Charlotte Off Topic

[ah59396]

1 hour ago, Jayvee said:

Gotta say it: Go Cavs!

BOOOOOOOOO

[jednc]

12 hours ago, ah59396 said:

BOOOOOOOOO

I'm sleepy this a.m. but that game was worth staying up for. Hope that's the closest one.

[abttown]

Today is primary day!  Don't forget to vote.  This link takes you to the NC voter search where you can look up your sample ballot and voting location.  I believe you can only vote in your specified voting location today.

[SgtCampsalot]

Hey, does anyone happen to have any good photos of speed tables? They are the speed bumps that are full squares that cover an entire intersection. Downtown Matthews has a great one on Trade St but I haven't been able to get down there.

[grodney]

10 minutes ago, SgtCampsalot said:

Hey, does anyone happen to have any good photos of speed tables? They are the speed bumps that are full squares that cover an entire intersection. Downtown Matthews has a great one on Trade St but I haven't been able to get down there.

Google Images has several (see below for one).  Or you could use StreetView of Matthews.

 

 

[Guest]

Just now, grodney said:

Google Images has several (see below for one).  Or you could use StreetView of Matthews.

 

 

Looks like a quaint village in the UK

[grodney]

6 minutes ago, ricky_davis_fan_21 said:

Looks like a quaint village in the UK

Haha, yes, remove bottom inch and flip image to get the driving on the right.

[videtur quam contuor]

Camden and Worthington has one that crosses the intersection. Road sign says "speed table".

[SgtCampsalot]

39 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

Camden and Worthington has one that crosses the intersection. Road sign says "speed table".

Oh yeah! I forgot about that!

[SgtCampsalot]

So can we have a UP conversation on the sustainability, or lack thereof, of towers and skyscrapers?

Our growth paradigm has been entering a drawn out phase of contraction for some time, and there is still the momentum of the system we've set in place continuing to build things with the intention of maximizing economic profit on any given piece of land with little thought of its adaptability and maintenance down the line. In our inevitable future of energy scarcity and forced reorganization of our living patterns, it seems as though there is no way they will end up being anything but liabilities.

I love the look of tall buildings more than anyone (my heart melts whenever I return from a trip and see our skyline over the horizon), but they seem to be a drastic mis-allocation of resources in the same order of faceless suburban sprawl development and excessive highway construction.

Thoughts?

Edited June 13, 2016 by SgtCampsalot

[kermit]

^ I am no expert but I was always under the impression that dense mid/high rise construction was the most environmentally friendly form of development. What am I missing here?

Edited June 13, 2016 by kermit

[kermit]

The most suburban of all businesses has decided to move its HQ from the burbs (of Chicago) to edge of downtown (the West Loop)

http://chicagoist.com/2016/06/13/mcdonalds_is_moving_their_headquart.php

 

[tozmervo]

3 hours ago, kermit said:

^ I am no expert but I was always under the impression that dense mid/high rise construction was the most environmentally friendly form of development. What am I missing here?

There are diminishing returns in a way - at some point the infrastructure required for high rises outweighs the efficiencies of shared utilities (the embodied energy of producing increasingly heavy steel, concrete, etc). 

[Prodev]

18 hours ago, SgtCampsalot said:

So can we have a UP conversation on the sustainability, or lack thereof, of towers and skyscrapers?

Our growth paradigm has been entering a drawn out phase of contraction for some time, and there is still the momentum of the system we've set in place continuing to build things with the intention of maximizing economic profit on any given piece of land with little thought of its adaptability and maintenance down the line. In our inevitable future of energy scarcity and forced reorganization of our living patterns, it seems as though there is no way they will end up being anything but liabilities.

I love the look of tall buildings more than anyone (my heart melts whenever I return from a trip and see our skyline over the horizon), but they seem to be a drastic mis-allocation of resources in the same order of faceless suburban sprawl development and excessive highway construction.

Thoughts?

You should take an afternoon and tour some of the new buildings uptown and even in south end and ask about their "green" features. I think you'd be surprised how many things these projects include in that regard. While LEED was the trend in the last cycle and still has some merits, mostly in office product, it's not cost effective. Certain high price items or processes that are required to get enough points for LEED certification don't have the environmental return on investment so developers have stopped focusing on LEED and are just focused on incorporating energy efficient and environmentally friendly features into the projects without needing the LEED stamp of approval. 

[Crown]

21 minutes ago, Prodev said:

You should take an afternoon and tour some of the new buildings uptown and even in south end and ask about their "green" features. I think you'd be surprised how many things these projects include in that regard. While LEED was the trend in the last cycle and still has some merits, mostly in office product, it's not cost effective. Certain high price items or processes that are required to get enough points for LEED certification don't have the environmental return on investment so developers have stopped focusing on LEED and are just focused on incorporating energy efficient and environmentally friendly features into the projects without needing the LEED stamp of approval. 

Also, for Tryon Place at least, they decided that LEED was a "standard" of sorts that is a requirement for new buildings (although the actual "level" doesn't matter at much for leasing purposes). TP will instead focus HEAVILY on being the first building with the "well building" standard on the east coast. This designation aligns even more closely with what decision makers for big corporate relocations  want, mostly because it's something they can can turn around and sell for recruitment purposes.

http://www.wellcertified.com/well

https://www.wellcertified.com/system/files/The WELL Building Standard v1 with May 2016 addenda.pdf

 

[SgtCampsalot]

18 hours ago, kermit said:

^ I am no expert but I was always under the impression that dense mid/high rise construction was the most environmentally friendly form of development. What am I missing here?

