Depressing Places

This weekend, my job had me going to a site up in Columbia Gateway, a sprawling, depressing office colony in Howard County. It is an intimidatingly isolated, desolate, oppressing void of a place. I grew furious trying to figure out which anonymous LeCorbuseurian complex housed the site where I was meeting my colleagues. It was a very depressing landscape, and I couldn't wait to leave.

Then it dawned on me that thousands of people work here every day.

Columbia Gateway. Photo by Howard County

I find my self oppressed by the traffic-choked pedestrian-hazardous landscape of Laurel Lakes, and I am doing everything in my power to move. But push comes to shove, I can walk to the store. If someone is causing problems in my neighborhood, it will be noticed and police will be called. Those police shouldn't have too much problem finding the suspects. It is Lower Manhattan compared to Columbia Gateway (except they have the skyscrapers up there).

Perhaps I am ruminating on the concept too much. I may be reading too much James Howard Kuntsler. But then CNN illustrated human's desire for beautiful and memorable settings. The visual stimulation of the beautiful planet in the hit film Avatar is striking people on such a level that going back to the cul-de-sacs, drive-thru fast food joints, and office parks of reality has caused them depression.

I have not seen Avatar yet, but I plan to do so soon after reading the CNN article. I know the symptoms. I was a little depressed when I returned from my two months in Europe, having seen such awe-inspiring places as the Abbey at Fauntevrault, the American Cemetary in Luxembourg, Heidelburg Castle, Chateau Vianden, the Ardennes Forest, Die Bergstrasse, the Amsterdam canals, and Chateau d'Angers and then returning home to the billboard littered landscapes of Route 1 in Laurel. Fortunately, I go to downtown Silver Spring, Clarendon, H Street, Hyattsville, Chinatown, or one of the DC area's many other great places, and I get over it. They may not be on par with the beauty and sense of places as the Abbey at Fauntevrault, but they are memorable places designed for enjoyment of people.

Perhaps the visual magnificence of Avatar is so otherworldly beautiful and James Cameron has accomplished something truly profound. I'll let you know after I watch it. But perhaps many Americans are already depressed by their lack of access to truly beautiful places, and Avatar simply defined that their need for such places that was already festering inside them.

Coast Guard HQ: 2,000 Cars, No Boats

A historic campus. An idyllic untouched corner of real estate in close proximity to the seat of federal government for a great nation. The headquarters of an esteemed branch of the military and an a department headquarters for a government agency. No nation on earth could improve on a venture like that. But in the United States, we throw in a 1900 space garage.

The United States Coast Guard Headquarters design has been approved. I'm not an architect nor am I capable of eloquently stating my disgust at a coast guard headquarters that looks like a spa retreat off in the woods despite the nearby convergence of two navigable rivers, but I will openly take issue with the 1,973 space garage. It is definitely better than surface parking, but this is a historic site, virgin land with views of the convergence of the rivers, the Capitol, and the monuments. Real estate in America doesn't get more prime than this. And DHS is dropping a greenified Tyson's Corner transplant with a huge garage in the middle of it, complete with a sexed up drainage pond and ample parking.

I've advocated that a campus like this ought to house an institution of higher learning, particularly UDC. To me, that would be the ideal way to dignify that site (Although I don't know what your average UDC student would think about moving into dorms that formerly housed mental patients... but one would think the good people hat DHS and the Coast Guard would have similar concerns!)

I'll admit my reaction is perhaps a bit pessimistic considering that I have not seen an illustration or elevation that contextualizes the complex amongst the St. E's buildings, but with streetcars imminent, location near two Metro stations, and traffic congestion already problematic, a huge parking garage has me worried that this is just going to be another office park like those in Columbia, Gaithersburg, or Tyson's Corner.

The garage is built into a slope visible from Haines Point. Several measures were put in place to minimize the visual impact of the structure, such as putting more of it underground and a green wall system on the northern facade, however on an important site like this with available transit alternatives, I would expect better planning and land use than a green-guilt version of the same disposable crap office box we have all come to know and hate.

Students of architecture, I beg your input on this one. I am at a loss for words. If the Army built something that ugly, I would be even more embarrassed as a veteran than I am when West Point gets annihilated by the Naval Academy in football every December.

Bolling Air Force Waste

Neil at GGW had a great article about the proposal to narrow the Anacostia River (dubbed the McMillian Two Plan) and bring a bit of Paris to eastern DC. If it works and can be done with environmental prudence, I am absolutely in love with the idea. It strengthens the urban fabric of the city, it extends the grid to an underdeveloped but historic part of the city, and it creates more monumental space in the city.

