I had a discussion last night with a friend who is involved in the renovation of Union Station in Toronto. Union Station is a big deal of a building, not because of the architecture but because it was one of Canada's first great train stations - the entry to the City for thousands and thousands of people. It makes appearances in Canadian literature (Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion for example). And it is the centre of a large urban set-piece as University and Front Streets form a block long U shape to emphasize its importance.
Architecturally, it is a Canadian attempt at Beaux Arts architecture that only comes off in the Great Hall - a long basilica space with covered by a coffered arch. Still, it has about the highest level of Heritage Protection a building can have.
My friend's firm is specifically handling many of the interior elements throughout the station. Other firms are responsible for different aspects of the project. Because he is working with the interiors, he spends a lot of time negotiating the specifics of how to interpret heritage protection. The exterior is relatively simple - fix it. But the interior is more complex; railway stations linked to public transit don't work the way they did when Union was first built so every issue from signage to ticket booths to furniture to timetables has to be negotiated. In many parts of the building it isn't complicated but in the Great Hall it is.
Heritage protection, according to my friend who gets his info from a specialist they hired in Montreal, is ultimately reduced to one of three states: reproduction, submission, and nothing. So the ticket booths, for example, can be exact replicas of the originals (totally impractical) or they can be removed (even more impractical) or they must be submissive to the heritage portions. This is interpreted as "less interesting".
I was surprised by this. I am a fan of heritage protection generally. I think everyone can agree there is at least one building in the city developers should be prevented from demolishing. Which means everyone is in favour of heritage protection to some degree. We all fall on a hypothetical continuum between preserving one building and preserving every building. That was about as much thought as I had given the subject. The actual working of the protection, what was protected, from whom, and how weren't really questions I asked myself. In the particular case of Union Station I would say packing the Great Hall with laser light displays is a terrible idea but the qualification "submissive" is odd.
It is like demanding half-assed design. Nothing should grab peoples attention more than the original Great Hall architecture so everything you design must be bland. Invisible. It isn't wrong to ask for subtle architecture. It isn't wrong to forbid neon or bright colours or things that make very loud noises. It should be understood you are designing for a prestigious public building and not the midway of a travelling carnival. But the "submissive" qualification presumes people using Union Station will care about the architecture and that is definitely a mistaken presumption. Part of the joy of Union for me is that it is there to be looked at but it's out of the way. The most impressive bits happen 40 or 50 feet above your head. You can look up and admire or you can fight through the crowd to get the next train. It's always there and I'm glad there is protection in place to ensure it will continue to be there but I spent almost a decade in architecture school, I'm passionate about architecture and even I don't care all the time. If I'm meeting someone, I want to be able to see the schedules and track listing, I want to know how to get from where I am to where I need to be, I want to know what time it is and how much time I have to get from A to B. This is stuff my friend's firm is fantastic at designing (they are also pretty good at buildings, interiors, and furniture).
The qualification for design inside a heritage building shouldn't be "submissive" but "clearly differentiated".
I guess my point is there should be two axis - one for how many buildings you want to save and another for different they can be and still be the same. Right now, there are condo towers being built (and not only in Toronto) with facades of older buildings glued to the side like bumper stickers. In some perverse way, this qualifies as "preserving" the original building. I am not that far along the second axis. But I think well-designed, state of the art signage, info-graphics, furniture, and other accoutrements would be beautiful beneath the Great Hall's arched ceiling. No neon needed. And it would be obvious to everyone which parts were a century old and which weren't. That would be honest to the original building, which was less about the Beaux Arts and more about progress. It was (and is) an important building because it marked a giant technological step (the railroad) and the unification of a nation. Design that demonstrates precisely how far the state of the arts has advanced since the station was originally built would be entirely appropriate. Sometimes you need trust people to have a brain. Of course, when I see how heritage protection is applied to some buildings in this city, it is worth asserting the opposite: sometimes you have to wonder if people have brains.
Monday, November 25, 2013
The Battle for Yonge Street
If you want to understand the collision (and collusion) between political and economic forces as they apply to development and urban form there is no better place to look than Yonge Street in Toronto.
The City of Toronto recently made a significant change to how approval for tower construction is handled. Previously, the entire city had height restrictions and anyone wanting to exceed that limit (60 - 70% of recent condo construction) had to apply for an exception. The City used this as leverage to get things like parks built by developers. Developers got fed up with the extra costs and time these negotiation and payouts required and started appealing to the Ontario Municipal Board (a provincial body not a municipal one and very business friendly). The OMB almost always struck down height limits. The City responded with a new statute for tall buildings that contained design guidelines (rules) and heights by area. It was a concession to business interests meant to keep the province out of the decision making process. Most of Yonge St downtown is now 60 storeys by right - meaning the location entitles the developers to 60 storeys without any negotiation. Some of it is 80 storey and some 100. A new 100 storey project seems fantastic now but when the statute was passed Toronto had more towers under construction than any city in the world and more condos being developed than Manhattan.
The design guidelines in the Tall Buildings code include a mandatory podium (I forget exactly how tall this is to be, probably between 4 and 6 storeys) to preserve the streetscape. Buildings, particularly towers that stand off from the street (and from the line established by the surrounding buildings) look like gap teeth. Over the last 400 years an understanding, sometimes statutory and sometimes habitual, has been established that only buildings of significance can stand off the street. So City Hall gets its own courtyard. The Provincial Parliament gets a great lawn in surrounding it. But Starbucks stands in line with all the other buildings. If you think of a tall building, it's probably standing alone with open space around it. Unless you live in Manhattan, where laws concerning maximum coverage and set-backs have been in place for a long time. There are exceptions in Toronto, most notably Mies ven der Rohe's TD Towers.
Most residential buildings downtown (or anywhere where land is valuable) have a plot that encourages units on all four sides - this is only untrue if your plot is very thin. But you need astronomical land values for a thin plot to be worth developing a tower on. Think Hong Kong or Tokyo. So, you have a plot that is some version of a rectangle or quadrilateral. More units equals more money; units facing four directions equals more money than units facing two directions. But two of those four directions are going to be looking directly at other buildings unless you rotate the building and step it back slightly from the edges of your plot. So that's what happens. Now, instead of a continuous wall enclosing both sides of the street, filled with shop windows and things to look at you have a corners facing the street. The answer is make the developer (and the architect) include a podium on the bottom. Developers don't complain because you can't use the lowest stories for condos anyway - no one is going to buy a street level condo. The space in the podium is used for elevator cores, service areas, mail boxes, offices, and (when the space is big enough or valuable enough) retail. The problem is extremely high land prices (meaning extremely high rents) limit the types of tenants you can get. Mostly it is either chains that will lose money on an individual branch to maintain market share, luxury goods, or stores that make huge profits per sq ft.
Yonge St real estate is valuable but not cool (at least not in most areas). Partly that value is due to historic significance but mostly it's due to the location of Toronto's subway system - there's a major line directly below Yonge. I'll get to that in a second. Because Yonge isn't cool luxury stores don't want space on it - they are all on the so called Mink Mile (Bloor between, say, Avenue Rd and Yonge). That means the podiums (podia?) of any new towers on Yonge are going to be filled with bank branches, drug store chains, tiny coffee shops, and liquor stores. Block after block. It doesn't make for a nice stroll.
Now the subway. The Yonge line is ridiculously beyond capacity. If you live downtown and want to ride the line to work, you better leave your home a 6 am. Because by 7 am the line will fill the platform, out the turnstiles, up the stairs, and out onto the street. So adding 100 storey condo towers directly on top of it isn't such a great idea. But the developer doesn't care how long you have to wait to get on the subway. She only cares if you will pay more for the idea you have instant access to transit. And people do. The fact that subways increase land value is why Toronto is building one in Scarborough - which doesn't need one at all - instead of downtown - which desperately needs one. The people who voted for the current Mayor (and his brother) live along the route of the new line. It's cash for votes.
OK. So because of the subway, because the street has a by right height of not less than 60 storeys, because it is one of the most famous streets in Toronto, it's possible to sell a lot of condos on Yonge. But the City (not the part that is building subways we don't need, the part headed by Toronto's wonderful head planner Jennifer Keesmaat) is trying to get almost all of Yonge turned into a Historic Conservation District. If / when they succeed (Torontonians love heritage protection and will slap it on anything) developers will be forced to build without affecting the historic streetscape. Personally, I think most of the streetscape should be replaced - someone once called it 500 buildings leaning up against the Eaton Center. But that won't be a possibility when the whole thing gets heritage protection.
The people who run the heritage protection part of City Hall are little despots. Their office is only open until noon, they can exclude you from a building permit by fiat and there is no appeal. There are levels of heritage protection ranging from just a little (you can fix it and change the interiors all you want) to total (touch it and die). I don't know what level will apply in this case. It will probably be settled by negotiation. There are some ugly fucking buildings on Yonge and it would be impossible to justify total protection for them.
And so here, in a nutshell, are all the forces at play. The City can control the maximum height off any building as well as set-backs, cornice heights, percent coverage, and massing (through guidelines that are really rules). The City also decides where to build subways and how good transit service will be. And the City can award Heritage designations and the concomitant protection. But those are three different agencies within City Hall. Developers can pick and choose where to build towers and, if the by right height isn't high enough, they can appeal to the OMB for an exception. The planners are up against the pro-business politicians and the developers. Unfortunately, no one is talking to the TTC.
