Everybody Loves the Sunshine

Everything old is new again. Was flipping through one of those Taschen photo books at a friend's house recently and this caught my eye. A quartet of young Berliners enjoying their "green roof" in 1926. Enjoy the long weekend, everybody.

The World Laps Chicago

Since the World Cup is on it's two-day break before the quarterfinals begin, I have a chance to think about things less important. A few years back, Chicago was held up as a shining example of what big cities could do with bicycle infrastructure when the civic elites set their minds to it. Then, apparently, Mayor Daley got distracted by his dreams of Olympic glory, selling off the rights to the city's parking meters, inventing new ways to use the English language and who knows what else. Nowadays, a lot more is happening in New York, London & Mexico City than here at home.

I've been reading about what transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is doing in New York for the last couple of years with great envy. It wasn't until I finally booked myself a trip to London later this year that I realized how much we've slipped. As we all know, London is a sprawling metropolis, and as excellent as their transit system is, I've grown so accustomed to getting around by bike that I figured it would help out my patience and my wallet to do so during my visit. They don't have an ideal system in place just yet, and reading the comments on various posts on the Guardian's bike blog would indicate that there is still a very, very long way to go. But let's run down what's coming down the pike just this summer...400 bike share stations throughout the center city and completion of the first two "cycle superhighways". All under the aegis of a Conservative mayor in need of a new hairstyle who rides a bike to work. The city is spending £110 million just this year, a big chunk of which is coming from Barclays, who get naming rights to the programs and even get to put their logo on the maintenance crew's uniforms. But what impressed me more than anything is that the city's bicycle plan is totally integrated within the framework of Transport for London (TfL), the government body charged with running the Tube and double-deckers. Go to TfL's website and you can find an entire section with information on bike sharing, route planning and even a page where users can upload their own routes into a Google Maps mashup.

Again, the system isn't perfect, one of the largest flaws being that bikes aren't allowed on subway trains and only on buses "at the driver's discretion". However, it really got me thinking about the RTA here in Chicago. Public transit planners worldwide struggle with the dilemma of the "last mile". Including bikes in the equation would make transit a lot more attractive, especially in the suburbs, but of course only if adequate infrastructure exists to ride them on. This is something London really isn't too far ahead of us on, traffic has decreased since congestion pricing went into effect, but it's still pretty horrendous. And those streets are narrow, some London streets could fit into a single lane in a place like Schaumburg.

Speaking of lane width, I remember hearing an anecdote once about how the Mexican government promised to double the total mileage of the Mexico City's freeways by the end of a certain year. Money for the project either dried up or was siphoned off and the authorities simply doubled the number of lanes by remarking the roads and claimed it as a success. Nowadays I guess we would call this a road diet. The effect of these sorts of actions just made room for more cars, and now the city government is attempting to undo some of the ill effects, notably the infamous air pollution. A few years back they introduced the hoy no circula scheme, which restricts drivers from using their cars on a certain day each week based on the last number on their license plate. Now, the local government is pushing bikes as the ultimate solution and has begun by expanding bike parking, installing ramps down stairs into Metro stations, bike boxes, pedestrian bollards, bike sharing, all that good stuff.

None of this stuff is all that difficult. Chicago had a deal in the works for a bike share program a couple of years ago that fell apart, and is now tentatively moving forward with 100 bikes at six stations. Six. Compared with 400 in London, where stations will be no more than 400 meters apart, which do you think will be more successful? Despite Complete Streets design measures being passed by the city, county and state, I've seen very little in the way of new bike lanes, bike parking, bike anything over the past couple years. There has been some stirrings of support for bike boulevards and the like, but it seems like the grassroots support falls on deaf ears at CDOT, possibly because the agency just named it's sixth commissioner in five years? Mayor Daley set a very ambitious course five years ago with his Bike 2015 Plan...unfortunately, the amount of work left to do is daunting.

World Cup Songs -- Group of Death Edition

I realize that the number of people who care as much as I do about World Cup songs can be counted on one hand, but do I let that bother me? There are literally hundreds of official and unofficial songs out there on YouTube...England alone has dozens, leading me to believe that the lead-up to the World Cup must have provided quite an economic spark to local English video production houses. As a result, I'm back with more favorites.

1. Ghana: K&Q All Stars, "Ghana Black Stars"


Enjoyed Ghana's performance against Serbia and am hoping they advance. Here's some auto-tuned West African hip-hop to spur them on.



2. England: Rik Mayall's Noble England, "World Cup Anthem 2010"

Yeah, that Rik Mayall. An "official unofficial" song...seems a bit odd but wait for the comic payoff at the end.



3. Australia: John Duffin, "Here Come the Socceroos"

The runner-up in a tv competition for an official song, and much better than the winner. Alcoholism jokes and cheerleaders!



4. Republic of Ireland: The Mighty Stef, "Protest Song With No Name"

One of the great things about football is how long the fans will hold grudges...Brazilians still haven't forgiven their team for losing in the 1950 final to Uruguay. So Ireland "lost" to France in the qualifiers, but only with the help of Thierry Henry's handball. My friend Stefan Murphy, Dublin resident, Ireland supporter and general raconteur, penned this song in protest.



