PlaceShakers and NewsMakers

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greenwaters08 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:19:01 +0000

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andres-portrait-lo

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retrofitting

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atlstation

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atlstation1

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atlstation2

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atlstation3

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atlstation4

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atlstation5

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atlstation6

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mrf_long-beach_condos01

greenwaters08 — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:10:33 +0000

Untitled-1

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Untitled-1

legalguide

greenwaters08 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:02:21 +0000

obama

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lc-logo

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seniors

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arc-close

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arc-close-2

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earthday

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cottagesquare

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sprawl_repair_act

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mall

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mouzongreenhouse

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Krier

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TFA2

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BestPractices

greenwaters08 — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:52:09 +0000

Charles

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image002

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DCP_3927

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WholeEarth

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Print

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Pavement_Grass

greenwaters08 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:40:48 +0000

CNU prescription graphic

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GoogleMaps

greenwaters08 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:50:37 +0000

Leon Krier Announcment

greenwaters08 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:10:44 +0000

Existing US Conditions

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Civic US Upgrade

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Leon1

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bicycle-diaries01

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HazelHS

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Winter Snow at The Waters

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Power-of-Half Book Cover

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Historic St. Gerards, Buffalo, NY

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Mary Our Queen, Norcross, GA

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Howard Blackson

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1906 Camp

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Core House

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pk-haiti-logo

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Howard-Blackson

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Scott-Doyon

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Hazel-Borys

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Ben-Brown

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Magical Mystery Tour Promo Flyer

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SC iPhone

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1

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Retail Example 1

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Retail Example 2

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Retail Example 3

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Retail Example 4

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Retail Example 5

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Robert Gibbs

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What Main Street Can Learn from the Mall

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T6

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T6-2

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Public Health

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Infrastructure

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Energy Emissions

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Easy Fix

greenwaters08 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:15:33 +0000

Sipsey Landing Invitation

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Geoff-Dyer

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Taos Process

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Taos Process

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Taos Process

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Smart Code Intensive Banner

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Form-Based Codes Pie Graph

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T5 Illustration

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CNU18button2

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Sipsey Landing Pin-Up Invitation

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Master Plans Handout

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MMT Project Overviews

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European Streetscape

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Public Space

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Paris

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Howard at Lake

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Broke Down Bus

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Alys Beach

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24 Hour Plan

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Santana Row

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Tribute

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FBC Bar Graph

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FBCtimeline

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FBC Timeline

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M21 Skyline

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Steamboat Springs

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Taos NM SmartCode PlaceMakers

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Arcade Fire Graphic

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Childhood

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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Sustainability Nesting

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Sustainability Nesting Solo

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Stool Parody

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Wrestling with Andres

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Picket Fence

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Wrestling with Andres

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Wrestling with Jane, Robert and Andrés

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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Fresh Every Friday

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5 YR Special Report

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Fresh Every Friday

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T5 SYNOPTIC DSCN1355

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McDermot

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McDermot

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McDermot Avenue in the Exchange

Albert

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Bannatyne

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Kingsway

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Crescentwood_Street

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Bannatyne

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Bannatyne

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Crescentwood_Street

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Kingsway

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Kingsway

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Corydon

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Lilac

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Corydon

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FutureWorld

greenwaters08 — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:28:57 +0000

Freddy

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PS Zoning

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PS McMansion Fort

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PS McMansion Fort

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Hazel-Tweet

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Howard-Tweet

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RSS-FEED

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Hazel-Tweet-RO

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Howard-Tweet-RO

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RSS-FEED-RO

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PM-LINK

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Hazel-Tweet

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Howard-Tweet

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PM-LINK

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RSS-FEED

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Fresh-Every-Friday-Sidebar

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Fresh-Every-Friday-Sidebar

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McMansion Fort

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Columbia Heights 2010 10 03 90 Happy Howard Blackson small

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Columbia Heights 2010 10 03 74 Howard Blackson Underwear small

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Market-Hall_Pre-Opening_0019

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Cartovator

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130

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418846405_8eyg5-M-1

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Alys Beach Paseo

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Del Mae Station photo

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Futurama1

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Steam Train

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retrofit

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sprawl image

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Sprawl image2

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Tsawwassen-Canada5

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Valencia

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Sprawl Group

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Cities for People

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Copenhagen credit Flickr Mikael Colville-Andersen

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Credit Livable Streets

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Critical Mass bike ride in Vancouver Credit Flickr ItzaFineDay

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The Pink Zone in Bogata credit Flickr Jorge Lascar

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SA-COA

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DW-Logo

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DD

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Email Newsletter

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Guest Shaker Banner

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Email Newsletter-01

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Email Newsletter-01

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Garrison Woods, Calgary

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Charter of the New Urbanism

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Amanda Thompson

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Windwalk Illustrative Plan

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Hazel-Tweet

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Howard-Tweet

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PM-LINK

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RSS-FEED

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Howard-Tweet

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PM-LINK

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RSS-FEED

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Email Newsletter

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Fresh-Every-Friday-Sidebar

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BM

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Chain Store Sprawl

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Hazel-Tweet

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Howard-Tweet

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PM-LINK

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RSS-FEED

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JG-01

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pastedGraphic-1

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Chickens-Talapia

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Casita Verde 2

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Food Truck

greenwaters08 — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 01:46:58 +0000

Email Newsletter Sign-Up

greenwaters08 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:28:22 +0000

Left-Overs

greenwaters08 — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:39:05 +0000

Dhiru

greenwaters08 — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:38:12 +0000

LowerDexter

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View Terminated to Ralphs

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View Terminated to Ralphs

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JN

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JHK

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JN

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oil_cleanup7

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:40:38 +0000

Oil cleanup workers hired by BP pick up oil soaked absorbent booms that were placed at the edge of the surf at the Gulf Shores public beach in Gulf Shores, Ala., Thursday, June 24, 2010. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster continues to wash ashore along the Alabama and Florida coast. (Press-Register/John David Mercer)

Ricky Mathews

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:44:32 +0000

Ricky Mathews, publisher of the Press-Register, chairs the first meeting of the Coastal Recovery Commission of Alabama Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010, in Spanish Fort, Ala. (Press-Register, Mike Kittrell)

CRCAL Logo

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:47:09 +0000

crc_presentation_4

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:04:01 +0000

Gov. Bob Riley speaks during a press conference to announce the release of the final report of the Coast Recovery Commission in the Old Statehouse Legislative Chambers at the State Capitol Wednesday, Dec.15, 2010 in Montgomery, Ala. The CRC was created by executive order of Gov. Riley to draft strategies for the recovery of coastal Alabama in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. (Press-Register, G.M. Andrews)

crc_presentation_12-LR

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:04:40 +0000

Commission chairman Ricky Mathews, left, poses for photos with with Gov.-elect Robert Bentley, center and Gov. Bob Riley with a copy of the Coast Recovery Commission's (CRC) final report following a press conference in the Old Statehouse Legislative Chambers at the State Capitol Wednesday, Dec.15, 2010 in Montgomery, Ala. (Press-Register, G.M. Andrews)

Waters 2009 03 01 Snow

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Howard Blackson on Zephyr 2009 06 1939

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cliff-lee-phillies

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Me-Dad

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Getaways

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Hyperbole

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John-Watts

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LBVA

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LBVA-03

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MAPB

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LBVA-04

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John-Watts

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My House

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Mixed Use

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Cottage Neighborhood

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Chapin Book Cover

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BOM

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Robert Gibbs

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Galina Tachieva

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Sprawl Repair Manual

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Palm Beach_platted_retail

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Drive-Thru Before and After

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Mableton_Town_Square

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Encore Post

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Dhiru Thadani

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Andres at Seaside

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Stefanos and Hank

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Uptown District Diagram

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Uptown District Diagram

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Arterial

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Neighborhood Centers

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Bird Rock

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Geoff-Tweet

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Lower Row-2

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PM-LINK-2

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RSS-FEED-2

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Blank

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Lower Row-2

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PM-LINK-2

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RSS-FEED-2

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Lower Row-2

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Lower Row-2

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End

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End

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Showdown

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Dan Reuter

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Scott Polikov

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:05:38 +0000

Joe Minicozzi

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JC

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Joe-Manicozzi

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:26:04 +0000

Susan-Tweet

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:30:09 +0000

Susan-Tweet

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:34:24 +0000

Lee-Sobel

greenwaters08 — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:37:32 +0000

Dent-Pod Parody

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Dent-Pod Parody

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BPA

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Composite

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Pig Graph

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KK

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eNews-Do-It

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eNews-Do-It

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Ben-Tweet

greenwaters08 — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:22:49 +0000

John-Belushi

greenwaters08 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:24:14 +0000

Hogarth

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Poundbury Pub

greenwaters08 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:26:35 +0000

Golden Hill Neighborhood Plan

greenwaters08 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:28:04 +0000

Decatur Beer Ad

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Golden Hill Neighborhood Plan

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Smart

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SmartUrb

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CollegeSt

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:25:01 +0000

91SouthCedarStreet

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:26:28 +0000

TappinSquare

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Main-St

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Gideon-Crevoshay

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PM@W | Decatur

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Porkchops

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GGP

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Susan-Henderson

greenwaters08 — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:01:08 +0000

Clifton_Cincinnati

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SS_desktop

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iPhone images

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Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

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2004

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:59:24 +0000

Nathan-Norris

greenwaters08 — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:48:37 +0000

VPS MGM Nelessen 05 Nature

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VPS MGM Nelessen 15 CSD TND Comp 2

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VPS MGM Nelessen 16 CSD Riverside Comp

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Dover Kohl Steve Price Liner Buildings Before

greenwaters08 — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:57:19 +0000

Dover Kohl Steve Price Liner Buildings After

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RSA Plaza 770 Washington

greenwaters08 — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:00:32 +0000

Bethesda Row

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Waters 2008 11 07 Aerial

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09

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Aerial

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Ion 2009 07 10 264 courtyard

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Cottage + Park

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Waters Lake Sweet T

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Waters Lake Sweet T

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Octavia Boulevard

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RSA Capitol Parking 501 Monroe

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Parking Deck Staunton

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PikeRoadSmartCode

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DellingerEvent

greenwaters08 — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:56:39 +0000

Taos Arterial

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:39:50 +0000

Taos Form-Based Code

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:50:59 +0000

Civitas: Leon Krier

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Civitas: Leon Krier

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Civitas: Leon Krier

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Urban Patterns: Leon Krier

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Architectural Patterns: Leon Krier

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Blackson Types

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:06:35 +0000

Public Space Types

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:08:17 +0000

Angry Mob Fun Run

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:13:31 +0000

Intersection Aerial

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:29:20 +0000

New Model Aerial

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25th Perspective Photo

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Krier Block Good

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New Streetscape

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:46:14 +0000

Bilbao

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:46:47 +0000

Susan-Henderson

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App Screen Capture

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photo

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Gum Pole

greenwaters08 — Sun, 01 May 2011 20:27:20 +0000

MMT Flyer 2011

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1

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2

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Steve Mouzon

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4

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Huntsville sprawl

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3

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FBCs

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FB

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FB

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FB

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Facebook-SC-Sidebar

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Scott-Doyon

greenwaters08 — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:33:19 +0000

Abed

greenwaters08 — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:51:34 +0000

Tactical Urbanism

greenwaters08 — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:55:44 +0000

Original-Green-cover

greenwaters08 — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:57:13 +0000

Ben-Brown

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 May 2011 14:52:57 +0000

Trust

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:06:08 +0000

Trust-02

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:11:15 +0000

Ben Brown

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 May 2011 13:52:17 +0000

Battle Royale

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:17:53 +0000

CNU Hallways

greenwaters08 — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:38:04 +0000

Ian Rasmussen

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Urban Project Lodge

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Project Lodge Exterior

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Howard-Blackson

greenwaters08 — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:15:13 +0000

Hazel-Borys

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 03:33:16 +0000

Garden Cities Graphic

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 03:35:41 +0000

Vancouver

greenwaters08 — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:51:42 +0000

Walking

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The Waters 05.07

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Downtown Child

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Downtown SD 1970

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Dogs on Stoop

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Dogs on Stoop

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Dog Restaurant

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Dog Sign

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Dog!

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Time

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ReduceReuseRecycleLunch

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:32:42 +0000

UrbanAgLunch

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Otherwise_law_abiding_cyclist_takes_to_sidewalk

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Otherwise_law_abiding_cyclist_takes_to_sidewalk

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No_bike_lanes_in_T4_T5_please

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:58:59 +0000

©Mike_Lydon_Zachary_Adelson_2010

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:01:18 +0000

Bike_trails_everywhere

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Even_the_ice_cream_man_cycles_in_Winnipeg

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:07:52 +0000

Another_front_yard_garden_this_one_on_commercial_corridor

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20110721-105548.jpg

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20110721-105708.jpg

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NIMBY-02

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NIMBY

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Waters-Chapel Hill

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P1010098

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P1010123

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P1010122

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P1010111

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P1010127

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P1010130

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P1010131

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GiftToTheStreet

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PeopleAreWalkingMore

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ItsVeryServiceable

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GreatCivicSpaces

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TheUsesCanChange

greenwaters08 — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:59:11 +0000

WhatCouldTheyBeDoingBetter

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Juniper Street

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IMG_1390

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Graphics

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Admin

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Marker

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Popsicle

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Under-H2O

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ElPasoMCA

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AndrewsBarrioCapital

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EPIA

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ElPasoMCA

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Like-PM

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Like-SC

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Like-PM

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Like-SC

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Like-PM

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Like-SC

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pruitt-igoe

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5814392674_ed8b1bcd5d

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IMG_0552

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Suburban-Dream

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Hartman

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Tag

greenwaters08 — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:02:02 +0000

Can Preservationists Let Love Rule?

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:07:46 +0000

Turnover

greenwaters08 — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:42:37 +0000

Supply-Demand

greenwaters08 — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:11:29 +0000

Bill Fulton

greenwaters08 — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:21:29 +0000

Teddy_Cruz

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USDA

greenwaters08 — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:55:51 +0000

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

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Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

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Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

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Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

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Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

greenwaters08 — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:31:04 +0000

TuscanCountryside

greenwaters08 — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:31:36 +0000

Urban Evolution in San Diego

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:48:17 +0000

Vancouver Aerial

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:51:30 +0000

SD Vancouver Model

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Old Urbanism

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:55:02 +0000

Alexis de Tocqueville

greenwaters08 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:06:24 +0000

odd-fellows

greenwaters08 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:12:04 +0000

Grizzly

greenwaters08 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:19:31 +0000

Issues

greenwaters08 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:27:04 +0000

Tomato

greenwaters08 — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:04:00 +0000

FarmersMarket

greenwaters08 — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:07:37 +0000

Beale

greenwaters08 — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:26:35 +0000

Protester

greenwaters08 — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:29:08 +0000

600 MeV Electron: Image credit: Tomasz Barszczak

greenwaters08 — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:41:00 +0000

UrbanRetail_Image_BobGibbs

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CharlestonKingSt_Image_BobGibbs

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SethHarryRetail

greenwaters08 — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:26:01 +0000

CharlestonKingSt_Image_BobGibbs

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CharlestonKingSt_Image_BobGibbs

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EtonStation_Image_BobGibbs

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Table 12_3_WinterPark0313

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DSCN1955

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Jan Gehl - Cities for People

greenwaters08 — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:09:08 +0000

Podium vs Integrated

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Hemingway

greenwaters08 — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:14:28 +0000

Name Calling

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:31:17 +0000

AH

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:38:09 +0000

Condescending Snob

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:40:28 +0000

Tea-Party-Washington-DC

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Wendell Cox

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:52:47 +0000

Return on Investment Piggy Bank

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:56:25 +0000

Le Corbu Radiant City

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:59:35 +0000

Corbu Image

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:03:23 +0000

Vote

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:08:31 +0000

Facebook-Vector-Icon

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:12:03 +0000

Nathan-Norris

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:17:53 +0000

Old Lady Driving

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:29:04 +0000

Facebook-Vector-Icon

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Facebook-Sidebar

greenwaters08 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:12:50 +0000

Scott Doyon

greenwaters08 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:53:30 +0000

Prices

greenwaters08 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:26:03 +0000

Gauge

greenwaters08 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:26:38 +0000

FB Welcome

greenwaters08 — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:37:46 +0000

FB Welcome

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FB Welcome ALT

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FB Welcome ALT

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FB Welcome ALT

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Facebook Welcome

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Facebook Welcome

greenwaters08 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:17:43 +0000

Facebook Welcome

greenwaters08 — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:21:38 +0000

Facebook Welcome

greenwaters08 — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:51:03 +0000

Facebook Welcome

greenwaters08 — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:08:00 +0000

Ben-Brown

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:54:40 +0000

Source Credit: http://www.freevector.com/anger-pain-terror-scream/

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:13:49 +0000

Source Credit: http://www.freevector.com/anger-pain-terror-scream/

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:36:50 +0000

ImageCredit_BenchmarkingReport

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:35:00 +0000

ImageCredit_SustainableStreetNetworkPrinciples

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:38:29 +0000

ImageCredit_SteveMouzon_The_DNA_is_obviously_NewOrleans

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Bruce and Sid

greenwaters08 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:22:43 +0000

Bruce and Sid

greenwaters08 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:36:23 +0000

Scott-Doyon

greenwaters08 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:39:06 +0000

LZS

greenwaters08 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:46:36 +0000

Photo credit: http://www.feelnumb.com/2010/08/19/the-led-zeppelin-airplane-the-starship/

Joey Bruce

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Chuck Ian

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Joe Bob

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SR

greenwaters08 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:24:08 +0000

Photo: http://www.hotelsbycity.net/blog/usa_california_san-jose/2007/01/22/santana-row-luxury-shopping-dining-and-living-in-the-heart-of-silicon-valley/

Cottages Oak Park

greenwaters08 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:42:11 +0000

Fresh-Every-Friday-CHG

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Austin

greenwaters08 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:40:33 +0000

San Diego Parking 2011

greenwaters08 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:41:29 +0000

University Avenue Aerial

greenwaters08 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:43:04 +0000

San Diego's planning department is currently updating Uptown's community plan, its blueprint for future development. It's one of the last community plans the department Ð faced with repeated cuts -- will complete in the foreseeable future, said Bill Anderson, the cityÕs outgoing planning director.

SAMSUNG

greenwaters08 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:45:27 +0000

Back-Envelope

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Back-Envelope

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B-Grid

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B-Grid

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Back-Envelope

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Back-Envelope

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Hazel-Borys

greenwaters08 — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:18:41 +0000

CarlyleAlexandriaVirginiaMissingIntricacyOfTheLot

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DekalbMarketBrooklynNY_CreditVictorDover

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FoodTrucksCreatingSpontaneousPiazza_CreditVictorDover

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NYCMeatPackingDevelopedOnLotByLotBasis_CreditVictorDover

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PreBoomSeasideMuchLikeTodaysPopUpRetail_CreditVictorDover

greenwaters08 — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:37:33 +0000

Decatur Strategic Plan

greenwaters08 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:19:38 +0000

Back-Envelope

greenwaters08 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:32:40 +0000

Apartment Demand Stats (John Burns RE Consultants)

greenwaters08 — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:31:38 +0000

Slide 1

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Slide 1

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PowerPoint Presentation

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Slide 1

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Slide 1

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Florida_Bad

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Covington_Good

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Q:50004471CADCIVILLLOYD-DESIGNcis exhibitsConcept FFXG-4 2

greenwaters08 — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:12:11 +0000

Howard-Blackson

greenwaters08 — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:36:34 +0000

Suburban Sprawl Hawaii

greenwaters08 — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:44:08 +0000

Suburban Sprawl Hawaii

greenwaters08 — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:46:23 +0000

Doe Mill Aerial

greenwaters08 — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:51:51 +0000

american_attitudes_toward_homes

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SP-01

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Doe Mill

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Krier Public to Private Ratios

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Howard Study

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Generic Comp Plan Cover

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BoyInDiningCar-1946

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TheProblemWeAllLiveWith-1964

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LincolnForTheDefense-1961

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MurderInMississippi-1965

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Howie

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EisenhowerImage-LG

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Foundation

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Adams House

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Construction Montage

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Adams House

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Clay Chapman

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Stable

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Chapman House

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Tonge Groove

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Cabin

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Basement

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Granite

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Construction Montage

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ShoppingMall-Color

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WalkableNeighborhood-Color

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Back-of-Envelope

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NPSG Shyam Kannan Presentation 2012 02 02

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bungee-jumping

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Bradys Friends

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Generation Y texting

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Moms Minivan

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Google Bus

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Suburb Moving Day

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MTV Logo

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Flickr Credit: New Urban Developers

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Flickr Credit: New Urban Developments

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Flickr Credit: Bill in DC

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Flickr Credit: Jzimbabwe

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Waters-Chapel Hill

greenwaters08 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:45:03 +0000

Flickr Credit: Clangers England

greenwaters08 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:46:49 +0000

Flickr Credit: Payton Chung

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Flickr Credit: Payton Chung

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The Waters | Chapel Hill

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WorkoutVennDiagram

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TransportationVennDiagram

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tomato

greenwaters08 — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:21:35 +0000

PalaceCoutyards

greenwaters08 — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:28:15 +0000

Amelia Park-SMouzonP116

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05010 Bon Secour NVBoA V1.indd

greenwaters08 — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:33:30 +0000

Stimulus Showdown

greenwaters08 — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:35:07 +0000

When the Democrats' $825 billion economic stimulus seemed to choose same-ol' over sustainable, Smart Growth advocates and New Urbanists began turning up the heat. Favoring super highways over mass transit, rail, pedestrian, and biking alternatives incentivized sprawl for decades. And isn't sprawl part of what got us in this mess? Smart Growth advocates believe investing new money in the same old strategies will only make it harder to achieve goals of energy efficiency and community affordability. Almost all of this federal stimulus money will find its way into state and local government bank accounts. So debates on how to spend it will take place in forums in Washington and in state houses and city halls all over America.

Time to talk to elected officials in your community, as well as Congress. For Smart Growth and New Urbanist perspectives on the infrastructure stimulus, go to Congress for the New Urbanism, Transportation for America or Center for Neighborhood Technology.

Connecting streets and the stimulus. To bolster Smart Growth arguments for how to spend stimulus bucks, the latest edition of New Urban News reports on a study of 24 California cities showing that those with the most highly connected street networks have one third the traffic fatalities of cities with poorly connected street networks. And in the same issue, CNU president John Norquist provides commentary on the stimulus.

- Ben Brown

About Us

greenwaters08 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:35:07 +0000

PlaceShakers and NewsMakers is brought to you by Ben Brown and Scott Doyon, two explainers with the town planning and development advisory firm, PlaceMakers. We spend our days cheek by jowl with urban designers, architects, civic boosters, enviros, developers and community activists, and our job is making sense of them all. Making the interconnected -- and often competing -- agendas of community design accessible and illuminating the inevitable benefits and trade-offs that result from the choices we make. We publish twice a week: Perspective essays every Monday and practical placemaking advice every Thursday. With so much change in the air, we want to invite conversations about connectivity. Like most folks with an Urbanist perspective on change, we believe that paths out of the housing and finance crisis and paths toward sustainability and accessibility intersect. And that issues like energy, agriculture, aging and obesity share common roots. So let's look for opportunities to connect the dots. We, and some of our equally opinionated partners at PlaceMakers, will take note of ideas and efforts that interest us, from innovative applications of form-based codes to design solutions at home, neighborhood, and community scales to civic engagement and the selling of big ideas. You do the same. Let us know what's happening in your area and how it plugs into the Bigger Picture, and we'll share. Drop us a line at ben(at)placemakers.com.

Report from the Real Estate Front Lines

greenwaters08 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:47:36 +0000

Vince Graham, the New Urbanist developer of the award-winning I'On TND in the Charleston metro area, has a "get real" message for home owners and realtors. Like other established New Urbanist properties, I'On has weathered the current housing slowdown better than conventional suburban projects nearby. Yet owners determined to sell their homes in I'On have had to face the reality that the era of double-digit annual appreciation is over. In fact, recent sales even in I'On have been at prices closer to those of four years ago, as opposed to the record levels of 2006. "Let's face it," says Vince, "2006 was an anomaly. Forget about it. A good pricing rule of thumb this year is to consider what homes were selling for at the end of 2004."

Other experts have echoed Vince's analysis. Measured over decades, home values nationally have appreciated at annual averages close to the average inflation rate -- roughly three percent per year. Which suggests that average home prices nationally, after teasing investors for years at unsustainable appreciation levels, still have room to fall.

- Ben Brown

Designing for the New Economy

greenwaters08 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:53:04 +0000

The New Urban Guild, an association of some 60 prominent designers with New Urbanist leanings, met January 10 in Miami to formulate a strategy for creating sustainable architecture for the new American future. The Guild is determined to create a new series of building types that not only hit affordability marks but also satisfy ambitious goals of environmental responsibility, energy efficiency, safety, durability, and neighborhood friendliness. While times seem hard, says New Urban Guild founder Steve Mouzon, the new era can reward innovation and a commitment to high design standards.

- Ben Brown

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fre6d3gHiGw&hl=en&fs=1]

What We're Reading: Retrofitting Suburbia

greenwaters08 — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:01:57 +0000

Considerable attention has been paid to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the exurban periphery. But in between, the out-of-date and unsustainable developments in existing suburbs also provide enormous opportunities for regeneration. Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, is a comprehensive guidebook that illustrates how existing suburban developments can be redesigned into more urban and more sustainable places. Beyond simply re-skinning buildings or changing use, the best suburban retrofits systemically transform their neighborhoods, increasing connectivity and walkability, while contributing to affordability, transit, and sustainability.

- Hazel Borys

Gluttony and Glut: Finding the New Normal

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:09:42 +0000

[caption id="attachment_74" align="alignright" width="300" caption="An evening cross section of Atlanta's Atlantic Station."][/caption] How serious is the implosion of the once-booming urban condo market? And what does the downturn say about the prospects for housing in urban centers?

A piece in the business section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution seems to say it all. Desperate to unload some units in "a stagnant market," says the sub-headline, an Atlantic Station developer will auction off some 40 units, with bids starting at 56 percent off list price. A similar story about the stalled condo market in Chicago appeared in a Feb. 3 New York Times story.

Well, welcome to the New, New Normal. Just don't read too much into implications for the future of multi-family housing in these places.

To be sure, fire sales aren't great news for developers caught in the current pinch, or for investors, including condo owners who bought into a project at the old list price. But it seems to us that the only environment in which this sort of mark down is seen as a disaster is one in which folks deny the realities of the real estate marketplace. It's not a marketplace unless prices go up and down depending upon what buyers are willing to pay, right?

For what we now recognize as an unsustainable period of speculator insanity, prices of detached single-family homes and condos soared, particularly in desirable cities and desirable climates. The period lasted long enough for a lot of folks - buyers, builders, developers, and real estate brokers, to name just a few - to believe the aberration was the New Normal. For a look at how a misguided sense of entitlement played out in the lives of real people on Florida's southwest coast, check out George Packer's story in the Feb. 9/16 New Yorker - it's called "Ponzi State," and for good reason - and then take a look at his video. And for a west coast take, watch this video from the Associated Press.

The remnants of that sense of entitlement persist in many of the conversations about "stabilizing" home values by artificially propping up prices in a market still seeking a bottom. New Urbanist developer Vince Graham explained how it's time for a get-real approach to home values in one of our previous posts.

But it's just as dangerous to assume an opposite marketplace trend, that advocates for downtown mixed-use development got it all wrong. The current shakeout is not about whether or not there's a market for condos and rental apartment options in downtowns; it's about the nature of that market, particularly about how diverse the housing choices have to be and how well integrated is the planning for truly mixed use opportunities.

One of the best overviews of demographic and marketplace trends is the 2008 report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. And for a glimpse at how Americans rank places they'd like to move to - including places like Atlanta and Tampa that have experienced the greatest housing market downturns - see this recent survey from Pew Research.

- Ben Brown

Preservation Through Beauty

greenwaters08 — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:44:26 +0000

A recent New York Times article, examining struggling efforts to preserve the architecture of the New Deal, raises an interesting question: Why do some attempts at preservation capture broad-based attention and support while others wither away as fringe acts of desperation?

The answer might have a lot to do with beauty. Because, while we’ve come to accept as truth that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, it really doesn’t.

[caption id="attachment_81" align="alignright" width="254" caption="The dimensions and proportions of "beauty" reflect far more agreement than we'd like to admit."][/caption] In a 2003 paper, V. Patnaik and others examine the human face and demonstrate how we culturally establish a shared understanding of beauty, concluding it’s the “relational proportion of our physical features that is the primary factor in determining the perception, conscious or subconscious, of beauty.”

More simply, certain proportions and arrangements are more pleasing than others. Not as a matter of personal opinion but as a collective, cultural agreement. We may not, as a nation of individuals, want to admit that we essentially view beauty in the same light, but tough luck. We do.

That’s why it’s not such a leap to conclude that our buildings and infrastructure work the same way. Most would agree that, at some point, our built environment stopped responding to a shared, cultural understanding of what’s beautiful and started expressing – at the upper end – the personal artistic ambitions of its designers and – at the lower end – the need to cut costs.

Either way, the result has been buildings and places that often lack the one thing most likely to ensure their preservation – the ability to be loved and valued by the everyman. As architect Steve Mouzon says often, “Any serious conversation about sustainable buildings must begin with the issue of Lovability.”

We can agree on what’s beautiful. We have met the beholder and it is us. The big question moving forward, especially as the financial floodgates of the stimulus package begin to open, is what are we going to do about it?

- Scott Doyon

What We’re Reading: A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development

greenwaters08 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:18:54 +0000

It probably won’t surprise most folks that the pursuit of more traditional (and sustainable) urban patterns is often thwarted by… lawyers! But here’s a refreshing change: Two of them – Dan Slone and Doris Goldstein, with Andy Gowder – have just released A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Planners, Developers and Architects, a wellspring of practical solutions for beating them at their own game. [caption id="attachment_103" align="alignright" width="232" caption="Put the power of lawyers to work for you."]you." width="232" height="300" />[/caption]

From planning and zoning to development and operations, this richly illustrated resource lays down the law on all aspects of smart growth and development: incorporating good urban design into local land regulations, overcoming impediments in subdivision and platting, structuring community associations for mixed-use projects, maneuvering the politics and, yes, surviving litigation.

In a solid nod of approval, it’s perhaps equally unsurprising that the book’s foreword is provided by Andres Duany, who’s spent a career running the gamut of these legal and political hurdles – some successfully, others not.

And in a not-too-shabby September 2008 review, The New Urban News says, "Immensely practical, this guidebook is loaded with techniques that can enable New Urbanism to jump hurdles erected by the legal system, the political apparatus, and the day-to-day difficulties of community life." Finally, Law of the Land, in an October 2008 post, summarizes, "Justice Brennan: 'If a policeman must know the Constitution, then why not a planner?' is a perfect lead-in to a wonderful new book."

We agree. Get your own copy here.

- Scott Doyon

"Just Building Sprawl" is Over, But How?

greenwaters08 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:22:09 +0000

When President Obama declared, before an audience in Ft. Myers, Florida, on Feb. 10, an end to "just building sprawl forever" (fast-forward to around 58:58 for the money quote), it may have signaled a change of venue in the battle over how the stimulus package is interpreted and applied.

[caption id="attachment_130" align="alignright" width="300" caption="President Obama addresses residents of Ft. Myers, Florida, declaring "The days where we're just building sprawl forever, those days are over.""][/caption] Up until Obama left Washington for town meetings in Florida and Indiana, the debate seemed paralyzed by partisan politics at the national level. Democrats and Republicans retreated to familiar corners, debating the effectiveness of tax cuts vs. spending initiatives as if the issues were purely academic. The national media, as usual, were captivated by the food fight. By changing the stage for the debate from the floors of Congress to communities already hard-hit by the recession, Obama was able to bring back into focus the sense of urgency for action and likely targets for effective stimulus funding. The American Society of Civil Engineers had already done some of the homework for Obama, giving a grade of "D" to the nation's infrastructure and calling for $2.2 trillion in repairs and upgrades over the next five years. And even if Obama had not taken to the road, bottom-up politics was likely to overwhelm Congress before long. See this February 8 Chicago Tribune story suggesting a growing tension between conservative elected leaders and their constituents over the need for immediate investment in communities.

City, county, and state governments were not likely to sit on the sidelines for long, either (note Florida's Republican Gov. Charlie Crist standing on the dais next to Obama in the Ft. Myers video). In the short term, government spending at all levels is likely to be the source of most new investment. So the faster funds begin moving out of Washington, the better.

A recent conference hosted by Governing magazine on the "Outlook in the States and Localities" was full of sobering presentations about spending cuts and lay-offs. According to a survey by the National Association of Counties, 91 percent of those polled said they were cutting spending, and 64 percent predicted lay-offs. A similar survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures suggested 40 states have budget gaps in the current fiscal year and 24 are already predicting shortfalls in 2010.

The signal Obama sent with his end-of-sprawl message in Ft. Meyers is likely to be welcomed by counties and municipalities, many of which have Smart Growth vision plans in place and have a pretty good idea how to use economic stimulus money. With transportation planning at the center of the infrastructure debate, here’s a good place to watch how the process plays out: www.t4america.org. Also, The Alliance for Innovation, a public-sector collaboration that includes the International City/County Management Association, is monitoring 11 municipalities and how they’re coping with the current economic environment. The group is producing a wiki report called Navigating the Fiscal Crisis: Strategies for Local Leaders. Much of the advice, taken from lessons learned in other downturns, is about resisting the temptation to sacrifice long-term strategic goals for short-term savings.

- Ben Brown

Atlanta, AARP, DPZ Attack Challenges of Aging in Place

greenwaters08 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:01:37 +0000

The New Urbanist mantra for neighborhood planning is to go for compact, connected, and complete. Well, one critical component of completeness, that of making communities comfortable - and practical - for residents of all ages, has been sort of assumed by NU planners. Yet it's taken an effort by the nation's primary advocacy group for seniors, AARP, to make the idea of "Livable Communities" for aging in place a planning priority. [caption id="attachment_150" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Can community design impact one's ability to age in place? The ARC is examining how."][/caption] Integrating that priority into master planning for real places is getting its first major test with a Lifelong Communities Charrette in Atlanta, Feb. 9-17. The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), which coordinates planning for the 10-county metro region, is behind the project, with AARP as one of its partners. Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ), led by Andres Duany, will provide the design and planning expertise. Together they hope to make solid headway on an issue that will only loom larger moving forward.

The charrette targets five sites in the region, selected for their potential to represent typical challenges to aging in place and for communities' willingness to embrace walkable, mixed-use, mixed-generational solutions to those challenges. How DPZ approaches the project and the plans that emerge from it are likely to provide models for similar efforts in other places. Lots of other places. Here's why:

In 2008, the oldest members of the Baby Boom Generation became eligible for Social Security. The whole generation, 76 million strong, will have turned 70 by 2034. And if we're not able to reverse the dominant trend of suburban sprawl and its near exclusive reliance on automobiles for mobility, we will make aging gracefully at home in America difficult for even well-off seniors and all but impossible for the majority of older people.

[caption id="attachment_154" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Will our communities offer a vibrant array of possibilities for seniors or just a depressing descent into diminishing choices?"][/caption] Flunking the aging-in-place test not only means an increased burden for family care-givers and public programs (and therefore tax-payers); it also means the loss of good neighbors and productive citizens who could live independently longer in their own homes and neighborhoods if their communities planned for walkability, diverse housing choices, and mixed-use.

In addition to AARP, healthcare and public safety experts have been connecting the housing issue with aging in place challenges for most of the last decade. You can read working papers from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies here. Included among those papers is one on "Aging in Place: Coordinating Housing and Health Care Provision for America's Growing Elderly Population" by Kathryn Lawler, who's one of the planners of the Atlanta Regional Commission project.

We'll follow the ARC/DPZ charrette in blog posts to follow. In the meantime, care to shake this story up a little? Then share your comments below.

- Ben Brown

Will Economic Woes Stall the Green Movement?

greenwaters08 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:42:36 +0000

When we got a note from colleagues in Chattanooga, Tennessee, letting us know that that their city had not only crafted a Climate Action Plan but was also set to create a new office of sustainability, it got us to thinking: Is the competition for funding in the deepening recession going to kill momentum for this sort of focused effort for green planning and building?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ89EQ_z12Y&eurl=http://www.chattanooga.gov/ChattanoogaGreen/ChattanoogaGreen_Climate%20Action%20Plan.htm]

Not in Chattanooga, obviously. City forester Gene Hyde, who chaired the 14-person committee that crafted the Climate Action Plan, says momentum was easy to sustain, thanks to the participation of folks "representing a cross-section of viewpoints from the business, industrial, environmental, and academic communities. In addition, the opinions of more than 500 citizens and 100 subject-matter experts were factored into the final plan."

When the Chattanooga mayor signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2006, committing to planning for lower carbon emissions, there were 235 signatories to the Agreement. Now there are more than 800. That's good news for keeping the green going, right?

So this would be a good place for a "Not so fast" interjection and a bulleted list of all the reasons we're doomed anyway. And there will be room for a little of that in future posts. The sustainability of sustainability is going to be a recurring theme for us all. In the meantime, let's give Chattanooga and other cities moving forward on green initiatives the bows they deserve. And let's indulge ourselves with news with a positive green spin. To wit:

Designer/Planner Doug Farr's Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature has gone into multiple printings and is already used as a guiding text for design seminars. Doug has also developed a sustainability module for the form-based SmartCode.
"Global Green Building Trends: Market Growth and Perspectives from Around the World," a 2008 survey by McGraw-Hill Construction Analytics, reported high expectations for green from worldwide construction pros. A majority predicted that at least 60 percent of their projects over the next five years would focus on green building. Eighty-five percent of the firms said they expected rapid or steady growth in sales and profit levels associated with green building. Solar power, already in use by 52 percent of the firms, is expected to be used by more than 75 percent in five years, Wind power is expected to be in use by 57 percent of the firms by 2013, compared to 20 percent in 2008. And geothermal power is expected to double in use from 2008 levels to 45 percent in 2013.
Across the Atlantic, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment hosted a November, 2008, summit that "brought together a cross section of industries that see 'smart growth' as the way to a sustainable future. A line up of leading figures from property investment, insurance and sustainable development industries guided the debate." Their presentations have just been posted here.

- Ben Brown

An Urban Fix for Suburbia? Tackling Growing Problems Through Retrofits

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:20:45 +0000

Watching Andres Duany go through images at the final presentation of the Lifelong Communities charrette in Atlanta, it quickly became clear how many of the goals of the ambitious planning effort could be lumped under one category: retrofitting suburbia.

"In one way or another," said DPZ principal Galina Tahchieva, "all of the interventions we suggested were suburban retrofits." They involved connecting street networks, creating town or neighborhood centers, "completing" neighborhoods with the missing components of mixed-use, and providing for transit interconnections.

Emerging evidence suggests the retrofitting phenomenon is going to grow in importance. Credit Georgia Tech School of Architecture director Ellen Dunham-Jones and City College of New York/CUNY professor June Williamson for getting out a book that explains it all.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzWjE8wLH44]

The retrofitting movement is likely to benefit by a broader trend of redevelopment in close-in neighborhoods, including central city neighborhoods. Read about the EPA's most recent research in the trend here.

At the Atlanta charrette, Tahchieva oversaw DPZ's ideas for bringing new life to Gwinnett Place Mall in the northeastern suburbs. Expanding the study area to adjacent strip malls and offices, DPZ created three designs for a site totaling 900 acres. It's a big enough parcel to accommodate something like a third of the projected growth of the county over the next 20 years, provided the declining single-use mall converts to an urbanized, mixed-use community with a town center.

"We were after a visionary sort of retrofit that could be a successful intervention," said Tahchieva. Her team offered three alternatives. Two assumed adaptive reuse of at least some of the existing mall structures and the addition of residential and office components to the retail.The core of the mall would become either a public square or a Main Street. "The interiors of malls such as this provide the best public space," said Tahchieva. "So why not build on that?"

The third option went in the opposite direction, assuming a devolution of intensity to what would essentially become a medieval-style village surrounded by farmland. In his presentation of the options, Duany pointed to the canal that encircled the retrofitted site to help manage stormwater: "Here's the moat."

Tahchieva, Duany, and the authors of Retrofitting Suburbia make the case for malls as ideal places for second chances at urbanism on the metro edge. They are often large enough to make walkable mixed use viable; they have intact infrastructure; already sited at key transportation cross-roads, they connect easily to transit; and they are typically owned by one entity, which streamlines the planning and entitlement process.

Duany added one other advantage: "Since they've already decimated the natural ecosystems of the original site, there's not going to be an environmental issue. Whatever you do, you're likely to improve the environment."

- Ben Brown

Atlanta's Lifelong Communities Charrette Delivers the Goods

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:46:17 +0000

Atlanta's landmark charrette on planning for "Lifelong Communities" wrapped on February 17, with an Andres Duany presentation to a downtown auditorium packed with some 500 people.

[caption id="attachment_210" align="alignright" width="300" caption="A crowd of nearly 500 gathers for the closing presentation of the ARC's Lifelong Communities charrette."][/caption] On February 11, the opening night of the weeklong event, Kathryn Lawler, who coordinated the ambitious project for the Atlanta Regional Commission, explained that one key goal for the charrette was to explore this question: "What does a community look like that does not have barriers to growing older?"

See her introductory remarks and Duany's opening presentation here.

During the week, Duany's DPZ team expanded the borders of their assigned model projects in five Metro locations and added a sixth, a retrofitted town center for a dying suburban mall. The core strategy was New Urbanism 101, "completing" neighborhoods with street connections, parks and plazas, and provision for node-to-node transit links. The idea, Duany told his audience, is to reassemble the fabric of community scattered by suburban planning and coding and give back to residents of all ages and incomes the full range of choices that make for quality of life.

"Suburbia is full of false choices," said Duany. "It provides only the illusion of choice. Everybody drives everywhere."

[caption id="attachment_211" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Ben Brown, up close and technological with Andres Duany."][/caption] What gave the DPZ/ARC/AARP charrette its distinction was in the way Duany's team turned talk about the convergence of livability principles into actual plans for implementing them in actual places. The first days of the Atlanta charrette were devoted to hearing from experts not only on design, planning, and coding, but also specialists in public health, physical accessibility, aging issues, and demography. For a day-by-day report on those presentations, go here.

One of those who wanted to make sure her group's views were reflected in the convergence was accessibility advocate, Eleanor Smith, founder of Concrete Change. "Most planners think of the 'disabled and elderly' as a clump of existing people who need a new place to live. Which is true to a certain extent," said Smith, "but the big fact not taken into account by current planning and housing construction is that the way disability usually happens is that formerly able-bodied people who live in inaccessible houses have to move because their houses and neighborhoods can no longer accommodate them."

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcCEcxgyh60]

There's likely to be a growing sense of urgency for addressing aging in place. The graying of the Boomer generation will assure that. Already signs of nervousness are emerging among older Americans in existing neighborhoods. In a recent survey by Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends, researchers found people generally satisfied with the places in which they lived. But the demographic category most likely to register dissatisfaction was the senior demo.

The effort to fit so many priorities into unified approaches was not without conflict. Pressed for time and space, the Atlanta Regional Commission and DPZ restricted studio access and risked alienating those who saw proposals sketched for their neighborhoods without their participation. Atlanta-area urban planner Don Broussard was among those who were bothered by at least some of the ideas he saw.

"The prototype dwellings for the elderly displayed by Andrés showed great merit," said Broussard. "Also, the plans for at least three of the six charrette sites (Mabelton, Conyers, and Gwinnett Place Mall) provoked little controversy, since they create little if any potential for displacement of existing residential neighborhoods. The new thoroughfares planned by DPZ for the towns of Mabelton and Conyers could be accomplished under existing subdivision laws gradually over time and therefore involve willing sellers or owners of private lands desiring to redevelop. In contrast, Williamsburg [ed: the DeKalb site at Toco Hill] involves elderly renters at the mercy of a single landlord who wants to redevelop now.

"How can a plan that wipes out hundreds of affordable apartments in a decent landscape accommodate 'aging in place'? It can't," said Broussard.

In his final presentation, Duany answered critics by acknowledging the limitations of a format designed to turn out provocative concepts in record time. While the proposals provide realistic options for real places, said Duany, they were created without consideration for the broader context best accommodated in an entirely open charrette.

"If you want us to take these ideas to the next level," he said, "we would want to come back and do real charrettes," with residents in attendance. And if adopted plans displaced residents, he added, "there must be a way of returning them to the community" when it's redeveloped.

Check back here often. We'll continue to follow news on the integration of aging in place with neighborhood planning around the country. And let us know about how your community or your project addresses the aging of the population. Email us at ben(at)placemakers.com.

- Ben Brown

Events

greenwaters08 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:35:21 +0000

Practitioner, advocate or activist, there's always plenty going on in the pursuit of more livable communities. See below, and check back often as more come on line.

Original Green Tour | Steve Mouzon Green Bay/Minneapolis, MN | Mar 26-30 Salt Lake City, UT | Apr 2-3 Omaha, NE | Apr 5 Denver, CO | Apr 9 Edmonton, AB | Apr 11 Calgary, AB | Apr 12 Seattle, WA | Apr 16 Los Angeles, CA | Apr 23 London, UK | Apr 30 Form-Based Codes Institute Arlington, TX | Mar 29-30 Austin, TX | May 21-22 National Main Streets Conference Baltimore, MD | Apr 1-4 National Health Impact Assessment Washington, DC | Apr 3-4 APA Los Angeles, CA | Apr 14-17 Bicycle Leadership Monterey, CA | Apr 17-19 Community Reinvestment Coalition Washington, DC | Apr 18-21 PlaceMaking @ Work Webinars Form-Based Code Education 1 hour CNUa credit per month
Form-Based Codes and the Public Process| Susan Henderson | Apr 19 Balanced Retail for Successful Urbanism | Rob Spanier | May 17 Urban Design for Character-Based Environments | Geoff Dyer | Jun 21 Dark Art of Urban Development: A Contractor's Perspective | John Anderson | Jul 19 Going Regional: Form-Based Regulations Beyond City | Howard Blackson | Aug 16 Market-Driven Smart Growth | Lee Sobel | Sept 20 Top 10 Missed PlaceMaking Opportunities | Nathan Norris | Oct 18 Small Y'all: A Cottage Solution to the Housing Problem | Ben Brown | Nov 15 Tactical Urbanism Testing Grounds | Mike Lydon | Dec 20 National Charrette Institute London, UK | Apr 23-25 Washington, DC | Jun 4-6 Vancouver, BC | October Online webinars Green Building Conference & Expo Nashville, TN | Apr 29-May 1 CNU 20: The New World West Palm Beach, FL | May 9-12 AIA Washington, DC | May 17-19 Making Cities Livable Portland, OR | May 20-24 Wind Power Expo Atlanta, GA | Jun 3-6 Urban Ag Summit Toronto, ON | Aug 15-18 StormCon Denver, CO | Aug 19-23 Canadian Institute of Planners Banff, AB, Canada | Oct 9-12 Railvolution Los Angeles, CA | Oct 14-17 Ongoing Chicago Architecture Foundation's Lunchtime Lectures Chicago, IL | every Wednesday Place Matters with Dr. Katherine Loflin | every Thursday at 11 am Eastern or via free podcast on iTunes tweet chats hashtag #SmartCode with Hazel Borys & guest | every 3rd Thursday at 2 pm Eastern facebook Form-based SmartCode PlaceMakers Have a great placemaking event that we're missing? Please send us the link to info@placemakers.com. Thanks!

greenwaters08 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Asheville

greenwaters08 — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:25:07 +0000

Chuck

greenwaters08 — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:26:26 +0000

Social Media Explained

greenwaters08 — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:41:18 +0000

Ben-Brown

greenwaters08 — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:31:53 +0000

Stop Making Sense

greenwaters08 — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:56:09 +0000

On this Earth Day Anniversary: Hints of Convergence

greenwaters08 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:13:14 +0000

Green meets Smart Growth meets Healthy Communities

As 21^st century crises and concerns began stacking up, it had begun to look as if Smart Growth priorities were going to have to compete for attention and resources with other burning issues. Such as: Climate change, peak oil, community affordability, health care costs, and now the struggling global economy. But on the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22, it was impossible not to notice how these apparently parallel concerns are beginning to overlap. Which is good news for a movement like New Urbanism that assumes the interdependence of challenges and opportunities and promotes comprehensive solutions.

Thanks to the work of organizations like the Center for Neighborhood Technology and the T4America initiative from Smart Growth America and its partners, connections between transportation planning, community affordability, and healthy communities were already getting more attention. Now, as the frenzy for all things green increases, coupled with the reawakening of the Environmental Protection Agency under a new presidential administration and a similar invigoration of public health policy, we’re seeing a dramatic convergence of strategies with broad implications for community planning. Here are three key components of that convergence:

The increasing interest among environmental scientists in the advantages of compact, walkable, communities. For instance: Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies recently included on its website an analysis by Bruce Stutz called “The New Urbanists: Tackling Europe’s Sprawl”. Here’s the blurb associated with the post: “In the last few decades, urban sprawl, once regarded as largely a U.S. phenomenon, has spread across Europe. Now an emerging group of planners is promoting a new kind of development — mixed-use, low-carbon communities that are pedestrian-friendly and mass-transit-oriented.”

The explosion of green building interest in the private sector. Best example: The ever-multiplying territory of Greener World Media, Inc., which operates www.greenbiz.com and other sites linking business with green building, climate change, and other environmental issues once considered the domain of environmental wonks. Because they’re aimed at the ROI crowd, the company’s websites, surveys, research, and newsletters have a no nonsense feel that is likely to significantly advance the green discussion with economic development types and others who aren’t sympathetic to warm and fuzzy arguments for environmental responsibility.

The intersection of public health policy, environmental concerns, and urban planning. The overlap was always clear to many professionals working in the field, but now it’s beginning to feel embedded in the thinking of policy makers. By far the biggest stride towards connecting the dots is the EPA’s just-announced intention to consider regulating greenhouse gas emissions because of their threat to public health. The move is considered a nudge to Congress to act before the Executive Branch writes the regs. So the battle is joined.

Also: Consider this video of Dr. Howard Frumkin, national director of the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Environmental Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Dr. Frumkin appeared before architects and planners at the National Building Museum, using part of his time to caution them against making scientific-like claims for community design without the backing of sound scientific research. Yet most of the presentation feels like a New Urbanist guide to creating and sustaining compact, walkable communities.

For more specific references to community design and public health, take a look at:

A recent study from the University of British Columbia on a correlation between riding transit and fitness. (Thanks to Laurence Aurbach for this tip.)

A source for research into opportunities for addressing obesity with neighborhood design.

And a recent New York Times column on social netwoks and community health.

-- Ben Brown

Katrina Cottages Finding Traction on Gulf Coast

greenwaters08 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:13:57 +0000

Neighborhood Sites in the Works

Finally, after more than three and a half years, one of the key New Urbanist efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast is beginning to grow legs. And perhaps more importantly, the models being created have implications for affordable housing everywhere. (In the interest of full disclosure: I’ve been a consultant on various Katrina Cottage projects, including the Cottage Square effort covered below. Also: Fellow PlaceMaker Scott Doyon and I revisited lessons-learned since the Mississippi Renewal Forum with our 2008 update of the official charrette website).

The Katrina Cottage movement, born during the Renewal Forum in Biloxi in October of 2005, put forward a series of designs for affordable, storm-worthy structures small in scale but beautifully proportioned and in keeping with the Mississippi coastal vernacular. The idea was to offer emergency housing designed and built so well that they could transition to permanent dwellings, as opposed to FEMA trailers that often ended up in landfills. Read about the history of the KC effort here.

Because of its mandate to focus on emergency management issues and not permanent housing, FEMA resisted investing directly in Katrina Cottages but was nudged into an alternative housing experiment because of pressure from the politically influential Mississippi Congressional delegation. Louisiana, which lost even more homes during the flooding aftermath of Katrina than Mississippi lost in the storm surge, got part of the appropriation, as well. And the two states pursued separate tracks for creating cottages inspired by the work of the Forum architects.

Mississippi designed its own Mississippi Cottages and contracted manufactured housing companies to build them. And while the designs didn’t measure up to the standards set by the Forum architectural team, they came close enough to be embraced by folks desperate to escape from FEMA trailers and to appear capable of taking the next step envisioned by New Urbanist designers in 2005: Transitioning to permanent dwellings in existing neighborhoods and serving as building blocks for cottage clusters in new projects.

What stalled the transition was resistance from citizens who were stuck in the perception that anything made in a factory was a mobile home. So they pressured planning commissions and local officials to keep the cottages out, even, ironically, out of neighborhoods zoned for mobile home parks. In its April 2009 issue, Governing magazine lays out the debate and features one of the reasons the tide is changing: Bruce Tolar’s Cottage Square.

[caption id="attachment_246" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Mississippi Cottages in Cottage Square (Harry Connolly/Enterprise)"][/caption] Tolar, an Ocean Springs, MS, architect, was on the original MRF architectural team and took to heart Andres Duany’s admonition to create model Katrina Cottage neighborhoods. The Cottage Square, created by a development team Tolar assembled, is a transit-oriented, mixed-use infill project on two acres a half-mile from Ocean Springs’ historic downtown. The site is home to six Katrina Cottages, including the first one, Marianne Cusato’s “little yellow house” that was such a big hit at the 2006 International Builders Show. And now it also has eight of the state’s Mississippi Cottages permanently set on foundations, massaged into neighborhood friendliness by Tolar’s building crews, and rented to locals displaced by Katrina. Go here to see how the Mississippi Cottages were wedged into Cottage Square in time for the third anniversary of the storm last year.

As more and more citizens and elected officials get the chance to tour the Square, official resistance to the cottages, including the manufactured Mississippi Cottages, is shrinking. “Most people don’t get this place,” Tolar told Governing, “until they come here.”

Increasingly, they’re getting it. The architect is now working with non-profits, local governments, and private developers to place as many as 200 cottage units in site-planned neighborhoods over the next six months. Some of the sites are likely to contain three or four times the number of units as Cottage Square and may inspire, at long last, an acceleration in the manufacture and on-site construction of safe, affordable housing in neighborhoods built back better than they were before the storm.

Tolar is also getting attention beyond the storm zone. A visiting group from MIT was by recently, and the affordable housing non-profits like Enterprise are spreading the word about potential adaptations of the Cottage Square model for other communities. In the area of the New Austerity, living small and smart could catch on in a big way.

The Katrina Cottage example may provide “recovery housing for the new economy,” Tolar told Governing. “Maybe it’s the home we can all afford. When people ask me why I spend so much time on these cottages, I say it’s because I may be living in one.”

-- Ben Brown

DPZ Promotes Mall Makeovers

greenwaters08 — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:53:02 +0000

Firm Suggests Model Legislation in Florida

Will Florida put the “suburban retrofitting” movement on the fast track?

[caption id="attachment_265" align="alignright" width="360" caption="Making it easier to do something about this."][/caption] Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) is providing state officials with a legislative template to do just that. On April 20, the Miami-based design and planning firm submitted to Florida’s Division of Community Assistance a suggested draft for a State of Florida Sprawl Repair Act. It’s intent: To enable, among other things, “the retrofit of shopping malls and shopping centers into dense, walkable, mixed-use town centers.”

In an appendix, the document even provides a list of 48 enclosed shopping malls that may be ripe for retrofitting. The effort, says DPZ principal Galina Tahchieva, “is about stirring ideas about how to incentivize the private sector through easier permitting and infrastructure funding.” And the hope, of course, is that other states embrace similar initiatives.

“The repair, retrofit, and repurposing of commercial nodes -- these malls and shopping centers -- should be the first in a number of sprawl interventions,” says Tahchieva. That’s because they promise maximum bang for the investment buck.

“These nodes command the largest monetary and real estate investments in suburbia, and in most cases, they’re still under single ownership,” she says. What’s more, if dead or dying malls are redeveloped and intensified as complete town centers with residential and office components to supplement the retail, “transit between these intensified nodes will then start making sense.”

The next target, says Tahchieva, “should be the failing residential subdivisions. The choices are: evolution into mixed use neighborhoods, if they are lucky with location and have potential for intensification and leadership, or devolution, abandonment or conversion to park or agricultural land. The future growth of Florida is dependent on such actions.”

Tahchieva headed a DPZ design team that, during a February charrette in Atlanta, explored design alternatives for an out-of-date mall in the city’s northern ‘burbs. See our coverage here.

The broader retrofitting initiative is already influencing form-based coding efforts. The Center for Applied Transect Studies is working on a SmartCode module for suburban retrofitting – and, incidentally, for the emerging “agricultural urbanism” movement. See CATS’s new modules here.

-- Ben Brown

Mouzon Green Home Design Featured in WSJ

greenwaters08 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:51:42 +0000

Contrasts “Original Green” vs. “Gadget Green”

Even before green building gathered momentum, Miami architect Steve Mouzon was determined to change the focus of the discussion. Green shouldn’t be just about the individual house in the here and now, he argued; it has to be about the broader community over time. Design and construction should build on lessons from the past and lay the groundwork for a sustainable future.

That perspective led him to an award-winning book, A Living Tradition: Architecture of the Bahamas, and to the continuing refinement of the idea of “Original Green.” “Original Green,” as opposed to “Gadget Green,” focuses on vernacular practices honed over time to shape highly efficient and much loved structures that adapt and endure over generations.

[caption id="attachment_281" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Must green living fully rely on technological invention?"][/caption] This past January in Miami, a design group founded by Mouzon, the New Urban Guild, convened in Miami to talk about producing a series of ideas for dwellings for a new era in America. The discussion was about efficiencies of space and about Original Green-style sustainability. Now, one of the first products of that 2008 discussion, a Mouzon design for a neighborhood-friendly green home, was among four ideas featured in a special section of the April 27, 2009, Wall Street Journal. Mouzon’s concept shares at least one approach with the work of the other four architects. Its scale is relatively small, especially compared with McMansion-style mega-houses. Everybody, it seems, is coming to understand that reducing volume is one sure route to greater energy efficiency. Mouzon’s design fits easily on a standard 50 X 100 urban lot. Its 1,200-square-feet of air-conditioned space utilizes less than half the site. The highly detailed outside rooms encourage living a great part of the time in the outdoors, even in the sub-tropical climate of the South Atlantic coast, where Mouzon chose to locate his theoretical lot. (Original Green, Mouzon will point out, is not a one-size-fits-all approach; designs have to be customized to regional climate to take advantage of time-honored vernacular for conserving energy and achieving creature comfort.)

While Mouzon doesn’t shy away from the latest advancements in solar and wind technologies, he avoids expensive, high-maintenance gadgetry in order to focus on much older – even ancient techniques – to achieve sustainability: Shading eaves, sleeping porches, cross ventilation, and “sails” to direct cooling breezes in the gardens. In this design, homeowners can live 100 percent off the energy grid. Enough food can be grown in the gardens or harvested from the chicken coop or tilapia pool to sustain a small family. Yet nothing about the house prevents it from nesting comfortably in a neighborhood.

You can read more about the design for the WSJ story on Mouzon’s website here.

What We're Reading: Leon Krier's "Architecture of Community"

greenwaters08 — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:31:09 +0000

In 1984, Bruce Springsteen told Rolling Stone Magazine that he had albums of unreleased songs and that one day he would “put those out because there was good material in there.” In 1998, he did just that, releasing a beautiful 4-disc set of unreleased songs. Being a long-time devotee, I was more than a little impressed that, though it took fifteen years, I could still count on Springsteen to keep his word. [caption id="attachment_300" align="alignright" width="170" caption="A "handy publication" indeed."][/caption] During a 2003 charrette, as I asked Mr. Leon Krier to sign my well-worn copy of Architecture: Choice or Fate (Andreas Papadakis Publisher, 1998), he noted that he hadn’t seen too many of his books in the States. In my lame attempt to impress Mr. Krier (no, I didn’t tell him I was a Springsteen fan) I told him that my copy had been found at Powell’s Book Store in Portland and I then began to recite my complete collection of Leon Krier books--L.K. Houses, Palaces, Cities (Academy, 1984) and Rational Architecture (AAM, 1978)--and where I had found them. Mr. Krier gently interrupted me to say something about the need for a “handy publication of my architectural and planning ideas.” As quoted from the book's Author’s Note above, Mr. Krier has kept to his word and done just that. The Architecture of Community is a seamless read and a comprehensive publication of his architectural and planning ideas crafted over 40 years. The 443 pages read quickly, as more than half of the book is filled with his poignant cartoons, vignettes, and parti. Eagerly, I read the book over the weekend, trying to not bend the corners or dint the dust jacket. However, the book’s pristine condition will not last, as I have already begun to use the book as my primary reference guide for architecture and urban composition and theory. I tend to view my daily professional life as tilting at windmills of conventional architecture and urban design, and Mr. Krier’s pithy cartoons lighten this perception, both literally and figuratively. This book contains well-known images from past books as well as new images, photographs, projects, observations and captions. A missed opportunity in the book is any direct reference to his polemic and inspirational debates with Peter Eisenmann in 1983, which were summed up with this barb, “You can’t, but I can,” in response to Peter stating, “Leon, come on, you cannot build this way anymore today!” Understanding that Mr. Krier’s theoretical position is detailed throughout the book, those series of debates, in my opinion, helped to shape what design means to the United States of America. As discussed in his chapter, The Modernity of Traditional Architecture, “Traditional architectural forms derive from and are conditioned by the use of natural materials.” Today, with sustainability having moved from long-time trend status (such as Watershed Planning and Livable Communities) to radical movement (such as Modernism and New Urbanism), Mr. Krier’s long-time focus on ecological planning and humane buildings is rising up to meet our contemporary needs. The book is published by Island Press (ISBN-13:978-1-59726-578-2). Through simple, matter-of-fact, black and white text and graphics, it comprehensively illustrates how Mr. Krier’s work has consistently delved deeper into the timelessness of building “good and elegant human settlements” with new chapters (The Architectural Tuning of Settlements) assembled upon the old (Aspects of Modernity). And, his steady, reliable, dependable and honest focus on shaping our buildings, neighborhoods and towns towards an architecture and urbanism that are simply beautiful is to be celebrated with the reading of Leon Krier's new book. - Howard Blackson

Next Step in Reforming Transportation Policy: T4 America’s “Blueprint”

greenwaters08 — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:44:22 +0000

Advocates for a different approach to transportation planning haven’t been delirious about the reluctance of the feds and DOTs to depart from business as usual when it comes to investing stimulus money. But there’s another chance. [caption id="attachment_305" align="alignright" width="300" caption="All aboard. It's time to depart from business as usual."][/caption] Transportation for America, a coalition of SmartGrowth-oriented organizations, is proposing a forward-looking agenda for the upcoming debate on reauthorizing the Transportation Act. T4 America’s “Blueprint” calls for Congress to:

Articulate a National Vision, Objectives, and Performance Targets for the national transportation program and hold state and local transportation agencies accountable for demonstrable progress toward goals including safety, efficiency, environment, health and equity.
Restructure and consolidate federal programs for greater modal integration, with a focus on completing the second half of the national transportation system, providing more transportation options for all Americans and creating seamless transportation systems that meet the unique needs and connect metropolitan regions, small towns, and rural areas.
Empower states, regions, and cities with direct transportation funding and greater flexibility to select projects, using carrots and sticks to incentivize wise transportation investments and in return require demonstrated performance on meeting national objectives.
Reform how we pay for the transportation system and create a Unified Transportation Trust Fund that would achieve balanced allocations of federal funds in a portfolio of rail, freight, highway, public transportation, and non-motorized transportation investments.

For an overview of the full report, go here. And for the executive summary, click here. - Ben Brown

“Best Practices Guide” Debuts to Glowing Reviews

greenwaters08 — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:58:14 +0000

4th Edition of New Urban News Book Just Issued Here’s what got our attention: Miami architect/author/New Urbanist provocateur Steve Mouzon says the 2009 "Best Practices Guide" from the New Urban News “just might be the most useful single book on the New Urbanism I have ever seen.” (Read Steve’s complete review here). That’s hefty praise coming from Mouzon, who is famously cranky about architectural details and planning practices. [caption id="attachment_312" align="alignright" width="232" caption="The latest edition of the "New Urbanism Best Practices Guide" reflects the movement's ever increasing, and ever-improving, body of knowledge."][/caption] The book, by NUN editors Robert Steuteville and Philip Langdon and “special contributors,” runs more than 400 pages and utilizes some 800 illustrations and tables. Which bolsters the claim that this is indeed “the definitive reference on new urban ideas, practices, and projects.” Among the new chapters are ones on architectural styles and building types, land development, parking, and health and aging. And the editors have revised and updated chapters that have to do with revitalizing cities and towns, retail, the workplace, civic spaces, marketing, finance, transit, and affordability. The price: $129, plus shipping and handling; $99, plus shipping and handling for New Urban New subscribers and members of CNU. Student price is $79, plus shipping and handling. Download the order form from the NUN website. - Ben Brown

Prince of Wales Argues (Again) for ‘Bottom Up’ Design

greenwaters08 — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:07:35 +0000

Addresses British Architects Who Aren't Always Big Fans Twenty-five years after he prodded the Royal Institute of British Architects on the group’s 150th anniversary to consider making a little room for traditional approaches to architecture and planning, HRH The Prince of Wales appeared before the group on another anniversary to clarify the message. Though it’s not likely unrepentant modernists in the group saw it as a reframing of the issue. [caption id="attachment_327" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Connecting us to our place in the world through an "organic architecture.""][/caption] “To my mind,” said the Prince, “that earlier speech also addressed a much more fundamental division than that between Classicism and Modernism: namely the one between “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to architecture. Today, I’m sorry to say, there still remains a gulf between those obsessed by forms (and Classicists can be as guilty of this as Modernists, Post-Modernists, or Post-Post-Modernists), and those who believe that communities have a role to play in design and planning.” Maybe “organic” would be a less controversial way to express his vision than “traditional,” he allowed. “I know that the term ‘organic architecture’ acquired a certain specific meaning in the twentieth century . . , but perhaps it is time to recover its older meaning and use it to describe traditional architecture that emerges from a particular environment or community – an architecture bound to place, not to time. In this way we might defuse the too-easy accusation that such an approach is ‘old-fashioned,’ or not sufficiently attuned to the zeitgeist.” Since The Prince of Wales has been the most ardent advocate of the New Urbanism in Europe, practitioners in the States will be interested in his current take on this continuing debate about form. See an edited video of his speech before the Royal Institute and a transcript here. - Ben Brown

Now What? CNU 17 Addresses the New Era Economy

greenwaters08 — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:26:29 +0000

The irony is unavoidable. Interest in Smart Growth and New Urbanist topics has never been higher. Check out this May 2 column in the Washington Post; or David Brooks’ opinion piece in the New York Times from May 4. Yet the economic downturn has sucked the energy out of innovative projects in both private and public sectors. Lots of will, less way. At least for the moment. And this is the moment in which the 17^th national gathering of the Congress for the New Urbanism takes place. CNU 17 begins June 10 in Denver. Early registration ends today. Before the bottom dropped out of the economy, CNU attendees were expected to be talking a lot about greening the movement. Now, the hot topics will be about adapting to new realities. While the downturn may seem like a reason to skip this year’s gathering, it may be the best reason for scraping together the resources to get to Denver. If ever there was a time to share great ideas, this is that time. Already the energy is producing cool stuff, particularly the award-winning video that makes the convincing argument that cul de sacs spell the end of civilization as we know it. Here it is: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pErk61t1N70] We’ll see you there. If you have time, check out the discussion I’m moderating at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 13. It’s an invitation to “Embrace the Convergence” between the goals of creating compact, walkable comunnities and strategies for addressing public health, environmental, and demographic challenges. On the panel: EPA’s Tim Torma, the CDC’s Dee Merriam, and former AARP staffer Michael O’Neal. - Ben Brown

New Urbanist Cohousing: Another Arrow in Developers’ Quivers?

greenwaters08 — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:08:38 +0000

CNU 17, DENVER, CO – New Urbanists attending the 17^th annual Congress of New Urbanism gathering in Denver will spend the next four days talking about alls sorts of overlapping , interconnected challenges: The uncertain economy, the implications of climate change, the impact of an aging society on land use planning, to name a few. About an hour away in Boulder are intriguing examples of how designers, developers, and a forward-thinking housing authority might tackle some of those issues. The Holiday community on Broadway, about 10 minutes from Boulder’s downtown, is a ten-year-old New Urbanist development built on an old drive-in movie site. The local housing authority, Boulder Housing Partners, acquired the property in 1997, and invited five local developers to provide 300-plus units, 40 percent of which had to hit affordability benchmarks. [caption id="attachment_347" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Holiday community's co-housing units."][/caption] The general plan – retail and offices fronting Broadway, live-works, town houses, duplexes, and single family units of different scales deeper within the project – would be familiar to most New Urbanists. What sets it apart are two embedded cohousing neighborhoods – Wild Sage, a 34-unit multi-generational neighborhood, and Silver Sage Village, a 16-unit elder cohousing cluster. Cohousing is an imported-from-Denmark approach to community building that reverses the usual relationship between resident and developer by encouraging the formation of a virtual neighborhood of people who work out how they intend to live with one another before they move in, or even choose the setting in which they’ll live. They maintain separate living units but share maintenance chores and a common house where they dine together at least a couple times a week. It’s part commune, part condo, all community. For a more complete explanation and list of cohousing communities in the US, go here. Before the economy went into the dumps, cohousing was attracting more and more interest, particularly elder cohousing, which seems a far more attractive way to age in place than in a car-centric suburb. Last month, USA TODAY’s Haya el Nasser profiled life at Silver Sage. And the movement is still big enough to stage its own national get-together, June 24-28, in Seattle. That appeal to community makes cohousing a natural ally, a potential nesting component, in New Urbanist projects all over the country. Jim Leach, president of Wonderland Development Company credits the fast start of the whole Holiday project to the enthusiasm Wild Sage’s residents brought to the project. And demand for units in Silver Sage Village boosted market-rate prices over the $500,000 mark for some units. Is this something developers, who could use all the jump starts they can find in the current environment, should be paying more attention to? Certainly Jim Leach and architect Bryan Bowen, who designed the two Holiday cohousing clusters, think so. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSVyshBniL4] -- Ben Brown

Tweet, Flick, Whatever: More Help or More Noise?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:07:46 +0000

CNU 17, DENVER, CO – Adapt or die. That Darwinist admonition has been invoked to justify tons of brilliant and tons of stupid strategies for coping with change. It’s applied these days to the rise of Web-enabled social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. And since New Urbanists are early adopters of new approaches to conceptualizing and coping with change, there’s a lot of conversation going on right now about how to – and whether to – employ these new tools. On June 10, here at the 17^th annual Congress for the New Urbanism, Bill Lennertz, executive director of the National Charrette Institute, and Ken Snyder, a founder of PlaceMatters, led a half-day workshop on “Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch Public Meeting Facilitation Tools for Charrettes.” Below, Lennertz describes how the NCI is exploring the strategic possibilities and the gadgetry of social networking tools. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUT2EiI_I3A] The path to merging public engagement strategies and the rapidly evolving Web tools is not going to be clear anytime soon. We don’t have sorting mechanisms just yet that help us decide whether a new tool enables a paradigm shift or is just another distraction from purposeful planning. We might speed our adaptation if we paid attention to the discussion going on in the realm of the techies who invented all this stuff. New Urbanists were among the first to see the implications of crowd-sourcing strategies that imitate natural networks. Wired mag co-founder Kevin Kelley has been on the must-read list, first with New Rules for the New Economy, and more recently with Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Electronic World. Kelly has a provocative piece in Wired suggesting that these Web technologies are enabling the “new socialism.” Even more on point with regard to the social implications of Web-enabled systems is NYU adjunct professor and interactive technology consultant Clay Shirky. Shirky provides a readable intro to this new territory in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And you can watch Shirky walk an audience through some of the ideas on youtube: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_0FgRKsqqU] One of the essential takeaways from Shirky’s work is the notion that, with social networking, we are likely talking about a challenge of “different” rather than just “more.” In another video, he makes the key point that our frustration with what we call information overload is actually about a breakdown in the filters we’ve evolved for determining the value of information input. Instead of fretting over the redesign of old-era filtering mechanisms that focused on editing/censoring/gate keeping at information sources, we must develop new ones on our end of the information stream to cope with what is likely to be a permanent condition of accelerating access to everything, all the time, everywhere. What that implies for New Urbanists’ adaptation strategies for public engagement is that we have to first recognize that this new environment is the one in which we’ll be operating and that our responsibilities for refining our own filtering systems and for helping clients and citizens develop theirs will only grow. -- Ben Brown

Call for Cool Plans

greenwaters08 — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:26:55 +0000

New Urban Guild plans Southern Living plan book Miami-based architect and author Steve Mouzon, founder of the The New Urban Guild, has made the deal he and the Guild have been working toward for years. Southern Living magazine, arguably the most influential shelter mag in the southeastern US, is going to publish Guild collections of TND-worthy homes. And Mouzon is inviting all comers to submit designs. Read all about it here. "We're looking for a wide range of house plan sizes, from cottages to mansions," says Mouzon. "And we're also looking for many types of plans, including side yard houses, courtyard houses, carriage houses, townhouses, mews units, live/work units, and Katrina Cottages. There's only one type we don't need -- ordinary houses -- as in ordinary suburban houses with garages in front, facing the street. There are enough of those plans out there already." Plans will be selected by a jury of Guild members. "It's a tough jury, so only a fraction of plans submitted are likely to be selected," says Mouzon. "But that's what it takes to make sure this is the best collection of traditional neighborhood homes ever assembled." Go here for plan submission requirements. And if you want to see Mouzon's narration of two of his own designs, Katrina Cottages constructed for Cottage Square in Ocean Springs, MS, check out this: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWLviXW6x8]

And Now the Rest of the Story: Stewart Brand Promotes Urbanism, Including Slums

greenwaters08 — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:38:24 +0000

This could be the next must-get book for Smart Growthers, New Urbanists, and lots of us who bought into the eco-techno connection decades ago. Stewart Brand, creator of The Whole Earth Catalog and author more recently of How Buildings Learn (Penguin, 1994) - which Jane Jacobs called "a classic and probably a work of genius" - will have another big title out in the next week. It's called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. And you know how New Urbanists love manifestos. Brand's new work seems capable of raising eyebrows. In fact, it hit the No. 7 spot among "12 Shocking Ideas that Will Change the World" in the October issue of Wired magazine. In the realm of not-so-shocking, at least for Smart Growth types, is Brand's championing of cities as good for the environment. More provocative maybe are his positive views about genetic engineering and squatter shanty towns "We made the mistake of romanticizing villages, and we won't need to make that mistake again," Brand told Wired. "But the main thing is not to bulldoze the slums. . . That's where vast numbers of humans - slum dwellers - are doing urban stuff in new and amazing ways. And hell's bells, there are a billion of them!" -- Ben Brown

Everything’s Connected: Health, Healthy Aging, Community Design

greenwaters08 — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:33:04 +0000

Among the most encouraging trends in Smart Growth is an emerging consensus that good community design can address a bunch of issues at once. Which makes for much more comprehensive, cost-effective strategies to match the complexity of challenges before policy-makers. Take, for instance, the agendas of separate entities concentrating exclusively on topics such as public health, environmental protection, energy conservation, and aging issues. Just in the last few months:

The Environmental Protection Agency has published “a guide to Smart Growth and Active Aging” called Growing Smarter, Living Healthier );
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has its own Healthy Community Design Initiative, will lend its name and expertise to the 18th national gathering of the Congress for the New Urbanism in Atlanta next May (more about that in a separate post);
And the U.S. Climate Change Science Program published an “Analysis of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems."

