My "ungood" ideas submitted to the DC Appleseed contest

1. Create a combined Central Library, City Museum and Visitors Center

A city that's a great place to live is also a great place to visit. Great cities treasure their history and knowledge.

The chronic underfunding of our libraries and the crisis of the DC Archives, and the failure of the City Museum ought to tell us that it's time to rethink these seemingly unconnected planning efforts.

Instead of separate planning initiatives for a central library, the DC Archives, and cultural heritage interpretation initiatives such as a City Museum, plus the "Visitors Center" that people mention--think about combining the functions into one place.

For a number of difficult market development reasons (the Federal Experience defines D.C. and most of the related attractions are free) it is difficult for an independent museum focused upon local history to be successful.

And, we ought to have a good visitors center, like Baltimore's, to help orient people to the city.

That's why I argue for a "cultural resources management plan" for the city, to encompass historic preservation, cultural heritage interpretation, tourism aspects, asset harvesting and development, archival and collections issues, and related arts and cultural activities.

Money from the taxes that support the Convention Center and the Washington Convention and Tourism Corporation should support these activities, not just marketing the city to people from other countries.

A combined Central Library, City Museum and Visitor Center would allow us to harvest the treasures that DC has in abundance.

2. Advisory Neighborhood Commissions are a beautiful concept of civic engagement, but lacking a training infrastructure, too frequently they operate far below the ideal.

DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions were created to provide nonpartisan, grassroots government. An elected Commissioner represents a district of 2,000. Councilmember Catania describes the mission thusly: "To provide community-based input to the urban policy-making process.

ANCs are only as effective as the knowledge base of the Commissioners and those constituents who chose to participate in committees (if they are allowed--many ANCs do not provide for resident membership on committees).

The learning and training infrastructure to support informed decision-making doesn't exist. An Office of the ANC provides some support and organizational assistance, but most DC government agencies provide little training about the matters that come before ANCs--such as zoning, planning, public space, transportation, alcoholic beverage licensing, etc.

Some ANCs have members that are quite knowledgeable, but many do not. Local newspapers frequently report on the malfeasance or misfeasance of ANCs and/or ANC Commissioners.

Often, ANCs make decisions without careful consideration. This demonstrates a weakness in participatory democracy, a dearth of informed representatives.

There are best practices examples from around the country that could be adopted in DC to help make ANCs truly a powerful agent for neighborhood improvement, by building a training infrastructure for civic engagement:

- Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Planning program;
- Massachusetts Citizen Planner Training Collaborative;
- Dallas Public Library Urban Information Center; and
- the training models of the volunteer-based Main Street commercial district revitalization program, Project for Public Spaces, and the Asset-Based Community Development Institute.

3. Expanding the idea of the "People's Counsel" to BZA, Zoning Commission, and Alcohol Beverage Control Board Matters.

A problem with regulation is that the system can be gamed through lobbying. Businesses, with much more at stake with regard to the benefit from shaping how they are regulated, expend a lot of money to ensure that they do well or to get what they want.

This is nothing new. The Abramoff Scandal at the Federal level is just one example. But this happens every day, especially at the local level in Washington, DC.

It's difficult for ground-up citizen groups to compete with the traditional business and business-backed forces. There are tremendous imbalances in terms of financial and paid-for staff resources, as well as technical competence, access to technological resources, etc.

This is why I suggest that the "Office of People's Counsel" model used to "represent the public interest" with regard to public utility matters, including rate increases, needs to be extended to land use and planning issues wrt matters before the Zoning Commission, Board of Zoning Adjustment, and the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

There are many examples of DC neighborhood groups and residents retaining counsel to represent citizen interests before the above-named boards.

Making citizens pay, like the $500,000 being charged to Clarksburg, Maryland residents fighting the failure of Montgomery County to adequately regulate development in their area, is unreasonable, and again is an instance of protecting citizen rights being more of a privilege of income rather than an income-neutral right of all citizens.

4. Promoting anti-litter behavior through experiential learning in [DC Public] school[s]

With regard to litter, one of the biggest problems is that people lack a sense of connectedness to the environment, an ethic about trash, litter, and responsibility. The best way to address this is to build its development into our learning system, not just within schools but more broadly.

But I am getting ahead of myself. For many many years I have been intrigued by an article I read more than ten years ago in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about elementary education in Japan. In Japan, the schools don't have custodians; the children are responsible for cleaning the school. Now, it might not get quite as clean as it should, but the kids learn about what happens when they make messes...

Similarly, in efforts on litter interdiction in the H Street NE neighborhood, I made the following suggestion (although I am no longer involved with H Street Main Street, so I didn't execute it):
I think that every elementary school should have a fall and a spring cleanup activity around a minimum of a one block radius around the school. This should be done in conjunction with local organizations. But every school in the city should do it, every fall, and every spring, every year...

Children become adults. And they would learn how to properly dispose of trash (and ideally, eventually, that it's a good idea to create less trash). Some of the trash littering our streets and sidewalks ends up in the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers...

5. Build a community of learning centered around the schools through family learning contracts.

Until we have families and peer groups that support learning, we're not going to be able to improve outcomes. School systems can only do so much.

There is an interesting article about "positive deviance" in the May 2005 issue of the Harvard Business Review. It includes a case study about the schools in an impoverished state in Brazil where the teachers hadn't been paid in 6 months, and the test results for the entire province were about 50% worse than the national average.

Yet some schools were amongst the highest performers in the country.

It turned out this occurred because these schools engaged the entire family into the process of achieving academic success by creating family learning contracts. Parents were also motivated to do this because they were often illiterate, and literate children were able to help connect the family to government services by being able to read, write, and translate information about the programs.

This provided an additional sweetener, making the whole family committed to and engaged in the classroom success of their child(ren).

This idea of the family learning contract has a lot of relevance to urban school systems. Schools only have children for 6-8 hours/day. The rest of the time they are under the influence of peers, parents, and other members of the community. We can begin to right this process by getting the whole family committed to and participating in the learning life of their children.

Index Keywords: civic-engagement

DC Parks and Recreation Town Meeting next week

From the DC Department of Parks and Recreation:

Please join us for the DC Department of Parks and Recreation's Town Hall Meeting. The agenda for this meeting will give stakeholders an opportunity to ask questions, give comments and make suggestions about parks and recreation activities in your neighborhoods.

Additionally, we will have information about our summer camps, becoming a certified volunteer and many other opportunities regarding various programs and activities.

When: Thursday, June 8, 2006
Where: King Greenleaf Recreation Center, 201 N Street, SW
Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm

For more information about the Town Hall Meeting, please contact Robert King, Special Assistant for Community Affairs at 202-673-7645, or visit our website.
_______
I'll be out of town but I hope someone goes and lets me know what transpires.

Index Keywords: parks-recreation; civic-engagement

Muddled thinking in ostensible defense of the asphalt nation

Flickr photo from the Cincinnati Flower Show by mrobenalt.

