Campuses have back yards too.

Though I had driven through the mid-southern boomtown of Nashville before in the past, this past weekend was the first time I had left the interstate to tour the city briefly. One of the first stops was the venerable, woodsy campus of Vanderbilt University, just a mile or so away from the city center. Much of the campus offered exactly what one might expect from an older urban academia: uniform, solid brick buildings with limestone Doric columns, well-maintained grassy quadrilaterals crisscrossed with foot paths, a generous tree canopy (at least in the summer), an alarming overpopulation of squirrels. Those more familiar with Vanderbilt can surely describe it better than I; those unfamiliar at least can conjure a facile image.

What took me by surprise was a chance encounter with this beast in the southern half of the campus:

And of course, this pole’s identical siblings stand approximately 250 feet away in either direction. It’s rare to see such a jarringly large utility line in the interior of a campus. In fact, it’s rare to see utilities on a campus at all—nearly all private schools are willing to front the cost to run the lines underground.

In many ways, the presence of overhead wires in urban settings distinguishes the US from most other developed countries. The American landscape is littered with them, even in relatively dense inner city neighborhoods. Only a few settings come to mind in the US where electric wires are not widely visible: downtowns usually employ buried cables, as do newer subdivisions built since the 1970s, and large parcels under single corporate ownership (such as a university). The comparative lower density of US cities no doubt necessitates much higher costs for burying wires than would be the case in, for instance, the Netherlands. Our population is spread over a significantly greater land area, and loosely translates to negative economies of scale in terms of the square footage of cable per person served, equating to higher costs in physical utility installation per person, whether as poles or undergrounded. However, overhead wires elicit other inefficiencies: they are far more likely to suffer power outages from fallen tree limbs or toppled poles after storms or heavy wind. Many urban utilities companies must pay for tree trimming on private lots to protect the cables from snapping, with costs most certainly passed down to the consumer. Utility easements grant them this privilege, resulting in roadside properties with funny-looking, lopsided trees.

Conversely, undergrounding cables never completely eliminates the possibility of power outages, and a severe outage on an underground system may be harder to access or repair. In addition, cities that engage in a fair amount of road alterations such as widening or storm sewer additions may find that underground cables are far easier and cheaper to maneuver around, while underground cables would cost a fortune to relocate. Regions with a high level of seismic activity also need to be conscious of the vulnerability of buried electrical cables. I have also read on occasion that the speed of electrical transmission across great distances is inferior on underground cables, thus explaining—beyond the sheer costs—why sparsely populated rural areas almost always depend on overhead cables. (My source on this last bit of information is questionable; perhaps an electrical engineer can confirm or contradict it.)

Arguments favoring and opposing overhead cables are clearly numerous, often leaving the investment decision at a stalemate, in which each location gets individual consideration. The one determinant in which buried cables always wins is aesthetics. Overhead cables are an unsightly blight on the landscape to most people—no doubt many commercial photographs of great vistas have had the power lines blotted out courtesy of Adobe Photoshop. So why did Vanderbilt choose not bury these lines that rest fully within the campus? My guess is the answer is quite simple—this is not a part of the campus that Vanderbilt leadership wants or expects most of the public to see.

In hindsight, I’m kicking myself for not taking more good photos of the campus, but the combination of what I did take and some campus maps should get the point across. The oldest part of the campus remains sequestered from the majority by busy 21^st Avenue South:

This area (outlined in blue in the campus map below) is known as the Peabody Campus, because it originated as the George Peabody College for Teachers upon splitting from the University of Nashville in 1875. In 1979, it merged with Vanderbilt University and assumed the name Peabody College of Education and Human Development. While the majority of the top-ranked graduate school of education classes take place on the Peabody Campus, its buildings also host classes for undergraduates, administrative offices, as well as some dormitories. Its largest distinction is the strictly geometric layout of its buildings, somewhat visible in the photos as well as the campus map.

The distinctive origin design of the Peabody campus design becomes more evident when contrasted with the historic main campus of Vanderbilt to the northwest. Indicated by the red outline in the campus map, this section of “Old Vanderbilt” adopts a much more organic campus layout—looser and much less emphasis on perpendicularity than the Peabody Campus.

Apparently the biodiversity of this portion of campus has earned it the designation as a national arboretum. This section and the Peabody Campus receive the highest level of utility upgrades; not a single overhead cable is visible here.