Those of us who fall under the category of “aging Boomers” are going to be particularly interested in how this confluence affects both our personal and professional lives. Thankfully, healthy aging is becoming an increasingly hot topic and seems likely to offer some of the most immediate opportunities for unifying strategies. In blog posts below, we’ve reported on how senior co-housing might fit into planning for New Urbanist TNDs and infill. And we talked about DPZ’s landmark Lifelong Communities Charrette for the Atlanta Regional Commission here and here. The complete report from the DPZ/ARC effort in Atlanta is now up on the ARC’s website, and it’s a must-see for planners and municipalities concerned about how to work aging-in-place planning into other goals – such as retrofitting dead malls and creating infill TODs. Check it out here. With this convergence of Big Ideas gaining momentum, what’s the next step? Scaling up. The bad news in this good news/bad news scenario is that the challenges of demographics, energy depletion, and climate change are bigger than any effort to confront them so far. Listen particularly to the ARC’s Kathryn Lawler in the video below, as she joins other presenters from a recent Healthy Aging conference in Chapel Hill, NC. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-mAyBEEft0] -- Ben Brown

Infrastructure v. Economy: The Battle Continues

greenwaters08 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:43:01 +0000

In the battle for pedestrian-oriented streets, it's clear that walkability isn't the only thing at stake. The heavy economic and environmental burden of auto-centric roads and utilities is starting to become painfully obvious. Both in scholarly research and the daily management decisions by local governments. While compact development patterns are cheaper to build, they're also cheaper to maintain. During a meeting of midwestern county governments last month, it was reported that most midwestern paved county roads soon will be turned back into gravel. This midwestern trend has been escalating over the last 12 months, as counties grapple with dwindling budgets. Repaving one mile of road costs about $120,000, while grinding it up into a gravel road costs $4,000, according to an article from Kalamazoo News. Lowering the cost 30 times leaves little choice for many strapped county governments. [caption id="attachment_377" align="alignleft" width="283" caption="The grass is always greener when it's slowly destroying your infrastructure."][/caption] From a more metropolitan perspective, this summer Calgary estimated compact development patterns would save them $11.2 billion in infrastructure costs, making it 33% less expensive to build the roads, transit, water, recreation, fire, and schools that it expects to need over the next 60 years. The US EPA commissioned Morris Beacon Design this summer for a study on the subject, indicating TND infrastructure costs 32% to 47% less than conventional development patterns. Calgary pegs the lower end of this spectrum. Taking a more holistic view of economy, energy, and emissions, The Transportation Research Board released "Driving and the Built Environment: The Effects of Compact Development on Motorized Travel, Energy Use, and CO2 Emissions" this month. This report details the effects of land development patterns and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on petroleum use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While the findings are completely obvious to urbanists, it's good to see some quantifications through the scholarly attentions of this 180 page study. The primary findings are: 1: Compact development reduces VMT. 2: Doubling residential density while increasing nearby employment, transit, and mixed use can decrease VMT by 25%. 3: Compact, mixed-use development produces reductions in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. 4: These reductions will grow over time. 5: The biggest obstacle is zoning -- regional and state governments need to take a stronger role in land use planning. More governments than ever are starting to step up to this plate, to enact the sorts of zoning reforms that can: 1. Decrease their costs of building and maintaining infrastructure, 2. Decrease the amount of oil and natural gas required to fuel their local economies, and 3. Cap their local greenhouse gas emissions. Here's an informal support group of some of the governments currently undertaking exactly the sort of zoning reform that can achieve these lofty yet expedient goals. -- Hazel Borys

A Prescription for Healthy Places

greenwaters08 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:36:15 +0000

The not-so-good news persists: The continuing economic woes, including long-term concerns about housing, infrastructure, and transportation policy. The complications (to put it mildly) of climate change. And the crisis in public health. It’s no wonder the whole country feels a little under the weather. Which is why we think it’s clever that famed designer/planner Dhiru Thadani came up with the cool graphic to the left to remind us that there is a prescription for what ails us. Or, at least, that there’s an approach to healthier living that should be included in national strategies for renewal. [caption id="attachment_387" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The cure for what ails us?"][/caption] Not coincidentally, that theme “Rx for Healthy Places,” provides the sub-title for CNU18, the annual gathering of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which will be held in Atlanta, May 19-22, 2010. The healthy places angle gets an extra shot of credibility because of the active participation in CNU18 of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The public health connection to New Urbanist principles has always been implied. It’s important these days, especially during a heated debate over the future of health care, to make it explicit. The most authoritative link-up between public health and land use planning is "Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities" by Howard Frumkin, director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Frumkin will be honorary chair of CNU18. Adding to the work of CDC researchers and epidemiologists who study links between physical health and environmental factors is an increasing body of work on mental health and social conditions, especially with regard to social isolation. Remember "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam’s 2001 best seller about “social capital” and community? That book inspired a lot of discussion in New Urbanist circles. And research has continued to connect isolation and ill health. Here’s a recent L.A. Times column on the topic (thanks to Ann Daigle for the link). And to read more about the book that inspired the column, "Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection" by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, go here. We’ll be reporting more and more about what’s beginning to shape up as an historic gathering in Atlanta next May. So keep coming back. -- Ben Brown

Miami Just the Tip of the Iceberg for Form Based Coding

greenwaters08 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:57:13 +0000

When Miami, Florida adopted a SmartCode on October 22 by a 4-1 vote, an important step was taken for the global knowledge base of placemaking. This zoning reform is clearly a turning point away from the energy-intensive, environmentally-destructive, auto-centric development patterns of the 20th century. Miami 21 represents the "Miami of the 21st Century," and takes into account all of the integral factors necessary to make each area within the City a unique, vibrant place to live, learn, work and play. The initiative is the largest mandatory form-based and transect-based unified development ordinance in history. While this is a massive step for the 4th most populous urbanized area in the U.S., Miami is not alone. About 200 other cities are in the process of zoning reform that utilizes form-based codes to reverse the negative effects of use-based zoning. Use-based codes separate the uses into pods of commercial, residential, industrial, and agricultural. And generally requires an automobile to get from one pod to another. Form-based codes allows a mixture of compatible uses that enable neighborhoods to develop again, nodally along transit corridors. [caption id="attachment_393" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Form Based Coding's thousand points of light."][/caption] To get an idea of where all form-based codes are happening, Collaborative Google Maps show the lay of the land. These maps provide an informal support group of SmartCodes and other form-based codes at some point along the process of code writing, adoption, and implementation. While most of these other initiatives are not on the scale of Miami, several are close, including El Paso, Texas; Denver, Colorado; San Antonio, Texas; Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Nashville, Tennessee; Phoenix, Arizona; St. Petersburg, Florida; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On the other end of rural-to-urban transect is the "New Ruralism" that is occurring among the towns and villages that are seeking to deal with sprawling placeless-ness through form-based codes that protect their rural character. The idea is that by learning from the experience of others, ideas can grow more quickly, and the continental community consensus building power can increase. The maps allow individuals to change their own information, however the general format includes: - A description of the work at hand - Links to the draft or final codes - Illustrations and maps - Project, client, and consultant websites - General statistics on adopted codes, including population and acreage - Links to news articles regarding each initiative Currently, the maps contain information on 41 adopted SmartCodes, 51 SmartCodes in progress, and 97 other Form-Based Codes. This is not an exhaustive list, as new initiatives begin every day, so everyone is encouraged to add their own work. Check them all out: SmartCodes Adopted SmartCodes in Progress Other Form Based Codes Green markers indicate SmartCodes adopted, yellow SmartCodes in progress, and purple other Form-Based Codes. Additionally, TND maps give details on projects that are being designed in form-based development patterns. While many of these projects were done without the benefit of form-based codes but rather as Planned Unit Developments (PUDs), others are designed under adopted form-based codes. These maps are intentionally not a ranking or review system, however turning on satellite view and zooming in is an instructive virtual tour on the successes and challenges of thse developments. All of these maps may be opened simultaneously, to get a regional idea of the sorts of initiatives that are occurring across the continent. When traveling to a particular region, the maps become a tour guide for progressive urbanism and zoning reform. TNDs US - West TNDs US - East TNDs US - Florida & Caribbean TNDs Canada For TNDs, blue markers indicate greenfield development, and turquoise for infill, brownfield and grayfield. -- Hazel Borys

Learning from Leon

greenwaters08 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:19:40 +0000

My colleagues have quickly grown tired of my repeated references to the week I recently spent with Leon Krier while he toured Southern California to promote his new book, The Architecture of Community. The book, published by Island Press and co-edited by Dhiru Thadani and Peter Hetzel, is an updated compendium of Leon Krier’s most significant work to date. The book was included in Planetizen’s Top 10 Books published in 2009. [caption id="attachment_403" align="alignleft" width="234" caption="Leon me, when you're not strong.."][/caption] Before this publication, Geoff Dyer, one of my business partners, and I had been engaged in a silly professional competition to acquire Leon’s books because it was difficult to find his many brilliant books and projects for sale in United States book stores. My rare French copy of Architecture Rationnelle put me in the lead until Leon autographed Geoff’s copy of Architecture: Choice or Fate, led with “To the very talented…” With a stroke of Leon’s pen, Geoff now sits comfortably in the lead. Leon came to San Diego to give a lecture on architecture and urbanism to 250 interested people in a beautiful Balboa Park theater and then to 200 excitable students and faculty at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design. Local reporters, planning directors, and political leaders heard, met and learned from Leon throughout the week. San Diego Union-Tribune and San Diego City Beat wrote about his time in the city. After San Diego, Leon then spoke to a class at Arizona State University with Emily Talen and Nan Ellin. He then joined Stefanos Polyzoides in Pasadena to discuss architecture and urbanism at the invitation of the Mayor of Pasadena. Pasadena Star News and Pasadena blogs Inside Socal and Media Bistro covered the visit. The lessons learned from Leon while touring the Southwest were varied, complex and meaningful. The more general themes surprised me most. For example, upon picking him up from the airport, I immediately drove Leon to the latest modernist infill project in my turn-of-the-century streetcar neighborhood. The villa savoye copy had been in Architecture Record as the local architect is well known. Upon passing by the building slowly, I was expecting an affirmation of my disgust when Leon says--disappointingly-- “It’s good.” My eyes widened and my hands gestured wildly as I explained that the fenestration was backwards, the building completely out of context, and the urbanism only existent in materials and scale. Leon agreed that all were true, but that for a modernist building it was a very good example. The lesson being, “If you do modernism (or anything for that matter)… then do it well.” He is correct. I forget how difficult it is to get buildings and places built. He said that to build anything in today’s toxic environment (naturally and politically) was laudable and then to build it well was meaningful. So, I relaxed a little about a building I had previously wished acts of God upon and drove Leon downtown. Driving past the single core of the city, townhouse-wrapped, Vancouver-model towers proliferate San Diego’s downtown cityscape. I explained the ugly politics that gave additional entitlement to buildings that had green roofs rather than civic spaces. I was expecting a classic Leon Krier diatribe on the lack of value Vancouver brings to the New Urbanist dialog and both the ecological and social failure of high-rise towers as a building type. Instead, he thought San Diego’s towers were somewhat playful and fun. He explained that while towers are regretful, these had an element of lightness and amusement that made them easier to live with than those being stamped across Vancouver and the east coast. Finally, he quickly surmised that our monotonous grid must become more complex. As he had pointed out years ago in Houses, Palaces, and Cities, the grid is rural in structure with its visual terminus toward infinity. A simple ‘center’ was needed in key locations to ‘urbanize’ the neighborhoods within the monotonous grid. Due to the width of San Diego’s typical streets, 80’, a majority of the infill retrofit could occur within city right-of-way and include civic buildings. Therefore, mostly what I learned from Leon (besides the fact that driving around was much less informative than walking) was to approach places and projects with a positive, optimistic attitude in order to work towards a better future. Why is this simple lesson meaningful? To see this man remain positive after 35 years of being vilified in our modern design world is very inspirational. While his professional lectures are polemic and absolute, his professional perspective is equally optimistic and conclusive. The following are Leon Krier’s recent drawings of how to create more urban centers in our more rural grid:

--Howard Blackson

Easy Rider: David Byrne Unfolds Bike, Reviews Cities of the World

greenwaters08 — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:40:56 +0000

Over the holiday I experienced a very 21st century weekend. Upon downloading my new Kindle App on my iPhone, I read David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries, 2009 Viking Penguin. The $14.99 book caught my attention at the local bookstore and became my first Amazon Kindle App purchase for $9.99. I know, I know... but I promise to never buy eBooks that have exclusive Wal-Mart deals. David Byrne, artist, musician and now author, is this year's CNU 18-Atlanta Keynote speaker. His Talking Heads music taught me to dance in early 1980's High School proms and one of my partners was in a punk rock band on the same New York City club circuit. While traveling through Texas recently, I re-watched Mr. Bryne’s 1986 movie, ‘True Stories,’ which I found to be an enjoyably restrained criticism of suburban sprawl. So, I was connecting with the author on many levels and eagerly swiped through the e-book on my iPhone. [caption id="attachment_416" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Still talking: David Byrne"][/caption] The hook is that Mr. Byrne sees our townscape as New Urbanist do while writing down his observations from the perspective of his well-travelled folding bicycle. While traveling the world to perform, Mr. Bryne brings his bicycle with him to refresh his senses and understand the places he is visiting. Through his years of bicycling around the world, coupled with his musician point-of-view, the book's hook on me was his chapters on experiencing cities in an intelligent and artistic manner. He poignantly captures the landscapes of Manila, Berlin, Istanbul, Detroit and Baltimore in political, social and cultural ways. His account of finding the visionary urban planner Jan Gehl, great New York urban theorist Jane Jacobs, and Transportation Innovator Enrique Penalosa, seemed illuminating for Mr. Byrne, and I look forward to hearing his reaction to meeting our Congress this spring. My personal reaction to the book was that Bicycle Diaries is a more artistic version of James Howard Kunstler's more caustic City in Mind. After an easy-to-agree-with suburban sprawl critique introduction, I began to feel like a NASCAR spectator awaiting the carnage! Blow up Las Vegas; put Detroit out of its misery; and, yes, San Diegans are rude! The fun part was Mr. Byrne’s unexpectedly sharp critique of European and foreign cities both culturally and while biking. Except for Melbourne, of course. It seems Melbourne has become the new Barcelona – the greatest city in the world – probably because it is located in the far corner of world and most of us can only imagine how great it is. The ending of the book sort of drifted off for me as I was less interested in Greenwich Village bicycle rack design as I had been about a city of hookers in the Philippines (an unfortunate personal bias). The revelation that resonates with me is because of David Byrne’s desire to simply get out of the car to see and experience the world he has become a well-respected transportation advocate in his hometown of New York. -- Howard Blackson

Confessions of a Former Sprawl Addict

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:34:51 +0000

Hi, my name is Hazel, and I'm an addict. For the last 25 years, I've been addicted to a string of takers. Time-draining, money-grubbing, fat-building, resource-depleting, toxic machines. For the last 18 months, I've been clean. Ever since our move to Canada. And this last weekend, I realized I may be cured. That's right, when we moved here 18 months ago, I decided to get rid of my car. This past weekend, my in-laws offered me their sweet little Audi on loan as they fled the cold for the winter. But living without a car for the first time since I was 16, I realize it's a much better way. I just said, "No." Living in the heart of Winnipeg, I'm surrounded by walkable neighbourhoods on every side. Going from a golf course community in Florida -- let's call it an experiment, shall we? -- with a Walk Score of 9 to Winnipeg's Exchange District with a Walk Score of 88 quickly ended my auto addiction. And the score should actually be more like 98, but Canadian transit is not yet reflected, nor are the new Exchange retail establishments that have been opening one per month ever since I've lived here. It's rich. So I'd call this a lifestyle within sustainable urbanism -- walkable, transit-served urbanism integrated with high-performance buildings and infrastructure, that balances environmental, social, and economic requirements -- and it also makes extreme climates livable. The principal barrier to greening where we live is how we live. Misguided transportation planning, home and infrastructure financing systems, and zoning practices incentivize sprawling, disconnected lifestyles, and are increasingly unaffordable, unfulfilling, and unhealthy. To reverse sprawl's unintended consequences we should incentivize compact, diverse, transit-oriented development. The foundation of Real Green is neighborhood, district, corridor, and regional design, with high-performance infrastructure and green architecture layered upon that base. It's cost-effective, since even $1 million invested in planning a city is less than gadget-greening a handful of buildings to which everyone drives. So what does this mean to me personally to have kicked the habit? My family's average car miles per month decreased by 90%, going from a 3 car family driving 530 miles per week, to a 1 car family driving 55 miles per week. The AAA Your Driving Costs 2009 lists our combination of three cars costing $0.702/mile. Walkable, transit rich urbanism got us a 90% emissions reduction and saved us $17,206 per year. It also freed up 700 hours per year, which are entirely more fulfilling to spend in other ways than on my addiction. Oh, and all that walking has started dispensing with the weight gain that averages 10 pounds per person living in sprawl. Last Saturday's New York Times article and CEOs for Cities study intone that my new house, with it's above-average Walk Score will likely commanded a premium, as much as $30,000. Judging by local real estate prices, they've more or less pegged it. Yearly savings tally: - 90% less carbon emissions - $17,206 car savings - $30,000 house savings - 700 hours - 10 pounds - Real community -- priceless Walkability isn't about doing your duty for others. It's about a better life for you. Or as Ken Groves put it last week, "I dwell small and live large." It feels great to come clean. --Hazel Borys

A Rapid Kick Off for CNU18 Atlanta — “Urban Labs” Point to May Conference

greenwaters08 — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:11:05 +0000

The 18th national conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism doesn’t officially start until May 19, 2010. But Atlanta, the host city, is getting a running start. Conference organizers in Atlanta are working with Metro governments, non-profits, and the private sector to create lead-in events tied to all the big themes of the May gathering. The broadest of the themes, of course, is the “healthy communities” category, reflecting the association with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You can read about that in one of our previous posts. There are also opportunities to integrate CNU responses on topics having to do with transportation and transit, sustainability, affordability, “aging in place," and retrofitting suburban sprawl. The first of the CNU18 lead-in events were held on January 14 and 15. Central Atlanta Progress, the leading convener of a broad cross section of advocates for downtown redevelopment, joined with CNU18 organizers to stage an information forum and a one-day urban lab in one of the downtown neighborhoods. The two events attracted an impressive array of local leaders and organizations – plus CNU president John Norquist, CNU co-founder Stefanos Polyzoides, and international designer/planner Dhiru Thadani. Here’s a video overview. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oVG_W5gZoE] Norquist provides a strong “why Atlanta” explanation here: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsxJur_oEBI] And Polyzoides offers his overview on Atlanta’s challenges and opportunities here: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sun73eZOL8U] Next up is another lead-in lab opportunity on March 1 and 2, when Sustainable Urbanism author Doug Farr appears as one of the main speakers at the annual Greenprints conference. The conference is sponsored by Southface, the Atlanta-based non-profit that trains builders, developers, and others in state-of-the-art green building practices. -- Ben Brown

Development Option Theory

greenwaters08 — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:04:21 +0000

The real option theory of land development was a hot topic in the mid 2000's, as the volatility of the real estate market peaked. Now that we have a break from the U.S. housing bubble and financial crisis, it's worth talking about how we might decrease the volatility of the development market over time. Urbanism by right is achieved with tools such as form-based codes, which allow walkable, compact, mixed-use, sustainable development, at the scale of the lot, block, neighbourhood, and region. Changing the law to allow urbanism by right makes walkable communities go "in the money" for several reasons, including decreased uncertainty, shortened planning and approval processes, increased flexibility, and increased long term asset value. [caption id="attachment_438" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Snow falls on The Waters, a traditional neighborhood development in
Montgomery, Alabama, governed by the form-based SmartCode."][/caption] One of the best ways to decrease volatility is to decrease uncertainty. You change what developments pencil when you decrease the uncertainty of what is developable. Uncertainty is "beta" from the option theory perspective. As beta decreases, the required rate of return also decreases, because people don't need to be paid so handsomely if they aren't taking as much risk when they "buy" their option to develop. The time value of money is less of a factor when the playing field is levelled to allow urbanism by right, because the development process is drastically shortened. If the developer isn't owning a call option on a property as long, her interest fees decrease. The reason that form-based codes shorten the timeline is because a prerequisite is consensus on the community vision. By agreeing in advance about the sort of development that locals want, developers have both shorter plan approval times, and increased certainty about what their options are. Less emphasis is put on individual mojo and political connections that allow discretionary power over development decisions. Community NIMBYs have already spoken to what is and isn't allowed in their back yards. As flexibility increases, the option value increases. Form-based codes are inherently flexible, and nimble in their responsiveness to adapt to changing conditions. The mixture of compatible uses allows one building or block to respond to market demands, changing from a townhouse, to a live-work, to a storefront, and back again, all as a matter of right. Higher densities encourage more compact development patterns, allowing narrow lots that can provide a range of price points. Blocks within form-based codes are easily re-platted to move up or down the Transect, because the basics of the urban form and street grid are honoured. Conversely, in suburban bedroom communities, along strip retail, or within other auto-centric patterns, sprawl repair is expensive and time consuming. Once a developer commits to one of these uses, they're locked in. Increased long term asset value is enjoyed by walkable neighbourhoods, which are healthier for the economy, society, and environment. This is from myriad reasons, including increased walkscore, decreased vehicle miles traveled, increased housing value, decreased carbon emissions, decreased auto costs, increased personal fitness, decreased infrastructure cost, increased hours available, real community, and the list goes on. All of this is captured in the intrinsic and extrinsic value of the development option. Intrinsic just marks the asset to market once the land is developed, while extrinsic is the value of the volatility around which a developer can bet or trade. Too much of the latter builds your house of cards, and bubble bursts. The extrinsic value decreases and intrinsic value increases when physical and policy planning reforms are undertaken. A recent NY Times article discusses several market factors of the development landscape over the next two years, as we recover from recession. These include the current scarcity of construction financing, the lowering price points of residential demand along with increasing housing types to include condos, town homes, and flats, and that in many places, conversion is less expensive than new construction. All these items, with the exception of financing, find solutions within the flexibility, certainty, and timeliness of form-based codes. In fact, in places that have adopted optional form-based codes, locals indicate that most of the recessionary development is occurring under these optional form-based codes instead of under the auto-centric laws. "One of the economic conundrums of the past year has been the great divergence in the Canadian and U.S. housing markets. While American home prices swooned in 2009, the Canadian market only stumbled before resuming its inexorable climb upward," according to the Globe & Mail last week. Some economists say this is the result of Canada's fiscally sound banking practices, while others argue that the Canadian housing market is 15 to 35% overvalued. If the latter is true, a careful look at the predominance of Euclidean bylaws in Canada that increase market volatility via destabilizing uncertainty is worth consideration. Indeed, western provinces are leading with bylaw reform, with 12 out of the current 14 Canadian form-based bylaw initiatives being based in the west. --Hazel Borys

Community and Charity: Bold Action Inspires a Closer Look

greenwaters08 — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:00:42 +0000

You will always have the poor among you, and you can help them whenever you want to. – Mark 14:07 I’m not sure Jesus could see all the way to the 21st century. If he could, he may have been more inclined to offer, “You’ll always have the poor, but there are plenty of ways to avoid their unpleasantries. And you can still figure out how to help them if you put your mind to it.” Think about it. We’ve invested immeasurable resources over three quarters of a century in land use policy specifically designed to ensure that the poor are not among us. As a result, we’ve detached ourselves from certain truths – biblical and otherwise. It’s more comfortable, to be sure, but is it really better for us? I’ve been thinking a lot about these issues lately, largely due to the release of a new book, “The Power of Half: One Family's Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back.” The premise is moving: Kevin Salwen and his family decide to sell their posh Atlanta residence in favor of one half its size, then donate half the proceeds to a charity they researched and chose together. What’s equally intriguing is the spark that ignited their endeavor. Sitting at a traffic light with his daughter, Hannah, the two witnessed an otherwise unremarkable juxtaposition of two men – one homeless, one idling in a luxury car. The jarring contrast woke up 14-year-old Hannah to the reality of extreme inequity and, in subsequent actions as a family, extreme charity. It’s a commendable, even beautiful, story, but it makes me wonder: Should we be relying on uncommon people doing remarkable things to bridge the gaps between all walks of life? After all, in many ways, our current development patterns foster the “A-ha” moment experienced by Hannah by isolating us from the circumstances of the less fortunate. When we finally experience them, they're shocking. In the case of some special people, they inspire dramatic actions. But for many of us, we close our eyes and hope for the light to change. But what about the way we’ve lived historically—in traditional, human-scaled, diverse and interconnected communities—where people of all classes often crossed paths as a routine part of daily life and, as a result, were more inclined to develop meaningful interdependencies? If our built world today continued to be governed by such patterns, would drastic reactions like the Salwen’s be necessary? Or, instead, would our eyes be open to the poor among us as a matter of course and charity take the form of a million little things over a lifetime instead of a big thing designed to make up for previous slights? It’s not a new idea—Eric Jacobsen explored it nicely in “Sidewalks in the Kingdom”—but the Salwen’s book provides good opportunity to reconsider our relationship with the best and worst of others, and what it would take for our charitable actions to come more naturally. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Kevin socially a time or two and my fellow PlaceMaker, Ben Brown, has worked with him in the past, and that allows us the luxury—for a time—of transcending cynicism and simply enjoying the pleasure of experiencing real-McCoy decency. I think I’ll savor it for a bit. But then I’m going to get back to the work of building stronger communities. Places where the bold actions of people like Kevin can be complemented regularly by a shared smile between two people of different means. —Scott Doyon

Heaven Help Us: Ambitious Project Both Reaffirms, Tests Faith in Sustainable Future

greenwaters08 — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:53:57 +0000

I was a post-Vatican II, suburban Catholic. For anyone of shared experience, that typically meant attending a church that was designed and built to serve the rapidly growing, happy motoring suburban leisure class. Equal parts woody earth tones and ample parking, it was a transient testament to our nation’s awkward adolescence: a monolithic UFO of contemporary styling. But it was also testament to the church’s theological tension at the time, which manifested itself in doctrinal inclinations towards avoiding that which had been done before. To this day, according to architect Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, this unresolved traditional/modern conflict “requires a sorting out of intellectual goals and the emotional or visceral effect that a space can have on a people’s spiritual stance.” I was just a kid at the time but, even then, the less-than-subtle disconnect between these newfangled buildings and the deep rituals taking place inside of them did not go unnoticed. Theological considerations aside, that’s just poor branding. But now that the sheen of the suburban promise has faded and our recent history’s tendency towards folly is increasingly revealed, the timing is perfect for some signs of hope. One such sign arrived today, with this morning’s Atlanta Journal Constitution. But it’s a mixed blessing. Mary Our Queen Catholic Church, a growing, 15 year old suburban congregation in Norcross, Georgia, is looking for a permanent home. But rather than build something new, they’re looking to purchase a spectacular, historic Buffalo, New York, basilica and move it nearly a thousand miles south, piece by piece, to be reassembled. The church calls it “preservation through relocation” and claims new construction of equal quality would cost more than twice as much. The whole project seems like a solid exercise in pragmatic preservation, nicely aligned with what Original Green architect Steve Mouzon describes as the key attributes of truly sustainable buildings: lovability, durability, flexibility and frugality. Such permanence, history and reinforced cultural identity are touchstones of common sense sustainability. But don’t rejoice just yet. There’s at least one devil in the details. Take a look at the church in its present location:

Now consider this rendering of its future home: Conspicuous in the new plans is the apparent absence of a surrounding neighborhood. Thus, a structure that once stood as the spiritual heart of a physical community will now be repackaged as the idealized temple on a hill. Not that I have anything against grandeur or symbolism. Each has their place. But the church suggests this rebirth will add centuries to the building’s life. Assuming that's true, what are the ramifications when the building is embedded in a physical context that many believe has increasingly diminished prospects? Or, as Mouzon puts it, “Only after a place has been made sustainable does it make sense to discuss sustainable buildings.” That’s not outside the parish’s reach. It simply depends on their vision. If their goal is to remain a relevant spiritual hub over decades (if not centuries), they may want to broaden their approach to reflect the fact that their days as an auto-dependent destination may be numbered. Could the church transcend its sprawl-intensive landscape to once again, as circumstances change, serve as the heart of a vibrant physical community? Maybe yes. Gwinnett County, where the church is located, has been the site of some intriguing suburban mall retrofit proposals and, on an even more related note, Grenfell Architecture has spelled out a great proposal for transitioning a sprawling, suburban lot to a denser, transit-friendly urban neighborhood, developed over time by a church that would sit at its center. It all goes to show just how fractured the whole conversation is. In no way discounting the church’s efforts, they're just one more example of how far we’ve yet to go. If only there were some resource that put all the issues – transportation, land use, environmental and historic preservation, energy depletion, community sustainability, cultural identity, agriculture, and more – on the same page so individual efforts could better plug into a more cohesive big picture. We could call it the Good Book. --Scott Doyon

You Betcha! It’s PechaKucha…

greenwaters08 — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:07:39 +0000

It used to be that I would claim to be too young to be cynical, but those days have long passed. The change is becoming apparent as I begin to prepare for a local PechaKucha event I’m participating in this weekend. It’s Global PechaKucha Day for Haiti to raise money and awareness for Haiti through Architecture for Humanity. It is important to keep our public awareness momentum going as the devastation in Haiti will quickly be forgotten as soon as Tiger Woods or the OctoMom tees it up once again and recaptures the attention of our “utopia of overfed clowns riding in clown cars around the plasticized cartoon outskirts of our ruined cities,” to quote James Howard Kunstler. PechaKucha has become a national designers phenomenon in itself. The idea is that the format keeps speakers on track, short, and to the point at 20 slides x 20 seconds each. The format is now commonly used at APA, CNU and AIA conferences with great excitement. Having done a few here in San Diego and seeing more across the nation has led me to believe that it has limited effect. Andres Duany once critiqued a presentation of mine as having too many slides. He challenged me to speak for as long as possible with as few slides as possible. A picture is worth 1,000 words and a really good picture should tell a whole story. 20 pictures in 6 minutes 40 seconds is a bit excessive, but hey, it’s totally hip and cool. [caption id="attachment_489" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="PechaKucha for Haiti Reconstruction"][/caption]From the national press release: In response to the catastrophic magnitude 7 earthquake that tore the country apart, the global PechaKucha family is coming together with Architecture for Humanity to lend a hand in rebuilding Haiti. The global event will stick to its now renowned presentation format: 20 images, 20 seconds – but will be taking place in 200 cities, generating 2,000 presentations and more than 200,000 spectators simultaneously. All proceeds to benefit PechaKucha for Haiti Fund, from which all proceeds go directly to Architecture for Humanity 501(c) and will be used solely to build buildings. Design work has already been paid for by donations. The reason our local chapter of Architecture For Humanity invited me to this international event is due to my experience during the Mississippi Renewal Forum Charrette. They wanted my Hurricane Katrina experience and acerbic perspective to pepper the PechaKucha night. The lessons learned were many. A few that have resonated are: [caption id="attachment_488" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Credit: Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co."][/caption]1) Andres Duany is right again … our teams aimed toward rebuilding too well too soon and were too empathetic with the local’s sense of loss. We wanted to rebuild their towns toward a restored beauty that hadn’t existed since Hurricane Camille and missed the step of simply inhabiting the area under healthy and safe conditions for human welfare. The recent Haitian proposals are more realistic in assessing the conditions and immediate need. The prefabricated “core house” proposed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. encapsulates the lessons learned from the difficult Katrina Cottage experience. The easy-to-assemble, easily transferable, dignified structures are being considered as long-term housing appealing to the cultural structure of Haiti. [caption id="attachment_484" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The handwritten caption reads: 'A camp for the homeless, after the fire of April 18, 1906. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Cal.' Credit: alamedainfo.com"][/caption]2) As with the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, those who stayed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina lived in the parks and plazas that provided necessary open space to build temporary structures and re-establish life in towns and cities. Today, parks and civic spaces are seen as amenities rather than the emergency relief and lifeblood they really are. Those parks that were inhabited during rebuilding will be revered and beloved for good reason. Their parks literally saved Pass Christian, Mississippi. 3) In San Diego we will plan, codify, re-plan, re-code, re-test, and change building codes over and over again in response to earthquake events. Experts predict that over the next 30-years a 9.0 quake will hit California and kill 3,000 people. However, over that same amount of time, 10x that many people will die in California from obesity, diabetes and other health issues associated with a lack of physical exercise -- but our local codes and planning will not be subjected to the earthquake-level rigor. With that point, I am not trying to make light of the fact that our building codes allow for buildings to better survive earthquakes and only kill 3,000 rather than the 300,000 persons in Haiti. However, I am incredulous that the longer term is less emphasized in planning and coding than the one-off catastrophic event. We must plan for both short-term and long-term hazards with equal rigor. If you’re in San Diego this weekend, our PechaKucha event will take place on February 20, 2010 at the Whistle Stop Bar, 2236 Fern Street in South Park, and will be webcast worldwide between 8:00 - 9:00 p.m. in a unique “WAVE” presentation. Know that my wonderful wife and I had our wedding reception on St. Patrick’s Day at the Whistle Stop Bar and it is a block away from my home. This reminds me of how fortunate I am, and maybe I should lighten up… -- Howard Blackson

An App for That (And that and that...)

greenwaters08 — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:09:55 +0000

One of the greatest selling points of the SmartCode, the DPZ-created version of a form-based unified development ordinance, has always been its customize-ability. First of all, it’s Transect-based, which immediately separates it from conventional codes that stamp out the same rules for development everywhere in the landscape. And since DPZ made it a free, open-source code, practitioners from everywhere can correct, refine, and amend it as conditions demand. The latest, still-evolving version of the SmartCode, v10, takes flexibility to a new level with add-on modules that address everything from storm-water management to sprawl repair to aging in place. Comparisons to Apple’s iPhone applications strategy are inevitable. In fact, Arizona State grad student Dan Bartman (email: dbartman(at)asu.edu) is already doing SmartCode explainers in PowerPoint using an iPhone face and modules as app icons. Andres Duany, founding principal of DPZ and author of the SmartCode calls the latest version “the single biggest change since the beginning.” Here’s how he explains it: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQxDoBxa-a8] SmartCode v10 is still a work in progress, directed by the non-profit Center for Applied Transect Studies. Sandy Sorlien, CATS’ director of technical research, says v10 will be ready for its debut at the SmartCode Intensive workshop on Wednesday, May 19, the opening day of the annual conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism. You can find out more about the modules for v10 here. And read all about the 18th annual CNU Congress here and in our previous blogs here and here. -- Ben Brown

ReTales: How Trying Too Hard Messes Up Main Street

greenwaters08 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:40:49 +0000

In taking on the foibles of our built environment, author James Howard Kunstler makes a point of noting that he’s neither an architect nor planner. Instead, he’s the everyman, and his profession is dutifully pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. I’m in a similar position. I’m not an architect or planner either (or a retail consultant, for that matter). I’m an interpreter of such folks, taking the wonky banter that characterizes their various disciplines and making it accessible to the concerns and interests of regular, everyday people. My perspective comes from common sense osmosis, not formal instruction. Granted, I may still wear disciplinary blinders to some degree, but I propose they’re less a bulky optical barrier to greater context and more like something Lou Reed would have worn in 1968. Today, I set my gaze on Main Street retail. Probably to the chagrin of my far more educated colleagues. All across the country, Main Street retail is hurting. In some cases, this is a reflection of far more complex, and often regional, economic factors. But in others, it’s in places that have made great strides towards creating (or recreating) thriving downtowns. That’s the kind of place I’m talking about. As our urban renaissance gathers greater momentum, we need to look at ways that common practices can either help or hinder municipal efforts to encourage a more viable economic environment. [caption id="attachment_575" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Bob Gibbs, tellin\' it like it is."][/caption]Retail consultant Bob Gibbs often stresses that, for Main Street to be successful, it needs to heed the lessons of the mall. Reduced to a sound bite, this is often cynically dismissed as a suggestion to “mall-ify downtown,” but Bob’s suggestion actually reflects a much more nuanced reality: For decades, the business of malls has driven meticulous study of consumer behaviors. Literally reams and reams of data exist, telling savvy retailers everything from how to keep shoppers shopping to why they walk into one store and not another to which way they’ll turn once they get in the door. Good, old-fashioned human behavior stuff. Universal and predictable. Which is why it’s just as important to the many hands of Main Street as it is to the top-down tyranny of the mall. Understanding what attracts people, and what repels them, is a constant. And what you’ll find is that certain details have surprising impact. None are killers or saviors in their own right, just potential barriers or assets towards larger goals. So what happens when a city does its job--engineering walkable streets, making urban-friendly revisions to its zoning ordinance, recruiting business and development--and it's time for the private sector to take over? To my eye, a lot of good but also a looming potential for missed opportunities. Below are a variety of examples of what can happen, taken from my own town of Decatur, Georgia, five miles east of downtown Atlanta, site of the upcoming CNU 18: This is a classic instance of an architect committing the sin of forced variety, which reflects both a cursory understanding that diversity provides interest and a developer's fear that unrestrained expression by individual tenants will impact the marketable value of the units above. Thus the crudely differentiated facades at street level, which attempt to provide said diversity but in a controlled and sanitized way, coupled with signage and awnings that are meticulously coordinated. Ironically, the resulting mish mash lacks both the allure of authentic, organic diversity and the modernist appeal of artistically-minded aesthetic consistency. Other projects avoid such temptations for forced differentiation, sticking instead with safe consistency: The problem, as my colleague Nathan Norris points out often, is that, by playing it safe aesthetically in the form of consistent signage and awnings, it's "boring the humans." That is, in trying to remove any element of unpredictability, it takes on a level of banality completely devoid of the very elements of unexpected visual interest and delight that draw people. Such attempts at safe consistency aren't limited to traditional projects. Here, a postmodern project attempts something similar. The difference, to its credit, is that its approach to signage allows retailers more freedom in their brand expression and that can be an interesting thing. However, it occurs in a way that's far more oriented towards passing traffic than towards pedestrians on the sidewalk. For them, it's still an overly-sterilized environment: Similar results occur when comparable tactics are applied to older properties. Below, in an effort to improve the presentation of an historic commercial strip, oversized coordinated awnings were added which, in addition to hampering individual retailers' ability to differentiate themselves through unique branding, also limit visibility of individual enterprises: So what does work? First and foremost, avoiding the conventional wisdom of the last fifty years. As we've increasingly separated our retail from our office from our residential, it's become incumbent on each individual project to be the whole. Create a total environment or folks might drive somewhere else. But Main Street is counterintuitive to such thinking. Each individual project is not the whole but, rather, is plugging into and contributing to something larger. Simplicity trumps over-thinking. Diversity beats consistency. Many hands outperform controlled authority. Consider this example of getting things right. From a developer or landlord's perspective, it requires the least effort. It's essentially one building--with no great investment in reinvention architecture--broken up into a series of shopfronts. Each is given a blank, easily modified canvas and afforded the freedom to be who they are. In response, the whole becomes infinitely more compelling--not just to shoppers but to anyone--than any of the examples already provided: What emerges? Different colors. Different approaches to awnings. Different types of lighting and signage. In short, a more intriguing and inviting environment and a greater contribution to the whole. Even from the perspective of marketing upstairs residential units, which often drives the skittish, overly programmed approach (common with new downtown projects), it's far easier to sell life on a happening block than on a block gap-toothed with empty storefronts where no one willfully chooses to shop. Not surprisingly, all of this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making Main Street work. But it's a good place to start, as cities and city boosters increasingly come to understand that getting buildings to meet the sidewalk is just the start of getting them right. As for right now, I wouldn't say the emperor has no clothes. I'd just suggest he rethink the outfit. -- Scott Doyon

Love Ain't Enough: Put Up or Shut Up

greenwaters08 — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:18:01 +0000

Like any next, big something, placemaking is growing up. And in its role as gawky adolescent, it's beginning to realize something most of us have long since come to accept: You can't skirt by on youthful good looks forever. Today, efforts to create more endearing and enduring surroundings are being subjected to decidedly grown up demands. And with them, smart growthers—from enviros to designers to code reform advocates—are learning one of life's hardest lessons: Love will only take you so far. Son, you've got to demonstrate sufficient returns. Recently, a city asked me for some help in their argument for funding transit oriented developments with TIFF dollars. The top arguments that immediately came to mind are the same reasons that cities are investing in planning and zoning reform, even during these tight times. City planning is able to speak to a variety of the significant challenges that currently face us. Here's the soundbite version of the top 4 drivers.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

How do walkable neighbourhoods contribute to the local economy? They increase long term asset value for many reasons, including increased housing value, less crime, higher walkscore, lower vehicle miles traveled, less carbon emissions, fewer auto costs, greater personal fitness, decreased infrastructure cost, more hours available, real community, and the list goes on.

PUBLIC HEALTH

What does obesity cost, and how is it effected by where I live? The average white male living in a compact community weighs 10 pounds less than his counterpart in a low density subdivision, according to the British Columbia School of Planning. Every 1% rise in the urban sprawl index increases the risk of obesity by 0.5%, according to Boston University School of Public Health. The medical costs to treat obesity in the US for 2008 is estimated at $147 billion.

INFRASTRUCTURE

How much more does sprawling infrastructure cost, over traditional compact patterns of development? An EPA study indicates compact infrastructure is up to 47% less expensive than conventional development patterns. Calgary estimated compact development will save them $11 billion in infrastructure costs, making it 33% less costly to build the roads, transit, water, recreation, fire, and schools that it expects to need over the next 60 years.

ENERGY & EMISSIONS

Walkable communities can quell the effects of global warming and peaking oil with mixed use, compact urban design. An average family in auto-dependent community drives 24,000 miles per year, while a family in a walkable community of 16 dwelling units per acre and compact mixed use drives 9,000 miles per year, according to Sustainable Urbanism. The average American churns out 20 metric tons of CO2 per year; Manhattan resident 7 metric tons. The Transportation Research Board's “Driving and the Built Environment” details the effects of land development patterns and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on petroleum use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Doubling residential density while increasing nearby employment, transit, and mixed use can decrease VMT by 25%, along with reductions in energy consumption and GHGs. According to my calculations, the emissions profile for the US plus Canada indicates that residential uses generate 24% of our CO2, commercial 21%, transportation 40%. On the energy side, residential burns 21% of our total energy, commercial 18%, transportation 29%. These numbers don't include industrial, because they experience less of an impact from urbanism. LEED buildings clearly aren't enough to solve our energy and emission challenges, because transportation uses the majority of energy and generates the most emissions. And these numbers skew upward locally in the more auto-centric places. Sustainable urbanism strategy changes energy demand, efficiency and generation. Decreasing demand via transit-rich compact development patterns, increasing efficiency with high performance infrastructure and green architecture, and increasing generation with renewable energy sources, on-site generation, district energy, and integrated agriculture. It makes sense to invest in the proven harbingers of change. Those that are tested to produce local mission statements about what we all want, and not a bevy of unintended consequences. Those that form the basis of a real community that can leave our children with a hopeful future. —Hazel Borys

Innovation on the Road to Oblivion?

greenwaters08 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:01:57 +0000

Context is everything. The New York Times reports with unease that the FDA has approved statin drug Crestor’s use in a preventive capacity for those not currently diagnosed with cholesterol problems. The degree to which this represents innovation in medicine is a topic to be debated elsewhere. What matters to me is that such use of pharmaceuticals is indicative of something larger. Something fundamental to our future: An ever-growing commitment to the path we’re presently on. Problem is, that path is built on a 20th century belief that the wisdom of the ages must be supplanted--not augmented, but supplanted--by technological invention. In the end, we’ll have easy fixes for everything. And we’ll be better off for it. But if our underlying systemic health remains largely unaddressed and unchanged, are we really? And, if not, is innovation in service of a broken model a sustainable pursuit? For those focused on community and growth issues, it’s a question worth answering because we tend to apply a similar approach to our built environment. As communities grapple with seemingly endless economic questions, we’ve developed a general consensus that what’s needed is innovation. Innovation will create the green economy. It will uncover new sources of energy. It will improve our personal mobility, foster increased convenience and reduce the personal energy required to get things done. It will perpetuate our current model and allow us to continue doing all the things we’re accustomed to doing. Which may make us feel better, but will it make us healthier--in mind, body and spirit? What if, instead, we applied our penchant for innovation holistically, with different goals in mind? Goals informed not by symptomatic response but by natural interdependencies and the cultural wisdom they've fostered. Like efforts towards agricultural production that also consider the role of food in our health, in the health of the planet and in our relationships with others? Or efforts towards urban planning that consider our natural inclination to connect with other people and not just the science of how we buy things. Or efforts towards transportation that foster different options for different challenges, and that also consider local economies, public health and our ability to remain gracefully in the communities where we've put down roots? Or efforts towards architecture and construction with an eye not just towards curb appeal but also to permanence? The list, like the interconnections that define it, seems overwhelming. And that's because it requires us to acknowledge--and contend with--something people like me do everything in their power to overcome: complexity. In short, I’m talking about innovation in concert with nature rather than in defiance. Recognizing that human communities are ultimately natural systems, what role should we, as smart growth advocates, play? Master chemist or holistic healer? --Scott Doyon

What’s So Smart About the SmartCode? And Why Do We Need It?

greenwaters08 — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:51:35 +0000

What the world definitely does not need are more complicated rules for doing anything. So why are planners imposing a whole new approach to zoning on communities? To planning pros, the question seems unfair. New regulatory approaches grow from necessity. The old ones simply don’t work for getting many communities where they want to go. But that doesn’t always fly with citizens, business people, and developers who are asked to welcome what they see as new restrictions on top of old ones they view as confusing, ineffective, or oppressive. Hence the pushback in so many places where staff planners and consulting teams try to introduce new codes. How to fix that? Well, first accept the reality. Zoning is enacted and enforced by political bodies, which means fiddling with zoning rules is a political process. And political processes must satisfy political constituencies. Elected officials and citizen boards can’t be expected to muster the courage to take on constituents and neighbors whose suspicions, no matter how misplaced, make life uncomfortable for those who serve at citizens’ pleasure. Simply put, different approaches to zoning produce different outcomes so, first and foremost, such outcomes must be in sync with where the community, collectively, wants to go. For those whose "where" transcends an auto-centric habitat in favor of a more comprehensive human-centric one, form-based coding provides a valuable "how." But for those happy with their present results, save your efforts. Effective community engagement processes leading to results-focused charrettes go a long way toward overcoming suspicion and cynicism. Building trust precedes building a case. Still, it helps at each stage, beginning with planners’ initial contacts with elected officials and citizen board members, to have a context-setting explanation that gets to the heart of what most people want to know: Why are we doing this? And what do we get for going to all the hassle? Here’s how I explain it: The Big Why: Why Now? With all the converging issues likely to shape future planning -- climate change, energy scarcity, world-wide finance and credit crises, demographic change, etc. -- jurisdictions throughout North America have begun to shape visions rooted in economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Through initiatives such as a Smart Growth, it has now become widely accepted that to achieve true sustainability, we must get away from automobile-focused, segregated land use patterns, and return to more time-tested models of walkable, mixed use, compact neighborhoods. Most of the requests for proposals that now come from municipalities looking for consulting help reference sustainability principles. So new goals are coming into clearer focus. The Big Disconnect:
Two Patterns,
Two Regulations. The trouble is goals and strategies for achieving them don’t match up. While municipalities are increasingly asserting visions based on Smart Growth, sustainability and active living, they are also starting to realize that regulations they have in place are based on automobile-focused planning practices from the last century. These practices not only flunk the sustainability test, they imbed into law approaches that prevent sustainability options. By segregating neighborhoods according to building uses, they force commuting by car and inhibit street connectivity, pedestrian-friendly public space, and mixed-use development patterns. Something has to give. The Solution: Form Based Codes To connect Smart Growth visions with policy-making, municipalities are increasingly turning to codes based on form, rather than conventional use-based regulatory approaches. Simply put, a form based code is a regulatory mechanism that aims to achieve a specific physical outcome, a place-shaping goal, with less emphasis on uses and more on general character. There are number of ways that a form based code can achieve this. Early codes typically focused on street types, building types, and sometimes frontage types. These highly graphic codes, another hallmark of a form-based code, set out prescriptive requirements, often resulting in very exact, highly customized regulations. Street type codes would define specific streetscapes, including the relationships between all the elements between curb and building façade. Building type codes would prescribe rules for each possible building type and for their location on a plan. Frontage type codes would focus on how buildings relate with the public realm. While all of these components are important considerations, form based codes are evolving to become more comprehensive and more flexible. The Transect Current best practices still consider typologies of streets, buildings, and frontages, but organize them on a scale of development intensity or degree of urbanism. In its simplest form, the scale could be “center, general, and edge.” To reflect the fuller rural-to-urban range, however, planners, led by Andres Duany and his DPZ firm, borrowed from ecological studies the idea of a landscape cross-section, the Transect. For land use planning purposes, the Transect is conceived as containing a continuum of six zones from the most natural, uninhabited “edge” to the most intensely developed urban “center.” The zones provide six distinct human environments and six different degrees of relative urbanism. Each of the six environments can be used as a form based zoning district, with each regulating building types, building uses, heights, setbacks, frontages, and appropriate street types -- all keyed to the character of their place on the Transect. For instance: There are bigger setbacks and lower buildings on the less urban end of the continuum, smaller setbacks and bigger buildings on the more urban end. State-of-the-art form-based codes now use the Transect to demarcate zones, accommodating almost all of the complex sub-sections of conventional zoning in six, easy-to-grasp categories of human settlement. From Form Based Coding to the Transect to the SmartCode Each application of a code is unique. In many instances, form based codes have been used solely as an alternative to zoning, applied directly to Smart Growth-based master plans, to downtowns, and to other urban areas seeking revitalization. Where urbanism is evident – where, for instance, connected streets form urban blocks – a simple form based code may suffice. But in many places -- including greenfield, brownfield, and car-focused suburban sites -- the familiar components of urbanism and neighborhood structure are not established. What then? And how about the other end of the spectrum, where there is sparse development now but a threat of unregulated growth to come? A basic form based code built to operate in a narrow range of relative urbanism would struggle to accommodate growth-guiding goals in such areas. The tool that’s evolved to address the full range of coding challenges is the SmartCode, also developed by DPZ and administered as an “open source” template. It is a model “unified development ordinance” that enables Smart Growth at all scales and across all disciplines, integrating the region, neighborhood, block, and building -- as well as transportation, land use, and many other disciplines. At the core of the SmartCode is an advanced form based code with a basis in the rural-to-urban Transect. This core code, found in Article 5: Building Scale Plans, incorporates all the necessary considerations for coding at the scale of the lot and building, including parameters for building height, building types, frontage types, setbacks, and others. Used alone, Article 5 (with appropriate enacting passages from Article 1: General to all Plans, and appropriate street types) would satisfy the need for a simple zoning replacement by a form based code. In many ways it represents the best practices of generic form based codes. But while the SmartCode has a form based code imbedded, it also expands the scope to include: Regional design (Article 2: Regional Scale Plans); new neighborhood design (Article 3: New Community Scale Plans); and infill and redevelopment plans (Article 4: Infill Community Scale Plans). Of particular concern for those seeking a basic form based code is the Community scale. Again, for places that already have good connected streets and block structure, Article 5 alone may suffice. But if you need to design new blocks or retrofit a suburban development with urbanism, it will be necessary to accompany your form based code with instructions for how to create walkable neighborhoods -- whether through the SmartCode Article 4 and 5, or by another means such as subdivision standards tied to the basic form based code. What the SmartCode offers is a flexible, reality-tested base to build on. Using the Transect and the model code as the operating system, municipalities have access to a growing number of regulatory modules -- “apps,” if you will -- covering a wide range of concerns, from storm water management to aging in place. But again, you can also start slowly and simply, slimming the SmartCode down to a very competent form based code. So regardless of whether you are considering the SmartCode with all its bells and whistles, or just a simple SmartCode that delivers the essentials of form based coding, you have a tool to match your needs. The first task, of course, is to define your range of needs. If in doubt, turn to the SmartCode’s Article 3 and test it against the places you are looking to code: If your place matches, a FBC may suffice. If it doesn’t, you may need to consider a more comprehensive code. To get more background info and to download the latest versions of the model SmartCode, go here. To buy the manual, go here. Give us a little feedback about whether or not this kind of explanation advances the discussion in your community or your practice. -- Geoff Dyer News of innovation and implementation comes often. If you like the idea of form-based codes in general, and the SmartCode in specific, and would like to stay on top of what's happening, consider liking it in the more modern, technologically connected Facebook way.

Zoning: No Longer Just for Nerds

greenwaters08 — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:50:17 +0000

Remember when you could empty a room by trying to work zoning philosophy into a conversation? Okay, you can still do that in most places. But the coolness quotient is on the rise, we swear. Consider the adoption late last year of a form-based code in Miami, surely one of the most exotic political environments in North America. Very high hipness factor. Note also the change in the air in the heart of the country. Minnesota, for instance, where the guys behind the Strong Towns blog make the case for great places that knit together the key components of livability through good design and well-considered coding. In an April 26 post, Chuck Marohn exposes “The Crazy Face of Zoning,” using regional examples of the unintended consequences of conventional zoning. What’s happening? Here’s how Phil Langdon puts it in the April-May issue of New Urban News: “Something is changing — for the better. Across sizable portions of the US and Canada, codes aimed at shaping communities into compact, walkable, mixed use configurations have crossed a threshold. A constituency has begun to solidify in support of form based codes (FBCs). “ Phil updates readers on the latest strategies of FBC-coders and reports the numbers. The current tally: Some 294 form-based codes are in some stage of preparation or have already been adopted in the U.S. and Canada. Including international codes, the count is up to 325, with more rapidly announced. The surge in interest in an alternative to conventional coding coincides with increasing interest in shaping places that are accessible to a broad range of incomes, ages, and abilities and that avoid the mistakes of car-centric, land-devouring sprawl. Revamped comp plans are beginning to call for transit alternatives, more pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and corridors, mixed-use development, ag land conservation, and rules that support sustainability. Conventional zoning only frustrates communities’ efforts to align goals with regulatory tools. So no wonder the call is going out for a better approach. For an explanation of how and why form-based codes became tools of choice for implementing Smart Growth, read Geoff Dyer’s analysis, and check out resources at the Center for Applied Transect Studies and the Form-Based Code Institute. If you’re headed to Atlanta for CNU 18, in addition to coding discussions imbedded in the general program, there are two one-day workshops on applying the latest in form-based code approaches, featuring top thinkers and practitioners. Both are on May 19.

“The ABC’s of Form-Based Codes”, presented by The Form-Based Code Institute, features Dan Parolek, Joseph Kohl, Bill Spikowski, and and Sam Poole. Place: Millennium Gate, 395 17th Street, Atlanta. Price: $250.
“The SmartCode Intensive” is organized by PlaceMakers and headlines SmartCode creator Andres Duany and 16 other experts. Place: Hilton Downtown, 255 Courtland Street NE, Atlanta. Price: $49 (with a webinar for the same price for those unable to attend in person).

--Ben Brown

18th New Urbanist Congress: Best Ever?

greenwaters08 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:31:21 +0000

What’s constitutes “best ever” depends on the takeaways, right? And when it comes to conferences, we could be talking takeaways that aren’t products of the event itself. Like maybe you got a job or connected with a soul mate. Let’s call that the upside of unintended consequences. Atlanta, host city for the 18th Congress of the Congress for the New Urbanism, May 19-22, is going for something more intentional, a timely convergence: Right place. Right moment. Right people. We’ve made a big deal about this convergence idea before. For instance: here and here. Now we have an historic gathering designed to get down to the details. What makes Atlanta the right place is connected to what’s gone so terribly wrong over the latter part of the 20th century. Despite a fairly serious effort at mass transit, especially for a major city in the Southeast, Atlanta has been mostly about the care and feeding of cars. Which has made the metro region a textbook example of sprawl on a grand scale. Which, in turn, has forced sprawl-coping strategies on the political and economic leadership in the region. That makes Atlanta the epicenter for “retrofitting suburbia,” which happens to be part of the title of the widely admired book co-authored by Georgia Tech architecture professor Ellen Dunham-Jones, who also happens to be co-chair of the Atlanta Host Committee for CNU 18, along with Atlanta native Laura Heery. With Ellen and Laura wrangling major players in both CNU and in Atlanta, there have already been “urban labs” to convene the conversation about connectivity. We covered the January session here. And we interviewed participants in the March workshop for the short videos below. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD1bCp4RmqM] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0spINoBhxo] To add a new layer and a heightened sense of urgency, in 2009, a federal judge addressing the water wars between Georgia and adjacent states ruled that Georgia and Atlanta have three years to figure out some combination of conservation and new water sources or shut down most new development in a region that defines itself through growth. To see how this crisis has penetrated the economic development discussion in the Atlanta area, check out the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce’s postings. [caption id="attachment_387" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The cure for what ails us?"][/caption]Even before water issues joined the mix for CNU 18 discussion, the connection between land use planning and public health was made more explicit and timely by CNU’s association with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See our earlier posting on the partnership. And read Jonathan Lerner’s just published piece on the duh factor when it comes to connecting community health with community planning. The Big Idea, of course, is not just that Atlanta finds itself at the center of all these interconnected challenges all by itself. It’s that Atlanta has these challenges in common with so many other places, making it an ideal place to convene a discussion that can be informed by principles and strategies of New Urbanism. Atlanta and CNU are bundling all of this stuff together and bringing top thinkers in dozens of previously disconnected fields to the table. Given all that, this Congress could very well be the best ever. Maybe it has to be. Check out the complete program here. And sign up. We’ll see you there. --Ben Brown

Original Greensta: Steve Mouzon Gets Medieval on Sustainability

greenwaters08 — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:13:27 +0000

The Original Green is all about architecture and urbanism. But it’s also about reflection, living, inspiration, and delight. We can achieve sustainable living only when we “want to” or “love to” instead of feeling that we “have to” or “ought to” balance the needs of our society, economy and environment. Miami architect Steve Mouzon’s new book looks carefully at the building blocks of community, and what needs to shift to making living on earth a long-term proposition. Instead of repeating the cases others have made to quantify the drivers of sustainable living, Steve suggests honoring the Original Green of how we lived in the pre-petroleum era, while leveraging the technological and urban advances of the last 100 years. First the book identifies the top 10 problems about how we’re approaching sustainability now, and the top 10 underlying principles to any effective plan for change. Steve more or less sums up his premise on the individual building with, “The best sort of carbon neutrality comes from building lovably and durably, using techniques that allow the building to largely condition itself, so frugality comes naturally.” Steve’s been thinking through this idea for some time now, in his design for a neighborhood-friendly green home, the Smart Dwelling, for the Wall Street Journal, and in his award-winning book, A Living Tradition: Architecture of the Bahamas, among others. However, unlike his earlier more specialized works, The Original Green puts forth seminal and holistic philosophies to effect global change. The general framework of the Original Green idea is that places must be nourishable, accessible, serviceable, and securable. And that buildings must be lovable, durable, flexible and frugal. Each of these eight elements breaks down further into the constraints on energy and materials that must occur to achieve sustainability. Finally, report cards indicate who’s carrying the load within each of the elements and constraints. Featured throughout the book is Steve’s portfolio of photographs he’s taken throughout North and Central America and Europe. This inspiring view into the nuances of what is most sustainable about the way we currently live – and the depressing view of the flip side – is reason enough to read this compelling new work. Clearly there is reference to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building, bringing things current for the sorts of actions that must occur to safeguard such complete, convivial, compact and sustainable places. The book is written in conversational language that targets everyone, although the concepts apply to industry and government as well as individuals. The number 1 of Steve’s 10 principles required for any effective plan is “the Involvement of Everyone.” And this book is written to that point. The particulars: The forward is by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The publisher is The Guild Foundation Press, released May 7, 2010. At 288 pages, the 6" x 9" softcover is meant to be a handbook, containing 245 images. A new short film recently released speaks to many of the same ideas. American Makeover, episode 1, Sprawlanta, looks at what will happen if we don’t change our course, and some applications of Original Green ideas. If you’re coming to CNU 18 in Atlanta next week, you can meet up with both the filmmakers, John Paget, Chris Elisara, and Drew Ward, as well as the author, Steve Mouzon. And get cracking on the Involvement of Everyone. -- Hazel Borys ASW28FC99CFK

Beaches, Booze and Briefs: A New Urban Odyssey and Retail Lament

greenwaters08 — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:19:44 +0000

Last week I hurriedly packed for my 10 day New Urbanism adventure in the Southeastern United States. In my rush I was only able to find and pack nine pairs of clean skivvies, but assured myself that I would be able to pick up a new pair while traveling through Georgia, Alabama and Florida. Launching the odyssey, I arrived with my fellow PlaceMaker, the talented Mr. Geoffrey Dyer, to design a new resort community along Smith Lake in northern Alabama, where we were lucky enough to find un-fried food, but not lucky enough to find adult beverages as it was a dry county. The clients wanted Seaside... on a lake, as everyone in the region knew or had visited Seaside, which was obviously the most famous resort town in the region (within a 5-hour drive) and our next stop. Geoff and I joined the CNU Magical Mystery Tour heading toward Seaside and Florida's Redneck Riviera, when our bus promptly broke down in historic and beautiful Eufaula, Alabama. Being a late Sunday afternoon and on foot, I could neither find an open department store to buy new skivvies nor a restaurant able to legally sell adult beverages. Undaunted, we loaded the new bus and continued onward to Seaside, which was the most bustling town along the string of new towns in the Florida panhandle. Leo Casas, former Seaside Town Architect, Frank Greene, current Rosemary Beach town architect, and Andres Duany led us through 30-years of town making principles using a series of built projects as a sort of town-making laboratory (a report on the complete Tour will be issued in the next few weeks). To my delight and chagrin, Seaside had plenty of booze, but no boxers or briefs. Neither did the upscale Alys Beach, funky Rosemary Beach, nor more predictable Watercolor for that matter. No worries though, as we were on our way to the Traditional Neighborhoods in and around Montgomery, Alabama. The town center of Hampstead was thoroughly impressive in scale and a beauty mark along a mostly bleak State Highway. The most consistent criticism of all the TNDs toured was the bulk of the arcade columns obscuring shopfronts and the use of naturalized landscape that dominated urbanized streetscape. The landscape issue was most apparent in the residential areas of Rosemary Beach, where it concealed building frontages and their beautiful architecture, yet due to the absence of the landscape in the paved parking courts, the garage doors were the only architecture seen at the street level, distorting the truth. Seaside handles its parking differently and the same landscape was less of a problem. To me, Alys Beach proved that beautiful architecture, urban design and landscape architecture can bring tremendous value to any scrubby landscape! The new town of The Waters was pleasantly attractive to most everyone except for the oversized square, which was a similar criticism of Seaside. Another interesting point was my personal shift in criteria between a community TND and resort TND. Hampstead's town center worked on many levels, and was supported by the high number of cars passing by. For the first time in several visits, The Waters felt a little 'shabby' in a 'lived in,' comfortable shoe sort of way. While only 5-years old, we saw people interacting with their town in very ordinary ways, which was more informal than the vacation mania and tension felt along the Florida coast. Still, neither The Waters nor Hampstead had a store selling much more than fine cheese, better wine and great food. We boarded the buses for downtown Montgomery. While it did appear that Geoff and I were voted off the tour bus when they dropped us off on the side of road in downtown Montgomery (the Magical Mystery Tour headed off toward Mt Laurel in Birmingham and Serenbe, south of Atlanta), our departure was actually due to us volunteering to assist Dover Kohl, CNU, and the City of Montgomery on a 24-hour charrette. Our team, and a handful of CNU 18 participants, designed an infill plan for a neighborhood center site along the National Historic Voting Rights Trail. Martin Luther King Jr. led civil rights marches from Selma to the State Capitol building in Montgomery along this route, and from the site the capital rotunda would be finally in view by the marchers, thereby making it a truly significant American place. We were honored to be working with the team and within the parameters of the existing SmartCode Planning Director Ken Groves and Dover Kohl had implemented city-wide. While tiring, the 24-hour charrette turned interesting when the local news broadcasted live from the event, asking how we felt with... "only 12 more hours to finish the plan, will you make it!?!" The hyperbole made it quite fun and 24-hour charrette leader, Chad Emerson, played along as much as possible. However, my shopping choices in downtown Montgomery were limited to late night dining, bars, and whatever toiletries the hotel offered. No socks, no undershirts, no underwear, but Geoff and I were on our way to downtown Atlanta for the 18th Congress for the New Urbanism. CNU 18 was inspirational, uplifting and educational as usual, however, Atlanta's downtown tourist district offered only a regrettable shopping experience. It was nearing my 9th day quickly and it dawned on me that in order to buy new shirts, pants, socks, and under garments for everyday use (and not consisting of souvenirs) I was at the mercy of a car and regional retail on the suburban fringe. Downtown Atlanta offered no shopping stores as my daily needs were met in hotel lobbies and restaurants, therefore I had great breakfasts, up-to-the-minute news, coffee, fine dining, and many adult beverages. My wife and kids were easily found their required travel gifts and I could walk many places of great interest, but despite our 30-years of winning the reconfiguration of our American landscape, I was still trapped by the need for an automobile to visit a Target, Wal-Mart or some other regional department store in order to supply my weekly and monthly goods needs. The urban environment was about to affect my quality of life... I was going commando. Affordable family retail still mostly exists on the periphery of our everyday life. While we know of 2-story Targets and other one-off urban stores, in my personal experience only Santana Row offers a purpose-built, dense, mixed-use, commercial and shopping center as it stands as a beacon of walkability in sea of big box sprawl in downtown San Jose, California. Yes, my last day at CNU was a liberating experience in many ways, but this only obfuscates my point: The majority of our nation is still in desperate need to relocate themselves or their general shopping choices in closer proximity to each other in order to enhance the quality of our lives. Steve Mouzon's very good new book, The Original Green, begins with the philosophical point that we do the right thing because we 'want to' rather than because we simply 'have to or ought to.' We are supposed to be building complete places, but how are we measuring up to the task? We should be building towards an intensity that accommodates for the neighborhood and region scale rather than giving up our greatest tax and job generating goods to the periphery. --Howard Blackson

Planning & Zoning: The Musical

greenwaters08 — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:01:36 +0000

When was the last time you heard someone make the case for the “soulfulness” of zoning? Or capture the essence of “third place” theory in a song? Unless you’ve been listening to singer/songwriter Melanie Hammet, you probably haven’t experienced the connection, at least not quite in this way and certainly not at this level of sophistication. See her in solo performance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eBzc9HAQ-k&feature=related Hammet, who lives in the Atlanta Metro town of Pine Lake, Georgia, is a musician first. Which helps mightily when it comes to getting through the novelty veneer of the tunes collected in her “Edifice Complex” album and into the music itself. Other alt/folk/country/rock/whatever artists should sound so good. And where else are you going to hear auto-dependent sprawl described so aptly in lyrics like: “I drive to all my car’s favorite places”? It also helps that Hammet knows a thing or two about planning and zoning. Now in her second term as a Pine Lake city council person, she found herself leading a coding rewrite effort and making the connection with “the emotion of land use.” A stint as an artist in residence at the Seaside Institute’s Escape to Create program gave her the time and the inspiration for the “Edifice Complex” songs. Now, she’s becoming one of New Urbanism’s most articulate spokespeople, especially when it comes to expanding the discussion of urban planning beyond core wonks. Listen to her explain why linking music and zoning is not a round-peg-in-a-square hole thing here. And get ready to hear more from Hammet, who may be just what Smart Growth needs to take its message to a broader audience. Info about how to get her “Edifice Complex” CD and how to book her for engagements can be found on her website. -- Ben Brown

Back to the Farm (And to the Bunker)

greenwaters08 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:07:54 +0000

Just when reporters were beginning to buy into the hopefulness of “sprawl repair” and “ag is the new golf,” Andres Duany trips them up with visions of the dark side. Or at least the really hard side, as in the hard work ahead if we’re to reverse the direction of 20th century excesses. "Our wealth as a nation allowed us to become stupid in planning and we separated everything - residential areas, commercial, industrial,” Duany told an Oregon audience May 12. “Our wealth allowed us to do that for 50 years - but those days are over." (The full report can be found here.) Then, during CNU 18 in Atlanta, he shared his perspective on what it will take to fix the mistakes. Perhaps, said Duany, we should go back to the mid-19th century and start over. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZYcJYEs71I Not surprisingly, media types unaccustomed to Duany’s passion for skewering sacred beef – including those in his own herd – sensed “cognitive dissonance.” Here’s Greg Lindsay, blogging for FastCompany. “Thirty years after Duany first formulated (New Urbanists’) basic principles, they have far outgrown their image as the advocates of quaint cottages (see: Seaside, Florida; Celebration, Florida) and are really in the business of finding spatial fixes to social challenges, whether public health, water scarcity, affording housing, disaster relief, or the future of good. What they can't agree on is the scope of the problem -- should they be making the best of suburban America's bad situation, or building lifeboats for the end of the world?” The answer is both, plus a lot of stuff in between. Duany and his DPZ firm -- along with Ellen Dunham-Jones and co-author June Williamson who wrote Retrofitting Suburbia -- have been advocating something slightly different than “making the best of suburban America’s bad situation.” They advocate identifying potential sprawl targets to retrofit for livability. Needless to say, not every sprawling suburb is worth of the effort. That retrofitting initiative is in addition to the preferred alternatives for development and redevelopment in urban neighborhoods, to preserving working ag in more rural locations, and to planning for transect-zone appropriate farming and gardening elsewhere. Credit former Dwell editor and New York Times blogger Allison Arieff for being among the first in the mainstream media to make the connections. Using Duany’s “ag is the new golf” quip as a theme, she provided a comprehensive overview in an April NYT blog. But FastCompany’s Lindsay got it mostly right when he described the new sense of urgency in Duany and other New Urbanists who’ve been watching the gap growing between the challenges ahead and the money and political will to face them. Even with what’s clearly a willingness to turn around bad policy at the top of some federal agencies, the political stalemate in Congress and the depleted coffers in statehouses don’t bode well for scaling up to do what’s required. -- Ben Brown

Considering Community in the Face of Tragedy

greenwaters08 — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:07:09 +0000

Something terrible happened in my neighborhood. The specific details of the incident have been covered elsewhere and are not especially relevant to my point here so I’ll spare you the rehash. Suffice it to say that, during what was reportedly a messy divorce, one of my neighbors killed his five year old son rather than share custody with his soon to be ex-wife. There’s no logic to his actions, which makes it of little surprise that the common emotional thread that subsequently weaved its way through the community was one of profound and pervasive confusion. “How could this happen,” we all asked, “and what can we do?” In the course of these discussions--which happened everywhere, from the neighborhood coffee shop to the local blogs that cover community news--someone suggested a makeshift floral memorial in a centrally located neighborhood park. Word was spread. A local florist made a contribution. Permission was secured from the city. Come, they suggested, and leave a token of your prayers and support. A day later, I passed by the memorial site and felt an almost knee-jerk sense of dread. Despite the widely distributed and discussed invitation, there was little to show but a few bouquets. So few in number that it wasn’t even clear what was happening. Where was the mountain of flowers, stuffed animals and scribbled notes so prevalent on the news whenever community tragedy occurs? Could it be that the sense of community I’ve always felt here, and have even held up as an example of the compelling relationship between physical form and human interaction, was some kind of illusion? But the more I stepped back, the more I found evidence to the contrary. Instead, some in the community had set up a fund through the local bank to help cover funeral expenses. Others were organizing the series of meals that could help carry the family through their ordeal. There were even those helping to insulate the mother from the glare of media exploitation. All of which seems entirely more meaningful than simply showing one’s concern in the form of flowers, however sincere that offering may be. The media has conditioned us to believe that, in the cultural malaise that constitutes our postmodern life, a makeshift memorial is the appropriate expression of community grief. That it demonstrates in towering ways a community’s strength and connectedness. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that perhaps the opposite is true. Maybe these mountainous piles of mementos instead reflect the frustration of having a very human desire to contribute in some way while having absolutely no idea how to go about doing so, or where to turn to find out. Maybe they’re less an indicator of connected community and more an indicator of fractured community. Taken in that light, I suddenly had a newfound appreciation for that feeble little collection of flowers, because its entirely unimpressive stature now seemed as much a monument to my community’s ability to come together in more purposeful ways as it was to that little boy. We’re social animals. We want to be together. Now, more than ever, we need a return to principles of community design and development that foster, rather than thwart, such inclinations. In short, we need more places that, in bringing us together, ultimately help us to help each other. -- Scott Doyon

Brave New Codes Reach Tipping Point: When, Where, Why?

greenwaters08 — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:59:17 +0000

A year ago, Apple's sales of its iPhone and iPod Touch eclipsed 40 million units, confirming their potential to fundamentally retool our future opportunities and patterns of daily life. Today, a year later, form-based codes hit a similar milestone, with similar implications, as over 330 cities and towns around the world -- representing over 40 million people -- have embraced the idea of form-based coding as an alternative to the sprawl-inducing zoning models of the past century. We've hit the tipping point. Welcome to the other side. [caption id="attachment_838" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption]The understanding has clearly dawned that use-based development codes separating people from their services are not good for us, or for our environment. Euclidean, single-use zoning creates a sense of placelessness in which strip malls, bedroom communities and office parks fragment cities into disconnected sprawling pods accessible via automobile. Here the economy can only be sustained within a series of big boxes -- retail, churches, schools, commercial, and recreation. Major fluctuations in the market cycle hit hard within these inflexible development patterns. We've been talking about form-based codes (FBCs) as an alternative to all that here, here, here, and here. And we're not the only ones talking. Architect Magazine's Brave New Codes does a great job of laying out the dynamics, particularly from the perspective of architects. “If the architects could understand that they’re part of a larger effort of placemaking, and it’s not just a restriction like any old code, I think that they would have a good time working with form-based codes,” says Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. She was the coauthor of the first form based code, adopted in 1986 in Seaside, Florida, and also of the recent adoption of the Miami 21 SmartCode, the largest form-based code effort to date. Within those 25 years, form-based codes have come of age. To help share the knowledge, the recently-formed Transect Codes Council launched its first TCC News newsletter today. The TCC works to expand the use of open source transect-based codes and modules for planning and regulating the built environment as part of the natural environment. Made up of 18 members, TCC is similar in some ways to the Form-Based Codes Institute (FBCI), but TCC is also an advisory board to the Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS) and focuses solely on codes that incorporate the rural-to-urban transect as a mechanism for placemaking. [caption id="attachment_843" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption]Hitting this tipping point has taken some time. The Codes Study, coauthored by Emily Talen and me, was released this week, detailing the 332 FBCs currently underway along with 11 form-based guidelines. 25 years ago, when this all started, it took some time for the built results to tell if FBCs work, and why. But take a look at the graph of codes adopted over time, and you'll see that the movement is picking up steam. The reality has sunk in that complete, connected, convivial communities are the most sustainable in the long run. Not to mention the most enjoyable today. And because the unit of coding is the neighborhood, form-based codes apply just as well to big cities as they do to small towns. It's all about coding the character of the place. Some of the biggest players adopting FBCs include Miami, Denver, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando, Phoenix, Lee County Florida, Buffalo, Saudi Arabia, Scotland and the United Arab Emirates. However, the small town players are making some big impact as well, across the US and Western Canada. The other day I picked up a Skywest Magazine on a United flight, and was happy to see that 14 of the cities and towns showcased in this issue have form-based codes in progress or adopted, including the cover town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The headliner article points to the reasons why Steamboat Springs would want a FBC. The code protects both the extraordinary mountain -- hiking, skiing, biking, hot springs, kayaking and fishing in the Yampa River -- as well as the character-filled mountain hamlet and its art galleries, restaurants and music. It does this by keeping the new development around the town compact and in keeping with the existing character -- true to form, you might say. For Steamboat Springs, as well as most of the other 332 form-based codes underway, the new regulations are making peace between the enviros and developers, and keeping it real. --Hazel Borys

