Incredibly late notice conference this afternoon

I just got this in email 10 minutes ago. Sorry about the late notice.


When: Saturday, April 30 2011 @ 01:00 PM - - 10:00PM
Contact: Mark A wearefamilydc@aol.com, www.positiveforcedc.org
Where: 15th & Irving Streets NW
Washington, DC
Description: PM Press will be tabling at DIY Punk & Wilson Center: 30 Years of Community, Arts & Protest (1 - 10 pm, Saturday, April 30, 2011)

Often history is made in the unexpected places; the humble hole in the wall that provides space at the right moment for creation to flourish. The basement of the former Central Presbyterian Church at 15th & Irving Streets NW -- long known as the Wilson Center -- is one such location. Among other things, it provided a haven for members of the now globally-influential DC punk underground to hold shows and build community, and inaugurated a broader tradition of DIY shows held in community hall spaces.

In honor of this legacy -- and to continue it -- punk activist group Positive Force DC (now based at nearby St. Stephen's Church) has organized a 30th Anniversary celebration, April 30, 2011 at the former Wilson Center, now operating as the Capital City Public Charter School.

PF aims to both celebrate DC's DIY punk history and build on it through an exhibition of photographs, posters, and videos of past Wilson Center shows, as well as speakers, and, of course, music, all of which would help to raise funds, gather food donations, and recruit volunteers to assist the Capital City Public Charter School and neighborhood non-profits We Are Family and Hermano Pedro, serving seniors and the homeless, respectively.

The evening benefit show beginning at 7pm will include Max Levine Ensemble, Birds & Wires, War On Women, and Regents (all-ages, sliding scale admission $5-10, with food donations encouraged); at 5pm, Ian MacKaye will speak and answer questions on "Playing Underground: The Importance of Community Hall Spaces." (A full schedule of the day's events will be available shortly; except for evening concert, all events are free, with canned food and gently-used clothing donations encouraged for Hermano Pedro and We Are Family.)

This event is not meant to be about nostalgia, but about celebrating and continuing a crucial local tradition of creativity, community-building, and empowerment. Please join us!

TENTATIVE schedule for the day (Free admission except for evening concert, but please bring food and clothing donations for Hermano Pedro and We Are Family - thanks!)

1 pm: Doors open for art/photo exhibition in main hall and video display in back room - available for viewing all day.

2:30-4 pm: panel "Cultural Convergence: The Wilson Center as Multicultural Meeting Ground" (w/ Head-Roc, Lilo Gonzales, Natalie Avery, Wade & Ryan Fletcher, all invited, but tentative)

5-6:30 pm: talk/Q&A w/ Ian MacKaye "Playing Underground: The Importance of Community Hall Spaces"

7-10 pm: Benefit concert with Max Levine Ensemble, Birds & Wires, War On Women, Regents; all-ages, $5-10 sliding scale admission, all proceeds to Capital City Public Charter School, Hermano Pedro, and We Are Family.

PLUS: Special musical guests, vegan bake sale, and CDs, DVDs, and books! ALL EVENTS ARE FREE EXCEPT FOR EVENING CONCERT - BUT PLEASE BRING CANNED GOODS (WHOLE GRAIN CEREAL, PEANUT BUTTER, VEGGIES, BEANS, SOUP) OR CLEAN, GENTLY USED CLOTHING FOR DONATION TO WE ARE FAMILY AND HERMANO PEDRO - THANKS!

(US) National Train Day, Saturday May 7, 2011

Website: National Train Day

Amtrak is sponsoring events in Washington, DC; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; and Los Angeles, and in many other cities across the nation.

-- California High-Speed Rail Authority
-- High Speed Rail Corridors, Federal Railroad Administration
-- Railroad Station webpage
-- different railroad station webpage
-- Railroad history
-- Maryland Railroad Commuter line, Growth and Investment Plan
-- Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation
-- Bill Wright's book/dissertation on Washington's Union Station, incredibly well-written


Go by Train sign, Union Station, Portland, Oregon by sfgamchick, on Flickr

How teaching to the assessment test can be classist and racist

Valerie Strauss, the Washington Post education blogger, reprints a searing essay by education writer Alfie Kohn, "How school reform damages poor children."

It recaps arguments made in Jonathan Kozol's first book, Death at an Early Age, and to some extent, those by Bowles and Gintis in Schooling in Capitalist America, which argues that the purpose of K-12 education is to socialize us and make us employable and relatively unquestioning.

Sustainable transportation policy, City of Stonnington, Victoria State, Australia

Tram in Melbourne with a pro-transit message. Photo by Ethan Kent, PPS.

