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Along North Avenue, from Chicago’s west side well into the suburbs, at several major intersections lone men stand on the median strip of concrete – or just on the pavement between the two centermost lanes – holding a stack of newspapers. They start selling well before most people get in their cars to go to work, but remain there – in all weather – until late morning, when most commuters have already gone by. They sell the Tribune, the Sun-Times, and possibly the Daily Herald out past the numbered avenues of Melrose Park. Wearing mesh vests to stay more visible in the low morning light, they are an unusual sight on multi-lane arterial roads, standing in the middle of the street selling newspapers.
As a print subscriber to the New York Times, and previously the Tribune, I never had occasion to buy a paper, but always felt bad for the men on the median, especially on bitter cold Chicago mornings, or when piles of snow had turned to brown slush. Sure, it’s a job – but surely not a good one. I did see some people purchase papers while stopped by red lights, holding coins out through their cracked windows, and maybe they had a regular “newsman” at a particular corner. Even if I hadn’t a subscriber, though, I probably would not have bought one – after all, when would I read it?
The big arguments about why newspaper circulation is declining – a lot – are the usual suspects: the decline of reading and intellectual pursuit, the rise of the Internet and television news, general phasing out of newspapers as a respectable, reliable, and up-to-the-minute source of information. These are all surely important, though definitely debatable, particularly the “dumbing of America” argument. Nor is this a new phenomenon, according to the Washington Post:
“The decline [in circulation in 2005] continued a 20-year trend in the newspaper industry as people increasingly turn to other media such as the Internet and 24-hour cable news networks for information. Newspaper industry officials also blamed the National Do Not Call Registry, which has forced newspapers to rely less on telemarketing to secure subscribers, and a shift in strategy among major newspapers away from using short-term promotions to acquire new readers.” – Washington Post, 5-3-2005
Think about 20 years before 2005: 1985. No Internet, cable news just starting (if it existed at all, really?), and a culture on the verge of massive media change – MTV launched in 1981, a critical milestone in TV culture. If the decline in newspaper readership predates the Internet in its popular form by at least 10 years – and certainly more time than its current form – then maybe that’s not the main cause, or at least not the earliest cause.
Back to the newspaper sellers – they’re basically doing the same job that paperboys and others have done for decades, both on street corners in big cities and (in the case of home delivery) at suburban doorsteps. They are also doing the same work as the coin-operated paper boxes in downtowns and city neighborhoods, where people on their way to the bus, train, or office can stop and buy the morning news. The difference is, they’re delivering them to people in cars, not out on the sidewalk. Even those who drop off the paper on the porch in the morning, are mostly doing so for people who will end up driving to work. And the biggest population of adults who don’t go to work in the morning – the elderly – are also those who tend to still subscribe to the newspaper and read it regularly.
Is it too much of a stretch to speculate that maybe our large-scale shift in transportation behavior, i.e. commuting to work by car to perform primarily white-collar jobs, has heavily contributed to the decline of newspapers?
Sure, the Internet makes news easier to get, iPads and the like are seen as “killer devices” for paper media, and people watch more television than ever for information and entertainment. But if you think of reading a newspaper as an action requiring time, inclination, and the information source itself, commuting by car (having to drive) eliminates a big chunk of time when the newspaper might otherwise be read – in the morning, when you’re waking up and getting ready for the day, not fully functioning but wanting to find out what’s going on. Having to drive to work takes up most attention that transit users can give to other things like reading.
It is also significant that the phenomenon of “morning drive” talk shows, and other sources like NPR’s “morning edition,” get wide listenership no matter the actual quality of the show. You’ve got a captive audience in the car, probably two peak listening times at the beginning and end of the work day, and they want to get at least some idea of what’s going on in the world before they get to where they need to be.
There used to be evening newspapers, to get what happened at the end of the day, and some studies have shown that people tend to spend most time reading on their iPads and Kindles in the early evening. Perhaps they’ve simply displaced their reading time to be after work, but it also means they cannot read the newspaper (or any other device) on the way home either.
