AntiRust

City Living: Why Real Estate Matters

Virginia Postrel offers an intriguing take on city-living and the cost of housing here. (Get there fast. Not sure how long the link will be active.) A sample:

Dallas and Los Angeles represent two distinct models for successful American cities, which both reflect and reinforce different cultural and political attitudes. One model fosters a family-oriented, middle-class lifestyle—the proverbial home-centered “balanced life.” The other rewards highly productive, work-driven people with a yen for stimulating public activities, for arts venues, world-class universities, luxury shopping, restaurants that aren’t kid-friendly. One makes room for a wide range of incomes, offering most working people a comfortable life. The other, over time, becomes an enclave for the rich. Since day-to-day experience shapes people’s sense of what is typical and normal, these differences in turn lead to contrasting perceptions of economic and social reality. It’s easy to believe the middle class is vanishing when you live in Los Angeles, much harder in Dallas. These differences also reinforce different norms and values—different ideas of what it means to live a good life. Real estate may be as important as religion in explaining the infamous gap between red and blue states.

Which of these is Pittsburgh? Seems like a bit of a mix. Maybe one trying to become the other?

Colleges: The New Convention Centers?

I have no idea whether or not the Urban Land Institute's suggestions for Point Park University amount to sage advice. But I thought it was interesting that none of the related media accounts noted that former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy has been a senior resident fellow at ULI since last summer. That has no bearing on the proposal. But it's interesting to see how these people make the rounds.

In the meantime, it appears that urban academic centers are all the rage. Check out this proposal from Cleveland.

Pittsburgh as Bedroom Community: Choo Choo!

Chris Briem points to an interesting proposal to connect Pittsburgh to Columbus with high-speed rail. As he mentions, it seems like there is always some kind of ambitious rail plan afoot. (Maglev, anyone?) That being the case, can I proose something even more bold and transformative?

If we are going to spend a hundred kazillion dollars on a high-speed rail line, why not connect it to DC? It's about 250 miles, sure. And there's a mountian range in the way. But imagine: it would solve our "population problem" by transforming Pittsburgh into a sleepy (and affordable) bedroom community overnight.

Too far, you say? Sure, even a really fast train would require more than two hours to get to DC. But I lived and worked there. And it REGULARLY took me more than two hours to make my 30-mile drive home from work. (I was off the transit grid on both ends, as I didn't work downtown.) Baltimore already has made the transition to bedroom community, with scads of people taking the MARC train to DC everyday. (And scads more grinding to a halt in I-95.) And most preposterously, some commuters there are now driving more than 130-miles to work.

That is, if you made it possible to commute from Pittsburgh to DC in less than two-and-a-half hours, tens of thousands of people would likely take you up on it. Particularly if they could get some work done en route. Which is possible on a train.

At Maglev speeds, Pittsburgh/DC would be less than an hour. (An express line, at least.) And I am here to tell you that it took me almost an hour to make a left-hand turn out of my apartment complex in Silver Spring.

Now, I am not really serious about this. It would cost too much. And politics basically make it impossible to consider a 250-mile rail line without stops along the way. (The Baltimore/DC Maglev proposal called for a stop at BWI, which meant that the train could never even really get up to speed.)

But the fact that it does not seem all the preposterous (at least compared to the people driving 130 miles to work) says a lot about... what? I don't even know anymore.

Car Culture and Urban Living: New Heights or New Depths?

I'm not sure what to make of this, except that it's so confusing it's hard to tell who will be mad about it.

Mayor Ravenstahl--Victim!--in the New York Times

So I am sure you've seen Ravenstahl's interview in the NYT. Judge for yourself. But a few points:

“I just can’t enjoy the [Steelers] game when I know I’m going to get hounded by the press the whole time,” said Mr. Ravenstahl, who took office a year ago after Mayor Bob O’Connor died. So for the time being, he said, he and his wife will ride their living room couch on game days to avoid reporters.

