Really cool annual meeting for Richmond VA's Partnership for Smarter Growth: road trip

The Partnership for Smarter Growth is the Richmond area advocacy group focused on smart growth, transit, and optimal decision making concerning land use and transportation policy generally.  Transit-wise, Richmond has a bus system, and railroad passenger service from Amtrak.

Last year, the Hampton Roads region saw the realization of the initial routing of light rail service, the TIDE system, which serves Norfolk, and is intended to be extended to Virginia Beach (a long story that...). 

The service is already significantly exceeding ridership estimates, with more than 7,000 daily riders.  Granted that's not very much compared to a bigger city with subway service, but is seen as an important milestone and indicator that transit can be successful in the Hampton Roads region.

So the PSG is organizing a bus trip to the Virginia High Speed Rail Association's annual meeting this year in this year in Norfolk, to see the service in action. I think they already have a busful of people committed to going.

I think that such a trip makes sense, because coming to a place like DC where thus far we have a subway, but not light rail or streetcar service, is probably overkill, because the Richmond region will never be able to justify subway service (you need 20,000 to 30,000 people/hour for multiple hours during the day to justify the added expense of subway servcie), but they can justify light rail and streetcar service, and the Tide light rail system is a good example of the kind of fixed rail transit service that is achievable in Richmond.

Economic impact of business improvement districts (in San Diego and Canada)

Typically, there are four types of organizations that may be involved in local commercial district revitalization: community development corporations, although cdcs usually focus more on producing housing; merchants associations; Main Street organizations, which link merchants, residents, and other stakeholders; and business improvement districts, which usually are in larger cities, are funded by assessments on commercial property, and spend a goodly portion of their efforts on clean and safe activities, along with property-development-oriented economic development activities.

People usually get confused about what type of organization does what.  The most important things that these organizations do are: (1) marketing the commercial district as a distinct entity; (2) business recruitment and development; (3) streetscape improvement and transportation coordination; (4) clean and safe activities; with funding provided in a wide variety of ways.  Typically, the smaller city and towns don't provide the means to do tax assessments and the bigger cities do.

BIDs usually have the most stable funding source, but tend to be oriented to the interests of property owners, because property owners provide the funding support for the organization.  Main Street organizations tend to be more focused on the interests of retail and service businesses, and unlike the BIDs, they work to capture the involvement of local residents, to expand the ability and capacity of the organization to accomplish work.

I've always felt the best possible structure would be to have the regular funding system typically "enjoyed" by BIDs, with the committee structure and community involvement of the Main Street Approach.

San Diego comes closest to this ideal. 

It has 17 business improvement districts, funded with property assessments, but many are organized like Main Street programs, such as the Little Italy, North Park, and Adams Avenue districts.

Because the programs are up for renewal of their funding stream, a report, The Economic Impact of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in San Diego, was commissioned to determine their impact.  The report found that there is a $5 return for each $1 provided through the property tax assessment.  (Also see this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Study: It pays to have a Business District.")

I haven't worked through the report yet, so I doubt that it has made this distinction between how San Diego BIDs operate versus more typical business improvement districts.

Speaking of economic impact of investment in the coordination and capacity building of traditional commercial districts, the Canadian Urban Research Institute released the report, The value of investing in Canadian DOWNTOWNS,which finds that downtown revitalization is dependent on successful partnership and organizational development.

An example of a big problem with nonprofit organizations: who runs the show?

The Washington Post has a somewhat interesting piece, "A feud over a D.C. park pits one man against his neighbors," on a debacle in the Bloomingdale community. 

Some time ago, the community came together to create a park space on the interior of a block, not unlike how there private gardens are situated in London or with Gramercy Park in New York City, or how there is a movement where people connect their backyards to make contiguous spaces.

Typical of the Post, the article focuses more on what I'd call the personalities and conflicts behind the dispute--an old, somewhat, wacked out African-American resident who was one of the founders of the Crispus Attacks Development Corporation and new, white residents who rehabilitated the space and created a community park space on the once vacant and dilapitated space--rather than the systemic issues raised by the example.

What is more important than that this is about a park is how this article demonstrates problems with how nonprofit organizations are governed and perpetuated. 
Once an organization is created, usually there are very limited provisions for how people are elected to and serve on the boards of the organization.  Community organizations basically manage themselves, purportedly for the community.  For the most part, boards are self-replicating and bylaws don't include procedures whereby people can be nominated and/or elected to the board outside of procedures controlled by the board or staff.

If the organization and the community are congruent with the vision and agenda of the organization, things usually work out somewhat okay, although it's hard for particularly innovative or challenging people to get elected to the board.

If the vision and agenda of the organization is not congruent with the community, it's not a good situation, and short of the government stepping in, there are no effective means to improve the situation on the part of people not on the board.

This has been a real problem with so-called "community" development corporations, but it can be a problem with neighborhood associations and other groups.  I can think of many civic organizations across the city that are disconnected from all but a small coterie of the neighborhood's population.

Technically, nonprofits are overseen by a unit of the attorney general's office of a state or locality, but only in rare situations does the state step in to protect the interests of the public, since community organizations/501c3s are owned so-to-speak by the public.  (Situations that come to mind for me have been in Pennsylvania, with the Barnes Foundation and its relocation, use of the funds generated by the Girard Trust, and whether or not the Hershey Trust has been following the dictates of its founder and adequately meeting the terms of the trust agreement.)

To receive nonprofit designation in DC, certain types of groups, including neighborhood associations and community development corporations, should be required to have democratic procedures for the election of representatives to the boards, so that the groups don't become disconnected from the communities which they purport to serve.

