A Short Course in Site Planning

Every semester the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning offers a nice little selection of one-credit short courses.  These courses usually last four weeks and are designed to give students a chance to build practical planning skills.

This September, the department offered a short course in Site Planning, taught by City Councilman Satyendra Huja.  As fledgling site planners, my fellow classmates and I were tasked with the redevelopment of a small parcel of land on Charlottesville’s Monticello Avenue.

Our assignment was to design a site plan that provided for the following program:

• 20,000 to 40,000 square feet of commercial space
• 5 to 15 single-family dwelling units
• 20 to 40 multifamily dwelling units

In developing our site plans, we needed to consider a plethora of issues, everything from off-street parking to zoning restrictions to drainage and landscaping.

The site plan that my planning team cooked up can be seen below (I’d recommend clicking the image to see a larger version).

The site planning process was an excellent adventure, I must say.  And I’d fully recommend taking a planning short course.  Just a month of your time for an incredible experience.

Earthquake Alchemy

As the dust settles after Central Virginia’s virtually unprecedented 5.8 magnitude tremor, I’d say it’s high time we started talking about earthquakes.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I visited the epicenter of the quake, located in Louisa County, near the tiny town of Mineral.  I was shocked.  While the earthquake had done nothing more than give us a minor case of the shakes over in Charlottesville, we discovered that the quake had wrought devastation in Louisa County.  Walls collapsed, chimneys fallen, buildings condemned.  Nothing short of a tragedy.

As we speak, six seismologists are on trial in L’Aquila, Italy.  Their charge?  Manslaughter, for failing to predict a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that killed 309 people in 2009.  According to the prosecution, the defendants gave a “falsely reassuring statement” to the public after analyzing hundreds of small tremors that had rocked the city prior to the quake.

If only it was so easy to predict an earthquake.  But alas, in its current state, the science of earthquake prediction is little more than alchemy.

Of course, there are many things that might precede a quake.  When rock begins to fracture under stress, radon gas is often released, and increased radon levels tend to accompany earthquakes.  Fracturing rocks also cause disruptions in groundwater flow, since fractures increase the amount of pore space between rocks.  Unfortunately, these telltale signs of an impending earthquake may occur too early, too late, or not at all.

The seismologists on trial in Italy were members of the Serious Risks Commission, a government panel assigned to monitor the ongoing tremors in the L’Aquila area.  After assessing the situation, the panel reported that there was “no reason to believe that a series of low-level tremors was a precursor to a larger event,” but that it was “not possible to predict whether a stronger quake would occur.”

The panel, in essence, was reporting that they had no idea what was going on in the rocks beneath the city.

As world populations continue to soar past seven billion, more and more people will come to live in large, earthquake-prone cities.  Earthquake prediction is going to need to improve.  It seems to me that rather than putting scientists on trial, we might want to think about investing in seismological research instead.  Because it’s not a hopeless cause: while successful earthquake predictions are extremely rare, they are not unheard of.  The 1975 earthquake of Haicheng, China, a 7.5 magnitude monster, was predicted one day before it struck.  Countless lives were saved.

After all, alchemists struggled for centuries to turn lead into gold…and today, modern physicists transmute elements on a regular basis.  What’s to say this isn’t the future of earthquake prediction?

Deep History

As the eons march onward, our world’s landscape changes relentlessly.  Oceans rise and fall.  Glaciers sculpt the earth with titanic chisels, etching valleys and ridges into solid rock.  Mountains stretch their fingertips toward the heavens, only to wither away under the gentle caress of wind and rain.

The study of these transcendental processes lie at the heart of the discipline of geomorphology.  Geomorphology (geo = earth, morph = change) is literally the study of how the earth’s surface changes over time.  This semester I’ve been lucky enough to take a geomorphology course with Professor Alan Howard, a geomorphologist in UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences.

But what does geomorphology have to do with urban planning?  Well, let me tell you.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke to you about my summer in Scottsville.  In exploring the influence of geology on the history of the town, I realized that Scottsville would not exist without its unique geomorphological context.

