Not a fork in the road as much as a spoon.

While it’s easy to derisively brand American suburbia as homogenous and essentially unchanging since it emerged as the preferred settlement pattern for the majority of Americans fifty years ago, we hardly need an intense study to see how much they’ve evolved since the postwar housing boom that began in the late 1940s.  In fact, this “study” glosses over it about as superficially as you can.  But it gets the point across, and it provides the backdrop for an interesting glimpse at what innovations (if that’s the right word) we typically see today.

Go back in history and take a look at the street pattern from subdivisions that sprouted across the purlieus of major metros in the 1950s and early 1960s—about the same time that the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 galvanized construction of limited-access expressways through the hearts of medium and large American cities.  By the time President Eisenhower authorized the Federal Interstate Highway System, this segment of Levittown, PA (outside Philadelphia) had already enjoyed several consecutive years of astronomical growth:

 

By today’s standards, Levittown’s homes are modestly sized, the lots small enough to force the homes close together, and the garages/driveways barely accommodate two cars.

But they still represent a remarkable achievement in enabling homeownership to an emergent middle-class that had never enjoyed such a luxury in the past, particularly when the crippling Great Depression brought virtually all housing construction (and ensuing growth in independent households) to a screeching halt.  Average people could afford these homes.

Now let’s do the time warp again thirty years more, by veering about 10 miles closer to central Philly.  Witness the change in the layout of the streets:

While everything contained in this Google Map rests within the municipal boundaries of Philadelphia (unlike anything from the previous Levittown map), the most appropriate description of the neighborhoods outlined here is “transitional”.  The street configurations to the west of the large, bisecting Pennypack Creek Park still mostly abide by the conventional street grid that Philadelphia and most American cities used as the basis for neighborhood design until around World War II.  However, the east side of Pennypack begins to display a mix of conventional grids along with the same carefully ordered curvilinear streets that dominate Levittown further to the north.  Housing developers after World War II, at the onset of the baby boom, began experimenting with street designs that boldly defied the four-way stop and quadrilateral.  These new subdivisions meandered and undulated, continuing uninterrupted without any intersections for much longer intervals than any grid would allow.  The William Levitts of the era gambled by speculating that Middle America would buy into sinuous streets that, though potentially more confusing and less suitable for navigation, helped break the visual monotony of a street that stretched to the horizon line.  Curvilinear streets seemed to work well in the prestigious pioneering streetcar suburbs designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, such as Riverside, Illinois (outside Chicago) or Shaker Heights, Ohio (outside Cleveland).  Why not export this typology to the middle classes?

The gamble paid off in spades, and first-time homeowners embraced the street design that all three of the major Levittowns employed.  Before long, virtually every major metro witnessed the development of communities that followed the Levittown model, with most proliferating at about the same time that the central cities endured the cataclysm of interstate highway construction right through the central neighborhoods.  Thus, it should come as no surprise that these 1950s suburbs nearly always stretch in close proximity to either their city’s major interstate highway, the circular beltways (with three-digit numbers instead of two) or both.

But this elegantly winding braid of streets still generally lacks something we associate with today’s suburbia: complete automobile dependency.  It might not be easy or particularly desirable, but usually Levittowns are still tightly organized enough that it is possible to walk to a few destinations.  Purely hierarchical street patterns—in which one “trunk” road provides access to “branches” and then still smaller sprouts—did not catch on until later, meaning we have to go back to the future (and much, much further out from the city center) to see the sort of development patterns that emerged in the late 1960s and 70s.  The map of upper Bucks County (north of Levittown) proves this.

By the time the overwhelming majority of households had at least one car, it became de rigueur for developers to build according to these expansive street configurations, resulting in subdivisions that emphasized homeowners’ privacy at the expense of any real walkability.  With homes spaced much further apart, yards were larger, and no amenities stood conveniently within walking distance, even back on the collector or arterial that provided access to the subdivisions.  Nobody who bought into these developments gave any consideration that they would get anywhere except by car. Quite a few developments built during the 60s and 70s didn’t have sidewalks.