The biggest exception to the newspaper decline seems to be the New York Times, probably the most well-known and respected newspaper in the U.S. Coincidence that its primary readership, New York City and surrounding area, largely commutes by public transit if they work in the city? And similarly with D.C.’s Washington Post? And the Tribune and other papers publish variations on Chicago’s RedEye, a fluffy smaller-format paper that’s free and strategically placed in red boxes by train and bus stops. It’s just enough information to get you up to speed on big national and local news, and includes some fun things to do that week and a crossword. It’s free, quick to read, and as far as I can tell, popular with transit riders even if it’s mediocre quality. It serves the morning-newspaper need.
So, it would be really difficult to actually determine a causal link between the rise in commuting by car and the decline of newspaper readership, and certainly the Internet, TV, and “instant gratification” attitude toward information play no small part in this trend. But I think it’s worth considering how our land use and transportation decisions have affected other aspects of our lives, and what impact they have on our routines. The newspaper sellers of North Avenue are a half-hearted attempt to bring the newspaper into our cars, since we cannot get out and get them on the sidewalk. The problem is, we’ve eliminated the time in our day we used to have to actually sit down and read it.
[I’ve been meaning to post this for months.]
During our group project for the CRP New York City workshop, we specifically studied the neighborhood around the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, an old industrial area around a historically-working waterfront, now becoming a mix of warehouse space, unfinished office and craft spaces, a few residential units (in addition to the large housing project on its edge), and an influx of creative activity like artists, performance venues, trendy bars, and randomly a Holiday Inn Express.
Being generally unfamiliar with New York City and very familiar with Chicago, it struck me that the Gowanus area looks and feels (perhaps smells) a lot like the Clybourn/Goose Island industrial corridor two miles northwest of the Loop. Both have a lot of old, messy industrial uses – some of which still exist, others which have left only brownfields – along a formerly working waterfront, in Clybourn’s case the Chicago River.
The forces of gentrification and redevelopment have been at work longer in Clybourn, however, perhaps in part because the river is not a heavily, notoriously polluted Superfund site. While Finkl Steel and a few others have held on in the area, by and large the area along North Avenue and Goose Island has flipped to become retail (and a bit of housing), especially home furnishings like Restoration Hardware, Design Within Reach, and Crate & Barrel. The two most buzzworthy developments were the flagship Whole Foods (May 2009) right along the river on Kingsbury, and the Apple Store and renovated Red Line stop (Winter 2010) at the edge of the industrial development.
Comparing aerial views of the two highlights their similar scale, location near a highway, and situation between two dense residential neighborhoods – Wicker Park and Lincoln Park in Chicago, Carroll Gardens/Boerum Hill and Park Slope in Brooklyn.
Clybourn Corridor and Goose Island, Chicago, view at 1000 ft
Gowanus Canal and Brooklyn, New York City, 1000 ft
More interesting than their shared history and layout, however, is their possibly shared future – specifically, the degree to which the changes in Clybourn portend how Gowanus will develop as the Superfund cleanup moves forward. Both already have a large Home Depot, both will soon have a large Whole Foods with several yuppie-friendly gimmicks: the Chicago store has a lovely riverside patio, a huge food court, and a demonstration kitchen which gets regular use. The Brooklyn store will have a rooftop garden for ultra-local produce, possibly waterfront access, and likely many WF amenities which are possible when building on such a large lot. Both also have a kayaking presence, though the Gowanus Dredgers certainly take on more risk than the rental places along the Chicago River!
While neither area had a large residential community per se, both were home to many industrial jobs, probably for over a century in both cases. And both have those who have some degree of fondness, or at least tolerance, for the messy, smelly, bustling, “wild west” they used to be. In Chicago’s case, the legacy of shady activity along Weed Street comes to mind; in Gowanus’ case, the area still struggles with some drug activity and prostitution, though probably not the “roving gangs of hookers and drug dealers” claimed to exist by one resident. The influx of trendy stores and office lofts represents real change, however, and what Clybourn is now, Gowanus likely will be.
What lessons for Gowanus can be drawn from Clybourn?
First, that change is inevitable – even its reputation as one of the most polluted sites in America will, with the help of the federal cleanup, likely not stop development in the long run. The recession has slowed development city-wide, but New York is an aggressive real estate market, to put it mildly.