For what it's worth, transportation demand management planning protocols for the most part were first developed in Victoria State, Australia. The TravelSmart program there is the first that I know of that initiated and implemented a wide variety of protocols for inducing mode shift to more sustainable transportation modes. The kinds of programs that Arlington County Virginia does are based on that program, although ArCo doesn't go into the depth of the Australian program.

I was looking up something on the web, and I came across the above-cited transportation policy for the City of Stonnington, which has about 90,000 residents, is located just outside of the Central Business District of Melbourne, and is about 10 square miles. (Arlington County has a very similar set of policies.)

From the Stonnington Sustainable Transport Policy:

Policy principles

Deliver Priority
In recognising that travel relates to the movement of people (and goods where appropriate) and not to the movement of vehicles, priority will be given to transport modes in the following order:

• Walking
• Cycling
• Public Transport
• Commercial vehicles serving local businesses and institutions
• Multiple-occupancy vehicles
• Single-occupancy vehicles

Preference will be given to more sustainable modes of transport in terms of allocating Council time, space and resources.

Moderate the Impact of Cars
Council will strive to reduce car dependence and to minimise associated impacts by working towards having more people in the municipality choose to walk, cycle and use public transport more often and drive cars less, particularly for short and local trips, through increasing local shopping, employment, education, recreation and other travel destinations accessed daily by people of all abilities and economic means.

Increase Connections
Council will strive to improve pedestrian, cyclist and public transport connections, accessibility and permeability within and between activity centres and other parts of the municipality by providing direct and legible travel pathways and functional multi-modal interchanges to enable people to reach their destinations with ease, efficiency and in comfort.

Improve Safety
Council will strive to provide conditions, which encourage activity, reduce the potential for injury, and improve actual and perceived safety in order to increase public transport use, cycling and walking in public spaces.

Raise Profile
Council will raise the profile of walking, cycling and public transport and the health and environmental benefits of these modes, through the provision of information, facilities and active promotion, both internally and externally, to compel people to change their travel behaviour when accessing their everyday needs.

This comes up all the time in terms of discussions on this blog and on others. I focus on optimal mobility, or what Transportation Alternatives calls the Sustainable Transportation Hierarchy.

Most communities, including DC, don't prioritize transportation in this manner.

Not having an equivalent policy in DC always worries me when City Council legislates various aspects of transportation policy in bits and pieces, from proposing free parking for funerals, angle parking to accommodate churches on Sundays, tax incentives for gas stations, streetcars, tolls on the 14th Street bridge, etc., there's no overall plan, no overall vision, but worse, there's no recognition of the need for an overall plan and vision.

For TOD to be successful, necessary antecedents are required, there's no magic wand

So while I thought the previously mentioned New Urban News articles about the state of the U.S. housing market are very good, I thought the discussion of the opportunity of transit oriented development was inadequate. Here is my response.

-----
Just because a transit station exists doesn't necessarily make it a great candidate for "transit oriented development" from the standpoint of either sprawl reduction or compact development, except by comparison to what could have been done instead. It's the difference between relative and absolute change.

In DC and Arlington County especially, as well as in Montgomery County, stations have place capital (or the potential for it) because for the most part the stations have been integrated into/located in places where a block and grid street network exists or can be created.

But as importantly, the 5 lines of the WMATA subway system link many activity centers, and high quality neighborhoods. Even so, not every area served by a station is successful.

I argue that at the core of DC, the 29 stations over a 15 square mile area operate "monocentrically" for the city within the broader system, and most of the areas served by those stations have been improving, although it hasn't just been the investment in transit that's brought about changes, necessary zoning changes, having the right developers, and access to incentives have also been key. That being said, it has taken 35 years for transit oriented development to occur at the Rhode Island Station. That's a long time...

So the lessons are (reversed from the order above):

1. The biggest lesson I take comparing the transit system in DC and the transit lines in Baltimore is that you have to have a real transit _network_ in order for location near to transit to become more valuable than land located by roads only. You can't

2. The second lesson is the spatial pattern of the areas served by transit stations. It has to support compact development. All the smart growthers are touting transit stations in PG County and asking why hasn't there been development at those stations, and the New Urban News articles mention the New Carrollton project, but for the most part, none of these stations serve areas where there is "there there", there's no grid, and even if you build the stuff as "TOD" I think its more likely it will function like the BART station in Fruitvale, which is mostly a failure--because putting some retail and a bit of housing at a station mostly serving people who drive there doesn't do much to change either the mobility or the land use paradigm, and contributes very little to compact development. Actually, the development at Fruitvale created a new retail area competing with an extant commercial district.

Not covered above, but the third lesson is that train stations as part of a commuter railroad network (this differentiates train service in the DC region from the NY region, because their train service network functions 7 days a week, and not just during commuter rush periods) probably don't have the kind of TOD potential that smart growthers tout because these stations are outlying by definition, so that development at the stations is still likely to support polycentric growth patterns (sprawl), rather than the intensive, concentrated development within a region that I thought was the definition of smart growth.

