Yeah, I'm Pro-Development

But not just any development.

I’m pro-dense, urban, well-designed, well built development.

I’m against crappy development, like the strip mall at W and 14th which, thankfully, now has construction fences around it.

To create good development, you need government oversight in the way of zoning and building codes, and you need community involvement. Constructive community involvement. The community needs to support good development and oppose bad development. The problem is, of course, that people have different definitions of what those things are. For instance, as I stated in my last post, the Dupont Conservancy is opposed to the proposed development at 14th and U, but where were they when that horrible strip mall was built a few blocks away? Perhaps they didn’t exist then, but that’s the kind of development that needs to be opposed.

There are other great things happening in that part of the neighborhood.
Along with the fence around the strip mall, there are two other big
projects underway. And they just took down the scaffolding in the most
well constructed building ever built on the NE corner of 14th and U. I
say that because they’ve been working on it for about 15 months, and
it’s a small three story building, so it better be the best building in
the history of the world! I’m not sure what’s going to go in there, but
right next door is the new Marvin. We’ve only been there for a drink,
but it looks fantastic and I have a feeling that the food is good.

Further up 14th is the new Union Row where a Yes! Market will soon open.
The silly European style alley they built through the middle of the
building is actually quite nice! I hope that building fills up. If
they build something of that quality at 14th and U, who could have any
concerns?

Thanks to all who read and commented on my last posting about the
project at 14th and U. Surprisingly, all the feed back I received was
positive. I figured there would be someone who disagreed with me.

14th and U Street Controversy

A developer has proposed a ten story apartment and retail building for the southwest corner of U and 14th Streets, where the McDonalds now is. The proposal is to get rid of the bad one story development along 14th Street and incorporated the historically contributing structures into the design of the new building. This, of course, has brought out all kinds of opposition from various community group, including, for some reason, the Dupont Circle Conservancy and the Dupont Circle ANC, even though 14th and U is NOT in Dupont Circle.

But that’s OK, because in this great city of ours, anyone and everyone can throw their two cents into any issue at any time. Since I live two blocks from 14th and U and walk past that corner twice a day, I figure I probably have more right than people who live at 22nd and S Streets to comment on it. So here goes.

I support the development. To not support dense in-fill development in the middle of the city is to be both anti-urban and anti-environment.

Anti-urban because dense development, as Jane Jacobs pointed out in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is good for the economy and good for public safety. Anti-environment, because in a neighborhood that is well served by public transportation (the Metro is one block away), and in a world where global warming is a reality, leaving a huge plot of land like that under-utilized is backward looking. Us urbanites should be leaders in the environmental movement, not NIMBYs.

The arguments against it come down to traffic and “massing,” which is the same as saying “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big.”

The traffic argument doesn’t work because, again, Metro is one block away. Who on earth would move to that building so they could drive to work every day? Plus, I walk past there at rush hour every day, and there ain’t that much traffic there, something the Dupont Circle folks might know if they every actually ventured into my neighborhood.

The “massing” argument is also absurd. To support the “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big” argument (and I quote from The Dupont Current), the Dupont Circle Conservancy said that “unlike the Reeves Center to the north, which was built on a large site, this project is being wedged into an existing historic district with considerable adjacent existing residential areas.” The sheer idiocy of this statement is mind-boggling! First, to hold up the Reeves Center as some sort of model of development is lunacy. The first problem with the Reeves Center is that it doesn’t use all of it’s large site, not to mention that it has such things as huge ventilation systems fronting on U street and empty glass and ugly brutalist architecture, all of which make it relate extremely poorly to the prominent corner on which it is situated and not fit in with the historic structures all around it. Which brings up the second problem with the Conservancy’s statement: the Reeves Center is in the exact same historic district, surrounded by the same residential areas, as the proposed site. In fact, it is right across the street! Their argument is simple nonsense. A 75 to 100 foot building would have the same “massing” as the self-storage building it will abut, as the Reeves Center, and as all the other apartment and condo buildings that have been built along 14th Street.

The devil, of course, is always in the details. The plans have to be good. But since it is in a historic district, and there are zoning specifications it must meet, and a lot of it has to be reviewed by the ANC (the ANC that has actual jurisdiction over the area, not one from across town), the plan will have to be good to pass muster.

In this day and age, with the price of oil climbing to ever higher levels, with the reality of global warming, NIMBY-ism and obstructionism should not be allowed to derail good, dense, urban in-fill development, which I believe this will be.

My Wife is NOT Homeless

Contrary to word on the street, I work very hard to ensure that my wife remains housed. We found out about her street rep just recently. She was walking down U Street, carrying various attributes of her profession (paint box, palette, etc.), wearing paint spattered clothes, weaving her way through the crowds around Local 16 and Stetsons, when she happened by a homeless man. He was about to ask her for money, when he changed his mind and apologized. Then, reaching deep into a grimy pocket, he took out a couple dimes and actually offered them to her.