In DC, with regard to the Crispus Attacks Development Corporation, the only way to resolve the situation legally, because the "wack job" is the person listed on the nonprofit corporation's articles of incorporation as the president, is for the Attorney General's Office to step in to resolve the situation.

DC and taxis: need for a comprehensive plan

I've argued for awhile that planning for taxis needs to be incorporated into a community's transportation plan.  Because taxi "management" is seen more as a regulatory function, it's most often treated separately.

In DC, taxis have been in the news for a number of reasons, including an attempt to create a medallion system (since rebuffed) and the related bribery attempts and scandal, the DC City Council's passage of a new law concerning taxis (I think the law was premature, given that a plan for the industry doesn't exist), and how the Washington Post (probably because a reporter got caught in the scrum) reported chaos for cabs at Union Station after the line monitor normally ends his shift ("At Union Station late at night, all’s fare when seeking a cab," "Union Station steps up late-night enforcement to quell cab chaos," and "A new day at Union Station cab queue"). 

And granted the newly adopted DC City Council legislation is focused on significantly improving the quality of taxi service in the city, which face it, tends not to be great.

Flickr photo by WILL1955.

For example, many people don't find DC taxicabs can be relied on to get to the airport early in the morning.  So you know to call Red Top Cab of Arlington.   It's legal for them to come into the city to pick up a fare if the final destination is in Arlington County, Virginia.

That says something very chilling about DC taxi service, for residents especially.

One of the ever present issues concerns the provision of taxi service outside of the core of the city (NYC is introducing a new system of "green cabs" to provide more cab services in areas traditionally underserved, outside of Manhattan, see "A Green Apple Taxi" from the New York Times; and Montreal has shared taxi services in outer parts of the city, which provide near-transit service on a more cost-effective basis), or in the early hours of the day.

Another issue concerns the availability of cabs with disabled-access, and even the shifting of some of the paratransit trips from the higher-cost MetroAccess service to presumably what would be a less expensive service delivered in part by taxis.

You'd think there would be an opportunity in the DC market for a taxicab service providing high quality, advanced services--ordering online/by mobile phone, paying by credit card, etc. --but such a service doesn't seem to be in the offing.

There has been the controversial Urber service ("Uber car impounded, driver ticketed in city sting" from the Post), but it's more of a high end car service and not what I have in mind.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics: parks edition

Graphic of the Parkscore(tm) methodology from the Trust for Public Land.

Newspapers across the country have reported on the release by the Trust for Public Land of a report, Park Score, comparing the provision and access to parks on the nation's 40 largest cities on these criteria:

• how many residents live within walking distance of a park
• the percentage of park space within cities
• median park size
• public investment in the park system
• the number of playground spaces. 

-- "New survey says D.C. among the best in the country for access to parks," Washington Post,-- "Fort Worth rated 24th for parks," Fort Worth Star-Telegram
-- "Seattle ranks 9th for best park facilities," Seattle Times

DC ranked fifth.

That makes me question maybe not the utility of the measures, but their lack of nuance:

Maybe a score system like this is helpful to localities, in raising the bar for quality of service. Maybe not. I think that having DC ranked as fifth best in the country for urban parks will reduce the demand to do better, because the city can argue it's doing fine, even though I would argue that DC's parks, recreation, and cultural planning activities are deficient, and under-serve citizens, and the potential of the city to be a truly great place to live.

DC has some "unique" issues in that many of the city's park spaces are controlled by the federal government, the National Park Service--90% of the city's parks lands are controlled by the NPS.

Local citizens have limited input into the operation of these parks, and the Park Service is significantly underfunded, especially as it relates to the parks and how they serve local, as opposed to national, audiences.

Another problem arises from the fact that the city doesn't have a parks master plan (something that I testified about earlier in the year) but apparently the city is going to develop such a plan in the next fiscal year).  Typically such plans wouldn't provide guidance with regard to the federal parks, but if the city's parks plan doesn't, then resident interests won't be adequately represented when it comes to parks since 90% of the city's park spaces are managed by the federal government.

This really matters.  At a session last week at the American Institute of Architects national conference, someone commented about how DC's significant construction boom over the past decade was not, for the most part, accompanied by any significant increase in park type space. 

This is true and I think in part is the result of the failure to have a parks master plan, but also resulted from a failure to have adequate processes in place for parks, recreation, and community spaces as part of the "small area planning process" (DC doesn't do full-blown neighborhood or sector planning). 

I know this was the case for both the H Street and NoMA plans, where future opportunities to add open spaces in the commercial districts were ignored--not deliberately I don't think, but because the lead planners and consultants didn't address parks issues as a matter of course.  By the time buildings started getting developed, it was often too late to add space back.

So questions concerning "who" provides the park, the services provided, whether or not a parks master plan is in place, whether or not parks plans have high quality frameworks for the types of parks and recreation facilities provider and level of service guidelines aren't covered in the TPL report, and this can "encourage" a failure to dig deeper into the issues that shape local community parks--AND RECREATION--agendas and plans.

Note that the tension between parks and open space provision and space for recreation--passive vs. active parks use--has existed from the beginnings of the US parks movement and the park spaces created by Frederick Law Olmsted, beginning with Central Park in New York City in the 1870s.

This tension definitely exists both within the National Park Service's management of local parks spaces, influences some of the issues concerning the national/monumental parks in the city, and is clearly an issue with the city's parks and recreation department, which is far more focused on recreation than it is on parks.  (This tension is seen in other local communities.  For example, Montgomery County Maryland's recreation department is separate from the parks department.)