4. The fourth lesson, subsumed within the mention of the Rhode Island DC station experience, is that it can take a long long time to being able to begin to realize the place capital value of transit adjacency. (And there are other factors besides. E.g., in DC, you needed a change in political leadership of the city in 1998-1999 before developers began reconsidering investing in the city. This coincided with an increase in demand for urban living.)

The NUN article mentions the street car lines in DC in terms of great opportunity for transit adjacency, because the addition of the planned lines will mean that 1/2 of the city's households will be within 1/2 mile of higher quality transit, but in terms of the ability to add rental-multiunit housing in particular to those corridors, DC isn't a good example, especially compared to places where streetcar lines have already been created such as Pearl District, Portland and South Lake Union, Seattle.

With the exception of some of the area served by the proposed lines in DC, there isn't build out capacity along the routes for the most part (the H St.-Benning Road line and the Anacostia line are exceptions) UNLESS the underlying zoning is changed, allowing for redevelopment of a block or two on either side of the line--just like what Arlington did in the Wilson Blvd. corridor.

HOWEVER, it means the rezoning of what is mostly single family housing, and I don't think residents will ever agree to the change. In any case, assembling blocks for redevelopment would be quite costly, e.g., in my area (upper Georgia Ave.) at current prices the cost would be $16 million to $22 million/block and likely more, because people will want a premium to sell and eminent domain would be too controversial, if you can get all of the homeowners to agree (32 to 72 houses/block depending on if they are single family detached or rowhouses).

With regard to Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, I think the biggest change as it relates to TOD (other than White Flint, not mentioned in the NUN article, and which, along with the redevelopment in Tysons Corner, I think is one of the most significant redevelopment projects in all of the U.S.) is the light rail line (Purple) that will be built, which will connect both legs of the red line with the northern spur of the green line, and the eastern spur of the orange line.

The Purple Line offers to PG County especially the ability to reshape its land use and transportation planning and development paradigm towards smart growth and transit oriented development, and the revaluation of extant areas newly served by higher quality transit, rather than basically greenfield or grayfield development at subway stations that are in shitty locations.

Note that transit stations in suboptimal locations is the biggest problem faced by Baltimore City and Baltimore County and the subway and light rail lines there.

Besides not having a transit network, the light rail line especially was the conversion of an industrial railroad line, so except for the line through the city, most of the suburban stations aren't adequately integrated into potentially urban fabric as for the most part they pass through industrial areas. Because the line isn't part of a robust network, there isn't demand driving conversion of some of these properties to residential or other mixed use. Where some change has occurred, such as at Lutherville, the new properties are only minimally successful.

The proposed Red Line streetcar/light rail there doesn't really change the paradigm much in terms of strengthening and repositioning the lines as a network. (I wrote a bunch about it when I worked for Baltimore County, but the points didn't go anywhere, because what I suggested required money and took vision--the major suggestion was linking the subway and light rail in Downtown Baltimore, and rerouting the light rail from Falls Road station to Lutherville via Towson, the #1 conurbation in Baltimore County.)

I could write more, but you get the picture.

The state of the U.S. housing market

The thing about being based in DC and writing a variety of pieces, based on what's happening in this area, is that our real estate market is much different from most of the rest of the country. Because of the federal government along with trends favoring urban living, the transit system, and a fair amount of high quality historic building stock, the market in DC proper isn't that bad.

It's not perfect, many neighborhoods lack a diversity of housing types--meaning a mix of single family houses, smaller and larger apartment and condominium buildings, accessory dwelling units-alley housing, etc.--so the market is unbalanced. But because of the nature of the market, the neighborhoods will remain relatively resilient, with the negative consequence of a continued reduction in the availability of affordable housing.

Even though a lot of people oppose the addition of larger multiunit housing buildings in their communities as a harbinger of change and "gentrification," the reality is that this type of housing extends a community's ability to remain relevant in changing markets, and healthy neighborhoods need a variety of housing types in order to better meet the demands of a variety of types of households.

Nielsen, in their analyses of the consumer market, identify 9 different types of households:

- startup families (with children under 6 years of age)
- small-scale families (children older than 6)
- younger bustling families (larger households, head of household under 40)
- older bustling families (larger households, head of household over 40)
- young transitionals (no children, under 35)
- independent singles (no children 35-64)
- senior singles (65+)
- established couples (no children, 35-64)
- empty nest couples (55-64)
- senior couples (65+)

and that is an interesting way to think about the housing market, and whether or not areas provide housing that satisfies the varying requirements of different types of households and income levels.

