FrontBurner Archives

Giuliani Doubts He Could Win GOP Presidential Nod

By Glenn Hunter | August 31, 2011|4:53 pm

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says he would consider running for the Rudy_IMG_0256 GOP presidential nomination if he were the only candidate who could beat President Obama–and if he could win the nomination. However, “It would be a real challenge for me to get the nomination, because I’m considered a moderate Republican,” Giuliani said in Dallas today, addressing a luncheon at Hodges Capital’s 2011 Investment Forum. Asked later whether he’d be interested in the vice presidential slot on a ticket with his friend Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the former mayor laughed and said, “I’m not thinking about that at all. … But I do admire Gov. Perry a lot. Anyone who attacks him on his record in Texas is making a big mistake.”

During his luncheon talk, Giuliani (pictured) said runaway health care costs are the No. 1 reason for the nation’s debt problem and struggling economy. He recommended taking responsibility for health insurance away from employers and the government, and putting it in the hands of individual consumers with a blend of tax incentives and private accounts. On foreign policy, Giuliani said America’s willingness to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is the “only reason the country has been safe for the last 10 years.” He also ripped the administration’s timetable for troop withdrawal from that part of the world, saying a continuing U.S. presence is needed there, because “maybe 20 different groups and thousands if not hundreds of thousands would like to come here and attack us and kill us.”

A D Magazine Guess-tigation

If You’re Reading This, Then Timbo, the Dallas Zoo’s Oldest Gorilla, Is Dead

By Zac Crain | August 31, 2011|3:35 pm

She is, at the advanced age (for a gorilla) of 49. Cue this, then jump.

Uncategorized

A Meaningless Thoughtxperiment.

By Patrick Kennedy | August 31, 2011|3:16 pm

Arts District, off-center.

Arts District (woulda, coulda, shoulda, despite my preference for a scattered form of public amenity, each as its own centerpiece) organized around a center of gravity, a redesigned Ross Avenue fitting of its primacy and funded by the very private development parcels it creates to provide the background of the “district.” That should’ve could’ve would’ve been on-going during the last building cycle providing the area with the auxiliary life providing development without waiting around for subsidy that may never happen.

Uncategorized

Right is Wrong, Up is Down

By Patrick Kennedy | August 31, 2011|2:24 pm

patrick kennedy's Photo on Lockerz

I snapped this a moment ago. The “Please Play On the Grass” sign is superfluous, but perhaps necessary to the joke. The real aim of this post, not to mention the focus of my camera phone, is the wall.

Urbanism is about integration, things interconnecting. Interfacing. Creating synergies where the value of one thing amplifies the value of the other and vice versa.

It is building accommodation without integration, the requisite demand driver creating the very need for said accommodation. That accommodation might be 100 million dollar condos or it could be a welcome sign to play on the grass. But what market is there to listen?

People emerge at crossroads. This is integration. Cross-roads create centers, also known as hubs or nodes in planner-speak, of activity. The illogical city tries to create place, accommodation, off-center. Perfectly rational, because the cross-roads are so undesirable. So unsafe.

This is a building within a cloverleaf off-ramp. Such engineering gymnastics erode interconnectivity, value, and desirability. Demand. The driver of supply.

The wall, presumably as part of a parking garage, clumsily designed, is actually a rational by-product of the site and the cloverleaf. It is what happens when thought and design is bottled up into a box. Of course, is a rational response to irrationality, rational or logical in the first place?

You have to untangle the negative forces weighing upon demand. In this case, they didn’t. In most cases, the city of Dallas doesn’t nor does the private development market. And it ends up costing. In this case, it will be the investors and the city. Unfortunately, the investors are also the city. Its fire fighters and police pensions.

I don’t like seeing anyone lose money. Especially when everything could be done right in the first place before having to go through these painful learning experiences of bad developments and mismanaged attempts at “urban” and “density.” It usually means we’ll give up easily and go back to the way things were. And that is what really scares me.

——-

And since I’m not smart enough to plan out my stream of conscience tweets in reverse order so they appear on a timeline orderly rather than chronologically, I’ll post them as intended:

The wall as rational solution to an irrational, illogical city.