The Suburbs: Arcade Fire, Childhood Memory, and the Future of Growth

greenwaters08 — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:27:57 +0000

I’m in my 40s. I grew up in the suburbs. It was awesome. And then it wasn’t. Never before and, perhaps, never again will there be as efficient and reliable a machine for manufacturing idealized childhood memories. The suburbs of the 60s and 70s, maybe even the 80s, were like some sort of paradise. Kids. Woods. A 7-11. Anything closer to perfect would have required the hand of the Divine. But now they’re the object of smug, hipster derision, and snooty intellectual dismissal. They draw the ire of urban planners, public health advocates, environmentalists, and community activists. What the hell happened? As singer Win Butler laments on The Suburbs, the latest offering from his indie collective Arcade Fire, “With my old friends, it was so different then, before your war against the suburbs began.” From there, this new Merge Records release is a curvilinear ride of mixed and conflicting emotions, as the band dissects one of history’s most notorious broken promises and, in the process, reveals a subtext typically ignored in discussions about our patterns of growth and development: Sadness. As we grew, especially those of us in and around Generation X, the suburbs that served us so well for a small window of time just couldn’t keep up. The very fact that they were so specifically conceived as Eden for breeders, a Utopian template for child-rearing, robbed them of the one thing most necessary for survival: the capacity for progressive adaptation. First we built the road, then we built the town. And that’s why we’re still driving around and around. The suburbs confront the prospect of evolution with just one option: The wholesale replacement of one thing with something new. Or, as Butler sings, “This town’s so strange, they built it to change, and while we sleep we know the streets get rearranged.” [caption id="attachment_868" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Halcyon Days: Me and my brother in the suburbs of Washington, DC, circa 1970."][/caption]The result is several generations of people who have a hard time going home, as the places they find bear no relationship to the places they left behind. “Let’s take a drive through the sprawl, through these towns they built to change,” sings Butler. “... it’s no wonder that you feel so strange.” This conflict over paradise lost is more than just the anxiety that accompanies change. It’s that the changes, almost universally, have been for the worse. We began life, in tandem with our suburban neighborhoods, full of potential. But as we grew closer to becoming the best of what we could be, our surroundings steadily declined. Oh this city’s changed so much Since I was a little child  Pray to God I won’t live to see The death of everything that’s wild Now we’re confronted with the reality of mourning their loss. Not in a nostalgic way that denies their ultimate failings but in a way that honors their original goal of creating a place where people could live, thrive and be happy. In light of the changes that will define the next era of suburbs, that task means taking a good hard look at where we’ve come from while acknowledging where we as a culture are going. In short, it means getting it right this time. It means finding better ways to live together, not dreaming of impossible perfection just beyond the horizon. Almost half of all Americans live in the suburbs and, according to urban land strategist Christopher Leinberger, the majority of our future development is going to take place there. So what form should it take? Michael Mehaffy, writing for Oregon Live, describes how “visionary suburban leaders are finding ways to retrofit their communities, adding new pedestrian, transit and bike connections, and improving the walkability and livability of streets. They're encouraging attractive new mixed-use projects and compact, walkable neighborhoods close to jobs and transit.” In essence, they’re introducing urban structure into suburban chaos and, in the process, creating a lasting framework conducive to incremental evolution. As we’ve learned the hard way, change happens whether we like it or not. But maybe now the places we love won’t have to simply go away. If we get it right, they can grow and mature, just as we do. Taking on all these possibilities, learning from our mistakes in pursuit of something more permanent and resilient, is going to require a national emotional bloodletting -- a collective gathering on the proverbial psychiatrist’s couch -- to acknowledge the memories, conflicts and sense of abandonment we carry with us. But as we ultimately move past our sadness and regret for the places we’ll never get back, we’re faced with the undeniable need to clean up from the party. And in that endeavor, the haunting retrospective beauty of Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs provides the perfect soundtrack to get started. The last defender of the sprawl said, “Where do you kids live?” “Well sir, if you only knew what the answer is worth I’ve been searching ever corner of the earth.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4JrQpzno5Y --Scott Doyon

Sustainability's Triple Bottom Line: Tool for Commit-a-Phobes?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:30:47 +0000

As a recovering journalist, I’m working hard to suppress old impulses. But habits of a couple decades are hard to shake. Which is why I’m struggling with familiar twitches of cynicism when it comes to “sustainability.” We’ve reached a point where just about everybody is laying claim to a sustainability strategy, whether we’re talking mining companies blowing up mountaintops or guys selling eight-mile-per-gallon SUVs. Let’s give them this: They have a point, provided sustainability goals are tied to the desire to keep on doing whatever you’re doing in perpetuity. I don’t think I’m being too cynical by noting the irony. Folks making claims on sustainability are, well, folks – human beings, each of whom are guaranteed from birth to be unsustainable. We’re all gonna die and flunk the test. So if sustainability is to have the transcendent implications we intend, we’d better agree on a definition that implies a multigenerational warranty. And that gets me to my gripe about the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) language we’ve been leaning on for the last couple decades. The TBL metaphor is an earnest attempt to bust us out of single silo thinking. Sustainability is not just about securing a future for Nature without humans. It’s not just about building an economy that ignores the natural environment or social responsibility. And it’s not just about privileging social relationships and ignoring the environment and human ambitions for individual and collective prosperity. It’s about doing all that at once. Hence, the three-legged stool: People, Planet, Profits. Okay, that gets us out of a single silo. But it sticks us with three. It makes us tri-polar, which in itself is unsustainable. Another irony. And how has TBL thinking affected decision-making so far? Not so much. At the moment, we’re having trouble imagining a sustainable economy, a natural environment that will sustain human life as we know it, or healthy social relationships on the neighborhood scale – let alone globally. I think one reason we’re stuck is our reluctance to commit to perspectives that force hierarchal decision making. We are biased towards egalitarianism. Love that three-legged stool. [caption id="attachment_896" align="alignleft" width="317" caption="Click for greater detail."][/caption]What nudged me out of cynicism recently was what I take to be a better metaphor, rendered in a simple graphic. It appeared in one of the foundation documents for a coding charrette we organized with the City of Revelstoke, British Columbia. Instead of the three-legged stool, the TBL was arranged as a hierarchal nest, with the environmental component forming the surrounding context. Then, contained within the environmental nest was the one representing human society. And then, within that, the economic component. Simple, elegant, powerful. Representing the TBL in that way implies a commitment. To be sustainable in even the most basic sense, an economy demands the context of a healthy society. And society, in turn, cannot be considered outside the context of the natural environment, which includes and encompasses the other components. As self-evident as this organization appears, it’s a tough one to honor in everyday political and business practice. We want desperately to believe that we can wag the dog from the tail. It’s where we can most easily get a grip. But if debates over global warming or the effects of the recent BP oil spill tell us anything, it’s that the struggle towards sustainability is likely to require a shift in perspective. The three-legged stool won’t stand. I’m for promoting a new metaphor. Or at least a better graphic. --Ben Brown

Wrestling with Jane, Robert and Andrés

greenwaters08 — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 04:01:13 +0000

Recently, I have been intrigued by newly emerging books and articles critical of Jane Jacobs’ legacy on our built environment. Fifty years ago, she was the community activist who ‘saved’ New York city’s Greenwich Village and went on to become the post-modern icon to inspire citizens and urbanist to this day. She was ranked first in Planetizen’s Top 100 Urban Thinkers poll in 2009. This newfound criticism is specifically leveled at her for the gentrification woes of the Village today and for the general rise of NIMBYs across the nation. [caption id="attachment_943" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="What are we going to do with you, Jane?"][/caption]Andrés Duany, Planetizen’s second Top 100 Urban Thinker, has wisely pointed out that the few great neighborhoods in any town, such as Greenwich Village in NYC, are expensive because they're rare. As Christopher Leinberger writes, in The Option of Urbanism, “Americans are voting with their feet to live in urban neighborhoods,” and our Great Recession has changed the market to focus on small-scale infill redevelopment in those few great neighborhoods. NIMBYs have been effective obstructionists for many years but the game is changing. With redevelopment of existing neighborhoods often being a municipality's only hope for future revenue, NIMBYs simply cannot be avoided anymore. That means angst in the development community is no longer knocking at the door. It's now invited itself in and is currently going through your fridge. Anthony Flint’s book, Wrestling with Moses, is a great read and provides Jane’s well-known story with depth in both detail and humanity. The web and newspaper articles are less poignant and criticize Jane for her NIMBY legacy. In the Wall Street Journal’s, “Enough with Jane Jacobs Already,” Andrew Manshel illustrates Jane’s legacy as blocking real-estate development and driving up the price of real estate. These stories lament the loss of the Robert Moses power broker type (to borrow from the title of Robert Caro’s famous book) needed to simply get things done today. Getting things built, they say, is of utmost importance, with our collective fear rising in our realization that our prolonged Great Recession is of dramatic economic consequence. [caption id="attachment_938" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Iconic for a reason: The unseen power of the picket fence."][/caption]Today’s historic reinterpretation of Jane Jacobs, from municipal and citizen planning icon to facilitator of obstruction, reveals to me that the development community is genuinely scared and looking for answers. Historically, when faced with crisis, people tend to look backwards for solutions. An effective example is the New Urbanism itself, which looked in this direction to solve our nation’s suburban sprawl crisis. We looked back towards the empty city cores and past town building techniques to relearn walkable neighborhood design principles to counter regional auto-dominance. New Urbanism successfully integrated Clarence Perry’s 1920‘s Neighborhood Unit with Patrick Geddes diagrams to create the rapidly emerging standard in context-sensitive planning, the rural-to-urban transect. Unfortunately, collective fear of the unknown, with its concurrent search for easy answers, typically trumps the hard work of change and adaptation. New Urbanists need to be aware of the development community stepping backwards and grasping at ineffective solutions, such as Robert Moses and his one-size-fits-all approach to public process (his way and/or the highway). Fortunately for our profession, Andrés Duany is still alive and thereby assumes the role of Planetizen's Top Urban Thinker in 2010. He appears to be reveling in this role as he continues his prodigious production of solutions for today’s urban issues. Recently, Andrés suggested looking all the way back to our post-Civil War west as possibly the correct time period to study how we move forward from this point in our recession. This perspective was probably reinforced by his Haitian earthquake housing solutions after re-thinking and learning from the traumatic experience in leading the Rebuilding Mississippi and Louisiana Speaks efforts post-Hurricane Katrina. Provocative, his thesis on revising our economic scale in light of resource scarcity is reminiscent of the 1870 - 1880’s boom/bust period. This is also the time period of the Industrial Revolution and the ideological change experienced that is similar to the rise of sustainability and its new place in our moral or ethical compass. Andrés also proposes reforming the public process lamented in NYC with a grand jury type of organization, as used in Australia. His solution is for a public process that places the neighbor in their correct role as one of several community-scale stakeholders rather than allowing that same neighbor to claim power as the default decision-maker. Working at this frontline intersection of infill redevelopment urban design and public process is the real value New Urbanists can deliver to calm the development industry’s collective anxiety. With everyone wrestling over Jane Jacobs' legacy out of fear over the upcoming NIMBY showdown to build in the next 20-years, it appears Andrés Duany has stepped up to give definite answers to difficult questions in order to get things done. --Howard Blackson

Katrina’s Fifth Anniversary: Getting Real in Mississippi

greenwaters08 — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 03:59:57 +0000

Every year since Hurricane Katrina mauled the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf coasts, I’ve returned to Mississippi around the storm’s August 29 anniversary to renew friendships and refine my capacity for humility. The friendships have turned out to be the most rewarding outcomes of the 2005 Mississippi Renewal Forum, the historic charrette in Biloxi six weeks after the storm. The humility training is less fun, but it’s starting to take. What’s clear is how naïve I was about the extent of the devastation and the appetite for “building back better than ever.” At least in the ways we outsiders imagined. Now I understand: It would have required monumental effort for places with intact infrastructure and energized leadership to tackle the to-do list the Forum left behind. It was delusional to expect the 11 towns and three counties of coastal Mississippi to digest our ambitions, then marshal the resources and energy for implementation, when everything they knew had been blown out from under them.

Thanks to the Knight Foundation and a partnership with the Congress for the New Urbanism and the South Mississippi SunHerald newspaper, we offered an update of progress on the Mississippi coast for the third anniversary of the storm in 2008. By then, the chasm between the recovery assignment and the rebuilding dreams was beginning to sink in. Since then, a 2007 overview, narrated by the then SunHerald publisher, Ricky Mathews, has emerged and provides an even better context from the local perspective: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f4VDYuxaPA] The anniversary events this year rightfully celebrated the distance covered since 2005 and not the distance to “better than ever.” Here is the SunHerald’s map on projects completed along the coast. Anniversary event speakers, including Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour -- who initiated the Governor’s Commission that, in turn, enabled the Mississippi Renewal Forum -- offered thanks to the thousands of voluntary organizations and individuals who played key roles in comforting those the storm dispossessed and in supporting the beginnings of the renewal process. The richest memories were the person-to-person encounters, the helping hands extended in the direst moments. Here is the SunHerald’s report on the major event in Gulfport on Aug. 29. The words and music at that gathering felt right, bought down to human scale from makeover delusions in the months after the storm. Andres Duany, who led the Forum charrette in 2005, has been rethinking the makeover impulse. I videotaped some of his ruminations at the 2010 CNU Congress, and my PlaceMakers partner Howard Blackson wrote about implications of Duany’s perspective in a previous post. So, from the hopeful perspectives of those of us who participated in the mega-charrette in 2005, what achievements can we point to? Not built-out towns. Certainly not Monte Carlo on the Gulf Coast, as we re-imagined Biloxi’s casino district. And, sadly, not fully recovered neighborhoods for the least affluent in the region. But there are two concepts the designers, planners, and engineers can be proud to have introduced: One is the tool of form-based coding, maybe not in letter-perfect SmartCode calibrations everywhere on the coast, but at least in concept. Coding reform is in place or in development in many of the communities. The other achievement is the Katrina Cottage, not just as an individual, storm-fortified emergency dwelling, but as a foundational element in a new kind of infill neighborhood. Thanks almost entirely to the persistence of Ocean Springs architect Bruce Tolar, the model for such a neighborhood, has reached a critical mass in Cottage Square. Here, in a video from earlier this year, Bruce updates the Square story. I wrote about the traction the cottages were getting last year. And this time around, I cornered Jason Spellings, who built the original Katrina Cottage – the “little yellow house” – from Marianne Cusato’s design. Here is my interview with Jason, who joined Gov. Barbour’s office to expedite the Mississippi Cottage program inspired by the Katrina Cottage movement. Coming soon: An update on how the Katrina Cottage/Cottage Square model might finally bump out of the emergency housing discussion and into the broader conversation about creating safe, affordable workforce housing and neighborhoods for “aging in place” beyond the storm zone. --Ben Brown

Confessions of a Former Sprawl Addict: Speed Humps on the Road to Recovery

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 04:01:03 +0000

Hi. I'm Hazel and I was a Sprawlaholic. If you've been reading awhile you may recall that, with the loving help of my friends and family, I went cold turkey, dumping life in a Florida subdivision for the intense urban charms of downtown Winnipeg. It was a life-changing move with no regrets. Yet, as good as it's been, I'm finding that puritanical denial of guilty pleasures is sometimes out of sync with life's reality. And by reality, I mean kids. [caption id="attachment_1066" align="alignright" width="150" caption="McDermot Ave in the Exchange"][/caption] Simply put, T5 may have enormous benefits to offer but, in most cities, the needs of children -- especially as they relate to education -- are not among them. That's why I'm turning to a temporary life in T3, the urbanist's equivalent of controlled drinking. Yes, I'm imbibing somewhat on the intoxicating, have-it-all promise of suburban delights, but I'm doing it in a way that still honors my commitment to urbanism and placemaking. I can stop any time. And, by any time, I mean when my son graduates high school. [caption id="attachment_1083" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Bannatyne Ave in the Exchange"][/caption] While both offer amenity-rich single family dwellings, the big difference between our life in Winnipeg's historic T3 neighborhood versus in a sprawling Florida subdivision is that here our complete community greatly reduces our ecological footprint while providing a satisfying quality of life. That's because we're moving to a compact (6 du/a), highly walkable T3 "sub-urban" (not to be confused with auto-centric "suburban") neighbourhood, within one ped shed of three mixed use corridors. And we can remain a 1-car family, a block away from school, and a short bike or bus ride to downtown. So we're still getting the annual benefits over the 'burbs of 90% less carbon emissions, $17,206 car savings, $30,000 house savings, 700 hours, 10 pounds, and real community. These numbers aren't counting the emmissions differential of the dwellings themselves, although the un-airconditioned century homes and complete streets do satisfy many Original Green requirements, per Miami architect, Steve Mouzon. Still, what would make someone want to move from a Walk Score of 92 in the fabulous Exchange District to a Walk Score of 68? [caption id="attachment_1084" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="A typical street in Crescentwood"][/caption] For the reasons that most families in North America live in T2 and T3: schools and square footage. In order for us to remain a 1-car family, we can't stay where we are as our son starts first grade this month. Not in the school that we feel is best suited for him. That, coupled with the higher prices in the urban core for family-sized accommodations, are the reasons families with children aged 6 to 18 are the demographic missing from city dwellers. In our 20-unit condo building alone, 3 families just left for these reasons, emptying the building of all 4 of its children. What creative maneuvers are cities doing to try to keep an age-diverse population in their downtowns? [caption id="attachment_1088" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Kingsway in Crescentwood"][/caption] "You can't rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there," according to Jane Jacobs in her 1958 essay, Downtown is for People. Easier said than done. And even in this seminal article, Jacobs is looking for how to make the city "two-shift," not 24-hour. Toronto downtown population has grown by 20%, but a 3-bedroom condo in the core averages over $600,000. To prevent inner city schools from closing down and encourage economic diversity, steps are being considered to require affordable housing. However, how do we achieve this without meddling with markets in a downward cycle? [caption id="attachment_1093" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Corydon in Crescentwood"][/caption] Vancouver made this critical decision in the '80's, with their "Living First" strategy, in which 8 million square feet of excess commercial was rezoned to mixed use, with heavy incentives for housing intensity and diversity within walkable, mixed-use, civic-minded neighbourhoods. Including schools! Developers are generally asked to pay for most of their own infrastructure cost, but without a form-based code to articulate the collective community vision, the question is still being asked, densify the core, or extend out? Even in very livable downtowns like Seattle, only 2% of core households have children. Seattle Planning Director John Rahaim argues that families don't need a particular kind of home, they need a community around it. "It's having a school nearby and having kid-friendly open space nearby." [caption id="attachment_1090" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Lilac St in Crescentwood"][/caption] Edmonton is thinking that the biggest issue is that cities typically bankroll sprawling development by paying for infrastructure to the suburbs. Reversing this would bring family-friendly housing and schools back in the money. Would we have stayed downtown if our Montessori school went through grade 6? Most definitely! Just as with a certain number of rooftops bringing in a full service grocer, school options will follow. Or perhaps we should start thinking in the opposite direction, and tap into the unfilled needs of the parents among the 72,000 people who work downtown. Until then, see you 5.6 km away in T3, where there are 13 kids on our block alone, under 12 years of age.

Fat-tastic! Can Small Thinking Solve Our Super-Sized Problems?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:46:55 +0000

According to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- more commonly known for crunching global budget and employment numbers -- the United States is on track to be 75% obese by 2020. 3 out of every 4. And if you check with researchers at Johns Hopkins University, they’ll tell you to expect 86% by 2030. 86%! Even Colorado, our skinniest state, has become almost twice as fat in the past 15 years. [caption id="attachment_1112" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Parody or prophesy? Maybe both."][/caption]You don’t have to be an egghead to look around and see something’s going on. Since the connection between our generally affluent existence and our expanding waistlines was lampooned in Pixar’s mainstream blockbuster, “Wall-E,” in 2008, the prospect of denial -- or claiming it’s a fringe issue -- ceased to be an option. We’re packing on the pounds. That much we’ve figured out. It’s driving up health care costs. It’s creating a generation of diabetic children. It’s even killing the planet. Now it’s time to address the problem in the only way we know how: Find out who to blame. Special interest groups are more than happy to oblige, and have served up a variety of reasonable boogeymen. It’s processed, industrial agriculture. It’s vending machines in schools. It’s missing sidewalks. It’s tech-driven, couch-potato culture. [caption id="attachment_1113" align="alignleft" width="194" caption="That\'s right. I\'m the guy making you fat."][/caption]Jeeez. Not since Freddy Krueger has there been such an elusive villain. And not only does such rabid finger pointing fail to take on the complexity of the problem, it also triggers apologists more than happy to step forward and say it’s none of these things. No one’s doing it to us. We’re not even doing it to ourselves. It’s just genetics at work. In the meantime, the problem gets worse. Maybe, just maybe, we want so desperately to find our villain that we’re overlooking the possibility that the problem may be a wee bit more complicated. Like, what if it’s not just one of the suggested causes but all of them, unwittingly working together in a sort of perfect storm of negative outcomes? How could anyone coordinate their defenses against something so pervasive? The answer lies in reducing the problem to its lowest common denominator. We’ve got a pretty strong sense about the various contributing factors. Now’s the time to look more closely at the commonalities and intersections among them. Scan the line-up of usual suspects closely and you’ll begin to see that all of them ultimately tie back to the patterns of how we build our communities and provide for our food. Those patterns -- fueled by the earth’s creamy nougat center of cheap energy -- have been decades in the making and will most likely be decades in the unmaking as well. But it’s not reckless speculation to suggest that how we design our surroundings, and whether we integrate the things we need, influences our ability to walk more. Or to more easily forge neighborly connections. Or to come together growing, selling and eating more natural foods. And that influences the ways we come to know and rely on one another, which informs how a community can become stronger, which influences how decisions get made and things get done, which drives the economic options available to those who live there. Long story short, a sprawling landscape of trucked in food and piped in entertainment is not a very good laboratory for positive results. But proper labs are emerging. New Urbanists have invested the past three decades in unearthing many long-discounted principles of community building while the food movement, currently visible almost everywhere you look, has applied equal fervor to the lessons of agriculture. Now, they’re starting to cross-pollinate their ideas while progressive communities weigh health impacts in their land use decisions. Food and shelter, addressed not at the super-sized level of national initiative but through the everyday decisions and demands of regular people. That’s good news, and it’s why my (hopefully diminishing) gut tells me the battleground where our war on obesity will play out is not national in scope. Think a little smaller, starting just outside your front door. --Scott Doyon

Zoning as Spiritual Practice: From me to we to Thee

greenwaters08 — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:11:22 +0000

Get right with God. Fix your zoning. That’s not something you hear regularly from the pulpit, maybe. But it’s gospel nonetheless. Here’s why: If there’s one common thread woven through the world’s most enduring religions, it’s the call to connectivity: Self to others to everything. [caption id="attachment_1125" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Not everyone gives separated-use zoning a positive review."][/caption]Buddhism coaxes an awakening to at-oneness. You’re “saved” in Christianity when you open your heart to a deity who bridges the chasm between humanity and the divine through the intervention of a son born among humans. Everybody has a version of the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you want to be treated. Which is religion’s counter to the law of the jungle: Trust blood and tribe. Fight or flee the rest. Getting to trust -- especially trust in strangers -- may be theology’s greatest contribution to the evolution of our species. Given a few million years of being threatened by organisms that don’t look or act exactly the way we do, trusting people outside family and the pack we run with requires an act of faith. Two things got me thinking in this vein lately. One is the current mood of the American electorate -- angry, frustrated, distrustful. It feels like devolution, a rejection of the lessons of cooperation that make for community. And when I say “community,” I’m thinking of physical ones like neighborhoods and virtual ones like the communities of interest that lead to fruitful collaborations that, in turn, make us more secure or more prosperous or, sometimes, just happier. One metric of happiness, I believe, is the number of people you believe you can trust. And right now an awful lot of us have narrowed our circles of trust to the space around us we’re convinced we can control. We should have seen this coming with the enshrinement of private space in the houses and neighborhoods we’ve built and the cars we drive. We’re like kids building pretend forts, gathering up all our favorite toys and stuffing them in space we imagine we can protect from threats we imagine await us. At least when we were kids, the adults eventually came into the room, made us take apart the forts of blankets and chairs, and insisted we join the rest of the family. [caption id="attachment_1132" align="alignleft" width="450" caption="Loathe thy neighbor: Safe at home in America."][/caption] The other thing that nudged me was the publication last week of Robert Putnam’s new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. Putnam, you’ll remember, is the Bowling Alone guy. That 2001 book, hinting at the decline of community in American life and backing the argument with sociological surveys and analyses, started crossover conversations about “social capital” and the components of successful communities among planners, designers, sociologists, and many general readers. The new book explores the positive and not-so-positive impulses towards community linked to various degrees of religiosity. People who identify themselves as religious may be more intolerant of others’ beliefs – just as many non-believers suspect – but they’re also more likely than people who aren’t religious to give money to strangers, help people outside their own households, and be more civically engaged. And we’re not just talking about those on the conservative end of the political spectrum. “In fact,” says Putnam, “across all surveys we have explored, holding religiosity constant (by looking only at regular churchgoers, for example, or only non-churchgoers), liberals are never less generous than conservatives and are, by some measures, better neighbors than conservatives.” Bottom line: There’s evidently something to this “Love thy neighbor” business. So if a religious perspective promotes neighborliness and community, regardless of the religious tradition -- as Putnam argues -- then maybe, given the current toxic environment, we need a religious reawakening. A come-to-Jesus moment, so to speak. Here’s the alter call: Turn to any page you like in the Smart Growth hymnal. And let’s lift our voices. We know it’s asking too much too quickly to make the Big Connection from our personal space all the way to the universe. So let’s start small. Like the streets outside our houses, the ones that connect us to where we work and play and visit friends. What if we make our profession of faith an investment of trust in folks in our neighborhoods and maybe a few blocks beyond? What if we act as if we owe them the chance to age comfortably in the communities in which they now live? How ‘bout if we think about lifting the mandate that everybody over 18 has to own a car to live an engaged life in our community? What about an option for kids to walk safely to school? Are we willing, brothers and sisters, to guarantee those opportunities for all by setting standards we all must abide by? (You know, like a covenant.) If we are ready to take that step, my friends, the path towards righteousness awaits us. And here’s the sacred text: The zoning code. And not just any code. It’s a set of rules that make manifest our profession of faith through the form in which we shape our community. A form-based code. Can I get an amen? (For those of you who need a secularized version of this message, please consult the words of Geoff Dyer here.) --Ben Brown

Retail Redemption: Skivvies Uncovered, then Promptly Covered

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:01:52 +0000

A couple months ago I rambled on here about my inability to purchase a particularly critical item of men’s apparel during an extended tour of new urban projects throughout the southeast. Modesty was not my problem. Rather, despite healthy commercial activity most everywhere I went, I could find no walkable stores catering to such day-to-day basics. Food and drink? Sure. Tchotchkes and novelties? You betcha. Skivvies? Not a chance. By the end of the trip, the sad reality of neighborhood retail staples was more than a little exposed. As was I. So when an equally hectic SmartCode education tour through the mid Atlantic states had us back out on the road recently, my colleague, Nathan R. Norris, took the opportunity -- leading me through his boyhood home of Washington DC, then out the Metro line to Columbia Heights -- to convince me all was not lost. Escalating up to the corner of 17th and Irving, we crossed a busy plaza and narrow street to the Target store, located on the floors above Marshall’s, Best Buy, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Once in Target, we loaded our shopping cart onto the Cartovator and, heading upstairs one more time, found ourselves in the Men’s Clothing section on the third floor. And there, success. In every conceivable style, size and comfort level. New Urbanism had worked its magic again.

Columbia Heights, a 2009 ULI Award for Excellence and CNU Charter Award winner, was severely blighted a few years ago. Today, however, there are about three square blocks of newly constructed multi-story shopping, office, grocery and residential buildings oriented around the Green line Transit station. The older Mount Pleasant neighborhood surrounding the new TOD Station Area is a robust mix of townhouses and live work units. On the beautiful Saturday afternoon of our visit, the new plaza was abuzz with a farmers market and a wealth of outdoor dining tables all fully occupied. The key to Columbia Heights was that Torti Gallas and Partners expertly leveraged its transit station location to reconfigure conventional big box retailers into urban amenities that support plazas, and both expensive and discount shopping opportunities within walking distance of high-intensity residential areas. Retail is an interesting canary to observe during this Great Recession. In response to expensive cash and cheaper land, a new temporary urban retail format is hitting the streets. In Hercules, California, The Red Barn Company has unveiled its new Market Hall, which was slated to be built-out as a new downtown. However, with the recent difficulty in financing delaying their start, Partner Tom Weigle and designer AJ Remen have repurposed a parking lot into a temporary mixed-use gathering space. [caption id="attachment_1193" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Photo courtesy The Red Barn Company. Click for larger view."][/caption]Through creative design and permitting on a one-acre parcel, there’s now retail shopping in containers that front a plaza and dining in travel trailers surrounding a green, accommodating weekend bazaars, farmers markets and evening movie events. Active and successful, it's creating a local buzz, not to mention political will for the future four acres of buildings for dining, shopping, and public spaces with housing. Yes, the learning curve has been expensive, as usual, but now the Hercules Market Hall concept is being considered by other California projects as an effective means of bringing empty lots into use while their potential as downtowns of their own waits on the cornerstones of market and financing to work out their differences. --Howard Blackson

Today's "Eco-Warriors": Giving Them Something Worth Fighting For

greenwaters08 — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:01:16 +0000

This week I’d like to share a few thoughts on infill and sustainability that coalesced while preparing this week for another Pecha Kucha presentation on Retrofitting Suburbia. I’ll begin with a little background. My daughter came home from her International Baccalaureate Elementary School with a new sticker in her daily planner proclaiming her an “Eco-Warrior!” She had been awarded the sticker because the teacher saw her picking up trash on her own volition (which I attribute to good parenting, of course). When I asked about it she explained it was ‘sustainability week’ and that she thought she got the sticker because she didn’t get one earlier in the day when the class was discussing ‘sustainability.’ The previously awarded Eco-Warriors had vegetable gardens, hybrid cars, solar panels, and worm/compost bins (In fairness, we do harvest limes in our backyard, which my kids will come to understand the value of after turning 21). Yes, I hear my fathers voice as I type these next words; “My kids are growing up in a completely different world than I did.” No more sneaking off into the woods to smoke cigarettes as I suspect they’ll be sneaking off to check on their native habitat restoration plantings. As Andres Duany states, embodied in my daughter’s 3rd Grade class, today's theological rise of sustainability in confluence with the Great Recession and peak oil instability actually kicked-off our 21st Century around 2008. The changes we have been predicting for years are now afoot. Now my few thoughts: 1) The power of new technology to change our built and cultural environment. The internal combustion engine begat the Industrial Age and changed our agrarian society to an urban one. We were now more able to access vast landscapes and grow as a nation across the continent. [caption id="attachment_1207" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="Steam, then gas, engines connected our nation and the world."][/caption] 2) The further refinement of said technology again reshaped our culture towards a more Suburban society. The automobile and its miniature engines allowed each individual to own their own personal train or streetcar system to access the region. Architects and designers actively redesigned how people lived to accommodate for new technology. [caption id="attachment_1206" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="Futurama, New York World\'s Fair"][/caption] Le Corbu’s ‘City of Tomorrow’ has been implemented across the world with his International Style of towers in a landscaped (sub)urbanism. His clean, modern city was intended to ‘redevelop’ the blight and false ornament of the Victorian / Industrial Age. These same modernist tower blocks continue to threaten our cities' first tier streetcar neighborhoods to this day. [caption id="attachment_1221" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="Images courtesy John Norquist, CNU"][/caption] 3) Great urban design and architecture creates tremendous value. From Seaside to Alys Beach, these great places have made Florida panhandle coastal scrub some of the most valuable and beautiful real estate in the nation. [caption id="attachment_1204" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="Value created in coastal scrubland."][/caption]
4) Planning is dead, long live redevelopment! Coastal cities such as San Diego, where the majority of our population lives, cannot continue to grow through sprawl (we all know it's bad). To keep the lights on, however, cities will only be able to increase tax revenues through infill redevelopment and sprawl repair. This redirection is creating great angst in both the NIMBY and development worlds. [caption id="attachment_1208" align="alignleft" width="458" caption="Retrofitting Suburbia and Repairing Sprawl"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_1212" align="alignleft" width="458" caption="City of Valencia, California, retrofitting their old mall with Main Street."][/caption] 5) Community is the New Technology. Cultivated by the refined technology of our personal / handheld computer devices, we now have greater access to and within our own society. This technology has given us new found access to land we already inhabit. This is seen in the rise of social networks as we are able to communicate more easily with our own places and re-connect in ways we haven’t for several generations; such as community farms and gardens, glee clubs, and civic events. [caption id="attachment_1211" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="DPZ CNU Award Winner: Southlands Agricultural Urbanism,
Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada."][/caption] 6) New Urbanism is in a position to design and leverage our new technology. Cities need our transect and form-based tools to build toward this ‘new’ manner of contextual redevelopment and retrofits. Communities and developers need our context-sensitive expertise to design for an Architecture of Community (Leon Krier) and create meaningful places that both generate taxes and are beloved (i.e.: Steve Mouzon’s Original Green manifesto). [caption id="attachment_1205" align="alignleft" width="458" caption="Good job! Moule Polyzoides Architects, Del Mar Station, Pasadena, California."][/caption] 7) The kids are alright; but, why should they stay here? My daughters will grow up in more tech-savvy and sustainable world than I can imagine. These kids are now concerned about nature and are more connected to each other than ever before. However, the majority of new plans and planning documents are not savvy enough to inspire kids towards a future they can imagine themselves building towards (Think Wacker Manual of Chicago’s past). [caption id="attachment_1203" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Today\'s Eco-Warriors."][/caption] In an attempt to jump-start economies, cities and towns across the nation are updating their General Plans, Comprehensive Plans and Community Plans to stimulate something. Unfortunately, most are trying to create a new future using the same old planning tools that got us in this mess in the first place. New Urbanists can provide proven new types of tools to convey community-oriented plans for kids growing up today to see a reason to stay in their towns and neighborhoods. --Howard Blackson

Can Cities Help You Forget Your Troubles, C'mon Get Happy?

greenwaters08 — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:52:16 +0000

In most physical and policy planning, triple bottom line benchmarks focus on environment and economy, and tend to skim over the subject of society. That's probably because urban design impacts are much easier to measure with respect to profit and planet than they are with respect to people. Any good MBA professor preaches, "What gets measured gets done." For several generations, we've been proving that point with our relentless focus on measuring our collective success via a host of global economic indicators. Since An Inconvenient Truth, environmental factors have joined the economic mainstream as well, sparking a whole new breed of Eco Warriors. Now, we're starting to get our arms around some of the bigger public health issues connecting society with the built environment, particularly on the obesity, diabetes and depression fronts. Proponents of gross national happiness to augment gross national product would like to see our society focused on conserving instead of consuming and connectivity instead of distrust. Still, how do we measure national happiness, well-being, and social capital as they relate to the way we plan our neighbourhoods, towns and cities? This week's Wall Street Journal article released the 2010 Legatum Prosperity Index. "Wealth alone does not make for a happy and successful society. Happy citizens are produced as much by democracy, freedom, and entrepreneurial opportunity as they are by a growing economy." Of note, this index tracks social capital as well, starting to value people's connections and the higher levels of trust that result from frequent interactions. "Our gross national product, if we should judge America by that, counts [..] the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile." - Robert Kennedy, 1968 The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index tracks life evaluation, physical health, emotional health, healthy behavior, work environment, and basic access. Once our basic needs are provided for, increased wealth does not increase our happiness appreciably, nor does unemployment effect us as much as we might think. Instead, happiness is due to our sense of belonging, and not our income, confirmed by John Helliwell, professor of economics at the University of British Columbia. Public spaces that bring people together in congenial activity produce happier citizens than those – like traffic jams – that spur animosity and aggression, Professor Helliwell says. [caption id="attachment_1247" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Critical Mass bike ride in Vancouver. Credit: Flickr ItzaFineDay."][/caption] Still, neither of these indices correlate urbanism to happiness. But the City of Vancouver is starting to. As one of the world's most livable cities, Vancouver is asking itself what more it can do to provide for physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs. In doing so, it's adding spirit to the other pillars of a healthy community: complete community (land use, density); healthy mobility (transit); healthy buildings (zero carbon); thriving landscapes (open space); green infrastructure (water, sewers, storm); healthy food systems (organic agriculture, nutrition); healthy community (facilities, programs); and healthy abundance (sustainable economic development). Advancing the idea of "spiritual urbanism," Vancouver's Healing Cities finds inspiration in the human body's ability to rebuild, repair and regenerate, and asks what it takes for our cities to heal themselves, and in turn heal us. Oxytocin, the trust hormone, goes up with eye contact. We get a whole lot more of it while walking. Which is just the beginning of balm to the spirit fostered in walkable neighbourhoods. And it's interesting how some things go full circle, with a healthy society making for a healthy economy. ‎60% of East Coast developers say, “to stay competitive, they are shifting away from bigger traditional home designs to conservative pedestrian-oriented mixed-use neighbourhoods.” People get more enduring happiness from experiences in their neighbourhood than possessions in their home. On the other end of the spectrum, what makes people the most unhappy? Not work, but commuting to work. [caption id="attachment_1248" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Pink Zone in Bogata. Credit: Flickr Jorge Lascar"][/caption] Just as Vancouver is a shining example to the developed world, Bogota's urban happiness movement is an urban innovator of the developing world, led by former Mayor Enrique Peñalosa. “There are a few things we can agree on about happiness,” he says. “You need to fulfill your potential as a human being. You need to walk. You need to be with other people. Most of all, you need to not feel inferior." A key to equality is providing dignified, functional transportation, which Bogota has done with a powerful version of bus rapid transit as well as extensive bike and pedestrian networks. "When you talk about these things, designing a city can be a very powerful means to generate happiness,” Peñalosa says. By linking urban design to the economics of happiness, Bogotans have become happier. The murder rate fell by an astounding 40% during Peñalosa's term and continues to decrease, along with the number of traffic deaths. Traffic moves three times faster now during rush hour. And the changes transformed how people feel. “A good city is like a good party – people stay much longer than really necessary because they are enjoying themselves,” per Jan Gehl, author of a City for People, and leader of Copenhagen’s transformation to a bikeable, walkable city. Gehl encourages urban design from the perspective of the five senses, taken at walking speed. This eye-level approach does much to address the needs -- and the happiness -- of the individual. So I still don't have an Urban Happiness Index. But I think it's coming soon, to a street near you. --Hazel Borys

Branded! Municipal Identity and the Selling of Cities

greenwaters08 — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 17:31:37 +0000

What does America’s oldest city have in common with one of its youngest? They’re both concerned with branding. St. Augustine, Florida, kicked off their branding initiative in 1715 by petitioning the King of Spain for a coat of arms. Upon his receipt, the King assumedly delegated the request to his creative services department who, in turn, set out to define the message and visually articulate the city’s identity. The resulting execution diligently captured St. Augustine’s essence--a strong, Christian safe haven, noble and serene, with a familial affinity for France and lasting respect for the bad ass military garrison that founded the city--though, sadly, the completed logo was ultimately caught up in a bureaucratic morass and never delivered until the city issued a follow-through memo in 1991, some 276 years later. The process of city branding moves a little faster in our modern age. Perhaps a bit too fast, it turns out, as the recently incorporated city of Dunwoody, Georgia, discovered a few weeks ago when roll-out of their new identity drew less than flattering notice for its eerie similarity to a certain global corporate behemoth. Now, I don’t live or work in Dunwoody so I’ll leave it to the good people who do to decide what, if anything, they want to do about it. But I do have some thoughts on the whole idea of branding and its role in the articulation of place. Such thoughts are uncommon among the placemaking and community-building crowds I run with now because they’re rooted in the 12 years I spent working in the shadow of J Walter Thompson, the global advertising agency named for the godfather of modern branding who pioneered many of today’s common practices well over a century ago. The resulting perspective means I don’t consider the issue solely as one of “selling a city” any more than I do as some lofty grasp for authenticity, moralistically hovering above the crass business of boosterism. The problem, it seems, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what branding a city really means. Talk of “creating a brand” suggests a blank slate, a point of ground zero where we begin the process of establishing who we are. But cities are living organisms, with a legacy of past behaviors and no shortage of current, on-the-ground realities, which means--like it or not--they already have a brand. Jackie Benson, a long-time player in place-based marketing, puts it this way: “If you’re the guy who doesn’t return phone calls, it doesn’t matter how much you talk about your personal commitment to your clients. You’re still the guy who doesn’t return phone calls. That’s your brand.” [caption id="attachment_1282" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Face it. You can't escape from who you are."][/caption] That is, you can’t escape from who you are and how people see you. You can change it through meaningful action, but you can’t gloss it over. And that’s the rub with city branding, because meaningful action is all about genuine leadership and good governance which, all too often, are in woefully short supply. Heed this warning: If your city branding efforts don’t begin with top down commitment to both your foundational principles and your aspirational goals, you are wasting your time. It doesn’t matter how many chamber of commerce meetings you attend, how many resident focus groups you hold, or how many Addy award winning agencies you interview. If your community has not done the hard work of building consensus, defining goals and demonstrating commitment through meaningful actions, it just doesn’t matter. If your leadership fails to engender trust, you can’t sell strength. If your policies are not incentivizing what you want and penalizing what you don’t, you can’t sell vision. If your zoning promotes sprawl and your citizens are disconnected from civic participation, you can’t sell community. No matter how pretty your logo or clever your tag, you are wasting your time. In marketing, this is what’s known as getting the product right. Unfortunately, with cities, you can’t just send it back to the lab. It takes years of labor and commitment, with government, citizens, businesses and institutions all working together. It’s hard. And when things are hard, the thought of just picking up the phone and calling the local ad agency can seem pretty darn attractive. Don’t buy it. --Scott Doyon

My Sleuthing Adventure: Where are Western Canada’s Form-Based Codes?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 04:01:15 +0000

Western Canada’s form-based codes are missing. This is no small problem. Those of us working in the region are continuously grilled by municipalities with the same question, often delivered with a suspicious, cocked eyebrow: “Where are they? Where in Canada have they, or any other alternative zoning regulation, been enacted?” The answer we’re obliged to offer is unfortunately neither reassuring nor helpful: “We’ve turned up little evidence,” we mutter quietly. Little enough, in fact, that a comparable municipal mentor is typically unable to be found. A mystery is at hand. A recent study co-authored by PlaceMaker Hazel Borys revealed over 300 form-based codes adopted or in progress in the U.S. There, despite a difficult economy, successes and increased interest in this important planning tool continue to rise. And even here in Canada, a country that is no stranger to the proliferation of automobile-focused planning and all the consequences that come with it, form-based codes have become a hot topic. So where are they? Let the sleuthing begin. My initial theories were loose, and steeped in Canadian pride. Perhaps the U.S. had developed such pressing, super-sized problems that they demanded a quicker response. Or maybe the critical mass of its population, ten times the size of Canada, pushed early innovation of form-based regulations. Or perhaps Canada is simply uninterested in a “Made in the USA” idea and is instead waiting for a “locally grown” solution to deal with its own unique growth issues. These are just a few of the possibilities but, with each journey down a new avenue of speculation, the further I got from a definitive answer. I needed to start with the big picture, then work my way down. Setting the Stage We essentially abandoned the idea of building walkable urbanism as far back as the 1930s and, by the 80s, denizens of our fair continent were only beginning to come to terms with the consequences of the previous four decades of building cities around the automobile. But as the seeds of their growing dissatisfaction began to germinate in the U.S., in the late 1980s through the early 1990s, a number of pioneering projects came out of the ground and with them two important rallying cries for change: The practice of designing and building urbanism articulated in the Charter of the New Urbanism in 1996, and the 10 Principles of Smart Growth formalized in 2003. [caption id="attachment_1311" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="New urban neighbourhoods like Garrison Woods in Calgary have been approved in spite of current regulations."][/caption]Though most regions now have their own built example(s) of New Urbanism--often approved in spite of local planning practices rather than because of them--the idea of Smart Growth as a systematic change was still seen as the bleeding edge in the 1990s. Nonetheless, the problems being faced were mounting and, slowly through the late 90s and early 2000s, these seemingly new ideas began to seep into hundreds of local municipal plans and policies. At first they were general: concern for pedestrians, the thought of mixing uses, fixing the inner city, and other broad ideas. But by the mid 2000s, (yes, this is recent history) you would be hard pressed to find any municipality with any concern for sustainability not have thoughts of walkability, mixed use, and more compact development forms dominating their municipal vision. Which brings us to the point in our narrative where reform efforts evolved to their logical next step: Changing the rules to match these newly emerging goals. After all, the regulations at hand were written to produce something else in a time when new walkable urbanism was virtually unheard of. Enter our story’s protagonist, form-based codes, the unassuming, crisply dressed antihero currently missing in western Canada. Examining the Scene of the Alleged Crime I amped up my investigation: Perhaps the plot line of North America’s Smart Growth saga failed to play out exactly the same way on our local stage. My hypothesis? Within western Canada’s physical, cultural and climatic bubble, the basic ideas of Smart Growth did not begin seeping in in earnest until the mid 2000s, a gut-hunch I subsequently confirmed through review of multiple municipal plans from the era. Now factor in that, in most of our western Canada cities, an overall municipal plan is required to be updated or created every 5-10 years as the early broad-policy stage of the visioning process. Given that it takes roughly two years from plan inception to plan approval, it would probably be 2007 or so to expect to see western Canada municipal plans demanding mixed uses, walkability, complete communities, and more compact development forms. And not surprisingly, confirmed by my meticulous investigative skills, the facts bear this out (Have you seen Calgary’s new plan?). [caption id="attachment_1347" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Many form-based codes in western Canada are project specific, like the SmartCode adopted for Mike Holmes' Windwalk project in southern Alberta."][/caption]In a perfect world, a municipality would jump right on a form-based code or other zoning alternative to make way for their new vision, but this is new territory and it takes time. Only municipalities such as St. Albert, Alberta, Richmond, B.C., and a handful of others started exploring form-based codes earlier in the decade, allowing for their more advanced position today. For most, it takes a few years for the idea of new zoning rules to make it to the front burner. A couple of years and you are to 2009. So that, my dear Watson, is my best answer to this curious mystery. It’s not that our subject is missing, kidnapped, bound, gagged or otherwise at the mercy of nefarious villains. It is the simple fact that, here in western Canada, he has yet to really be born. The timing is right, however, and the will to conceive is growing every day. If my own efforts and the efforts of progressive city leaders and other practitioners throughout the region are any indication, it won’t be long before form-based codes are popping out all over. So stay tuned... --Geoff Dyer News of innovation and implementation comes often. If you like the idea of form-based codes in general, and the SmartCode in specific, and would like to stay on top of what's happening, consider liking it in the more modern, technologically connected Facebook way.

A Municipal Planner's Call to Arms (and Legs, Hearts and Lungs)

greenwaters08 — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:10:10 +0000

The obesity epidemic isn’t really “news” anymore (thank you, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution) yet when I question my friends who work outside the fields of design and planning on why Americans are so fat, they tie everything back to poor food choices. But what about exercise? They reply that if you want to exercise, just find yourself a park or a gym. No worries. So, although we know that there is an obesity “problem,” one with significant national impacts, the average American still is not aware that it is, in many ways, a design problem. A result of a built environment that has been constructed over the past 50 years with one singular purpose – move more cars faster. While Jamie Oliver and Michelle Obama for that matter might convince us to eat a vegetable, it is not so easy to grow a sidewalk in your front yard, much less connect it to a useful destination. That's our job, those of us who plan, fund, design and construct the built environment. And let’s throw in our bosses (or elected officials) too, just for fun. I’d like to suggest that if there was such a thing as designer malpractice we would be in a lot of trouble right now. We have created a land use and transportation system that actually prevents a healthy lifestyle. Ironic, considering the preamble of most zoning ordinances indicates a goal of promoting the “health, safety and general welfare” of the inhabitants of a city. Back in the 1900’s we were arm in arm with our friends in public health fighting infectious diseases—separating land uses, establishing systems to clean water and get our waste carried away—but somewhere along the way we transformed into little worker cogs focused on specific issues like the perfect bridge design or the exact number of malaria cases. We forgot to look at the big picture or question our reasons for building an 8 lane road. I thought I was improving quality of life, not setting people up for cardiovascular disease. But since we haven’t managed to design and build our way out of traffic congestion, I haven’t even provided anyone a way to get to the doctor quickly. If only we knew the way out of this downward spiral… I know! We can just create a commission, model policies, walkability checklists and cost calculators to show us how to plan and design our way out of obesity. No need. Amazingly, all of these resources are already readily available. Right now. [caption id="attachment_1441" align="alignright" width="240" caption="You like me. You really like me!"][/caption]I hear what some of you are saying: “This isn’t a professional problem, it’s the people! They just need to put down the Big Mac.” But some of our design friends in the environmental field have decided that expecting humans to act, well, less human isn’t a reasonable solution. “As long as human beings are regarded as 'bad,' zero is a good goal. But to be less bad is to accept things as they are, to believe that poorly designed, dishonorable, destructive systems are the best humans can do.” [Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough & Michael Braungart] If the goal is for each person to work against existing systems to eat better and exercise more, we’ve failed ourselves and our profession. Humans like consuming new things, connecting to others and experiencing a diversity of environments. Why don’t we design our physical environment to celebrate our human nature (like Bank of America’s “Keep the Change” program) and allow us a fighting chance at being healthy? Do we wonder why connecting through the internet has become so popular? What have we done as designers to make it easy to interact in real life? [caption id="attachment_1447" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="What?! You prefer the internet to this? Credit: randylewis.org."][/caption]We’ve created an endless monoculture of highways and strip malls that could all be labeled “Anywhere, USA.” It's no surprise then that residents choose instead to stay inside and explore the virtual world while we design another soulless building and single mode road. Every time a traffic engineer tells me trees are not allowed in the “auto recovery zone” (a.k.a. sidewalk) or a planner decides to use a population projection model that results in a 20 lane highway, I start to wonder if we are in the midst of a mental health epidemic as well. When did we start caring more about cars than people? If we have the knowledge we need to design healthy environments and we are going to count on humans acting like humans, then what’s missing? Leadership, from us, the people responsible for the design and condition of the built environment. Say it with me: We are not cogs in a machine made to follow a manual with a goal at the top that says “move more cars faster and then store them.” We are professionals that have the sacred responsibility and opportunity for creating healthy places. It is not hard to build a healthy environment (here is a handy checklist!). It’s hard to stay curious about your work. It’s even harder to step outside of your bubble and connect with colleagues in different fields of design and public health. It’s hardest of all to have the courage to tell your co-workers, bosses and the public that you refuse to design, enable or build projects that will perpetuate an unhealthy environment. We have to lead this change. We are actually the only ones who have the technical skills and legal authority to build healthier cities. It’s simple. We merely change the operating paradigm we've used for the past 50 years from cars to people, tomorrow. Try not to feel overwhelmed. As a starting point and shout out to our medical friends, I suggest you take the Hippocratic Oath to, first and foremost, “do no harm.” --Amanda Thompson Amanda Thompson is the Planning Director for the City of Decatur, Georgia, the first city in the United States to perform a Health Impact Assessment in development of its transportation plan.

Dancing with Urban Agriculture

greenwaters08 — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 05:01:47 +0000

My lovely wife of eight years enjoys really bad television. For better or worse, last night she tricked me into watching a segment of 'Dancing with the Stars.' Coyly, she asked me to name the movies in which the dancing ‘star’ had ‘starred’. Having no idea and starting my way back upstairs, I heard her mimicking quietly, "Bueller... Bueller...? [caption id="attachment_1490" align="alignright" width="112" caption="Exsqueeze me? Really?"][/caption]Surprisingly, this now unrecognizable star from my beloved '80s was Jennifer Grey, of Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller fame. I resumed watching, frozen in disbelief that something as simple as a nose job had rendered her completely unrecognizable (despite the formaldehyde she'd obviously been dipped in, as she still looks 20 years old). This was an amazing transformation with one simple alteration. Sometimes that's all it takes for dramatic change to occur. The 80‘s slow food movement begat by Alice Waters* in a small restaurant in Berkeley, California, is now well-known and replicated in every restaurant row across the nation. Perhaps not surprisingly, locally grown food restaurants have helped drive demand for locally grown food which, in turn, has helped folks to understand the unsustainability of the 3,000 mile caesar salad. Different communities have embraced these ideas in all manner of ways. In mine, they took the form of a local Community Garden which, as our own metaphorical nose job, has since driven a simple yet powerful neighborhood transformation over the course of the past year. Today, when walking my kids to school, I pass a good three or four front and sideyard victory gardens on every block. I live in a first tier, turn-of-the-century streetcar neighborhood just outside of downtown San Diego. Mine is a typical urban area of mostly single-family detached, small lot homes with a few multi-family units, surrounding single-story mixed-use neighborhood centers scattered every quarter-mile or so. A new urban pattern has emerged. Front lawns and yards have been transformed into the traditional Victory Garden, producing fruits, veggies, and ornamental fruit trees. Sideyards and driveways host a little more intense orchards with allees or stands of trees producing fruit and maintaining neighborly privacy. Finally, the rear yards are filled with more intense chicken coups (no roosters) and Tilapia ponds (fish tacos are a big deal in San Diego). Without a code, my neighbors have organically ‘coded’ themselves, producing less intense agriculture in the public/private front and more intense agriculture in the more private back. Illustrating the social transformation, my neighborhood is currently undergoing a Community Plan update through our City Planning Department. Instead of yelling at each other about density, there's consensus over the need for a ‘transfer station’ as an urban amenity. This is a waste management facility and my neighbors talk excitedly about allowing for a place to leave/pick up mulch, recycle materials, compost, and distribute all manner of information/knowledge. Not that they are going back to the farm, mind you, because the discussion centers around the need for it to be a mechanical biological treatment system/facility, which removes and makes available dumped materials for recycling in home gardens. And what about those terrible parking and density issues that have captured the neighborhood’s attention for the past 40-years? With all that's going on, they just seem so 20th century. Today, you're more likely to hear local chit chat about the new bugs and pests sweeping through the neighborhood. Bees are the new polar bears, and cultivation of local bees and their hives is now a topic over beers at the local pub (BTW - I live in a great neighborhood). Slow food has led to a slow beer movement, with local pubs serving local brews that people dispense into their own recyclable ‘growlers,’ as if I’m living in turn-of-the-century London. Bicycle shops have grown as fast as the pubs and restaurants, along with food trucks parking at the neighborhood centers on the weekends, feeding the local beer crowd. My children’s school has gardens with associated weekly classes. All of these new cultural experiences are based on the idea that we can power and feed ourselves... and the physical transformation I see happening today is due to the implementation or realization of the ecological movement begun decades ago. The best site plans / codes for urban agriculture have been generated by the work of Steve Mouzon in collaboration with DPZ. The succinct design of Steve’s SmartDwelling II provides for parcel-scale urban agriculture on a standard American corner and mid-block lot. Add to that the SmartCode’s Sustainability - Food Production module, which is being updated via a book to be published by DPZ, and you've got a growing collection of tools for this emerging way of life. Fads, as we all know, come and go but, having lived through many, I feel like I'm now witnessing something much more lasting and powerful. Agricultural Urbanism is very quickly transforming our communities, and the neighborhood-centric results are impacting our culture for the better. Eat up. --Howard Blackson * Burros, Marian (1996-08-14). "Alice Waters: Food Revolutionary". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-07-29. "“Ms. Waters, who is 52, has singlehandedly changed the American palate, inspiring a devotion to seasonal cooking and emphasizing the importance of local organic ingredients, both of which have helped nourish farmers markets all over the country.”"

Considering Community in the Face of Tragedy

greenwaters08 — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 05:01:15 +0000

Provoked by this seasonal opportunity to give thanks, we at PlaceShakers cast an eye towards our communities and offer up this second helping of a piece from earlier this year. Its message for the season? Be glad. Not just for what you have, but for the people you have to share it with. Happy Thanksgiving! Something terrible happened in my neighborhood. The specific details of the incident have been covered elsewhere and are not especially relevant to my point here so I’ll spare you the rehash. Suffice it to say that, during what was reportedly a messy divorce, one of my neighbors killed his five year old son rather than share custody with his soon to be ex-wife. There’s no logic to his actions, which makes it of little surprise that the common emotional thread that subsequently weaved its way through the community was one of profound confusion. “How could this happen,” we all asked, “and what can we do?” [caption id="attachment_804" align="alignleft" width="257" caption="A random example of community grief
in contemporary America."][/caption]In the course of these discussions--which happened everywhere, from the neighborhood coffee shop to the local blogs that cover community news--someone suggested a makeshift floral memorial in a centrally located neighborhood park. Word was spread. A local florist made a contribution. Permission was secured from the city. Come, they suggested, and leave a token of your prayers and support. A day later, I passed by the memorial site and felt an almost knee-jerk sense of dread. Despite the widely distributed and discussed invitation, there was little to show but a few bouquets. So few in number that it wasn’t even clear what was happening. Where was the mountain of flowers, stuffed animals and scribbled notes so prevalent on the news whenever community tragedy occurs? Could it be that the sense of community I’ve always felt here, and have even held up as an example, was some kind of illusion? But the more I stepped back, allowing a wider view of what community really means, the more I found evidence to the contrary. For example, without fanfare, some in the community had set up a fund through the local bank to help cover funeral expenses. Others were organizing the series of meals that could help carry the family through their ordeal. There were even those helping to insulate the mother from the glare of media exploitation. All of which seems entirely more meaningful than simply showing one’s concern in the form of flowers, however sincere that offering may be. The media has conditioned us to believe that, in the cultural malaise that constitutes our postmodern life, a makeshift memorial is the appropriate expression of community grief. That it demonstrates in towering ways a community’s strength and connectedness. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that perhaps the opposite is true. Maybe these mountainous piles of mementos instead reflect the frustration of having a very human desire to contribute in some way while having absolutely no idea how to go about doing so, or where to turn to find out. Maybe they’re less an indicator of connected community and more an indicator of fractured community. Taken in that light, I suddenly had a newfound appreciation for that feeble little collection of flowers, because its entirely unimpressive stature now seemed as much a monument to my community’s ability to come together in more purposeful ways as it was to that little boy. We’re social animals. We want to be together. Now, more than ever, we need a return to principles of community design and development that foster, rather than thwart, such inclinations. In short, we need more places that, in bringing us together, ultimately help us to help each other. -- Scott Doyon

Dhiru’s Encyclopedia of City-Shaping: Reassurance in Uncertain Times

greenwaters08 — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:43:41 +0000

Just about anybody remotely interested in how the world’s most admired places earned their adulation is going to love Dhiru Thadani’s new book: The Language of Towns and Cities. In it, Dhiru subtitles the book “A Visual Dictionary,” but as L.J. Aurbach points out in his blog review, it’s really an encyclopedia. And it couldn’t come at a better time. What Dhiru offers is an 800-page compilation of our species’ success stories. Here, delivered with the customary Thadani elegance and illustrative efficiency, are the components of placemaking and how they’ve been honed over centuries to achieve interior and exterior spaces that not only appeal to the head and the heart but also represent high-performance design. Here’s proof that some stuff just works. And it works on just about any level we imagine. The reason that sounds so remarkable is that these are not inspiring times, particularly for those holding onto to dreams of collaborative achievement or even collaborative competence or maybe even collaboration itself. We’re hard at work downsizing expectations and adjusting to the new normal in which less is really less. A certain amount of that is long overdue. We overindulged the opposite attitude back when times were flush. So it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if we recommitted ourselves to something more basic, such as using the tools of placemaking to enable more health and happiness in community and less gold-plated isolation. We’re trying to encourage that train of thought in this space. See Hazel Borys’ post on planning for happiness here and Amanda Thompson’s related health argument here. Yet I’m not so sure tweaking our priorities is going to be enough. Some bigger shift appears to be in the works. As usual, Andres Duany is already out in front of the revolution, storming his own barricades. He helped shape the New Urbanist debating society that’s been bickering over its evolving manifesto for 30 years. Now, with global warming and the persistent recession on his mind, he’s up for a total rewrite. He hinted as much at the last CNU Congress. In 2011, get ready for the full reality-therapy agenda from Andres and from the NextGen crowd, who recently convened in New Orleans and seem to be working on their own plan for a New, New Urbanism. I expect some of these themes will emerge when the usual suspects gather in Seaside over the weekend of Jan. 28-29 for the annual awarding of the Seaside Prize to a much-revered New Urbanist leader. This year’s honored recipient: Dhiru Thandani. Couldn’t be a better time to marry glimpes of the potential for our species’ perfectability with the need to face the facts of new era challenges. --Ben Brown

Let's Get Small: Placemaking as Antidote for Shrinking City Budgets

greenwaters08 — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:38:08 +0000

It’s that time of year, but it’s no holiday party in most city budget meetings. Cities across the continent are looking for ways to make ends meet. A quick survey turns up some sobering city deficits: New York $4.4 billion, Toronto $225 million, Washington DC $188 million, Houston $120 million, L.A. $87 million, San Diego $72 million, Cleveland $28 million. States are worse still: California $6 billion, Illinois $15 billion, Arizona $1.5 billion. Those are some major gaps to fill, before we make it to the federal level. We hear the reasons every 24-hours or so, on the nightly news. Recession-related factors such as slashed tax revenues – property, sales, income – lessened state aid, expiring stimulus funds, high unemployment, increased healthcare costs, and pension commitments for baby boomers are draining the coffers. So we’re less able to pay for our infrastructure-intensive, high-octane lifestyle. Which just might have an upside. While the economy shows some weak signs of recovery, cities lag the market by about 18 months, and are feeling the pain. The usual cadre of solutions – layoffs, furloughs, decreased services, health care cuts – may be short-term fixes. Visionary cities are looking for ways to decrease infrastructure spending and jumpstart economic development via a myriad of placemaking approaches. How can great placemaking save money and grow the economy? If we want to be bean counters about it, there is plenty to count. Urban mixed-use midrise is over 200 times as profitable in tax revenue per acre than suburbia. The tax basis adds up. One point of Walk Score increases your home value by up to $3,000. The equity adds up. One point in the urban sprawl index increases your risk for being obese by 0.5%. The health care costs add up. For every 10 minutes you spend in your car, the time you spend in community activities falls by 10%. The social capital costs add up. An average American churns out 24.5 metric tons of CO2 every year, but a New Yorker produces 7.1 metric tons. The global warming costs of suburbia add up. Former Milwaukee Mayor and CNU President John Norquist sheds some light on the city crises in a conversation we had this week. [caption id="attachment_1641" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="John Norquist"][/caption] “It’s hard rations, and it’s tough times with most all city budgets. Any infrastructure has to guarantee a return on investment. Convention center expansions, ballparks, grade separated streets, and wide streets never yield the expected returns. Cities that continue down those paths will exacerbate their fiscal conditions. Neighborhood streets, complete streets, walkable neighborhoods have major returns.” “Local governments – because they don’t have as much flexibility as state and federal governments – have to be more disciplined. A street with healthy retail and housing is worth more to the tax base – whether property tax, sales tax, or income tax. Giant roads and shopping centers are losing strategies. Infrastructure must add value, and the time for experimentation is over.” That’s been proven by tax revenue per acre studies, as enumerated here by New Urban Network, which conclude that one of the best fiscal cures for cities is dense, urban development. The top performer is downtown mixed-use/condos that rise six stories or more, when it comes to tax revenue per acre. The logic failure of the past was thinking of tax revenue per lot instead of tax revenue per acre, making big boxes seem much more fetching than they really are. Norquist continued to say, “Municipal finance officers are looking for returns, and it behooves planners to make the case for the added value of planning. Planners need to be aggressive about sharing their knowledge and helping people understand. If muni officials understand that their planning staff is a key to a bigger tax base, then you won’t see cuts. Cutting your planning staff is like getting rid of your seed corn. Unless, of course, they’re ill directed. Good planning that promotes walkability and complexity are faring better in the market than strip malls and suburbia.” “You won’t see Portland or Vancouver putting its planning staff on furlough. Vancouver has some of the best real estate appreciation in North America, thanks in large part to great planning. During a recent visit, I noticed the ramps to the bridge to the north of the island. They used to be two-lane, but now it’s one-lane for autos and one-lane for bikes and pedestrians. They realized multi-modal transportation adds to land value. Adds to tax base. Adds to livability. Not long ago, the City passed an ordinance prohibiting arterial lanes over 3 meters. Vancouver prefers streets that add value to neighborhoods over roads that accommodate high speed vehicle movement. The City realizes the street’s value for market and social purposes, not just moving traffic. If you leave the first two out, you get a dead street, and a dead city.” Infrastructure and transportation value capture Infrastructure to service compact, dense development costs 32% less than conventional development patterns, says the US EPA (7/09). Denser Calgary will save taxpayers $11.2B versus sprawl over 60 years, according to PlanIt Calgary (4/09) and, according to the Transportation Research Board’s Driving and the Built Environment (11/09), doubling residential density while increasing nearby employment, transit, and mixed use can decrease VMT by 25%. I took a peek into the bearish outlook this week, and phoned James Howard Kunstler. [caption id="attachment_1624" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="James Howard Kunstler"][/caption] “Shrinking city budgets have obvious implications for infrastructure. We've had warnings from professional engineer associations that the water systems of American cities are dangerously old and in need of replacement. Which applies to our entire infrastructure, except for recent light rail lines. We've elaborated a road and street system that is so enormous – and we've done it incrementally over 90 years – that we will have a very tough time keeping it up, as we become a less affluent nation. Without necessary funds for repair, we're going to keep on deferring maintenance, even though the results are obvious roadway, water, power and infrastructure problems.” “Larger picture is that our cities have become over-scaled to the resource realities of the future: oil, coal, electricity, natural gas, but also the fiscal realities. The bottom line is that all cities will find themselves contracting. City planning may become less institutionalized, with more self-organizing, emergent task forces. It is becoming self-evident that we have to plan in a certain way, to build more densely, compactly, and flexibly. I have this fantasy that all of the great underemployed planners out there at the moment will become their own developers, doing great incremental infill, sprawl repair, and redevelopment.” So what’s standing in our way? Most of our current laws make the economic losers – from the city’s perspective – easy to build, while mixed-use walkable neighborhoods are generally illegal. Particularly at a time when incremental, small-scale infill is more supportable than vast greenfields, tools like form-based codes and zoning reform allow flexibility in a changing marketplace, along with the walkable environments that people value and that generate the most optimal tax base. [caption id="attachment_1586" align="alignright" width="224" caption="Lower Dexter Avenue Redevelopment RFP"][/caption] Places like Montgomery, Alabama, are taking things into their own hands. The SmartCode Montgomery adopted in 2006 is enough of an economic development driver that the City is putting its own funds into the local development market. The City has a developer RFP out now for Lower Dexter Avenue, in a move to speed redevelopment of perhaps the State's most important street. The City purchased and aggregated the properties, which they could sell at a loss, realizing the long term tax revenue of the redevelopment will likely dwarf their investment. It helps that the Mayor is a former state economic development director, and that the SmartCode has a proven local track record. [caption id="attachment_1596" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Uptown District: terminated vista to Ralph's"][/caption] San Diego’s Uptown District, a mixed-use infill project on 14-acres of formally city-owned land, was executed in 1987 by then City Architect, Michael Stepner. The project includes a healthy mix of residential and commercial units types, townhouses, flats over retail, live-work over retail, office over retail and two-story retail. The city invested its land into the project to promote the “City of Villages” concept to private developers, and its numerous award have resonated over time as the definitive model for redevelopment in the region. Its success led the way for Peter Calthorpe’s innovative 1992 Transit-Oriented Development Guidelines as well as informing the recently updated General Plan Strategic Framework. The $14 million dollar public investment in buying the land is still paying dividends today as this site has the lowest vacancy rate and highest rents per square foot in the mid-cities region. Where some of the funds are still flowing DOT-HUD-EPA Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities awarded almost $700 million in October, which is in the early stages of being disbursed via Tiger II and other grants. Other sources at the top of the list for funding placemaking efforts are US Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grants and US EPA Smart Growth Implementation Assistance Program. A plethora of other options are available, including the following sources: American Farmland Trust Community Farmland Protection. American Institute of Architects Sustainable Design Assessment Teams. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. City and State Civic Art Commissions such as Seattle Art Resource Network. EDA Economic Adjustment Assistance Program | Global Climate Change Mitigation Incentive Fund | Planning Program | Public Works and Economic Development | Research and National Technical Assistance Program | Revolving Loan Fund Program. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Waters Act | Coastal Zone Act Reauthorization Amendments | Brownfield Grants | Revolving Loan Fund Grants | Cleanup Grants | Job Training Grants | Targeted Brownfields Assessments | Sustainability Pilots. FHWA Transportation Enhancements | Transportation Planning Capacity Building | Transportation, Community and Systems. Gateway Communities Technical Assistance. HUBZone Program. LGC Customized Technical Assistance. NAR Smart Growth Grants. NEA Citizens Institute for Rural Design. NTHP Main Street Center. National Vacant Properties Campaign. Project for Public Spaces. Rural Community Development Initiative. Scenic Highways . Smart Growth America. Smart Growth Leadership Institute. Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. Urban Land Institute Advisory Services. US Dept Veterans Affairs Business Development Program. USDA Rural Development. USDA Value-Added Producer Grants. Workforce Investment Boards. So what's it all mean? The economics are undeniable. The historical lessons are there. The modern-day case studies are growing. The question that remains is not "how?" but "who?" Some will choose to heed the writing on the wall and some will not, which is how cities have thrived or withered for as long as there have been cities. Is your city working towards the cure? --Hazel Borys

Season’s Greetings from Alabama: Where Stars Aligned

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:09:36 +0000

Here’s a story of hope for the holidays. And like most good stories, it begins with bad news. On April 20, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 of its 126 rig workers. That was the first tragedy. Then, came the second, as oil from the uncapped well began spilling into the Gulf. By mid-July, when the well was finally secured, more than 170 million gallons had flowed into the deep waters, and arguments escalated about whom to blame and about how many terrible things were likely to happen. [caption id="attachment_1707" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Oil cleanup workers hired by BP pick up oil soaked absorbent booms that were placed at the edge of the surf at the Gulf Shores public beach in Gulf Shores, Ala., Thursday, June 24, 2010. (Press-Register/John David Mercer)"][/caption] About the only intelligent things we can say about the long-range environmental impacts of injecting all that oil into the Gulf’s complex ecosystems is that nobody yet knows what effects it will have or when we’ll know for sure. But we can be sure of the oil spill’s immediate impacts on families and businesses tied in one way or another to the Gulf of Mexico. In coastal Alabama, where PlaceMakers has been leading the communications team in support of an effort launched by Gov. Bob Riley in late September, tourism and everything connected to commercial and recreational fishing tanked. People were thrown out of jobs. Businesses collapsed. Families that had never had to turn to social service agencies for help, even in hurricanes, were showing up at food banks and counseling centers. To its credit, the state pursued two separate recovery paths. One involved the battle for immediate compensation from BP for victims of the spill. The other may have seemed less obvious but is likely to have more lasting effects. Through his executive order on September 27, Gov. Riley created a Coastal Recovery Commission (CRC) of Alabama. The commission’s mission: To draft a set of strategies to make the coastal region more resilient to future threats not only from events like oil spills but also from hurricanes and other disasters. The boldness of the plan had folks taking note. Kaid Benfield, writing for the NRDC, raved "It’s hard to think of a better on-the-ground (solution-oriented and forward-looking) example than this one, and it’s almost enough to make me want to move to South Alabama to be part of it." [caption id="attachment_1709" align="alignright" width="206" caption="Ricky Mathews, publisher of the Press-Register, chairs the first meeting of the Coastal Recovery Commission of Alabama Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010, in Spanish Fort, Ala. (Press-Register, Mike Kittrell)"][/caption] The idea might sound familiar to those aware of the Governor’s Commission of Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And for good reason. It was born from a conversation between Gov. Riley and Ricky Mathews, now the publisher of the Mobile Press Register. In 2005, Mathews was publisher of the SunHerald of south Mississippi and vice-chair of the Governor’s Commission. The CRC was molded after the Mississippi effort. But there was this major distinction between the aftermath of the 2010 oil spill and the aftermath of the most devastating hurricane in Gulf history: Oil spill victims were deprived of the evidence of what tore apart their lives. There were no piles of debris and no flooded landscapes. And once the well was capped and oil stopped washing ashore, the sense of emergency began to evaporate everywhere but on the coast itself. What helped the CRC’s sense of urgency was the prospect that sometime, possibly soon, BP, the federal government, and states affected by the spill would settle on amounts due the states from oil spill penalty fees and related sources. Billions of dollars would find their way to the states. And there could be a feeding frenzy like no other were there not a plan to invest that money wisely. The CRC’s charge was to put that plan – or at least a plan for the plan – on the table. The challenges and opportunities faced are summarized in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqFVqJXW_1g On December 15, the Commission presented its report to Gov. Riley and Gov.-elect Robert Bentley in the historic Old Statehouse Legislative Chambers in Montgomery. Consider this scene, especially in the context of the current political environment in America: In the same room where, in another century, Alabama voted to secede from the Union and in the building that was the destination, in a more recent century, of the civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., this cast of characters lent their endorsement to an idea worth taking to the next level: Two governors, one going out and another coming in; leaders from both the Alabama State Senate and the House of Representatives; county commissioners and mayors from coastal Alabama communities; and, via prerecorded video, the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. [caption id="attachment_1716" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Commission chairman Ricky Mathews, left, poses for photos with with Gov.-elect Robert Bentley, center and Gov. Bob Riley with a copy of the Coast Recovery Commission's (CRC) final report following a press conference in the Old Statehouse Legislative Chambers at the State Capitol Wednesday, Dec.15, 2010 in Montgomery, Ala. (Press-Register, G.M. Andrews)"][/caption]The report itself (7.9mb .pdf), produced in 90 days, is less significant than the response it was able to conjure. To produce it required an alignment of the stars through a process that attracted more than a thousand leaders and citizens. And though the report’s recommendations aren’t likely to surprise professionals familiar with the fundamental goals of regional planning, the process and its ceremonial climax in Montgomery on December 15 revived at least a little hope that it’s possible for folks to come together in agreement on something important for generations to come. Even if what’s agreed upon is a commitment to keep the conversation going. It wasn’t a gift. It was the result of some heavy lifting on the part of regional leaders and an inspired governor. And it’s a fragile coalition that will require continuing attention as the Commission’s proposals move towards implementation. But it’s a hopeful moment, nonetheless. Which is good enough in these uncertain times. Happy holidays. --Ben Brown

