Protecting Views

 I was talking to someone recently and they brought up the golf course that used to be in what is now extremely prime real estate by the river in Chicago.

My friend's claim was that this happened because people wanted to protect their views of the lake, and that building tall towers there (which is eventually what happened, of course) would impact others' views. 

I'm not here to litigate whether this is actually the reason (though it seems plausible to me). Rather, I want to talk a little bit about this concept of protected views--both why it can make sense, and when it can go too far.

1. A View Is A Genuine Amenity

Let me start with the most important point: I do think that there are levels at which a view is, legitimately, part of the value of a place, and something to be protected. 

We can think of this in a reductio ad absurdum: if my neighbors put up tall buildings on every side of my lot and across the street that mean I can see literally nothing but the street straight down and their blank walls on each side, I think it's pretty clear that my quality of life and the value of my living space have been impacted.

The brick building doesn't have much view to the right, does it?

But we can go beyond that. There are good reasons for not just the ability to see out the window in general but for views of certain buildings or sights to be protected.

St. Paul's is genuinely the centerpiece of the City of London: being able to see it is valuable.

As this downtown Vancouver logo suggests, the mountains are an important thing to be able to see in that city.

We could say the same about Lake Michigan in Chicago (not that you'd have any trouble from the height this photo was taken).

So there are genuine reasons to protect views.

2. How Much Protection?

But the counterpoint is that not every scrap of visibility needs to be equally protected. Once we've hoisted ourselves over the "completely blocked by all surrounding buildings" bar, we enter into a more complicated space where countervailing interests need to be accommodated. 

We can imagine this with the opposite reductio ad absurdum: if we don't allow any building at all that might enter into the sightline of an existing building, we can't build anywhere anytime; we can't accommodate the density we'd need in a functional city; and we're imposing just as much cost on our neighbors (now unable to build) as they were on us in the first hypothetical (unable to see). 

So the question becomes: how much of a view needs protection?

Certainly, we can't expect everyone everywhere in Chicago to see the lake, or in Vancouver to see the mountains--the cities are too big, and sheer distance plus the existence of height variation in the land is going to mean not everyone can see everything all the time.

That goes double with St. Paul's, which is, after all, itself a building built into what would have been a different view before it was built (and indeed there was a different St. Paul's there before the Great Fire). 

This is what the concept of Vancouverism is intended to balance: tall buildings, as above, but also wide pediments that mean that there are gaps in between the buildings so people can see.

The above picture isn't classic Vancouverism, despite being in Vancouver, because the high-rises are fairly wide, instead of thin shards above wider, shorter buildings. But I use it to point out that the style matters less than the substance; it matters less that the buildings be the distinctive narrow towers of downtown Vancouver than that there be space between them to let others peek through.

We can see similar trends, though less of the pediment-tower style, in the Chicago skyline as well. Everyone can see the water (or in this case be seen from the water) and yet we do not have a race to the bottom where everything has to be 1 story.

In other words, there is space to protect views without that meaning that we don't build.

3. Reasonable Accommodation, Not A Veto

The fundamental point here is that protecting a view should be a matter of a reasonable accommodation, where you can't deliberately and significantly block someone else's view of something important, but it should not be a veto where you can block all development simply so you can look across someone else's property. 

Or make them turn it into a golf course because it's shorter.

It can be reasonable, as here in London, to prevent the riverside (or lakeside, or other major point of culturally or environmentally significant views) from becoming clogged with high-rises that block everyone else from seeing it.

But especially as we suffer collectively from a housing crisis across the world, it's not reasonable to say we can't build up at all.

And as St. Paul's shows, you can have consistent density at medium heights without impeding a good view at all.

Views matter--but they're not the be all and the end all. Letting people actually live where they want is another significant good, and one we can't ignore.

When It Rains, It Pours

 There's no denying that weather happens to every city. If it didn't, we'd live in an airless void, which I guess means we wouldn't live, which means no city because no people.

But I digress.

My point is that every city has weather. Cities have different climates, of course, and thus different weather occurs in them, but the common issue of needing to allow people to continue to operate the city regardless of the weather crops up worldwide.