If I had any say, and I don't, I would make the by right height 40 storeys, exclude the OMB appeals by any law I could think of and make developers pay the TTC for any extra storeys. That way there might be a hope in hell the Downtown Relief Line would be built in my lifetime.
The City of Toronto recently made a significant change to how approval for tower construction is handled. Previously, the entire city had height restrictions and anyone wanting to exceed that limit (60 - 70% of recent condo construction) had to apply for an exception. The City used this as leverage to get things like parks built by developers. Developers got fed up with the extra costs and time these negotiation and payouts required and started appealing to the Ontario Municipal Board (a provincial body not a municipal one and very business friendly). The OMB almost always struck down height limits. The City responded with a new statute for tall buildings that contained design guidelines (rules) and heights by area. It was a concession to business interests meant to keep the province out of the decision making process. Most of Yonge St downtown is now 60 storeys by right - meaning the location entitles the developers to 60 storeys without any negotiation. Some of it is 80 storey and some 100. A new 100 storey project seems fantastic now but when the statute was passed Toronto had more towers under construction than any city in the world and more condos being developed than Manhattan.
The design guidelines in the Tall Buildings code include a mandatory podium (I forget exactly how tall this is to be, probably between 4 and 6 storeys) to preserve the streetscape. Buildings, particularly towers that stand off from the street (and from the line established by the surrounding buildings) look like gap teeth. Over the last 400 years an understanding, sometimes statutory and sometimes habitual, has been established that only buildings of significance can stand off the street. So City Hall gets its own courtyard. The Provincial Parliament gets a great lawn in surrounding it. But Starbucks stands in line with all the other buildings. If you think of a tall building, it's probably standing alone with open space around it. Unless you live in Manhattan, where laws concerning maximum coverage and set-backs have been in place for a long time. There are exceptions in Toronto, most notably Mies ven der Rohe's TD Towers.
Most residential buildings downtown (or anywhere where land is valuable) have a plot that encourages units on all four sides - this is only untrue if your plot is very thin. But you need astronomical land values for a thin plot to be worth developing a tower on. Think Hong Kong or Tokyo. So, you have a plot that is some version of a rectangle or quadrilateral. More units equals more money; units facing four directions equals more money than units facing two directions. But two of those four directions are going to be looking directly at other buildings unless you rotate the building and step it back slightly from the edges of your plot. So that's what happens. Now, instead of a continuous wall enclosing both sides of the street, filled with shop windows and things to look at you have a corners facing the street. The answer is make the developer (and the architect) include a podium on the bottom. Developers don't complain because you can't use the lowest stories for condos anyway - no one is going to buy a street level condo. The space in the podium is used for elevator cores, service areas, mail boxes, offices, and (when the space is big enough or valuable enough) retail. The problem is extremely high land prices (meaning extremely high rents) limit the types of tenants you can get. Mostly it is either chains that will lose money on an individual branch to maintain market share, luxury goods, or stores that make huge profits per sq ft.
Yonge St real estate is valuable but not cool (at least not in most areas). Partly that value is due to historic significance but mostly it's due to the location of Toronto's subway system - there's a major line directly below Yonge. I'll get to that in a second. Because Yonge isn't cool luxury stores don't want space on it - they are all on the so called Mink Mile (Bloor between, say, Avenue Rd and Yonge). That means the podiums (podia?) of any new towers on Yonge are going to be filled with bank branches, drug store chains, tiny coffee shops, and liquor stores. Block after block. It doesn't make for a nice stroll.
Now the subway. The Yonge line is ridiculously beyond capacity. If you live downtown and want to ride the line to work, you better leave your home a 6 am. Because by 7 am the line will fill the platform, out the turnstiles, up the stairs, and out onto the street. So adding 100 storey condo towers directly on top of it isn't such a great idea. But the developer doesn't care how long you have to wait to get on the subway. She only cares if you will pay more for the idea you have instant access to transit. And people do. The fact that subways increase land value is why Toronto is building one in Scarborough - which doesn't need one at all - instead of downtown - which desperately needs one. The people who voted for the current Mayor (and his brother) live along the route of the new line. It's cash for votes.
OK. So because of the subway, because the street has a by right height of not less than 60 storeys, because it is one of the most famous streets in Toronto, it's possible to sell a lot of condos on Yonge. But the City (not the part that is building subways we don't need, the part headed by Toronto's wonderful head planner Jennifer Keesmaat) is trying to get almost all of Yonge turned into a Historic Conservation District. If / when they succeed (Torontonians love heritage protection and will slap it on anything) developers will be forced to build without affecting the historic streetscape. Personally, I think most of the streetscape should be replaced - someone once called it 500 buildings leaning up against the Eaton Center. But that won't be a possibility when the whole thing gets heritage protection.
The people who run the heritage protection part of City Hall are little despots. Their office is only open until noon, they can exclude you from a building permit by fiat and there is no appeal. There are levels of heritage protection ranging from just a little (you can fix it and change the interiors all you want) to total (touch it and die). I don't know what level will apply in this case. It will probably be settled by negotiation. There are some ugly fucking buildings on Yonge and it would be impossible to justify total protection for them.
And so here, in a nutshell, are all the forces at play. The City can control the maximum height off any building as well as set-backs, cornice heights, percent coverage, and massing (through guidelines that are really rules). The City also decides where to build subways and how good transit service will be. And the City can award Heritage designations and the concomitant protection. But those are three different agencies within City Hall. Developers can pick and choose where to build towers and, if the by right height isn't high enough, they can appeal to the OMB for an exception. The planners are up against the pro-business politicians and the developers. Unfortunately, no one is talking to the TTC.
If I had any say, and I don't, I would make the by right height 40 storeys, exclude the OMB appeals by any law I could think of and make developers pay the TTC for any extra storeys. That way there might be a hope in hell the Downtown Relief Line would be built in my lifetime.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Why Old Buildings Matter
Toronto impresario (I have no idea what that word means) Ed Mirvish has hired Star Architect Frank Gehry to design three enormous (and enormously profitable) towers for him on a site protected by Heritage designation. Mirvish owns the site but, because of the Heritage classification, can't tear down his own buildings. Gehry was brought in to convince the appropriate municipal bodies that Heritage protection should be waved: here is the National Post article. Instead of arguing against Heritage in this particular case, Gehry argued against it generally. He thinks there are only two buildings worth protecting in all of Toronto (there were three but one was already demolished). Why these three buildings? They all play some role in Gehry's own life. And here is the fundamental stupidity in Gehry's argument - two buildings are worth protecting because they are important to me. What might be important to other people is unimportant because I am Frank Fucking Gehry.
I'd love to leave criticism of the proposed scheme out of this and just deal with the heritage argument but I can't because it is so shit. It is the worst kind of architecture, eschewing thought in favour of "iconic" visuals. These are buildings that are meant to be viewed from far, far away and no other consideration has been allowed to impinge on how they will look in a photo. It goes without saying that to photograph an 80-something story building you have to be far away from it. Architecture, as a plastic art, is about form and proportion. These buildings, like all of Gehry's famous works, lack all consideration for proportion. They are formal gestures. With the Guggenheim, Gehry had the freedom to create a form; museums allow for various forms. Designing a condo tower, Gehry is trapped by the nature of the beast. Condos are tall and thin. You can try to do something interesting with that shape, you can try to cover up the fact you can't do anything interesting with that shape that hasn't already been done a thousand times. Gehry has chosen the latter. I don't know a single architect who thinks these buildings don't suck. A lot of real estate developers think they're great. And Christopher Hume, the nominally credentialed ass-kisser who writes about architecture for the Toronto Star, apparently thinks they are the only ambitious architecture in the city. Hume is correct the city needs more ambitious architecture but completely (absolutely, totally, synonym synonym) wrong to tie that argument to this project. Christopher, if you happen to read this, you are completely wrong. The project has opponents for many more (and much more complex) reasons than because it is "ambitious". The only aspect of this project that is ambitious is Mirvish, Gehry, and your attempts to convince us this isn't complete shit. That's an ambitious project.
Anyway. Even if this was the best proposal ever and everyone loved it, Gehry's arguments about Heritage protection (and Hume's) are absurd. Ever since Conrad Hilton started building versions of the same hotel in cities around the world, architects and critics have been watching with dread fascination as the world's cities started to resemble each other more and more. Different names for this phenomenon have been coined at different times but my favourite is generic city. I don't know if Koolhaas invented the term or adapted it. Essentially the generic city is composed of all the elements a city requires plus all the shit global corporations put up everywhere. Neil Stephenson performs a partial topology in his novel Snow Crash but refers to the system of strip-malls, fast food outlets, car lots and muffler repair shops by the term loglo - the distinctive light (predominantly red) cast by the signs spinning on their pylons. The city reduced to mass transit, double loaded commercial streets and punctuated at predictable intervals with conglomerations of tall buildings that we call downtowns.
There are reasons Toronto does not look like Atlanta, Shanghai, Tokyo, Miami, Vancouver, or Mumbai. Most of those reasons can be figured out by looking at the oldest buildings. Of course, having a chronology of buildings to work from, representatives of each epoch in a city's history, makes the job much simpler. Gehry's argument (that the only things worth preserving are buildings he, personally, considers important) is beneath destroying. Hume's argument (that the city's form is stunted by a fear of ambitious architecture) is partially correct but, in this context, irrelevant. We don't save old buildings because they are beautiful - although it's a nice side benefit. We don't just save them because they are old. We preserve them because they tell the story of the city in a form that is more accessible, and more honest, than written histories. We save them because we don't want to become Atlanta - that most generic and hollow of cities.