Insane, Trains and Automobiles

greenwaters08 — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:21:11 +0000

The holiday season is our culture's designated time for wishes of good cheer and contemplative New Years Resolutions for a better tomorrow. Or so I thought. Then I read this stark statement: “Scott Walker, governor-elect of Wisconsin, who vowed to stop the train in a campaign commercial, said that the train from Milwaukee to Madison would cost too much money, take the same amount of time as driving and leave many passengers needing cars anyway to get around at both ends.” — New York Times, “More U.S. Rail Funds for 13 States as 2 Reject Aid," December 9, 2010 Governor-elect Walker's quote inspired the following Holiday Wishes for my friends, family and colleagues: 1) Rail that travels in the same amount of time as driving! Perchance to dream... of regional train service with the same travel time as a car in Southern California! Just last week I took the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner from San Diego to Santa Barbara and it took five and a half hours for a typically three and a half hour drive. And, in fairness to Mr. Walker, I did have to bum a ride to the San Diego train station from my neighbor. However, upon arriving in Santa Barbara I was able to comfortably walk to my destination on State Street (America’s best High Street). So, if I compare my train ride against Governor-elect Walker's simple criteria of money, time, and walkability, it is easy to state that cars are faster than trains in SoCal, but that cost and access are a wash. Still, an important factor missing from his criteria is rail's quality of life and travel experience. [caption id="attachment_1737" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Try doing this while driving. Howard Blackson, far right, together with John Anderson and Paul Crabtree, make productive and relaxing use of their time on the California Zephyr (2009)."][/caption] With my laptop, I was able to work throughout the entire trip, taking breaks to watch one of the world's most beautiful landscapes roll by. Inspiring, beautiful, comfortable, with wireless internet and electric plug. As Ian Rasmussen points out, the extra time I had to contemplate my place in this world allowed me to arrive in a calmer and a more relaxed disposition, which driving through Los Angeles never provides. Finally, it's worth noting that this one new year's wish comes with higher than average expectations because, in an oddly pleasurable twist of bureaucratic red tape, California is getting the federal train funding Wisconsin refused. 2) Walkable cities! It is understood that my SoCal experience isn't the same as in Wisconsin because the drive from Milwaukee to Madison is not as stressful as the LA experience. Plus, San Diego’s weather is only awful about two weeks of the year. With that said, I would compare San Diego’s downtown to Madison and Milwaukee’s in terms of walkability (verified by their respective WalkScores of 56, 59 and 60). Today most of us arriving by train to these cities would still have to drive to reach the majority of residents and businesses in each city. Therein lies my holiday wish for everyone who travels from one major city to another to not depend on a car for every business, personal or recreational need upon their arrival. [caption id="attachment_1747" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Pitcher Cliff Lee: Walkability Advocate?"][/caption] Anecdotal evidence of the value of transit and walkability is embodied in Cliff Lee. Major League Baseball’s most sought after free agent pitcher, he may have chosen to sign with Philadelphia last week because his wife wanted her husband to return to the Phillies because of “how easy it is to get from Point A to Point B.” WalkScore and the 2010 Census verify Mrs. Lee’s perceptions. Neither the state of California nor Wisconsin are in the nation’s Top 10 in Population Densities, whereas eight of the Top 10 states with the highest population densities are along the DC - Boston transit corridor. Not surprisingly, our nation’s best regional rail service — Amtrak’s Acela Express — operates in these states (See here). And, the respective WalkScores for Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Boston are 71, 74, and 79. With the joyful inspiration (and eggnog) these holiday’s bring, I am determined to not let the stark reality of Governor Walker’s decision limit my planning for a less auto-dependent future. What the Governor should have stood for was monetary assistance to facilitate the economic development more walkable places capture at both ends of any new publicly funded rail line, regardless of its speed. With that, PlaceMakers and I wish everyone a Happy New Year! --Howard Blackson [caption id="attachment_1733" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="A rare snow falls over The Waters, a PlaceMakers project just outside Montgomery, Alabama. Happy New Year, and keep on Shakin'!"][/caption]

Unplug! Accommodating Our Need to Escape Each Other

greenwaters08 — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:06:50 +0000

Sense of community. It’s been a rallying cry of New Urbanists since the beginning and for good reason. For years leading up to the birth of the neo-traditionalists, it didn’t take much effort to realize that our surroundings had changed—a lot—and not for the better. Our neighborhoods—subdivisions, really—were isolating us from each other and from the things we needed to get done. Despite the ample comforts we’d developed to help mitigate the separation, that’s simply not a good recipe for human productivity, much less fulfillment. There was a hole to be filled, and the distinctly market-based New Urbanists stepped in to fill it. We approached the job with an almost evangelical fervor. Without question, those looking for greater connection to their communities—estimated at somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of homebuyers—were a deeply under-served market hungry for something better. Something meaningful. So what did we serve them? Well, together with decidedly better neighborhoods, we also dished up a whole lot of hyperbole. [caption id="attachment_1772" align="alignleft" width="267" caption="Forget heaven. Nirvana is achieved in Kissimmee."][/caption]Though probably never stated exactly this way, the first wave of New Urban sales claims were akin to a cure-all—traditional urban neighborhoods create community—and, perhaps not surprisingly with the benefit of hindsight, it didn’t take too long before such overblown promises became the source of well-founded criticism. We took an early beating because we oversold the product. But that’s not uncommon with exciting, seemingly new things and, by the early part of the new century, a second wave of new urban marketing had emerged in its place. I recall attending a New Partners for Smart Growth session where developer Joe Duckworth laid out the truth of the matter: New Urban design doesn’t create community, he said, and we need to stop claiming it does. However, for those socially inclined and yearning to connect with others, it does make it a whole lot easier. And, for what may be half the market or more, that’s still pretty compelling. People are social creatures and traditional urbanism fosters that. Bam. Go sell. But now here we are, ten years later, and I submit we’re still a little off. It’s time for the third wave. Complexity reduction To understand the challenges ahead of us, it’s necessary to take a look back at why we fled the cities to begin with. There’s little argument that we were served up all kinds of Federally-driven inducements to do so—summarized beautifully in David Wilen’s series for Capitalism Magazine—but that’s not really what I’m getting at. Incentives need to connect with something. To satisfy unmet desires. And for post-WWII Americans living in cramped, deteriorating cities recently emerged from the Great Depression, those desires had a lot to do with leaving it all behind and starting fresh. [caption id="attachment_1764" align="alignright" width="237" caption="Me and Dad, retreating. Circa 1969."][/caption]A place to call our own. To be in control. To retreat. Granted, we ultimately took the suburban promise of independence and personal space to some pretty ridiculous—and dysfunctional—extremes but, in attempting to correct them, we’ve since made the mistake of confusing the need with the manner in which we satisfied it. Simply put, sometimes the last thing we want to do is experience another person. And that’s okay. Very few (perhaps none) of us are on all the time. At times, we do need to pull back, to be alone or with intimate gatherings of carefully chosen people. Community, for all its benefits, is a tiring endeavor. But that’s a hard thing to consider when the larger conversation, one often taking place here on PlaceShakers as well, is focused on all the measurable ways urbanism can help us solve our problems—from the environmental to the economic to the social. In that realm, the rallying cry is “what gets measured, gets done.” But when it comes to the nebulous drivers of human fulfillment, it more often plays out as “what gets measured, gets dumb” because it applies analytical thinking to things that are innately emotional. It misses the point of what we need to be happy. Kaid Benfield takes a step in the right direction with this post on the NRDC Switchboard yesterday. In a nutshell, he’s pushing that design matters and we need to start acknowledging the connections between the quality of the details and the manner in which people operate and find fulfillment within their environments. It marks the amping up of design in the larger Smart Growth discussion and that’s encouraging, but it still dwells largely on what’s happening outside—the ways in which the pieces relate to and interact with each other. And that’s where, marketing-wise, the new hole is. [caption id="attachment_1769" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Leave me alone, by design."][/caption]Between hordes of downsizing, empty-nesting Boomers and their equally numerous, city-loving children now coming of age, all the demographic indicators point to robust demand for urban living in the coming decades. They’re drawn to the convenience, the cultural amenities, the health benefits, the action and, yes, the easy connection to others. But when they’ve had their fill of that—and it happens to everyone, often daily—the only urban amenity they’ll be looking for is a good place to hide. Be it in the form of a backyard retreat, a lush, intimate courtyard, a modest balcony, a cozy reading nook a la Sarah Susanka, or any of the countless other endearing places people choose to hide away, they’ll need it. So to those looking to capture the real estate markets of the new economy, remember this: Community is very appealing but our urban adventure doesn’t end there. It also requires better private space. Not necessarily more, or larger, or extravagantly pimped out. Just better. Bam. Now engage a designer and go sell. --Scott Doyon

An Ode to Old Towns

greenwaters08 — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:01:57 +0000

PlaceShakers takes a very literal step off our comfortably beaten paths of urban design, zoning reform and community resiliency today to focus on, as the software industry calls it, the "end-user experience." Despite, or perhaps because of, having no vocational connection to placemaking at all, explorer / spelunker / observer John Watts offers up some poignant reminders of why our work towards endearing -- and enduring -- human-scaled places is so important. For today, certainly, but ultimately for tomorrow. My drive from Sterling, Virginia, heading due west, started out as a yawner and then turned to a downer. The bumper sticker battle slogan seen often a few years ago stating “Don’t Fairfax Loudoun!” (meant to admonish Loudoun County to not repeat the same mistakes Fairfax County had made in over-developing) appeared to be becoming moot. Rapidly. The tangle of traffic congestion at 1:30 in the afternoon was as formidable as anything Fairfax can conjure up. It was largely due to the highway construction, with traffic being funneled down to just one lane on mighty Route 7's westbound leg. Glancing at the scenery was the real clincher though. For a several mile stretch, as I gazed out from my car, all I found was upturned clay mountains and huge claw marks from bulldozers gouging the top layer of ground. “I have been away too long,” I thought to myself. The tug of inevitability was very evident on this stretch, as progress was moving on without me. [caption id="attachment_1882" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Mom's Apple Pie Bakery, Leesburg, Virginia.
© bigbear.photo, via Flickr."][/caption] But then, reaching the Leesburg town limits, I found myself increasingly comforted as familiar landmarks, minus the construction, returned before me. I crossed past the first few shopping centers on the outskirts of town, following the main road towards the heart of the city and then, suddenly, the standardized predictability of VDOT signs and precise highway lanes abruptly halted and the main street was split by a pie-shaped wedge of land fittingly belonging to Mom’s Apple Pie bakery. This little peninsula with the tiny parking lot beckons drivers to have a hot coffee and pastry, that is, if they can manage to make a split second decision and park the car before it is passed by. In this day and age of constant change, with its disposable, dumbed down architecture showcasing even blander stores, the old town section offers a respite. Thank God for old towns. They continue to hold their own and remain intact just as firmly as a river or national park, serving as vital centers of physical and cultural geography in these transitory times. [caption id="attachment_1864" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Old Town Leesburg, Virginia.
© zswire, via Flickr."][/caption] From this point on, everything seemed fresh and exciting. Instantly the commonplace ways of conducting public life evaporated. Delightfully unexpected buildings and stores cropped up in unconventional places. The first place I noticed this was at the gas station behind Mom’s Apple Pie bakery. As I walked in to buy a newspaper, I was startled to see a side door with row upon row of tables with fancy silk tablecloths. I did a double take. “Is that a restaurant?” I asked the cashier at the gas station. “Why yes,” he replied, “we have a Thai restaurant under our roof.” He gave me a menu to take with me as I ran back to my car. I looked back several times at the incongruity, as this was the first time I had ever seen a fancy, sit-down restaurant sharing quarters with a gas station. My next magical visit was to a fairly new British tea room (at least new to me), called the Aylesbury Tea Room and antique store. The gift shop seemed to entail most of this historic house beyond the opening tea room, and it seemed to extend forever. I marveled at how many entrances there were all around this old brick house. This British tea and scone shop, which served tea from 12 to 4, had all the refinement and delicacy of a BBC set in one of those Agatha Christie Miss Marple mysteries. But since I am all thumbs in a tea room anyway, I gravitated to the antique and UNIQUE shop that covered a whole block and produced the real “Wow!” factor. Each room was a revelation. A telling sign at the base of the staircase stated plainly, “Mind Your Head—Low Ceiling!” It was the type of fun house where a group of kids could get lost in a wardrobe closet that turns into a fantasy world. Fascinating wall hangings and knick knacks adorned the place to tantalize collectors in search of a distinctive gift. [caption id="attachment_1892" align="alignright" width="277" caption="Antiques in Leesburg, Virgina.
© Ellrober, via Flickr."][/caption]Further into the heart of downtown Leesburg, the Black Shutter Antique Center offers the same novelty and sense of adventure. These huge historic homes of great character, off plumb and full of eccentricities, are like falling down the rabbit’s hole in Alice in Wonderland. You take a fanciful plunge into room after room and staircase after staircase with surprising collections of merchandise around every corner. You feel alert like a trail hiker as you scan for arrows to tell you what direction to go to next. Old towns compel you to linger longer. You are meant to try out an endless variety of sequences such as reading the newspaper at a café in between shopping. On one visit to Leesburg, I can choose to go to an authentic dark pub atmosphere like the Balls Bluff Tavern for a cold beer. On another, during a cold winter’s day, I am comforted by a cup of hot cocoa with whipped cream at the old Georgetown Cafe. Diamond-in-the-rough deals beckon the discerning antique buyer. In the used book section I found a John Steinbeck novel first edition that I had never heard of before called The Wayward Bus. I also ended up buying a very strange and dated children’s book called The Gnomobile, written by Upton Sinclair, who was not known for being a children’s writer. Old towns are great for breaking preconceptions and delivering plenty of surprises. I walked out with my book, feeling very proud indeed. After years of visiting the downtown, suddenly on this trip, I noticed a venerable Ohio Buckeye tree for the first time on Cornwall Street with its own historic sign on the bark signifying that it was registered as an historic tree. How had I missed this before with all my many walking trips around old town the past few years? I made a note to myself to come back for a future trip and take its picture. The eccentric arrangement of houses, with their funny angles and maximized spacing, are also a hallmark of downtown. To attest to this fact, I saw a thin old brick house comically crammed in between the addresses of the bigger houses listed as 14 and 15. Naturally it was listed as a fraction in between its neighbors -- 14 and a half. So many aspects of old towns are ethereal and elusive, requiring the right childlike spirit and receptivity to be noticed. Like the mythical island in the musical Brigadoon, certain treasures suddenly seem to sharpen into focus out of nowhere, when the stars are aligned just right for that particular visit. [caption id="attachment_1868" align="alignleft" width="199" caption="Courthouse cupola, Leesburg, Virgina.
© Sabrina Watkins, via Flickr."][/caption] Old towns are a feast for the senses. Alleyways can be secret little worlds unto themselves as well as short cuts. Stylish shops can make gift buying fun again as one of a kind knick knacks compel you to not walk away until you take them home. Casting your eyes up to the rooftops reveals all types of patterns and shapes ranging from old to oldest. The colorful randomness of the rooftops is a great relief to the human spirit worn down by sterile shopping centers. Humor and elegance are found side by side as you notice distinctive weather vanes such as the one at the Carriage House, or the many church steeples with the occasional bell tower. Whether I am on foot or driving a car, I find myself getting sucked into the vortex at the center of an old historic town. I feel a gravitational pull to walk or drive into the heart of a town or city. Old towns are a patchwork quilt of unexpected and unscripted adventure. To me, an old town feels like an animate object whose presence I can feel, from the cobblestone pavement to the cellular bricks in the old buildings. Old towns keep alive ghosts that tell us stories. The ubiquitous predictability of mass marketed chains and standardized products are kept at bay and are replaced by bubbling hot springs of individual human ingenuity and handiwork. I have been blessed to roam the streets of so many classic old towns. Old Town Alexandria, with the Potomac River as an added gem, Winchester, Leesburg, Warrenton, Staunton, Front Royal, Fredericksburg, Annapolis, and Purcellville, to name some of the most frequented in the region. Virginia alone has so many delightful old towns brimming with history and unique stories. So when you are stuck in the traffic, and bored with the national franchising of your suburban mailing address, take my advice and allow the gravitational pull of an old town to reel you in and revive your senses for a few hours or a whole day. Each visit offers a new adventure for picking out a different sequence of sightseeing with never before seen attractions to add to your repertoire. I always come home revitalized, feeling like I have experienced a mini vacation from a one day outing to an Old Town. If you expect precision and punctuality to get back in time from your 30 minute lunch break, then it is not the place to be. It’s not safe and predictable and you can’t set your watch to it. Family-run stores may suddenly and for no clear reason be closed at an odd hour. Hand written signs may offer vague, personal reason for not being open such as “Gone Fishing,” or this amusing and expansive sign I read in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, at the front door: “Cat does not run out. Please allow door to close on its own. Thank you.” And don’t expect to find parallel Men’s and Women’s restrooms in old towns, lined up neatly as they're customarily situated in chain establishments. An example being the 2 flights of stairs I once walked to chase down the Men’s room at a cool coffee shop in Falls Church, Virginia. This amusing experience, in which I dodged crates, squeezed by stacked merchandise boxes, and almost trespassed into a quasi “Employee’s only” section, was a powerful testimony to me for how old towns, and only old towns, can transform an ordinary customer into a combination of explorer/spelunker/and maze navigator on a simple quest to locate a bathroom (which also often come in amusing designs and states of repair). It is certainly true that by their very nature, old towns aren’t predictable and they are certainly not good at complying with ADA specifications in granting smooth access for people with physical disabilities, but for those that don’t mind the inconvenience and can hoof it on foot, the adventures are endless and spring directly from the pages of history and tradition. Anxiety may ensue as you gamble and try a new dish on a menu or hunt around to locate merchandise in a store with an unorthodox floor plan. But if you can roll with its unscripted qualities, you will consider it a small price to pay for all the upside you get in return. It is a 100% certain guarantee that if you allow your car to cross the threshold beyond that first disposable epidermal layer of chain stores, you will feel a part of something bigger than just a shopping errand--you will be communing with the heart of the old town. --John Watts John Watts was born in Denver, Colorado, but has lived most of his adult life in northern Virginia. A teacher for many years, he revels in the writing of essays and short stories, weaving mischief and streaks of whimsy through what he lightly refers to as "heartfelt transcendental observations of daily life."

Livin’ Large in Small Spaces: It Takes a Town

greenwaters08 — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:51:02 +0000

I’m big on small. Ever since the 2005 Misissippi Renewal Forum in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I’ve been beating the drum for Katrina Cottages and cottage neighborhoods. Most recently here and, in 2009, here. I haven’t exactly been a voice in the wilderness. In fact, I wasn’t even among the early wave of advocates. North Carolina's Sarah Susanka and her “Not So Big” books tapped into what turned out to be a pent-up demand for well-thought-out, smaller scale home design. And Pacific Northwest architect [caption id="attachment_1919" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Ross Chapin's cottage neighborhood."][/caption] Ross Chapin demonstrated a premium market for new-era cottage neighborhoods at the height of the McMansion craze. Now, thanks to demographic and economic pressures, the construction industry is not nearly as determined to super-size American housing as it was a half-dozen years ago. For a glimpse of how those changes are playing out, read Neal Peirce’s November, 2010 post in CitiWire and Wendy Koch’s recent story in USA TODAY. [caption id="attachment_1914" align="alignleft" width="300" caption=""Ya'll come." Welcome to my lavish, 300 square foot spread."][/caption]Last fall and early winter, I got the chance to move from cottage living theory to real-life cottage living when I took Mississippi architect Bruce Tolar up on his offer to use the original Katrina Cottage as a temporary base of operations for a post-oil spill project on the Gulf Coast. For 90 days, I lived and worked out of the 308-square-foot cottage designed by Marianne Cusato during the Mississippi Renewal Forum and displayed at the 2006 International Builders Show in Orlando. For the story of how the “little yellow house” came into being, check out my interview with contractor Jason Spelling in this 2010 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5_cZN4N61s Cusato’s cottage now nests comfortably on Tolar’s two-acre Cottage Square in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, one of 14 cottages that were among the early Katrina Cottage designs or were inspired by the movement. Next door, on another two acres, more than 30 new cottages, reflecting a further permutation of Katrina Cottages as workforce housing, are going in. So, soon there will be an intown neighborhood of 40-plus homes and offices ranging from a studio under 300 square feet to Tolar’s 1,300 square foot two-story design that he now uses as his office. [caption id="attachment_1916" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Tucked in: Getting lot size and density right in
Bruce Tolar's Cottage Square."][/caption]Which gets me to the first of three lessons learned – or at least underlined – by my live/work experience in Cottage Square: These structures are “better together.” They need a critical mass to achieve their promise as a viable alternative to neighborhoods of 3,000-square-foot-plus homes. Dropped randomly into acre-lot subdivisions and diminished by surrounding McMansions, they look eccentric and experimental. They need small-lot site-planning and the company of friends. Here’s the second lesson confirmed by my life in 300 square feet: The space has to be beautifully designed and the construction detailed perfectly. Otherwise you’ve got exactly what Katrina Cottage critics warned against – a tricked-out trailer. When you compress the volume, the first thing to go is wiggle room for sloppy decision-making. Compromise on design and construction quality, including material choices, and you’re off to the race to the bottom. That’s why Cusato, Tolar, Steve Mouzon and others fight so tenaciously against cheaping out on ceiling heights, window selections, flooring, roofing, and trim details. That’s bad news for workforce housing advocates committed to driving prices per square foot down. Better to achieve the savings by intelligently compacting the space, as opposed to competing with production builders who amortize prices per square foot over thousands of under-performing square feet. My third and most important take-away from 90 days in tight quarters is this: It takes a town. If you want to make the move from a conventional, 2,500-square-foot home to one half that size appealing, you can’t do it with design alone or even with the combination of home and neighborhood design. The trick to living large in small spaces is to have great public places to go to – preferably by foot or on a bike – once you’re outside your private retreat. This argument echoes Scott Doyon’s pitch for balancing privacy and community. No problem feeding the private, nesting impulse with cottage living; but the smaller the nest, the bigger the balancing need for community. Big community. Bigger than a greenfield new town or village. Tolar’s Cottage Square is an infill neighborhood that’s colonizing a commercial district with mixed use within a 15,000-person town. Within the sacred quarter-mile walk are schools, a super market, a YMCA with child care, retail, and bars and restaurants. Within a 15-minute bike ride is all that Ocean Springs has to offer, including its historic main street, a beach, marinas, and lots more retail, restaurant, and bar options. As impressed as I was with how Marianne Cusato achieved livability in 300 square feet, I would have felt imprisoned in that space if I couldn’t hop on a bike and enjoy Ocean Springs anytime I wanted. Ross Chapin will have a new book in stores in the next month or so that speaks to some of these lessons: Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small Scale Community in a Large Scale World. And we’ll keep this discussion going at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Charlotte, Feb. 2-5. Sarah Susanka, Ross Chapin, and I are on a Feb. 4 panel called “Taking ‘Not So Big’ to the Next Level: Pocket Neighborhoods as Urban Infill.” Hope to see you there. --Ben Brown

Monkey See, Monkey Don't: Economic Development as a Whole New Animal

greenwaters08 — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 05:01:32 +0000

In the economic development world, we're always trying to grow our economic base. And by that we mean goods and services that we export, not just what we use in our local markets. That might include university services, tourism, and any products that we pack and ship, or regional retail that we steal from our neighbors. We see economic development in conventional terms, and we seek only to perpetuate the model, adding more of the same to the end of the chain. Another monkey from the barrel, so to speak. [caption id="attachment_1944" align="alignright" width="300" caption="All I really need to know, I learned in Kindergarten. At least as it relates to old-skool economic development."][/caption] From the MBA perspective, OPM, or Other People's Money, usually refers to debt. But it's really also the traditional view of economic development, the Ponzi scheme that Strong Towns articulates so well. It's how America has run for the last century, and it isn't working. We can't spend our way out of this financial situation by boosting consumer confidence so that we "spend" the most recent stock market up-tick, which we, of course, haven't sold our stocks to really capture and may just turn into credit card debt in the end. It's the same sort of way we've justified the next sprawling infrastructure spending in the hope of future revenue. Last month we talked about how sprawl is an economic loser for city governments, and how placemaking is a development catalyst and infrastructure saver. Kaid Benfield’s great article on the NRDC Switchboard this week highlights the Growing Wealthier study, which quantifies those arguments. The neighborhood is the unit of sustainable urbanism. But what if we went back to the notion that the region is the unit of sustainable economic development? Not cutting off the spice trade or China, but in terms of how we think of balancing our city budgets. Attracting and channeling investment rather than jobs? Targeted selectively, across the spectrum of residency, building, employment, the works. Of course, the region is, at its cellular level, a collection of places -- places acting in their own self-interests, competing with each other for diminishing slices of pie -- and the monkey-see, monkey-do manner in which so many of them go about their economic development efforts ultimately fails to produce sustainable results at either end of the spectrum. Thus, the taming of this new animal is paramount. The sooner the better. How are today’s great -- or poised to be great -- cities and towns getting it done, despite their dire city budget situations? And what does community have to do with it? Quality of Life Even in the toughest assessments of what attracts industries to locations and keeps them there, quality of life rates high. We know that people who live and work in places with diverse options for housing, shopping, mobility, and entertainment are generally happier. Happy people tend to be happier employees. Happier employees make more productive employees. And productive employees are highly valued by employers. LA’s Strategic Plan for Econ Development does a good job of laying it out. Attachment Soul of the Community, thanks to Knight Foundation and Gallup, concludes that the places where people have the most emotional connection to their community generate the highest rates of GDP growth over time. The usual drivers of safety, leadership, and services were overshadowed by social offerings, openness, and aesthetics – gathering places and a public realm that is alive with pedestrian activity, not auto-oriented throughput. A Predictable Decision-Making Environment Communities that have consensus-backed rules and straightforward processes to channel growth and redevelopment can control one of the variables that make firms nervous about capital investments. Predictable environments are at the top of business wish lists. New Economy Entrepreneurs Since the overwhelming majority of businesses in the U.S. are those with 10 employees or less, the future of economic development will be in providing a supportive environment for small, entrepreneurial outfits. The most sought-after are the knowledge economy/creative class types. And those folks are urbanists with a vengeance. The latest Kaufman Foundation report does a good job of laying out government strategies for encouraging innovation and entrepreneurial firms. Don’t just take my word for it [caption id="attachment_1964" align="alignright" width="231" caption="Retail Guru Bob Gibbs"][/caption] It ain’t just me. I gave a call to urban retail guru Bob Gibbs, who’s releasing a book, The Theory and Practice of Urban Retail, this summer, to talk about how savvy cities are sparking investment through land planning, particularly if last week’s jobs projections from the Fed are accurate. His take, italicized, follows. In terms of the employment numbers, Bernake could be right about full recovery taking four or five years, but not all sectors will take that long. We’re at an all time high unofficial unemployment, but companies are making record profits off of skeleton crews. There has not been a lot of incentive to hire. Now we’re pushing to overtime, and we’re at a point that large scale hiring again is coming back into the money. You’re starting to see massive hiring in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania for industrial jobs. In some industries, it will be less than five years before we’ll be at a good employment number. So what can cities do to nurture those recovering industries via planning? How can we keep our existing economic base, while cultivating regional synergies? And how do we do it in a form that we can pay for in the long run? Regional Planning Cities with strong regional planning have an equal footing to suburbs. Suburban sites tend to be as expensive or not as available as those in the city. On a straight economic sense, if there is strong regional planning, the inner city offers better development options. Cities without strong regional planning have to compete with suburbs that offer cheaper land. The most important tool in the chest in this case is predictability – both of the entitlement process and that other projects will be built of high quality. Predictability happens with good zoning. You have this in wealthy suburbs. Except for places like West Palm Beach, where developers made quick deals and built large ugly buildings. Ease of Development Cities can engage in outright land assembly. And remove the unfair disadvantages of building in the city: building parking garages, utilities. Before the recession, cities could get into the game by giving tax incentives and cash, but now the only thing most can reasonably offer is to make it easier to develop within city limits. A small town in Georgia has a market for a quarter million square feet of retail, but all of that may be built outside the city because there’s cheaper land, owned by one entity. The city is thinking about aggregating land, dealing with parking constraints, and leveling the playing field. Montgomery says they had the most job creation of any city in Alabama in 2010, thanks in large part to their aggressive 5-year commitment to placemaking that we discussed last month, in which their SmartCode makes development very predictable. The City is leveraging that with land assembly in the Dexter Avenue developer RFP, which garnered 8 responses that are moving forward with downtown development projects. Will Unlike Montgomery, the will to develop in cities is often strangely missing. I’m shocked when I go to cities and work with policy makers, they believe that the best way for cities to compete is to go after a minor part of the market share, and to leave the bulk to the suburbs. For example, Santa Cruz, CA, a beautiful northern California coastal city, has a policy to shun national retailers, encouraging them to stay out in the suburban mall. One-of-a kind specialty retailers, who are very expensive, are welcome in the city. But not larger hotels, office buildings, large cinemas, Targets. That’s like saying we want to dominate the auto industry by selling Yugos and let someone else sell Chevys and Fords. Cities need a paradigm shift to be willing to be competitive, and sell whatever it is that people want to buy today, and then mold that into an urban form that matches local character. Cities assume that multi-screen cinemas have to go by the freeway, and think that the only thing that they should have downtown is a one or two-screen art house. This snowballs into a suburban pressure to develop surrounding restaurants, stores, and residential around the suburban multi-screen cinema. There are innovative and practical ways to put larger format uses within a walkable urban context. How do you find developers in this economy? How do they finance and build within a tightening credit environment? There is a strong demand for walkable places as seen by their stronger economic performance, but lack of ability to meet that demand in many places. Implementation Cities have to develop a business plan and actively engage. Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, would rather drive to Tyson’s Corners and shop – it was their conscious decision. This is the story of two King Streets, one in Alexandria and one in Charleston. The Alexandria King Street depends on tourism, depends on residents being able to drive, while the Charleston King Street enjoys local, regional, national, and international draw. The latter is incomparably more authentic. Mayor Riley of Charleston has established policy to bring in whatever retailers his residents want, as long as they are willing to be in the unique urban form of Charleston character. There is a new Apple Store on King Street in Charleston, which also wanted to open in Old Town Alexandria’s King Street. Because of landlord negotiation issues, Apple chose to locate in Georgetown instead. Cities can get involved with this sort of program: 1. Establish the will to develop what their residents want to buy 2. Do basic market research to understand what they can support 3. Pick what they want to encourage, then assemble the property and find developers Cities can buy 6 or 12-month options on large underserved blocks of downtown, and create enough critical mass to make it interesting to developers. Or else hire a leasing company that can articulate the worth of the city, and bring in the tenants. Developers and real estate development trusts are trying to buy whole cities – or several downtown blocks anyway, and treating it as a shopping center. Such as 3^rd Street Santa Monica a few years ago, Lincoln Road in Miami Beach in the '90's, and it’s under consideration in Niagara Falls now. Urban centers, to be sustainable, need to be more than employment and residential centers. Cities lost 77% of retail market share between 1941 and 1960, and are now down to 2-5%. In their heyday, cities had 75-80% of regional retail. Now, cities should shoot for a minimum of 30%, but ideally over 50%. In Europe, most cities still have over 50% of the market share. But that’s because of heavy-handed legal intervention, which isn’t feasible or palatable in North America. Australia blatantly says no retail outside of the city limits in Melbourne and Sidney, and they’re very rigid about it. I just did a case study for a little town in Scotland that won’t let anyone open a grocery store outside of High Street, unless you can prove that it won’t take market share away from the one on High Street. So it’s not happening. We need to make it as easy or easier to develop in city centers. Developers made the mistake of thinking that town centers had to be complicated with lots of ornamentation – fountains, clock towers, paving. Santana Row was $400-500/SF to build, requiring $40-50 rents. It’s unsustainable. They didn’t appreciate the value of urbanism. When you’re passing a strip center, you’re passing it at 40-50 MPH, so they have to make them attention getting. When experiencing urbanism on foot, it’s totally a different animal. New Urbanism got this tag that it was more expensive to build than conventional retail. So most developers think that good urbanism is twice as expensive. Terry Shook, for example, is really good at building town centers that are the same price or less than conventional: $60/SF for office buildings that are really beautiful, while others were paying $120/SF for the shell. All four sides of the building don’t have to be brick, and it doesn’t have to have a slate roof. If you look at great cities, when they were peaking in the 40’s and 50’s, they were simple. Great placemaking, good squares, places between the buildings were beautiful. Even street trees were rare. The older buildings in Winter Park's Park Avenue or in Palm Beach’s Worth Avenue in Florida are often 1-story, $60/SF buildings. [caption id="attachment_1970" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="Palm Beach. One story. Sixty bucks a square foot. Image credit: Gibbs Planning Group."][/caption] Cities can redevelop themselves by going back to the 20’ x 60’ lot, and selling them to small entrepreneurs who can build their own. Instead of waiting for someone who can build a $60 million project, the city can replat to the smaller lots, and sell under $50,000 each, then smaller businesses through sweat equity can build their own stores. Rosemary and part of Seaside were built this way. The only part of Rosemary that got in trouble was the large hotel, which went through a few bankruptcy’s. It’s a very good post-recession model. Instead of taking out a large note and build an Easton Town Center, build the streets and squares, and let the rest occur incrementally, on a small scale, as the market will bear. Gotcha. Demand needs to be more effectively answered. Form matters. But at some point we’ve got to move beyond consideration of tomorrow’s winners and get down to the practical realities of today’s doers. [caption id="attachment_1967" align="alignright" width="256" caption="Sprawl Repair Maven Galina Tachieva"][/caption] To that end, I talked with Sprawl Repair maven, Galina Tachieva (also italicized below), about some of the options she sees for sprawl repair providing an economic development catalyst. Sprawl doesn’t serve the current market. We’re seeing under performance and foreclosures in far-flung suburbs. Currently there’s a big demand for walkable, diverse communities, but they’re in short supply. The simplest reason is the majority of our projected population growth of 100 million in the next 30 years – baby boomers, echo boomers and ethnic minorities – prefer more urban environments. To accommodate these populations, we’ll need to go into the 2^nd and 3^rd tier suburbs and make some changes. Last week’s National Association of Home Builders conference agreed, pointing out the big Gen Y population wants to walk everywhere. According to the WSJ, “One-third are willing to pay for the ability to walk. They don’t want to be in a cookie-cutter type of development. The suburbs will need to evolve to be attractive to Gen Y.” So on top of the 80 million Gen-Y, there are 76 million boomers who want to age in place. The 'burbs don't work for either group. Aging residents will prefer to retire in their suburban homes, in their largest personal investment, per AARP’s Home and Community Preferences of the 45+ Population. If we retrofit nearby amenities, then they can potentially age in place, invest in current neighborhoods instead of moving somewhere. We need to "amenitize" our sprawling landscapes. Most of the jobs created in the past decades have been in the suburbs, which can be redeveloped into complete communities by adding residential, retail, and civic uses to office parks. To spark potential economic redevelopment, we have to get creative. Policies, subsidies, and utopian planning created sprawl. To repair it, we’ll have to use policies and subsidies as well. Development is starting to stir again in some places, so we’d better redirect it. Low hanging fruits are increased density, mixed use, outbuildings, accessory rental units. Suburban zoning is the first thing that has to go. Where are some of the cities that you are working now that are being proactive about retrofitting suburbs and repairing sprawl? Mableton in Cobb County, Georgia, a typical suburban community near Atlanta, is writing a form-based code that applies the ideas of the Sprawl Repair Manual and SmartCode Module, with an eye toward multigenerational living and lifelong communities. The most important thing is to ensure the currently high numbers of aging residents are able to stay there. A new town center is shaped out of existing parking lots, making streets more walkable. We’re allowing single-family housing to expand into front yards. Public spaces are carved from leftover land. The senior facility, instead of being a conventional mega-structure, is fully integrated into the community, with a series of smaller scale buildings that can serve a number of demographics. The new code will be an economic catalyst because it’s creating a predictable development environment with incentives for faster approval and risk reduction. During the Mableton charrette, people were clear that they want a place where they can walk, as today it is dangerous and auto-centric. If the private sector provides pedestrian environments through new projects, then it will be a win-win situation for everyone. The master plan and the code were sponsored by the County, and hopefully Mableton will become a regional model. [caption id="attachment_1999" align="alignleft" width="460" caption="Sprawl repair in Mableton, Georgia. Credit: DPZ. Click image for larger view."][/caption] The Sprawl Repair Manual gives elected leaders, citizens, and developers ideas and practical tools for what they can do with existing sprawl. Sprawl types are normative; they’re repetitive. For example, you can pick any mall in Texas, and it’s going to look similar to any mall in Georgia. The solutions for redevelopment of a mall apply across the country. So let’s go back to jobs. What are some of the outcomes that Mableton is hoping for in their sprawl repair efforts? How do they hope to stabilize and strengthen their economy through adopting a form-based code and master plan that provides sprawl repair and suburban retrofit policies and tools? Age in place. Attract young residents. Become more competitive to attract and retain jobs, and the investments of the private sector, along with all levels of government incentives. It’s important for cities to understand that greenfield expansion will not bring more tax revenue, because of extensive infrastructure that is required to make greenfields happen. They will need to work with what's on the ground already - to repair it, to redevelop it, and reuse it. But places need more ideas of how to do this. New zoning codes are a start, and these codes need to guarantee excellent urbanism. This is how places will compete in the future. The best urbanism will be the winner - in all its forms - walkable neighborhoods, small, quiet towns, or vibrant downtowns. Cities and municipalities need to see the full range of possibilities. Under-performing golf courses can be redeveloped to become amenities for the surrounding bedroom communities. Suburban medical campuses can be transformed into regional urban cores. Commercial strips can be redeveloped into transit boulevards. Reduce, reuse, recycle, yes my son says this to me constantly. So how are cities funding these sprawl repair initiatives? It ranges widely from place to place: Tiger Grants, Development Authority Grants, Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) as in the case of Mableton. Business Improvement Districts and Tax Increment Financing are other familiar financing methods. But recent bond market movements and city deficits make muni bonds less attractive right now. Public-private partnerships can be considered, and have been successful in past retrofitting efforts. The Sprawl Repair Manual enumerates some of the already tried strategies but also offers new ideas. For example, cities that want to look at the suburban fringe and do sprawl repair can think of innovative tax credits for specific targets, such as malls, shopping centers and office parks that should be redeveloped so that transit might make sense along certain corridors. So, while plenty of unanswered questions remain, one thing seems clear: enough with the monkey-see, monkey-do. That chimp's gone and likely won't be back. We're dealing now with a whole new animal, something straight off the island of Dr. Moreau. Where's Dr. Doolittle when you need him? --Hazel Borys

Original Greensta: Steve Mouzon Gets Medieval on Sustainability

greenwaters08 — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:45:22 +0000

The Original Green is all about architecture and urbanism. But it’s also about reflection, living, inspiration, and delight. We can achieve sustainable living only when we “want to” or “love to” instead of feeling that we “have to” or “ought to” balance the needs of our society, economy and environment. Miami architect Steve Mouzon’s new book looks carefully at the building blocks of community, and what needs to shift to making living on earth a long-term proposition. Instead of repeating the cases others have made to quantify the drivers of sustainable living, Steve suggests honoring the Original Green of how we lived in the pre-petroleum era, while leveraging the technological and urban advances of the last 100 years. First the book identifies the top 10 problems about how we’re approaching sustainability now, and the top 10 underlying principles to any effective plan for change. Steve more or less sums up his premise on the individual building with, “The best sort of carbon neutrality comes from building lovably and durably, using techniques that allow the building to largely condition itself, so frugality comes naturally.” Steve’s been thinking through this idea for some time now, in his design for a neighborhood-friendly green home, the Smart Dwelling, for the Wall Street Journal, and in his award-winning book, A Living Tradition: Architecture of the Bahamas, among others. However, unlike his earlier more specialized works, The Original Green puts forth seminal and holistic philosophies to effect global change. The general framework of the Original Green idea is that places must be nourishable, accessible, serviceable, and securable. And that buildings must be lovable, durable, flexible and frugal. Each of these eight elements breaks down further into the constraints on energy and materials that must occur to achieve sustainability. Finally, report cards indicate who’s carrying the load within each of the elements and constraints. Featured throughout the book is Steve’s portfolio of photographs he’s taken throughout North and Central America and Europe. This inspiring view into the nuances of what is most sustainable about the way we currently live – and the depressing view of the flip side – is reason enough to read this compelling new work. Clearly there is reference to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building, bringing things current for the sorts of actions that must occur to safeguard such complete, convivial, compact and sustainable places. The book is written in conversational language that targets everyone, although the concepts apply to industry and government as well as individuals. The number 1 of Steve’s 10 principles required for any effective plan is “the Involvement of Everyone.” And this book is written to that point. The particulars: The forward is by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The publisher is The Guild Foundation Press, released May 7, 2010. At 288 pages, the 6" x 9" softcover is meant to be a handbook, containing 245 images. A recent short film speaks to many of the same ideas. American Makeover, episode 1, Sprawlanta looks at what will happen if we don’t change our course, and some applications of Original Green ideas. If you’re coming to New Partners for Smart Growth in Charlotte next week, you can meet up with Steve Mouzon and me. And get cracking on the Involvement of Everyone. -- Hazel Borys

The Revolution Will Not be Organized (But the food and drink will be pretty good)

greenwaters08 — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:33:30 +0000

It’s officially over. The flush era for planners and designers, when utopian villages and new towns could grow from dreams and piles of private sector cash? Long gone. Now comes the revolution. What the revolt will look like is under debate. And not surprisingly, the most intense discussions are joined by those who have always been arguing about one thing or another, even as they designed and built places that, at least in part, defined neighborhood and community character during the flush times. [caption id="attachment_2030" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Dhiru Thadani, making copies of his book even more valuable. A feat no one thought possible."][/caption]Over the weekend of January 28-29, the New Urbanist debate team reconvened on holy ground, Seaside, Florida, where the annual Seaside Prize for distinguished contributions to design and community building was awarded to Dhiru Thadani. Dhiru’s worthiness as the Prize recipient was about the only thing not up for discussion. [caption id="attachment_2032" align="alignright" width="300" caption="“The 20th century ended in 2010," said Andres."][/caption]Andres Duany refined his theory of an “impoverished America,” where the lessons of the mid-19th century -- “when the wealthiest country in the world was built entirely on brains” -- will be more important than the experiences of more recent times. Okay, maybe “impoverished” is not exactly the right word, said Andres. “We’re not poor, just no longer hideously wealthy.” But one thing for sure, he said: “The 20th century ended in 2010.” [caption id="attachment_2035" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Stefanos Polyzoides, left, pictured with Hank Dittmar of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment."][/caption]Stefanos Polyzoides, one of the few pioneering New Urbanists who can out-passion Andres, attacked the “pseudo-science or idiotic science” and costs of LEED sustainability certification. Better, said Stef, for the Congress for the New Urbanism to assign itself the job of creating a “description of core sustainability approaches” in 20 pages and give it away for free. What’s more, said Stef, himself a beloved member of the old guard of New Urbanism, it’s time for the old guard to step aside. He proposed that for the 20th anniversary of the Congress for the New Urbanism no one over 50 years of age be allowed to participate in the annual event. Andres then upped the ante by suggesting that the age limit be lowered to 40. That was pretty much the drift of the discussion through two invigorating forums over two days. Part Ivy League honors class and part New England town meeting. In between and after, as usual, everybody moved somewhere to eat spectacular food and drink good wine. (Will the revolution be catered?) The ritual debate was leavened by the presence of Shelley Poticha, a former CNU executive director and now head of HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPhdu8JVvJc] There are indeed tough times ahead, Shelley told the forum audience. But it’s also good to remember that the work New Urbanists have done to advance the cause of compact, walkable, mixed-use communities has paid dividends. Core principles of the New Urbanist effort now permeate the highest policy-making offices in Washington. And even if they don’t call themselves New Urbanists and even if they don’t yet know a transect zone from no parking zone, “there are people absolutely everywhere,” said Shelley, who’ve become advocates of repairing and rebuilding communities according to those principles. “They may not yet have the skills,” said Shelley, “but they understand. . . They are already there, and they are open” to approaches tested and refined by Smart Growth/New Urbanist advocates. The challenge will be to “start where people are at” and not necessarily where New Urbanists insist they be. Which is a revolutionary concept if ever there was one. It’s a good time, said Shelley, “to use our skills in strategic ways” to keep the conversation going and to facilitate the transformation of communities. To that end, what do you think? How do we move, as Shelley asks, "from this desire -- this vision -- to actual change on the ground?" --Ben Brown

Redevelop this, California!

greenwaters08 — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:01:23 +0000

How California will redevelop its existing communities in the future is up for debate. And, it's about time. The role of redevelopment in shaping our built environment came to its crescendo in the halcyon days of 2005 over Kelo vs. New London. Today, Susette Kelo's home sits as a vacant scar on business-as-usual redevelopment practices. Born from the sins of blight eradication through Urban Renewal, redevelopment’s application of Corbu's mechanical tower-in-a-park utopia led to the rise of Jane Jacobs and the re-humanization of city living. A seemingly positive turn of events, and yet this pendulum swing of community influence, taken to its less positive extreme, has bred a culture of increased NIMBY vigilante justice that’s questioned not only redevelopment, but every urban planning move in recent years. California's Proposition 13 initiative was passed in 1979 and led everyone to believe you can have something for nothing. Property taxes were fixed at 1% while costs for city services continued to rise, leaving redevelopment as the only tool for increasing property tax revenues in local communities. Meanwhile, everything else was on its way to Sacramento to be lost in a bloated bureaucracy. Redevelopment has been a double edged sword for the City of San Diego. An easy target of public demagoguery when successful, such as in downtown's Gaslamp District or City Heights neighborhoods, it's criticized as a back room deal tool for private developers to be handed public money. On the other hand, where deemed a failure, it's portrayed as a coarse tool wantonly scarring communities with projects either out-of-scale or out-of-character. Where Are We Now? Despite New Urbanism providing better context-sensitive tools, such as our transect and place-based designs and codes, redevelopment is still a relatively crude tool, mostly leveraging a community’s ability to assemble private property into master planned chunks, increase the land's value, and bond against the value to get buildings built. However, by being private property-centric, all new redevelopment puts pressure (and thereby angst) on surrounding properties to upgrade to the new standard, intensity or height only initially achieved through subsidy. A conundrum wrapped in an enigma. The use of government to condemn private property in order to raise property values (and taxes) has aligned mostly pro-business property rights advocates and taxpayer associations against redevelopment. Yet, with insufficient property tax funding to keep the lights on, redevelopment has been seen as a positive source of community building until recently. In fact, because of its success in bringing people back to cities, blight is now as difficult to define as "rural community character” and the role of the government in improving property values through stimulating infill development in what were formally unloved urban areas is in question. The nation has been trending towards living in urban areas over the past decade. New Urbanism is old hack, and the days of assembling an entire block of private property are over. What will we do now? I suggest keeping your eye on San Diego. America's Finest City Why San Diego? The city has a tremendous history of changing our nation's built environment in both good and bad ways. The first Mission built in the late 1700's. In 1915, Bertram Goodhue's reinterpretation of Spanish Baroque and Spanish Colonial architecture 'invented' a new architecture style that defined Southern California and led to the Art Deco movement that swept across our nation. During our 1935 International Exposition, the Federal Housing Authority unveiled Richard Neutra and Garrett Eckbo's vision of socialist housing subsidized by the FHA's mortgage insurance, which inadvertently led to the suburban sprawl we have finally neutralized 60-years later. Despite that one little screw up, San Diego notably re-introduced compact, mixed-use, and economically successful infill development with Michael Stepner's Uptown District, which still wins national awards to this day. So, assuming redevelopment funding is gone and we lose the ability to leverage private parcels into great higher tax brackets, where will be find new land to develop and revitalize? In San Diego, the new land is right in front of us. Our street sections are, on average, 80-feet wide throughout the city. Add mandatory 20-foot setbacks on both sides, minimum. Therefore, at any given section we have 120-feet of right-of-way (ROW) in four directions, with squat corner buildings vying with billboards, street trees, signage, lights and power lines for your undivided attention. The Four-Corners idea was developed by Leon Krier during his stay in San Diego last year. Combining this idea with Leon's Architectural Tuning of Settlements, we developed 16 distinctive character types of town and neighborhood centers to reconfigure mostly within the ROW (click for larger view): By 'wiggling' the street at appropriately located street corners, a variety of things occur simultaneously to increase property values: 1) Appropriate areas to revitalize valuable centers are usually located in the highly sought-after older Traditional Neighborhoods. The bones are already in place, infrastructure is sized to increase intensities and, urbanistically-speaking, they usually are in need of additional civic space and sidewalk/streetscape improvements. Suburban-sprawl retrofit is possible too, but I am concerned about their lack of lovability and infrastructure (streets and pipes) built for one intensity, thereby being less sought-after and more expensive to retrofit.

2) Civic spaces work well with civic buildings. Adding new civic buildings and spaces needs to be well-designed. Foreground buildings (Civic) in relationship to existing private buildings, oriented by the urban pattern (new and old), create a distinctive character. 3) Terminating Vistas create retail value, just like JC Penny's at the Mall. Adjusting streets to 'see' the new retail frontages, and parking spaces, creates greater value than only seeing signage for shops while driving through at 45 MPH. 4) Slowing Down Traffic helps you see the place. The architecture is more important because it is seen. The retail is seen, the parking is seen, the people enjoying themselves are seen. Slowing down traffic at key Neighborhood Centers allows for walkability, outdoor dining, and increased retail sales. Note the difference in business along Bird Rock's La Jolla Boulevard after the street improvements calmed the traffic greatly. 5) But, I want to drive fast! Not every street on every corner is appropriate for the cross-roads infill design. And the corner of two 'A' Streets creates a different design approach than an 'A' and 'B' Street corner or two 'B' Street corners. This has been the only criticism of the concept as people want to drive suburban speeds across our urban neighborhoods. Just as women used to be discouraged from riding bikes, it's possible our car culture can be discouraged from driving over 35 MPH through every neighborhood, and slow down to spend a little time and a little money in terrific neighborhood centers. 6) Condemnation isn't necessary. With the city adding land (ROW and setbacks), that adds value to a developer pioneering a new development model. Wiggling the roads create a destination in our monotonous grid, adding value to a few key areas without 'taking' private property and creating unrealistic development intensities. Importantly, street improvements are financed by a city's General Funds, State Transit Funding (1/3 sales tax), and Federal Gas Taxes. Smart Growth funding and the recently increased Federal/State dedication to infill development is reshaping our redevelopment future. --Howard Blackson

Good News: The End Is Near. Really.

greenwaters08 — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:28:33 +0000

More than three decades ago, sociologist Ernest Becker published The Denial of Death which made the argument that the fear of death, in all its irrevocability and finality, provides a unifying, baseline reality for humans. We may be overwhelmed and confused by an increasing number of competing “truths,” wrote Becker, but one truth cuts through all others: We’re all gonna die. Acting effectively in the face of that reality, denying its hold on us, gives us the chance to be creative, to be heroic even. Comforting, no? These days, a similar passion for optimism in the face of dire prospects might be called The Death of Denial. We are about to be freed to innovate, to become heroes even, by being stripped of comfortable delusions. Chief among them: Faith that somebody else will pick up the tab. It’s easy enough to point fingers at the villains we imagine to have cheated us out of our dream state: The lenders who encouraged borrowing for houses that people couldn’t afford, the Wall Street geniuses who hid the risks in bundled securities, the politicians who borrowed more money to bail out bad debts and bad management. Our collective frustration at all those other guys cashing in on our hard work turned into the throw-the-bastards-out tsunami that reconfigured Congress in the mid-term elections. So now let’s ask the all-important Dr. Phil question: How’s that working out for us? Too early to tell, maybe. But it’s not looking great for government workers -- including cops, teachers, and others whose jobs and pensions are being slashed as states look for ways to deal with the worst budget crunch in memory. Also not so swell for counties and municipalities that channel state money into salaries, projects, and maintenance on the local level. And it’s not going to get better for a while. Here’s how Governing magazine summed up discussions at its early February Outlook in the States and Localities conference this way: “Even as the national economy begins to turn around, (Fiscal Year) 2012 will be the worst budget year for states and cities so far.” Cities, which are used to the trickle-down effect of federal spending, aren’t overjoyed either. Governing headlines another budget analysis this way: “Obama's Budget Creates Rift with Mayors, a Core Constituency.” But aren’t the states supposed to be balancing their budgets every year, unlike the profligate feds? How did this meltdown happen so quickly. Well, the states, including many that send representatives and senators to Washington to shake their fists at the federal government, rely on the money the feds borrow to keep stuff running at the state and local levels. For most, the return on their citizens’ investment of tax dollars has been enviable. An analysis of federal spending received per dollar of taxes paid by states in 2005 by the non-profit Tax Foundation found that 32 of the 50 states got more back then they paid into federal coffers. Not news widely shared by those who get elected to government by denying its effectiveness. Wiggle room for the deniers may be constricting, however. The most recent poll from the Pew Center for the People & the Press suggests that even folks who consider themselves Republicans are getting nervous about Tea Party-driven proposals to cut government programs they like. “In fact,” said the Pew analysis, “across a wide range of issues, including federal spending on entitlements, education, agriculture and energy -- the spending preferences of Republicans and GOP leaners who do not agree with the Tea Party are far more in sync with Democrats than with Republican supporters of the Tea Party.” This doesn’t mean that Congress will read public uneasiness with belt-tightening polls as a reason to keep on borrowing and spending as we did in the Age of Denial. It just means it’s going to be hard to adjust to the new reality, and it’s going to take a while. In the meantime, many of the pots of money local and state governments rely on for the noblest of initiatives are emptying. Which means those of us who thought funding cuts wouldn’t affect how we live and work, how we educate our children and assure our families’ health and safety, have some adjustments to make. This is not altogether terrible news. Waking from a dream state forces us to take responsibility for living in a more complex environment. We have to stop pretending we can do – and pay – for everything. Just as the Tea Party tantrum will subside, so must all the other tantrums we throw, whether we’re pounding the desk for single-minded environmentalism, single-minded economic development strategy, or single-minded infrastructure initiatives. Instead of fighting to optimize one component of complex systems at the expense of all the other components, we have to think comprehensively and imagine integrated, cost-effective solutions. Credit some of the federal agencies, especially those reviled most by the deniers, for already thinking this way. Check out this just released publication by the EPA, tying market performance to Smart Growth. If there’s one ongoing process that suggests how this new approach might work in the real, messy world, it’s the evolution of the New Partners for Smart Growth conference, which just held its 10^th annual gathering in Charlotte, NC. It was my third conference over that decade, and I was struck by all the ways in which passionate folks from the private, non-profit, and government sectors were using the networking opportunity to work their way clear of the debris of denial. Here’s a video I did with three attendees – DPZ’s Tom Low, the CDC’s Dee Merriam, and Julie Mayfield of the Western North Carolina Alliance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_BKL5czSko And here’s an overview from Michele Warren, associate director of the Local Government Commission, which puts on the annual New Partners events. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaGX_wHi_xc Next year, the New Partners conference is in San Diego. The tough road out of the current frustration and confusion may be more clear then. But be forewarned, the way forward won’t be like the way we’ve come. --Ben Brown

"You're terminated, hippie." — Where does that leave local sustainability?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:34:24 +0000

Federal government to sustainability efforts: You're terminated. In a blockbuster-style showdown, the House Appropriations Committee started a furor this month as they proposed the elimination of HUD, USDOT and EPA sustainability programs in 2011-12, as well as suggesting the rescinding of dollars already awarded by the Sustainability and TIGER grant programs. As municipalities, counties and regional COGs scramble to find ways to focus the weak development market forces into more sustainable patterns of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, the possible removal of the federal support is discouraging. Looks like we're gonna have to go indie. [caption id="attachment_2118" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="No fate but what we make? Sorry, hippie, you're terminated."][/caption] In this new age of municipal austerity, forward-thinking local and regional governments are looking for ways to spend our remaining cheap oil in human-centric ways, instead of our auto-centric habits of the last 80 years. For obvious reasons. We’ve talked last week about being stripped of the comfortable delusion that somebody else will pick up the tab, and how new partnerships are generating Smarter Growth. We’ve been making the case for how great placemaking can save money and grow the economy. We’ve looked at urban retail downtown and sprawl repair in the 'burbs, and their wealth-building potential at both ends of the spectrum. Such conversation is good but, lest you get lulled into thinking that's enough, I turn now to three of my colleagues-in-arms, currently slugging it out in the trenches of community building, for some wider insight. Dan Reuter Land Use Division Chief, Atlanta Regional Commission Georgia is one of a dozen or so states that require a comp plan, thanks to the State Growth Management Law (1989). If Senate Bill 86 passes, comp plans will become optional, in hopes of decreasing short-term costs for local governments. Similarly, Florida’s Governor Scott is trying to dismantle the FL Department of Community Affairs. The DCA is credited with curbing sprawl, overdevelopment, and environmental degradation, but its opponents say it’s a roadblock to development even though it approves 93% of the local plans it reviews. This may be coming to a statehouse near you. Politicians often look at other states, and start borrowing strategies before they’ve been proven. And recently the most borrowed tendency is deleting planning and environmental initiatives, by taking away state mandates on local governments. Perhaps at the time we need them the most. Local proponents are fighting back by pointing to the results of planning and development for the past decade, and the large numbers of successful local actions increasing livability in the face of decades of low-density, automobile-oriented development. What other process might replace the current one? Ad hoc, short-term considerations will inform decisions. Citizens will have no choice but to vent at public meetings in lieu of an agreed upon local vision. When planning is successful it’s because local governments did have plans. Then regional entities can come in and help implement the consensus plan. Many proponents of the bill are from smaller local governments and rural areas who could have a reduced or alternate planning standard. The successful medium and larger towns and cities realize the exceptional need, and continue fighting for local and regional planning. Putting its money where its mouth is, on Wednesday the Atlanta Regional Commission awarded Livable Centers Initiative grants to 14 local governments. Scott Polikov President, Gateway Planning Scott and I were talking about cities, towns and counties who are implementing their context-sensitive comp plans by adopting form-based codes for economic development purposes. Getting ready for our PlaceMaking@Work webinar next month on the subject. Similar to the ARC, the North Central Texas COG has handed out $200 million to enable Sustainable Development. Here, building a boulevard instead of perimeter arterial gets rewarded. DPZ and Gateway Planning's Craig Ranch received $3 million from the COG to build a boulevard, which anchored $500 million of new development. If it had been put into arterial improvements to facilitate traffic, there wouldn't have been enough roadway capacity to anchor the retail and commercial. Richardson in Dallas, for example, has great cool urban neighborhoods, so this is where large corporations are locating. Gen X and Gen Y's are driving location decisions by corporations -- form-based codes allow intensity and location to make the argument to big business. About the feds, how can the current federal system authorize under a broken system anyway? They’re short funds in the reauthorization period. What can regions to do leverage limited dollars? Infrastructure decisions by regional governments should require some de-programming of the larger roadways, because the money is not in the pipeline to maintain them. It’s largely a modeling problem. Funds flow based on the regional congestion calculation -- the more congestion you have, the more money you get. Yet we know that it's not the lane-miles alone that can alleviate congestion, but also the development patterns. The MPOs and the local constituent communities need to agree that they'll let developers do walkable, multimodal urbanism -- reduce congestion and increase tax base. Travel demand models for the region and for the city says, "The level of service is broken for this part of the city, so we'll add lane miles." Allocation based on congestion levels is extremely inefficient. With limited dollars, we have to carefully leverage. In the past, we knew the Feds were going to continue to send us highway dollars, so didn't have to worry about growing tax base. Local communities should ask MPOs to adopt measures of effectiveness to shift a share of dollars to transportation development that encourages sustainable development patterns. Create a competitive environment at the regional level where improvements to the network through multi-jurisdicational collaboration gets extra credit. Then go back to the Feds and say that we're willing to do more with less if they’ll let us build complete streets. Form-based code is the DNA or the glue that makes sustainable development possible. FBCs tie the economics of transportation investment to the economics of the development outcome. FBCs aren't site-specific or project-specific. A form-based environment leverages limited transportation dollars. If a city or community is not leveraging FBCs, then they will not be economically competitive. Feds should reward communities that are willing to transition from sprawl models. Joe Minicozzi Interim Executive Director, Asheville Downtown Association New Projects Director, Public Interest Projects, Inc. I was just in Washington at a SmartGrowth America round table. One thing we all agreed is that the value of placemaking has been well proven and documented. People prefer walkability. Downtowns are doubling and tripling their real estate value. The taxable value of downtown Asheville, NC, for example: 1991: $104 million; 2000: $350 million; 2007: $552 million; 2010: $665 million. That’s just filling up existing buildings with vertical mixed-use and incremental infill projects. This also runs through the bubble. Thanks in large part to a number of people in the public and private sectors that understood the potential of the urban environment, and visionary folks like Julian Price, founder of Public Interest Projects (PIP) and Pat Whalen, President of PIP, who invest in architecture and programming with a long term view. Some people love to say that Smart Growth is too expensive. Is it? Where? Compared to what? Sprawl doesn't have to make its case. Yet Smart Growth has made the case exhaustively (750kb .pdf). In Washington, people are saying, "We need to talk about national policy, national policy, national policy." All of this community fabric out there that's broken has little to do with the feds. It's because of lousy local decisions. All our comp plans say brilliant things, but without the local zoning that can back it up. It’s amazing that we think that we’re a well-run government, but we’re not. To some extent, the current anti-government movements have some legitimacy, but they are going about it the wrong way. If government were a business, it wouldn’t work. We continue to approve projects that won’t pencil out for their public sector costs. And by that, we continue to incentivize the wrong thing. Our state, North Carolina, has adopted Complete Streets, and I don't see much practice of that in our neck of the woods. At the top level, they totally get it, but the culture hasn't changed in the departments. It's still a bunch of engineers who think in engineering sorts of ways. Title 23 is the law that the feds created to create MPOs – it requires multi-modal Complete Streets – and yet the MPO budgets don't reflect the law. When a WalMart comes in, they have a whole real estate department, and they can tell a better story to our politicians than our planning staff can -- or is allowed to. We have to change that. If the argument is financial, then planners need to understand and use finance. We've built systems where the majority of our population is now suburban. Those people aren't paying their portion of the real cost of the system they require. We're getting this transference through the government to try to cover their costs. And without new growth bridging the gap, we’re seeing a major shortfall. The states and the feds had their heart attacks last year, because their revenues are hooked to income and sales tax. Local governments are having their heart attacks now, because property tax lags the market cycle by 18 to 24 months. We’ve programmed ourselves that we can’t raise taxes, but neither can we pay for the services that we provide to low density development. Policy dictates that there be get a rational nexus between the cost of the municipal services and the taxes paid, yet our appraisal standards make us do the opposite - letting the biggest infrastructure consumers pay the lowest tax burden. We need to look at land as a product. How we develop land should be guided by what it can produce. Just like a farmer looks as his land and crop yield -- what’s our tax yield? There's an opportunity cost to each WalMart we build. For Asheville, it’s over half a downtown of opportunity. For Florence, it’s the renaissance core. And yet there are huge tax incentives to build big box, without generating revenue to the government. There's an accountability that needs to come home. We're getting what we incentivize. Some would call that democracy, but it's also bad business. It's up to local planners and officials to understand that local policies are facilitating local financial collapse. It's locally created and it can be locally changed. So what are we talking about? Right now, we often incentivize what we don’t want – sprawling, auto-centric placelessness. How do we start to incentivize what we do want – walkable, complete, convivial neighborhoods? How do we get there from here? Change our zoning laws to encourage sustainable development patterns. Change our transportation planning to retrofit poor economic performers, poor environmental performers, poor societal performers. And maybe even change our property tax methods of calculation. Which brings us back to James Cameron, who conceived the Terminator to begin with and who has proven himself remarkably adept at leveraging available sources of money to innovate towards new ways of doing things. According to Cameron, we'll make all the decisions in the next decade that will determine whether or not we survive as a species. No small challenge. But regardless of your personal beliefs about what that might mean, there's no debating that livable places require change from our current business as usual practices. A plethora of resources and support groups are champions of the cause. And are making it work, with or without federal dollars. Transect Codes Council. Form Based Codes Institute. The Code Study. Congress for the New Urbanism. New Partners for Smart Growth. Reconnecting America. Transportation for America. Urban Land Institute. US EPA Smart Growth. Smart Growth America. CEOs for Cities. New Urban Network. Original Green. Planetizen. --Hazel Borys

New Urban Development: Too risky, too costly. Not.

greenwaters08 — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:01:45 +0000

I just heard from a colleague who had a developer tell him something along the lines of: "New Urbanism is too risky and too expensive because, you know, Kentlands failed." That’s not an uncommon belief. What is uncommon, however, for anyone on the receiving end of such broad brush generalizations, is an easy response that fleshes out the finer, and truer, details. So here’s mine: Correct! Kentlands failed -- in the late 1980s, the second or third TND (traditional neighborhood development) project ever, during a recession, and when the option for the sale of its mall land was not exercised. Never mind the hundreds of subsequently successful New Urban and infill projects. Despite a dozen or two failures, you still have around a 95% success ratio. Not a bad track record for a new real estate product with just 25 years in the ground. New Urban TNDs are real estate and, like the strip centers, office buildings and hotels we’ve long become desensitized to, some fail. It happens. But, again like the office buildings, strips, and hotels, that doesn’t mean they’re too risky to do. Go to real estate conferences. The speakers like to say that it's the second or third or even the fourth investor that finally makes money on a real estate project -- and they are talking strictly single-use product. People make bad decisions (investment or marketing) or the market changes on them, neither of which are exclusive to New Urban projects. All real estate is risky. There’s a saying (that gets said a lot): "If you want to make a little money in real estate, start with a lot of money." Some developers and builders may operate at the top of the game but many more are in the business of churning out cookie-cutter housing and cul-de-sac subdivisions. Enter a product like TNDs, which are typically not low-end housing projects, and most developers and builders are simply not up to the task of doing one. You can’t convert an assembly line, mass production model to handle a product whose value is reliant on context and details (i.e., better planning, land engineering, green infrastructure, landscaping, building materials, etc). You can't fit square pegs in round holes. Let them go, they are the wrong person to develop a traditional neighborhood. Think in terms of cars. You want someone with a range from RAV4, to Prius, to Camry, to Lexus. Communities interested in their future need to look for developers and builders who can execute a TND at the level a TND should be. No one wants to buy a BMW with a Yugo engine under the hood. Another analogy I use is that some developers only do office, some only do retail, etc. That's fine. They shouldn't be forced to do industrial, or self-storage, or mixed use. As such, local communities shouldn't have builders and developers who don't do mixed-use be involved with mixed-use projects. I can say with certainty that I don't want a podiatrist doing dentistry on me just because both are doctors. The third thing is this: When seeing the houses at Kentlands, Bradburn, Baldwin Park, Hercules or I'On, many builders acknowledge their attractiveness yet stress that either they would never do something like that (read: they can't do something like that), or that such homes cost too much to build. I am here to say New Urbanism does not inherently cost too much, nor is extensive detailing inherent to NU. What can't be seen, what isn't being seen in those TNDs, are the market forces at work that makes a successful project a success. What my contrarian developers/builders don't understand is that successful, higher-end projects emerge in particular markets that can support excellence. Excellence in planning, design, materials, and pricing. It doesn’t matter whether it's a TND or a gated community with 8 approved named architects and high minimum square foot standards in the homeowner covenants. The developers of successful TNDs understood their local market demographics when they set out, and the design of their project reflects the realities they must contend with. This justifies their lot pricing, resulting in a price the market can bear and expects to bear for a good product. The builders also understood their market demographics indicated a demand for better materials, and that their old housing plans would not satisfy an unmet desire for porches and free standing rear garages. This justifies their home pricing, and this is a price the market can bear and expects to bear for a good product. This market explanation is further reinforced when home buyers upgrade from siding to brick, or from 90 degree brick to 360 degree brick, or from a cement walkway to a slate path. This justifies their purchase price, and this is a price they will bear and they expect to bear when showing off to friends. New Urbanism isn't inherently more expensive or risky. It's responding to the local market's threshold and expectations. No one is forcing anyone to pay a lot of money to live in a TND. A TND, a car make and model, a certain cell phone, a tablet computer, an RV trailer, they are all market choices. Developers and builders who tell me why New Urbanism can't be done are really telling me why they can't do New Urbanism. This reminds me of an excellent quote from Nathan Norris: "Some places are just not destined for greatness." I would add to that: "And there are those who are more than happy to ensure this result." Ignore them at all costs. --Lee Sobel Lee Sobel is the author of Greyfields into Goldfields, a book on retrofitting suburban mall properties into great neighborhoods.

Settle Down Now: Is community the new frontier for Generation X?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:56:15 +0000

In 1992, Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha offered a dire warning to a restless but aimless Generation X: “If we don’t take action now,” he sang, “we’ll settle for nothing later.” An anthemic rallying cry and yet, just ten years thereafter, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard was introducing those same listeners to “the sound of settling.” While the idea of settling carries with it some pretty unsettling connotations, its execution is proving nothing of the sort. In short, the settling down of Generation X, whose youngest members are now turning 30, may very well prove to be a pivotal baby step towards the construction of a more resilient future. [caption id="attachment_2194" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="From denial and anger to depression and acceptance: Zack De La Rocha and Ben Gibbard."][/caption] Those born in the closing years of the Baby Boom -- the founding punk rock generation -- may have set out to fight the power and dismantle the system but this head-butting sentiment inevitably gave way to what’s proven a far more definitive characteristic of Generation X: The desire to sidestep authority in pursuit of a more appealing alternate system of their own creation. It was, after all, the fuel that inflated the original internet bubble. Unapologetically idealistic and hyperbolic, the rise of the dot-com era served as a sort of sneaky end-run around business as usual. If the Boomers in power didn’t get it, why waste energy fighting them when the emerging internet frontier offered you the prospect of building a whole new world from scrap. To your own specs. Of course, it didn’t work out exactly that way. The internet panned out to be less an alternate system and more a compelling new wrinkle to the existing one. Companies still needed to make money and innovation for innovation’s sake, no matter how cool, was still folly at the end of the day. Reality bites. But that’s not the end of the story. What’s important in all this is that, despite the crushing blow of unrealized (or, at least, unrealistic) internet dreams, the defining motivations of Generation X endured. Our instincts still tell us to sidestep power, to make things work on our own terms instead, and nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of localism. Trends in governance and business over the past half century, with their ideological insistence on centralized efficiency, have reduced us to two extremes. At one end is the self-reliant individual fending for him or herself; at the other are the enormous institutions (both public and private sector) that provide our safety nets and facilitate our access to the stuff we want to buy. That’s where the power is. Meanwhile, the formerly robust human ecosystem in between -- our local and regional communities -- has suffered years of malnourishment. That makes local a pretty compelling new frontier. A new arena in which Gen Xers -- now grappling with marriages and babies -- can attempt to wrangle control of their own realities outside the imposing power structures held by the Baby Boomers, who always seemed more focused on advancement to greater and greater heights. That's what seems to be happening. A recent piece in World Magazine explores the issue, noting some key ripples cascading their way through our culture:

The baby boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) pioneered divorce rates and two-career couples. Many among the [Gen X] crowd .. rebel against that.

Many commercials seem less focused on achieving prominence in the world and more on the satisfactions of family and community. The popular Volkswagen ad premiered during the Super Bowl shows a mom giving her son a sandwich and the dad coming home from work...

The media movement two decades ago was toward more centralization, with USA Today and networks riding high. Now the hot area of interest is localism and hyper-localism, with new journalistic websites aimed at small geographic areas popping up and national media like AOL, CNN, and MSNBC seeding neighborhood publications.

.. Mobility declined throughout the past decade, with not even one out of 10 American households changing addresses in 2010...

Then, finally, the kicker:

[Gen X’s] emphasis on local control of government, local production and consumption of goods, and local culture...