From Cycleicio.us

Hillary Clinton wants half of all US gas stations to sell E85 by 2015. Robert @ The Oil Drum crunched some numbers and came to this conclusion:

Our annual gasoline consumption is up to almost 140 billion gallons. That means on a BTU equivalent basis, converting the entire US corn crop into ethanol would amount to 13.4% of our annual gasoline demand. It takes 77,228 BTUs of fossil fuel inputs to make 83,961 BTUs of "green, renewable" ethanol. That means that in reality, using our entire corn crop would only displace 1% of our annual gasoline consumption. We can't possibly produce enough E85 to justify putting in all those pumps.

Cycleicio.us readers are a smart bunch, so you already know that Hillary talked about cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from switchgrass (among other things). I crunched the numbers before on cellulosic ethanol and switchgrass, figuring we need over 500 million acres of switchgrass to create enough ethanol to replace what we burn today. This commentor came up with a similar number. This comment is also good to read regarding some of the reality that we encounter when trying to figure out a way to fuel our automobiles.

Note that 500 million acres is 781,250 square miles. The continental United States totals 3,098,489 square miles. So switchgrass for gas would require about 1/4 of the land area of the continental U.S.

People will go to great efforts to defend sprawl.

Gasoline is a particularly efficient way to power cars. Alternatives aren't. One of the best ways to provide alternative "energy sources" for transportation and mobility is to get around in ways that are not automobile-dependent.

Index Keywords: energy

What's coming soon to Brentwood Center

What's coming soon to Brentwood Center
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

U.S. Capitol

U.S. Capitol
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

Public Dump, Fort Totten

Public Dump, Fort Totten
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

Everyone needs to check this out at least once. In fact, I think there should be tours of it during the next Walking Town DC event.

The interior dump reminds me of the underground scenes from the future in the movie "Terminator." Pretty dark, scary. The big construction earth movers organizing the trash are an experience.

Another lament about education

I am pretty much resigned to what I see as the further dissolution of the public schools in the District of Columbia. I believe this, and it depresses me, because the level of discourse on the issue, by parents and activists, strikes me as committed to not much better than the status quo. There is a failure to recognize real problems, and to grapple with them.

The reason I am writing more and more about this is because of my concern about this failure.

Granted, this is a problem at all levels of leadership in the city.

I wrote this tonight in response to an email on a community e-list about why do people care about what Mayoral candidates think about education, since they don't have control over the school system, a particularly interesting comment given what I wrote yesterday about Marion Orr's study of Baltimore's school reform efforts, as well as the process underway in Seattle to close schools.

Here's what I wrote:

While technically you are correct:

(1) this can change (the laws could be changed to bring overall oversight of the school system to the Executive Branch);
(2) Mayors have a leadership and engagement role that extends beyond merely what they can do legally and what they can influence practically;
(3) there is no question that Mayor Williams has been an active proponent of charter schools... and this has had a wide variety of impacts, not all positive--wouldn't you want to know what a Mayoral candidate thought about this and other issues?

Think about Martin O'Malley and his "Believe" campaign, which by the way, includes a Believe in the Schools component.
At Fallstaff Elementary School, Jaday Jones looks at a book donated by the Believe in Our Schools book drive, sponsored by Mayor Martin O'Malley. Books collected from residents are given to struggling school libraries.(Sun photo by Monica Lopossay)Aug 24, 2005.

Mayor Martin O'Malley, seated at the controls of a bulldozer, kicks off his Believe in Our Schools campaign at Harbor City High, where unsightly vacant trailers had become home to crime. (Sun photo by Doug Kapustin) Jun 22, 2004.

[Speaking of politics, I think there is plenty for Mayor O'Malley to do in Baltimore, before trying to be Governor. On the hand, having a pro-transit, pro-center city, pro-regionalism governor of Maryland is important to the state of Maryland and to DC as well.]

I have been a supporter of Mayor Williams, but in some sense I think he has attention deficit disorder. He took up schools issues for a brief moment and then dropped it.

The mayor could have made it happen that simultaneous planning processes for libraries, schools, and parks and recreation were connected.

The mayor could have extended the idea of "creating a community of learning" that is allegedly guiding the library planning process to include the school system, which in fact should be at the center of "creating a community of learning."

The Mayor could have instituted a "First Day" event to communicate how important the schools are to all of us as residents of the District of Columbia. Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, SC attends that First Day event in his city, even though it is organized by the school district.

The Mayor could call for "family learning contracts" which is something that I have written about quite a bit, to better engage families into the learning process.

But it would require more than a flitting mention and then moving on to something else.

It happens that on Sunday the Baltimore Sun had an excellent interview with Prof. Marion Orr, author of the book Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore. It sounds from the description that it is a must read.

Anyway, speaking of Mayoral campaigns, remember the brief efforts to have everyone in the community read the same book?

Well, I think that the books read in such programs should be about urban revitalization issues, such as Cities: Back from the Edge about urban revitalization or a book like Black Social Capital about improving urban public school systems.

We have too much to do to improve the city so we can't afford to not build up our understanding of the issues.

Or to limit the way we think about how we can go about influencing these issues, and improving the various municipal agencies that are supposed to be serving and aiding us.

The lack of (in my opinion) substantive discourse on such public education issues in the city depresses me greatly. If things don't change, soon, I think the system is doomed.

Also see this paper by urban regime theorist Clarence Stone on "CIVIC CAPACITY AND URBAN EDUCATION."

Index Keywords: education

Progressives vs. the Growth Machine and the DC Election

Since this is my personal blog, I can say specific things about politics, and candidates, and my preferences--although I have to think about this from a political calculus standpoint, about how to manage my progressive tendencies with reality and "effectiveness."

But one thing I do know is that the "Growth Machine"-"Urban Regime" isn't about much other than more construction. It certainly isn't an agenda that embraces citizen participation, especially of the "people power," unmonied sort.

And as the City Paper made so clear in the excellent piece about Herb Miller a few weeks ago, the Growth Machine wants to control every councilmember, every one. See "A superb lesson in DC "growth machine" politics from Loose Lips ..."

as well as this entry: DC's Growth Machine is hard at it, well-funded, and odious ...

That means that At-large City Councilmember Phil Mendelson is targeted, just as he had been targeted in the two previous elections by Beverly Wilbourne (a Growth Machine candidate, she was endorsed by the Post the first time she ran, but not the second, but she didn't have the kind of community connections and bonafides that Scott Bolden has).

Scott Bolden is running an alleged populist campaign, but he is the darling of the developers.

It makes sense, he works for a law firm with a huge real estate and financing practice (even though that isn't his area of practice, he still profits from it, at the end of the year when partnership profits are divvied up), he was chair of the DC Chamber of Commerce, and former chair of the City (State) Democratic Party, and note, you don't get those kinds of positions if (1) you don't deal; and (2) you're a populist. (DC isn't the kind of place that "produces" people like Paul Wellstone or Bernie Sanders.)

Anyway, tomorrow night is a straw poll for the Ward 6 Democratic Party for the at-large race. I hate these kinds of political events (see [1] and [2] in the previous paragraph for why I don't like these kinds of events), but a progressive political agenda for the City of Washington demands our attendance there tomorrow night.

From "Along the campaign trail . . .News and notes from the 2006 campaigns for D.C. elective offices" from the Common Denominator:

[May 31st]Democratic candidates for D.C. City Council chairman and at-large council will be questioned at a forum sponsored by the Ward 6 Democrats and several Ward 6 community organizations at Jefferson Junior High School, 801 Seventh St. SW. The forum begins at 7:30 p.m. and is expected to feature Vincent Gray and Kathy Patterson, both seeking the chairman's seat, and incumbent at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson and Democratic Primary challenger A. Scott Bolden. The event will be moderated by WTOP political commentator Mark Plotkin.

