Besides (or maybe beyond) excess capacity, Dubai suffers from a major design flaw: It's a brilliant copy of the very worst model of urban planning: USA 1975. Even in the 5-6 months of moderate weather you cannot walk around the new parts of Dubai. The distances are too great for comfortable walking. The city is built around the car. All that Arab culture learned in a thousand years about adapting cities to great heat -- high-ceilinged buildings along narrow streets which provide shade and short distances to walk outside — have been forgotten or ignored. Confoundingly, with all of Europe and Asia to learn from, the city's design ignores the goals of the sophisticated tourist — to be able to walk around outside — in favor of antiquated down-market Las Vegas.

via Marginal Revolution: Dubai fact of the day (see my further comments there)

Btw, just in case my criticism is interpreted as disparagement — it's not. I liked Dubai and had a great time there in my very brief stay last year. It's just that I would have liked it better and would be more intent on returning if it were a walkable city. Plus I think that if it were a walkable comfortable (hey! that's what this blog is about: comfort) city it would have increased staying-power and depth as a tourist destination. 

"This has been an entirely transparent process," Obama said of the months-long and often public discussion of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for additional troops. "There's no Gulf of Tonkin here. We are having a wholesome debate about the best strategy forward and I am being held fully accountable to members of Congress, all of whom I think are going to be interested in holding me accountable and making sure that this strategy works."

What I don't get is how Obama can with a straight-face use "transparent process" and "accountable to members of Congress" in the same sentence. Yes he had lots of meetings in the White House and no doubt there were leaks and of course you and I ands everyone discussed it over coffee. But "transparent" and "accountable" means you go down and present your ideas to Congress in public (mostly) and the public gets to hear how the discussion proceeds and how the legislature responds to your proposals to spend our (glorifyingly-worded) "blood and treasure."

This decision to send more troops has been by no means by arrived at with accompanying open and vigorous public debate between decision-makers i.e. Congress and the President. To be meaningful such discussion has to have a point such as a Congressional authorization or a special tax on the war. Without an end-point to a discussion, a goal, there is no real discussion.

Live-Blogging West Point By Andrew Sullivan

8.35 pm. "Not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes." 

I confess I do not feel those highest hopes. I do not share his confidence in American military and civilian power to turn the roiling region of Afghanistan and Pakistan into something less threatening. I see no reason after the last eight years to see how this can happen, even with these new resources. But if you rule out withdrawal right away, then this seems to me to be about the smartest strategy ahead. But I see absolutely no reason to believe that it will mean withdrawal of any significant amount in Obama's first term.

What escapes me is how Obama squares 

# 1. How important it is to stop the Taliban and deny al-Quaeda a base in Afghanistan

 with

# 2. Willingness to leave Afghanistan in 18 months.

It seems to me that if #1 is so important, then how can he even consider leaving? Until the job is totally finished? Setting a timetable for departure seems to undercut the importance of being in Afghanistan in the first place.

None of that should suggest that I was convinced by Obama. I am still skeptical that any outside force is able & competent (in many respects) to do the job. Now, what we should be doing there I have no firm idea. But this post Let America be America, and Depart Afghanistan is quite informative and fairly convincing.

The culture clash between Bloombergians and BusinessWeek staff will be interesting to watch. Bloomberg tracks when its employees come and go, monitors whether employees are at their terminals and has all of its writers make their calendars accessible to anyone in the building. Bloomberg says it makes it easier to find people, but employees say they can feel constantly monitored. And instead of an easygoing magazine culture, where editorial meetings are rarely held before 10 a.m. because no one would show up, Bloomberg News staff begin arriving before 6 a.m., and there's a long line to get into the elevators by 8 a.m. The elevator only stops on a couple floors of the building, making staffers crowd through open areas and onto escalators to get to their floor, creating a sense of activity and intensity. (italics added)

The Architect as Totalitarian

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything.

From a wonderfully interesting article by Theodore Dalrymple. I agree almost entirely with the thrust of this article — (the major exception is the author’s harsh judgment of reinforced concrete, which in the right hands can be a wonderfully urbane material.) But I agreed with that thrust long before I read it. So for those who already understand why Le Corbusier was so destructive, to urbanism, it's a good article.

But from a didactic perspective, I am not sure if this article helps people (who have not thought about urban form) to understand why exactly Le Corbusier was so wicked in his impact. It's not good enough to state that he was totalitarian. You must show and explain the forms which the totalitarian, controlling mind produces. Contrast the isolated tower-in-plaza with the sidewalk-hugging Jane Jacobs street etc etc. It's important for as many people as possible to understand and be able to recognize what he did that was so bad and to be able to describe it to others. 

As interesting as it is, this article fails to offer the punch line: to educate the general reader about exactly why and how in architectural and spatial terms was Le Corbusier so destructive. (And the why and how are hardly matters requiring special training.) The author spends too much time on what are really abstract generalities -- which is precisely our criticism of Le Corbusier: he was too much concerned with theory and abstraction and too little with simply helping to craete a pleasant walkable city. 