That’s where things get interesting as an aging Generation X, settling down and establishing roots, begins applying their existing M.O. to the community vacuum they find before them. Interesting because the building of community--and the interdependencies that make it possible--doesn’t happen at 2 a.m., sitting solo in front of a computer screen with a bag of Doritos and a super-sized Mountain Dew. It happens two people at a time as ideas are debated and alliances formed. It happens through a process of negotiation where individuals concede their need for one another and explore equitable common ground from which to interact and collectively advance. Which is to say, it requires acknowledgement and engagement of other players, some of whom may stand in the way. And that’s exactly the opposite of how Gen X handled things their first time around. [caption id="attachment_2184" align="alignright" width="300" caption="We are all workers here. Damn straight."][/caption]Consider the ramshackle story of Braddock, Pennsylvania. The focus of a Levi’s advertising campaign and intense media interest, it’s become a cause célèbre for those exploring progressive trends in localism and the possibilities of rebirth at the community level. But what’s more interesting, at least to me, is its role as a laboratory for these exact generational conflicts. Sue Halpern, writing for the New York Times, dug into this nicely. John Fetterman who, at 41, is a dyed-in-the-wool, tattoo-laden Gen Xer, may be the town’s Mayor but his most notable accomplishments were achieved by -- you see where I’m going with this -- sidestepping the town’s existing power structure. This has brought him a lot of attention but it’s also fostered a fair amount of resentment. Enough so, finds Halpern, that his long-term effectiveness may be compromised. Our tragic dearth of interdependencies at the local level is without dispute, and may prove to be our undoing if future circumstances conspire to reinforce just how much we really need each other. That is our context and Generation Xers, now over 30 and shy of 50, are the ones in the position to do something about it. The question, speaking as a Gen Xer myself, is are we up to it? Can we transcend a generational predisposition to bypass obstacles and instead work together (even with Baby Boomers) to re-stitch the fabric of community or will such efforts ultimately prove unsustainable -- another bubble to be popped -- and fall victim to the whimsy of generational trends. It's no small question. As Philip Bess noted recently on a listserv I subscribe to, “I'm all for it, of course. But if it only lasts for twenty years or so, it's not going to matter all that much.” --Scott Doyon

Everything is Multiplied: Social media as tool, threat and total waste of time

greenwaters08 — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:51:23 +0000

So I’m checking out the debut of the Onion News Network and two things occurred to me: First, sadly for the Onion writers, cable news is inoculated against parody. What passes for news and analysis on most cable shows satirizes itself. Hence Jon Stewart’s brilliant strategy of curating and juxtaposing actual news clips for The Daily Show. Stewart is almost single-handedly reintroducing irony in the post-ironic era. The second thing that hit me was that social media as a topic for satire is similarly transcendent. The lead story on the Onion News Network was about how terrorists crashed the Internet by inviting social networkers to download, friend and tweet an awwwww-inspiring image of a piglet in rain boots. Bam! There goes the world’s communications networks. [caption id="attachment_2259" align="aligncenter" width="456" caption="That's adorable! And deadly. Click to watch video."][/caption] But what’s so outrageous about that? It can happen, man. Social network entrepreneurs are already pushing the envelope. Last week, ad.ly, which monetizes celebrity endorsements via Twitter, announced that by hooking up Charlie Sheen and a company that recruits interns (stay with me, now), it generated 412,000 clicks in 48 hours and attracted 74,040 applications for internships. Also paired on Twitter by ad.ly were Khloe Kardashian and Old Navy. Khloe’s sponsored tweet: “Want to know how Old Navy makes your butt look scary good? Ask a Kardashian.” See what I mean about the challenge to satirists? [caption id="attachment_2266" align="aligncenter" width="456" caption="Kardashian: Twitter + Backside = Marketing Gold. Will it do the same for you?"][/caption] Amid the craziness, I sense anxiety among many of the folks I work with over how they’re supposed to cope with the rapidly changing environment of social media. Here’s my advice: First, take a deep breath. Then, go to Home Depot. Stand in the aisles and consider the array of stuff, mostly tools and construction materials and assorted gadgetry to make the application of tools to materials easier. Now, think about this: Does the purchase and application of any of this guarantee a better construction job? Even more to the point, are you suddenly a better carpenter or plumber with the purchase of new tools? You still have to know what you’re doing as a designer and builder, right? You still have to have a plan and a strategy for implementing it. And you still have to be a good enough manager of the process to adapt to sudden change and facilitate the integration of a bunch of separate pieces into a coherent whole. Social media choices are rapidly overflowing the shelves of the communications equivalent of Home Depot. Choose the right tools for the right time and place, and you can accelerate productivity and add value to what you can offer customers and citizens. Choose unwisely and you increase costs without growing revenue and potentially undermine your brand. Bob Garfield, who enjoys bonafides in both adversting and journalism, writes about this regularly. Here’s a recent Garfield blog post on the topic. Let’s take this a step farther. There is an important impact difference between social media tools and the Home Depot variety. And this can’t be overstated. Social media are multipliers. Everything gets better or worse much faster thanks to viral networking. Good-bye, wiggle room. Here’s how I see the challenges and opportunities for people concerned with building and sustaining community in this new environment:

Web-enabled communications tools, especially Twitter and Facebook, are means to ends -- not ends themselves. They have to be integrated into broader communications strategies that are fundamentally unchanged since early humans told stories around campfires.
Key elements of those strategies also remain the same: Identifying and understanding target audiences, framing the storytelling in ways that resonate with those audiences, and leveraging stories to inspire action. This is an exercise in branding or brand support. Here’s what my PlaceMakers colleague Scott Doyon says about how that applies to placemaking, especially for municipalities.
The chief advantages of social media are speed and cost-effectiveness. Because of their viral capabilities, these tools can expand highly resonant messages from a tiny core network to a world-wide audience in minutes. So they can inspire action -- or resistance -- in dramatic ways. Consider the recent action in North Africa and the Middle East.
However, the speed and effectiveness of viral storytelling vary with the degree the message resonates. There's a reason that social media apps use words such as "like," "fan" and "follow." They are recruiting devices for ideas and personalities people are predisposed to have feelings about, whether the feeling is admiration or revulsion or bemusement at piglets in rain boots.
The combination of the advantages of rapid fan recruitment and low costs empowers insurgencies and revolutions. Social media are spectacular organizing tools for small, underfunded groups hoping to undermine or merely annoy established entities like governments and companies. Which is great news for revolutionaries and grumps. Not so great for governments, companies and other establishmentarian organizations, including those that are not necessarily evil but just have less compelling, more complicated stories to tell -- and, therefore, fewer predisposed fans.

Here’s the bottom line: If you're already having a tough time connecting what you do with what customers or citizens value, you can't tweet your way out of it. In fact, viral speed and lowered barriers of entry into the marketplace of dissent and ridicule mean more trouble for you. So: Before you add a social media specialist to your communications team, close the promise/performance gap. Create happier customers, who become champions and defenders of your products and services (including government services). Then you can tap into their social media connections to spread the word. If you want to join in this social media and community planning discussion, check out the National Charrette Institute’s March 23 webinar on “Social Media for Planners, Advocates and Consultants.” I’ll be joining a panel moderated by NCI executive director Bill Lennertz and including Julia Thompson, communications director for the Portland Office of Sustainability and Planning, and Jeff Wood, new media director for Reconnecting America. The webinar begins at 10 AM PST/1 PM EST. Beyond that, Scott Doyon and I will be conducting our own webinar -- Managing Message and Media in the New Normal -- on July 21. --Ben Brown

St. Patrick, Charles Dickens and the Role of Beer in Community

greenwaters08 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:51:45 +0000

This morning I took a moment to reflect upon the challenges and tragedy of the past year -- BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well, Aussie wildfires, the Christchurch and Haiti earthquakes -- until, as a Californian, my mind inevitably drifted back to current events in Japan and their nuclear radiation currently floating its way stateside over the Texas-sized plastic trash flotilla/vortex in the northern Pacific. And did I mention last week’s news on democratic revolution in the Middle East/North Africa? It’s enough to drive a guy to drink. Well, thank goodness it’s St. Patrick's Day, which means I can devolve into a James Howard Kunstler American Zombie, satiating my anxiety by eating cheese doodles, dressing like a hobo clown and watching March Madness down at the local! As mentioned in previous posts, I live in a great neighborhood that is magically blessed with both walkability and a healthy mix of uses. For those among the walkability faithful, that magic mix includes pubs, cafes and ice creme parlors. Notice that I used the term “local” above to describe my favorite neighborhood bar. That’s because I was fortunate enough to live in London during graduate school and immersed myself in their pub/local culture, which is notably different from the American take. The European Public House, or “pub,” is sometimes referred to as the “local.” These are mixed-use, mixed income community incubators that, in neighborhoods and villages, are the focal point of community life. Their long history is traced to Roman transportation engineering creating the need for inns at their highway interchanges (or crossroads). These inns turned to alehouses, which turned to meetings houses, which became the pubs of today. However, in the early 1800s, someone introduced booze and “Gin Palaces” took over, creating both creative fodder for Charles Dickens and illustrator William Hogarth, and great strife among the villagers. This led to licensing laws and greater government control. [caption id="attachment_2286" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Beer Street / Gin Alley"][/caption] Today, in large part due to the globalization of beer companies, English pubs are facing new challenges and have been closing at an alarming rate. But don't count them out just yet. Leon Krier’s new town of Poundbury just enjoyed the opening of their new pub, The Poet Laureate. [caption id="attachment_2287" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="The Poet Laureate, a recent addition to Leon Krier's Poundbury."][/caption] Back home, the American take on Bars is quite different. In most places, bars are single-use, demographically monocultural escapes from community, with an unmeasured yet oftentimes tolerated degree of drunk driving danger. In San Diego, bar strips were historically located near the beach and around college campuses. However, with urban revitalization, such single-use, monocultural bars are now landing in older, now hip and cool, neighborhoods. They are causing age-old conflicts and neighborhood strife with a call for greater government control. My neighborhood is fortunate to have had a history with complexity, mixed-use and bars. We understand that well-crafted beer goes well with well-crafted food and should be located in small building footprints on important street corners. We are learning to appreciate locally brewed beers and have cultivated a beer connoisseur’s ethos that turns a night out into a ‘tasting’ event rather than a drinking race based upon how well you can bounce a quarter. Combine this attitude-shift with a healthy lifestyle that’s since cultivated a new found breakfast and biking culture and voila!: Our neighborhood's prevailing cultural perspective measures pub establishments as enhancing, rather than undermining, the surrounding community. At least for today... The hip/cool success factor of my neighborhood has led to the monolithic college bars wanting to join in our fun. During our city’s Community Plan update, I worked with a local business group to submit an alternative plan for consideration. In order to keep the conflicts from happening in predominately residential areas, the plan is to allow for new pubs (alcohol permits) in a few complex, mixed-use, neighborhood centers. In addition, with parking availability controlling the building size, the existing small block pattern inherently limits the ability for single-use, large-format bars down our ‘High Streets’ (my use of another English word for an American Main Street). Therefore, in an attempt to thwart our own Gin Alley debacle, we’re recommending less government control and more neighborhood design control. [caption id="attachment_2288" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Thwarting our own Gin Alley debacle with less government control and
more neighborhood design control. Click for larger view."][/caption] A European religious holiday turned American debauchery event, I hope you all enjoy St. Patrick’s Day at your favorite local. Savor the time, place and people, as well as the beer. Spend time rooting for your favorite college team while discussing with your neighbor how to best distribute iodine pills, share rides to work and figure out how to maintain a source of clean water in preparation for additional and pending environmental emergencies. And please, walk home. They call ‘em “locals” for a reason. [caption id="attachment_2292" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Not only does the city of Decatur, Georgia, embrace pub culture,
they leverage it for economic development. Click for larger view."][/caption] --Howard Blackson

Oberlin, Ohio, and the Promise of Place: A Love Letter

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:46:51 +0000

What is it about a place that engages one so fully that years after moving away, a return trip feels as if you’ve never left? As if you never want to leave? It’s the elusive immersive environment we urban design types are always aiming to achieve. Beware. A personal reverie is heading your way, to help answer that question. [caption id="attachment_2329" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Oberlin, Ohio: Main Street in bloom."][/caption] This week, I went back to Oberlin, a town I moved away from five years ago this month, and was again revived and delighted. The reasons are countless. Great friends, family, real places, good streets, big ideas, inclusive people, beautiful buildings, expansive parks. But the reasons are also layered and nuanced. Oberlin’s sense of freedom and inclusion runs deep. The town was the last stop on the underground railway, and Oberlin College was the first to grant bachelors degrees to women in a co-ed setting, and to admit people of color. The subsequent level of creativity is extraordinary. Oberlin College Conservatory is world renown and puts on 500 concerts per year. Most of them are free and walkable or bikable to the majority of local housing stock. The Allen Memorial Art Museum is one of the top five college art museums in the US. The liberal arts college itself needs no introductions. Countless jazz, classical, and historical concerts comfort me with memories, along with Oberlin readings by Billy Collins, great modern dance, and thought-provoking theatre. Progressive dinners in the homes of good friends were made easy by the small blocks, fine-grained streets, and the walkability created by garages out back. I’ve lost count of how many dinners on our front porch were happily interrupted by the addition of friends. Kids were free range after a certain age, since the narrow lane widths kept cars from going fast, and eyes on the street increased safety. [caption id="attachment_2326" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Our century home had its garage out back, eyes on the street, and frequent dinners on the porch. "][/caption] I realize I’m connected to Oberlin for my own personal reasons – I fell in love with Tappan Square (Olmstead, 1914) as well as in Tappan Square, and was married at Fairchild Chapel, one of five local Cass Gilbert buildings. These were the beginnings of the Gilbert / Olmsted master plan for Oberlin, which was derailed by the Great Depression. Much of the plan was realized, including a tightly gridded street network radiating from the 13-acre square, with many similarities to Olmsted's plan for Stanford. The plan is in the archives of the Allen Art Museum, which is where my husband was the curator when our son was born, and brought home to an Oberlin century home. [caption id="attachment_2327" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Tappan Square here on Commencement, May 2005, is a gathering place year round."][/caption] Originally a streetcar suburb 35 miles from Cleveland, Oberlin is 40 minutes from the West Side Market, 45 minutes to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Orchestra, and 20 minutes to the airport. Oberlin’s population of 8,000, or 11,000 including students, is clearly well connected to some interesting street life, although as with most North American cities and towns, it’s a tragedy that the connection is no longer via streetcar. [caption id="attachment_2335" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Housing variety lets students live in apartments and lofts close to single-family detached. This Oberlin student, Gideon, was my son's favorite nanny, and an alternative fuels guru."][/caption] When I lived in Oberlin, I rarely drove, except for once-a-week sort of requirements. Walking and bikes were the primary modes of transportation for daily needs, and the gathering places were plentiful and engaging. It was a 5-minute walk from most residences to either civic amenities or the retail of Main and College Streets. The variety of housing types was wide enough to allow a bevy of college students to assist with our childcare from a close proximity. On the commercial corridors, vertical mixed use allows for an integration of services, and recent new developments encourage aging in place and some town-gown reconnection. [caption id="attachment_2325" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Walkable, mixed-used College Street, on Tappan Square."][/caption] So how could this town get better, anyway? The Oberlin Project. It intends to make Oberlin into a post-fossil-fuel based economy. I’m not surprised to see something so holistic, organic, and essential being born in Oberlin. A joint Clinton Climate Initiative / US Green Building Council effort, “The vision of the project joins the many strands of sustainability – urban revitalization, green development, advanced energy technology, sustainable agriculture, green jobs, and education – into an integrated response to the burgeoning crisis of climate destabilization, environmental deterioration, and economic turmoil.” Plans are underway to find a Managing Director. I never intended to live in a small town, moving in from German Village in Columbus, but Oberlin was nothing but delight. The music, art, theatre, friends, family, and general thought leaders were abundant. That was the software of our system. But what allowed it to function so well was the quality of the hardware: good college town urbanism that contributes to walkable environments, gathering places, and accessibility. Here’s to making it work for generations to come. Here. There. Everywhere. --Hazel Borys

Ignorance was Bliss: How my urban learnin’ almost ruined everyday places

greenwaters08 — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:44:35 +0000

For ten years I’ve been hanging around with a pretty interesting collection of traditional architects, planners and urban designers. That’s my job. Taking their inherent disciplinary wonkdom and simplifying it for wider appreciation. Doing so means I’m frequently on the sidelines as they work, and a consistent witness to their application of accumulated wisdom to all manner of challenges currently ill served by modern solutions. That’s put me on the receiving end of something of great professional value. And equally great personal annoyance: An understanding of what makes great places great. For the bulk of my life I was unencumbered by this burden. I could take a walk through my leafy, hundred year old neighborhood, see a new Craftsman going up, and think to myself, “That’ll fit in nicely. Good job.” Or venture down Main Street in a small town, eyeing antiques and odd finds and marveling at how intimate everything feels. I could even attend a downtown festival, soaking up the ambiance of people, food and music while never once considering how well or how poorly the surrounding buildings were contributing to the experience. Learning about civic art -- the artistry of city design -- changed all that. Thereafter, I looked at that new house and saw only its clumsy porkchop eaves, the scourge of unskilled, production labor. And its accessory building, dutifully drawing cars to the rear of the house? I could only lament its awkward siting, unnecessarily rendering part of the backyard unusable while, at the same time, failing to frame any meaningful sense of private space. [caption id="attachment_2403" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Pork chops, anyone? A former sign of the apocalypse. "][/caption] Oh, and its porch! Six feet deep?! Who were they kidding?! Eight feet would surely be better, and ten certainly ideal. Not to mention that, based on its proximity to the street, it really needed an extra foot in elevation. The delicate balance between privacy and access was totally blown! It got worse. Every T-intersection, once just another turn in the intricate maze of getting from Point A to Point B, became mourned for its failure to provide an appropriate vista. Or perhaps it did, in the form of a Target store! What was once the site of a great church or the home of a baron or even a simple background building offering a modest architectural nod to its surrounding context, was now adorned via lessons learned at the mall. What changed? The places I once enjoyed? No, just me. Because I foolishly learned, from a design perspective, how bad they actually were. If this were the end of the story, it would be a sad tale indeed. Another true-life example of the adage, “If you’re not outraged, you’re just not paying attention.” But thankfully, amidst the passionate designers and their admirable quests for artistry, were more measured voices, reaching out to pull me in from the ledge a little bit at a time. A growing number of urbanists who, over the years, began suggesting that we not let the idea of perfection be the enemy of the good. In everyday places, they stressed, everyday good is often good enough. [caption id="attachment_575" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Bob Gibbs, tellin' it like it is."][/caption] Early on, there was retail guru Bob Gibbs. I remember hearing Bob address the issue of towns struggling to revive Main Street. While many were making significant investments in streetscape improvements, much of the money was ending up in brick pavers and decorative benches, streetlights and trash receptacles. Forget all that, he said. Start by getting the sidewalks right. For the most part, people aren’t concerned about materials. Their backsides don’t really know the difference between a $300 bench and a thousand dollar bench. They simply want a safe and comfortable place to walk and hang out, with safe ways to get back and forth across the street. It’s the sidewalk, he argued, that brings people together, protects them from traffic, and facilitates commerce. Not the pavers. So focus on the big picture. Do a good job and let the details work themselves out over time. [caption id="attachment_2409" align="alignright" width="196" caption="Good is good."][/caption] Another huge influence was Ray Oldenburg and his classic tome, “The Great Good Place,” where he explored the magical chemistry of third places like pubs and coffee houses and how, even though they’re often perfectly average places by most measures, they're a key part of what ultimately allows community to flourish. There have been many more. All acknowledging the challenge that, even though everyday good may have historically been exceptionally good, our current inability to regularly meet such standards shouldn’t be viewed as a failure. That kind of collective wisdom is not relearned overnight. Today, in a world that enshrines one’s individual quest to do their own thing, the view of civic design as a shared initiative with shared ideas of what makes a good place, and a good city, is a tough sell. Agreements over arrangement, ornament, and public vs. private space, fine-tuned over hundreds and hundreds of years, do not become normative once again in a couple of decades. There’s much work -- big picture work -- yet to be done. There’s a reason people say that God is in the details. Because that’s the level at which our efforts can, but often fail to, reach their full potential. And yet we try nonetheless. Such grand ambitions are important, even vital to our evolution. But it’s equally important to remember that, while greatness is a powerful motivator, community can just as easily thrive in the presence of goodness. It’s going to take one good place at a time to reintroduce us to just how good good can be. --Scott Doyon

Measure Local, Share Global: There’s an app for that

greenwaters08 — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:01:45 +0000

Okay, so I have a little problem. Since 1985 I’ve been a committed, out of the closet, Macoholic. I wrote my architectural thesis on an Apple IIe. Don’t do the math -- I’ll be fifty this year. A couple of months ago one of my business partners, Howard Blackson, suggested we find a way to use our iPhones and iPads to collect the urban DNA we use in writing form-based codes (another problem of mine -- I’m a code geek). Understanding how to write standards that produce the types of places people love the most is my professional passion. So imagine my excitement on April 1st to find that Project for Public Spaces had a blog post titled “The Placemaking Revolution Comes to Your Pocket.” I followed the link hoping to find something for my iPhone that would be useful in our work but, of course, it was their April Fools joke. And it was pretty darn funny. But I digress. [caption id="attachment_2435" align="alignright" width="190" caption="Extracting the DNA of place: Cincinnati."][/caption] The first step in the process of place-based DNA extraction is something we geeks call a Synoptic Survey. We photograph and measure all the things that make up the character of a place we’re looking to emulate: height, setbacks, whether it’s a porch or a stoop or a shopfront, the type of yard (if any), sidewalks, street trees, parking and travel lanes. You get the idea. Then we translate the data into code that can ensure new development that's in character with locally-favored patterns and places. Over time, we’ve amassed a wealth of data on wonderful places all across the U.S. and Canada. For municipalities and practitioners working to retrofit conventional suburbia or enhance the character of modest places offering little in the way of built models, such aspirational DNA could be a tremendous asset. But how can we make it available? Much of our work is built upon the open source form-based code template, the SmartCode. It has grown dramatically in the last five years through the development of modules that can be added to the base code in response to local needs. Much like iPhone apps. With this open source idea as inspiration, we wondered, how can those of us who do similar work begin to share our libraries of information? So I started working on my first iPhone app. I have a good friend, Lawrence Abeyta, who’s a successful app developer. He cautioned me it could cost many thousands to develop something from the ground up that would do exactly what we wanted. He suggested using the FileMaker database, Bento, as the basis for our app since it’s so user-friendly, financially accessible (after all, we want students to be able to afford it), and adaptable. Another major asset of Bento is that it was written to be shared. It has a wonderful, swarm-driven template exchange and is designed to easily share both your templates and your libraries. What I've developed is the v.1 of a Synoptic Survey app. The images below illustrate how it looks on the computer screen as well as your iPhone. iPad 2 images coming soon, or at least as soon as I can get my hands on one of the peskily hard-to-come-by tablets. You can collect data in the field, including images from your phone, automatic GPS coordinates, and all your measurements, then bring them back to the studio and sync with your computer for whatever your final product will be. You can export into GIS and standard reports. But perhaps one of the most exciting features for us is the opportunity to share these libraries with others. [caption id="attachment_2438" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Synoptic Survey desktop view 1. Click for larger view."][/caption] [caption id="attachment_2439" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Synoptic Survey iPhone view 2. Click for larger view."][/caption] [caption id="attachment_2440" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="The accumulated DNA of the world's most loved places. In the palm of your hand. Click for larger view."][/caption] For centuries, we created deeply endearing and enduring places with little more at our disposal than observation and memory. Today, we still possess those very same skills. Plus, now we have an iPhone. Let the sharing begin. --Susan Henderson The Transect Codes Council has a website where the SmartCode and all its app-like modules reside. We’re hoping in time to have the place-based DNA library available there as well. The caveat is it will take a while to do all the data entry to move our existing libraries into the new format. If you’d like to try it out, drop me a line and I’ll send you the template. Feedback much appreciated. News of innovation and implementation comes often. If you like the idea of form-based codes in general, and the SmartCode in specific, and would like to stay on top of what's happening, consider liking it in the more modern, technologically connected Facebook way.

“Sustainability” is so ten years ago — Let’s talk “Resilience”

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:00:46 +0000

Deep in an April 14 New York Times story on the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami was mention of an iPhone app called Yurekuru that gives warning of an impending quake. The name, said the Times, translates into English roughly as, “the shaking is coming.” Before the March 11 quake, the app attracted 100,000 users. Now: 1.5 million. In a sense, living organisms could always be fairly certain that a shaking of some kind was on the way. Life on earth has been shaped by violence, by sudden upheavals and reversals of fortune for one hapless population or another. Foreboding is written into the human psyche. It’s only recently that we’ve felt entitled to be spared. It’s an expectation ungrounded in reality. But it has its good points. If we don’t believe that everything is out of our control, we are motivated to take charge of some things. We can organize ourselves to survive. Which is why, in the developed parts of the world, at least, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes and other catastrophic acts kill far fewer people than they did a century or so ago, even when horrific events take place in more populous areas. Maybe because the 200,000 death toll was so dramatic, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami challenged scientists who applied our modern assumption of a right to survive and bounce back from calamities to the study of resilience strategies. And much of what they discovered not only helped agencies and communities fine-tune emergency response techniques, it expanded the market for ideas scientists have been thinking about for generations to an audience made suddenly attentive by the life and death implications of their theories. Resilience thinking is systems thinking. Complex, interconnected systems – systems within systems – are reality’s engines. And they are made even more complex by ways in which their components adapt to new situations. Continuous adaptability makes the systems dynamic, always changing into something else. The change may be slow and predictable. But maybe not. Sometimes giant tectonic plates shift and the shaking comes. What scientists learned from the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami is that some communities were better than others at adapting to the sudden, violent change and bouncing back. They faced the complex adaptability of nature with adaptable systems of their own. They had responsive leadership networks that people trusted. They had developed diverse economies in which some sectors might recover faster and support the recovery of others. I was reminded of this over the last year working in Coastal Alabama in the aftermath of the BP oil spill. I wrote about our report, “A Roadmap to Resilience,” here. The one-year anniversary of the spill will be April 20. And the lessons many are taking away from the experience is that the ways in which many communities in the region organized themselves were not sustainable. Living in the path of potential catastrophe, whether from oil spills or hurricanes or a sudden churning in the world economy, requires flexibility and adaptability. And those attributes were in shorter supply than we imagined in a region overly dependent on tourism and on seafood harvesting and processing. Fortunately, Coastal Alabama may be applying the lessons of resilience in ways that might serve as a model for other communities and regions in the path of disaster. That’s a pretty broad universe. For eventually, the shaking comes. --Ben Brown

Gettin' Paid: Placemaking and the Importance of Compensation

greenwaters08 — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:25:53 +0000

Over a decade ago Andres Duany of DPZ taught me that, more times than not, NIMBY opposition stems from a sense that proposed development is not of equal or greater value to what would be lost. Tony Nelessen, the inventor of the Visual Preference Survey, confirmed this lesson a few years later when he came to my town and conducted one. Presented with images depicting environments of varying character, participants ranked them from negative 10 to positive 10. Images of untouched nature, like this one below, scored around a positive 7. Pretty tough to beat.

Images of development that was replacing nature, however, fluctuated greatly, even if they depicted the same density. Like this:

These results clearly showed that some types of development adequately compensate the larger community, while others are not just an uneven trade, but a lousy trade altogether (if you wish to see an entertaining catalogue of lousy trades, consider viewing James Howard Kunstler’s “Eyesore of the Month.”). Is it worth trading a positive 7 for a negative 3? I have found that looking at placemaking issues through this prism of compensation helps people better understand how to address their particular placemaking issue, whether they're trying to revitalize their downtown or simply select a dwelling that suits their needs. Here are a few placemaking issues that can benefit from a compensation analysis. 1. Pedestrian Propulsion: Humans are willing to walk longer distances if they are compensated by a safe and interesting walk. On the other hand, if the walk is boring because a place shows no signs of life (e.g.’s, gaps between buildings; buildings set back too far off the street; windows that do not permit walkers to see inside the building; etc.), the humans will stop in their tracks because they are not being rewarded for their effort. Steve Mouzon calls this concept Pedestrian Propulsion. Little to no compensation results in low Pedestrian Propulsion:

Re-envisioned, however, the area will result in the kind of high Pedestrian Propulsion shown below (images produced pursuant to the Dover Kohl downtown charrette by Steve Price at Urban Advantage). So, the City of Montgomery adopted a SmartCode to help lead to this transformation.

2. Downtown Living. Some people are pre-wired for downtown living while others are not. For those who fall in the middle of these two extremes, they need to explore whether their downtown adequately compensates them for its perceived inconveniences. For example, in my town many people would claim that downtown has more noise and artificial light, less convenient access to nature, a greater threat of crime, and less convenient parking for guests. To compensate for these perceived inconveniences, the city offers more convenient access to jobs and entertainment options while providing a more vibrant environment. Are downtown residents in your community adequately compensated? The office building below is designed in a suburban manner (suburban setbacks, and not designed for interaction with passersby) even though it is downtown. It clearly is not doing its job of compensating downtown residents with a more interesting and vibrant neighborhood.

On the other hand, this image below of Bethesda Row shows how the residents in this area are compensated with a vibrant and interesting streetscape.

3. Small Yard (or no Yard): Most Americans believe that bigger is better, including the size of your yard (assuming you have one). The larger lot is perceived to compensate the owner for its increased cost with greater privacy and the flexibility of using the yard for more purposes than a smaller yard. But, a smaller lot has the potential to compensate the owner with: (a) greater privacy if the dwelling is designed with a courtyard; (b) less yardwork; and (c) greater likelihood of convenient destinations due to the increased density. This dwelling below enjoys a wonderfully private rear courtyard due to the design of the dwelling into a principal building, two backbulidings, and a garage apartment.

Meanwhile, these conventional homes below, which are less than a mile away on lots which are 10 times larger, do not enjoy any private outdoor space.

Concurrently, this courtyard below at I’On offers a private rear oasis just off main street.

4. Small Dwelling: Like large lots, most folks aspire to larger homes even though they cost more and require greater upkeep. From a lifestyle perspective we have learned about the merits of smaller homes from Sarah Susanka’s "Not So Big House” movement, the Katrina cottage, and most recently with Ross Chapin’s “Pocket Neighborhoods” book. But, how might a neighborhood compensate those who opt for a smaller dwelling? Essentially, the key compensation is the public realm -- the area outside the house. Are you rewarded with restaurants where you can entertain friends, a theater (instead of having your own home theater), a gym (instead of having your own home gym), a wonderful park? My mother-in-law moved into this 762 square foot cottage. Being a widow, she didn’t need a larger home, and enjoyed having to maintain a smaller place. And one of the compensations was having this beautiful park right around the corner from her cottage. In addition, she enjoyed the YMCA and restaurant which were both right around the corner (she actually worked at the Y).

5. Master on the Main: If you ask a realtor whether the master bedroom should be on the first floor of a house or the second floor, most will tell you that it must be on the first floor in order to sell -- unless they think about the compensation issue. What if the purchaser is compensated for walking up the stairs by having a magnificent view? Here are two homes that were built side by side overlooking Lake Sweet T at The Waters. One has the master bedroom on the first floor while the other has it on the second floor. The realtors told the builder not to build the one with the master bedroom on the second floor (despite the wonderful plan by Allison Ramsey Architects, Inc.). Guess which one sold first?

6. Freeway Removal: CNU President John Norquist has been an advocate for promoting economic development in downtown areas with the removal of pedestrian-hostile highways. You can learn more about this “Highways to Boulevards” program at this link. The core argument is that the cost and inconvenience will be outweighed by the amount of redevelopment that will occur around the displaced highway. Here is an image of Octavia Boulevard in San Francisco that replaced a small interstate spur -- and resulted in the city being compensated by a massive amount of redevelopment in the area.

7. Parking Deck: A parking deck can provide the benefit of convenient parking in areas where spaces are limited. But, is that enough compensation? Should a parking deck also compensate the motorists after they get out of their cars and become pedestrians? If so, parking decks should contribute to the vibrancy of a downtown, but they cannot do that so long as they are naked; i.e., no liner building. While this parking deck provides parking, it does not compensate pedestrians or surrounding property owners with a vibrant and interesting streetscape. In fact, it has killed everything around it.

On the other hand, this parking deck below in downtown Staunton, Virginia, respects the main street by providing first floor uses that engage pedestrians and the surrounding buildings. The upper floors merely mask the parking deck, but that is sufficient compensation to keep this street vibrant and interesting.

Call it "Fair Trade Placemaking" -- complementing the quantifiable measures of economics with the qualitative ones people use in their ultimate perceptions of value. Got it? Then now's your chance to put your newfound understanding of compensation into practice, while helping me out with future posts: [polldaddy poll=4951399]

--Nathan Norris

Coding for Character: The Architecture of Community

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:12:49 +0000

My career as an urban designer has been spent, not surprisingly, doing what urban designers do: crafting plans and regulations for municipalities to build great places. A side effect of this, much to my wonderful wife’s chagrin, is that whenever we travel I remain 'on the job,’ annoyingly interrupting her shopping with some variation of: “Would you look at that terminated vista!” She walks away as I take 37 pictures of “the enclosure!” We willingly pay thousands of dollars to travel long distances to soak in the ‘character’ of wonderful places. My wife intuitively knows that the shopping will rarely disappoint, and I know that these places are invigorating, inspiring and flat out illegal to build in my home town. “Americans can drive from one ocean to the other, stopping every day for the same hamburger and every evening at the same hotel, as traveling in a straight line is no longer much different than traveling in a circle.” - Dan Gilbert

The roads to Sedona, Taos, Kona or just about anywhere else are paved with supercenters, office parks, and vacant strip malls. Placeless places whose future relevance rests on our ability to wrangle redevelopment, formerly vilified as urban renewal, in service of somewhat smarter outcomes. But newsflash: Redevelopment is just about dead. Here in California, the Governor is raiding local redevelopment coffers to balance this year’s budget. And yet, at the local level, we continue to hang onto redevelopment's past slash-and-burn approach to generate tax revenue to keep the lights on, fill potholes, and keep pension plans funded. Let’s be honest. Our cities are broke and redevelopment was unpredictable at best -- except in causing a lot of angst among the general public. And, despite Einstein’s definition of insanity, a majority of our nation’s Planning Departments have stubbornly continued to use the same Land Use-based planning tools over and over again, expecting different outcomes. These same municipalities have also separated placemaking responsibilities: Public Works regulates streets; Park & Rec regulates civic spaces; General Services builds civic buildings; and now, with planning departments being cut across the nation, it appears Code Enforcement will be regulating private development. It is time to bring out a new set of tools to help our cities grow more strategically in our new economy and re-focus new development to contribute towards a sense-of-place that is socially, culturally and economically valuable. 1. ITS A NEW CENTURY, GO AHEAD AND USE NEW TOOLS The rise of Form-Based Codes, from Denver to Miami, is an obvious 21st-Century planning tool that needs to be embraced by every municipality across the nation. To stop building sprawl, and start building urbanism, we need these urban-to-rural, place-based planning tools. 2. PLAN FOR THE COMPLEXITY OF NEIGHBORHOODS Urban Design Mystic, Leon Krier, defined the following basic elements of community. First, the city’s Public Realm is made up of Foreground / civic buildings and civic spaces (streets / churches / parks / libraries), and that the Private Realm consist of Background / privately owned buildings and spaces (houses, offices, shops). These realms are inter-dependent and shape our neighborhoods and towns. Neighborhoods are where we live, and they are filled with people and places that provides for our daily need to be healthy, social, and spiritual. 3. UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITY OF URBAN PATTERNS Second, the structure of the neighborhood’s pattern of streets, blocks, squares, plazas, parks, is either less formal / ordered, organic (the language of specific place, or Vernacular) or more formal / ordered (Classical), or a combination of both. The English Village is Organic; the American Grid is formal / classical; and Madrid’s Plaza Mayor combines both elements with a classical foreground civic plaza and a more organic background of private streets and blocks. 4. UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITY OF ARCHITECTURE Thirdly, Krier found that the character of the Architecture is also either less formal / ordered (Vernacular) or more formal / ordered (Classical). That means the buildings are of either a very simple vernacular or a very formal classical character. 5. UNDERSTAND THE CLASSIFICATION OF YOUR COMMUNITY’S CHARACTER

These elements allow us to begin studying Three-Dimensional patterns of great places (as well as boring places) through a legible pattern that blends the urban and architectural background/foreground elements with formal and informal elements to identify unique characteristics of each place. The image above is of the elements that regulate Santa Fe’s distinctive character. The study below identifies 16 general community character types. Ranging from the naturalistic Taos Pueblo to Beijing’s oppressively ordered Forbidden City, this 16 character type analysis assists in understanding existing places and to plan for new places.

6. WORK WITH LOCALS TO UNDERSTAND VALUES AND NEEDS It also appears that this place-less-ness has freaked people out, and how we talk to each other has suffered for it. Propose a new development and people will be falling out of trees to oppose it. In really nice places, they'll oppose it for fear that it will lessen their property values; where there is no “there there,” they'll oppose it fearing the next development will get something more than they got. As urban design professionals, we need to explain our principles and foster an inclusive, localized public process built first around the identification of ‘character,’ rather than responding to or negotiating with developer proposals after the fact. Call it “Fair Trade Placemaking.” 7. FUND NEW DEVELOPMENT IN LAND RATHER THAN CONDEMNATION The old redevelopment model pays fair market value, assembling and clearing a full block of private properties. It puts the pressure on the fronts of all surrounding buildings, increasing the potential number of angry neighbors who don't want to participate. But consider this: This is a new model that reconfigures redevelopment from one based entirely on private parcels to one built around the creation of civic centers. Using city land, it reconfigures large, formal intersections into an informal Urban Pattern that terminates the street view from four ways. This new approach makes conflicts with new development happen mid-block, backs on backs, and focuses change on creating complex public and private places. Rather than using condemnation, the city actually has skin in the game by putting land into the deal, and reconfigures overly-wide streets and setbacks at the intersection to balance the needs of pedestrians, bikes, transit and cars. This idea is intended to solve for infill development over the next ten years as we move out of this Great Recession. It is not intended for every intersection but is ideal for neighborhood and regional centers typically identified in city plans as ‘Commercial or Mixed-Use Nodes.’ In addition, these are usually located at Transit Stops and Stations on Transit Authorities. Usually, street improvements come from a city’s General Funds, rather than an earmark allocated to a specialized department, or Tax Increment Funds. Transit Authorities have State and Federal funding access to redevelop important sites throughout a region. CASE STUDY - MY LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD My neighborhood is a mostly forgettable but orderly grid of overly-wide streets with pawn shops and taco shops behind parking lots. The surrounding architecture is eclectic, informal modernist boxes. However, being adjacent to San Diego’s Balboa Park, there is a precedent for Classical and ordered architecture in the area. The Commercial Node is transformed into a civic space, instead of an intersection, making it a textbook American Square, set in the neighborhood’s best location, right in the center! The informal foreground urban pattern is in contrast to the formal urban background pattern, which creates a civic and mixed-use destination within the neighborhood that will capture trips as well as generate/receive trips. The Square is complex, with a transit plaza, paseos, sidewalk dining, fountains, and crosswalks/cars. The architecture is designed to be seen. When retail is seen, such as the Macy’s at the end of the mall, its leasing value is increased by 15 - 20%. The informal foreground urban pattern creates paseos to the parking areas, dignified transit plazas, and a properly enclosed ‘square.’ The square increases surrounding land/building values by 10 - 15% for being adjacent to a civic space. Purposely, the redeveloped intersection becomes complex civic space that is an amenity for the entire neighborhood. The amenity allows for increased density and commerce, attracting both locals and visitors. 25th Street’s place-less-ness is now being solved for purposely, creating a sense-of-place by designing for a system of complexity.

PLAN FOR THE BILBAO EFFECT The results are seen in Bilbao, Spain, where Frank Gehry’s Starchitecture, inadvertently succeeding in building toward social and cultural value, equates to economic value. A complexity of architecture and urbanism transformed a forgettable Spanish city into a world destination. Fortunately, the world is changing, and in the 21st Century we are now limited in our ability to build large-scale master planned projects. We have to enable long-term economic, social and environmental value created from building neighborhood-scaled places of distinctive character. For it is in that place that we want to spend time, linger, sit, and spend money. To address the economic and emotional anxiety that place-less-ness causes our society and economy, I recommend we use these steps to purposely build places of Community Character that reinforce our sense-of-place and, with it, our sense of selves. I believe it is community that will get us through the changes of the 21st century and there's hope in the fact that, through our internet-enabled smartphones and computers, we're more connected and linked to each than ever before. But it's how we're able to subsequently connect physically that will define our ability to endure and thrive. --Howard Blackson

Measure Local, Share Global, Part 2: From app to main course

greenwaters08 — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:30:09 +0000

Talk about geek love! When I wrote recently about having cooked up an iPhone app for collecting the physical metrics behind form-based codes, my intentions were pretty modest. First, I was just kind of giddy over how it was coming together and wanted to talk about it. But second, and more importantly, I wanted to get the idea out there and let the swarm take a crack at it, as a true, open-source initiative. [caption id="attachment_2640" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Takin' it to the street in Atlanta, Georgia.
Click for larger view."][/caption] The response, both on and off-line, was impressive, as there’s clearly no shortage of pent up demand for more efficient data collection. The question that remains, despite how much I continue to noodle with it, is whether or not others will enlist in their own efforts to move it forward. To that end, here’s the latest: We did our first field test recently at a charrette in Atlanta, this time with the much-coveted iPad 2. As expected, the size of the screen and keyboard made things considerably more efficient than the iPhone. However, there were, uhhhh, parts of town where the inconspicuous and not-quite-so coveted iPhone was an asset. As with all things urban, context is everything, so it was nice to have the choice. [caption id="attachment_2644" align="alignleft" width="224" caption="We did consider doing a chewing gum / staples survey in one location."][/caption] We began by using an architecturally-correct, all-black format with gray text, but quickly decided in full sun to opt for the less sexy black-on-white. Bento, the engine behind the app, offers a number of color schemes, so the result can be branded to whatever project you’re working on or conditions you're working in. And the clipboard format amused me with its hint of nostalgia for all the past surveys we’ve done manually. Someone made the comment after my initial post of how important it is to pinpoint location, something that, given the inherent GIS integration, works quite well on both iPhone and iPad. They automatically locate your position, and you can even tweak it further by moving the pin. Take a look at this video which, in all its pedagogical glory, offers a walkthrough. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfGYPha_hp4]

As a dedicated Macophile, another comment I got proved a bit more challenging: When will there be a version for Android? I hope someone in the PC world will pick up the ball on that request, since this is all about the swarm’s response to a problem at hand. My flippant response is “Just get an iPhone.” Not because I’ve consumed too much of the Kool-Aid but because, currently, you can only import the template to your device by having Bento running on your desktop. And Bento is Mac-only software. Finally, for the most ardent of gadget and gizmo fans, there was the desire to hold something in their hands and really get a feel for how it works. To this, I’m happy to report that there’s just such an opportunity brewing for the rapidly approaching CNU 19 in Madison, Wisconsin. On June 1, we’ll be leading “SmartCode Calibration SWAT Team,” an intensive, CNU 202 session. Judith Bell of DPZ, Andrew Zitofsky of Dover Kohl, and I will shepherd participants through a Synoptic Survey and analysis of local Transect zones as a part of the calibration training process. We’ll share the template with anyone to wants to try it out, and it should be very helpful to use as a group and assess where it needs further improvement. Of course, clipboards and paper forms will be available as well. Want a taste? The last day for reduced-rate registration is May 6. An interesting track at CNU this year is “Implementing the New Urbanism: Design and Economics.” It has a number of sessions dealing with regulatory obstacles and, of course, form-based codes are a critical part of the solution. They’re particularly important when legalizing suburban retrofit and redevelopment. So, although it’s good nerdy fun to use the app, the real gratification is served up with the thought that it could, in some small way, help ease us through our social, environmental, and financial malaise, so eloquently described by Ben Brown in “Good News: The End Is Near. Really.” That's the main course before us. Now's the time to dig in. See you in Madison. --Susan Henderson News of innovation and implementation comes often. If you like the idea of form-based codes in general, and the SmartCode in specific, and would like to stay on top of what's happening, consider liking it in the more modern, technologically connected Facebook way.

Form-Based Codes? A picture’s worth a thousand words.

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 May 2011 04:01:50 +0000

If the attendees list of Placemaking@Work, my monthly webinar series, is any indicator, we’re increasingly united in our desire to improve the places we call home, wherever those places might be. Last month, I had participants from Hawaii to Russia, from British Columbia to Saudi Arabia, and many points in between. The common thread among these seekers is their search for tools and tactics that have proven effective. And increasingly dominating these conversations are form-based codes. [caption id="attachment_2717" align="alignright" width="300" caption="It's not just people talking about form-based codes. It's an increasing number gettin' 'em done. Click for larger view."][/caption] In preparation for a recent session on the form-based SmartCode, I started a #SmartCode tweetchat to get in the mood, and to engage the question I seem to receive at every dinner or party or event I attend: “Why form-based codes?” It’s a valid question. People often tell me, “Things aren't so bad around my town. We're comfortable enough. Why would we want to consider the idea of a form-based code? Why are you guys so high on all this stuff?” The simple answer is that our passion is helping communities become more economically competitive, socially connected and environmentally sensitive and, time and time again, it’s existing single-use zoning that stands in their way. In response, form-based codes have emerged as a useful remedy, effectively legalizing community visions and serving as a bridge between their current conditions and the goals they're trying to reach. So, that’s the why, but there’s still the question of what. What are form-based codes? And how do they work? To easily illustrate these ideas – the work of a lot of people over time, including the Transect Codes Council and the Form-Based Codes Institute – I talked to my brother and fellow urbanist, Steve Mouzon, about using some of his photos. Here they are. And, assuming a picture truly is worth a thousand words, they’re sparing you a 10,000 word post. You’re welcome. [caption id="attachment_2690" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Above: A form-based code (FBC) is a blueprint for places where true community, in all its complexity, can prosper. [caption id="attachment_2691" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Above: To cities, planners, developers, and citizens, FBCs offer choice, quality of life, economic opportunity, environmental stewardship, and adaptability. [caption id="attachment_2695" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] FBCs support community vision, local character, open lands conservation (as shown above), transit options, and walkable mixed-use neighborhoods. [caption id="attachment_2696" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Above: FBCs prevent wasteful sprawl development, automobile-dominated streets, empty downtowns, and a hostile public realm. [caption id="attachment_2697" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Above: The SmartCode is a form-based, unified land development ordinance for planning and urban design. [caption id="attachment_2698" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Above: As a form-based code, it strongly addresses the physical form of building and development. Conversely, conventional codes focus mostly on use & density. [caption id="attachment_2699" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Above: The SmartCode is transect-based, fostering communities with a continuous cross-section of habitats, from rural wilderness to urban city core. [caption id="attachment_2700" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] The transect is divided into Transect Zones, each of complex character. This makes for diverse building types (as demonstrated above), thoroughfare types, and civic spaces. [caption id="attachment_2701" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Above: The six primary Transect Zones are T-1 Natural, T-2 Rural, T-3 Sub-Urban, T-4 General Urban, T-5 Urban Center, and T-6 Urban Core. [caption id="attachment_2702" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] The SmartCode addresses development patterns at three scales of planning: Regional; Community; and, as shown above, Block and Building. [caption id="attachment_2694" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Urbanist and Author, Steve Mouzon."][/caption] I talked further with Steve about his photos, which are as smart as they are telling. Each one is its own database. According to Steve, “The great thing about every photo I post on Zenfolio is they’re fully tagged with keywords. This is possible because IPTC metadata can now be embedded in every photo. Here's the structure of my keywords. Here's a partial list of over 10,000 keywords I use. “What this means is that if you're looking for terminated vistas, for example, you can easily find them. Want T4 images, both from the air and the ground? No problem. Or people walking. Or people walking a dog. Want a building part like a porch? A building type like a hotel? Images of sprawl? A River? No problem. I'm even starting to catalog Light Imprint. Have some fun... give it a test run!” Fun, indeed! So, back to the original question of why form-based codes. Places, just like people, are dynamic, changing, growing, shrinking, refining, evolving. But the character of most places is unique, and challenged – rather than protected – by its current laws. Just like a good friend helps you become more of who you really are, good development laws code for character. And that helps places grow in authentic patterns, building walkable community – instead of placeless strips and pods for fast cars, the James Howard Kunstler Home from Nowhere sort of place. A great form-based code extracts the DNA of a place and allows it. By right. And I don’t need a thousand words to say that making it easier for developers to build the things you want is smarter than making sprawl their path of least resistance. Unless, of course, sprawl is what your community really wants. --Hazel Borys News of innovation and implementation comes often. If you like the idea of form-based codes in general, and the SmartCode in specific, and would like to stay on top of what's happening, consider liking it in the more modern, technologically connected Facebook way.

The Future of Planning: Going meta

greenwaters08 — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:21:00 +0000

“In a world where the peddlers of invention dominate progressive discourse, a willingness to acknowledge--let alone heed--the lessons of history and tradition is a truly radical act.” --Scott Doyon Check the wiki-hip Urban Dictionary (or watch an episode of Community on NBC) and you’ll find the term meta’s common usage on the street is “to characterize something that is characteristically self-referential.” Consult a more conventional dictionary and you’ll see this derived from its earlier (as well as current) use as a prefix meaning “beyond, about.” That is, taking a subject to a higher level. As a stand-alone term now, it’s typically applied to works of culture -- television, music, film and art. But I suggest we expand that usage because, to me, it’s also the best means of expressing the challenge facing anyone concerned about our urban future. In essence, planning needs to move on. As both a discipline and an action, it needs to better address today’s problems with today’s tools, in the harsh light of today’s resources. And, first and foremost, it needs to do so by referencing the wisdom of our urban traditions. It needs to go meta. [caption id="attachment_2743" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Poster child for the future of planning."][/caption]Conceptually speaking, this charge isn’t altogether unspoken in planning circles. Little by little, urban advocates coming head to head with the new normal are finding it’s not all that new after all. Just as the “new urbanism” was really only new to generations raised on subdivisions and strip malls, and despite our narcissistic need to feel like we’re the first people to ever experience something, the “new normal” is not altogether different from what centuries of previous generations thought of simply as “normal.” There’s less money to get things done, yet we’ve built thriving, wonderfully livable towns and cities in the past with less relative wealth. There’s the prospect of energy scarcity yet, in reality, the idea of cheap, abundant energy has most likely been but a momentary blip on an otherwise long-term trajectory of limited resources. There’s the environmentally and economically toxic fallout of our overly-consumptive lifestyles. And yet, we’ve somehow managed historically to find value and happiness in simpler experiences and possessions. As Steve Mouzon champions with his Original Green, solutions to many of our current predicaments are embedded in our urban traditions, if we just take the initiative to unlock them. But there’s a problem that goes with such solutions: they’re not plug-n-play. In many cases, they need to be forcibly inserted into our modern world by those with the time, creativity and flexibility to figure out how. That’s the crux of why planning needs to evolve. Because there are certain aspects of our present condition -- especially as it relates to technology and pop culture -- that are exclusive to our time and place. Modern times seek modern tools, best wielded by those willing to embrace and master them. Steve Mouzon may be one of those people but, it must be acknowledged, the bulk of 'em are disproportionately young. That’s why I see such promise in the current breed of young urbanists: they’re carrying less baggage from the era of illusion. They’re good at working together. They excel at building communities of shared interest. And they’re used to stripped down, technology-enabled, DIY solutions. In an era of seemingly new realities, they’re the ones who get it. You can see it as the Next Generation of New Urbanists spawns a new era of discourse and debate at CNU 19 with their Open Source Congress and AuthentiCity design competition. Or in the efforts of Strong Towns, where Charles Marohn and company deliver harsh economic medicine to any community willing to take it. You can even don your Che Guevara beret and embrace the screw-the-system splendor of Tactical Urbanism, an open source book from Mike Lydon, Dan Bartman, Ronald Woudstra and Aurash Khawarzad, or check out “Low-Cost & High-Value Ideas for Cities” on Facebook. There's no shortage of examples and yet it's still just the tip of the iceberg. The bigger picture is a literal, generation-spanning army of potential allies -- professionals, activists, non-profits, for-profits, public servants and everyday citizens -- with the tools to connect and the wherewithal to re-chart the course of urban planning. Referencing the past, wrangling the present, taking on the future. With relative comfort. I may not meet their criteria age-wise, being five years beyond NextGen's loose definition as those under 40, but I’m more than with them ideologically. As are many others with a realist's bent and similar love and concern for the places we share. Thus, if age has imparted me with any insight worthy of passing along to those just now getting their feet wet, let it be this: Go meta, young urbanist. Go meta. --Scott Doyon

Get Real or Get Rich: Lessons for an era of limited trust

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:15:06 +0000

It’s a great time to be really rich or really smart. It’s never hurt, of course, to be able to tap into big bucks or big brains. It’s just that penalties for having access to neither are rising dramatically. What got me to thinking in this direction was an exhaustive investigative report in last Sunday’s Washington Post. The headline: “Million-Dollar Wasteland: An ongoing investigation of how HUD has failed affordable housing.” In the Front Page days of journalism, this would fall under the category of “exposé.” Charged with serving America’s affordable housing needs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), “has largely looked the other way,” said the Post, while “nearly 700 projects awarded $400 million have been idling for years. . . The result is a trail of failed developments in every corner of the country.” What followed was a region-by-region analysis of HUD’s shortcomings in project oversight, shortcomings that costs tax payers tens of millions of dollars and deprived the neediest people in our country of access to housing that could help them participate more fully in community life and economic opportunity. The part of me trained in two decades of newspaper reporting recognized a heck of a piece of public service journalism. But the part invested over the last decade in arguing for equitable community development was bummed out. I knew what would happen next: Reactions to the news would be divided into the two extreme political camps. Those on the right would see more evidence of the failure of government to do anything right and call for hacking away even more at HUD’s budget. Those on the left would see the failure of adequate oversight and call for more regulations. Either way, policy and program paralysis. Sure enough, by Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans in Congress were calling for hearings and investigations. For politicians and interest groups with stakes in the next election, it’s win/win. For the rest of us, the risks of poverty and ignorance just went up. The problem is not with the Post’s exposure of HUD’s problems with at least this limited portfolio of projects. The problem is our current political environment oversaturated with cynicism. We’re full up with distrust. And the higher the barrier of distrust, the tougher it is to ramp up efforts to organize effectively beyond family and tribal levels. I hit on this topic in a previous post about zoning as spiritual practice. And we’ll return to the trust topic soon, since it’s become a major part of the conversation in international development and finance.

The discussion has been building. The April, 2010 survey of attitudes from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press predicted the angry mood of last fall’s election and the continuing cynicism of the electorate. It’s worth quoting directly from the Pew analysis from last year, especially when it comes to ways distrust is infecting citizen-government relations all the way down to the local level: “Rising criticism about government’s personal impact is not limited to the federal government. Just 42% say their state government has a positive effect on their daily lives, down from 62% in October 1997. There is a similar pattern in opinions about the impact of local government – 51% now see the impact of their local government as positive, down from 64% in 1997.” People who don’t trust government at any level won’t support policies that help communities and regions dig themselves out of the trouble they’re in, let alone embrace opportunities to improve life for families and businesses in the long haul. Ironically, strategies to provide a framework for opportunity on the community and regional levels are embedded in the most ambitious programs of the very federal agencies most distrusted and most under attack. There’s no better example of such programs than the Sustainable Communities Initiative, combining goals of HUD, the EPA and DOT. To see how one regional recipient in that program, Greater Kansas City, has organized itself to take advantage of the opportunity, read today’s post by David Warm, executive director of the Mid-America Regional Council on the Citiwire blog. It appears that Greater Kansas City, along with other SCI grant applicants, have done a pretty good job of setting themselves up to leverage limited federal dollars to do ambitious work on the level most likely to improve quality of life and economic opportunity for the most people in the shortest timeframe. That would be the regional level. That’s where smarts will pay off. But it ain’t easy. Warm’s rundown on what it’s taken to align the Kansas City region to take advantage of the SCI grant will intimidate most local and regional planners. The alternative to ramping up to intelligent regional thinking is to have increasingly enormous resources at the level of organization that still enjoys trust. Unfortunately, as we can see by the Pew polls and other indicators, the boundaries of trust are contracting dangerously. For most of human existence and in most of the world now, control of the assets necessary for a high quality of life and economic opportunity have been in the hands of the rich and powerful. Those folks haven’t had much trouble achieving organizational effectiveness with like-minded partners or with influencing government to protect their assets and assure continued opportunities. It’s the rest of us who are enthralled with myths of individualism and disabled by distrust. So the best advice is to get better fast at scaling up networks of trust. Or get rich. Really, really rich. --Ben Brown

Well, Bless Their Hearts: Now can we move on?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:25:20 +0000

Next week, the 19th annual gathering of New Urbanism cultists takes place in Madison, Wisconsin. I’m one of them, and I’m sorry not to be making the Congress this year. This has the feel of one of those turning-point moments. First, the good part. A lot more folks have bought into the New Urbanist perspective for building and enriching community through thoughtful design. Federal and state policy-makers, even the slow-to-change Department of Transportation types, now talk about integrating land use and transportation. And requests for proposals from regional planning agencies routinely reference principles embodied in the Charter for the New Urbanism, even if the authors of those RFPs are clueless as to where they got the ideas. So there’s reason to celebrate. Still, as the evidence mounts that we’ve got piles of work to do, we’re too easily distracted by food fights that sap energy and waste time. It’s a by-product of so much success, I suppose, that, as a country, we can waste so much time arguing over whether or not human activity has an effect on climate, over whether or not God means for us to base our health and prosperity on an unlimited supply of cheap oil, over whether or not the President of the United States is a Kenyan. Only people with the means to keep buying their way out of the consequences of bad decisions can afford the luxury of serial stupidity. As I’ve argued, it’s a good time to be rich. We can ridicule the current national infantilism. But the truth is, New Urbanists have their own tantrums, if on a significantly less damaging scale. Take, for instance, the determination to yank irrelevant academic arguments into the broader arena of planning policy. Maybe because there are so many New Urbanist architects who’ve lost the love of their old professors by designing for people instead of other architects, there’s a yearning for respect from schools of design. Ain’t gonna happen. Like many of the bubble-dwellers in the current national debate, the academics imagine themselves as standard-bearers of a Lost Cause. Ayn Rand’s most famous character, architect Howard Roark, would be at home with either contingent. So why are some of the most gifted thinkers in New Urbanism wasting time debating people no one has ever heard of about issues no one cares about? [caption id="attachment_2790" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Step right up, folks, for the most distracting show on earth!"][/caption]For over a year now, Andrés Duany, co-founder of New Urbanism and one of the movement’s big thinkers, has been bored with merely leading talented pros in reimagining American communities. So he’s picked a fight with academic proponents of Landscape Urbanism, who are advancing a view of design that privileges landscape and landscape architects over other organizing principles of community – and particularly urban – design. Thanks to the generosity of the Lincoln Land Institute of Land Policy, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, I got to hang around with journalists, authors and others at a Forum on Land and the Built Environment in April. So I asked Jerold Kayden of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design — which is imagined by New Urbanists as coven headquarters for the practice of anti-New Urbanist dark arts — why Landscape Urbanism bugs Andrés so much. “Maybe,” said Kayden, “because (it’s feared that) the adjective ‘landscape’ will replace the adjective ‘new’ in New Urbanism.” Really? Is that it? Martin Pedersen, executive editor of Metropolis magazine, was at Harvard for the Forum, as well. Pedersen is clever enough to host these occasional flare-ups of New Urbanist pique that give modernist architects and others more attention than they’d otherwise earn. Here’s a snippet from a video interview with Pedersen about Landscape Urbaism, Andrés and the inevitable march towards the accommodation of once-competing ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPR1cxYhCho It’s sort of what New Urbanism does, as Duany himself reminds everyone: There can be no good idea that lasts for long outside of New Urbanism, because New Urbanism will steal it and massage it into the movement’s evolving package of potential solutions for bad ideas. In the final plenary at the Congress on June 4, Duany and Harvard’s Charles Waldheim will square off on Landscape Urbanism. Maybe this will satisfy the food fight fans, and we can move on to the work that attracts most people to New Urbanism. Or maybe not. --Ben Brown

CNU 19: The Uprising

greenwaters08 — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:57:23 +0000

Like my anniversary, family birthdays and selected holidays, the Congress for the New Urbanism is an annual ceremony that I faithfully attend. My lovely wife would confirm that I never question the necessary time and money spent to participate in the congresses. And, as expected, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at CNU 19 in Madison, Wisconsin, even though I had to leave a couple days in... It was during a late night conversation with Steve Mouzon about marketing when I realized that I took a ceremonial approach to the Congresses. The demarcation, from when the congresses went from being a professional networking event to a more personal ritual, occurred during the CNU 13 — Pasadena. Because I was on the host committee helping to organize and coordinate the event, I spent the entire congress busily trying to keep the circus tent up and the quality of the event worthy of everyone’s time and money. It was while I was scurrying around Pasadena’s convention center, touring a bus through San Diego, and missing pretty much every session when I finally understood what Douglas Duany meant when he said, “the congress actually occurs in the hallways between the sessions.” [caption id="attachment_2799" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="The real congress, hiding in plain sight."][/caption] Those hallways are where I met my colleagues, friends, and collaborators. It is where we made dinner/drinks arrangements, discussed projects, and took a few minutes to shake hands and say hello. Like walking down main street in new urban-topia, I bumped into people I knew, admired, and had been wanting to meet. It's these moments that I enjoy as much as learning the latest techniques in the sessions, if not more. Because I can buy the book on the new technique, but I can’t buy the opportunity to watch Ian Rasmussen groove out as a DJ. [caption id="attachment_2801" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Ian Rasmussen: Funk Soul Brother. Credit: Jim Kumon"][/caption] A few personal highlights from this year's Congress included: getting my autographed copy of Bill Dennis’ self-published book of his watercolors, “Draw Your Own Conclusion;” our Mini-Magical Mystery Tour through Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison; watching the Camp brothers discuss their latest Cotton District a la Vicenzia rad building while on the NextGen pub crawl; and, finally, the audacity and invigoration of Ian Rasmussen, Glenn Kellogg, Payton Chung, Matthew Lambert and Karja Hansen’s Urban Project Lodge. [caption id="attachment_2802" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="New Urban Jets and Sharks come to rumble. Credit: Dan Bartman."][/caption] The Project Lodge was so contemporary, and in-the-moment, that I felt like an elder statesman, which was new for me. The social media networks were blazing during the Project Lodge events. We responded to live Twitter feeds of our discussions while Steve Mouzon blogged an idea and I found out which restaurant Geoff ‘Checked In’ at on Facebook. Even this blog, now five days after the event, is already passé with the MindMixer crew currently discussing new ideas for next year’s CNU on their Public Square. And, judging from the picture above, the free red cups were a great marketing tool to promote the Project Lodge. Sans any real debate outside of the hallways, as we really haven’t discussed this yet as a congress, it does appear that the New Urbanist approach is now America’s planning orthodoxy. Who doesn’t plan for mixed-use, walkable urbanism these days? No, I’m not saying that everyone knows HOW to build these types of places but, attend any planning and design conference, such as APA, or review any comp plan and without labeling whatever topic being discussed as New Urbanism, all of the elements we have been promoting over the past 20-30 years are now fully embedded — sacrosanct and unquestioned. See these offerings from Plantizen and Grist. Hooray! We made it! So... now what? Well, I recommend we keep our eyes on the kids who are organizing NextGen events, planning Project Lodge insurrections, tweeting Tactical Urbanism copies, and filling social networks with content. They are the ones wrangling the Great Recession with new ideas. They are living the religion of sustainability and will embody its built response. And, they are the ones who will work their entire professional careers in an unstable oil economy as it careens out of control and our country invades Venezuela or some such nonsense. How they deal with the challenges of planning and urban design in the 21st century will probably end up defining the course that, over time, wider audiences will take. And, after watching them challenge a brand new orthodoxy last weekend, I sort of trust ‘em with that responsibility. I look forward to seeing them in the hallways next year in West Palm Beach. Something tells me it's going to be worthwhile already. [caption id="attachment_2803" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="The Urban Project Lodge spills out into the street. Credit: Aurash Khawarzad."][/caption] --Howard Blackson

The Allure of Food: It's not just a lifestyle. It's a life.

greenwaters08 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:11:33 +0000

All the recent talk of Agrarian Urbanism has sent me down a tangential thought process. The difference between life and lifestyle. Lifestyle has come to mean how we spend our money on the weekends – or maybe squeeze in after work – before we get back to the grind. Things that often have more to do with entertainment than community. Over the last 50 years or so, shopping and golf have become central national pastimes. What if, instead, life became a little more organic again? Innately, life is internal. Lifestyle is external. However, in my parent’s generation, in a more agrarian time, they were one and the same. We were more connected – by necessity – to what sustains us. The coming age of austerity has caused all sorts of redefinitions, and has brought a number of reprioritizations. Lifestyle has perhaps been put in its place a bit, giving life its due. Yesterday, Andrés Duany said something that particularly struck me. That, in the next generation, the market square is likely to replace the shopping square. [caption id="attachment_2818" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="The Market Square. Click for larger view. Credit: DPZ."][/caption] When my parents were kids, this was certainly true. The farmer’s market was a gathering place that was not only fully integrated into both local urbanism and culture, but was also essential to life. Most cities had at least one in each quadrant, although sadly few historical examples have survived. The ones that have are regional destinations and National Historic Register material. Now you’d be hard pressed to find a community-based economic development plan without a farmer’s market, in both rural and urban settings. Agriculture is making its way back into our lives as we search for the organic, the connected, and the communal. As we search for meaningful daily rituals and seasonal celebrations. As we search for slow food, localism, community, economic resiliency, environmental stewardship, health and fitness, and just plain fun. And in a time in which we’re seeking to wean ourselves off of petroleum for a wide range of reasons, localism seems like a viable path forward. Andrés is releasing a new book this summer, Garden Cities, published by the Prince’s Foundation. One image from the book, above, illustrates the market square as the “primary social condenser of Agrarian Urbanism.” The book overall examines global strategies for the integration of agriculture at multiple scales serving multiple goals. The movement isn’t just North Americans trying to do penance for their love affair with the car. Garden Cities examines Ag Urb urban designs in Edinburg, Scotland, Vancouver, BC, Southlands, BC, Dumfries, Scotland, Hertfordshire County, England, Santa Gloria, Mexico. US examples include Dade County, FL, Onondaga County, NY, St. Bernard Parish, LA, Londonberry, NH, Calhoun County, FL, Sandy Point, NC, Cloud Rock, UT, Goodbee Square, LA, and Flower Mound, TX. Countless farms, community gardens, and community-supported agriculture hold some amazing stories. Many have been transformative for people as well as place, like the Homeless Garden Project. Along with the economy, like the Portland Food Innovation Center, the Appalachian Center For Economic Networks, to name a few. So today, what makes me so fulfilled by digging in the dirt in my small back yard? Cultivating some herbs and vegetables, snacking on arugula in passing. And does that sense of fulfillment have the sort of universal resonance to make this ag urb idea take widespread root? Can the funds we’ve been investing in ornamental landscape and entertainment pastimes be reallocated to something more productive and fulfilling? And could food – growing it, sharing it and eating it – be it? It may be too soon to say, but there’s an ever growing army of allies and like-minded thinkers more than willing to work the issue until, well, the cows come home. There are times I feel it can't happen soon enough. What do you think? --Hazel Borys

Smart Growth = Smart Parenting

greenwaters08 — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:29:17 +0000

Put the village on hold. For the time being, it’s gonna take a parent, a councilman and a developer to raise a child. Flashback 2003: Attending the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in New Orleans, I caught the keynote from a planning official for Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, under normal circumstances, I don’t suppose I’d remember much of what he said but, at the time, my daughter was just over three years old and something he used as the overall framing for his making Smart Growth work presentation really resonated with me. “If it works for kids,” he said, “it works for everyone.” He went on with a series of slides showing a neighboring child from his downtown building taking to the streets, visiting a shop, playing in a tot lot. I remember being quite inspired by the idea and I imagine others were too, as it wasn’t too much later that “the popsicle test” -- the ability of an 8 year old to safely get somewhere to buy a popsicle, then make it home before it melts -- became the go-to elevator speech for a lot of New Urbanists making their case. Now jump ahead to 2011. Just last week, in fact. Doing some work in Canada, I stumbled into a conversation on “the Vancouver model” -- typically characterized by the pencil-thin towers that brought new density, and new life, to Vancouver’s revitalizing streetscapes -- when something funny happened. “If you were to ask Larry Beasley (the city's former planning director) today, in retrospect, what he sees as the biggest shortcoming of his legacy there,” someone said, “he would say it was the failure to bring kids downtown.” WTH? [caption id="attachment_2834" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Downtown Vancouver. Photo credit: vancouver-bc-home-search.com/"][/caption] The ultimate culprit, it was suggested, was that the model of development defining Vancouver in that era was most conducive to smaller unit types that were most appealing to the young, the single, the childless. Not families. I can't speak to whether or not that's accurate but it really doesn't matter. [Ed. Note: Larry Beasley himself dropped by the Comments section below to say my cocktail party companion's speculation was off base. He's quite pleased with Vancouver's results, as it relates to kids.] The larger point is this: Even in a place where attracting families was supported, even championed, by local leadership, it may have been easier said than done. But that doesn't make it any less critical. Doing right by our kids is no small task. And we can’t do it alone. But perhaps we need to redefine exactly who it is we need -- especially in the here and now -- to help us through. For too many years, we’ve tried to purchase our way to happiness for our kids and, quite responsively, the marketplace of products and ideas has made it all too easy. Surely a well cared for child shouldn’t have to share a bedroom, right? No problem, just move outside the city and get more house. Need a second income to pay for it? Again, no problem. There are plenty of daycare centers to fill in while you’re away. Afraid your older, unsupervised kids will spend aimless hours outside with nothing to do? Problem solved! The internet and all its associated tech gadgetry will keep them safely indoors with all the entertainment options anyone could ever want. But what about their well-being, you ask? Fuhgeddabowdit! If you want them well-rounded, with opportunities to explore their interests, just pop open iCal and fill their calendar to your heart’s content. And if you find all the shuttling from place to place seems to steal the little remaining time a child would normally be playing, just swing by McDonald’s for lunch. They’ve got a PlayPlace there. That may sound cynical, even unnecessarily snarky, but it’s also fair. The Atlantic this month describes college deans now dealing with these kids, whose every whim has been accommodated, every move scripted, every moment scheduled, every unpredictability or challenge sidestepped, and every decision made for them. Their term for them? “Teacups, because they’re so fragile that they break down anytime things don’t go their way.” Maybe I’m in the minority, but that doesn’t sound like doing right by anybody. And I’m not the only one who feels that way. [caption id="attachment_2841" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Free-range kids at The Waters, outside Montgomery, Alabama."][/caption]For quite a while I’ve been following the great advocacy of people like Lenore Skenazy, with her Free-Range Kids movement, and Mike Lanza, on his quest to re-establish the culture of “Playborhoods.” A lot of other parents are doing likewise. These are folks who realize that, for a child, having increasing opportunities to navigate the world around them, explore, invent, fall down, scrape knees, make decisions, screw up, get into -- and solve -- conflicts and, ultimately, achieve a sense of personal identity and self-sufficiency is a good thing. The right thing. But you can’t do it easily just anywhere. Place matters. It matters in the design of the streets and the things they connect to. It matters in the variety of uses, opportunities and activities. It even matters in the diversity of housing types. After all, smaller homes or accessory units end up housing people who appreciate, and want to be able to afford, the prospect of being a stay-at-home parent. Or seniors offering options for drop-off babysitting. Not because it’s their corporate value proposition and you're paying them a thousand bucks a month but because they’re your neighbors and they care about you. [caption id="attachment_2842" align="alignright" width="500" caption="Place matters: The Market, a community gathering spot at The Waters,
a new urban community just outside Montgomery, Alabama."][/caption] Now here’s the rub: There’s only so many neighborhoods that offer this type of environment and, more often than not, they’re historic. That means, on the lower end, that they often come with crime, poor schools and disinvestment issues or, on the upper end, are cost prohibitive for everyday, middle class families. There’s just not enough good ones to affordably meet a demand which, as talk of teacups finally brings down the era of helicopter parents, will only grow over time. That brings us back to where this post began. Talk of how it takes a village to raise a child sounds -- and feels -- good but, to make it work, you need a village to start with. Which means you need politicos willing to push it, and developers willing to build it. Want to do right by your kids? Then cuddle up with your councilperson until they see the value of compact, mixed-use, walkable, kid-friendly neighborhoods and bake a plate of cookies for the first developer who shows up to build it. --Scott Doyon [caption id="attachment_2859" align="alignright" width="500" caption="The city, town or village is not a bad place to raise a child: Exhibit A."][/caption]

Urban Renaissance Gone to the Dogs

greenwaters08 — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:01:11 +0000

Downtown San Diego has gone to the dogs. Having grown up in San Diego, I've thoroughly enjoyed experiencing our downtown’s renaissance. Its revitalization has altered our cultural patterns and social connectivity. Today’s downtown is host to vibrant new neighborhoods, monthly cultural events, and the Gaslamp District’s rise (or demise) to Bourbon Street-esque nuttiness, as well as a baseball park, convention center, new library, and new city hall, the usual suspects of downtown revitalization over the past twenty years. While I wasn’t around when downtown was vital for its first eighty years or so, I do remember what it was like in the early 1970s. I usually experienced it when my parents would leave me in the car while they shopped or ran errands (they also smoked, spanked, didn’t wear seatbelts or motorcycle helmets, sprayed asbestos everywhere, and used bleach to clean the Formica while letting me run around unsupervised until nightfall). As a kid, downtown was a scary mix of flop houses, locker rooms for sailors to change their clothes, bars, strip joints, X-rated movie theaters, warehouses, and buildings that people had abandoned for glittery stucco boxes newly built out in the suburbs. Growing up in the land of similar houses, arterials, cul-de-sacs, 7-11’s, those-kids-on-the-other-street, open space easements, freeways under construction, and backyards with a menagerie of dogs and cats, it was like another world.   I distinctly remember locking the car doors and hiding in the back seat.