New Urban News has a two part series on the state of the housing market nationally, "The coming housing calamity: The great senior sell-off, rising household sizes, dropping homeownership, tighter lending standards, and other reasons why the next decade will be a disaster for homebuilders" and "Housing: An irresistible force meets an immovable object: Rental and transit-oriented development will dominate market demand for the next decade, but will public officials provide the right framework?"

It's very ugly.

From the second article:

... rising household sizes, declining homeownership, tighter lending standards, and a sell-off of single-family houses by the nation’s fastest growing demographic — senior citizens — will keep the for-sale building industry depressed for the next 10 years. Yet demographers expect the US to add 33 million residents by 2020 — so where will these people live and what part of the housing industry will be strong? The answer, in a word, is rental. ...

Three reputable studies — by NAR, the Robert Charles Lesser & Co. (RCLCo), and Nelson — all found a nearly identical, massive imbalance in US housing supply and demand. The 2010 American Housing Survey found that 28 percent of houses are attached, 29 percent are detached on small lots, and 43 percent are detached on large lots. The three studies found that only 24 to 25 percent of Americans would prefer to live in large-lot single-family houses (see graph "Housing preference versus supply"). Consequently, there’s an oversupply of approximately 28 million units in the drivable suburbs.

Attached housing and small-lot housing, on the other hand, are undersupplied — by about 12 million and 13.5 million units, respectively.

What I think is relevant for DC in particular, and of course all the other markets, is the ability to add rental housing, especially in association with transit. This is what has been driving revitalization in neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights and Petworth, although those neighborhoods are at different stages of growth.

Interestingly, those neighborhoods are more successful with new housing driving broader improvements than is new housing at Fort Totten Metro, which doesn't have the same kind of street grid and block pattern, although that area will be undergoing significant change as a more traditional block pattern is created and retail is brought into the mix.

Interestingly, plans for increasing density at Metro Stations in DC is fought in some neighborhoods, like Brookland and Takoma, which have traditionally been bastions of single family homes.

But the issue of staying relevant and successful as neighborhoods needs to be on the minds of residents more typically focused on the here and now.

From the article:

A flood of new rental units could come in many forms — new apartment buildings; condo buildings converted to rental; accessory units attached to single-family houses; and existing owner-occupied houses that are flipped to rental — but the most popular locations will be mixed-use, transit-friendly neighborhoods.

“Forty-seven percent of households want urbane living; that’s a big change from 10 or 20 years ago,” says Nelson, referring to a recent National Association of Realtors (NAR) finding on that percentage of households that prefer to live downtown or in mixed-use city or suburban neighborhoods. “Back in ‘70s or ‘80s, people wanted drivable suburbs. Now 70 percent want to walk to discernable destinations, from transit to grocery stores. This wasn’t the case until recently.”

The New York Times had an an article, "Builders of New Homes Seeing No Sign of Recovery," about the increased demand for townhomes, what we call rowhouses in the city, in the Chicago suburbs.

But townhomes aren't new in suburban markets (like the DC region) where demand and the cost of land is high.

To stoke demand, one builder of traditional single family homes, KLM Homes, is giving a free car to every purchaser. I guess we still have a long way to go before the idea of compact development and walkability, and transit adjacency, catches on. The subdivision is in Richmond, Illinois, 50 miles from Chicago.

Given how long it has taken to see transit oriented development come about in DC, depending on the station and the market and other conditions peculiar to the city, it has taken 10 to 35 years, the period of time it takes for these changes to become evident will be considerable.

Sitting Outdoors and planning for small public spaces

Sitting Outdoors, a photo by M.V. Jantzen on Flickr.

People sitting in the CentralSpace to CentralPlace plaza, created by the Rosslyn Business Improvement District in Arlington, Virginia. Flickr photo by M.V. Jantzen.

One of the things we don't seem to do very well is plan for small public spaces as part of our commercial districts and urban neighborhoods.

It's not that there aren't small pocket parks and such, there are, but often at least in DC they are the result of how diagonal avenues meet the more typical street grid of blocks and streets.

David Barth of AECOM's presentation on "Parks and Open Space System Master Plans: Tools for Sustainable Communities" provides a framework for a complete typology of parks and open spaces that a community should work to plan for.

AECOM is also doing a parks and open space plan for the Buckhead District in Atlanta, which provides a more targeted list of the right kinds of spaces needed in denser, urban places.


In retrospect (although before today of course), I realize that we have inadequately planned for such places in NoMA, H Street, and Brookland, among other places, as part of the city's land use planning and transportation planning initiatives. Mostly, we didn't think about how to insert pocket parks and plazas as part of these processes, and now it becomes even harder to find the space, or buy it, as municipal budgets are increasingly stressed, stretched, and under pressure.

(Another dimension of this is incorporation of school playgrounds and greenspaces into the community parks network.)