The approximate spot where I took the original photo of the utility pole is indicated by the orange circle on the campus map. This area, and virtually everything to both the south and west of it, represents the preponderance of Vanderbilt’s expansions. Most of the university’s expansion began in the 1950s, and it shows. Whereas Peabody and the old Vanderbilt campus are almost completely pedestrianized, with the majority of academic buildings fronting foot trails, the newer portion of the campus reflects the more automobile dominating ethos of the time. Unfortunately the only photo I took that accurately demonstrates this is the first one on this blog post with the utility pole, but it at least hints at the widespread campus design typology of the second half of the twentieth century. The cars, parked perpendicular to the curb, enjoy dedicated parking along a right of way that does not function as a city street, nor is it purely a parking lot. These “campus roads” that weave their way through most universities of a reasonably size usually have two origins: they are formerly city roads that served a residential neighborhood, both of which (homes and road ROW) have been purchased and claimed by the university, giving the school the freedom to design traffic flow and parking to its own standards; they were integrated into the university’s own master plan and never existed as part of the public right of way, again giving the university almost unlimited freedom. In this case, I suspect these campus roads owe their current existence to the first of the two aforementioned scenarios. The brown lines I have traced on the campus map show an inchoate grid pattern that most likely formerly serviced private residences; many of the homes where either purchased or demolished by the university to make way for fraternities and sororities. The roads directly serving the Greek housing still maintain many of the characteristics of conventional rights of way, but one street (indicated by the brown line that terminates in the orange circle) looses its ROW character and becomes more of a logistical service route, with dedicated parking. This is also the point where the conventional urban grid breaks down and, instead of the roads defining the shape of parcels and the buildings that rest upon them, the building alignment seems to have dictated part of the trajectory of the road. I’ve included a few more photos below that show how this phenomenon influences the buildings in the new campus, provided from the Vanderbilt website.

Lupton Hall is one wing within a larger quad structure, but it rests on Vanderbilt Place (no doubt purchased by the university but with public access) and it features a separate vehicular drop-off point.

The Ben Schulman Center for Jewish Life is a particularly new addition at the corner of Vanderbilt Place and 25^th Avenue South. The off-street parking is marginally visible to the far left.

The need for 22,000 square feet of parking would have seemed unconscionable prior to the expansion, but by the time the Kensington Garage was built at the intersection of Kensington Place and 25^th Avenue South, it critically served university staff and faculty as well as guests to a neighboring hotel.

Most likely my original photo featured a different perspective of this 1920s-era power house. The prominent smoke stack is an unlikely feature not commonly seen in most campuses. Interestingly, the campus website claims here that all house-run utilities are underground, which leads one to question why it would make such a claim when above ground facilities are plainly visible. Could it be that the power lines running through campus service other parts of the city and the City of Nashville simply needed to wind across parts of Vanderbilt campus?

Regardless of whether the utility placement is by-right or by easement, it clearly remains the underbelly of the institution—the mess of wires and gears that makes the place tick. Nearly every major campus has a portion like this—the section where aesthetics took a back seat to the convenience of parking, or vehicle unloading, or the necessity of a close electric substation. It would be lunacy for Vanderbilt’s admissions office to coordinate tours in this portion of the campus—the whole area feels like logistical roads for vehicle unloading, while the main entrances to the buildings themselves seems almost hidden. Like most urban development in the 1950s and subsequent decades, both the scale of the structures and the flow created by linear paths disfavor the pedestrian. The buildings might be generally close together and contiguous with the old campus—after all, students aren’t necessarily going to own cars and will still need access to the expansion sections of campus—but the planning seems far less cognizant of foot traffic than 19^th century Vanderbilt, which is human scaled by necessity. The new campus seeks to accommodate both the car and the pedestrian, but it is axiomatic that only the pedestrian will make any sacrifices in this case. The result is sprawl, university style.

This dichotomy between old and may have little bearing on the overall success of the university, but the fact that campus facilities has made no effort to conceal those aggressive electric poles speaks much about the aesthetic stance the university takes to its new development. Most contemporary American cities are devoting an inordinate amount of resources to revitalizing their downtowns, largely because, no matter how much it may decentralize, the downtown remains the foremost location by which an outsider is going to form an impression of a city. Downtown is the city’s front door. Accordingly, old campus and Peabody are the front door of Vanderbilt—the images of walking tours, of postcards, of an officially dedicated arboretum. Some of the suburbs of metro Detroit are lovely—but the first images that come to mind when one thinks of Detroit is a decaying old city center from Robocop. I am not denigrating the development patterns and practices from the age of the automobile, but the positioning of the old historic center of downtowns and campuses demonstrates a perhaps unconscious preference for the way old walkable hubs look and how they accommodate visitors. Contemporary downtowns are increasingly adapting to a growing demand for building and street designs that engages the pedestrian. Most likely, subsequent development at Vanderbilt will follow the same pattern, eventually minimizing the back yard, no-man’s land feel that comprises a significant portion of the campus. And in time it may also impel the university to bury those power lines.

Mystery kitchens.