Gehry ought to know better but he's been huffing his own fame for so long his brain might be fried. Hume should know better, or his employers should. If anyone from the Toronto Star reads this, you might want to have someone who appreciates architecture writing about architecture for you. As it happens, I have some time on my hands. Just saying.
Toronto has two prominent architecture critics at its major papers and both of them are, how can I put this charitably?
Still thinking....
They're shit.
Recently the Globe and Mail published this piece about the Ripley's Aquarium. Let me explain why this is a great piece. It's dead on about the design. The author actually bothered to talk to the architects. And he is taking a dump on a building designed by a prominent Toronto firm. That's 3 big thumbs-up. Not that shitting on T.O. firms is necessarily good but it takes nerve. I doubt the designers at B+H are surprised by the piece. They are a good firm and smart enough to know when they are taking a crap on the streets of Toronto.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
The Allocation Problem
This is a piece from the NYT about a program to guarantee every citizen a cheque every month for being alive. It is one of a string I have read recently about the income distribution problem. Basically, the allocation problem is this: we live in a time when we have the knowledge, technology, resources, and transportation infrastructure to feed, house, and educate everyone on the planet yet millions of people are starving, homeless, and illiterate. There are a record number of billionaires now and they have more money than ever before - the Walton family alone are worth more than $150B. There is nothing you can do with that much money; it is functionally useless. It can't act as money because nothing costs $150B. No sensible amount of items combined cost that much. You like Ferraris? Buy every Ferrari that was ever made, collect them all and then buy all the future products Ferrari will make until the year 2050. What are you going to do with the other $149B? No single person or family could spend that much money in a lifetime (or a dozen lifetimes). It is no longer money; it is only the ability to move the markets and political influence. Great, you want to be important. But the only thing you use your political influence for is to ensure you get to keep your money. Spend money buying politicians who help you make money that you'll spend buying politicians... My name is Jon Jonson, I live in Wisconsin, I work in a lumber mill there...
Classical economics is based on scarcity. The only scarcity remaining is either artificial (imposed by one group of people on another group, either locally, nationally, or internationally) or fetishistic (we can't all own Ferraris but we could provide transportation for everyone if we decided to). I'm not an economist so I refer you to this article about post-scarcity economics (and Star Trek).
The most common argument against this kind of program is the deeply held (and deeply flawed) belief it would provide a disincentive to work. In effect, the economy would collapse because everyone would sit around playing World of Warcraft all day and no one would work. This argument, as the Times points out, works best if you try to imagine what others would do. If you consider what you would do with a guaranteed income the picture changes dramatically. The experiment also works with people you know well.
If I had a guaranteed income I would go back to school to get a PhD in the history and theory of architecture. No question. I would have to think about it for about ten minutes because I would also like to get an advanced degree in architectural preservation and restoration. Well, you say, the world sure as hell doesn't need another architecture theorist! I submit the world doesn't really need another (partially employed) intern architect either. But they've got one as long as I have to put economic demands ahead of my own interests. I've tried doing nothing but reading books and killing time and I hate it! It's the last thing I would do with a guaranteed income. I would also like to volunteer (in whatever capacity I'm able) to the on-going discussions and debates about the future of Toronto's urban form. And that's something the world could use. At least compared to another an architectural historian. Or maybe I would design a set of bookshelves that look good, can hold more than one box of books, and don't cost a fortune. I've looked for one online and, difficult as it might be to believe, it doesn't seem to exist yet.
I'm trying to think of anyone I know who would quit their jobs because they were getting money for nothing and the only person I can think of who would quit would do so to get a slightly different job that pays less but requires fewer hours. Everyone else I know works in spite of the money. I mean that in the sense that they chose their professions because it was what they wanted to do, not because of how they would be paid. So they would change the number of hours they devoted each week to their various pursuits but continue with all of them.
The question of how really unpleasant jobs would get done. The traditional response, and by traditional I mean since about 1800, is that they won't get done unless people fear they will be starved to death unless they do them. It's the carrot and whip argument - the carrot is the wage and the whip fear of starving to death. For the last century or so the whip has been wielded a little less ferociously so instead of starving to death you will just be very very poor. If you live in a rich Western nation. In most other places starving to death remains a likely punishment for the refusal to be a wage slave (I use that term in the classical, not pejorative, sense). People who make this argument have probably never been unemployed for very long. The social stigma of joblessness is huge everywhere except where a permanent under-class exists. That stigma would provide willing employees for jobs nobody really wants as well as eliminating the permanent under-class. In a society where the first question people ask each other is "What do you do?" it's important to work. And I don't mean that as an exhortation, I'm saying people already understand this and don't need to be told. Work is important; it's what you do. How do sewers get cleaned? By someone like me who would rather say "I work for the City" than "I'm unemployed".
As the Times article points out, we are already paying people for being alive. It's the social safety net that is made up partly of cash money, partly of subsidized housing, partly of food stamps and food banks, and other components besides. Right now these are separated from the money supply because a means test applies. The government doesn't want you spending your housing subsidy on a new television. But it would improve the economy and make the system much more efficient if, instead of many difference agencies and volunteer run programs, each separate system and institution was turned into one simple program that deposited a certain amount of money into your bank account automatically each month. Some would stipulate the amount should be low so that you can live on it but not live well. I think that is an unfairly cynical attitude to take towards the generations of people who have done jobs most political theorists and commentators consider below them. Your grass will still get cut even if people get a large enough amount to live without discomfort. It might get cut by someone else but it will get cut. When I lived in Galt, I noticed a lot of really well-tended gardens on small pieces of property. It was a group of people who enjoyed gardening and so ask for, and got, permission to garden on property that didn't belong to them.
If a job is so terrible that even the tiniest guaranteed income would prevent anyone from doing it maybe it says more about that job (or industry) than it does people. I'm thinking of factory farms at the moment. I come from generations of farmers and so I don't think it is at all strange that people can enjoy farming like they enjoy gardening. But they wouldn't work in factory farms. Maybe jobs that are so hideously awful no one will do them without the looming threat of poverty, homelessness, and indigence hanging over their heads is an indication that job really isn't worth doing (in an existential, not economic sense).
Anyone who has read more than three or four of these things (if such a person exists) will know I don't have a whole lot of hope for the human race. But this is one of those incredibly simple and beautiful ideas that gives me hope. It seems like a far better idea than violent revolution, human extinction, death by zombie hoard, etc. I'm not sure all of those things logically follow from the same premise but you get what I mean.
Classical economics is based on scarcity. The only scarcity remaining is either artificial (imposed by one group of people on another group, either locally, nationally, or internationally) or fetishistic (we can't all own Ferraris but we could provide transportation for everyone if we decided to). I'm not an economist so I refer you to this article about post-scarcity economics (and Star Trek).
The most common argument against this kind of program is the deeply held (and deeply flawed) belief it would provide a disincentive to work. In effect, the economy would collapse because everyone would sit around playing World of Warcraft all day and no one would work. This argument, as the Times points out, works best if you try to imagine what others would do. If you consider what you would do with a guaranteed income the picture changes dramatically. The experiment also works with people you know well.
If I had a guaranteed income I would go back to school to get a PhD in the history and theory of architecture. No question. I would have to think about it for about ten minutes because I would also like to get an advanced degree in architectural preservation and restoration. Well, you say, the world sure as hell doesn't need another architecture theorist! I submit the world doesn't really need another (partially employed) intern architect either. But they've got one as long as I have to put economic demands ahead of my own interests. I've tried doing nothing but reading books and killing time and I hate it! It's the last thing I would do with a guaranteed income. I would also like to volunteer (in whatever capacity I'm able) to the on-going discussions and debates about the future of Toronto's urban form. And that's something the world could use. At least compared to another an architectural historian. Or maybe I would design a set of bookshelves that look good, can hold more than one box of books, and don't cost a fortune. I've looked for one online and, difficult as it might be to believe, it doesn't seem to exist yet.
I'm trying to think of anyone I know who would quit their jobs because they were getting money for nothing and the only person I can think of who would quit would do so to get a slightly different job that pays less but requires fewer hours. Everyone else I know works in spite of the money. I mean that in the sense that they chose their professions because it was what they wanted to do, not because of how they would be paid. So they would change the number of hours they devoted each week to their various pursuits but continue with all of them.
The question of how really unpleasant jobs would get done. The traditional response, and by traditional I mean since about 1800, is that they won't get done unless people fear they will be starved to death unless they do them. It's the carrot and whip argument - the carrot is the wage and the whip fear of starving to death. For the last century or so the whip has been wielded a little less ferociously so instead of starving to death you will just be very very poor. If you live in a rich Western nation. In most other places starving to death remains a likely punishment for the refusal to be a wage slave (I use that term in the classical, not pejorative, sense). People who make this argument have probably never been unemployed for very long. The social stigma of joblessness is huge everywhere except where a permanent under-class exists. That stigma would provide willing employees for jobs nobody really wants as well as eliminating the permanent under-class. In a society where the first question people ask each other is "What do you do?" it's important to work. And I don't mean that as an exhortation, I'm saying people already understand this and don't need to be told. Work is important; it's what you do. How do sewers get cleaned? By someone like me who would rather say "I work for the City" than "I'm unemployed".
