War Is a Media Racket

The non-stop huffing and puffing we've seen in the past several weeks over the withdrawal of American troops and the return of the Taliban has laid bare a deep problem in larger media institutions.  Smedley D. Butler used the phrase "War is a Racket" in a series of speeches given in the early 1930s, which he turned into a book published in 1935.  In it, he explained how the U.S. military was used to support corporate interest in various countries it was deployed to in the 1910s and 1920s.  These days the U.S. military does not so much prop up overseas corporate operations directly as aim a giant fire hose of defense dollars to defense contractors large and small.  These companies and their owners in turn use some of the money as campaign contributions to the most hawkish or pro-outsourcing politicians, who then seek to extend wars or have the military turn over as many functions as possible to private industry.  The money also flows to various "think tanks" who generate position papers, op-eds, and conveniently available talking heads for any news show that makes a last-minute request.

The media, too, has an interest in conflict and war.  At the institutional level, war is good for ratings, subscriptions, "engagements", and - ideally - revenue.  That's not surprising.  The uncertainty and potential threat from war makes people pay attention because there is a long history of war causing massive amounts of death, well above the everyday level of death that people have always experienced.  So it is completely rational for media organizations to cover war in detail, and bring in lots of guests who are pro-war, or at least deeply, deeply concerned with developments.  Little time is given to anti-war voices, who are viewed and portrayed as naive and idealistic.  We saw this in 2002-2003, and we're seeing it again, though the pro-war voices present now are mostly there to re-enforce the idea that Afghanistan was a "loss" and thus Biden is a loser who should be replaced with a more war-friendly president, or at least replaced.

What is more complicated is individual motivation among members of the media.  I think a lot of them have a pro-war bias because covering a conflict could be better for their career than covering anything domestic.  Those who are assigned to the war get to stand in exotic locations and talk intensely about dramatic developments for reports that are aired at the top of the hour, or have their reports published on the front page.  Those covering ongoing domestic issues tend not to be the center of their reports, which are relegated to the second half of the show, or farther into the newspaper, next to the ads for the discount liquor stores.  It is also probably more rewarding personally to cover war.  The locations are distant and different.  The conflict-zone reporters have opportunities to "embed" with the military and be flown around in helicopters while officers explain complex programs.  Domestic reporters on assignment get a rental car in which they have to drive themselves around to assemble their story.  And so on.

Ultimately, an overwhelming majority of journalists and media institutions cannot be trusted on matters of war.  They may create and run tragic stories from the front lines, or about the victims, or even the aftermath, if the leadership thinks viewers still remember the war. But in the lead-up to any war of choice, they will be biased in favor of war.  That will come though in the choice of stories, interviewees, and overall tone.   American citizens will have to learn to fight this bias by choosing different media outlets for their information.  Otherwise, the country will eventually repeat the mistakes of the Iraq War and the overly-long occupation of Afghanistan.

Planning: Curb Cuts and Alleys

NB: I believe this topic has been discussed much better many times elsewhere on the net and in print.  I am writing simply to clarify my own thoughts.  I apologize for the primitive graphics.

One of the issues that arises with higher-density housing is parking.  As I discussed in a previous post, people want cars and thus parking for a variety of reasons.  On-street parking in residential areas has a number of issues, and off-street parking does as well.  Nonetheless, people desire parking, and there are ways to accommodate it in the context of fee-simple houses - up to a certain point.

The standard way to accommodate parking is to build access from the street to the private property where an owner wants to park vehicles.  In low-density suburbs and rural areas, that means a simple paved or unpaved driveway leading into the property from the roadway.  As housing becomes denser, in most cases the access crosses the pedestrian portion of the right-of-way, which is usually a paved sidewalk, but may in some cases be bicycle lanes.  These intersecting paths of movement are point of conflict between vehicles and pedestrians.  They are also known as curb cuts in America, because the standard high curb is cut down so the vehicle can drive smoothly from the street into a private property.  

On lots with large, open yards, it can be easy for a driver to spot a pedestrian.  (In this post, I will use the word 'pedestrian' as a shorthand for any using the sidewalk.  Apart from people walking, other users may include joggers, younger cyclists, micromobility users, assisted mobility users, and older cyclists, depending on the local regulations and specific configuration of the right-of-way.)  On lots where vision is obstructed by plants, fences, or other buildings, pedestrians can be injured if a driver is not careful.  Pedestrians learn to be wary in low-visibility situations, but too many dangerous crossings can make walking down certain streets unpleasant, and those streets are avoided.

