From left to right: indoor phone booth, tiny house, and a crosswalk.

I attended this program, in part, at the invitation of a friend who lives in Toledo – because I am an architect, and I am working on the design of a small bunkhouse for their summer cottage in Ontario.

Architecture is about creating meaningful spaces and about communicating that meaning to the occupants and users of those spaces. For me, the Small Worlds exhibition triggered a series of thoughts about elements of physical culture in Ann Arbor and whether that culture is successfully serving its purpose in the city.

I’m going to wrap a lot into this notion of physical culture – from pedestrian amenities, to accessory dwelling units, to a phone booth. The phone booth is something I’m planning to add to the physical culture of my own workspace – at Workantile on Main Street in Ann Arbor. So that’s where I’ll start, with something tinier even than Jay Shafer’s 65-square-foot house.

Inside Work

Workantile, a co-working community at 118 S. Main St., is housed in a large, open office space in an old storefront where independent workers can work in the company of others, rather than in solitude. Chronicle editor Dave Askins and I are both members. On any given day, a handful to more than a couple dozen people might be at work throughout the space, all focusing on their own projects. And life in the 21st century means that people get phone calls and need to have conversations that they don’t necessarily want to share.

One of several indoor phone booth design concepts by Philip Proefrock.

The open, unbroken space of Workantile, with its hardwood floors and exposed brick walls, makes it very acoustically “live.” The space can be very quiet even when there are a dozen people all working on their own projects, and the ring of a cell phone, or the subsequent talking, can carry through the space. A small “phone room” – a closet with a glass door – provides one bit of acoustic privacy.

If that space is taken, members have learned to use other nooks, such as the landing down the back steps, or a corner by the kitchenette, to avoid intruding on other members. But there are times on busy days when several people all need to talk on their phones at the same time, and there aren’t enough corners for everyone. So I am working on the design of an indoor phone booth.

Workantile members using their phones will have some additional privacy for their conversations, and other members will have less of a noise distraction.

The phone booth will be a tiny place, more a piece of furniture than a room, and it won’t even include the amenity that phone booths have traditionally offered – a phone.

Instead, it will indicate through its physical attributes that it’s the place you go to use your phone. It’ll look like a phone booth, and the sides will be transparent, so when Workantile members use it, it’ll be clear what they’re doing in there – using their phones.

A view from inside Workantile onto Main Street. The telephone-shaped object hanging on the wall does not denote that it's a good place for making a phone call. It's a luminary that was constructed at one of the workshops in preparation for the FoolMoon celebration on Friday, March 30.

The current “phone closet” already offers the functionality that the phone booth will. But for a visitor or a new member, the intended use of the phone closet is not self-evident. It looks and feels like a very tiny office, with a door like any other door in the Workantile. You can’t see what people are doing in there. We could put a sign next to it to identify it as a place for phone calls. But that would not convey as clearly and as intuitively, even from 40 feet away, a basic fact about the Workantile community: The phone booth is a good place to take phone calls, and generally we try to be considerate of other people working.

Once it’s built, new members won’t have to ask where they can go to have a phone conversation. The physical form of the phone booth will serve to define and reinforce the intended activity. And it will do that with less confusion and conflict between different users who are sharing a single space.

Outside Travel

Most Ann Arborites are not Workantile members, so they do not need to worry about how to share indoor space cooperatively by using their phones in the right places. But outdoors, we share space with each other throughout the city – as phone users, pedestrians and motorists.

I recently had a near encounter with a young woman (likely a student, given her apparent age and proximity to campus) who, while talking on her phone, walked out in front of my vehicle in the middle of a block, emerging from between two parked cars. She crossed the street with the seeming certainty that the law gave her the right to cross wherever was most convenient. There are those who think that a new city ordinance gives pedestrians carte blanche (and that the city’s laws take precedence over the laws of physics).

Seventh & Washington in Ann Arbor looking northwest. The crosswalk includes an island in the middle of the street as well as a "local law" sign.

Many of the pedestrian/vehicle crossings in Ann Arbor offer little beyond some road paint, and a tiny local law sign in some instances. These don’t do a particularly good job of encouraging pedestrians to cross at particular points, nor do they help manage the interaction between pedestrian and vehicle. Establishing ordinance language coupled with enforcement does not necessarily encourage the main behavior we’d like to see motorists and pedestrians display: caution. Instead it encourages people to think in terms of “rights.”

