Seattle: first three weeks

So,

Now we live in Seattle.

We arrived around midnight of May 23-24 after a cross-continent airplane ride with two cats in Sherpa carriers. They engaged in a back-and-forth, call-and-response symphony of meows and crankiness. It could have been worse, I suppose, but I was somewhat concerned when I noticed that one of them was foaming slightly at the mouth near the end of the trip.

All is well. The cats actually look very happy in the new place and seem to be digging the change in weather as much as I am.

Here are some initial observations based on a few weeks of living here. Of course, I reserve the right to change my tune after more time has passed and to deem all these as the naive observations of a new resident.

The "Nice" Factor
I can guess that Seattleites may be tired of hearing this all the time, but it is quite striking how personable, chatty and helpful people are to each other despite being complete strangers. I often find myself in that odd mental state where I am not certain if I am engaging with someone who has some ulterior motive and is about to con me or if I am being regaled with authentic good intentions. Luckily, L. works in the restaurant industry. She can handle these overtures much better than I - I tend to mumble, grumble and change colors to meld into the background...much like an octopus.

That said, I do appreciate this trend when it comes to dealing with, say, public transportation or city services. When the bus drivers wait for people to catch the bus even though they are 1/2 block away or will spend 2 minutes of their time giving directions or helping people figure out the transportation system, you know you are not in SEPTAland (Philly) anymore.

That said, I like this description of the "Seattle Nice" factor:

...a chilly Scandinavian undertow continues to tug at the soul of the city.

"Strangers when they first arrive say this is quite a friendly town," Raban said. "They don't realize that the good manners are usually more of a protective barrier than an invitation to intimacy."

Crosswalks and Cars

People obey the "Walk/Don't Walk" signals here. Apparently this is the result of actual enforcement of jaywalking laws and stiff fines; but it seems to stem from something more fundamental -- a respect for some kind of civic order.

In Philly, crossing the street (whether you had the right of way or not) always involves being sensitive to a matrix of observations, expectations and behavior. In other words, assume you will get run over no matter what. In Seattle, there have been dozens of times where we've done the pedestrian mambo with a car that is trying to turn a corner or coming out of some garage....

Look..shuffle a little...pause...Look...evaluate...shuffle a little...pause...Look...evaluate......

During this sequence, cars stay still and their drivers look at you with benevolence. Cars here will wait and not move until your pedestrian rights and privileges are exercised to their fullest. We must look like neurotic chipmunks.

Here, take a look at this article on the "Seattle Freeze" -- apparently this post is not that original and my newcomer's syndrome has already been pinned and mounted for study.

Weather
So far, it has been about 10-30 degrees cooler in Seattle than in Philly...I've been checking the weather reports...that's what I do. Combine this with maritime features that I love, and I'm abuzz with happy chemicals: breezy, quick moving and low altitude clouds, misty sprinkles, dark clouds that contrast with aquamarine colored skies....you get the picture.

Neighborhood and Seattle Growth
We live in Belltown -- this was an area that used to be a desolate extension of the downtown area that was filled with drug dealing and decrepit buildings. Over the decades, it evolved into a fringe area where artists and musicians emerged and shared the area with the drug culture and is now a condo-happy neighborhood with galleries, restaurants, nightclubs, etc. You know, the usual urban revitalization story...with some differences.

There are still drug dealers around and some kind of equilibrium has been reached between the better-off newer residents and the druggie/hobo presence. Well, there seems to be equilibrium on the streets, but there have been noises about "cleaning up the neighborhood" as more people of my general ilk move here.

Seattle (city) is expected to grow from ~570,000 to about ~600,000 in the next 5 years or so. That whopping growth rate has spurred condo developments all over town -- most notably in the South Lake Union area. At the moment, South Lake Union looks like Berlin in the early nineties -- construction cranes everywhere. Belltown and South Lake Union have managed to remain "low altitude" when it comes to construction. This allows, among other things, a clear view of the Space Needle. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 5+ years. We'll probably be one of those sparking demand for such construction in the next few years.

