One Year of Daytonlogy

The first posts on Daytonolgy were on July 13th., 2007:

First Post
Pix

Fittingly one was a post of mostly vacant downtown buildings in the setting sun, maybe unintentionally symbolic, but really taken because the city just looks good in the afternoon sun.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this blog or even if I wanted to blog. The motto was “Urban Nihilism from Dayton Ohio” , so I had a sort of industrial slumming concept in mind, as well as a bit of “Dayton sucks and this is why…” thing.

Things didn’t work out that way, as I tried at first some posts on things that make Dayton different. Some of them, like foreign language radio, ended while I was blogging. Others, like the various festivals, are still happening, and the Rev Cool is still doing radio.

Some things I steered away from was sports because I think sports is boring and know absolutely nothing about it. I also didn’t post much about politics. There is a social-democratic/Marxist meta-politics that’s behind my POV, but I didn’t post on partisan politics that much, with the exception of things for David Esrati when he ran in the Democratic primary for Congress. Though, on occasion, I did touch on politics as it related to urban affairs.

I tried “scene” blogging. Taking pix of bands and gallery things. And commenting on the creative class. That turned out to be pretty silly as I have absolutely no connection with the art/music scene and urban bohemia in general, such as it is here. Music blogging is being done better elsewhere (actually better on MySpace than in the blogosphere, though the Bhudda Den remains a good blog on this). This is insider blogging and an insider I am not.

I did dabble a bit in economics and tried a sort of activist blogging (around certain issues, like gay rights and the “grocery gap” when the Gettysburg Kroger closed), but I don’t really know anything about economics and , again, don’t have the kind of insider knowledge for solid activist/muckraking blogging, which is done best at sites like Esrati and Dayton OS.

The main point of the blog turned out to be urban history and geography, mixed in with urban morphology & vernacular architecture and an interest in, for want of a better term, “suburban studies”. This is a pretty rare POV in Dayton, aside from the interest of gentrifiers/restorers in their particular neighborhoods and in the city proper (which tends to be more an advocacy/booster POV, rather than a critical analytical one) .

Also, my take on history is fairly different given my Marxist/populist POV, as its not nostalgia, genealogical, or celebratory.

I am unsure this kind of blogging is worthwhile given the somewhat middle-of-the-road/conservative mindset here vs. what I blog on (lots of research behind those posts on the union movement and black history, but few to no comments), and the seeming lack of interest in the built environment/urban fabric.

Prior to blogging I posted quite a bit at the Urban Ohio forums, which was more of a community open to my interests. That online community aspect is missing from blogging, which tends to be typing out into thin air (or at best," I post/you comment") vs being part of an online conversation of kindred spirits.

So there is a sense of alienation to blogging on what are really special interest topics and themes.

I am not sure where I am going with this blog or if it will survive. I might go back to the original intent of a mix of urban slumming & noir + Dayton sux ranting (which I never really did much of of).. Also, experimenting with long distance blogging on other places was interesting. I might do more of that along with Dayton stuff.

Eurosprawl IV: Pepperoni Pizza Suburbia

The Rhine-Main region is a good illustration of how to grow compact suburbia, avoiding the carpet of sprawl that is characteristic of Dayton and elsewhere in the Midwest.
Suburban development in this part of Germany grows around old country villages. The original village adds streets and block of development, expanding the built up area, but still leaving areas of open space between
So the effect is like a big pepperoni pizza

So, taking a look at this in the northern suburbs of Frankfurt, in Rosbach.

This used to be three villages, Ober(Upper) and Nieder (Lower) Rosbach plus Rodheim. The state administrative reform in the early 1970s combined the three communes into one large local government entity named Rosbach. On the map, the settlement at the bottom is Rodheim, and the two Rosbachs are at the top. I’ve marked the autobahn exit and a railroad that goes through the area.

Place name designations in this part of Hesse used vor der Hohe as a suffix, similar to the way the British have descriptive place names, like Newton-le-Willows and Stoke-on –Trent. Here, the VdH means “Before the Height”, meaning the high peaks of the Taunus hill country directly to the west.

So, roughly translated, Rosbach Before the Height (as there are other Rosbachs in Germany). The “bach” would translate as “brook”, meaning there is a creek running through the area. The geology of the region (formerly volcanically active edge of a rift valley) results in things like naturally occurring carbonated and mineral water springs, bottled and sold as table water (similar to the table water one finds in France). If Rosbach is known at all it’s for the table water.