5. England: The Skatoons, "The World Cup's Waiting for You"

A bit naff, as the limeys might say. What can I say, I was really wishing to see a Madness song for the Cup, I guess this will have to do.

The World Cup of World Cup Songs

If you'll indulge me to go wildly off-topic, you may have heard that the World Cup is upon us. I am very excited, because, well, it's the World Cup. For the next month, you will find me watching television very early in the morning. Every World Cup brings with it official songs for many of the national teams. Most of them are absolutely terrible, which is why I'm obsessed with them. I have watched a lot of them, good, bad and completely forgettable, so you don't have to. These are my favorites (so far) of 2010.

1. South Korea: T-ara, "We Are the One"

First, a peppy little k-pop anthem called "We Are the One" by girl group T-ara:

2. England: Robbie Williams, Russell Brand, Baddiel & Skinner, "Three Lions 2010"

I was skeptical about the lineup here, but it's actually a pretty good song, real "Parklife"-ish Britpop, and readymade for the terraces.

3. Germany: Ikke Hüftgold, "FUSSBALLGÖTTER"

And then there were the Germans. "Football Gods". Really speaks for itself.

4. Nigeria: Paj ft. Tolumide, "Goalaaaso (Inside the Net)"

Another favorite...this is for the Super Eagles of Nigeria. Awesome afroelectro style.

5. Algeria: various, "1 2 3 Viva l'Algerie"

Last, but of course not least, here's an all-star jam a la "We Are the World" featuring the Algerian entertainment world's biggest names. I assume.

Kultur Takes the Ruhr

Whoops, no posts in the month of May. Sorry about that. I don't know how some people make the time to update their blogs regularly with interesting content. Rest assured, I have not abandoned this thing, I have a few posts I'm working over in my head that should arise in the coming weeks. Patience is a virtue, or so I am told.

I was watching the Deutsche Welle news last week (what, doesn't everybody?) and saw a really interesting piece on the Ruhr Valley's preparations to be one of the European Capitals of Culture 2010 under the theme "Art, Culture & Energy". I've been hoping that the video would go up so I could share it with you lovely people, but so far no dice. So to break it down for you, Germany's Ruhr Valley contains the cities of Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund and is home to about twelve million people. It was once Germany's industrial and coal mining heartland, though most of the factories have since migrated to cheaper realms in the former East Germany and beyond. The folks in charge of regional planning have apparently been listening quite intently to the likes of Richard Florida and have been busy reinventing the area's image. Where once stood smokestacks, now there are, um, three hundred and eleven luftballons.

The EU's Culture Capital program is ostensibly a chance for cities to showcase their unique character to tourists, which on the surface seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But as Andrew Ross has written, it's become little more than a feeding trough for real estate developers at the expense of the displaced working classes. Writing about Glasgow's experience as the Culture Capital for 1990, Ross posits that "the familiar lopsided footprint of neoliberalism made itself visible in a system of labor apartheid that displayed an ever-firmer spatial demarcation between the residences, workplaces, and playgrounds of the ascendant professional service classes and those of the low-wage and unemployed populations at the city margins. From the standpoint of arts practitioners themselves, a 2004 study showed that the progressive legacy of 1990 was widely perceived to have been squandered by the data-focused bureaucracy in charge of cultural policy in the intervening years. An obsession with audience numbers and quotas had inhibited the sustainable growth of jobs in the sector." (Ross 2009; pp 30-32) He goes on to cite a 2007 Demos report by saying "city boosters who followed the model were locked into...a 'cultural arms race,' competing for finite pools of investment resources, cultural workers, audiences, tourist streams, and signature archistectural icons." (Ibid.) As a witness to Chicago's recent failed bid for the Olympics I can relate.

Florida is not without his critics, but his ideas (most of which he amalgamated from other sources, but I digress) are popular among city managers worldwide...and he has made quite a lot of money selling communities his services. But honestly, the way small cities are latching onto this bandwagon is a bit silly. Not to pick on Duluth, Minnesota--I'm sure it's a lovely town for three months out of the year--but does anybody honestly believe that anybody will be drawn there just because the city paints a few bike lanes and cuts tax breaks to art galleries? Don't misunderstand me, those are nice things to have, but the way Florida is selling these ideas as a panacea to dying towns seems a bit disingenuous. It may work for some, and places like Pittsburgh have had success, but the idea that Pittsburgh's revival is reproducible anywhere is preposterous. The much sought-after "creatives" are a limited resource, and most of them tend to be drawn to places that have already reached a critical mass. Large ponds may translate to a lot of small fish, but it also means more ideas being bounced around and more "creativity", however you want to define it. For all of it's qualities, Duluth lacks two critical components to revitalizing a city: connections with the outside world and existing, philanthropic wealth. You need one or the other to get on your way. I'm sure Duluth has it's prominent families that made fortunes from the iron mines, but nothing close to Pittsburgh's collection of Mellons and Heinzes and Scaifes and their associated charitable endowments.