Housing from this time period isn’t as abundant as are the examples from the 1950s, because fewer households were organizing into families.  A moderate baby bust followed the boom.  Interestingly, home sizes grew even as the birth rate plunged; thus, individual households had more space to their own than any time in history—both inside and outside the house. Demand for shared green space reached a nadir.  Public parks in these regions are particularly scarce, since private yards typically sufficed.  The few parks in Upper Bucks County must devote a significant amount of space to parking lots, because they are inevitably unreachable by foot.

It was this time period that the cul-de-sac evolved from a suburban novelty to a sine qua non in subdivision development; families soon specifically sought them out.  The early 1960s developments often didn’t even bother with the circular patch of pavement that allowed vehicles to turn around; the roads just terminated in dead ends, particularly when these new suburbs were pushing into unincorporated areas well beyond the inner-ring suburbs.  Most municipalities eventually required roads to end in cul-de-sacs.  While the curvilinear configuration of the 1950s remained popular, by this point many of the streets in a subdivision terminated in a court.  The lack of a thruway discouraged all cars except for those belonging to people who lived on that cul-de-sac, dramatically lowering traffic volume, increasing privacy and giving the suburban subdivision a quiet, low-density settlement pattern that almost resembled rural living. 

I’m not sure when the next subtle generation in subdivision design truly emerged, but it would probably correlate to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the now-adult Baby Boomers began starting their own families—the echo boom.  Household formation picked up pace, and these young families generally sought new construction just as their parents had.  While some of the new developments took on an expansive form—particularly the luxury ones or those where land was cheap and abundant—quite a few homebuilders tightened the design.  In many cases, average lot sizes retreated slightly, even while square footage to the homes continued a steady growth.  Perhaps recognizing that they had renounced too many neighborhood essentials (or perhaps because more municipalities began mandating them), the developers of suburbs from the 1980s and onward regularly featured amenities such as storm sewers, curbs, and sidewalks (at least on one side of the street).  As a compensation for the slightly smaller yards, these subdivisions (particularly the larger ones) would often include some shared open space in the form of greenery around a decorative retention pond, a community clubhouse, or a soccer field.

Why did this happen? Why did subdivisions return to a slightly higher, more urban density than the decades prior?  My own suspicion is that some of it was prescriptive: through ordinances, municipalities started requiring culs-de-sac instead of dead ends, or storm sewers instead of drainage ditches, which drove up development costs.  Also, formerly unincorporated lands began incorporating and immediately raising the minimum standards for subdivision design.  Developers, in turn, couldn’t necessarily pass these imposed costs directly to the consumer, so instead they found a trade-off with smaller lot sizes, squeezing more homes into a newly platted piece of land.  The result looks something like the quintessential 1980s/90s suburb below:

If this photo looks unusually flat for something in Pennsylvania, that’s because it isn’t Pennsylvania.  The subdivision pictured above is in the outskirts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  While such a shift in location may seem eccentric or even unexplainable, Baton Rouge offers much more abundant examples of the 1980s subdivisions, having grown considerably at a time when the more mature metro of Philadelphia was fairly stagnant.

This subdivision also demonstrates another, subtler evolution in street design: the 90-degree cul-de-sac.  Notice the shift in the street from the photo below, as well as the parallel sidewalk.

The buffer strip between the sidewalk and the street seems a bit larger than normal, but other than that, nothing is likely to catch the eye as out of the ordinary.  But then, upon entering the bend in the road, the sidewalk takes a more generous cut into people’s front yards, veering strangely close to their front porches. 

Why would they have done this?  It almost appears to me that authorities approved the site plan without thoroughly vetting it.  While there’s nothing wrong per say about having a sidewalk so close to a house, it’s also hard to see why the average buyer would prefer it to a parcel where the sidewalk is much closer to the street.

Elsewhere, in a similar neighborhood down the road, one can witness another insertion of the cul-de-sac into a 90-degree-turn.  Though the homes are more modest, the design of the sidewalk seems a bit more conventional, and, as a result, more effective.

But look at the grassy island in the middle.  The lawn is poorly maintained, and the absence of any other landscaping makes it seem like an afterthought—like some sort of padding.

In neither of the two above examples is the execution as effective as it should be, which makes me suspect that the developers really didn’t know what they were doing.  Or they didn’t care.  It’s not a tough concept, though if these worm’s-eye photographs don’t convey it, this bird’s-eye Google Map should, taken from a subdivision of similar design in the same part of town.

