The garbage problem in the U.S. is a big issue - of course, not an issue like the economy or war or crime, but just another one of the lifestyle issues we could easily and quickly confront.
As I took the trash out today, I realized that maybe throwing things out is just a bit too easy for us. We do pay for it in our taxes, but once that tax bill goes out the door, we have a years' worth of throwing out as much household waste as we please, literally (it's unlimited in the Town of Brookhaven as long as the bags don't weigh over 50 pounds each).
Meanwhile, on the recycling side, the Town has an every-other-week schedule that alternates between cans/bottles and paper, and a laundry list of "acceptables" and "not acceptables". You can't put any old plastic in your "CURBY" can - and you can't mix your newspaper with your mixed paper. Turning CURBY into a cartoon character may have seemed like a smart move by the Town, but he sure is discriminating when it comes to your recyclables.
Part of the answer to the problem lies in single-stream recycling. While it has its cons (one of which is the potential downgrading of paper due to contamination by the other recyclables), single-stream recycling does exactly what our culture demands: ease of use. No thought is involved - almost everything except for food can be stuck in the bin, and the garbage men will collect it later.
I learned just how much one really can recycle when I stayed with my aunt for a few days. She has somehow completely reversed the proportion of garbage to recycling that most of us use. Her main garbage pail is essentially a tiny wastebasket under her sink, right next to a giant bin for all the recycling - and it really makes sense. Each time you go to empty your wastebasket, check out how much of it is miscellaneous papers, junk mail, plastic wrappings, styrofoam, etc., and then how much is food and other non-recyclable things... you'll see that upwards of 75% is probably recyclable, yet we all just throw it into the landfill. My aunt somehow changed her mindset and sees all of these items as recyclable.
Changing to single-stream across the nation may be part of the solution, and I hope that more cities and counties move in that direction. In an ideal situation, our responsibilities as stewards of the environment would be enough to motivate us all. This is the real world, however, and in this world, the only thing that really talks is money.
As it stands now, I can do everything I can to eliminate general waste, or I can just throw absolutely everything out for regular trash collection (it's unlimited!) - either way, my household pays the same exact assessment, based on our home's value. While there's a feel-good incentive to recycling, there's absolutely no personal economic incentive to Joe the Trash-Thrower-Outer - he's not the one who lives near the dump, and he'll have moved south to Florida by the time the town has to deal with landfill capacity issues on the taxpayer's dime.
So I end with a question - does a system where one pays by volume for landfill trash, but pays nothing for single-stream recycling make sense? I could imagine a system where the household assessment remains in place, but the city/county charges say $2 per 32 gal. bag of regular trash to your account, and bills you quarterly. There would be accounting issues to be sure, but I think they could be worked through rationally. All in all, I think the only way to actually kick Americans into gear and curb their wasteful habits is money.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sea Cliff, NY: Treasure Trove of Urbanism
As a lifelong Long Islander and an urban explorer by nature, it is rare for me to discover a place I have never seen before here on the Island. It is a thousand times rarer for me to be absolutely stunned by something here, but when I visited Sea Cliff for the first time, I was floored.
I spent about two hours on a perfect Friday summer evening driving and walking around, photographing, and taking measurements in Sea Cliff because I was so intrigued by it. For those unfamiliar with the area, Sea Cliff is located less than twenty miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan on Long Island's "Gold Coast":
Tucked into a natural harbor off of the Long Island Sound, and perched atop a 120' precipice that gives it its name, Sea Cliff has always been a fairly sleepy place despite a nearby commuter rail link to New York with trips under one hour. Luckily for us today, Sea Cliff managed to survive the modernizations of the 20th Century with its amazing historic urbanism and architecture completely intact.
The actual roadway at Sea Cliff is only 32' wide for two parking lanes and two driving lanes, and it is flanked by 4-8' sidewalks. This is extremely narrow even by historical standards - similarly aged towns on Long Island and in the Northeast have main streets with somewhat wider roadways as well as more generous sidewalks, generally totaling about 55-60' in sum. Compare this to 19th Century Midwestern railroad towns that might have main streets with 80-90' ROWs, and modern day arterials that are far, far wider.