What we have, then, are crossings where pedestrians have a legal right-of-way, but little more than crosswalk markings and signage to distinguish the point. Pedestrians (if they want to be safe) must still play a waiting game to see if traffic will slow stop before they can venture into a cross walk. Motorists must estimate whether someone standing in the general vicinity of a crosswalk intends to cross, or perhaps is merely waiting for a bus at an immediately adjacent bus stop.

As more motorists conform to the requirement that they yield to pedestrians, other motorists are confronted more frequently with stopped or slowing vehicles ahead of them. A stopped or slowing vehicle by itself is sometimes not a sufficient cue to an inattentive following motorist – and that can result in a rear-end collision. I’ve seen the aftermath of at least one such incident like this along Plymouth Road.

Seventh & Washington in Ann Arbor. The signal is flashing yellow. The camera caught it between flashes. Recently, pedestrian-activated rapid flashing beacons were installed with additional signage – look for the horizontal bar just below the yellow diamond. The two pedestrians here did not activate the flasher – but when they'd alighted on the center island, the motorist yielded.

Changes to physical culture that go beyond road paint and signs can convey meaning to pedestrians and motorists alike – and provide additional cues that their behavior needs to accomodate a special circumstance. Take for example Ann Arbor’s relatively new HAWK pedestrian crossing signal and the very new rapid flashing beacons. The HAWK has been installed along Huron Avenue just west of downtown, and the rapid flashing beacons  have been installed at crosswalks along Plymouth Road and at Seventh & Washington.

Such signals invite pedestrians to do something more than just stand there – they’re meant to press a button to activate the signal. And the signals provide an unambiguous indication to motorists of a pedestrian’s intent. The flashing lights provide an additional cue to following motorists, to alert them to a possibly slowing or stopped car ahead.

However, meaning-laden physical infrastructure need not take the form of signalization. An example of a simple, meaningful infrastructural element – that conveys the same message as a blinking yellow light or a sign that reads “SLOW” – can be found in a residential street in Bloomington, Ind. (pointed out to me in a conversation with Chronicle publisher Mary Morgan). On South Lincoln Street where it crosses Dodds Street, the curbs are bumped out into the roadway on both sides.

Northbound South Lincoln Street at Dodds Street in Bloomington, Indiana. (Image links to Google Streetview)

Motorists and bicyclists need to exercise added caution to navigate through the narrower space. And a pedestrian who’s crossing Lincoln Street can venture into the roadway by the width of the bump-out, to get a clear view of traffic that might be approaching. It’s also clearer to oncoming motorists what the intention of such a pedestrian might be. The bump-outs also reduce the width of roadway that pedestrians must cross – reducing their potential risk of being struck by a car.

Of course you don’t have to travel to southern Indiana to see bump-outs. They’re also a part of the Fifth and Division streetscape improvements that were undertaken in downtown Ann Arbor over the past year.

The bump-outs are consistent with an idea that’s been tried in several European cities – completely removing signage and signals.

The distinct lack of all traffic signs conveys meaning – that everyone needs to proceed with care and be fully aware of their surroundings; no traffic light or street sign will tell you what to do or who has right of way. In these cases, drivers have to adapt and be more considerate of other drivers and pedestrians.

Example of an intersection in Drachten Holland with little signage and no signalization. Photograph by Jerry Michalski.

Everyone using the space, drivers and pedestrians alike, have equal rights. They pay attention to what is going on around them. They also work more cooperatively, because everyone instinctively understands that two people or vehicles can’t occupy the same space at the same time. People who are given no external cues at all tend to work together to get through each encounter with a minimum of disruption to all. And the rate of accidents and of injuries to pedestrians has been reduced where this approach has been tried.

As Matthias Schulz notes in writing about cities without traffic controls, “Psychologists have long revealed the senselessness of such exaggerated regulation. About 70 percent of traffic signs are ignored by drivers. What’s more, the glut of prohibitions is tantamount to treating the driver like a child and it also foments resentment. He may stop in front of the crosswalk, but that only makes him feel justified in preventing pedestrians from crossing the street on every other occasion. Every traffic light baits him with the promise of making it over the crossing while the light is still yellow.”

Physical Limits

It was the use of physical limits on space, and the extreme example of Jay Shafer’s tiny houses, that first got me thinking about physical culture. The initial drive to create a tiny house came from Shafer’s belief in a lifestyle that does not require a large number of possessions. The tiny house movement may just be a counterpoint to the inflation in house sizes that has occurred over the last half century. Instead of pushing to add space to a house because, “we’ve got too much stuff,” opting for a tiny house is a choice that requires more materially-limited living.