My wife had a hard time explaining to him that she didn’t need the money. Telling him she always dressed that way was not convincing, for he always dressed that way, too. She said she’s an artist, and he said, yeah, he is too. I’m just coming from doing work, she protested. I’m sure this guy is used to seeing people dressed in non-filthy clothes coming from work, so he was rightfully skeptical. Finally, he understood. Perhaps it was her perfume.

She told me what happened as soon as she came in. I laughed.

I wish there were a better ending to this story. I wish I could say that we rushed back out there and bought him dinner or at least gave him some money. But, instead, we sat down and ate our food and drank our wine while he continued to rattle his coin cup at the bus stop.

What City Do You People Live In?

I like dcblogs new little brain tickler at the top of the page each day. Nice addition!

So I’ll devote this posting to a response to DC’s not quite an urban paradise yet, but we’re getting there.

My response is to the original post(s) at American Prospect by Ezra Klein and the comments specific to DC.

My first response: what city do you people live in? Cause it ain’t MY city.

The amount of mis-information floating around in the original posts and the comments is astounding, such as:

"...a plurality of [DC's] population is well educated and in many ways upper middle class, while far more of its population is poor and not well educated..."

Huh?

(First, I think the word “plurality” is misused: you’re either well educated, or you’re not.)

Some facts: DC Poverty Rate: 18.3%; Percentage of DC residents with a BA or higher: 39.1%
(From the U.S. Census) Please don’t comment that 18.3% is high. It is, but it is not a majority. And 39.1% is also high. Extremely.

DC has a bad rap as being a poor, crime-ridden place. There, of course, is a racial overtone to that bad rap, since DC is 57% black. But the statistics don’t back up the rap.

The black middle class in DC is HUGE, but they live in places few white people have ever heard of, because nothing ever happens there to make it onto the evening news and they don’t have any trendy night spots: Riggs Park, Michigan Park, Brightwood, Hillcrest, Fort Dupont, Fort Totten, etc. (Also in places you’ve heard of, like Capitol Hill and Anacostia and Bloomingdale and Ladroit Park and Shaw.) These people may or may not have college degrees (although many do), but they all have good, stable jobs (either blue or white collar), or own businesses. It’s true that some of these neighborhoods don’t have many “coffee shops,” but neither did McLean, Bethesda, Silver Spring, or Arlington until a decade ago.

The symbolic "coffee shop" comes down to culture: 20 years ago, a coffee shop was a diner. You went there for breakfast and a cup of coffee and sat at the counter. The United States has never had a tradition of cafes, or tea houses, or tea rooms, or hookah bars, or Hamams, or bath houses, or any other kind of "third place" (save neighborhood bars), except in ethnic enclaves, where people brought their old world traditions with them. (And by “old world”, I’m including Asia, the Middle East, and Africa: check out the coffee ceremony at Dukem some time.) To claim coffee shops are white is silly. They are a new phenomenon in most of the U.S., and are slowly spreading everywhere. At most, they are bell-weathers of new prosperity, which says little about race. By the way, Mocha Hut, Love Cafe, and Jolt-n-Bolt are all minority owned businesses. To add to the confusion, many of the new places on U Street (that cater to “Yuppies”) are owned by immigrants, minorities, or, brace yourself, partnerships consisting of whites and minorities together! How does this fit into the rich/poor/race/class/new-comer/old-resident/owner/renter/working class/yuppie calculus that so frustratingly dominates such discussions?

Ezra Klein seems to think that a city government conjures up things like coffee shops (and other amenities that make a city “livable”). While a city government can encourage local businesses in a variety of ways (something I think DC does a poor job of), the “free market” plays the largest role in how a city develops.

Moving on: the idea that DC doesn't have any University ties is also absurd. The city is full of Howard lawyers, doctors, and dentists who stuck around, as well as lawyers, doctors, and dentists (and every other profession you can name) from Georgetown, GW, American, CUA, Trinity, even UDC.

The assertion that DC doesn’t have bookstores or an arts culture is also ignorant. Within walking distance of my place, there are the following bookstores, some new, some old (you know, before all the hated yuppies moved in):
Red Onion Books, Second Story Books, Idle Time Books, Candidas, Books-a-Million, G Books, Kramer Books, Busboys and Poets, Lambda Rising, Howard University Bookstore, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

There is a large and dynamic arts scene is DC. It’s just that it’s filled with people who actually spend their time painting, writing, sculpting, acting, and dancing, and not a bunch of highly visible posers who hang out at cafes NOT painting, writing, sculpting, acting, or dancing, like in other cities. Because to be able to afford to live in this city, you better get off your ass and do some work. Here are some fine examples:

Washington Writer’s Publishing House
Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
Mid City Artists
Brett Busang
Anna Demovidova
Agatekartstudio
Solas Nua
Lines and Stars
Burlesque Poetry Hour

And these are just the ones I know about.

