Hyde Park Urbanist

Whither

And now I'd like to say a few words about a topic close to my heart.  Me. 

Aye, it's been a lovely four months in Beijing.  Soon, I'll venture back to Chicago for work meetings and then out to Kansas to see my Dad.  Then I'm planning to return to this land of strange writing, tonal phonemes and scrumptious vittles.  I'd like to stay long-term and my workplace would like to keep me here, so it's mostly a matter of getting a deal worked out and satisfying the Chinese government of my fitness for residency.  There could be a hurdle too high to jump over, but I know which track lane I want to run-- which might be a poor metaphor for a man of my girth.

Should everything come together, this blog's title will make zero sense.  After posting almost every day for the last six weeks, I'm going to take it easy while I negotiate these transitions. 

My adult life, I've moved from Austin to Philly, back to Austin and then to Hyde Park.  Each move gives me a chance to reinvent myself a bit.  I wish I'd been able to reinvent myself into someone who dances & sings, but only so much is possible: sloughing off stuff I'm bored with and picking up new interests.  This time, I get to choose a new name. 

When I moved to Chicago, I wondered whether I was too old to keep moving from city to city every few years or whether I was too old to stop.  I guess I'm about to find out.  

(Photo of me at the 798 Arts District, taken by Jessica Bibbee.)

Three Space Parking Rant

It's been a very busy week for me, what with a super event on Monday and an afternoon spent looking at apartments in addition to the usual stuff.  But, I can always find time to rant about parking.  David Biello reports:

City gurus estimate there are eight parking spots for every vehicle in the U.S. today...  But according to the first nationwide count of parking spots, conducted by civil engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, last July, that might be a bit much, which is good news for the environment. It's more likely there are only three parking spaces for every car and truck in the U.S., or some 800 million spots to choose from.

Ah, only three.  <sigh>  That happens to correlate perfectly with the notion that people need three places for themselves-- one home, one workplace and one playspace.  But do we really need three parking places for each car?  Couldn't most of those spaces be eliminated with more mixed use planning, so that A uses a parking space during his worktime and B uses the same space during her playtime?  Probably too much to ask that home parking spaces could actually be shared...

Gun Control

Ask a Korean accurately observes:

(I)t is eminently possible to eradicate guns from a society -- even in a society where nearly every single adult men is familiar with guns (during their military service.) And eliminating guns from a society is easier than eliminating crazy people.

I'm against eradicating guns from society and against the City of Chicago's ban on handguns.  However, we have a functional first amendment and, simultaneously, a prohibition on yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater.  You'd think a functional second amendment could co-exist with restrictions that would ban a 22-yr-old (possible) schizophrenic from buying 9mm Glocks with 30-round magazines.

DIY Stroller

I snapped this photo of a neat-o baby stoller near the Drum & Bell Towers.  The kid has a 360-degree view and gets to stand up in it.  A toddler could do worse, don't you think?  If the parents are smart enough to make their own roomy stroller, I bet they figure out a way to get the kid thru college.  Just guessin'.

Jingshan Park

Jingshan Park is a tier two attraction for tourists, after the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square in Beijing and the Great Wall nearby.  But I had a terrific time visiting Jingshan on a clear Autumn Sunday.

The older folks in pic-left are playing the accordion and singing patriotic songs from days gone by, but most visitors are attracted to the 45 meter-high man-made hill at Jingshan.  Why would the 14th century Chinese build such a large hill in a city?  Feng shui, really.  It sits on the north side of the Forbidden City and protected the muckety-muck from chilly winter winds.  (The hill was constructed from earth and shale removed to build the moat.) 

On clear days, the views at the summit of the man-made hill are terrific in all directions.  And there's a huge Buddha statue at the summit, too.

Taxis and Villagers

I don't take taxis in Beijing much.  I can walk to work and I enjoy strolling around the city in decent weather.  Plus,the subway gets me where I need to go, speeding along underneath the clogged streets.  Beijing taxis are super cheap, too, but unless it's after the subways close down (around 11pm, sadly enough), I don't need them.  But mostly it's just personal habit.  The ten years I've been in Chicago, I think I took a taxi for just myself a total of one time. 

I think I'd like Beijing cab drivers if I spoke their language.  They have a reputation for honesty & feistiness, a beautiful combination in a person, if you ask me.  The blog Sinoglot/Beijing Sounds records normal conversations for language learning and in one a taxi driver refers to the Chinese saying: "老乡见老乡,两眼泪汪汪" ("when you meet someone from the old village, you cry many tears").  But in today's rapidly urbanizing China, rural customs are going thru a transition phase.