This Tumbleweed Tiny House model is called the Walden, offering 117 square feet.

It would be possible to attempt a simpler lifestyle living in an average-size house. But one of Shafer’s tiny houses creates a physical limitation on the occupant that enforces a simple lifestyle requiring only a few physical possessions. It is much easier to live a life with just a few possessions if your home offers only 65 instead of 2,700 square feet. That latter figure was the average-sized American new home in 2009 – more than 40 times the size of the XS Tumbleweed house.

Shafer doesn’t try to satisfy all possible needs within a small house. Instead, he believes in living in the larger community. The town becomes your living room, with all of its amenities to choose from; the local restaurants serve as part of your kitchen, which help supplement the lone hotplate in a Tumbleweed house.

Legal Limits on Space

If living in a tiny house means living in the larger community, part of that includes putting your tiny house on some land somewhere in the physical space of that larger community. Most communities have laws that govern how land may or may not be used – zoning laws. Zoning laws define, among other things, what kinds of buildings may or may not be built on a particular piece of property, and where a building can or cannot sit on the property.

When Shafer lived in Iowa, where he built the first model of the tiny house, he originally had it on a piece of property six miles outside of town. But he wanted to reduce his travel distance into town, to align better with a lifestyle of reduced material consumption. When he went about moving his house into town, he found that the house was smaller than the minimum allowable building size. What he wound up doing was buying the cheapest house in town and moving his tiny house into the back yard of that lot. He then lived in his tiny house while he rented out the “main” house to others.

Of course, Ann Arbor has done its own dance around the issue of tiny houses. That’s taken the form of a conversation about whether to allow the construction of an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) or so-called “granny flat,” a detached building, usually just a one-bedroom apartment, on the same lot with a house. ADUs might be a bit larger than the Tumbleweed tiny houses, but they’re still generally no more than a few hundred square feet.

Although the city of Ann Arbor planning commission has looked at the issue of accessory dwelling units several times over the last decade or so, the matter has never been brought before the city council for consideration. That’s because it has been a focus of vocal opposition from some quarters.

Currently, the only kind of “accessory apartments” allowed in Ann Arbor are those that are attached to the principal dwelling and are less than 600 square feet. Additional requirements include: The principal dwelling must be owner-occupied, and the occupant of the accessory apartment must be a relative of the owner. The special exception use for accessory apartments has been sought only twice since it was added to the zoning regulations for residential properties in the 1980s.

A Tumbleweed tiny house parked in an Ann Arbor backyard could not meet the conditions of the special exception accessory apartment use. But as a detached accessory dwelling unit, a tiny house, whether a trailer-mounted Tumbleweed house or a site-specific small accessory building, could offer great benefit to those who would like to have a family member live on the premises, but not necessarily under the same roof – such as an elderly parent or a teenager who needs a bit more private space.

And a tiny house could offer an older homeowner the option of having a tenant who could also help with some chores as part of a rental agreement. But that arrangement would also fail to meet the current standards of a special exception accessory apartment use.

Allowing detached ADUs on appropriately-sized lots with less strict conditions on occupancy arrangements would provide immediate benefits to property owners. And it would permit an incremental increase in total population density over time. Even if such an ordinance revision were to be approved by the city council, it would likely take a number of years before many homeowners added such buildings to their property.

Concluding Thoughts

Using the physical environment to express a rule and to enforce a concept is nothing new. We’re familiar with the idea that keeping people off the grass is more effectively achieved with a security fence, not just a sign that reads “Keep Off the Grass.”

But security fences aren’t necessarily pretty. A border of flower beds might just as effectively keep people from trampling on a lawn. As we think about building a physical environment that helps shape our interactions, I think it’s worth focusing on making those physical elements attractive as well as functional. Too often, a design gets focused on serving just one function or achieving one goal, and it may accomplish that end adequately, but it’s not terribly attractive.

HAWK signals and rapid flashing beacons are examples of a functional way that physical infrastructure can help support the goals of a pedestrian-friendly city. But they are not things of beauty.

It’s not hard to imagine a more attractive way to manage the interface between cars and pedestrians, even though I’m not a traffic engineer and have no expertise in designing aesthetically-pleasing traffic infrastructure. But I do know something about designing indoor spaces for people to inhabit, even if it’s just for the brief time required to take a phone call. I’m hoping to complete the first version of the phone booth in a couple of months.