The data element "median park size" is somewhat of a concern, especially when you are ranking cities, because the issue is providing the right types of spaces for the area. Neighborhoods and commercial districts in cities have different needs for park and recreation services than are typically provided by a large park, which tends to serve large areas, and has a service profile focused on larger areas of a city (or county).

This is the park space typology from Atlanta's Buckhead Collection plan, which is more focused on the provision of neighborhood/district park spaces:


• Plazas
• Central Gathering Space
• Neighborhood Parks
• Community Greens
• Conservation Parks
• Greenways & Trails
• Historical & Cultural Resources
• Public Art
• Dog Parks


A comprehensive parks plan for a city or county has an even wider range of spaces within the typology, which will be shaped to a particular community's spatial conditions, location within a metropolitan area, and natural resources.  So a plan for Miami will differ from that of Fort Worth or Washington, DC.

I wrote about this in 2008 with regard to the failure to plan more widely for parks and recreation spaces in DC in this post, "Prototyping and municipal capital improvement programs."

And playgrounds are an issue, as was indicated in the TPL report concerning DC.  Many neighborhoods don't have parks close by, so by default, playgrounds at local schools serve--if the school sets up the playground in this way--as local parks. 

Many school playgrounds are being renovated out of community, not school management, initiatives, such as at JO Wilson Elementary School in the H Street neighborhood.

Traditionally, unlike cities such as Denver and New York City, DC Public Schools haven't been very open to making playgrounds spaces for community use outside of school hours.  And some communities have detailed agreements between the school system and the parks and recreation department so that space at the school is available to the public at other times of the day.

Another concern is the provision of shared use paths as part of parks systems, but maintaining access to these assets as part of the transportation network.  This is a constant tension within parks and transportation planning.  The Star-Telegram article quoted a representative from the local group Streams and Valleys, on how if Fort Worth's extensive network of trails were included in the data analysis, then the city would have been ranked higher.

I could go on and on with issues that I think need to be considered for 21st century parks planning.

Some parks plans include cultural resources (including arts) planning, some don't.  I've written about that as it relates to DC quite a bit, these entries cover the gist:

-- Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
-- Arts, artistic production, and culture districts revisited (this entry covers similar themes, but focused on music )
-- The Howard and Lincoln Theatres: run them like the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust/Playhouse Square Cleveland model

And probably no community parks plan includes a wider ranging consideration of "democratic spaces"/spaces for participation in a planning context where most space is provided by the private sector, and communities are economically hard-pressed to operate parks or to add new, flexible spaces that can serve citizens as residents and as participating members of their communities.

-- this blog entry on community building discusses this issue in terms of spaces as well


Public Realm as an Interconnected system, Slide from presentation, Leadership and the Role of Parks and Recreation in the New Economy, David Barth and Carlos Perez, AECOM

Building the city a generation at a time

An article in the Toronto Globe & Mail about Toronto's early 20th century "works commissioner" RC Harris mentioned that he thought of civic building and projects in terms of a generation.

Another article on pedestrian bridges mentions the new Peace Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava, in Calgary

Photo by K-ideas, on Flickr.  The 85-ton bridge drew its share of criticism because of its $24.5-million price tag, construction delays and procurement process.

Recapping new urbanism

The New Urban Transect, using images by Norman Rockwell to illustrate the various zones.

A couple weeks ago, the annual conference ("congress") for the Congress of New Urbanism was held in West Palm Beach, Florida. 

In advance of the meeting, the newsletter Better! Cities and Towns ran a three-part series by Peter Katz on the beginnings of the movement and the development of a relationship with HUD that led to the HOPEVI program which spearheaded redevelopment of public housing projects.  See "CNU at 20: A recollection," "The origins of the Congress for the New Urbanism," and "HopeVI and the inner city."

Interestingly enough, according to Katz' articles, some of the schisms in the movement today over what we might call new suburbanism and the development of greenfield tracts far from urban centers, but with new urban principles based on the Charter of the New Urbanism vs. focusing redevelopment at the core of a metropolitan region, with a focus on "infill" apparently were present at the beginning and still aren't resolved.

Erin Chantry, an urban designer at the firm Tindale-Oliver & Associates and blogger (At the Helm for the Public Realm) attended the congress and wrote eight dispatches related to conference sessions and her reactions. 

Her dispatches are a good introduction to the basic principles underlying smarter growth and well worth a read.

Too early to say what the special election in Ward 5 means: but change is coming regardless

Today's Post has an op-ed, "Putting the 'divided DC' meme to rest," by David Alpert, the publisher of Greater Greater Washington, on how the Ward 5 special election result, the election of 35-year old Kenyan McDuffie, is the harbinger of a reduction in the so-called racial divide in the city.

I think it's way too soon to make that kind of declaration, especially considering how the successful 2006 primary victories by Adrian Fenty for mayor, and Harry Thomas Jr. for Ward 5 Councilmember, were seen as a positive step--the harbinger of change, youth, andthe triumph of people born in the city achieving amongst the highest political positions in the city.

We know how that worked out. 

While many quarters of the city (continue to wrongly) lionize Adrian Fenty as an agent of change, I think the reality is that his policies accelerated the destruction of many parts of the city's school system, and many of the administration's accomplishments were born out of developments and programs initiated by the previous mayor.  And Fenty got a pass on serious contract steering to his friends and the peopling of boards and commissions with his training buddies.  And Harry Thomas Jr. is soon to embark on a 38-month sentence in federal prison for conversion of public funds.