Another issue is that curbside portion of a street where the access to private property ends becomes an area that can't be used for parking if there is on-street parking on the same side of the street.  In that situation, it can't be used for normal vehicular movement, either.  In some neighborhoods, an informal rule develops that a property owner can block the access to their own property, but doing so still risks a ticket.  It can also encourage less conscientious drivers to block other people's driveways.

A third issue with curb cuts is that sometimes people simply park their vehicles across the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to detour and potentially enter the roadway to continue their journey.  This happens most often when the driveway is relatively short and a larger vehicle such as a pickup does not fit completely onto the private lot.  It also happens when the driveway is obviously too short, but the vehicle fits between the end of the driveway (usually a garage door) and the street.  Either way, in most jurisdictions this discourtesy is illegal, but rarely enforced unless someone complains.

One solution to the issue of curb cuts is to create a second, usually parallel, right-of-way that allows rear access to properties for the purpose of parking.  This right-of-way is usually called an alley, but is sometimes called a service lane, or just a lane.  Alleys predate the automobile by hundreds or thousands of years, depending on how they are defined. Some American cities that have them were laid out when the horse was the main means of long-distance travel.  But alleys have been adapted to support motor vehicles, and offer some advantages over front access for parking.

The first is that alleys cut down on the opportunities for pedestrian-vehicle conflict.  Alleys reduce the number of curb cuts from many to as few as one per block, though two is most common.  While pedestrians can use the alley as a walkway, most people prefer a sidewalk, as an alley is an obvious zone of conflict.  Some urbanists are interested in upgrading the alley to a sort of second, pedestrian friendly street, but outside of warm tourist towns, that seems to me to be a duplicative and futile effort.

The second advantage is that with rear parking and reduction of curb cuts, the street in front of homes has more space either for parking or the various forms of traffic, depending on how it is striped.  Or the roadway can be narrowed and restricted to vehicle movement only, reducing the amount of paved area the jurisdiction needs to maintain.  The space freed in this way could then be used to create or expand curb lawns.

Alleys have some smaller benefits.  They are good places for trash pickup, as a garbage or recycling truck can access cans or bins in an alley without having to pull them across a line of parked cars from the sidewalk or curb lawn.  They also reduce the chances of the truck driver coming into conflict with moving vehicles, as alleys are usually so narrow that most passenger vehicles cannot pass a stopped truck.  They can also be used for overhead utilities in areas where they cannot be placed underground due to costs or technical reasons.  Overhead wires in an alley don't mar the appearance of the adjacent street, and they don't come into conflict with any trees planted in front of the homes.

Alleys have downsides, of course.  The primary one is that they have to be built and maintained.  While they don't have many of the features of streets, such as sidewalks, curbs, crosswalks, lane markings, and traffic lights, they still need to be built to support the vehicles that travel down it.  Garbage trucks are the heaviest vehicles to travel through residential areas on a regular basis, and cause the most damage to residential streets from vehicles.  The second is that the hard surface of an alley will increase runoff over that of unimproved yards.  The tradeoff between having an alley and rear parking verses having driveways and front-parking needs to be calculated when it comes to managing storm water.

Another negative negative factor is that alleys tend to be unsightly.  Because they may not be fully visible from the surrounding buildings, trash can be dumped and improvements vandalized without anyone even being able to notice.  And the fences and structures along alleys are often neglected since they aren't the public face of the property.  Alleys are problematic in areas with heavy snowfall.  Because there is nowhere to put the snow, they are left unplowed, making access difficult or dangerous.  Snow can be moved with a bucket-loader and trucked out, but that is an expensive option.

Alleys also have a reputational issue.  The dark alley is a widespread fictional device that probably has its roots in the actual alleys of medieval cities in England.  There is no doubt that the originals were poorly lit and often the location of crimes that might not take place in wider streets or the daylight.  Modern alleys are not narrow walkways with sections passing beneath buildings, and often have streetlights.  Nonetheless, the negative perception continues, probably because alleys tend to be trash-strewn and poorly maintained, indicating that few people notice or care what happens in them.  Research indicates that gating alleys in the UK reduces crime by a small amount, but the number of studies is limited.  The overall level of crime in an area with alleys is probably more important than the absence or presence of alleys themselves.

Because of their complications, I think alleys need to be analyzed with caution in mind before they are included in a design.  I think they provide a way to mitigate the issues of parking in residential areas of moderate density, but they are not a solution in themselves.  Only by addressing car-dependent mobility can the problem of parking be truly solved.

Planning: Block Sizes for Mixed Uses

NB: I believe this topic has been discussed much better many times elsewhere on the net and in print.  I am writing simply to clarify my own thoughts.  I apologize for the primitive graphics.