Index Keywords: Washington-DC-Election-2006

Alley Homes Fight for Respect -- and Trash Pickup

Kyle Kreutzberg rehabilitates an alley dwelling in LeDroit Park. Washington Post photo by Nikki Kahn.

The online story, "Alley Homes Fight for Respect -- and Trash Pickup," in the Washington Post, has a nice gallery of additional photos, and covers alley dwellings in Washington, DC. Two points that could have been made a bit more strongly, are:

(1) having residents on the interior of blocks helps bring more "eyes on the street" and reduces disorder and other problems, a la the story David Bernhardt recounted about a woman who intended to urinate in his alley; and

(2) that having more housing options on the interior of blocks provides more options for housing, presumably some that is more affordable (the greater the supply, especially of extant housing, a la "a large stock of old buildings" being necessary to support Great American Cities, the lower the price)

Finished. Kyle Kreutzberg rehabilitates an alley dwelling in LeDroit Park. Washington Post photo by Nikki Kahn.

Index Keywords: alleys; urban-design-placemaking

Other places to learn from, when thinking about DC public school closures

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES. Martin Luther King Elementary School first-grader Dasia Burkett shows a project she made for her mom. The school has just 104 students.

People have asked me about other school districts where they are closing schools, and I have mentioned Seattle, completely forgetting that Baltimore is going through the same school closing process right now.

1. Yesterday's Baltimore Sun has an excellent interview, "Race, politics and the schools," with Professor Marion Orr, who wrote his dissertation, later expanded into a book, on the Baltimore Public Schools.

The book Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore, 1986-1998, draws on data gathered as part of an 11-city study of urban school reform. Judging from the description of the book on the website, it appears to be an essential read for understanding urban school reform and center city political dynamics. Professor Orr's book applies urban regime theory (which I have written about before; while I am a proponent of the "Growth Machine" theory, I believe that the two theories are complementary, that regime theory explains how the Growth Machine works). From the book's website:

Orr's book challenges those who argue that social capital alone can solve fundamentally political problems by purely social means and questions the efficacy of either privatization or black community power to reform urban schools. Black Social Capital offers a cogent conceptual synthesis of social capital theory and urban regime theory that demonstrates the importance of government, politics, and leadership in converting social capital into a resource that can be mobilized for effective social change.

Some of the interesting points in the interview are:

(1) how control of the public school system was given to the black community in the city while the business and political leaders (the "Growth Machine") continued to focus on downtown and other economic development projects and wanted to maintain that power as the city became majority African-American (a similar point about DC is made in the book The Future Once Happened Here);
(2) that patronage in this agency was to be expected and understood, given that ethnic control of various municipal agencies and resulting patronage is a Baltimore (I would say "urban" or even general government) tradition;
(3) that control was ceded in a time of difficult financial circumstances--"It was really an inopportune time to get control."
(4) and how:

"Mayors are now beginning to see the danger of ignoring public schools. Now many of them are saying, "Please give me control over the schools," because they see that connection with economic development. When [Baltimore Mayor Martin] O'Malley was elected in 1999, he ran on a crime-fighting platform. He was going to stay away from the schools. It is cute to watch how this has played out.

To be fair, this was right after the state partnership legislation put limits on the mayor's authority in school affairs. But when I interviewed Mayor O'Malley a few years ago about his role in the school system, he told me that he played a very limited role, that his focus was on crime fighting.Now in his second term, he is talking about education. This is the shift you see in big-city mayors in the 21st century."

2. I have mentioned that Seattle is going through a public school closing process as well, although the school system doesn't face charter school competition similar to the DC Public Schools. So I decided to poke through some of the coverage of this in the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

There are many interesting pieces, and this one from last year, "Budget shortfall forces tough choices at Seattle Public Schools," from the P-I, discusses center city school closing efforts in Seattle, and compares this to similar efforts in Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. From the article:

Determining criteria. Education experts and districts familiar with school closures say the criteria used vary, but typically include common considerations, such as the age of a school, current and projected enrollment, recent or planned improvements to the building and its suitability to deliver educational programs. Academic performance should also be a factor, said Mike Griffith, policy analyst for the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.

Since the federal No Child Left Behind Act imposes increasingly severe sanctions on schools not meeting performance goals, Griffith said, closing low-achieving schools makes sense. But those schools are frequently located in disadvantaged neighborhoods, he said, and often provide needed community supports.

"Especially in the bad neighborhoods, that seems to be the case," he said. "So you wouldn't want to close a school if it runs after-school programs and it's got a day care center and it's a seniors center on the weekend. It's part of keeping the community alive."

This is an important issue in DC. What I would rather have is a set of smaller schools, so that neighborhoods could retain elementary schools, in part for neighborhood stabilization and improvement efforts, despite dropping enrollments., which makes uneconomic larger school formats.

DC once had many small elementary schools, but in the 1950s-1970s, these schools were closed and consolidated into new larger facilities. Some of these old ("historic") and usually smaller schools were demolished. Others were sold off or given over to other functions--3 schools in my neighborhood are used as shelters or other public facilities, and another is now an upscale apartment building. (Another had been converted into housing a couple decades ago.)

The larger buildings that replaced the smaller schools are now utilized at far under capacity, for at least three reasons:

(1) decline in the number of school aged children living in the city;
(2) better enforcement vis-a-vis non-residents who were enrolling their children in city schools, usually in the neighborhoods where the parents grew up, and where grandparents still live;
(3) competition from charter schools.

Plus, demographic trends project continued drops in the number of school-aged children in the center city. While the Post-Intelligencer published a chart of city schools, with their enrollments, and a graphic comparing this to capacity, in "Closing Schools: Tough Choices," I haven't seen similar information published in DC, although the Post graphic accompanying the article on school closure proposals did list that information for those specific schools.

In 1954, the neighborhood north of Stanton Park/Maryland Avenue NE and south of Florida Avenue had seven elementary schools and one junior high school, and most of the schools were small, although one, Logan elementary school, had about 1,000 students.

Today this area is served by two relatively large and underutilized schools (another large elementary school built in the 1950s is located here, but is used for out-of-area school functions; similarly Logan School next to Union Station is used for administration).

Getting back to Seattle, the article "Save schools? Trick is where else to cut: Seattle parents want other options, but all involve some pain," quotes the Schools' finance director:

"Our revenue keeps going up," Nielsen said, "but revenue isn't keeping up with expenses." A key reason, Nielsen said, is the collective impact of decisions the district has made since the 1970s about how to run the school system. To Nielsen, "The giant elephant in the room is the number of schools that we have."

Enrollment in Seattle is half what it was 40 years ago, but the rate of school closings hasn't paralleled that decline. To be in line with the state average of students per building, Seattle would need to close 25 of its 94 schools, Nielsen said.

Seattle Public Schools enrollment has fallen from 86,000 students in 117 schools in 1970 to 46,000 students in 94 schools. The Seattle Times did the Post-Intelligencer one better, creating a fabulous interactive graphic depicting all the city's schools, with an exceptional amount of data on each, including enrollment and capacity.