Notice how the 90-degree bends stretch into curvy culs-de-sac?  This road design is a shrewd method to make a little more money by cramming an additional parcel or two into the same space.  If the road were to employ a conventional l-shaped bend, the lots that directly front the bend would be even more strictly wedge shaped, to the point that the street frontage wouldn’t be wide enough to allow individual driveways.  Or, one house would claim an enormous side yard from the land that is completely unreachable by a driveway.  With a gentle arc in its place, each house gets more or less the same linear footage as access to the street, and the surveyors who put together the original plat could fit in another parcel or two.  And a more conscientious developer could transform grassy patch in the center of the cul-de-sac into an attractive, verdant amenity.

There’s nothing subversive or unethical about this design; it simply demonstrates that, particularly for moderate or middle-income households, developers have learned they can slice away at some of the yard size.  The homes featured in the photos and map above all come from Gardere, a lower and moderate-income area on the otherwise affluent south side of Baton Rouge.  My suspicion is that these subdivisions exist through some form of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits: they’re newer, in better condition, and bear some of the “neo-traditional” design features that federal housing programs love to employ.  Because the average buyer for these properties doesn’t have the money to be choosy, developers can take huge liberties, and they don’t necessarily worry about details like attractively landscaped common area or well-designed sidewalks.  And, in the grand evolutionary arc (pun fully intended) of American settlements, this represents one more design strategy pushing us further from the look and feel of the original Levittown.  Suburban developments are neither uniform nor unchanging.  I’m not confident that the conventional grid will ever become the standard again, even though New Urbanist advocates have successfully implemented it in specialized niche developments throughout the country.  (After all, does anyone openly claim to be a New Urbanist anymore?)  But I absolutely trust that culs-de-sac and street curves have a long way to grow before the design calcifies.  And it probably never will.  The evolution continues.

MONTAGE: Washing and cleansing every stain from the sin of neglect.

This montage blog post pioneers an unusual organizational approach: the time elapse. During a six-month period in which I was living in the city of Baton Rouge, a particular edifice caught my attention: a stalled high-rise with its load-bearing walls fully complete but little else. All evidence suggested that its owners had abandoned it quite some time ago: graffiti slathered upon the lower levels, overgrown weeds, a makeshift chain-link fence installed to deter trespassers (unsuccessfully). Sadly, these sorts of structures are all too common in American downtowns after the housing bust that began around 2008: even some of the most successful ones have some weathered relic from an era of high demand for vertically oriented condominiums that has since retreated almost completely, along with the rest of the owner-occupied market. Fortunately, many of them have since gotten converted to apartments—a downgrade by most assessments, but better than sitting vacant for years. The building that caught my attention in Baton Rouge wasn't so lucky:

It could be anywhere—except that it looked like it had been abandoned far more than three years ago. And Baton Rouge’s downtown hadn't been enjoying a huge housing boom up until the bubble burst. Perhaps most importantly, this relic doesn't even sit downtown. It would have made sense if the developer put the kibosh on construction when he or she realized the real estate wasn’t as lucrative as initially expected, perhaps due to a surrounding area that was turning increasingly low-income. But that wasn’t the case here. This faceless golem stands in one of the most sought-after parts of Baton Rouge metro, just down the street from the Mall of Louisiana, the state’s largest and probably most successful megamall. It’s not far from the Highland Road corridor, where Baton Rouge’s stateliest homes preside over large lots. And, just a mile further south sits Perkins Rowe, a high-end lifestyle center with multi-family housing on the upper levels, an ambitious project that would probably have lower vacancy levels if it hadn’t opened at the peak of a recession. Either way, this building clearly struck me as an oddity. Why was it abandoned?

The answer: it was a casualty of one of the biggest televangelist scandals in history.