While few American locales outside of New Orleans are famous for their cuisine—a whole family of entrees and specialties derived from local foods—many cities boast a signature item or two. The Midwest, suffering an undeserved reputation as a culinary underperformer, has more than its share of regional specialties, some of which are more high-profile than others. Of course most people are well familiar with Chicago’s deep dish pizza or its ketchup-free hot dogs. Buffalo, though somewhat straddling both Midwest and East Coast, has achieved dozens of national imitators purveying its signature hot wings. Kansas City offers the most northerly variation of beloved barbeque. Other food traditions, however, are a bit quieter. Only in recent years has Cincinnati’s chili heritage become popularly known thanks to the Skyline chain (I concede I didn’t learn about it until several years ago); Louisville’s hot browns are rarely seen outside of the bluegrass state but still treasured in the city; every signature bar in Indianapolis is expected to sell a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich (more of a rural tradition made urban); and Buffalo’s other contribution, the beef on weck, has never really caught on elsewhere. No doubt I’m forgetting quite a few traditions in other Midwestern cities, but this restaurant sign in a rough-and-tumble part of Indianapolis left me scratching my head:

Any ideas? I’ve only been to Cleveland briefly, so I’m no expert. But an entire restaurant devoted to the city without specifying the food suggests to me more than just a sandwich. Is there a Cleveland cuisine? Apparently it failed to evoke much to its targeted clientele either; the restaurant is shuttered, perhaps years ago. I don’t mean to underestimate Cleveland, but it would be far easier to reference a place if it were known indisputably for a particular food. I’m not sure Cleveland’s food has achieved such a level of branding.

Contrast this with another food seller that recently opened in another, less rough but still chancey part of Indianapolis: a “Taste of Philly” at the intersection of 42^nd and College. The signage at this storefront automatically wins; it informs the passers-by that it sells pretzels, which is a food tradition far less associated with Philly than its cheesesteaks but just as embedded in the culture. Though it appears to be a franchise, I can assure anyone in Indianapolis who is bewildered by the squashed look of the Philadelphia pretzel that this humble seller is the genuine article—great spicy mustard too.

Referencing a place name in a business will always prove a challenge if it fails to elicit any clear associations—it’s much the same hurdle an ethnic eatery faces when its food is new or unfamiliar. In many cities, this is why some of the best exotic cuisine can be found in struggling retail corridors, such as the strip malls in inner-ring suburbs. (It doesn’t hurt that the housing costs in these areas is often cheaper as well, offering the combination of affordable residential and commercial that attracts immigrant communities.) A new Indonesian restaurant—the first of its kind in Indianapolis—opened recently at 46^th and College. This location appears to be a shrewd decision on the part of its owner, because the area is relatively close to the fashionable Broad Ripple neighborhood, yet it is far enough—and in a less prosperous area—to most likely demand considerably lower rents. It’s way too soon to determine if the Indonesian restaurant will make it, but it benefits from high visibility near a yuppie neighborhood where the sort of adventuresome demographic is likely to see it, while lower operating costs should give it a buffer of risk management.

The same cannot be said of the failed Touch of Cleveland. Maybe the location in a generally low-income area was bad, maybe the idea of Cleveland cuisine didn’t ring a bell or even arouse any curiosity, maybe the lack of an illustration of the signature entrée on the sign led to its demise. Maybe Cleveland’s own widely publicized economic woes could be ever so slightly mitigated if the city was better at galvanizing its own identity to the point that the rest of the country was aware of its great food offerings. All of these speculations are most likely flights of fancy, and Touch of Cleveland could just as easily have been badly managed and offered mediocre food. But even when its origins are modest, a locational identity that clicks and forms an easily translatable brand no doubt provides the best narrative for understanding the success of the Chicago hot dog, Buffalo wings, and Cincinnati chili.

Main Street camouflage.

When visiting or even passing through small towns, it’s normal to gravitate toward the business district in order to determine what a town is “like” in the most generalizable sense. In many cases, the preponderance of commercial activity in these towns, particularly those larger than 2,000 people, takes place at a bulwark of big box stores along the four-lane or six-lane highway that circumscribes the community on one side. (Towns that surpass 5,000 persons generally boast sufficient buying power to justify a Wal-Mart among them.) While the easy availability of automobile-oriented convenience shopping that these structures provide often deters people—both locals and visitors—from seeking the goods and services the downtown has to offer, the original core of the city usually remains the heart of a town’s identity, its visible essence. In communities under 5,000 persons, this core often entails little more than one or two contiguous, linear blocks of faded Italianate commercial buildings, often with gaps between party walls where other buildings once stood and have since been demolished. Any meanderer across the American countryside that is seeking more than the Wal-Marts on the fringe will soon develop an intuitive sense of where that main street lies within a given town. Look for the old church steeples, perhaps the clock tower of a county courthouse, or, in even the tiniest villages, find that railroad track and observe the architecture that fronts it—perhaps the old depot and a warehouse still survive.

