Lookin’ Good… Or Not.

#227, December 5, 2007

The holiday season shopping surge is here. And Mr. and Ms. Consumer will be exposed to dangerous levels of bad design, things that just don’t work like they should. IMHO, if you can’t design it well, don’t build it. Some of the stuff being sold… you pay your everyday low price, it’s broken before the end of Christmas break, and you wonder: is this why the Chinese are burning all that coal? Why don’t they cut out the middleman: charge your Visa, and drop ship their lousy goods from the distributor directly to the landfill. And it’s not just the products: I think there should be an inner circle of hell reserved for people who produce instruction manuals that can’t be navigated by anyone who has consumed less than four glasses of holiday spirit.

Enough talk about crummy merchandise; let’s look around Petaluma for the good, bad, and ugly of architecture and urban design. First stop is that clock tower-thingy in the Petaluma Plaza: the faux carillon bells, the Playskool-colored faux stained glass on the underbelly… what the faux were they thinking? Across the street, we see what is truly the finest building erected since I came to town a quarter century ago. Not lamely trying to pretend to some historic style, the Luchessa Community Center strikes a fine balance of blending in and standing out. *Its* tower, with the optically shape-shifting pyramidal cap, is a real work of art.

Up Sonoma Mountain Parkway, sandwiched between subdivisions of garage-dominated homes, lies lovely little Britannia Court. Its design favors people over cars, with a narrow tree-canopied street, real front porches, and small garages recessed to the back of the lot. It has a very neighborly feeling, where you actually *want* your kids out playing in the street. Moving westward, we come to the buildings that ask the architectural question, “when did SPARC start giving away ‘good for one unconditional approval’ cards?” Those buildings bordering McDowell, with their condiment-colored cubism and bizarre ornamentation, the mechanical mutant eyebrow, the broken aircraft carrier elevator... ick!

On to Telecom Valley Tilt-Up Row (Cisco, Tellabs), where providing workers with a decent place to hang out outside seemed at best an afterthought (“drive to work, drive to lunch, drive home… are we missing anything?”) Turning south, we pass the Auto Mall sign. This behemoth was approved *and partially funded by* the City, ostensibly to let freeway passers-by in on the secret that there are cars for sale here. Funding the sign was compensation to the dealers for prohibiting individual signs at each dealership (so we could better see the acres of parking lots?) Outlet Mall: looks nice, but still too car-dependent. Theater District: looks great, and is pedestrian friendy. The new Transit Center bus shelters: racy design, but will they shelter riders from the wicked north-westerly winds and southwesterly rains?

Do you see a common thread in my critiques: that I dislike designs that assume the car will forever reign as king? Good. Now let me tell you that the worst design of all is pending before the City Council. No, it’s not the beloved Kelly Creek subdivision. But fuelish, sprawling auto-centric projects like that are more likely if the City approves the pending draft of the General Plan’s Greenhouse Gas Emission component (http://cityofpetaluma.net/genplan/deir/notice-revised-deir.pdf).

On July 18, 2005, the CC unanimously approved Resolution 2005-018, joining the rest of Sonoma County in committing to reducing emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2015. Unfortunately, this new General Plan proposal, despite the increasingly dire news about climate change over the past years, ignores City policy. Goal 4-G-6 of the draft plan, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, says: “Reduce the contribution to greenhouse gases from existing sources and minimize the contribution of greenhouse gases from new construction and sources." What happened to the 25% net *reduction*? Table 3.10-6, Projected Emissions, goes on to show GGEs *increasing* 10% between now and 2015, a 50% *increase* over the 1990 level. Driving fast, to be sure, but in the wrong direction.

Maybe I’m misreading this, but if I’m not, the City Council is poised to approve a stupendously crummy design. Don’t buy it!