Second, that unless told otherwise, developers will probably bring big-box retail as the natural successor to large industrial spaces. While Clybourn is now cleaner and probably safer, it is not very walkable – big parking lots separate building from street, and North Avenue has narrow sidewalks and fast-moving cars (when they aren’t clogged with traffic). Given Gowanus’ proximity to dense and growing Brooklyn residential neighborhoods, more work should be done to make it a natural bridge between the two, not a barrier, by keeping some of the large-format stores from building replicas of what we have in the suburbs.
Third, that it is possible to keep some vestiges of the area’s past life, if only symbolic. Chicago recently finished restoring a small railroad bridge which connects North Avenue with Goose Island, now a pedestrian walking path (but with “Live Rail” signs, which I’m not sure actually mean anything). The Whole Foods and kayak rental places allow access to the water, but the height of the bank makes it clear that this is not another North Avenue Beach. The Goose Island brewery, Smith & Hawken, and several other stores occupy old industrial warehouses which have been retrofitted, though many of the retail buildings (and certainly the NoHo residential tower) are new. Although most of Gowanus’ old industrial buildings might not be worth saving for public health or financial reasons, keeping as much as possible of the old brick and stone buildings can at least maintain the area’s character, which is what has attracted much of the new activity in the first place.
The planner is, of course, going to conclude that Gowanus needs better planning. But in this case, and based on what has already happened along the Clybourn Corridor in Chicago, it seems to be true. Change will happen, and the area will likely not remain industrial, except perhaps at its south end toward the Gowanus Bay. Once the Canal itself becomes a water amenity rather than an environmental liability, it will become a desirable place to be; the large, underused lots are rare in New York and will become prime locations for suburban-style retail, unless more guidelines are put into place ahead of time to create denser, more walkable development which benefits the neighborhood. Taking the good aspects of Clybourn and learning from the bad, Gowanus can perhaps become the same, only better.
Cities, and people who think about cities, are usually all about place and space. I’d like to make the case instead that cities and the way we think about them – by which I mean, the everyday activities and movement within cities, more than the physical landscape itself – are really all about time.
First, time defines the urban in contrast to the rural. This is not to say that rural areas exist outside of time, but that they experience it differently. Time, in agricultural terms, is cyclical, relying on the predictable recurrence of sunrise and sunset, of spring and summer; action is dictated by the length of day and the growing season. Unpopulated rural areas, forests and wetlands, adhere even more closely to the natural cycle. Extraction operations like mining may rely less on that cycle, but only through the benefit of technologies like electricity and industrial machinery. In popular perception, at least, rural life is slow, unhurried, and “close to nature,” relying on the sun rather than the digital clock to tell the time; urban life, in contrast, is fast-paced, frenetic, and full of impatient crowds, rushing so as not to be late.
Suburbs seem to exist in the middle space between these two ideas – slower and calmer than a bustling downtown, but still tied to time-sensitive activities like the morning commute, the after-school program, and the evening news. Time is still measured, but much of it by the car’s dashboard clock.
It has been observed that we have built our cities with increments of time: the “forty-five minute rule” claims that city size has historically been determined by the length that can reasonably be travelled in forty-five minutes. If on foot, about two to three miles; if in a horse-drawn cart, somewhat longer; if by train or car or motorized bus, longer still. While this may not hold true in all cases, it seems to make sense: a person can only spend so much of their waking hours travelling, or else nothing would get done. City height and density may have been determined in part by construction technology and infrastructure limitations, but its breadth may be most practically determined using travel times, not physical distance.
The importance of time in urban movement – and it seems that urban life is all about moving from one place to another – is most evident in public transit. We often choose one mode over another based on travel times, even if it puts us a couple blocks out of the way; we may even spend more money on a cab just to save time. Using NextBus and similar tracking services, we determine our schedule by the number of minutes to arrival, not the length or even number of stops the bus or train has to travel. Our estimated travel time may make one place seem more accessible than the other, even if they are both exactly one mile away. We measure our reasonable walking radius by minutes as much as by miles; and even in easily-understood grid cities like (midtown) Manhattan or Chicago, we orient ourselves at least as much to the time spent in transit than to the miles we travel every day. In more chaotic cities like Boston or Paris, the zig-zag distances we travel are hard to measure, and it’s not really worth doing so anyway.