The aforementioned commercial clusters along the outlying highways have inevitably introduced a new layer of competition to the business districts of these small towns, just as suburban shopping malls did the same to the downtowns of larger cities. However, even in villages too small to justify a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, or even a conventional full-sized supermarket, the original commercial core—sometimes little more than the depot and a cluster of brick buildings—has suffered, as these aging structures fail to accommodate retail with the ease and capacity of windowless cement titans along the highway: logistically, the big box stores are better for unloading trucks; they accommodate mass distribution and storage more readily; they are more secure and protective for the merchandise; they offer more parking for consumers. Those commercial buildings, often at least a century old, simply couldn’t compete. The most nationally visible effort to save the central districts of smaller town is the Main Street Center under the National Trust for Historic Preservation, under which nearly all states have coordinated programs; at this date, only Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, Utah, and the Dakotas lack them, while many states have dozens of communities enlisted. The capital city of Dover, is among them—the Downtown Dover Partnership protects historic Loockerman Street, seen below:

That a Main Street Association exists in Dover to promote, preserve, and help beautify the city’s downtown is hardly remarkable; what’s surprising that an organization with the geographic scope of a Main Street Association is all it takes. Dover is hardly a big city. But a community with population of 35,811 (according to the 2007 estimates by the US Census Bureau) would typically have a downtown business district of at least four to six full blocks with an intersection as its focal point—the absolute center, where all address numbering begins. Dover has the same three-block-long commercial district one would expect to see in a town of 4,000 persons. The Downtown Dover Partnership tries to incorporate a broader geography into its outreach and promotional initiatives, including businesses on several of the surrounding blocks. But the real center of town—the essence—remains those blocks on Loockerman Street, where the street beautification efforts of the Partnership are evident.

The result is a well-kept if not hugely active main street, at least based on these photographs from 2004, which may prove dated. My research through the Downtown Dover Partnership suggests a bit more activity five years later, but retail health is not really the point of this analysis. The curiosity is the scale of what comprises downtown, or what should comprise it in a state capital. Below is a map of central Dover, with the commercial core circled.

Perhaps the main street was longer in the past, as this Depression-era photo available at the State website suggests, but the density of buildings drops considerably to both the north and south of Loockerman, featuring many free standing structures serviced by parking lots. I’m not trying to dismiss Dover’s historic integrity; much of the area outlined in blue on the map comprises the “capitol complex”, with the statehouse, governor’s mansion, a rectangular town green, and a number of intact Federalist residential structures, a few of which house law and accounting offices. Loockerman isn’t necessarily a linear island surrounding by parking lots, and the east of the main street provides a contiguous sense of what might have been the “original” Dover, as seen below, culminating with the statehouse:

It has the verdure and architectural consistency of a college campus, as well as the sense of centralized planning. Nothing wrong with this, but it dwarfs the commercial heart of Loockerman Street in size, and fails to generate the sort of activity one would hope through its proximity to the main street, certainly compared to the 1929 photo. And I took these pictures around lunchtime on a weekday. Clearly not bustling. As small as the City of Dover may seem, it’s hardly the smallest state capital: Alaska, Maine, and South Dakota, are all smaller, while Vermont’s capital is the smallest in the nation, at less than 10,000 people. Yet Montpelier VT still has a bigger and more robust commercial core than Dover.

The explanation for why the City of Dover overpowers its central business district is simple: Dover has only been a big city of 35,000 in recent years.

Maybe some of the growth of Dover is attributable to municipal annexation, but I find no evidence of it. And the surrounding Kent County is growing at just as fast of a pace, so clearly its a regional phenomenon. Such a growth pattern would seem unremarkable in the Sun Belt or the far West, but for a state in the Mid-Atlantic that hosts some of the earliest colonial settlements (the First State, no less), it shows an uncharacteristic consistency and robustness in growth. Delaware as a whole is atypical of the states in the northeastern seaboard for being fast growing; the majority of cities in other Mid-Atlantic states such as New Jersey, Maryland, and particularly Pennsylvania and New York are static or shrinking. Whereas Philadelphia, Baltimore, Newark, Camden, Washington DC, and Delaware’s largest city Wilmington all grew at a steady clip until the decline of manufacturing in the 1950s, Dover started as mere village whose only significant role was the head of state government. After the 1950s, the aforementioned Mid-Atlantic manufacturing powerhouses hemorrhaged jobs and population plunged; not one of these cities has recovered its population peaks of fifty years ago. Conversely, Dover started tiny and has grown 900% over the past century.

The city’s anomalous growth this echoes the curious positioning of the state of Delaware within the larger conurbation that stretches from Washington DC all the way up to Boston, made famous under the label “megalopolis” by French geographer Jean Gottman. The map below from I-95 Highway.com is a bit busy for my taste, but it effectively shows where Delaware and Dover fit into the network.

Wilmington and its suburbs, at the far north of the state, fit into the I-95 corridor which by many measurements forms the vertebra of Megalopolis. To the northeast is Philadelphia; the southwest is Baltimore. Any visitor to Wilmington will tell you it has the architectural look, the density, the hilly topography, and the pace of the Northeast and clearly identifies itself as such. Yet, after less than an hour’s drive south in this tiny state, the hills disappear and soon one is in Dover, which moves and operates every bit like a quiet southern capital. The shift is hardly gradual; everything changes south of Wilmington after crossing the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and visitors find themselves in the coastal plains of Lower “Slower” Delaware. Residents of the area tell me that the Delmarva Peninsula on which parts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia rest, with the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Chesapeake Bay on the west, completely bypassed the Industrial Revolution. The area only began to take off after the 1952 construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, providing a link to the populous Washington/Baltimore side of the Bay over to the largely isolated Peninsula. Ever since, the beaches of southern Delaware and the Maryland shore have become incredibly popular as weekend destinations; Delaware ranks among the top states for its concentration of vacation homes.

