text:
YIMBY and Production Theory
Two years ago, at a Breakthrough Institute conference, I met Tory Gattis in real life for the first time, having known him on the Internet for maybe ten years. He was doing a debate with Kim-Mai Cutler, except they mostly agreed, and I think the reason for the agreement is their conception of production theory.
Tory's opening was the most illuminating part, and only then, in 2018, did I understand why in 2008-9 I was so interested in reading him even though he was always pro-car, an unabashed Houston booster, and a fan of Joel Kotkin. He opened by defining himself in opposition to three ideas from the 2000s: smart growth, New Urbanism, and Richard Florida's conception of the creative class. And there is clicked: these three ideas are all about cities as loci of consumption. Before YIMBYism, when Market Urbanism was an obscure libertarian blog, there wasn't a lot in there for people who think in terms of urban job and residential growth, who think that consumption follows production and not the reverse.
New Urbanism and Richard Florida's theory both hold, in different ways, that if cities make themselves nice to specific (different) classes of people, they will attract people who are morally and economically better to have as residents, stimulating further growth. In New Urbanism, this is about designing cities based on principles that are held to be objectively nicer for residents; this quickly boils down to the "when we're expensive this proves we're desirable, when you're expensive this proves you're unaffordable" principle. Ironically, the blog Old Urbanist holds something similar, it just posits a different (generally better) set of design principles. Richard Florida is less about physical design and more about community amenities for groups that in the 2000s he held were more creative, like gay people, for whom he prescribed more gay bars.
The irony is that even as he has increasingly repudiated the creative class theory, Florida maintains his attachment to consumption theory of cities. The difference is that 18 years ago he thought that building New Left-coded amenities like bike lanes and gay bars would attract creatives and increase social and economic outcomes and now he believes the same except that the final outcome is to raise rents. Tory was critiquing the idea already in the late 2000s, pointing out the anemic outcomes of cities whose development policy was consumption-based – it's not that they were creating jobs but their rents was rising, but rather that they kept having low job growth and net emigration.
Smart growth is somewhat different, in that it is not explicitly an endorsement of consumption theory. However, in practice its effect is always to make development harder, not easier. The contrast is with transit-oriented development, which in theory means the same thing but in practice counts dwellings build near train stations and not dwellings prevented from being built far from train stations. California celebrates smart growth and smart growth celebrates California, and in practice the effect of California's housing policy for the last 50 or so years has been to make all housing hard to build, creating a supply shortage.
In comes YIMBY. The central policy proposal of YIMBYism is to build more housing in rich, expensive cities. But the central tenet of YIMBYism is that people's decisions about where to move to are driven by production rather than by consumption – that is, that people move for work rather than for the sort of consumption amenities that urban policymakers focus on.
This does not mean consumption amenities do not exist. They clearly do, but they operate at different levels from that of neighborhood activism. Albouy-Ehrlich-Liu find extensive consumption effects on urban desirability, but these are almost all geographic, like mild weather and proximity to the coast; only one is affected by policy, air quality, and that is a regional rather than local variable. Other policy-relevant consumption variables may be crime and education, neither of which is that responsive to local-level policy, especially when it pertains to development. People like New York and London and Paris, and maybe they'll like them more if they provide public services like clean air better, but they'll certainly not like them less if they replace 150-year-old 4-story buildings with 50-story ones. What people like about New York and London and Paris is not the architecture or the size of the buildings, but the dense job networks.
Written by Alon Levy Posted in Development, Urban Design, Urbanism
2020/06/18 - 01:41 Eric2
"What people like about New York and London and Paris is not the architecture or the size of the buildings, but the dense job networks." I would phrase this as "What gets people to move to New York and London and Paris". People really do like the architecture of Paris, which is why they visit so often. But they also like the architecture of Santorini, which they also visit. The reason people *stay* in Paris and not Santorini is the job networks.
2020/06/22 - 07:27 electricangel
You make a good point. Cohesive urban design, like Haussmann's 19th century Paris, has its own value in beauty. It's just hard to quantify, so the logic of replacing graceful Beaux Arts structures with cheap but more capacious modern structures holds.
I've long thought letting people on the street vote on beauty of a building, and taxing ugly structures more, might go to incentivizing the construction of the sorts of modern, high rise buildings we could all support. 15 Central Park West is new, denser than what was there before, and beloved.
2020/06/18 - 03:37 Cirratus
[New Urbanists say] "when we're expensive this proves we're desirable, when you're expensive this proves you're unaffordable"
[you say] "People like New York and London and Paris … they'll certainly not like them less if they replace 150-year-old 4-story buildings with 50-story ones .. [what they like is] the dense job networks."
What do you mean exactly by "people like city X" ?
And how can we measure it ? Rent growth ? Population growth ? https://www.lexpress.fr/emploi/un-parisien-sur-deux-pret-a-quitter-la-capitale_2007456.html ? All these methods have very obvious shortcomings, and it's all because it's never clear if people make their choices because "they like it". For example, yes, people go to the big cities for work, but this fact can be seen as "they like the dense job networks" or as "they are forced to move because of the collapse of jobs networks everywhere else".
I look at income, mostly, and also at housing costs. Occasionally there are caveats for places where it's genuinely hard to import construction materials, like Hawaii, but that's a rare case, and usually if housing construction costs are high, as in San Francisco, it's because there's such a housing shortage that construction workers require more money to afford to live in the area, and over time zoning liberalization would lead to reduced construction costs.
This isn't just about big cities. New Urbanist developments like Seaside clearly have it and this suggests, to me, that there should be more development in Seaside, whereas CNU would instead suggest more development elsewhere with the same built form as Seaside. The same is true of resort towns like Aspen, which in the name of smart growth choked development, leading to high housing costs and long working-class commutes.
Polls are not terribly relevant – huge cities generate huge numbers of people who want to move in and huge numbers who want to move out. You see the same in New York – many say they'd like to leave, many people in the rest of the US say they'd like to move there.
Also, many people who'd like to leave NYC, would like to leave because of the housing costs. Build more housing, and they would lose their reason to leave.
2020/06/19 - 18:09 Mike
Some of New York City's attractions are unique to New York: its 400-year history; the Broadway show industry; its founding Dutch influence of anything-goes commerce, diversity and tolerance, and not fearing large cities. Other things could easily be replicated in most American cities as they are in Europe and Asia, but they're not due to cultural/political issues: ubiquidous public transit, self-contained walkable neighborhoods that have everything you need, pedestrian-oriented medium and high density. Some people move to New York because their job is there. Others move to New York because it has amenities that are hard to find elsewhere in the US, and they find a job that allows them to stay there. The unique attractions and the generic attractions are probably half and half.
Mid-20th century American history is littered with examples of once thriving medium-density neighbourhoods that were gutted by towers-in-the-park-joined-by-highways schemes. This even happened to parts of New York City, which went through a deep decline even though the jobs-hub of Wall St and Midtown remained largely unscathed throughout this period (the employees just moved out to the suburbs).
The question comes down to how do you best accommodate the need for housing growth? There are basically three realistic options (ignoring isolated cases where dense neighbourhoods can spring up from nothing):
1. low-density development in greenfields areas
2. developing suburban areas into medium-density
3. upzoning existing medium density areas to high-rise
Everyone here is agreed that option 1 is bad, because it leads to urban sprawl, car dependency and the withering of the public realm. The issue is whether 2 or 3 is preferable for quality of life. And what is the priority: giving people neighbourhoods they like living in, or accommodating them as close as possible to where jobs are.
It would seem on the face of it that in the US there is a severe market under-supply of medium-density walkable/transit-oriented neighbourhoods with vibrant street life, since the ones that do exist usually end up becoming impossibly expensive to live in (initially New York and San Francisco, but now this is happening in inner neighbourhoods all over the country). So they end up turning into playgrounds for the rich.
The existence of a sizeable number of reverse commuters living in dense historic cores and working in ex-urbs (e.g. San Francisco-Silicon Valley, New York-Stamford, etc.) also suggests that there are people who value neighbourhood quality over job proximity, and are even willing to pay a significant premium (in terms of higher rents and longer commute times) for the privilege. Of course this primarily happens among a small, well-to-do, mobile elite. Most people don't have the luxury to make these choices in the first place and basically have to make do with their existing situation, no matter how inadequate.
It's not really right to attribute what happened in New York in the 1970s to high-rise construction. The Upper West Side got towers (on a base, not in a park), and against Jane Jacobs' prediction became one of the city's richest neighborhoods. Stuy Town, a segregated white project designed for the middle class, didn't turn into a hotbed of crime and neither did Co-op City, whereas the entirety of Harlem and the South Bronx did, projects as well as mid-rise streets with a continuous street wall like Edgecombe and St. Nick. The problems were poverty and racial segregation, and not how tall the buildings were.
The reverse-commute issue is not quite consumption-based. It comes from any of the following issues:
– In the suburbs that generate the most high-end reverse-commuting, like Silicon Valley and the edge cities north of New York, housing is even more expensive than in the city.
– Many people have two-body problems.
– The industries in question are not ones of lifetime employment, and living in the city makes it easier to switch jobs.
Of note, the neighborhoods people live in for reverse-commute purposes are not necessarily the most desirable for other purposes, for example Fordham in the Bronx.
"Towers in parks" get a bad rap because they were usually built as public housing for the poor, so naturally they ended up as slums. However, I can't think of a single *privately* built tower, in a park or otherwise, which has become rundown. I challenge the readers of this comment to name one. In the meantime I will assume that free market towers in parks are completely desirable.
Ponte City would be the obvious example
Touche. I would say though that "end of apartheid" is a kind of shock that few cities nowadays have to go through. Any examples outside South Africa?
There are plenty towers in parks that are in private ownership nowadays. What about them?
