Michigan - students in a suburban Detroit school district could attend school named after private or corporate donors

Your kid's education, brought to you by...

Now they haven't named a school after a corporation yet, but it apparently has been discussed. I can't blame the administrators for looking into this option. Schools are becoming very expensive to run and the state budgets that fill in the gaps are going broke. I think this demonstrates that we are at a tipping point when it comes to public education. Something besides "the no child left behind" garbage needs to be discussed when it comes to our education system. Some real new ideas need to be looked at, besides having our schools become yet one other source of the constant barrage of advertising we all get in 2005.

I have a little background with teaching in the public schools. A professional organization that I belong to has a competition every year for a scholarship award. Typically students in architecture related classes get into this competition. My role in this is that I am an advisor. I go into the school that I am working with about twice a week and work with the students on their projects. I can honestly say that the high schools I've worked in seem as if they are little more than a daycare service for 14-18 year olds. There are a handful of students every year who are interested in pursuing architecture, or at least higher education, and take the scholarship competition serious. The rest, since this project is typically required as the semester project for the class, do just enough to get by to stay eligible for sports or stare at the wall all day. When I do this, I often wonder if it is really worth trying to educate everyone beyond 8th grade. Maybe some kids would be better served apprenticing under someone, learning a trade during these high school years.

I have no research to back this up, but my opinion is that to cut some of the school budgets, as a society we should get away from the large factory style schools with 100s, if not 1000s, of students per grade and start looking at smaller neighborhood schools. My thinking on this is that it would allow the teachers to better monitor the students without the need for teacher aids. I also suspect that if the schools were smaller, students would actually get to know one another and the Columbine type incidents and other misbehavior may cease. The other advantage of this is that the cost to run large fleets of school buses would disappear. Hey, as an added benefit, our children would get exercise everyday by walking to school.

Now of course, this idea may end our precious sports watching. I know here in Toledo, half the 11:00 newscast during the winter months is devoted to covering high school sports on all four of the major channels. There is a radio show where people call in and carry on about the local high school teams. Too many people are devoting their life to games played by 16 year olds, but I do have an idea for this. Athletics should be taken out of the schools completely. I know in Australia, if you want to play extracurricular sports, you have to join an athletic club. Trust me, as worked up as people get about high school sports around here, there is no kid with athletic ability that is going to get shut out of the opportunity to be on a club team, so I don't think that will be an issue.

These are some ideas I have, and like I said I have no research to back them up, but they seem like reasonable ideas to at least look into.

House are getting bigger and becoming more inefficient

Monster Homes

I added a link to this article because there are some interesting diagrams demonstrating statistics related to McMansions. Here are some that interested me:

1. If New York City were a state, it would rank 51st in the amount of energy used per person. Not that New York City would be a model place, but there is less use of the automobile there per person and people live in more efficient spaces. The shops are located on street level and the homes are above these shops. There is no need to drive 5 miles to get groceries.

2. Suburban white men weigh more 10 pounds more than men in cities. In the cities, the use of the automobile is required less than in the suburbs. All the amenties needed are near by, where as a suburbanite has to drive if they want to go to the grocery store or to see a movie. City residents get exercise and don't realize it.

3. 1 in 5 new homes is larger than 3000 square feet, the size at which it becomes unmanageable to clean without hired help. Or as friends of mine that live in houses of this size, they have entire rooms that have no furniture and are not used. I always wonder why they felt the need to buy houses that big if they don't even use the rooms.

4. Since 1950, the average new house has increased 1247 sq. ft., meanwhile the average household has shrunk by one person. Not much to add to that, just an interesting statistic.

There are many more interesting stats on that article linked to.

Supreme Court rules that cities may take private property to create economic development

Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes

The Supreme Court ruled against people who owned houses in New London, Connecticut who did not want to give up their homes to make way for a hotel and convention center. This ruling opens up the doors to allow cities across the country to take land through eminent domain for economic development purposes.

The reason I am against this more than anything is that the economic plans are so ridiculous usually. This New London example is a good example. I have no idea what the neighborhood that they are taking away is like, but a hotel and convention center can not possibly be the answer to the cities troubles. There are not enough Shriners conventions to make it worthwhile. This building will likely run into the ground and change ownership several times before it becomes a big empty shell in 12 years, therefore wasting more tax money in the name of "economic development".

There is also a mention of a Coast Guard Museum. Seriously, a Coast Guard Museum? I don't think I would walk across the street to go to a Coast Guard Museum, and I can't be in the minority on that opinion, so I don't see a lot of people flocking to New London, CT of all places to see a Coast Guard Museum. I have nothing against the Coast Guard and value what they do, but come on.

This seems like a pretty important supreme court decision to me that potentially effects everyone in America. Where was our mainstream media on this? Covering even more important issues such as the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes relationship I suppose.

California - Wal-Mart to build a supercenter in Vallejo, demonstrating many problems with Wal-Mart coming to town

Wal-Mart confirms Vallejo Supercenter plans

I am posting this article for several reasons. I would like to follow along if there is any backlash against Wal-Mart for building this store and to demonstrate many of the problems with Wal-Mart when they come to town.

Here are the problems with this Wal-Mart Supercenter being built in Vallejo, California:

1. 160,000 square foot building, with surrounding sea of asphalt parking designed for the day after Thanksgiving will create a large hole socially and environmentally for in this town.

2. Located on the site of a former K-Mart, but not using the existing building which obviously was designed to move large quantities of cheap merchandise. Therefore this increases garbage going to a landfill and wastes the energy required to create the new building.

3. Located four miles away from another Wal-Mart Supercenter being built in nearby American Canyon.

4. Wal-Mart is going to close another Wal-Mart store that is only 14 years old in Vallejo when they open the American Canyon superstore.

