Friday, January 10, 2014
Blah blah blah.
The world does not lack for words. There is no global dearth of that commodity these days. They squish out from everywhere. They are all around. Even the most interesting of them are some times nothing more than nothing. Nothing more than blah blah blah.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Fire in Babylon.
It hadn't occurred to me that one could understand the implications of British colonialism through the game of cricket, but the film Fire in Babylon about the unbeatable West Indian cricket teams that dominated the sport throughout the 1980s has disabused me of my ignorance, at least the beginning edges of it.
It's obvious to say, and it is said in the film, that the export of cricket to the colonies was a way of subjugation. The game, made by public school boys for public school boys, established differences and allowed the English to teach the natives another English thing, a game to make gentlemen of the savages that yoked them to a British social structure where everyone had his place. It also allowed for the expression non-violent forms of oppression that are more culturally destructive than a baton or a rifle butt. Up until 1960, the captain of the all black West Indian cricket team had to be a white man.
Historian and erstwhile Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff once joked that there is something called a "Commonwealth moment" when inhabitants of the Commonwealth countries can share an insight from their common relationship to the British crown. Cricket must be one of those Commonwealth moments that links Pakistan to New Zealand and Australia to Guyana. It's a thread of history that's weaves together billions of the world's people but leaves out 300 million Americans. This is not a bad thing. We can find meaning in the sentiment that he should throw a 3-2 sinker away with speed on the corners. But the idea that the West Indian team had, that's HAD, to beat England in 1976 because London's West Indian immigrants would suffer untold abuse in the workplace if they didn't. Or Nelson Mandela's appreciation to those cricketers who refused apartheid South Africa's huge payout to a touring West Indian team in the early 1980s because their "no" boosted him in his struggle. Or that the current Indian logo for their cricket league derives from the pre-Indian-independence British league and not from some newly designed post-1947 logo -- these kinds of things happen at a level of meaning that Americans would be loathe to try to sort out.
But like film so often can do, Fire in Babylon opens those doors to that world and let's us inside -- to hear the history, see the symbols and to try to decode some of the meaning.
It's obvious to say, and it is said in the film, that the export of cricket to the colonies was a way of subjugation. The game, made by public school boys for public school boys, established differences and allowed the English to teach the natives another English thing, a game to make gentlemen of the savages that yoked them to a British social structure where everyone had his place. It also allowed for the expression non-violent forms of oppression that are more culturally destructive than a baton or a rifle butt. Up until 1960, the captain of the all black West Indian cricket team had to be a white man.
Historian and erstwhile Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff once joked that there is something called a "Commonwealth moment" when inhabitants of the Commonwealth countries can share an insight from their common relationship to the British crown. Cricket must be one of those Commonwealth moments that links Pakistan to New Zealand and Australia to Guyana. It's a thread of history that's weaves together billions of the world's people but leaves out 300 million Americans. This is not a bad thing. We can find meaning in the sentiment that he should throw a 3-2 sinker away with speed on the corners. But the idea that the West Indian team had, that's HAD, to beat England in 1976 because London's West Indian immigrants would suffer untold abuse in the workplace if they didn't. Or Nelson Mandela's appreciation to those cricketers who refused apartheid South Africa's huge payout to a touring West Indian team in the early 1980s because their "no" boosted him in his struggle. Or that the current Indian logo for their cricket league derives from the pre-Indian-independence British league and not from some newly designed post-1947 logo -- these kinds of things happen at a level of meaning that Americans would be loathe to try to sort out.
But like film so often can do, Fire in Babylon opens those doors to that world and let's us inside -- to hear the history, see the symbols and to try to decode some of the meaning.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Two women, both dead, one wearing a beadnet dress.
This is the story of two women. Both are dead.
One of them wore this dress when she was buried in ancient Egypt. It is called a beadnet dress.
That, her burial that is, happened during the reign of King Khufu, which would mean about 2,550 B.C.
On March 30, 1927 she looked like this, when her tomb was opened by a Harvard-sponsored archeological expedition to Giza.