Like, they were built by "the state" (whatever that means) but have since been privatized… Look at Dresden-Gorbitz, for example…
These complexes were often badly designed (not in response to market forces) and cheaply built. Often their "park" is roped off to prevent use by residents. Many of their residents have subsidized rent that prevents market rate residents from moving in later on. And of course any gentrification process takes time, rich people aren't going to move into a slum, but rather into an already somewhat-desirable area. All factors which prevent from them becoming desirable the way purpose-built private towers are desirable…
Slumlords wish to make a buck while spending nothing on maintenance. Most towers in parks were bought by slumlords, not gentrifiers.
Most towers in parks were bought by slumlords, not gentrifiers.
The thing is that there's little distinction between slumlords or gentrifiers because with property there is always a stark imperative to maximise corporate profits to the max, which is often so excessive–via excess rent increases and/or skimping on maintenance–that it drives such places towards the precipice of irreversible decline. It's the nature of this particular "industry" where "investor" (speculator) expectation is way beyond reasonable returns. Two prominent examples of middle-class (note to Eric2) high-rise housing come to mind. Parkchester in the Bronx, and Stuyvesant Town & Peter Cooper Village on the northern border of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Both were developed in the immediate post-war period by MetLife with city assistance which makes the rapacious behaviour of modern owners even worse. As with so much that is acclaimed as what great things the private sector can do, it turns out they didn't do it, and could not have done it, without public assistance, in this case intended to help returned servicemen gain housing. When ownership changed hands the new owners were predatory, because they (Tishman Speyer) had over-leveraged debt to outbid the tenant's bid (which itself was initially not allowed by MetLife until forced by legal action to consider it). This over-paying for assets in flakey property booms is vulnerable to small changes in economic conditions and this happened to both of these–ie. the 2008 GFC almost brought them down. The assumptions underlying the $5.4 billion 2006 valuation were extremely aggressive; the valuation assumed that the income from the properties would triple by 2011, only possible due to lapsing of rent-control. In 2010 Tishman Speyer had the largest commercial mortgage default in U.S. history, and its investors lost $3.3bn. But as the world and NYC recovered over the next 5 years, the sharks picked up the scent again:
Stuyvesant Town is "so big, it's so well located, there's still so much upside in it that someone is still going to make a lot of money if you hang in there," said Peter Hauspurg, chief executive officer of brokerage Eastern Consolidated, who isn't involved in the deal.
Parkchester, which was the immediate prototype for Stuy-Cooper, has also survived but only by the narrowest margins. With a change of owner, who stopped spending on upkeep etc possibly in an attempt to get rid of long-term tenants to break the rent-control (rents can go to commercial rates with a new tenant), it went into a big decline. But it was rescued in the nick of time–by the state/city of course.
The world's biggest hedgefund, Blackstone (a division of BlackRock) bought Stuy-Cooper in 2015 with an agreement hashed out between the city and residents that would keep almost half of the more than 11,000 apartments affordable for 20 years. We'll see. This shows the effect of a middle-class estate with its intrinsic advantages over poorer estates. And to be fair, ones like Heygate (or the American equivalent Pruitt-Igoe), were so poorly built and poorly maintained that they may deserve demolition but the city then should be morally obliged to provide an equivalent of affordable units in the new development that replaces it. With Heygate there was more than enough profit margin to cope with this but the property industry knows no such reasonableness, and in a system (the Anglosphere) which has distorted values, the poor and the city will always be losers. I think it is instructive that in October last year, Berlin rent increases have been frozen on 1.5 million of the city's 1.9 million homes. Typically Merkel's 'Interior Minister Horst Seehofer expressed his belief that the rent freeze is illegal, as it would "distort" national laws' but jurisidiction re rental law remains unclear. It was Merkel's CDU who oversaw privatisation of ownership of so many properties that were previously state-owned social housing. As with other big cities, as Berlin became hip and desirable, big property money moved in, and in a big way. (Feargus O'Sullivan in CityLab:) Deutsche Wohnen owns 110,000 apartments in Berlin, and has developed a reputation for raising rents sharply by finding loopholes in Germany's fairly strict rental laws. In the meantime, the firm invests almost half as much as state housing companies do to keep its homes in good condition.
It just further shows that housing should not be the domain of anonymous big-money interests. There is no easy solution except it is clear that so-called market mechanisms don't work. Which is why the Vienna model is gaining plenty of interest. The Berlin experiment will be interesting to follow but what hope for residents in London, NYC, SF or Sydney (or Hong Kong, where the only 'relief' might come from a total collapse in confidence)?
Towers in the park as I understand them are alternating high density and zero density, with nothing in between. The zero-density surroundings were originally envisioned as a park or countryside with crisscrossing highways, but in actual practice the surroundings have largely been parking lots and ornamental open space that nobody uses or wants to be in. It's not just bug public-housing projects, but office buildings everywhere. Even lowrise office parks have that abrupt moderate-density, zero-density alternation. Whereas a better design would not have density drop off so precipitously. The surroundings would be more active and intimate-scaled, and people would linger there; and maybe the buildings wouldn't be quite so tall and ultra-dense.
Whereas a better design would not have density drop off so precipitously. The surroundings would be more active and intimate-scaled, and people would linger there; and maybe the buildings wouldn't be quite so tall and ultra-dense.
That is exactly what is being done in London as they demolish the hi-rise housing estates built in the 50s-70s. The notorious Corbusian neo-brutalist Heygate Estate (next to Elephant & Castle, so actually excellent location) featured in so many Brit low-life crime shows etc. (see Michael Caine movie Harry Brown; pensioner as Charles Bronson avenger against local drug thugs!). Of course, even with it physically deteriorating and riddled with crime (rendering unusable the main pedestrian underpass across the main adjoining artery) many of its 3,000 residents still liked it. But they were shifted out and everything demolished and replaced with mostly low-level modern apartments at much higher ground coverage on 'normal' streets or sidewalks (instead of the notorious elevated concrete walkways and unkempt open space) and sold to middle-class at absurd London prices (£569,000 for a studio, or £801,000 for a two-bed flat). The developer had promised a lot of "affordable" housing but welched on it so that in the end there were only 74 such apartments. It shows how ridiculous the towers-in-a-park design was that the replacement, with bigger apartments and lower profile actually almost doubled the residency –to >5,000 IIRC.
michaelrjames – I wouldn't all this "lower profile"; if anything it's more towers-in-the-park than what came before.
That doesn't look anything like the usual artistic mockups that I last saw here:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/25/london-developers-viability-planning-affordable-social-housing-regeneration-oliver-wainwright
https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/the-truth-about-londons-heygate-by-lendlease/
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qkq4bx/every-flat-in-a-new-south-london-development-has-been-sold-to-foreign-investors
Yeah, a bit absurd really. Artistic impressions with people strolling along a cobbled and treed pedestrian way and a kid's creche under a giant tree (!), and all surrounded by unthreatening 5 to 7-storey apartment buildings with balconies. Could almost be a modern ZAC in Paris, that do actually look a bit like that!
However it is not clear to me if those buildings in your GE streetview are either residential or part of the Heygate redevelopment. The whole zone is undergoing big change. I hunted around those streets onscreen but couldn't get a clear fix. But it wouldn't be a surprise if they went supersized compared to early plans and intentions. The project was a mess in all possible ways involving local government corruption (grossly underselling the public interest) and total perfidy by the developer. In other words, business as usual for the Anglosphere …
Also, from those streetviews, what a bloody mess and typically modern British. Maybe it'll improve in another 5-10 years development but I strongly suspect careful urban planning is not really in the mix. It looks like rampant barely controlled development. Heygate is the first of about 90 such estates around London that will be demolished and rebuilt, though it is one of the best located. Next off the starting blocks is Aylesbury Estate, also under the same council, Southwark. The usual has begun, making derisory offers to the current owners.
Development Has Been Sold to Foreign Investors
When the Heygate Estate was demolished there were promises of social housing and a "community feel", but it's all fallen through.
By Andy Jones, 13 April 2017
Sales of these properties began in Singapore on the 11th April 2014, with flash brochures and slick marketing conferences. Not a single unit was for sale in London at this time. Lendlease don't even seek to hide the fact they are selling investment opportunities, not homes, as they list exactly how much rental income – around £25,000 a year for the cheapest – foreign investors can cream off without ever touching the front door.
In fact, this slow, dirty war against home owners is exactly what developers want, says Heygate campaigner Jerry Flynn: "If you'd said to Heygate residents way back in 2001 the new development would have nearly zero social housing, the cheapest unit would cost £400,000 and would be mostly sold overseas, they just wouldn't have believed you. But these sagas are an integral part of the redevelopment process because people get tired and, eventually, despite how awful it is, they accept whatever they are offered. People get bored of arguing and stop caring how much affordable housing is being built or who makes the profit out of it."
Lendlease, Southwark council and Riseam Sharples were contacted multiple times for comment and did not respond.
I agree Heygate's planning was a complete mess – I remember reading about its mismanagement for years. Those streetview shots are definitely of the redeveloped estate (if you use the rewind function you can see the old blocks pretty clearly). The area south of Heygate Street is the only one that's been finished so far, and it seems fine to me. Nothing special, but classic New London Vernacular (irregular blocky form, modest but intricate brickwork, repeated rectangular motifs, cut-out balconies, generous proportions). The lack of active frontage is a problem but not a massive one. Definitely miles better than what came before. Raising density through towers in a well-connected, central but historically unremarkable area isn't too bad IMO; shame that the social housing provision wasn't kept or increased.
Right, but that wasn't the Streetview you linked to? (It was a slick hi-rise that looks more like an office building.) Looking around I did see something vaguely matching both the old artist drawings and your description. So maybe it was the token bit of New Urbanism to get their project up and PR etc.