The Sitting Outdoors photo shows us that the spaces don't have to be complicated or overly designed to be useful and appreciated.

Although one part of the city where they have done a better job with this is in Columbia Heights, in the Columbia Heights Public Realm Framework Plan," which includes a cool public plaza at the convergence of a number of streets at 14th Street, about a block from the subway station and the big DC/USA retail center.


Still, this becomes an important issue in another dimension in terms of how do we plan for public places and spaces in what are technically privately owned developments, but where the developments are specifically designed to connect to and extend the public realm, and to be for all intents and purposes, "public spaces," albeit privately owned.

One of the problems from a cultural studies or urban sociological standpoint is do all these spaces become privatized and commodified?

How do we maintain the ability for citizens to come together in public, as citizens, not as consumers, to congregate, to aggregate, to communicate, etc.

Or do we have to purchase goods and services to be able to use the space?

The patio is jumping at Ebenezer's Coffee Shop, at 2nd and F Streets NE, Washington, DC.

Will private property owners and managers only contribute to the quality of the public realm to the extent that the marginal returns from the investment in other revenues is positive?

And are methods for tracking marginal revenue contributions narrowly or broadly construed, which depending on the definition, from the standpoint of private sector expenditures, makes activities profitable or not in the context of the public realm and the public space..

Maryland Hires Bryan Sivak as State’s First Chief Innovation Officer

From the article in Public CIO:

When Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray defeated incumbent Adrian Fenty last year, Sivak suddenly was forced to look for a new gig after one year in D.C. government.

In Maryland, Sivak will likely see similar challenges, strengths and weaknesses. O’Malley has received acclaim —and some critics — for supporting analytics-based management. Sivak was working on similar data initiatives during his brief time in D.C. TechPresident mentioned that Sivak might also work on the state’s portal for purchasing health insurance, and could enact processes that tolerate risk in government IT projects. ...

The position of chief innovation officer — a job that’s become increasingly common in IT companies —could be gaining some traction in government. The Obama White House has minted a deputy CTO for innovation, a job now occupied by former San Francisco CIO Chris Vein. (San Francisco also has an innovation manager, Jay Nath.) Boston is also moving in a similar direction, with two staffers who lead ventures within City Hall from the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics.

Local governments need innovation officers, but they shouldn't just come out of the information technology arena.

New National Walk-Friendly Community Program

The League of American Bicyclists' program of designating Bicycle Friendly Communities is an excellent initiative in how it focuses attention on improving the local environment for bicycling. The application form is really an evaluation tool that helps communities focus on the most important components of a bicycling-friendly environment.

DC and Baltimore are rated bronze. Rockville, Maryland received an honorable mention (a bit surprising, since in the region, they are one of the most active in promoting bicycle through trails development, signage, and construction of bridges over I-270, and even though the Viers Mill Rock Creek Trail bridge is a Montgomery County Parks Department initiative, hey, it's in Rockville).

Frederick, Maryland is working to attain a positive rating in the BFC program, which again shows the aspirational importance of the program. (See "Bicycle committee presents funding options to Aldermen" from the Gazette.)

That LAB has extended this concept to Bicycle Friendly States, Bicycle Friendly Colleges & Universities, and Bicycle Friendly Businesses further strengthens the environment for practical bicycling. The Arlington County Government is recognized as a bicycle friendly "business" by the League. See the "Bicycle Friendly Blueprint" for more detailed discussion of the framework.

Yesterday, the Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Center introduced its Walk Friendly Communities program, recognizing the first 11 cities to earn that designation for improving walkability and pedestrian safety, according to the US DOT Fastlane blog entry, "Walk friendly communities offer residents a gas-saving, healthy alternative."

Comparable to the LAB program, the WFC program's Walk Friendly Communities Assessment Tool offers a great deal of guidance on what to focus on in terms of improving a community's walking conditions.

- Community profiles of the designated communities

Platinum Level

Seattle, WA

Gold Level

Ann Arbor, MI
Arlington, VA
Hoboken, NJ
Santa Barbara, CA

Silver Level

Charlottesville, VA
Decatur, GA

Bronze Level

Austin, TX
Charlotte, NC
Flagstaff, AZ
Wilsonville, OR

Honorable Mention

Cedarburg, WI
Coeur d'Alene, ID
Concord, NH
Franklin, TN
Juneau, AK
Louisville, KY
Sparks, NV
Temple Terrace, FL

All is not well downtown, union-wise

(Photo: Downtown DC BID.)

Apparently the street workers (Safety/Hospitality and Maintenance) for the Downtown DC BID voted to be represented by a union, but the BID hasn't moved forward in negotiating.

The union decided to hold a rally outside the scheduled session for the release of the BID's annual report about the "State of Downtown."

