Tag Archives: learning

Reading “Big Box Reuse” by Julia Christensen – Chapter 2

The PolyBlog
February 14 2018

Chapter 2 takes us to a suburb of Austin that grew into its own as the town of Round Rock. This is closer to the type of “re-use” I was interested in when I started reading the book — a building that was previously a Walmart and was / is now being used as something else.

The really interesting part of this chapter is the interplay with Walmart as the continued owners of the land. They bought the land initially, built their store, operated it for awhile, and it was successful. Dell located its HQ in the area, things started to rocket in the local economy, and they decided to build a super-centre across the road, leaving the old location empty. While there were lots of suitors looking to buy and use the land, Walmart was happy to let it sit empty unless the deal included a lot of restrictions on what could be put there for the future — basically eliminating any business that would compete with Walmart.

Then came a proposal to use it as an indoor race track for super go-karts / low-power racing cars. Ten cars at a time, racing around the indoor tracks, with racing league nights, conference rooms (mainly for Dell to rent out for corporate events), and early adoption of wifi in the lobbies. With no competition against Walmart, the deal was done, with a local developer buying it and the race track leasing it for awhile.

Initially, the deal looked awesome, mainly because the race track people were looking for a large empty warehouse structure to race around in. They didn’t care about the location; although it was great, they mainly cared about the structure. However, that same “deal” had a built-in ticking bomb…eventually, when some of the lease restrictions eased, it was more profitable for the landlord to lease to companies who wanted the location bad enough to pay a premium for being there. And so it eventually out-stripped the race track’s revenue stream, and they rented to a gym, tanning salon, barbershop, smoothie store, and a health food place.

Whether it was Walmart’s “holding out” for the right initial deal, or the subsequent developer “holding out” for the right leasee, or even later selling it to the right buyer for more than 3x the original purchase price, all of the owners used it as a “land bank” — they bought it up and held on to it, thus controlling future developments while others built up around it.

What I also found interesting was that the racetrack found ways to even use the parking lot — for motorcycle courses and mini-races, antique car shows, carnivals, etc. … almost none of it particularly “revenue generating” so much as just straight marketing and cross-promotion.

I found this chapter had a lot of great variables that raise some interesting questions. Do most of the “land banks” generate future profits? Does it require the first Walmart to still be nearby to draw extra infrastructure? Was it just because the whole area continued to boom? Lots of big box stores like K-Marts and Zellers in Canada did not “accrue” interest acting as land banks, as the areas were essentially dying. They sometimes find alternate users, but usually at a far cheaper rate than the land bank would suggest. Equally, it raises the question of timeframe for re-use…if you looked at this one in the early days, it looks like a giant success story. Five to ten years later, the racetrack is gone, the developer got its profits, and the location seems to have been broken up some, although the gym is still there.

Again, though, like the predecessor, it is just “different retail” in a retail space. While the raceway was interesting, maybe even iconic, the ultimate reality is simple retail use. Out with one vendor, in with another.

Reading “Big Box Reuse” by Julia Christensen – Intro, Chapter 1

The PolyBlog
January 8 2018

A few weeks ago, there was an article in one of the U.S. newspapers about old big box bookstores i.e. Barnes and Noble’s stores being converted into other uses. In a forum that I follow, someone suggested someone should write about a book about this, and someone else pointed out that it had been done — Julia Christensen wrote “Big Box Reuse” back in 2008.

The idea fascinates me for a number of reasons. Initially, the article interested me because I follow the rise and fall of various aspects of the book business — from brick and mortar stores to digital e-books to wax and waning aspects of public libraries. And with so many of the bookstores with large overhead and full retail pricing losing out in the U.S. in particular to the ubiquitous options of Amazon, there are lots of bookstores closing.  Not as gentle a world as the “You’ve Got Mail” scenario of romantic small bookstore owner against the big box store retailer nearby, more like economic crushing by a faceless entity that can literally financially obliterate you by drone.

Secondly, I have a passing interest from a business operations side. I am fascinated not only by what some people think will be a functional, well-earning business (i.e. fancy sock stores); what will function in a specific environment (i.e. non-franchise coffee shops opening in the SAME location that three other coffee shops have failed previously — do the new people figure that they can survive on a 1% savings on supplies?); or businesses that seem to do most things right but just fail to connect (i.e. thousands of restaurants every year).

