Water tower repartee.

Even if it’s not a commissioned piece like the mural from my previous post, the landscape of artistic expression in Detroit is rich.  Since such a huge portion of it comes in the form of graffiti—which is almost always by definition an act of vandalism—it’s understandable that my opening sentence might carry a whiff of irony.  But any city that loses nearly 70% of its population will inevitably contain within its jurisdiction a large amount of unmaintained space.  In Detroit, such space includes both raw, formerly developed land as well as vacant structures.  Abandoned buildings may comprise the most conspicuous acts of graffito, but sometimes one can find it in unexpected places, like this water tower.

Pondering it a little more deeply, it’s no surprise that the tank became a canvas.  It presides over a difficult-to-access, largely depopulated neighborhood near the intersection of Dequnidre Road and the Davidson Freeway.  Typically, the area probably doesn’t receive a great deal of monitoring, so it would be easy to sneak around and make it up the ladder to the tank.  In addition, the tank stands only a few hundred feet away from a very prominent location, the I-75 corridor, so thousands of motorists pass by it daily.  For a typical vandal, this tower is a dream come true: a clandestine site for execution that will offer a big payoff in terms of visibility.  But what about the artwork itself?

It looks like a monochrome hand in a popular gesture, in which the thumb holds down the ring and middle finger, while the pinky and index finger remain elevated—the sign of the horn.  While it carries many other connotations, from warding off bad luck to cuckoldry, the most common and enduring connotation in the United States is a sort of good-natured expression of solidarity within heavy metal and headbanging subcultures—certainly the more likely implication in a northern industrial city like Detroit, when compared with its other well-known signifier, the “hook ‘em horns” rally at University of Texas at Austin.

A closer look, however, suggests that the painting wasn’t always so whimsical.

Someone painted over the upper half of the middle and ring finger, using an almost identical color to the tank of the water tower, thereby more or less blotting them out.  What this means is the original gesture was a raised fist.  And though it, too, carries a variety of implications, nearly all of them include a degree of political protest—a gesture of collective revolt against an oppressive authority.  By “whiting out” the original graffito, the second vandal muted and, by large extent, trivialized the original message.  If the original full fist embodied the iconic “black power” salute, it is possible that the actions of the second vandal is demonstrating a counter-protest toward black power, which, by nature of reducing it to a adrenaline-fueled rally for “rock ‘n roll!”, some might construe as belittling racism.  Simultaneously, others perceive the defiance implied by the black power raised fist to perpetuate racial differences that are inherently prejudicial and divisive in nature.

I’m not going to fan the flames any further, because I can’t begin to know what the original intent was, nor that of the palimpsest the followed.  While it could demonstrate the broader implications of racial tension in Detroit, it might simply reveal little more than two graffiti artists who had differing visions for a water tower.  Since neither artist had any vested right to paint this tower, it’s always fair game for another person to destroy the original aesthetic message, and it’s possible that someday a third will recover the original of solidarity in political protest—or turn it into something unrecognizable.  That at least two artists treated the tower as their canvas has less to say about the content than about the level of supervision over this part of town.  It’s not that common to find vandalized water towers, because in most places you simply couldn’t get away with it.  Detroit is clearly different in that regard.  And while Detroit’s distinction might not say much about the City’s prevailing ability to fight property crime, it certainly punctuates the landscape visually with a density of self-expression we’re not so likely to see in, say, Disneyland—or Manhattan, for that matter.

Testing the mutability of murals.

Urban murals, once a rarity outside of a few pioneering cities such as Philadelphia, have emerged in the last decade or so as a sine qua non for any big-city civic art initiative.  Philadelphia might still be the national (or even global) leader through its Mural Arts Program, but many other cities are trying to give Philly a run for its money.  In recognition of having won the bid for Super Bowl XLVI back in 2012, the City of Indianapolis commissioned a variety of local artists to festoon the sides of various buildings with 46 different murals, significantly boosting its corpus in the process.  Inevitably, these murals vary greatly both in prominence and quality, but some of them have generated significant positive buzz in the last two years.  One of the highest profile (and best-loved) of Indy’s murals is a giant recreation of Kurt Vonnegut, looking about as avuncular one could ever hope from the city’s most lovable curmudgeon.