The pattern of the dress was recreated by modern scholars who found places on her mummified body where the beads still lay in their original configuration as when she was placed there 4.5 millenia ago.
The second woman died in Dresden, Germany. In February, 1945 she looked like this.
She was killed by the Allied firebombing of that city after British and American planes dropped more than 650,000 incendiary devices such as these over a three-day span from the 13th to the 15th of February, 1945.
These two women's deaths were separated by 4,500 years of human history, but only by 1,700 miles as the crow flies. Their lives sat equidistant to the Mediterranean Sea and to the birth of Christ, almost. About them I know nothing else.
One of them wore this dress when she was buried in ancient Egypt. It is called a beadnet dress.
That, her burial that is, happened during the reign of King Khufu, which would mean about 2,550 B.C.
On March 30, 1927 she looked like this, when her tomb was opened by a Harvard-sponsored archeological expedition to Giza.
The second woman died in Dresden, Germany. In February, 1945 she looked like this.
She was killed by the Allied firebombing of that city after British and American planes dropped more than 650,000 incendiary devices such as these over a three-day span from the 13th to the 15th of February, 1945.
These two women's deaths were separated by 4,500 years of human history, but only by 1,700 miles as the crow flies. Their lives sat equidistant to the Mediterranean Sea and to the birth of Christ, almost. About them I know nothing else.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
The New Urban Mechanics.
It's hard not to be stunned by the sheer energy that Nicole Fichera brings to her job. I don't think I've ever met someone so able to pack so many words into a sentence in such a short amount of time. I've heard her described as the Rachael Ray of innovation and a walking Wikipedia page. I would say she's the hub around which the wheel of her Boston Innovation District turns, a connector supreme, a Woman for All Seasons. Her official title is Innovation Director at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, but she is much more than that. Just meet her. You'll see.
For starters, she is in charge of the transformation of an area in Boston that is rapidly growing and has some of the most expensive real estate in the city. She's 30 years old, if that, but probably not even. She has no staff. She has no budget. She has only her energy, her ideas, and her connections. These seem to be sufficient.
By the time she showed us the sixth floor of the Dry Dock building south of the Seaport District, our tour group from the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program was tired. I was exhausted. A morning in cold Kendall Square in Cambridge followed by time in the Boston Innovation District left us all worn. Not unnourished, but worn.
There is a certain type of building that I call a Cathedral of Modernity. Perhaps it is more properly called a Cathedral to Modernity. It had an industrial use, usually built about 100 years ago. Other cities like Lawrence and Lowell are filled with them, old factories and warehouses and the like. The Dry Dock building in Boston is one such building and its essence is unmistakeable from the moment you drive up to it. Seven stories high, as long as the Prudential building is tall, it's massive and refined but not delicate. Its utilitarian design doesn't hide an elegance of simplicity. With so many large, multi-paned windows, it's an odd mixture of transparency and solid.
Back in the Second World War, tanks rolled off these lines onto waiting ships nearby. Now this space will hold MassChallenge, the startup accelerator that reeks of the new innovation economy, but also represents the massive economic change underway in Boston, Cambridge, and in cities around the country most perfectly.
The MassChallenge move into the Dry Dock is only one small part in a much larger picture of the Boston Innovation District. Mayor Tom Menino declared that this area would be an urban laboratory. Fichera, on her tour, shared some of the fascinating new concepts being working on, like the idea of shared open ground floor space. Yes, new residential buildings in the District are being asked to design with the idea of communal, open, ground floor work and meeting space. Anyone can walk in off the street, sit down on a couch, pull out a laptop and work. Anyone. This is innovative. Smart parking is also coming to the neighborhood, with sensors telling drivers where free parking spaces are, to reduce the amount of driving around the block until you find what you're looking for. It's about increasing the efficiency of the resources we already have, like lobbies and parking spaces. That's the part of the revolution in our economy that is both not new and entirely new. It's about sharing more and owning less. It's Millenial as opposed to Gen X or Gen Y. It's technological, and it's communitarian. It's about efficiency and it's about environmentalism. The amazing faith in innovation to solve problems is awe-inspiring, but also possibly naive. Regardless, the Innovation District is undeniably a radical explosion of energy and creativity by a generation that is convinced it can do. And seems to be doing.