-- Primary election special: losing sight of what matters
-- The "system" vs. "Anybody but Fenty"
-- Thinking about the "uncivil war"

I think it's way too soon to draw conclusions from the election results, especially as there was no exit polling.  My 2010 fears about voting for Vince Gray turned out to have been right on the money.  But the fact that election was called because Harry Thomas Junior resigned after having plead guilty to breaking the law while in office makes the willingness to elect someone new atypical of how people have tended to vote in ward elections.

Judging by the comments of the candidates as printed in newspaper articles leading up to the W5 special election last Tuesday, it seemed as if Kenyan McDuffie was trying to disavow to some extent, "progressivism", as it was seen as a code word for "white" or at least political interests "different" from those typically expressed by longer term residents.  And it's not like his land use and transportation agenda, at least before the election, reflected particularly "progressive" viewpoints.

This reminds me of my early experiences as an activist in the H Street neighborhood.  Compromise was expected to be one way--you were expected to give in, to capitulate--not unlike how Marshall Brown, father of City Council Chair Kwame Brown, was quoted on the subject a couple years ago:

The longtime white population, the people who got involved in statehood, civil rights and environmental causes, thought of this as a black city,” Brown told Fisher. “But the new white voters aren’t involved like that. They want doggie parks and bike lanes. The result is a lot of tension. ... The new people believe more in their dogs than they do in people. They go into their little cafes, go out and throw their snowballs. This is not the District I knew. There’s no relationship with the black community; they don’t connect at church, they don’t go to the same cafes, they don’t volunteer in the neighborhood school, and a lot of longtime black residents feel threatened.”  (from the Post)

That's pretty facile.  You can want an improvement in the city and neighborhoods without going to church.   But there are issues and as I joke with Anwar Saleem, director of the H Street Main Street program, "revitalization is really hard to do in hetereogeneous communities."  Because generating consensus is really difficult.

On the other hand, Bob King, the W5 stalwart known for his connections to the senior constituency, a reliable source of votesfor typically "traditional candidates,  and seen as a reliable member of the ward's traditional political machine--at least one faction of it, since the now cleaved off John Ray faction (John Ray, a former city councilmember, is now a leading lobbyist for various real estate and other interests) supported Wilds--supported McDuffie Delano Hunter, another younger candidate, but one criticized for anti-gay marriage positions (but one who seemed to express reasonable positions on land use and transportation issues, according to a Q&A in the Washington Post) so maybe there are the beginnings of some change in the attitudes of people associated with the machine.

Thus far, compared to wards 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, demographic change lags in W5.

E.g., in W4 from 1990 to 2010 the percentage of African American residents dropped by 20 points. There was a 10 point drop in W5 over the same period.

So it makes sense that legacy political behavior and the longevity of traditional machine politics will be more resilient in W5 until a critical mass of citizens demanding second order change is reached.

The comparatively static nature of DC's black population in demographic terms is discussed in an old paper, "Demographic Dynamism and Metropolitan Change: Comparing Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC," from Housing Policy Debate.  The somewhat inert Chocolate City population gives resilience and instransigence to "old school" political attitudes and agendas.

The op-ed does provide an impetus to consider the future of W5 over the next 10-20 years.  So far, with the exception of more traditional suburban development at Fort Lincoln and the development of a big box shopping center adjacent to the Rhode Island Metro, there hasn't been significant new development in the Ward.

This suburban style shopping center at Brentwood was seen by Vincent Orange as one of his major accomplishments. The center's urban design could have been used to strengthen and extend urbanism, instead it focused on automobility, delaying significant economic improvement in the area. The parking lot in the foreground, abutting the Rhode Island Metro station, is now home to apartments, the construction of which is pictured below.

But that's deceptive.

I think Ward 5 is on the cusp of its own transformation, a significant and quantum transformation, not unlike the point where DC was on the eve of 21st Century, two years into the ascension of Anthony Williams as Mayor, and to some extent, the sidelining of Marion Barry as a significant force in the city.

In the late 1990s, after Anthony Williams was elected mayor, advocates had no conception of the depth and breadth and velocity of the change that was about to be unleashed, as the city exited its period of practical bankruptcy, developers felt much more comfortable about investing in the city, and the willingness of people choosing to live in the city instead of the suburbs--opposite of the dominant residential trend since the end of Ward War II--reached critical mass (assisted a bit by a special federal residential tax credit for new residents).

It's hard for people relatively new to the city to understand what it was like in the 1980s or 1990s or even until 2005.  We didn't think many neighborhoods, including H Street, Shaw and others, were likely to improve any time soon, or even in our lifetimes.  Sadly we didn't have the right planning and policy tools in place to assist us with managing the change that was about to occur.

This graffiti had been painted on a building on 9th Street NW in the Shaw neighborhood, and had been up for years. This photo is from 2006.  Today that area is undergoing significant transformation, which was unimaginable just a few years ago.

W5 is about to experience a great deal of mostly residential development, which will result in the influx of thousands of new residents to the ward.  The ward will be transformed in the process, in ways that current residents aren't likely to be fully considering.  But it's the same kind of change that is has been transforming wards 1, 2, and 6 for the last two decades. 

Just like the addition of housing to downtown is transforming ward 2, and to downtown, H Street, NOMA, and the Southeast Waterfront in Ward 6, and the intensification of land use around the Columbia Heights Metro Station is transforming ward 1, Ward 5 will undergo significant changes.