In fear of seeming like too much of a killjoy, let me defend the mural not just for its great attention to detail, the formidable skill of its creator, and its unquantifiable boost to the city’s self-image by reminding the world that it was the boyhood home of one of the 20^th century’s most respected satirists and social critics.  Hopefully Kilgore Trout would approve of my cynicism, though, when I follow this paean with a serious disclaimer.  Doggone it, this mural has Kurt beaming onto a parking lot along Massachusetts Avenue, a fashionable yuppie nightlife corridor that will inevitably turn into a mixed-use development eventually, shrouding the gargantuan Vonnegut into a back alley.  The salience the mural enjoys now from emptiness of the parking lot will eventually lead to its downfall—or, at least, its almost complete concealment when a building sprouts up.  (Then again, Kurt, ever the rake, may just as easily have approved of such a self-defeating gesture.)

But this Vonnegut dilemma hints on a recurring problem with many murals: the conceivers deliberately place them on blank walls that probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the adjacent building the faced demolition years prior.  Such is the case for many of the murals in Philadelphia, as well as this earlier mural (predating the Super Bowl) that I blogged about a few years ago.  Too many murals serve as unintentional placeholders, beautifying a featureless flat surface until something else comes along that is far more likely to stimulate economic activity in the area—and, yes, that “something else” nearly always translates to a new infill development.

Michigan’s largest city can claim its own artistic ammunition, boasting a variety of sculptures and murals, both amateur and professional.  I’m not sure if Detroit’s murals emerged under a centralizing organization in the same way as the murals of Philadelphia or Indianapolis—after all, the city appeared at one time to have a Detroit Mural Factory that trained students in the practice, but I cannot find a centralized webpage with up-to-date information for this Mural Factory.  At any rate, the existing array of murals certainly offers a powerful contrast within a city that, by most empirical assessments, suffers a higher-than-average problem with graffiti, when compared to other American cities.  And though graffiti is far less common place across the American landscape than it is in most other countries, Detroit seems to have more than its fair share, no doubt due to the higher concentration of vacant, neglected or underutilized buildings.

So it is with no small amount of comfort that I recognize a highly effective mural that sits on Woodward Avenue, one of the city’s prime arterials, just south of Warren Street, in the heart of the Wayne State University campus.

Whatever one might think of the mural’s broader aesthetic ambitions, it certainly adds color and texture to an otherwise monochrome flat surface.  It’s big—possibly bigger, all in all, than the lanky Vonnegut in Indianapolis.  But it shares the same predicament: it rests on a blank wall to a building whose kissing cousin came down years ago.  In its place is this big grassy lot.

And the lot is expansive—huge.  Here’s looking at it from the other direction (northward) along Woodward:

And pivoting a little bit to the left, in a northwesterly direction:

Not surprisingly, a city that has suffered as much extensive depopulation and disinvestment as Detroit has more than its share of vacant lots, the verdant reminders of mighty Art Deco buildings that once lined this corridor.  In many quarters of the city, the urban prairies will likely sit there for years to come.

But not here in Midtown, and certainly not on Wayne State’s campus.  Leadership at WSU has pushed significantly to shift its prevailing identity over the years.  Since its founding as a medical school and training college, the university has burgeoned and evolved into Michigan’s third-largest.  But it has rarely (if ever) claimed a significant presence of live-in students.  Long a commuter school, the reputation—particularly in Detroit’s darkest days of crime and disinvestment—was that students at WSU drove to the university from the suburbs, took their classes, and got out by dusk.  Throughout the 1990s, the campus did not even offer dorm living.  Though the transition is undoubtedly a bit more nuanced than I’m portraying here, the University’s leadership and economic development arm realized that the chasm between the school and the surrounding Midtown neighborhood was only growing.  And it certainly wasn’t helping the desirability of being a student at Wayne State.  As a result, the school has engaged in a flurry of both dormitory construction and partnerships with developers to encourage a greater student life around the campus that lingers after hours.  Consequently, Midtown has as bustling pedestrian scene that was scarcely visible 20 years ago.  More eyes on the street translates to greater perception of safety, and the presence of a youth culture with some disposable income has spurred a concomitant college-town retail scene.

This broad scythe at a history of Wayne State’s involvement in Midtown inevitably cuts some corners (pun intended), but in the long and short of it is, it’s only a matter of time before this grassy corner at the intersection of Woodward and Warren will host a new building, if not several.  And it’s equally certain that, in due time, a developer seeking to maximize the FAR (floor-area ratio) on the parcel will want to build in very close proximity to the existing building with the mural.  The developer may even choose to touch the adjacent structure.  Which means that this elegant adornment could fall into oblivion, frustrating not just the artist but also the community support that helped to conceive it.

Fortunately, the minds behind the mural have an ace in their sleeve.

Notice the tiniest shadow at the lower left corner of the mural?  That’s right—it’s not directly painted onto the wall.