Anyway my major objection is almost entirely from p.o.v. of street-level urbanism (other things being equal). Of course new buildings these days generally will be acceptable (though flammable cladding…), even from the design aesthetics p.o.v. but context is all. As I wrote, maybe when this whole zone is closer to being finished, it might be much better but I was very turned off from what I saw. Equally, as you know, I have my biases which don't predispose me towards anything in London or the UK. I find their high streets to be appalling, even Oxford's Cornmarket (=main street, the actual High Street has no retail so is lifeless) which may be marginally better than most but is still wall-to-wall usual tatt of 100% identikit chains and choked with traffic (despite being a nominal pedestrian zone!). I walked thru it twice a day for about 6 years and every single time I was struck by the ugliness and the incongruity that they allowed it in a UNESCO zone! So it's burned into my brain, and I see the same crap on almost every Brit tv show or news item. None of the vibrant stimulating chaos of Hong Kong, Tokyo etc but pure depressing drudge and shoddiness, and it induces the same behaviour in its denizens. Then to top all this anti-urbanism in London the majority of any new build apartments are sold to foreigners purely as an investment strategy that keeps feeding the absurd rents.
The problems were poverty and racial segregation, and not how tall the buildings were.
That can be true, but the form of those post-war housing projects all over the western world did have an effect on the lack of community they bred, quite independent of poverty. The big open completely sterile and unkempt spaces between buildings were to no purpose and became part of the problem. With the tall buildings, often in unrelenting long stretches of uniform facades (that today is outlawed by planning regs.) created an inhuman and bleak aspect. You cannot believe that it doesn't have a damaging psychological effect over time.
Despite your claims, surveys of both Stockholmers and Singaporeans who live in high rise public housing find they like it quite a lot despite the protestations of aestheticists like yourself. But in some sense this discussion is pointless you are convinced high rises are inherently degrading. Jesus could return for the second coming, proclaim high rises good, and I'm 100% certain you'd ignore the divine intervention.
surveys of both Stockholmers and Singaporeans who live in high rise public housing find they like it
Both of those cases concern people who have almost no choice. In Stockholm those are public housing for people who might otherwise be in slums or cheap exurban locales. Likewise in Singapore, but in fact a lot of the housing including the stuff you refer to is privately built, but also quite a lot is not what I call high-rise but medium rise and Singapore does these things reasonably well, especially the overall context–walkability, transit, green, garden feel. And apart from the very earliest stuff (now mostly demolished) it's pretty good quality.
My point is that the same people could have been housed in non-high-rise, using no more, sometimes less ground, which, in general and less dependent on external factors, will produce better urbanism–a better local environment for humans to live in . In fact some of that Singapore housing does this. In any case, if you give all these people the choice–with all other things being equal, especially location & price–between that high-rise and my version of urbanism I'm pretty sure of which they'd choose. Of course this theoretical exercise is confounded by lack of experience by most people, and I'll make the infuriating claim that I have experienced many of the different forms from my suburban Australian upbringing (though not today's exurban McMansions 50km from the city), to inner-Paris Haussmannian to high-rise (Paris, Tokyo, NYC) to medium rise inner-city, and that is why I consider my opinions are informed, not just assumed. Or by divine intervention!
You should try to overcome your own prejudices. My criticism are about alternatives and how too much, especially in the Anglosphere is one extreme (SFH in far distant exurban hell) or the other (high-rise, now super-high-rise). Incidentally, I can't quite remember what I said about Copacabana for which you will never forgive me, but I am sure it wasn't worthy of your bile. I find it ok, but a bit too high and it gives the quarter a bit of an looming, slightly oppressive feel which is perhaps accentuated by the fact it is in the sub-tropics (so prone to deep contrast shadowing). But I understand why, and in the context of Rio or other big south American cities, excellent (it's a bit like inner Buenos Aires?). FWIW I think it is lucky it was built when it was, because if it was done today it would clearly be far worse. Maybe as these buildings age, it will begin doing the usual, with supertalls or whatever. Certainly it is vastly better than Brasilia and neo-Corbusian Niemeyer's inclinations. And he's yet another starchitect who chose not to live in what he designs for everyone else to live in; IIRC he had a hyper-exclusive house in the jungles of Tijuca.
2020/06/21 - 10:21 yuuka
In addition to michaelrjames –
I think I've said it before, but urbanism is viewed as a necessary evil over here, and it's how Johor property developers get away with selling so much landed housing. For what it's worth, not too long ago they were building "town centres" with low-rise housing and commercial uses on the ground floor, in what I assume is an attempt to copy European inner-city land use policies.
The reasons why I presume there aren't much more super-high-rises of the Hong Kong kind around here is a combination of practical height limits from the need to maintain an air force and airbases around the island for national defense, along with an arbitrary height limit based on "plot density" allowed in an area or 280m, whichever is less.
not too long ago they were building "town centres" with low-rise housing and commercial uses on the ground floor, in what I assume is an attempt to copy European inner-city land use policies.
I'm struggling with understanding that a bit. Surely the Asians never had to copy this as they have always spontaneously generated such activity. It's a natural human inclination, and it requires active regulation and enforcement to prevent it, like American zoning laws and nutty notions such as BigBox Malls with gigantic car parks to sequester such activity "somewhere else". I can't quite remember if Corbusier picked up his notions, of leaving the ground floor empty under his pilotis to generate such activity, from the Asians but it is something they have done with their MFH, whether medium- or high-rise.
Perhaps LKY had learnt from his time in the UK that it was a good idea to avoid the shocking sterility and crime incubators/community dysfunction of tower-block project housing. Note that Heygate Estate was opened in 1974, which is pretty late in the day–we are institutionally slow learners. Herbert needs to comment on this but this bleak sterility at ground level also bedevils ostensible more upmarket developments like Märkisches Viertel (1963-74). Deja vu, as I am sure we had long exchanges on this last year. I discussed many of these estates including more recent ones, even in Copenhagen, as covered by Florian Urban in his "Slab and Tower" (2011) and "The New Tenement: Residences in the Inner City Since 1970" (2017). I am pretty sure I cited tracts of his but I can't find them now. Here's a tiny bit that captures the problem:
The Märkisches Viertel was criticized as a textbook example of modernist hubris that entailed both ugly architecture and bad planning. The lack of daycare, transportation, and shopping opportunities–many of them were planned but not yet finished–was denounced as a fundamental defect of tower-and-slab developments. The Märkisches Viertel was also criticized on an aesthetic basis: the buildings were too big, as were the "dead" spaces between them, and the standardized forms were too monotonous.
The student's criticism was eagerly published in Germany's most eminent news magazine, Der Spiegel, which censured the Märkisches Viertel as "the bleakest product of concrete architecture." The diagnosis: "This is a gray hell!" The periodical followed up with a cover story five months later, quoting frustrated inhabitants of large prefab settlements all over Germany: "I feel like I am in a prison camp," "I will die in this monotony," and "Every night when I come home I curse the day we moved into these barracks". The projects were indicted as "monotonous orthogonal high-rise towers," "inhospitable square mountains," "shabby dwelling cubes" and "bleak groups of barracks."
…. The criticism targeted different aspects. The works were often shabby, the apartments relatively small. The endless repetition of the same forms was perceived as monotonous, the scale as inflicting insecurity upon the inhabitants. The vast green spaces rarely served as the meeting places that the architects had envisioned; indeed they were dangerous to cross at night. The dissolution of old neighbourhood structures and the anonymity in the huge towers led to mistrust and neglect of public spaces.
Re Singapore's more medium rise than super-talls as in Hong Kong, it's because it doesn't have the same space pressures as Hong Kong which derive from its topography. Though both city-states generate new land by very expensive sea reclamation, Singapore has more developable land. There also appears to be conscious planning to achieve more human-scale developments but I yield to yuuka's local knowledge on that. Singapore has very high economic inequality but seems to have so far avoided the kind of extreme inequality in housing like seen in Hong Kong. At the same time I cannot help think that the economics of extremely tall residential towers–like the series ranks of 64-storey towers in Tung Chung new town opposite HKI airport–are counter to providing affordable housing for the lower-SES, especially in the likes of Hong Kong. And therefore that Singapore's lower profile housing helps reduce that problem; not that Singapore is an inexpensive housing market but HK is stratospheric (towers and prices!). At any rate, we seem so slow to learn (Nilo!) that building high-rise has never solved these problems, either in the rich east or west.
There are 17 subway tracks entering Manhattan, versus 5 regional/intercity tracks. Given the cost of building in NY, these numbers are not going to change much in the forseeable. This means that most building in the future will have to be in the city.
The existence of Copacabana and Ipanema in Rio, the UWS and UES sides in NYC, the entirety of Miami, and the Lakeshore in Chicago should dispel us of any notion that high-rise living is disliked by people and inherently less desirable than mid rise living. On this issue I'm always struck by the fact that Swedish architects and intellectuals reviled public housing developments in Stockholm that hit 17 stories in height, but when residents of those same projects were surveyed they loved them.
Nobody's saying that high density is inherently undesirable. But I think it's clear that the greatest mis-match between supply and demand in the US is in medium-density, non-car dependent neighbourhoods: there are so few of these that the ones that do exist have mostly become over-priced.
The UWS is a good example of retaining the street character of medium-density while densifying, but even here most of the neighbourhood away from Central Park and the waterfront is pre-WWII medium density. By contrast, my experience of the Chicago Lakeshore (I have in-laws who lived there) is that it's a pretty desolate place despite the high population density. People pay top dollar for a view of the water and a short commute, but that doesn't make it a successful urban environment.
They think it's a sucessful environment or the rents would be as high. May not be to your tastes but they like it.
As Adirondacker says people love it so clearly there's something successful about it. Anyways I don't think anybody has ever called Copacabana or Ipanema desolate.
