Potty Parity

This short post is about a topic related to urban planning/land use.  Lars and I had a wonderful time in England, but there is one thing that really bugs me about England: waiting in the cue for the WC.

Are you laughing yet?  

This is Potty DISparity- something I hate about London: the above picture speaks for itself.  If you can't tell what is going on here, let me tell you: this is a picture of women standing in line for the toilets.  Also, if you can't tell, no men are waiting in line. 

The voice you hear is Lars saying, "Ist geil!" or "is funny," loosely translated, as I turned the video setting on.  Lars knows how much I abhor the queue for the washroom/restroom/WC/toilets or powder room, depending on your dialect.

I am not exaggerating; this is a real problem everywhere I went in England.   I can't tell you how annoying it is to stand in line for 15 minutes and watch 15 men or so walk by into the men's room giving you the pity smile.  They are thinking, "oh man, glad that isn't my line."  

Ever noticed that men never stand in line?

As a woman, I feel that I have two choices, I can either hate the women in the line because there are too many too many of us, or I can hate the men, because they don't have to wait.  What do you choose?  The correct answer is neither.  Someone else is responsible for this.   The planners, engineers and lawmakers are responsible.

Well, the US has improved a lot in this regard due to regulation and parity laws.  I talked to Brant, my stepfather, about this.  He works for the Florida Department of Transportation and told me that this issue is called, "potty parity."  The fact is that women need more toilets than men for various reasons.  It takes us longer to use the restroom because we have to do more than pull down a zipper.  It also takes longer because, for physiological reasons, we use the restroom more often. Apparently, incontinence and urinary tract infections are more common in women, confounded by menstruation, which partly explains this.   There are technical differences to the way men and women use restrooms too; women use the same stall for all uses whereas men have a streamlined separation of use system: urinals and toilets.  The result is, men need less time to use the restroom because of zippers and urinals, and need to go less often.  

There is a third factor and that is that the elderly need to use the restroom more often than the young for biological reasons again, and most older people are statistically female.  So, if you are a person, who needs to use the restroom, you are most likely going to be a woman, and you are going to need more time than the minority of men going to the bathroom.  This is why equal stalls for men and women is not fair.  Equal is not fair in this situation.  It is counter-intuitive, sure, but engineers can calculate what the ratio of toilet facilities should be for women and men.  

There's no shame in being a woman!  I feel insulted waiting in line.  Time standing in line is time wasted for me, and there is nothing I can do about it, even if I try not to drink at all, I'll never be a man, so I'll never get the fast line.  It was all planned this way. No one cares that me and the little old ladies are waiting in line and we really gotta pee!

Maybe I don't need to continue on this point, but here is a little factoid: the term "potty parity" became popular when a California lawyer, a man- by the way-, started a movement by saying that an equal number of toilets for men and women is not fair.  His motivation was not entirely selfless; he admits that he was tired of waiting on his wife while she waited in line to use the restroom.

Potty Parity article from the Washington Post

From Wikipedia

Regulations

Current laws in the United Kingdom require a 1:1 female–male ratio of restroom space in public buildings.The International Building Code requires a 2:1 female–male ratio of toilets. New York City Council passed a law in 2005 requiring this in all public buildings. An advisory ruling had been passed in 2003. U.S. state laws vary between 1:1, 3:2, and 2:1 ratios. The Uniform Plumbing Code specifies a 4:1 ratio in movie theaters.

Urbanized Film

Check out this film about urbanized life around the world and the role of urban design in place.  Follow the link below to rent the movie.  I also appreciate you using my link because I get member benefits if you do so.