If you’d like to see it in person, stand outside the door at 118 S. Main and peer inside. For a member of the Workantile community, your standing there will convey meaning. And someone will likely come open the door for you.

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The author's media credentials for the North American International Auto Show. (Photos by the writer.)

So what was I doing at the Press Preview of the North American International Auto Show a few days ago at Cobo Hall? Even though I’m an architect in my day job, I also do some writing for EcoGeek.org, a blog focused on issues of technology and the environment. And I’ve also contributed to several other online media outlets in the past few years.

My writing sideline started with a focus on green building technology. But because of my proximity to Detroit, I found myself receiving forwarded invitations to auto industry events.

So while I’ve never particularly thought of myself as a “car guy,” I’ve come to find myself acting in the capacity of an automotive journalist. I have now attended the North American International Auto Show three or four times as a member of the press.

Despite having developed some familiarity with the process, I still feel like an interloper – as though I’m getting away with sneaking in someplace I’m not supposed to be.

Auto Show Credentialing

Gaining admittance to the auto show as a journalist is a multi-step process. In order to get a media credential, I filled out my application back in December. I submitted the application, along with copies of three recent auto-related articles I had written, as well as an assignment letter written by my editor to the show’s organizers. Because I have attended a couple of years previously, I think this was easier than in previous years – but it’s still the same process. A few days later, an email arrived saying that my credentials were approved.

On Monday, Jan. 10, I arrived at Cobo Hall before the sun was up to spend my day at the show – though not early enough to attend the 6 a.m. “Porsche Breakfast.” Once inside the building, the first order of business was to pick up my press credential at the ticket window.

Already at that point, the international scope of the show was apparent, as a group of four or five men in front of me conversed in Spanish. They were from Argentina, which I deduced from one of their passports. Then, after obtaining the badge, I had to show it, plus a photo ID, to another official in order to get a wrist band. The wrist band let me get through the doors and onto the show floor. Presumably this keeps people from swapping badges to let others into the show.

After clearing all of these hurdles, I walked through the doors and joined the other journalists for the Press Preview.

Auto Show Marketing Campaigns

I encountered the first marketing campaign even before I got to the line to get my credential badge. Stands with free copies of the Wall Street Journal were wrapped with an ad with Toyota’s tagline for this year’s show, “What’s the plural of Prius?”

Once inside, I decided to just walk a big loop through the entire show to get a sense of what the different manufacturers are promoting and to get an idea of what things I would like pursue further. The number of electric cars seemed to be a key theme last year, and even more electric vehicles are here this year – but they seem to be less in the spotlight, maybe because we learned so much about them last year.

It's not hard to figure out when a press conference is about to start.

What’s the difference between the Press Preview and the show that’s open to the general public? For one thing, you get to walk through the show with a relatively open floor. I’ve also attended the show during the days it has been open to the public, and it is much more crowded then than it is during the Press Preview.

The other key feature of the Press Preview is the company information that is provided to journalists. Throughout the day, press conferences are scheduled by different manufacturers, and hundreds of journalists will converge on that manufacturer’s booth to hear the presentation. They often include self-congratulatory sales information from the previous year, as well as some information about the company’s strategy and new model plans.

These conferences are little theatrical productions unto themselves. They are the kind of events when new models or concept vehicles are dramatically undraped with great flourish.

Even if you don’t have a copy of the floor map and the schedule of these conferences, you can tell when and where the next press conference is going to be held as the time nears: The current of people moving in one direction is a clear sign, as many of the attendees converge on the space for the next scheduled announcement.

Music precedes the introduction of the first speaker, who often has a title with labels like “executive,” “vice president,” “marketing,” and “corporate communications.” Lots of bass seems to be a musical requisite. Audi’s introduction featured lots of thundering drums, making it seem like an outtake from Battlestar Galactica – all the more when last year’s E-tron model was introduced. Theatrical lighting, large display screens, video clips, and little over-the-ear, foam-covered microphones also seem to be regular parts of these productions.

Some press conferences feature two or three different speakers, with one presenter talking about the company and the next introducing a new model, or speaking more about the new features the company is emphasizing.

Behind the scenes, some of these productions also have lavish and extensive production teams. A video production booth – that wouldn’t be out of place at a live sporting event – runs the show with a team of technicians, shifting between two or three cameras for alternating shots on the large screen displays of the speaker and the cars. They also cue the video clips showing cars out on the road or demonstrating particular features of a vehicle.

