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1. At a farm in San Juan Capistrano, the one lucky disabled visitor gets a nice little pad of concrete while everyone else parks in the dirt.
2. At a church in Eagle Rock, the disabled get a shady wood canopy while the rest of the cars bake in the sun during morning services.
3. (This is not a parking stall, but still…) At the Hollywood Bowl, a special turn-out area for wheelchair users to avoid getting trampled by the concert-going crowds.

A recent trip up to Northern California allowed me time and space to see San Francisco – a favorite of urbanites across the country – with fresh and more benevolent eyes.

The visit actually began with a 24-hour stop in San Jose, which proved to be a useful comparison for its cousin (very distant cousin – maybe even two or three times removed) to the north. I don’t claim to know much about its history or current economy, but it seemed to me that present-day San Jose was like a hypothetical offspring that resulted when a city planner and real estate developer got together and had a baby. It had all the right pieces – the large high-value single family homes, the campuses of tech companies teaming with well-salaried young professionals, a lovely pedestrian-scaled downtown dotted with clothing boutiques and crepe restaurants topped with glass luxury condos, large public parks and civic plazas, and a sleek transit system to tie it all together. Yet it remained a worthy subject of the old question, “If you build it, will they come?” Because on that bright spring Saturday afternoon, there were no people.

So while San Jose felt as sterile as a semi-conductor chip, San Francisco was a welcome burst of authenticity.

Cities tend to get better with age. Sure, they have some rusty spots and maybe start to smell a little funny, but the best kind of old cities are the sort that aren’t self-conscious about these things, the kind that don’t act old. I recall writing many years ago about New York City as this type of place – a city that’s old without drawing attention to that fact (unlike Boston, for example), totally comfortable in its skin. San Francisco is also one of these. The urban landscape has a nice patina – the kind that says “we were here before you were even born” but can still relate to the 21^st century. A grandma with an ipad.

San Francisco is unashamed of itself in general. It is what it is – and doesn’t seem to be trying to be anyplace else. Houses are painted according to the owners’ whim. Sure, sometimes beige but (neighborhood covenants and design guidelines be damned) also hot pink, butter yellow, periwinkle blue. (Makes me wonder – is this what other cities might look like if everyone acted themselves and had their own way? Would letting our guts hang out on our building facades result in a more colorful, interesting city?) This free-loving culture of the San Franciscans is reflected in built form, and I found this honesty refreshing.

My travel companion and I also noticed a richness in the city that seemed to result from a layering effect. For one, the natural topography of the city allowed for a constant comparison of juxtaposition of foreground, middle-ground, and background at nearly every vantage point. Even while you were part of what’s happening on the ground, you feel part of the neighborhood around and still greater a sense of connection to the rest of the city beyond. The transportation system within the city also had a thickness to it, as within most neighborhoods people were noticeably getting around on every mode, from automobiles and trains to buses, trolleys, mopeds, bicycles, and feet. However narrow, hilly or highway-like, the streets accommodated all of these.

In keeping with its hippie/beatnik/pioneering reputation, San Francisco is also leading the way in sustainable neighborhood planning and eco-conscious living. Between the commonplace Vespa scooters, mandated composting, and volunteer neighborhood cleanups, “green” is truly cool there. The psychology of the residents is so different that the counter-culture is actually the culture. Thanks to a pit-stop in a downtown SF office building, I had the opportunity of using a dual-flush toilet for the first time (it works, by the way.)

I’ve always had something against San Francisco. It was that city up there that everyone down here wanted to be. The better Californian city – to some, even the real one. As a serious Los Angeles devotee, I resented this and consequently shut the place out of my thoughts. No need to spend all our time staring at the prettier sister, I thought; we need to focus on our work here. After this experience I still don’t think we need to be playing copy-cat, but I admit San Francisco definitely is a nice place to be.

[click image for larger view]

[click here to view other entries for the GOOD magazine infographic contest in which this was entered]

left / sauerbruch+hutton building . waffle . computer chip
right / wuhan, china . barcelona, spain . foshan, china

Culture and demographics have a noticeable – and potentially powerful – relationship with sustainability. Where most middle class white people have to be convinced by countless marketing campaigns (or required by city codes) to conserve energy, reduce waste, and be water wise, it seems like minority populations are already ahead of the game and have been doing this sort of thing for ages.