Urbanized Film to rent:

Daytrip to Goerlitz/Zgorzelec

Lars and I spent an afternoon in Goerlitz, a city in the region called Lusatia of former Silesia, in order to scout out antique furniture.  We had a pretty good time window shopping for antique furniture in the city, a lot of which is Art Nouveau, which is known as Jugendstil or "Youth Style" in German.  This type of architecture was popular at the turn of the 19th-20th century and incorporated organic shapes, lines and occasionally figures into its motifs.  The most famous city for Americans with a preserved and enormous amount of Art Nouveau buildings, furniture, houseware ist Prague.  Art Nouveau art and architecture was embodied by the Arts and Crafts Movement in the US and Great Britain.

The following pictures really highlight what a beautiful town Goerlitz is.  Many of the buildings are older than Art Nouveau and are medieval or baroque instead. Goerlitz is a Saxon city, as is Meissen, Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz (previously known as Karl-Marx-Stadt). There is a saying in Saxony, Germany:  In Chemnitz, one works in industry; in Leipzig, one makes a profit.  In Dresden, one spends the money (royal seat) and in Goerlitz, one can live comfortably in retirement.  Maybe this is why Lars refers to Goerlitz as a retirment city for all the rich.  The furniture we found was all very classy.

Here's a little bit of history: Goertliz was an important city in Silesia, before Silesia was almost entirely taken away from Germany after WWII, causing a mass exodus and human migration to other parts of Germany.  This is a very sad history, the effects of which are still felt in Goerlitz.  The border for the new Germany was the River Neisse, which runs through Goerlitz, thereby resulting in a split German-Polish city.  The polish side of town is called Zgorzelec.  Can a town be one if it has been split between two countries?  If you have an opinion on this, come and look at Goerlitz.  It is an interesting question.   Residents here refer to their city as an "international" city, and it truly is!  Maybe a more appropriate word would be "binational."

View looking out from a furniture store.

Medieval city tower in center  next to Art Nouveau row houses.

Massive church with gothic? windows?

Old Medieval streets and alleys are precious.

Lars is taking a break, already tired of shopping

Steps to old Town Hall?- Baroque or Neo?-Gothic

Cooking pumpkin, spelt breakfast roll and Poppyseed cake

This last picture is the odd picture in this post.  I took all these pictures in September, when Fall was just starting to set in.  I could feel the change in the seasons, but I could see the change in produce and local food being sold at markets, grocery stores, restaurants, cafes and bakeries.  The Poppyseed cake is a Autumn favorite because, apparently, poppyseed is a fall crop, just like pumpkin.  I didn't know this.  Spelt is called "Dinkel" in Germany, and is used to make a variety of bread items.  Here, it isn't back in vogue, because it was never was out of vogue.  I think food is culture too, and I wanted to share my food experiences as well.

The bread rolls are for breakfast and are eaten with cold cuts, cheese, Leberwurst, eggs, marmalade and meat salads.  Cakes are eaten at Vespars, or coffee time, around mid-afternoon, especially on weekends.   Pumpkin is popping up everywhere here, in soups, main dishes, and in vegetable medleys.

Fall is a wonderful time.  I like how the light seems a bit yellower.  Maybe that is just because the sun is going down sooner, creating longer shadows and creating the yellow-orange tint associated with dusk.

Modern Problems- Is it all just about the car? (edited)

 I have to edit this blog right now so that no one misunderstands my rant, which should have been proofread.  I actually really like Florida and the US, so I don't mean to be too negative or offend anyone.

The topic is: Where did all these modern problems come from?

I don't understand why we, people today, see sustainable living as something dependent on a technological revolution.  We consumed less energy and produced less waste a hundred years ago.  Certainly we have some of the solutions to the energy crisis already.  For example, air conditioning and don't need to be as prevalent as they are (in the US).  Food production could be more local, cutting down transportation costs and pollution.  Food production itself could be more environmentally friendly.   The list goes on and on.  The modern technology of the past 100 years has caused a lot of problems.  Why is technology the exclusive solution?  What if we have to go back, partly, to how we used to live?  Walk more, shop in your block, Travel using public transportation.  Pay more for food and more for your home.  Less packaging, because food doesn't haven't to travel the whole world for retail.  Take baskets and cloth bags shopping, just like people have for thousands of years.... It's not a new idea!