Ward 5 residents, advocates, and community groups need to prepare for the changes, changes that the city was not able to deal with very well in the last decade because we didn't have an:

• adequate housing policy and plan (although the city did a good job for a time improving the DC Housing Authority, doing a lot of HopeVI residential projects--but at the loss of housing units for the extremely impoverished, and the creation of the housing production trust fund to support the development of affordable housing)
• no parks and recreation master plan
• no system for developing true neighborhood plans (we still don't do comprehensive neighborhood planning)
• a zoning code that preferences suburban style development
• community organizations more familiar and comfortable with dealing with a shrinking, declining city rather than knowing what approaches to use to address changes and opportunities in a city that after many decades of loss, was starting to add population
• and a somewhat outdated "comprehensive plan" (even the new one, approved in 2006, has many gaps.)

Atlas Flats development, Bladensburg Road.

Development is moving to Ward 5 because the choicest locations in the northwest quadrant and in Ward 6 are getting built out. 

The number of people likely to be attracted to living adjacent to transit is not only increasing significantly, but what matters most is the people attracted to this type of housing tend to be different demographically--younger, whiter, more highly educated, likely with better income potential--than many current residents, especially those that have been living in the ward the longest.

This will be the source of contestation for many years going forward--i.e., the point made above about the difficulty of dealing with change in hetereogeneous communities is fully relevant and apt.

Hopefully, Kenyan McDuffie has it within himself to lead "third order" change, and build the capacity of the citizens, community organizations, and civil society more generally so that residents are empowered and shape the vision and agenda. That's a tall order for any politician. Thus far, no elected official in the city meets such a high bar--most are focused on "helping" citizens to the extent that they remain dependent on the elected official, which aids re-election.

In particular, the Rhode Island, Brookland, and Fort Totten Metro stations (the latter served both by the Green and Red lines) are beginning to see significant new transit-oriented development.  (The New York Avenue station is in Ward 6, just south of Ward 5, but the bulk of its impact thus far has been on development in Ward 6.)

The amount of new development that is or will be occurring in Ward 5 areas that are well served by transit will be considerable:

• Bloomingdale and Eckington, mostly the rehabilitation of extant housing and residential turnover, along with scattered infill new development
• housing development at Rhode Island Metro (with housing sites available further up Rhode Island Avenue, the eventual redevelopment of the declining shopping center located at 4th and Rhode Island Avenue, and the conversion into condominiums of many apartment buildings in the area)
• new development at Brookland, currently the "Monroe Market" development and eventually projects on the Subway station site and across the street from it, along with the "Chancellor Row" rowhouse development by EYA on a deaccessioned portion of the St. Paul's College campus
• redevelopment coming to both the W4 and W5 parts of Fort Totten
• the streetcar on H Street will also drive change in the portions of W5 that will have access to it (Trinidad especially) but is also being felt in the development of the now named "Atlas Flats" on the site of the old Sears Department store, which will be a one block walk from a streetcar stop at Bladensburg Road and H Street/Benning Road
• housing being constructed in the Ward 5 side of the "NoMA" district
• and the eventual residential development coming to the now re-termed Union Market.  (The developer's video on the future of the development references images heavily drawn from NYC's Meatpacking district);

or centrally located and close enough to transit, for example, the development of the long since abandoned McMillan sand filtration plant site at Michigan Avenue and North Capitol Street is still in bus-bike range--the station is 1 to 1.5 miles away from most of the site--to be within striking distance of the Brookland Metro Station, especially if the proposed "crosstown" streetcar line between Woodley Park and Brookland ever gets constructed.

(There is also the New Communities program, a local HopeVI type program, targeting the area between K Street and New York Avenue, from North Capitol Street to I-395.)

It's surprising to think, but Ward 5, one of the most reliably "black" wards located north of the Southeast waterfront of the city which separates Wards 7 and 8 from the rest of the city, is likely to become majority non-African-American, within maybe 15 years, because of the one-two of influx of new residents to newly built housing, and outmigration and aging out of current residents.
Rustik Tavern, Bloomingdale--five years ago, that a restaurant in this location would be successful and a neighborhood draw was almost inconceivable.  The cafe across the street had been robbed a number of times, and the commercial buildings were mostly mouldering.

More on community building:not painting Evanston's fire hydrants Northwestern University purple

Photo from Tumblr.

Evanston has already painted some of the fire hydrants near Northwestern University (school colors Purple and White) purple.  But at this juncture, they've decided to not paint all of the city's fire hydrants purple.  See "Evanston City Council rejects painting fire hydrants purple for Northwestern" from the Chicago Sun-Times.

I think this is a kind of street furniture and streetscape defining element that is increasingly disappearing.  E.g., Federal Highway Administration guidelines on street signs make it difficult for communities to display distinctive signage, say comparable to that in Toronto.

Toronto street sign photo by jbcurio, from Flickr.

Neighborhood-community building: Porchfest music festival

Ithaca Porchfest, 2008.  Flickr video by Ari Moore.

The original Porchfest is in Ithaca, New York, which presents music around the city, delivered from various house front porches.

Somerville, Mass. is doing this today for the second year in a row.  It's not a community festival in one location but a "distributed and decentralized" event where 'Somervillians share their love of playing and listening to music.'  It's like an open studio tour, but for music.

-- Somerville Porchfest
-- Map page, which includes band profiles, links, and mp3s

From their website:

On Saturday, May 19th musicians and bands throughout Somerville will celebrate and utilize an underused public venue: The Porch. Acts—ranging from bollywood funk, cosmic americana, killer blues, Moroccan, Balkan, gospel, American space rock and clawhammer banjo—will serenade passersby from porches throughout Somerville. There are three time slots are based on three quadrants of the city; east to Walnut will be 12-2; Walnut to Willow will be 2-4; west of Willow 4-6. It's all on this map. 

