Tuesday, September 27, 2005

President Bush - redesign the built environment!

The President has called on Americans to conserve gasoline by driving less. Unfortunately, the single-use zoning plan used in the United States since the end of World War II requires the use of automobiles any time an activity changes. Switching from residence to work? Get in the car. Switching from work to shopping? Get in the car. Switching from residence to leisure activity? Get in the car. The most ridiculous example of the latter is that the county is building Tweed's Park adjacent to our residential pod (Stenning Woods). The only way for my kids to safely get to the park will be for me to drive them there.

The correct solution to the "Americans drive too much" problem is to acknowledge that the zoning ordinances used in the US are obsolete, and to throw them away and start over. The idea of using public transportation, as Mr. Bush proposes, is specious, since efficient public transportation infrastructures require population densities that are disallowed by many, if not most, zoning ordinances. Essentially, city and county planning agencies have made efficient public transportation illegal.

So how can we fix it? Revitalize the idea of community. Not the community advertised by developers building tract housing, either. True community, with mixed-use structures, income-integrated housing, gridded street design, and planned layouts, which include ample public spaces, safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and a design that discourages overuse of automobiles. The solution is not to make roads wider, curves longer, and speeds higher (like they're doing with Route 41 in Hockessin) - the solution is to do the opposite. Control traffic speeds with design, not signs.

So Mr. Bush, asking Americans to drive less is not the solution, even in the short term. Our cities don't allow us to drive less.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Cheapest Gas

With prices the way they are, I thought I'd keep a blog entry with the cheapest local gas. I'll edit this as things change. This is the price for a gallon of regular.

Current cheapest: $2.63 at the Route 40 Exxon in Elkton, MD.

Sallies marching band at Seneca HS

The gallery from the band competition is up. I think Sallies took third, but I'm still a neophyte when it comes to scoring and announcing results.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Sallies Homecoming

New Galleries are up!

Band practice before the soccer games.

Sallies vs. Caesar Rodney soccer.

Sallies vs. Bell Aire football.

The Band, Twirlers, and Color Guard half time show.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Boulden school bus number 51

I was behind this bus this morning on Route 82. We approached the Delaware Central Railroad, which is a single track across 82. Within sight of the crossing are the empty concrete footings where the entire trestle bridge was washed away in the floods a few years ago.

The driver stopped at the crossing.

Twice. Once there and once farther down the road where the track re-crosses 82.

I know the bridge near Route 48 is also out. I suppose, for a moment, that heavy lift helicopters may have deposited a locomotive on that track, where a suicidal engineer may attempt to hurl it into the streambed at high speed, or some kind of amphibious trackless locomotive will ford the stream and hit the bus. But I doubt it.

It's that kind of blind, sheeplike adherence to some rule that makes TSA guards at airports deny passage to a toddler who's name happens to be on the terrorist watch list, and it's just as stupid.

Sallies vs. William Penn Soccer

The gallery from today's 5-nil Salesianum win over William Penn varsity soccer is up.

Padua vs. St. Marks JV Volleyball

Another gallery is up.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Padua vs. St. Marks varsity volleyball

Padua 25-13 26-24 25-17. The gallery is up.

Freedom?

The ongoing fiasco at Ground Zero has taken a surreal turn. First, we've replaced the "Freedom Tower" (itself a marginally beautiful design) with a widely despised bunker/tower combination, the first 200 feet of which is windowless concrete. From an architecture and urban planning standpoint, imagine the street presence of that building. It screams "we're afraid" rather than "we're free." Santiago Calatrava's PATH station has been redesigned with internal concrete pillars and fewer windows, out of fear of bombings. Now, the International Freedom Center is facing eviction from the Cultural Center because survivors and next of kin don't want anything that might be "anti-American" or "unpatriotic" on display. One suggestion was that any materials be reviewed by an outside committee before it could be put on display.

I hope I'm not the only one who feels queasy that America has come to the point that artistic and historical material must be censored before being displayed at the "Freedom Center." The irony of the Freedom Center being anything but free is stomach churning.

The article in the New York Times has additional information.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Back by popular demand - Greece and Italy

The Greece and Italy galleries are back up....

Inhumane Lack of Urban Planning

Today's News Journal has an article about FEMA City, a mobile home farm outside Punta Gorda, Florida. This supposedly temporary housing was built for 1,500 people displaced by Hurricane Charley a year ago. The population hasn't decreased any, and they're having horrible problems with crime, depression, and substance abuse. Why is this?

For one thing, landlords in Punta Gorda, realizing that available rental housing is a scarce resource, have dramatically raised their rents. I'm a big believer in free markets, and clearly the price point will rise in the presence of supply-demand shortfalls. Unfortunately, we (as humans) simply cannot expect low or fixed-income people to find their own housing when there's little or none available. Also, it's unreasonable to use tax dollars to line the landlords' pockets (which is what happens when FEMA funds reconstruction, and resulting rents skyrocket).