Precisely, and as I have said on this blog many times. The UWS typology is predominantly perimeter-block (Blockrandbebauung) of about 10-12 floors, which I what I label 'New York Haussmannian'. Note that one of New York's and the world's most famous apartment buildings, The Dakota, has 8 floors and was overtly modelled on Paris. Of course it is changing and has changed but arguably not an improvement re urbanity. The fact that the UWS became popular among the younger, middle-class professional types (during its rehabilitation phase in the 80s & 90s) proves that it is in fact both preferred and more affordable than, for example the UES which got stuck with ugly post-war hi-rise with questionable aesthetics and low ceilings etc. The hi-rise incursion that Alon mentions is a small zone, barely qualifies as UWS (it borders the Lincoln Center) and the noise and fuss over its construction demonstrates the existing residents' appreciation of the old form. As Wiki says:
With the construction of Lincoln Center, its name, though perhaps not the reality, [the UWS] was stretched south to 58th Street. With the arrival of the corporate headquarters and expensive condos of the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, and the Riverside South apartment complex built by Donald Trump, the area from 58th Street to 65th Street is increasingly referred to as Lincoln Square by realtors who acknowledge a different tone and ambiance than that typically associated with the Upper West Side.
In fact, as far as I can tell, it is actually excluded from the UWS by a bit of gerrymander squiggling on the map as shown by Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_West_Side#/map/0
Wiki's description of its early-twentieth century development confirms everything I have banged on about on this site:
The stately tall apartment blocks on West End Avenue and the townhouses on the streets between Amsterdam Avenue and Riverside Drive, which contribute to the character of the area, were all constructed during the pre-depression years of the twentieth century. A revolution in building techniques, the low cost of land relative to lower Manhattan, the arrival of the subway, and the democratization of the formerly expensive elevator made it possible to construct large apartment buildings for the middle classes. The large scale and style of these buildings is one reason why the neighborhood has remained largely unchanged into the twenty-first century.
Interestingly, with its 214,744 residents on 4.9km2, its density of 43,800/km2 is marginally higher than the UES at 42,100/km2. Dare I mention these are almost identical to the entirely low-rise (Haussmannian 6-7 floors) of Paris 11th (152,500 in 3.7 km2 ≈41,600/km2)
Re your comment on Chicago's Lakeshore, I have made the same observations. Even the high-priced Gold Coast district (18,836 on 0.54km2 ≈ 25,114/km2) with its famous hi-rise modernist apartment buildings is pure dormitory with a lifeless streetscape. Mies van der Rohe who designed the influential 860 & 880 Lakeshore Drive apartment blocks, briefly lived in one of those twin buildings but soon moved out, to three blocks away, into a "1916 Italianate six-story brick apartment house …of no special architectural merit" where he lived until he died in 1969. Just like another famous starchitect champion of hi-rise, even supertall living, Le Corbusier chose to live, between 1934 to his death in 1965, in a very modest 7-floor block on the very edge of Paris-16 (24 Rue Nungesser et Coli, nr Porte Molitor).
Arrival of the El.
Other than the part where Paris averages 31 m^2 per resident (and the 11th must average less, it's lower middle-class) and New York averages 50 (and the UWS averages a lot more, it's high-income and full of overhoused retirees on rent control), sure. The spread in residential space per capita between the two areas is likely more than a factor of 2.
Et alors?
Doesn't that mean that the attraction and advantages of living in intramuros Paris is even that greater? Same as those who choose to live in Manhattan versus joining the bridge-and-tunnel brigade for less rent/more space.
In fact I knew this bloke who insisted that he had to live in intramuros Paris rather than the nearby suburbs–where you get twice the space for the same rent–for the unconvincing reason he had to catch a certain RER … He wouldn't ever admit it was the architecture but it was certainly something other than what he claimed. And everyone understands that as a rational choice.
2020/06/19 - 12:34 Gok (@Gok)
Seems like 18,836 / 0.54 would be ~34,881/km2?
Good catch. It turns out that I misread my files. I couldn't find a residency or density so (ages ago) I had made an estimate based on av. occupancy of apartments which worked out to between 18,836 to 25,114/km2, which yesterday I failed to read properly/remember. I suspect it is the lower figure because such hi-end apartments tend to have lower occupancy (more singles and childless couples and more part-time occupancy).
I also remember trying to find out some information on thermal performance of those apartments. I just can't imagine how much energy must be used to make them liveable in Chicago's horrendous winters and almost equally awful summers. Glass curtain walls like that (and I can't think they were double-glazed?) must powerfully suck the heat out, combined with metal frames (which I recall were a problem for MVDR's early examples). I know many American apartment buildings include heating in the monthly charge (ie. without limit), which means some people leave it permanently on in winter!
The UWS is high-rise on all avenues and all of the major streets, and overall it has the highest average residential FAR in the city, 4.2. The buildings on the non-major streets are smaller, which is why it's 4.2 and not 10, but that's because the major streets and avenues are more desirable, stimulating more real estate investment; developers have even been quoted in trade media saying "you can't charge avenue rents on a street."
And what's desirable isn't a built form. That's the thing. Nothing about the built form of (say) Scarsdale is particularly impressive. House prices are high because people like the easy access to city and White Plains jobs and the municipal services provided by the extremely high-income tax base. The first one is about location and not built form, and the second is purely positional.
If Scarsdale was purely positional they would live in the Bronx.
Positional, not locational. Positional in economics means based on one's position in the income distribution.
So there's something intangible about Scarsdale that encourages them to pay more. It may not be to your tastes but no one is forcing you to live there either. I haven't been in Scarsdale for decades but glanciing at the demographics information on Wikipedia, not much has changed in that time. New Urbanist's wet dream suburb. Elevator buildings near the station petering out into dense single family that peters out into post World War II riding-mower-land.
The intangible is "rich people liked it in the 1920s." That's all there is to it. It gets reproduced through a segregated school system that relies on local funding, plus the desire of the Little Boxes types to live near other Little Boxes people.
New Urbanist's wet dream suburb./blockquote>
I wouldn't call it that. Not least because it is essentially illegal to walk there! And nowhere to walk to anyway. Well, my experience was singular. On my first ever trip thru the US I had been invited to stay with a family there. I arrived at the bus station on a Greyhound from Boston and because the woman had a newborn, and it was snowy winter, I didn't want to impose on her to drive and pick me up. So I walked–or tried to. I only got maybe one km before a cruiser pulled over, checked my id, then "offered" to drive me to the address–where they watched until I was admitted into the house!
For a few days I travelled into the city each day with the man–yes, some kind of investment banker–and the routine was a car-pool to get to the rail station for the train to Grand Central. Reverse at end of day. Thus a very regimented life from which I probably subconsciously picked up certain lessons. Alon is right. The houses are big in the American way but nothing luxe, and it was I imagine mostly to have a SFH and with good schools etc. The commuting wasn't necessarily that much of a grind, except for the relentless regimentation and inflexibility.
Actually it was New Rochelle, next to Scarsdale. I remembered it from the Dick Van Dyke show because it is where his character lived.
Most of them don't want to live in little boxes stacked next to the elevator. Some of them do, within walking distance of the station. It's not to you tastes, no one is forcing you to live there.
It's socially acceptable to walk in the Northeast and people do. Even in the Google Streetview pics of downtown Scarsdale. The kind of downtown New Urbanist's dream of. With bicycles in the racks and people lounging on the benches. Alon blurtged out that there is nothing in Dobbs Ferry, a while ago. So I called the neighbor who spent most of her life in Ardsley and she said there were lots of trips to Dobbs Ferry, for the retail. Where they parked the car and walked. On the street. It's like most railroad suburbs in the Northeast and Chicago. where people walk even though it's not Times Square.
Sorry, but where you drive to some retail centre where you may walk, is not the (New Urbanist or anyone else's) definition of a walkable neighbourhood. Next, you'll be describing your local WalMart or Big Box shopping centre surrounded by 10 acres of surface parking as "walkable". Also, New Urbanism does acknowledge the need for higher density than standard American SFH suburbia, even if it ends up as those twee, and expensive, New England style multifamily 3 storey homes etc arranged around a town centre to which you can walk via actual sidewalks and narrow laneways between houses etc.
Ya live in Ardsley where there isn't much retail you have to drive to places like Dobbs Ferry or Tarrytown where there is a dense walkable downtown where the people who live there walk. Everyone doesn't have to live in a tower block or even a triple decker.
2020/06/20 - 02:45 Onux
Why isn't medium density development in greenfields an option? This was the default way in the US up to the Depression, (and I believe still done elsewhere) true even for residential areas; Brooklyn brownstones were laid out with 10-15 lots per acre, continuous row houses, frequent duplexes/triplexes, and apartment buildings at corners or commercial streets. The notion of all new development as low density is a post-war artifact, not immutable law.
More broadly, your options reflect a notion that development progresses through stages, seen in the FormCode/Transect model (frequently cited by StrongTowns). This organic growth ideas is better than choking growth through zoning but makes the mistake of assuming linear growth in even increments. Organic processes are non-linear and chaotic, showing short bursts of activity after long dormancy, or vice versa. The FormCode/StrongTowns approach recognizes a benefit to the market determine density (instead of fixed zoning) but balks when the market wants to jump ahead and build areas more densely from the start.
In urban areas with a housing crisis, there is plenty of demand to justify building mid-density at the start, or high density out of low density suburbs, where conditions are right (access to jobs, transit, etc.)
"Why isn't medium density development in greenfields an option?"
Because all the greenfields nowadays have extremely long commutes.
2020/06/18 - 11:11 Henry Miller
Where people live is a compromise. People love camping, but they are glad to be home overall with solid walls, air conditioning, a stove… People love the space of rural areas where they can keep a horse if they want to (not to be confused with keeping livestock because farming is their job). People love dense cities where anything they can dream up is close. People love suburbs where they can afford a large house yet the shops they want are not too far away.
There is no rule I'm aware of that says you can't have a large apartment that is affordable. However the reality in my experience is that apartments are generally smaller than the house you can get for the same monthly payment (which includes taxes and insurance, the latter an additional cost for renters). Here I'm referring to the Des Moines market, small enough that rents
Rents are affordable..
What do you think about the current pandemic-inspired moral panics about people abandoning cities and fleeing for the suburbs and/or countryside just because they can now "work from home"?
It's the opposite: big cities tend to be a magnet for people who work from home. Not least because if you don't have socialising opportunities in your workplace you probably want to live somewhere that offers them.