I think that this is a great thing to do in a decent sized neighborhood like Capitol Hill, Dupont Circle, Columbia Heights, even Petworth, as a community building and neighborhood development event.

A Copenhagen-Amsterdam type moment

Bicyclists in the cycletrack on Pennsyvlania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, with the US Capitol in the foreground (cropped).

Generally, I have been critical of the Pennsylvania Avenue cycletrack, which is located in the former median, not because it isn't cool, but because that is a street that doesn't get much use by resident bicyclists, so they are a form of cycletracks to nowhere--except that they do actually connect important destinations, including the White House and the Capitol.

I wish that cycletracks would have been put instead where they are more likely to be used.  (The Pennsylvania Avenue cycletrack was done in response to a kind of "challenge" issued by Rep. Earl Blumenaur, in a talk sponsored by the National Association of City Transportation Officials a few years ago.)

But when they are used, they are beautiful.

Bicyclists in the cycletrack on Pennsyvlania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, with the US Capitol in the foreground, uncropped. 

Yesterday was Bike to Work Day, and the key DC "pit stop" was at the Ronald Reagan (ugh) International Trade Center at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

So the cycletrack was filled with bicyclists yesterday.

Not quite to Copenhagen or Amsterdam numbers, but a nice sight to see nonetheless, communicating that DC has the potential to achieve high mode split levels for bicycling as transportation.

Cycletrack in Copenhagen.  Photo by Steve Faust.

Artomatic starts Friday

Artomatic, the free-form temporary arts space that lasts for about one month, located in spaces around the area that are about to be demolished or not quite ready for leasing, is launching again this Friday, once again in Crystal City, in Arlington, Virginia, at 1851 S. Bell Street.

(Next time, I might get it together to do a display on cultural planning and discipline specific arts planning, the development of arts districts, etc.  I think the opportunity to push discourse forward on arts policy isn't taken up by the Artscape initiative, and it's a lost opportunity.  Although maybe there is still time to do a forum on the topic as part of the overall program.)

Mobile retail

Selling back college textbooks at the end of term to a mobile buying operation using a hot dog cart, on the George Washington University campus.


Boston Business Journal has a story, "Could Boston be 1st in Fashion Trucks: 7 Startups need Newbury Street Parking," on how the City of Boston is going to permit 7 mobile trucks to sell fashionable clothes.  I think that this form of "pop-up" retailing is interesting, but will be difficult to pull off successfully with longevity because apparel in particular is a "specialty" good, and people like to shop different stores before they buy.

But it reflects a couple things.  The difficulty of finding a place to sell.  The fact that so many of the hours during the week that a store is open are unproductive from a revenue standpoint, since the majority of retail sales transaction volume occurs Friday through Sunday.

The "upscale" container market in Brooklyn, the Dekalb Market (story from Inhabit) is another way to reduce barriers to entry, and to restrict hours of operation so that they more closely match the times when people are more apt to buy.

Bike share bicycle with child in the carrier

Another lesson that people will use a public bike system in a variety of ways, many of which are not authorized.  E.g., this photo of two people on one bikeshare bike.

Changing matter of right zoning regulations for houses to conform to heights typical within neighborhoods, not the allowable maximum

There has been discussion in GGW and the Washington City Paper Housing Complex blog about opposition being fomented to DC's forthcoming zoning regulation update, because of perceptions that the changes allowed, some concerning eliminating parking requirements in certain places served by high frequency transit, will significantly change neighborhoods, reduce property values, etc.

I wrote about an element of this in this entry, "DC and the zoning rewrite and the approach not taken," about the road that was not taken in the rewrite, one that I recommended and that the Office of Planning considered positively, but was rejected by the Zoning Rewrite Advisory Committee (note that most of these kinds of advisory committees tend to be somewhat conservative, and most of the members are political appointees not necessarily deeply knowledgeable and future-oriented).
Generally, I am in favor of the rewrite, because the original code is suburban oriented and DC is a city.

But some of the discussion and reaction "against" the rewrite raises an interesting point about residential building size, which has been a problem for years anyway, regardless of any coming changes to zoning code.   

And I think we can solve the problem, with the rewrite or just by a change to the current code.

The problem derives from the fact that much of the city's residential building stock was constructed before 1950, and the house sizes that were typical back then are smaller than what many people prefer today, especially if they watch HGTV or are accustomed to tract home subdivisions in the suburbs.

New rowhouse construction, 1100 block of 5th Street NE.  Actually, these are "flats."  Each rowhouse has at least two separate units.  Note the difference in height between the new buildings and the house to the left.  The height of the building to the left is typical of the  neighborhood and the period in which it was built, which was probably in the 1920s.  The newly constructed buildings are much larger than most houses in the neighborhood, and were built to the allowable maximum height.

Even if "McMansion" sized houses aren't allowed in most neighborhoods, the existing zoning code already allows significantly bigger residential houses to be constructed than are typical of most DC neighborhoods. These newer and much larger buildings tend to be significantly out of context by comparison to the existing building stock, and have the effect of diminishing place value.

In neighborhoods designated as historic, for the most part, the historic preservation regulations act as an "overlay" superior to the basic zoning regulations, and changes that are out of character concerning size generally aren't approved because of the various review processes in place.

In neighborhoods not designated as historic--even though the neighborhoods may in fact be comprised of housing that is considered "historic", just not legally--houses can be built or modified to the maximum allowed by the zoning regulations. 

1010 Irving Street NW.  What was once a simple two-story rowhouse has been augmented by a discordant third floor addition.

