Talking to strangers | Modern shotgun style houses as workforce housing for firefighters in Ketchum, Idaho + playgrounds

I take a lot of photos in public places, or not so public places, and people wondering if I am up to no good challenge me.  Because "I can talk" (your ear off), usually it's not a problem. 

There's an article in the Washington Post, "The mental health benefit of striking up conversations with strangers," about the value in talking with strangers.  For me, it's an opportunity to learn--to interview and interrogate, even if it doesn't seem like it.  From the article:

Nick Epley was commuting to work at the University of Chicago when he looked across the train and wondered: Why are all these people sitting elbow to elbow ignoring each other?

Epley, a professor of behavioral science, thought about how very lonely people are, and he challenged himself to strike up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him. It changed his life — and led him to write the book “A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health and Connection.”

After reading it, I decided to try the experiment myself. For the past month, on my commute to work, at kids’ birthday parties with my daughter, in the elevator at the office and on the street while walking my dog, I’ve been challenging myself to talk to strangers. Would it actually feel good, or just awkward?

I’ve always been a fairly outgoing person, but the idea of talking to strangers and befriending acquaintances still made me feel anxious. As I contemplated opening my mouth to talk to the stranger sitting next to me on a nearly-silent bus, I felt as if my jaw was sealed shut by fear. What if she didn’t want to talk to me? What if I said the wrong thing, or she felt like I was bothering her?

Ever since my involvement in college student government, I can "talk".  This increased manyfold as I got more involved in urban planning.

In my recent playground study for a grant application, I talked to people at "playgrounds," like the "senior" Fitlot at Columbus Center in South Salt Lake.  

Even though it was built with money from AARP, it turns out an Instagram group called  #slc.calisthenics organizes meetups there and at similar sets of equipment, and lots of people of all ages end up using it--part of my observation is that people/kids play with what's there especially when "more appropriate" equipment isn't present.  I saw a four year old doing pull ups on the same set.

I talked to little kids like this one.  She said the monkey bars are her favorite element at playgrounds.  (So did an older boy at a different playground.)  So I aim to have more types of monkey bars present at the playground.

Observations, analysis, and conversations made the application so much stronger.  Going to about 15 different playgrounds in a couple days educated me fast and deeply about playgrounds--including realizing I needed to be there when kids were, because I didn't know how they used certain equipment.

Young children like learning to bicycle on soft surfaces because it doesn't hurt when you fall.

We need wider sidewalks around the playground oval because there is mixed traffic--kids on scooters, bikes, skates, skateboards, adults on bikes (because we have inadequate bike parking, people walking, people sitting to the side, etc.

Greenhorn Fire Station Workforce Housing, Ketchum, Idaho.  When I was taking photos of these buildings at what turned out to be the Greenhorn Fire Station, I learned the back story, which I wouldn't have known otherwise.

I took the photos because I thought the buildings were an interesting interpretation of the New Orleans shotgun style house, and years ago, I helped write a chapter in a book compilation about the type.

618 Jefferson Street, Flickr photo by Elliott Cowand, Jr.

I learned after being challenged, not realizing it was a fire station, and photographers could be would-be terrorists, one of the tenants came out to ask me what I was doing.  As a result, I learned the back story of the complex, for which I would have had no idea about otherwise.

In an area of ever increasing housing costs because of its being a resort area, it's an effort by the North Blaine County Fire District to provide workforce housing.  They rent the land from Idaho DOT, for the Greenhorn Fire Station, and built eight prefabricated units, mostly with donated funds.  

The 870 s.f. units are rented below market rate to tenants who agree to serve as volunteer fire fighters ("Final housing units arrive at Greenhorn Fire Station" Idaho Mountain Express, "Greenhorn Firefighter Housing Fully Occupied," Wood River Weekly).

What an interesting and important project.

A follow up example with regard to Metropolitan Revolutions: the National Science Foundation moving to Alexandria

As a follow up to the previous entry, it's worth discussing the federal government's role in fostering research and discovery in the context of seeding innovation districts in the National Capital Area.

The fact that the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, a USDA experimental station, NIH, FDA, NIST, the Naval Research Laboratory, and other federal research agencies are located "here" is one of the reasons that there is a big research and technology community here, aided by the fact that DOD and the federal government in general are large customers for information technology and telecommunications, hence the large presence of such companies in this region also.

The book focuses on academic, medical center, and private industry research.  But there are scads of federal government laboratories and research centers, dating back to the 1800s, when military-related research and then the creation of the Extension Service of the US Department of Agriculture and federal financial support of agriculture colleges were elements in research-based investment in the nation's future.  Comparable to how USDA funds research at Ag Schools and Experiment Stations and communicates it out through the Extension Service, the US DOT funds research at universities and research centers around the country also, and communicates it out as well (I get publications from some of these centers, based in Minnesota, New Jersey, and California, and try to keep up with the output of the Volpe and Mineta Centers).

Most of the research installations of the federal government are campuses and research laboratories set apart and alone, and mostly they don't function as anchors of "innovation districts."  This is an issue that should be addressed going forward generally, because by re-orienting these facilities to the world, likely we will get greater return on investment.

(Partly this happens because Congressmembers see such installations as "economic development" for otherwise forlorn places, although there are some instances where the remote location was chosen for security reasons, such as for various federal labs like Oak Ridge, Sandia, etc.)

I've been putting off writing about how it has been announced that the National Science Foundation is moving from a very connected location in an innovation district it anchors on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington County (where other science organizations and contractors have located, including DARPA, a research campus for Virginia Tech, the Center for Defense Innovation, and the Arlington campus of George Mason University) to a disconnected location somewhat office-park-y, in Alexandria ("National Science Foundation moving headquarters from Arlington to Alexandria," Washington Post).

This was predicted because of how Congress is so f*ed up that the General Services Administration isn't seeking the approval of what are called "prospectus leases."  GSA has a set rent schedule of something under $45/s.f.  To lease space at higher costs--and higher costs are typical of closer in locations in Arlington and DC specifically--Congress has to approve the lease.  That's not happening in the current political environment.  (Wilson Boulevard as a discovery-innovation district  and the benefit of urban locations as innovation districts is discussed in this blog entry, "The state of Arlington County Virginia's commercial real estate market: 2012 and the future.")

So Arlington wasn't in the position of being able to retain NSF.  Because NSF is being offered what I would consider to be a marginal location, although it is directly across the street from the Eisenhower Avenue Metro, which is probably the only advantage present in the new location other than cheap space--well, it's not too far from the Wilson Bridge/I-95/I-395, although the current location is close to I-66.  (Note that the Ruby Tuesday's located there right now has really marginal food.)

On the other hand, most of the agglomeration economies of being located in an "innovation district" are lost, reducing the spillover benefits from the research and knowledge networks that are presently based in Arlington.

Arlington, Alexandria, and DC face further competition for federal agencies from Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, which through the January 2014 opening of the Silver Line subway extension, will be able to offer to the GSA low rent space with subway transit access. ("Short term vs. long term thinking: transit, the Washington Examiner, Fairfax/Loudoun Counties vs. DC")

So a focus on the short run cost of space and Congressional logjams mean that agglomeration economies from research clusters anchored by federal agencies are likely to be dissipated for the next 10 years.

Another example of how the Federal Government is too focused on the here and now and not investing in the future.

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And also counter-examples of how not to organize research organizations spatially.