Let me give an example of how people are unaware of the effect that new technology has has on their own production of waste and pollution: the human north-to-south migration to naturally hot areas requires air conditioning.  Lots of people in Florida like to say, "I love the heat in Florida!"  I'm like, "Oh really?" I didn't have air conditioning in Philly because I didn't need it in an insulated town house. 

Those people tend to be the northern American immigrants, to be specific. I have to be specific because there are a lot of people in Florida from Vietnam or Puerto Ric, for example, and they don't really talk about how wonderful the heat is, because it's already normal.  

When hearing northerners talk about the wonderful heat in Florida, I'm thinking in my head is, "You don't like the heat at all.  You like air conditioning- is more like it- and now you have a reason to turn it on.  You don't know a thing about the heat in Florida."  None of us do, really, except for that horrible day when the electricity goes out because a hurricane blew a tree over the powerlines.  And maybe you're crying too because the gator ate your dog, Snuf. (For a scenario) But, when was the last Summer day  that you could bear to be outside all day, without rushing inside to "cool off", as they say or run away from alligators?  As far as I'm concerned, there is very little about Florida "heat" and weather that people like, so instead they hibernate inside all summer and most of the rest of the year, and travel around in air-conditioned cars otherwise.  There is nothing "green" about that.

As a side note, city-construction/city planning and architecture methods of previous centuries discovered ways to build buildings that creates a drought through the buildings.  Building height (more than just one story obviously) and awnings can also strategically be used to create shade from the sun.  Also, older Florida homes were built longways and parallel to the sea, in order to get the breeze from the ocean.

I have an anecdote to complement this topic: my mom, while visiting historic downtown Orlando, said more or less something like, "Wow, it's so breezy and shady.  It's so nice to be outside here. It's hard to believe it."

That is the problem, it's hard to believe that we already have all the answers we need for so many of our modern problems.  Only, they aren't necessarily all going to be new solutions; a lot of them will be what has been time-tested and true in terms of urban design.

I want to say, "We are too dependent on air conditioning!" These modern technologies have become a crutch for Florida living.  I am not particularly nostalgic, I just don't think that current energy usage can sustain the kind of Florida-lifestyle that is almost exclusively available now.
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But, there is another problem confronting urban design: where will we put the cars?

 It seems to me that our problem is just our mobility with the car.

I know, I know; I'm simplifying things too much.  It isn't just the car. But the car is at the bottom of a lot of our new, modern problems, which have been encouraged or exacerbated by car-living, car-design and the industries which strive to make it possible for the accompanying car-based infrastructure and economy.

Given, the trend began with the train; with its advent, people rushed out to settle new areas, resulting in lower population density in our cities and fueling a popularity of small-town living.  And, even before that, thinkers like Thomas Jefferson were already espousing city-life as decrepit and corrupt, dirty and unnatural.  I understand why they felt this way.  Most of those Americans were tired of London and idealized the simplicity of smaller towns.  But those smaller towns were in every way more urban than the car-designed small towns and suburbs we have today.  The older small towns, like Cottbus until 1945, were as dense as many modern walkable cities are today.  But, since the revolutions leading to car affordability, we are even more likely to live in low-density communities, which defy all historic precedent.

The evidence for this is on record: small towns and cities used to be dense.
Low-density is new.  Today, we have lots of new problems.  Therefore, low-density may be related to our modern problems.  Could it be a root cause?

Is low-density the  Problem? I mean, I just discussed air-conditioning, but maybe the car is the elephant in the room, so to speak.  No everyone wants to talk about their car usage and the participation in creating the hole in the ozone layer.  But, isn't that, like, the main cause of it?  Or a big cause of it?  I heard that Americans consume 30 percent of the petroleum supply (in the US) on personal automobile travel.  That compared to like five percent or something in Europe... and other countries don't manage to use that much at all.