Yet despite its limitations (see the cars in the picture above that actually don't fit in the 6.5-7' parking lane), Sea Cliff actually works. There was not a lot of traffic, but it did move through the town, albeit slowly when two cars had to pass. I wouldn't advocate a 32' wide four lane road today, but Sea Cliff Avenue shows that "too small" can actually be functional, and reminds us that every extra few feet we add greatly diminishes the intimacy of place a street can evoke.
It might be hard to believe, but the typical residential street in the town is even narrower. I loved this because even in a town where the main drag is 32' wide, the residential streets were still hierarchically smaller, in this case about 16-18' of pavement. They had no sidewalks, but didn't really need them since they felt comfortably sized for walking, almost as though they were pedestrian lanes down which cars occasionally traveled and parked. I documented 12th Avenue, one block south of Sea Cliff Avenue:
*A caveat to both street sections: all of the streets in the downtown area of Sea Cliff are very variegated in plan, with buildings at all different setbacks, alternations between attached and detached buildings and even building types, etc. The street sections try to give a representative view of the street's most typical character.
The architecture of Sea Cliff complements its amazing and unique urbanism. There is an excellent mix of well-executed buildings in several styles popular in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, including Queen Anne, Italianate, Tudor, and more. I'll close with a selection of some of the many amazing buildings I saw, without doing the justice to the countless others that fill every street in the historic town.
The fire station (left), my favorite building and a simply awesome example of half-timbering in brick, was finished in 1931. The town library (right) must have formerly been a church, and sits a few steps above Sea Cliff Avenue, with its own wooded plaza out front.
Some of the mixed use buildings downtown. The left building is an example of the beautiful polychromy throughout the town. The right building shows the adaptation of detached housing into mixed use streetfronts, with a single (or sometimes double) story extension filling up the former yard to meet the street wall formed by its neighbors. This happens frequently in small towns throughout Long Island. I also loved that the storefront was nothing other than an architect's office!
More polychromy (left), not in the best shape but still stunning. Finally, a typical local house (right), featuring a tower, which are quite common in Sea Cliff due to its excellent vantage point. There are excellent views across the harbor to Port Washington, and also across the Long Island Sound to New Rochelle, which is developing quite a skyline these days.
I spent about two hours on a perfect Friday summer evening driving and walking around, photographing, and taking measurements in Sea Cliff because I was so intrigued by it. For those unfamiliar with the area, Sea Cliff is located less than twenty miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan on Long Island's "Gold Coast":
Tucked into a natural harbor off of the Long Island Sound, and perched atop a 120' precipice that gives it its name, Sea Cliff has always been a fairly sleepy place despite a nearby commuter rail link to New York with trips under one hour. Luckily for us today, Sea Cliff managed to survive the modernizations of the 20th Century with its amazing historic urbanism and architecture completely intact.What struck me first as I wound around the serpentine roads leading into Sea Cliff along the harbor was Sea Cliff's tiny scale - for the first time on Long Island, and perhaps for only the second or third time ever in the United States, I felt like I was entering a piece of Europe. Like Boston's North End and Lower Manhattan, Sea Cliff operates an what in today's terms is a tiny scale - the main street of the town, Sea Cliff Avenue, measures between 44' and 48' wide from street wall to street wall:
The actual roadway at Sea Cliff is only 32' wide for two parking lanes and two driving lanes, and it is flanked by 4-8' sidewalks. This is extremely narrow even by historical standards - similarly aged towns on Long Island and in the Northeast have main streets with somewhat wider roadways as well as more generous sidewalks, generally totaling about 55-60' in sum. Compare this to 19th Century Midwestern railroad towns that might have main streets with 80-90' ROWs, and modern day arterials that are far, far wider.