Historically the village was first mentioned in document from 800s, so a fairly old settlement. There are some pre-celtic grave sites (“Hugelgraben”) in the woods south of the two Rosbachs

An enlargment of the map, showing the original village cores shaded, the train station, and the industrial park between the two. The large big box buildings are a distribution center for the German retailer Rewe. We will be taking a closer look at the village to the left, Ober Rosbach


Rosbach from the air, autobahn exit circled in the lower left. The characteristic European rural landscape pattern of relatively small farm parcels, some as ribbon farms, is also visible. These are accessed through unpaved roads and field paths, so one can actually walk out into the landscape.



And a close-up showing different types of auto-oriented development, including a McDonalds. What’s noticeable here is the lack of extensive parking in the presumably more auto-oriented commercial/industrial area. One can also see the fairly dense suburban development.




What’s also noticeable from the aerials is the lack of development directly around the autobahn exit, and the location of the “Bundestrasse” (Federal Highway, equivalent to our US Highway designation) between the villages, similar to the bypasses of the old US highways. Unlike in the US this bypass is not lined with retail development


A map from the Hesse state historic preservation office, showing the original Ober Rosbach village (technically it was a town, as it had “Stadtrecht”, or city rights) surrounded by postwar suburbia, showing how extensive suburban growth was in this area.


And a pix from the 1950s, showing the village church and rooftops through the cherry orchards. Ober Rosbach is on a foot slope of the Taunus, which creates a small microclimate, leading to the planting of cherry orchards. This part of “Kirschberg”, or Cherry Hill, is now all subdivided and built-out

A close-up, where one can see Nieder Rosbach in the background behind the steeple. The open area between is now the industrial park

And an enlargement, showing how the suburbia grew into the orchards. One can also see the compact nature of the original town vs the freestanding structures of postwar suburbia.


Suburban development north of the old village. It's pretty clear here how the old field paths and field divisions are guiding suburban growth outward, as suburbia expands into what looks like either allotments or orchard strips


The red boxes in the maps enlarged, clearly showing the mix of single and multi-family and the fairly small lots. This pattern of development is actually similar to the older parts of Dayton, like Walnut Hills and South Park, where there is a mix of singles, doubles, and apartments.

This approach to suburban development is radically different than the US, where such a residential mix would never occur due to zoning, nor would it be tolerated by American homebuyers. Apparently the Germans don’t zone residential the way we do, permitting a mix of types

Ober Rosbach on the Ground

The suburban area west of the prewar village. A mix of housing types, yet all following a very minimal approach to design, in these cases not much of a revivalist influence.
What’s also noticeable is the mix of multifamily and single family. Directly to the left of the evergreen in the middle of the pix one can see either a 2 and a half story duplex or apartment building, and right next to it is a one and half story single family bungalow (click on the pix to enlarge for detail).



Another look, this time in the northern part of the village, the area covered by the map enlargements above. Again one can see some single family homes directly in front and to the left (the one with the decorative concrete block screening), but also some multifamily, maybe next door
In the background one can see the industrial park, including a gaudy pink and green high rise. Maybe part of the Rewe complex.

Another view of a streetscape from a second story condo. Note again the largish single family homes across the street, but we are in a condo looking at them. Also the street itself is pretty narrow, not even a sidewalk. This pix is a good illustration of how the Germans approach yards and lawns: they fence them off from the street with either landscaping or actual fences.



And another view, showing how the Germans do backyards, and their love of generous balcony or deck space (we’ve seen a lot of deck views so far). One might be close to the edge of town here.

And a few single family homes. These are pretty small, but show two approaches. The lower one is an earlier version, while the one above is a newer, sort of a standard model sold by a commercial builder as a package deal.
And another smaller single family house, at the edge of town. The German suburban dream?


One can see how the Germans do have suburbia, but the standard is less than ours, with smaller lots and a mix of multi-family and single family in the same development area. The houses are also probably smaller inside, and they don't have closets (which is why you see those big wardrobes for sale at IKEA).

We’ll be taking two more looks at Rosbach later, one at Rodheim village and another at transit options.