The District calls itself an urban lab, and by the sounds of it, it is. Iterating a city as opposed to planning it is one of the radical concepts now being tested out in cities across the country. In Boston, Tom Menino deserves the credit for this. He was derided for being an urban mechanic when he was first elected. No big vision, just a fixit guy. At the end of his long tenure, he turned that around and said, let me be the new urban mechanic, the guy who rethinks this stuff. And like most good elected leaders, he had the vision, created the office of New Urban Mechanics, and then has let it run. Thank goodness someone had the good sense to put Nicole Fichera in charge of her part.
For starters, she is in charge of the transformation of an area in Boston that is rapidly growing and has some of the most expensive real estate in the city. She's 30 years old, if that, but probably not even. She has no staff. She has no budget. She has only her energy, her ideas, and her connections. These seem to be sufficient.
By the time she showed us the sixth floor of the Dry Dock building south of the Seaport District, our tour group from the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program was tired. I was exhausted. A morning in cold Kendall Square in Cambridge followed by time in the Boston Innovation District left us all worn. Not unnourished, but worn.
There is a certain type of building that I call a Cathedral of Modernity. Perhaps it is more properly called a Cathedral to Modernity. It had an industrial use, usually built about 100 years ago. Other cities like Lawrence and Lowell are filled with them, old factories and warehouses and the like. The Dry Dock building in Boston is one such building and its essence is unmistakeable from the moment you drive up to it. Seven stories high, as long as the Prudential building is tall, it's massive and refined but not delicate. Its utilitarian design doesn't hide an elegance of simplicity. With so many large, multi-paned windows, it's an odd mixture of transparency and solid.
Back in the Second World War, tanks rolled off these lines onto waiting ships nearby. Now this space will hold MassChallenge, the startup accelerator that reeks of the new innovation economy, but also represents the massive economic change underway in Boston, Cambridge, and in cities around the country most perfectly.
The MassChallenge move into the Dry Dock is only one small part in a much larger picture of the Boston Innovation District. Mayor Tom Menino declared that this area would be an urban laboratory. Fichera, on her tour, shared some of the fascinating new concepts being working on, like the idea of shared open ground floor space. Yes, new residential buildings in the District are being asked to design with the idea of communal, open, ground floor work and meeting space. Anyone can walk in off the street, sit down on a couch, pull out a laptop and work. Anyone. This is innovative. Smart parking is also coming to the neighborhood, with sensors telling drivers where free parking spaces are, to reduce the amount of driving around the block until you find what you're looking for. It's about increasing the efficiency of the resources we already have, like lobbies and parking spaces. That's the part of the revolution in our economy that is both not new and entirely new. It's about sharing more and owning less. It's Millenial as opposed to Gen X or Gen Y. It's technological, and it's communitarian. It's about efficiency and it's about environmentalism. The amazing faith in innovation to solve problems is awe-inspiring, but also possibly naive. Regardless, the Innovation District is undeniably a radical explosion of energy and creativity by a generation that is convinced it can do. And seems to be doing.
The District calls itself an urban lab, and by the sounds of it, it is. Iterating a city as opposed to planning it is one of the radical concepts now being tested out in cities across the country. In Boston, Tom Menino deserves the credit for this. He was derided for being an urban mechanic when he was first elected. No big vision, just a fixit guy. At the end of his long tenure, he turned that around and said, let me be the new urban mechanic, the guy who rethinks this stuff. And like most good elected leaders, he had the vision, created the office of New Urban Mechanics, and then has let it run. Thank goodness someone had the good sense to put Nicole Fichera in charge of her part.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Art? Sure. Modern? Not so sure.
A recent trip to the Met in NYC left me wondering: museums still seem to insist that Picasso is the pinnacle of modern, followed closely by his acolytes and other like-minded travelers. Disclaimer - I know nothing about art. But I do know this --
Pablo Picasso painted this painting 100 years ago:
This may be an arresting image. It may still be a revolutionary image in some ways. But it is no longer new.