Today’s downtown has shiny new blocks of residential towers wrapped with townhouses, courtyards, offices, shops, trolley stations and 7-11’s, all sometimes within the same building. Now filled with childless professionals, college students, retired elderly, and rock and stroll hipsters, there are a few faint suburban echoes that still resonate. Most noticeable are the dogs… a lot of dogs. Dogs everywhere. The homeless and late night drunkards can no longer be blamed for the prevalent stench of urine in our city streets as every hipster and retiree are prancing all over downtown with little Chihuahuas and giant Great Danes. It seems everyone I pass has a plastic baggy filled with doggie-doo in his or her hand, thereby making the handshake or polite wave a real adventure. Plus, trash cans are filled with the stuff. [caption id="attachment_2879" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Hangin' out on the stoop in downtown San Diego."][/caption] The numbers of retail shops that cater to dogs nearly outnumber those for people. You pass several dog washes, dog sitters, dog groomers, dog toys, personal dog trainers, and dog psychotherapy stores before finally finding a restaurant. Dog-friendly, of course. [caption id="attachment_2881" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Can you imagine a barbeque restaurant without dogs?! It's barbaric!"][/caption] Downtown’s playground structures are stained yellow as these are the only outdoor places dog owners can walk to, and everyone is frustrated with this. Both the dog owners, with few places to go, and those eleven moms who live downtown, watching their kids climb all over deserted playgrounds. Dogs are now common downtown for three main reasons: First, our suburban generation grew up with a population explosion of dogs in the backyard where they mostly served as guards, playmates and/or walking companions. Second, since the 1980s, the dog’s role as protector has changed to now serve as emotional support for their owners. And, third, dogs have proven to be great social connectors. Today, we all understand the social advantages of urban neighborhoods over suburban developments. However, in re-inhabiting our downtown, we wrongly assumed that social interactions would be based around shopping as a leisure activity and over-zoned our ground floors with commercial space while under planning for interactive civic space. Due to the economic downturn and mechanical-scaled towers, many people are not able to publicly display themselves on a front porch, stoop, step or balcony, as the majority of downtown’s tower blocks are accessed through a private, guarded lobby entrance. Interestingly, people have gotten around this designing-for-fear-and-security mistake by using the pretense of walking or caring for pets to socialize on city streets. Want to meet that attractive single person walking down the street? Rather than the initial, awkward interruption necessary to introduce each other and talk face-to-face, it's easier to begin talking about that cute dog first. Then people can ease into a conversation over a coffee, make plans to meet up for drinks after work, and then finally end up discussing the need to move out of downtown when a kid starts to show up several months later. Voila… urbanism works its magic again! Interestingly, the make and model of your dog now appears to be supplanting the car as our cultural status symbol. Today, people stand around a small park and talk about dogs and breed the way we use to stand around a popped open hood of a car and talk about engine points, heads and manufacturers. A couple of years ago I helped with downtown San Diego’s Open Space Needs Assessment Plan and the overwhelming priority was the need for a Dog Park. It became a glaring omission in our collective attempt to attract suburbanites to live back downtown. Our residential policies required a minimum number of large, 3-bedroom units and to fund children’s playgrounds as civic spaces, which were intended to attract larger families. The 2005 Community Plan valued green roofs over civic spaces and we still ended up with 80% non-traditional families at fewer (1.5) persons per households but sporting 2.5 dogs that act like dogs in very urban streetscapes. Fortunately, a dog park is now in the works. As we continue to build more urban developments, these dogs may actually be viewed as an indicator species for designing towards the next urbanism. First, we know that well-defined and varied civic spaces are important to our daily lives for a variety of reasons. Second, we should be allowing for a middle ground between uber-urban towers and sub-urban townhouses. The Vancouver model, a point-tower with a townhouse wrap, is a great invention, but it is only one of several block types in our urban design toolbox. Even Vancouver understands this. Finally, maybe now we can design our cities as if we are all a little more comfortable inhabiting an urban environment. In response to walking the dog, we are now able to build more humane and varied buildings that front the street. We can build more units and frontages that are exposed directly to the street and civic spaces. And, we can actually dare to reconfigure our 1950’s one-way streets downtown into complete streets, configured for all users rather than just efficient car mobility. In fact, when it finally comes time to get the ball rolling with an awkward, face-to-face conversation with my local traffic engineer and fire marshall, I think I'll use a cute little dog to break the ice. And to bite 'em, if they prove too obstinate. --Howard Blackson

So Much to Do: Sadly, so much time

greenwaters08 — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:46:52 +0000

Time is not on our side. And that earth-shattering insight works in two directions. The most obvious is the situation most of us face each day, with ever-expanding to-do lists colliding with obstinate time frames. Same old days, with the same old number of hours in them. But here’s the deal with a to-do list: What makes it useful is the degree to which it ranks tasks. And the way you decide what rises to the top of the list is to have a pretty good idea what will happen, in what sort of time frame, as a result of you choosing one thing over another. The problem is, your confidence about what will result from choices depends on how quickly the consequences of the choices unfold. You know, it’s the old cause-and-effect thing. Hot stove, ouch. One martini, two martinis, three martinis, floor. [caption id="attachment_2908" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The devil's in the duration: Too much time to be smart."][/caption]The wider the gap between cause and effect, the lower the confidence level for choices and the less dramatic the sense of urgency. Unfortunately, the most important stuff often takes the longest time to figure out and the longest time to mount a response and measure impacts. Which means that too often there’s just too much time to be smart. What got me thinking about this lately is the haggling over raising the ceiling on the U.S. debt in the short run and committing to strategies to lower debt in the long term. What’s keeping the sides apart is that the consequences of whatever actions they take or don’t take fall outside the time frames in which political players – and citizens, for that matter – operate. The link between choices made, intentionally or otherwise, in 2011 and impacts on a thousand different components of the U.S. economy and Americans’ daily lives is obscured by the length of time it will take for those impacts to be felt. There goes the sense of urgency. When it comes to big, complex challenges like this, our famously inefficient democracy is robbed of the advantages of learning from cause and effect. We’re flying blind. That sometimes works out , as Winston Churchill is reported to have observed about Americans being counted on to do the right thing – after having tried everything else. The problem comes when the cumulative effects of not-so-clever choices become bigger than our capacities for correction. When that happens, we’re back to the more familiar problem with time: Too little of it to do too much. In planning practice, we see the cause-effect gap complicating attempts to reverse long-standing transportation policies at the regional and local scales, even when the guys at the top have bought into new ways of doing business. Despite evidence that the approaches will work and despite commitment from some thoughtful folks in Washington and in state capitals, the synaptic delay problem messes up efforts to integrate land use planning with public health, the environment, affordability, aging in place, community agriculture and economic development strategies. The effects of choices in all those categories seem too distant to trump more immediate worries like unemployment and the housing bust. We sympathize with those who are trying to get likely climate change impacts into the discussion, but that’s an even tougher challenge. While we tend to think this failure to calculate future impacts has mostly to do with shortsighted leadership, it’s probably more complicated. There’s evidence the shortsightedness is hardwired into us by evolution, which equipped us well to focus on immediate threats but no so well for long-term planning. So how do we get around that limitation when it comes to community and regional design? The most successful strategy I can think of is strategic alignment. Look for chances to do something obvious fast, and make sure it plugs directly into policies that serve a larger purpose over time. Illustrate the principles of a Big Think strategy with a no-brainer project that quickly connects problem and solution and provides a foundation for moving on to a higher level of complexity over a slightly longer time frame. Keep the principles at high altitude. But find something at ground level to prove their viability. Time might still embarrass us. But planning paralysis is worse. --Ben Brown

Like Butterflies to the Garden: The case for urban biking

greenwaters08 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:12:38 +0000

I can’t remember a summer that I’ve found such satisfaction in simple pleasures as I have this season. Maybe it’s because this is my third summer as a Canadian resident — a country that proudly dominates winter and passionately embraces summer. Or maybe it’s because the sobering events of late on many fronts have reinforced the importance of small blessings. My early summer after hours were about tending a small garden of vegetables, herbs, and cutting flowers. And thinking about how I might help localize ag in our city. While definitely not slow food, my two favourite recipes inspired by my garden are here and here. [caption id="attachment_2921" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Law breaker!"][/caption] And now that the garden’s on its way, extra time is spent happily on my bike. For transportation or exercise or pleasure. When it’s all three at once, you know you’re on a complete street. You also know when it gets auto-centric, when otherwise law-abiding cyclists take to the sidewalks. More than anything, both the garden and cycling have brought a sense of relaxation and the perception of time slowing down, just a little bit. As I’ve cycled my way through my favourite Winnipeg neighbourhoods, and watched the community gardens starting to crop up on front lawns, I’ve noted again how much of what we love about the most authentic places is illegal. [caption id="attachment_2926" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Slow cars, comfortable bikes. Often illegal."][/caption] The best streets to cycle down are illegal to build in the majority of North America’s suburbs, because they’re too narrow, too pedestrian-oriented, too enclosed. Even the ones that are very pedestrian-oriented often restrict cyclists to bike lanes when they’d be safer mixing with cars, as clearly illustrated in Casey Neistat’s amusing but serious film on the subject last week. And those groovy front yard gardens popping up around here are threatening a Detroit woman with 93 days in jail. Yet cities everywhere are moving quickly to enable both local ag and cycling, creating the infrastructure and environment to attract gardeners and cyclists. It reminds me of trying to attract butterflies to a garden, and the care that goes into getting the conditions right. [caption id="attachment_2928" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The SmartCode Bike Module. Click for larger view."][/caption] For example, the Bicycling SmartCode Module (4mb PDF) advises, “Some known bicycling accommodations are intentionally omitted from this module because they compromise other aspects of urbanism. For example, Wide Curb Lanes unnecessarily expand roadway width, thereby encouraging automobile speeding, while not meaningfully attracting bicycle use - probably for that very reason.” Butterflies and bikes – attract them. Which takes us back to Casey Neistat’s point that the bike lanes really don’t work in most non-rural places. From the module, “Bicycle lanes and other bikeways that widen the right-of-way are not advised for new thoroughfares designed for the urban contexts of T-3, T-4, T-5, and T-6. They are, however, useful for retrofitting overwide existing thoroughfares,” Mike Lydon, The Street Plans Collaborative. [caption id="attachment_2930" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Bike trails, bike trails, everywhere."][/caption] And why are governments going to such legal extremes to get the conditions right? Many cities are investing hundreds of millions in bike infrastructure. It’s Planet, People, Profit, as usual. Although until recently, the order was wrong. Profit led decisions because governments get big bucks from gas tax, and the more we drive the more they make. So it was a client-provider relationship. However, the climate change steamroller in the rear view mirror has recently been looming, which redirected our focus to the Planet. Who cares how much gas tax can be had if we’re going to have other irreversible and devastating damage unless we keep global warming to 2°C or less? This year’s droughts and floods may be an uncomfortable foreshadowing. But for those who aren’t so sure about modern science, there are other reasons to encourage the burgeoning bike movement. Dollars spent on cycling projects (1mb .pdf) create 46% more jobs than road-only projects. And that study even includes Anchorage, so winter cities are in the conversation. The bicycle is the “most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon,” according to Bill Strickland. Others argue 1,000 miles per gallon, but whatever the case, it’s good for your wallet. [caption id="attachment_2933" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Even the ice cream man cycles in Winnipeg."][/caption] The Grist Bikenomics series that wrapped up this month points out that bikes won’t make us rich, but they will help us stabilize, get healthy, and have fun. Check out International Bicycle Fund’s Economics Index to look at economic development research from a variety of sources. So if you can’t get Profit out of the driver’s seat, there’s still a reason to change lanes. Cities have healthy and sick zones based in part upon walkability and bikeability. Life expectancies are often 20 years shorter in dehumanized neighbourhoods. Yes, income factors in, but even that is mitigated by bikeability, of which Bogota is a shining example. Environments are defined as obesogenic when they promote obesity, usually the disconnected sections of the city. With health care costs spiraling out of control, biking becomes serious fun. United States is on track to be 75% obese by 2020, per the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. A couple of years ago, with obesity at 34%, it was costing the US $147 billion annually, according to the Center for Disease Control, 2009. Assuming costs per obese person remain constant, that'll cost us $324 billion per year by 2020. $3.2 trillion every decade. All this reaffirms that People and Profit are closely linked. If you want to crunch the numbers for your transportation plan to estimate dollars and lives saved, check out the WHO’s Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for cycling and walking. Not to mention that air pollution’s flat out killing thousands of people every year. And more of it will get to you in your car than on your bike. People do get all this, obviously. Over the past 40 years, bike production has increased 4x, while car production has increased 2x. And for anyone who needs some reminders, see Dr. Chris Cavacuiti’s fully referenced case, Cycling Health and Safety: A Review. It's a little older than the other links in today's blog, but the science is solid. [caption id="attachment_2935" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Hop on your bike and come on down."][/caption] It’s clear, biking is gaining traction. Just look outside, or in cycling zoning codes, bike sharing programs, bikeability indices, a proliferation of trails and paths – here is Winnipeg’s new set. And all that exercise and fresh air may leave you hungry enough to phone up your local organic farmers, and see where you can find them on Saturday. --Hazel Borys

Goooooal! Sometimes you strategize, sometimes you ‘dump & chase’

greenwaters08 — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:23:58 +0000

Given the means, most of us who work with communities to design and implement form-based codes would opt for a full-blown process, one that involves lots of community outreach, education and hands-on idea-testing in a charrette. But every situation is unique and sometimes you need something a bit more immediate.

Sometimes the process you use is the one the situation imposes. Kind of like sports, where, if you want to win, you’d better adapt to the way the game unfolds before you, as opposed to insisting on imposing a plan you carefully worked out the night before. And since I’m headquartered in Canada, where hockey is the game, let’s talk hockey strategy.

Like all other teams in organized sports, hockey teams work on plays, planned strategies designed to optimize chances for getting the puck in position close to the opposing net where the best scorers have the most opportunities in high-percentage situations. That’s the process every team prefers: Control the game with well practiced plays that cut the risks and stack the odds of scoring in your favor.

But, if you’ve every watched a hockey game, you know that the ability to totally control the puck is rare. There’s always the little matter of the other guys on the ice, to say nothing of the ways in which a team’s own screw-ups affect their best plans. Complications ensue. Chaos even. So hockey offensive strategies take chaos into consideration, sometimes inducing it with the hope of adapting to opportunities faster than the other guys. Take the “dump & chase” play, for instance.

“Dump & chase” is for opportunists. Instead of carefully maneuvering the puck through precision passes down the ice, you slap it long, hoping to dump it in front of the other guys’ net, while your guys, with the other team in pursuit, chase it down and score. No plan, no control, lots of risk. But in the right situation, it’s a winning strategy. In fact, more often than not, it’s the game-changer you see on the ESPN highlight reel.

So what does this have to do with community planning and coding? Well, sometimes, you have to simply seize the moment and push for a win, even when you don’t have everything lined up precisely the way you want.

I’m thinking about a coding effort our team was involved in not so long ago. Big city. Complex politics. Lots of things to go wrong. But thanks to a lot of prep work by a savvy planning staff and some open-minded developers, the timing just seemed right for a “dump & chase” maneuver. So just two of us came to town and worked with the planning staff to do all the things we’d normally assign to a charrette process. We went out and physically measured the city’s great walkable places to guide our new code. We recruited good legal advice to make sure what we were doing state and city requirements. And we showed how the proposed code would work on several development sites.

It was just the two of us with some offsite help for three days. No public engagement process. No charrette, no website, no endless meetings. All on the cheap. With some minor edits after our on-site work, this was the code that was adopted. Even more importantly, this is the code that is being implemented and embraced by private-sector developers.

What made it work? Right place, right time, right preparation. The city had done much of the hard work to chart the way, reaching general consensus about goals – walkability, mixed use, transit connectivity. All we had to do was supply the vehicle to get them where they wanted to go.

What’s important to understand here is that the city and its staff were the opportunists, the team strategists. When a developer with land came knocking with a potential project that matched up with their Smart Growth goals but required variances from current regulations, they hustled up a modest budget, called for help from consultants and slapped the puck down the ice. They dumped, we chased.

The new code could have been a lost chance -- another plan on the shelf. But the result was a puck in the net. Although the original developer went away, scoring that crucial goal opened an opportunity for the City resulting in over a dozen new plans -- many now adopted -- that fit the new code aimed at making better places in a changing market, and in uncertain times.

Did the “dump & chase” produce a perfect code? Nope. But the hard work is done and the code has already been improved and expanded. These adjustments are just bumps in the road headed in a direction everybody has agreed upon.

What does this mean for your town? As we move into increasingly austere times, there are going to be more and more questions about shaping cost-effective strategies to get to consensus-backed goals. And while we’re talking here mostly about means, let’s keep the ends in mind: They are often walkability, bikeability and other mobility options beyond private automobiles; community affordability; and expanded choices for families and businesses.

In flush times, the safest strategies were all about controlling the puck with step-by-step community outreach efforts leading into a charrette. If you’re just getting into the game (or you’re not sure who’s on what team), those are still the most effective ways to win in the end.

In the new era, however, you may have to do a lot of the work you outsourced to consultants before. You’ll have to assemble and train a competition-ready team of opportunists. Then, the options open up.

We still believe your best bet is the calculated, professional multi-day charrette to confirm your vision, design a plan in harmony with that vision and commit to implementation. It’s the best “play.” But if you already have support for a broad vision for sustainable urbanism and you have market interest -- even latent interest for small-scale development -- you owe it to them and to your tax base to write the rules to match the opportunity. Maybe the situation calls for immediate action and you need to consider the “dump and chase”.

--Geoff Dyer

News of innovation and implementation comes often. If you like the idea of form-based codes in general, and the SmartCode in specific, and would like to stay on top of what's happening, consider liking it in the more modern, technologically connected Facebook way.

NIMBY Nation: Mad as hell and I don’t blame ‘em. For now.

greenwaters08 — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 04:01:55 +0000

You know, I gotta give NIMBYs their due. In many instances, their tireless efforts have kept the world from becoming a worse place, and that’s no small feat. But, sadly, it’s not their only accomplishment. They’ve also kept the world from becoming a better place. Welcome to the problem with NIMBYs. Their reactionary nature can’t tell the difference between bad change and good. And that’s a problem if you’ve any hope for building better communities. [caption id="attachment_2981" align="alignright" width="300" caption="NIMBY action as a force for communal good."][/caption]Early on, NIMBY action centered around large, substantive initiatives with no shortage of arguable downsides. Nuclear plants. Landfills. Toxic industry. Projects universally loathed no matter where you went. These were proposals whose negative impacts would be felt community-wide, leaving little reason to view NIMBY efforts as self-serving. Quite to the contrary, they were the work of community stalwarts, fine-tuning the art of grass roots political organizing for the betterment of the common man. Democracy at its most basic level. Together, NIMBYs saved their homes and communities from being trampled by powerful corporate interests in cozy cahoots with nearsighted government opportunists and, in the process, earned a seemingly well-founded reputation as a sort of David in the shadow of Goliath. Progressive and passionate, they were mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore. Or so it seemed. But then a funny thing happened. Somewhere along the way, NIMBYs began applying these new organizational tools and techniques not just to projects presenting some level of threat but to any project offering the prospect of change. Which is to say, any project at all. This is the point at which it would be very easy to start demonizing the NIMBY movement, painting them as the problem rather than solution and holding them responsible for the agonizingly slow process of improvement in our communities. Sadly, though, that would be too easy. Because it’s just not that simple. If you’re really about community improvement and not just about snark (and I admittedly teeter between the two), you have to examine not just the what but the why. Why have NIMBYs increasingly developed an opposition to everything? The answer has little to do with development. It has to do with trust. [caption id="attachment_2982" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Trust in positive change is a limited commodity."][/caption]You don’t have to be a dyed in the wool treehugger, preservationist ideologue or evangelical New Urbanist to acknowledge that, more often than not, the past fifty years of growth and development has resulted in a downward trade. That is, what we’ve built has been inferior to whatever was lost. The meadow, teeming with wildlife, that became a soulless subdivision. The historic block of downtown buildings lined with shops, leveled for a parking lot. The supersized, unwalkable regional high school dumping runoff into your basement. There’s no shortage of reasons why people are wary when a slick developer starts talking their talk. Collectively speaking, the development community simply hasn’t offered much in the way of track record for quite some time. Add to that the context in which development takes place. More often than not, it’s permitted -- even courted -- by municipal governments seemingly detached from the will of their constituents. These people are supposed to be representing your interests and instead are caving to the very forces undermining your quality of life. Given that, how could any rational person ever believe that change could, in fact, be positive? People have no reason to trust anyone in the process, and the saddest part of all is that it’s a distrust that’s been wholly earned. Yesterday’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, reporting on a revised town center design working its way through public process in Alpharetta, Georgia, included this quote from a resident: “I oppose the original plan for many reasons and compliment the planners for developing a much better plan -- which I still oppose.” Such antipathy would leave us in a hopeless stalemate of lose-lose scenarios if it weren’t for one thing. There are communities out there with enlightened and accountable leadership. There are developers out there doing exceptional work, delivering value not just to buyers but to communities overall. They do exist. Hell, I’ve met a bunch of ‘em. But you’ve no reason to trust me either. [caption id="attachment_2983" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="A good developer whose good work benefited not just homebuyers but the community overall."][/caption] So, instead, I offer this challenge to the NIMBY Nation: Go forth, and continue to be vigilant. By all means, be a thorn in the side of development that threatens the viability -- and livability -- of your town. But be equally observant of context. If your local leadership starts engaging resident ideas and direction in meaningful ways and then makes decisions in line with what you’ve asked for -- in essence, if they start earning your trust -- admit that you no longer have the right to use them as justification for your discontent. The burden now falls on you to stop telling them what you don’t want. And start telling them what you do want. Once you have, if a developer then enters the picture willing to put up their money to help implement your vision, you need to cowboy up and accept that that person is now your ally. Not your enemy. That’s the point at which you can stop fighting the war. Because you’ve already won. --Scott Doyon

Six Years Later: Katrina Cottages take hold

greenwaters08 — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:45:50 +0000

August 11 will be a landmark day in the South Mississippi communities still recovering from the 2005 mega-storm, Hurricane Katrina. And it’s about time. On that day next week, 18 days shy of the sixth anniversary of the storm, the development team behind the Cottages at Oak Park in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, will host a ribbon cutting for 29 rental units that represent the latest evolution of an idea born in the Mississippi Renewal Forum following the storm. [caption id="attachment_3003" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="The Cottages at Oak Park, a short walk from historic downtown Ocean Springs, Mississippi."][/caption] [caption id="attachment_3004" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Affordable housing with surprisingly solid detailing."][/caption] [caption id="attachment_3005" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="A variety of sizes and configurations are offered,
providing affordable options for everyone from singles to families."][/caption] Even before the grand opening, the Cottages at Oak Park are 25 percent leased. And it shouldn’t take long before the neighborhood fills up, joining the adjacent Cottage Square neighborhood in demonstrating the appeal of a comprehensive approach to community affordability. That was the not-so-secret-secret mission of the Katrina Cottage movement. After disasters like Katrina, the spring floods and the recent killer tornadoes, replacement housing needs are severe. The push to immediately get people into some sort of shelter can conflict with another post-disaster hope, to build back better than ever. Katrina Cottages were conceived during the 2005 Forum in Biloxi to provide an alternative to FEMA cottages, offering emergency housing designed and built to transition to permanent dwellings. More importantly, from the “building back better than ever” perspective, the cottages could seed new neighborhoods of safe, appealing and affordable housing. [caption id="attachment_3002" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Bruce Tolar's Cottage Square."][/caption]Ocean Springs architect Bruce Tolar pioneered the application of the idea with his Cottage Square model neighborhood, which has 15 Katrina Cottages or cottages inspired by Katrina Cottages on two infill acres within easy walking and biking distance from Ocean Springs’ historic downtown. I wrote about taking up temporary residence in the Square here. Now comes the Cottages at Oak Park next door. And soon a similar project in Pass Christian farther west along South Mississippi’s Beach Boulevard. What the new neighborhoods resolve, at least for this time and place, is the question of how to make the numbers work. Achieving all the interconnected goals — storm-worthy design and construction, curb appeal, sustainability, affordability and in-town convenience — requires collaboration. Even when there were billions of dollars dedicated to affordable housing from the feds, the results — with the exception of programs like Hope VI — have been unpopular and costly to manage. Now, budget cuts are sure to restrict public sector investments even more. Non-profits provide all sorts of help during emergencies. But even when they’re able to leverage a variety of funding sources, their resources fall far short of what’s necessary to scale up to meet community needs. For the time being, at least, the private-sector housing market is skewed towards suburban-style single-family ownership through tax and infrastructure and mortgage financing subsidies. Infill parcels that hit targets of sustainability and affordability for cottage neighborhoods are often more costly to acquire and present more regulatory hurdles for construction. So private developers have a hard time reconciling risk and return on investment. What made the Cottages at Oak Park work is a partnership. Private developers acquired the two-plus infill acres in Ocean Springs next to Cottage Square. FEMA, via a one-time-only Alternative Housing Pilot Program, and the State of Mississippi paid for the cottages. And Mercy Housing and Human Development and other non-profits provided program administration to connect the aims of post-Katrina housing policy with the developers’ business plan. Read about how the development team was organized here. I’m convinced this big step in the advancement of the Katrina Cottage effort is significant beyond Coastal Mississippi. In an era of scant public dollars and nervous private-sector development, this sort of collaboration will be essential. It can be a key component of strategies to address the increasing challenges of matching community-worthy housing with the needs of an aging population and a workforce that can balance household budgets only by living closer to where they work, shop, send their children to school and enjoy the benefits of community life. Keep in touch. We’ll have more on this topic as the Katrina Cottage pace picks up. --Ben Brown

Entice, Don't Coerce: The pleasures of green by design

greenwaters08 — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 04:01:59 +0000

Living in a century home with passive air and choosing cycling as my primary mode of transportation during this unusually warm summer may sound like hardcore Greenie behavior, but it’s been particularly satisfying. This enjoyment of a modernized take on methods that have worked for generations has made me pick up Steve Mouzon’s Original Green book again, where he notes: Delight is often a side effect of buildings that operate naturally for most of the year. And that’s before the economic, environmental, and social paybacks for my good behaviour. No level of efficiency can ever compare to turning off the equipment. Yet outdoor dining only works when the air conditioning is passive. Or, at least, quiet. Outdoor sleeping only works when the traffic is calmed to a low roar. So while the savings due to less equipment is significant, it also allows all sorts of other enjoyable and effective lifestyle changes. Original Green is common sense, plainspoken sustainability. It’s the sustainability that has always existed, before the thermostat age. When people had to be green, otherwise they couldn’t live. The newly re-launched Original Green website aggregates, curates, and distributes the wisdom and methods that have worked for the longest time. And provides fun places to talk about how to move these ideas forward, and bring them home. The other day I was talking with Steve about all of this, and he pointed out that we’re at 6.7 billion people now, heading to 9 billion in most of our lifetimes. So even if we’re all conserving more, our consumption has to drop sharply to keep things level. And level isn’t good. So sustainability can only be reached with a collective -- and significant -- lifestyle change. Go ahead, call yourself a Greenie. And I’ll call you a survivor. But it might be more hedonistic than you’d think. Lifestyle change happens easiest from enticement, not coercion. We should be able to choose to be smarter before the larger context coerces us. For the moment, we have a choice -- an option for a smarter landing. Our kids might not be so lucky. So I’ve been walking and cycling the streets of Winnipeg neighbourhoods, always drawn to the ones that adhere to Original Green concepts. Sustainable places are nourishable, accessible, serviceable, and securable. Sustainable buildings are lovable, durable, flexible and frugal. If you want the philosophy behind all that, visit OG Foundations. However, I’ve been thinking about it in terms of a few photos. Earlier this year, I wrote about Oberlin, and its good college town urbanism that contributes to walkable environments, gathering places, and accessibility. I often meet up with Steve in Oberlin, visiting family, thanks to the fact that he’s my brother as well as fellow urbanist. These photos are all Steve’s, and will be available on Zenfolio soon. Much of what Oberlin -- and other traditional neighbourhoods like it -- are doing to be sustainable is probably almost unconscious instead of a big sacrifice. People are walking more, so conditioning themselves to the weather instead of conditioning their buildings to 70 degrees, thanks to complete streets and plenty of things to walk to: Gifts to the street are enticing people into the public realm: Great civic spaces are providing places for people to gather, places for real community: It’s a very serviceable place because most of the shops and offices are within walking and biking distance to homes: The uses can change over time, so the buildings are frugal – like this home that later became a museum: What could they be doing better? Like most towns and cities, the urbanism breaks down on the outskirts, where newer zoning makes things more auto-centric. And agriculture – there isn’t much evidence of it being highly nourishable. While there is a strong local food movement from 50 miles, there are only a few community gardens: What can you be doing in your home, in your neighbourhood, in your city, to be Original Green? These aren’t easy times. So like the “leave a penny, take a penny” habits of sharing, why don’t you share your ideas below? Outside of my personal habits, what we’re doing is changing the laws to make Original Green legal again. If you want to talk with Steve and me about it, join us next Thursday for a webinar on Getting to Green: Recovering Sustainable Traditions. Or follow the conversation with the #SmartCode hashtag on Twitter. – Hazel Borys

City Neighborhoods: Livin' large

greenwaters08 — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:01:31 +0000

Empirical observation is a key to unlocking secrets of great urban design. As Jane Jacobs wrote in Death and Life, “The way to get at what goes on in the seemingly mysterious and perverse behavior of cities is, I think, to look closely, and with as little previous expectation as possible, at the most ordinary scenes and events, and attempt to see what they mean and whether any threads or principle emerge among them.” In my case, proof is in the pudding. The most notable observation I’ve had since I sold my sports car in January, leaving me walking or biking 'round the neighborhood every day, pretty much everywhere, is that I haven’t lost a pound. You often hear people say that urban living, because it promotes walking, is good for your waistline, but through my own advanced empirical observation I have to argue that the opposite is true. Through this blog I’ve readily documented the great restaurants, bars, taco shops, coffee shops, ice cream parlors, liquor stores, bike shops, grocery store, thrift stores, and a new beer store located in my neighborhood (South Park, San Diego, California). All of these places are within a block or two of my bungalow home and are mostly set in single-story turn-of-the-century buildings. A quant neighborhood center, South Park has rapidly become a very hip and very cool place to walk and bike around. [caption id="attachment_3050" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="The intersection of Juniper and Fern Streets, a pedestrian-scaled,
single story commercial crossroads in San Diego's South Park neighborhood."][/caption] The weather is usually 72 degrees and sunny, making my daily walks pleasurable all year. The housing stock is interesting as the element of time has made for some unique building types, with the bungalow courts being a highlight. The variety of places to eat and drink nearby are fantastic. I also get to bike the kids to and from school every day, which is fun as the training wheels came off last spring from my youngest daughter’s bike. And, having lived here for almost ten years (my Mom grew up in this same neighborhood), I know a lot of people and usually stop to have a few conversations along my way. [caption id="attachment_3051" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Food is as close as my neighbor's yard."][/caption]Here's the problem: With so many great places so close to home, and so many ties to the people around me, my caloric intake opportunities greatly exceed my caloric expenditure requirements. Combined with a lack of discipline, there is simply too much great food and drink too close to my home. If the neighbors don’t have flour for my wife’s world-famous chicken fried steak, then I can walk down to the store and be back within minutes. When she wins some important award at work, we will walk down to our favorite restaurant to celebrate (with everyone). And, on those rare times during the week when we run out of wine while watching, "So, Americans Can Do Silly Things to Get on TV," I can have a freshly uncorked bottle before the commercials are over. (Yes, I too notice that I'm deflecting all blame toward my lovely wife.) It also doesn’t help that I stop and talk to my friends and storekeepers along the way, making my walks a more leisurely and social event. Such as: my neighbor from France who owns our favorite special event restaurant; my neighbor from Malta who cuts my family’s hair; Rebecca and her scones; Sam and his hipster bars; Matt and his organic street tacos; and, the list goes on and on. It is also fun to watch the younger rock-n-stroll hipsters who make our neighborhood center a very cool place to be and to be seen. They ride by on their fixies while I wave to the owner of the gym, Rob, whom I pay monthly to not visit nearly enough... and know that I love every bit of it. So, if you really want to gauge the quality of urbanism in your city neighborhood, check your scale. If it refuses to go down, you're probably in a great place to live! --Howard Blackson

Extreme Makeover: Zoning Edition

greenwaters08 — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:45:08 +0000

Want to get some sleep tonight? How about snuggling up with your local Development Code? Read any section, such as Sign Violations and Enforcement Procedures, and I’m willing to bet you’ll be out before you get past the Statement of Purpose. That’s a problem, because such volumes don’t exist to cure insomnia. They exist to engage us in the collaborative project of creating our shared surroundings. That means something and, while I understand that Comprehensive Plans, Zoning, and Subdivision Ordinances, by virtue of their lofty stature, might make for poor everyday reading, we all suffer when they end up so... tedious. “Our life is frittered away by detail ... simplify, simplify.” - Thoreau A little context: When reforming development codes, the intent always begins with the idea of crafting a simpler, more explicit, and graphically compelling set of development regulations. But the final code doesn’t always end up that way. Many hands may make for light work, but they also make for greater complexity. More perspectives, after all, often translates to more detail. And more content. Which means that, with each contribution, a code can often move further and further away from its core reason for being: communicating fundamental rules to regular people. I’ve been witness before as code reform efforts began veering off the rails. Trust me when I say it’s not something you can easily wrangle back under control. The preferred alternative, always, is to remain on track and, to that end, I offer my own thoughts on making simplification work.

Balancing Graphics and Text. What begins as a ‘simple’ diagram often turns into a great test of artistic restraint -- both personally and professionally. The attorney says to never use photographs, as something within the frame, unrelated to the point you’re making, may subvert its meaning. Or the architect on the team wants to design everything and the simplest diagram becomes a four-page graphic design thesis. I say keep it simple, diagraming text that describes three-dimensional prototypes, such as building types, street types, street and building frontages, civic spaces, parking lots, and submittal requirements necessitating metrics (such as setbacks, encroachments, and access). Like this (click for larger view):
Formatting the Document. The most beautifully graphic illustration can be easily lost when practical application at the local level involves it being reprinted hundreds of times on a black and white copy machine, then stuffed into an 8 1/2” x 11” binder. Start by examining how the documents will be used by consulting with (revolutionary thought here) the users! Simplicity includes not introducing revised processes where they’re not needed.
Administration Tools. Just as you’re reforming a code to be more user-friendly to a variety of users, administration documents should be reformed for the same reason. Design administration checklists, forms, and calculation handouts that make comprehensible the submittal requirement and decision-making process to an average applicant. Too often, the development application processes are convoluted and this is usually the first interface of citizen and government planning. Making the process easy to understand goes a long way to ensuring the citizen applicant can see the value in charging for these important services. For example (click for larger view):
State what Matters Upfront! Most importantly, I believe the Purpose and Intent sections are of great importance to decision-makers, administrative reviewers, staff processors and citizens. Yet, too often, these end up being ignored as they are either too convoluted or too succinct in their intended statements. I believe Hemingway would have been a great code writer. Finding a way to clearly state a regulation’s significance is an art. Not a science.

Consider this: "High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants, remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point." This development standard is inscribed on a centuries-old stone tablet in the small Japanese hamlet of Aneyoshi. According to news reports after the May tsunami destroyed the country’s northeastern coastline, this stone marker, and several more like it, some more than 600 years old, "dot the coastline" of Japan to warn future land use decision-makers of catastrophic development decisions. These zoning statements, if you will, ultimately protect the Health, Welfare and Safety of Japanese citizens. The wisdom of Aneyoshi’s ancestors saved the homes and the lives of this tiny village's inhabitants as their town was entirely located above the regulatory marker. Other markers translated to more general warnings and lasting reminders of risk that might only occur every fourth or fifth generation. One example, the stone marker in Kesennuma, warned, “Always be prepared for unexpected tsunamis. Choose life over your possessions and valuables.” Another, in the coastal city of Natori, advised simply, "If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis." For those that survived the tsunami, the timeless clarity of such directives cannot be overstated. The importance of coding explicitly and simply for resilient, lovable, sustainable, walkable, and memorable places is more than just an administrative task. It’s an exercise in effective communications -- in bridging who we are with what we want to be. Its enduring value should not be lost on municipalities and coding professionals. Now sleep tight. --Howard Blackson

Popsicles and the Importance of Simplicity

greenwaters08 — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 12:48:21 +0000

Back in June, I wrote a piece about how, compared to sprawl, smart growth produces places better suited to raising children. The overall takeaway was simple: When kids are able to navigate the world around them, manage conflicts, make decisions, screw up and recover, they’re better off for it. And place is a big contributor to that. Attracting families to life in the city can be a difficult endeavor. But given the stakes, it’s a critical one. Over the course of the post, I touched on a lot of different things. Vancouver, and the challenges they faced with their own smart growth efforts. Buying happiness, helicopter parenting and fragile, teacup children. The value of independence, and the need to align political and market forces to make things happen. And, oh yeah. Popsicles. Which idea do you think actually went somewhere? [caption id="attachment_3094" align="alignright" width="286" caption="The "popsicle test." The simplest ideas are usually the ones that take off."][/caption]If you guessed popsicles, consider yourself a winner. That’s because, two months after I resurrected the old idea (and not my own) of the “popsicle test” — the ability of an 8 year old to safely get somewhere to buy a popsicle, then make it home before it melts — as the measure of a good neighborhood, Kaid Benfield used it, along with the notion of good trick-or-treating, for his own exploration on the NRDC Switchboard. As many of you know, Kaid is also a contributor to The Atlantic, and they chose to republish the post a day or two after that. Once something hits The Atlantic, you make the leap from smart growth geekdom to a broader audience, and that’s when the “popsicle test” caught the attention of Lenore Skenazy, champion of the Free Range Kids advocacy movement, who featured it on her own blog. That transitioned it to an idea less about planning and more about parenting. Parenting, of course, represents a lot more potentially interested people, which is probably why the "popsicle test," a tiny supporting example from my original post on a much larger topic, was ultimately featured on Boing Boing, the widely-read “directory of wonderful things” and go-to blog for folks of all stripes. So why am I rehashing the details? Because they contain a valuable lesson for those of us working in the trenches of smart growth and sustainability. So long as we’re talking to each other — and, admittedly, that’s part of the process — all the secret handshakes of wonky language are accepted. Even preferred, sometimes. But that same language presents a formidable barrier to wider interest and wider interest is where movements really take shape. In short, very few people care about the details as much as we do. They don’t care about the theory. Or the research. Or the elegance of the solution. They have little patience for metrics and even less for debating them. Instead, they care about their families and the people around them. They care about their health and the money they earn. And, most importantly, they care about their time and how they’re spending it. We may enjoy the rigors of placemaking but real progress gets made outside the walls of our comfortable silos. So keep it simple. Forget about the full course meal and treat people to tasty little ideas they can share with their friends. Treat ‘em to popsicles. --Scott Doyon

After the Flood: Hard choices for communities and citizens

greenwaters08 — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:29:01 +0000

Virginia Republican Eric Cantor, majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, caught a lot of grief for suggesting there should be budget cuts elsewhere to offset the extra federal dollars that FEMA needed to do its job as tornadoes, floods and winds assaulted the eastern U.S. But at least he was being consistent as a deficit hawk and fearless -- if naive -- in the face of some ugly truths. The ugliest of them: We want a bunch of stuff we’re not willing to pay for. And because democracy allows us to vote our delusions, we don’t plan to stop wanting or to start paying anytime soon. The “we” is not intended to be patronizing. The sense of entitlement is universal. It transcends demography and political disposition. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the territory in which Cantor ventured, disaster relief. Case in point: Getting real about insurance in high-risk coastal areas. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968 with the hope that some of the rising costs to taxpayers for dealing with disasters like Midwestern floods and Atlantic and Gulf hurricanes could be offset by selling insurance to folks in flood zones. Which would be a great idea if the premiums collected amounted to enough to pay the costs of flood damage. The trouble is, the gap between NFIP income and outlay is growing. The insurance industry -- which, admittedly, has a vested interest in getting the federal government out of the low cost insurance business -- figures NFIP premiums underestimate true risks by an average of 50 percent. Which may be one reason why the NFIP is now $18 billion in the red. After the current hurricane season, the deficit will probably deepen. [caption id="attachment_3113" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Under Water: Will this handy idiom for lost housing value soon take on a more literal meaning?"][/caption] Congress has held hearings and investigations aplenty. There are a zillion white papers. And by now, just about everybody knows what has to happen to reduce the subsidy taxpayers fork over to their fellow citizens living in flood-prone areas, especially in coastal hurricane zones. There has to be some combination of banning development in the riskiest areas, bolstering building codes, and letting premiums rise to more closely reflect actuarial data. Hopeful folks in coastal areas argue for some sort of all-hazards insurance program that pulls in premiums from policies in lower-risk areas with policies in high-risk zones. But it would take a substantial expansion of the pool to offset repeat payouts in areas where storms are more frequent. Despite arguments that mud slides, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and inland flooding put just about everyone at some kind of risk, hurricanes account for the biggest losses, often in the same high-risk areas. The insurance industry estimates that repetitive loss properties account for 25 to 30 percent of the claims under the NFIP even though they represent only one percent of the policies in the program. What’s more, despite the low, heavily subsidized costs of flood insurance under the program, property owners often opt against buying it unless they’re required under mortgage agreements, and communities fight federal flood maps that establish risks. Reauthorization of the NFIP expired in 2008, and the program has been limping along with temporary extensions while Congress studies the issues more. Private insurers, meanwhile, have backed away from coastal zone coverage in general, leaving some states fiddling with risk pool coverage that essentially bets against anything bad happening until states can build a big enough treasure chest to cover big payouts. Everybody’s watching Florida to see if the bet works or the whole state defaults after a Katrina-like storm or a string of smaller ones in heavily populated areas. If we know how to fix this, and smart guys like Eric Cantor, bless his heart, are willing to point out the problem, how come we’re stalled? It’s because a lot of folks -- a lot of affluent, voting folks -- live in areas likely to experience flooding “events” due to storms. And they have made it very clear to the people they elect and to the people who build houses and who sell houses that they think they’re already paying enough of a premium for living where they live. And before we start getting too snippy about “those” folks, let’s consider the size of the group we’re talking about. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), about half the U.S. population lives in coastal counties, even though coastal counties comprise only 17 percent of the nation’s land area. Can you visualize an initiative to move a bunch of businesses and residents out of some of those areas and raising insurance and housing costs on everybody else? I didn’t think so. So here we have a specific example of the more general problem facing not only Eric Cantor and his fellow true believers, but all the rest of us, as well. Many of us live in a subsidized dream world where we can wish away our troubles and our accountability for addressing them. And when someone waves an invoice in front of us, we’re peeved at being bothered. We wring our hands over the mounting debt load, but hold onto our sense of entitlement. What makes paying for disaster events different from most of the other bills coming due is that, when the wind blows and the waters rise, it’s a lot harder to turn over and drift back to dream land. --Ben Brown

Special Districts Getting All Mixed Up

greenwaters08 — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 04:01:38 +0000

Recently there’ve been rumblings of a very interesting trend among cities that have adopted form-based codes to guide the character of their neighbourhoods. That is, once a city begins to think urbanistically, they start to solve some really hard problems. And those problems lately have been to do with industrial uses, and how to reconnect industry to the walkable portions of the city. Over the last month, I've lost count of how many emails and phone calls I've gotten asking for exemplary plans under form-based codes that incorporate industrial uses. I got one while I was writing this, in fact. Heavy industry is one primary thing zoning initially sought to separate. I am reminded of one of my favorite T.S. Eliot excerpts, from Little Gidding: "We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time." Not that anyone's adding back in noxious uses to the 'hood, but it is a very interesting turn of events. When the first form-based code was written 30 years ago, all sorts of large format uses ended up in something we still call "Special Districts." Not because they're special, but because they aren't inherently walkable, and don't really fit in the rural-to-urban shape sorter we call the Transect. These typically auto-oriented Special Districts (SDs) generally include uses such as industrial, big box retail, medical centers, and airports. Use-based codes separate communities into their various uses -- residential, commercial, industrial, institutional -- and put those uses into auto-centric pods to which one must drive. Initially conceived to keep you from living next door to a stinky candlemaker or butcher, use-based or Euclidean zoning was the first to put large format uses on the edge of neighborhoods, and eventually, on the edge of cities. This, in part, contributed to the sprawling development patterns of the suburbs. Form-based codes aim at a mix of compatible uses, but until recently still followed their use-based predecessors in grouping large format development patterns as generally car dependent, and more or less putting them in their own auto-centric pod. But something is changing. Form-based codes generally are residentially based. That is, they put basic daily needs within walking distance from our homes. And by walking distance we mean 5 minutes away, about a quarter mile or 400 meters. It’s the optimal scenario, on all levels. And for the codes that give in to the political pressure to count density, they key into dwelling units per acre or hectare. However, in the cities, such as El Paso, Texas, that have started seeing the value capture inherent in using the SmartCode, they’re loathe to let something even as usually unwalkable as an airport give up the extra value of mixed use. Some things will always be separated from residential, but often can still be walkable in context. Just because a use isn’t compatible with residential, doesn’t mean they can’t be compatible with each other, and the rest of the city. As increasing oil prices and decreasing wealth are putting the brakes on the long commute, non-noxious industrial uses are being reintroduced to urban formats. When El Paso leaders started planning the redevelopment of their airport, the first simple goal was to give the workers in the district somewhere they could walk for lunch, and the guests at the airport hotels an interesting and walkable retail street. Just because the FAA doesn’t allow single family residential in this proximity to flight patterns won’t keep it from becoming the most walkable airport in North America. [caption id="attachment_3121" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="El Paso Airport, reworked to mix industrial, commercial and hotel users together. Click for larger view."][/caption] Similarly, Andrews University’s design for Barrio Capital de Analco in Santa Fe, New Mexico, won a 2010 Charter Award, with a capital campus special district incorporating larger format governmental uses. [caption id="attachment_3120" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Click for larger view."][/caption] Medical Center of the Americas uses a medical center special district to integrate a larger format medical campus into surrounding urban structure, and offers some economic stability as an anchor for the neighbourhood. [caption id="attachment_3122" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Regulating plan for the MCA campus in El Paso, Texas. Click for larger view."][/caption] All three of these plans are designed to a locally calibrated form-based SmartCode. If you’d like to get into a 3-day conversation on this subject, join me in El Paso in November for the SmartCode Workshop. Or drop in on a monthly PlaceMaking@Work session. I’m not saying we’ve arrived, but we’re heading in a full circle. Reintroducing our workforce -- both white collar and blue collar -- to the walkability that makes for healthy planet, people, and profits. And doing it in a way that honors and advances the character of the place. --Hazel Borys

Pruitt-Igoe: More ego or opportunity for vocational penance?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:19:00 +0000

The restoration of degraded, traumatized, and distressed communities has been a high priority for the Obama Administration. The EPA, HUD and DOT are all allocating revitalization funds for places as large as Detroit and Cleveland, and as small as Ranson, West Virginia. That's the kind of solid support needed at the big picture level, where communities can be considered -- and treated -- as the living organisms they are. But what about revitalization at a smaller scale? Because that's when it stops being about the relative health of the collective and gets down to the level of individual lives. Real people. [caption id="attachment_3178" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Dream: 1956"][/caption] To me, the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri -- destroyed in a dramatic and highly publicized implosion in 1972 -- is a simpler, more explicit microcosm of Detroit and Cleveland’s "receding city" scenario. Lasting only 16 years, it is often cited as the beginning of Post-Modern urban theory and is referenced as perhaps the most vivid symbol of modernist architecture's failure with urban renewal politicians and policy makers. [caption id="attachment_3180" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Reality: 16 years later"][/caption] Today, it's reemerging within our professional consciousness through the release of a new movie, "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth," now being shown at film events across the nation, and has been further amplified by its mention during the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, as the same architect, Minoru Yamasaki, also designed the Twin Towers in NYC. Next year, a St. Louis housing collaborative is hosting a design competition to observe the 40th anniversary of this idealized modern failure. And, once again, this now vacant site will be used as an experimental area to test the latest urban design and planning models being propagated by Harvard School of Design Landscape Urbanists, by New Urbanists, and others. Literally and figuratively, the site is located on dangerous ground. Steve Mouzon and I toured it last winter and we were amazed at the level of poverty and insecurity in the vacant/blighted blocks surrounding the site. I am not going to pretend that I have keen insight on the cultural context, but the area certainly appeared to be a place that deserved our collective help -- fallow ground in need of healing and renewal. [caption id="attachment_3181" align="alignright" width="500" caption="2011"][/caption] I see the Pruitt-Igoe spectacle, now spanning 56 years, as a tremendous opportunity to test the New Urbanism's current orthodoxy. Revitalizing this redevelopment project using the movement's ever-evolving and refining principles would illustrate why some of our contemporary approaches (agrarian urbanism, security-and-survival, complete neighborhoods) are relevant. Not just as conduits to cultural, environmental AND economic value, but in the lives of very real people. It's too soon to say where this story will lead, or the degree to which the real people calling this place home will be respected and engaged but, leaving St. Louis, I felt like the AIA, APA and ASLA owed Pruitt-Igoe some sort of restitution or penitence for the damage they propagated on these citizens. This restitution approach would make for a tremendous marketing opportunity to shake business-as-usual planning and design at its base (as if the economy wasn't enough). And it would finally turn a critical eye on these professional organizations, whose response would either make them more accountable in the future or reveal them as irreparably insignificant. Speaking as an individual, of course. --Howard Blackson

Can Preservationists Let Love Rule?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 04:01:42 +0000

Call me naive. When I was first exposed to the New Urbanism in the 1990s, it was as a 9 to 5 ad-man with an appreciation for music and art. Killing time one day in my dentist’s waiting room, I stumbled upon “Bye-Bye Suburban Dream,” the cover story of the latest Newsweek magazine. I still remember the feeling I had as I read it. Unbelievable, I thought. This is a movement creating places where people, community, beauty and culture are once again prioritized. Where the interconnected everyday experiences that color our lives are valued. Where commerce and art can both thrive. Call it the restoration of soul. A resurrection of the wisdom embedded in our most-loved places. And with such affection for historic precedent, you’ll forgive my seemingly simplistic assumption at the time that these emerging New Urbanists wouldn’t just be allies with historic preservationists. They’d be thick as thieves. Warriors united in a mutual battle for enduring cities, towns and villages. One side preserving history’s great lessons. The other taking them forward. I know better now. Pot? Meet Kettle. Kettle? Pot. Over time, I began noticing a strange tension I couldn’t explain. When prominent New Urban projects embraced historic styles, it was often preservationists lobbing the charges of “fakery.” In their view, the desire to emulate, for example, the great streetcar suburbs of the 1920s was “contrived” and “dishonest” because it failed to express the zeitgeist of the modern age. And yet, somehow, these same critics seemed to adore what appeared to me, the simpleton layman, as essentially the same thing. After all, there’s been no shortage of efforts to preserve the grand estates of late 19th century industrialists, even though many of those homes borrowed styles born during the Renaissance. That’s not just snatching from another time period. It’s snatching from another culture altogether. How honest is that? It just didn’t make sense. I grew up outside Washington, DC, where important civic buildings express our founding democratic ideals with a style born several thousand years ago, a full ocean away. An architecture of neither its time (the birth of our nation) nor its place (a swamp between Virginia and Maryland), and yet indispensable to our collective identity as a nation. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Dishonest! Not of its time!"][/caption]When Tudor Revival emerged in the early 20th century, its timber frames were typically included solely for stylistic reasons, rather than bearing the weight of the house as they did originally. Is this fundamentally different from a newly constructed Greek Revival foursquare in a contemporary New Urban project adorning its porch with comparably stylistic columns? Or an infill Craftsman employing Hardiplank instead of clapboard? Surely no, and yet newly-built examples are deemed fakes while historic ones inspire heroic efforts to ensure their longevity. [caption id="attachment_3207" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Your 50-Year Rule frightens and confuses me."][/caption]Similar discrepancies abound, each nudging me towards greater sympathy for Phil Hartman’s classic “I’m just a caveman” SNL character. Like that befuddled neanderthal, I’m just a regular person who appreciates some places over others. Not because academic ideology says they’re worthy but because they simply feel, and work, better. As someone driven by the simple notion that preserving our past allows us to harvest lessons for creating better places in the future, preservationist rules and practices can seem contrary to every notion of common sense. Completely baffling, which confounds things further because I consider myself a preservationist. I reject the 20th century’s culture of disposal and reinvention. I hold artistry in high regard and relish beauty in my surroundings. I see great economic opportunity in the craft ethos and equally believe that the greenest home is one already built. I want preservation, in tandem with building for longevity, to exist as our normative cultural behavior. [caption id="attachment_3210" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Do NOT question my commitment to preservation."][/caption]Hell, I even pay a premium for my preservation-boosting license plate. All of which makes me want to understand why this clash of values even exists. Judicial Preservation The answer’s actually a lot less complicated than you’d think. During the 20th century, as it became increasingly apparent that we were throwing away our built heritage, people began banding together in opposition. Not surprisingly, they started with the truly remarkable buildings. The ones whose worth was, to most everyone, obvious and undeniable. Their motivation was love. These were buildings that inspired great affection and people wanted to save them. So they turned to the only authority with the power to do so -- the courts -- and that’s where modern preservation ideology was born. Because, in the course of all those proceedings, activists discovered a consistent reality: When they argued on behalf of intangibles like stylistic purity or emotional attachment, they lost. But when they spoke of a building’s demonstrative role in our ongoing historical narrative, they won. The message was clear: Discuss how a building is loved (or deserving of love) and you get nowhere. Position a building as a marker on our cultural timeline and you get legally defensible results. Which is why, in the preservation playbook, a house built today that looks like it could just as easily have been built a hundred years ago presents a problem. Now, far be it from me to malign people for being effective. Preservationists took the pragmatic route: Study what works, then develop principles around those successes to provide a best-practices guide for moving forward. But there’s a certain irony to that as well, as it’s exactly what New Urbanists do--and get criticized for--in relation to urban design. Can’t We All Just Get Along It’s hard to imagine how we can repair this divide. Saving buildings is a legal process and strategy matters. I don’t fault preservationists for that, and know that much of our remaining historic building stock exists entirely through their efforts. For better or worse, age has become a litmus test proven to work. But I can’t help thinking that, for most people, saving buildings has little to do with a number, be it 50 years or otherwise. It has to do with the admittedly subjective perception of worth. Excellence endures. Maybe not, regrettably, as a specific building but certainly as a repeatable stylistic pattern or technique. Maybe not as a specific collection of buildings but without doubt as retrievable instruction for planning neighborhoods and towns in the future. Excellence inspires imitation. It’s not about a position on the historical timeline. It’s about applicability. To a preservationist, the history of human settlement is a sort of interactive museum featuring a series of definitive, time-stamped displays (my observer’s assessment, not a criticism). But to everyday people throughout history, and to New Urbanists now, it’s a toolbox, filled with items that may come in handy on the work ahead. The merits, or lack thereof, of age-based value weren’t much of an issue when the buildings being preserved were almost universally acknowledged as special. But we’ve recently passed the 50 year threshold for ranch house subdivisions. As we move into an era of diminishing resources and increasing demand for walkable, transit-friendly urban living, should we really be systematically enshrining these experiments in cheap gas, leisure-class consumption, which often occupy first-ring suburban settings now best suited to redevelopment and increased urbanization? It’s a tough call and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Nipping at its heels are the McMansions of the 80s. Will they inspire the same impassioned rallies when they turn 50? If age equals value, how do we make the collective, subjective decision that maybe some things should just fade away? Excellence Endures In the early 1920s, just down the road from where I now live, businessman George Willis embarked on an effort to build Avondale Estates, the picturesque equivalent of what we today call a “traditional neighborhood development” -- a master planned town of varying housing types in walkable proximity to a civic and commercial core. He planned it as a Tudor village modeled on the centuries-old birthplace of William Shakespeare, Stratford-Upon-Avon. But it would be a mistake to assume any connection between the medieval stylings he chose and the ramshackle Georgia farmland he’d purchased. Instead, he simply wanted to honor fond memories of an English vacation he’d once shared with his wife. Did he do this to be dishonest? To perform an act of fakery? To violate the sanctity of the historical timeline? Of course not. He did it because he was human. And to be human is to protect and promote what we love. Ideology be damned. Let love rule. --Scott Doyon

100,000: What’s in a number?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:01:47 +0000

Sometime today or over the next few, Placeshakers and Newsmakers will cross a notable (for us) threshold: 100,000 reads. Not that 100,000 is altogether different from 90,000 or 80,000 but it does make for a nice round opportunity to reflect on what we’ve been doing here and how its evolution has surprised us. As many readers know, Placeshakers is the online soapbox of PlaceMakers, a town planning and community development firm. By our own admission, a company blog is nothing particularly special -- in fact, they’re often painfully tiresome -- and that’s why we’ve taken great care to avoid the sin of talking all about ourselves and, instead, talk about what really matters: the big picture issues and ground-level challenges facing those who care as much about shaping community as we do.

There’s clearly no shortage of such folks. In fact, there are so many, of so many stripes, that they’re broken out into all kinds of silos -- bike and ped advocates, environmentalists, rails-to-trailsers, preservationists, neighborhood school boosters, transit lovers, community foodies, smart growthers, and many, many more. Silos are nice because they provide us a receptive audience of like-minded souls who share our particular obsessions. We can drill down deeply on the nuances of our respective goals, share epiphanies that border on genius, and then grudgingly mumble that things would be so much better if only everyone else could just get it. That’s fine enough at the personal level and maybe even for our individual specialist pursuits but it lacks one key thing: the widespread collaboration necessary for truly systemic change. That’s a gap, and not a small one, and it was the impetus for why we started Placeshakers in the first place. Conventional wisdom says that, if your special interest teams up with another one, you double your efforts. But the reality is much better. Once cross-pollination among organizations really takes hold, advances stop being incremental and start being exponential. And that's when movements really gain momentum. That’s something we’ve tried, in our own small way, to help foster and the growing scope of our readership would seem to indicate that people are hungry to make greater impacts. As we say in our description, we believe that paths out of the housing and finance crisis and paths toward sustainability and accessibility intersect. And that issues like energy, agriculture, aging and obesity share common roots. But even then, when links to our posts materialize, we’re amazed at how often they emerge from voices well outside the new urban camp. We’re at the dawn of a whole new era. One where we’ll no longer have the luxury of simply spending our way out of difficulty. It’s now the age of bang-for-the-buck pragmatics, where solutions to any one problem will be deemed insufficient if they don’t also offer some degree of greater, comprehensive value. To that end, we’ve enjoyed being a part of the conversation and hope the perspectives shared here on Placeshakers have been of some small value to you and your own efforts. Keep the faith. Keep connecting. Keep fighting. And thanks for dropping by. --Scott Doyon

Resources + Connections = Jobs

greenwaters08 — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:19:22 +0000

Jobs come up in every community-building conversation these days. It's making me go back to the start, to think it through. What created jobs in the first place? Division of Labor. Access to natural resources. Human settlement patterns: cross roads, rivers, oceans, eventually railroads and highways. In the last few decades, many cities have been racing to the economic bottom trying to incentivize jobs. It's led to jobs being all about giving away resources, and not so much about the value of connections. If we were to shift our perspective for a moment, and to think of jobs as a commodity, the supply / demand curves for jobs would put companies and entrepreneurs on the supply side selling jobs, and cities and governments on the demand side buying jobs. That is, cities have tended to "purchase" jobs with tax incentives and other mechanisms that welcome businesses. And yet, often they hold no currency when it comes to the connections that people are after. That business is after. Sure, cities can offer tax incentives, although on today’s dime, they’re getting skimpy. But what the creative class and its companies are looking for are connections. Also it turns out that those incentives used to welcome business don’t always pan out from an economic perspective. Trading goods -> Trading services -> Trading ideas -> Trading goods 100 years ago, this continent’s economy was largely based on trading goods. In the last few decades we’ve off-shored much of our industrial production to become a service-based economy. But in the latest economic downturn, ideas are the new currency, and with them we’re seeing local economies starting to form again, trading goods. Having come full circle, savvy cities are noticing what’s driving the economy, and it’s often to do with character-rich places. The most effective environments for fostering jobs are creative spaces where people can gather, connect, and exchange ideas – the new currency – often within smaller-scale local economies. Winnipeg Resiliency I’ve noticed this dynamic happening here in my city, Winnipeg. As one of the strongest economies on the continent at the moment, the Manitoba Miracle is worth thinking through. On a macro level, it “runs like an obsessively defensive investment portfolio with a balanced weighting of sectors.” But on the streets, and in the neighbourhoods, there’s more to it. The places that have a balanced weighting of uses are enjoying the economic benefits of diversity as well. Take the Exchange District, for instance. Over the last 3 years, a quarter of a billion of new investment has happened on 12 blocks around Main Street. Not your usual development story in the recent economy. And that’s just the tip of downtown Winnipeg development. According to Ross McGowan, CEO of CentreVenture, it's because of the "tremendous stability here, deep-seated community commitment that permeates all we do. 10 years ago people couldn't get their money out of here fast enough. Now it's coming back in droves." “It’s about having the toolbox and structure – a focused, strategic plan, and a way to implement it. Economic development is a fairly simple thing to do, with the right tools. Don’t get lost in years-long area structure plans, but be responsive to the market demands that are a good fit for local character.” It’s all the economic drivers of character-based city planning and zoning reform that we’ve been talking about lately. So are big deals like an NHL hockey franchise or the first national museum to locate outside of Ottawa economic development silver bullets? Or are they partly the results of great placemaking that gets it about resources and connections? Cities that hold this dual currency are defining resilience these days. “He doesn't speak the language, He holds no currency. He is a foreign man, He is surrounded by the sound, sound, Cattle in the marketplace. Scatterlings and orphanages. He looks around, around, He sees angels in the architecture, Spinning in infinity, He says, Amen! and Hallelujah!” –Paul Simon –Hazel Borys

‘Show Me the Money!’ New bumper sticker for the New Normal?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:01:13 +0000

There hasn’t been a New Urbanist Council gathering for a while. Which is why a lot of pent-up anxiety -- and hope -- found release in Council sessions in Montgomery, Alabama, October 14-16. These regionally organized Councils are intended to grapple with topics that should be on the table for annual Congress for the New Urbanism meetings but require give-and-take from a smaller group to better focus issues. So some 50 or so folks came to Montgomery to critique recent ideas and projects and to wrestle with propositions to position New Urbanism for the New Normal. Here is Andres Duany with the overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_5CL74WHuA There’s no shortage of topics to put on the table. When all else fails, there’s always the wither-goest-New Urbanism theme to fall back on. But now, thanks to an economy that’s humbled most of the know-it-alls in finance, housing and real estate, there’s a sense of urgency that might have been missing from the same discussion a half-dozen years ago. The persistent thread in most discussions in Montgomery: “Show me the money!” Return on investment was always a factor in New Urbanist planning. But it was easier to cope with bottom-line questions when the market was rockin’ and the people doing the asking were developers. New Urbanist design firms built a portfolio of cool places that provided eye-catching returns over time. Of course that was way back in the early days of this century when developers freely roamed the land, banks lent money and everybody assumed 20 percent annual appreciation. Now the money questions are coming from the new power brokers in planning, economic development specialists in local and regional governments. This stuff you’re drawing looks pretty, say these guys, but what does it have to do with job creation? And now that we can’t stick developers with the bills for infrastructure, where’s the money going to come from? There’s a way to turn the show-me-the-money question back on economic developers. I’ll make that case below. But first, here’s how Council participants came at the money question at both the macro and micro scales. Texas planner Scott Polikov presented the most aggressive big picture proposition: Leverage a form-based code as the equivalent of a master developer, a guarantor of long-term predictability in an unpredictable economic environment. Showing an example of a Texas project with powerful transit-oriented-development opportunities, Polikov worked through a pitch to investors -- including off-shore funds -- emphasizing the potential for long-term returns on mixed-use development guided by the form-based code. Here Polikov introduces his argument for getting New Urbanists into the international finance conversation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itq9Dx0PwyM Coming from the other direction, that of conventionally financed development on individual parcels, is John Anderson. The Chico, California-based designer/builder has been bugging designers to master the bottom-line vocabulary for years. Now it appears his time has come. Anderson argues that, as dire as the market appears, we’re not at the end of all housing construction for all time. Single-family and multifamily residences will get built. But the realities of the new era in finance and community affordability argues for smaller, smarter designs that pencil out on profit and loss statements local bankers and accountants can understand. Anderson calls it planning for ROBD (Return on Brain Damage). We’ve invited Anderson to pitch his ideas in this space soon. But in the meantime, here’s a preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv0BcmaecGc Montgomery turned out to be a good vantage point from which to glimpse the recent history of New Urbanism. The downtown, where Dover, Kohl & Partners did planning and coding, found traction before the downturn. Two greenfield projects, Hampstead by DPZ and The Waters by PlaceMakers, book-ended the recession. And an infill block of shops and lofts underlines the challenges of getting the commercial/residential mix just right. Here is Montgomery developer Anna Lowder talking about lessons learned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQeZ4kjafBk Victor Dover, a CNU board member and veteran of the full range of New Urbanist adventures at just about every scale, was, with Duany, a Council keynoter. He provided the zen perspective, arguing that a forced slow down in development is not altogether a bad thing, especially if it allows designers and builders to be more respectful of context and complexity. What’s missing in many block-size New Urbanist projects from the go-go days, said Dover, is the advantage that comes with “intelligent incrementalism.” The slower pace allows for adapting future development stages to the experiences of stages that preceded them. Here is Dover’s argument in his own words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5idjDna24 What the Montgomery Council didn’t quite get to was the core of the economic developers’ arguments about job creation. While the truth is job creation is far more complex than most of us imagine, there’s an increasingly convincing case to be made for placemaking as an economic development strategy. We’ve talked about the topic here, for instance, and here. And a new book out of Michigan, The Economics of Place: The Values of Building Communities Around People, lays out arguments for a specific region. So now it’s time to level the playing field for the “Show me the money!” crowd. We know that the lowest unemployment figures are for college-educated workers. And we know that the most concentrated clusters of the college educated, especially college educated young people, are in vibrant urban centers. It also happens that new company formations are more likely in those urban areas and that company expansions and relocations prioritize access to highly trained workers, quality of life for employees and predictable environments for growth. So let’s compare the advantages of strategies that enable those kinds of job-rich places with conventional strategies for bribing companies to move to areas where none of those advantages exist. Who’s got the keys to new era economic development now? --Ben Brown

My Right Turn at the Intersection of Good Ideas

greenwaters08 — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:31:00 +0000

When things get tough, people start digging in ideologically, increasingly viewing the world through the lens of their own experiences to fortify their already entrenched positions. Yes, experience counts for a lot and, chances are, they do hold some piece of the larger solution. But as we’ve learned time and time again, things are never that simple. There are no magic bullets. Answers typically turn up where perspectives intersect. I was reminded of this fact again recently, which left me even more confident (if that's possible) that I've developed a valuable and viable model for addressing the issue of San Diego, and places like it, grappling with the uncertain future of growth, development and community sustainability. Setting the context, this is what Bill Fulton, preeminent planner / writer / Mayor of Ventura, writes and thinks about the state of California planning today:

"The entire planning business in California is changing, and I cannot quite predict where we are headed. So many of the conditions we have lived with for the past generation or two are changing. Real estate development is flat and we can’t predict when the market’s coming back, meaning we can’t use development to leverage needed change in our communities – nor use developer money to fund our practices. Local government revenue is flat and probably going down – meaning advance planning in California is extremely dependent right now on state and federal money, which could dry up anytime. And, of course, nobody knows what’s going to happen with redevelopment in the long run. Cities are on the verge of bankruptcy, planning departments are being rolled up, and planners are out on the street.

In the short run, all these things are harmful to the profession and to California’s communities as well. But it’s possible that some kind of shakeout and rethinking of how planning works in this state is long overdue. Maybe we’ve become too dependent on the same ol’-same ol’ – tax-increment funds, developer impact fees, and so forth. Maybe it’s time to find a new model – one where the local governments play a smaller or at least different role, and developers and nonprofit organizations play a bigger one."

No argument there. And look where it fits with this NGO model presented by architect Teddy Cruz:

"Our projects primarily engage the micro scale of the neighborhood, transforming it into the urban laboratory of the 21st century. The forces of control at play across the most trafficked checkpoint in the world has provoked the small border neighborhoods that surround it to construct alternative urbanisms of transgression that infiltrate themselves beyond the property line in the form of non-conforming spatial and entrepreneurial practices. A migrant, small scale activism that alters the rigidity of discriminatory urban planning of the American metropolis, and search for new modes of social sustainability and affordability. The political and economic processes behind this social activism bring new meaning to the role of the informal in the contemporary city. What is interesting here is not the ‘image’ of the informal but the instrumentality of its operational socio-economic and political procedures. The counter economic and social organizational practices produced by non-profit social service organizations (turned micro-developers of alternative housing prototypes and public infrastructure at the scale of the parcel) within these neighborhoods are creating alternative sites of negotiation and collaboration. They effectively search to transform top-down legislature and lending structures, in order to generate a new brand of bottom-up social and economic justice that can bridge the political equator."

An interesting convergence. Now allow me to add my 'Community Character Corner' synopsis, which heroically attempts to bridge the brilliant points of both these perspectives together:

"Due to our governor's pilfering in combination with our citizens' general fear and loathing of condemnation, redevelopment has gone gently into that goodnight. In complete disarray, our local government now embodies Einstein's definition of insanity by using the same suburban tools over and over again and expecting more urban results. Today, our General Services department builds civic buildings; Parks and Recreation builds our civic spaces; Public Works builds our streets; and now, with the demise of planning, code enforcement governs private development. This separation and segregation of responsibilities and decisions makes the simple act of rebuilding a place a mayoral decision. Couple this with the segregating practices of conventional Land Use planning and, viola!, our city has self-imposed a moratorium on small-scale, incremental building. Because it is just as difficult to do small-scale development as it is to large-scale, most new mega-projects are built strictly for economic value, which is out-of-scale and character with the surrounding neighborhood's context, perpetuating said fear and loathing.

Community character is difficult to describe, but we know it when we see it. And, we see physical expressions of a place's character in its underlying urban patterns (from a classical to vernacular spectrum - formal to informal public streets, and civic spaces with private block patterns), as well as in our architectural patterns (again, classical to vernacular spectrum of public and private buildings). Analyzing, understanding and applying these patterns, designers and city staffers, in collaboration with local citizens' expressed memories and expectations, are now able to build/allow for new development that reinforces a local place's character, social capital, and value. By building towards social and cultural value we are able to create tremendous economic value, neighborhood center-by-neighborhood center. In San Diego, this is understood as 'The Balboa Park Effect.'"

Want to see how it could work? Check out this previous post. --Howard Blackson

Backyard Chickens: WWI-Era Solution to Almost Everything

greenwaters08 — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 04:01:10 +0000

Over the course of the past six or eight decades, certain things have come to define, in part, our modern existence: Making a living out of your home has been increasingly restricted, especially in predominantly residential areas; the production of goods has fallen to fewer and larger hands; and we’re now seeing the rise of what some call the helpless generation, with their legion of helicopter parents herding them about. Now contrast that reality with this USDA poster from just under a century ago, courtesy of online foodsteaders The Icebox Chronicles. In a simple, pragmatic way, the Fed somehow manages to address personal food security, childhood responsibility (the picture even shows them doing all the work), recreation, income potential, and patriotic duty all with a simple plea for backyard chickens.

But times have changed, you say. Today we live in a modern, convenience-driven world. That's fine, but are we so comfortably detached from the basic workings of nature that we're now compelled to greet the prospect of a neighboring chicken (not even a rooster!) as though it were a landfill? Or a sex offender? (Like this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or ....) There's absolutely nothing revolutionary about a chicken. It's pretty much a cat with wings that pays you back in food and fertilizer. Which makes me wonder how something so simple, something once promoted by the U.S. government as an easy, self-managed balm for a host of domestic (and national) challenges is now, less than a century later, a growing source of community angst. They're fine. They're harmless. And they're a helluva lot quieter than a leaf blower. Get over it. --Scott Doyon

Poggibonsi and other Tuscan Lessons

greenwaters08 — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:34:48 +0000

With all the angst over Italy this week, I’m in the mood to count some blessings. To elaborate on some assets. To look at the local marketplace. And to debunk a couple of frequent idealist notions about European urbanism often heard from North Americans. Last month, I was traveling in the Tuscan countryside, which is the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. Staying in a vineyard outside of Poggibonsi, waking up to the resident rooster, and walking medieval streets was cleansing for the mind and spirit. Even the parking lots are frequently overseen by amazing art, like this copy of Michelangelo’s David on the hill overlooking Florence. I spent way more time in a car than I usually do, thanks to day trips, and had more of a chance to look at the newer neighbourhoods. As much as we North American urbanists find inspiration and instruction in European streets and buildings, the new stuff rarely gets it right. For the same reasons that plague us here: it’s the law. For instance, this street in Poggibonsi is the main drag, and readily achieves compact mixed use, but fails on walkability. The use and density are right, but the form is still off, catering to the auto-centric tendencies of the last several decades. Trading off character for speed. And parking. Talking with the locals, it’s because of land use codes and bylaws that call for parking in the first layer, between the building and the sidewalk. The law squeezes down the sidewalk widths to increase the travel lane widths. And call for cobra-head lighting and other highway-like mechanisms. Much of the reasons are the same as here – people operate in specialist silos, and rarely communicate with a holistic, generalist perspective. However, what was completely shocking to me is that just two blocks away is a deeply satisfying walkable, immersive environment for which we all strive. Just as Europe tried to become a homogenous single economy, and is feeling the pain of their varying debt profiles and economic conditions, when we return to the local, unique, character-based realities, good things happen. Many of those good things are evident in the Poggibonsi market and in the vineyards and orchards on the rolling hills. Every Tuesday in Poggibonsi, about 8 blocks are shut down for the market, which are very versatile shops out of trucks that offer everything from clothing to culinary delights. It’s tactical urbanism at its finest. Or out on the farms, where visitors can offer their services with the harvest in return for food and wine. Within these deeply local markets, global monetary shocks are less obvious. And somehow, here you can find the comfort of the timeless. The comfort of the underlying strength of place and of traditions that remain the strong undercurrent of local life.

