the third union place…

I previously wrote about some of my thoughts on Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place” in July here, and wanted to develop some more thoughts on how the student union can serve as a community third place based on some of Oldenburg’s later chapters.

So, as Great Good continues, the author moves into exploring specific famous third places of the past, like the English Pub, French Cafe, American Tavern, and coffeehouses of various sizes, shapes, and nationalities.  In a section on the English coffeehouse, we explore the concept that the English gained knowledge of and explore through conversation the news of the community and the world, and that the coffeehouse was the end all be all of this service.  Up until the mid-19th century, the coffeehouse was a daily stop for English men to gather, hear the news, discuss, and argue.

Give me the news!

Oldenburg credits the development of home mail delivery, the daily newspaper, coffeehouse owners going for bad business policy, and other factors as the downfall of the coffeehouse.  A quote stood out to me from this section, included from a foreign visitor observing English coffeehouse culture and life, stating “…workmen habitually begin the day [we are talking everyday] by going to coffee rooms in order to read the daily news.”

In a sense, this is sort of what we hope for in thinking about how our unions can function for our campus and our student community.  It’s why we have services that draw students to our buildings (food, post office boxes, printing services) and its why we have unique and pleasurable spaces to relax, connect, and study.  We want to draw the student community in in order to introduce them to new opportunities and the greater involvement picture of campus life, and in the perfect union world, they are exposed to new ideas and perspectives that provide them more context on their academic work and help to craft a more open and understanding student.

Look at all the things you can look at, experience, taste, enjoy! *Neither I or ACUI endorse installing a candy room in your Union. This would cause both gastrointestinal bloat and administrative bloat.*

This transitions well into a later chapter, titled A Hostile Habitat, which explores why modern urban environments and designs are so hostile to these third places, where the community should be able to gather together at their local.

Oldenburg contends that “the modern urban environment accommodates people as players of unifunctional roles… it reduces people… allowing them little opportunity to be human beings.”  Wow, that is harsh.  Borrowing from architectural critic Wolf Von Eckardt, who you know you can get behind 100% because his first name is WOLF (*Does not apply to Wolf Blitzer), Oldenburg explains “what ails us… is not that we are incapable of living a satisfactory and creative life in harmony with ourselves, but that our habitat does not offer sufficient opportunities.  It hems us in.  It isolates us.”

West Wing Walk and Talks are bifunctional, so they are not allowed.  Be sad about that.

But, that’s supposed to be the beauty of the college union – the fact that there are a lot of functionalities crammed into one building, so that students, even if they aren’t that over-involved student leader, are in the building often, and hopefully in a vibrant and active atmosphere that we have fostered, are exposed to new learning opportunities and experiences.  The union fails if it is unifunctional, but multifunctional will take on a different look on each campus (a rural campus union will serve a very different role than an urban campus union), each era of student culture (game rooms and smoking lounges may not be the highest priority anymore), and will need the commitment of the community to ensure it stays updated and functioning to the highest degrees for our multifaceted campuses.

When it comes to our buildings, we have to ask each and every constituent to consider “Does this place offer sufficient opportunities to explore, grow, and live?” and if the answer is no, we may need to go back to the drawing board to better understand what our spaces need beyond just the basic architectural and engineering requirements.  I’m not advocating for over the top everything to please every constituency, but we really have to understand how the environment influences the user, because if our whole mission is based around exploration, we need spaces that encourage that, rather than hemming us in.  That’s what works.  That’s a lot more important than mosaics of your mascot or Starbucks on every floor.

But, uh, your SGA does not need this in their office.

I think I’ve got one more blog post that can come from this book, so stay tuned for that.  It’s about space.  Not Neil DeGrasse Tyson space, but like, TLC’s Trading Spaces space.

the architecture of grumpiness…

Please find below a post about architecture, something I have learned through osmosis by dating an architect, drinking lots of wine with architecture students, and spending late nights keeping Eugene company while he works on architecture projects.  Architecture.

Step 1: lolchitecture. Step 2: Click the image.

So, when I got on my recent, and still going strong, kick about urban design and particularly how it applied to the urban college union, I reached out to said architecture students and friends for some suggestions.  Both Eugene and Adam Welker (who’s Memory Card podcast you must check out) suggested as my first book on architecture The Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton, a disturbingly heavy book for how small it is.