In a previous post I examined block sizes for perimeter apartments, a common form of housing in Europe.  They allow fairly high density, but generally don't allow for very large businesses to be established on their ground floors.  Many businesses don't necessarily need or even want street-level access, and could occupy higher floors.  Others want much larger floor plates, or need to be in a separate structure for reasons of noise, vibration, or other measures.  Replacing the portion of the perimeter apartments with a building dedicated to businesses is one way to integrate the two functions.

Here I have depicted some fairly simple divisions of a block into thinner perimeter apartments and commercial buildings that use up their entire lots.  The main issue is the amount of open space from any window to a wall or window on a facing building.  This is culturally dependent, and ranges from a few feet to as high as 80 feet, even in urban areas.  New York City has codified a minimum of 30 feet from a window to a wall, and 40 feet from a window to a window, but only up to 25' in building height.  Offset distances increase with building height.   For a building 55' high, as I have been using, the values would be 50' and 60', meaning the commercial building in the upper left corner could not be inserted into the block without carving it back to the T-shaped area outlined on the roof.  However, if it was built first to the limits of the lot, then subsequent apartments might have to be impractically thin.  The zoning code may have rules for resolving, preventing, or mitigating conflicts of this kind, or it may depend on negotiation and trading of rights.  No matter what the method, the conflicts would need to be resolved clearly.  Otherwise, the first landowner to build in any block could seriously impact the use of every other owner on the block without the others' consent or foreknowledge.  There would be less conflicts on blocks larger than the 260' by 260' (buildable) examples I have shown above.

For larger businesses, it may be necessary to develop entire block at one time, and replace the entire interior of the block with the commercial structure.  This is often done with parking garages in suburban developments, and results in what has been dubbed the Texas doughnut.  This configuration has the advantage of hiding pedestrian-unfriendly or generally unappealing buildings away from sight.  Structures hidden in this manner can cut some costs since aesthetics are not a concern.  However, the arrangement could reduce the exterior ring of apartments to outward-facing units only, meaning that common elements are shared between fewer units, increasing per unit costs.  The density of the block would be less than with double-sided blocks, but the tradeoff may be worthwhile in some circumstances.  With bigger blocks, it would be easier to develop a large commercial structure with little impact on adjacent buildings.

Another approach available only to large development projects is to stack the functions.   By putting the business functions on the outside and constructing a residential tower above that on the inside, businesses could have fairly large floors.  However, the apartments could possibly look out on an unattractive roofscape full of machinery, solar panels (hopefully), or highly reflective roofing material, though "green roofs" could be an option.  They would also lose any connection to the street below, giving them a suburban feel at best.  Inverting those functions would work better in some ways, with the apartments looking directly onto the street, and the businesses looking onto a relatively small roof area, along with the street, at least from higher floors.  However, the major disadvantage here would be a large area of interior space below the tower that would have limited uses, such as storage or parking.  Parking located here would be fairly expensive, as it would all be custom-designed and cast-in-place in order to fit inside the envelope and have a column grid compatible with the businesses above.  More complicated architectural forms could potentially make the large interior area less useful, though they would benefit non-occupants if they had lasting aesthetic appeal.  Overall, I think smaller blocks would work better for whole-block developments, but it would depend a lot on local expectations and regulations related to heights and setbacks. 

In addition to businesses of various sorts, there are a number of other institutions that are part of any urban fabric, including religious organizations, schools, universities, hospitals, government facilities, and museums.  All of those will have a physical presence.  Often they are large enough to require an entire block, or are given one in order to highlight their prestige.  But smaller institutional buildings can be easily integrated into a block of apartments.

Investigating the mixture of apartments with larger commercial or civic functions leaves less clear answers about block sizes, because the non-residential functions have widely varying needs.  In most dense areas, I feel the established grid should force the commercial or civic function to adapt.  There may be a few situations where institutions need to combine blocks to function effectively, such as sports arenas or conference centers.  But those should be rare exceptions, and should be sited so the superblocks don't interrupt important traffic corridors or divide neighborhoods.   In a future post, I will look at block sizes for larger businesses.

Planning: Block Sizes for High-Density Housing

NB: I believe this topic has been discussed much better many times elsewhere on the net and in print.  I am writing simply to clarify my own thoughts.  I apologize for the primitive graphics.

In a previous post I examined block sizes for perimeter apartments, an arrangement found in Europe that can create high-density neighborhoods.   In this post, I will look at other high-density apartment building types, mostly from New York City.