And one of the most consistent issues that cities have to deal with is rain. Most places people choose to live, especially in urban numbers, get rainfall. Some more, some less, but some.

Heck, I've even been in Phoenix in a rainstorm. It happens.

But what cities do to deal with that rain can be highly variable, and can massively impact the experience of living there. Today, I want to talk about some rain options I've seen, and how they operate.

1. Just Suck It Up (Because You Can)

This is the attitude of cities like Seattle and London to rain: yeah, it rains here. So? 

Now, this kind of attitude actually relies very heavily on the urban infrastructure, which is designed to handle (most) rain because it's a common occurrence.

Take this sunny photo of Pike Place Market in Seattle. Notice anything about the market itself? That's right, it's covered. Seattle assumes that there will be a lot of days where it's at best overcast and likely drizzling or actively raining; as such, it defaults to design where public spaces are rainproofed. This empowers the city's moment-by-moment unconcern for rain: it's already built into the plans.

It's subtler in an open, uncovered space like the University of Washington's Red Square, but the bricks here are organized and patterned so that the ground channels water down to massive drains, leaving the space not dry, but not puddled or hazardous, in all but the worst moments of a squall.

The city is built to just accept the rain, because it's easier than fighting it.

2. Wait, It Rains? What Do We Do?

The flip side of this is cities that seem to sometimes forget that it rains at all.

Sometimes I worry that Davenport is one of these.

In these cities, there may be rain infrastructure (there's a drain in the above picture, somewhere, though it's losing the war to the water) but it's not well maintained, and seems mostly vestigial as a result of standardized city planning, rather than intentional for the space.

Even unclogged drains may not be up to the task of draining the water the comes when it does actually rain.

Sometimes, this is should be linked to climate change: perhaps the style or frequency or intensity of rain is changing. But often it feels more like a cost-benefit analysis: everyone will hate it when it rains anyway, so is it worth the money to improve this system for a time that won't be appreciated?

Doing similar things with snow and ice leads to a lot of freeze-thaw cycles, though that's technically beyond the scope of this post.

3. Prepare But Don't Stress

Then there are cities that fall between these extremes: the ones that actually do things about the rain, but don't keep those preparations visible 24/7 because they don't think it's always coming.

Like Paris, for example:

Notice the available but not used extendable cover in front of Shakespeare & Co. here. 

With apologies for the blurry picture, you can see several other equivalent preparations here, some extended and some not (it had rained that morning). And the cobblestones likewise are good in the rain but not built as intentionally or permanently to deal with rain as Red Square is.

This is a neutral ground, where the city can adapt to a rainstorm but is not constantly cowering in fear of one (not that Seattle fears the rain--but it is always assuming that the rain will return soon). 

What about your city? How do you see it dealing with rain? Does it deal with rain at all? Or are you, like the Quad Cities, constantly surprised when water comes from the sky?

Advantages of Elevated Rail

Here in the Midwest, the most iconic semi-local transit infrastructure is, naturally, the Chicago El, and specifically the Loop.

While the El is not entirely above ground (the Red and Blue lines go underground through downtown), the name and the brand are both about the elevated lines. This contrasts strongly, of course, with a city like London, where the most significant and iconic intracity rail network is literally called the Underground (though, as we'll discuss below, the DLR is often elevated, and there is of course a whole system called the Overground as well).

I also recently visited Montréal, which is building out two different mass transit lines on very different principles: one tunneled belowground and one elevated above it. And one of them is way over budget--the one with the tunnels.

So naturally, I have some thoughts on why elevated rail works well, and why (given those cost advantages we're seeing in places like Montréal) more cities should use it.

To be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't ever tunnel. There's lots and lots of places it makes sense! I've been snowed on at a Chicago El station and cursed the choice to be aboveground! But given the mounting evidence that elevated lines are quite a bit cheaper, I want to focus on non-cost reasons that elevated rail can be pretty darn good on its own.

1. Look Around You

Most obviously, an elevated train gives a new view of the city: one at least a story up, and often criss-crossing parts of the city that might not be as naturally connected on street level.