Another contributor to the problem is that the city of Punta Gorda has razed the waterfront housing projects to make way for high-rent condominiums and apartments. Affordable housing has been displaced by luxury or high-rent housing. I think it is a good thing that housing projects have been torn down. Public housing doesn't work because it stigmitizes the residents and locks them into a socioeconomic pattern of failure.

We, as Americans, cannot continue neglecting entire social classes - from an economic or creative standpoint - and expect to be able to compete in a globalized world market.

Don't believe me? There are others who have done a much greater amount of research, and I encourage you to have a read:

Suburban Nation, a well-researched and eloquently presented analysis of sprawl, urban planning, and the widening gap between social classes.

Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works is a new book on multiuse integrated housing that addresses the problem of social stigmatization and lack of community in public housing.

Sallies vs. William Penn Football

And just what happened here, gents? William Penn won 25-6, after a miserable, hot, ugly football game. We'll just have to do what I do on 99.999% of my golf shots: mumble incoherently when asked and just forget it happened. Unfortunately, there's photographic evidence (which is saying the gallery is up).

Padua vs. Ursuline Volleyball

Wow, that was a tense game! Ursuline won 25-23 22-25 25-22 17-25 15-10, but it was close all along. This is going to be a great season.

Ursuline vs. Padua field hockey

The gallery of Ursuline vs. Padua field hockey is up. Padua won 2-0, but the game was cut 11 minutes short by a thunderstorm. The storm cancelled the JV game.

Friday, September 16, 2005

House for sale

I'm tired of talking about urban renewal, responsible urban planning, and the evilness of Sprawl. So my house is for sale. Let me know if you're interested. I'll be moving downtown and renting until I can save enough to buy an infill site and build a modernist or minimalist house....

Modern housing

I'm so sick of sprawl. Really really really sick of it, with its nasty traffic congestion, ridiculous development design, and ostentatious and superficial McMansions, which cost an outrageous amount of money and are built like crap anyway (if you spend less than a mil on your house, the electrical boxes won't actually have a 19 cent spacer between the faceplate and the box, so they'll pull out, sooner rather than later). There's no such thing as affordable housing any more. There's hope, though! Not only does Wilmington have beautiful neightborhoods that have interesting architecture and real neighborhood character (like Rockland, Trolley Square, and Little Italy), but now Dwell magazine has a collection of pre-fab modern houses that allow the buyer to select the house layout. Go look at these. Very nice....

Dwell

As long as I'm sharing some of my favorite places to hang out, I should tell you about Dwell magazine. It's a publication, now into its fifth year, that focuses on modern architecture and design. It's absolutely some of the best architecture porn available, arriving monthly.

Inhabitat

Another wonderful link for modern design and architecture is Inhabitat. Definitely worth a visit and a bookmark.

Modernism

An excellent web site for modernism - architecture, construction, and interior design - is Live Modern. It's really worth a long visit and a bookmark.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Getting Things Done

I've joined the David Allen "Getting Things Done" bandwagon. Mr. Allen has a methodology that helps people (particularly People Like Me(R)) organize, overcome procrastination, reduce stress, and keep all the balls in the air. It's a remarkable but simple process, and I highly recommend it. You can get The Book (titled, remarkably, "Getting Things Done") at the above link, or at Amazon.

A bunch of new galleries

1. Sallies vs. Newark football (Sallies won 25-7)

2. The AI duPont HS volleyball tournament (Padua, St. Marks, Brandywine, and Friends)

3. The Wilmington Hispanic Festival Parade

Coming up we have the Ursuline field hockey game on Wednesday and the Sallies vs. William Penn football on Saturday.

Catching up....

I've gotten pretty far behind on my blogging. I'll try to catch up today.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

New HS Sports Season!

This Friday is the first scheduled event of the 2005-2006 high school sports season. Here's the tentative shooting schedule (e-mail me if you have additions or changes):

Sept. 9th '05 - Sallies football game, Baynard Stadium
Sept. 10th '05 - AI duPont volleyball tournament
Sept. 11th '05 - Wilmington Hispanic Festival Parade (Sallies marching band)
Sept. 14th '05 - Ursuline vs. Padua field hockey
Sept. 16th '05 - Sallies soccer vs. Newark
Sept. 16th '05 - Padua vs. Ursuline volleyball
Sept. 17th '05 - Sallies football vs. William Penn
Sept. 20th '05 - Padua vs. Sanford volleyball
Sept. 21st '05 - Padua vs. Red Lion field hockey
Sept. 22nd '05 - Sallies soccer vs. William Penn
Sept. 22nd '05 - Padua vs. St. Marks volleyball
Sept. 24th '05 - Sallies soccer vs. CR
Sept. 24th '05 - Sallies football game, Baynard Stadium
Sept. 25th '05 - Sallies marching band competition, Tabernacle, NJ
Sept. 26th '05 - Sallies freshman soccer vs. Newark
Sept. 27th '05 - Newark soccer vs. Delcastle
Sept. 27th '05 - Padua vs. St. E's volleyball (maybe)
Sept. 30th '05 - Padua vs. Archmere volleyball