OK, that's it for now. So much to write about but I do not want to create a wall of text.

En Route...

More to come at a later date.

Philadelphia Construction: The Skinny

The folks at Philadelphiaskyline.com have been much more industrious when it comes to keeping up with the state of new construction projects in the city than I have. Take a look at their compendium of projects in The Skinny.

I covers most projects ranging from residential construction, cultural projects, transit projects etc. A good resource.

Philadelphia: an ephemeral city?

Interesting article positing a developing trend in major urban centers around the world:

The Rise of the Ephemeral City

About Philadelphia:

In places like Philadelphia, these central areas serve as "Potemkin cities" that persuade outsiders and suburbanites that the city is still habitable and worth visiting. But those who study the urban condition understand the limitations of this strategy. "Downtown has done great, but it does not represent the rest of Philadelphia," Gyourko says. "That's our story--a bright spot where fundamental decline is still in play."

This link came to me via Peter Merholz's blog.

Poked out of my hiatus

Well,

I have neglected this place for a while but have been prodded by a recent flood of comments to two entries about Philadelphia:

• Future Philadelphia Skyscrapers?
• Philadelphia Public Transit in Trouble

Not surprising given the recent news that Comcast will be proceeding with building its national HQ in Center City Philadelphia with, what will be, the tallest tower in the city and the news that SEPTA has been given some stop-gap funding to prevent huge fare increases and substantial reductions in service.

Alright, I have been shamed by the readers who are more willing to post here than I have been. I will re-energize this place.  Thanks.

The Urban Archipelago

From the editors of The Stranger in Seattle:

The Urban Archipelago

I am not in agreement with significant portions of their manifesto and a lot of it is chock-full of excessive rhetorical flourishes -- but it certainly feeds that part of my soul that is a bit pissed off.

Excerpts:

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American popuation chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000. The future success of liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist agenda may not be a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new Democratic majority.

These, of course, are broad strokes. We all know that not everyone who lives in the suburbs is a raving neo-Christian idiot. The raving neo-Christian idiots are winning, however, so we need to take the fight to them. In this case, the fight is largely spiritual; it consists of embracing the reality that urban life and urban values are the only sustainable response to the modern age of holy war, environmental degradation, and global conflict. More important, it consists of rejecting the impulse to apologize for living in a society that prizes values like liberalism, pluralism, education, and facts. It's time for the Democratic Party to stop pandering to bovine, non-urban America. You don't apologize for being right--especially when you're at war.

| Robert J. Vanderbei's Electoral Map Variations |

Last Day in Paris

Well,

I thought I'd post some photos, but I forgot to bring the camera's battery with me. No big loss since I was not in the mood for photography after all.

I will return to Philadelphia tomorrow and the last day here has the same emotional tones as the hours after the last Morrissey concert I saw in Chicago last month.

Here is a list of a few spots / moments that linger in the mind from the last two weeks:

• The Pause Café on the corner of Rue de Charonne and Rue Keller. A great spot to linger over coffee for hours and then slipping into dinner time as the crowd begins to fill in. It also had a role in the film When The Cat's Away - which I recommend highly. To make matters more interesting, I bumped into the actor who played Djamel in that film: Zinedine Soualem.
• An interesting choice of films shown on French television stations before and after the U.S. elections (such as Johnny Got His Gun and Wag The Dog) and the disbelief over the results of the elections. The general mood over here is that the U.S. population seems to be more religious and moralistic than initially thought and that the European Union now has the clear duty to become a "counterweight" to the U.S. for years to come.
• Paris-St. Germain's miraculous (and undeserved) comeback to win 3-2 over Olympique de Marseilles after being down 0-2.
• The discovery that Café Orbital no longer exists. The discovery of Café du Commerce in the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood offering free WiFi.
• Finished three books during my stay: Saint Morrissey, Wittgenstein's Poker and The Philosopher's Dog.