The unlikely phenomenon of a fast growing municipality in a region whose growth levels are much more modest (the booming Washington DC suburbs excepted) leaves Dover as a city where the downtown foot is far too small for the municipal boundary shoe. This isn’t a problem per say, but it leaves the visible result of a 35,000-person city with a tiny 3,500-person Main Street. Such a scenario is fairly common in the booming suburbs of Phoenix or Las Vegas in the west, but it is an odd site here in a centrally located member of the thirteen original colonies. Loockerman Street is a perfectly respectable corridor, sleepy but hardly vacant. My suspicion, though, is as Dover shows all evidence of continued growth in the foreseeable future, city leaders are most likely attempting to reaffirm the role the state capital plays as a primary employer and how any activity from those facilities might spill over onto the main street. Dover’s modus operandi up to this point has been decentralization akin to the Sun Belt, but, as the state precariously balances its business friendly northeastern alignment in Wilmington with its laid-back southern heritage, it will no doubt hope to concentrate more commercial and residential energy in Dover’s miniscule downtown. It is, after all, the first post-revolutionary capital to the First State.

Fueling our appetite to push away from the center.

I have up to this point generally shied away from the topic of urban sprawl because I see it as a hydra with no easy or politically viable solution. Then it occurred to me that few of my blog topics merit a quick fix, and, even though my own views on suburban growth no doubt differ from most planners or recognized theorists, I can still identify precise scenarios where human settlement patterns are eliciting indisputably negative results.

Take this example in the generally suburban outskirts of Indianapolis city limits. At the intersection of U.S. Highway 31 and Epler Avenue (about 5.5 miles from downtown), a developer demolished a recently vacated quickie auto repair/oil change shop to build a new gas station. The gas station is nearing completion at the time of this post; it appears to be a British Petroleum.

Nothing particularly remarkable about this. I suppose one could carp on whether it was necessary to redevelop a site that had not been vacant long and should easily find a new tenant. Instead, we witness a demolition and reconstruction on-site, which by any conventional estimate is a waste of what was a perfectly functional building. But this is a small patch of land that most likely did not require a change in zoning or a variance; to obstruct this change of use in a suburban location where available land is plentiful would only seem like bureaucratic meddling with the owner’s property rights. The demolition and new use suggests complete transfer of title rather than a simple lease; only a new owner is likely to invest in the fuel storage infrastructure necessary for a new gas station. And at least British Petroleum branches are usually well maintained.

The real frustration of the scenario is this: just one half mile closer to the Indianapolis city center, at the intersection of U.S. 31 and Thompson Road, is a real eyesore:

It’s an old Shell station, I believe, vacant for at least two years. And the well-known Broken Windows Theory is beginning to apply: a property that sits vacant this long inevitably attracts graffiti artists. But why couldn’t the owner of the British Petroleum franchise locate here, thereby removing the neighborhood of this blight and no doubt reaching just as large of a consumer population, if not more so? (This latter site has the added advantage of sitting less than 500 feet from the exit ramp to Interstate 465, the city’s beltway.) It should be easy for a new gas station to move in. After all, the infrastructure, the shell of a building, and the underground fuel storage tanks all remain on location.

No doubt the site selection here involves a number of extenuating circumstances. It’s possible that an investigation of the infrastructure would reveal that the underground fuel storage tankards were deteriorating and would need repairs or replacement for the facility to be useable again. Perhaps thieves had pillaged valuable materials such as copper from the premises. It is very possible that the developer of that new BP engaged in a financial analysis that determined that the cost of remediating the abandoned gas station was less than tearing down and a different site and buying anew.

But it is equally possible that the developer failed to consider the blighted site at Thompson and U.S. 31 altogether. Petroleum brownfields such as these, which comprise nearly half of the nation’s brownfield sites, often sit vacant and deteriorating for years longer than any other site because the cost of redevelopment is so high. We’ve all witnessed this. If a developer plans a new use for the site, it will prove costly but essential to remove the underground storage tanks, creating a disincentive for any other use on the land beyond a gas station. This leaves the site at Thompson and U.S. 31 in limbo. It’s just one more manifestation of the forces pulling American settlement away from the commercial and industrial core. I hate the world “sprawl” because it’s clearly a pejorative that isn’t always appropriate—some outward development is inevitable and not all of it is bad. I prefer “decentralization” as a term not only because it is neutral but in this case it has a more flexible denotation. The gas station culture didn’t “sprawl” in this case: one closed, and a new developer decided to locate a half mile further out rather than repairing the old one. Other industries have for decades applied this same approach at much larger capacity: the sprawling brownfields, rusted wrecks of our nation’s industrial heritage that largely collapsed over the past forty years, dominate the area around downtowns and inner cities. (The only difference, of course, is that these shuttered factories didn’t usually re-open down the road in the suburbs; they operate thousands of miles away, in developing countries where the labor is cheaper.) It’s hard enough to revitalize when reinvestment puts a developer at odds with market forces that indicate a low demand in a depopulating urban area, but infrastructure removal considerations only throw another barrier into the mix—a new disincentive for working at an old industrial site.