Seattle Public Schools by the numbers.
Seattle Public Schools owns more than 100 properties--nearly all of which are school buildings--citywide. Now, for the second time in a year, district officials are weighing whether to close schools. The Seattle Times analyzed statistics from the school district and the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and provided data on each property, linked to the map below. Facts about each school building--its age, size, capacity--are displayed along with details about the students and academic programs within it. The map is divided into Seattle Public Schools' planning regions.

______Clicking on one of the "dots" yields this (but in a fancier table)___
John Rogers Elementary School Facility statistics
Year built 1955
Year renovated -
Square feet - 36,266
Acres - 9
Capacity (seats) - 286
Classrooms - 16
Occupied space - 102.8%
Maintenance costs - $111,346
Busing costs - $84,170
Demographics
Asian - 13.3%
American Indian - 2.0%
Black - 13.3%
Latino - 9.9%
White - 61.6%
% on free and reduced-price lunch - 34.3%
Program statistics
Special programs -
Enrollment - 294
First-choice rankings, 2005 - 21
% of those who live in school's cluster - 5%
Students who passed 2005 WASL reading - 81%
Students who passed 2005 WASL math - 72%
Rate of student progress, reading - average
Rate of student progress, math - average
Program costs - $1,416,590
___________

Another article, which also mentions that Portland, Oregon and San Francisco are closing schools, "Will closing school doors open others?," makes the point that the need to close schools can also be an opportunity in (re)creating better schools.

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, wrote a good column, "Closure strategy is valid," that echoes some of the things I've said or written about wrt DC. He writes:

One by one, or in large gaggles of color-coded T-shirts, the people took to the stage to denounce the plan to close some Seattle schools. The 300 parents and kids were rousing. Defiant. Occasionally outrageous. Some said closing these nine schools is a racist attack on black children. Or that it will rip out their neighborhood's heart. Or that their school is too great to deserve such a fate. What was striking was how little any of it spoke to the actual rationale behind the citizen-led plan to close schools.

Ever since a masochistic group of 13 volunteers announced its suggested school-closure list last week, it seems the whole point has been lost in emotional diatribes and conspiracy theorizing. Here's what I haven't heard anyone saying:

• These schools are on the chopping block because parents are rejecting them.
• For all the shrillness about racism, the reason more schools are slated for closure in the minority-heavy South End is far more mundane. It's because enrollment is declining there....
• Finally, let's cut the speeches about how closing these schools is an attack on these neighborhoods...

It's painful to close schools. But we need to. Seattle has the most space per student of any district in the state. We're about to have a school with fewer than 100 kids in it. It's time to stop cowering. And do something. Several districts in Oregon — Eugene, Portland — just closed schools amid great controversy. It took them just a few months to do it.

This list may be flawed. But it's the best one yet. It comes from the people. I say close at least some of these schools. If the School Board can't, then please, don't try again. Put a tax increase on the ballot and just admit we're going to be the priciest — and the roomiest — school system around.

Note that the Seattle School System attempted to close schools last year and it was controversial. So they scrapped the process, created a committee of citizens to make recommndations based on a public process. These recommendations, released within the last two weeks, and resulting from a process not too dissimilar from that used by the Department of Defense to close military facilties (Base Realignment and Closure--BRAC) are before the Seattle School Board now, for action.

Index Keywords: education

Si, se puede

JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES. Kent Peterson, 47, waits for a green light at an intersection in Issaquah. He commutes 35 miles round trip on his bike from his Issaquah home to his job in Seattle. "It's really the clearest part of my day," he says of his time on the road. "It's a nice block of uninterrupted time."

The Seattle Times reports on a suburban Seattle family that doesn't own a car. Kent Peterson, bicyles to work, a distance of 17.5 miles. The family walks, bicycles, and uses transit. See "A family of 4 — but no car."

Top questions people ask the Petersons

1. How do you get ice cream? "From the store." The family has used foldable shopping carts, backpacks and bike baskets to carry the groceries.
2. What if you want to go on vacation? "We take the train or the bus. We take the shuttle to get to the airport."
3. What if there's a real emergency? "Call 911."
4. What happens if you buy something big? "We get it delivered." Kent Peterson used his bike once to bring home a new 13-inch TV from Target in Issaquah. He rested the TV on the bike bar and, using it as a dolly, walked it home the one-mile distance.
5. What if it rains? "I take an umbrella," Christine Peterson said. "I wear flats, generally. I won't do cute little heels. I will never be on anyone's best-dressed list." Kent Peterson wears a bright-yellow rain jacket and dry-fit bike pants. At his previous job, he used to keep a week's worth of anti-wrinkle clothes at the office and change there.
6. How do you plan to go to the movies? "Christine has a lot of the bus stuff in her head, but sometimes we use the schedules of Metro's online trip planner," Kent Peterson said.
7. Have you saved a lot of money? The Petersons say their lifestyle afforded Christine the opportunity to stay home and raise their children. They say they have never calculated all the money they would have spent paying for two cars since 1987.
8. Is there some deep philosophy behind this? "No. We just don't like driving."

Index Keywords: bicycle; car-culture

Anesthesizing children while shopping

Photos by Lance Wynn / The Grand Rapids Press. Anita Johnson shops for groceries in the Cascade Meijer store while her children Andie Johnson, 5, and Lucas Johnson, 4, right, are entertained by a ride in a car-shaped shopping basket equipped with a TV screen in Grand Rapids.

The Associated Press reports about Meijers, a Michigan superstore (that long predated Walmart), and their testing of child-oriented shopping cards that include mini television screens, in "Meijer experiments with kiddie carts: Carts equipped with small video screens designed to make shopping with small children easier."



Index Keywords: retail

Continuous process improvement

"What are we going to do better today than we did yesterday? I wake up with that thought every single day," he said.

From a story in the Detroit News about the Tepel Printing Company, "Decision to invest in equipment pays off: Printing company has nearly doubled sales since putting focus of business on growth."

No comment required. But I will anyway--there are no laurels to rest on, and every sector gets more competitive daily.

Index Keywords: continuous-process-improvement

Journal of Public Transportation

Came across this journal yesterday, which is available in print (for free) and online.

Index Keywords: transit

Curb appeal (treeboxes)

The Baltimore Sun has an article*, "Curb appeal," about planting treeboxes, but with native species that allow for low maintenance. The article discusses the Delaware Center for Horticulture, which has some "curb appeal" gardens on display. (*The hardcopy article in the Saturday paper is much more detailed than the ultra-slimmed down online version.)

The State of Delaware has a program in this area, and publications, including "Roadside Vegetation Concept and Planning Manual: Enhancing Delaware Highways."

Among other programs, the Delaware Center for Horticulture has sponsored the Wilmington City Gardens Contest for 24 years, to promote a green city. Categories include:

-- Community Flower Garden
-- Community Organization Garden
-- Community Vegetable Garden
-- Community Youth Garden
-- Garden Block
-- Greenest Block
-- Container Garden
-- DNS Habitat Garden
-- Entrance Garden
-- Flower Garden
-- Landscape Garden
-- New Garden
-- Vegetable Garden
-- Water Garden
-- Tree Garden
-- Councilmanic District Award
-- Civic & Neighborhood Association Award

The Post had an article about treeboxes a few weeks ago, "Taking Root in Common Ground," although her article was more about ornamental gardens, including this photograph:
Photo by Elizabeth Festa.