This trip was dominated, unlike previous ones, by staying put and letting the hours slide by slowly rather than walking all over the place.

In Paris

I have been in Paris since Oct. 29 and will be here until Nov. 13. I'll try to post some photos as soon as I begin taking them and slurping them into the blog via some kind of Internet connection. Right now, I am piggy-backing on someone's open wireless connection from within the apartment I rented at Rue Crillon, near the Marais and Bastille.

Until the photos come in, here are a few of the highlights up to now:

A good plate of roasted meats at the L' A.O.C. restaurant on R. des Fossés St-Bernard in the 5th

Saw "East of Eden" (dir. Elia Kazan) for the first time at the Le Grand Action cinema on R. des Ecoles, also in the 5th. Good thing I saw this since I just finished the book "Saint Morrissey" by Mark Simpson and he discusses Morrissey's obsession with James Dean.

Met an old college friend (whom I had not seen for about 7 years) and his wife, David and P.Y., and we strolled about the Marais. We had wine and cheese at the Petit Fer à Cheval and dinner at Cafe de L'Industrie - the latter in the 11th.

Visited La Défense for the first time in about four trips -- my initial intuitions were correct: not a very compelling place unless you are curious to study large-scale, monumental corporate projects and architecture.

Tonight, I'm planning on seeing Pedro Almodovar's "La Mala Educación" at the L'Entrepot -- a great cinema, culture house, bar/lounge thingy.

Well, that will do for now. I don't know how long I have before the free wifi is pulled from under my feet.

By Eric, 08:55 AM in Cities, Food and Drink, Travel

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September 24, 2004

Seattle Album

I have made a selection of photographs from a recent trip to Seattle available as a photo album. You can find it in the right-hand column or here.

By Eric, 10:31 AM in Cities, Photography, Travel

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September 21, 2004

Seattle

Just came back from a long weekend in Seattle with Laura. We visited the following neighborhoods:

• Downtown
• Pioneer Square District
• Belltown
• Capitol Hill
• Ballard
• Fremont
• Wallingford
• Lake Union area (Montlake/Eastlake)

The aesthetic appeal of the city involves the transitions between a dense, skyscraper-heavy hub and the lush, watery neighborhoods around it. High-rises and high-density housing blocks concentrate, for the most part, around the Downtown, Belltown and Capitol Hill neighborhoods. Significant portions of the other neighborhoods have higher concentrations of low-elevation homes designed in a "mild" modernist style.

This offers residents a smooth shift between a highly urbanized visual experience and a less hectic and greener experience without having to travel "out" to the suburbanized areas. The greener areas of Seattle do not have the traditional suburban features (i.e., sprawled clusters of homes, roads leading to shopping hubs, reliance on traffic arteries). These neighborhoods are surrounded by northwestern greenery, but homes within them do not have large tracts of empty land isolating them from other homes. Modernist homes and bungalows lie close to each other but their privacy and individuality are conserved by the lushness around them.

Of course, this is an initial impression gathered from a four day visit and selective sampling of the neighborhoods. Other parts of Seattle will not fit this description (e.g., industrial South Seattle and certain spots in Ballard); but I think this description captures the essence of what was appealing about Seattle.

While I was there, Forbes Magazine released a list of the Most Overpriced Places of 2004 and Seattle came in as #1. In a nutshell, their reasoning boils down to the claim that "the cost of living and housing is not proportionate to the job and income growth in the area." A scan of real estate listings revealed that rentals are about 10-20% cheaper than in Philadelphia while the sales market was comparable (perhaps slightly higher). Given that I am mulling over a potential move and that Seattle is a prime candidate, I must admit that I did not sense it as overpriced -- though that may change if I know more about the typical salaries in the area and whether the homes in the removed islands and uber-wealthy regions are outrageously priced.