I will not neglect the fact that this likely stems out of basic needs and frugality. An eco-conscious lifestyle, when done correctly, costs less, and the majority often does not have an urgency to change their behaviour for financial reasons. But it’s also related to where people come from – cultural norms, levels of tolerance, indigenous technologies, etc.  For example, those who have immigrated from different climates have different levels of thermal comfort. Thus, the tipping point for A/C usage among households in a diverse city as LA varies, and consequently so do energy bills and carbon footprints.

I believe the affinity between certain population groups and sustainability also lies in the relationship between people and the earth. While many of us struggle to do good by stepping out of LEED certified condos and driving hybrid cars to Whole Foods for organic produce placed in reusable canvas bags – an experience very disengaged from the actual desire to care for the environment – the rest do not experience such difficulty. They seem to know how to live close to the ground, physically, mentally, and sometimes spiritually, and in that way can more easily and directly care for the earth. Whether it’s incorporating a native landscape tradition into the front yard, reusing food and drink containers for storage, or hanging the laundry out to dry, their actions are less commercialized and therefore feel more authentic.

I’ll end this thought with an exhortation: Just as I am looking to Los Angeles, an often underestimated city, to stand up and lead the rest in terms of urban innovation, I want to see minorities (and, even greater, third-world countries) step up as leaders of the eco-movement. They need to share more widely their ideas and technologies, even if they sometimes seem a bit old-fashioned, low-tech, or “ghetto.” Everyone else, instead of focusing on building new “green” policies and rating systems, should take time to look and listen.

Photos Above
Right / Drought-tolerant planting in a front yard in South LA. Reflective of cultural heritage and arguably more lush and beautiful.
Left / Pretty but very water-hungry landscape in a less diverse part of LA.

Are all suburbs the same? Or is the loathing of single-family subdivisions linked more to a particular architectural style than the development pattern or density?

As unfortunate as the results may be, people are attracted to sameness. Whether regarding design, flavors, even ethnicity, people generally prefer the stability and predictability offered by more of the same. Once while I was on a gondola ride through the canals of Naples, Long Beach (a 60′s designed community comprised of upscale custom homes fronting man-made waterways) the other passengers and I were amusing ourselves by pointing to which houses we liked best – the old Victorian, the over-the-top Tuscan villa – when a friend pointed to a particularly odd-shaped modernist structure with a glass curtainwall and confidently stated, “I don’t like that one. It’s so different!”

Of course many do know the value of diversity in architecture, and see that the depth of experience in great cities is partly due to the eclecticism of its architecture (and conversely, a dearth of urban delight often stems from a homogenous architectural environment.)

Still, it somehow it seems okay to be presented with repeating facades and rooflines of cookie-cutter buildings when the resulting cookie is good architecture. At least to this So Cal eye, accustomed to the typical cheap stucco, beige-on-beige style of many new single-family developments, the subdivisions of rustic wood lodges in Park City are not only tolerable, but pleasant. Surprisingly, I didnt find myself cringing at their names – Sun Peak, The Meadows – even though they were as false-sounding as their Orange County equivalents (Rolling Hills, Whispering Creek, Quail Run…) Perhaps there is a level of forgiveness when in foreign territory, or maybe it was the way the the snow-capped roofs of these homes, all likely permutations of the same floorplan, harmonized together as they became a texture on the landscape. Maybe there is a beauty in sameness.

Google has already updated their aerial imagery of Port au Prince,  Haiti since last week’s city-crumbling and life-stealing earthquake.  Quite chilling, actually. Only a few days ago, curious about the nature of this place I took a  tour of its streets and squares using Google Maps. A typical bustling  third-world capital.

Checking back in today I immediately noticed something was drastically  different. Instead of thousands of cars lining the streets, there were thousands of tents set up in the parks, squares, and football fields. The National Palace – recently standing dominant and erect over the surrounding fine-grain neighborhoods – was noticeably crushed. Huge dark grey clouds covered the area – presumably nothing to do with a incoming rainstorm bringing  water from the sky but instead reflective of demolished structures emitting dust and ash up into the air.