One of the last conferences of the day was BYD (Build Your Dreams), a Chinese automaker that began as a battery manufacturer. BYD was on the main floor of the show for the first time last year. The company is building hybrid and electric vehicles for China and is trying to move into the American market as well. BYD has begun its first testing in the U.S. with its F3DM hybrid car, which is being used in a fleet test with the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles. The director of the housing authority appeared on stage to speak briefly about the cars.

Chinese automaker BYD presented 3 Green Dreams.

The production values of the BYD presentation, as well as their booth, were not as elaborate and refined as many other exhibitors. Much of the BYD presentation was about their “3 Green Dreams,” which includes development of low-cost solar power systems to generate electrical energy, and electrical energy storage using environmentally friendly materials, along with an electrified vehicle fleet. BYD’s presentation included talk about integrating these three technologies, but only in very general terms, and without technical or commercial specifics – which made it seem much more like a political address than a business presentation.

Press conferences at the auto show serve as theater not just for the reporters in attendance, but also for a broadcast audience. This year’s Honda presentation was only partly about their cars – the 15-minute program included several minutes worth of talk about the Honda Civic concert series. Honda brought in Pete Wentz, member of the currently on-hiatus band “Fall Out Boy,” to announce a social media promotion encouraging people to compose songs about the Honda Civic. Indirectly, this is part of the corporate marketing, of course, and it serves to promote the name of the car. But it seems off topic for an automotive show.

Media Amenities

To post a story during the show, I need to use the press room, located on the third floor. I wasn’t even aware it existed the first time I attended, but I have since learned that this space is available to those of us with a press badge. It’s a very large space filled with tables and chairs for several hundred reporters, photographers, videographers, radio correspondents, and bloggers. The polyglot nature of the show is reinforced both by the numbers of national flags hanging from the ceiling overhead as well as the languages one overhears walking through the room.

The press room at the auto show.

A couple years ago, while I was writing and posting a piece for my blog, I heard how a radio reporter at the table behind me did repeated takes for a piece he was assembling for his program.

Ethernet cables and power strips cover the tables, allowing a data connection to the outside world, if you can find an open seat. Since I wanted to be able to post at least one story on the day of the show, after a few hours I made my way upstairs to the press room to write the article, as well as to have a chance to sit for a few minutes before heading back to the displays.

While a few years ago it was common for the different automakers to fly in bloggers from different outlets around the country, that has seemed less prevalent over the past couple years, though the practice still exists. When the owner of EcoGeek – the blog I write for – attended the auto show a few years ago as a guest of an automaker, it marked the only occasion I’ve met him in person.

I have also been invited on a couple of trips to other locations, and in those instances, my editors and I have disclosed the interest of the company involved in providing the invitation. But in this case, as I live in Ann Arbor, there was no need for anyone to fly me in to Detroit to cover the show, and EcoGeek will cover my expenses. I have always tried to be unbiased about my writing in any case, and although no one is paying me to write favorable things about them, I still find myself wanting to be extra clear about this.

There are still small gifts and tsotchkes the manufacturers hand out to publicize their products. The press kit has gone from the printed page (though there are still loads of printed brochures to be found) to CD- and DVD-ROMs, with high-resolution, print-ready copies of the publicity photos of all the new cars (though some manufacturers still have these, too) to USB thumb drives, which are the latest trend, and have been increasingly distributed for the last couple of years.

A sampling of memory stick press kits distributed at the auto show.

Sometimes the memory stick is packaged in a way to try to make it memorable. Fiat’s tiny flash drives were tucked into a bed of confetti inside an espresso cup and saucer set. Hyundai’s drives were in Swiss-army tools that also include a pen and LED light. Buick’s flash drive is in a wooden swing-out case. Others are simply prominently branded with the company logo.

Some manufacturers offered journalists other amenities to induce them to spend more time at their displays. Accura offered an espresso bar serving cappuccinos, lattes and mochas.

Toyota provided a table with charging stations to recharge cell phones and personal electronics, and a couple of computers for online access. These seemed to be popular with some journalists who wanted to check their flight plans.

Both of those features will likely have been reconfigured to provide additional space for the sales representatives, now that the show is open to the public.

Hands-On Fun

The lower level of Cobo includes a driving track with a number of vehicles that attendees can drive – after signing a liability waiver and taking a breathalyzer test. This year has fewer vehicles than last year, when nearly two dozen hybrid, fuel cell, and electric cars and trucks were on display and available for test drives.