This view, from next to the elevated metro station at Amsterdam Sloterdijk, is an angle you can't see without being up top. Perhaps it's not as impressive as others (I could have found a picture, say, of downtown Chicago) but I like the way it shows the sense of the city, as altered from a height. You can see other infrastructure (hello cute little tram!), you get a real sense of the size of the bike parking (which is much less impressive when the bikes block each other), and you can also see the rest of the city peeking out from behind the developments near Sloterdijk itself.

And of course in cool automated systems like the Vancouver SkyTrain (above), the REM, or the DLR in London, that view is out the front of the vehicle, unimpeded. You don't get those trees underground!

2. See and Be Seen

But you don't just see from an elevated line. You are also seen.

I don't really have to ask where the DLR station is at Canary Wharf, do I?

Elevated lines are highly visible and easily identifiable. I don't have to see a little sign to know there's a stop.

Sure, this T sign is iconic! But it's also kinda small, and doesn't tell me which direction the trains go.

This does; thanks outer boroughs of NYC!

Again, this isn't the be all and the end all of transportation needs, but it's nice to be able to see the lines and stations without effort.

3. Flexibility

There are places that are not easy to tunnel in: either they're really hard rock, or conversely too soft and shifting to stay in place, or there's some kind of deposit in the way, or you're in Rome and every dang meter of construction hits another archaeological find.

There aren't many places where factors like that make building elevated rail impossible. The only factor there tends to be local opposition--which is a serious problem, don't get me wrong, but isn't exactly absent from underground digging either. Building the actual elevated line is the easy part, in a way that it often isn't for underground construction, except maybe cut and cover--which likewise produces massive resistance in many cases, and still requires certain conditions for the underground space being used.

If you can build a road, most of the time you could build an elevated line too, since you have the right of way. 

I don't mean to say all roads should become elevated transit, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that as a mode, elevated rail is more flexible in where it can go and how than an underground line.

To be fair, this cuts the other way with things like mountains.

There's a reason the REM goes under, not over, Mont-Royal. 

But by and large, even if an elevated line weren't cheaper (because I said I wasn't talking about cost!) it is easier to build. And given the transit deficit of so many cities, especially in North America, that's not nothing.

Both subways and elevated rail have their merits, and as long as the transit is getting built I'm for whatever there is political will and economic power to build. But it's well worth considering that elevated rail isn't inherently a case of cheaping out: it has other benefits as well.

Privacy in the City

 Today I want to talk about something that I think gets misunderstood somewhat in a lot of discourse over urban density: the question of privacy. How much do you experience privacy in a big, dense city versus a smaller one or a town or rural area?

Well, that's gonna depend on how you define privacy. 

1. Big City Surveillance

Let's start with the obvious: if your interest is not appearing on CCTV, traffic cameras, or other forms of state or corporate surveillance, you'll probably be on camera more in a big city.

There are more traffic cameras, gun cameras (in the US at least), private and government CCTV, etc. in denser places, for obvious reasons. 

But at the same time: there may also be more places that don't have those things, as a percentage. If the only place I can shop for groceries is driving to Walmart, well, I know Walmart has me on CCTV. My local grocery may or may not; the corner store may or may not; the farmers market probably doesn't, depending on what city I'm in. But if those don't exist, I'm definitely, rather than possibly, being surveilled while I shop--even if I may be on camera fewer timers per day.

2. Big City Anonymity

But the flip side of that is that in a big city there are also a lot fewer reasons for someone to care about you, specifically, and what you are doing.

There may be CCTV nearby, but someone managed to tag this door an awful lot anyway.

I'm sure there are multiple CCTV in this picture (it's Camden in London after all) but who is watching them to see me in particular in this press of people?

There may not be anyone watching at this random intersection in Davenport, but if they are they're definitely looking at me. Because I'm the only one here, and I expect to be the only one here all day, basically.

Even more so here, where there isn't even a school or a business to drive foot traffic. Yes, it's less likely anyone is looking--but if there's a house with a camera, I'm on it and they'll be interested to see me, specifically, on their feed.