It appears to be a sort of canvas that has been stretched to tautness through tying its corners to hooks implanted in the mortar between bricks.  I suppose, if we’re purists, this means that this piece of artwork no longer fits the traditional definition of a mural.  But it will likely fake anyone who isn’t scrutinizing.  And, more importantly, it means that the canvas can come down when a building goes up next door, then get installed somewhere else.

From an artistic standpoint, my suspicion is that this display has lost a bit of credibility.  After all, it didn’t require an artist’s careful assessment of the space, nor the dedication of applying paint to a rough surface from a vertiginous position.  Though clearly “drawn” as an original, it’s quite possible this canvas’s existence depended upon a digital magnification.  So maybe it’s cheating.  But the fact remains that neither WSU, future developers, nor whatever arts program finally implemented the “mural”—none will have to witness the demise of this work of art in a few years.  The same can’t be said about Kurt Vonnegut in Indy, nor the hundreds of murals emblazoned on blank sides of buildings in Philly.  Migrating this canvas to another big wall should seem like a minor effort in comparison, and in a city that has witnessed so much renegade art in the wake of its abandonment, the citizens will finally get to see a painting salvaged, as welcomed new construction fills the void.

When egalitarianism rests on two wheels.

With scores of urban advocacy blogs out there, I find it hard to imagine that I have much to add to the conversation on the defining characteristics of Mackinac Island, Michigan.  Even if the northerly island in Lake Huron—a former Jesuit mission, Ojibwa sacred site, and strategic military encampment—elicits little more than a head-scratching among people from the coasts, nearly everyone in the Midwest is at least familiar with the name.  And in the summer, the isle draws tens of thousands of visitors daily from downstate and elsewhere in the Great Lakes region.  Even those who consider the Great Lakes a pale substitute for a genuine sand beach would probably concede that the town itself is fairly picturesque.

While most visitors to the Island will first encounter the dense cluster of buildings along Main Street, the overwhelming majority of the 3.8 square mile island is unsettled.  Not only is the entire island a State Park, but the National Park Service also classifies it as a Historic Landmark. The impeccable condition of the buildings should therefore come as no surprise.  What distinguishes it from most other historic districts, however, is that it shows little to no evidence that the historic preservation movement that emerged in the mid 20^th century spawned a revival of Mackinac.  It’s difficult if not impossible to spot any telltale indications that the town was ever down-and-out: few, if any, architectural embellishments fail to conform to the rest of the structure; not a single building (some of which are over two centuries old) is in even slightest disrepair; no parking lots where a building once stood.  It looks like the town never went out of style.  And, to be frank, Mackinac probably never did suffer.  It earned popularity with tourists after the Civil War, then quickly expanded to serve as the premier summer destination for wealthy downstate industrialists during the Victorian era, the time period influencing the preponderance of the town’s architecture.

Generalizing though it may be, the nation’s pioneer spirit has always valued novelty—whether through our persistently decentralizing metropolitan areas, or for our storied history of domestic vacation destinations that peak suddenly then decline to a permanent malaise (Atlantic City, Monticello NY, Salton Sea).  Or, conversely, those vacation destinations that have demonstrated sea legs for remaining viable over many decades—Las Vegas, Disneyland—primarily because they have reinvented themselves every few years through the demolition and construction of new attractions.  Mackinac Island has done none of this, yet has continued to age gracefully.  It’s an outlier.

Of the three aforementioned preservation indicators listed above, however, one should stand out in particular: the absence of parking lots in the space of buildings.  Mackinac has no parking lots because it doesn’t need them.  It has no cars.  The island’s government passed a law forbidding motorized vehicles as long ago as 1898, a time well before the motorized vehicle had become commonplace.  The law’s original aim was promote clean, noise-free air and to avoid startling the town’s horses; subsequent leadership has maintained the law ever since, with few exceptions for snowmobiles, shipment trucks, and emergency vehicles.  But no residents or entrepreneurs on the island can own a car.

The absence of cars on Mackinac translates to a modified system of rules for human settlement, which manifests itself in the look of the town.

Not surprisingly, roads don’t need to be particularly wide to accommodate on-street parking, and parking lots are unheard of.  The town itself doesn’t look particularly unconventional in terms of the positioning of structures—instead, it looks almost hyperconventional, an unsullied facsimile of Main Street Americana.

Even outside of the most urbanized parts of the island, a dense network of paths crisscrosses through the woods and the hills, almost exclusively intended for horses and bicyclists.

And the perimeter of the island features a complete multi-use path, which many of the beachfront homes depend upon for access.

And, of course, the inordinate cluster of bikes parked together.