As the James River wends its way through the Piedmont of Virginia, the river is bordered on either side by extremely steep cliffs.  In the days of America’s infancy, these cliffs, as well as the river itself, presented a serious barrier to transportation.  But at Scottsville, settlers discovered a convenient breach in these cliffs, the only such breach for many kilometers to the east and west.  This breach offers a low-gradient slope to the northern and southern shores of the James River and allowed Scottsville to prosper.

This breach in the James River’s formidable river bluffs frames the very backbone of Scottsville’s cultural landscape.  But what was the cause for its formation?  Looks like we’re going to need to break out our geomorphologist’s toolbox to answer this question.

As I said a few weeks ago, Scottsville sits atop the Horseshoe Bend of the James River.  As it turns out, Scottsville’s breach in the river bluffs is caused by the Horseshoe Bend’s migration across the Piedmont over the past million years.  The migration of the Horseshoe Bend can be traced through the mapping of river terraces, the eroded remains of ancient floodplains.

Based on the distribution of terrace deposits in the Scottsville area, the Horseshoe Bend has migrated from west to east over the past 500,000 years, leaving a broad, flat terrace to the northwest of Scottsville and a similar terrace across the river to the south.  These terraces offer convenient, low-gradient access to both the northern and southern shores of the river.

Ta-da!  Question answered.  Science is pretty cool, huh?

And of course, Scottsville is not the only town that could benefit from this sort of geomorphological analysis.  Virtually every city owes much of its history to the landscape in which it is nestled.  Geomorphology allows us to connect the ephemeral threads of human history to natural history, a history that runs as deeply as time itself.

Blue Magic

The ocean!

The mere thought of salt spray and seafoam is more than enough to stir the soul and quicken the blood.  Clearly, Jules Verne had it right: “The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.”

Within the ocean’s trackless depths are creatures more wonderful than anything the human imagination could ever summon.  King Neptune and the old gods of the sea guard vast riches in watery mines on the seafloor.  And there are secrets cached within the dark corners of the ocean that would cause nations to tremble.

This past summer I took an oceanography class with Professor Steve Macko, a man who is equal parts geochemist and seafarer.  Professor Macko led us from the icy reaches of the polar seas to the rain-soaked tropics, teaching us his scientific lore along the way.

But if there’s anything I took home at the end of the summer, it’s that a storm is brewing over our marine heritage.  Humans are squandering ocean resources, be they fisheries, oil and natural gas, or the sea’s incredible biodiversity.  And this storm has only begun to rear its ugly head.

So what can we do to avoid the worst?  What can we do to manage our oceanic legacy?

One answer may be found in comprehensive marine spatial planning, or ocean zoning.  In the United States, although the use of ocean space is highly regulated, most of this regulation takes place on a sector-by-sector basis.  Regulatory agencies simply do not communicate with one another, and as a result, the quality of our oceans continues to decline.  But if the US begins to implement a more comprehensive form of marine spatial planning, we may be able to turn back the clock on ocean degradation.

A few of our international friends have already begun to implement ocean zoning policies.  Take Belgium, for example.  Belgium has introduced a comprehensive, ecosystem-based planning system to regulate its territorial sea and its exclusive economic zone.  Belgium’s plan includes the development of offshore wind farms, the delineation of marine conservation areas, a plan for sustainable sand and gravel mining, as well as the management of terrestrial activities that have been linked to the degradation of marine areas.

And don’t think the United States’ huge size is a detriment to the creation of ocean zoning polices.  Take a look at China.  As of 2008, ocean zoning had been established and implemented in over two-thirds of China’s coastal provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities.  China’s ocean zoning policy divides territorial waters into different types of functional zones, in accordance with ecological productivity and economic priorities.

Now, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy for the US to embark on a journey of responsible ocean management.  I am, however, saying that it is essential that we do so, and that we do so as soon as possible.

There’s just too much magic in our oceans for us to lose.

The Summer of the Rock

There are few places more beautiful than Virginia in the summertime.  I swear, the trees here are greener than anywhere else on Earth.  And in Virginia, the summer sun shines with real gold.

As a Master of Urban and Environmental Planning candidate at the University of Virginia, I’m required to complete an internship during the summer between my first and second years.  The guidelines on what sorts of internships you can choose from are pretty broad, and so these internships vary widely from student to student.