Mexican Land Grant to US State Capital: Platting Sacramento

The Cesar Chavez Plaza post looked at a town square in front of city hall. It might seem the park was located there because of the city hall, but the situation is the opposite.
Chavez plaza was part of a large scheme of open space, part of the original town plat.

But first, before there was a town plat there was the rancho. Nuevo Helvetia

Northern California during the Mexican era was experiencing a lot of land alientation via land grants, expanding beyond the Bay Region into the Central Valley and the Coast Ranges in the 1840s





Nuevo Helvetia was one of these 1840s land grants



About 16% of thee of these went to non-Mexicans. Alta California was already seeing some light US settlement prior to the Mexican War and gold rush era, and it was these settlers that precipitated the comic opera “Bear Flag Revolt” at the Sonoma presidio that gave us the state flag and California Republic motto.

Though grants went to Americnas, in the case of Nuevo Helvetia it was a German Swiss, John Sutter, who obtained the land at the confluence of the Rio Sacramento and Rio de los Americanos and built his fort on high ground some distance from the rivers.
The story of the Sacramento City plat was more the story of John Sutter’s son, who took control of his fathers’ property and platted the city along with Sam Brannan, who ran a store near the river landing.

The plat was drawn by military men: Capt. William Warner, with assistance of E.C. Ord (namesake of Fort Ord), and a young Ohio native, William Tecumseh Sherman, who was stationed in California doing administrative work for the Army in the days after the Mexican War.

The plats most distinguished feature, aside from the Manhattenesque uniformity, was the reservation of a block as public space every 6 blocks, forming a secondary grid over the city. Another important feature was the central street, M street, was slightly wider than the rest. The other distortion to the grid was Sutter’s Fort, which was still standing when the city was platted
Reading the legend on the plan it seems that part of it was added to shortly after the original survey, perhaps the part without plazas

And, as one can see Chavez Plaza was just one of 12 plazas proposed for the city

A period map of Sacramento in the very early 1850s Gold Rush era, showing that, though surveyed, the city hadn’t laid out streets over the entire grid just yet. An interesting feature is John Sutter’s competing town site of Sutterville (which failed), the appearance of early railroads linking the city back into the gold fields, and early levees, as the site was extremely flood prone
One can see the built up area closer to the river, shaded in a bit. Sacramento became the state capital in 1854, around the time of this map.

By 1870 the city had not grown much (population of around 17,000), but was already linked eastward by the transcontinental railroad, following the American River up to and over Donner Pass. In this view the capitol was sited on a four block reservation, location determined by siting the capital building on-axis with the wider M Street. The capitol was sited and went under construction in 186, completed in 1874.


In the view one can also see the railroad shops at the left, near the river. The shops were the major employer in the 19th century city, before the food processing & canning industry took off.

The original gridiron plat did undergo distortions into modern times, with expansion of the Capital grounds into Capital Park, the addition of South Side Park, disappearance of plazas via platting and, in one case, reservation for a auditorium.



Yet enough of the plazas remain as a grid of neighborhood parks, relieving the relentless gird of perfectly square city blocks.

The grid and plazas remain as a distinctive features of the old city, marking the original town as much as the grid plans and squares of Savannah and Philadelphia are characteristic of those cities. Locals recognize this as a special place, calling it the "Old City", and more recently "The Grid". This is now (actually has been for some time) the hip urban neighborhood in the city, getting recognition from the Bay Region press.

Bibliophilia in Sacramento

Northern California was a reader’s paradise. The Bay Region abounded in bookstores of various types, including the famous City Lights (but also the well-stocked Cody’s in Berkley). Probably to be expected given the intellectual heft of the area.

A bit of this rubbed off on Sacramento. And, being the state capital, one would expect a literate and somewhat well-read population of public policy wonks working as lobbyists, public interest groups, bureaucrats, staffers, and journalists.

Yet the interesting thing about Sacto is that it didn’t have a big local bookstore. Nothing like the largish independents such as Hawley-Cooke in Louisville, Books and Company in Dayton or Joseph-Beth in Lexington. About all there was Tower Books, a spin-off from Tower Records (Tower was based in Sacramento). Tower had two stores, both fairly small and fairly crowded. What I recall was their magazine section, which had a lot of indy stuff, almost zine-ish. Tower carried things like Art Spieglemens' Raw, quite a find at a time when comix were still somewhat underground.