That physical observation would carry through into its contents though, as well, as Happiness proved to be a short but very heavy, dense, and fulfilling read.  Lots of thoughts about it initially, that have been reformed and reflected upon as I’ve delved into the subject a bit deeper, talking over it with colleagues, reading articles and other books.  So, if you will allow me, I would love to explore some of the concepts in Happiness and how we might be able to connect them with the current state of the urban college union.

One of the first topics that stood out to me in the book was a discussion about what buildings can do to us, how they can influence us, and how it is “architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”  If that does sound goo-goo-ga-ga student development theory, I don’t know what does.

But sensitivity to architecture also has its more problematic aspects… if our happiness can hang on the colour of the walls or the shape of a door, what will happen to us in most of the places we are forced to look at and inhabit? (p 13)

I think this concept of how the design and feel of a building can affect our happiness or ability to get things done resonates at a time when lots of unions are being renovated or reconstructed, but also budgets are tight, and many campuses are focusing those funds elsewhere on campus, allowing a student center to take on deferred maintenance.  We tell ourselves and we tell our students and our colleagues and the public that our unions are the heartbeat of campus, the student living room.  That’s a tall order for buildings that don’t look it, are not designed to fit the bill for a modern student living room, and what does that mean to our campus’s messaging and support for it’s students?

I currently work in a campus center that is designed in the brutalist style, which let’s just stop and look at that word for a couple of minutes.  Nothing says community like brutalist architecture.  It’s a Boston thing, as our City Hall is also the same style of architecture.

By the standards of a lot of union construction going on right now, the lack of windows and the lack of what I can only call “internal seeing” (I’m sure there is some actual term for it) makes an older style union, especially in the light of newly constructed unions, a less inviting place.  Internal seeing is the ability inside the building for users to see each other across multiple spaces and up and down multiple floors, either via open space or glass.  I got to visit my old stomping grounds, The Memorial Student Center, at Texas A&M this past fall for the first time since graduating in 2009.  The main lobby used to be a confined, tan, 1 floor rectangular hallway space.  No openness, no internal seeing.

This is looking up from the lower floor into the open lobby area of the new MSC.

This amount of light, internal seeing, and space was something I never thought possible after living in the old MSC for years.

The other concept I wanted to touch on that is big in modern union construction is flexibility of spaces, which is also exposed in de Botton’s quote above.  Happiness means very different things to each person, and so essentially, for a union to bring happiness to our students, our spaces must reflect this diversity, these options, these multi-faceted pieces of how people find happiness and how they use spaces personally.  Up until this book, my thinking on space flexibility was all about programming and ensuring union spaces could be maximized for programming via structural flexibility.  Now, de Botton has me thinking about how our spaces actually communicate to our students individually, and whether they say “Welcome!” or “GTFO bro.”

This scene keeps popping into my head thinking about this.

The other piece I’ll get into in this post is the concept of going beyond just a basic functionality in our buildings, as de Botton puts it “we are in the end unlikely to respect a structure which does no more than keep us dry and warm.”  We get even deeper into this with a quote from John Ruskin about how we seek two things from buildings we encounter:

We want them to shelter us.  And we want them to speak to us – to speak to us of whatever we find important and need to be reminded of.

I think this is also one of those themes that is constant in modern unions, the desire to ensure the story of the institution and the students is being told.  Whether its the history or the current events that we hold dear, storytelling through design is a must it seems in current union design and redesign.  Whether it is walls of history, alumni stories, or celebration of campus resources like at the Ohio Union, or it is the recent renovation of the UW-Stout Memorail Student Center which offered a chance to bring more light into a space and to tell the entire timeline of history of the campus through images.  We want our buildings to tell our stories, but also to tell our students they are welcome.

If you need advice on how to tell a story, check in with Ms. Lippy.

de Botton invokes Ruskin again later, saying that

Buildings speak – and on topics which can readily be discerned.  They speak of democracy or aristocracy, openness or arrogance, welcome or threat, a sympathy for the future or a hankering for the past.

How should our buildings speak?  Should they speak in one way only, or must the building balance what it says to honor both the tradition of what it stands for but also the future of what our institutions are shooting for?  I think we can easily agree that they should say “Welcome” but do we know what that truly looks like, and what other values do we want to ensure they are saying to our community?  Openness, transparency, the quest for knowledge, San Dimas High School Football rules?