The illogical city defined: whence providing accommodation without ensuring the requisite integration that demands it.

Space with no place.

Place without reason.

Taxpayers left footing the bill of desire without demand.

Local News

Felix Jones Is Now More Explodey

By Bethany Anderson | August 31, 2011|12:48 pm

Interesting story by Matt Moseley here, on how the Cowboys’ Felix Jones worked to become a more explosive running back in the offseason. In short, he started attending gymnastics classes in Rockwall, where he was under the tutelage of Brazilian gymnastics coach Igor Carvalho, but Marion Barber started it.

Media

Sam Gwynne Going Back to Texas Monthly

By Michael J. Mooney | August 31, 2011|12:20 pm

Sam Gwynne, the Pulitzer Prize finalist and best-selling author of Empire of the Summer Moon, will soon be returning to Texas Monthly, after a brief stint with the Morning News. Gwynne spent much of the past decade as an executive editor at TM, and he’ll rejoin the staff in October as a special correspondent. Jake Silverstein, the man in charge over there, told me this morning that Gwynne will have plenty of time to finish his highly anticipated new book, a biography of Stonewall Jackson, (a film adaptation of Summer Moon is also in the works, with Larry McMurtry writing the screenplay) but he emphasized “this is definitely not an honorary position.” Silverstein says they’ve already got a few story ideas in the works. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to have Sam returning to what we certainly consider his home.”

Things to Do in Dallas

Things To Do In Dallas Tonight: Aug. 31

By Liz Johnstone | August 31, 2011|11:26 am

It has been brought to my attention that I don’t ever talk about sports here. While this is not entirely true, you don’t actually want me to talk about sports. It would be embarrassing for everyone involved, despite my very small amount of newly acquired knowledge that has come with marathoning both seasons of Sports Night, which was/still is genius television.

Regardless, athletic events do happen. And I’m especially sad that I didn’t recommend last night’s Rangers game, where apparently people wore bear suits. Hindsight is a terrible thing. Then again, no one expects a bear suit at a Tuesday night baseball game the same way that no one expects the Spanish Inquisition on Halloween, because ignorant people will just think you’re some sort of priest. In a red robe. So clearly they mean “cardinal” but they’re already so far off it’s not even worth trying to explain the joke. Maybe, just maybe, these bear people will come back for game two this evening against Tampa. Behold my sporty brain. And if you are heading to the Ballpark tonight, check out the Dallas Morning News‘ exciting food coverage. One of these is sub req, naturally.

As you might could tell, I’m feeling a little weird today. So that makes it a great night for me to head over to the Ochre House and check out something I do talk about quite a bit: a play. Morphing is Matthew Posey’s latest writer-director-actor credit, a riff on Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night that of course manages to incorporate a giant man-eating puppet. Of course it does. FrontRow’s Lance Lusk has the review. Cliff notes? He liked it quite a bit. Green means go, except if you ask my cousin Jeff, who has a theory that almost makes sense on why green traffic lights do not actually mean go.

For more to do tonight, especially if you are someone who secretly or not so secretly likes Selena Gomez, I cordially invite you to click here.

Business

Chuck Greenberg: Stars Bidder Who Believes Most in Future of Franchise Will Win

By Glenn Hunter | August 31, 2011|11:08 am

“Yeah,” sports executive Chuck Greenberg was saying to Paul Stewart, a former Dallas Symphony Paul Stewart and Chuck Greenberg IMG_0250 Orchestra official, “I’m gonna try to make it two in a row!”

Greenberg (pictured at far right with Stewart) has kept a low profile since being ousted as Texas Rangers CEO earlier this year. But there he was at a party last night at the W Hotel penthouse where sports entrepreneur Kirby Schlegel lives, talking openly to guests about his interest in acquiring the Dallas Stars.

Greenberg and Kirby’s father, Canadian-born Pavestone founder Bob Schlegel, who was also in attendance, years ago tried (unsuccessfully) to buy the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres team.