A good rule of thumb: most places in Chicago seem to take forty-five minutes to reach; most places in Columbus take ten to twenty. If the destinations are close, we may take a leisurely walk and allow ourselves extra “cushion” time to leave. If they are further away, driving time must include a traffic jam and some time to search for parking; if taking public transit, we build in extra time to wait for the bus or train, and even more if a transfer is required. Unless it’s just up the street, we expect to take some extra time getting there.
Trains are most closely linked to time, and are often disconnected from space. Consider the origin of standard time itself: the development of cross-country train networks in the United States created the need for a common understanding of when noon or eight or five actually occurred, rather than each town measuring for itself by solar position alone. (A plaque near the Chicago Board of Trade building commemorates that city’s part in the “invention” of time.) Because the train’s route and schedule are already circumscribed, we think little of the actual distance we travel, but conceive of the trip more or less as a straight line from A to B, within a given time frame.
Train schedules and maps exist even further out of real, physical space: the stylized, rectilinear diagram of the London or New York subways alter the form of the city itself to be more legible as a network of colorful lines; stations that appear relatively far apart may indeed be only a block or two away, as is the case with the Regent’s Park and Great Portland Street Tube stations in London. [walking] [by train].
Furthermore, particularly for commuter rail with few or no connecting stations, the schedule is all we really need. When will it depart? When will I arrive? The intermediate locations, not to mention the actual path of the track, is irrelevant.
Inter-city travel may be more or less time-dependent than intra-city. While we pay attention to miles on the highway, relying on the odometer and the gas tank to remind us when to stop, when we travel by air, we worry primarily about whether or not we’ll miss our flight. The actual experience of travel is disconnected from the physical distance: we arrive in one airport, wait a bit, board the plane, perhaps watch landing and takeoff and catch glimpses of farm fields before ascending above the clouds, then touch down again at an eerily similar airport elsewhere. Frequent flyer miles remain somewhat arbitrary numbers, points we accumulate over time.
Because movement is such an integral part of urban life, we must inevitably rely on time to determine the rest of our actions. We generally work for a given number of hours, whether or not we are salaried; we take our children to and from school; we must pay attention to opening and closing times of our stores and restaurants and offices; we make appointments and plans and attend events according to the time we have left. And, of course, somewhere in the midst of everything we find time to sleep. We find time, lost time, make time, waste time, need more time or time off. A city itself may be a place, a location, a location in physical space, but in our everyday conception of the city in which we live, it is really a series of time.
In going through my New York photos, I found a couple other shots worth posting.
The first is from across the tracks at Williamsburg’s Marcy Avenue station. An old man and a hipster waiting for the train.
Williamsburg, Marcy Avenue Station
The second is a view from the High Line, of new condos going up along the (river? harbor? whatever it’s called there?).
Sunset, from the High Line
Gotten a lot of photo mileage out of those three days … will post photos of other things soon, I promise!
I was talking with some friends this morning (and by “morning” I mean 2 PM) about cul-de-sacs and how, for planners, they are a really inefficient and disconnected urban form. I thought I would reproduce my argument here, since it’s a pretty simple exercise in Google Mappery.
Case in Point: Going to Target in western Columbus, Ohio
Figure 1: My parents’ neighborhood in relation to a nearby recent development – the aerial photo is out of date, but in that empty land east of the interstate, there is actually a medical office complex and, on the other side of Trueman, a Home Depot and Target (marked in map).
Figure 1. The cul-de-sac in context, Hilliard, Ohio
There is a cul-de-sac separating the neighborhood from the road. Trueman was built around 2006 or so, the houses are only a few years older, and the construction of that road had been on the books for years. In addition, the houses around that cul-de-sac have all put up sturdy metal fences to prevent anyone from cutting through their small yards. There is luckily a nature trail just south of the neighborhood with an outlet onto Trueman, with a sidewalk on that side for relatively pedestrian friendly access (along a 35-mph, four-lane road).