So the BID cancelled the event/public release of the document, scheduled for tomorrow.

Interesting.

-- "Ushering the Future," article about SAMs from the Downtown DC BID newsletter

-- "SAM workers rally for a contract," Washington DC Metro Council, AFL-CIO

Maybe not a branding campaign, but a good image building campaign nonetheless

I was maybe a bit mean about the initiative in Prince George's County to find themselves. After all, when I wrote commercial district revitalization framework plans, discussion of the community's image and position in the market was generally a significant part of the plan.

Funny thing is that both Brunswick, Georgia and Cambridge, Maryland have addressed points that I made in their respective plans. (The local newspaper in Brunswick even did some redesign after I pointed out how dowdy it was).

I first wrote about this in 2005, in an early entry on "Town-City branding or "We are all destination managers now"." This entry "Identity ≠ branding or Authenticity is the basis of identity" lists a lot of other entries on this topic.

But in the plans I wrote something like this (this is from the Cambridge plan):

Just as the study team believes that "we are all destination managers now," elected and appointed officials in particular and in association with other community stakeholders serve as a community’s “brand managers”—whether or not they choose to think of their roles in this manner.

That means that decision-making on land use and zoning, business issues, infrastructure development (roads, sewers, water, utilities, transit), technology (broadband Internet, etc.) and quality of place factors (arts, culture, historic preservation and heritage, education, public schools and libraries, etc.) must be consistent and focused on making the right decisions, the decisions that collectively achieve and support the realization of the community’s desired vision and positioning.

The materials that the community uses to communicate (print media advertising, brochures, websites, radio and television commercials, billboards, public relations placements, press releases, etc.) also must be consistent with the vision and positioning of the community’s branding program.

The Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh has an image development ad campaign running now. I came across one of the ads online, probably at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website.

It's the kind of campaign that Prince George's County needs to start with, in beginning the process of honing in on the characteristics they want to emphasize. It's a good model.

But the contrast, even with Pittsburgh, is significant. PG County's housing market is in shambles right now. So whereas all the Pittsburgh ads focus on the relative strength of their residential and commercial real estate market, PG County can't do that. And they have issues with ethics in government, and crime. And that lack of "place capital" issue.

On the other hand, in terms of place capital, Prince George's County has a number of important assets. There's the University of Maryland College Park, a number of strong and attractive communities, a decent bikeway system (which could be a lot better), the USDA Experiment Station, one of the U.S.'s earliest examples of a garden city, Greenbelt, the Gateway Arts District, a number of historic sites and assets--the county is 350+ years old, proximity to DC, the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area, significant transit assets that need to be better utilized, etc.

NACTO bikeway design guide

From email:

The National Association of City Transportation Officials has just posted an online PDF version of the Urban Bikeway Design Guide. We decided to release this PDF in response to comments we received during our outreach efforts following the online guide's initial release in March 2011. A print book of the guide will be available on our website for purchase in late summer/early fall.

This PDF reflects all of the information that is already available on our website but allows people to engage with these materials in a different manner. It may be downloaded in low or medium resolution and also includes a separate file which compiles the Guide's annotated plans.

As excited as we are to release this PDF, it is important to reiterate that the NACTO Cities for Cycling website will be the ultimate source of updates, revisions, and more detailed information. Please refer to the website for these updates and send us constructive comments.

This guidebook is important because the best practice treatments for biking-bikeways tend to not yet be accepted practice in terms of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the standard tome covering transportation engineering.

The NACTO guide codifies best practice, making it simpler for communities to implement "innovative" practices through a process involving the state department of transportation.

Crazy: BART is scheduling multiple community meetings out in the field to get input on seating configuration

Interesting that BART, the subway system in the San Francisco Bay region, is scheduling meetings out in the community to get input about seat configurations, versus the more traditional process likely to be followed by WMATA in seeking the same information. See the Patch article "Pick a Seat: BART Lab Coming to a Town Near You."

From the article:

Between now and the beginning of summer, BART is bringing a mobile lab filled with seats of different heights, widths and materials to communities.

The goal is to get feedback from commuters on what kind of seats they would like to see in a new fleet of BART cars scheduled to start hitting the tracks in 2018.

"What I might like might be different from what the public might like," said BART Board President Bob Franklin. "So, we're going to get a range of opinions from a wide variety of people." ...

On Monday and Tuesday, senior citizens and disabled riders will test out the seats at the BART offices. After that, a sampling of the seats will be packed into a trailer and taken to at least nine communities over the next two months.

This is the kind of prototyping that is typical of the design method, which isn't usually used in planning, which tends to rely on the more static "rational planning" method.

How about the "Green 'Hood" as the unifying brand for Prince George's County

The press reports that the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Prince George's County is doing a branding study. (See "County seeks a brand to help market itself" from the Gazette.)