As the Times article points out, we are already paying people for being alive. It's the social safety net that is made up partly of cash money, partly of subsidized housing, partly of food stamps and food banks, and other components besides. Right now these are separated from the money supply because a means test applies. The government doesn't want you spending your housing subsidy on a new television. But it would improve the economy and make the system much more efficient if, instead of many difference agencies and volunteer run programs, each separate system and institution was turned into one simple program that deposited a certain amount of money into your bank account automatically each month. Some would stipulate the amount should be low so that you can live on it but not live well. I think that is an unfairly cynical attitude to take towards the generations of people who have done jobs most political theorists and commentators consider below them. Your grass will still get cut even if people get a large enough amount to live without discomfort. It might get cut by someone else but it will get cut. When I lived in Galt, I noticed a lot of really well-tended gardens on small pieces of property. It was a group of people who enjoyed gardening and so ask for, and got, permission to garden on property that didn't belong to them.
If a job is so terrible that even the tiniest guaranteed income would prevent anyone from doing it maybe it says more about that job (or industry) than it does people. I'm thinking of factory farms at the moment. I come from generations of farmers and so I don't think it is at all strange that people can enjoy farming like they enjoy gardening. But they wouldn't work in factory farms. Maybe jobs that are so hideously awful no one will do them without the looming threat of poverty, homelessness, and indigence hanging over their heads is an indication that job really isn't worth doing (in an existential, not economic sense).
Anyone who has read more than three or four of these things (if such a person exists) will know I don't have a whole lot of hope for the human race. But this is one of those incredibly simple and beautiful ideas that gives me hope. It seems like a far better idea than violent revolution, human extinction, death by zombie hoard, etc. I'm not sure all of those things logically follow from the same premise but you get what I mean.
Mayor Ford and the "Little Guy"
I have written before that politics in Toronto (in the sense of negotiation, the "art of the possible") is impossible because of the deep divide between the core and the suburbs. This division has been made wider by the Ford brothers, who are the most divisive figures in Canadian politics (and that's saying something when one province has a major party with a platform based on seceding from Canada). Those on both sides of the divide have been reduced to idiotic stereotypes - by the Fords, by the media, by each other. The Ford brothers are the biggest causes of the limiting of politic discourse to "elites" and "regular people" but the newspapers and blogosphere aren't far behind. The Ford brothers have successfully made being ashamed and angry at a Mayor who smokes crack, drives drunk, is currently the subject of a police investigation, and has incurred mockery from everywhere in the civilized world seem like a symptom of arrogance or an attempt to protect unfair privileges. So long as this is the case any kind of reasonable debate is extremely difficult and maybe impossible.
The cornerstone of Ford's appeal is his reputation for curbing spending and fighting for the little guy. The Toronto Star (and other media outlets) have produced detailed accounts of spending under Ford that demonstrate 1) he has done almost nothing to cut spending except cancelling one, not very important but extremely unpopular, tax and 2) consistently lied or misled people about his record. This is immediately dismissed as a partisan attack. It is worth mentioning the Star is a left-leaning paper and has always hated Ford but no one has produced anything to dispute their findings - except ad hominem (or whatever the version of ad hominem is for a newspaper) attacks. That the Star hates for is not the issue, that Ford consistently lies about the basis for his popularity would be an issue if he wasn't tackling members of Toronto's city council and insulting citizens during council meetings (just the latest of Ford's WTF moments).
Still, I think it is worth asking if the most basic premise of Ford's platform is anything less than a complete fabrication. I suppose it depends on who one considers "the little guy". I would take that to mean anyone traditionally lacking support or representation on city council. But if you take that to mean members of the LGBT community, Asian Canadians, or blue collar workers Ford is demonstrably not standing up for them. He is doing his best to trample them. Ford's distaste for Pride events (that bring as many as a million people out for the parades and other events) is the stuff of legend in Toronto. Not only does he not attend, he takes his whole family out of the city. Presumably to protect them from the decadence and moral depravity. He has said, during a council meeting, Asians are taking over because they "work like dogs" and "sleep next to their machines". And during his latest shouting match with Toronto citizens, he screamed "Go back to your union!" and "You're a leach on the system!" - leaches on the system must constitute elites to Ford.
I think this is part of what makes the media so confused about Ford. He is blatantly, pridefully pro-business and his policies consistently fall on the right side of the political spectrum and yet his support is from people who would benefit most from higher levels of taxation being returned in public services. This kind of voting (expressly and determinedly against the voters economic interests) has been an American phenomenon for decades but there it is based on two factors that have never been especially important in Canadian politics - fear of governmental over-reach and the association of evangelical Christians with the political right. In the States poor people vote Republican so they can reduce the size of the government until it is just large enough to outlaw abortion. In Toronto people are voting against their economic interests because the Fords and right-leaning newspapers tell them Ford is for the little guy - despite his continual attacks on unions, his endless attempts to cut wages for city employees who earn the least, and his pro-business, pro-investment, anti-everything else policies.
In hindsight it is easy to forget how powerful Ford and his supporters were in their first two years in office. They were unstoppable. They got everything they wanted and ran rough-shod over the opposition. The moment it all started to fall apart was when Rob's brother Doug threw out a multi-million dollar plan for the Docklands and replaced it with something he cooked up himself - featuring a really big ferris wheel. Doug's plan was mocked savagely (yet not as savagely as it should have been). It was ridiculous. The previous plan had been the product of several competitions and several thousand hours of consultations, meetings, and collaborations between planners, economists, architects, elected representatives, community groups, and many others with an interest in or expertise that might benefit the future of the city. In retrospect this one incident perfectly encapsulates the Ford brothers' world view, the basis for the popularity, and the huge problem Toronto will have to overcome in order to function as a working political entity. The distrust of education, of expertise. The disdain for long-term planning. The belief "ordinary" people want a theme park rather than a functioning addition to the city. It is a demonstration of their own anti-intellectual, anti- "elitist" thinking and their disdain for their own supporters. You don't have to be a professional planner, or economist, or architect to believe hundreds of such professionals will come up with a better plan for a large section of the most valuable real estate in the city than the head of a label-making company doodling on the back of a napkin. Yet, this is what the Ford brothers believed unquestioningly. They also believed "Ford Nation" wanted a big ferris wheel. And a monorail that didn't go anywhere. Maybe they have fond memories of visiting Epcot as kids. Who knows.
This mindless reduction of everything to both the simplest possible form and the lowest common denominator has been the hallmark of Ford's term. One of the hallmarks - the criminality, vulgarity, and substance abuse would be the other. The "debate" about the Scarborough line completely baffled Ford. He couldn't work with the terms. He wanted a subway. People downtown got subways. The various other options (and the subtleties involved in costs, passenger capacity, construction time, routes, and such) were all sub-par for Ford. He couldn't sell them because he couldn't reduce them to the simplest possible terms. I'm not saying either Ford brother is stupid. They aren't geniuses and Ford is delusional but it is a question of Ford's politics, not his intellect. The Fords thought they could sell a ferris wheel because it is easy to understand. Same with the subway (as opposed to LRT or any of the other options). I don't think the Fords are stupid; I think they believe their constituents are stupid. Subway = good (transit and sandwiches), LRT = bad (acronyms are elitist). Ferris wheel = good, mixed-used development = bad. Little guy = good, union member = bad. It is the politics of reduction, mocking complexity, insisting anything that can't be drawn on the back of a business card is an elitist, leftist, waste of money.
It is also completely in line with what one might expect when the fourth largest city in North America is handed over to the head of a label-making company and his little brother (who "never had a passion for labels"). Employees are good, as long as their not unionized. Unemployed people are bad because they don't make labels, etc. I'm reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, specifically the character who believed, honestly and with all his heart, everyone really wanted to make bicycles for him and was completely unable to imagine any other kind of person and, consequently, dismissed them all as "pissants". That is Toronto to Ford. Either you make labels or you are a pissant. Whether his "Nation" agrees with that is more complicated. Unfortunately, we won't be able to settle that question until Ford is gone. Then we will have the opportunity to see whether the people who voted for the Fords have a more complex view of Toronto and its politics than a crack-smoking alcoholic and his Cro-Magnon bully of a brother.
The cornerstone of Ford's appeal is his reputation for curbing spending and fighting for the little guy. The Toronto Star (and other media outlets) have produced detailed accounts of spending under Ford that demonstrate 1) he has done almost nothing to cut spending except cancelling one, not very important but extremely unpopular, tax and 2) consistently lied or misled people about his record. This is immediately dismissed as a partisan attack. It is worth mentioning the Star is a left-leaning paper and has always hated Ford but no one has produced anything to dispute their findings - except ad hominem (or whatever the version of ad hominem is for a newspaper) attacks. That the Star hates for is not the issue, that Ford consistently lies about the basis for his popularity would be an issue if he wasn't tackling members of Toronto's city council and insulting citizens during council meetings (just the latest of Ford's WTF moments).