Yet despite its limitations (see the cars in the picture above that actually don't fit in the 6.5-7' parking lane), Sea Cliff actually works. There was not a lot of traffic, but it did move through the town, albeit slowly when two cars had to pass. I wouldn't advocate a 32' wide four lane road today, but Sea Cliff Avenue shows that "too small" can actually be functional, and reminds us that every extra few feet we add greatly diminishes the intimacy of place a street can evoke.
It might be hard to believe, but the typical residential street in the town is even narrower. I loved this because even in a town where the main drag is 32' wide, the residential streets were still hierarchically smaller, in this case about 16-18' of pavement. They had no sidewalks, but didn't really need them since they felt comfortably sized for walking, almost as though they were pedestrian lanes down which cars occasionally traveled and parked. I documented 12th Avenue, one block south of Sea Cliff Avenue:
*A caveat to both street sections: all of the streets in the downtown area of Sea Cliff are very variegated in plan, with buildings at all different setbacks, alternations between attached and detached buildings and even building types, etc. The street sections try to give a representative view of the street's most typical character.
The architecture of Sea Cliff complements its amazing and unique urbanism. There is an excellent mix of well-executed buildings in several styles popular in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, including Queen Anne, Italianate, Tudor, and more. I'll close with a selection of some of the many amazing buildings I saw, without doing the justice to the countless others that fill every street in the historic town.
The fire station (left), my favorite building and a simply awesome example of half-timbering in brick, was finished in 1931. The town library (right) must have formerly been a church, and sits a few steps above Sea Cliff Avenue, with its own wooded plaza out front.
Some of the mixed use buildings downtown. The left building is an example of the beautiful polychromy throughout the town. The right building shows the adaptation of detached housing into mixed use streetfronts, with a single (or sometimes double) story extension filling up the former yard to meet the street wall formed by its neighbors. This happens frequently in small towns throughout Long Island. I also loved that the storefront was nothing other than an architect's office!
More polychromy (left), not in the best shape but still stunning. Finally, a typical local house (right), featuring a tower, which are quite common in Sea Cliff due to its excellent vantage point. There are excellent views across the harbor to Port Washington, and also across the Long Island Sound to New Rochelle, which is developing quite a skyline these days.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The Suburban Lawn: A Single-Use Paradigm
As a recent graduate, forced into early retirement by the job market, I find myself once again doing a job that I loathed from about fifth grade until I started at Notre Dame: mowing my family's oversized front lawn. My father is looking down on me now, chuckling to himself that the job he assigned to me 13 years ago is still mine - and we even have the same walk-behind lawn mower.When I was just 10 years old, I swore each and every Saturday morning that I would never, ever have a lawn when I grew up - it wasn't worth the wasted time to me as a kid. Today, at 22, I realized that I still would never, ever have a lawn, but I realized that a $210,000 education had given me an ideological reason for my gripe: lawns are single-use constructs, and if I have learned anything at all about good architecture and urbanism, that is a big no-no.
The lawn perfectly encapsulates the conflict of what we are trying to achieve by building sprawling suburbs. When we "drive till we qualify" and plop ourselves on a half-acre in a brand-new exurb subdivision, we are signing up for what looks like a match made in Heaven: a new home close enough to all the conveniences, yet also right out there in Nature, with lots of open space and room to breathe. Similarly, with a personal lawn, we want Nature at our doorsteps, literally, yet we want it just so:
"Your first impression … and it stays with you … is one of quiet, spacious beauty. The gently curving streets with modern lighting are uncluttered by cars … Everywhere you look, your eyes rest on the loveliness of well-kept lawns, majestic shade trees, fruit trees and flowering shrubs."
- 1950s ad for Levittown, PA, from http://web1.fandm.edu/levittown/one/f.html
The essential problem with suburbia, one that the public at large is finally beginning to realize, is that you can't actually have it both ways. You don't get to live out in the "quiet, spacious" country, yet also live amidst manicured surroundings with easy access to culture, commerce, and education. In a case of 'something's gotta give', both sides end up giving, and suburbanites are left with neither the pleasantries of true country living nor the perks of living in the big city.
