waterfront, your parks and greenways–none of these exist in a vacuum, and they all converge at physical places. So once you change the frame of reference and start thinking about interconnected places instead of separate systems, then you can start shaping cities in ways that very tangibly improve many different aspects of people’s lives. And once you’ve shown people what that looks and feels like, they want more of it; they want to become part of the process.”

“The widespread appeal of this approach to building neighborhoods, towns, and cities is quickly apparent in maps of settlement patterns around the world. The unmistakable trend for the past five years has been the growth of population centers and the decline of spread out development. Not all of these new concentrations are mega-cities. In fact, most are small towns and suburbs that have shifted away from the old sprawling forms and towards something more city-like, where walking and transit are the preferred modes of transportation. You can credit new laws and regulations for bringing this change about, but the truth is it never would have happened if most people didn’t want it to happen.”

I know I’ve been a downer on here, painting a dark picture of future economic and environmental destruction and all. Today I bring good news for the children that have to live in the world we are making– Lot’s of comfy stuffed animals are there to comfort you in any bridge future bridge collapse. A few real ones may even exist, depending on the availability of breathing devices for them.

It seems that while the outlook for the biological world is getting worse, the polyester world just gets better. “While the number of living species continues to plummet, the exact opposite is true of their toy counterparts,” WWF director Ruth Aberg said. “This is particularly true in America, where polyester-fiber-filled replicas of even the most endangered species can be found in glorious abundance.” The number of new species and species diversity is rising rapidly.This increase in toy diversity has been ignored by the slanted media.

“”As rainforests continue to disappear at a rate of one and a half acres every second, I thought there was no hope for the leopard frog,” Sierra Club associate director Dianne Wilmot said. “But Wild Republic just announced there will 5,000 more Rana pipiens in existence by Christmas. A walk through the aisles of any toy store reveals what a diverse world we used to live in.”

While Wilmot is encouraged by the stuffed-animal boom, some see cause for alarm.

“The number of species is rising way too quickly,” said South Bend, IN, wildlife enthusiast Wendy Elias. “I wanted to get all the animals in the Jack Hanna collection: They’re so cute, and I knew I could give them a good home. But they keep introducing new ones faster than I can make shelf space. My husband will absolutely kill me if I bring another one home.”

In fact real world pets and critters should be aware of how easily they can be replaced.

I doubt I am making too many friends here by making often negative comparisons between the Pittsburgh region and some cities elsewhere. But not many places could not learn a thing or two from the nearly miraculous history of Hong Kong. It’s the kind of place that is likely to become more common in the future– that is if we are going to have one.

Off hand, there are a number of things in common between the two cities. First, is that they were born in a similar time period, growing into significant cities starting in the 1800’s. Hong Kong is a very new city in terms of Chineese history.

“In 1839, the refusal by Qing Dynasty authorities to import opium resulted in the First Opium War between China and Britain.[7] Hong Kong Island was first occupied by British forces in 1841, and then formally ceded from China under the Treaty of Nanking at the end of the war. The British established a Crown Colony with the founding of Victoria City the following year. In 1860, after China’s defeat in the Second Opium War, the Kowloon Peninsula south of Boundary Street and Stonecutter’s Island were ceded to Britain in perpetuity under the Convention of Peking. In 1898, Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the adjacent northern lands and Lantau Island, which became known as the New Territories.”

Second, is that both cities have roots as places that pulled themselves up through poverty and acted as magnets for migrants. Hong Kong in 1949 would have wasn’t much more than a refugee camp swollen with people escaping communist China. Both cities initially grew as manufacturing centers.

The other big thing that the places have in common is geographic barriers. Hong Kong is dramatically surounded by steep mountains. What’s worse, Hong Kong actually faces the very real threat of heavy rains and tropical cyclones.”Hong Kong is most likely to be affected by tropical cyclones from July to September, although they are not unusual any time between May and November. An average of about 31 tropical cyclones form in the western North Pacific or China Seas yearly, half of them reaching typhoon strength. Winds increase and rain becomes heavy and widespread when the centre of a cyclone comes close to the city; the heavy rain may last for a few days, the subsequent landslips and flooding may cause more damage than the winds.[16]”

Land use is almost completely the reverse of Pittsburgh, with Hong Kong maximizing density in the easy to build flat areas. These high density levels make self supporting mass transit easy. In fact, according to the wikipedia, only 25% of the land in the teritory has been developed! “The remaining land is remarkably green with about 40% of the landmass reserved as country parks and nature reserves.[14] Most of the territory’s urban development exists on the Kowloon peninsula, along the northern shores of Hong Kong Island and in scattered settlements throughout the New Territories.”

Anyway, the Pittsburgh region’s balkanized destructive use of land was really well described in a recent Post Gazette editorial.We treat land as if were disposable. The interesting thing is that the numbers don’t show that this destruction has made us richer.

Antirust has a nice commentary on today’s post article which profiles a few architects who specialise in working with oddball small scale urban buildings.

“But wait. I thought that was impossible. You remember. The city has told us for years that the only way to revitalize a neighborhood is for the government to buy up all the properties–taking them through eminent domain, if necessary–then give the properties to a single, politically-connected developer. Or sell them to that developer at a loss. And then to pile on the subsidies.

They always claim this is the best way to do things. No matter what the project. High-end condos? Mid-range condos? Public housing? Department stores? Stadiums? Doesn’t matter. The formula holds.”

On Friday another great letter was published in the post about the recent “surprise” floods and this one the Post put online.

“A few years back, we’d all shudder when we heard of a hurricane coming up from Florida or points southeast. Now we shudder when it just starts raining.
And nothing is done about it.

The building of shopping centers and housing plans uphill from us keeps going on. The cutting down of trees and the laying down of asphalt and cement continue. And the developers don’t do enough to allow for water drainage from these plans. Most states have laws governing these developments in their areas. And the developers have to abide by them or no developing goes on.”

One simple suggestion would be to smack some nice tolls on the roads that allowed this development to happen in the first place and use that money to pay for flood control measures. Another plan might be to take the thing to court. There seems to be fairly solid case that development policies and construction in the areas that drain into some of these poorer old communities has played a big role in these problems. If so, isn’t there a chance to get a lawyer on a contingency basis to sue some of the entities most responsible.

I think the issue for example of Route 28’s effect on the Millvale situation would be one obvious case to look at. If some careful study shows it to be a major contributing factor to the problem, then the town can bring a case against the state to force remediation.