They might hound you less if you didn't get drunk and cuffed.

In the past year, the baby-faced mayor has helped keep the city’s hockey team, the Penguins, from leaving by promising a new arena.

Did he? In what sense did he promise it? The narrative here seemed to be that he sat on the sidelines and let Rendell do the promising.

Crime remains low, and he recently helped persuade two major contractors to redevelop sections of the city’s downtown, which has been plagued by vacancies.

Wait. Ravenstahl is responsible for the whole Piatt thing? I thought that discussion predated his administration. And in what sense did he "persuade" them? As far as I can tell, the developers held out until someone promised them money.

He is widely expected to defeat his Republican opponent, Mark DeSantis, a businessman, given the Democrats’ 5 to 1 advantage in registration.

I teach Intro to Journalism. I fail people who write vague statements that include terms like "widely."

“Frankly, I’m so tired of hearing, ‘Give the kid a chance, we’re pulling for Luke, the press should stop being so mean,’” said John McIntire, a talk-show host for KDKA news radio and the blogger who broke the story surrounding Heinz-gate.

KDKA? Did I miss something? Perhaps I did. But... KDKA? Congratulations on the new gig, Mr. McIntire.

Formerly an avid BlackBerry user, he retired the device in June. Too distracting, he said, adding that he is now forced to delegate better. Instead of drinking coffee, he keeps his energy up with help from 12 Diet Pepsis a day.

Maybe he ought to go back to the Blackberry for updates on whether he's supposed to be meeting with people from the Hill District. And in what sense is switching to Diet Pepsi better than a coffee? Is that a good way to seem more mature? And why so tired, dude? You're 27. I drank every night when I was 27 and I was fine in the morning. You drink all the time too, apparently. But you are young enough to handle it. Man up, and ditch the diet beverages.

“I asked him how he can go golfing every weekend and not get attacked,” Mr. Ravenstahl said. Mr. Bloomberg told him to tell reporters that how he spends his private time is private, Mr. Ravenstahl recounted.

Demonstrable accomplishments help. (Place-kicking doesn't count.)

Keeping Up with the Joneses: How Does Your Neighborhood Compare?

Here's a cool website that allows you to (very quickly and easily) compare your neighborhood to those around you. Interesting things about my home, 15224? About 57 percent of my neighbors have been here five years or more. Twenty percent have a bachelors degree or higher, yet 26 percent live below the poverty line. (Lots of grad students, maybe?) But the coolest thing is comparing it to the neighborhoods around you. For instance, my neighborhood has a population density of more than 13,000 people per square mile. Compare this with the two downtown zip codes:

15222: 2,322 people per square mile

15219: 8,200 people per square mile

That is, we'll have to squeeze more than twice as many people into downtown to make it as dense as Bloomfield. (In the case of 15222, about five times as many.) All for the purpose of making it a "24-hour downtown."

But we'll need a lot more than that. Because as dense as Bloomfield might be, I can tell you this: It's no party scene. Even on a Friday and Saturday night, nobody is going to mistake it for Manhattan. I understand that the KINDS of people we are trying to get downtown there are different. A lot more of them will eat out, go to shows, etc. But I wonder: Is there a target for downtown? A density that we are aiming for? What is it?

Either way, take a look. It's fun to see how you stack up.

You Know You're Old When...

Chris Briem has a piece about feeling old, and some of the strange things you can say about "kids these days." Check it out.

I know that just a few months ago, I was driving somewhere and caught a live version of some Pearl Jam song. It was from "Ten," and the DJ mentioned that it was "released in 1990. I did the math and thought, "Holy crap." Most of my students are 18,

I am just trying to get a handle on the music that was 18 years old when I first started college. Geez. Stuff from the early 70s. That's weird. Because that stuff was so OLD.