If you wanted to walk from my parents’ house to Target, with a total distance of about 0.7 miles, you would take the following route (Figure 2):
Figure 2. Route from Scioto Run to Target, Walking
Now, let’s say you wanted to drive to Target instead. Even if you combine this with other trips down the line, it will add 2 miles to your trip (note: this is Google’s suggested route):
Figure 3. Driving from Scioto Run to Target, Google's Suggested Route
There is a slightly shorter route if you instead take Hilliard Cemetery Road, but because of an odd U-turn and boulevard situation, you pretty much have to go further out of your way to get home (Figure 4):
Figure 4. Alternate Route, Equally Out of the Way
Now, not all cul-de-sacs are extremely inefficient like this one was, but it pretty much illustrates why they are a bad idea.
QED.
The final installment of my NYC photos. It was especially hard to choose for this set, as it includes shots of Williamsburg/Brooklyn, the High Line, AND Central Park. I’ve chosen a mix of detail shots and, in the case of Central Park, some interesting pictures of actual people (rare for me, I know!) I encountered.
Back to writing soon. As well as a brief discussion of how to do easy and successful LEGO photography.
Elevated Train to Williamsburg
Williamsburg, Bicycle
Williamsburg, Art Studio
Williamsburg, Glass Mosaic
High Line Park
High Line Park
High Line Park
High Line Park
Central Park
Central Park, Dog Walker
Central Park, Fountain
Central Park
Central Park, Boats
Central Park
Central Park, Boat
Central Park, Ties for Sale
Central Park, Parenting
Park Avenue, French Defenses
Parade Woman
On Saturday (last month) I spent a lot of time in Midtown Manhattan, seeing the big sites, and some smaller ones as well. More photos from the trip.
Plaster Detail, Manhattan
Graffiti, Manhattan
Hot Dog Vendor
Palm Room, Some Bar
Madison Avenue and 42nd Street
Grand Central Station
Grand Central Station
Grand Central Station
Buildings in Midtown
Times Square
Times Square
Vogue Covers
Chrysler Building, Lobby
Chrysler Building
Well, only two weeks late with putting up some photos from my New York trip. I took way more than was good for me, so I decided to focus on some of the details in this set.
These are all from Day 1: Brooklyn Bridge, Financial District, Broadway, Soho, and NYU/Greenwich Village.
Brooklyn Bridge Cable
City Hall Park
Panda on Wall St
Brick Building
Hydrants, Financial District
Broadway and Pine
Store Window
Going to Temple
Just returned from my first official professional planning conference, the APA Upstate New York Regional Conference! I probably wasn’t as “professional” as I should have been, but it was a good time and the department comped most of it.
Most notable here: I didn’t realize how much I missed delapidated city streets until our drives and walks through the area immediately around downtown. I’ve included a couple photos (pre-processing) of my usual super abstract brick-wall-and-a-weed style.
Also, out of idle curiosity I checked out this and the other blogs’ reading stats lately… Stan&Ergo is doing better than I thought! I should post some new ones soon. Also, I found it amusing that almost exclusively, the key words listed to find the other blog were variations of “epic fail.” Good times.
I’ll post the rest on Facebook, until I finally get around to a photoblog format.
Under Construction, Albany
Brick Wall, Albany
The following is a list of wildlife I’ve seen so far in the past couple weeks – some of the numbers are approximate. So far, no deadly and/or greatly inconveniencing encounters, just observations. More to come I’m sure, and hopefully nothing involving Lyme disease (which is apparently a problem in Cayuga Heights).
Wildlife in the Ithaca area:
- Deer (4 – mother, 2 babies, unknown tagged deer)
- Snake (2 – both in streams, one very small and shy)
- Small fish with stripes (~few dozen)
- Smaller algae-eating fish with no stripes (~few dozen)
- Crayfish on stream bottom (10)
- Some small sucker-looking fish like a plecostemus (1, on a rock)
- Squirrels (~thousands)
- Chipmunk (1, briefly, unverified sighting)
- Slugs (~thousands, all of them gross)
- Skunk (2)
- Cardinal (1 pair)
- Sparrows (~thousands)
- Frat boys playing beer pong (~6)
City Forward 