Finally, I came to DC to go to grad school, and discovered that it is awesome, and so I found a job here so I could stay. It’s awesome because, unlike Portland and Seattle (overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly boring, overwhelmingly easy to live in (or "livable")), DC is diverse and challenging and stimulating. You’ll find a lot of people like me in DC, at least the DC in which I live.

The Ducks of Jena, Louisiana

Seeing so many of my fellow Washingtonians wearing black today, I can’t help but feel a little neglectful at not having shown, somehow, my feelings about the Jena 6.

I like to think of myself as open-minded, never leaping to conclusions without knowing all the facts. So in a case like this, I usually would reserve judgment, especially on a whole town, that everyone else is calling racist.

But sometimes, I have to admit, one can simply know things without the benefit of all the facts.

I’m sure the African American kids did some provoking, as teenagers, especially boys, do, and it is obvious that the white teens did some of there own, in no uncertain racist terms. I suppose one could say that everyone in the situation was at fault, that no one had more blame than anyone else. Except, that’s exactly what the local authorities are NOT saying. Why were the African American kids the only ones arrested? I know I don’t have all the facts, but if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...

I used to coach youth lacrosse in Northern Virginia. One day, we had Gary Gait (the Michael Jordan of the Lacrosse world) come out to give a clinic to our league. There were probably fifty or sixty kids huddled around him, all of them white, except for one black kid. He was probably 12 or 13, standing towards the back, joking around with his (white) friends. They were making noise, which was inappropriate, and maybe the black kid was making more noise than the others, but he wasn’t the only one. One of the fathers, another volunteer coach, came over and pulled this lone black kid, and only this kid, out of the group, and proceeded to yell at him with that seething, closed-teeth, bulging-eyed style of restrained-yet-not yelling that belied something deeper and more menacing than a simple reprimand for inappropriate adolescent behavior. I don’t remember the exact words he used, but they weren’t racist or off color in any way. But it didn’t matter. Even though I didn’t know a thing about this man, I still knew a duck quacking when I heard one.

A small town in Louisiana, far from the cosmopolitan excesses of places like DC? You’d have to be naive if you didn’t think there were some ducks down there, even some ducks in power.

I was going to write a post about how my neighborhood, from Dupont Circle to U Street to Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, and Mt. Pleasant, was like a snap shot of the American promise: one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the country, and one of the most densely populated. African, Middle Eastern, Latino, and Asian immigrants live and work side by side with established African American and white families and new comers of all colors (like me), young and old, gay and straight, well educated and not, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and unaffiliated, and it all works. There are problems, just like anywhere else, but nothing like Jena, Louisiana. Now I don’t know how to write that post, because it seems we are still a long way from that American promise.

I’m just glad I live where I live.

The Great Mailbox Conspiracy on U Street

Now that I’m back from my travels, I suddenly realized that something terrible has happened in DC while I was gone: someone has stolen all the mail boxes. Or they all got sick of standing around being blue and just took off.

I had a very important letter to mail (or “screed”, as editors and the judiciary all across the land have called them in their “restraining orders”), and I walked all around the neighborhood, down New Hampshire and up 17th, and down 18th and around U Street, and not a mail box was to be found!

I suspect they are congregating somewhere near the river, perhaps in one of the Potomac Parks, maybe near where The Awakening will soon be torn from the ground, saying their good-byes.

Or maybe they are tired of being Borfed, and are staging a mail-in (or squat-in, or sit-there-in, or whatever mail boxes do) at the USPS headquarters building (it’s that big blue rounded-top building in Southwest that always makes me think of grandma - you know the one).

In any case, there are no mail boxes near Coladams Circle, and my screeds are piling up, and we are in danger of suffocation by screed, necessitating more writing of screeds, with no way of emancipating said screeds. Thus the provenance of this blog entry.

The Long, Slow, Inevitable Ruination of U Street Has Begun

I saw it, and now I may just have to move: not one, but a whole family of tourists on U Street. I wasn’t sure at first; I mean, how likely is it that an entire family with no connection to the neighborhood would be on U Street in the middle of the afternoon when even people from Fairfax or Shady Grove are terrified to step foot on U Street? (That’s a subject for another blog entry, and I’m just the man to write it!)

But there they were, mom, dad, and two kids, perusing guide books and plastic-sheathed maps, a-slung with cameras and fanny packs, milling about indecisively in front of Ben’s Chili Bowl. (I assumed they were there to see the “Craddle” tags; those artistes are such a draw. Perhaps DC government should give them a grant.)

I just couldn’t figure it out. I walked past them aggressively, just to let them know whose turf they were on. Their reaction confirmed my suspicion: they were crazy. The mother rattled off some sort of gibberish, which the father, who pretended to understand her, answered with similar guttural, monosyllabic nonsense. Frankly, they scared me a little.

I kept walking. It took me half a block to figure it out: they were German. German! It all made sense now! Germans are everywhere! They’re as bad as the Australians: interested in stuff, like history and culture and food and cities, and just head-strong enough not to listen to anything someone from Reston might tell them about “that” part of the city.

They’re still crazy, though. And it’s still gibberish.