Pablo Picasso painted this painting 100 years ago:
 |
| The world as it looked to Picasso, back before the First World War. |
Monday, November 18, 2013
On the Waterfront.
There are some upsides to not winning an election. For the first time in my 47 years, I have seen On the Waterfront. Even the Vatican considers this a significant film. I am glad to know that my views and theirs are in line.
Brando. Brando! Even 60 years later, he's as fresh and new and revolutionary as ever. Even more so, given all the film that's happened in between now and then. The naturalness and the attention to detail are unique.
Kazan. Kazan? Who is Elia Kazan? Coward and traitor? Fighter? Neo-con? A very gifted director. That he would get in bed with HUAC offends. But life is always more complex than that. HUAC was an American Star Chamber, in a democracy no less. But according to Kazan, he'd already broken with the Communists. Faced with an unacceptable choice, he chose an unacceptable option. But no worse than the other option. Furthermore, the Communists were not just wrong, but dependent on coercion, that most pernicious of political tools. As it turns out, in the next five decades, the capitalists won the day if not the argument and have managed to break the labor movement and hollow out the middle class all at the same time.
For all the inherent brutality of the On the Waterfront world, both physical and psychological, the scenes depicted are quaint now. Not that they aren't still brutal, it's just that they no longer exist in such proximity to our world. Politically, we are different. Economically too. Find me an American city that has a dock scene like that? Maybe union politics still aren't all that different. But unions don't play the role they once did. And more to the point, our cities aren't like that anymore either. They turn not on grease but on electrons. Good, unless you try to make your money by manipulating grease.
Both the personal and the political are not just the things of drama but of life, which is why art can imitate life, but more commonly it is the other way around.
The other thing about this film is that its 1950s-ness shines through. Any urbanist will love it for its grittiness.
Today a city is pretty: a playground for the very rich or an absorber of the very poor. In the winter of 1953, people still went up on rooftops without a second thought. No health and safety regulations there. I am a nostalgist, but there is a glory in that time. Kazan's camera unintentionally captures details that tell the story of that world so well: the brick chimney with its mortar gone, brick on brick. The Empire State Building makes a cameo across the Hudson in the background. Meanwhile, the film's most famous line, one of the most famous lines in all of film, is said in one of its quietest scenes. Not some waterfront ballet scored by Leonard Bernstein but in the back of a taxi cab, one brother to another. Brando utters "I could have been a contender." We've all felt that way.
Bold, black and white, beautiful -- Story, Location, Actors -- On the Waterfront is so palpably itself. Unlike so many films, this film carries its own weight, easily.
Brando. Brando! Even 60 years later, he's as fresh and new and revolutionary as ever. Even more so, given all the film that's happened in between now and then. The naturalness and the attention to detail are unique.
Kazan. Kazan? Who is Elia Kazan? Coward and traitor? Fighter? Neo-con? A very gifted director. That he would get in bed with HUAC offends. But life is always more complex than that. HUAC was an American Star Chamber, in a democracy no less. But according to Kazan, he'd already broken with the Communists. Faced with an unacceptable choice, he chose an unacceptable option. But no worse than the other option. Furthermore, the Communists were not just wrong, but dependent on coercion, that most pernicious of political tools. As it turns out, in the next five decades, the capitalists won the day if not the argument and have managed to break the labor movement and hollow out the middle class all at the same time.
For all the inherent brutality of the On the Waterfront world, both physical and psychological, the scenes depicted are quaint now. Not that they aren't still brutal, it's just that they no longer exist in such proximity to our world. Politically, we are different. Economically too. Find me an American city that has a dock scene like that? Maybe union politics still aren't all that different. But unions don't play the role they once did. And more to the point, our cities aren't like that anymore either. They turn not on grease but on electrons. Good, unless you try to make your money by manipulating grease.
Both the personal and the political are not just the things of drama but of life, which is why art can imitate life, but more commonly it is the other way around.