We worry about a lot of things, and it might all be random and disconnected.  But, let's play the game of asking ourselves whether our modern problems could be caused or related to the isolation or social/economic structure of low-density living.

We have modern energy problems,  physical-health problems, modern mental-health problems, economic problems, a dependence on large corporations (for our employment and for the supply of products), food access and food quality, global warming, access to nature, etc, education, etc.

1. Physical-health problems? Obesity?  -- People used to use their legs for transportation.   This problem could be car related.

2. Mental-health problems?  Isolation? Lonliness? Are we left to learn what is right and wrong only from tv?  How many people today go into the gas station just for some human interaction?  In a dense environment, people walking on the street and shopping in their own neighborhood had a community.  In residential, car-friendly developments, businesses are against zoning ordinance and people jump in their car because walking talks too long.  No easy human interaction here.  Car-design could be the problem.

3. Economic problems?  Lars said to me once after looking at the US Department of State's fiscal budget pie chart, "Whoa! The US doesn't have a debt problem at all, just a Military problem"  He said that because the budget showed 30 percent allocations to the military, excluding police etc.  And, not to simplify things, but aren't we at least partly involved in the wars in the Middle East because we need peace in that area, or we'll have an energy collapse in supply?  And isn't the oil for cars mostly, and plastic secondly?  Maybe that is just gossip...

Besides the oil business higher density with proper mixed use design is good for business.  That is because we all know what our community needs, and business owners can react more quickly to local demands if they have a fighting chance to compete with chain stores.  Big box stores do better in surban settings than in dense settings... because there just isn't the space for a Wall-Mart type thing in a city.  If you don't know what I mean, go to a really dense city street in any big city, and you'll see all kinds of things.  The more the better, right?  Isn't that the free market?

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Another thing, what if bad urban design strangles out the small-time business shop owner?  Malls are an option, but how natural is a mall?  The whole issue is super complex I think, but my feeling is that malls aren't flexible enough because they can't really shrink or grow with the demand for space.  And, you always have to problem of inconvenience.

In a dense neighborhood (it doesn't have to be in a city) we would have an even stronger feeling of what residents in our town need.  We could be the one to supply it.   We would know, because we would sort of see our neighbors more if we traveled less by car and interacted with our neighbors more, in a mixed use designed/permitted neighborhood.

If Zoning and real estate prices make it unattractive or impossible to open a business in our neighborhood, then less people can open their own businesses.  Big Box is the easy solution. The economy is then dominated by MBA's who run big stores and think in numbers and have no relationship with us.

Do you ever feel like there is nothing personal about shopping anymore?  If all we have is those big box stores or shopping malls with comercial chains run out of NYC or wherever, then this is a sad sort of modern world.  It is similar to the stories I have heard about communism in East Germany and Poland.  Except it's worse.  The stores decide what to put on the shelves based on "market studies", but it is impossible for us to meet our own communities demands.  We are just a number, a consumer.  This is not the nice-communism that makes sure we all have health insurance, for example, and some type of employment, haha, but something else, something unintentional.  This is a big issue, and I couldn't begin to argue about this without some additional/concrete facts... but maybe I'm on to something.  I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this.

Another issue is insurance and healthcare.  Those big insurance companies don't care about you, even if the individuals who work there might want to care about you; they have no time to do so.  They are stressed out, don't see a face.  And the lawyers, they profit on the problem (but most not that much), and can you blame them?  Besides, there's a new trend of turning law offices into corporations, where even the lawyers get abused, and who can they complain to if the whole system works that way?   They're under pressure to take on more and more and more cases.  It all comes down to economics, which is somehow related to how we run our communities...

A good way to counter all these new modern problems is to focus on phsyically creating/allowing small walkable neighborhoods where we interact on a personal basis and shelter ourselves a bit form the cold, impersonal modern world.  I think it is necessary to build higher density, walkable towns and cities.