Still, I think it is worth asking if the most basic premise of Ford's platform is anything less than a complete fabrication. I suppose it depends on who one considers "the little guy". I would take that to mean anyone traditionally lacking support or representation on city council. But if you take that to mean members of the LGBT community, Asian Canadians, or blue collar workers Ford is demonstrably not standing up for them. He is doing his best to trample them. Ford's distaste for Pride events (that bring as many as a million people out for the parades and other events) is the stuff of legend in Toronto. Not only does he not attend, he takes his whole family out of the city. Presumably to protect them from the decadence and moral depravity. He has said, during a council meeting, Asians are taking over because they "work like dogs" and "sleep next to their machines". And during his latest shouting match with Toronto citizens, he screamed "Go back to your union!" and "You're a leach on the system!" - leaches on the system must constitute elites to Ford.
I think this is part of what makes the media so confused about Ford. He is blatantly, pridefully pro-business and his policies consistently fall on the right side of the political spectrum and yet his support is from people who would benefit most from higher levels of taxation being returned in public services. This kind of voting (expressly and determinedly against the voters economic interests) has been an American phenomenon for decades but there it is based on two factors that have never been especially important in Canadian politics - fear of governmental over-reach and the association of evangelical Christians with the political right. In the States poor people vote Republican so they can reduce the size of the government until it is just large enough to outlaw abortion. In Toronto people are voting against their economic interests because the Fords and right-leaning newspapers tell them Ford is for the little guy - despite his continual attacks on unions, his endless attempts to cut wages for city employees who earn the least, and his pro-business, pro-investment, anti-everything else policies.
In hindsight it is easy to forget how powerful Ford and his supporters were in their first two years in office. They were unstoppable. They got everything they wanted and ran rough-shod over the opposition. The moment it all started to fall apart was when Rob's brother Doug threw out a multi-million dollar plan for the Docklands and replaced it with something he cooked up himself - featuring a really big ferris wheel. Doug's plan was mocked savagely (yet not as savagely as it should have been). It was ridiculous. The previous plan had been the product of several competitions and several thousand hours of consultations, meetings, and collaborations between planners, economists, architects, elected representatives, community groups, and many others with an interest in or expertise that might benefit the future of the city. In retrospect this one incident perfectly encapsulates the Ford brothers' world view, the basis for the popularity, and the huge problem Toronto will have to overcome in order to function as a working political entity. The distrust of education, of expertise. The disdain for long-term planning. The belief "ordinary" people want a theme park rather than a functioning addition to the city. It is a demonstration of their own anti-intellectual, anti- "elitist" thinking and their disdain for their own supporters. You don't have to be a professional planner, or economist, or architect to believe hundreds of such professionals will come up with a better plan for a large section of the most valuable real estate in the city than the head of a label-making company doodling on the back of a napkin. Yet, this is what the Ford brothers believed unquestioningly. They also believed "Ford Nation" wanted a big ferris wheel. And a monorail that didn't go anywhere. Maybe they have fond memories of visiting Epcot as kids. Who knows.
This mindless reduction of everything to both the simplest possible form and the lowest common denominator has been the hallmark of Ford's term. One of the hallmarks - the criminality, vulgarity, and substance abuse would be the other. The "debate" about the Scarborough line completely baffled Ford. He couldn't work with the terms. He wanted a subway. People downtown got subways. The various other options (and the subtleties involved in costs, passenger capacity, construction time, routes, and such) were all sub-par for Ford. He couldn't sell them because he couldn't reduce them to the simplest possible terms. I'm not saying either Ford brother is stupid. They aren't geniuses and Ford is delusional but it is a question of Ford's politics, not his intellect. The Fords thought they could sell a ferris wheel because it is easy to understand. Same with the subway (as opposed to LRT or any of the other options). I don't think the Fords are stupid; I think they believe their constituents are stupid. Subway = good (transit and sandwiches), LRT = bad (acronyms are elitist). Ferris wheel = good, mixed-used development = bad. Little guy = good, union member = bad. It is the politics of reduction, mocking complexity, insisting anything that can't be drawn on the back of a business card is an elitist, leftist, waste of money.
It is also completely in line with what one might expect when the fourth largest city in North America is handed over to the head of a label-making company and his little brother (who "never had a passion for labels"). Employees are good, as long as their not unionized. Unemployed people are bad because they don't make labels, etc. I'm reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, specifically the character who believed, honestly and with all his heart, everyone really wanted to make bicycles for him and was completely unable to imagine any other kind of person and, consequently, dismissed them all as "pissants". That is Toronto to Ford. Either you make labels or you are a pissant. Whether his "Nation" agrees with that is more complicated. Unfortunately, we won't be able to settle that question until Ford is gone. Then we will have the opportunity to see whether the people who voted for the Fords have a more complex view of Toronto and its politics than a crack-smoking alcoholic and his Cro-Magnon bully of a brother.
Monday, November 11, 2013
One Difference Between the Internet and "Real" Economy
I like movies. Except rom-coms. Ok, there are some of those I like too but people laugh at me when I admit to owning a DVD copy of Shakespeare in Love. It was written by Tom Stoppard and it's funny! Anyway, there are a huge number of movies I think everyone should see that are not "popular" - they don't appeal to a wide audience in those parts of the world with the largest movie-going audiences. I remember when my mom won free tickets to a preview of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful and half the audience left at the beginning because they didn't want to read sub-titles. I'm not a movie snob - at least I don't consider myself one. I don't pride myself on knowing a lot about movies or having theories about them or knowing the work of a particular director inside out. I like every movie I have ever seen that had an exploding helicopter; that excludes me from the elite club of cineastes. Still, everyone should see Tampopo before they die.
I think Tampopo is a great example of the kind of movie I want to talk about because everyone (who doesn't mind reading sub-titles or can speak Japanese) will like it. The story is about noodles. A trucker (who is kind of like Shane in the eponymous Western) eats at a struggling noodle counter and there begins the quest to create the perfect bowl of noodles. It's a tremendous mash-up of styles and stories, great writing and slapstick comedy (including a scene in which a man's life is saved with a vacuum) that is interesting if you want to think about it and fun if you don't.
There used to be specialty video stores in almost every city (like the comic book store, a haven for a particular kind of nerd) that had one copy of every movie only a few people wanted to see - that was their niche. If you wanted a Hollywood mega-hit, you could get it at Jumbo Video or Blockbuster for $3 and if you wanted Days of Being Wild or Yakuza Election you could go to that one place with the annoyingly hip staff.
These days everything is a function of bandwidth. iTunes rents two kinds of movies, the incredibly popular and the complete shit. If you are looking for movies from Korea or Japan, forget it. Even Canadian movies are hard to get. And if it's more than 10 years old but isn't by a director your filmy friends can't shut up about you aren't going to find it either.
The sites that offer movies for free aren't really offering movies for free; they are offering either slow downloads that try your patience and get you to buy a membership or a little piece of real estate between two banner ads. You can get new movies from all over the world at those sites because they are accessed from all over the world but you don't get sub-titles.
What I imagine will happen is the internet will eventually fill the niche held in meat space by the specialty video store with a specialty download store. The problem is finding it. And even then, they will be asked to perform tasks (that cost money) previously done by the film's producers (or whoever handles the release). DVDs with sub-titles aren't sub-titled so I can enjoy renting them for $4, they are sub-titled as an incentive to by them for $30. It isn't an accident that dubbing went out when rentals came in. Television audiences want to watch, not read. DVD audiences want the original (with options). So that site will require a membership and if you pick the wrong site you end up paying two membership fees (and there goes your credit card info to who knows who, etc).
DVDs are so great I think we take them for granted. Even if the commentaries were almost always shit, they had the movie, optional sub-titles in several languages, chapters you could skip to and navigate with, little extras like "Behind the Scenes" or "The Art of..." It all added up to a pretty great package. And you got the whole deal when you rented. Now you get the movie and that's it. If you can find it. Which means I never have to pay to see another hundred million dollar action movie (unless I want to see it in 3D or in IMAX) but the rest of the movie world is duller. I have been trying to find a way to buy Wong Kar-Wai movies (in real life and on the internet) and it's hard! I finally found them all at the little store under the theaters in the TIFF building - which is more like a gift shop at a museum than a store.
While it might seem stupid to be complaining about the difficulty of acquiring consumer goods at this point in our history, when there is more of everything for sale everywhere, but there are certain areas where curation has taken a larger role than others. This is true past a certain level of discernment of all things (for sale). Someone has to make a choice about what to put on the shelves and they choose the most popular, not the best. Unless their niche is "the best". It is in those types of products where different geographical or ideological territories are producing radically different products that curation becomes important. And why I want a Muji store to open in Toronto so badly I can taste it. But to get back to the subject of movies, the market is huge and so is the supply. Almost every country has a domestic movie industry capable of producing all the movies you could want to watch. I don't care about Icelandic cinema but there are people who do and, if they don't live in Iceland, they are being curated out of the market. When it's a product like really high quality paper-clips (which I really want now but can't find) I don't mind so much but a product like movies starts to both bother and worry me. It worries me because next it might be books and that's the proverbial straw that will mess with this (following the constraints of the proverb) camel's back. When people start messing with my access to books, I get mean.
If you are a young internet entrepreneur, I recommend at least looking at the feasibility of the "All Movies of All Time" membership website. You might get rich. You almost definitely get invited to some cool parties. You could say you were "Bringing Tarkovski to everyone!" People would eat that shit up and, meanwhile, I could watch Beat Takeshi's entire ouvre for $5.99 a month - with the occasional diversion into movies featuring exploding helicopters.
