The Use of the Drive-Thru Lane

Most of you reading this have been to a drive-thru.  Be it a bank, fast food establishment or for coffee.  For your visit you were likely in a motor vehicle.  Duh, right? But what if you don’t have a car or don’t drive?  The most obvious is as a pedestrian.  Other options might include a bicycle or motor scooter.  When I rode a motor scooter I was able to use the drive-thru if they knew I was there.  Bicyclists have, for years, complained they have been refused service at banks and at other drive-thru lanes.  What about mobility scooters?

A reader sent me a link to an interesting story:

A White Castle in St. Paul, Minnesota, is a 24-hour establishment, but it locks its dining room doors at 11 pm. Unfortunately, its drive-through service is restricted to customers in cars, so the employees refused to serve a 37-year-old woman who pulled up on an electric mobility scooter. Now she says she’s madder than fish grease, which is pretty mad, and she wants to sue them for discriminating against customers who can’t drive.

Fish grease? Anyway, if a business is open is it legal to refuse access to the disabled who are not in a car?  Or even the able-bodied not in a car?  Our society has become so auto-centric we don’t know how to relate to other humans not in a car.  We use their car to judge them — their income & social standing.  The lack of a car presumably puts them at the bottom.

As someone who drives a car as well as an electric wheelchair I can tell you I expect service regardless of which “vehicle” I’m using.  I hope the woman in the story forces White Castle and such places to examine their policies.

– Steve Patterson

Are Developers Evil?

First, full disclosure – the bulk of my work as an architect has been for and with developers and their cousins, commercial property managers.

In the world of urban design, developers, many times, become the fall guys and/or are blamed for building the suburban blandness that we all love to take pot shots at. I fall into the camp that the development community is much like any other – you have few crooks and sleazeballs, you have a few truly outstanding, creative and “sensitive” individuals, and most just fall in the inoffensive middle. I’m also a big believer in the three-legged stool analogy – developers don’t and can’t act in vacuum. Before anything can be built or renovated, in addition to the developer, a project requires approvals by “the government” and willing buyers or renters. Granted, developers are “in it for the money”, and many times tend to favor “cost-effective” choices over more sustainable ones, but they can only “get away with it” IF the government approves and/or IF their customers are willing to write the check for the finished product. People are buying vinyl-sided boxes in O’Fallon for a variety of reasons (including “affordability” and a “yard”), but having a gun held to heads isn’t one of them. The same goes for the proliferation of Walgreen’s at the expense of the locally-owned corner pharmacies – people are voting with their wallets.

Unless you’re one of those real rarities, a fourth of fifth generation living on the family farm/homestead, you can thank a developer for where you live, where you work and where you go to school. Someone, sometime, took a risk and laid out your block or cul de sac. Someone built a structure, and it may have been renovated, one or more times, by other people, or even you, willing to take the risk, a.k.a, developers. And in the realm of higher education, nearly every institution continues to invest and reinvest in their facilities, acting very much as developers.

The second leg of the stool is “the government”. I’m going to save a discussion of the quality of our elected officials for another post, but we can certainly kick around the wonderful world of government regulation. If you go to any jurisdiction that has a Planning, Community Development or Public Works department, you can be pretty sure that you’re going to have rules that limit what you can do and specify what you can’t do. And while appeals of and challenges to the regulations remain a possibility, most developers and most clients would much rather just comply with them, get the project done, and move on. These rules and regulations don’t just magically appear on the law books – they originate either from the professional staff or from the legislative side, and almost always are enacted, with the best of intentions, to address, in someone’s eyes, a bad or problem situation. Unfortunately, that Law of Unintended Consequences has a nasty habit of kicking in, and bland is “safe”, which is one big reason why suburbia looks remarkably consistent across the United States.