I know this seems too simple.  Experts, politicians, engineers, lawyers: they should all be concentrating on making a simple solution possible: How can we live without the car.  We don't need more complicated answers and solutions.  We need communities; we need to care about each other in a personal way.  I think the reason we sense something amiss is because something is amiss.  Our basic instincts tell us this.  As they say, "Keep it simple, silly."  The car is a problem.  It starts with the car, leads to car-based design, and a whole domino effect follows.

The Baby-Boomer generation especially thinks of higher density living as stressful, but what if you took the car out of the equation?  Are they just stressed out about traffic? Cities can be denser, but density doesn't equal traffic jam.  Traffic jams only occur with cars!!! Lots of people on foot can be hectic, but you are still moving!  If traffic is caused just by moving about the city, then planners have already failed.  Traffic is often about getting out of the city.  But if you live in the city, you don't have to leave it and sit in traffic.

Thoughts on Food Deserts

When I worked on the Activity and Food Landscape Project at Penn (August 2010-October 2010), I learned a lot about the "Food Desert." It is a very very complex issue with interesting causes, terrible and surprising results and innovative solutions.  One cause of the food desert is that grocery store chains deem inner city neighborhoods of a certain demographic as "too risky", so they don't open shop, even though there are people this is the demographic, which tends to travel the most on foot or with public transportation, and traveling to a far away grocery store is an all afternoon affair.

But it isn't just inner-city neighborhoods.  The high-end, yuppy neighborhood I lived in in Orlando (which I like, by the way) has been the antithesis of a blighted inner-city for at least a decade, yet hadn't had a grocery store in a square mile radius for, like, 30-40 years!!  It was impossible to live downtown without a car, but a compact downtown isn't possible if everybody has a car, so the whole venture was doomed, until Publix opened a grocery store on Central and Eola Dr..

Also,  I know this because I lived in a food desert in Philly.  I lived a couple of streets away from a poorer part of town, but my neighborhood was all college students (no cars) and professors.  Corporations can be really blind sometimes when it comes to knowing where to invest.  I took me a half an hour usually to take the bus to the nearest grocery store, that or I had to walk two miles or so, also taking a half an hour.  My solution: I bought a backpack with wheels!  Two miles doesn't seem like a lot to some car-driving executive, but without a car it's a long way.  At least the walking was nice and I could walk down a recreational trail on the river on my way to the grocery store.  I guess I was privileged.

A surprising solution to the food desert problem is that the residents in these areas supply their own services for their own demand, and the result is a very non-corporate America in it's most authentic form, in my opinion.  There are parts of America that McDonalds, Wallmart's, and big chains don't care about a bit, so they don't open shop.  Access to fresh food suppliers for small scale and corner stores must be difficult though and could explain why lots of food-stores in inner-cities don't have good quality food, or if they do, it can be expensive compared to the chains.  At least a local resident had the pride of being his/her own boss.  

I mean, it is not as if all grocery stores need a pharmacy, bakery, meat counter and wine store within it; That is potentially six different stores, potentially run by six different small business owners.  The grocery stores might have to be smaller, but if there are lots of small stores, it comes out to the same amount, just spread out between a lot of hands, a lot of entrepreneurs.

But what do I know; I'm no entrepreneur or small business owner.  Or is this common sense?

Another solution are food markets on the weekend (from local farmers or imported, whatever), food trucks, and smaller grocery stores spread out more often (like every corner, darn it!).  Suddenly there are a whole lot of people in Generation X and Y, who want to have a farm, raise cows and churn out organic cheese.  That, or small family farms might have an alternative to selling en masse to some retailer. 

New Apartment, Same Town

Lars and I recently moved into our new apartment.  We now live practically in the town square, in the center of town life. 