One might easily confuse such a vista for Copenhagen or Amsterdam, but in this case the bikes are almost uniformly in good condition—no need to grime them up to deter thieves.  And the proof is the fact that virtually none of them are locked or secured.

If it all seems impossibly idyllic, it’s likely that you formed the same conclusions that I had, at least until I set foot on the island.  I’ll concede that I was expecting a bohemian enclave, with provocative murals on the sides of buildings, purveyors of hemp products, unwashed street musicians, and vegan pastry shops.  And if that guess was way off base (and it was), at the very least I was anticipating something a little bourgeois-bohemian—a resort town for affluent urbanites, filled with expensive pet salons, micro-brewpubs, Asian tapas, or wine bars.  Strike two.  Maybe these were bad assumptions on my part, to think such a settlement would thrive in such a remote village.  But such communities do exist: Vermont is filled with hippie hamlets like my first description, and Michigan can claim more than its share of ritzy waterfront towns that attract weekenders from Chicago and Detroit (Petoskey, MI is the first that comes to mind).

But Mackinac Island is neither of these.

The most famous comestible for sale along Main Street is fudge, offered from a variety of vendors.  Other shops display different flavors of hot pretzels, Native American-inspired crafts, family dining, soda fountains.  And so forth.  Superficial as it may seem for me to define the character of a community through its retail, it is a judgment call we all make in our assessments of unfamiliar urbanized places.  And what it indicates is that Mackinac Island is, for the most part, a slice of Middle America.  Nary a whiff of counterculture.  I guess it got the bourgeois part right.

Was I naïve in expecting Mackinac to appeal to society’s fringe?  Probably.  But since the island’s most enduring claim to fame is its century-old ban on automobiles—in the state that serves as the cradle of the automotive industry, no less!—it’s understandable to expect the community to push its anti-establishmentarianism to greater extremes.  But, as far as I can tell, it really doesn’t.  Instead, we get chubby Midwesterners on bicycles.

In many ways, this is a greater marvel than if Mackinac were filled with hippies, or hipsters, or Luddite militias.  The fact remains that banning cars is unorthodox just about anywhere in the world, and such a gesture could have easily scared away the peak of society’s bell curve.  After all, most people crave convenience on their vacations, and yet here is a community that outlaws one of the most quintessential American creature comforts.  And middle class families flock here anyway.  And while some opt for the horse-drawn shuttles to view the town, many more rent bikes.

I’m probably being a bit unfair to Middle America in my astonishment—and more than a little patronizing.  But, in many regards, Mackinac is wonderful because it’s so normal. It aggregates a population that, though not necessarily averse to bike-riding, is certainly unlikely treat it as a utilitarian means of getting around—and these vacationers are even less likely to take a hardline stance toward bicycle advocacy, the way the fringe groups do.  They’re recreational bicyclists back home (if they use bikes at all), but on Mackinac, getting around by bike is both utilitarian and recreational.  No militancy to be found.  Yet Mackinac is militant about its ban on motorized vehicles.  The accomplishment of Mackinac Island vaguely resembles the achievement of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail—a shared use path through the Circle City’s downtown, less interesting for attracting hipsters (we knew they’d use it) than it is for luring Mom and Dad and the kids from the suburbs.  It effectively democratized bicycle riding by making it much less intimidating.  I suppose Indy’s achievement is greater than Mackinac’s, since it’s easy not to be afraid of biking the streets of a small town when the streets have no cars.  (Indy obviously still has more than its share of vehicles on the roads.)  But the implementation of this Mackinac law and its unlikely pairing with mainstream culture still makes the island more of a peculiarity.

Mackinac’s ability to perpetuate this ban ad infinitum may depend on a few other embedded advantages the town has over other enclaves.  First of all, the community is really only bustling five months of the year at most; otherwise, population plunges to below 500 people.  Bike-dependency is unlikely to demonstrate such widespread appeal during northern Michigan’s long and unforgiving winters.  Secondly, its island status means it discriminates who wants to arrive there, as well as who can arrive.  Passers-by just don’t stumble onto the community.  By paying for a ferry, visitors have already largely bought into the way of life while they’re there.  And the geography fosters a sense of comfort impossible to replicate if it were part of the mainland.  Even if crime does occur, it’s clear from the absence of bike locks that no one perceives it to be a problem. It’s hard to steal bikes too far on a 4 square mile island in which 99% of the people arrive by ferry.  (Though I guess people could take bikes on the ferry and claim they belong to them?)