There's a reason the stereotype of a small town is that everyone knows everyone else's business: the other people are few enough that you know them all, and they're the entertainment. People watching is a bit different if you actually know the people! That doesn't mean that's a negative; for a lot of people, it's a big positive! But it's also a different kind of surveillance in its own way.

3. People vs Machines

In many ways, this comes down to the idea that in a big city a machine is more likely to watch you, and in a smaller area a person is more likely to do it.

I totally see why the former concerns some people more: my memory is less perfect than a computer's, and so being watched by me means you'll be forgotten, and no one can search their database for what you did or where you were! I also see how the fact that the former is usually corporate or government-controlled is also an issue. 

But if you're most concerned with being able to do things without anyone caring, rather than without anything seeing, you're probably better off in a big city.

It's a balance, and I don't blame anyone for falling on either side. But give me the anonymity of a million eyes over the scrutiny of ten any day.

Centralizing Multimodality

 So here in Davenport we have a single ground transportation station that brings together all the transit modes available in the city.

Of course, that's just buses (intercity and intracity).

But lots of other cities have more transit options, and still manage to bring them together into union/hub/transfer stations. 

Hallo, Amsterdam Centraal!

Other cities lack a single centralized station but have multiple stations that serve a variety of lines, functionally providing a range of multimodal stations: think the many termini of London, for instance.

Or Paris, where the Gare du Nord (above) brings together metro, RER, and intercity lines but not, e.g. the trams (which to be fair aren't designed to come this far into the center city), and other stations like Gare Montparnasse do the same for other lines.

Other cities, though, don't integrate their modes nearly as much. My own chief example would be Chicago, where Union Station is a Metra and intercity rail hub but notably underserved by the CTA.

And the Greyhound station above isn't connected to CTA trains or Union Station.

What I want to talk about today is why so many places do have centralized stations like this, and why it's a real disadvantage for places like Chicago to not.

1. Force Multipliers

Having a wide range of transit all available at one place means that more people will use that transit--and increases the value of each piece of transit non-linearly. As RM Transit has discussed in a podcast about the Eglinton Crosstown, the people already on a transit line are much more likely to take more transit than the general population that might be served by transit-oriented development or other types of density: connecting to a second transit line is thus a more effective way to get people onto the first transit line (and vice versa) than just connecting to a dense destination might be.

This is why the way that the aforementioned Eglinton Crosstown and its Montréal cousin the REM were integrated into their local pre-existing networks matters so much.

Having a smooth connection between the 1 and 5 lines here means that you don't have to rely solely on people who would need the 1 or 5 line alone to fuel ridership.

This is non-linear in a positive way (to a certain limit: not everyone will use transit for every trip): connecting more lines and more modes means more potential for increasing ridership. Thus, a centralized multimodal station can be very powerful.

A station like Denver's Union Station brings together two different local rail lines (one of which serves the airport) as well as buses, both local and intercity, and intercity rail. It's even on local bike lanes! This makes for easy transfers, simple wayfinding from one system to another, and increased ridership for all.

2. Ease of Expansion and Connection

Relatedly, having a pre-existing hub allows future construction to bootstrap itself onto the existing demand quickly and easily.

London's Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) is a great example of this: with a route connecting to Heathrow, Paddington, Liverpool Street, and Farringdon, it both piggybacks on a huge number of existing hubs and termini and in turn creates new connections from those stations to each other.

This doesn't just apply in giant cities like London. See the Amtrak Intermodal Station in (or really just next to) downtown Milwaukee.

Now add the HOP streetcar!

The station was already intermodal before that was added (buses, Amtrak). 

I'm pretty sure that sign is older than the tramline.

But now it's more intermodal. And that strengthens both the value of the streetcar (which now connects to an awful lot more transit!) and of the station (which is now connected by a fairly quick, very easy, free route to major downtown destinations despite being a bit peripheral itself). 

That's the thing about a central station: even if it's not optimally organized itself, it still has a lot of value for anything connecting to it, and it is in turn elevated by each line that connects in.

3. It Builds Resilience (As Long As It Works)

Now, there's a big caveat to what I'm about to say: it requires the central station itself to stay operational.

But if it does, it increases the resilience of the rest of the network, by giving users a natural place to change modes or routes if something goes wrong somewhere along the line.