But my favorite part? The plan appears to redevelop the northern part of Bolling Air Force Base. Bolling AFB is an abominable waste of valuable riverfront real estate. Some might argue that the Nation's Capital ought to play host to military facilities. As a former soldier, this is a no-brainer. Of course it should. But DoD property within the District ought to use the space in a manner that is congruent with the rest of the city. Across the Anacostia River, Fort McNair interacts with its urban environment productively and in keeping with the other infrastructure surrounding it. Bolling AFB looks like it could have been built on an empty greenfield an hours drive from the city:

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Does an Air Force base (especially one without an active air strip since 1962) need to take up this much land? Does the utterly suburban housing stock need to sit atop land above one of the most iconic rivers in the world? I'm sure this is no problem at Minot AFB in North Dakota, but the District of Columbia has only 68 square miles. Should almost 5% of it be devoted to isolated, wasteful suburban style land use? Perhaps its time to consolidate Bolling's facilities into something that works better with the city surrounding it, and redevelop Southwest's Potomac waterfront in a manner more suited to its urban environment.

Stupid Growth: St. Elizabeths

What does this look like to you:


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Does it remind you of this?


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Or this?


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Using St. Elizabeths Hospital to house the new Department of Homeland Security headquarters is a bad idea when the land would be much better suited to house a new UDC Campus.

BRAC =/= Community Building

Nuclear Free Zone Sign (Takoma Park, MD)
Originally uploaded by takomabibelot

Today I was talking to a good friend of mine at work about Takoma Park. She is a relative newcomer to the area, moving up here from the South just over a year ago. She works with me at Fort Meade, lives in Annapolis, and goes to church in Takoma Park. She was considering moving closer in to the city, but wasn't too fond of Takoma Park, her only experience with it being the two mile drive down University Boulevard from the Beltway to her church on Carroll Avenue.

This, of course, is right by where I grew up. So naturally, I had to chime in and offer to take her on a tour of a town much more pleasant than the snippets that she has experienced over the last sixteen months.

I could sing Takoma Park's praises for hours. It's a very pleasant streetcar suburb. It's very friendly, clean, and safe. It houses a very diverse spectrum of people. And it's close to everything. Frankly, I was perturbed that this hadn't been exposed to her previously. Why was this? I can attest that she is highly intelligent. But when she moved up here for her job at Fort Meade, my guess is that the hiring office pointed her toward the drab car-oriented apartment complexes of Central Maryland so that she could be (relatively) close to work. To her credit, she moved to Annapolis and not Columbia or Odenton, but nonetheless, after a year of suburban isolation, she wants to move closer to one of the cities.

She chose the DC area because that is where her church is, in Takoma Park. But a word she threw around often during our conversation was "community". Not just church community, but community as a place to live. Her apartment complex, though safe and quiet, offers no such sense of community.

I explained to her my philosophy on choosing an apartment complex (I've only once ever lived in one, and would never do it again now that I own a house, but I love offering my unwarranted advice). If you can enter an apartment building from a sidewalk along a street and you don't have to walk across a surface parking lot, it is more likely to be better than other apartment buildings in the area.
-Apartments with street entrances generally make better use of the land on which they lie, leaving fewer dark corners for crime to breed.
-They encourage pedestrian activity, which adds eyes on the street, detering criminal activity.
-People walking around are more likely to interact every day, and thus less likely to behave poorly towards each other (as I've found the anonymous neighbor might tend to do).
-Pedestrian activity also implies less dependence (real or perceived) on the automobile.
-Less automobile dependence ipso facto means less money spent on the automobile, which in turn implies a larger disposable income, raising their socio-economic status
-People of higher socio-economic status demand a higher standard of amenities and are less likely to tolerate crime or unsanitary conditions in and around the building.

Again, the above is just my own little method of choosing a decent apartment, and it is entirely unscientific. But I use the example of down town Silver Spring: The apartment buildings on East-West Highway between Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road are far superior than those just a quarter mile away in the Summit Hills complex (Slummit Thrills, as my college buddies who lived there call it) at East-West and 16th Street. Better urbanism makes a more palatable place to live. Thing is, we're seeing that transformation to urbanism in Silver Spring and Takoma Park... not so much in Anne Arundel and Howard Counties.