The relatively new Trinidad Ivy City Community Garden Club has an active treebox beautification program.
Photo by Inked78.

Just today, I was talking with someone about how the greenhouses in the city schools should be utilized in teaching horticulture and landscape architecture, with a companion "co-operative education" program including summer paid-for work, where students would be engaged in growing and planting plants in the public spaces across the city. Perhaps the plants could be provided at a discount for efforts such as this one, by the Greater Brookland Garden Club:
Gateway Garden, Michigan Avenue and 12th Street NE, Washington, DC

Some of my treebox photos.

Index Keywords: treeboxes

Thinking about cruise ships up the Potomac

Picture 568
Originally uploaded by DictatorAsia.

With the higher span of the Wilson Bridge, maybe cruise ships could come up the Potomac to Washington, DC, for day trips, just as cruise ships embark from or stop by for a visit in Baltimore, at a passenger terminal in Dundalk. A cruise ship terminal is being planned for Canton, which is just east of Fells Point.

(See this article from the Baltimore Sun, "Port launches cruise season: The first of 28 cruises from Baltimore to Bermuda and the Caribbean this year sets off from Dundalk, where nearly 2,000 passengers boarded the Grandeur of the Seas."

Caption: The Godspeed, a reproduction of a 17th-century ship, travels toward the Alexandria waterfront after passing under the new and old Woodrow Wilson bridges. Photo Credit: By James A. Parcell -- The Washington Post.

Rendering: Canton Crossing Cruise Ship Terminal, Baltimore. From Whitney, Bailey, Cox & Magnani.

Hardball vs. Softball

In further comment about above-ground vs. underground parking in the vicinity of the new baseball stadium, today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports about how a federal judge who illegally cut down 120 trees in an adjacent public park to improve his view, has paid $618,000 over three years to settle the dispute, in "Judge pays off debt for cutting trees." (This is also relevant to the similar Dan Snyder incident, although that was signed off by high level federal National Park Service officials interested more in making Dan Snyder happy, and less concerned about the park.)
Another frame from Funky Winkerbean (yesterday), which finds the city kid chasing the suburban kid, to communicate his displeasure at losing while playing a videogame.

Newspapers report that Mayor Williams will be stepping in the negotiations between the various stakeholders, on the parking structure issue. I'm sure it will be settled by cutting in the Lerners on the revenue generated from the space above ground, although it is possible to build attractive mixed-use above-ground parking as well.

Index Keywords: stadiums-arenas

Amtrak

People look at an Amtrak schedule showing departure delays at Pennsylvania Station in New York on Thursday, May 25, 2006. A major power outage stranded thousands of rush-hour travellers between New York and Washington, stopping five trains inside tunnels and forcing many passengers to get out and walk to the nearest station. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan).

The other day, Amtrak had a power outage, which inconvenienced many, including people on the commuter railroads that run on the Northeast Corridor. I learned about it from the FOE transportation blog, Getting There.

The Baltimore Sun has a nice editorial today, "Working on the railroad," about the issue this raises: to wit, the nation's underfunding of railroad transportation. It's somewhat related to the federal government's distinterest in the issues of cities (center cities/urban areas)--my joke that President Bush would be fine with it if the White House was in Springfield Virginia, ... (this came up in an interview yesterday with someone from Canada, and I contrasted how federal governments treat their capital cities in countries like Canada, the UK, and France, compared to how the U.S. government is somehwat indifferent when it comes to cities generally, and DC in particular (except for the fact that the federal government is based here).

From the editorial:

Between the delays, the fare increases, the shortage of parking at some stops, the crowded bus-like conditions of some of the more outdated cars, and the often surly attendants, you might assume that rail ridership was in a period of decline. And you'd be exactly wrong. Amtrak ridership is up, and so is MARC's. Commuters may have plenty of reasons to complain, but they must also have a strong motivation to take the train: MARC ridership has hit a historic high after nine straight years of growth.

That's why it's so frustrating that Amtrak is treated so shabbily by the White House. Over the years, the system may have been mismanaged at times, but it's also been half-starved. Amtrak badly needs to update its rail lines and other infrastructure. MARC needs an infusion of capital, too, but its situation has an added dimension. Any MARC expansion must pass muster with Amtrak and CSX, owners of MARC's Brunswick and Camden lines.

Passenger rail has untapped potential, and rising fuel costs only underscore the ridiculousness of the nation's failure to pursue it. Plenty of members of Congress understand this - so why can't President Bush? In a country addicted to oil, kicking the habit requires a serviceable fuel-efficient alternative to driving a car.

Interestingly enough, the federal government is still on their privatization kick for passenger railroad services. Access, the journal of the University of California Institute of Transportation, has an article on the negative impact of privatization of the railroad system in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, this issue isn't yet online, but check back for the article.

Last week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported, in "Former Amtrak chief: transportation needs help: He says country lacks planning for ways to ease congestion on roads," about a conference sponsored by Virginians for High Speed Rail, where David Gunn, the recently fired president of Amtrak, was the keynote speaker. He said that:

The national transportation system is on a collision course with gridlock, the former head of Amtrak told a state rail advocacy group yesterday. Unless the White House and Congress take bold action, I think the country is in for a very rough, slow ride, said former Amtrak chief David Gunn.

Shooting the messenger is an honorable tradition in government, especially at the federal level.
Index Keywords: railroads

A request for more detailed information (transit marketing)

Originally uploaded by owizard.

Another Flickr photo from Owizard.

And for another laugh, too "vulgar" for me to show, check out Danspotting. There are two good entries.

Dundalk Idol

Originally uploaded by owizard.

DC1974 says I don't understand Baltimore... what about Dundalk anyway?

Current Washington Business Journal survey

If you were opening a new business in the region, in which up-and-coming neighborhood would you put it? From the entry:

It's all about location, location, location. The best business in the world falls flat on its face when opened in the wrong place. Where you open up shop has as much to do with what you do as it does with what your employees want. Fortunately for businesses in Greater Washington, we have plenty of dynamic neighborhoods inside and outside the Beltway. Employees and shoppers want short commutes, a decent cup of coffee and more than a Wendy's for lunch.

The second question offers these choices, with a space for comments:

-- Southeast D.C.
-- NoMa
-- Shirlington
-- Ballston
-- Reston
-- Silver Spring
-- Other

Index Keywords: competitive-advantage

I'm shocked shocked that the Lerners think like suburbanites...

Today's Post reports that the new Washington Nationals baseball team owners would rather have blighted parking structures above ground adjacent to the stadium rather than exciting ,vibrant streets and businesses (the article makes the point that the baseball team wouldn't share in the revenue from those spaces). From the article, "Owners Want City to Shift Gears on Parking":

The Washington Nationals' ownership group is pushing District officials to build massive parking garages for the baseball stadium aboveground, contrary to the wishes of city planners, who say the structures should go underground to make way for a potentially lucrative entertainment district.