If I were more of a cynic, I could see these two advantages (the isolation and the seasonality) as inextricable with Mackinac’s biggest cultural drawback: people like it precisely because it’s an escapist novelty, meaning that all but the few hundred year-round residents are perfectly happy to return to the comfortable, auto-dependent suburbs of Detroit on Sunday evening.  The characteristics that make Mackinaw distinctive also preclude its replicability anywhere else.  But since I don’t think the abolition of cars makes for pragmatic policy in most of the country (at least not in jurisdictions much bigger than this town), I resign myself to appreciate the island’s broadly accessible charms on their own terms.  Mackinac is just fine without the car-hating counter-revolutionaries.  At least everybody has a good way to burn the calories from all that fudge.

Plugging the passed-over pocket park with programming.

My latest post is up at Urban Indy.  It scrutinizes a small park on the near northside of Indianapolis--a park so unremarkable that most of the city's residents have probably never heard of it.  Wedged between the Fall Creek Place neighborhood and its namesake Fall Creek, Kessler Park is hardly an unattractive park.  Clean, easily accessible, generously landscaped, and boasting part of a creekside greenway trail, the park has everything an urban park needs...except people.

It's empty nearly 100% of the time.  What seems to be the problem?  The surrounding neighborhood is, at least by Indianapolis standards, relatively high density and pedestrian friendly.  But, at the same time, the neighborhood is not so crowded that the houses lack private yards.  Meanwhile the nearby Ivy Tech Community College campus brings students to the area, but it's overwhelmingly a commuter school, so the numerous daily visitors don't translate to much pedestrian traffic.  And this park--named after George Kessler, the designer of the city's park system--remains ignored.

What could the park's designers--or Indianapolis Parks and Recreation, for that matter--have done to make Kessler Park succeed?  Obviously it hasn't yet found the competitive edge that could make it at least something better than an oversight.  The designers seem to have thought that the park could become desirable on its own terms, so they didn't integrate any sort of programming or specific use into the site plan.  We see the results.

A counterpart in every sense of the word is Campus Martius Park in Detroit.  It might seem like an odd analogy, since this park sits in the heart of the Motor City's downtown, compared with Kessler's tucked-away spot along a residential street.   But Campus Martius does enjoy some obvious advantages; for starters, it's among the most lively civic spaces in this beleaguered city.
 
The park, re-established several years ago on what had previous been a sterile and unnecessary traffic circle, has a little bit of everything: a fountain centerpiece, a war memorial, the Fountain Bistro restaurant, a lawn with chairs for viewing concerts, the stage to host those concerts, and even a beach and a cabana bar.  Even when downtown Detroit is devoid of a good crowd (which can happen on any given weekday after 6 pm, unless a Tigers Game is taking place) Campus Martius park is still generally humming.  But could all that programming be a little overkill?

The goal of the article is to scrutinize the idea of programming our urban open spaces with destination-type venues, in order to lure the public.  Although this technique seems to be working at Campus Martius, such intensive cramming of activities into little more than an acre robs the space of its spontaneity.  People aren't enjoying the space on its own terms; they're responding to the many sales pitches it has to offer.

Ultimately, the programmed park reaches unprecedented extremes in they city of Yerevan.  This Armenian capitol took its circular beltway--designed as part of the master planned downtown during the early Soviet era--and has sold off the majority of the land to cafes and restaurants.
 
Most of Yerevan's parkland is completely commercialized, to the point of compromising its accessibility.   Bicyclists, for example, must find another outlet, since the extensive Circular Park is overwhelmed by vendors and small businesses that crowd the pathway.  It almost looks like an amusement mark. 

Where does this leave Kessler Park in Indy?  Obviously the current, unprogrammed condition isn't working, but it should avoid the opposite extreme from Detroit and Yerevan as well.  Truly visionary landscape architects recognize that a great urban park doesn't simply offer restaurants, pseudobeaches and other novelties--they should reveal sensitivity both to the landscape and the green space demands of the surrounding community.  In short, exactly the sort of park designed by George Kessler and his contemporaries.

The full article at Urban Indy provides far greater description and numerous photos of all three city parks.  As always, comments are welcome, both here and on the Urban Indy site.

Ramping up the capacity of a rural highway—but without the ramps.