Collaboration’s Failing so it’s Back to Hypocrisy

greenwaters08 — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:58:12 +0000

It’s a sad day when you have to start rooting for liars and hypocrites. That thought occurred to me when I read the news of Congress’s likely axing of the budget for the Sustainable Communities Initiative. That’s the two-year-old program that attempted to pull together goals of three federal agencies -- the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency -- to encourage out-of-the-silos thinking by local and regional planners. Grants under the program required getting lots of folks who don’t normally talk to one another collaborating to integrate policies and programs covering infrastructure, environmental protection, economic development, public health, housing, transportation and transit, and land use. Initiatives developed under the grants promised two things that critics of government consider impossible: cost-effectiveness and permanent changes for the better in the lives of citizens and in the prospects for broad ranging prosperity. Such idealism would have been a tough sell in the best of times. In the current era of political polarization, the concept was probably doomed from the get-go. It would be a mistake, though, to see the collapse of an ambitious effort like this -- or the failure of the Congressional Supercommittee to make a deal on deficit reduction, or, for that matter, the struggles to hold together the European Union -- as an indicator of political paralysis. Politics is never paralyzed. It is merely pursued through alternative means. Roads, bridges and ports get built. Economic development initiatives discover funding sources. Projects find benefactors. And government is almost always a partner. The time-tested method for securing government partnership, of course, is to become best buds with those who control purse strings. Which is why just about everybody from local governments to global corporations with a stake in government policy and government funding streams hires lobbyists. A lot of good stuff happens through the efforts of these “special interests.” A lot of bad stuff happens. The point is, that’s the way a lot of stuff happens. We’re currently in one of our periodic tantrums about how special interests have highjacked democracy. So business as usual in Washington and state capitals has had to pretend to play along with the rhetoric, widening the already significant gap between what political leaders say and what they do. The disconnect is so obvious now that even journalists, who take a certain amount of hypocrisy for granted, can’t resist exposing its current excesses. Hence the recent Newsweek story on how conservative political leaders who’ve sworn allegiance to Tea Party purity when it comes to getting government out of the lives of citizens are working government agencies for every dime they can get on behalf of their districts. This is an ancient art. Thanks to the work of their Congressional delegations, most states get more back from the feds more than their citizens pay in federal taxes. For a look at how the numbers trend over 20 years, check out this story and chart in an August, 2011 issue of the Economist. Because the Sustainable Communities Initiative is only two years old, it may not have built sufficient support among all the private and public sector interests it needs to twist the right arms. But you can be sure that some of what would have been funded under those grants will be funded through other means. Ironically, the solutions will come as a result of the kind of collaboration prevented in the regions by the budget cuts. It will be a collaboration of Congressional staffers, lobbyists, and powerful public and private players. The losers in that meeting of the minds will be those with the least political and economic clout. So it will be up to local leaders to build back into programs the opportunities lost in the federal budget cuts. That will require a stomach for hypocrisy. Those who have built relationships of trust and support, including relationships with politicians compelled to wave a fist at Washington with one hand while they reach out for cash with the other, will get their shots at shaping better futures for their regions. --Ben Brown

Do We (Still) Need Vancouver?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:04:10 +0000

A few years ago Urban Guru Leon Krier asked this question -- “Do we still need Vancouver?” -- at CNU XVII Denver. In response, the Next Generation of New Urbanists invited then-new Vancouver planning director Brent Toderian to speak in favor of Vancouver, which is easy to do. For, since the fall of Hong Kong, Vancouver has been reinvented to become one of the world’s most livable cities, and a model for urbanization. [caption id="attachment_3421" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Urban Vancouver."][/caption] While Leon emphatically stated “No” in answering his own question, San Diego has answered with a resounding “Yes.” Former Vancouver planning director, Larry Beasley, easily sold his city and its developers to other north American city booster groups, and San Diego smartly bought it. Hook. Line. Sinker. Our downtown redevelopment agency leadership actively pursued Vancouver developers Bosa and Intracorp and changed the local building codes to allow for single-core podium towers with a suburban townhouse wrap on the street. All the rage, the imported Vancouver model was built very quickly and effectively changed our downtown and its skyline until the economy inadvertently solved for our affordable housing issues. With our downtown development experiencing a dramatic pause (or contemplative lull), it’s now easier to reconsider just what happened to my city, and where do we go next? So, I’ve concluded that Leon was wrong... as well as right. He is correct in his assertion that the Vancouver model is really urbanism-lite and a contradiction of both suburban and urban. The single common entry frontages to the towers choke the flow of people like a vertical cul-de-sac. The towers themselves celebrate and elevate a private imperialism of residential glass fishbowls that looms over and dominates the public realm below. And, he is correct to point out that the suburban townhouses that ‘wrap’ were used to ‘hide’ the urbanism of the narrow point tower that woefully undermines urban intensities with luxury, view-oriented condos. The ground floor townhouse wraps also limit access into the urbanized block with their single private stoop entries fronting the majority of the block. A contradiction, the model is simultaneously a little too much and a little too little... but for San Diego, it was just right. Contrarily, I find Leon incorrect is in his frame of reference. He is correct to assert that urbanism-lite in a European or east coast USA context is a mistake. However, from 1947 to 1997, San Diego effectively emptied out, made illegal, disenfranchised and completely disinvested in our previously vital downtown. It was lost, gone, and could not be (RE)vitalized as all of its vitality was completely sapped. We had to (RE)learn how to build and live downtown. As local Urban Guru Michael J. Stepner, FAIA, FAICP, smartly points out, “When downtown was vibrant in 1940s, we were a city of 250,000 people. Redeveloping downtown today is occurring in the context of a region with 3 million people.” [caption id="attachment_3423" align="alignright" width="273" caption="San Diego emulates the Vancouver Model."][/caption]As with the rest of the US west, ours is a relatively new downtown with a renewed purpose and vitality. But, it took the perceived design safety of the Vancouver model to teach us that downtown was safe again. With its security-guarded common entry lobbies, urban dwellers are effectively sequestered behind their gated stoops. Add the safety of the townhouse wrap and you’ve got a strong sell that downtown can embody the aesthetic comforts of suburbia. In response, here in San Diego, bored suburbanites were lured back downtown. The model smartly assembled building types without the loathed double loaded hallway corridors and essentially lowered the number of overall units per block. Therefore, for San Diego, the Vancouver model was the appropriate block type to vitalize downtown again. [caption id="attachment_3424" align="alignright" width="225" caption="The traditional face of urbanism."][/caption]All that said, I now believe the Vancouver model is outdated. Ten years later, we all get it. We see the value of urbanism. Its building and block type really did serve as an entry level urbanism to re-inhabit our cities in a more livable manner. And, because of it, we are now prepared to build true urbanism. Brooklyn, Wicker Park, Union Square and Capital Hill urbanism. This is the type of urbanism being demanded by the Baby Boomers (born mid 40s to early 60s), who no longer feel compelled to spend their time maintaining their suburban lawns, coupled with the Millennials (born after the mid 80s), now thoroughly rejecting their parents’ suburban lifestyle. These two large markets are creating a tremendous demand for real urbanism which we designers are now being looked upon to build. The lessons of the Vancouver model, good and bad, have been studied and learned. Now’s the time for next steps. A more 3-dimensional urbanism, where people connect at the street, and at the 3rd, 6th, and upper floors... and back down to the street. The blocks will be more permeable, translucent, engaged. The street will be the entry, rather than the edge, of the blocks, and we will grow closer to the ground as we need less privatized security and more penetration into where people live, work and play. I now agree with Leon that Vancouver is not the appropriate model to urbanize San Diego’s future (though he visited San Diego in 2009 and surprised me with an appreciation for our towers, finding them playful, even fun, and certainly not as oppressively repetitive as he had seen in Vancouver and on the east coast), but it was a necessary step to encourage generations of people traumatized by the bucolic safety of suburbia to emerge from their paneled dens to walk, talk, shop, and have fun with each other downtown. --Howard Blackson

Resiliency: It’s who ya know.

greenwaters08 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:01:58 +0000

If there’s one thing the 20th century gave us, it’s the luxury of not needing each other. It so defines our culture that it’s physically embodied in our sprawling, disconnected landscapes. That alone begs a classic, chicken-n-egg question: Did the leisurely lure of the suburbs kill our sense of community? Were our social ties unwittingly severed by the meandering disconnection of subdivisions and strip malls or was sprawl just a symptom of something larger? After all, for all their rewards, meaningful relationships take a lot of work. Perhaps, once the modern world elevated our prospects for personal independence, we cut those ties ourselves, willingly, lest our happy motoring be weighted down with excess baggage. Sprawl: form following function. Whether we’re victims or perpetrators doesn’t really matter. Either way, the land once described by Alexis de Tocqueville as a nation of associations, where people look not to government but to each other to overcome the bulk of their challenges, is now described by Robert Putnam, in his groundbreaking 2000 book Bowling Alone, like this: “Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values--these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live.” It’s who we are. And it’s a problem. What? Me Worry? I can hear it now: “What problem? Thanks to the marvels of modernity, time once spent in negotiations with difficult people can now be applied towards something I find much more tolerable: Me.” I get it. The appeal is undeniable and it works just fine... until the party ends. And there’s increasing indicators that that’s exactly what’s happening. [caption id="attachment_3466" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Odd Fellows, the fraternal organization that brought the mechanics of communal self-reliance to America in 1819."][/caption] Today, the breakdown of local community has robbed us of our historic safety net. One in which half the population once belonged to a fraternal organization and from it received everything from fellowship and business opportunity to health care, lost-wage insurance and burial benefits. In its wake, we find a nation where the available support structures for the average person now number exactly two. At the one end, we have personal and family resources. You against the world. At the other, we have enormous institutions like the Federal Government or BP or United Healthcare. The faceless behemoths. And in between? Our once robust networks of interdependent social, religious, institutional and commercial resources have largely withered on the vine, leaving currently en vogue cries for “less government” ringing a bit hollow. After all, when you strip away big gubmint, our primary source of support in a nation now devoid of Tocqueville’s admired communal unity, who’s gonna pick up the slack? Oh, I remember. We’re a nation of rugged individuals who can fend for ourselves. Right. Better Together [caption id="attachment_3468" align="alignright" width="201" caption=""I, like every American, can fend for myself!""][/caption] Of course, that’s not really true. There may always be the classic woodsman out there, living off the land but, for the majority of us, a stable economy, cheap energy, well-stocked grocery stores, big boxes filled with Chinese creature comforts, digital information at our fingertips, and endless sources of entertainment-on-demand have simply lured us into thinking we’re the masters of our own domains. As though self-reliance were actually easy. Sadly, it’s not. As John Michael Greer says in his handy post-industrial how-to, The Long Descent, “One core concept that has to be grasped is the rule that the community, not the individual, is the basic unit of human survival. History shows that local communities can flourish while empires fall around them.” Resilient communities are connected communities and there’s a growing body of research to back that up. Furthermore, there’s more than a little evidence indicating that the strength of those connections is fostered, in part, by the form those places take. That's right. I'm talking about traditional urban form. Walkable, neighborly Smart Growth. Community design designed for the complexities of community. Roadblocks Given the less-than-desirable state of our economy and the national financial obligations that go with it, common sense would dictate that we invest in the strength of our community ties as a reasonable tool for reducing demands on the Fed. Yet, curiously, those most concerned with whittling down the size of government are more often than not the same ones opposing the local community visioning and smart growth planning efforts necessary to restore the social fabric that makes such reductions possible. Add to that the off-putting tenor of sustainability discourse. Day in and day out, it’s consistently predicated on unthinkable scenarios -- natural disasters, climate change, peak oil, global financial meltdown. From a rhetorical perspective, this is done to create a sense of urgency but, in terms of motivating our efforts to rebuild local social networks, it tends to have the opposite effect. Those things are just too big, too complicated or too uncertain to wrap our heads around. Justifying the effort to meet the neighbors now requires we buy into global warming? Aw, jeeez. Just forget it then. A New Discourse Instead, I propose a new premise. A simple premise. Change happens. That’s it. It is, without dispute, inevitable that change will come to our communities. It may take the form of a locally unique challenge or it may be the effects of something larger trickling down upon us. Something we brought upon ourselves or something unfairly levied. It may be change for the worse, bringing with it great tragedy, or it could equally be change for the better, revealing tremendous new opportunities. Whatever form it takes, the reigning constant is this: The deeper our sense of community, the stronger its connections, and the more robust our web of interdependent relationships, the better positioned we’ll be to take it on and manage it effectively. Connected communities are competitive communities. And those willing to compete are those best positioned to win. In Practice Recognizing the practical value of strong, local community is not a difficult proposition. The more we admit that we need each other and, in turn, make ourselves available to others, the better off we’ll be. Many of us are already hard-wired to do this. Which means the role for municipalities is to simply make it easier -- in the form of policy, expenditure decisions and growth planning. One example I’m closely familiar with is right here in my hometown. Decatur, Georgia’s community-wide strategic planning effort in 2000 revealed something interesting: The surge of newcomers descending upon this revitalizing city, as well as the long-timers greeting their arrival, wanted the city to take an active role in connecting people by providing a central clearinghouse of civic-minded opportunities. In response, the city created Volunteer! Decatur, which coordinates volunteers for city-sponsored events as well as maintaining a referral database of local, non-profit opportunities. Give ‘em a call, tell them how you might be useful, and they’ll point you in the right direction. The city was simply responding to expressed need but, as it turns out, they were creating value as well. Not just in the terms discussed here, where a more robust community can better weather change in the future, but in the here and now. Over the course of roughly eight city-sponsored events each year, volunteers contribute 13,000+ man-hours. Hours which, if gauged according to the skills employed, translate to over a quarter million dollars in value. Each year. And that’s not counting all of those steered towards the non-profits tirelessly taking on social imperatives that, in their absence, would fall on the shoulders of... you guessed it: government. Put a price tag on that. But even better, in the course of all that volunteering, all those civic-minded participants met other civic-minded participants and forged the connections that have since resulted in things like community gardens which, in turn, inspired our local farmers' market and farm-to-school initiative. That’s how community grows. Of course, it’s not just about food. It’s a lot bigger than that. It’s about cooking up the tasty stock of resiliency. Tocqueville style. --Scott Doyon If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Ta-may-toe, Ta-mah-toe: Lessons in complexity from a fruit

greenwaters08 — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:13:03 +0000

Want to know where we go wrong solving single-mindedly for parking, affordability, sustainability, accessibility and all the other stuff on urban planning’s high-priority list? Consider the tomato. More specifically the winter tomato, as designed and manufactured in Florida. In Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, food writer Barry Estabrook shows how things go haywire when you’re determined to dumb down complexity. As Estabrook describes it, Florida tomato growers have one big advantage, a winter growing season, and one big marketing concept: A tomato defined by factory-perfect roundness and redness. The trouble is, to get to the round and red, the growers have to dispense with a lot of other stuff that should have some bearing on the value of tomatoes worth buying and eating. Such as: Taste and nutrition, product safety and labor issues that approximate (and sometimes equate to) slavery. “If it were left up to the laws of botany and nature,” Estabrook writes, “Florida would be one of the last places in the world where tomatoes grow.” That’s because the sandy soil needs an infusion of expensive, chemical fertilizers to grow non-native plants like tomatoes. And the heat and humidity favor bugs that, according to Estabrook, require some 100 different varieties of pesticides to control. Then, to get a product that can stand up to the time and distance from field to produce section, the already over-engineered tomatoes have to be harvested green and hard, then gassed to ripe-appearing color with ethylene. [caption id="attachment_3529" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Tomatoes, taking a nod from the fashion industry: "At least I look good.""][/caption] What got Estabrook interested in South Florida tomato production was the experience of watching hockey-puck-like objects falling off a farm truck on a Florida highway. When he stopped to check out the spillage, he discovered tomato-like things, apparently unbruised by the experience. “A ten-foot drop followed by a sixty-mile-per-hour impact is no big deal to a modern, agribusiness tomato,” writes Estabrook. Despite all those production strategies borrowed from manufacturing, Florida’s winter tomatoes make for risky business because of the escalating costs of chemicals, fertilizer and fuel and because of the uncertainties of weather and a marketplace increasingly crowded with imports and green house produce. Since the only cost growers can squeeze is labor, farm workers -- most of them migrants and many of them illegal -- pay the price in exposure to pesticides, low wages and the worst possible working conditions. Estabrook quotes one prosecutor as saying South Florida tomato fields are “ground zero for modern-day slavery.” So besides celebrating local farmers markets and in-season produce more than ever, what can we take away from this example? The tomato growers’ mistakes are anchored in a fundamental perception problem. What gives tomatoes value is a set of complex, interconnected variables that can be taken for granted when tomatoes are grown in hospitable climates, seasons and soil conditions and when they’re consumed short distances from the fields. Tomato taste alone, writes Estabrook, “is the distilled essence of sun, warm soil, and fine summer days.” To say nothing of the way nutrients in a real tomato plug into the nutritional needs of humans evolved over eons. [caption id="attachment_3531" align="alignnone" width="500" caption=""The distilled essence of sun, warm soil, and fine summer days.” To say nothing of the way nutrients in a real tomato plug into the nutritional needs of humans evolved over eons."][/caption] By redesigning tomatoes to optimize a particular shape and hue, then contorting the growing process for the convenience of transport and just-in-time delivery, the South Florida tomato industry engineered the value out of the product, drained humanity out of the process and wed themselves to an unsustainable business model. Sound familiar? Compared to human settlement patterns, shelter needs and the architecture of community, tomato production is a piece of cake. Yet we’ve allowed similar approaches to dominate the “industries” of designing and building the places where we live, work and play. To optimize distance from noxious industries, we impose zoning separated by use and break apart the connections of community. To optimize private automobile convenience, we bring highways into cities, design neighborhoods and buildings around parking and kill street life. To optimize privacy, we move living quarters to the burbs and force long daily commutes and recreation by appointment. To optimize affordability, we prioritize drive-til-you-qualify financing and isolate people with the fewest resources from employment and education. To optimize appeal to relocating businesses, we incentivize environmental risk and waive the taxes that support the quality of life that businesses list as a reason to relocate. What’s missing is an appreciation of the way tomatoes -- and other real world entities -- work. Ours is a universe of constantly emerging interactions. Push on one thing, lots of other stuff starts moving around. For decision-making convenience, we yearn for simple. We are genetically programmed for simple. But we are embedded in complexity. Those who study this sort of thing talk about “complex adaptive systems” capable of self-organizing beyond our capacity to confidently predict outcomes. For instance: The weather, the movement of the global economy, the unintended consequences of American democracy. It’s exasperating to continually confront ultimately unsolvable complexity. But it doesn’t help to isolate and optimize one component of the whole mess and pretend it provides all the answers. Scientists have been studying strategies for better understanding and for more successfully operating within complex adaptive systems. Many are involved in the field of resilience studies, and their work has been playing an increasingly important role in planning for disaster preparedness. I talked about some of those efforts in a previous post. Last year, at almost exactly this time, I reported on an experience in Coastal Alabama in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The report that emerged from that effort, “A Roadmap to Resilience,” stressed the need to appreciate the complex connections between a healthy environment, society and economy. It encouraged a regional perspective that transcended geographic and political boundaries as well as the narrow interests of any one sector of society. As leaders in that Coastal Alabama effort tussled with the lessons learned from the spill and the strategies for going forward, one utility company executive offered a suggestion I’ll paraphrase. We seem to agree that we can’t solve any single problem having to do with the environment, the health of our families and communities or the economy of our region without affecting all the others. So why don’t we define our challenges in relation to all three categories -- the environment, the society and the economy? And why don’t we require whatever recommendations we come up with to demonstrate how they’ll contribute to solutions under all three headings? Love that idea. In Tomatoland, Estabrook didn’t leave the story of the South Florida growers with the depressing ironies of a race to the bottom. He reported on a series of innovations the industry was undertaking, including research into new hybrids that would be rich in tomato nutrients without so many chemical boosts. And he chronicled labor improvements likely to make harvesting more humane if not any less arduous. Estabrook didn’t let anyone off the hook. Not the growers, not officials who turned a blind eye to illegal and unsafe practices and not consumers. And he encouraged not only recognition of the broader complexities, but also strategies that take them into account: “It’s a world we’ve all made, and one we can fix,” wrote Estabrook. Pretty good all-round advice, if you ask me. --Ben Brown If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Getting Beyond ‘Mad as Hell’: Here’s hoping for a civic afterlife

greenwaters08 — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:47:05 +0000

On December 14, Time magazine announced its 2011 “Person of the Year.” And as it’s occasionally done in the past (Remember the choice of “You” in 2006?), the mag opted for a broad zeitgeist capture as opposed to settling on just one person. This time around it’s The Protester. “Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough,” Rick Stengel wrote in Time’s intro to the 2011 “Person of the Year” section. There’s something about that phrase that sounds a tad familiar. Maybe a little Howard Beale-ish? You know: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” from the 1976 Network movie that’s among the most quoted and mischaracterized films of all time. In the role that won him a posthumous Oscar, Peter Finch was Beale, a news anchor at a fourth-place TV network who was slipping in the ratings and losing his grasp on reality after the death of his wife. When he learned he was going to be fired, the slide from mere depression into psychopathology accelerated, and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who also won an Academy Award, had a field day trashing everything from phony Marxist revolutionaries to old fart/young babe affairs to Saudi Arabian-financed corporations. By the end of the movie, when Beale is assassinated on camera by the Marxist phonies desperate to protect their leverage in their own TV program negotiations, the landscape is littered with the remains of Chayefsky’s broadsides. Nothing and no one is left standing. Yet our memories of the movie tend to re-imagine Chayefsky’s neutron bomb as a rifle shot targeting corporate greed in general and television in particular. We invoke Beale’s challenge to throw open our windows and shout, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it any more!” as a kind of declaration of independence, as speaking truth to power. Out from under the thumbs of the oligarchs and into freedom’s wide open spaces. Finally. Chayefky, who practiced a brand of satire so dark that it would be pure nihilism were it not for its hilarity, must have loved that. No characters in Network were treated with more contempt than Beale’s audience. They’re depicted as the fickle, easily manipulated consumers of the drek Chayefsky satirized, obedient multitudes provoked by a psychopath on TV to declare how mad they were at, well, TV and all the stuff that TV provoked in them. To be fair, Time was conscious enough of the pitfalls to steer clear of undiluted (and un-ironic) protest romance. “Because,” as Kurt Anderson puts it in the main “Person of the Year” piece, deciding what you don't want is a lot easier than deciding and implementing what you do want, and once everybody has a say, everybody has a say.” Which is to say: When everybody is entitled to be a victim and to be mad as hell about it, and to interpret the sources of that anger and the potential remedies for the wrongs done them in their own way, it gets a little complicated. Those of us who work in communities and regions anxious to overcome barriers that inhibit real community, that prevent physical and social connectivity, that limit access to decent housing and economic opportunity, recognize the romance of protest. Many of us have been trapped in community engagement exercises that get so stuck in the speaking-truth-to-power phase, that we don’t get to the part of a public process that empowers real change. Determined to broaden participation, to harvest every idea and forge perfect consensus, we allow the means to become the ends. We count meeting attendees, website hits, newsletter mailings, tweets, blog comments and every other scrap of evidence of how well we’ve encouraged self-expression, including outrage and cynicism. But that’s not the ultimate deliverable of a public process. Taken by itself, engagement alone won’t produce results that might relieve some of the outrage and cynicism. Nothing is more important than listening – and really hearing – the voices of concern and protest. But it’s not enough. The listening has to be purposeful and accountable. Somebody at some point has to turn the to-do list into action steps. There have to be measurable results. And that’s hard work. Anderson, referencing the protests from the Mideast to the American Tea Party and the Occupy groups, allows for one of those jury-is-out conclusions about measurable results. Since “even free politics can be inherently unclean,” he writes, we don’t know yet whether the idealistic folks in the street “have the stomach for democratic hardball. Will the moral high ground keep working for them?” A good question for all of us. --Ben Brown If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Retail: When it bends the rules and breaks the law.

greenwaters08 — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:01:14 +0000

Getting ready for a TEDx talk in a few weeks, I’ve once again been noticing how the places that I love the most usually break the law. The contemporary development codes and bylaws, that is, which are geared to the car, not to the pedestrian and cyclist. Then last week’s urban retail SmartCode tweetchat with Bob Gibbs sparked a debate about the rules of thumb that govern the success or failure of the most risky development of all: retail. And when those rules might be bent by certain special circumstances. Ready to geek out with me for a moment? Newtonian Physics To contemplate the non-idealities of life, let’s start with the laws of physics. All of classical mechanics – and Newton’s Laws upon which they are founded – have both their ideal statement of law, and then all sorts of corollaries for when non-idealities happen. Rarely, even in our physical world, do ideal states occur.

Newton’s Laws 1. A body in motion (or at rest) stays in motion (or at rest), unless acted on by an outside force. 2. Force = mass x acceleration. 3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

I remember as a young electrical engineering student struggling with the fact that there are significantly more corollaries than there are laws. Back then it made me write an epigram about that irony:

Learning a lie so that we can understand the truth.

Quantum Physics [caption id="attachment_3570" align="alignright" width="216" caption="Electron. Image credit: Tomasz Barszczak"][/caption] When things are very small or very fast, classical mechanics’ laws – as well as their corollaries – do not hold true. Then you’re into the realm of quantum physics where things get very interesting. Everything boils down to relationships, probabilities, and the fact that when things get small and fast, they act quite differently. Sound a little bit like our economy? An electron may sometimes act like a particle, and other times act like a wave. And whether or not it tunnels makes a big difference to all the silicon-based artificial intelligence in your life. So back to urbanism. When are rules bent and laws broken that shape our everyday community? We’ve talked extensively about when laws are rescinded to get in line with local character, or circumvented by grandfathering. To get new development in harmony with local character, cities are often using the form-based SmartCode. However, it can’t be emphasized enough that the SmartCode is a model template that must be customized for local character. It’s not exactly a law-corollary relationship, but something close. How about urban retail rules of thumb, and when don’t hold they true? Retail Rules Let’s look for a moment at some of the key rules of retail. And the numbers that influence our buying habits. Concise rules of human behavior govern whether retail will be successful. But these rules have many corollaries. [caption id="attachment_3578" align="alignright" width="237" caption="Bob Gibbs new book was released last week"][/caption] Bob Gibbs was highlighting these rules in last week’s PlaceMaking@Work webinar. If you’d like to pop the hood on retail, Yarmir Steiner and other leading retail developers recommend Gibbs’ new book, Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development. You’ll be seeing more reviews soon, but here’s a peek. Over Supply: The US has 20 SF of retail per person. That’s massive in comparison to other countries; the next closest are Sweden at 3.3 and the UK at 2.5 SF of retail per person. So if you're going to build more, it's gotta be good. Downtown Market Share: Until the mid 60's, downtowns captured about 80% of the trade area, which was typically the county. Most downtowns declined not for market reasons, but for ill-conceived planning reasons. Now the average American downtown only captures about 2% of the retail market share of its community. The rest is sold in malls, strip centers, and online. This is defining downtown as the central business district. However, an ideal goal is a 50% capture of retail needs in each neighbourhood, including downtown. Charleston is a great example of sustainable retail for mid-sized cities, thanks in large part to Major Joe Riley making his first retail goal to sell what his residents need. The various districts reinforce each other, and draw plum tenants. The Apple Store chose to locate on King Street instead of in the four malls in Charleston because of predictable urbanism. [caption id="attachment_3593" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Another corollary: if you're as good as Charleston's King Street, you don't need on-street parking out front in T5 after all. Image credit: Gibbs Planning Group."][/caption] 8 Second Rule: It takes about 8 seconds to walk past a standard main street storefront. The average person decides in about 1.5 seconds whether to walk in. SmartCode requirements for glazing, private frontage, signage, and public frontage assembly are key. Retail Transect: Retail character must change significantly along the rural-to-urban Transect in order to be successful. Two SmartCode Retail Modules lay out goals and methods for bringing retail back downtown. Retail: Sustainable Commerce by Seth Harry (4.3mb .zip) and Retail Markets by Bob Gibbs (1.8mb .zip). Very important to both of these, as with the model form-based SmartCode, is that they must be calibrated locally. [caption id="attachment_3588" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Retail: Sustainable Commercrce SmartCode Module by Seth Harry & Associates, Inc."][/caption] Corner Stores generally need 1,000 housetops to be successful. While this rule of thumb has many corollaries including housetop reductions for selling gas, or for when construction workers are present or for resort communities, this was one of those argued points on the tweetchat. Yesterday Steve Mouzon published a followup retail blogoff. I don't argue with most of Steve's points, but he's clearly overlooking the fact that resorts were part of the corollaries that were exempted from this rule of thumb. The SmartCode Retail Module would be calibrated for resort in that case, drastically reducing the 1,000 to a few hundred. Also many of his examples are part of T5 main street, and not the T4 corner store that Bob was addressing, surrounded primarily by residential. When we dug down into some examples on the tweetchat, the conclusion was that many new corner stores in walkable places are subsidized. Because retail was viewed as an amenity, the developers are often willing for this investment. However, now there's a new need to get resilient. Strategically placed retail is more essential than ever in soft markets, and will continue to be so as long as signs of the recession remain. In some places where subsidies are no longer available, retail may need to go indie and get tactical. Live-Works. The sweet spot for a retailer is 1200 SF for the retail portion of live-work units. The average live-work usually marginalizes the retail by making it too small. An example of getting it right is Eton Station in Birmingham, MI. [caption id="attachment_3598" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Eton Street Station in Birmingham, Michigan. Image credit: Gibbs Planning Group."][/caption] Hours: 70% of all sales are after 5 pm. A downtown that closes at 5 is immediately giving up the market share. People are spending more money in less time – today’s woman will spend more money in 20 minutes than her mom did in 2 hours. Parking is one of the most important determinants in sustainable retail. Convenient centers need convenient parking; Main Streets must offer on-street parking. Nationally, required parking quantities have been cut in half to 4-5 cars per 1000 SF of building by most retailers. More parking is required for stand-alone stores than mixed-use centers. Recent research has found that mixed use centers and even large regional suburban malls only require 2.3-2.6 cars per 1000 of gross building square feet, even during peak demand periods. New Economy: Post recession shopping centers are becoming one level, in a main street walkable format. They are surface parked with various land uses mixed horizontally rather than vertically. Pier Park Town Center in Panama City sports 1-story buildings, strip center priced construction, and tenants in a main street, walkable format. We’re often told full sized department stores don't belong in walkable urbanism, but history shows they are appropriate and necessary. Retail Performance: In 2010, average sales were $80/SF for independent retailers, $275/SF for malls, and $575/SF for the highest performing centers. Typically rents are 8-10% of gross sales. Downtowns that get the retail rules right can outperform the best malls: tenant mix, anchor, hours, parking policy, private frontage, and costs. Urban centers, to be sustainable, need to be more than employment and residential centers. [caption id="attachment_3600" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Lilac Street near Corydon in Winnipeg, some of my favourite retail."][/caption] Controlling Costs. Lifestyle centers cost $350-400/SF to build, while simple landscaping and architectural details can make a good main street cost about as much, and outperform the lifestyle center. Central to our urban retail goals is to make walkable urbanism more profitable than auto-centric sprawling patterns. While much of the national retailer perspective will stay the same, there are all sorts of corollaries to many of these retail rules. And every now and then, they almost go quantum. - Hazel Borys If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? 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The Next Urbanism

greenwaters08 — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:01:48 +0000

'Tis the season to rejoice and enjoy the brotherhood of all mankind, as well as that of our in-laws... As we ease into 2012, I am officially announcing a New Urbanism victory across North America, as we recently witnessed the end of building suburbia and its physically isolated, segregated lifestyle. Proof? Just this week, the award-winning New Urban News, a publication dedicated to all things New Urbanism, officially changed their title to “Better! Cities and Towns.” As Robert Steuteville explained on their website, “When we launched New Urban News in 1996, the trend toward walkable, mixed-use planning and development was in its infancy. Cities were still at a low ebb — many of them just beginning to revitalize their downtowns... Today much is different. The sprawl-producing industry has been badly damaged in the financial crash. Markets have changed. A new generation of young adults has emerged with a strong preference for walkable places, while previous generations are also seeing the value of mixed-use neighborhoods.” Reinforcing my point, this year’s TED Prize was awarded to The City 2.0 to emphasize the cultural, social and physical significance of our collective return to the city, and its role in shaping our future. The TED Prize differentiates this 2.0 version from failed modernist attempts to urbanize our cities by explaining that it “is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom. The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity.” Last month, I wrote about the entry-level urbanism of the Vancouver model that successfully urbanized downtowns across US west. My criticism of the model, a tower on podium with a townhouse wrap, is that it has safely sealed off the interior of the blocks with its few secured residential (private) entries. In fairness, according to former city planner and current UCLA PhD candidate, Neal LaMontagne (find him on Twitter @nlamontagne), Vancouver is building upon its success with an innovative eco-density approach to more livable urbanism. As we continue Learning from Vancouver*, today’s debate centers around towers versus street level design and hiding the necessary density that shares infrastructure, cuts public expenditure (streets, highways, services), and reduces carbon emissions. The next step, Urbanism 2.0, is to understand the relationship between buildings in regards to how we interact with people above the street, across the street, and between buildings. City blocks should be providing easier access to public and private areas both vertically as well as horizontally, which is the 3D Urbanism Jan Gehl has illustrated in his new book, Cities for People, and has been documenting since his 1971, Life Between Buildings. Urbanism 2.0 will design towards the limits of our senses and the scale of human livability. The Next Urbanism, 2.0, is building towards immersive city blocks at smaller development increments. These new blocks are well-connected and permeable with greater social interconnectivity. The Next Urbanism will assemble complex places that mix to scale the varied intensities of retail shops, industrial shops, manufacturing and sales on-site, housing, and offices. Add to this the need to re-urbanizing first tier, streetcar suburbs (today's development battle line), and it's clear New Urbanists will need to be as effective at this as we were in combating suburban greenfields over the past 20 years. The rise of our new social technologies and networks are (re)enabling trust between strangers and we are now able to collaborate more efficiently and share information, infrastructure, and costs, enabling a renewed sense of community divergent from community in the past. Now, coupled with our new economy, technology is thereby reinforcing our need and use for connected places within our neighborhoods and city blocks. Think of the neighborhood-by-neighborhood social fabric of turn-of-the-century Paris, its impact on our ex-pat Lost Generation and how that interaction shaped our culture over the last century. [caption id="attachment_3611" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Hemingway and friends. They found each other with a simple #Hemingwaysidewalkparty."][/caption] In the late 20th century, the New Urbanism rightly recognized that cities are an amalgamation of neighborhoods, districts and corridors, with neighborhoods forming the basis for where we live, work, play, worship, and interact with the people who provide for our daily needs. The true value of urbanism and technology occurs when we are able to physically connect and share information, resources, ideas, and empathy with each other. These face-to-face interactions build the social fabric that will (re)define our ability to endure and thrive culturally into the 21st century. -Howard Blackson

*Learning from Las Vegas, originally published by the MIT in 1972, was one of the most influential and controversial architectural books of its era. Its authors—architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour—famously used the Las Vegas Strip to argue the virtues of the "ordinary and ugly" above the "heroic and original" qualities of architectural modernism.

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Playing Tea Party: Planning and Agenda 21

greenwaters08 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:54:40 +0000

2011 is over, but not forgotten. Indeed, in the planning world, it will be remembered as the year when many planners across the country began fielding smart growth policy objections from Tea Party supporters and those concerned about the U.N’s Agenda 21. No shortage of articles and blog posts, written in tones that drip with frustration yet offer few solutions, have documented the trend. These concerns are no small issue. Rather, they’re a formidable distraction capable of sinking years of work and wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars. In an era of diminishing resources, they’re something most communities simply can’t afford. It’s a very real challenge, but not an insurmountable one. For planners looking to make progress despite the hurdles of today’s political reality, here’s a four-step process for successfully navigating the waters. [caption id="attachment_3656" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Stop belittling objectors."][/caption] Step One: Stop Belittling Objectors. This should be so obvious that it should not even be a step, but every time I turn around I see smart growth advocates making things worse by calling objectors derogatory names before even attempting to address their specific concerns. [caption id="attachment_3660" align="alignleft" width="125" caption="Not only offensive, but completely ineffective."][/caption] Just last month I read a blog comment by a former President of the APA who claimed that the Tea Party and the Republican Party “would be extremely comfortable adorned in the brown shirts of its ideological predecessors of 1920s-1940s Germany.” He later called them supporters of fascism -- all the while never addressing a single substantive point (let alone supporting his name-calling allegations). [caption id="attachment_3663" align="alignright" width="150" caption=""I'm sorry, but your concerns are beneath me.""][/caption] Sometimes, more subtle actions are just as damaging. For example, last year I had to kick a member of our charrette team out of a meeting with local Tea Party representatives because he was rolling his eyes, making other condescending gestures and picking unnecessary fights that only clouded the issues. Step Two: Listen. Ask any sales person what the most important trait of a great sales person is and he or she will answer the ability to listen. The reasoning is simple. If you do not understand the concerns of your audience, you will not be able to address them. So listen hard. And then listen some more. Step Three: Identify. If you listen patiently, and respectfully ask questions that help you identify and isolate substantive concerns (which, oftentimes, are hidden behind rhetoric), you will finally be at the point where you can engage them in a meaningful way. While it is important that you learn as much as you can by asking a wide range of questions, the number one goal of your questions should be to identify the category into which your objector falls: A. Conspiracy Theorist. While this may sound derogatory on its face, it’s not intended as such. It’s simply shorthand for those who believe that local planning department efforts are being conducted in support of the United Nations' Agenda 21, despite the fact that most communities have only recently even heard of it. These opponents might also assert that local planners are conspiring with the federal government to force everyone to live in high-rises, abandon their cars, and give up their private property rights. B. Libertarian. Many libertarians have found refuge in the Tea Party because of their shared belief in limited government. They’ve been around the public planning process for decades, and their core belief is that the government should not tell citizens what they can and cannot do with their property. C. Mainstream Tea Party Supporter. The largest group of potential planning opponents is mainstream Tea Party supporters who have joined together with other local activists to combat fiscal irresponsibility and the growing size of government. They are distrustful of government, which translates to a critically untested assumption that everything the local planning department is doing is wrong. They believe that the voices of the citizenry don’t actually count, no matter how many public hearings and meetings take place. In short, they believe collaborative community initiatives always produce the same end product. That it's a sham process. Many of their objections spring from arguments made by others, as opposed to personal research (see “Agenda 21 for Dummies"). Call it guilt by association -- if Al Gore and the U.N. are for it, they must be against it. If Glenn Beck and other Tea Party members are against it, they must be against it as well. Step Four: Engage. The final step is engaging objectors in a civil manner based upon who they really are; i.e., the group they align with ideologically. In other words, treat them differently based upon their different points of view (although there is overlap). Here are the basic techniques: A. Conspiracy Theorist. Request evidence from the objectors that supports a connection between your local smart growth planning efforts and Agenda 21. Those who have been active in smart growth planning over the past 15 years know that there has been no connection. (Most did not even know about Agenda 21 until recently, meaning that collusion, if it actually existed, has been the most poorly orchestrated collusion in history.) [caption id="attachment_3692" align="alignright" width="115" caption="Wendell Cox: He may oppose smart growth but he also opposes distraction."][/caption] Next, highlight that the most visible critic of smart growth policies, Wendell Cox, wrote an article encouraging opponents of smart growth to abandon their focus on Agenda 21, and to simply oppose smart growth principles on their merits (though he defines smart growth in a manner that is at odds with most smart growth efforts). B. Libertarian. The conventional libertarian will claim that the built environment should be regulated on the individual choices of each individual parcel owner. That is how they define freedom. But this vision necessarily takes away a land owner’s freedom to live in a vibrant downtown setting or a neighborhood where agreed-upon rules produce, to them, a desirable environment. In other words, the libertarian vision provides freedom for some, but takes away the freedom of others who want something different. Ironically, the prospect of a community that permits a demand-driven diversity of places should be the goal of true libertarians, as it respects the freedom of all citizens. But is it? Ask the libertarian if they believe that property rights should be subject to the democratic process that we have in place today. [caption id="attachment_3695" align="alignright" width="150" caption="If wasteful spending is the problem, why oppose efforts towards greater returns on public expenditures?"][/caption] C. Mainstream Tea Party Supporter. Beyond the issues raised with the other groups, focus on the following: (1) the fiscal performance of sprawl; i.e., why do we subsidize infrastructure such as roads, sewer, electricity, gas and cable without regard to its true locational cost or its return on investment for the community; (2) the increased freedom associated with smart growth policies; i.e., more housing choices; more choices in how to get around; the ability to live in a multi-generational neighborhood; more development options than with existing separated-use zoning codes; and [caption id="attachment_3711" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Fighting to preserve conventional zoning affords us the freedom to be mowed over by people who should no longer be driving, yet have no choice but to do so."][/caption] (3) the European socialist origins of conventional development patterns; e.g., Le Corbusier and the Radiant City. [caption id="attachment_3698" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Looking for an easy definition of irony? The separated-use zoning defended by Tea Party advocates has its roots in the ideas of a European, intellectual socialist."][/caption] Finally, don’t indulge discussions of terms with no shared, agreed upon definition, such as “sustainability” or “economic justice.” Instead, ask them to articulate their vision for the community so that it can be contrasted with your efforts. And remember, it is counterproductive to simply label one thing “smart growth” and another item “sprawl.” Dig deeper into the details so that you can discuss the substantive issues. [caption id="attachment_3702" align="alignright" width="150" caption="The community will have the final say on what they do and don't believe."][/caption] It’s not necessary that you convince everyone of the correctness of your position. Instead, you simply need to work through their concerns. By engaging them respectfully such that they articulate and go on record with their real beliefs, you ensure that their objections can be judged not by you but where it matters: At the ballot box. What you do not want to do is get into an argument centered around who best fits the description of a Nazi. --Nathan Norris If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Rolling with Ever-Changing Gas Prices: Lessons from my dumb luck

greenwaters08 — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:01:40 +0000

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Op-Ed pages took on the subject of gas prices this week, devoting a good fifty column inches to a discussion that could otherwise be summarized like this: The price of gas might increase by anywhere from a few pennies to a dollar this year. It might also go down, but then it will go up again. And, amidst the fluctuations, expect the ongoing trend of slowly increasing average costs to continue. So we’re right to be concerned. Not exactly a news flash but nonetheless on par with the ever fatiguing state of our national conversation on energy. To that I’m resigned but then I got to this, from AAA spokesperson Jessica Brady, where the prospect of a solution is suggestively dangled but then never delivered: [As it relates to price increases,] “the most honest answer is it’s too hard to say with 100 percent confidence at this time. It’s definitely a possibility. Knowledge is power. When the odds are strong, prepare. If it does happen, we won’t be standing at the pump with our mouths open, as if we never saw it coming.” No, we’ll be standing at the pump with our mouths open even though we saw it coming. Seriously, what does “prepare” mean? How are people who are fully invested in a consumptive lifestyle dependent on the availability of cheap gas supposed to “prepare” just because their latest check of GasBuddy told them to expect an uptick? If you're of means, I suppose you could get yourself a hybrid. Others could prepare by instituting a family ban on eating out. Or canceling the cable TV. Maybe amp up your use of coupons and other forms of calculated shopping. Or worse. There’s all manner of Americans right now “preparing” for rising gas (and other energy) prices in ways exactly like this. But why does preparing have to be a reactive, punitive exercise? It doesn’t. There are meaningful ways to prepare proactively. Enjoyable ways. In fact, I discovered a few of them myself, quite by accident. In 1996 I was a young newlywed shopping for a place to put down roots. Our situation was simple: We wanted an old house and we were relatively broke. So, while we did end up finding what we wanted, it wasn’t exactly where we wanted, in that its surrounding neighborhood was something best described as “sketchy.” That’s okay, we rationalized. Our block was still better than a couple blocks over. And the schools? We didn’t need to think about that. We didn’t even have a child, much less one of school age. A lot can change. We’d cross that bridge when the time came. Time went by and things did indeed change. Other folks, as young and oblivious as we were, began moving into the neighborhood. They spent money, fixing up houses and launching local businesses. We had a daughter and pretty soon we started seeing kids all over. Then, we both made job changes that allowed us to work from home. We weren’t making any sort of calculated career moves so much as we were following our passions and interests. It just worked out. By the time school age rolled around for our daughter, parents in the neighborhood had achieved a loud enough voice to push for, and get, changes in the school system. As a result, everyone began enrolling their kids in the neighborhood school which, conveniently, was right down the street. We did the same. As the neighborhood continued to improve, so did the quality of the amenities. We reclaimed our streets and parks and responded enthusiastically with each new pub, restaurant or convenience opening nearby. In time, people were walking all over the place for all kinds of reasons. That’s when we realized that, between working at home, walking to school, friends’ houses, businesses and the park, having the subway a half mile away, and generally being part of a place where almost all needs can be satisfied within a mile or two of home, we had no use for a second car. And that’s why, in a decidedly Gen-X maneuver, we traded it in for a Vespa. The end result of all this, these sixteen years of fortuitous stumbling, is that, while the average American household paid $4,155 for gasoline in 2011 (a 25% increase over 2010), we paid about $1,400. And it wasn’t because we made sacrifices. It was because we happened upon an immensely satisfying lifestyle that just happened to be less dependent on gasoline. At whatever price.Beyond that, what we initially sought for a very specific and limited set of reasons ended up delivering a lot more, in more ways. Not only do we save on gas, we spend less time in the car. We’re afforded more time with our daughter who, now a ‘tween, may not want it but certainly needs it. And when she’s had enough, she can always set out -- via foot or bike -- on her own. We also live a more active, more localized existence now which, in practice, has led us to a lot of creative and interesting people with whom we’d have never crossed paths had our daily lives been operating at 45 miles per hour. Long story short, we consider ourselves very fortunate, but I realize that a story predicated on dumb luck and serendipity is, by definition, not directly transferrable. So before anyone feels the need to respond with a snarky “How nice... for you,” let me be clear. The true lesson here is that, since birth, many of us have been indoctrinated into a program of American Dream-like desires that may, in practice, bear little resemblance to the things that actually bring us satisfaction and joy. So long as we continue to pursue them, making decisions as though the cost of energy doesn’t matter, we’ll increasingly find ourselves at the cruel mercy of fluctuating prices. Instead, try this: The quest to use less gas will often lead you to compact, diverse, walkable mixed-use places offering a wholly unexpected quality of life.They may differ from what you’ve always pictured. They may offer fewer square feet per dollar. They may take a lot of work in partnership with others. But they will undoubtedly deliver on something often promised and rarely fulfilled: Newfound levels of personal freedom. What's that worth to ya? --Scott Doyon If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Politics & Public Process: The Half-Life of Anger

greenwaters08 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:16:26 +0000

Maybe it’s like the argument that given enough time, a chimp with a keyboard would eventually hammer out Hamlet, but I’m thinking the messy GOP presidential campaign is inching its way towards clarity. Not that the process will produce outcomes extreme partisans will like. Disappointment is often the byproduct of a clarifying experience, especially if success is measured by outcomes perfectly in sync with the purest of visions. In that sense, the Republican ordeal might have something to teach us about public processes in the communities and regions in which we work. Like the environments many planners discover when they’re involved in controversial projects (rezoning efforts come to mind), the context for rational policy discussion in the GOP primaries is, shall we say, testy. Since the Big Recession settled in, it’s been one long “mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore” tantrum. All you need to know about the mood of the country going into the 2010 and 2012 election cycles was this headline from a spring 2010 Pew survey: “Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor.” Discontent carried the day in the 2010 mid-term elections and set the stage for the 2012 GOP primaries. One by one, Republican contenders rose to channel the rage, basked momentarily in the media spotlight, then melted in the glare. As of this writing, the only anger outlier left standing is Newt Gingrich. And it will shock just about everyone with a feel for American politics if Newt is able to adapt his human hand grenade style to the demands of the more complex electoral environments in Florida and beyond. Barring something unforeseen, Mitt Romney, whom many Republicans suspect to be far closer than they like to the current White House inhabitant, will be the nominee. And to appeal to the more moderate voters he’ll need in the general election, Romney will have to reclaim turf abandoned by the radical right during the GOP primaries. The fears of the fiercest conservative partisans will be realized. But the chances for better outcomes for the country are likely to increase. Bottom line: Rage is not enough. Given a little time and exposure, ideas propelled principally by fear and mistrust lose traction. Inherent contradictions expose themselves. And advocates who can’t produce a convincing argument for how their proposals will right the wrongs that inspired all the anger in the first place will fall from favor. So how do we apply those lessons to local public engagement processes? First of all, let’s don’t fall into the trap of assuming that passion of any sort is permanent and that we should contort processes and policies to channel it. Anger has a half life. Over time, the toxicity diminishes. And, eventually, we’ll be left with doing the hard work of sorting through competing ideas, making hard choices about strategies, then implementing the ones with the highest likelihood of success. Too many public engagement processes confuse means and ends. I’ve heard consultants, in a desperate effort to gain the trust of warring factions, say, “Every idea has equal value.” Nope. Some ideas are lousy, and we should design processes to help us sort through concepts and toss out the ones that are dead ends as quickly as possible. Of course, this should be a collaborative endeavor. There has to be general agreement on the sorting rules. Together, we should arrive at goals and develop consensus-driven strategies in line with those goals. But achieving the goals is the point. Public engagement is a necessary component of the process to get there, but it ain’t THE process. All the faded GOP hopefuls successfully engaged the public and successfully channeled the passion of the moment. But when primary voters got a look at how that passion played out in a policy to-do list, contradictions emerged. Ambivalence grew. And now it looks as if Republican primary voters will default to the least passionate candidate in the lineup. By November, when the only vote that really counts occurs, it will have taken three-plus years for the country to slog through the tantrum stages to some sort of rough, unsatisfying consensus. If we’re to fulfill what we promise to communities and regions, we’ll need to get there a whole lot faster, and we’ll need outcomes to be a whole lot more satisfying. Without a plan to work through temporary passions to get to strategies with chances for permanent success, we’ll all be losers. --Ben Brown If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

On the Street: The DNA of place and the ROI of movement

greenwaters08 — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:01:28 +0000

The corporate culture of our government has been a carte blanche to keep doing what we’ve been doing. This culture implies that what we’ve been doing works. In business, last year’s income statement is a major driver in this year’s action plan. If a product or service was profitable, then it’s nurtured and grown this year. If a deliverable creates a loss, then change is made as quickly as possible. Because governments are focused on GDP and jobs instead of ROI, the reasons behind decisions often get muddy. Return on Investment (ROI) is quite simple. It’s just the gain from investment less the cost of investment all divided by the cost of investment. How many times over your money will be returned to you. And yet our governments aren’t geared to think this way unless it has to do with a change from business as usual. The ROI of Movement The Washington Examiner reported this week that D.C.’s 37-mile streetcar network would cost $1.5 billion and spur development and increased property values by $15 billion. That works out to an ROI of 9x. If we assume a 25-year timeframe to realize the gain, we’d be talking a 36% rate of return. When’s the last time your local government delivered those sorts of returns? But more importantly, when’s the last time your government placed a ROI on business as usual? The ROI of building one more road to a bedroom community and strip commercial? If you’ve done it, please comment below. There are precious few. 2012 Benchmarking Report Here’s a handy tool to help local governments out with some of the valuation involved with the ROI of Movement: 2012 Benchmarking Report for Bicycling and Walking in the United States, released this week. A few tidbits:

Cycling and walking levels fell 66% between 1960 and 2009, while obesity levels increased by 156%.
Percent of children who walk or bike to school fell 75% between 1960 and 2009, while childhood obesity rose 276% during that same period.
Canadians walk or bike for 12% of daily trips. Americans are the same. Netherlands 51%; Denmark 34%.
While biking and walking comprise 12% of all US trips and 14% of fatalities, facilities get less than 2% of US federal transportation funds.
Cycling and walking investments return up to $11.80 for every $1 invested.

That’s an ROI of 10.8x, and often with less initial investment required than transit. And that’s before you factor in GHG impacts, which are much harder to value. It’s not clear if these returns are factoring in the $3.2 trillion that obesity will be costing us every decade, starting in 2020. [caption id="attachment_3848" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="2012 Benchmarking Report for Bicycling and Walking in the United States shows active transportation is conversely proportional to obesity levels"][/caption] Sustainable Street Network Principles What about the required principles to realize the ROI of Movement? CNU released the Sustainable Street Network Principles this month, a compact guide to achieving a human-scale street network with significant returns. “We assert that current transportation engineering addresses only limited individual components of the region’s street network. This results in a fragmented and inefficient system that fails to adequately engage the social, environmental, and economic aspirations of communities.” These principles advocate a human-scaled urbanism, where the act of walking represents the basic unit of design. And instead of having a street just provide a transportation service, it looks to monetize governmental investment in infrastructure by choices that are “magnets for business, light industry, jobs, and economic opportunities.” This project lays out seven principles for creating livable street networks, then talks about the six key characteristics for implementing the principles. As always, the points where multiple modes of transportation intersect are the places that have the highest ROI of Movement. Places that thoughtfully coordinate the connections between the pedestrian, bike, transit, and car are the ones that generate the highest returns. And why does implementing these principles matter? Despite the $200 billion per year the US spends in transportation infrastructure, the country has higher traffic fatality rates than any developed nation. Engineering has been focused on moving cars and trucks quickly, yet transportation delays per capita has more than doubled since 1982, and the US has the highest vehicle miles traveled per capita globally. Americans spend more time in their cars than anyone on earth. Not really the American Dream. Something isn’t working as planned. [caption id="attachment_3850" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Sustainable Street Network Principles offer policy for increasing ROI of infrastructure investments"][/caption] The DNA of Place Looking at the ROI of Movement here, we’ve been mainly talking money. But when you find a character-rich, highly valued place, you’ll also find a high quality of life and lowered environmental impacts per person. When you dig further into what makes these places, you’ll conclude the streets are genes in the DNA of Place. Or maybe they’re even more like histones, which compact and organize DNA. Just as DNA is essential to life and health, streets are essential to the health of our urbanism – and therefore to our economy, society and environment. [caption id="attachment_3851" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="A little DNA from New Orleans. Image credit: Steve Mouzon"][/caption] In old urbanism, streets are nearly as complex as the double helix of DNA. Unnaturally simplifying streets as we have over the last 65 years, into a meager selection of freeways, arterials, collectors, locals, and cul-de-sacs have put the health of cities and economies and people at risk. Just as in complex lifeforms, urbanism isn’t easily put into a petri dish for studying one moving part at a time. But until we understand – and appropriately value – the ROI of Movement, the DNA of Place is at risk. --Hazel Borys If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Punk Rock and the New Urbanism: Getting back to basics

greenwaters08 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:01:51 +0000

By the early to mid 1970s, something was wrong with rock and roll. It no longer fought the system. Worse than that, it had become the system. Bloated. Detached. Pretentious. Performer and audience, once fused in a mutual quest to stick it to the man, now existed on separate planes -- an increasingly complacent generation sucked into the service of pomp and circumstance. And the shared experience of joyful rebellion? Replaced by pompous, weed-soaked, middle-earth mysticism. Rock and roll needed to get back to basics. What country pioneer Harlan Howard characterized as “three chords and the truth.” Enter punk rock. New Urbanism Wins the War Missing the connection to urbanism? Stick with me. What sent me down this metaphorical rabbit hole were mounting suggestions that the war for America’s built future is over. And New Urbanism won. My colleague, Howard Blackson, said as much in a recent blog post. But the most compelling evidence can be found in just about any municipal comp plan from anywhere in the U.S. Even ones written by people who’ve never even heard of the New Urbanism or, better yet, consider it some sort of threat to our sovereign liberty. Take a look inside at the concepts being adopted and the words employed to describe them. Town and neighborhood centers. Walkability. Mixed-use. Form. Housing diversity. Transportation choice. Not only is that the new language of livability, it’s also the gospel New Urbanists have been preaching for over a quarter century -- now embraced everywhere you look as normative planning practice. That makes us the de facto victor in the battle for hearts and minds, even as it deprives us of our long-imagined, flag-planting, told-ya-so moment bringing the war to a poetic close. Inch by inch, it just sort of happened. But now comes the aftermath. New Urbanists who built careers fighting the system are presently waking up to find that the new system is, well, us. And all of a sudden, our roundabouts might as well be “Roundabout.” 20/20 Hindsight [caption id="attachment_3896" align="alignright" width="300" caption="I think I was on this charrette..."][/caption] We should have seen it coming. In the glory days of the housing boom, developer charrettes were akin to Led Zep’s Boeing 720 “Starship” (minus the groupies and drugs, as far as I know). Luxury, comfort, and every creative whim not only welcomed but celebrated. Ouch. In that context, our frequent argument over whether to code something four stories or five, despite a market that may never support more than a story or two, suddenly takes on the overreaching tones of an eight minute guitar solo. And our greenfield TNDs? While certainly beautiful, functional and neighborly, many remained so connected to auto-intensive patterns of commuting and consumption that, in retrospect, they were the creative equivalent of a free-form jazz exploration in front of a festival crowd. [caption id="attachment_3917" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Santana Row. Beautiful, but can we build it in the future?"][/caption] Finally, there’s our master planned town center development schemes which, like Genesis’ “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” dutifully satiated our desire to be entertained at a grand scale. But all too often, behind the curtain, were balance sheets so bloated that fostering the incubation of small business start ups or service sector housing, the bedrock of sustainable economics, remained flat-out impossible. Yes, those plans reflected the optimistic tenor of the times -- not to mention the evolution of the century’s most influential design movement -- but they were also the beginning of the end. Call it New Urbanism’s operatic collaboration with the London Philharmonic. Where’s punk rock when you need it? [caption id="attachment_3891" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anarchy in the NU. Chuck Marohn, Bruce Tolar, Bob Gibbs, and Sid, still lacking on the bass."][/caption] Meet the New Boss As it turns out, it’s been kicking around the underground for a while now. A new breed of back-to-basics urban troubadours, banging out songs of incremental infill, architectural temperance, sustainable economics, and design tuned to humans across the social spectrum. Here are three: Bruce Tolar, New Urbanism’s Joey Ramone Like Joey Ramone, Bruce Tolar is shaggy haired and roughly 20 feet tall yet, despite that, friendly and unthreatening. An architect in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, we’ve written about his work before, here and here, but the Cliff Notes version is this: Bruce participated in the post-Katrina Mississippi Renewal Forum, where the idea of the Katrina Cottage was born, and has since gone on to be one of the most active, put-yer-money-where-yer-mouth-is champions of small scale, cottage infill as a catch-all solution for workforce housing, business incubation, and aging-in-place. Cottage Square, the embodiment of his ideas, speaks a particular brand of truth because it emerged organically over time. “Some people collect stamps,” he explains. “I collect cottages.” [caption id="attachment_3925" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Cottages at Oak Park, adjacent and connected to
Bruce Tolar's Cottage Square."][/caption] Through a combination of strategy, good fortune and happenstance, a slew of the movement’s proof-of-concept cottages, 14 in all, have come to reside on Tolar’s property. The original MRF Cusato Cottage that debuted at the 2006 International Builders Show in Orlando. The Lowes kit cottage. Two from the Mouzon Katrina Cottages collection. The DPZ cottage. Even a row of MEMA emergency houses. Together they form a modest, infill proto-neighborhood of both commercial and residential structures, walking distance from primary conveniences and a short bus or bike ride to the finest downtown on the Mississippi coast. More importantly, they’ve also proved scalable, having since inspired an adjacent development of another 30, now fully occupied, rental units. All in all, over 40 cottages occupy the lush, four acre site. While not necessarily tearing down the walls of the establishment, Tolar’s efforts expose an exciting and empowering alternative to the conventional wisdom of the old guard -- that workforce housing is housing of last resort; that it can’t be desirable when produced at a reasonable cost; that it can’t add aesthetic and economic value to a community; that it has to be concentrated on a large scale; that it can’t be integrated with existing development; and that people won’t downsize by choice. Given the right options, they will. Happily. Chuck Marohn, New Urbanism’s Ian Mackaye A self-described “recovering engineer,” Chuck Marohn is on a mission. Like Ian Mackaye, he compels people -- or, in this case, towns of people -- to take ownership of their inherent value, follow their own path, steer clear of destructive behaviors, and become more of what they’re capable of becoming. Some people find the blunt edge of his truth unsettling. He doesn’t care. In his own words, here’s what’s driving him: “The American approach to growth is causing economic stagnation and decline along with land use practices that force a dependency on public subsidies. The inefficiencies of the current approach have left American towns financially insolvent, unable to pay even the maintenance costs of their basic infrastructure. A new approach that accounts for the full cost of growth is needed to make our towns strong again.” Like parenting, his work requires tough love and the ability to tell people things they instinctively do not want to hear. It garners scores of fans for Strong Towns, the nonprofit advisory he runs from Saint Paul, Minnesota, but it can also get him in hot water. Turns out, pointing out that the emperor is wearing no clothes is an often thankless business. Last month, Marohn was on a tear about development patterns, contrasting the economic performance and future potential of two blocks in his hometown -- one with traditional, pedestrian-oriented, small lot urbanism; the other with an auto-oriented fast food franchise. There was no soppy lamenting of lost memories, no touchy-feely boosterism of “community.” There were only numbers. Numbers that don’t lie. Long story short, the idea that we’re achieving economic gains through auto-friendly strip development is a fallacy. Instead, we’re signing our own death warrant. Such revelations alone are enough to encourage some folks to insert their heads comfortably back in the sand, but Marohn was just getting started. He followed things up with this post taking easy aim at the consulting profession still happily suckling at the teet of delusional municipal aspirations. To him, it’s akin to professional malpractice. You can’t stop him. He doesn’t want to help cities thrive. He needs to. Exposing the Growth Ponzi Scheme while pushing models of scale and form proven to endure without bankrupting the places we purport to care about, he doesn’t pander to his audiences. He confronts them. It ain’t pretty, but the truth rarely is. Bob Gibbs, New Urbanism’s Joe Strummer Joe Strummer had a gift for taking aim at the system and helping people see how it wasn’t always ideal for helping them be who they wanted to be. His mantra, “The Future is Unwritten,” summarized his belief that, ultimately, things will be whatever we make of them. That we have it within our power to change our apparent destiny. To change systems. That kind of describes retail guru Bob Gibbs. The author of the recently published “Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development,” Bob takes those schooled in conventional retail and reorients them for an urban future. He’s a sensei. A mythbuster. But most importantly, he’s grounded in the reality of what people want. Bob knows our economic gravy train has ground to a screeching halt, perhaps permanently. In response, he scours our built past -- when we lived in traditional, urban communities with comparatively less wealth -- for models to guide the present. He doesn’t so much seek to destroy the system as he does to subvert it in a quest for better outcomes. Here’s a dose of his pragmatism, taken from a previous interview: "We need to make it as easy or easier to develop in city centers. Developers made the mistake of thinking that town centers had to be complicated with lots of ornamentation – fountains, clock towers, paving. Santana Row was $400-500/SF to build, requiring $40-50 rents (per foot). It’s unsustainable. They didn’t appreciate the value of urbanism. When you’re passing a strip center, you’re passing it at 40-50 MPH, so they have to make them attention getting. When experiencing urbanism on foot, it’s totally a different animal. New Urbanism got this tag that it was more expensive to build than conventional retail. So most developers think that good urbanism is twice as expensive. Terry Shook, for example, is really good at building town centers that are the same price or less than conventional: $60/SF for office buildings that are really beautiful, while others were paying $120/SF for the shell. All four sides of the building don’t have to be brick, and it doesn’t have to have a slate roof. If you look at great cities, when they were peaking in the 40’s and 50’s, they were simple. Great placemaking, good squares, places between the buildings were beautiful. Even street trees were rare. The older buildings in Winter Park's Park Avenue or in Palm Beach’s Worth Avenue in Florida are often 1-story, $60/SF buildings. [caption id="attachment_1970" align="alignleft" width="456" caption="Palm Beach. 1-story. Built for roughly sixty bucks a square foot. Image credit: Bob Gibbs."][/caption] Cities can redevelop themselves by going back to the 20’ x 60’ lot, and selling them to small entrepreneurs who can build their own. Instead of waiting for someone who can build a $60 million project, the city can replat to the smaller lots, and sell under $50,000 each, then smaller businesses through sweat equity can build their own stores. Rosemary and part of Seaside were built this way. The only part of Rosemary that got in trouble was the large hotel, which went through a few bankruptcies. It’s a very good post-recession model. Instead of taking out a large note to build an Easton Town Center, build the streets and squares, and let the rest occur incrementally, on a small scale, as the market will bear." It’s Now or Never The bloat of the housing boom is over. We’re living in a different era now -- an era of new economic realities -- and the relevance of the planning and development trades depends on their -- our -- ability to get back to the basics of urban growth and development. It’s happening. The torchbearers profiled here reflect something real and growing and I encourage you to become a part of it. Of course, I’d never be so presumptuous as to speak on their behalf, but my gut tells me their response would go a little something like this: Gabba gabba we accept you we accept you one of us! --Scott Doyon If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Hey, where's the freshness?

greenwaters08 — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:21:54 +0000

Hi, there. Thanks for dropping by. If you're here seeking your weekly dose of community perspective, we've got some news for you. It's become increasingly apparent to us here at PlaceShakers that our Friday publishing schedule is a bit counter-intuitive. After all, here we are at the end of the week, trying to gear up discussion while everyone else is winding down. Perhaps it originated with subconscious impulses to simply counter whatever the mainstream tends to do. Or maybe Friday just turned out to be the day when we had the most bandwidth to write. Whatever is was, it's not ideal. It's become the week's dessert. A little treat at the end, when the heavy lifting is done. We're really looking to be more of an aperitif. So, beginning Monday, we're switching to a Fresh Every Monday promise instead. We'll start the week with you and together we can consider the challenges ahead at the same pace. See you then.

Money, It's a Gas: New Economy development financing

greenwaters08 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:01:55 +0000

In startling alignment with James Howard Kunstler’s stark predictions, ULI’s 2012 Report, "What’s Next: Real Estate in the New Economy," bubbly concludes: “The real estate world is hurtling into a different place and time. Change is coming at a faster pace with more uncertain consequences. Success will take on different forms and risks will increase. Standing pat or ignoring new realities is not possible. Notably, investment will gravitate to places that welcome business and view public investments -- in education, infrastructure, and innovation -- as prerequisites for progress and economic sustainability.” I interpret ULI’s analysis as:

World hurtling into a different place/time (Yeah, like 1890);
Change is coming fast (Conventional tools are not applicable today);
Success takes on different forms (We realize we need the predictability of Form-Based Codes);
Money will be invested in:

a. Places that welcome business (Free market - less rules); b. Places that welcome public investment (But, provide subsidies - So, we’d appreciate more local/state/fed funding with less rules attached...); c. Places that welcome education, infrastructure, innovation (We realize that Richard Florida's creative class theory is now a law).

The changes we were looking for have finally arrived. Due to the economy, our nation’s primary development pattern will now be small-scale infill development in our first tier streetcar neighborhoods. An interesting anecdote is the regional apartment builder building their standard 150 unit rental products on multiple lots in multiple buildings in a historic San Diego neighborhood. Recognizing such, municipalities are finally looking to new models modifying their decades-long reliance upon suburban planning tools to enable infill redevelopment. Just as suburbia was built with now vanishing state and federal subsidies, the following financing tools are available to tilt the playing field towards the difficult chore of building infill redevelopment. We* essentially have the following four options: 1.0 Land Redevelopment agencies (RDAs) have long subsidized, condemned and assembled private lots (land) in order to make larger urban projects work. With California closing down RDAs, there are other ways to make new land available (without Kilauea nearby). All government agencies -- such as cities, counties and school districts -- and nonprofit institutions -- such as universities, hospitals and churches -- located in urban areas tend to be land-rich. Without giving away their land, these agencies and institutions are now equity partners in a redevelopment public/private partnership project. These land-rich entities are able to commit their land up front at no cost to an infill development deal in exchange for a later financial payoff. In addition, surplus state land could be made available to cities to help make urban projects work. [caption id="attachment_4005" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Vacant Lots - Austin, TX. Image courtesy of photolitherland at www.skyscraperpage.com."][/caption] [caption id="attachment_4006" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Vacant Lots - San Diego. Image courtesy of photolitherland at www.skyscraperpage.com."][/caption] 2.0 Urban Planning Policies and Urban Design Regulations 2.1 Neighborhood-scale Planning: Cities can also help by creating "master plans" for whole urban neighborhoods that front-load the environmental and community review process so individual developers can then construct projects more quickly at the back end. These plans should focus efforts on easily funded policies, such as complete streets and sustainability practices and healthy community design principles. [caption id="attachment_4007" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="El Cajon Boulevard, Community of North Park, San Diego.
Photo By: Sam Hodgson (Voice of San Diego)."][/caption] 2.2 Rezoning: In exchange for building bigger than what is otherwise previously allowed, builders pay a fee to cover a public project. Rezoning towards a publicly vetted neighborhood-scaled master plan allows that community to capture the value of increased intensities and build for infrastructure deficits without the use of condemnation. 2.3 Streamlined processing. Programmatic environmental impact reports, covering not a project but an area where growth or revitalization is to occur, speed up the review process and reduce the cost to builders. 3.0 Local Tax Districts 3.1 Landscape Maintenance Districts and Business Improvement Districts: Local property and business owners vote to charge themselves extra to build and maintain better sidewalks, parks and other local amenities. [caption id="attachment_4008" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Little Italy Neighborhood - San Diego, CA. Photo by: Liz Giffen."][/caption] 3.2 Community facility districts: Local property vote owners raise their taxes to fund schools, new streets or utilities. Originally used in “greenfield” master-planned communities, these are self-taxing districts and may be applied to contiguous growth. 3.3 Infrastructure facility district: Cities are able to divert a set percentage of property taxes from a specific development zone to build anew or improve basic infrastructure deficits. 4.0 City-wide Tax Tools 4.1 Sales-tax increment. Bill Fulton states the because redevelopment laws only affects property taxes, some cities also have aggressively used tax-increment financing drawn from sales-tax generating projects -- essentially, committing a portion of the future revenue stream to pay for infrastructure or subsidize development. Another example of a suburban tool to fund strip centers and auto dealers, this technique could assist urban projects with a retail component or an employment center that generates a lot of taxable business-to-business sales -- an often-overlooked source of funding. 4.2 Developer impact fees: Builders pay a one-time fee to cover the cost of their project’s impact on transportation, recreation, library and other public services. However, these fees cannot be adjusted to make up for past sins or deferred maintenance issues. 4.3 Budgeting: The city devotes a portion of its general fund revenues from sales and property taxes, hotel taxes and other sources to capital improvements — at the expense, however, of operating costs. Most improvements to streets and streetscape are allowed to use general fund monies and represents another ‘land’ option for redevelopment in an overly engineered right-of-way. 4.4 Tax abatements: Cities reduce or eliminate property and sales taxes in exchange for a developer’s construction of a road, park or other community need. In addition, a state's policy actions can help local efforts by providing, for example, aggressive guidelines to streamline environmental review or link subdivision rules with transportation and planning standards, in order to expedite and fund local master plans and neighborhood planning efforts. With the need right now to forge new territory using both new and old tools, this is a great time to be in the place making business. Municipal redevelopment is being reframed as a public/private strategic coordinator of public policies and funds to promote well-designed infill development and urban revitalization opportunities. *(I need to thank Former City of San Diego Planning Director Bill Anderson, and current Smart Growth America Vice President, Bill Fulton, for borrowing heavily from their recent articles). --Howard Blackson If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

B-Grid Be Good

greenwaters08 — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:01:56 +0000

Start the conversation from the standpoint of an all A-Grid plan, and then work backward to identify strategic B-Grids.
Get all of your small retail onto an A-Grid. If you’re up against more conventional developers, diagonal parking will usually do the trick, though parallel parking makes for a better pedestrian environment.
Connect the A-Grids to A-Grids forming an A-Grid network for pedestrians throughout the neighborhood. In theory, a pedestrian should not have to enter the B-Grid.
Install walkable streets on the B-Grid, setting the seeds for future redevelopment, and acknowledging that pedestrians emerge from parking lots and need to walk safely to the A-Grid.
Ensure that B-Grid utilities are installed along block perimeters, not through parking lots.
Where parking isles intersect the B-Grid, anticipate the street that might be built in the future. Provide a continuous sidewalk that trumps the drive isles. Plant trees and install light standards so that they don’t have to be moved in the future.
Up to 20% is an acceptable standard for B-Grid thoroughfares within any given neighborhood.

--Geoff Dyer

Retail on My Mind

greenwaters08 — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:01:52 +0000

Seems I’ve got retail on my mind. It all started in December, with Bob Gibb’s Placemaking@Work webinar, whose tweetchat sparked a Neighbourhood Retail BlogOff led by Steve Mouzon. Then last week Victor Dover’s PM@W webinar followed up with ideas about tactical retail, where he talked about the next version of mixed use being smaller, quicker, and more organic. Building Mixed-Use in tough times We've long valued mixed use as a social condenser. And those gathering places that grow naturally out of mixing uses produce the highest dollars per square foot in the surrounding neighbourhood – for developers, owners, and cities. Keeping mixed use viable in tough times makes for economic resilience, yet it's harder than ever to finance. Necessity is coming up with all sorts of interesting inventions, often with smaller-scale, organic results. The frequently "cold, dead hand of common management" is being replaced by tactical urbanism for more authentic places. [caption id="attachment_4089" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Just off NYC's High Line, traditional urban development on a lot by lot basis. Photo credit: Victor Dover"][/caption] The first, most essential tool to enabling incremental development is the lot. Mixed use developed on a lot-by-lot basis can expand, contract, and repurpose, providing the zoning is character-based, instead of use-based. This also allows us to repurpose heritage buildings, as well as enabling small-scale infill. An incremental layering up by risk takers is then possible, and sweat-equity of entrepreneurs becomes a viable source of funds. We're seeing many suburban retrofits engaging horizontal mixed use instead of vertical. The bankers relax to only contemplate one use at a time -- the other day a Wells Fargo senior analyst told me to stop talking about vertical mixed use in the US until the European credit crisis calms in the spring. A few weeks before that, a California developer suggested not saying the words mixed use to bankers, but to focus on individual components. [caption id="attachment_4086" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Mixed use development at this scale is not currently viable and lacks the intricacy and flexibility of the traditional urban lot. Photo credit: Victor Dover"][/caption] Not everyone's so bearish, but the truth is local markets often don't support more than 1-story retail right now, so a mixture of horizontal uses within a 5-minute walk still makes for a great place and is easier to finance. And it allows for smaller developers to take on a few blocks -- or a few lots -- which is how most great old urbanism was built. More bullish markets are building 1-story structures strong enough to carry additional stories later. [caption id="attachment_4087" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Built from shipping containers. Dekalb Market, Brooklyn, NY. Photo credit: Victor Dover"][/caption] Subdivision of lots -- instead of large parcel development -- was historically one of the greatest generators of wealth. Savvy cities are subdividing small lots again, and removing other zoning barriers like suburban parking requirements. Small, light, easy to implement, and easy to reverse has always been the most viable retail formats in recessionary times. To do that, not only do we need to resurrect the tradition of lots, but also enable pop-up retail. All sorts of interesting examples are emerging: [caption id="attachment_4088" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Food trucks create a spontaneous piazza.
Photo credit: Victor Dover"][/caption]

Container stores like the DeKalb Market in Brooklyn
Farmers markets virtually everywhere
Food truck round ups organized by social media
Movable buildings – the Tipping Point at Hamstead, Montgomery, Alabama
Reversible demonstration projects that enable cyclists and pedestrians, and often provide expansions for restaurants, coffee shops, and cafés.
However, some have had a harder time, like the Hercules Market Hall in Hercules, California

Mixed-use has been enshrined in most comp plans across this continent. However, the building must be lovable enough to make us want to recycle it. So building design and urban form are critically important. Retail: 1000 rooftops and other magic numbers The BlogOff spent most of January debating the question: Does a corner store really need 1,000 rooftops to exist without subsidies? Urbanists spent much of the last 25 years designing things that need subsidies. Scott Doyon talked about that a couple of weeks ago, in his piece about punk urbanism. To explore further, I reconnected with one of Scott’s anti-rock stars, Bob Gibbs: Supportable means that the business can produce enough sales to pay market rate rents, labor, inventory, and taxes. The figure is determined by how much the average household spends on convenience food items such as beer, milk and chips. Corner stores are more expensive than large supermarkets, and therefore will capture only a tiny fraction of the household budget. They’re for when you need that baking soda or diaper now, and don’t care how much it costs. Still, a rule of thumb is just that. The 1000 homes rule of thumb assumes that 100% of corner store sales are generated only by the surrounding homes. This is seldom the case, especially if the corner store is located along a busy road, or if there is an employment center or civic use nearby that attracts shoppers beyond the neighborhood. As an extreme, zero homes are needed to support a corner store if it sells gasoline along a highway. Corner stores that sell liquor, specialty deli, wine, or baked goods can reach beyond the typical sales performance. An example is Kentland’s corner store, located near live works, a Whole Foods, a million SF of retail, and lots of office. Large amounts of their sales come from beyond Kentland’s 300+ homes. If the store is located away from an urban center or supermarkets, it may capture a larger percent of the household’s food budget. Multiple corner stores may be viable if specialties are varied between them: wine, baked goods, or prepared foods. [caption id="attachment_4090" align="alignright" width="300" caption=""Pop-up retail," like this in Seaside, Florida, maintains low overhead. Photo credit: Victor Dover"][/caption] In the case of a building owner with no mortgage who’s interested in creating a groovy corner store with modest return, all rules of thumb are off. Cities and new urban communities are filled with closed corner stores. As a rule of thumb, under no condition, should the developer or anyone else subsidize a corner store. This leads to lazy operators that offer poor goods and services. Encouraging prospects Despite the economic challenges being faced in all aspects of our built environment, I'm especially excited by what's happening with retail. Not because I'm expecting a return to business as usual but because we're finding ways to leverage resources not in short supply: Creativity. History. Ingenuity. Even moxie. What are your ideas? --Hazel Borys If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

The goal is not engagement. It's disengagement.

greenwaters08 — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:01:05 +0000

Here’s your guide to achieving disengagement: Identify supporters. Start with who you know but the real key is who they know. Plug into their networks, build alliances of mutual benefit, and arm them with everything they need to be advocates. Identify opponents. Opposition is rarely arbitrary. If people feel a disconnect between your goals and theirs, you need to understand why. Are they misinformed? Are there ideological differences? Where are there potential areas of shared interest? You may not be able to convert the opposition, but the act of listening is the first step towards common ground, as it removes their advantage of being inattention victims. By dealing with all participants on the same terms, you can likely detoxify the discussion enough to keep the process moving in a positive direction. Connect the stories. Your community already has a story. Craft yours entirely in the context of theirs, with an eye towards clarity and simplicity. Find the connecting points, the shared context, the common values. And forget “facts,” at least the kind that are weaponized for debate. You can’t talk somebody into trusting you. Look for opportunities to demonstrate that you’re trustworthy. (Actually doing what you say you’re going to do is a good start.) Define success. We see no shortage of RFPs that spend more time talking about the means -- for example, social media and other online tools – than about the end goals of a project. We can’t stress enough: You cannot determine tools and tactics until you’ve determined where you want to go and whom you have to have on board to get there. You just can’t. Design a self-correcting process. Listen. Respond with ideas to test. Use the feedback to tweak the ideas. Present again. Listen again. Tweak again. Repeat until there’s consensus for a set of proposals that are powerful enough to inspire yet are realistic enough to be achievable. If you’re doing it right, three feedback loops will produce the results you want. Plan for incremental successes. To keep your advocates advocating, you have to reward them with short-term wins on the way to long-term accomplishment. Identify benchmarks or model projects that can be planned and implemented in a matter of months or less. Achieve them. Celebrate them. Use them to recruit more partners and more resources. And remind everybody how cool it is to trust a process and a set of co-collaborators that get them to places they’d never have gotten by themselves. --Scott Doyon and Ben Brown If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Dream Home for the New Era: Compact, connected & mortgage-free?

greenwaters08 — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:01:18 +0000

The future is here. And it’s for lease. Even before the Great Recession, real estate market analysts Todd Zimmerman, Laurie Volk and Chris Nelson were patiently explaining the demography-is-destiny argument for an inevitable shift in American housing. It’s all about the numbers. Between them, two monster generational cohorts, Boomers (born 1946-1964) and Millennials (born 1981-2000), account for more than 150 million people. There’s broad diversity within members of the generations when it comes to attitudes and capacities for acting on them, of course. But there are so just so darn many people in the two age groups that even small slivers of the total number will have multiplier effects on housing supply and demand. The difference-making population slivers may not be all that small, it turns out. These age groups both trend away from family norms of the past. Many more of them at both ends of the age clusters live alone or have no children.