The outcome of the negotiations, which could be decided in a few weeks, could drastically affect the look of the ballpark area in Southeast Washington and determine whether the city, which has committed $611 million in public money to the stadium, reaps as much tax revenue from related development as promised by Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D).

Here's my response:

1. This is Tyson's Corner Mall, owned by the Lerners. It typifies how they think about development and the centrality of the automobile rather than paying attention to outdoor spaces, public spaces, and walking-pedestrian oriented places.
Washington Post Photograph by Tracy A. Woodward. Overview of the Tysons Corner area. Photo taken from the Tower Club at Tysons Corner. Looking west across Tysons Corner, over the Tysons Corner Shopping Center.

2. Just because Ted Lerner grew up in the city doesn't mean that he or his family appreciate the urban experience. All the money they've made from real estate development has pretty much derived from the suburbs and automobile-centric development.


A frame from the comic Cathy.

3. While the city has agreed to pay for a stadium and wants to build an urban experience around it...
Drawing of the southeast view of a new baseball stadium unveiled by Mayor Anthony Williams, the D.C. Sports & Entertainment commission and the Washington Nationals during a news conference in Washington March 14, 2006. MANDATORY CREDIT REUTERS/HOK Sport/Devrouax & Purnell/Handout

Yawkey Way, Boston. Flickr photo by Potami.

4. This $611 million gift to the Lerners and to Major League Baseball is made possible by the District of Columbia and its taxpayers. (Rent will pay for a portion of the stadium, but only a portion. MLB doesn't even want to pay for upgrades to the subway station. They are lobbying their old friend, former Texas Rangers managing partner George W. Bush, to get the federal government to pay for it...)

5. The contract favors the Lerners, because the city didn't put in many provisions that favor the city, they pretty much yielded most everything to Major League Baseball. (One of my colleagues says this happened because Mayor Williams relied on the advice of people like Fred Malek, and people at the Sports and Entertainment Commission, who cared more about baseball and less about developing a somewhat equal relationship between the city and Major League Baseball.)
Frame from Crankshaft where the city boy appears to be defeating the suburban kid in a videogame.

5. Bad contracts make for unequal negotiating. But in any case, I think the city should play "hardball" on this particular issue. It matters too much to making a great place out of the Stadium District.
Frame from Crankshaft, where the suburban boy ends up "schooling" the city boy.

6. Great outdoor places aren't really anything that the Lerners know too much about.

"The baggage and ghost of Landover Mall still negatively impact us today," says activist Arthur A. Turner Jr. of the Lerner Enterprises complex. Photo Credit: By Lois Raimondo, The Washington Post. (From "Mall's Comedown Taints Lerner Image: Resentment of Nats' New Owner Lingers in Pr. George's")

Retail shops have foundered near Fed-Ex Field. Landover Mall closed in 2002. Photo By Marie Poirier Marzi For The Washington Post, 1999.

Tysons Corner, Virginia, aerial view.

Index Keywords: stadiums-arenas; car-culture; urban-design-placemaking

Montgomery County Rallies for the Purple Line

001
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

From the Sierra Club:

Speak out for the Purple Line at rallies on Thursday and Friday!

Thursday, Noon -12:30 PM - The plaza at One Bethesda Metro Center

Friday, 6:30 - 8 AM - 8500 Connecticut Avenue, Chevy Chase

I don't know any of the details. Contact Chris Carney for more info.

(I have been going through Langley Park the past few Sundays. That area is clearly in need of some transit assistance. Interesting area, it's the boundary of Montgomery and Prince George's Counties.)

Index Keywords: transit

Branding the city and the 'hood

One of my nemeses at H Street Main Street came up with this slogan for H Street: "We're over the hump." Did that refer to bad times in the past, or the H Street bridge over the railyard? In any case, as a slogan it needed work.

My own slogan--since dropped I'm sure--was "It's our neighborhood. It's our business." It was oriented to our "internal" market of current customers, residents, and businesses and centered upon my belief that until the people using or in proximity to the H Street Commercial District were active patrons, we had no business trying to market H Street to new market segments. (Kevin Palmer's logo was dropped as well, although the "new" logo is very similar, and modeled after the 500 block of H Street instead of the 400 block of H Street.)

Thinking about Downtown DC, what associations come to mind for you? Here are some of mine:

office buildings, Hechts, Warner Theater, National Theater, 7th Street, Jaleo, Red Sage, the relatively empty Pennsylvania Avenue, proximity to the National Mall, empty streets at night, restaurants.

Please let me know what associations you have. Would you consider the White House part of downtown?

Index Keywords: tourism

Greenroof Tour at Casey Trees (Sierra Club)

From the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club:

Location: Casey Trees, 1425 K Street, NW, Washington, DC
When: Tuesday, June 6, 5:30pm

The largest greenroof downtown and the first on a commercially-owned building in the District was installed on the Casey Tree building at 1425 K Street NW in June 2004, and we have arranged a tour and reception. From 5:30 PM to 6:00 PM, tour the 3,500 square foot project, and from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM, learn about the benefits of greenroofs and about the chapter's energy efficiency and green building initiatives at a reception on the greenroof.

For more resources on the topic check out Green Roofs or Green Roof Plants.

Index Keywords: environment

More (pathetic?) city branding efforts... (Baltimore)

I've been way behind in reading, so I missed the Baltimore Sun's article a few days ago about Baltimore's new slogan: "'Get In On It". This was disclosed in the article "Baltimore's new bait: The city is about to unveil a new slogan, 'Get In On It,' meant to intrigue visitors." (Also see today's Sun editorial, "Branding Baltimore.")

I think it's pretty unimaginative. Get in on it? Why would that possibly motivate me to go to Baltimore? Is "what the hell is that supposed to mean?" the kind of intrigue that they aim to engender?

Here are some of the positive associations I have in thinking about Baltimore (we won't list the negatives like heroin distribution, Stop Snitching, 50,000 vacant properties, or a high murder rate):

Movies like Avalon and Diner, heavy industry, the birth of railroads, ocean-going ships, Inner Harbor, historic buildings, rowhouses, public markets, Lexington Market, the waterfront, Fells Point, steel, Domino Sugar, Natty Boh, Penn Station, Washington Monument, Bromo Seltzer Tower, Baltimore Orioles, Baltimore Colts, Cal Ripken, Johnny Unitas, Camden Yards, (Memorial Stadium), Bertha's Mussels, concerts at places like Fletcher's, dessert pizza at Brick Oven Pizza, Charles Street, National Aquarium, sailing, Preakness, Johns Hopkins University, Old Bay Seasoning, crabs!

"Get in on it" doesn't call forth any of those images, not at all.

From the article:

Filmmaker John Waters said, "It's not catchy. I keep having to ask what it is again because I forget. That's OK. I don't hate it." I get what they're saying," Waters said. "What they're saying is, come celebrate real estate porn. You know, when people talk about how much their house cost at parties."

One branding expert, Eric Swartz, founder of TaglineGuru.com, said Baltimore has come up with a winning slogan. "Get In On It sounds provocative, inviting, sounds like there's something to discover" in Baltimore, Swartz said. "It's vague enough to have an appeal to people who are not familiar with Baltimore. It's an invitation."