One of the biggest yet quietest challenges in managing capital improvement projects is maintaining a basic level of functionality during major upgrades.  My suspicion is that the implementation of major capital improvements is usually quiet because—more often than not—these upgrades take place with few disruptions.  Think about it: the basic etymology of “infrastructure” reveals how rarely we are conscious of its existence.  The Latin infra means “under”, denoting “below” in terms of location and connoting the same in terms of hierarchical prominence.  We don’t notice it unless it isn’t running as it should.  And various branches of government—municipal public works departments or state departments of transportation—are constantly upgrading infrastructure, much of the time while allowing at least a minimum functionality.  Yes, when upgrading a bridge within a sparsely traveled country road, it is like the servicing agency will close that road segment altogether.  But if it’s a major arterial where an outright closure could seriously vitiate commuter mobility and harm the local economy, most infrastructure project managers will sacrifice speed of reconstruction to allow at least some operability during the entire process.

While not of national prominence, the upgrade of US 24 certainly matters a great deal to citizens of northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio.  One of the original highways that the Joint Board on Interstate Highways developed in its numbering system (after much prompting by the equivalent of today’s AASHTO), the Ohio stretch largely paralleled the sinuous trajectory of the Maumee River, connecting riverfront towns such as Napoleon and Waterville to the much larger cities of Fort Wayne in Indiana and Toledo in Ohio.  As logistical demands between Fort Wayne and Toledo grew, the riverfront towns became engulfed in traffic, diminishing their appeal and frustrating the truckers who had no need to transect these much smaller municipalities.  Grassroots initiatives from the 1960s in both states resulted in proposals to improve US 24, but only two four-lane bypasses around Napoleon and Defiance materialized.  At one point, the Ohio Department of Highways proposed widening US 24 to four lanes through the heart Waterville and along the Maumee River, but this incited immediate opposition in the community.  In addition, a stretch of the highway west of Defiance developed a reputation for head-on collisions, prompting the Toledo Blade in the 1980s to christen the entire thoroughfare “the Killway.”

Last August, a few hundred citizens gathered in Waterville, Ohio to celebrate the completion of the Fort to Port project, a comprehensive upgrade of US 24 that bypasses most of the communities by cutting across farmland to the north of the river.  Motorists heading between Fort Wayne and Toledo will never need to steamroll through these smaller towns.  And—best of all—the new and improved US 24 has few at grade intersections, helping it to function almost like a limited access interstate highway.

But not quite.

Both states have waffled on exactly how sophisticated the upgrades should be.  Over the years, Indiana’s DOT improved much of its section of US 24 to four-lane expressway status, occasionally introducing cloverleaf and parclo interchanges to endow the thoroughfare with an almost limited-access status.  Budget considerations in the previous decade prompted the State of Indiana to renege on original plans to convert the easternmost leg (from the Fort Wayne I-469 beltway to the Ohio state line) to limited access, but this time the Indiana communities objected.  While residents in the Fort Wayne area argued that heavy truck traffic justified a full upgrade with flyovers and interchanges, INDOT rebutted that traffic volumes aren’t significantly high enough to build limited access.  Nonetheless, Governor Mitch Daniels announced in late 2007 that upgrades to the easternmost segment would include interchanges.  Six years later, the Indiana segment of US 24 functions almost completely like a limited access highway.  But then we get to that Ohio section.

[Forgive the photos.  The majority were taken at dusk and are less than crisp.]

The railroad crossing is more than enough evidence that Ohio’s share of US 24 from Toledo to the Indiana state line is not limited access in its entirety.  If it were, the above photo would be impossible: a true interstate highway never intersects with railroad lines at grade.  Perhaps this anomaly helps to explain the mysterious use of the word “exempt” below the crossings signs.

I’m not sure what the word means in this context, but it may have something to do with the fact that this railway is “exempt” certain standards that might otherwise apply if this were a typical limited access highway.  The ambiguity is confusing.  Fortunately, railroad crossings along US 24 in Ohio are relatively few and far between.

More compelling is the way ODOT treats conventional intersections with other vehicular roads.

Though hardly ubiquitous, intersections such as the one above—with a rural collector road—are relatively common along Ohio’s US 24. After a superficial glance, it might not look particularly strange.  After all, the sign is preparing motorists for an upcoming egress opportunity, in much the same way signage would communicate on a limited access highway.  But a later sign directs motorists to different lanes, depending on whether they desire to turn down these intersecting roads.

Notice the sign to the right of the shoulder, indicating the various turn lanes.  Even it might not seem so strange on its own terms.  But look at US 24 at an intersection—the exact configuration that sign is referring to.