Similarly, the manicured private lawn is another failure to link the true nature of the country with that of the city. A lawn is inherently unnatural, for Nature does not produce anything single-use on its own. Indeed, our lawns are constantly trying to go back to a natural state, with weeds and dandelions cropping up as soon as the first rains come. But because we want the lawn just so, we spend weekends toiling to keep it unnaturally single-use. And unlike a farm field, which is also single-use and somewhat unnatural, the lawn provides absolutely, positively no benefit to us other than aesthetics and the occasional football game or family gathering. For that, we are willing to invest countless dollars and hours, use harmful chemicals, and consume what would likely be replaced by a thriving ecosystem. What's worst, we claim to have a piece of Nature in our yards, when in fact the entire thing could not be further from a legitimate ecosystem.
The irony of it all is that cities typically feature great and expansive urban parks that allow for exactly what uses we do get out of our lawns: picnics, strolls, games for all ages. Since these parks are communal, they can offer us far more amenities than individual lawns, and the grass that we must maintain there gets a constant stream of use instead of the occasional pickup game. We can argue whether the cost to maintain the manicured communal park lawn, both economic and environmental, is indeed worth it, but such cost is surely not worth it for each and every household in the U.S.Surely in today's world of "green" thinking, where a magic convergence of concerns for economy, energy, climate, and environment are moving common sentiment away from large-lot sprawl, we can put some serious thought into foregoing the green parcel that made William Levitt fawn. There are tons of more sustainable options like rain gardens, native plantings, permeable courtyards, and the simplest, a much smaller patch of green for each home. Let's hope for a better understanding of the diversity that characterizes good ecosystems as much as it does good urbanism.
Isn't This Era Over?
I visited a developer's website today looking for information on a new local PRC (Planned Retirement Community). The following image is from their featured project, a 55+ community on Long Island (company's name removed):
When is this era going to be over? I see about a thousand things wrong with this picture, and I'll detail the most egregious:
When is this era going to be over? I see about a thousand things wrong with this picture, and I'll detail the most egregious:
- Isolationism, in this case for retirees. The project is geographically isolated from anything besides other homes, and some light industrial uses. It has no amenities whatsoever within comfortable walking distance, despite the website's bragging about how close residents are to "one of the most picturesque waterside villages on Long Island".
- Density, in an awful way. The project places 174 units on 28 acres, or 6.2 DUs per acre gross, far denser than the typical for Long Island. The project replaced a single light industrial business and some virgin forest. This places approximately 300+ residents about 1.7 miles from a downtown and 2 miles from any supermarkets. At least most of them are no longer commuting, as job centers are much, much further away.
- Deceiving arguments to dupe locals. In a 2002 article about the zoning charge from industrial to residential, the developer argued that "the development would reduce commercial traffic" as homes instead of as the larger industry that could have replaced the smaller one on site. Great argument - instead of the 50-100 workers commuting to and from work generated by the would-be new industry, we have 174 units with upwards of 300 cars leaving all day long to: go to work, go to the supermarket, go to the doctor, go to the drug store, go out to dinner, go to a movie, go to a play, go to the beach, etc., etc., etc.... but I bet that's still less than the one industrial business would have produced.
- Concern for the pedestrian falls short. Even though there are "public spaces" and walks for residents around the lakes, there are absolutely no sidewalks along the "streets", which are really parking lots. Good thing nothing is nearby - even if it was, you'd have to hike across the asphalt.
- Cookie-cutter architecture. All white, three unit types, all buildings almost the same size... does it get worse than this?
- Blatant Photoshopping!!! You'll have to take my word since I do not want to reveal the location, but the subdivision entrance road does not disappear into green as shown - the two lane local road leading to the neighborhood is only about 100' southeast of the lower lake, and should run diagonally across the lower right corner of the picture (the lower right homes in the picture back up to a small buffer along the road)
Baptism of a New Blog
Welcome to my blog, started July 19, 2009. Please share your thoughts, comments, criticisms, and ideas!
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