Finally, I’m attracted to stories of economic revival, particularly for downtown areas, but also in areas where a strip mall loses its main anchor and what happens to the store after that event. I’ve seen a couple of malls where it has lost a big anchor, and I thought, “Oops, that one is going to die”, only for it to attract another anchor store and keep going. And then lose that one, prompting a similar expectation from me, and yet they find either a third store or go in a different direction yet continue. I’m also fascinated by the small stores that remain in the same malls and how they can possibly remain open with such little foot traffic.

So the book attracted my attention, and lo and behold!, it was available for free through the public library. How could I say no?

Introduction

The intro is mostly about introducing some of the concepts for the rest of the book. First and foremost is the identification of what constitutes “reuse”. While there are multiple elements discussed, for me, I like the idea of “reclamation” and the process of change i.e. it was used for one purpose initially, then there is a definite dormancy period, and then there is a new function. The example I gave above where a mall keeps attracting other big box stores to try their luck isn’t really the same type of reuse she envisions.

I also like the idea that box stores tend to be utilitarian in design — you can usually tell what the store was previously just by the design. Similar to restaurant chains too, you often see an empty one and can immediately think, “Oh, that used to be a McDonald’s”. But it also means they are also quite bland once the logos and stuff are removed — after all, it WAS a “box” store. 

I confess I’m a bit disappointed too with the scope of the book in two areas. In designing the case studies, she focused on K-Mart and Walmart stores only. While that allows for identification of some common factors, it also limits the study/book to only looking at stores with very specific styles of footprints — literally a large one-story box with a large parking lot.

I’m only a chapter in, but the book also seems to be lacking much in the way of other context. It isn’t just stores that are being converted…entire neighbourhoods are going from factories to residential, for example. And how do historic buildings fit into the equation when someone converts an old house in the downtown core into a doctor’s office? The issues are quite different, but are they similar in category? Hard to see the parallels without the broader context. I’d especially like to see comparators with historic buildings being adapted into residential or commercial space, and with conversions of schools and churches.

When approaching the book, I hadn’t given much thought to the definitional challenge of “what is a big box store?”. It seemed relatively obvious. Except the definition depends not on some national or international definition of square footage, layout or sales, but on local ordinances. I was also expecting it to be mostly abandoned buildings when stores closed…I didn’t expect it to be about stores closing because it was so successful that it “expanded” nearby with a whole new store, leaving the old building an empty shell (because it was cheaper to build a whole new separate store than shut down the old one temporarily during renovations).

Chapter 1 – Bardstown, Kentucky

I feel cheated by the first case study. The basic premise is that it is a historic old town, and Walmart located on one side of it. Then they abandoned that building to open in a new larger building on the other side of town. And not for nothing, did so again farther out with a huge superstore. But it isn’t really about two abandoned buildings finding other uses.

In the first instance, the courthouse relocated to the site, which sounds kind of odd and she references the weirdness of “corporate justice” trickling down. But it’s based on rhetoric more than reality. She does a great job of describing how the local town is so protective of its Kentucky heritage, and deep almost philosophical discussions about how to handle moving the courthouse. But in the end, all they are doing is moving to the space — they razed the building and built a new courthouse. That is not reuse in any fashion that has anything to do with the Walmart that was there before, all it really is about is the location of land close to the city and outside the downtown core. And while it suggests that it is all historic across from the old Kentucky home plantation, Google Streetview shows the reality — it’s next to a cheap stripmall with hair salons, tanning beds, a small credit union, etc, across from a McDonald’s and next to a bunch of small residential areas. It’s a far cry from a protected heritage site of Colonial history.

What I did find interesting is how the local city council learned from their earlier dealings with Walmart. When they built the first one, there were no real restrictions placed on what could be done with the old building. Similarly for the second one. But for the third one, they put limits on the construction that would allow for easier adaptation in the future if it ends up empty — more doors so that it could be subdivided into multiple stores, and a requirement for Walmart to tear it down if it sits empty and unused for a certain number of years. I’ll be curious to see what future chapters have as “civic lessons learned”.