I think Tampopo is a great example of the kind of movie I want to talk about because everyone (who doesn't mind reading sub-titles or can speak Japanese) will like it. The story is about noodles. A trucker (who is kind of like Shane in the eponymous Western) eats at a struggling noodle counter and there begins the quest to create the perfect bowl of noodles. It's a tremendous mash-up of styles and stories, great writing and slapstick comedy (including a scene in which a man's life is saved with a vacuum) that is interesting if you want to think about it and fun if you don't.
There used to be specialty video stores in almost every city (like the comic book store, a haven for a particular kind of nerd) that had one copy of every movie only a few people wanted to see - that was their niche. If you wanted a Hollywood mega-hit, you could get it at Jumbo Video or Blockbuster for $3 and if you wanted Days of Being Wild or Yakuza Election you could go to that one place with the annoyingly hip staff.
These days everything is a function of bandwidth. iTunes rents two kinds of movies, the incredibly popular and the complete shit. If you are looking for movies from Korea or Japan, forget it. Even Canadian movies are hard to get. And if it's more than 10 years old but isn't by a director your filmy friends can't shut up about you aren't going to find it either.
The sites that offer movies for free aren't really offering movies for free; they are offering either slow downloads that try your patience and get you to buy a membership or a little piece of real estate between two banner ads. You can get new movies from all over the world at those sites because they are accessed from all over the world but you don't get sub-titles.
What I imagine will happen is the internet will eventually fill the niche held in meat space by the specialty video store with a specialty download store. The problem is finding it. And even then, they will be asked to perform tasks (that cost money) previously done by the film's producers (or whoever handles the release). DVDs with sub-titles aren't sub-titled so I can enjoy renting them for $4, they are sub-titled as an incentive to by them for $30. It isn't an accident that dubbing went out when rentals came in. Television audiences want to watch, not read. DVD audiences want the original (with options). So that site will require a membership and if you pick the wrong site you end up paying two membership fees (and there goes your credit card info to who knows who, etc).
DVDs are so great I think we take them for granted. Even if the commentaries were almost always shit, they had the movie, optional sub-titles in several languages, chapters you could skip to and navigate with, little extras like "Behind the Scenes" or "The Art of..." It all added up to a pretty great package. And you got the whole deal when you rented. Now you get the movie and that's it. If you can find it. Which means I never have to pay to see another hundred million dollar action movie (unless I want to see it in 3D or in IMAX) but the rest of the movie world is duller. I have been trying to find a way to buy Wong Kar-Wai movies (in real life and on the internet) and it's hard! I finally found them all at the little store under the theaters in the TIFF building - which is more like a gift shop at a museum than a store.
While it might seem stupid to be complaining about the difficulty of acquiring consumer goods at this point in our history, when there is more of everything for sale everywhere, but there are certain areas where curation has taken a larger role than others. This is true past a certain level of discernment of all things (for sale). Someone has to make a choice about what to put on the shelves and they choose the most popular, not the best. Unless their niche is "the best". It is in those types of products where different geographical or ideological territories are producing radically different products that curation becomes important. And why I want a Muji store to open in Toronto so badly I can taste it. But to get back to the subject of movies, the market is huge and so is the supply. Almost every country has a domestic movie industry capable of producing all the movies you could want to watch. I don't care about Icelandic cinema but there are people who do and, if they don't live in Iceland, they are being curated out of the market. When it's a product like really high quality paper-clips (which I really want now but can't find) I don't mind so much but a product like movies starts to both bother and worry me. It worries me because next it might be books and that's the proverbial straw that will mess with this (following the constraints of the proverb) camel's back. When people start messing with my access to books, I get mean.
If you are a young internet entrepreneur, I recommend at least looking at the feasibility of the "All Movies of All Time" membership website. You might get rich. You almost definitely get invited to some cool parties. You could say you were "Bringing Tarkovski to everyone!" People would eat that shit up and, meanwhile, I could watch Beat Takeshi's entire ouvre for $5.99 a month - with the occasional diversion into movies featuring exploding helicopters.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
On Rob Ford
So the Mayor of Toronto smoked crack. "Probably in a drunken stupor" - his words, not mine. Toronto has devolved into an endless discussion over how fucked up this is and why this guy is still the Mayor. And everyone is making the same mistake - it isn't about Right versus Left (or right versus wrong). It isn't because the suburbs are horrible little backwaters of bigotry and willful ignorance (although they might be for all I know, I've lived here for two years and still can't tell Scarborough from North York). It isn't because his supporters are stupid or gullible. It isn't because his opponents are weak or cowardly.
Rob Ford is still the Mayor because no one has done anything (in at least six months) to have him legally removed from office. And he still has supporters because the people who elected him did so because he told them he would keep their taxes low and stop the "gravy train". I'm not sure there ever was a gravy train in Toronto municipal politics - at least not since Mel Lastman, who a person I know but can't identify because of his extremely checkered past disparagingly referred to as a gangster. So stopping the gravy train probably wasn't that hard. And he hasn't initiated any of the kinds of projects that infuriate the people who voted for him.
In case you are wondering who those people are, this should tell you. It's from Torontoist (a great website if you live in Toronto or give a shit about it for some other reason):
Rob Ford is still the Mayor because no one has done anything (in at least six months) to have him legally removed from office. And he still has supporters because the people who elected him did so because he told them he would keep their taxes low and stop the "gravy train". I'm not sure there ever was a gravy train in Toronto municipal politics - at least not since Mel Lastman, who a person I know but can't identify because of his extremely checkered past disparagingly referred to as a gangster. So stopping the gravy train probably wasn't that hard. And he hasn't initiated any of the kinds of projects that infuriate the people who voted for him.
In case you are wondering who those people are, this should tell you. It's from Torontoist (a great website if you live in Toronto or give a shit about it for some other reason):
The purple part in the centre is what I think of when I say Toronto. The rest is the result of the amalgamation - a trick the provincial Conservative Party pulled off a couple decades ago when they got sick of getting whipped by the leftists in Toronto elections. The little chunk of what looks like compromise at the bottom of the purple block is water. So, imagine you live in the top right or top left corners of the map, your taxes go to pay for all the things that require tax money in the purple part that you never use or even see. Subways, streetcars, garbage collection by unionized workers, about a million other things necessary to have the population density of the purple part - you pay for it all, just as much as the people who get the results. Research has consistently shown people who live in the blue areas make less money than those in the purple - which makes a kind of intuitive sense, living downtown is more expensive than living in the suburbs. I complain frequently about my rent but I chose to live downtown and it's a choice I can make because I'm not married, don't have kids, don't have to worry about the quality of their schools, where they are going to play, etc. Remember, those people didn't ask to become part of Toronto - they were their own separate municipalities with their own governments and own tax bases and then they weren't.
So, from the perspective of someone who lives in the core I would consider a new subway line running along Queen St a huge victory of intelligent planning over political entropy. If I lived out in the corners, I'd consider it yet another victory for the elitists in the core. And elitists isn't too strong a word; those of us who live in the core (as you can tell from the tone of this entry) don't think very much (or very often) about those who don't live in the core. They are worse than people who live in other cities - hangers-on, hicks, members of the Ford Nation (which has become about the most damning thing a person can be called these days by people in the core).
A lot of Ford's supporters are being filmed by the media, or drawing attention to themselves by saying ridiculous shit about how this is all a "Left-wing media conspiracy" and a witch-hunt. The media eats that shit up because the people who buy the papers live - want to take a guess? It isn't that the media is left wing, the readership is left compared to the suburbs. National papers (The National Post and Globe and Mail) are reporting the story too and in much the same way but it is the locals who get attacked as the lynch mob out to get Ford.
I like to think of it this way - because it helps me make sense of it - The Rolling Stones best album was made when Keith Richards was so fucked up on heroin he couldn't stand sunlight and never went outside. I didn't say he should get fired from the Stones (in point of fact I was probably about 2 years old but you get the analogy). At the moment people who voted for Ford are probably equally pissed at Ford and the Toronto media for making this city a laughing stock on the world stage. But since they already disliked the Toronto media, it's easier to get pissed at them. And Ford will either get removed from office by some kind of procedural move, criminal charges resulting from an on-going police investigation, or by election next year. His replacement will be the next person in line who promises not to make the suburbs pay for things the core desperately needs.
Toronto civic politics is ugly. And not in the interesting way American politics is ugly. It's ugly in that we have moved far beyond the stage where anything can be negotiated. The essence of politics is negotiation but the suburbs are like the Chinese empire prior to the Opium War; they won't negotiate because they don't want anything except to be left alone. Which isn't to say the citizens of the core hold any kind of high ground. Our failure to find a way to negotiate with the suburbs has turned us into spiteful dicks.
I used to flip flop between hating the Mayor for a combination of his political positions and his playing the "stupid equals authentic" role so baldly and liking the Mayor because he was a joke with a punchline delivered every other day. Now I don't hate him or like him. I feel bad for him. Everyone knows politicians lie. Everyone knows addicts lie. This guy doesn't know what's real anymore. He went into a scrum of reporters using the excuse "I was too drunk to know what I was doing" as a way to get around the fact he'd been caught on camera smoking crack. He doesn't need ridicule at this point, he needs help and the only way he's going to get any is if his brain trust (which unfortunately seems to be composed of a group of petty criminals organized by his brainless, sadistic older brother) decide it is something they can turn into a politically useful narrative.