Oct. 1st '05 - Sallies marching band competition at Villanova -OR-
Oct. 1st '05 - Sallies invitational cross country meet (probably this one)
Oct. 6th '05 - Sallies soccer vs. Charter
Oct. 7th '05 - University of Delaware Invitational Cross Country Meet
Oct. 8th '05 - University of Delaware football vs. Hofstra
Oct. 11th '05 - Padua vs. St. Marks volleyball
Oct. 12th '05 - Sallies freshman soccer vs. Charter
Oct. 14th '05 - Fair Hill International eventing
Oct. 15th '05 - Fair Hill International -OR- Sallies marching band
Oct. 18th '05 - Sallies soccer vs. St. Marks
Oct. 19th '05 - Sallies freshman soccer vs. St. Marks
Oct. 20th '05 - Padua Cross Country vs. Ursuline
Oct. 20th '05 - Padua volleyball vs. Friends (maybe)
Oct. 21st '05 - Sallies football game, Baynard Stadium
Oct. 22nd '05 - Sallies marching band at the US Naval Academy
Oct. 27th '05 - Padua field hockey vs. St. Marks
Oct. 27th '05 - Padua volleyball vs. Ursuline
Oct. 29th '05 - Sallies soccer vs. St. E's
Oct. 29th '05 - Sallies football game, Baynard Stadium
Oct. 30th '05 - Newark Halloween Parade (Sallies marching band)
Oct. 31st '05 - Padua volleyball vs. Dickinson

Nov. 2nd '05 - Sallies freshman soccer vs. St. Marks
Nov. 5th '05 - Delaware volleyball state tournament prelim
Nov. 6th '05 - Sallies marching band competition, Hershey, PA
Nov. 8th '05 - Delaware volleyball state tournament prelim
Nov. 10th '05 - Delaware volleyball state tournament prelim
Nov. 11th '05 - Sallies football vs. St. Marks
Nov. 12th '05 - Delaware volleyball State Championships
Nov. 12th '05 - Delaware state cross country championships
Nov. 25th '05 - Wilmington Christmas Parade (Sallies marching band)

Dec. 9th '05 - Padua swimming vs. Charter
Dec. 13th '05 - Padua swimming vs. Tower Hill
Dec. 15th '05 - Padua basketball vs. Tower Hill
Dec. 19th '05 - Padua basketball vs. St. Marks

Jan. 3rd '06 - Padua basketball vs. Archmere
Jan. 6th '06 - St. Marks swimming vs. McKean
Jan. 9th '06 - Padua basketball vs. Ursuline
Jan. 10th '06 - Padua swimming vs. Ursuline
Jan. 21st '06 - Padua basketball vs. St. Marks
Jan. 27th '06 - Padua swimming vs. Concord
Jan. 31st '06 - Padua swimming vs. St. Marks

Feb. 1st '06 - Padua swimming vs. Dickinson
Feb. 6th '06 - Padua swimming vs. Ursuline
Feb. 7th '06 - Padua basketball vs. Ursuline
Feb. 18th '06 - Delaware state winter track championships
Feb. 23rd '06 - Delaware state women's swimming and diving prelims
Feb. 25th '06 - Delaware state swimming and diving championships

Mar. 1st '06 - Delaware state basketball prelims

Apr. 7th '06 - Padua soccer vs. Ursuline
Apr. 11th '06 - Padua track vs. Ursuline
Apr. 25th '06 - Padua soccer vs. Archmere

May 3rd '06 - Padua soccer vs. St. E's
May 4th '06 - Padua track vs. Archmere
May 11th '06 - Padua softball vs. Ursuline
May 12th '06 - County track meet
May 16th '06 - Padua soccer vs. St. Marks
May 19th '06 - Delaware state track meet
May 20th '06 - Delaware state track meet

June 3 '06 - Delaware state soccer championship

I also intend to go to many/most Ursuline basketball games, but I don't have their schedule yet.

The site has moved....

I couldn't afford to keep the server where it was, so I moved to a less expensive hosting arrangement. Unfortuantely, this means I can't keep everything online indefinitely. It also means that, for the time being, online ordering isn't working. I'm trying to figure out a way to do that with this arrangement.