I shall post a Seattle photo album shortly.

By Eric, 11:56 AM in Architecture, Cities, Travel, Urbanism

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May 14, 2004

Skyscrapers, Thesaurus and GWB

Alright, alright...

...I should be more diligent with my posting. In the meantime, here are some fresh links to some noteworthy places:

The Skyscraper Museum's Web Projects: Includes Flash interfaces mapping the Manhattan skyline and its transformations through time.

Visual Thesaurus: hours and hours of fun with language. A trial version of ThinkMap's spidery thesaurus.

Whitehouse.org: Just go and visit.

More writing and less link listings in the future, I promise (or is that, "threaten").

By Eric, 06:44 AM in Architecture, Cities, Politics, Web/Tech

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December 28, 2003

Chomsky on Suburbanization

Chomsky usually is careful not to appeal to conspiracies since his detractors tend to describe many of his views as conspiracy theories and, thus, try to discredit the views. He usually replies that what he is describing is the cultural and institutional inertia of capitalist and governmental institutions. It is the ingrained culture and framework of presuppositions that lead to problematic behavior and not necessarily an agreed conspiracy among the powerful.

That said, it was with a bit of a disappointment that I read his views on suburbanization. He appeals to a conspiracy explicitly.

...take the fact that so many people live in the suburbs and everybody has to drive their own car everywhere. Was that the result of a "free market"? No, it was because the U.S. government carried out a massive social-engineering project in the 1950s to destroy the public transportation system in favor of expanding a highly inefficient system based on cars and airplanes -- because that's what benefits big industry. It started with corporate conspiracies to buy up and eliminate streetcar systems, and then continued with huge public subsidies to build the highway systems and encourage an extremely inefficient and environmentally destructive alternative. That's what led to the suburbanization of the country -- so you get huge shopping malls in the suburbs, and devastation in the inner cities.

Noam Chomsky; Understanding Power; p.256

Keep in mind that this is a transcript of an off-the-cuff talk he gave in the early 1990's and, as such, his simplification could, perhaps, be excused. The passage does have a footnote dedicated to justifying the accusation of "conspiracy".

I'm close to finishing the book, so I'll post a critical analysis sometime in the near future.

By Eric, 09:14 AM in Books, Cities, Urbanism

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November 01, 2003

Cafe Orbital

OK, found a decent Internet cafe that allows me to work with and upload photos. It is called Cafe Orbital -- right across from the Jardin de Luxembourg on Rue de Medicis.

I took some photos just to have some in the arsenal in case I bumped into a good Internet cafe. You can find them within the Paris Photo Album.

By Eric, 09:07 AM in Cities, Photography, Travel

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In Paris...

As some of you know, I will be spending the next 12 days or so in Paris. I plan on posting some notes every other day or so, depending on whether I find convenient Internet access points. If all goes well, I may post photos as well. In fact, I'd prefer photo-dominant posts, but that will depend on whether I can find Internet cafes that let me hook up the Powerbook.

Joe at Petit 4 has given me a small mission: take photos of his competition - sweet delicacies in Parisian patisseries. If anyone else has a special mission for me, let me know.

So far today, I've walked through the Bastille area, Ave. Ledru-Rollin, up to Rue Oberkampf and am currently in an Internet access shop on Rue Menilmontant in Belleville.

| Belleville-Menilmontant | Rue Oberkampf |

By Eric, 04:41 AM in Cities, Travel

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January 29, 2003

In The Metro

I am in the process of reading "In the Metro" by Marc Auge. It is a small book where he muses about his experiences in the Paris Metro and engages in "ethnography" of its population.

There is an interesting bit about the tendency to give stations the name of some historic figure (e.g., "Charles de Gaulle - Etoile") or of some famous feature of the area (e.g., "Bastille"). Perhaps those in charge of naming such stations believed that the names would foment an appreciation of the history of the city or an appreciation of the unique places of the city. Being confronted with those names on a daily basis as one moves from one point to another might cause further reflection about Charles de Gaulle's contribution to France, for instance.