I am all for branding and identity programs.

But you start with identity. You just can't pull a "brand" out of the hat.

I wasn't able to keep track of the Envision Prince George's visioning-planning effort. Hopefully it was strong on defining the "place capital" of the County.

According to Embrace the Possibilities: Phase 1, Final Report, the goals of the vision are:

Live
• High Levels of Safety
• Diversity of Shopping, Restaurants, and Entertainment

Work
• Prosperous Small Businesses
• Federal Jobs Hub
• Higher Education Innovation Engine

Learn
• Top-Notch School District
• Career & Technical Education

Serve
• Responsive Government
• High Public Engagement Levels

Enjoy
• Recreation, Health, and Wellness Activities
• Vibrant Arts & Culture

Sustain
• Local Jobs, Businesses, and Amenities
• Transit-Oriented Mixed-Use Communities
• The Vision—Envision Prince George’s

However, the County is dissipating its place capital in all kinds of mostly new places (National Harbor, Boulevard at Cap Centre, Redskins Stadium [granted, it's been around for awhile], Konterra, Wegman's), rather than focusing its efforts and building outward from extant assets.

What does PG stand for?

What should it strive for?

Build an identity and vision from there.

Right now, the best I can come up with is:

Prince George's County: The Green 'Hood

because it has the violence and corruption of DC, without a center, but with the green open spaces that attract people from the city.

(DC has those kinds of spaces too, just not at the center fof the city.)

It is about place capital.

Suzanne took a cab home last week, and the cab driver knew our area, and talked about how in the 1980s, all the people he knew were leaving this neighborhood, for the seeming green pastures of condominium living in Prince George's County.

They moved to condominiums, but they didn't move to a place.

He said virtually all of them lost their money as the housing market tanked, or they moved back, because they couldn't find the community that they were seeking by leaving the city.

Demanding excellence in public projects is too rare a phenomenon: #1 the subway station at Dulles Airport

1. The subway station at Dulles Airport.

A couple weeks ago, Robert McCartney, the Metro columnist for the Washington Post, was a keynote speaker at the Washington area Urban Land Institute conference. Basically, he argued for equity in smart growth development.

But I blurted out, loudly, after his talk something to the nature of "you're saying that the area should step up and do great and important things, yet the editorial page of the Washington Post constantly advocates for the mediocre, such as its opposition to doing an underground subway station at Dulles Airport."

He went on to say that the editorial page does its own thing.

I have been meaning to write about this issue, whether or not to do an underground subway station at Dulles Airport, and the negative response by politicians and the press to this choice, because yes, it is more costly than the alternative.

I think that the biggest lesson from the development of transit systems in the 1970s and 1980s around the country is that if you satisfice on routing, station placement, and whether or not the stations are integrated into activity centers, you seriously compromise the likelihood of success for the system.

But we don't have to look at the failures in other systems (although it is helpful), because we have at least five examples of this lesson just with our own subway system, WMATA, in the DC region:

1. At the core of the city, 29 stations serve about a 15 square mile area, with stations serving the central business district and downtown, and the most successful stations are integrated into activity centers-neighborhoods, virtually all of the neighborhoods served by these stations are well on their way to revitalization success.

2. Arlington County got the alignment of the Orange Line changed from the I-66 median, to Wilson Boulevard, and four stations on Wilson Blvd., along with the Rosslyn Station, have augured billions of dollars of redevelopment.

3. Montgomery County has fewer subway stations than Prince George's County, but many of the stations have been placed to serve extant commercial-residential centers (Friendship Heights, Bethesda, White Flint, Rockville, Takoma [arguably], Silver Spring, and Wheaton) and even if the areas are in the midst of revitalization, and it's a long way to the end, the fact is that because the stations are located in communities, the communities have the ability to revitalize.

4. By way of comparison to Arlington County, Montgomery County, and DC, with the exception of the Prince George's Plaza station, PG County subway stations are not situated in extant places (it's a long story about the PG Plaza station which I won't go into here), and it shouldn't be a surprise that the subway stations have had minimal positive impact on land use, property values, and transit oriented development.

5. Not to mention those of us who remember using the subway to get to National Airport when it was a major pain in the a** to get to and from the airport by subway, before the station entrances were reconfigured and a new terminal, which opened in 1997, was built to better leverage proximity to the subway.

Now it's a relative dream to use the subway to get to and from the airport. But I don't know how much the new terminal cost, and how much of this cost we should ascribe to the original poor placement of the subway station.

All of these lessons, not to mention the relative failure of the subway and light rail in Baltimore, which satisfice on routing, station placement, and integration of stations into activity centers, seriously compromising the ability to create network effects and advantages from transit, ought to make every politician and appointed official in the Washington region focused on building a great transit system.