The trams and buses in Toronto may not be as efficient as the TTC Subway, but if one of the two systems is less than fully operational, Union Station is a really good place to switch between them and still get to your destination.

Amsterdam Centraal remains my favorite example of this: I've taken regular NS trains, trams, buses, a ferry, and the metro out of it at various times to a very similar set of destinations, depending on where else I was going, what was closed (the northern part of the metro when I visited), and various other factors.

Now, this admittedly creates a potential vulnerability: if the central hub goes down, so do all those connections. This is probably why cities like Paris and London operate so well through a multihub system. 

If the Elizabeth Line is going to connect to all those little labels (each of which is at least one line of transit), it's going to go better than if all the labels are only on one spot. It's a quirk of their history, but London and Paris benefit a lot from this: they have so many big hubs that you can really get around easily no matter what.

So that's why I advocate for making sure lines touch, intersect, and connect at a central hub--at least from the positive view. Maybe someday I'll do the negative view (what happens when cities don't do this), but for now: remember that it's a good thing, and if you can do it more than once in your city that's even better!

Predictability

 A topic I keep coming back to is the idea that good transit is not merely extensive, frequent, or fast--it is, specifically, predictable.

That is: the benefit of car travel is considered by most advocates to be some element of freedom to go where you want when you want. The way to create this freedom for transit users obviously includes extensiveness (get where you want) and frequency (you can go whenever you want), as well as speed (you don't give up a lot more of your time). But it also includes predictability: the legibility to the user of that intersection of extension, frequency, and speed. If I can't tell how to get the transit, where to get the transit, or how to use it to go where I want, I won't use it. I need to be able to predict how my transit experience will go (in a positive sense--if my prediction is that it's gonna suck, being right won't encourage me to take it again).

1. Visible Stops

Now, most major transit agencies in the world have done a pretty good job of making it clear where the transit goes. 

Maps help, especially ones posted publicly near where the transit is.

Visible stations and stops help too (even if no one is coming for these statues anytime soon). A line on a map is great, but not if I can't tell how to get on it.

This goes for bus stops too: a visible shelter or at least a good sized sign helps identify the transit's availability.

I emphasize this because, well, Davenport does a really bad job of it.

This is, in fact, a bus stop--in that it's a corner on a street a bus serves, and in Davenport that means I can get on or off here. But there's literally no signage for it.

Not great for being able to predict if I can use transit here!

2. Visible Lines

You know what's on that transit map besides the stops, though? The lines!

And the lines may not be printed on the ground, just like the first-down line on an NFL broadcast isn't on the field. But there are ways to make it more visible and predictable anyway--just like the markers on the sidelines still tell you where a first down is.

This is, of course, the great advantage of rails: they make the continuity and directions of transit predictable just by looking down.

 But as these lanes in Amsterdam prove, a transit lane can do this without the transit being tracked: buses run on them as well, and they're still predictable lines on the street because of the dedicated lane, even if the vehicle is a bus.

A tunnel can also do this, though only if you're underground to see it--the whole point is that it's not visible aboveground.

We don't use these tracks in Davenport for passengers, but if we did--we'd get that benefit too. Or we could do as the old trams did and slap rails down on River Dr, Mound St, Brady, Harrison, etc.

3. Obvious Interchanges

But it's not enough to know that there's transit: we also need it to be predictable how you'd use that transit to get places. This is one of the things I've mentioned that I think Montréal generally does well:

Note both the predicted times to each station and the well-marked interchanges at Bonaventure, Berri-UQAM, etc. 

Chicago's Loop is a great example of a very obvious interchange point in the system (even if Chicago would, in fact, benefit from more non-downtown transfer points).

And Paris does quite well by running a tramline directly by the front door of a RER station.

Ah, for a world where Davenport's Ground Transportation Center had more ground transportation options...

You could build a great system, and if no one can predict how the pieces work together, it won't function the way you want, no matter how quality an individual piece of it might be. So make your transit more predictable, and let the pieces operate in concert. 

But don't forget that this works best if it's also extensive, frequent, and fast. All of that works together to make a great system go.