Sacramento really was best at the specialty and used bookstore. Three I remember:x

Lioness Books

This was a feminist bookstore set in an old bungalow. This was somewhat similar to Crazy Ladies in Cincinnati, and like Crazy Ladies it carried gay and lesbian lit as well as general interest titles on cultural politics and political art. This was a fairly small store, though.

Beers

I was shopping at Beers for a year before I knew they had this second floor loft space filled with used books, being known locally more as a used book store. For me Beers was an excellent example of a small independent with a niche market. They carried new titles, things like Eduardo Galleano’s Memory of Fire trilogy on Latin American history. If I recall right they did carry some GLBT titles, but not much, and I don’t recall a magazine section.

Beers also carried a solid line of technical books. This might seem surprising until one thinks of the boomtown character of Sacramento. There were a lot of contractors and engineers active in the area due to the booming construction industry, so this book carried things like building codes and engineering how-to books (including some published by locals, like the “Excavation and Grading Hanbook"). Fascinating little bookstore, which you can visit online.




Time Tested Books

This was one of the best used bookstores, a classic. The place specialized in political titles, western regional stuff and “Californiana”, works on California or by Californians, which makes sense for a bookstore located in the state capitol. Time Tested carried first editions, signed editions, and so forth, so a true collectors store. But also paperbacks, like essay collections by Virigina Woolf and Kenneth Rexroth, and Daniel Singers book on the 1968 May-June Days in Paris. I seem to recall a limited selection new titles and speaking engagements by authors, similar to what you see today on Book TV.

The owner at the time was an outspoken lefty, so the store did carry a lot of left-related titles, going back to muckraking writers of the early Progressive era. Being politically left myself I really appreciated a kindred spirit running this bookstore. I recall also his personal touch, ranging from advice to the care he took hand-wrapping ones purchase in brown paper and tape. Time Tested has apparently entered the internet era as they have a website and blog



Others

There were some others that I don’t remember too well. Levinsons facing Plaza Park, had a lot of art books. Another that I do recall was in Old Sacramento (which also had a “Californiana” specialization, but sold old maps and prints, too). I remember because I bought a used copy of the old California Water Atlas there.

Edited or facilitated by Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Cataogue fame, the Water Atlas was published during the Brown administration, and inspired in part by the water atlas prepared by state engineer Ham Hall back in the 1890s, this huge folio-size book was partially bound in leather. A masterpiece of book design for its time, it was a real surprise to see this for sale since it was intended more as a library reference book.

"..but its a dry heat!"

Sacramentans have transformed the somewhat boosterish grin-and-bear-it response to their hot summers into an ironic statement. At 100 degrees and up it doesn’t matter if the heat is dry or wet, it’s just hot.

Native Sacramentan Joan Didion has a perfect passage on the hot Sacramento summer in an early essay, “Notes of A Native Daughter”:

“ ..It is just as hot in the summertime, so hot that the air shimmers and the grass bleaches white, and the blinds stay drawn all day, so hot that August comes on not like a month, but like an affliction…”

The essay itself is an excellent little memoir of the city and its surrounding countryside, told from the perspective of the heiress to an “old settler” legacy; Didion is of an old ranching family that came over in the gold rush days. As she tells it this class remained prosperous but increasingly irrelevant as Sacramento grew from an agricultural trading center into a metropolis.

Around the turn of the last century, when the larger ranches were being subdivided into ranchettes and irrigation colonys, promotional literature or the era usually mentioned fruit and orange groves and palm trees, giving a somewhat arcadian cast to the place.

This was deceptive, because the Central Valley is in reality a semi-desert.
The golden hills of California are not golden, they are dry dead grass, turned maybe a light brown rather than gold, during the dry season.

And there are really just two seasons. Hot and dry and rainless in the summer, rainy and cool (not cold) in the winter.

And smoky in the fall, when they burn off the rice paddies between Sacramento and Yuba City.

In the summer those rice paddies form a little microclimate. Driving down off the foothills and across the valley-floor range land, in the hot dry air with your windows open, dropping into the expanses of the diked lowlands of the paddies closer to the river humidity from evaporation hits like a wall, the heavy wet air leaving one gasping for breath a little.

Tule Fog

What is not mentioned is the peculiar winter weather phenomenon (when it’s not raining) of tule fog.

Named after the tulares, the reed beds that once filled the delta and lowlands of the valley prior to reclamation, tule fog rises in these wet low spots to fill the valley from the Coast Ranges to the Sierra foothills.