In my opinion, vague doesn't sell, unless you have nothing to sell. Or at least, given my background in direct marketing, I believe in being direct, that "more is more" not "less is more." There are too many competitors to not be specific about your own competitive advantages.

More from the article:

Swartz said the city should be prepared for an initial backlash. "Projects of this magnitude are usually accompanied by a fair amount of anguish and nagging doubts, especially when detractors start chomping at the bit. After all, a city's pride and reputation are at stake," Swartz wrote in an article, "Jumping on the Brandwagon," on his Web site.

The branding strategy aims to create a positive perception that attracts tourists and conventions, which, in turn, can boost the local economy. Experts consider Las Vegas' slogan "What Happens Here Stays Here" to be among the most successful. An earlier attempt by Sin City to brand itself as a family-friendly destination led to a demonstrable drop-off in business."A slogan is a valuable ambassador," Swartz wrote.

The failure of Las Vegas' previous branding attempt was a failure because it was at odds with what Las Vegas has to offer--non-stop gambling and some sleaze. Las Vegas is not Branson, Missouri or Disneyland, and it never will be.

To be fair, I haven't delved into every page from BACVA on their new "Are You in On it?" campaign. In any case, they've done a nice job launching this.



Index Keywords: tourism

Eminent domain: the real issue is considered vs. ill-considered development

Magnet Bar, Baltimore. Baltimore City Paper photo.

One of my knocks on Baltimore is that it has very much of an anti-asset urban renewal approach to urban "revitalization," even though it is true that they do a lot of asset-based revitalization, especially around historic preservation, cultural heritage and the arts.

Another problem is that the Baltimore Development Corporation, a quasi-governmental development authority is very secretive and doesn't have to disclose much of its proceedings, although this is changing.

Today, the Baltimore Sun reports, in "City bid to seize bar is blocked," that the BDC's desire to seize a number of properties in the Station North arts district, an area that granted, needs help, was rejected by the Courts, in part because BDC had no specific plan for revitalization. From the article:

By rejecting Baltimore's plan to seize a bar for its Charles North redevelopment effort, a Circuit Court judge has complicated that urban renewal plan and called into question the city's economic development tactics.

Judge John Philip Miller, in an opinion released yesterday, ruled that city economic development officials failed to show "sufficient grounds" to warrant taking the bar through eminent domain. Land-use officials say this could be the first time the court has blocked the city from a "quick take" seizure. ...

M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's development arm, declined to discuss the specifics of the ruling but said yesterday that Baltimore's use of the "quick take" process for Charles North is no different than the hundreds of other instances the city has used eminent domain. "This is not unique in any way. This is the way the city's done things for the last 40 years," Brodie said. "It's called urban renewal."

However, in his ruling, Miller questioned the city's procedure of moving to seize the bar before having a specific plan for the site. Typically, the BDC leaves it up to developers vying for the seized property to decide whether they want to build homes, shops, offices or something else. Citing last year's Supreme Court ruling that affirmed government's right to seize private property for economic development, Miller wrote that Kelo v. New London showed that to take property for economic development, a city must show "a carefully considered development plan."

While I don't think this is the best kind of authenticity to develop as a part of a revitalization strategy, the Baltimore City Paper ranked The Magnet as Baltimore's Best Dive Bar. (For another take on the bar, check out Jason Dove's blog entry.)



Index Keywords: eminent-domain; urban-design-placemaking

Quotes from-about Carlos Ghosn relevant to "Positive Deviance" and change

Because I am from Michigan, I feel obligated to follow the car industry pretty closely, even though I write negatively about automobile-centric land use and development planning.

The current issue of Forbes has an article, "The Impatient Mr. Ghosn," about Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan and Renault. Ghosn is renowned for the turnaround of Nissan, a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Here are some quotes from the article that I think are relevant to what I wrote earlier today about the necessity for change in the DC Public School System:

1. [Re: report after report, study after study] "I've had 250 presentations on sales and marketing in the last three years. What is done? Why is it never done?" he asays. He wonders why it took a special task force to arrive at such a commonsense solution. "I'm so sad our own management is not able to come up with such ideas. I'm so sad."

2. [Re: state of the schools] (This is from the sidebar "Could He Make It a Triple Play?.")
Q: Is that what's wrong with Detroit automakers--they let problems fester?
A: Any company that finds itself in this situation where it's going through heavy restructuring has obviously missed a lot of signals before that something was wrong and needed to be fixed. … My perfect illustration was Nissan. … The more you wait for a problem to be solved, the more casualties you are going to have to accept, and the more risk at the outcome.

Q: It sounds like you don't have too much sympathy for U.S. automakers?
A: Well, it's not a question of sympathy. I have a lot of sympathy, and we have a very good relationship. ... I think it's a question, really, of reality. That in a certain way you may have fabricated the conditions that you are complaining about today.

Q: Do you think Detroit is permanently broken?
A: I don't think so. There is nothing which cannot be fixed.

3. [Re: school closures] We were pushing people very hard," designing more than ten new models per year, plus five or six concept cars, Nakamura recalls. Ghosn did his part by never dallying on a final design decision. "Every meeting, a decision was made," says Nakamura. "There's nothing worse than delaying a decision. It's not motivating."

4. [Re: competition] "These days everybody is worried about the future. It's not good enough to say we're better than we were before. If you improve by 3% but competitors are improving by 5%, you're actually becoming less competitive."

5. [Re: breakthrough ideas] Yet Ghosn always leaves time for debate. "What I hate," he says firmly, "are meetings when people hide their opinions. If you don't see different aspects of a decision and different options, you can't make a good decision." He uses cross-pollinated committees to breed conflict, ensuring they are led by promising mavericks who, oddly, lack expertise in the areas they oversee--that way they can challenge and question even the most basic accepted procedures. This rankles the veterans and puts team leaders at risk. "That's why they report to the CEO. That's how they survive," Ghosn says.

The inevitable clashes let managers see possibilities they hadn't imagined before, says Renault's controller, Jean-Baptiste Duzan. "It's just like a spring--you have to push to release the energy. At Renault we had no sense of time. The spring was not tense at all."

Index Keywords: education

Speaking of bicycling

Cycleicio.us comments about "Bike to Work" events being pretty lily white.

And while I hate to be promoting the suburbs, the Anacostia Heritage Trails Area is sponsoring a bicycle tour on June 3rd, entitled "Go Prince George's," with 10, 20 and 40 mile rides visiting "cultural, historical, and natural attaractions that can be accessed from the Anacostia Tributary Trail System." Bike rentals will available on a first-come, first-served basis. I think it starts at the Bladensburg Waterfront Park.
____________
Updated: Ken Firestone, clearly a better researcher than I, provides this link with more information about the event. Or call 301-887-0777 or send email to the ATHA director, Karen Crooms. THANKS!
____________

The bike tour is part of National Trails Day (about.com site), an event that encourages people "to get outside, get active, and experience the wonders of trails in their own communities." (On that day, I'll be experiencing the wonders of post-Katrina New Orleans.) Click here for the official National Trails Day site.

Click here for information about the DC Anacostia Riverwalk Trail Bikepath study. And here for a map which shows how the East Coast Greenway bike trail can be extended from Maryland into DC.
Maryland section, East Coast Greenway bike trail.