NYC has been America's most populous city since the first census in 1790, and contains one of the largest extents of hyperdensity on the planet.  Due to the restrictions imposed by the surrounding waterways, land has long been valuable in the city, leading to intensive development.  When the majority of the Manhattan was laid out in 1811, the population was only about 100,000.  In contrast, London had a population of about 1,200,000, and Paris about 600,000.  The blocks in the undeveloped parts of NYC were divided mostly into lots measuring 25' by 100'.  This was deemed appropriate for a single-family house at the time, whether attached or detached.  However, as the city grew rapidly to 810,000 by 1860, the lot width became a liability, because the single family houses were replaced with tenements, or apartments, for low-income residents, which were the majority of the population.  The earliest of these ("pre-law") were often built to the limits of the lot, with only a 10' deep rear yard.  This meant that interior rooms received no light or fresh air, as light shafts or courtyards would cut into profits of the landlords

This led to the "First" Tenement House Act of 1867, which required fire escapes for each apartment and windows for each room, among several requirements.  Landlords met the letter of the law by installing windows in interior walls, which may have provided a slight improvement for some rooms, but was not what the legislators had intended.  In 1879 the "Second" Tenement House Act was passed, which required windows to face the street, a yard, or a minimal airshaft open to the sky.  This airshaft was very small by design, to please developers, and did little to light rooms.  Unfortunately, the narrow air shaft led to two problems.  One was that it was used as a dumping area for trash and waste by residents on upper floors, leading to unpleasant odors for all because the space was not designed to be easily accessed for cleaning.  The second was that it enabled fires to spread floor-to-floor and building-to-building more easily, as the air shaft acted as a flue.

The problems with the "Old Law" led to the "New Law" formally known as the New York State Tenement House Act, passed in 1901.  This new legislation required "inner courts" entirely enclosed by the property to be at least 24' by 24' for a 60' tall building.  For courts on lot lines, the minimum was 12' by 24', which could be paired with the adjacent building for a more open space.  The law also allowed "outer courts" to extend from deep inside the building to a street or back yard.  These had an minimum dimension of 6' when on a lot line, and 12' when between parts of the same building.  The measurements again were for a 60' tall building.  The regulations for both inner and outer courts had adjustments for both taller and shorter buildings, as well as absolute minimums.

Above I have depicted the basic shapes allowed in each era.  First, at the bottom, are the "pre law" tenements that were allowed up to 1879, with no air shafts at all.  Next are the "old law" "dumbbell" tenements, with the problematic narrow air shafts.  On the upper block are examples of inner court and outer court "new law" buildings.  Multi-family dwellings on lots under 40' or so became much more difficult to build economically after passage of the law, thus the wider buildings.  Pre law and old law tenements were mostly 4 or 5 stories in height, but some new law tenements were as much as 6 or 7 stories, even without elevators, in order to make up for the lot space reserved by the new requirements.  Similarly-sized buildings conforming to the 1901 statute were also constructed for more upscale customers, with larger suites and at least one elevator.

Another major city experiencing explosive growth about the same time was Berlin.  Previously the capital of Prussia, it was made the capital of a united Germany in 1871.  The population then grew from 826,000 to 1.88 million by 1900, roughly the same as Manhattan at the time.  It also had tenements, known as mietskaserne, or "rental barracks."  These buildings may have started as perimeter blocks, with additional structures added first at the rear of each, and then along the sides, to create large interior courts.  But by the late 1800s, they were regularly built to the lot line from the start.  Unlike in NY, there were not separate buildings for the wealthy and the poor.  Instead, the wealthy lived in the front section on the second floor, while others crowded into the rest of the building.  Blocks in Berlin are much less regular than in Manhattan, and the image above shows an abstraction of the basic form.  The mietskaserne were often extended to create a second or even third courtyard on deeper blocks.  This did not happen to tenements in New York, because the more rigid street layout created few deep blocks.  The meitskaserne could also be reoriented to pair with units on the opposite side of a very shallow block  Also included in the image for comparison is a block with identical dimensions and perimeter apartments. 

	Perimeter, 60' thick	25' Pre-law	25' Dumbell	50' New Law I-plan	50' Mietskaserne
Gross length	900	900	900	900	900
Gross depth	260	260	260	260	260
ROW width	60/100	60/100	60/100	60/100	60/100
Net length	800	800	800	800	800
Net depth	200	200	200	200	200
Lot width	580	25	25	50	50
Lot depth	130	100	100	100	100
Lots per block	2	64	64	32	32
Units per floor	100	4	4	6	7
Floors	5	5	5	5	5
Lot coverage	66.00%	90.00%	78.00%	68.00%	72.16%
ROW per unit (ft.)	2.32	1.81	1.81	2.42	2.07
Density per block (pers./sq. mi.)	119,138	152,497	152,497	114,373	133,435