This is very alarming to me, but in my opinion will only be short lived fad. Most are making that decision on their current pay remaining the same while being able to live in a lower cost location.
Once companies start adjusting pay to remote locations, people will realize they no longer have the amenities they were used to and will return back to the big cities.
Or will companies decide that big city cost of living isn't worth paying extra for and quit paying extra money for the same results. (you will note that I live in an urban area with a population less than 400,000)
Noise and the visual impact of highways are an aspect that majorly affects rental prices which you fail to mention…
Yes, but only within a very narrow radius. For example, when the Embarcadero Freeway was removed, property values right on the waterfront rose, but in Chinatown the lack of convenient motorway access meant that they fell, leading area activists (chiefly, Rose Pak) to demand some substitute transportation, which created the Central Subway disaster.
Why do people pay higher rents in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg than in Märkisches Viertel?
Because it's a lot closer to Mitte jobs? I don't think it's a coincidence that Kreuzberg went from a place where people feared being robbed in the 1990s to a place where people fear being robbed by Biomarkt prices today – during division it was far from City-West jobs, but as the city has rebuilt Mitte it's now very close to city center jobs. Neukölln is similarly gentrifying as Kreuzberg spillover around Hermannplatz, where U8 provides easy access to Mitte, whereas the rest of the neighborhood, especially from Karl Marx-Strasse east, has white flight. For the same reason, Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain are desirable neighborhoods even though in the 1990s their housing stock was not great, while East Berlin outside the Ring is full of resentful Ossis who vote AfD.
So buy apartments in MV and speculate that they'll extend U8 – eventually…
If I'm buying real estate, it's at Gesundbrunnen – way better rail connections, and I believe that Germany is becoming less racist over time so that people will stop thinking that neighborhood is bad. Maybe also Neukölln, but U7-Neukölln doesn't have as convenient access to Mitte, and U8-Neukölln already has people speculating on real estate.
This is quite a different claim to the one you make in the post, as it's about suburbs/neighbourhoods and not whole cities/metro areas. I think you'd have a hard time justifying that production factors are the main pull for neighbourhoods in most cases, given the obvious and numerous counterexamples: inner-city depopulation of the mid-20th century, hard-to-access but desirable areas (e.g. Dulwich in London), easily-accessible but undesirable areas (e.g. Schilderswijk in the Hague), etc.
2020/06/19 - 10:58 RossB
So, people move to where the jobs are. Huh, who knew? Seriously though, this is pretty obvious, and I think Richard Florida and just about everyone else would agree. This begs the question though: why are the jobs there? Why are the jobs in San Fransisco, New York, and Seattle, instead of Detroit or Charleston, West Virginia? I'm sure Richard Florida would start by saying it is all about the universities. If there is one thing I remember from reading his articles in the Atlantic Monthly over the years, it is the emphasis on education.
But is that it? Of course not. Businesses locate in areas where they can attract talent, and a good educational system is only one part of it. If Amazon moved to Corvallis Oregon, for example, I don't think they would attract that many workers. To be clear, it is home to an outstanding university. Some would love the small town, rural atmosphere. But a lot of other people would hate it. There are other issues (like how businesses connect to other businesses) but if you are focused on attracting workers, then you need something more attractive than this: https://goo.gl/maps/qpPNiDmMCGMZRavs7. OK, to be fair to Corvalis, it isn't that bad. By no means is it the worst place in America to live. But the point being that businesses locate in San Fransisco because they know they can attract talented people to San Fransisco, especially if they pay them a lot of money (and many tech companies are willing to pay their employees a lot of money).
Then there is the interplay between the city and the suburbs. White flight hollowed out a lot of cities. Greater Detroit really isn't abandoned, but folks moved to the suburbs. The businesses moved to the suburbs as well (a long time ago). The major university is outside of the city (which doesn't help). But you could say pretty much the exact same thing about San Fransisco. Cal is in Berkeley, not San Fransisco. While most would consider it part of the urban core, it is on the edge of it. Stanford is in Palo Alto — clearly a suburb. Tech companies love the suburbs and located in "campuses" outside of town. San Fransisco avoided the fate of so many cities in part because it really is a nice to place to live. Even when crime rates were high, people liked living there. As a result, there are reverse commuters, as well as lots of businesses that have decided to add jobs right in the city.
But you don't have to be San Fransisco. Cities like Philadelphia and Cleveland have improved the pedestrian experiences and have thus attracted businesses that would otherwise locate in the suburbs (or pulled workers from the suburbs). Some suburbs, meanwhile, have transformed themselves (at least around the edges) developing what amounts to a "town center" or "downtown" in areas that were largely deserted not too long ago. Naperville, Illinois cleaned up their river, added parkland around it, retained and refurbished the old brick buildings and then built similar looking buildings right next to it. It is reasonably charming suburb (https://goo.gl/maps/Mij2TJgGp2BaKG4X6) as a result, so while most of the suburb still consists of big houses on huge lots, it nonetheless allows people a bit of an urban, or at least urban-ish experience without taking the train into Chicago. This has made it one of the more attractive places to live and open a business.
These are all factors that are important, although the random nature of business play a big part in what cities grow and what cities don't. The eastern suburbs of Seattle grew like crazy because Paul Allen and Bill Gates (who grew up in Seattle) decided to open their business there. Amazon is located in Seattle in large part because of the technical talent from Microsoft and the University of Washington. Without those two companies, Seattle would be much smaller, and might even be shrinking (as Boeing shrinks). But then again, it would probably be doing OK (similar to Portland).
The eastern suburbs of Seattle grew like crazy because Paul Allen and Bill Gates (who grew up in Seattle) decided to open their business there.
Must have been a close-run thing because Paul Allen was working in Boston when he convinced his childhood friend Bill to drop-out of his freshman Harvard year to form Microsoft.
Microsoft actually started in Albuquerque. (So my sentence was incorrect — I should have wrote "moved" instead of "started".) They moved the company to Bellevue (a suburb of Seattle) a couple years later. Anyway, my larger point is that Microsoft could have located anywhere. They could have stayed in New Mexico, or moved back east, or moved to California. Their decision to move to the eastern suburbs of Seattle dramatically changed the region — a lot more than any public planning decision made during that time, although you could argue that they wouldn't have moved to the Seattle area without the UW. Both of Bill Gates' parents were on the board of regents at the UW; I'm sure he was well aware of the importance of hiring well educated people (even though both Gates and Allen were dropouts 🙂 ).
2020/10/22 - 19:54 Pingback: Job Sprawl as Deurbanization | Pedestrian Observations
2020/12/26 - 23:33 Pingback: Quick Note: Consumption and Production Theories of Berlin | Pedestrian Observations
Leave a Reply to df1982 Cancel reply
The Problem of Infrastructure Profits
Transportation Renaissance


Chronic illness causes emotional trauma, but since I've been dealing with my illness since birth, I've taught myself many coping mechanisms that helped free me from the depression and anxiety faced by most newly diagnosed patients. I started blogging as a way to broaden the message of emotional wellness.
First, I recognized how fearful I was to talk about my illness and knew that most others with the disease also felt the same way. I knew that was no way for a person to live, and it was worth sharing my personal stories if it meant leading to change in the way other people viewed themselves.
Second, I noticed that most newly diagnosed cancer patients are at odds with their need for medical treatment. I see them when I go in for my medical appointments and I have become friends with many over the years. Older patients have difficulty accepting that they are sick and this can result in extreme anxiety and depression.
My blog intertwines personal stories with ideas learned from my days in graduate school (I received a Master of Social Work degree with a concentration in clinical psychology). Every post is created to share an anecdote from my life and offer psychology/behavior modification techniques that can change the way a person thinks and acts.
At first, I was extremely hesitant to present at the conference. I had never spoken to an international audience and I had never traveled to the Middle East. Fortunately, my social media interaction helped me realize that my stories were already resonating with people across cultures.
To prepare for my presentation, I decided to first get a read on the worldwide thalassemia population by way of Facebook. I went on to Facebook thalassemia groups and simply asked, "What are the biggest emotional/psychological challenges for thalassemia patients?" Even though I know what the experience is like firsthand, I still wanted to hear about it from other people.
Facebook being a global brand, my post was answered by people from Canada to India. I received about 100 responses, many of which were similar in nature—self-esteem issues, and a fear of talking openly about their illness. So, I decided that these were universal topics I could speak on. My proposal was accepted, and I in turn accepted a new personal challenge: to talk for 20 minutes in front of several hundred people about the disease I have lived with since birth.
After a 12-hour flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport, I arrived in Abu Dhabi. The weather was hot and humid; my first day at the conference was a whirlwind of new people and seminars. Before arriving in Abu Dhabi, I had read multiple websites and asked well-traveled friends for ideas on respectful dress for tourists of the United Arab Emirates.
Several people had me thinking I might have to wear a headscarf and full-length clothing, while others told me to dress the way I normally do. I ended up packing long-sleeved cardigans and knee-length or longer skirts and dresses. I quickly learned more interesting, less stereotypical things, about Middle Eastern clothing.
On the day I arrived I began learning firsthand from those leading the global fight against thalassemia. I met an impassioned young man from Afghanistan named Saqib Niazi, founder and CEO of Meena Health Welfare Organization.
Saqib's sister Meena had died at the age of 15 from thalassemia. He told me that children born with thalassemia in Afghanistan have a small chance of living a normal life because they do not have the medicine needed to remove excess iron from their bodies.
When a person is chronically transfused, iron builds up in their organs, leading to early death. The only way for patients to survive into adulthood is through expensive iron chelation drugs, which families in Afghanistan cannot afford. Niazi attended the conference in hopes of bringing awareness to his organization and gaining funding.
My presentation took place on the third day of the conference, and I was given a special vote of confidence: Before going on stage, I was introduced to His Highness Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, a prince within Abu Dhabi's ruling family.