The 206,000 square foot building was intended as a dormitory for students attending the Jimmy Swaggart World Ministry Center. Reverend Jimmy Swaggart fell from grace after being caught at a motel outside of New Orleans with a prostitute in February of 1988; his widely publicized contretemps may not have toppled his empire, but it certainly stalled the growth of his once-burgeoning bible college. His very public, televised apology (without acknowledging what he had done) remains legendary; YouTube claims over 150,000 views. After the Swaggart sex scandal gained momentum, enrollment at what was then the Jimmy Swaggart Bible College plunged, and construction stopped at the dorm by 1989. Apparently many other plans for Swaggart’s campus stalled in the late 1980s, and a second time caught with his pants down in 1991 only further thwarted any chance for renewing construction as a dorm. However, this building most likely advanced much further in construction than anything else stalled by Swaggart Ministries after his 1989 scandal, and this first set of photos, from May of 2010, shows it at its bleakest. (While the rest of the campus appears fully operative twenty years later, it would appear from the above photo that many of the palm trees aren’t getting the care they need to fend off disease.)

For nearly two decades, a concrete shell sat there in lugubrious decay, even as the area around it boomed, culminating in the construction of the Mall of Louisiana in 1997. Finally, the abandoned shell caught the interest of a developer, who in 2007 hoped to begin rehabilitation of the structure to convert into a high-end hotel, but the real estate and financial market’s slump prolonged the delay. A somewhat recent Associated Press article that the developer ultimately scaled the project down from an initial $75 million proposal to a more modest $42.5 million: a 256-room hotel with conference rooms and a ballroom. Interestingly, the Louisiana Legislature applied Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to expedite the project, which uses the estimated future sales tax revenue to help finance a project that might otherwise lack either the equity it needs or is unable to secure an adequate loan. While this tactic is common throughout the US, governments normally apply it in economically disadvantaged areas—not directly across the street from a metro’s most successful shopping hub. The City of Baton Rouge also granted tax credits under the state’s restoration tax abatement program.

Though it lacks the materials, plumbing, wiring or mechanical engineering that would be most vulnerable to inclement weather or thieves, the cement skeleton still shows considerable wear and staining from elements.

Ten-foot tall chain-linked fences and threatening signs aren’t enough to deter the graffiti artists.

And many of the vandals made their way up to the top floor.

A return visit to the site a little over two months later (near the end of July 2010) revealed a surprising level of further deterioration and graffiti.

My one college course in materials science doesn’t provide me much illumination on why the concrete on the upper levels seems to be in much worse shape than closer to the ground, but it is obvious that these higher floors are deteriorating considerably. Could that have really happened so quickly since May?

It looks systematic, as though it involved a human hand, dismantling the top floors and working the way down. An orange outer fence on the front side (facing the principal arterial, Bluebonnet Boulevard) appears to have been installed much more recently and suggests the sort of deterrent used for construction projects.

At this point, without having read anything about plans for the site, I had drawn the conclusion that the building was getting demolished, an assumption substantiated by the presence of backhoes and other earth moving equipment.

And, at that point, my chronicle of this building seemed likely to come to its end; shortly thereafter I was reassigned another city. Thankfully, my ever-loyal blog-follower and South Louisiana native, Nici English, remained close to the Red Stick and was able to follow it over the ensuing months. With a sharper pair of eyes and an undoubtedly better camera, her professional approach picked up where I left off. (And I cannot help but offer a shameless promotion, since she more than deserves it: her personal site, Oak Tree Photography offers breathtaking black-and-whites of the built environment across a number of southern cities.)

The developer had clearly taken real initiative over the winter: by late February of 2011, the “Swaggart dorm”, as we call it, was taking on a new life, with the installation of what appears to be insulation.

Note that the developer has apparently deemed it unnecessary to remove the graffiti on the concrete at the ground level of the building.

A few weeks later, a sign offer promise of what is to come:

By late August, clad with what I strongly suspect is EIFS, the Renaissance Hotel is starting to establish its identity.

And, in mid October, the building opens to the public.

It appears that some of what I saw as deterioration on that top level was actually an alteration of the fenestration: hotel rooms generally emphasize larger windows than dorms. I’m not going to pick apart the architecture any more than to acknowledge that the huge “Renaissance” sign atop the roof manages to compensate for its dull typography by suggesting to me a throwback to the 1950s—a time when rooftop signs for hotels were commonplace, even though at that time the majority of Baton Rouge’s hotels would have likely been downtown and not off a major highway in suburbia (especially not on Bluebonnet Boulevard, which was nothing but countryside sixty years ago).