This is the source of the three primary anti-neighborhood/anti-character building construction and alteration practices (although this list is not exclusive):

(1) rear additions that are extremely large

(2) addition of an additional floor--usually adding a third story to a two-story rowhouse, in a manner that is typically out of character

(3) teardowns--demolishing a house that is "small," in order to be able to build a larger house. This tears at the character of neighborhoods in two ways, by eliminating an original house of an architecturally significant style, and by inserting a new, larger house, one that is usually of a significantly different design and style compared to other housing stock in the neighborhood. (Note that teardowns aren't a significant problem in DC, because the cost of housing is so high generally, that it is difficult to do a teardown and make a profit, except in situations where one house is located on two or more lots.)

As part of the zoning rewrite process, protections for neighborhood character should be a mandatory provision within the code, inserted at the outset of the approval of the new code, not something to be added in, neighborhood by neighborhood, after the code is introduced.  "Afterwards" is usually too late to stop problems from occuring.

In fact, from a planning standpoint, the approach of adding additional protections afterwards makes little sense. 
I argue that the point of planning and zoning is to produce and generate routine outcomes that "increase" quality of life, and when the outcomes from our planning and zoning processes don't do this routinely, it is an indicator of a failed process/set of regulations that need to be changed.

Demands for separate overlays for neighborhoods for the most part are a sign of a failure in a code, because a code should be "naturally" robust in terms of its provisions for placemaking and protections for neighborhood affirming qualities. (I made this point in testimony to the Zoning Commission in 2007, when they were deciding how to respond to the 2006 Comprehensive Plan.)

Lack of protection and the failure to have robust regulations is not a good thing, the debacle over Walmart being a more recent example--the city lacks substantive review provisions for "big box" stores as many of us found out to our chagrin. (Of course, it didn't help that elected officials basically "ordered" the Office of Planning to make sure the Walmart stores will happen.)

When Walmart arrived, the problems of not having adequate zoning regulations in place became obvious, because citizens had limited recourse and for the most part were unable to influence the process in any significant way--all because of the failure to have the right zoning regulations in place before they might be "needed." (It's called "planning" for a reason...)

This is why I recommended the Nashville approach as a framework for the zoning rewrite. The Nashville "Community Character Manual" provides 17 subzones for the land use contexts that most typify DC. 

For the most part, those zones and the supporting regulations provide a high level of protection for residents and other stakeholders, without requiring the development of additional regulations. That seems like a much sounder choice.

But regardless, a new DC Zoning Code could and should reverse "matter of right" regulations concerning allowable housing size. 

In another context, Ben Ross, a Montgomery County planning advocate, has made a similar point, that zoning codes tend to have it backward, that "matter of right" regulations tend to privilege the construction of the least quality project, and make it harder to construct the most desirable and highest quality project.  In other words, why don't we make it harder to do the wrong thing, and easier to do the right thing?  (See this 2011 blog entry, "New years post #6 -- the crazy thing about U.S. zoning is that it's not designed to maximize overall land value.")

Instead of making "matter of right" for the largest possible house, make "matter of right" for the size of a house typical of a neighborhood. 

Of course, this size would be coded by neighborhood.  On a block with two story rowhouses, two stories would be the "matter of right", on blocks with three story rowhouses, three stories would be the "matter of right".  But to build a larger house on the shorter block, or a shorter house on the taller block, special approval procedures would be triggered.

For years I have been surprised that a city so defined by historical excellence in planning (L'Enfant, McMillan Commission) and excellence in architecture, does not require design review for the entire city, regardless of whether or not a neighborhood or building is designated as historic. (Visitors to the city don't just comment on the architecture of the federal buildings, they also comment on the charm and attractiveness of the city's neighborhoods, especially those in the core of the city.)

This would be a way to right the terrible wrong that occurs in so many neighborhoods, when alteration of the housing stock is done in ways that diminish the value of place.   For example, this is what is happening to the house two doors down from me.

Before


After

I can't think of a better example of why design review ought to be required in DC than this one. And I can give equally bad examples from similar projects within a block or two.

Sure the original house had been neglected for many years, but completely eradicating it in favor of some ersatz design totally disconnected from the neighborhood context shouldn't have been allowed--but it is, because undesignated neighborhoods have no significant design review requirements.

This is correctable as part of the zoning rewrite.

(Although a more robust design review regulation should also address other problems that weren't listed in my top 3.)

Bike to work day, Friday May 18th 2012

-- Bike to work day, Metro DC

People who register have a chance at prizes and get a tee shirt.  Data on registrations are used for planning purposes.

Because May is National Bike Month, there are variety of bike promotion efforts during the month, ranging from specific "bike to work day" promotions to month long initiatives like California Bike Commute 2012.

This poster was displayed at the Arlington County Central Library.  There are over 50 pit stop locations throughout the metro area.


Today's Express has a couple pieces on biking, including maintaining your bike, fitting bikes, mountain biking (I focus on transportational biking), and carrying stuff.

The DC Rider column in the same edition had a couple reader comments on how weekend subway service has become abysmal.  According to the column, there were 40 minute waits between trains on the red line.  The columnist opines that she is surprised that people are even riding the system on the weekend because "weekend delays ... render the transit system virtually useless for thousands of riders."

She's right and I want to write about this later, in context with the new book Straphanger, which is about how transit-centric communities have better quality of life, in part because automobile-dependency is fundamentally disconnecting, and because with transit you get density and amenities in close proximity.

But that's later.  The complaint in the article was that the rider took about two hours to get from Cleveland Park to Potomac Metro, after finally walking the last 10 blocks.