Because of their very high lot coverage ratios, the pre-law and dumbell tenements generate the highest density.  New law buildings cover less of their lot, which accounts for the lower density.  However, they are by all accounts much more pleasant to live in.  An argument can be made that the mietskaserne are better still, because they have one large courtyard instead of a smaller courtyard and a rear yard that isn't very usable.  They are the only type still built as well, as the NYC zoning code has continued to be updated and nothing in the shape of the new law tenements is built.  Block sizes for the mietskaserne should probably be driven by a balance of walkability and efficiency, similar to perimeter apartments.  The NYC blocks are too long, so something around the size I have previously been using (580' by 240' buildable) would preferable.  However, some blocks with mietskaserne in Berlin are as large as 700' by 800', with over 35 interior courts.  That level of interaction between different structures might be a difficult to sustain in societies where businesses relationships tend to be more adversarial.

Much larger buildings were also constructed within the regulations of the 1901 law.  Show below are three whole block buildings.  From smaller to larger they are The Apthorp (1908), The Belnord (1909), and London Terrace (1931), which is actually 14 adjacent buildings.  The first two are luxury buildings with large units and separate servants' elevators and entrances.  The last was designed as a middle-class housing for workers in Midtown Manhattan.  Its units ranged from studios to two bedroom units, with some larger penthouse units.  Originally housing over 4000 residents in 1665 units, it remains one of the largest apartment buildings in the world.

Filling a lot right up to the edge of the surrounding right of way is not the only way to create density.  Isolated towers can be constructed with enough floors to substitute for high lot coverage.  In fact, that was the point of one of the earliest proponents of the "tower in the park" arrangement, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret.  However, in reality most residential towers aren't surrounded by parkland, but parking garages, indoor malls, or other pedestrian-unfriendly features.  In some cities, most notably Vancouver, the towers are located in or on a podium of human-scaled shops and housing, but that arrangement is not the rule.  Isolated towers in NYC, whether privately or publicly-owned, are usually not surrounded by other buildings.  But neither do they float in a sea of undisturbed nature; land there is too valuable to allow that.  In most cases the spaces surrounding NYC towers are simply small sections of fenced-off grass, with a few trees and not a lot of other landscaping.

	Perimeter, 60' thick	Belnord	London Terrace	UdH-style towers	HK-style towers
Gross length	900	440	900	900	900
Gross depth	260	260	260	260	260
ROW width	60/100	60/100	60/100	60/100	60/100
Net length	800	340	800	800	800
Net depth	200	200	200	200	200
Lot width	800	340	800	800	800
Lot depth	130	200	200	200	200
Lots per block	2	1	1	1	6
Units per floor	100	18	100	40	8
Floors	5	12	16	23	36
Lot coverage	66.00%	68.61%	60.40%	25.50%	21.14%
ROW per unit (ft.)	2.32	6.48	1.45	2.52	1.34
Density per block (pers./sq. mi.)	119,138	115,803	228,746	109,607	205,871

There are a two things to note in the table above.  First, the densities of both The Belnord and the London Terrace complex are based on census data, instead of being calculated.  Because they are expensive properties, they may have a higher number of small households and second homes than the rest of the city, so the density shown is probably lower than I would calculate.  Unfortunately, I don't have access to current floor plans, so calculation is impossible anyway.  Second, the block sizes for the two tower-style buildings are arbitrarily the same size as the others, which affects the density calculations.  In reality, because they are intended to have little relation ship with the streets below, block sizes don't matter that much.  The vast majority of similar towers have been built in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where they are part of large planned unit developments (PUD), and have a very suburban feel.  That is unlike The Belnord and London Terrace, which arguably may overwhelm their adjacent streets, but don't entirely turn their back on them.

Ideal block sizes for the isolated tower blocks are essentially impossible to determine, because of their lack of relationship to surrounding streets.  Preferably, they would not be built in an urban environment, but in NYC many have, often arranged in geometrical patterns on superblocks that obliterated existing streets.  For the whole block-buildings, a shorter block works better because it promotes walkability.  London Terrace should have been be split between two different blocks, and have more retail or office space on the ground floor, but NYC does not have a history of splitting large blocks to this day.  The depth of the block for the three probably depends on what people feel about the tradeoff between density and light.  North-facing exposures on lower floors will never get much natural light, but somewhat deeper blocks would increase the amount.  The tradeoff would be lower density and higher land costs per unit.

At this point I have explored most housing types that are built in high and middle-income countries.  In a future post I will look at some commercial structures and whether then can be constructed within the confines of a urban grid.