Elliptic Blog

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.

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.

What's cooking...

Here is a quick recap of some of the events and items capturing my attention these past few weeks:

Flickr
Opened an account in Flickr and placed a photo feed on Elliptic (see the right-sidebar). This will allow me to keep a frequent feed of photos rather than only creating albums every so often. Flickr is an interesting site for many reasons - I've already discussed one of them.

"Home"
My old college friends, Matt and Jen, have made a film that is curently touring the film festival circuit. In true independent (read: financially-strapped) spirit, I was an actor, cameraman, boom operator, lighting monkey and associate producer (among other things). Now if I could only get my act together and assemble a crew to do my own script.

Philadelphia Film Festival
Here is an initial list of films I am planning to view:

• 5 x 2: Five Times Two  dir. Francois Ozon
• Ma Mere  dir. Christophe Honore
• Lonesome Jim  dir. Steve Buscemi
• Clean  dir. Olivier Assayas
• Kings and Queen  dir. Arnaud Desplechin

Philadelphia Bloggers cont.

Since I have been such a slacker at keeping the blog updated, I though I'd post a fresh list of Philadelphia bloggers to keep you occupied until I get my act together.

• A Smoke-Filled Room
  
• Fables of the Reconstruction
• artblog
• Blankbaby
• PhillyLunchBox

Not too sound completely self-obsessed, but I promise to spark this blog up a bit in the near future.

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 |

Philadelphia Public Transit in Trouble

Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has announced that it will be forced to:

• Eliminate all weekend service,
  
• Increase fares an average of 25 percent, and
  
• Fire 16 percent of its empoyees,

by January 1, 2005 if the state legislature does not increase its funding to cover a $62 million deficit.

See "SEPTA warns of deep cuts" in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Though I am not privy to the details of SEPTA's operations and budget, I believe they have a serious perception problem to address. SEPTA operates two urban subway lines, a citywide bus and trolley system, eight regional rail routes and one regional high-speed rail line.

The frequency of service does not compare to the frequency offered in other cities with a similar or smaller population number (think Boston or San Francisco). Stations and busses are often dirty, in disrepair and in dire need of renovations.

It is a mystery how a public transit system that is not as active in its service timetables and in its renovation initiatives as other cities can be is in such financial straits.

In a nutshell, the poor quality of SEPTA's service and facilities paired with the fact that its fares rank consistently among the top 3 in the nation makes one wonder whether a serious amount of mismanagement is occurring.

Granted, perhaps it is the case that SEPTA does not receive an adequate amount of state and/or national support. I do not know -- I will research and post what I can find.

Update
From Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers:

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania funds transit in a vastly different way from other states: (1) There is no single adequate, reliable funding source for public transit, (2) Transit agencies must recover half of all costs from their fare box. This has meant years of service cuts and higher fares.

Without reasonable increases in operating support from the Commonwealth, transit in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in the Commonwealth, is being pushed into a descending spiral of service reductions, fare increases and loss of ridership. For six of the past nine years, the state has not increased subsidies for public transportation; as little as three-percent increase per year would have avoided the crisis public transportation is now facing.

Regardless of whether SEPTA is bailed out or not, the city, state and national agencies need to clamp down on SEPTA and consider a serious overhaul of its operations.

Or so goes the perception of a disgruntled rider.

| Save Transit Coalition |
| Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers |
| Phillyblog Discussion Forum |
| Pennsylvania Senate Bill #1162 (PDF) - for the establishment of dedicated funding to public transportation systems |

Alternative Political Parties

After a screening of "The Corporation," someone approached me asking to sign a petition to include Green Party candidates in the Pennsylvania ballot this November. The Green Party candidates would include three state offices and their presidential candidate. I signed the petition.

A great friend of mine expressed his disappointment at my choice and even though we have not had a chance to discuss it, I wanted to solidify my thoughts. So you, dear reader, get to endure the initial rough draft.

The groundwork:

1. I will vote for John Kerry this November.
2. I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000.
3. I despise what the George W. Bush administration has wrought.
4. I believe that an increased plurality of parties and options on our ballots is, for the most part, a good thing in the long-run
5. Ralph Nader is not the presidential candidate for the Green Party this election.

View 1:

Allowing alternative parties to have a presence in the ballot is tantamount to allowing the possibility of votes moving away from John Kerry and Democrat candidates. This shift in votes presents the clear and present danger of tipping an important state toward George W. Bush and toward Republican candidates for other offices.

There has been no wider chasm, in my lifetime, between voting for the Democratic and Republican parties. The infestation of certain policies and views into government agencies and courts has had and will have an impact on government policy for years to come.