Index Keywords: bicycle

St. E's tops list of endangered places in D.C.

McMillan Reservoir photo by Christopher Leary.

The Washington Business Journal reports on today's press conference by the DC Preservation League. According to the article:

The D.C. Preservation League announced its most endangered places list Wednesday -- and it contains several large District properties slated for redevelopment. Topping the list is St. Elizabeths west campus, the 176-acre federal site overlooking the Anacostia River. The government is studying redeveloping the site as a headquarters for the Coast Guard and other agencies.

Other sites on the list:

-- World War I Memorial on the National Mall
-- Armed Forces Retirement Home.
-- McMillan Reservoir Sand Filtration site.
-- Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
-- Martin Luther King Jr. Library.
-- The Slater, Armstrong and Langston public schools.

Click here for more detailed information about the 2006 DC Most Endangered Places.

Index Keywords: historic-preservation

Marketing transit "sexily"

In response to yesterday's blog entry:

1. Andrew Salzberg calls our attention to a set of buttons customized to promote each subway station of the TTC system in Toronto, produced by the Toronto public places magazine Spacing.


2. Fritz of Cycleicio.us calls our attention to the Boulder bus system, where each bus line is branded in a specific manner. He writes:

The Denver-area RTD does a pretty good job with branding the bus routes in Boulder. Instead of calling them "Bus 123" the bus routes have names, and the buses are painted with distinctive logos. The names give a clue to the destination, also. For example, BOLT is the Boulder-Longmont route... And a list of all of the routes with images of the artwork used on the buses.

Skip bus in Boulder, Colorado. Photo from Boulder Tankentai.

Certain of the bus routes in the area are starting to be marketed more specially, such as PikeRide on Columbia Pike in Arlington County. The same is supposed to happen to the X buses on Benning Road-H Street NE, and the 70s buses that travel on Georgia Avenue-7th Street NW. The Downtown Circulator does this (although it is a system contracted to WMATA, but owned I think technically by the Downtown DC BID) and so do circulator buses like the Georgetown Connector (not run by WMATA).



Index Keywords: transit

The kind of eminent domain action I can wholeheartedly support...

Wal-Mart attorney Edward Burg walks past Brenda Smith Johnson and Jason Akel after the vote. Chronicle photo by Kim Komenich.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, "Vote goes against Wal-Mart Council OKs using eminent domain to block retailer":

On Tuesday night, a packed house at the Hercules City Hall broke into cheers after the City Council voted unanimously to take the unprecedented step of using eminent domain to prevent Wal-Mart from building a big-box store near the city's waterfront.
A standing-room-only crowd listens as the Hercules City Council debates using eminent domain to thwart Wal-Mart. Chronicle photo by Kim Komenich.

Index Keywords: eminent-domain; wal-mart

Positive deviance and DC Public Schools

The New Guess Who, 1965. Sally, Dick, and Jane ~ Junior Primer Integrated 1st Grade Book.

I have written before about an article from the May 2005 issue of the Harvard Business Review, entitled "Your Company's Secret Change Agents." Alas, this article isn't online for free, but it's worth tracking down and reading. It states that:

within every organization there are a few individuals who find unique ways to look at problems that seem impossible to solve. Although these change agents start out with the same tools and access to resources as their peers, they are able to see solutions where others do not. They find a way to bridge the divide between what is happening and what is possible.

One of the examples in the article is about a set of schools in a Brazilian state. Some of the schools actually out-performed the entire nation, while most of the schools within the same state, with the same resources, underperformed that nation as a whole.

In looking at why these schools succeeded, they discovered that the innovation of these schools was the creation of a "family learning contract" to bind the entire family to the success of the child.

I have written about family learning contracts, First Day activities, linking schools and libraries, and other aspects of creating a "community of learning," something that the "Master Education Planning" process of the DC Public Schools system and the Library Planning Process of the DC Library System, doesn't seem to be doing. Links to these efforts are in the section of Education links in the right sidebar.

Today's Post has a big article about the increased interest in K-12 education issues on the part of the city's residents, "Education Becoming Top Issue For D.C."-- although I would say that creating a "community committed to learning" needs to be concerned about pre-K education issues, as well as undergraduate, graduate, and lifelong learning just as much as K-12 issues.

The fact is that DC has some high-performing schools, such as:

-- Oyster Bilingual Elementary School;
-- Capitol Hill Cluster Schools (Watkins, Peabody, Stuart-Hobson Middle School);
-- Woodrow Wilson High School; and
-- Benjamin Banneker High School;
among others.

The positive deviance approach would say, how can the principles that led to the creation, implementation, and success of these schools be duplicated in other school settings across the city.

I have suggested for some time to either or both:

(1) expand the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools with a school on the north and a school on the south; and
(2) create an arts cluster of schools in the area north of Stanton Park-Maryland Avenue to complement the "arts district" developing on the eastern end of H Street. The schools could be devoted to performing, visual, English language, media, Foreign language and cultural arts. Schools could have artists in residence, living on the campus. Each school could focus on a particular "foreign" language and culture to complement English language instruction in the same way that Oyster does this in Spanish -- but imagine such languages including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, German, etc.

There's been hardly any traction wrt these ideas.

And most of the parental activists appear to me to have been merely advocating for more money. The amount of money isn't the problem, although maybe how the money is used is a problem. But clearly, the lack of a culture focused on results is one of the problems. And so is the failure to have a broader community involved and committed to quality education, both generally, and specifically for their children.

I will never forget receiving a call from a social worker at a school south of Hechinger Mall in northeast DC. She was looking for donations of alarm clocks because the students at her school didn't have a reliable parent or guardian to wake them up in the morning, to ensure that the student would get to school on time.

We have an opportunity to do great things.

Or an opportunity to do more of the same, but somehow expecting different results.

I'm not too hopeful.

The HBR article suggests this process for creating organizational change:

Step 1: Make the group the guru. The members of the community are engaged in the process of their own evolution.

Step 2: Reframe through facts. Entails restating the problem in a way that opens minds to new possibilities.

Step 3: Make it safe to learn. Involves creating an environment that supports innovative ideas.

Step 4: Make the problem concrete. The community combats abstraction by stating uncomfortable truths.

Step 5: Leverage social proof. The community looks to the larger society for examples of solutions that have worked in parallel situations.

Step 6: Confound the immune system response. Solutions are introduced organically from within the group in a way that promotes acceptance.

"The positive-deviance approach has unearthed solutions to such complicated and diverse problems as malnutrition in Mali and human trafficking in East Java. This mehodology can help solve even the most extreme dilemmas."

I used to be a big fan of charter schools, because (and I still think this way) I think it is unfair to hold students hostage to a system that isn't working to achieve excellence. But privatizing the public education function (have you ever talked to a 24 year old recent college graduate proudly discussing how she is writing a charter school's curriculum?, while you are wondering, "what about best practices?"--why do you need to write a fresh-from-scratch curriculum when clearly there are extant excellent examples?) is hardly the solution to stabilizing neighborhoods and creating a great public school system.

Today, we could probably take all our kids and teachers and put them in the Montgomery County Schools, and at the same time put the MoCo students and teachers in the DCPS schools, and DC would have great schools and MoCo wouldn't.

Think about that.