Finally, the third leg is the consumer. Like they say, never overestimate the taste of the American public. We’re a country that has embraced the mullet, shag carpet, avocado green appliances, vinyl siding, PBR and jacked-up pickup trucks. There’s a saying in the auto industry that “there’s a butt for every bucket”. Most developers aren’t stupid – if nobody’s buying at the price that they’re selling, guess what, they don’t do it again! So while it’s easy to sit in our ivory towers, in front of our keyboards, lamenting that too many people simply “don’t get it”, the hard reality is that they DO! The developers are giving them what they want, at a price they can afford, and everyone (except maybe “us” urbanists) is walking away happy . . .

– Jim Zavist

What Does a Neighborhood Center Look Like?

Perhaps a public square or park as a neighborhood center?  Or a commercial district?  Not if you live in Carr Square urban renewal area:

All the natural neighborhood centers were razed along with the rest of the neighborhood during the dreadful years of Urban “Renewal.”  With community centers that evolved over time the planners & architects created faux versions.  View the above on a Google Map.

The basketball and tennis courts, adjacent to the center, are quite sad.

Carr Square Village was one of the earliest  clearance projects in the city.  It was completed in August 1942.  The 24.3 acre development consisted of 53 2 & 3 story buildings with a total of 658 units.

The above center was not in place as of a 1971 aerial photo of the city.  The building appears to be from the 1970s or perhaps as late as the mid 1980s.  By then the renewal area would be been 30-40 years old.  The “neighborhood center” was likely another attempt to renew the area.

At some point after 1971 much of the housing was razed from the two green sections in the bottom left corner.  The remaining buildings have also changed considerably since 1942.  With enough time and money we will eventually reverse all the mistakes of the past.  But will this neighborhood ever have a real center again?  Doubtful.

Brick vs. Frame in St. Louis

St. Louis is a brick city.  Every block in every neighborhood you see brick.  I love St. Louis’ heritage of brick.  But I love wood framed structures too.

“Frame” is a reference not just to the exterior material but to the structural construction method.  St. Louis’ brick structures are made of structural brick walls.

Newer brick structures are wood framed with a veneer of brick applied.  Most framed structures have siding covering the framework.

The above house is a beautiful wood-framed example from my home town of Oklahoma City.  Similar homes can be seen in the St. Louis region. This house was never modest, originally built for a growing middle class.  In the City of St. Louis frame homes are typically modest:

I love the simplicity of these homes on the Hill North of I-44.

In places you will see frame homes next to the more standard brick, such as above.  To my eye the contrast is quite pleasing.  With so many stunning brick buildings in the City of St. Louis I think we unfairly dismiss our more humble frame structures.

Both construction methods have their own pros and cons.  Both are stable if they have a good foundation and water is kept out.  Renovation of each has issues.  Frame structures can be insulated easier than brick structures.  Ditto for running wiring & plumbing.  Wood siding & trim needs paint.   Weatherproof (vinyl) siding & trim ruins the look of these structures. Brick must stay pointed.

– Steve Patterson

Poll, How Long Before the City of St. Louis Will Be Smoke-Free

You oppose, favor or are neutral about smoke-free legislation.  Regardless of your perspective on the merits of smoke-free laws, I want your opinion on when you think the City of St. Louis will be covered by smoke-free legislation. Here is the question:

Clayton will go smoke-free in July 2010.  Regardless of your view on such laws, at what point do you think the City of St. Louis will go smoke-free, if ever?

The possible answers are:

• Before the end of 2009
• January 2010
• same time as Clayton – July 2010
• January 2011
• Only upon a statewide ban
• January 2012
• Never — not for City or Missouri
• By January 2015
• Unsure/Don’t Care

Remember this is not about when you want it passed or don’t want it passed. You may, for example, oppose smoke-free laws but think it will be in effect by January 2011.  Or if you are like me, you want these laws in effect yesterday, but realize it will not happen as quickly as you’d like.  So when you vote in the poll don’t select the answer you’d like to see but what you think will be the outcome.

You can find the poll in the sidebar to the right.

– Steve Patteron