My internship was particularly unusual…and, I must add, particularly awesome.  I spent this past summer working at the Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources office here in Charlottesville, researching and creating an exhibit for the Scottsville History Museum.  Scottsville is a charming little town, resting on the shores of the James River about twenty miles south of Charlottesville, and just brimming with history.

Scottsville is located on a large river bend, known locally as the Horseshoe Bend of the James River.  Scottsville’s placement on the Horseshoe Bend affords the town the status of the northernmost point on the James River.  Because of the town’s favorable geographic position, Scottsville became one of the most important ports on the James River in the mid-19th century, during the glory days of the James River and Kanawha Canal.

It is no secret that the Horseshoe Bend was critical to Scottsville’s economic success.  But why does the river bend in the first place? It is this question that my exhibit seeks to answer through an exploration of the relationships between the geology of the Scottsville area and the history of the town.

In the process of creating the exhibit, I lived the life of a geologist.  To those of you who are considering a career in the earth sciences, hear this: this life rocks.  (Alas, it’s also a life fraught with geology puns.)  I spent a good deal of my summer reading scientific journals and honing my ArcGIS skills at the state geology office.  But I also was able to do some “field work,” which is just a fancy term for “playtime.”

In my search for geological answers to the reasons for the Horseshoe Bend’s existence, I bushwhacked through forests, pulled stickers out of my clothes, and frolicked shamelessly in the James River.  And of course, I immersed myself in the warm embrace of a Virginia summer.

If you’re thirsty for an answer as to why the river bends, come on down to the Scottsville Museum this spring.  This exhibit will rock your world.

In Memoriam

Ever since the School of Architecture’s Campbell Hall was built in 1970, generations of students have been privileged with one of the best views in town.

The magic of Carr’s Hill’s forested slopes was not lost on Pietro Belluschi, Campbell Hall’s master architect.  Enchanted by the murmurs of the huge forest spirits with whom his building would soon keep company, Belluschi designed Campbell Hall to sit lightly upon the landscape, preserving the arboreal heritage of Carr’s Hill in the process.  And so Carr’s Hill’s trees came to embrace the newborn Campbell Hall.

Belluschi’s design also provided for soaring studio windows, allowing students visual access to the wonders of the green panorama to the north.  For almost fifty years, the trees of Carr’s Hill have fertilized students’ minds with passion, imagination, and childlike wonder.

But this past Friday, Campbell Hall lost many of its beloved trees.  On Earth Day, no less.

The construction of the University of Virginia’s new Thrust Theater necessitated the removal of nine trees on Carr’s Hill.  These trees will be sorely missed; their quiet beauty was a constant comfort for the students, faculty, and staff of the School of Architecture.

As we mourn the passing of these majestic trees, we must continue to celebrate and protect the trees we have left.  Campbell Hall’s grandest tree, a towering white oak whose branches cover an area larger than the Fine Arts Library, still stands on Carr’s Hill.

And with our help, it always will.

Powering Community

Community ain’t what it used to be.

Remember the old days, sitting on your front porch, kicking back with your family after a day of hard work on the farm, watching the afternoon sun wash your fields in gold?  Probably not.

Now, I’m not saying that America’s yeoman farmers had the market cornered when it came to community.  But over the last two hundred years, the people of this nation have traveled far afield from their roots.  We’ve traded our plows for iPod playlists, our oxen for Oprah, our windmills for Windows…and our families for Facebook.  Yes siree, the times they are a-changin’.

But perhaps not everything has changed.  Take food, for example.  As folks stop and consider where their food is actually coming from, they begin to appreciate the agricultural wealth of their own communities.  In the wake of this understanding, a community-supported agriculture movement has swept the nation, transforming local economies from Sacramento, California to Burlington, Vermont.

America’s food awakening is all well and good, but communities are built on more than simply what we eat.  Indeed, as humans continue to purge the Earth of its fossil fuel reservoirs, we are drawing ever nearer to a global energy crisis.  As the shocks of the impending fuel crunch ripple through our economy, the wise among us will begin to reconsider the scale of our energy system.