What?

the youth of the urban…

As a relatively new major urban center implant (sorry Columbus, but COTA does not qualify you for consideration in this blog), this story (when I first saw it all the way back in May) caught my eye.  Boston has a fairly extensive and fairly well-known (one often thinks it’s known more for its problems than successes) public transit system, with multiple train lines, busses that criss-cross the city, and commuter rail that connects outlying towns and suburbs.

The MBTA system around Boston

Every morning on the T.

I’m a huge proponent of the T, despite its continual issues about performing well below the temperature of 60 and above 85 degrees and its bogus funding and deferred maintenance structures.  Additionally, although the planning and construction of residential and commercial around the future stations is right on the mark, the Green Line expansion project is one of the biggest laughs of current MBTA planning, primarily because they are trying to add length and service to a line that is already woefully overcapacity and has planning issues when you try to get past Haymarket and North Station.

The article above is interesting because it details another aspect of how my generation, the millennial generation, is changing the dynamics of the American cultural/political/life landscape.  Driving is down, and some believe it is because millennials are less likely to drive, or even get a driver’s license.  Urban centers are where the jobs are at, and where innovation lies (I need another “beating a dead horse” gif for the word ‘innovation,’ good gracious).  Culture, food, and intracity transportation are all within the grasp of your office and your residence.  Urban centers are now paying for rural lands, with city residents paying more taxes while rural residents collect more government dollars, in many states.  Coming out of this last recession, home ownership in the urban center is more attractive than before… I think one article I read said that within Boston, more than 75% of condos/homes for sale saw initial offers above asking price.

For me personally, I would never give up owning my car even living in the city.  I got my American drivers license in Texas during college, where it was essential to drive (and even drove busses for cash money at A&M).  Eugene and I like to travel and get out of the city on weekends, and so, a car is essential, and really something I’ll never give up.  A trip to the outlets, IKEA, or a mall about 30 minutes to the west is way too attractive and happens way too often for grabbing a ZipCar.  However, with urban centers growing in size, density, and technological capacity, the youth of the city forsaking cars for public transportation is not surprising.

This is not your suburban 1950s, and President Eisenhower’s Interstate System is crumbling.

However, what remains to be seen is whether cities can keep up with demand, both physically and technologically.  It is absolutely no secret that our public transportation is woefully behind in the times compared to the bulk of Europe and Japan, but I attribute that primarily to our driving, interstate, and suburban culture, and then our lack of commitment to maintaining those superstructures.  But what happens when needy and demanding millennials come of age, have urban families, and realize that we need to get political to make change?  With our nation’s crumbling infrastructure (bridge collapses almost annually, and here in Boston, the MBTA and construction on basically every Boston-Cambridge bridge), we need to invest heavily in public infrastructure not only to bring it up to code but to go beyond and create a viable transit system that is more than Hubway bike systems.

It’s going to take investment (financial, time, and construction), and that is always a struggle.  It’s going to take politicians and neighborhood leaders committed to the transit realities of tomorrow, not today.

The city [Charlotte, NC] tries to channel growth into manageable areas, he said, by filling in the urban core with new development and encouraging new construction along major transportation corridors, including an expanding rail line. “It didn’t happen by mistake,” he said.

Public transit is not a mistake, and it’s not the only solution.  A balanced city that embraces walking, biking, green space, public transportation, and viable traffic patterns for driving is the real solution that we should put our minds to.  Let’s see if my generation can do it for ourselves.

Or, we can just give a trophy to everyone on the T.

boston…

I have struggled with how vocal I wanted to be today, because I was sitting at home just hanging out as news rolled in of the bombings at the end of the Boston Marathon.

Eugene and I are both fine, I was at home, he was at work in South Boston.  We met up at my family’s house in Milton down south.

I’m just so sad about all this.  I was physically sick about the news as I had Al Jazeera’s live feed up, NPR Boston’s live radio going and twitter refreshing every 15second on three different screens.  I have always been an information junkie, and I just want to know.  I want to the know the truth about what happened, why it happened, and what we can expect next… but we should never jump to conclusions about all that information either.

I watched, but I tried my best to stay away from inflammatory retweets and tweets, I wanted only to try and contribute and add what I thought would be helpful and would not get in the way.  I got angry at the speculation and rumors that only slowed process down, but I was lifted by the stories and pictures of first responders and runners who had just finished turning around to help.