Understanding Video Games – Week 7 – The culture of video games

The PolyBlog
December 29 2017

It has been some time, eighteen months in fact, since I viewed any of the materials for the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called “Understanding Video Games”. It was hosted by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas through Coursera and affiliated for credit with the University of Alberta. I say “was” because the course was removed from Coursera’s offerings at some point during that last 18 months. I’m not sure when exactly, but when Coursera changed their website some time ago, and the links were all going to change, I downloaded all the videos to make sure I didn’t lose them and I wanted to enable offline viewing anyway. However, it was fortunate I did because when the course offering disappeared, so did all the materials. This means while I still have all the remaining videos, and they’re probably sufficient for my purposes, I don’t have the syllabus outline or the extra reading materials for the week. Sheesh, hard to believe that a course I started two years ago isn’t automatically still available to my free-loading audit viewing, right? 🙂 I don’t even have the official title for the week either, so from here on in, it is more my “estimated” title.

Week 7 started with an explanation that up until now, most of the discussion was about “what” constituted a game. And there was a surprising amount (to me) of solid academic theory in there. Actual rigour in fact. However, this week relies heavily on cultural studies approaches, trying to look at “who” plays video games, and I found the limitations of the approach is as much about the content as it is about the limitations of cultural studies in general.

I went to Trent University, and it has one of the biggest and best cultural studies programs in Canada (at least, I think it is still one of the biggest and best…at one point, it was the only REAL program that had a full offering of courses as a specialization instead of a minor). And some of my administrative and policy studies courses were cross-listed with cultural studies courses, so the cultural studies approaches were often woven into the curriculum.

So here’s the rub for me. Cultural studies, like history or anthropology, have to mainly observe from outside of the culture. The obvious rationale is that this is a good thing, an ability to see broad themes by having a more distant and objective perspective. However, for me, that is also an extreme limitation. If you aren’t part of the culture, immersed in it, and explaining things within that culture, the best you can do is an abstraction. That’s not limited to cultural studies, of course, any academic study requires some abstraction to hold everything else steady while you look at a couple of key issues or variables, but I find it difficult to accept the cultural studies one as readily. Partly because interpreting another culture only works if you first understand the culture well enough to step back, and that act of stepping back hides meaning, particularly when it is then combined with a translation process to “transcode” those observations into something those not of the culture can understand.

Take for example a situation where you’re observing the interactions between genders in a village. It’s easy to misunderstand hierarchies if you assume that hearth and home are “lesser” responsibilities than breadwinning employment — it is almost impossible to avoid some bias in the interpretation process. Descriptions are easy, interpretation and translation are best guesses as to why or for what significance.

I really liked the description the hosts give to the culture at the beginning i.e. that the culture includes not only the members themselves, but a specialized language, sense of community, identity representation of self and others, and how they relate to each other. Right down to defining who is “in” and who is “out”. As well, they talked about how you might look back at the history of gaming consoles and group them or “rank” them…would it be by the amount of memory, type of graphics, simplicity or complexity of controllers, the addition of narratives, etc.? And thus it is incredibly important to understand something within the context.

However, I don’t think they go quite far enough in critical analysis of the tool (cultural studies). If you accept that you need to understand within a context, and that you need to speak the language to understand the context, then any translation outside that context will necessarily involve at least some loss of meaning. To me, that sometimes moves the analysis into the realm of subjectivity or simple descriptive relativism. One analyst could argue it means X, another could argue it means Y, but neither one really knows if that is an accurate translation. As with all languages, some words have no direct counterpart, and idioms / symbols / signs are the hardest to translate at all.

In the videos for the week, they had a pretty solid opening to describe the culture of first-person shooters for example. And the definition of what those who play video games would describe as a “gamer” (time spent, frequency, places, platforms).

However, there were three areas at the end that I found were lost opportunities for deeper dives. The first was the role of “modding” in the culture. How extensive is it? Does it represent 2% of the so-called gamer community or 20%? There was very little indication of scope, and so as an artifact of the culture, the modification of hardware and software, or the motives for doing so from total conversion to patches, from remakes to demakes, from cheat codes to plugins, remain just artifacts…descriptive, not analytical.