One in 12 people in the UAE are carriers of thalassemia. By the time I spoke, I felt comfortable and confident about my presentation. Those who couldn't speak English were provided with translation devices, so there wasn't a language barrier.
When my speech was over, I realized that my personal stories were the hooks that resonated most deeply. The audience gave me a standing ovation and upon leaving the stage, I was met by people with open arms and tears in their eyes. People who weren't fluent English speakers came up to me with a pen and paper, asking me to write my name for them. A flood of people with accents from all over the world greeted me and hugged me. The feeling was euphoric.
Against my initial fears and preconceptions, the experience taught me that human emotions are universal and personal stories resonate across all cultures. And now that I have made contact with nonprofit leaders, such as Maria Kastoras, Australian TIF representative, and Gabriel Theophanous, president of the United Kingdom Thalassemia Society, I plan to partner with them to create content (both for profit and for free) that they can share with their audiences.
I will also use this speech to leverage more opportunities to present in front of new audiences. My ultimate goal is to turn my 34 years of experience as a thalassemia patient, Master of Social Work degree holder and person interested in healthy living into a global health and wellness brand that contributes to children in less-fortunate countries. With a book on the way and allies in many different countries, I know I can make it happen.
1) Be clear about what niche you want to be known for. Create an identity for yourself when introducing your brand to others. What can you help people achieve?
2) Define your audience. Who are they, where do they hang out online and what do they love reading about?
3) Write candid pieces that teach lessons and promote your work in places where your audience lives. This means sharing your work on social media, websites with larger audiences, and talking about your expertise and mission with anyone who will listen.
4) Use social media to get to know your audience and network with professionals. Generate new content based on what you learn from those who follow you. Also reach out to organizations that might be interested in your blog; provide them with previously published work and ask them to share it with their audience. If you're interested in reaching people in a particular country, Google bloggers and groups in that country, then reach out to them and tell them about your mission. A nonprofit leader in Bulgaria liked one of my posts so much that he translated it into Bulgarian and shared it with patients in his local hospital. If people don't find you, find them. Connect with those whose mission is similar to yours and be of service to them, so they can be of service to you.
5) Write on a consistent basis. Pick a day of the week and post on that day, either weekly or biweekly.
—By Josephine Bila, Producer, CNBC.com. Follow her on Twitter @JosephineBila and Facebook.


I had the pleasure to work on this great episode for Love, Death & Robots Netflix animated anthology. IWorking on this one was such an amazing experience and truly a team effort with an all star cg crew from around the globe. I couldn't be more proud to be part of this project. Please do take the time to watch the whole first season of the series on Netflix.
I worked on two character on this one: Dicko and Simon *Modeling, Texturing and Shading. Damien C did an amazing job on the heads https://www.artstation.com/maddam on all the characters. Hossein Diba https://www.artstation.com/hossein_diba worked on the base model and I was in charge of making last minute changes to the model and texturing\shading.
I want to thank everyone at Blur, modeling, rigging, cloth, scene assembly and the whole production team did an amazing job! Massive respect to Sups Oded Raz, Chris Bedrosian and Jerome Denjean.


text:
The Best Mandalorian Merch You Can Get Online Right Now
Season two of 'The Mandalorian' might be coming to an end, but you can still celebrate the show with these pieces of merch
By Oscar Hartzog
Oscar Hartzog
Margo's Mom Grass: Margo Price Releases Cannabis Collection to Celebrate New Album
RS Recommends: The Best T-Shirt Brands We're Buying Right Now
The Best Men's Soaps (That Actually Smell Great)
View all posts by Oscar Hartzog
Now that season two of The Mandalorian is finally out, we're all (once again) obsessed with The Child and his bounty hunter protector. The best way to celebrate season two of the show – and indulge that Mandalorian obsession between viewings – is to pick up some of the best Mandalorian merch. Or, even better, treat any Mandalorian fans on your shopping list with a great piece of gear from the show.
Considering the success of The Mandalorian after just one season (and Disney's industry-leading merch selection) it's no surprise that there is now a great selection of merch from the show. Whether you're looking to rep the most adorable TV character on a tote bag, build a LEGO Razor Crest starship or put a Mandalorian twist on your game of Monopoly, we've got you covered. Below is some of the best Mandalorian merch for all fans – whether you know the difference between beskar and duraplast or not.
Stream The Mandalorian on Disney+ here
1. The Mandalorian & The Child Outside "Hello Friend" Mug
Every household can do with another mug. And when that mug features Mando and the now instantly-recognizable phrase, "Hello Friend," that extra mug might become a go-to. The graphic and text wrap around the majority of the mug, but Disney offers customizability to make the mug your own. The base of the mug is white, but you can switch up the glazed color on the handle and rim. You can also add a personal touch by customizing the graphics with, say, a happy holidays note.
Buy BUY NOW: $16.95
2. Monopoly: Star Wars The Child Edition
Monopoly is good on its own, but it gets even better with Baby Yoda tokens and a board that's been overhauled with places and objects from The Mandalorian. Instead of regular Monopoly, you'll be trading objects from the game and buying hideouts. It's a fun upgrade for family game night, although be warned: you might end up watching the show instead of finishing your game of Monopoly.
Buy Monopoly: Star Wars The Child Edition $20.99
3. Funko Pop! Star Wars: The Mandalorian – Death Watch
If you're looking for a great Mandalorian figurine, we recommend this one from Funko Pop! The brand is known for their small-bodied, large-headed pop culture figurines, and this Mandalorian bobblehead is one of the best to buy right now (Funko Pop! is a favorite with collectors). The action figure features the armor of the Death Watch, the terrorist faction seen in the show. It's our favorite action figure because Funko Pop! has a great reputation (i.e. people will recognize it), and – hear us out – the figurine can be a fun addition to adults' shelves as well as kids.'
Buy Funko Pop! Star Wars: The Mandalorian… $24.89
4. The Child in Floating Pod Cooler Tote
Cooler totes are very handy, keeping drinks and food cold when hitting the beach, park or a galaxy far, far away. This one features the Child in his pod, ensuring a few nods from fellow Mandalorian fans as well as cold refreshments. Although the tote is easily slung over a shoulder while walking to your destination, it fits a solid 24 cans. The interior uses a heat-sealed, water-resistant PVC liner to keep the contents cold and prevent any leaking (on your car's seats, for example). Plus an external pocket offers a spot to stash your phone, wallet or bottle opener.
Buy The Child in Floating Pod Cooler Tote $39.99
5. The Mandalorian Retro Comic Book Style T-Shirt
There are now plenty of Mandalorian T-shirts, but this one is our favorite. It boasts a retro comic book style graphic of Mando on a purple background and The Mandalorian title in a bold comic book font. If you buy from the Disney store website (linked below) you get a range of options for the color of the tee. The T-shirt itself is 100% heavyweight cotton and sports a casual, loose fit. If you're looking to rep the show (or just the Star Wars universe, for that matter) this is a great option.
Buy The Mandalorian Retro Comic Book Style… $25.70
6. This Is The Way Bicycle Playing Cards
These Mandalorian Bicycle playing cards are a great piece of subtle merch (or stocking stuffer for any fan). Instead of the Bicycle logo, the back of the cards feature Din Djarin with The Mandalorian title logo and Mando's mantra, "this is the way." It's not something you'll see often, but fans of the show will definitely appreciate it when you break these out for poker or blackjack. Plus, they're still made by Bicycle, so the cards will feel well-made and easy to shuffle.
Buy This Is The Way Bicycle Playing Cards $19.95
7. Star Wars Mandalorian – The Child Wall Calendar
We're all crossing our fingers that 2021 will be a lot better than 2020. One way to make that happen is to look at the cutest being in the galaxy every month. This Mandalorian calendar boasts pictures of the adorable creature for each month, as well as quotes from the show on a few of the images. The calendar is 16 months, encompassing 2021 plus the last four months of 2020.
Buy 2021 Star Wars Mandalorian - The Child… $9.99
8. The Child Animatronic Toy
If you're a serious Mandalorian fan – or cosplaying as Mando sometime soon – check out this animatronic Child. The toy is equipped with over 25 sound and motion combinations, including napping, using the force and more. These sound effects and movements are activated by patting the top of the little guy's head. For example, with three taps he'll start using the force by raising his arms, closing his eyes and sighing. The animatronic toy also includes a cloth carrier that can be worn on the chest or over the shoulder, ensuring that you can take the little guy with you anywhere.
Buy The Child Animatronic Toy $79.99
9. Mandalorian This is The Way Face Mask
If you're already tired of your current face mask lineup, consider injecting some Star Wars spirit with this Mandalorian mask. It's a fun, easy way to rep the Star Wars show, and makes an especially good gift in 2020 (because everyone could use another mask). The front boasts "This is the Way" in bold white lettering and Mando silhouetted in the A. And you're not sacrificing mask quality for fandom either, as the face mask is made of soft cotton and fits comfortably on most faces. It's also washable, so you can rep The Mandalorian more than once.
10. LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian The Razor Crest
LEGO has always done a great job of turning iconic Star Wars vehicles into buildable toys. So it's no surprise that this LEGO rendition of the Razor Crest starship is one of the best pieces of Mandalorian merch around. The 1,023-piece set gives any Mandalorian fan a task they'll thoroughly enjoy, plus LEGO figurines of Din Djarin, Greef Karga, a Scout Trooper and the Child. It's any young Mandalorian-lover's dream, but for the adult fans out there: LEGOs aren't just for kids.
Buy LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian The… $299.94
merchandise,
RS Recommends,
RS Recommends: This Top-Rated Bluetooth Karaoke Mic Is Nearly 40% Off Right Now
RS Editors
Margo Grass
RS Recommends: The Best T-Shirt Brands We're Buying Right Now
Wardrobe checklist
Big (Screen) Deal: This Surprise Sale Gets You a Massive 55-Inch TV for Just $369
This Popular WiFi Extender That Gets Rid of Dead Zones Is Just $15
BOOST YOUR HOME WIFI

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


If you've ever been to southeast Asia, you know they take their fresh food seriously. While in Indonesia, I had the pleasure of attending a cooking seminar run by locals. It may have been one of the best decisions of my trip, and the peanut sauce is SO GOOD, I've been sharing my Canadian-version ever since. Mix it into your favourite veggie/noodle/rice stir-fry and prepare to have your world changed!