It got me to think about where I live. I work at Fort Meade, which I've stated before is absolutely horrible for the region as a whole. I live in Laurel, because it is close to work. My father, who also worked at Fort Meade, chose a much longer commute, coming from Silver Spring... because it was near my parents' church, good schools, a community. And he moved there in the car-happy early '70s. And now, I find myself driving to Silver Spring at least four times a week to partake in that community (my church, the football team I coach, my family, many of my friends). And drive I must, because Laurel doesn't have convenient transit for me to bus or train it to Silver Spring.

So now you have me driving 13 miles round trip to and from work every day, plus 25+ miles round trip to Silver Spring several times a week. Then there's my friend who drive about 41 miles round trip every day for work, plus another 62 miles round trip every Sunday for church. If we could commute to work via transit, chances are we'd both live near a transit hub, set our roots there, and that would eliminate 300+ miles driving a week right there. Richard Layman points out the dangers of sending thousands more jobs to military. If there are going to be thousands of new jobs sent out here with the BRAC, perhaps there should be an initiative to encourage these folks settle in an area-- a community-- that minimizes their impact on the highways (and their wallets) with the commute.

After the BRAC takes full effect, Fort Meade will have over 50,000 jobs on it, and thousands more around it. And Fort Meade doesn't have a single transit station. It's a ticking time bomb.

PRT in Business Parks

I aborted my plans to protest my office's lack of transit access by sleeping in my office tonight. A colleague passed away over the weekend and I deemed the ensuing fanfare of the sleep-in highly inappropriate, all things considered. I'm sure that little improvement will be made in the next 365 days, however, so I'll give it another go next year.

Last week, The Overhead Wire wrote a post on PRT. Now, I agree with the overall sentiment in the comment thread on this one. If PRT was the least bit practical, it would already be up and running in East Asia or Europe. They know how to spend transit money over there. Though often proposed, it has not yet been widely implemented in any cities.

There are a couple of places, though, where PRT or people movers have been implemented. At the University of West Virginia, they have been using a such a system since 1975 to get students around the campus at Morgantown. London's Heathrow Airport will be rolling out a true PRT system next year, but the verdict is still out as to whether or not the system will achieve any success. There are also a planned system in Dubai, however they'll throw money at any half cocked project over there. The first two projects have something in common that may contribute to their success, however... they are getting people around a campus rather than public space.

Talk of replacing systems like Metro, the New York City Subway, the T in Boston, and Chicago's El with PRT would be absolutely ridiculous. But I don't think it would be that crazy to see if PRT could fix the "last mile" problem for business campuses like the one where I work in central Maryland. Perhaps a PRT could connect a couple of buildings in an office park to a Metro, MARC or VRE station a reasonable distance away (close enough that a PRT system would be feasible, but not close enough for transit oriented development to be more cost-effective).

Naturally, it makes more sense to redevelop an area and make it more walkable. but if a large company or government institution operates a large, spread out business campus (I'm looking at you, military bases). It would be important to make these systems usable only by approved personnel.

Perhaps Bethesda's Medical Center stop would be a good test case. The campuses of Suburban Hospital, NIH, Bethesda Naval Medical Center, and the Forest Glen Annex of Walter Reed are all within a reasonable distance, but the campuses are dreadfully car oriented. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center would be another candidate, employing 10,000 people on a 1,300 acre campus that is not accessible from not-too-far-away Greenbelt Metro Station. NIST in Gaithersburg is close enough to Shady Grove station to make it feasible. Fort Meade, Fort Belvoir, Fort Meyer, and Andrews AFB could use whatever accessibility they can get. And of course, there are the Airports, though ours probably don't need as much added mobility as Heathrow. Plus I'm sure there are a few office parks in Columbia, Reston, and other outlying cities where PRT might be more cost-effective than redeveloping the entire campuses. If PRT can cut it.

At the end of the day, PRT is not a solution. It promotes sprawl the same way cars do. But it would be a reasonable way to retrofit spread-out office campuses until it is economical to redevelop them. It could ostensibly take cars off the road if it connects businesses to transit. I could also remove surface parking lot, which ironically could speed up the redevelopment of such locations.

So replacing Metro with PRT is a laughable prospect. But if the Heathrow experiment works out, perhaps we ought to consider it as an alternative to promote transit use for job centers like mine at Fort Meade, which houses over 30,000 jobs, not to mention the nearby contractor facilities and 5,700 new jobs expected over the next decade, all without transit access. If connecting those jobs to transit could take 1/8 of the cars off the road, we're talking about 5,000 cars a day not on the highways burning gasoline, creating traffic and pollution, or sucking up land with asphalt parking spaces.