I’ve only lived in Boston for about 3/4 a year, but I have always loved the city, and my heart breaks for the unspeakable sorrow that has settled over our city tonight, on it’s yearly date with excitement and celebration.  What should have been an exciting and inspirational day has turned into one of just pure confusion and sadness.  That sadness cannot last, and will not last.  There is too much to do in the coming days and months to help ensure that Boston remains Boston, and that everything this city is about is stronger than any time before.

Bostonians are tough, fiercely loyal, and will see this through.  But, I think the greatest lesson we can take away today is from the runners, who persevere, go above and beyond their boundaries, and inspire us to reach for our own goals and dreams.

 

I’m sorry that I haven’t blogged in forever, I have about 6 drafts all sitting there waiting.  And I’m sorry this post is just a bunch of words about how I want to help and how sad I am for my city.  But that’s what this is for, I guess.  

All my thoughts are with Boston tonight and tomorrow, and with all of our many visitors who had their trips ruined by horrible people.

the city speaks to me (10/16)…

I… I… uh… don’t really know what the city is trying to say to me here.  Apparently cool cats are more important than shoes, and the city also likes the Rainbow version of Dippin Dots a lot.

In case you were wondering whether the City Speaks to Me posts are fillers… yes… yesssssssss they are.  Good day.

 

transforming cultures…

I am a big transportation buff, mostly airlines, but all transportation really interests me, and now that I live in a proper city, public transportation.  I will literally spend hours on Kayak planning out random trips and calculating costs and ensuring I’m on the right kind of airline and airplane, then let out a big sigh, and hit the x in the upper right-hand corner (I’m back on a PC, don’t judge me).  In fact, I’m reading Aerotropolis right now, which is a great economics read, and am searching for a book on the history of the MBTA (there is literally nothing out there except a kids book, and a book published in 1970…).

What I love about transportation is the way it can transform how societies thrive and survive, how people live and work and play, for both better and worse.  One small example lies right here in Allston, MA, which I love, and thought I would talk about here.

Refuge Island

What you see above is a Google Maps picture of there Commonwealth continues on from Downtown to the bottom of the picture along with the B Line of the T, with Brighton Ave. splitting off into the left frame of the picture.  What I have highlighted by the arrow is a small pedestrian island sitting in between this mass of cars, trolleys, and concrete, and is named by locals “Refuge Island.”

When walking by Refuge Island, you’ll often see about 5 or so student or young professional types standing around, looking down Comm Ave and down Brighton Ave, back and forth, back and forth.  They are waiting for either the B Line to come down Comm Ave or the 57 bus to come down Brighton Ave to take them down into Kenmore and further into downtown Boston.  What I love is that this little spit of land has become a waiting area, a purgatory of public transportation delay, waiting on whichever mode of transit will come to them first (honestly, the bus is always faster than the train… I always just take the bus).

It’s hilarious to watch and observe.  It’s a unique piece of the city that I have come to enjoy and analyze (read: people watch).

EDIT: Since I wrote this last night and scheduled it to be posted this morning, new developments have come up.  The T, being a single-track system, is thrown into chaos if something, anything, goes wrong on a line.  That happened this morning, with a bad wire just down the street from us, basically shutting down the Inbound Green Line this morning.  Standing at the 57 Bus Stop, we watched 3 buses glide right by us, with the next one slated to come in about 15 minutes based on the real-time T tracker app.  Hordes of students looking to go just a few stops into BU crowded around the bus stops waiting for the next bus.

This is why I wanted a car in the city.  So I can just drive Eugene into his job interview this morning rather than him risking tardiness because Boston hasn’t had a chance to match the Green Line with its modern levels of ridership.

the city speaks to me (9/7)…

Hey, you guys… hey… you can DJ the world.

*I just ignore the .com part… the website title itself makes such a good message.

without a car…

So, the one piece of life that is missing thus far in Boston (except for the whole I don’t have a job thing) is a parking pass.  See, Massachusetts requires that you turn your driving life over to them when you move into a Boston neighborhood in order to get a neighborhood parking pass.  Not a problem right?

No.  Problem.  See, my parents and I have been having trouble cutting the “I’m an adult cord” for some time now (both sides are guilty), and so a bulk of the paperwork I need for the Massachusetts registration process for the car is in my Dad’s name, so that I’m unable to be like, “Yeah, that’s my Matrix.”  And unfortunately, at the time I was figuring all this out, my parents are rolling around the country (and the Caribbean) on their Retirement Tour.  It is sort of tough to change the name on a Title and Registration in Brazos County, Texas when one is on a Disney Cruise sipping a drink in the Caribbean.