Some vehicles appear only at the show for preview week and will not be available for the general public to drive. AMP, a small company that converts cars to battery electric drive, was there with a converted Chevrolet Equinox that they are starting to produce for some consumers. The converted Equinox has a 100-mile range.

Protean Motors featured a demonstration Ford F-150 pickup with its engine removed, replaced by four in-wheel electric motors to power it. Both AMP and Protean are only appearing at the preview week, and will not have their vehicles available for the public to drive. But they were attending the show in order to show their products to manufacturers and industry insiders, as well as to curious journalists.

I drove the new Chevrolet Volt, which I have been following and helping to report on since it was unveiled as a concept car. The Volt, as well as the Ford Fusion and several other cars, are available for test driving during the public show, which opened on Jan. 15 and runs through Jan. 23.

The basement area is also home to the “Smarter Living in Michigan” show, which stretches beyond cars and trucks to feature a range of displays from LED lighting and log homes to automotive battery system manufacturers and wind turbines. Also on display: a truck designed to run on biogas generated from waste material; the University of Michigan solar car; and Current Motor’s electric scooters.

A slot car race helps promote the Ford Mustang.

It struck me that this is a good year for kids at the show. Games and interactivity seem to be a popular theme with several of the exhibitors’ displays. Chevrolet has a driving game featuring the Chevy Volt that uses the Kinect for Xbox to allow two players at a time to race side-by-side, pairing the new automotive technology of the Volt with the new electronic entertainment technology of the Kinect.

Camaro includes a display that is ringed with cameras to take a 3-D picture as the subject jumps in the air in front of the car, giving you a “bullet-time” image that pans back and forth, showing you suspended in space. This example features science-fiction author Tobias Buckell and a couple of his friends: [link].

Ford has a truck-driving simulator mounted on a motion-control rig with three monitors for a widescreen display. The game was a timed race with the driver steering a simulated Ford truck along a dirt road – a motion-control simulator banks and swivels the seat to give the driver a sense of motion. Another Ford video game features an overhead view of a city and requires the driver to hit different checkpoints.

An impressively large, 4-lane slot-car racetrack helps promote the Ford Mustang.

Both Ford and GM are also notably tying back to their past with historical models on display. Ford is showing a 1960s Lincoln in that part of their display, and GM is featuring a 1950s Thunderbird in the Chevrolet display. The requisite movie car tie-in at this year’s show is satisfied with the car from “The Green Hornet,” on display in the lobby area of Cobo Hall.

Winding up the Day

Chevrolet was the last press conference of the day last Monday, starting at 6:15 p.m. Hundreds of reporters and photographers were already filling the seats by the time I got there, and I joined the throng standing to the sides to watch as a group of musicians performed with a variety of mobile electronic tablets and phones.

Three new Chevrolet Sonic models drove onto the stage behind the musicians. As the cars rolled onto the stage, dozens of cameras were held aloft, reminiscent of concertgoers with lighters, as people in the deeper rows tried to get the first pictures of these cars. Sonic executives then gave another version of the same kind of pitch I had heard a half dozen times already. They were excited about how solid the past year’s sales had been, they thought the new models were wonderful, and they would produce future models that would be just what the car-buying public needed.

A new fuel combination unveiled at this year's auto show.

The speeches ended with a mass of photographers rushing the stage to crowd the new cars while other reporters crowded the press counter for one more flash drive.

Tables were set up nearby with bottles of Detroit Lager and waiters circulated through the crowd with trays of gourmet sliders for the assembled crowd.

Both the press and the industry people seemed to be glad that the whole event was over, and I saw lots of small groups talking shop among themselves. Some company people were giving follow-up interviews to reporters, while other groups of industry people chatted together; two reporters were talking about website design services.

Twelve hours after I had arrived, I finished my slider and headed back into the night to drive home and hang up my automotive journalist’s hat for another day.

EcoGeek articles by the writer from this year’s auto show:

• Chevy Volt Is 2011 North American Car of Year
• Toyota Searches for a Plural for Prius
• Green Cars at NAIAS 2011
• Efficient Conventional Cars at NAIAS 2011
• Ford Goes After Both Hybrid Competitors with One Car

The North American International Auto Show, located at Detroit’s Cobo Hall, is open to the public through Sunday, Jan. 23. More details are on the NAIAS website.