How does community-supported energy sound to you?  It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Most Americans are just as disconnected from their energy as they are from their food.  There’s a very good reason why large-scale energy companies build their power stations in remote areas – who wants a coal-fired power plant, spewing noxious fumes from every orifice, in their backyard?  Bringing energy production back to the community means that we will be forced to clean up our act.  We’ll choose renewable, environmentally-friendly energy sources to power our lives.

For a few lucky Americans, community-supported energy is already a reality.  Take a look at MinWind, an energy cooperative in Minnesota.  The project, which began in 2000, initially consisted of four 950-kilowatt wind turbines owned by 66 local farmers.  MinWind has been so successful that seven turbines and 150 farmers were added to the community in 2004.

Let’s face it, my friends.  Energy cooperatives offer yet another way for us to appreciate the richness of the places we call home.  By sharing energy with our neighbors, while at the same time divorcing ourselves from the national grid, we build the foundations for a resilient and sustainable community.

Because while fossil fuels will soon vanish from the Earth, the wind will always blow, the sun will always shine, and as long as we continue to share the wealth of our local resources, our communities will always be strong.

Banana Republic

Seems like everyone’s talking about food these days.

Over the past few years, America’s rapidly-expanding belly has been rumbling ominously, rumbling with a hunger that no amount of Taco Bell quesadillas or Hostess cupcakes seems able to satisfy.  Lady Liberty has been recently craving something she just can’t seem to find in her otherwise well-stocked pantry: fresh, local food.

There’s a good reason why local food’s gone missing from the larder.  America’s highly centralized, highly industrialized system of agriculture has made small-scale farming virtually impossible.  Meanwhile, the overuse of petroleum-enriched fertilizers and GMOs has been leading America down a path toward ecological meltdown.

The fact that we are experiencing a food crisis is clear.  The solution to our situation, however, is not quite as obvious.  How do we steer our agricultural ship toward open waters, away from the sirens of agribusiness (and the deadly shoals on which they sing)?

Well, if you’re looking for answers, then look no further than our sunny, socialist neighbor to the south.  That’s right: Cuba.

Surprised?  As it turns out, when it comes to agriculture, Cuba’s one of the brightest crayons in the box.

But her smarts didn’t come cheap.  Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s, Cuba had been awash in a sea of cheap imports, courtesy of her friends in Moscow.  She had traded sugar for subsidized oil, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, basing her food production system on the Soviet model: large-scale, industrial, and dependent on obscene quantities of oil.

When the Iron Curtain crumbled, Cuba suddenly found herself to be the only kid on the bloc.  In these dark times, foreign trade dropped by 75 percent and domestic agriculture production was halved.  Between 1989 and 1993, the Cuban economy contracted 35 percent.  Without oil and other industrial farm products, Cuba’s agricultural system teetered on the verge of collapse, and famine swept the nation.

Starved of the cheap imports on which she thrived, Cuba did the only thing she could: she improvised.  Almost overnight, she built a low-input, localized system of agriculture, and in no time at all, urban farms began to sprout in abandoned lots in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.  These organopónicos have become enormously successful; today, over 200 urban farms in Havana supply the city with more than 90 percent of its fruit and vegetables.  This produce is fully organic, and since it’s grown directly in the heart of the city, it costs nothing (and requires no fossil fuels) to transport.

Cuba’s transition from a high-input, industrial system to a low-input, localized system of agriculture has, quite literally, created an island of sustainability in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.  In 2006, Cuba was the only nation in the world to meet the World Wildlife Fund’s criteria for sustainable development, as the country has a Human Development Index of over .8 (reflecting high human development) and an ecological footprint lower than 1.8 hectares per person (that is, lower than the average biocapacity available per person on the planet).

As America begins to wake up from her oil-drenched agribusiness nightmare, she would do well to consider the Cubans.  It’s a brave new world down there.

Viva la revolución.

Planning for Pedal Power

My journey to Amritsar, deep within the heart of Northern India, started out a bit wet. 

No sooner had I stepped out of the train station than the sky opened up, engulfing the city with fountains of warm rain.  And this was no ordinary rain; you couldn’t just throw up your umbrella and forget about it. This was the sort of rain that eats umbrellas for lunch.  This was monsoon season in India.  This was as wet as it gets.