*PRO TIP: Try it with my Quick & Easy Chicken stir-fry!


text:
StudyMode - Premium and Free Essays, Term Papers & Book Notes
Home Essays The Western Frontier
The Western Frontier
Topics: Religion, Faith, Puritan Pages: 2 (841 words) Published: June 28, 2008
The Western Frontier and the Changes that took Place
The frontier was land that had been untouched in the Western United States by white mans laws and way of life. As time passed, and the population grew on the frontier, and changes took place. Basic ways of life changed. Religious beliefs, laws, and regulations were challenged and adapted to the new settings. Each of these novels, The Pioneer, A New Way Home-Who'll Follow, & Hope Leslie, take a different look at these changes that were taking place. In a New Way Home-Who'll Follow, Caroline Kirkland introduces the reader to a women's journey westward. She gives detailed accounts of things women should bring on the trip westward. Kirkland "advises any of my friends who are about flitting to Wisconsin or Oregon, to prefer a heavy lumber wagon over a fashionable wagon (36). This statement shows how concern for looks over quality could not be the right mindset for the pioneer. She also warns the reader to bring only the necessities, food, clothing, basic cooking utensils, blankets, etc. After her trip westward Kirkland looked back at what she had packed for her journey and wondered why she had brought half of the belongings that she had, since it was useless to her on the frontier. Kirkland is showing how the frontier differed from the city. Some personal items a woman might deem as necessary in the city were useless on the frontier, big dresses and makeup for example. By taking only the necessities, according to Kirkland, it would improve the chance of survival for pioneers on their journey. And survival on the frontier was a far different experience than that ever experienced in the city. In her novel Hope Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick takes a look at the old religious beliefs brought over from Europe to the towns in America. These religious beliefs worked in Europe where they had been established for centuries. But in America, there had been no long standing religious laws, but instead took...
Please join StudyMode to read the full document
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
Changes on Western Frontier: Chapter 13 Essay
...Chapter 13 Notes: Changes on the Western Frontier Native Americans -Native Americans of the plains hunted, farmed, and traded in traditional ways. -Plains people relied on the buffalo for a variety of survival needs -The booming of the cattle industry in the late 1800s contributed to the decline of the Plains Indians' culture. -The Sioux (war-like plains tribe) resisted the efforts of the U.S. government, the army & the settlers to remove them from their sacred lands. -Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse led the Sioux in their resistance against the government. -Sitting Bull fought the army at the Battle of Little Big Horn; he felt the Native Americans should continue to live in their traditional ways; he surrendered to the government in 1881 to prevent his people from starving; he continued to dislike the whites & their government; reservation police killed him in 1890; he remains an iconic symbol of Native American resistance today -Gold was discovered on Sioux land -Battle of Little Big Horn: June 25, 1876; Sitting Bull & Sioux killed Custer & all his men; also known as "Custer's Last Stand" -Red Cloud, leader of Sioux, signed many treaties with U.S government in order to keep peace and keep the army from killing his people; he petitioned the government to end white settlement of the Bozeman Trail and keep the traditional hunting grounds intact -Many attempts were made to assimilate or "Americanize" the Native Americans; Senator...
611 Words 3 Pages
Western Essay
...Marta Dziak – Western Civilization paper A numerous amount of revolutions have taken place throughout the storied history on earth, ranging from the unremarkable and forgettable, to the famous and extravagant such as the English and American Revolutions. As we study American history, we can see that on many counts, the phrase "history repeats itself", reveals much truth. Both the English Civil War and the American Revolution consist of similarities, whether general or specific. Many of the events triggering the specific wars and the weaponry involved in battle, share a correlation with one another. Both wars were triggered due to a disagreement on both political and economical aspects, and even though they didn't take place immediately following one another, they used similar weapons. No two wars are the same, and analyzing each one allows for the discovery of new ideas from the time; but when you look into them, it is visible to the eye that each one shares a connecting point with another. The history of Western Europe is full of violent uprisings that pitted a religious, or political group against the prevailing government of the day. The civil war that occurred from 1642 to 1649 in England was unique in that it pitted a monarch and his representative assembly against one another for the first time ever. (http://www.britannica.com) Even more shockingly, the English Civil War terminated in the first ever trial and execution of a sitting...
America's Western Frontier Essay
...America's Western Frontier The American Old West compromises the history, myths, legends, stories, beliefs, and cultural meanings that collected around the Western United States in the 1800's. Most often the term refers to the late 19th century, between 1865 to 1900, post-Civil war time period. Terms Old West and Wild West relate to life beyond the western frontier. The Wild West appears as a simple romanticized perception of the actual Old West identity, which forms numerous characters, lifestyles and based idea's upon its self. Historians over the years have investigated the mythical perception of the Wild West, and it's relation and difference to the American Old West. Comparing and contrasting the two, gives insight to the actual western genre that appears more factional. While the Eastern United states was the beginning to experience the Second Industrial Revolution around 1871, the western frontier was beginning to fill with immigrants and American folk. In the early days of the Wild West, a great deal of land was in the public domain, open both to livestock and to homesteading. The idea of the Wild West was thought to be filled with mythical legends along with fictional characters, provoking the perception of the Wild West towards the factional Old West to be a simple misunderstanding. Exaggeration of realistic characters such as Wild Buffalo Bill and...
Call of the Wild Analysis and Connection to Western Frontier Charachteristics Essay
...Call of the Wild In the book, "Call of the Wild," by author; Jack London, we will be comparing this wonderful piece of work and its characteristics to the early southwestern United States of American frontier literature. We will make a comparison of "The Call of the Wild," to other great books, such as "Shane," "True Grit," and "Tracks." Jack London tells a beautiful story, (London, 2005) takes place during the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon, during the nineteenth century. We find a tough situation in the setting of this story for a dog, in a place where sled dogs were greatly needed. Buck is a dog that isn't accustomed to living out in the wild, since he is a tame and domestic animal. Buck is taken from his ranch and he was sold off. Buck is mistreated and used as a sled dog; a life he has never adapted to. This beautiful beast learns to overcome so many hardships out in the wild. He must learn to deal with horrible treatments he sees from other animals, people, and the cold and harsh weather. California; Bucks original home had been an easy place for this dog to live easily, but Alaska had more hardships and huge lessons for this dog to learn. Living out in the wild wasn't an easy task but in the end it showed great determination; just like other readings where we learn about overcoming hardships out in the wild. Buck eventually learns to turn all of these lessons into something other animals respect. This dog becomes a leader to other...
East of Eden: The Discovery of Innocence on the Western Frontier Essay
... LI 532 Paper #3 February 27, 2008 East of Eden: The Discovery of Innocence on the Western Frontier What happens in the West? What kind of change takes place when an individual crosses over the boundary separating what has been settled from what has yet to be— the frontier. Over the last few weeks I have continued to probe the idea of the West as a place that has yet to be defined. Many times, authors and people are not even sure where it starts as it is an invisible border that exists only in the minds of those who seek to cross it. Once across this ambiguous frontier, the traveler encounters a place in which time seems to be suspended. As in the story of the Garden of Eden, paradise (or the West) represents a sphere in which God has held the hands of time, and the people and creatures live in a state of eternal sameness. The idea of ghost towns in the West embodies the notion of a place somehow being removed from the influence of time. Ghost towns exist as settlements that people forgot. However, unlike settlements in the East where space is at a premium and any unused building would quickly be removed and replaced by something else, in the West these places remain, like footprints on the moon where no erosion of time can disturb them. The same principle applies to people. The West has the effect of amnesia upon the minds of those who partake of it. In many ways, it resembles the lotus flowers from The...
History Paper Western Civ
... As humanity has progressed throughout history, there have been a number of times in which the interest and involvement of politics has changed. As we look back we can see that as the eras changed, interests of the people changed as well. One example of this is during the time of the Ancient Greeks. At this point in Western Civilization one polis by the name of Athens located on the coast of the Aegean Sea felt that political participation was a key factor in everyday life. Unfortunately not all Greek city-states were on the same page as the Athenians. While Athens took pride in their democratic elections, their assembly and their Council, other city-states such as Sparta took a much more different approach. Sparta was a society in which the main focus of all politics was to enter the military. Spartan men began their elite training around the age of seven. This training involved learning a number of skills such as stealth, loyalty to Sparta, military training, hunting, dancing, singing and social preparation. While this system helped Sparta become the military powerhouse it was in ancient times, it did not help them create an environment in which a complex political system could grow. The Spartans decided to opt for a political system that was stable and a system that protected the people of Sparta. By using oligarchy as their form of government, the Spartans let the powerful few rule which stagnated the role of the everyday citizen in politics....
Paper 2 Western Civilization
... which continues to be the means by which people can understand what faith reveals." He is considered "The Father of Catholicism." The Catholic Doctrine was greatly influenced by the contributions of St. Augustine in the necessity of ifant baptism, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Even though the Christian church faced extreme obstacles after Christ, the circumstances, and great Christian charcters like Origen, and St. Augustine contributed for the sucess of the eventual church. Bibliography Kagan, Donal, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner. "Chapter 5." In The Western Heritage, 149161. Tenth Edition ed. Vol. 1. Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458.: Pearson Education, 2010. Rogers, Perry McAdow. "Chapter 6 Caesar and Christ." In Aspects of Western Civilization: Problems and Sources in History., 166169. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall ;, 2010. ...