Awesome Things

These Rangers Fans Bear Watching

By Dan Koller | August 31, 2011|10:29 am

2011-08-30 21.14.55

My reception during the Rangers’ victory over the Rays last night was a little furry.

Uncategorized

Confusing the Leaves for the Tree

By Patrick Kennedy | August 31, 2011|9:26 am

Building a city of only leaves is fun for a while….

Christopher Alexander, one of the foremost influential writers/thinkers on urban structure, complexity, and the juncture between philosophy, psychology, and the ecology of human habitat, famously wrote an essay that “a city is not a tree.” In it, he argued against the on-going modernist planning and city building that was too “top down” and not an outgrowth of “the many.”

While I concur with his thesis, I will disagree with the appropriate usage of the metaphor. Or at least adapt the metaphor to the rhetorical purposes of this blog posting. He used the tree, to reference the trunk, the singular and top-down planning initiatives of the 20th century (that incidentally had no historical foundation, but were quite literally experiments with humans as the lab rats) and the thought process that a beautiful tree with leaves will sprout from said trunk.

The reality is that a city is precisely like a tree, when we properly define what the trunk, the roots, the limbs, and the leaves represent. So in this sense, the planning and city building process and professions are NOT like a tree as Alexanders suggests. But, the actual city is like a tree when we properly associate the metaphorical assemblage and the role of planning and citizens in the cultivation of said tree.

First, the primary mistake of the current generation of city planning/building, which for the most part is a remnant of the top-down approach that Alexander criticizes, and that Ed Glaeser summarizes in the first part of his most recent book (skip the last half), is that we mistake “city” and city function for that which we see, touch, hear, smell, etc. All of those things are the physical by-product of what the city really is and the function it performs for humanity.

What we’re left with is those who don’t know better concocting things like homogenous “arts districts” (let’s remember that the entire idea of “district” is a modernist one implying homogeny and impending doom), convention centers, highways, or various other “magic bullet” type projects to SAVE THE CITY!!!!!

Then on the other hand, we have those that SHOULD know better, professionals in the planning and city building industry who confuse things slightly closer to the mark, but still off it of being the appropriate and foundational building block of urbanism. These include the various phraseology clattered about by planners such as “mixed-use,” “live-above-the-shop,” “Build-to-lines,” “form-based-codes,” etc. etc. Similar to the above, these are just by-products. They are the leaves of the tree, but not the tree. They are ephemeral. They come and they go.

They are the by-product of that which is deeper and commonly misunderstood. It is also precisely the reason why we end up with so many faux or cargo cult urbanism development projects. With respect to Tyler Durden, planners, architects, and developers shoving feathers up their butts and calling themselves chickens, while the city officials crow about what they’re bringing to a city only to have it die on the vine not a handful of years later.

They’re all in the wrong place. They misplace their faith in perhaps they’re own deluded abilities to create value where there is none. Or at least, not nearly as much as they think they can get. More power to them if they can make a profit. But the lessons of Victory and Park Lane Place should prove other wise, providing a clarion call to both the public and private sides, that we must get it right. Development ought to be predictable, not chaotic. “Location, location, location” lasted so long because it was correct. There is a direct relationship between value, density, and interconnectivity, i.e. the location of a place in relationship to its surroundings.

The city, like a tree, is indeed a fractal entity. Where the tree is comprised of cells serving various functions, both interdependent and occasionally competitive, likewise is a city. Fractals are complex arrangements determined by infinite processes defined generally by simple rules. Water finds its lowest point, flows downhill, produces array of water bodies.

Or think about your television. Each pixel is just a blinking light. If you saw only that one pixel and watched it for an hour, you would only see lights of various colors blinking on and off. Watch the entire screen and the same hour of let’s say an episode of The Wire and you get nigh infinite meaning and complexity from that one pixel.

The rule of the fractal agglomeration of the city and its patterns of agglomeration is based upon desirability (and ideally on free choice and opportunity – although there rarely is such a reality). And desirability is related directly to proximity. To some extent the web allows us to decentralize, but being that we are social creatures who interact and perform tasks better when in person much like we don’t hate but depend on other pedestrians where eye contact is made, but hate all other drivers where it isn’t possible, suggesting that we will utilize the web rationally specifically to cluster, not in spite of it. Clustering still has its advantages.