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click for a closer look

1. Haiti Last Week
2. Haiti Today

What will be Haiti’s tomorrow?

A brief business trip a few years ago deposited me in Portland, Oregon. These were my immediate impressions:

For the past few years this Pacific Northwest outpost has been touted as a model city amon urban planners. Consequently it became a city of great expectations – great expectations that were quietly fulfilled. Downtown was a sort of urban utopia — cheap parking rates, almost eerie lack of traffic, clean narrow streets with nostalgic streetcars and futuristic electric trams criss-crossing the districts, old historic buildings rising up from perfectly proportioned square city blocks. Oh, and it seemed there is no “bad” part of town. Portlandians say that there once was –- the now famous Pearl District -– but this neighborhood has since been swept up, sanitized, and built out with luxury condos like a savvy Monopoly player’s Pennsylvania Avenue. Crime and homelessness, typical ingredients in the urban experience,  seemed conspicuously missing from conversation, as were air and water pollution. Of course, this is a biased account resulting from a mere 36 hour glide through the city. Still, it leaves me wondering, what’s Portland’s secret? Not the secret to successful urban planning – one might look for that in publications or policy papers – but what is the city’s  deep dark secret hiding behind this facade of perfection?

A more recent article continues some of my thoughts, and possibly sheds light on my questions:

“….“progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.”

“The relative lack of diversity in places like Portland raises some tough questions the perennially PC urban boosters might not want to answer. For example, how can a city define itself as diverse or progressive while lacking in African Americans, the traditional sine qua non of diversity, and often in immigrants as well?”

– “The White City,” newgeography.com. click here to read more.

Could it be true that I couldn’t see a “dark” side of Portland because it literally wasn’t there, or was the white was too bright and blinding?

My favorite films of the year all had memorable stories and performances, but many nestled in my mind even more because of the new places they took me and the fresh ways they presented places I thought I already knew.

1. Summer Hours – This realistic, gentle yet poignant family drama was set mostly on the property of a time-worn summer cottage in the French countryside. The eclectic (and artistic) decor of the interior, the wild, overgrown landscaping and trees, and the ease in which the characters sat in the simple outdoor furniture as the housemaid pulled roasts and quiche from the old gas oven made enviable the idea of owning a second home in rural Europe. And the story prompted the viewer to question, is a place still the same when all its contents and occupants have been removed, or can it live on with a soul of its own?

2. Tokyo Sonata – Another film centered on changing family dynamics, though instead of taking place on a sprawling property it gave us a glimpse into modern middle-class Japanese living in a tidy multi-level apartment where you can sneak in from a upper-story window without your wife seeing you. This film also showed me sides of Tokyo I never thought existed in the hyperdense metropolis – like a shopping mall surrounded by a massive surface parking lot, and a beach complete with crashing waves and sand.

3. (500) Days of Summer – This was a story of a boy and a girl…and a city that made the various moments in their relationship as memorable as a first date. Many Angelenos would attest their city is an interesting, diverse, iconic place, but most of what the rest of the nation knew about the West Coast locale was what they saw on “Melrose Place.” Here Los Angeles (especially downtown Los Angeles, so frequently filmed only to be used as a New York cityscape) finally got to play itself.

4.  35 Shots of Rum – This film would not have had emotional resonance without the skillfull urban cinematography. The opening scene, shot from the vantage point of the train conductor navigating through a web of tracks, and the views of working-class Paris lit up at night told that the ordinary stuff on the back side of cities is just as important and possible more romantic than the front.

5. Up in the Air - This film reversed urban planning wisdom that suggests there is more to see and learn about a place on the ground than from 10,000 feet through maps and aerial photography. The cities the lead actors visited – including Kansas City, St. Louis, and Detroit – turned out to be a lot more interesting-looking from the sky in the opening aerial shots than on the ground, where they felt as bland and character-less as the sterile hotel rooms they slept in 340 days out of the year. Here the concept of place lost all value to the movement in between.