Notice the problem?  The highway only features two lanes.  A special left-turn lane to the left of the sedan in the photo is faintly visible as painted, but it also has a hashed out buffer between it and the main two cartways.  But it is unclear if the turn-lane sane is referring to this, since the sign shows no buffer zones between lanes.  Thus, the sign appears that it could be referring two three lanes when only two exist.  And this apparent contradiction could pose some real safety hazards for motorists seeking to turn right at the intersection.  After all, what is it trying to say?  If the left lane is a left-turn lane, then that means the far right lane is a right-turn lane—but that is a ludicrous suggestion because it would force vehicles to slow to a crawl and turn a hard, 90-degree right.  Yet if vehicles slow to a crawl on this lane—the same lane where motorists also have the option of zooming forward—it could result in a car coming from behind and slamming into the vehicle slowing to turn right.  On a high-speed freeway such as US 24, vehicles making turns need complete protection, but this lane configuration does allow it—unless the vehicle seeking to turn right swerves onto the shoulder with the rumble strips, in order to make that turn.  At least such a maneuver would afford the motorist some protection as he or she slows down in the shoulder.  But who designs roads so that a car must veer into the shoulder in order to make a conventional right turn?

I’m doing my best to narrate these mediocre photos, but perhaps it’s a more apt “you-had-to-be-there moment”.  This predicament is difficult to describe.  The fact remains that Ohio’s US 24 abounds with intersections such as these, made all the more dangerous because they are the only type of intersection we are going to find along this highway.  US24 in Ohio has no stoplights, and speeds are well over 60 miles per hour.  Amazingly,  even in this day and age, ODOT designed intersections such as the ones above, on a thoroughfare that intends to channel traffic with the same level of service we would expect to see on a limited access highway. 

My guess is the majority of US 24 upgrades in Ohio have won accolades from people who live near this thoroughfare or use it regularly.  It achieves what it was meant to do: provide an alternative, high-speed route between Fort Wayne and Toledo that doesn’t overwhelm the numerous small towns along the Maumee River.  But it falls in an uncomfortable middle ground between a conventional arterial road and a limited access highway.  The two states upgraded the road considerably so that it almost has no direct intersections…but they didn’t quite go all the way.  And now the Ohio segment features at least a dozen intersections that look like nothing else I’ve ever seen.  As long as the road remains uncongested, these bizarre right turns should not result in any major collisions.  But odds are strong that US 24’s traffic volume will only grow in time.

Perhaps the existing configuration is a mere “placeholder”, preparing the right-of-way for the eventual upgrades it needs to become a fully functional limited access highway.  But, regardless of the future of US 24, the current design evokes serious compromise and negligent road design.  It’s still infrastructure, and most of us don’t contemplate the topic out of fun.  As mentioned earlier, we should remain unaware of high-performance unless something goes wrong.  My only hope is that a high-speed rear-ending never transpires along this highway—a road in which, as we celebrate its achievements, we become complacently blind to its weaknesses.  And then we get the “killway” all over again.

Retail's retreat from risk.

Forgive the hiatus.  I just relocated to the city featured in this article.  Set in metro Detroit (the first, no doubt, among many), it’s straightforward enough that it doesn’t really demand a long introduction or exposition.

From the outside, this unusual shopping center looks like it’s on the fritz:

 

No signs above any of the windows; it doesn’t seem like anything is going on.  The inside—in which the building reveals itself to be little more than a strip mall with an enclosed hallway linking all the stores—isn’t really any more promising.

After all, not a single storefront along this silent hallway has a tenant.  From the looks of things, this row of shops has been vacant for quite some time.  Notice the one on the left.

The color scheme should at least hint at the logo of this formerly ubiquitous chain, but if it doesn’t, the slot to the right of the gate is a dead giveaway.

That’s right; it’s the broadly recognizable as the after-hours depository for the once-mighty Blockbuster Video.  Since this company faded to nearly nothing about four years ago, chances are strong that this storefront has sat vacant for quite some time.  A few doors down, the rustic entryway suggests the former home of a Bath and Body Works.

The hallway is silent.  But this strip mall is L-shaped, with storefronts facing both of the intersecting streets. Turn the corner within the mall, and it’s an entirely different story.

All the storefronts are occupied, and the entire shopping center looks fine—quite nice, even.

The tenant mix includes both mom-and-pops and national chains.  If the mom-and-pops were fledgling establishments, one might still be able to argue that the strip mall is declining, and eventually all the chains will leave.  But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.  Buddy’s Pizza has multiple locations in the Detroit area.

And Gibb’s World Wide Wines has apparently been in business for 76 years.  Down the corner from the national mid-priced chain Dress Barn is a Barnes and Noble Booksellers, serving as the apparent anchor tenant—hardly one that you’d see in a dying retail center.

Interestingly, the Dress Barn is new…to that spot.  A label scar (which I regrettably failed to capture in a photo) revealed that it previously occupied a different space in the strip mall—in the half that is now completely vacant.  The relocation is recent.