You know the saying: you meet a fellow villager — you know why the tears flow freely? Because they’re bleeding you dry!

The taxi driver explains that the newcomer from the village expects the settled acquaintance to be helpful, but the settled urban dweller can only afford so much.  Thus, we have this awkward situation where newcomers go to friends and expect a break, so the urban dweller lets him think he's getting a break while helping him in such a way to profit. 

The whole conversation is worth a read, a document of capitalism with Chinese characteristics.

Big Piles of Dirt Near the Drum & Bell Towers

The title is really all I have to say about this.

More Small Businesses are Offering Health Insurance to Employees

The Los Angles Times reports that many small businesses are taking advantage of Obamacare's tax breaks for small employers of lower paid workers:

Nationwide, the Kaiser survey found that 59% of firms with three to nine employees offered health benefits, up from 46% last year.

That sounds significant to me. 

What Once was a Kitchen

I'm in temporary housing.  It's more spacious than my apartment in Hyde Park, with separate living and bed rooms, an adequate bathroom and what once was a kitchen.  When I moved in, the once-kitchen looked like the photo on the left.  The sink worked, but there was no stove (just a leftover hood). No table.  Not even a microwave oven.  Then one day I came home and the cabinets and sink were gone.  The room was pretty much barren.

From time to time over the last four months, there have been small infrastructure improvements made to the room-- stuff like pipes and electrical boxes.  But it's been pretty much useless to me, except for drying clothes.

The I came home today and there were all these new cabinets.  The whole thing was put in during one business day while I was at work.

I know what you're thinking.  The old cabinets were cooler looking.  Yes, they were.  But these are new!  And new is best, right?

Update of the new Beijing Traffic Regulations

On Saturday, I posted an article about the regulatory effectiveness of the traffic police in Beijing and mentioned the new auto regulations.  I now have a few English-language articles to link to and they'll explain the regulations better than I have.

Angel Hsu, writing for the terrific website The City Fix (and picked up by Sustainable Cities Collective), details Beijing's larger plan to deal with congestion:

(T)he construction of 280,000 parking spaces; 1,000 bike sharing stations; 348 miles of new subway track; 125 miles of new downtown streets (I’d like to see where these are going, considering 720,000 square meters of downtown Beijing is the Forbidden City); 23 miles of tunnels; 9 new transportation hubs; 3 congestion zones; and, my favorite, “the use of modern technology.”  The city will also cut the number of new licenses by a third to 240,000 for 2011.  The most controversial elements of the plan are the measures to levy congestion charges during peak hours and restrict car usage. 

Danwei published the front page of Tuesday's Beijing Times, which had the banner headline announcing that vehicles registered outside Beijing are banned during rush hour, with a fine of about $15.  The Jing is full of migrants from all parts of China, so this hits a lot of residents pretty hard-- and with very little notice.

The New York Times furnishes these quotes which describe the extent of the problem:

“We have built many flyovers and expressways,” said Zhao Jie, a transportation expert at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design. “We have spent quite a lot of money on subways and bus lines, and Beijing probably has the lowest bus fares in the world. But the stimuli to car ownership are even more powerful.”

Duan Haizhu, a 26-year-old taxi driver, put it more elegantly during a recent crosstown crawl in his orange-and-brown Hyundai. “The speed of building roads is nowhere near the speed of people buying cars,” he said. “And people won’t stop buying cars.”

Right.  The subway is extensive and costs 30 cents a ride.  The buses are half that price and half again if you use a smart card.  Yet, people keep buying cars.  Why?

Well, the subway is indeed packed at rush hours.  And with few special lanes for buses, they've been stalled in all that private vehicle traffic.  Those are reasonable excuses, sure.  But much of the impulse for driving is status.  The dignity of walking & cycling needs some attention.

Monday morning, I noticed much less traffic as I made my way to work.  The roads were empty and I jumped to the conclusion that the new regulations were the reason.  And then I learned that while we Americans had decided to take off work on Friday, December 31, the Chinese national holiday was Monday, the third.  Doh!  So, Tuesday was actually the first day of the new regulations and indeed there seemed to be a noticeable change-- somewhat less congestion in my area, anyway.  Ditto the last couple days.  This might signficantly improve the travel times for buses, I'm thinking.

And then again, lotsa Beijingers ordered new cars in late December and are in the process of taking delivery...