Some nonsense about green architecture is mentioned. According to this article, the architecture and design processes will increase energy efficiency by 30%. There are no amount of green add ons that will negate the damage done to the environment by tearing town an existing building, creating another empty big-box store that was built just 14 years ago, creating a new 160,000 square foot building dedicated to nothing more than the moving of cheap merchandise surrounded by acres of parking, and all the automobile traffic that will come to this store, since no one with a sane mind would walk to a Wal-Mart store. A great example of the problems associated with letting Wal-Mart into your town.

Ohio - Building a sports arena in downtown Toledo

Editorials - The 'Arena' Games

Letters To The Editor

I am posting a couple of articles today about my hometown of Toledo. There has been talk for years about building an arena for rock concerts and the Toledo Storm minor league hockey team. A suburban city attempted to build one in the late '90s but went broke trying to build it. The city proper is now trying to figure out where to place it. Should it be in the downtown near the Mud Hens new stadium, or in an arena district on the east side of the city?

My two cents - it doesn't matter, both of these plans aren't going to get the results that are expected. City leaders want to bring life back to the downtown by building this arena. Its been done in other cities, but it doesn't really bring people to those downtown areas. They come for the concert or sporting event and leave. In both the downtown plan and the arena district plan there is no discussion of building any mixed use facilities that would allow people to live in either area. There is some talk with the east side plan to include shopping and entertainment. It is obvious Toledo does not need any more retail space, as they already have a dead mall and another one with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. These will become large empty spaces in a few years and Toledo will be dealing with their own problems like Cleveland is with the Flats. Also, why drive all the way to the east side to buy designer soaps and Disney merchandise, when I can do that in the malls in my part of town.

The solution to bringing life back to the downtown is not in just building an arena, but creating mixed use facilities that create living space and appropriate retail space. This will bring life to the downtown or the arena district around the clock and not just for the time that a concert is going on. This has been done in places as nearby as Columbus and Indianapolis with great success to bring life back to downtown areas.

Of course another part of the issue is that people are sitting on downtown property speculating in hopes that the city will have to fork over big money to them in order to build an arena. This is a common practice throughout America and what happens is that landowners let whatever buildings are on the land rot away, thereby lowering taxes, while speculating that the local government will come in and pay for land to build these arena type projects. Basically, the system as it stands now punishes landowners who build new buildings or take care of existing buildings and rewards landowners who let things fall to pieces. This is because taxes are based on the values of buildings and not the land under them, afterall tax accessors always look at the value of a building on a site. Perhaps a new kind of tax system could be considered in Toledo that would tax the value of the land. Even land in the downtown center has more value than land in the suburbs and it would encourage speculators to do something with their properties.

McMansions making an appearance in older neighborhoods

New generation of homes dwarf those in suburbs

People want to move closer to the city because of advantages related to commute time. But they want to bring their McMansions with them. This article looks at some examples of people building large houses on smaller lots closer to the city and the problems that they create, including shadowing existing houses and ruining the character of existing neighborhoods.

Arizona - Follow up on election to keep limits on big-box stores in Flagstaff

Wal-Mart spent triple its Prop. 100 foes

What happened in Flagstaff was that in 2004 the city council passed an ordinance putting a cap on big box stores at 125,000 square feet. It was put to vote in order for this to be law, and the public voted in favor of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart voted 3 times the amount of money on the camapign than its opponents did. This included an ad comparing themselves to holocaust victims which I posted on this site earlier.

I often wonder about the effectiveness of ads on elections. I probably should wonder no more as even with all the proven disadvantages Wal-Mart brings to a community, just by pouring a large amount of money into a campaign, they will be able to convince enough people that Wal-Mart themselves are the victim.

Ontario - an editorial discussing a big-box development that turns its back to the public space

Boxes Inside Boxes - The big box model destroys the possibility of any street life in its surroundings

Where I live there is a Giant Eagle, Target, and a Home Depot all built next to each other along with an assortment of smaller national chain stores such as a Pier One and some pet store. The three main stores (Giant Eagle, Target, and Home Depot) all face the main road, but in between these stores and the main road is a sea of asphalt parking and all of the smaller accessory stores that face the entrance drives. It creates a situation where there is no connection for this entire development that takes up acres of land and probably stretches a quarter of a mile or more with the rest of civilization. This kind of strip mall of big-box stores is being built everywhere. It is a very dehumanizing way to build what we need for shopping activities. The article linked to above demonstrates what I am talking about perfectly with some very good diagrams.

California - tired of long commutes and living in sprawl, people are moving back into downtown LA

King of sprawl moves inward

A telling paragraph about our society from the article above, but one that I think is somewhat false and I'll explain in a minute.

"Suburban sprawl across America has increased peoples' driving time more than double in the last decade," Vilkin said. "If you take the typical person who lives in Los Angeles today they now spend 90 hours a year in traffic. People start to think about things: 'What impact does that have on the rest of my life and do I want to make a lifestyle choice?"

The stat that the average person spends 90 hours a year in traffic seems a little low to me, as that would mean that if a person works 250 days a year, they would sit in traffic for only 21 minutes per day. I spend 20 minutes a day commuting to and from work and my office is basically on the same street I live on, 6 miles away, and I only have to stop at one light. I guess the key words are "average person", as that probably counts babies and people who don't drive. If this regarded the average commuter in LA, this stat would have to be much higher.

Regardless, people are starting to realize spending a large portion of your day sitting in a car is a large waste of time. It takes away from time doing more worthwhile activities, such as playing with your kids or taking up a hobby and enjoying the fruits of your labor. I have often thought that at some point, the suburbs are going to be the slums of tomorrow and that the inner cities are going to be the place to be, as people start to realize suburban living isn't all that it is cracked up to be. Maybe this is a sign of the start of that happening.