Equally, the description of the change in commercial distribution channels with the growth of Indies has some amazing parallels with the music industry, Kickstarter campaigns for inventions, and self-publication through Amazon, yet received a pretty light touch without much comparative analysis. Even more definitive mapping out some of the changes in distribution vs. new production techniques vs. simple evolution (shareware to apps) would have been helpful.

Last, but not least, I find it difficult to understand their limited analysis and coverage of COS players. If you want to understand a culture, one of the most basic tools of cultural studies is to look at ways in which they express themselves for both artistry and identity. And the physical embodiment of a video game character would seem to be the ultimate form of that expression. For some, it is simply a creative challenge — can you make a costume or do the makeup? For others, it is an opportunity for role play and to experience the game in a different way, not by actually immersing oneself into the game’s reality, but by bringing that reality into the broader world. And for some, it is simply Hallowe’en costume play. Yet there are people who can do it for a living — they’re booked and paid to attend in various costumes at ComicCon, they pose as models for photographers, they travel around the world doing it. And yet it is only a throwaway topic in this week’s videos, which I found a bit disappointing. It’s a dangerous area for mass misinterpretation, but still, I would have liked to see more on it.

I can’t help but agree with the hosts. In the end, it feels like we tend to have more of a corporate history of gaming rather than a social or cultural history of gaming.

Articles I Like: What I’ve Learned From Tinkering With the Raspberry Pi for Five Years

The PolyBlog
November 14 2017

I mentioned earlier that I have a plan to build a Raspberry Pi project, and I’m often haunting sites with articles like What I’ve Learned From Tinkering With the Raspberry Pi for Five Years. I like LifeHacker as a site generally, although I can’t follow it completely — it’s like drinking from a firehose if I subscribe to its RSS feed. Back in March (14th, to be exact i.e. Pi Day — get it? 3.14?), they published the above linked article, and I loved it.

Before hobbyists latched onto the Raspberry Pi, it was a computer for learning how to code targeted mainly at kids. Since then, the appeal has broadened, but it’s still impossible for a project to “just work” out of the box. You will have to tweak something, dig into the command line, or spend a few hours buried in an obscure internet forum to find solutions to problems that only you seem to be having. You will slam your head against the wall, yell a little, and throw your Raspberry Pi at least once for every project you attempt to make.

In just about every other hobby, that would be a buzzkill for me from the word go. I feel that way every time I have to assemble Ikea furniture or build a shelving unit in my garage. It’s not something I have a knack for (home repair), but as a project for a hobby that lets me build my only little computer? I’m willing to give it a go.

I suspect I saved the article mostly because it talks about his experience building a retro game console, which is part of my desire. But it’s a good metaphor for why I want to do a project at all — troubleshooting, a little bit of gaming, and maybe some Linux. Following the path of those who have gone before.

Learning to drive

The PolyBlog
September 4 2017

Someone on the Lost Ottawa page on Facebook posted a pic of her old learner’s permit / 365 in Ontario (your learner’s permit was based on a writing test and was good for one year i.e. 365 days, hence the name) and it got me thinking about my own experience of learning to drive.

When I was in high school, I didn’t have a big desire to drive. Partly because I never needed to — my brother was six years older, and if I went anywhere without my parents, it was likely with him. Plus, most of the time, we could just ride our bikes wherever we wanted to go. And there was an element that while we had two cars, my brother had first dibs ahead of me anyway, so I wouldn’t have likely been able to borrow it very often anyway. And to be honest, I couldn’t care less about cars for the look and feel. Sure, I like the look of some, particularly a few you see in the old car shows, but the real specs or the history rarely excite me. Even now, I’m not looking for a car with a big engine or sleek styling. Decent transportation, some cargo room, a bit of power to pass people on the highway, and I’m more than satisfied. So I wasn’t the typical teen clamouring for his license.