What’s more, many in both generations seem more interested in compact, mixed-use neighborhoods than in car-centric, single-use suburban housing. The National Association of Realtors’ 2011 Community Preference Survey is among the latest of the attitudinal checks. In that report, 58% of respondents indicated a preference for “a neighborhood with a mix of houses and stores and other businesses within an easy walk.” Since the pre-recession housing boom was producing nothing like a 60/40 mix of mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods compared to drive-to ‘burbs, we can assume a pent-up demand for the Smart Growth stuff. And that was before the housing bust and rising gas prices began forcing Americans to rethink what, exactly, constitutes an affordable version of how and where they want to live. In an article in the Nov./Dec. 2010 Washington Monthly, Patrick C. Doherty and Christopher Leinberger characterized the dilemma this way: “Both of these huge demographic groups want something that the U.S. housing market is not currently providing: small, one-to-three-bedroom homes in walkable, transit-oriented, economically dynamic, and job-rich neighborhoods.” For many folks in those two generations, the combination of economic realities and quality of life desires are pushing them towards rentals. “The country is on the cusp of fundamental changes in our housing dynamics,” said Doug Bibby, president of the National Multi-Housing Council in a January online story for Multifamily Executive. “Preferences are driving more people away from the typical suburban house and toward the type of lifestyle that rental housing offers.” Housing industry trend watchers have been all over this story for the better part of a year. Now, everybody else is picking up on it. The Birmingham News made note last week of the against-the-grain growth of downtown residences in a down market for home sales. In the decade between 2000 and 2010, downtown Birmingham residents increased by 32 percent and the number of occupied rental units by 18 percent. The New York Times weighed in with a story on how demand for rental housing is outstripping supply and driving up rents. And the debate is heating up among developers and builders on how much to invest in this new direction. Is the rental explosion a temporary trend that will revert to old home-ownership patterns when the economy picks up? Or are we, as Bibby and the demographic analysts suggest, into a whole new housing era? I’ve been convinced by Zimmerman/Volk, Nelson and others that the shift to a higher proportion of rental housing is at least long-term, if not permanent. And I was on a panel at the International Building Show in Orlando earlier this month with multifamily experts whose numbers were even more compelling. Lesley Deutch of John Burns Real Estate Consulting said her research suggests “a 9.1 million increase in renter households over the next five years, more than double the rate of the last five years.” And the trends driving those numbers are not likely to fade anytime soon. The Millennials, many of whom are stuck living with their parents until job prospects give them the bucks to move out on their own, account for much of the pent-up demand.

For the just-starting-out generation, tight credit and requirements for substantial down payments will continue to be barriers to home ownership. And even when they have incomes sufficient to invest, continuing volatility in the overall economy will dissuade them from putting their money into something they can’t pick up and take with them if they have to chase better jobs elsewhere. So here’s what we have: A giganto demographic push towards flexible, close-in living; a demand for affordability on a broad scale; and an increasing desire for rental options. What this suggests for municipalities and private developers is an opportunity with a challenge. Obviously, there’s a chance now to expand housing choices in places people want to live and to achieve all the advantages that come with appropriate density. More diversity. Better options for aging in place. Increased economic vitality via the hanging-out effect. The problem is, outside of big city downtowns, where demand for rentals has always been high, the design and construction of apartments, town houses and other rental models haven’t consistently measured up to the range and standards of single-family, for sale residences. In too many places, “for rent” and “affordable” have become code words for subsidized government housing or cheaply built complexes likely to be opposed by neighbors worried about their property values or the increased traffic congestion. There’s a stigma to overcome. The sure way to aggravate in-town neighborhood fears is to import suburban multifamily designs that assume no one can live without a parking space outside their door. Or relate to human beings who are not fellow occupants of their rented space. The ideal approach would be to produce neighborhood-appropriate rental choices that are impossible to tell from for-sale dwellings. Historic in-town neighborhoods provide the best models. True townhouses. Appropriately scaled stacked flats. And, of course, single-family detached homes that toggle between owner-occupied and rented depending upon market conditions and owner preferences. That latter approach is getting a significant try-out -- and plenty of kudos -- in Ocean Springs, MS. The evolution of Katrina Cottage clusters into rental neighborhoods is in full swing. Last week, there was a celebration of LEED Platinum certification of one of the homes in the Cottages at Oak Park. Designed from the beginning as rentals, the 29 homes are on two-plus acres within walking and biking distance of everything in the historic waterfront town. Construction was complete in August of last year. And just about every cottage was leased within 60 days. --Ben Brown If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Rowhouses Without the Wiggle

greenwaters08 — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 05:01:06 +0000

Lose the wiggle. Here's five tips on townhouse restraint:

Keep the façade flat. This saves on cost and frees budget for improved windows and materials.
Resist non-rational articulation. Use simple solutions like porches, stoops, balconies or bay windows to provide interest while you develop faith in the attraction of the street itself.
For fee-simple rowhouses, separate the roofs with parapets. For condominiums, the straight roof is fine.
Break the parcels with passages mid-block. This permits easy access to the alley behind while providing two additional end units with additional light. However, avoid the temptation for frequent breaks as this begins to confuse the building type with less urban ones.
The parking MUST occur in the rear with parallel on-street spaces for guests. This model depends entirely on the beauty of the public realm and can be destroyed by dominant parking stalls.

--Susan Henderson If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

The Social Network: Community Edition

greenwaters08 — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 05:01:41 +0000

Likes. Friends. Followers. We’ve got hundreds of ‘em. Plus, LinkedIN for professionals and Google+ for, uhhhh, well, for someone and then all kinds of iPhone texting, FaceTime, email, and Skype-ing. Who has time to make a phone call anymore? In trying to understanding and leverage the power of our wired social networks, I've been thinking about how our new handheld technology will reshape our built environment in the 21st century. The obvious technological advances of the past (trains/trolleys/cars) led us to connect and build the places we now live in. Are we responding correctly to the contemporary human condition with the mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods we design and code for today? Local University of California San Diego professor, James Fowler, wrote a book, Connected, and gave a poignant TEDxSanDiego talk on the power of new technology to reform tactile social networks. Professor Fowler makes the point that our new technology isn’t influencing us to live in a George Jetsonesque technological fantasy world (or Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, or Frank Gehry fantasies, for that matter). In fact, he cites empirical and scientific data to illustrate how new social networks are ushering us “Back to the Village.” For it is face-to-face interactions that drive behavior and serve as the greatest influences in our lives. My personal handheld technology allows me to find my nearby shared car, Car-2-Go, to more easily / more cheaply meet someone. I can instantly contact a neighbor or connect with a local business owner. What the train/trolley/car did to expand our use of space and time over large distances, my new handheld technology does to expand my personal space and time within an intimate circle of neighbors and friends. From Robert Putnam’s great book on our collective loss of social capital in Bowling Alone, to Richard Florida linking creativity and tactile connectivity in The Rise of the Creative Class, our intimate connection with friends and family being lost to suburbia is well-documented. Mr. Fowler’s data also suggests that no longer are public health issues, such as obesity, solely a matter of one’s own free will, but that these are reinforced by our increasingly limited social networks. [caption id="attachment_4249" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="We no longer have to stay within the lines."][/caption] This week Planetizen released their top planning trends for 2011. The top two trends in our profession are Tactical Urbanism and planners becoming public health officials again. Both topics are directly related as people are making better urbanism with their own hands to create more walkable, bikable, and humane places. UCLA professor and former CDC director, Dr. Richard Jackson, has successfully implicated our suburban built environment in the remarkable degradation of our nation’s public health over the past 50-years. This new social network data, coupled with the public health evidence, makes it remarkably clear that our reconnected community networks are the new technology shaping future development towards more intimate neighborhoods. Our handheld devices and internet social networks are proving useful tools to facilitate our greater capacity for real social networks. And this, how we’re able to physically connect with others, will define our ability to endure and thrive into the 21st century. What's not to "Like"? [caption id="attachment_4329" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="This is good for you! Photo: ©2011 Sandy Sorlien, Transect Collection."][/caption] --Howard Blackson

Urbanists Know TED

greenwaters08 — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 05:01:40 +0000

While TED launched its City 2.0 prize last week to crowd-source tools for the next version of the city, I’ve been enjoying TED talks of several fellow urbanists who have been putting forth tools and ideas for making better places. The City 2.0 wish is stated as: THE WISH I am the crucible of the future. I am where humanity will either flourish or fade. I am being built and rebuilt every day. I am inevitable. But I am not yet determined. I wish to be inclusive, innovative, healthy, soulful, thriving. But my potential can only be reached through you. You can forge a new urban outlook. Begin by connecting. Imagine a platform that brings you together, locally and globally. Combine the reach of the cloud with the power of the crowd. Connect leaders, experts, companies, organizations and citizens. Share your tools, data, designs, successes, and ideas. Turn them into action. We hope you’ll find some of these ideas and arguments useful in your local work, as you build a more enjoyable, equitable, and affluent city at home. And we hope you’ll share your own in the comments below. Hazel Borys PlaceShakers blogger Confessions of a Former Sprawl Addict “Autonomy is fostered by the form of the built environment – by the character of the neighborhood. Many of the details that make walkable neighbourhoods so healthy – for kids, grown ups, and elders – are actually illegal today. And as a result our society, economy, and environment have been getting sick.” I had a particularly great time putting together this talk a few weeks ago! I start by taking a walk through my own century-old neighborhood, and photograph what isn’t legal to build in most places on North America today. Form-based codes are a tool to legalize the ability to build beloved places, and reap significant benefits. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjzTKQr9xUM]

Howard Blackson PlaceShakers blogger Coding for Community Character “What’s happened is that we’ve paved the roads – to Kona, Taos, Sedona – with junk. We’ve spent a lot of time, money, and resources to create cultural wastelands: office parks, strip malls, super centers. In order to repurpose these places and make them work, we have to come up with leaps in redevelopment ideas.” Howard talks through formal and informal architecture and urbanism, and how they might be applied to repurpose places. Taking inspiration from Leon Krier, he looks at how certain pairings make for exceptional experiences, just like getting the right dinner / wining pairings make for magical evenings. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwHqi__atwc]

Jason Roberts Arts activist and IT consultant Build a Better Block “We always talk about building great streets, and great places for our kids. There was some frustration on my part, because we talk a lot, but nobody in my Dallas neighborhood seemed to know how to do it. So I thought maybe I could expedite the process, get involved, and see if I could make a change.” How one guy’s tactical urbanism turned into a streetcar. The ultimate do-it-yourselfer talks about how floating an idea can make for reality. Whether it’s dreaming for streetcars, or creating a cycling community, or breaking the bad urban rules for a weekend to see what would happen, Jason tells some great stories of his own urbanism in action. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iciuh5pbnsI&w=560&h=315]

James Howard Kunstler Writer James H. Kunstler Dissects Suburbia “The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible. We can’t overestimate the amount of despair we are generating with places like this. Mostly, I want to persuade you that we have to do better, if we’re going to continue the project of civilization in America.” Jim talks about the national automobile slum, suburban sprawl, which he characterizes as the “biggest misallocation of resources in history.” Defining the public realm and what makes for walkability, he laments the decline of the “Culture of Civic Design,” and what steps we can take to get it back. [ted id=121]

Ellen Dunham-Jones Georgia Tech professor Retrofitting Suburbia “The last 50 years, we’ve been building the suburbs with a lot of unintended consequences. I’m going to present a whole bunch of interesting projects that I think give us tremendous reasons to be really optimistic that the big design and development project of the next 50 years is redeveloping suburbia.” Ellen talks about how to redirect growth into existing communities instead of eating up our remaining farms and wilderness. She addresses the major reasons why this matters – from an economic perspective as well as health and lifestyle reasons – then goes on to lay out design interventions for turning things around. [ted id=898]

Charles Marohn Strong Towns advocate The Important Difference Between a Road and a Street “In the US in the 1930’s we developed a plan about how we would exploit the great new invention of the automobile to bring prosperity across the country. While this vision was grand, it pales in comparison to the enormity we built. We’ve spent the last 60 years reconfiguring basically every space to accommodate automobile traffic.” Chuck explains the difference between a road (connection between two places) and a street (a network of activity). He stresses the importance of streets that serve as a framework for capturing value, and for reconnecting people. Innovation is driven by our ability to collaborate with and connect to each other. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XRjatW_N9M]

Don Carter Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon 2.4 Million “Let’s talk about the power of cities, because the world is rapidly urbanizing. What you see here is the City of Shen Jen in southern China: 30,000 people in 1979 and 10 million today. The UN predicts that by 2050, the world will grow by a third of today's population, fueled by an unprecedented movement from rural to urban areas.” Unfortunately, many of those people may be faced with situations similar to the slums of today’s mega cities, without access to clean water, sanitary facilities, or electricity. Don discusses the power of the post industrial city, and how the Sun Belt may become the Drought Belt and the Rust Belt may become the Water Belt. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85GyCnWib30]

Jaime Lerner City evangelist Jaime Lerner Sings the City “The city is not a problem, it’s the solution. Not only a solution for a country, but also a solution for the problem of climate change. We have a very pessimistic attitude to the city. From the experience I have, every city in the world can be improved in less than three years, regardless of scale and financial resources. It requires co-responsibility and design.” Jaime Lerner comes up with eccentric solutions to vexing urban problems. He talks about reconnecting the city to itself in organic, humanized terms. Hailing from Curitiba, Brazil, he articulates interesting possibilities in urban landscapes. Connections, mobility, and resilience are pivotal to his ideas. [ted id=213]

The City 2.0 Wish ends with the very outcomes that these speakers celebrate and document: Together you can: Bridge the gap between poor and rich communities. Spectacularly reduce your carbon footprint. Make nature part of daily life. Empower entrepreneurship. Re-imagine education. Nurture health. I am the City 2.0. Dream me. Build me. Make me real. So here’s to City 2.0 ideas in advance. What are yours? --Hazel Borys If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Smart Growth = Smart Parenting, Part Two

greenwaters08 — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 05:01:24 +0000

I’m a parent so, not surprisingly, I’m always on the lookout for intersections between that and my work in community design. The last time I considered the issue, I was thinking at the level of the neighborhood and exploring how walkable, mixed-use, mixed-product environments help parents combat a host of contemporary child-rearing ills. That post hit home for a lot of people and, since that time, my fellow ‘Shaker, Hazel Borys, has dug in further with her recent TED Talk, “Confessions of a Former Sprawl Addict.” Today I move from the neighborhood to the house and wonder: In what ways are evolving trends in home buying impacting our kids -- and our responsibility for raising them? The issue at hand? The average size of the American home is shrinking. Not for everyone or in every circumstance but, in 2007 and after decades of upward creep, a distinct turning point occurred. 150 square feet subsequently disappeared over three years, with almost 200 more expected by 2015. In a report in which they declared “the era of the McMansion is over,” real estate firm Trulia detailed how, as of 2010, more than half of the homebuying market now wanted a house under 2,600 feet, and more than a third wanted one below 2,000. Not because Smart Growthers forced anyone to do anything, mind you, but through free market choices reflecting shifting priorities. Among them, according to the National Association of Realtors, is a growing desire for walkable, convenient neighborhoods mixing houses, stores, parks and businesses. When presented with the choice of getting a desirable neighborhood or a larger house, 88% prioritized the neighborhood. Which means it’s getting increasingly common for people to concede square footage in order to gain other things they value. The net result of all that is less space, fewer rooms, different rooms. Which brings us back to kids because, over the past 30 years or so, a bedroom for every child has become not just the gold standard but a testament to one’s good parenting. Now, as people increasingly opt for better, more walkable neighborhoods over larger, isolated homes, that ideal’s going to come under stress. In short, a certain number of bedrooms will be lost in the transaction. What kinds of parents will we be if, God forbid, our children are forced to share bedrooms? As it turns out, pretty good ones. Because, when they do, a number of positive things can happen. Consider: [caption id="attachment_4305" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Me? Share space with him? But I’m entitled to my own lair."][/caption]They learn to share and cooperate. The one certainty about your child’s life ahead is that it will be filled with interpersonal challenges. There will be no shortage of difficult people and circumstances and countless days filled with situations that require collaborative decision making. Learning the skills of negotiation, compromise and sacrifice now will serve them well in the long run. They find ways to solve problems through the help of someone other than... you. That’s right. You’re not always going to be there. When you’re not, they need to know how to leverage other people and resources to navigate problems. An easily accessible sibling is like training wheels towards self-reliance. They’re more inclined to entertain themselves, which plays a huge role in how they develop their interpersonal skills, broaden their creativity, and master a talent painfully lacking in our modern world: the ability to self-edit. They forge stronger family bonds. While children may prefer the easy road, the hard work of relationship building breeds lasting respect and commitment. Closer siblings are more inclined to model behavior for each other, raise the bar on performance, and hold each other to established family standards. It's got enough going for it that some folks are doing it by choice. But before anyone suggests that I’m making a hard and fast assertion that children need to share bedrooms, let me be clear. Just like with one’s decision to buy a certain house, the manner in which we raise our kids is not cut-and-dried. It’s complicated and nuanced, and requires consideration of countless competing factors and priorities. Your unique context is ultimately what rules. That said, though, one thing is still certain. We’re not living up to our job description as parents when we blindly accept popular standards like “one room per child” without examining whether or not we’re actually doing them any favors. --Scott Doyon If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

(Public) Space: The final frontier

greenwaters08 — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 05:01:42 +0000

Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we've had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we've created "Back of the Envelope," a weekly feature where we jot 'em down for your consideration. Today I offer a quick study relating cities of the US West to Leon Krier's decidedly European Public Space Quantity Ratio. First, consider Krier from Architecture: Choice or Fate?, page 147 (click for larger view): His take on the subject: A. 15 - 20% is too little Public Space (Salt Lake City is an example of nearing too little) B. 25 - 35% is the Good Proportion (Portland is an example) C. 50 - 60% is too much Semi-Public Space (San Diego is an example) D. 70 - 80% is too much Public Space (Las Vegas would probably fit into this category) And now mine (with the gracious research and graphic assistance of Graham Larson and Lori McLaren -- click for larger view): While I only comment on the quality experienced by Pedestrian and Motorist, I could include Transit riders as well, as all US West downtowns, with Seattle's Streetcar nearing completion, now provide transit services. My points of interest: 1. Salt Lake City fits into Krier's "Good Proportion" percentage, and Andres Duany reveres the Plat of Zion. However, walking SLC can be very uncomfortable. 2. While San Diego is both relatively comfortable to drive and walk, due to short block length and average street widths, it is still too drivable due to mostly being one-way streets, and thereby not the most comfortable walking experience in the US West. That distinction belongs to Portland, which we would all agree is a very walkable city that nicely embodies Krier's Good Proportion public space ratio spectrum. 3. The reason Krier's percentages work, but not exactly in the US West, is because Krier assumes Public Space as consisting of Civic Space! The US West downtown percentages include very, very little CIVIC SPACE, consisting instead almost entirely of streets. I would dare say the amount of Civic Space in a typical square mile would total only 1% (this requires further study, of course, but I'm probably not far off). 4. As we enter the 21st century, these percentages should discern between lessening influential auto-oriented public space (parking lots and street travel lanes) and increasing pedestrian-oriented public spaces (civic spaces, street parkways, paseos, promenades, transit stations). Therefore, the Public Space categories for US West downtowns should be: A. Built Private Realm: 55 - 60% (taxable buildings) B. Unbuilt Private Realm: 5 - 10% (vacant/redevelopment land) C. Auto-Oriented Public Realm: 25 - 30% (streetscape, travel/turning lanes) D. Human-Oriented Public Realm: 3 - 5% (transit/civic spaces) To conclude, I would recalibrate Krier's Quantity of Public Space percentages: A. 0 - 25% is too little Public Space (You simply can't put SLC in the pantheon of great downtowns just yet) B. 26 - 39% is the Good Proportion (Solid urbanism, Portland fits) C. 40 - 60% is too much Semi-Public Space (This is suburban character) D. 61 - 80% is too much Public Space (Too rural for coherent urbanism) The greatest opportunity to build our downtowns into the 21st century will be found in re-purposing our streets and reconfiguring the street right-of-way. In San Diego, 40% of our entire land mass downtown is ONE-WAY STREETS! We also have a lot of vacant land, so I believe San Diego can greatly improve over the next 100-years, as can Salt Lake City. SLC's streetscape and broad blocks offer tremendous development potential. All of this leads to the question of Portland. Will it stagnate over the next 100-years? How will it continue to evolve? Only vertically? And, if vertical is their only option, how will they solve for their need of new civic space? Is a purposely built High-Line an option? Thoughts and opinions are welcomed. --Howard Blackson If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Cutting Edge, All-Purpose Comp Plan: For you? Free (conditions apply).

greenwaters08 — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 05:01:10 +0000

Pssst! You say you need a comprehensive plan? On the quick and on the cheap? If you pay retail, it can cost you tens of thousands, maybe millions, depending upon how many layers of wonk and weasel language you layer in. And it can take years. But I can offer you the best one you’ll ever get for free and for less time than it takes to get to the bottom of this blog post. And that’s not all. Add to the cost and time-saving advantages these value-added extras: You can put the whole thing on a single page. And it applies at the scale of the smallest community to the mega-region. Here you go, starting with the promise: We will shape future development and redevelopment through strategies that:

Are derived from transparent processes in which all citizens have opportunities to influence outcomes;
Respect traditions that have given the community/region its sense of place and inspired its citizens’ devotion;
Nurture an economy that’s diverse, adaptive and capable of providing opportunities for all;
Enhance accessibility to safe, dignified housing for citizens of all ages, incomes and physical abilities;
Enable the full range of mobility choices, including private automobiles, transit, biking and walking;
Foster community/regional health by reducing health risks and increasing access to sources for healthy food;
Minimize and mitigate harmful environmental impacts;
Increase energy efficiency and affordability at the parcel, neighborhood, community and regional levels;
Spread the responsibilities and rewards of policy development and enforcement equitably;
Position the community/region to attract and reward future public and private sector investment.

You’re welcome. Okay, so you may have to add legalese to satisfy the requirements of state or county law. And you might have to change words here and there for the sake of local vernacular. But I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t come up with a better list no matter how much time you take or how much money you spend. I can say that for two reasons: First of all, this is reality-based thinking. If you set out to identify the principal challenges before communities and regions in the post-sprawl era, then sort through alternatives for addressing them, you’ll be persuaded that success must be measured against standards such as these. The issues and the evolved strategies for dealing with them are universal. That gets us to the second reason: Lots of other folks, working independently of one another and just as determined as you are to assert the specialness of their perspectives, have done the research and the sorting and arrived at eerily similar lists. In fact, my version is a mash-up of lists from: Smart Growth America; the EPA/HUD/DOT Sustainable Partners program; the National Association of Home Builders; the National Association of Realtors; the Urban Land Institute; and hundreds of communities and regions that have invested millions of tax-payer dollars to affirm the obvious. Any questions? Oh, you want to know why, if comp planning processes lead inevitably to the same place, governments at all levels insist on spending all this time and money to retrace the route. Knowingly or otherwise, all of us involved in this stuff conspire in a lie. We promote comp planning as a collaborative process to hammer out a set of growth-guiding principles unique to a particular place. All the while, we know -- or should know -- that the collaboration is likely to identify universally shared issues that imply universally shared strategies. And we should also know that, no matter how painstakingly inclusive the process, these strategies will flunk the implementation test if we haven’t also fixed the broken parts of systems charged with fulfilling a plan’s promises. Elected officials facing push-back from small-but-loud constituencies can abandon support and doom passage. Silo-stuck public works officials can scuttle the process by digging in their heels when asked to revamp old assumptions or to change old routines. Planning staffers, exposed to attack from all sides during entitlement processes, are tempted to take I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it positions on reforms. Property owners and developers, pecked to death by burdensome approval processes, might suspect any new system will just add another layer to the old one. Distrust and cynicism abound. Which is why a planning process has to elevate trust-building and implementation system repair to the same level as the production of planning documents. We’ve addressed some of the strategies of trust-building here, here, and here. And we see the importance of this conversation rising along with the anxiety among community planners and officials at the levels of anger and frustration they see in public meetings. Holding a bunch of meetings just to arrive at a list of lofty promises ain’t gonna fix what’s broken. But if it makes you feel better to have a world-class, reality-tested list, be our guest. Taken by itself, it’s worth exactly what we’re charging for it. -- Ben Brown If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Public Process: Don't botch your online engagement

greenwaters08 — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:01:23 +0000

Project-specific websites you can set-up and manage yourself for little or no cost; and
Customizable tools for collecting resident ideas and opinions.

Both of these can be tremendously empowering and yet, in certain key ways, such efforts to simplify your life have also made things more complicated. In short, their impressive wizbangery can be deceptive, fooling the uninitiated into thinking it’s the tool that really matters, rather than the goal-focused story the tool allows you to tell. Fear not. Today we focus on the two most common pitfalls, with some key ways to avoid them. [caption id="attachment_4396" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Online public engagement: Will it be your savior? Or your undoing?"][/caption] “Put It On the Web” New tools have made it easier than ever to set up a project website, fast and cheap, for just about any endeavor. So easy, in fact, that people often assume the task of populating it with content is equally so. It’s not. Instead, what you end up with is city staffers with limited time and limited resources, and who already engage with the public regularly in person, suddenly presented with the task of doing so electronically as well. Not surprisingly under such circumstances, whenever they find themselves in possession of any piece of information even remotely related to the project, their response seems obvious: Put it on the web. Raw information. Posted. Done. That’s a problem. We’ve said it before, repeatedly, and I’m sure we’ll say it again: Your community has a story. A rich story, with a vivid history, complex characters, and a tangled web of interconnections. Your job, for any initiative, is to frame your story in the context of theirs. To present relevant details, making clear why they matter and how they help move the larger picture forward. In short, like any character, you need to play a contributing role, and that role is infinitely less distracting if your motivations are clear. Otherwise, the story stops being about where the community is heading and starts being about you. Your missteps. Your weaknesses. Your responsibility for dissatisfaction on every conceivable front. Think of the parallel: You’re in a traditional public meeting and someone asks a question about why the city is doing something. Do you provide a concise rationale, spelling out its benefits and role in larger community goals, or do you hand them a binder with 300 pages of reports and memos and tell them to have at it? The answer is clear and it’s applicable both in person and online. If you’re running a project website, you need to do so with an eye towards the ABCs: applicability, brevity, and clarity. Otherwise, sincere efforts to operate transparently will end up having the opposite effect, obscuring the process in an insurmountable mountain of content. The tangible outcomes: Frustration. Dissatisfaction. Cynicism. A trusty rule-of-thumb? Provide however much content it takes to express, up front and at each step along the way, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how people can participate. No more. No less. “Share Your Ideas” Another common fumble is confusing the difference between collecting ideas and building consensus around community goals. A variety of new tools have made it easier than ever for cities to engage citizens in a discussion of ideas. “What would you like to see?,” they ask. “Provide your ideas and rate the ideas of others.” They're very powerful tools -- democracy in action -- but, like a knife, they're tools that must be handled with great care. Don’t be a victim of the “Blank Slate” dilemma. That is, when presented with a blank slate, people naturally assume that anything is possible. But as you know, it's not. Avoiding problems is all in how you ask the questions. For example, you’ll often find questions like this: “How can we improve Founder's Park?” Sounds empowering, right? Unfortunately, it also sets a foundation for failed effort. Instead, the question should be posed this way: “The city has budgeted $4 million towards renovations for Founder's Park. Keeping in mind that further land acquisition isn’t an option at this site, what improvements, initiatives or recreational options would you like to see prioritized?” See the difference? The former suggests the sky's the limit, ignoring the constraints, choices and trade-offs that will inevitably occur. This allows appealing but unrealistic ideas to rise to the top, subsequently disappointing advocates and fueling cynicism that “government isn’t listening to the people.” Not to worry, though. If you’re already doing a good job of telling your story -- regular intervals of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how people can participate -- you’ll have far better opportunities to ask questions in context, making respondents contend with the same realities you do. Not only will this produce better data, you’ll be amazed at how quickly folks rise to the challenge, even to the point of self-policing within the group. Ultimately, ideas that rise to the top will be those held to standards of viability, not wishful thinking. Which means you’ll actually be getting somewhere. --Scott Doyon If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Life as I’d Like It To Be

greenwaters08 — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 04:01:31 +0000

Absorbing the Norman Rockwell exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery over the past four weeks, it’s extraordinary to witness one artist chronicling one nation over seven decades, from 1916 to 1978. For more than half of his career, Rockwell was constrained by racism that dominated the nation, forcing him to depict people of colour in subservient roles, if he wanted to publish in most circles. This is the timeframe and the images that many people think of when they think Rockwell. And it’s the majority of his body of work.

[caption id="attachment_4404" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Boy in Dining Car, Norman Rockwell, 1946, see endnote."][/caption]

It’s liberating to watch him later tackle hard issues of desegregation and hate crimes, once society permitted meaningful dialogue. During the years of his constraints, Rockwell looks for the good in people, and celebrates what is working: family, connections, community, and humor.

[caption id="attachment_4405" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="The Problem We All Live With, Norman Rockwell, 1963, see endnote."][/caption]

Leading a challenging life himself, he says, “I paint life as I’d like it to be.” Somehow, in his constant looking for the good, he steers people toward hope. He reiterates and reinforces what is working. And eventually has the freedom to mourn what isn’t.

[caption id="attachment_4406" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Lincoln for the Defense, Norman Rockwell, 1961, see endnote."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4407" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Murder in Mississippi, Norman Rockwell, 1965, see endnote."][/caption]

The Globe and Mail review of the Winnipeg show applauds a feel-good master’s complex message that still resonates in our age of anxiety. Being raised in Alabama, these images stick with me on a number of levels. The show is on until May 20, and I’ll be back to keep looking. Reinforcing What Works If you’re wondering what this has to do with placemaking, I’m getting to that. Within all challenging timeframes, there are certain ideals we quietly reinforce as a society, even when bigger issues lurk that we’re not addressing. During the times when there’s a lack of meaningful discussion on how to move forward, many people still resonate with these ideals, and reinforce them in some way or another. Whether it’s the African-American waiter’s fatherly smile toward the young white boy trying to figure out the appropriate amount of his first tip, in Boy in Dining Car. Or people lovingly caring for neighborhoods that are no longer legal to build. If most of our walkable, character-rich neighbourhoods burnt to the ground today, they’d have to be built back with wide, suburban streets and a separation of uses, thanks to the fact that we’ve legalized our love affairs with the automobile and suburbia. The redeeming factor is, because people do love the character-rich places, many of them have been preserved, quietly celebrated, and fiercely protected by their residents. Not in a dissimilar way to how Rockwell reinforces family, community, and connections at a time when it was hard to address the elephant in the room. Our Elephant When society became more open to discussing and positively responding to issues of race in the ‘60’s, it was a decade or so after we began actively insulating ourselves from people different than us by white flight to the suburbs of the ‘50’s. Then later locking ourselves into gated communities in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. A recent sorrowful event in a Florida gated community points to failures in this system. While we’ve made great advances in the civil rights discussion, our very suburban development bylaws continue to make it harder for people to connect in a constructive way, and continue to make for mistrust that comes with not getting to know each other. Whether it’s people of different races, ages, backgrounds, or income brackets. Suburbia segregates by all of these. We’ve discussed that here at length, in terms of charity, connectivity, social networks, resilience, and parenting. The Idyllic Landscape Despite demonstrating significant returns, historic urbanism is a frequent recipient of critiques about sentimentalism, similar to the art criticism of Rockwell in past decades. Just as Rockwell’s retrospective at the Guggenheim, the “temple of modernist art,” signaled a shift in viewpoint of the artistic community, the recent embrace of walkability signals a shift in the definition of livability. While the average person on North America still spends 6.25 weeks every year in their car, we’re starting to resist what that means to our wallet with rising fuel prices, and to our lifespans with rising obesity. We’re starting to redefine livability in terms of quality of life (community amenities, active transportation, family time, social capital) instead of standard of living (size of house, number of cars, size of lot, earnings). Similar to Rockwell's "life as I'd like it to be," Voltaire’s Candide struggles in his yearning for “the best of all possible worlds,” but lives through a satire riddled with caricatures and clichés. In the end, he settles for the conclusion that "we must cultivate our garden." It isn’t the architecture, or the urbanism, or inclusiveness, or the economy that will make the world right, but when all of those things are working together. It’s the patterns and connections that we’ve quietly reinforced as a society over time that hold both the meaning and the healing. Both autonomy and connectivity are fostered in large part by the form of the built environment. And that lets us cultivate our garden. --Hazel Borys Endnotes Boy in Dining Car, Norman Rockwell, 1946 Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, December 7, 1946. ©1946 SEPS: Licensed by Norman Rockwell Licensing, Niles, IL. From the permanent collection of Norman Rockwell Museum The Problem We All Live With, Norman Rockwell, 1963 Illustration for Look, January 14, 1964 Licensed by Norman Rockwell Licensing, Niles, IL. From the permanent collection of Norman Rockwell Museum Lincoln for the Defense, Norman Rockwell, 1961 Painting for The Saturday Evening Post story “Lincoln for the Defense” by Elisa Bialk, February 10, 1962. ©1961 SEPS: Licensed by Norman Rockwell Licensing, Niles, IL. Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust Murder in Mississippi, Norman Rockwell, 1965 Painting intended as the final illustration for Southern Justice by Charles Morgan, Jr., Look, June 29, 1965, unpublished Licensed by Norman Rockwell Licensing, Niles, IL. From the permanent collection of Norman Rockwell Museum If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Eisenhower Memorial Controversy Puts Focus on Urban Design

greenwaters08 — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:01:17 +0000

Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we've had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we've created "Back of the Envelope," a weekly feature where we jot 'em down for your consideration. How do we honor our heroes? The current dust-up over Frank Gehry’s proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial has brought the issue, and the conversation, to the forefront. Within it has been some well-articulated opposition from prominent urbanists, including this from Léon Krier, this from Dhiru Thadani and this from Christine Franck. Perhaps not surprisingly for regular readers here, I’ve got my own ideas on the matter, centered on place and the general premise that we best honor those of great contribution and sacrifice by doing so with deference. Not just to the complexities of their individual legacies but to the surrounding urban context as well. My submission to the committee spells out my position: House Committee on Natural Resources Attn. Chief Legislative Clerk 1324 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Members: As a member of the General Services Administration (GSA) Design Excellence Peer Review Committee, I wish to share my professional design opinion that Frank Gehry’s proposal, as presented to your National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Oversight Subcommittee Hearing on March 20th, is irrelevant to the point of disrespectful in its attempt to memorialize President Eisenhower. Being 2012, our nation’s architectural culture is finally unshackled from the 20th-century’s ‘Starchitect’ conceit. We are again able to design freely with tradition, context, urbanism, sustainability and pragmatism. These 21st-century values should be expressed through our memorials and civic buildings as these places are complex and deftly built to balance both memory and expectation. It is my opinion that Mr. Gehry’s latest-modernist-paradigm-above-all-else plan intends to add metaphorical complexity to an already complex place, reducing the visitor's experience to one of confusion. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission and Frank Gehry’s mixed-metaphor project intentionally lacks the expected dignity in remembrance of President Eisenhower. Upon review, the plan actually appears to be a memorial to the latest modernist fad, Landscape Urbanism. The contradicting landscape metaphors imposed on a visitor include: a roofless memorial; a park within a park; the rural Kansas barefoot boy-warrior; a rural landscape ‘tapestry’ set in contrast to our nation’s urban, civic core context, and; a naturalistic landscape grown in ‘modern’ ruins that do in fact ‘ruin’ L’Enfant’s planned axis from the Capital to the Jefferson Memorial along Maryland Avenue. Because of these many conflicting, faddish metaphors, Mr. Gehry's irrelevant design proposal challenges the very essence of a national memorial in Washington DC, which again has nothing to do with the memory of President Eisenhower. Simply imagining a Frank Gehry brand building makes it easy to understand his limitations as an architect to craft a civic building that has, according the GSA guiding principles for Federal Architecture, “design qualities which reflect the regional architectural traditions of that part of the Nation in which buildings are located.” Fortunately, the critique surrounding this project is indicative of the declining status of contemporary ‘Starchitecture’ in our national discourse. The backlash towards Mr. Gehry’s project failure points towards a maturity within our nation’s architectural culture as we collectively demand a more responsible approach for how we build great civic places in the 21st century. We will once again build dignified memorials that fit within the context of our honorable National Mall. In light of this failed GSA Design Excellence project process, I recommend your Subcommittee also consider the design alternatives and open design process presented by the National Civic Art Society and Institute for Classical Architecture Mid-Atlantic Chapter. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely yours,

--Howard Blackson If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Building a Custom, Multi-Century House for Under $80 a Square Foot

greenwaters08 — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 04:01:04 +0000

Affordability is a tough nut to crack. For decades, the production housing industry has operated under a simple premise: Americans value space above all else. If you want to make a house more affordable, you build the same house with lower quality materials and cheaper details. Goodbye four-sides brick, hello one-side brick. Or no-sides brick. It’s a perfectly sensical approach and, for some folks, it works out just fine. They get more house for the money and, because it’s new, it’s likely to last at least as long as they plan to live there. In short, it’s affordable. For now. Disposable dwellings are one, albeit shortsighted, way to meet the need for affordability but today I’m more focused on those whose needs are not being met. Those of average means who would prefer not to trade quality. Those concerned with energy costs and the long-term durability of their investments. Those inspired by sustainable, indigenous materials and the endearing imperfections of work-done-by-hand. Today I have a story for them. For you, perhaps. A story of one man who, in his own words, is “subverting conventional building practice with an act of permanence, constructing an energy-efficient, multi-century legacy home for the price of a vinyl-clad, production-built box.” Could this House Change the World? Don’t let the pictures fool you. The activity taking place on this rolling, 40-acre spread on the rural edges of Columbus, Georgia, may look like any other house being built but looks can be deceiving. It’s actually a grand experiment. A great leap backwards to take us forward once again. This is the future site of the Adams House, a 3,000 square foot, structural masonry and timber frame home centered on a grand fireplace that, if everything plays out as planned, will be completed for just under $80 a square foot. And that includes the profit through which its builder, Clay Chapman, makes his living. In return for that investment, its buyers will receive a rock-solid, practical, custom-built home whose shelf life can be measured in centuries. Meet Clay Chapman Clay Chapman is not an architect. He’s not even a homebuilder, really. At least not in the production-oriented way we consider those terms today. He’s more like an artifact from a simpler time -- a “field architect,” so to speak. A craftsman who, in the practical application of his trade, was taught the basic patterns of timeless architecture which, in turn, have become the basis for his own designs. Designs that have proven rich in sweat, sense and soul. He developed his skills as an itinerant builder, raising wooden stables for the rural gentry, until he realized just how much abuse a horse could actually inflict on a building. That’s when he turned to structural masonry, which he found to be “design with 1,200 pound animals in mind.” For the uninitiated, structural masonry is construction in which brick or stone walls bear the full weight of the building, as opposed to simply serving as a cosmetic veneer for a frame constructed by other means. Chapman lays bricks three brick deep, giving his walls 12 inches of regulating thermal mass. The rest of the building rests upon them. In time, his increasingly substantial stables gave way to custom homes for well-heeled exurbanites and deep-pocketed townies. The results, without doubt, have been works of purity and great beauty but there’s something else you need to know for this story to make sense. Chapman, you see, views every house he builds as a small contribution towards a greater good -- a dream of reforming how we build -- and there was one none-too-minor aspect of his work that challenged that goal: its cost. In short, building meticulously detailed homes for wealthy patrons might provide for a comfortable living but it wasn’t going to impact industry norms in any meaningful way. Yes, historically-speaking, buildings of the noble and well-born have always served to educate, inspire and drive innovation (and, for the artist, present wonderful opportunities), but what really distinguishes our historic building stock from today’s disposable landscape is the skill, durability and practical wisdom embedded in its everyday buildings of common men. I wonder, he thought, if the benefits of structural masonry construction -- its permanence, beauty and gentle environmental footprint -- could be made attainable, readily so, to the middle class. So he set out to do what tradesmen have always done: Try it and find out. Making It Work For years, Andrés Duany has been pointing out that the finest, most lasting assets of America’s built history were completed at a time when we had comparatively less wealth. Nonetheless, people routinely dismiss old, solid buildings with the suggestion that “no one can afford to build like that anymore.” So which is it? For Chapman, everything is relative. It’s not about whether such methods are affordable or not affordable. It’s about the design choices you make along the way, and the manner in which you embrace the masonry rather than simply viewing it as a feature in an otherwise conventional home. Chapman sums it up like this: “At the building envelope, the ‘one step’ based structural masonry process can replace nine steps required for conventional building: framing, sheathing, wrapping, siding, exterior paint, insulation, dry-wall, interior paint and the majority of trim.” That’s a promising start. And from there, his ambition to keep the house under $80 a foot -- on par with that of everyday, conventional tract housing -- drives other design choices. For example, masonry corners are labor intensive, which adds disproportionately to cost, so the Adams House is a classic, 4-sided box. That may sound like a concession, but it isn’t. Think in terms of homes historically. More often than not, they also started out as a box, then grew over time via smaller boxes added on. We may have become indoctrinated by the idea that over-articulation is necessary but it’s simply not the case. Scale, balance, and the manner in which a building’s variations catch light all contribute greatly to its dignity and presence. Then there’s the daylight basement. To build the ground level and second story as a 2,000 square foot house on a slab would have averaged out to about $98 a foot but by adding a basement, finished out, you gain 1,000 additional square feet of living space for only modest additional cost. Finally, there’s windows. Chapman loves them, and has included 50 in this one design. When cost is not the driving factor, he’d typically top each window, or bank of windows, with an arch to maintain the high design and structural integrity of the building. That might run $400 for a four foot span. To reduce cost, he might employ steel lintels instead which, to cover the three-brick thickness he builds with, would be about $100. In this case, however, he wondered what would happen if he employed slabs of finished granite (see photo above) for window headers. Turns out, they run about a buck an inch, or just under $50 for the four foot span. The end result? Functional elegance, more than 85% off. A creative cost savings that, taken with the others, allows for certain indulgences. For example, the Adams House will contain no drywall. All interior partitions are being constructed of solid, tongue and groove planking. The Adams House project is full of stories like these. Here’s another. When I visited, Chapman was nearing completion of a small outbuilding about 100 yards from where the house will be. Why? Because, during construction, he likes to live on the job site and needs a place to sleep. He gets up each day, makes coffee over a campfire, and lays brick. When the house is done, the cabin will become a studio, retreat or playhouse for the owners. This is the point at which you start to realize that Clay Chapman exists in some sort of alternate universe, doing things totally alien to how we now think of homebuilding. The things you see when you watch him work, or hear when you talk with him, seem impossible or, at the very least, impractical. And yet he’s doing it. As no shortage of people struggle with delivering solid, dignified housing for an affordable cost, he’s doing it. And then some. Providing a home of true permanence, capable of lasting for as long as it remains loved, at a price suited to the middle class. All of this raises an interesting point. For some time, we’ve been expecting housing innovation to somehow emerge from otherwise conventional circles and yet, in other aspects of business, we routinely assume that innovation will be driven not by the entrenched but by hungrier, more flexible, more creative outsiders. The challenges of affordability, durability, and beauty could be well served by such outsiders. And I think I’ve just stumbled upon one of them. Hope for Architecture Last year, Clay met “Original Green” author Steve Mouzon who, like a number of others, has worked tirelessly in support of traditional building and has achieved small-scale affordability through his work with the Katrina Cottage movement. Mouzon recognized immediately that affordable permanence, equally implementable from the rolling, subsistence farm in the countryside to the tightly-knit, walkable city neighborhood, was the “holy grail” he’s long sought. His encouragement proved propulsive. In response, and despite his discomfort with self-promotion, Chapman has launched “Hope for Architecture,” a documentary and blog effort to chronicle his ongoing progress on the Adams House and make its lessons learned available to others. Visit him, check out his body of work, follow his efforts on Facebook, and share this blog post. His story is the tree falling in the forest. It deserves to be heard. --Scott Doyon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C93ukh88PuI&context=C47079f8ADvjVQa1PpcFORD9JPGfY-VERqeTJkOwYlAlSfEONR8U8= If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Designing Regional Urban Retail Centers: Lessons from the Mall and Beyond

greenwaters08 — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:01:58 +0000

Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we've had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we've created "Back of the Envelope," a weekly feature where we jot 'em down for your consideration. As many of us are actively trying to reform car-focused retail into dynamic mixed-use, walkable urban centers, we are quick to point at the mall as the poster child for everything we are trying to reform. But as the heyday of last-century's drive-to mall fades into the past, there are many things that the mall excelled at. While these lessons are certainly applicable to the design of new regional centers (and yes, there are many under construction or in planning even in current economic times), they can also be applied in both traditional main street settings and for the transformation of dead malls into walkable mixed use places. This week, leaning heavily on the Gospel of Bob Gibbs, we're going to take a look at some of the design lessons that can be learned from the mall, and lessons that we've learned since then. Here's a few lessons we can learn from the mall: You Need a Critical Mass of Retail: To start with, we are talking about a sub-regional market with enough activity to attract a critical mass of shops -- in size and diversity -- similar to what you might find in a mall. This is NOT about trying to transform a neighborhood commercial center into a main street format. That’s another set of challenges for another time. Anchors are Critical: Fundamental to the mall are large users placed at either end of your commercial area to draw shoppers through and give them a clear destination. While traditionally these are the department stores, theaters and even restaurant/entertainment clusters make for good anchors as well. Create a Clear Shopping Stroll: Many shoppers aren't there just to buy something, they are there for the experience of shopping. Once you have good anchors, make a clear path for them to stroll. Multiple Store Entries are Possible: When creating street oriented retail, there is sometime push-back from large retailers who don’t want to have to manage two entries to their store. From the perspective of a strip center they are right. From the perspective of a mall, you should point out that they have been doing it for years: Entries to the parking lot, and one into the pedestrian realm of the mall. The Parking Walk-Around: Similar to the concerns of having multiple entries is the fear that customers are not willing to park behind the store, and then walk around to the front door. Again, from a strip mall perspective this is a challenge (though not unsolvable). From a mall perspective, for decades shoppers have been parking in vast lots facing blank walls and are happy to locate the interior of the mall. With a compelling shopping street, shoppers will not only find the front of the store, but you have the added advantage of limited on-street parking right in front. Create a Center: Most malls have an identifiable center to host events and activities (you know, where Santa sits.) Your main street shopping experience should have a central public space for gathering and hosting events. Group Food and Entertainment Together: The food court is a destination that allows for choice and a consolidated eating area. Grouping food and entertainment stores near a well thought out public space adds activity to your main street and an identifiable destination. As the demand increases for embedding our regional urban retail centers in walkable, mixed use, complete neighborhoods, we have learned many lessons beyond the mall. Here are a few: Terminated Views: Utilize the view toward the end of the street to increase visibility for key shops, anchors, and signage. This visibility has value. Get Beyond the Lifestyle Center: The lifestyle center was an innovation that simply took the mall, and turned the interior halls into main-street-like shopping streets. The problem is that this format is still isolated within a donut of parking (just like a mall) and really solves very little in terms of creating real walkable places. While a full urban experience is the eventual goal, consider surrendering only one side to the car (with visibility to a highway or arterial), while integrating the other side directly with a high density neighborhood. Birkdale Village and Denver's Belmar offer good examples.

Use the B-Grid to Plan for Converting your Car Side: While you may need to surrender the arterial side of the mall to the car, plan it with B-Grids so that in the future it can be more easily redeveloped into walkable blocks. Use Angled Parking and a Linear Park: To increase activity and on-street parking on the store side of your urban center, utilize angled parking. Adding an urban square or plaza is another way to add parking while also creating a public space amenity. Add Residents: Where anchors and good management were the cornerstone for the Mall, adding residents may be the key principle for the modern regional center. Do it through hotels, apartments above shops, apartments down the street, row houses, and live works. Residents create a built-in market for shops, provide surveillance during off-hours, offer a unique lifestyle choice, and help add people to your pedestrian-oriented place. Of course, these are just some back of the napkin thoughts. If you want to know more, there are many books out there. I would recommend Gibbs' new book "Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development," as well as Place Making: Developing Town Centers, Main Streets, and Urban Villages by Charles C. Bohl. --Geoff Dyer If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Why Generation Y is Causing the Great Migration of the 21st Century

greenwaters08 — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:55:32 +0000

Just after the close of World War II, the last Great Migration in the United States -- the move from the city to the new suburbs -- began to emerge, fueled by new roads, low congestion, and modest energy costs. It was a new beginning, a chance to shake off the past, and it came complete with the promise of more privacy, more safety, and easier financing. Not surprisingly, Americans bought in. After that, it didn’t take long for the preferred retailers to do likewise, abandoning the city and following their customers to the suburbs. The suburban single family home on a large lot became synonymous with the American Dream. After 60 years, many commentators have announced that the American Dream is poised to make its next great shift -- this time from the suburbs to the urban core of our cities. Indeed, at the recent New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in San Diego, Chris Nelson, Joe Molinaro and Shyam Kannan made it clear that a radical shift in preferences is on the horizon.

They’re not alone in that position. Just last week, Robert Shiller of the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index made the dramatic statement that, with our growing shift to renting and city living, suburban home prices may never rebound in our lifetime. Why such pronounced findings? According to researchers, it lies in the preferences of our largest generation since the Boomers, the under 30 Generation Y. But, why? While the answer is complex, it comes into focus when you contrast the childhood lifestyle of Generation Y with the childhood lifestyle of previous generations. Like those before them, Generation Y currently finds themselves attracted to things they did not have growing up. Four that stand out are: 1. Safety to Adventure. Generation Y has grown up in the safest environment in human history. The suburban cul-de-sac offered a safe place to play, with lower crime rates than cities. But despite this safe environment, the need to fill a 24 hour news cycle in the emerging world of cable and online communications brought every localized “stranger danger” news story to a national audience, giving rise to the overprotective Helicopter Mom who oversees every minute of her child’s life. Whereas previous generations simply needed to come home before dark, Generation Y grew up with scheduled play dates and activities. It should come as no surprise that this over-protected generation now celebrates dangerous and exciting activities like skydiving, rock climbing and bungee jumping. At the same time, television shifted from glorifying the surburban lifestyle in the 1960’s and 1970’s (e.g., Leave it to Beaver and the Brady Bunch) to glorifying the urban lifestyle in the 1990’s (e.g., Seinfeld and Friends). These cultural changes have pushed Generation Y to look for more adventure than previous generations, and they are less fearful of cities than previous generations. 2. Isolated to Connected. While the suburban cul-de-sac lifestyle offered the safest environment the planet has ever seen, it also produced the most isolated and disconnected environment. Today’s children rarely have the freedom to roam beyond the cul-de-sac, ensuring their social lives are determined by the quality of friends on the same street, together with the nature of their scheduled social interactions beyond their neighborhood. The net result? Generation Y wants to be more connected and less isolated than previous generations. They manifest this desire in their full-on embrace of social media and their desire to live in places where they can be around others; i.e., the densest, most active, areas of cities. 3. Inconvenient to Convenient. Convenience is another word for time, and Generation Y has a low tolerance for spending time on things associated with the suburban lifestyle -- Saturdays filled with yard work or long commutes in the car. Instead, they want the convenience of living close to the things they need, the things they do, and the people they do them with. They prefer the walk downstairs and around the corner to the neighborhood coffee shop or brew pub to the 20 minute car trip required in the ‘burbs. Developers of mixed-use communities understand this shift, and have been marketing their communities as places where you can live, shop, work and play. This is simply another way of saying that convenience matters more than ever. 4. Car Dependent to Car Independent. Last week the New York Times reported that General Motors has hired MTV’s marketing arm to help combat Generation Y’s lack of interest in cars. Talk about a shift. Only a few decades ago the car symbolized freedom. Indeed, you were not socially viable without one. Now, Generation Y views freedom as being car-independent. How did this happen? As stated above, the car is no longer a great convenience if it takes a 20 minute trip to buy a quart of milk (or a 6-pack of Belgian IPA). And if the trip is characterized by stop lights and traffic as opposed to the free-flowing suburban streets of the 1960’s, it is no longer going to be considered cool -- especially if the trip is in a minivan. In fact, Generation Y would rather be on a bus or train where they can work or be connected to the internet and social media, which is why Google provides its employees a bus to work.

Generation Y wants freedom, not obstacles or anchors. So when it comes to where and how they live, they also exhibit a greater desire to rent rather than own. Not the Only Factor As Generation Y ramps up the buying power they'll need to fuel a Great Migration back to the cities -- and the adventure, convenience, freedom and connectedness they offer -- note that a few other factors will also play large roles. These include: 1. Aging Population. When you turn 80 in the suburbs, you begin to realize that your lifestyle is contingent upon your ability to drive. As the Baby Boomers continue to age in the next few decades they will increasingly choose cities where they can walk or take transit over the alternative: independent and assisted living facilities. 2. Higher Energy Costs. Most analysts believe that energy will only become more expensive over time. This will increase the cost of living far from cities, and therefore contribute toward the revitalization of cities and the inner-ring suburbs. 3. Rediscovery of Urban Design Principles. 30 years ago it was difficult to find cities that were making life livable through excellent design. Today, knowledge of these principles is widespread, making it easier for cities to provide a better, even great, place to live. 4. Public School Reform. The recent advent of charter schools, magnet schools and other alternatives have provided an opportunity for parents to enjoy excellent schools in downtown areas for the first time in decades. 5. ROI Analysis. As government budgets become more austere, more municipalities will analyze their infrastructure investments based upon a Return-on-Investment analysis, something advocated by Joe Minicozzi. This naturally favors urban locations over suburban locations. 6. Lower Crime. Technological advancements over the past decade in surveillance and crime investigation have given us tools that make combating crime (as well as the perception of crime) easier. 7. Better Downtowns. While experts are already signaling the popularity of downtown living, these preferences are only likely to increase as our downtowns become better than they are today. It’s Never Just One or the Other, But... Just as cities were not completely abandoned in the 20^th century, suburbs will not be abandoned in the 21^st century. But the shift in preferences is clearly underway, and this radical change will manifest itself in the nature of real estate development over the next 20 years. --Nathan Norris If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Get to Know the Awkwardly-Named "Terminated Vista"

greenwaters08 — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:01:50 +0000

Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we've had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we've created "Back of the Envelope," a weekly feature where we jot 'em down for your consideration. I’ll admit it: I wish there was a more user-friendly way to say “terminated vista.” Perhaps I’m more sensitive to it because, as regular readers here know, I’m not an urban designer. I just work with them. That means I’m more inclined to scratch my head like any other layperson when I hear wonky expressions that sound far too highfalutin for an everyday community. That’s too bad, because the terminated vista plays a pivotal role in good community design. Basically, “vista” refers to your view as you look down a street or corridor. “Terminated” refers to any building, object or feature serving as the focal point and blocking the view from extending further. Think about when a street angles or dead-ends into another street. For the person heading that way, that spot becomes a focal point of greater prominence, so an urban designer would tell you its building should reflect that. Depending on the importance of the street, the parcel might be suited to an important civic building or monument. Downtown or on Main Street, it might be a church or prominent commercial anchor. Or, in an everyday context, the occupying building should simply make a small architectural nod to its surroundings, noting that it recognizes its enhanced role in community aesthetics and wants to contribute. According to designers, there’s a variety of reasons for doing this. In their handy compendium, “The Smart Growth Manual,” authors Andres Duany, Jeff Speck and Mike Lydon, explain: “Street networks that include staggered intersections, deflections, and slight curves improve spatial definition and orientation by creating memorable visual events .. When a street vista terminates on a building, it should reciprocate by placing a special architectural element on axis.” This, they assert, speaks to community values, contributes to the cues of basic navigation, and reduces car speeds. Personally, as a layperson, I like them for another reason: They make our communities more interesting, and interesting places engage people at a more intimate, emotional level. When we talk of making places more pedestrian friendly, we often focus on sidewalks, road geometries and diversity of destinations but it’s less often that we also focus on delight -- the visual candy that engages our senses as we travel from point A to point B. At the end of the day, you can build complete streets that provide safe, walkable destinations and amenities but if the surrounding environment’s a bore then it’s a bore and walkability suffers as a result. As my colleague, Nathan Norris, chides regularly in his Design 101 tutorials: Don't bore the humans. Leverage the power of delight. Terminated vistas, both grand and simple, used to be an everyday part of community building. It was just how we did things. We could do so again. Below are a number of Flickr examples -- some old, some new. Roll-over and click for photo credit. --Scott Doyon If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Urban Systems: Integration and the Value of Intersections

greenwaters08 — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:35:00 +0000

People have an extraordinary capacity for compartmentalization. Sometimes we call it attention span: the ability to focus on one task at a time. Sometimes we call it meditation: the ability to clear your mind. Sometimes we call it cognitive dissonance: the ability to pursue an action when in direct opposition to values. We compartmentalize in infinite numbers of ways. We may define our work/life balance as if they were completely separate entities. Along with the mind/body, public/private, self/community, and so forth. The opposite of this sort of separation and focus is integration. The hardest math concept –short of non-linear space and imaginary numbers– is integration. One dynamic solved over a range of states. One equation valued over a range of numbers. One relationship rationalized over a range of conditions. The truth is, many psychologists contend that humans can process about four variables competently. So you can see why we shy away from complex integration from an urban design perspective. However, this reticence is paying us back in negative global repercussions, thanks to our insistence on solving for about four things in contemporary urbansim: land use, lane width, lot size, and density. Intersections You know you’re a geek when you think about your workout options in terms of this sort of integration into your lifestyle, via a Venn Diagram. But it does provide for some interesting conclusions about what drives my behavior patterns. With the advent of spring, I’ve decreased time on my elliptical machine and walking and increased cycling and running. I started to notice how they pay off in different ways. Cycling and walking pay back in health, thinking time, social engagement, gas money, and reduced carbon footprint. Running loses the gas benefit and elliptical’s primary advantage for me is health. At the intersection of the circles, or where different values overlap, is the place where I get the biggest return on my investment of time. The more integrated the mixture of compatible uses in my neighbourhood, the more likely I am to engage in the activities that build health. And even 10 minutes a day of physical activity lowers risk of heart attack by 28% (Population Health Research Institute, January 2012). Assembly v. Transformation Once we’ve compartmentalized our cities into their parts, we tend to reconnect them in ways that are neither holistic nor organic. Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros make the distinction between assembly and transformation in MetropolisMag’s Science for Designers on Friday: “The most commonly held and influential idea about design is that it’s the art of bringing essentially unrelated parts into a “composition” or an “assembly”. The funny thing is, from a scientific point of view, this idea is entirely wrong. A much better idea about design is that it’s the transformation of one whole into another whole.” Applying systems thinking to urbanism is as old as cities themselves. Solutions to both the programmatic and economic demands of complex, interdependent, nonlinear relationships of communities certainly require more than four variables. The collective memory and self-organization of the swarm are required. Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros on self-organization: “What turns out to be key is the idea of fairly simple adaptive rules, operating at a fine grain. In the case of life, the grain is the molecular level of DNA, and going up from there, the cell, the organ, and the organism. In the case of human settlements, the grain is the scale of a person, and going up from there, a family, neighborhood, and city. (A big problem comes when we misunderstand the scale of these systems, and try to impose rules at a too-large scale.)” Gettin' Paid: Compensation and the Importance of Systems Thinking All sorts of complicated cost-benefit software and studies have been created to make hard, politically-charged choices, but instead often make for cognitive dissonance. Until cities begin to look seriously for intersections in their transportation value drivers, infrastructure capital investments will remain less than optimal. Copenhagen’s Bike Account values one mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss, after which it’s no trouble to get political buy-in for balanced, results-oriented investment. On the other hand, if you’d like to dive head first into graphical representations of resilient practices, check out Sustainable Lens: a visual guide from Samuel Mann, which is precisely 255 ways to represent resilient human practices with circles. Beware, it’s intense. Here’s a roundup of really great blogs and presentations last week. Kaid Benfield summarizes many of the economic and health benefits of active transportation. Gil Penalosa’s presentation to Dallas is an impassioned video describing the benefits of cycling and walkability, and the methods for making it happen on a tight budget. Tom Vanderbilt’s excellent 4-part walking series on Slate laments that walking has become “an act of dwelling on the margins,” thanks in part to not a single dollar in the U.S. federal transportation budget dedicated strictly to walking. Clearly, a multi-modal community where we have a choice about how we’re going to get around is an ideal intersection. And is by far the one that delivers the highest economic returns. We’re discussed solutions extensively on PlaceShakers, including zoning reform, economic restructuring, urban design, affordable housing, free range children, and community engagement. As usual, we’d like to hear more of your ideas. Thanks for sharing! --Hazel Borys If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Get Your Garden Room Right

greenwaters08 — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 04:01:06 +0000

Proportion is key. Use proportions of 1:1, 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, the Golden Mean, or the square root of 2. This may seem constrained, but its rational proportion greatly affects the enjoyment of the space.

Shape matters. A garden room should be intentional, not just leftover space. Rectangular or square spaces are easiest to furnish and use, although circular or elliptical spaces can be magical.

[caption id="attachment_4647" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image ©Steve Mouzon. Click for larger view."][/caption]Orientation is critical and, depending on climate and region, should be south or some degree off south. Here in New Mexico, we enjoy our southeast orientation since we need protection from the afternoon heat in the summer. Anything within about 45° of due south will usually work.

Keep it simple. If the space is heavily programmed, it loses flexibility and isn’t as useable on a daily basis. This is a critical point for public plazas as well. A very simple paved surface with seating and shade is the most effective. A fountain or tree works for a garden room, but practice restraint.

Balance sun and shade. Both are necessary in a habitable space, and make for an all season room. Proper orientation will assure sun in the winter, and shade may be provided by trees, umbrellas or awnings. Umbrellas are the most flexible in small spaces as they can be removed when sun is desired.

Infrastructure Deficit Disorder: The Doctor is In

greenwaters08 — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:01:21 +0000

This past week, Chuck Marohn and Justin Burslie of Strong Towns gave their Curbside Chat in the beloved San Diego neighborhood of Hillcrest. Chuck’s visit was possible through a fun collaboration between Walt Chambers of Great Streets San Diego, Ben Nicholls, Executive Director of the Hillcrest Business Association, and myself. Forty of San Diego’s most engaged built environment professionals filled the room with a happy-hour sense of electricity in the air. Chuck then proceeded to ground that spark. With his very honest, stark, and poignant perspective, Chuck deconstructed our nation’s infrastructure maintenance deficiencies and compared our current pattern of development to a bonafide Ponzi scheme. For example, California needs an additional $37 billion per year just to maintain our existing highway system. Like experiencing Springsteen’s “Nebraska” or Boston’s City Hall for the first time, Chuck’s message weighed heavily on the audience as he painted a bleak picture for our economic, social and cultural landscape. Personally, I felt as if our city had been diagnosed with a terminal disease and while we had complained for years about the obvious degradation of our neighborhoods, we had consciously feigned ignorance of the actual ramifications... until it was too late. San Diegans have long understood our city’s millions of dollars in infrastructure debt for needed parks, filling potholed streets, and fixing broken storm drains. This malleable number has been trotted out to stymie any further dialog by angry citizens whenever any new project is proposed. These millions are used to explicitly imply that if this single new project does not fix our city-wide needs... then forget it. I like to call this exercise our city’s Infrastructure Deficit Disorder. Because, instead of doing something about it, we always choose to do nothing, which is always easier and less painful. Like a good physician, Chuck’s prescription was healthy and inspired changes in our behavior. It was refreshing to hear the sobering truth, but Chuck did not end his lecture with any silver bullets; no secret government programs; no books to buy; and, not one tax cut that would cure our disorder. Chuck simply stated that our explicitly suburban pattern of development is a well-documented financial blunder. Instead, he instructed us to stop what we had been doing and fix what is broken with a traditional, more urban pattern of development. We should be rebuilding at a more incremental scale in a way that (re)captures the value of our existing infrastructure and surrounding building stock. I contend that we also need to reassess how we calculate for our current infrastructure deficits. Our deficit number(s) include retrofitting older urban streets into wider, faster, more suburban thoroughfares in order to achieve the mythical Level of Service C, which in fact creates more congestion. We also calculate for conventional storm drains that move water as fast as possible from point A to Point Sea; rather than promoting a more economical and ecological Light Imprint network approach. And, our new park standards require large acreage, more expensively programmed, because it’s easier to maintain with fewer city workers. These improvements are assumed to be built in a suburban pattern, which is impossible to build in existing neighborhoods... where the deficits exist. According to Dr. Einstein, my city is clinically insane for using conventional suburban development patterns and regulations over and over again and expecting different urban outcomes. Essentially, Chuck told us that we’ve eaten too many donuts and now find ourselves in the midst of a bleak and bloated economic landscape. He never uttered the words “sustainability,” “smart growth,” or “New Urbanism,” or insisted that we abandon our cars for a life on foot. Instead, he simply laid out the economic failures of our suburban experiment and left any future action up to us. The implication was clear: Failure to act is not an option. We have to change our pattern of development in order improve our quality-of-life. Folks like Scott Polikov (Value Capture!), Joe Minicozzi (Higher Yields!), Chuck Marohn (Return on Investment!), and the once again incredibly intuitive Peter Katz, are standing as the vanguard in changing our nation’s suburban development patterns towards a Next Urbanism that builds complete, compact and connected neighborhoods. [caption id="attachment_4664" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Asheville, NC: Average County Tax Yield per Acres - Land and Building
Credit: Public Interest Projects, Inc. J. Patrick Whalen and Joseph Minicozzi, AICP."][/caption] What will your community do? --Howard Blackson If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Municipal Dilemma: Get Social?

greenwaters08 — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:01:01 +0000

Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we've had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we've created "Back of the Envelope," a weekly feature where we jot 'em down for your consideration. Picture this scene: It’s your regularly scheduled city council meeting and the room is packed. Roughly two thirds of the audience is wearing matching red t-shirts with stickers reading “NO!” while the other third, sporting all manner of dress, displays stickers reading “YES!” There’s considerable tension in the air and it’s clear that things could turn ugly at the slightest provocation. Now imagine the Mayor calling the meeting to order by saying, “It looks like everyone has a lot on their minds tonight, so we’ve decided to cede control of the meeting and let the audience run the show. We’ll just sit right here, maybe chiming in from time to time if the opportunity presents itself. Now, here’s the microphone for anyone who wants it.” Bedlam, right? This seemingly unthinkable scenario is actually a lot more plausible than you might think. In fact, it’s a potential reality every single day if your city is actively engaged in social media which, according to this recent study from the University of Illinois at Chicago, it probably is. Or will be soon. According to the study, which examined the country’s 75 largest cities, 87% now engage residents through Facebook and Twitter. Which means that, day in and day out, they’re handing over the microphone. To God knows who. But let’s revisit our packed council meeting for a moment. This time, the room’s abuzz with laughter and chit-chat. Residents mingle, speaking freely with councilors and city staff before the meeting begins, asking questions, stressing concerns and catching up on the latest news. In this instance, turning over the meeting to the crowd doesn’t seem quite so terrible. In fact, it might result in some interesting dynamics. If your city is among those still considering social media, these two scenarios are what you need to be thinking about. That’s because your community is already engaged in conversation. All kinds of conversation on issues big and small, happening on terms you don’t -- and can’t -- control. Social media is your attempt to join these conversations. To enter a new forum through which your relationship with your citizens can play out in plain sight. Such platforms can make friendly relations even more interesting and valuable. But they can also empower networks of discontent. In essence, becoming a tool to be used against you. Skeptical? Then ask the city of Camden, South Carolina. Or the Mayor of Oakland, California. Or the police department in Canton, Ohio. Or the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. You get the idea. If your city leadership has built strong, trusting relationships with residents, social media can make them even stronger and help you develop wider circles of support. But if your community is dysfunctional, with little or no trust in governance and a legacy of gaping political wounds, then watch out. In short, before firing up a new Facebook page or Twitter account, take a good look out into the audience. Would you hand them the mic? --Scott Doyon If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.

Stop Making Sense: A new strategy for community outreach

greenwaters08 — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:01:06 +0000

Okay, I’m not confident David Byrne would be all that excited about turning an ironic subtitle from the Talking Heads’ 1984 tune into a community engagement tactic. But stay with me here. Over the last few months, the urban planning universe has been all atwitter (literally) with concern over how “those people,” the Agenda 21ers and Tea Party folks, have been making life tough in public meetings and planning processes. In February, a “Facing the Critics” session at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in San Diego attracted a standing-room-only crowd desperate for solutions to out-of-control meetings. (You can download presentations from that session here.) And in just the last couple weeks, I’ve attended meetings in Boston and Burlington, Vermont with similar topics on the agenda.

Soon, the American Planning Association will release a survey it commissioned to explore gaps between planning perceptions among citizens who self-identify themselves along the liberal-to-conservative continuum. And there will be a panel at the upcoming Congress for the New Urbanism on new challenges for charrette processes. A lot of the talk is about “reframing the message,” which tends to focus too narrowly, I believe, on coming up with new words to say the same thing. Instead, maybe we should be talking about a reframing of perspectives, particularly from liberal handwringers who tend to be of the “why don’t these guys get it?” mindset. The Boston conference I attended was the annual Journalists Forum on Land and the Built Environment, co-sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Since it was full of journalists and recovering journalists (like me), the room probably tilted left of center and definitely left of right. But the Forum planners invited Samuel Staley, now in Florida State University’s planning department but best known for his work with the libertarian Reason Foundation. And Staley made the case for Tea Partiers and others “coming from a different planet ideologically,” compared to liberal planning advocates. You can see and hear Staley in the short video below and read his take on the Forum panel here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP9b1d7SRCI Even if you don’t agree with his grounding of the Tea Party movement in the broader strains of American libertarianism, it’s hard to disagree with Staley’s core point: “These people” evaluate what’s right and wrong, what’s fair and unfair, and what’s likely to bring success to individuals and to businesses differently than most professional planners. Fortunately, that disconnect is getting a lot of attention from social scientists who might help us do a lot better job of closing the communications gaps and getting some important stuff done in our communities. The fastest route to understanding contributions from the psychologists, biologists, neuroscientists and anthropologists is the new book by psychologist Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Haidt has been working this territory for most of his career. Watch his summation of the core arguments in a 2008 TED talk here. The Haidt mantra is “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” Which is pretty much the opposite of the way many of us confront opposing viewpoints. Especially those of us who’ve been rewarded throughout our careers for fashioning methodical, logical arguments to defend our intentions. Backed by loads of research over decades, Haidt makes the case for evolution having written what amounts to a first draft of an intuitional guidance system that influences -- if not determines -- our moral choices. And while we can overcome these “pre-wired” intuitions, we’re still likely to default to them when we’re pressed to make quick decisions about whom and what to trust. The logical lawyer mind comes into play to defend the intuited choice and to convince others of its worthiness. Haidt makes the point that much of our species’ evolutionary success is tied to adaptive behaviors related to teaming up, in forming bonds beyond the kinds of kinship ties that allow other animals to work cooperatively. But that teaming up process requires implicit, oftentimes unconscious, agreements about the right way to look at the world and the right way to evaluate choices. Faced with threats to our positions, we’re likely to rally round our teams’ claims and discount the other guys’, even if evidence mounts that our positions are being undermined by unfolding events. No problem in seeing this blind spot in the “other” team, right? We can shape tight, logical briefs to argue in the court of public opinion against the opponents of climate change research, against defenders of sprawl, against those who’re convinced the United Nations is out to herd citizens into hobbit-sized units in overcrowded cities. But judgments by the public are not constrained by traditions of objectivity we strive for in legal proceedings and in science. They’re driven by intuition first, reason second. As are many of the judgments those of us on the opposing team defend as purely objective. One of Haidt’s best contributions to this whole discussion is his willingness to apply his arguments to his own team, educated professionals who fought challenges to their own sacred doctrines. Check out this narrated PowerPoint from Haidt’s presentation last year before colleagues in the Society for Personal and Social Psychology. So this gets us back to “Stop Making Sense.” If we’re not going to win a competition by out-debating people who disagree with us, what should the strategy be? Well, maybe we should open ourselves up to the idea that we all share a similar intuition-favored operating system. That requires, says Haidt, “stepping out of the Matrix” that frames delusions of pure objectivity. And if we’re to break through barriers to consensus we’d best figure out which of those intuition buttons we have to honor, in what combination, and to what degree. Haidt identifies five hot-button “receptors.” They are categories that invite choices about what’s fair and what amounts to cheating; about what constitutes caring or harm to others; about loyalty and betrayal; about respect for authority or subversion of authority; and about what is sacred or degrading. In a series of online surveys, Haidt and his colleagues asked questions of volunteers who rated themselves along the liberal to conservative spectrum. The questions got at how important those five moral receptors were to the values of respondents. People who called themselves liberals scored very high on valuing caring and fairness but were prone to value the other three categories less. Though they were moved less by fairness and caring priorities, conservatives responded about the same to all five moral receptors. I think that suggests liberal-leading educated professionals are handicapping themselves in discussions with conservatives. They’re operating on 40 percent of the power needed to inspire trust in those who don’t already agree with them and, therefore, to truly engage with a broader community. For more PlaceMakers’ perspectives on this topic: Nathan Norris on giving respect to the Tea Party. Scott Doyon on online engagement and the public process. Scott Doyon on civic engagement and social media. Ben Brown and Scott Doyon on the surprising goal of disengagement. Ben Brown on the half-life of anger. Ben Brown on zoning as spiritual practice. --Ben Brown If PlaceShakers is our soapbox, our Facebook page is where we step down, grab a drink and enjoy a little conversation. Looking for a heads-up on the latest community-building news and perspective from around the web? Click through and "Like" us and we'll keep you in the loop.