Unfortunately, the very conditions that make abandoned gas stations difficult to re-develop also only exacerbate the problem, because as these tanks corrode they can easily contaminate groundwater in the area. Not only are they an obstruction to any excavation, they’re a public health and environmental concern. Thus, abandoned gas stations with deteriorated storage tanks typically depend on the public sector for remediation, as is the case with most brownfields. EPA has a separate Office of Underground Storage Tanks (OUST) devoted specifically to promoting the clean-up of the 482,000 storage tank sites, and the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund—financed by a one cent federal tax on all motor fuel sold nationwide—awards over $50 million to states and tribal lands to administer and clean up these sites. These federal interventions offer hope to tiny gas stations and hulking paper mills that would otherwise continue to decay and pollute the landscape, aesthetically and environmentally. Downtowns such as Pittsburgh depended brownfield remediation if they were to remain viable after the sunset of the steel era. Indiana has the added benefit of being one of only a few states in the immediate region with an approved UST removal program—all of its neighbors lack the ability to administer tank removal on their own and must suffer the onus of additional regulations.

Indianapolis has benefited fairly recently from a UST redevelopment that, at least locally, was relatively high profile, and it’s been covered before in this blog. The new Douglas Pointe Lofts in the Fall Creek Place neighborhood hosts Goose the Market as one of its premier tenants (mentioned in Part II of my post on the Indianapolis City Market) , and for years prior the site hosted two decayed gas station with 7 USTs. Clean-up was funded through a combination of USTFields grants and Community Development Block Grants.

While this redevelopment is a boon for a gentrifying urban neighborhood such as Fall Creek Place, a suburban location such as Thompson and U.S. 31, with housing stock that largely dates from the 1950s, can hardly expect such a fashionable turnaround. The area around here, though hardly distressed, is showing signs of fatigue as measured by the persistently high levels of retail vacancy, including an attractive new strip mall across the street that remains over 60% unoccupied after approximately three years. A former chain hotel downgraded to mom-and-pop status next door to this blighted Shell station now offers rooms by the week, most likely to refugees of the foreclosure crisis. All the state and the federal oversight in the world can’t necessarily keep track of new brownfields popping up on an almost daily basis when a new gas station closes—it often depends on enterprising developers or active neighborhood groups. I’m not confident the Thompson Road site can claim either of these.

Thus, it would be specious to assert as some do that brownfields are a pure example of market failure, of a lack of will for the private sector to rectify its own negative externalities. Indeed, most brownfield remediation requires public dollars, but those EPA grants are usually steered in the direction of sites for which there is already a market demand for redevelopment, and, in this day and age, factories close to downtowns or potentially trendy inner-city urban neighborhoods will nearly always emerge as the winners. The tiny parcel and Thompson won’t be reincarnated as a trendy live-work townhome development; it’ll probably become another gas station if it gets rehabbed at all. Rural abandoned gas stations often suffer a bleaker fate, such as this one a few miles north of New Albany in far southern Indiana:

Though the condition of the building and blacktop suggests it was only recently vacated, its semirural setting almost insures that its only other option is a new gas station. Land is cheap out there, and any developer will simply skip to the next major intersection to build anew rather than deal with the clean-up. Without the density among the surrounding community to mobilize and advocate for redevelopment, the station, if it can’t find a new gas station tenant, will most likely be left to sit and rot. Rural America is profuse with littered wrecks of decades-old gas stations.

Even though tens of thousands of cars will drive past that new BP in Indianapolis each day, just as many will approach the eyesore down the road two minutes later (or before). The momentum that pushes cites outward sometimes manifests itself in mundane gestures, but the minefield of vacant gas stations in the inner ring suburbs offers proof that, however much our downtowns have revitalized, the overwhelming momentum remains centrifugal—all the more ironic when some of telltale indicators of decentralization induced by automobiles are the same facilities we depend upon to keep those machines running.

Judging a flag by its wavelength.