Auge, however, notes that the effort to increase civic knowledge and pride by naming subway stations in this manner actually may have the opposite effect. Think of the times you have coursed through a public transportation system and looked at maps and signs to orient yourself. Perhaps, during your first encounter with these names, you may have had some sustained thoughts about their referents. As time passes and familiarity with the transportation system increases, however, the names lose that historical/regional reference and they simply become scribbles and/or noises referring to that stop where the dentist's office is.

Sure. This is a generalization -- but there is some truth to it. Yet, Auge does not condemn people for losing hold of the original referents of those terms. Oddly enough, losing touch of the historic or regional referents of those names and creating your own idiosyncratic associations with those names is part of the process of becoming a full-fledged member of the urban community you are in.

Auge asks you to think of times when you are commuting in your subway system and you witness a tourist near you. The tourist glances out of the window at the station you are in, smiles and says with a sigh "Ah, the Bastille." It is at those moments when you set aside your primary associations (e.g., the place where my dentist is, good bookstore a block away, crappy coffee) and recall the grander intent of the subway planners.

It is a nice discussion and there are several other incisive observations about our relationship to our subway systems ranging from the complicity we feel travelling to mass events (e.g., sports events, political rallies) to the highly personal, almost Proustian memories that specific subway stations trigger in us.

| In the Metro by Marc Auge | The Subway Page: Links to Subway Maps from around the world |

By Eric, 08:35 AM in Books, Cities, Urbanism

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January 06, 2003

The Flâneur

Let's start with a discussion of what it means to be a flâneur. A simple definition would be "one who strolls aimlessly through urban spaces." Often, being a flâneur is associated with idleness and with the decadent luxury of having enough time to take those meandering strolls.

Though the original use of the term might have applied to folks that were decadent dilettantes with plenty of idle time, several writers, theorists and philosophers have appropriated the term and have used it to refer to a more complex activity. Walter Benjamin, in particular, has done the most to bolster the meaning of the term. Instead of assuming that those who have the time to wander aimlessly through urban landscapes are only engaged in a cursory and leisurely survey of their environment, Benjamin brought attention to the cognitive value and pleasures associated with urban strolling.

A flâneur, under this interpretation, becomes an active sociologist or reader of the environment around him or her. As urban landscapes become more dense and the architecture more complex, opportunities to observe and interpret events and objects have increased in number and complexity. Unfortunately, this has occurred in tandem with accelerated industrialization and the entrechment of the capitalist work-ethic. More often than not, we spend time in our cities commuting to and from our work places; too preoccupied or tired to take note of the visual complexities around us. We rarely have time to pause and admire small details in the architecture or to pursue a reverie caused by some stranger's facial expression. Our workplaces have also become barren environments where, more often than not, visual complexity has been replaced by monotony -- all in the name of economic efficiency (i.e., cubicles).

This lack of engagement is worrisome since we are not exercising our cognitive skills to read our environment. Whether it is the result of the pressures of commuting, of our inane habit of completing errands at break-neck speeds or of simple laziness, our visual intelligence is becoming rusty. Whether it should be deemed an aesthetic and/or political movement, it is time to rekindle our abilities to engage actively with our immediate environment and resist the tendency to let it pass unnoticed as the rythmic swaying of our bus or train lulls us into a stupor.

“The street becomes a dwelling for the flâneur; he is as much at home among the facades of houses as a citizen in his four walls. To him the shiny, enamelled signs of business are at least as good a wall ornament as an oil painting is to a bourgeois in his salon. The walls are the desk against which he presses his notebooks; newsstands are his libraries and the terraces of cafés are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done.” ––– Walter Benjamin, “The Flâneur”

| Flâneur, Fall 2002 | The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin | v-2.org |

By Eric, 07:31 AM in Books, Cities, Urbanism

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