This is not an ordinary fog, as it is exceptionally dense and exceptionally long lasting, filling the valley floor for days on end.




In fact so dense that CHIP will form up and lead convoys of vehicles across the valley as it is unsafe to drive across solo, except on the interstate, where one is at risk of sudden death at 80 MPH in the inevitable multicar collision.

But in Sacramento, in Capital Park and the tree lined streets of the old city, tule fog is sort of romantic and cozy , muffling the city sounds in a white gauze

Eurosprawl III: Introducing Region Frankfurt

...Frankurt Am Main, not that other Frankfurt in the former DDR.

Frankfurt had a reputation as the most "Americanized" city in Germany even before the skyscraper boom. Now it looks even more American with its cluster of downtown skyscrapers (which are, unlike in US citys, not in the original town center, but a neighborhood just beyond).
In a way Frankfurt had a similar issue as Dayton did, as the metropolitan area was called the Rhine-Main Region (after the two major rivers in the area), akin to The Miami Valley. Apparenlty the label now being pushed is "Region Frankfurt", which sounds like the rebranding of the Miami Valley as the Dayton Region.

The Rhine Main region is similar in some ways to southwest Ohio/Dayton/Cincinnati area as it crosses three state boundaries (Hesse, Bavaria, and Rhinland/Palatinate, sort of a German "Tri-State") and has a number of core cities of varying sizes, the dominant one being Frankfurt.

Unlike the "Tri State"/Miami Valley there are two state capitals here: Wiesbaden and Mainz. And one of the core cities, Aschaffenburg, was rated as one of the best places to live in Germany (the Germans apparently have their own "city list" or Places Rated thing going on).

To start we will look at three suburbs in this metropolitan region, Nordenstadt, Rosbach, and Rodheim.
For the above map, the colored areas show the economic influence of the core cities down to the lowest unit of local government (in Hesse it would be the gemeinde, or commune, usually based around a village or small town, but also can be urban or city government). The next largest unit of government, not shown on this map, is the Kreis, literally translated to circuit, but equivilant to a US county. In Hesse the largest citys are, or where, "Kriesfrei", meaning they are independent of countys (in the US an equivilant situation occurs in Virginia).

Though the Europeans, Germans included, are known for having good public transit, freeways are just as important as in the US for getting around a metropolitan area. Germans use their cars to commute just like we do, with business and industry being disperesed throughout the region in office and industrial parks, as well as in the various center cities (which are, unlike the US, still economically viable places)



Different from a US interstate system, this regional freeway net does not pass through any of the core city centers, but instead provides spur freeways or quasi-freeways to connect into the respective city centers.

And given the high degree of car travel in a fairly dense ubran region, one can anticipate the inevitable traffic jams, which can be as massive as in the US, maybe even more so.
In Hesse there are attempts to do various traffic control and management things, like this freeway cam system (similar to whats available in some US cities, where you can tune in to traffic conditions on cable TV).


The slogan is "Jam-Free Hesse 2015" (they wish). But interesting to note the scale of the freeway system: six lanes in what looks like a semi-rural or suburban area, not too different from I-75 between Cincy and Dayton.

Cesar Chavez Plaza

Back in downtown Sacramento, this park used to be called City Hall Plaza, but was renamed in honor of the union organizer and Chicano community leader Cesar Chavez (not based here, but influential in the wider California latino community)

The park is the centerpiece of a set of public buildings, most notably city hall, which provides a focal point for the space.
A close-up shows the landscaping detail, with a fountain in the center and a mix of restrooms and a little cafe structure to the left.
More views of the plaza. One perspective shows one of the skyscrapers proposed for downtown Sacramento, while another shows how the old city hall is a feature of the plaza landscape (plus the sensitive addition of the new city hall to the rear). One can see how this park is a superb urban grace note...
Another view of the plaza, showing the "Rachet Wrench Building" in the background and the central fountain.
The cafe/restroom area, plus some publicity for plaza music events. This place was always used for occasional concerts and political things.
...and in this case a farmers market on the circular walk around the fountain.
The greenspace of Cesar Chavez Plaza, with a great shot of Sacramento towers....city hall clocktower in the foreground, an old skyscraper, and the California Capital in the background, an excellent catch of the genus loci of downtown "River City"