Alas.

The danger for Apple is trying to do too much with its iTablet, make it too complicated with too many "features" etc etc. All Apple has to do is take a current iPhone or iPod Touch and increase the screen size by 3-4 times. That's it.

Apple Tablet Delayed with OLED Model Planned? 3G Possible?

Digitimes claims that Apple is planning on postponing the launch of their long rumored tablet device from March to the second half of 2010 as they make some final adjustments to the device's components.

The Mayor-elect asks the citizens of Seattle a question:  How do we build public trust in the new administration?

In short, I say by delivering the basic services and enrichments for which the citizens have asked and for which they have paid taxes. In short, by being competent, by performance. Trust is based on performance, on following through on one's word. There is nothing fancy in building trust. No gimmicks. No tricks. No shortcuts. Just do what you said you will do. Then others will trust you. That goes for all of us, of course, and not just the Mayor and his administration. Build trust through competence.

The City of Seattle is a collection of individuals organized to do the work of the people of Seattle.

The success of the organization turns on the way individuals relate to each other i.e. how well (or poorly) they work together, how they are organized.

Many, if not most, of the City's meta-policies have emerged out of consensus. Even though the elected officials of Seattle are nominally non-partisan, the political reality is that this is a Democratic city with the sort of liberal Democratic policies one would expect. That is to say, there is no huge ideological divide within the electorate of  Seattle. By and large, with some notable exceptions, the City's policies -- and whether one agrees with them or not -- are a fairly accurate reflection of the will of the people.

Thus Mayor-elect McGinn's administration well be judged on how well the City government does its job, how competent it is. That means how well the City staff are organized and motivated to do the work of the people as articulated by the City Council and executed by the Mayor.

But the Mayor can't do everything. In fact he can't do anything without an efficient and on-purpose City bureaucracy.

Therefore, I believe that the City's "personnel policy," understood broadly as the manner in which City employees relate to each other, is the key to implementing whatever policies he and the Council determine is appropriate.

In future posts I will offer some specific examples of what I believe an enlightened personnel policy would look like.

Apple Tablet Speculation Continuing to Gain Attention

CNNMoney.com today reports on the continued hype over Apple's much-rumored tablet computer, citing the multitude of different speculative reports of the device's specs to attempt to paint a picture what users can expect when it is finally announced.

Or so I hope.

That's what Felix Salmon thinks: reduce unemployment by hiring artists.  He writes:

Sally Bagshaw won a seat on the Seattle City Council. So congratulations, Sally! But I am a bit concerned about this quote:

"We're gonna stop the bickering. It's time for us to come together."

And I am pretty sure it is accurate as I heard Bagshaw use that "No Bickering" phrase at a candidate forum. It was a huge turn-off for me. It sounds as if it really means "Let's all pretend we agree i.e. with me." 

Typical Seattle. Paper-over genuine, reasonable differences of opinion on public policy by characterizing disagreement as "Sally bickering." Sounds very nanny-statish, as well. As if disagreement, on ________ (name anything important to you), is bickering. And as if in fact there are no disagreements — that's why we can come together....those pesky "disagreements" are just bickering about trifles.

Bad start. What we need in Seattle in more "bickering," not less.

...since it is clear that safe, walkable neighborhoods are in very high demand and are therefore holding their value well, it is important to build more such places.

Seattle faces an interesting election. The two-time incumbent (Nickels) didn't make it into the finals. Pretty amazing considering that he had been a 'not bad' mayor. Arrogant, maybe. But a perfect-pitch Seattle liberal with no financial or sex scandals (his own or in his city government entirely) in his 8 years in office. Amazing and admirable, even if I disagreed with much of his policy.

So now we have two guys running for Seattle's top job — neither of whom has held or even run for any public office. Since they agree on so much, the debate comes down to two prongs: the deep-bore tunnel and basic competence.

Here's a plug for Mr. McGinn: The Party of the Future. My own take on his opponent Mr. Mallahan:

I was at the Maple Leaf election meeting last night and I asked Mr. Mallahan how he expected us to pay for the tunnel’s cost overruns.

His response was that with his leadership as Mayor there wouldn’t be any cost overruns.

Such an answer is absurd and patronizing.

What strikes me about Mr. Mallahan is that he simply is not a smart politician. A smart politician would have said something like “Wait a second. I am committed 100% to the tunnel but we do have to clarify this issue of cost overruns. I am fiscally responsible and I want to make sure that Seattle is not stuck paying for management errors when we are not responsible for management.”

Such an answer would have reassured the tunnel advocates AND the tunnel waverers (though not tunnel adversaries, I admit.) But as it was, Mr. Mallahan’s answer made him look like a patronizing fool — trying to tell us that HE can prevent cost overruns. Talk about arrogance.

The speaker describes an interesting technique for (potentially) repairing/regrowing(?) piling under Venice. But her sneering characterization of current building methods as "Victorian technologies" is vast over-reaching, too-too trendy and it seemed to me a bit shallow.