The other thing about this film is that its 1950s-ness shines through. Any urbanist will love it for its grittiness.
Today a city is pretty: a playground for the very rich or an absorber of the very poor. In the winter of 1953, people still went up on rooftops without a second thought. No health and safety regulations there. I am a nostalgist, but there is a glory in that time. Kazan's camera unintentionally captures details that tell the story of that world so well: the brick chimney with its mortar gone, brick on brick. The Empire State Building makes a cameo across the Hudson in the background. Meanwhile, the film's most famous line, one of the most famous lines in all of film, is said in one of its quietest scenes. Not some waterfront ballet scored by Leonard Bernstein but in the back of a taxi cab, one brother to another. Brando utters "I could have been a contender." We've all felt that way.
Bold, black and white, beautiful -- Story, Location, Actors -- On the Waterfront is so palpably itself. Unlike so many films, this film carries its own weight, easily.
Friday, November 15, 2013
The Needed Revolution
I once heard Mitchell Silver, the former president of the
American Planning Association, say something I believe to be very very
true. Silver said that every planning
meeting, regardless of what community it’s in, takes place in a room filled
with 65 year olds, and their answer to every question is “No”. He went on "That's no way to plan."
Indeed, and what he noted about America more generally is true
in Cambridge too. A cynical pol walks
into that room, reads it correctly and exploits it. An unsuccessful pol (quod
vide) simply gets fed up with the feeling of entitled opposition and grows
dismissive of it.
It’s the odd but all too common scenario that exactly the
wrong people are in the room shaping the discussion, guiding the outcomes. None of the huge investment in Cambridge
right now is happening because of the AARP generation. None of it.
That they should be the tastemakers is an awful paradox that needs to be
upended. This latest local election is a
reflection of the start of that. The
greatest political revolution waiting to happen in Cambridge is the
generational one.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
No Middle Income Housing Without Subsidies
At a NAIOP breakfast meeting this morning, a panel looked at the housing boom in Boston. The market is strong there particularly at the high end. With the recent City Council race done here in Cambridge, it's time to look very seriously at a campaign promise that all candidates made (including myself) to create more middle income housing.
According to Steve Faber of the real estate development firm Related Beal at today's NAIOP panel, there is no way to build middle income housing in high rise construction in Boston without some subsidy. I'm going to wager that what is true in Boston is also true here in the People's Republic. So where is the subsidy going to come from?
It can come either as cash in some form, or it can be a subsidy from other market rate units, or it can come in the form of helping on the land costs. This last option is particularly interesting because Cambridge owns some land in Central Square. The parking lots that sit off of Massachusetts Avenue are the city's. It is my belief that the city should hold onto this land, and use it in the same way that MIT uses land -- long-term leases for tenants who can build on it. That way, the city doesn't relinquish the land, which would be near impossible to buy back once it was gone, and it can generate money for the city. Additionally, it will allow the city to pursue policy goals it seeks to outline, such as this middle income housing.
Of course, these are all for the next Council to deliberate. Had I been there, this is what I would be advocating for. I wish them well in their work.
According to Steve Faber of the real estate development firm Related Beal at today's NAIOP panel, there is no way to build middle income housing in high rise construction in Boston without some subsidy. I'm going to wager that what is true in Boston is also true here in the People's Republic. So where is the subsidy going to come from?
It can come either as cash in some form, or it can be a subsidy from other market rate units, or it can come in the form of helping on the land costs. This last option is particularly interesting because Cambridge owns some land in Central Square. The parking lots that sit off of Massachusetts Avenue are the city's. It is my belief that the city should hold onto this land, and use it in the same way that MIT uses land -- long-term leases for tenants who can build on it. That way, the city doesn't relinquish the land, which would be near impossible to buy back once it was gone, and it can generate money for the city. Additionally, it will allow the city to pursue policy goals it seeks to outline, such as this middle income housing.
Of course, these are all for the next Council to deliberate. Had I been there, this is what I would be advocating for. I wish them well in their work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)