So, until about mid-September, when they get back from their latest impromptu Disney Cruise, my car is thankfully parked at the home of family outside of the city (thank goodness for family!), so that I can hopefully avoid  another ticket and towing (once is enough Boston, thank you very much).

So, until then, Eugene and I are walkers and public transportation takers, which, is awesome, because Boston is a very walkable and train connected city, and it doesn’t make life hard at all, especially when driving is actually harder here in Boston.  I’m wondering how these next few weeks will influence my view of living in a large city, and on how the USA really should be more partial to this invention we call trains and subways, rather than relying on cars to get us from Point A to Point B.

Additionally, I’m wondering how long I’ll last until I write the city and demand that they decrease the number of stops that serves Boston University (3 directly, about 6 overall, it’s insanity.)

Until then… this will be me.

bahstan…

I’m sorry.  I’m really really sorry.  It has been like, what, over a month with no postings?  Sorry.

This summer has been all over the place.  Between the cross-country trip and vacay in San Diego (which I’m still halfway done drafting up a post on… sorry), flying to Boston to get some apartment hunting and signing done, and trying to soak up Cbus and time with Eugene’s friends as much as possible, it has been an all over summer, and I’ve certainly neglected this here bloggy thingy and other aspects of my life.

But, alas… we are safely now living in Boston.  We live out in Allston, west of the city, and smack dab in between BU and BC.  We live right down the street from an epic Asian grocery and food court, complete with a Ramen shop that features the best ramen since Japan (chicken karage too).  Dangerously, we also have a frozen yogurt place right at the end of our street (we have agreed to going twice a week).  Additionally, we have found that the tavern down the street does great $3 pizzas on Tuesdays, and the fish taco place about 10 minutes away has amazing $2 fish tacos on Wednesdays.  We are also a 3 minute walk from T stops, and one two main bus routes into Cambridge.  It’s a good location, but I think we will move to a different apartment in this area next year so that we can have pets and paint, and that will be our place for years to come I think.

Some quirks though about Boston…

Number First: The Parking Situation.  I basically have to transfer everything about my car and life over to Massachusetts before I can get an Allston/Brighton neighborhood parking pass, which is just excessive and ridiculous.  Like, I’m living here… why do I have to do all this other stuff just to get a parking pass.  So, Eugene and I park Sparks (my Matrix) in non-resident parking spaces for a few days at a time and then move it and hope for the best on street cleaning days.  I’m so over this parking thing… also, I never want to drive in Boston.  It’s more than scary.

Number B: Starbucks.  The coffee house situation in this city is fairly dire.  Starbucks here are tiny… honestly.  Like, we are lucky to get a table at one, and there are few viable coffee shop alternatives in the area as well.  Today, we spent about 4 hours at Boston Commons Coffee Company on the east side of Boston Common, which wasn’t bad, but not the coffee shop vibe I know or love.  The search shall continue.

I have decided I will do a job search post once I actually get a job (yes, I do not have a job yet, which is making me question every decision of the past 7 months since I decided to move to Boston with Eugene every 5 minutes – but that is past… it’s time to be wicked awesome and build a career here).  We are talking statistics of my search and stuff, and basically painting a bleak picture of how “heartless” higher education is in letting applicants know their situation.

Until then…

the natural evolution of cities…

Urban life has developed its own culture and rules since the times of the Industrial Revolution all around the world, creating space for citizens to live, work, play, and grow, sometimes not all equally.

There is a lot of research, speculation, theory, and idea sharing on what the future of cities hold for us, and what they will look like or should look like in the future.  This is especially true in fields like mass transportation, sustainability, living conditions/space utilization.

However, seeing things like these, sometimes you just have to trust that the natural evolution of cities lies in the human imagination to make cool things happen that are just plain positive.

Enjoy.

 

***Sorry if you have not seen the right video.  I was putting up a link coming from my favorites from YouTube rather than the link to the video itself.  The video below, “The Dreaded Stairs” is exactly what should be there.

From Imgur: “When the rain falls in Germany, this drain system turns into a beautiful musical instrument. It’s called “The Funnel Wall” A beautiful way to celebrate nature.”