Every nation state has a representative flag, and in most countries, the smaller bodies of government also choose to self-identify through a representative banner as well. In North America, every Canadian province and territory has a distinctive flag, as do each of the Estados Unidos Mexicanos. As much as we have drilled into our heads the US states and capitals (arguably at the expense of other world geography), it is rare that our education emphasizes any familiarity with state flags. By most measurements, knowing flags is not indicative of a broader proficiency that has achieved a widely agreed upon measurable social value, so I certainly raise no objections to the fact that flags are not taught in elementary social studies or civics classes (do we even have civics classes anymore?). I would have no business complaining about our collective state flag illiteracy; I don’t know many of the flags by heart myself. What is remarkable is how state flags in the US remain simultaneously the most prized and parochial means of political expression in certain social settings. We often know at least a dozen or so states’ nicknames (perhaps because so many of their top universities use them as mascots—think Hoosiers, Buckeyes, Tar Heels, etc). At least a few states can boast songs that are widely known, such as Connecticut’s “Yankee Doodle”, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”, or “Georgia on My Mind” (music written by Hoosier Hoagy Carmichael). But flags, for all their visual pomp, rank on par with state birds and state flowers (and only slightly above state pies) for insularity within their respective states. Chances are most people can readily identify the flag in their home state—it flies outside almost any public building—but few could distinguish the flags of even their neighboring states in a blind test.

What is it about state flags that make them so hard to distinguish? Perhaps I’m being optimistic, but my suspicion is that even the most poorly traveled Americans can probably make out at least one or two other nations’ flags, even if they’ve never traveled there. The Canadian National flag is hard to confuse, the British Union Jack seems omnipresent, and the Mexican flag is increasingly visible in assorted niches across the American landscape. Virtually every American can identify the battle flag of the Confederate states and its profoundly complicated array of connotations. Many ethnic restaurants will fly the flag of their national origin, and it is certainly common for hyphenated Americans (particularly Irish or Italian) to feature their heritage in a flag on the front bumper or dangling from their rear view mirrors.

But most state flags fail to resonate much outside their own boundaries. One indisputable exception—and there are others—is the flag of Maryland, waving proudly here below near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor:

It’s ubiquitous in the Old Line State—certainly far more than any state in the northeast, one sees it flying proudly outside homes, small businesses, and public spaces. It also features subtly as a central emblem on the license plate that the state has been using for decades. Marylanders seem inordinately proud of their flag, and even if the average citizen out west doesn’t recognize it offhand, the majority of people in the Mid-Atlantic and New England states would probably have no difficulty in pointing out the Maryland flag.

Is there something special about Maryland’s flag? Well, according to vexillologists (those engaged in the scholarly study of flags), it really is just better than most of the others in the Northeast. Case in point: I lived for two years in the neighboring Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I couldn’t for the life of me conjure a clear image of their flag. But Maryland’s burned into my mind after just a visit or two. Not all flags are created equal, and some fundamentally achieve their communicative goal far better than others; Maryland is one of them. Vexillology as a study combines the ancient practice of heraldry with the much more contemporary discipline of semiotics, the latter of which earns far more academic attention in determining what constitutes an effective flag.

Look at these flags of neighboring states, and it requires little further scrutiny to see why Maryland stands out:

Pennsylvania

West Virginia

Virginia

Delaware

New Jersey

New York

All flag imagery comes from http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/.

Every other state has an elaborate representation of the seal resting on a solid color field, usually medium blue. The content of these states’ flags is redundant and too intricate to be seen from a distance, which is often how people perceive a flag. Maryland’s flag’s two striking patterns occupy alternate quarters: the canton and lower right quarters (black and yellow) derive from the coat of arms of the family of Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, founder of Maryland colony. The other quarters (red and white) represent Crossland secessionists in a state largely divided between Union and Confederate sentiments during the Civil War; the combination of the two shows the reconciliation between the two under a single state government. The flag is the only one based on the heritage of English heraldry.

Far more flags share the common features of the Delawares, the New Yorks, the Pennsylvanias. No doubt some residents in their respective states feel an attachment to their native flags, but they lack the communicative force of Maryland. Semioticians would undoubtedly deconstruct the correlation between the function of a flag to its direct symbolism far better than I can, but it seems clear that a good flag boasts a few fundamental features. The North American Vexillological Association (NAVA) provides a simple set of heuristics for amateur flag designers, called “Good Flag, Bad Flag”. Its standards are quite straightforward: 1) keep it simple enough that a child could draw it from memory; 2) use meaningful symbols where colors and patterns relate to what it symbolizes; 3) use no more than three basic, contrasting colors; 4) avoid lettering or elaborate seals; 5) be distinctive enough that its not a duplicate of another flag, but evoke another flag if there are understood similarities or connections. Maryland might not abide by all these rules—its four colors may be a bit too complicated for a child to reproduce—but it’s vastly superior to the ornate, sometimes silly, often amateurishly drawn state seals that comprise almost half of US state flags.

It should come as no surprise that the flags that typically meet NAVA’s standards for “good” are the most regionally or nationally recognizable.

South Carolina’s palmetto tree and crescent moon grace bumpers, shirts, key chains, and other paraphernalia across the Southeast, and anyone in that region would recognize it as the most memorable state flag. Outside of Dixie, the symbol for the Palmetto State may often seem familiar without necessarily evoking South Carolina, or it recalls the general essence of the state for those who may not recognize it specifically as the state flag.