Because of this, it is wiser to put aside more theoretical views endorsing an increased plurality of parties in the long-term and choose the more pragmatic, immediate need of supporting the party that has the best chance of dislodging the present, despicable administration. A stronger formulation: it is irresponsible to make it easier for the present administration to rule another four years and continue placing their policies into our government agencies and courts.

See, for instance, The Nader Factor: a site founded by "a group of Democratic strategists" dedicated to winning over "Nader Democrats," according to the Washington Post.

View 2:

A central tenet of democratic principles includes providing access to as many government options as supported by a society. In order for an option to be viable in a democratic process, it is acceptable to require a minimal threshold of support to be met for such an option to be available to the entire populace (thus the petition signing drives).

If non-traditional parties ask for support to be considered an option during an election, authentic adherence to democratic (little "d") principles should lead one to, at the very least, consider whether that party's platform should be available for evaluation and selection during an election. Choosing to support a party's access to a ballot should not be confused, obviously, with choosing that party during an election.

Even if the presence of those parties creates the possibility of eroding support for the party one supports, principled adherence to democratic principles should lead one to risk that possibility. After all, one should support giving voice to sectors of the populace and the minimal threshold has been met.

The presence of these options should make the political discourse richer -- traditional parties are now pressured to evaluate the positions of those additional parties and choose to incorporate them or offer their own explanations of why and how they differ from those views. The electorate receives an improved spectrum of discourse. Well, one would hope!

My view:

Of course, there are more than those two views and you are welcome to add subtleties and variations I chose to omit. My view is very close to View 2.

I wrestle with View 1 all the time and I do have retrospective regrets for having chosen Nader in 2000. However, this particular case is different. The distinction is between allowing options on the ballot and choosing the option in the ballot that weakens the party that has the best chance to remove George W. Bush.

Is endorsing more theoretical, foundational democratic principles a naive, dangerous position given the contrast between Democrats and Republicans in 2004? I do not think it is naive, but it is dangerous. But this danger is inherent to any system where you allow the populace to decide what people and principles will guide a society.

If the presence of these parties in the ballot results in a GWB victory, I will feel awful. But I will not target the alternative parties as the source of the catastrophe. I will look first at the failure of the Democratic party to appeal to this growing dissatisfaction in the populace and I will look at the electorate's poor judgment. However, I will not regret allowing the options to exercise this judgment to be present in the ballots.

Political Pragmatism:

Some may say that an adherence to abstract and vague "foundational democratic principles" have to be put on hold when the effects of such adherence will have a pivotal impact on whether we will have a better, more humane and sensitive party in power. The pragmatic pull is a strong one and it has swayed me to vote for Kerry.

This pragmatic pull, however, does not sway me when it comes to ballot accessibility by legitimate parties that are trying to meet the threshold lawfully.

Tough cases?:

Case 1: Well, given your principles, would you sign a petition asking for ballot access to the Nazi Party of the U.S.A.?

No. The difference lies in the fact that such parties have platforms that run counter to fundamental democratic and human right principles. There is no contradiction in not choosing to support their presence in a ballot. If they manage to meet the required threshold for presence in ballots, then I worry about the kinds of people in my society.

Perhaps this tough case is a bit of a straw man -- it will get more difficult with less extreme cases that are despicable yet where it is not immediately evident that they violate fundamental democratic and human right principles. Can anyone think of less extreme cases?

Case 2: Some reports have suggested that activists from some alternative political parties have been presenting their petitions as voter registration drives, covering up the language in the petition that makes it clear that it is a petition to give the party presence in state ballots.

| Dems challenging Nader's bid in Pa. |

Despicable behavior that must trigger investigations to determine whether this is party sanctioned behavior or horrible tactics by foot soldiers. If true, either way, those parties should be sanctioned. Though I must admit that I am undecided whether the sanctions should include something as severe as removal of the party from the ballots. Without a doubt, the fraudulent signature should not count toward that end.

-----

If you have other tough cases, please feel free to set them out. There may be tougher ones I have not thought of.

So, given that I have often told people that I am an "apolitical" being and that a central tenet of Elliptic Blog is to pursue "economy of oral or written expression," I seem to have run counter to those statements. I guess I have changed.

Thanks for enduring this.

| Public Agenda |
| League of Women Voter's Democracy.net |
| CNN's "The Issues" - for what that's worth |

Philadelphia's Center City Demographics, continued

The Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation have made available another report that presents a wealth of demographic, economic and cultural information about Center City Philadelphia.

Here is a sample of some of the illustrations / charts in the reports to give you a sense of what to expect:

| State of Center City 2004 (PDF) |
| Philadelphia's Center City Demographics - Elliptic Blog posting; 1/1/2004 |