The streets of Amritsar proved to be no match for nature’s stormy horde.   In no time at all, the entire city was buried in water, with an average depth of two to three feet.  Driving a car through Amritsar’s drowned roads would have been absolutely impossible.

And yet, in spite of this diluvian madness, I was quickly able to find a hotel room in the center of town, more than two miles away from the train station, without even getting my feet wet.  How was I able to perform such a miraculous feat, defying Mother Nature herself?  Well, stay tuned.

Last week the School of Architecture hosted Turning Urban: Innovation in Megacities, a symposium on the modern urban world.

Today, urbanized areas capture over 50% of the world’s population, and this percentage is expected to grow by leaps and bounds over the course of the 21^st century.  Tomorrow, our children will be waking up in a global city.

Nowhere are these pressures of urbanization stronger than in the country of Bangladesh.  At the symposium, Sarwar Jahan, Professor and Head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, spoke of the trials and tribulations facing his country.  Bangladesh is threatened by a cornucopia of issues, ranging from poverty, rising sea levels, and a catastrophic loss of wetlands.  Many of these problems can be attributed to poor planning and land use patterns.

But there are a few things that Bangladesh is doing right.  One of the country’s best strengths is its transportation system: Bangladesh is a country built upon hundreds of thousands of bicycle wheels.

In Bangladesh, as well as in many other South Asian countries, bicycles function as every imaginable form of transportation.   A bicycle is a ride to work, a taxi cab, a truck for carrying heavy loads.  A bicycle might even double as a school bus.

To this day, the bicycle remains as one of man’s most wondrous creations.  A bicycle takes up very little street space, is easy to operate and repair, and burns no fossil fuels.  And as South Asia has proven, it’s also extremely versatile.

By now, I’m sure you’ve figured out how I escaped the rain on that monsoon-drenched day in Amritsar.  That’s exactly right: I hitched a ride on a bicycle rickshaw.  Best taxicab ride I’ve ever taken.

Imagine what New York City might be like if the city’s cabbies traded in their aging, tooth-decay yellow Crown Victorias for a fleet of shiny new bicycles.  Who knows?  Perhaps one day the Big Apple will also be known as the Big Bicycle. 

Yikes.  I pity the future citizens of New York City, who will have to endure such a terrible nickname.  But you must agree – it’s a terrific dream.

Community History Workshop: Take 2

When we last checked in on the Community History Workshop, we were nearing the end of the fall semester.  Incredibly, spring is already upon us, and somehow I’ve neglected to fill my readers in on all the adventures we’ve been having.

To those of you just tuning in to this blog station, the Community History Workshop is a year-long collaborative and interdisciplinary research, design, and planning preservation project that focuses on a single site or community.  This year’s class, consisting of an intrepid team of architectural historians, architects, landscape architects, and planners, has been tackling the history of Richmond’s post-industrial East End.  We spent last semester diving into the history of the community, trying to soak up as much information as possible about the area’s people and places.

Over the course of the spring semester, we’ve left the libraries and have begun to put our knowledge of the community to work.  Our first project involved the redesigning of the Echo Harbour development, an enormous hotel and condominium complex slated to be built on the James River.  Because this development does not integrate well into the historic fabric of the East End, not to mention obscuring the East End’s view of the river, we visualized four different alternatives to the current design.

My group’s planning and design solution involved building the Echo Harbour hotel complex into the hillside of Chimborazo Park, creating a series of terraces.  In doing so, not only would we preserve the view of the river from the park, but we would also use the hotel to resurrect historic circulation patterns between Church Hill, the neighborhood of Fulton, and the Fulton Gas Works.  By building into the hillside, we would also preserve the hill itself, which has historically experienced slope instability problems.  In doing so, we would be mirroring the efforts of the Works Progress Administration, which built retaining walls and carved terraces into the hillside in the 1930’s.

Our next project has involved the creation of a guidebook for visitors to the East End.  In this guidebook we’ll be spinning the story of the East End, introducing readers to the mysteries of Chimborazo Park, the Fulton Gas Works, the neighborhood of Fulton, and Libby Hill Park.

So keep your knobs tuned to this station.  Our adventures in the community history of the East End are only beginning.