That being said, I think a lot of the music from my college days holds up a lot better than music from previous eras. Not all eras. But some. Seriously. I don't think Pearl Jam or Nirvana sound all that silly. But I guess that's a pretty selective take on music from 1991. I am sure a lot of it sucked. In fact, I remember is sucking. Even at the time.   

A Housing Boom? In Pittsburgh?

The New York Times is reporting serious trouble with Baltimore's efforts to attract young people to live in the city's "new" downtown. But here's the really interesting part, at least from Pittsburgh's perspective:

But the fallout from the housing downturn is already showing up as a setback in this struggling city’s effort to reinvent itself as a robust commercial center, one in which a spruced-up and rebuilt downtown has attracted new residents, particularly young people, as well as more office workers.

In recent years, the housing boom propelled this process forward, here in Baltimore and in Cleveland, Memphis and Pittsburgh, among other cities. That is no longer true.

Really? The process was being propelled forward here? By a housing boom?

Could be, I guess. But "propelled"? And "boom"? I don't know...

Condo Living: Not So Prosperous After All?

Oh my gosh. I was out most of last week so I missed the article in the Trib about tough times at the Granite Building, where former New York Times style editor Holly Brubach is having a hard time renting out her condos. (Thanks to Chris Briem for pointing to it today.) From the Trib:

Holly Brubach hasn't given up on selling residential condominium units in the ornate Granite Building, Downtown, even though she hasn't had one sale in nearly two years.

... Brubach acknowledges she's disappointed in the response to her residential sales effort so far... "What I have learned since marketing the building myself is that most of the action in Downtown condominiums has been at the lower end of the market," she said. "I now realize the number of people that could afford a large, more expensive unit, is limited," she said.

So... uh... if you build it... they don't come? Seriously. The idea is that if we build such things, people will move here from Cleveland and New York and Paris to fill them up. Or at least move downtown from Cranberry. Right? Well. It doesn't appear to be working.

Why are we subsidizing the Piatts and PNC to build fancy condos, again?

Head to Mr. Briem for more coherent musings...

Hockey Versus Running: Inveterate Whiner Redux?

Over at TWM, Chad has harsh words for the mayor's enthusiasm for a city marathon:

A friend and colleague -- we'll call him Mr. T. -- emailed this morning to alert me to this Tribune-Review article, in which The Boy Who Would Be Mayor backs the return of the Pittsburgh Marathon essentially so he can run in it...

Running a marathon in the city, we should note, costs a minimum of $1 million that this city, broke and teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, does not have. But I suppose that would be a small price to pay for the pleasures of stoking the competitive fires -- and so stroking both the ego and the dick -- of our narcissist king. If only someone could convince him that jocks love funding pensions, or that real men don't let their cities suffer crippling debt, maybe we could get him to train a little less for the Great Race and a little more for his Actual Job.

I agree. Only I am not sure how this squares with a similar discussion about jocks who support hockey arenas. From a few months back at TWM:

It didn't take long for the sniveling talk radio calls and whining letters to the editor to start rolling in, lamenting all the local tax dollars it took -- you know, the ones that, under the terms of the deal, aren't actually being spent -- to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh, bemoaning all that money being given to spoiled millionaire playboys -- surely you don't mean all those good kids and dedicated family men? did the Pens sign Ben Roethlisberger when I wasn't looking? -- for their new ice palace, and pretending that building a replacement for a 46-year-old civic arena that serves the entire region was not overdue and not necessary and thus some sort of either-or proposition that precludes a solution to those draconian PAT Transit cuts.

Maybe if we just diverted the $1 million from casino funds, it would be a "free marathon"?

Moreover, isn't it possible to argue that a marathon would bring in more than the $1 million the government would have to spend? I seem to recall that kind of argument being made here.

Is it possible to argue for a marathon in terms of economic and psychological impact? Sure it is:

The great annual influx of out-of-town runners did more than swell merchants' coffers --it confronted Pittsburgh's image problem in the most practical way possible. By experiencing the city's beauty and friendliness on foot, visitors could shed their old misimpressions.