It is also important to note, that desirability is mostly subjective. This is where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes into place. Certain needs are objective. We all need access to air, water, shelter, and other basic necessities for life. The livable cities rankings are based upon this understanding (if only intuitively). Those that provide the greatest range of opportunity for the greatest range of people are those most livable cities (Vancouver, Zurich, Copenhagen, etc).

As you get higher up the order of needs, less people share those needs. Therefore, desirability is a gradient of subjectivity. Of occasionally overlapping and sometimes competing wants and needs. The city’s job is to balance those competing demands ensuring the basics (at least) are still met.

Our shared humanity, or nature as humans, is why cities are so similar throughout their recorded history and across the globe. Just bigger now. The differences might seem overt, but only as deep as one tree’s leaves are of a different shape or color than another’s. We all have the same (or similar) needs. Some just have regional variegations based on adapted localized culture and often more importantly, geography, ie different material palettes and adaptations based on local climate.

Unfortunately, we’re still building cities of leaves. Of those things we touch and see. Enforcing “mixed-use,” “live above the shop,” “build-to-lines,” and form-based codes and other codifications in places that likely don’t warrant such intensity of development. None of these concepts were defined when any great city was born and evolved. They just happened out of rationality and competitive metabolism of ideas. All are direct outgrowths of the desirability of proximity and the proximity to that which some segment of the market (enough to fill the building at profitable rent/maintenance levels) finds desirable, thus supporting the development.

It should be stated that I do support those quoted concepts, but only in appropriate places, and with the caveat that they are merely a necessitated band-aid on a gaping wound of city planning and perhaps more importantly, understanding.

Eventually, those leaves all dry up and blow away when they have no foundation to regenerate. No trunk, no seed, no roots, and more importantly, no stewards to cultivate it. Because ultimately that is what citizens and planners really are. The seed and roots are the connectivity (local and global). It is the point of being, the city’s raison d’etre. The trunk and branches are the infrastructure, the bones. They ought be permanent if you prefer a city to last. See Detroit, barely with any leaves left on its branches.

It had not only a homogeny of industry, but more importantly I’m guessing was a homogeny of transportation. Otherwise, it might’ve better adapted and overcome. If we don’t learn (and quickly) that the leaves are not the tree, our leaf pile will dry up and blow away and we’ll have no soft landing spot to cushion the various jumps in and out of bubble cycles.

10 Most Beautiful Women in Dallas

10 Most Beautiful Women: Who Will Be Week 3 Semifinalists?

By Raya Ramsey | August 31, 2011|7:08 am

If you missed my spiel on the WBAP Morning News today, talking about the 10 Most Beautiful competition, that’s okay. The exclusive interview went live at 6:47 am at 820 AM, and if you were in bed, I don’t blame you. I should have been, too. Here’s what you missed: it’s Week 3 of voting! (Oh, and my name is Ray-Uh, not Rye-Uh.) We have three women who are solid in the lead right now (we wish we could tell you), and every single vote makes a difference. If you’ve got a favorite lady this week, give her your click of approval and help her advance to the final round, which begins Sept. 12.

Local News

Leading Off (8/31/11)

By Zac Crain | August 31, 2011|7:01 am

Parkland Board Replacing CEO Ron Anderson. If you missed the story as it broke last night, here you go.

Wildfire Destroys 25 Homes Near Possum Kingdom Lake. Another 125 are threatened, and this comes only a few months after the fire that burned down 160 in the same area.

Carrollton Neighborhood’s Long Egret Nightmare Finally Over. “The stained streets, the poo, the regurgitation in the lawns,” resident Scott Baughn said, in a quote you are unlikely to see that high in a story again.Â No one on Chamberlain Drive or from the city could disturb the birds, who have been nesting in the trees there for months, because they are protected by Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code.

DISD Trustee Carla Ranger Retracts Her Resignation. She turned it in on Friday after losing a redistricting battle, but decided to stay after all.

One brand, four magazines.