When I was about to graduate though, and dating a girl who lived a bit outside my main neighbourhood, a car started to look a lot more useful for going out to the cottage or even just getting to different movie theatres or restaurants. Get your mind out of the gutter, it was about transportation. She was taking lessons, and her brother got his license, so it just seemed natural to go ahead and get mine. May of 1987, a few weeks before my 19th birthday.

I had my 365 for a few months, and did some practice here and there. I had driven a bit before the permit too, but always out at the lake on private property. No real roads, which was fine with me as we always had big cars and the roads were dirt, bordered by large ditches. Once I had my 365, my parents let me drive on the backroads to get used to driving, initially to the store and back, and over time, I was allowed to drive further and further.

City driving was another ballgame. Everybody was busy, so I rarely got to practice. A few weeks before the test, I got my Dad to take me out a few times, which I found nerve-wracking. He wasn’t super critical or anything, I just didn’t want to screw up.

And while I was learning to drive, I was often driving a big huge Buick or a station wagon or a full-size Malibu. Big vehicles. We had Comets and Mavericks before that, and I would love to have done my test in one of those, but they were long off the scene before I was doing my test. The night before the test, it was time to try…dun dun dun…parallel parking.

So my Dad took me downtown Peterborough. For those of you who have been to Peterpatch, you know that the main part of downtown is about 8 blocks long, with two one-way arteries — George Street running south and Water Street running North. So we went to George Street and started practicing. With the street four lanes wide, I wasn’t blocking traffic while I was practicing, easy for them to go around, and guaranteed cars already parked on the street to park near. Plus there were lots of cross streets with cars parked, particularly up around Brock Street, i.e. all good locations to practice.

I was a bit nervous about this part. I knew some people who had done their test years before and failed the parallel parking aspect, and had to redo the test. I knew too that recently some people had passed their tests without even having to try parallel parking. It wasn’t clear that I would have to do it, but just in case, I needed obviously to practice. With a giant Buick. Fun times.

I wish I knew then about the technique people teach now of pulling up alongside, turning hard until you’re diagonal with the license plate, and then cutting back in. Nope, just angle as best you can.

And I got it on the first try. I even impressed my Dad.

Three more tries, and Dad was bored. So we went home. That was my training.

I wasn’t sure what to expect for the test, it had been a few years since my brother had done his test, and like I said, I wasn’t really in a group of people bucking for their licenses at school, so no “common” reference point. I expected it to be a little more rigorous than my father’s test back in the war. At the time he did his test, you could drive with your confirmation to the testing centre for the actual test.

The testing centre was located in downtown Peterborough and so the guy told him to pick him up on the corner of x and y at 4:00 sharp. The guy got in, had my father drive a block and take one turn, another block for another turn, and a third block for a third turn. Basically he had him go around the block and stop next to a pub. He said, “Okay, you can drive, pick up your license tomorrow” and then he went into the pub. That was it.

Fortunately for all of us, it was a little more rigorous than that by my time.

For the test, I seem to recall borrowing my sister-in-law’s car, although I don’t really remember precisely. I just remember whatever car I used was smaller than the big ones that I had been driving. The tester had me drive down some side streets, take a few turns in a large neighbourhood, pull out onto a four-lane street with a series of stop lights, pass through a couple of busy intersections, a few more turns, and we were back at the testing centre, about 15 minutes duration. He said I took left turns a little sharp, and right turns a little wide, the same thing my Dad had said the night before, but it was all good. No parallel parking required, I just had to park it in a spot at the testing centre. All done. Passed the first time.

It’s interesting…I wasn’t very nervous learning to drive except for the size of our car. The big Buick just took up so much of the road that meeting anyone on the dirt roads scared the crap out of me, having to get over. But the part that was really interesting was a couple of people I talked to AFTER the test. They were really scared when they were learning because they have never driven ANYTHING in their life.

Huh? I had never really thought about it. I had driven bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles, ATVs, quads, different types of boats, and snowmobiles. Probably a couple of other things I can’t even think of off-hand, like go-karts. So, sure, it was bigger, but moving up wasn’t that scary, except for the size of our particular car. But for people who had NEVER driven anything in their life before? Not even a bicycle in the one guy’s case? Unfathomable to me.

Anyway, that’s my story. What’s yours?