So we are stuck with Ford (and, more unfortunately, he is stuck being the Mayor) until we can find someone with exactly the same positions who appeals to exactly the same people to replace him. This is a dim prognosis for Toronto politics but I actually believe things are much worse. Toronto and Chicago have a lot in common - they are both former manufacturing centres on a Great Lake, they are sister cities (officially), they are around the same population - and people often wonder why Chicago is so much nicer. It really is better and not just because the elevator took off there and they lured Mies van der Rohe into moving there. It's better because of their mayoral dynasty. I think what Toronto needs is a monstrosity like the Daley family to run the city with an iron fist for a couple decades. The last Daley mayor is kind of a hero of mine - not in a personal sense because everything I know about him suggests he was a real asshole, in a political sense. He liked architecture, parks, green roofs, and that was about it. So Chicago got a lot of good architect, one of the world's best park systems, and green roofs everywhere. And when he wanted to shut down a little airport because the noise bugged him, he sent the city's snow removal equipment out and tore the landing strip up over night. Toronto needs someone who wants to make the city world class (the whole city, not just the purple part) to rule like a dictator until we remember how important negotiation is and unseat the dirty bastard.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
On the Word "Architect"
I'm known for freaking out about this particular issue. The root of my dissatisfaction is this: graduating from a professional program in architecture does not give you the right to call yourself an architect. If I called myself an architect in this post (and anyone read it) I would get an angry letter from the OAA (Ontario Association of Architects) lawyers. And yet, so long as you are not involved with building anything, you can call yourself an architect to your heart's content. You can be a software architect or a Java architect or a solutions architect (I don't know what any of those are or what they might do but they can and do call themselves architects). This issue is getting hot within the small world of architects. Here is an article about the issue caused by a petition to deny Daniel Libeskind the use of the word "architect" because he isn't licensed in Britain. I presume he is licensed somewhere but that doesn't seem to be the point.
While I get what the authors are on about - architecture is a closed society, the archetypal "conspiracy against the laity" - I think they are wrong for two important reasons. First, the suggestion architects need to teach people how to think. I'm just getting this one out of the way because "educating the client" has been a personal pet peeve for a long time. Our clients are almost invariably wealthier and just as educated as we are so what, specifically, are we to educate them about? How are we supposed to "teach them to think"? Like architects? Why? Isn't that why they hired us? The suggestion a client should educate an architect how to think would be met with gales of laughter. It's pompous as hell and part of the reason architecture is in the plight so accurately described by the authors.
Second, and far more important, is the authors' stance on our professions marginalization. For those of you who aren't architects - this started happening a long time ago. The net result is architects have lost all certainty about their place in the world. They know what they were trained to do, know what they are capable of doing, know they are worth far more than they make (in most cases) but don't believe they will be able to convince anyone else. This is why every time a celebrity shows any interest in architecture at all (like Kanye recently did about Le Corbusier) the architecture world loses its shit completely. The authors' recommendations are totally sound and worth consideration (with the exception of the educating bit) but move the profession in precisely the wrong direction. Instead of trying to find new ground we should be striving to retake lost ground - or consolidate our position. Architecture has never held the same place in North America as it does in Europe. People say this is because Europe has a culture of design. I say it's because 50% of all housing stock in Europe was destroyed during WWII and architects built it again. That's the sort of thing that gets peoples' attention. In North America the enormous housing explosion in the same period was based on the developer's model (you buy the lot and get six different options to choose from). Almost nobody in North America lives in a home designed for them by an architect. You might think every apartment building or condo is designed by an architect but it isn't the case. Architects only handle condo towers in major cities where competition drives the price premium on "design" up. In smaller cities buildings are designed by engineers and technologists and the drawings are stamped by an architect who charges either by number of pages or square footage (and never even looks at the drawings).
Here in Toronto, where competition between condo towers is expressed in advertising dollars spent, you will find the name of the developer, the builder, and the management corporation on every ad but never the name of the architect. Unless the architect is Daniel Libeskind (whose contribution to Toronto's skyline is arguably the worst of all the condo projects, certainly the most careless).
We don't need to teach clients how to think; we need to tell people they can become clients. The price difference between having an architect design your house or or reno or addition and having the same work done by an amateur is almost nothing. I don't mean you don't have to pay them - you do. But the amount you pay your architect will be (in almost every case) less than the combined savings on the work (having a design professional do your drawings creates fewer fuck ups during construction and in many cases, if the fuck up is the architect's fault, the cost will be deducted from their fee) plus the added resale value of your property. Having anyone but an architect design your house or building or office should feel like having anyone but a lawyer represent you in court. It is kind of obviously a dumb thing to do. Someone getting sued for the amount they will spend on any construction project would never argue that hiring a lawyer is too expensive.
This should be the core of every architecture organizations efforts until everyone knows it - architects are not just for the rich. If you are getting any work done on your house, you should consult an architect. Ok, if all you want is your bathroom re-tiled, maybe not. But if you want a new bathroom added to your house, definitely consult an architect. Almost every architect will tell you whether or not you should hire them after a consultation - architects are weird that way. If you don't need them, they don't need you. The job would be a loser for them. If you do need an architect, but not them, they will give you free advice about other architects to contact. Architecture is a wacky world. I'm imagining a lawyer telling you, "no, you don't need to hire me at $800/hr" - it isn't going to happen. But an architect will tell you something similar (and they don't charge $800/hr). How much do they charge? Either a percentage of total cost or a fee based on square feet. The cost is much much less than you think.
This, coming from me, might sound like asking a barber if you need a haircut. But the reality is most houses (and almost all condos) are badly suited to the way their owners live. Most people have at least one room in their house they never use. Most people in a condo need a room they don't have. And almost everyone has at least one that is way too big and one that is way too small. An architect would have prevented that. Your rooms would all be the right size and you wouldn't have too many of them (or too few).
While I get what the authors are on about - architecture is a closed society, the archetypal "conspiracy against the laity" - I think they are wrong for two important reasons. First, the suggestion architects need to teach people how to think. I'm just getting this one out of the way because "educating the client" has been a personal pet peeve for a long time. Our clients are almost invariably wealthier and just as educated as we are so what, specifically, are we to educate them about? How are we supposed to "teach them to think"? Like architects? Why? Isn't that why they hired us? The suggestion a client should educate an architect how to think would be met with gales of laughter. It's pompous as hell and part of the reason architecture is in the plight so accurately described by the authors.
Second, and far more important, is the authors' stance on our professions marginalization. For those of you who aren't architects - this started happening a long time ago. The net result is architects have lost all certainty about their place in the world. They know what they were trained to do, know what they are capable of doing, know they are worth far more than they make (in most cases) but don't believe they will be able to convince anyone else. This is why every time a celebrity shows any interest in architecture at all (like Kanye recently did about Le Corbusier) the architecture world loses its shit completely. The authors' recommendations are totally sound and worth consideration (with the exception of the educating bit) but move the profession in precisely the wrong direction. Instead of trying to find new ground we should be striving to retake lost ground - or consolidate our position. Architecture has never held the same place in North America as it does in Europe. People say this is because Europe has a culture of design. I say it's because 50% of all housing stock in Europe was destroyed during WWII and architects built it again. That's the sort of thing that gets peoples' attention. In North America the enormous housing explosion in the same period was based on the developer's model (you buy the lot and get six different options to choose from). Almost nobody in North America lives in a home designed for them by an architect. You might think every apartment building or condo is designed by an architect but it isn't the case. Architects only handle condo towers in major cities where competition drives the price premium on "design" up. In smaller cities buildings are designed by engineers and technologists and the drawings are stamped by an architect who charges either by number of pages or square footage (and never even looks at the drawings).
Here in Toronto, where competition between condo towers is expressed in advertising dollars spent, you will find the name of the developer, the builder, and the management corporation on every ad but never the name of the architect. Unless the architect is Daniel Libeskind (whose contribution to Toronto's skyline is arguably the worst of all the condo projects, certainly the most careless).
We don't need to teach clients how to think; we need to tell people they can become clients. The price difference between having an architect design your house or or reno or addition and having the same work done by an amateur is almost nothing. I don't mean you don't have to pay them - you do. But the amount you pay your architect will be (in almost every case) less than the combined savings on the work (having a design professional do your drawings creates fewer fuck ups during construction and in many cases, if the fuck up is the architect's fault, the cost will be deducted from their fee) plus the added resale value of your property. Having anyone but an architect design your house or building or office should feel like having anyone but a lawyer represent you in court. It is kind of obviously a dumb thing to do. Someone getting sued for the amount they will spend on any construction project would never argue that hiring a lawyer is too expensive.
This should be the core of every architecture organizations efforts until everyone knows it - architects are not just for the rich. If you are getting any work done on your house, you should consult an architect. Ok, if all you want is your bathroom re-tiled, maybe not. But if you want a new bathroom added to your house, definitely consult an architect. Almost every architect will tell you whether or not you should hire them after a consultation - architects are weird that way. If you don't need them, they don't need you. The job would be a loser for them. If you do need an architect, but not them, they will give you free advice about other architects to contact. Architecture is a wacky world. I'm imagining a lawyer telling you, "no, you don't need to hire me at $800/hr" - it isn't going to happen. But an architect will tell you something similar (and they don't charge $800/hr). How much do they charge? Either a percentage of total cost or a fee based on square feet. The cost is much much less than you think.