...Justice, according to Thrasymachus, "is nothing but the interest of the stronger" (in other words, "Might is right!"). (a) Why does Plato reject this? (b) What is Plato's alternative definition of justice for the state (in other words, what is his explanation of political justice)? (c) Give two reasons why you agree or disagree with his definition. "Might is Right" by Thrasymachus Thrasymachus recommends that we regard justice as the advantage of the stronger; those in positions of power simply use their might to decree what shall be right. (a) Why does Plato reject this? Plato claimed that for one thing, if the ruling party mistakenly legislates to its own disadvantage, justice will require the rest of us to perform the opposite feat of both doing what they decree and also doing what is best for them. More importantly, Socrates argues that the best ruler must always be someone who knows how to rule. Thus, good rulers must try to do what is best for those who have trusted in them, rather than seeking their own welfare. (b) What is Plato's alternative definition of justice for the state (in other words, what is his explanation of political justice)? Plato defines justice in the two ways which are "Justice is Harmony" and "Justice is Doing one's own job". Finding these two phrases, however, is hardly enough to get a clear sense of what justice is. Plato's definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is one's own. A just man is a man...
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
The Odyssey Odysseus Cunning
Macbeth Essay
Criminal law Essay
Henry David Thoreau Essay
Project Mercury Essay
Unconscious mind Essay
Emily Dickinson Essay
Join millions of other students and start your research
Become a StudyMode Member
Sign Up - It's Free
StudyMode
©2020 StudyMode.com
Premium Essays
AP Notes
Jobs Hiring
Student Brands


1.0 (06/02/2014) – Initial release.
1.1 (06/10/2014) – Better VNet support, added per VM size configuration, auto log off when configuration is complete, added note that base VM name must be all lower case.
1. These scripts use Premium IaaS Images. If you are not using a subscription tied to a MSDN account you will occur significant changes.
3. The $baseVMName variable must be 8 characters or less and all lower case.
4. If the scripts fails, ensure you run 99_RemoteAll before re-running the scripts.
5. Due to limitations with PowerShell's support for Virtual Networks, the 99_RemoteAll script will remove all Virtual Networks that do not have resources attached to them. Ensure this is what you want before you run the script. If you have existing Virtual Networks in use, the 99_RemoveAll script will fail on the removal step and the Virtual Network will need to be removed manually.
Open variables.ps1 and review the variables. Only the top 8 should need to be looked at or updated. Of these, only 2 values must be changed.
$baseVMName = '<abcd1234>' # UPDATE – Must be Globally Unique and 8 characters or less. All lower case.
Run Master.ps1 in an elevated PowerShell window. If running in an IDE it is best to run the script from the command windows rather than hitting Run.
Tested with PowerShell late- May release. PowerShell versions before March (sorry can't keep the versions straight) will fail in the VM creation because static IP Addresses are assigned to the VM's in the network.
Ensure you have a working PowerShell installation before running. This can be tested by running Get-AzureLocation to ensure it returns values. Details on how to set this up can be found here.
Scripts must be ran elevated.
Master.ps1 – This is the only file you need to run. Ensure you run from an elevated PowerShell window. Takes a bit over an hour for full configuration.
variables.ps1 – This is the only file you need to update. You should only need to look at the first 8 parameters.
00_Create_Network.ps1 – This script creates the affinity group, storage account, and virtual network.
01_Create_PDC.ps1 – This script create the domain controller by promoting a windows server using remote PowerShell. It also creates all the groups and uses needed for the BizTalk configuration.
02_Create_Servers.ps1 – This script creates the SQL and BizTalk Servers using the Enterprise Edition of the Microsoft provided images.
03_Configure_Servers_RemoteProp.ps1 – This script uses remote PowerShell to complete additional configuration on the SQL and BizTalk Servers. If flags are set, files will be downloaded to the servers to complete configuration.
04_Configure_Servers_LaunchRDP.ps1 – This script will launch the Remote Desktop sessions needed to complete the auto configuration.
05_RemoteDesktop – Downloads the remote desktop connect for each server. This is stored inside a new folder called RemoteDesktop in the scripts folder.
99_RemoveVM.ps1 – End-to-end clean up script. Removes all items created based on the variables file. Note – due to limitations in Virtual Networks only run this if you have no other virtual networks on your subscriptions. If you do, you should comment out the virtual network section of this script.
SaveMoney_StopAll.ps1 – Scripts to stop and deallocate all the Azure Virtual Machines based on the values in your variables file.
SpendMoney_StartAll.ps1 – Scripts to start all the Azure Virtual Machines based on the values in your variables file.
Configs folder – NetworkConfig.xml – This is the XML Configuration used to create the virtual network in Azure.
multinodeconfigDemo_DomainHosts.xml – XML file used by the BizTalk Provisioning tool to auto configure the BizTalk group. No changes are needed to this file.
rdp.exe – Use to auto launch a Remote Desktop session to complete the BizTalk configuration.
RunBizTalkTask_Domain.xml – File used to create a Windows Scheduled Task.
RunLocalClient.ps1 – PowerShell script to be ran locally on the First BizTalk Server in the group.
RunLocalClientServer2.ps1 – PowerShell script to be ran locally on all Other BizTalk Server in the group.
StartPowershell.exe – Helper exe to enable Windows Scheduled Task to easily run a PowerShell script in elevated mode.
Optional – ClassicShellSetup_4_1.exe – You need to be download from http://www.classicshell.net/ and uploaded to your container. Ensure the version names match what is in the 03_Configure_Servers_RemoteProp.ps1 file.
Optional – BizTalk 2013 CU2 – This needs to be downloaded yourself and uploaded to your own public Azure container.
Optional – BizTalk.Provisioning.files– This needs to do downloaded yourself and uploaded to your own public Azure container.
If you do the auto configuration (witch is highly recommended for anyone who plans to run the scripts more than once) your end result will look like this.
At present the auto configuration is only possible if you download and host the BizTalk Provisioning files yourself. This will change in the future and I will release a new set of scripts once the process is cleaner.
Every once in a while Azure is really slow. I have added some speed breaks in the scripts to better account for this.
Every once in a while the auto configuration fails. The servers get joined to the group by no hosts are created. At that point, they should just be created manually or remove and restart all the scripts from scratch.
If you have an existing virtual network associated with your subscription the 99_RemoveVM script will delete it or fail trying. This is a limitation in PowerShell.
Enjoy and I look forward to community feedback!


Last Friday myself and some of the other lovely Plymouth bloggers were invited to an evening of pampering at Satori Salon which is based in Drake Circus. When you step inside its like its own separate bubble to the hustle and bustle of outside, you can just sit back and relax and let the world pass by or even have a little people watch as you get your nails done if you grab a window seat, who doesn't like doing that to pass the time?
I was really looking forward to this blogger event as I never usually treat myself to a bit of pampering in a salon, I normally just try and do everything myself at home. Throughout the evening we were given the chance to have a nosey throughout the salon, try some of their products/treatments and watch a demonstration of microblading.
Obviously the first thing I headed over to was the range of Delilah Cosmetics products. They come in such beautiful classical packaging and have a wide range of pigmented products. My favourite was the concealer pencil which was so creamy and blend-able as well as all of the lipsticks (I couldn't just pick one)! They also have some of the makeup brushes which are all so soft. What's even better about Delilah Cosmetics is that all of their cosmetics are paraben and cruelty free.
Satori offer a makeover using Delilah Cosmetics products for just £20 which is also redeemable on a product of your choice, win win! This will be perfect for any festive nights out you've got lined up. I've got my eyes on the deep red lipstick.
Then it was about time to tame the brows. I've had such bad experiences of having my brows done in salons that I'm now to afraid to have anyone touch them. Yep, I've had holes waxed into them before, I've had them tinted black and I've been given the worst scouse brows you will have ever seen!
I'd never had threading done to me before but it really was a doddle. The lovely lady just tidied up my current shape (see ya later mono brow) and it took seconds. I wouldn't say it hurt either it just felt like a bit of a tugging. I think I've now been converted from waxing to threading, because I have such sensitive skin on my face I find that with wax it always leaves me with spots along my forehead, I didn't have that problem with threading and I felt my makeup went on a lot better the next day.
After my brows were tamed I decided to watch a bit of the microblading demonstration. If you haven't heard about microblading before then who are you and where have you been hiding for the past few months?! It is a new treatment which originated from Asia and is also known as eyebrow emboridery. It's a great treatment for anyone looking to improve or enhance their eyebrows. This isn't something I would look into doing as I naturally have bushy eyebrows that need geling down twice a day, but I love looking at the before and after photos that are being poured all over the internet.
Microblading is a way of implanting pigment under the epidermis using a specially designed tiny blade which leave realistic hair strokes for a natural finish. At Satori they design the perfect brow for you - down to the perfect colour and shape to suit you. How long it lasts can vary from one person to the next but it's usually recommended to get a colour refresh 12 - 18 months after your initial procedure. Apparently some clients say it doesn't hurt at all while others say there's some slight discomfort, so again it all depends on the person but they do supply 2 different types of anaesthetics.
The Elemis Skin Lab was definitely one of the most popular areas for the evening. Unfortunately I dramatically fainted at this point in the car park so missed my chance, but basically the machine takes a picture close up of your skin and gives you an individual analysis on everything from spots to pores to wrinkles and sun damage. Once you've had the analysis it then recommends which products you could be using to counteract this.
The Elemis Skin Lab was only in the salon for a short visit but it will be returning again on the 25th November, so make sure you pop in before Christmas as I'm guessing there might be a few products you'll be wanting to drop on your Christmas list!
Satori have also just announced a really exciting new partnership with Hartley Clinic which is based in Mannamead. They will now be providing facial fillers, anti-wrinkle treatments and teeth whitening!
After such a great evening we were then gifted with lovely goody bags and I only went and won the raffle and bagged myself a Oral B electric toothbrush - I literally never win anything! A huge thank you to them all for putting on such a great evening, I have now gone away with a list as long as my arm of all the things I want to try and buy!
Have you been to Satori Salon before? What's your favourite treatment to have?