It was almost twenty-five years in the making, but now this plot of land has a structure worthy of its market value. In a less sour economy, this suburban arterial would probably see many more construction projects capitalizing on every developable square foot. As it is, the redevelopment of the Swaggart dorm represents an ostensible public-private partnership effort at revitalization, the heart of which remains a mystery. Did the area really have to depend on a TIF and tax credits to turn the blighted Swaggart dorm around? Perhaps I overstate the area’s desirability: if it were that lucrative, something would have been erected a long time ago. But the truth of the matter, I suspect, is that the area really is desirable, but a stalled mid-rise project throws a wrench into any other efforts. The cost of demolition before a developer can build may offset the area’s intrinsic market advantages. As mundane as this project may seem, it may have taken a shrewd developer with an eye for the building’s “physiognomy”—coupled with a city/state government willing to go to bat—in order to get anything off the ground. And at least the Renaissance Hotel seems to be taking care of its trees; something that will hopefully inspire Swaggart Ministries to do the same for its remaining share of the campus on this stretch of Bluebonnet Boulevard.

Brick roads don't always lead to Oz.

While this blog post won’t win any awards for brevity (would my blog ever win such a prize?), it surely surpasses all others for the simplicity of the concept. The photo below details the sidewalk upgrade component of a traffic improvement initiative in the Southdowns neighborhood of Baton Rouge.

The area represents a banner opportunity for a developer with the right serendipity, due to a succession of previous events.


A Wal-Mart at the northwest corner (in the purple box) relocated a few years ago, and Commercial Properties Realty Trust proposed a mixed-use retail/residential node in 2008, which would most likely have percolated by now if the lending climate were better. And then, on the first of this year, a major fire burned a huge wing of the Acadian-Perkins Plaza across the street, particularly the portion encapsulated by the red box in the above map. This fire has impelled the owners of the plaza to rebuild in a way that might harmonize with whatever lucrative redevelopment ultimately takes place on the old Wal-Mart site. The area will most certainly elicit something exciting before too long; the intersection sits near the commercial heart of Southdowns, which hosts some of the metro’s most prominent nightlife just a few blocks away on Perkins Road. In addition, the development will be widely visible to thousands of motorists each day passing on I-10 just to the north of this intersection. This is hardly the place for a run-of-the-mill strip mall that might have worked in 1968—the new retail node will undoubtedly offer more than a standalone big box.

It should come as no surprise that the city’s Green Light Plan includes brick paving surfaces for the sidewalk element of the traffic improvements at this intersection. After all, the Southdowns is a confidently middle- to upper-middle class neighborhood hosting some of the most desirable real estate in the city. And, as paving surfaces go, brick surfaces nearly always appeal to American public far more than concrete. (The American aversion to concrete extends to housing: while concrete is a strong, resilient material used for housing across the globe as an alternative to expensive masonry, it obstinately refuses to catch on in the US. We often prefer brick or the much flimsier wood as the fundamental material. Perhaps the pathological hatred we seem to have for Brutalist edifices has stymied our capacity ever to embrace concrete?) At any rate, brick surfaces are all the rage for streetscape improvements, especially in areas that hope to convey affluence or fashion, which the Southdowns no doubt hopes to achieve. The pattern here isn’t particularly audacious, but it consists of a modified 90-degree herringbone pattern that alternates both rectangular and square bricks, all with slightly rounded edges.


The header (perimeter) of the pattern achieves a mild contrast by relying solely on the rectangular bricks.
I have no doubt the proposed material achieved a favorable response among residents of the Southdowns neighborhood. But is it the best idea in terms of universal design? Not so long ago, I worked for a pedestrian advocacy organization, which released a special design review encouraging the abolition of brick pavers in the city. In this litigious society, safety is critical, and bricks are unambiguously more dangerous than many other paving materials.

Reflecting upon the sidewalk design, the reasoning is quite simple: bricks have far more interstices than concrete slabs, and a high interstitial density invites more chances for protrusions, as pavement expands and contracts with the vacillating temperature. Protrusions become obvious tripping hazards. A contrast is the aging brick pattern on a stretch of sidewalk in New Orleans, along Rampart Street at the edge of the French Quarter:

The design employs 45-degree herringbone pattern with 90-degree contrasting header, but many of the bricks and the mortar are fragmenting or have eroded in comparison to the adjacent concrete. The surface is uneven:
Not terribly bad right now, but it will continue to deteriorate, and the number of repairs increases in direct proportion to the number of interstices. More gaps equals more opportunities for failure, which equals more issues to address and a higher aggregate replacement cost.

Unsurprisingly, what proves treacherous for pedestrians is equally problematic for wheelchairs. Bricks can cause a very bumpy ride. While most of the Perkins Road improvements at the Southdowns are carefully ramped or sloped at the curb cuts to allow wheelchair access, not all of them are:
It amazes me that, at the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, such a design escapes the scrutiny of the public works department. My suspicion is that it will be replaced before long, and at a far greater cost than it would take if it were mere concrete. But then, concrete is ugly and prosaic—just look at the sidewalk 50 feet away on Perkins Road, where it has not received the upgrade.


For all its blandness (and this is clearly not a well-maintained sidewalk), the opportunities for uneven paving surface to emerge are much lower here than the bricks. Cement undoubtedly degrades over time, but which portion of the sidewalk here is likely to require greater investment for maintenance over the long term? Which material is likely to suffer the most from any deferred maintenance? I hate to be critical of something so seemingly petty, so I will conclude this post on a more positive note, with examples of pedestrian paving that can still achieve a desirable aesthetic effect without eliciting the same investment cost or potential for injury.

This sidewalk upgrade over a significant stretch of U.S. Highway 59 in Grove, Oklahoma, provides an excellent contrast.
Though purely middle class, the area undoubtedly hopes to attract those seeking vacation homes, since the community rests between various inlets of the vast Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees—a favored locale for sailboating and bass fishing. The color of the concrete here—as well as the unweathered metal of the streetlights—suggests that suggests these pedestrian improvements for the five-lane highway are recent. The brick headers immediately abutting the curb on an otherwise cement sidewalk achieve much the same effect as an all-brick sidewalk, but with far reduced risk of creating a tripping hazard. The red provides a contrast to the neutral grays of both the asphalt road and the cement sidewalk, resulting in a sort of “accent” that makes the sidewalks seem less utilitarian and more decorative. The fact that the bricks line only a small sliver of the sidewalk closest to the street—the portion least likely to be walked upon—helps to minimize the potential for a tripping hazard.

Baton Rouge offers an alternative in a portion of the well-used City Park. which seems to work much better than the new Perkins Road installation.
Interstices are minimal here, and yet the cement paving at the headers along the two narrow borders has a different texture. What causes all those strange speckles?
I’m only guessing here, but I think they are acorn droppings from the live oak trees that canopy much of the park. One can discern the vaguest outline of an acorn shape.
Did the Parks and Recreation Department deliberately time the laying of the concrete for these headers so that it would solidify at the peak of the acorn season, allowed the acorns to drop naturally and decorate the concrete with imprints? I think it was a bit more artificial of a tactic: the acorn imprints appear too evenly scattered across the headers. But it offers a creative solution that most likely cost virtually nothing extra. Though it may not evoke sophistication in the same way that bricks do, it endows the sidewalk with distinction and is much safer for pedestrians, particularly in an area that welcomes a fair number of joggers.In addition, the shallow root system of live oaks is notorious for shifting and destroying the evenness of paving surfaces. Bricks would be a disaster here within just a few years.

Have no doubt that I recognize this subject is small potatoes when placed in the context of other, more widespread urban concerns. But to dismiss sidewalk tripping hazards completely is unfair, when many have suffered injury from poor paving surfaces. The alternatives in Oklahoma and City Park prove that creative design can reconcile the age-old dichotomy between aesthetics and functionality. They also provide a fresh spin on the notion that necessity is the mother of invention: cutting budgets is particularly laudable in times of scarcity, and sometimes the cheaper, lower-maintenance alternatives can offer fresher designs and appearances, while the reduced elaborateness can improve safety. It’s a triple win, without a single skinned knee or sprained ankle in the process.