Another recognizable flag, the Texas symbolism is perhaps the most nationally famous, partly thanks to the rich clarity of its lone star, but also because of its ubiquity—again bedecking clothes, license plates, bandannas, and so forth. Some of the flag’s high profile is due to it being a very populous state, some of it no doubt also due to the proud Texan swagger, but much of it is because it is a semantically effective flag—it deserves to be displayed everywhere. (Compare this to other populous states such as California, whose Bear Flag has achieved some salience outside the state but is hardly iconic, or New York, whose flag is generally unknown.)

Alaska’s flag corroborates NAVA’s emphasis that flags should be so simple a child can replicate it; one of the top-ranked flags was designed by a 13-year old that won a statewide contest. Until recently it had long been featured on the Alaska license plate.

Perhaps the only jurisdiction in the mid-Atlantic outside of Maryland that earns acclaim for its flag is the District of Columbia, modeled after Washington’s family’s coat of arms. NAVA ranks it as the single best design among 150 city flags. Nearly all street signs in Washington DC feature a miniature recreation of the flag close to the stanchion.

The top-rated flag in North America, according to the 2001 NAVA survey, is that of New Mexico, featuring a red Zia sun symbol on a yellow field, which has typically appeared prominently on the state’s license plate in varying manifestations over the years. It elegantly recalls the state’s Native American and southwest heritage using a predominant yellow atypical of US state flags—it’s memorable, easy to replicate, semantically rich, and distinctive.

Judging from the fact that the vexillologists can summarize the essence to good flag-making in just a few simple points, one might question the complexity of the practice. Many have apparently called into question the rationale used by NAVA members in ranking all the states and Canadian provinces by the quality of their flags, particularly those in low-ranked states. NAVA shrewdly posts some letters showing reactions to their decisions: an anonymous Vermonter defended the state’s flag for using the seal across a blue background, arguing that it bests conveys the state’s ideals, whereas the New Mexican flag was stolen from the Zia Pueblo and is essentially meaningless. His assertion as an alternate opinion effectively limns the need for a semiotic approach that overrides subjectivity and matters of personal taste: after all, who is NAVA to say that flags with few colors and symbolic simplicity are always better? Most of the states that use seals as their primary charge are employing literal, denotative symbols; those with shapes and colored stripes, chevrons, or pales are operating more connotatively or figuratively. While it is unreasonable to assert that a state seal makes for poor flag content, the ability of some state flags to transcend their function as a basic representation of a political body overwhelmingly favors the Maryland, South Carolina, Texas. These flags managed to capture an ineffable essence of their respective states that the overly literal, text and motto-laden flags fail to do. Their semantic breadth gives them a versatility that seems appropriate, even fashionable as an accessory to clothing or a vehicle.

I have yet to see the Pennsylvania flag on a person’s car; chances are I’d forget it again if I did see it. And I can’t help referring back to Pennsylvania because the commonwealth does have a powerful icon it employs widely in public funded and folk signage across its highways:

The great keystone of the Keystone State, embodying the notion that it functions just like the great key stone to a gateway arch, linking the Midwest to the Northeast while holding them both together. Why doesn’t it figure prominently into the state’s flag? The expressive properties we ascribe to the most memorable, well-loved flag designs seem to suggest that they operate semiotically far more as a logo than portraiture. The most omnipresent and enduring advertising gizmos are virtually never ornate: McDonalds’ golden arches, the Nike swoosh, the bitten apple of Apple (whatever color it is). Although it is hard to enrich this comparison by recalling history’s unsuccessful logos because we forget them as a company scrambles to reinvent its brand to save its bottom line, most of the bad flags are frozen in time for our judgment, immune to the marketplace. Temporal and cultural influences prove that vexillology is not as simple as it may seem. To prove it, the State of Georgia revised its flag in 2001 in response to mounting controversy toward the prominence of the old Confederate battle flag within the design featured since 1956. The revised flag, rushed through the Georgia General Assembly, upgraded the image while trying to appease those who opposed the change:

It violates nearly all principles of good flag design: state seal on a dull blue background, lots of text (including the state name—twice), and a series of miniature flags embedded within the larger one, outside of their correct chronology. This reformist flag survived two years. Its replacement, which won in a 2003 referendum, hardly ranks among the best designed, but it manages to achieve far better readability while appeasing both civil rights groups and those who hoped to preserve recognition of Southern heritage (it recalls the “Stars and Bars” of the original secessionist flag).

The array of symbols on flag’s fabric—the real focus of this blog post—is obviously laden with semantic content that no doubt helps explain why Maryland and other flags simply “work” better. But vexillology can also encompass the symbolic significance of the height of flags on the mast, the shape, the public display, the material, the handling, the unfurling, burial, or even the burning. Maryland even boasts added significance for being the only state that requires a specific type of flagpole used to hoist the flag (code 2.03). The sacrosanct nature by which many hold their nation’s flags demonstrates that certain design standards deserve attention; Maryland’s meretricious heraldry elevates its identity over its neighbors in this regard. Even this blurred wikipedia photo shows how powerfully it stands out, easily out-blinging Old Glory.