Lars is my hero.  He found our apartment while I was visiting Agata in Poland.  Before my trip, we looked everywhere, but were faced with few options.  We saw an apartment in a Plate Development (with even a higher rent, but same space) in the south of the city, which seemed to be our only alternative to the loud apartment we had then.  Without a car, I would have been stranded after 7 PM in the Plate Development, when the last trolley serviced our area.  Our problem with finding an apartment was that we only want to rent short-term and we have a dog.  This time of year, with students going back to school, there's nothing left at all.

Miraculously, Lars found a two-room plus kitchen apartment for a lower price than even the Plate Apartment, and in the Old-City!  When I got back from Poland, he showed it to me and we moved in immediately.  Apparently, it was all luck; the last owner had just moved out.  Lars was the first person to commit to the apartment.  So, finally, Lars and I can say that we are settled in Cottbus, at least for the next 3-6 months!

Above is the view from the Foyet looking into the bedroom on the right and living room on the right.
Below are two pictures looking out of the bedroom window.  In the first picture, one can see a mixture of older buildings, Gründerzeit buildings and Plate-buildings.  In the second picture, you can see a  "Gründerzeit"building on the left, otherwise known as "Jugendstil" or in English, Art Nouveau style, a style connected to the American Arts and Crafts movement for its emphasis on organic and human form and decoration.  To the right is a building, similar to the own we live in, of Plate construction, or "Plattenbau."  A lot of the Old-City looks like the Plate building.

I learned that the reason for this is that much of the Old-City was destroyed during a bomb raid from the American-allies during WWII.  Since then, really nothing had been rebuilt until the Wall came down in 1989.  At that time, the town planners took a very conservative approach to rebuilding the Old-City: the decided to recycle the Plate-material they had on hand, but, instead of building large Plate building common to East European, they built building that fitted into the local buiding style and tradition.  That is why the Plate-buidling across the street doesn't really look like a communist Plate-building, even though the material is the same. 

Look to the Town Center "Alt-Markt", or Old-Market

View out my window, looking down a side street.  Plate-Building on the right.

Former site of City-Wall

Above is a interesting picture of the site of the historic City-Wall.  The stones mark the spot.  To take the picture, I stood in the middle of the street and looked south.  The street is also historic and was a main access into the city until 1500.  After 1500, the area around the wall became more settled, and I'm not sure what purpose the wall served then.  Still, the wall marks the boundary of the town until industrialization and the coming of the railway system, which caused an increase in wealth and an expansion of the city in all directions, especially southward.

I have been learning all of this in a class at the university, in which I get to look at really old maps of Cottbus and have to redraw maps.  One map I made shows the settlement pattern of Cottbus.  The city stayed the same size from its settlement in the 3. or 4. century AD. (according to wikipedia) until industrialization, and then again after WW2.  So, in the last 150 years, the city has exploded in size!  By looking at the maps, I'm guessing that one could fit 12 Old-City size Cottbuses into the current Cottbus.  Basically, there was an exposion of growth with the advent of the railroad, and again with the arrival of the personal car.  Does that also count as urban sprawl.....?

City Gate and entrance to the left and house built into the old City-Wall

House built into the City-Wall

Old City-Guard station on the wall.

Market street leading toward the Alt-Markt. My apartment is further down on the left.

Above is the Plate-building I live in, designed to fit into the local building style.  The entrance to my apartment building is on the right.  Number 12, Marktstraße.

Market Days in Cottbus

Walk near University

In this post, I want to talk about some of thoughts as I walked around town last week on Wednesday, which is a market day in Cottbus.

For the next few months, I will be taking some classes at the  university.  I'm looking forward to it, but I'm freaked out.  I signed up for classes so that I can figure what kind of profession I want to go into, and can catch up on some requisites.  The picture taken below is on my walk back from the university along a side street after matriculating.  Below is the building in the above picture, seen more closely. The building was built using plate material.  It doesn't look like a typical Plate building now though because the "green" in front of the building has been turned into parking.

