Recent Posts
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HPRB landmarks Third Church
I attended the Historic Preservation Review Board meeting last Thursday, which was a special meeting to discuss the landmarking of the Christian Science Church on 16th and I. After hearing from architectural historians and church representatives, the board members affirmed their belief that the church met the criteria for landmarking, while also qualifying their votes… Keep reading…
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Radiohead understands “induced demand”
Discussing the success of their recent online album, Thom Yorke analogized, “It’s like building roads and expecting there to be less traffic.” (NYT via Streetsblog) Maryland DOT, are you listening? Keep reading…
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SmarTrip will link to credit cards
Among other improvements coming next year to Washington DC’s fare card is the one I most wished for when I first arrived here: the ability to link it to a credit card and automatically replenish it as it gets low, like E-ZPass does. Keep reading…
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Maybe they can build ‘em like they used to
During the dark ages of urban planning (the 1960s and 70s), many old residential buildings were replaced with boxy, alienating public housing projects, until Jane Jacobs discredited the idea. Block after block of attractive row houses are gone forever, even though brownstones in places like Brooklyn, Boston, San Francisco, and DC sell for a million dollars or two, or more. Can… Keep reading…
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Public investment has been good for DC
According to the Washington Post, Downtown DC is enjoying a renaissance (duh), but also specifically, $400 million in public investment over the last ten years has generated “hundreds of millions of dollars annually in tax revenue.” Keep reading…
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Landmark or mistake?
If a building is ugly, doesn’t serve its intended purpose, and the people who own it want to tear it down… but it was built by the firm of a famous architect and is a prime example of its architectural style, should it be a landmark? That’s the debate before the DC Historic Preservation Review Board about the Third Church of Christ, Scientist (aka Christian Science)… Keep reading…
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Racial politics kept College Park Metro far from campus
It may be an urban myth that racism kept Metro out of Georgetown (while many residents did oppose a station, Metro planners hadn’t included the neighborhood in initial plans in the first place), but according to a graduate paper from 1994 that Rethink College Park found and put online, it played a significant role in the decision to locate College Park’s Green Line stop… Keep reading…
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Density on U Street?
I got my first taste of local politics last month by attending the Dupont Circle ANC meeting. DC is divided into a number of regions each with an Advisory Neighborhood Commission, a group of unpaid local elected representatives. They do have certain powers, such as reviewing and approving liquor license applications, though most of the board’s actions are advisory, like giving… Keep reading…
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The soul-crushing emptiness of downtown DC
410,000 people enter Washington, DC each weekday (as of 2005), the second-largest increase of any American city. But if you walk around large parts of downtown in the middle of the day, you might not think so. So many buildings face inward, with their public spaces in central courtyards cut off from the fabric of the city, feeding their workers in indoor cafeterias, leaving the… Keep reading…
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Metro actually works (sometimes)
Reading the Washington Post and local blogs, it’s easy to think that Metro hardly works, with numerous reports of delays when trains must single-track due to equipment failures or sick passengers. And I’m sure these things do happen, and are very disruptive (this weekend, a train we were riding waited for ten minutes at Dupont Circle for some unknown reason, without… Keep reading…