I suppose a start is that the construction of more and more high rise structures is predicated on the assumption that there will continue to be a plentiful supply of easily-accessible energy forever. It feels to be the same assumptions that lead to perpetual highway expansion (under the assumption that economic growth will continue forever, and that we just need to "prepare" for this inevitable prosperity). And the arguments that say we will continue to find new and innovative ways to generate easy energy in the future feels like a certain level of technological-hubris in the face of how nature works. We will never have an energy source that is as powerful and readily-accessible as oil and coal. Solar and wind are necessities, but they are by their very nature intermittent.

Our entire system is reliant on a certain percentage of growth at all times, and if it doesn't have growth, some part of it collapses under the weight of itself. 

This system's solutions to its problems has been to create higher and higher levels of complexity, which will inevitably succumb to entropy. If you look at the last century of modern civilization as a ball of energy that is growing, and growing, and growing, eventually it will contract.

So, the sheer amount of financial capital required to keep these tall buildings maintained and renovated will likely eventually restrict which ones are able to be saved in the long run.

 

Edited June 14, 2016 by SgtCampsalot

[tozmervo]

33 minutes ago, Crown said:

Also, for Tryon Place at least, they decided that LEED was a "standard" of sorts that is a requirement for new buildings (although the actual "level" doesn't matter at much for leasing purposes). TP will instead focus HEAVILY on being the first building with the "well building" standard on the east coast. This designation aligns even more closely with what decision makers for big corporate relocations  want, mostly because it's something they can can turn around and sell for recruitment purposes.

http://www.wellcertified.com/well

https://www.wellcertified.com/system/files/The WELL Building Standard v1 with May 2016 addenda.pdf

 

We've had some internal debate about the WELL standard and if it will become a worthwhile pursuit. Much like LEED, a great deal of the requirements are borderline "duh" and the other requirements are more like "are you serious?" from a bureaucratic perspective.

[kermit]

2 hours ago, SgtCampsalot said:

I suppose a start is that the construction of more and more high rise structures is predicated on the assumption that there will continue to be a plentiful supply of easily-accessible energy forever.

I am still trying to get my head around this. While I do understand Toz's point that making steel and glass is very energy intensive, I would think that a large portion of that energy cost would be recovered by the relatively long useful lifespan of the structure (e.g. if the building materials require twice as much energy to produce (per square foot) as a stick-built four story building but it lasts twice as long isn't that a wash in terms of sustainability?

In addition, do we know for sure that high rise structures consume more energy (during operation) per square foot than smaller buildings? I know that elevators and pumping water has a cost, but I would think that HVAC and lighting would be significantly more efficient in a high rise.

Finally, does the energy cost of transportation to/from the building enter into the calculation? Smaller buildings, by necessity, require more energy expenditures to get to or from the building (the parking lot factor). High-rises at least provide the opportunity to serve the structure by transit which will be far more energy efficient than single-passenger vehicles. As the energy expenditures for commuting are multiplied over the life of the building these savings become huge.

Other issues like amount of impermeable surface and greenspace preservation seem potentially relevant as well.

Edited June 14, 2016 by kermit

[SgtCampsalot]

Right. So the place I'm coming from is what happens to these tall buildings when the need for our communities to live within their means finally catches up with them? The cities will be wealthy enough prop up their economies with financial gymnastics, when even today they are broke. But eventually, building by building, there will not be an entity with the means to viably maintain and renovate every single one of these structures. 

It's like how local policy will eventually be to de-pave rural/suburban roads that are in need of maintenance because cities and towns are so stretched thin with their infrastructure obligations.

[kermit]

55 minutes ago, SgtCampsalot said:

Right. So the place I'm coming from is what happens to these tall buildings when the need for our communities to live within their means finally catches up with them?

I don't really see a problem here. As long as cash-flow exceeds maintenance costs for a building owner everything remains kosher. Since tall buildings have lots of adaptable space they generate plenty of revenue to stave-off maintenance cycles. 

Since I am not a commercial property manager I can't say I know the specifics of these numbers, but if you look around most US cities you very rarely see empty skyscrapers in downtown areas. There are two big exceptions to this that I am aware of, Fort Worth during the oil bust of the early 1990s and Detroit. Fort Worth filled its empty buildings in less than a decade and downtown Detroit RE values are climbing quickly.

 

[SgtCampsalot]

2 hours ago, kermit said:

I don't really see a problem here. As long as cash-flow exceeds maintenance costs for a building owner everything remains kosher. Since tall buildings have lots of adaptable space they generate plenty of revenue to stave-off maintenance cycles. 

True, that's a good point. But also, I'm talking many, many decades in the future. Do we see high-rise condominiums remaining relevant? Those are owned collectively by the tenants.

I know I'm getting really abstract here, so thanks for reading along with me this far. I'm talking the contraction of our complex, ever-expanding economic/financial structure here, which has to happen as a matter of nature (entropy and whatnot). I'm not saying we'll all be agrarian, but our economy surely has to shift in the future...?

[kermit]

Sure, I am totally on board with the inevitable failure of capitalism and that will almost certainly make skyscrapers our post-modern pyramids. 

This however begs the question, what could we build that is both efficient and productive today (like skyscrapers) and adaptable to the post-apocalyptic future (like Yurts)?

Edited June 15, 2016 by kermit

[tozmervo]

We all know where this conversation is going.

[SgtCampsalot]

^EXACTLY

Edited June 14, 2016 by SgtCampsalot

[grodney]

Ha hahahahahahaha: