Daily Loaf

This post is about one of my favorite places in Tampa Bay: Ybor City.

The Ybor City I admire is the community pre “urban renewal”: that pathetic time in the 1960s when vast stretches of this remarkable multi-lingual and multi-ethnic historic district were demolished in the name of the mid-century streamlined suburban dream.  I’ve written about Tampa’s planning history in previous Creative Loafing posts: The Tampa That Might Have Been, The roots of sprawl, and Fixing sprawl and redesigning suburbia.

The idea behind urban renewal (a national program) was that it demolish the existing crumbling old historic fabric of cities, and the newly vacant lots would become modern new development that would spur the economy. In Ybor this Faustian new construction never materialized, as I remember the old 1980s “Rough Riders restaurant” in Ybor being surrounded by vacant lots.

The real premise for urban renewal was most likely racial and socioeconomic, with the goal of moving the poor and disenfranchised out of the cities and into the sparkling new modern housing projects further out. Mind you, this re-location scheme is still being pursued by Tampa and the county to this day as these old housing projects are now meeting the wrecking ball and the unfortunate inhabitants are relocated even further out to places like the USF area (aka “Suitcase City”), Lutz, Carrollwood and Brandon (might I add places that largely lack mass transit). Dear readers, please note that South Tampa is not on the list.
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We all know the Tampa Bay area is notoriously inept at short or long-range planning. Most would rather work on their tans, or try to forget that nasty divorce up north, than do the heavy lifting required to intelligently plan for our region’s future.

Examples of our incompetence are everywhere. We lack mass transit, housing for the homeless,  good architecture and planning, appreciation (or even knowledge of) the history of our area,  potable water provided without sucking local rivers dry, or even  places worth caring about.

As it turns out, we may be off the hook. It may not matter in the future that we’ve been such custodial goof-offs.

Gordon Hamilton, a research professor at the University of Maine, and members of Clean Air-Cool Planet gave a presentation at the Florida Aquarium on Thursday morning that illustrates how most of Tampa Bay will be under water by 2100 anyway. How much water? Estimates vary from a low of three feet to a high of six feet, maybe more, and they presented maps that show what our region would look like if the sea rose 20 inches, 3.3 feet, and 6.6 feet. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous Green Community post I’ve discussed sprawl: developer-driven poor planning and bad growth polices facilitated by developer-friendly elected officials, and why we need to cease building this way.

In this post I present one possible strategy towards improving existing sprawl. Fixing the sprawl that we have, along with sprawl demolition and recycling, are strategies that could be employed in the future as a new green industry.

Ultra cool Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com recently held a competition titled “The Reburbia Design Competition”, that had the goal of re-envisioning the suburbs.
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This Saturday, August 1 join e-tba (Emerging Tampa Bay Architects) for the third installment of Pecha Kucha.  For those not familiar with the event, designers, activists, artists, advocates and generally creative people are given 20 slides shown for 20 seconds a piece to present an idea, theme, cause, or project.

Pecha Kucha originated in Japan and takes place in over 200 cities worldwide. It was invented by Tokyo-based architects Mark Dytham and Astrid Kleins who turned PowerPoint, fixture of monotonous cubicle life, into both art form and competitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed Pecha Kucha (Japanese for “chatter”), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That’s it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of this art form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.
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What architecture is and what an architect does seem largely unknown to most folks.

Tampa often seems strangely ambivalent toward good architecture and design; for instance, it’s nicknamed one of its finest newer downtown buildings the “beer can building” a.k.a. Rivergate Tower (see photo).   This exquisite neoclassical building was designed by architect Harry Wolf, who based its measurements on the Fibonnacci series. You know the building — it’s the round one right next to the “exploding chicken” sculpture.

People work with an architect for many reasons. Sometimes it’s required by law for the building they’re constructing. Others hire an architect because they’re interested in collaborating and turning their ideas into a built form that is extraordinary and reflects not only themselves, but the local climate, history and culture. This team then finds a contractor or builder that can build what they want. Many think that architecture is the purview of the rich, that the intent of architecture is to create expensive “works of art.” This ignores the fact that “good design” needn’t be expensive and often employs good old-fashioned American ingenuity: locating and implementing alternate materials and construction methods to keep the price within bounds. Truly good design accomplishes the needs and wants of the client and architect within whatever budget.

The American Institute of Architects Florida Chapter recently created a video that describes what architecture is, what architects do and why architecture is important.   It’s not on YouTube but it can be viewed after the break, along with a list of recipients of the 2009 AIA Tampa Bay Design Awards.

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This post is about bat conservation: efforts in Temple Terrace to reconstruct an historic tower for bats, a large community bat roost I designed for the Florida Bat Conservancy, and how you can purchase (or build) your own bat roost.

Folks have long thought that installing birdhouses is beneficial, but the idea of placing roosts for bats is a recent one. Bats are not the feared, repulsive creatures of the night that folklore and superstition have made them out to be.  Bats are not blind, they do not attack people, they do not get caught in people’s hair, and they are not flying rodents. Not all bats are rabid, in fact, “studies have shown that less than one percent of bats contract rabies, and when they do, they usually die within three or four days”. Bats are an important and beneficial part of the natural Florida environment, for instance, a single bat is capable of eating 500-1000 mosquitoes per hour!

Growing up in Temple Terrace I had many uniquely Florida experiences as I explored this eighty year old city with my brothers and sisters: the mysterious Hillsborough River; moss draped, crumbling 1920s Mediterranean Revival buildings; the ancient live oaks and longleaf pines; the Olmstedian 1920s golf course; and of course, the sublime and gothic bat tower. That’s right, I said “bat tower”!

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The American Institute of Architects Tampa Bay (AIA Tampa Bay) is currently conducting their “Second Annual People’s Choice Awards”  for projects entered into the AIA Tampa Bay 2009 Design Awards!  Voting is open to everyone, please visit this site to review the projects, and then cast your vote.

Unfortunately there does not appear to be a Green/Sustainable Architecture category as of yet.

Voting is open to ALL

Select your favorite entry overall from all of the award categories. Each category has its own page, so you will need to write down your favorites and then submit your final choice on the last page. You may only vote one time for one project. We welcome your comments: Please be sure to include the project name or number in your comments so we know what you are commenting on.

Results will be announced at the Design Awards Gala on June 20th 2009 at NOVA 535 at 535 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive North, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.

The term “sprawl” was coined in 1956 and is defined as unplanned greenfield (undeveloped land) development on the periphery of urban areas that is generally single-use, single-story, low density, inexpensive to build, and requires little knowledge or expertise to create. Sprawl gobbles up our farmlands and woodlands while increasing dependency on fossil fuel, fosters obesity because you have to drive everywhere, diminishes the natural environment, decreases the feasibility of mass transit, all while failing to create a “sense of place” or build community.

There was once a time in America (before the second World War) when sprawl didn’t exist. The ascent of sprawl to the predominant development form in the United States is based on many criteria: Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago I was doing microfilm research on local history at the John German Library in Tampa. Anyone who’s done this research knows how tedious it is; there’s no index for microfilm so to find pertinent articles one must scan each newspaper page on each microfilm roll. While doing this I was flabbergasted to discover a Tampa Tribune article from November 25, 1924, that mentioned the work of the famous town planner John Nolen in connection with Tampa.

To my surprise, the City of Tampa commissioned Nolen to survey the city in 1924 in preparation for a master plan which he was to create for the city. I know a good deal about the planning and architectural history of the area but hadn’t heard that Nolen was working in our area. Tragically, Nolen created his survey but was never commissioned by the city to create his master plan for Tampa: 1924 was the height of delirium during the 1920s Florida real estate boom and the development industry of the time did not want to slow down the good times enough to allow the creation of a master plan and code to direct them. The great depression came early to Florida and by the end of 1926 the roaring 20s were over.

The discovery of John Nolen’s survey of Tampa is important as he’s arguably the finest town planner to have worked in Florida and is the namesake of the John Nolen Medal for Contributions to Urbanism in Florida, given by the progressive planning organization Congress for the New Urbanism, Florida Chapter. In Florida, Nolen was the genius behind the town plans of Venice, Sarasota, West Palm Beach, Clewiston, and Temple Terrace.

In 1924, the problems that Mr. Nolen identified in Tampa’s planning remain problems to this very day: Read the rest of this entry »