That reminds me of the "Office Parks" in the US, which, when first developed, were supposed to offer workers a view of rolling hills and green surrounding their offices.  In actuality, the green was sacrificed for rolling, meandering parking lots and roadways.  But, I digress.  The picture speaks for itself.  It was a beautiful day!

The next picture, below, really shocked me!  It was taken as I approached the Old-City, on a very vibrant street with lots of cool restaurants and bars.  The shocking thing is that there is a wooden star of david tied to the little balcony toward the top of the house.  I tried to zoom in, but I don't think it turned out.  Whenever I see anything Jewish in Germany, like the remains of old synagogue, a jewish graveyard or a star of david (should that be capitalized?), I always pause to think about the situation.  I mean, it isn't common to see Jewish things in Germany.

Interestingly, Lars always remarks when he hears or sees a last name which is Jewish-German.  Be it in a film or book, be it an American or a German, or a name on an advertisement, he seems to know if the name is Jewish-German.  I asked him, "How do you know the names are Jewish?"  He answered, "The Jewish names are prettier."  "Really???," I ask.  "Yeah... I don't know why."   It seems strange to me that the names should be "prettier."  An example is "Rosenblatt", or Roseleaf, the name of the craftsman we met yesterday, who showed us some antique furniture.   Roseleaf is a very pretty name!

House with Star of David on the balcony

The picture below is of an Art-Nouveau house directly across from the house with the Star of David.  I love Art-Nouveau and liked the look of the posters on vacant store front.  I also liked how one can see the fading lettering on the building, left from a past tenant a century ago. The house will probably be renovated soon if it follows the trend of renovation on the street.

House on vibrant street, near Old-City

Later that day, I stopped by the street market to buy some groceries.  Mmmm.  I bought a delicious loaf of bread called, Crusty-Bread, no joke.  And it was!  I also got some cured-ground pork, which I cooked anyway-I am distrustful of ground meat-- and cured slices of ham.  I also bought lots of vegetables and a strainer.

These market stalls appear and disappear on the day of the market.  It's hard to believe how big a space can seem when it gets crowded!  I mean, this little plaza seems so small most days, but so many little stalls can fit in here for the market; you would think it is a very big place!

I guess that is how downtowns and dense cities work and end up seeming so big.  The space can be so small, but can fit so much, that you think it is much "bigger" than it is!  (On a side note, I remember the first time I walked across Center City in Philadelphia.  It only took 30-45 minutes! So much in such a small space.  I couldn't believe how small it is, when it always seemed so big.)

There are numerous markets in the Old-City.  This one is only Wednesdays and Fridays.  Another one is on Tuesdays, and another on Saturdays.  The market square is in front of the Town Hall "Stadt Halle" and Courthouse "Rathouse."  Directly next to the square is a shopping mall, so to speak, but it is more of a glassed in shopping passage.  Isn't that an interesting idea?  Instead of a parking lot in front of the mall, have a market!

Street markets are so common in Europe.  I took the pictures below to show the types of things bought and sold at the market.  They are so particular, that I chuckled from time to time.

Wednesday Market in Front of Stadt Halle

Vendor selling kitchen supplies- I bought a strainer!

Flower Bulbs for sale

Fruits and Vegetables for sale

Shoes and Slippers for sale to the right

Autumn Plants and Flowers/Grasses

Currywurst and .... Pantyhose?  Ok!

The picture above needs more than a caption.  To the left is a Bratwurst Stall, where one can buy a hot Currywurst with Brötchen (hard roll) or a steak, or a stuffed potato, perhaps.   Bratwurst is the most common thing to find at the food stalls, ready to eat.  I have never seen such a Currywurst Stall before, but we are close to Berlin, and Berliners love Currywurst!  To the right is a stall for pantyhose!  Check out the mannequin legs.  The tough guys, who love their wurst, won't be scared off by a few mannequin legs, or even think twice.