So what’s going on with one half of the strip mall?  A little knowledge about the physicality of the structure might help.  Here’s another outside view of the vacant half of the L shape:

It’s the lowest level of a parking garage, and the entire structure is connected to the St. John Hospital and Medical Center, resulting in an unconventional healthcare/shopping complex.  The name of the retail component is Pointe Plaza.  After questioning a clerk at one of the fully operating stores, I learned why one side was so vacant.  The row of vacant storefronts will allow enough consolidated space for one of the major gym/health clubs to move in, such as an LA Fitness.  I was unsuccessful in reaching Schostak Brothers, the property management company, to confirm this rumor, but it makes sense: a gym seems like an appropriate tenant for a complex that directly abuts a hospital.  Due to the gym’s size, it might serve as an additional anchor counterpart to the Barnes and Noble at the opposite end of the L shape.

But the peculiarities to Pointe Plaza extend well beyond the structure itself.  They’re political too.

This strip mall/garage/hospital sits right at the corner of Mack Avenue and Moross Road, as indicated in the map above (the small red circle is the site of the Plaza), and in the photo below, with the garage poking above the trees in the background:

Detroiters generally know this intersection as the boundary between Detroit the city and two of its suburbs: Grosse Pointe Farms, to the east of Mack Avenue, and Grosse Pointe Woods, to the north of the hospital.  In most metros, central city/suburb boundaries carry obvious significance in terms of distinctions between municipal tax burdens and ordinances, but in this case, those differences are unusually pronounced.  Detroit, as virtually everyone knows at this point, is among the most impoverished and economically challenged large cities in the country.  Meanwhile, Grosse Pointe Farms and Grosse Pointe Woods each have median household incomes of over $85,000.  I have yet to witness such an extreme juxtaposition between two municipalities anywhere in this country.  While the Detroit side of Mack Avenue in this district is in significantly better economic health than many other parts of the city, it still visibly lags far behind the affluent suburb on the opposite side of the street.

Pointe Plaza sits at the absolute easternmost vertex in Detroit city limits.  And, as the map indicates, it hugs the Detroit side of this inordinately influential boundary.  (The actual Detroit line is at Kingsville Avenue, just to the north of Pointe Plaza, which forms a three-way boundary between Detroit, Grosse Pointe Farms, and Grosse Pointe Woods.)  The proximity of the shopping center to this boundary inevitably complicates the property management agency’s ability to attract tenants, because its identity straddles sociological extremes.  One might expect that the management company would prefer a tenant mix more reflective of the affluent Grosse Points than the long-embattled Motor City, and the best way, of course, is to suppress every potential reference to Detroit.  A simple online search suggests that Google is giving Schostak Brothers, the property managers, an intrinsic advantage:

Not only does Google yield an address that incorrectly lists the facility’s address as Grosse Pointe Woods, but the thumbnail map falsely depicts the facility north of Kingsville Avenue—the boundary that would place it in Grosse Pointe Woods instead of Detroit.  The structure listed where Google Maps shows “Pointe Plaza Shopping Center” is something completely unrelated and definitely not a strip mall.  Meanwhile, Pointe Plaza’s identity online places it squarely in posh suburbia.

I decided to test this locational confusion a bit further, by asking each of the Pointe Plaza tenants a simple question: “Which city are you in?”  Of the seven tenants, only two correctly responded with Detroit.  Just to make sure I wasn’t misinterpreting the information available to me, I also rephrased my inquiry as a leading question: “Are you guys in Detroit?”  Interesting, all but one respondent conceded that yes, they were in Detroit, but most of them mentioned that they were right on the boundary with two of the Grosse Pointes.

Retail has long enjoyed a privileged status in the American commercial landscape: we always build far more facilities than there are tenants, meaning the majority of them can be incredibly picky about location.  The emergence of online shopping has only compounded the issue, because fewer goods and service providers depend upon bricks-and-mortar facilities to conduct their trades.  The fact that Pointe Plaza has avoided any stigma of sitting within the Detroit boundaries is a boon to this bankrupt city, since, for taxation purposes, the assessed value of the commercial property is undoubtedly higher than it would be if it could only attract marginal local tenants.  Only time will tell if this shopping center actually does absorb a major health club chain.  If it doesn’t, it may affirm my initial suspicions: that the vacant wing of this L-shaped strip mall has to overcome the challenge of directly looking out upon the impecunious city of Detroit.  Hopefully a revisit to Pointe Plaza in 2014 will prove me wrong.