That's about 7.5 miles.  I know that it seems like a stretch for a lot of people, but that's a 45 minute bike ride, and for much of the distance, is downhill.  With a readily available bike sharing system + an expanding network of bike lanes and cycletracks, increasingly, biking to get around, especially when you don't feel that you can rely on transit, will become a real option.

Frankly, the primary reason that I took up biking was to save myself time (+ the exercise benefits) and not having to be reliant on the subway and buses to get around.  Back then, I figured that biking saved me at least 30 minutes each day, giving me more time to do other things.

National Bike Month is a good time to consider biking as transportation and experiment with it, especially in those cities that have bike sharing systems (Denver, Minneapolis, Montreal, Toronto, DC-Arlington, etc.).

Flickr photo of a Capital Bikeshare user by Elvert Barnes.


51% of all household trips are 3 miles or less, and an additional 13% of trips are 3 to 5 miles in length.  Trips that distance take less than 30 minutes by bike.

150th anniversary of the USDA/Morrill Act and the link to urbanism

US15, Virginia.

Jane Jacobs argued in the Economy of Cities that cities developed first, and that innovation capacity within cities was essential to the improvement of agricultural productivity.  While that point is arguable, there is no question that cities and rural areas are inextricably connected, if only for the fact that cities are dependent on the foodstuffs produced by farmers.

Cities and rural areas are connected in other ways. Expansion of metropolitan areas consumes rural land (sprawl).   People live in "rural areas" and commute to the city, by car or train or other means.  Farmers markets in cities build the value of place and support the redevelopment of local food systems.  Urban agriculture and sustainability initiatives look to reinterpret "rural development" for the urban context, etc.


There was a piece, "The boom on the farm," by Robert Samuelson in the Post yesterday, on the success and productivity of the U.S. agricultural sector.  He made the point that it was unreasonable to provide subsidies to certain sectors and not others, that it would be best to end subsidies.

He didn't take the occasion to discuss how the Morrill Act was passed by Congress during the Civil War.  The act was a model for the government support of industry through the creation of capacity building institutions that individuals could not develop on their own.

The Morrill Act created the system of land grant colleges to support research and experimentation and the improvement of agriculture.  It made sense to elected officials to do this, because agriculture was the country's largest industry, and the foundation of "rural" economies.  The act also created the agricultural extension system, jointly run by the newly created US Dept. of Agriculture and individual land grant colleges, organized within each state.  Over time, networking occurred across system, rural experiment stations were created to supplement the network, and other research and implementation initiatives developed.

(Some of the most important work on the diffusion of innovations was developed out of research studying this system.  See the work of Everett Rogers.)

Today's Post has a story, "USDA set to mark 150th anniversary," on the 150th anniversary of the creation of the US Department of Agriculture.

Extension agents were tasked with spreading the diffusion of innovation--improvements in agricultural practices--to increase yields and income.

While the extension system originally focused strictly on agriculture, over time the mission expanded to include focus on community and community economic development ("rural development").  One of the resources that grew out of this is the Community Development Society and its journal.

Community development, derived from the agricultural extension system, is one of the foundations of community development, revitalization, and housing development in urban communities.

Basically, the fundamentals of community different are the same, rural or urban, although of course the industrial sectors are different, the conditions vary, etc., but the same general principles obtain.

So there are a smattering (there could be many more) of "rural" resources listed in the right sidebar, from the Center for Community Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin Extension program and their fabulous Downtown and Business District Analysis Toolbox, the publication Understanding Your Trade Area: Implications for Retail Analysis from Mississippi State University extension, the Rural Grocery Store Sustainability Initiative at Kansas State, or the Community Owned Stores initiative at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  All of these resources are fully applicable to urban settings.

The "regional rural development center" network produces actionable research that is useful for many settings, not just rural areas.  It's a shame that the same model wasn't fully adapted for cities, upon the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1960s.

While there is plenty of work being done, there isn't a good network for the diffusion and adoption of best practice across urban communities, and so much effort is wasted, at all scales (neighborhood, ward, district, sector, city, county, metropolitan region), because of duplication and repetition of unsuccessful practice in different settings.

Grain elevator, Culpeper, Virginia.

More on vacant properties and getting properties back to habitable use (abating nuisance properties)

Reservoir Hill, Baltimore, 2006.

1.  Argh.  Re-reading the piece from other day, I was writing about DC and I said "the problem is working itself out."

I should have been more specific.  In neighborhoods in demand, the problem of nuisance properties is being addressed more by the market, as more properties, even properties off the market for decades, are being renovated because of rising property taxes, citizen complaints (e.g., "Shiloh Baptist Church Agrees to Sell Two of Its Vacant Properties" from DCist in 2009), and basic economics.

In weak market neighborhoods (and weak market cities and regions), like Anacostia, the problem remains.  Although I didn't discuss it in the piece from the weekend, I did discuss it in March, in this entry, "Deeper thinking/programming on weak residential housing markets is required: DC example, Anacostia.

2.  The blog RUSeriousingMe, known for the production and display of great infographics, did a piece, "Vacant properties and neighborhood reinvestment," around the time I was writing mine.

3.  And his piece reminds me that I completely forgot to discuss other strategies for dealing with nuisance, vacant, and abandoned properties in weak markets.

One of the best programs I am familiar with is in Baltimore, the Healthy Neighborhoods program, which targets incentives and support services to neighborhoods that are at best, emerging, e.g., Reservoir Hill yes, Federal Hill no.  The Preservation of Philadelphia has developed a similar program, based in part on the Baltimore program.

These blog entries discuss those programs:

- Addressing neighborhood-based revitalization and resident attraction

- Sexy and fashionable programs don't make blight go away