Meatwagon

The above picture shows a Meat-wagon, for lack of a better word.  Here you can buy all types of non-vegetarian, mostly pork vittle, and cheese.  In comparison, Americans are way conservative when it comes to how we like our meat cuts and cheese.  In Germany, butchers (an actual profession) mix cheese and meat with all kinds of vegetables, fruit, cheese, meats or spices.  After all, meat cuts and cheese play a central roll in breakfast and dinner here and is eaten on top of sliced rolls for breakfast or sliced bread for dinner.

Sausage, ham, and all kinds of bologna, sometimes also some pickled meats like pickled fish, or some type of spiced pate or Leberwurst are commonly on display for buyers.  Beef and chicken is not so common.  It may seem strange to see so much pork for some Americans, but at least you don't see heads, legs or other less appetizing animal parts, as is common in lots of the world, I hear (certainly in Spain!).  Below is a Stall selling Spices, 250 Sorts to be exact.

Spree Gallerie (Shopping Mall)

Next to the Street Market is the entrance to the shopping Mall.  Shopping Malls in Germany tend to feel like outdoor shopping streets with a glass ceiling overhead.  They are called "Arcades" sometimes.

Overall, I think it is really fantastic that, at a street market, many people can still make a living selling one particular thing at different markets.  Aren't all markets the same the world over, whether in Jeruselum, Lyon, London or Philadelphia?  Is this not the epitome of entrepreneurship, the foundation for how the modern free-market economy evolved into it's modern self?  I think so, but I'm no expert.  But I wonder why markets hardly exist in the US, but are abundant in the social-market economy in Germany?  Is the root of the problem more economic in nature or is it a problem of urban design?
I am reading a book online called Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices by Charles Siegel.  He commented on this relationship between non-traditional home choices (outside the city) and real estate prices after WWII. 

"We often hear that suburbia expanded so quickly only because people wanted to live there. It is true ...that many people wanted to take advantage of postwar prosperity to buy their own houses. But there is no reason to think that they wanted houses in postwar suburbia, designed according to the planners' principles, rather than similar houses in neighborhoods designed like old-fashioned streetcar suburbs.

In fact, the data we have shows that most of the people who moved to the new postwar suburbs did not particularly want to live in this sort of neighborhood. When Herbert Gans interviewed the residents of Levittown, a name that was symbolic of the mass suburbs of the fifties, he found that 72% of them had moved there for reasons that had nothing to do with its suburban setting. ...But streetcar suburbs were not being built at the time because they were not allowed by zoning laws."
-Charles Siegel

So what came first: the economic problem or the urban design problem?  It is food for thought.

Speaking of food, I realize that a lot of the food at the market is imported from other countries, especially the vegetables, so the market isn't a market for local goods, necessarily.  Street markets don't have to be local, and they aren't anti-globalization, per sé.  Moreover, my favorite market experience was when the french marketeers visited St Albans in England for a week (such delicious cheese, bread, olives and sausage!!)    But still, I like markets because I feel as if the person selling me a product is profiting from my business, and cares about my business.  No offense to workers at chain stores, but sometimes they have a glassed-over look in their eyes, and I can tell they aren't thinking about me at all, just thinking about how long until they can clock out.   It is a nice feeling to know that my business at the market is helping someone become a small business owner.  Unfortunately, the prices can be higher. But they aren't are the German market in Cottbus.  The market is just an alternative to the mall.

I ask myelf sometimes what kind of world my kids will grow up in.  Will there still be small markets, small businesses and the option of a personal connection to where our food comes from in Germany and in the US?  Lars says that he thinks so, at least in Germany.  We talk about economics and quality of life a lot.  Germans don't make as much money and pay very high taxes, after all.  But, so many basic things are lacking n the US, like small markets.  They are becoming fashionable in American dense residential areas, but these dense urban centers are so expensive, that only "richer" people, for lack of a better word, can afford to live there.  That phenomenon is called gentrification.

Oh well.  I enjoyed the market very much!  I plan to become a regular at the Baker's Stall with the crusty bread.

The Mall that feels like a street.