This, coming from me, might sound like asking a barber if you need a haircut. But the reality is most houses (and almost all condos) are badly suited to the way their owners live. Most people have at least one room in their house they never use. Most people in a condo need a room they don't have. And almost everyone has at least one that is way too big and one that is way too small. An architect would have prevented that. Your rooms would all be the right size and you wouldn't have too many of them (or too few).
How to Make Progressive Taxation Seem like a Bad Idea
The basic theory behind progressive taxation is poor people can't afford to pay as much tax as rich people or, put the other way, rich people can afford to pay more tax than poor people. If you are part of a family making $40k/year you can't afford much for income tax. If you have kids, you really can't afford anything. I live in a tiny apartment (no bedroom, 365 sq ft) and I pay $1300/mth. So I need to make $15k just to cover my rent. I figure my nut (the minimum amount required to keep me alive) is $2k/mth. That's living on rehydrated noodles and pizza pockets and buying clothes based on how long they will take to wear out. $3k/mth ($36k/year) means I am just barely above the poverty line - a figure calculated by how much of your income is required for necessities. 80% for necessities is a normal(ish) definition, 90% is verging on cruel. Incidentally, the most common way for governments to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line is to change the definition. If I bring in $40k/year (and since I have no dependents and constitute my entire household) I can afford to pay some income tax. I'm already being taxed 15% on every purchase (harmonized federal and provincial sales tax) so I don't have much more than that to give. And the government doesn't ask me for much - I think I paid around $600 last year, which was a very lean year. This year has been even leaner so I probably will only pay $200 (which will still constitute a burden). So there's the situation at one end of the spectrum. Which end should be kind of obvious.
Now consider a family with 2 parents and 2 kids in the same household. Both parents work and have good jobs. They pull 50 or 60 hour weeks regularly. They earn $250k combined. Seems like an enormous figure to me but it really isn't. They have a house and two cars. They have all the expenses incurred by having kids. They are saving for retirement and worried about their investments constantly (worried about putting the kids through college, worried that a big hit to the market at the wrong time could wipe out their retirement savings, worried about money all the time). They are solidly in the middle class but are nowhere near being in what should be the top tax bracket. They couldn't, for example, buy a house in which 4 people could comfortably live in Toronto. Houses like that are at least $1 million. But the top tax bracket in Canada kicks in at $135k/year. So they pay the same rates as families making $1 million or $10 million or $50 million a year. This hypothetical family can afford to pay higher rates than I can but they don't have anywhere near the disposable income of a family making $1M/year. This is not the situation at the other end of the spectrum. At least, it shouldn't be. This should be the situation in the middle (edging closer to the top but just barely).
The way the government gets votes by slashing the top tax bracket (aside from all the bullshit about "job creators") is by keeping the amount at which the top bracket kicks in low enough that our hypothetical family is forced to pay the top rates. Slashing the rates on the wealthiest people in the country is a terrible idea (as Bush the Lesser proved in the US) but $135k/year aren't the wealthiest people! They aren't even close. There are enough of them (and enough of them vote) that governments can get away with reducing taxes for those who are the real beneficiaries of cuts like the one the Canadian government is thinking about now.
Any statistician who has looked at income distributions over the last ten to twenty years will show you (and I have linked to the demos many times already in this blog) the difference between people in the top 10% and the people in the top 5% is enormous. And the difference between the top 5% and top %1 is bigger than the difference between the top 10% and top 5%. You only have to earn about $300k/year to get into the top 10% but to get in the top 5% you need to earn many times that much. And all the people between from the top 10-5% together don't earn as much as the top 1%.
I can't give a figure for precisely how much you should earn before you enter the top tax bracket but I can say, with absolute certainty, it should be above $135k/year.
The tax rate on the top income earners is the lowest it has been since the 1920s but, while I think that rate should be increased, it shouldn't be increased very much. $135k just isn't what it was. Again, when I was a kid that was rich! Now it's doing well and feels like doing ok. It is cynical as hell to keep the entry level for the top tax bracket so low. It means members of city councils, university professors, some blue collar union members, almost everyone in the federal government are considered "The Wealthiest Canadians". It's also how the people who live off inherited fortunes or do nothing but own things get away with paying far less tax than they can and should.
The obvious conclusion is the government wants to decrease taxes for those who give the most to their campaigns - which is entirely predictable. But they aren't thinking of the people who barely scrape over the limit into the top bracket, which is how they will try to sell it. They are thinking about those who were born so far above the top bracket they have never even laid eyes on it. I know this because even a dumbass like me can think of adding another bracket at the top, rather than decreasing the top tax rate as a way to help families in the $100-200k range. If there were two more brackets above what is currently the highest bracket it would make even more sense.
When I have discussions like this with my brother - who actually understands some stuff about money - he says there is no point because people earning that much money can afford to pay someone $100k/year to hide it from the government. Or they can just leave the country. While this is no doubt true, I don't think it changes anything. To me it's like saying cops shouldn't check for fingerprints on cases where something worth more than $100k was stolen because anyone smart enough to steal something that valuable wouldn't leave any behind. If we think it is wrong not to tax the richest people in the country more than they are currently being taxed shouldn't we at least try? If they don't want to pay they should have to break the law instead of using their money to change the law.
Ah, yet another complaint against the world that will change precisely nothing. Sometimes I think it would be both easier and more effective to just kill the richest fucks in the world. But even if I limited myself to people worth over $1B, I would be killing all the time and that really isn't how I want to spend my life.
Now consider a family with 2 parents and 2 kids in the same household. Both parents work and have good jobs. They pull 50 or 60 hour weeks regularly. They earn $250k combined. Seems like an enormous figure to me but it really isn't. They have a house and two cars. They have all the expenses incurred by having kids. They are saving for retirement and worried about their investments constantly (worried about putting the kids through college, worried that a big hit to the market at the wrong time could wipe out their retirement savings, worried about money all the time). They are solidly in the middle class but are nowhere near being in what should be the top tax bracket. They couldn't, for example, buy a house in which 4 people could comfortably live in Toronto. Houses like that are at least $1 million. But the top tax bracket in Canada kicks in at $135k/year. So they pay the same rates as families making $1 million or $10 million or $50 million a year. This hypothetical family can afford to pay higher rates than I can but they don't have anywhere near the disposable income of a family making $1M/year. This is not the situation at the other end of the spectrum. At least, it shouldn't be. This should be the situation in the middle (edging closer to the top but just barely).
The way the government gets votes by slashing the top tax bracket (aside from all the bullshit about "job creators") is by keeping the amount at which the top bracket kicks in low enough that our hypothetical family is forced to pay the top rates. Slashing the rates on the wealthiest people in the country is a terrible idea (as Bush the Lesser proved in the US) but $135k/year aren't the wealthiest people! They aren't even close. There are enough of them (and enough of them vote) that governments can get away with reducing taxes for those who are the real beneficiaries of cuts like the one the Canadian government is thinking about now.
Any statistician who has looked at income distributions over the last ten to twenty years will show you (and I have linked to the demos many times already in this blog) the difference between people in the top 10% and the people in the top 5% is enormous. And the difference between the top 5% and top %1 is bigger than the difference between the top 10% and top 5%. You only have to earn about $300k/year to get into the top 10% but to get in the top 5% you need to earn many times that much. And all the people between from the top 10-5% together don't earn as much as the top 1%.
I can't give a figure for precisely how much you should earn before you enter the top tax bracket but I can say, with absolute certainty, it should be above $135k/year.
The tax rate on the top income earners is the lowest it has been since the 1920s but, while I think that rate should be increased, it shouldn't be increased very much. $135k just isn't what it was. Again, when I was a kid that was rich! Now it's doing well and feels like doing ok. It is cynical as hell to keep the entry level for the top tax bracket so low. It means members of city councils, university professors, some blue collar union members, almost everyone in the federal government are considered "The Wealthiest Canadians". It's also how the people who live off inherited fortunes or do nothing but own things get away with paying far less tax than they can and should.
The obvious conclusion is the government wants to decrease taxes for those who give the most to their campaigns - which is entirely predictable. But they aren't thinking of the people who barely scrape over the limit into the top bracket, which is how they will try to sell it. They are thinking about those who were born so far above the top bracket they have never even laid eyes on it. I know this because even a dumbass like me can think of adding another bracket at the top, rather than decreasing the top tax rate as a way to help families in the $100-200k range. If there were two more brackets above what is currently the highest bracket it would make even more sense.
When I have discussions like this with my brother - who actually understands some stuff about money - he says there is no point because people earning that much money can afford to pay someone $100k/year to hide it from the government. Or they can just leave the country. While this is no doubt true, I don't think it changes anything. To me it's like saying cops shouldn't check for fingerprints on cases where something worth more than $100k was stolen because anyone smart enough to steal something that valuable wouldn't leave any behind. If we think it is wrong not to tax the richest people in the country more than they are currently being taxed shouldn't we at least try? If they don't want to pay they should have to break the law instead of using their money to change the law.
Ah, yet another complaint against the world that will change precisely nothing. Sometimes I think it would be both easier and more effective to just kill the richest fucks in the world. But even if I limited myself to people worth over $1B, I would be killing all the time and that really isn't how I want to spend my life.
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