The fact is that most of the people appear to be narrow minded, not recognizing that these are infrastructure investments of major proportions, that will last decades, and that if you do it wrong from the outset, either it will be wrong forever, or it will be more costly to correct the error in the future, when because of the ongoing operational failures deriving from the compromises, new infrastructure will be built.

Note:

1. Yes, I think that serving this area by railroad rather than subway (heavy rail) makes more sense.

2. Maybe the John Cambron proposal for a split-level Metro station at Dulles makes more sense than the fully underground station as it allows for cost savings without seriously compromising the efficiency of the transit link. See "A split-level Dulles Metro stop would be best" from GGW.

Still, I think it is ironic that the National Endowment of the Arts is holding a conference in Chicago starting tomorrow, "Celebrating 25 Years of City Design: Mayors to Identify Challenges, Opportunities and Funding Sources Through Summit on Smart City Design, Honor Design Legacy of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley," focused on high quality urban design and placemaking in cities.

- Case studies, Mayors' Institute on City Design
- Mayors' Institute on City Design

Sure, Dulles isn't a city, it's an airport, but the transit system here, and at the places where people are introduced to the city, such as at National and Dulles Airports, communicates to the region and to the world how we value transit, how we value ourselves, and how we value visitors.

This by the way is something that Tyler Brule of Monocle Magazine writes about all the time, especially in his weekly column in the Financial Times, where he has been very negative about Dulles Airport. Now while this is mostly about the experience of going through customs and immigration, it does not speak well of the experience. From "Let’s play ‘Guess where I am?’":

I’ve just come off an airliner and it’s absolute pandemonium. There are gate agents screaming for transfer passengers, there are sniffer dogs, there are loads of immigration officers and there’s a general sense of disorganisation. My fellow passengers look bewildered and flustered after their eight-hour, 45-minute flight from Frankfurt, and there’s a lot of huffing and puffing as we’re divided up into groups of arriving passengers and “connectors”. ...

[description of 1,000 people waiting to go through ICE at shift change, when many people leave their posts, with the result that even fewer agents are there to work with the passengers.]

As I approach the desk, I feel like giving the young gentleman a lecture about how bad this whole performance is for Brand USA – particularly on top of a whole week of television reports about the new fee that visitors will have to pay to get a visa and how these funds will be used to create a campaign to encourage more tourism to the US. I want to ask him if he (and his bosses not far away in the District of Columbia) think a 90-minute wait in a dumpy airport is any way to welcome the world and if his department is really that interested in having people visit the US.

Combine this experience, plus the then less than sterling experience of getting to the city from the airport, by transit or other forms of ground transportation, and then think about what this says not only for BrandAmerica, but BrandDC, and is it any reason that the number of international visitors to the US is falling?

Preservation Maryland conference, May, Annapolis

From email:

Maryland’s Annual Preservation & Revitalization Conference
May 19-20, 2011
Downtown Annapolis Historic District

Register Now! Early bird rates end on Friday, April 29, 2011.
Click here to register online to save time and postage. The complete conference brochure and printable registration forms are available in PDF format on the conference section of the Preservation Maryland website.

- Click here for the two-day Schedule-at-a-Glance for the Conference
- Click here for complete descriptions of the Conference's educational sessions

The sessions look good, and cover a variety of placemaking topics, they aren't strictly preservation:

- THE CHALLENGES/EXPENSES OF INFILL vs. GREEN FIELD DEVELOPMENT
- EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS WITH ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS
- MARYLAND TRAILS: Sharing the Vision and Making Connections
- WORKING WITH SCHOOL SYSTEMS
- THE CHESAPEAKE BAY EXECUTIVE ORDER: New Opportunities for Cultural Landscapes
- C&O CANAL QUARTERS PROGRAM: Rethinking Interpretation, Cultural Resource Management, and Heritage Tourism along the C&O Canal National Historical Park
- PRESERVING GREEN: How to Restore and Maintain Your Historic Property for Energy-Efficiency
- THE PUBLIC REALM AS A FRAMEWORK FOR REVITALIZATION
- AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE TOURISM: Connecting the Story to the Place, Race, and Time
- GET ON THE TRAIN: Social Media for Preservation Commissions and Non-Profits
- HERE TODAY, UNDERWATER TOMORROW! Impacts of Climate Change on Cultural Resources in Maryland
- RLUIPA – RELIGIOUS LAND USE AND INSTITUTIONALIZED PERSONS ACT: What You Don’t Know Can Get You Sued
- THE CHANGING FACE OF RURAL AMERICA: Economic Development Issues Facing Rural
Communities Today
- CAN HISTORIC PRESERVATION ENHANCE THE LOCAL ECONOMY IN YOUR COMMUNITY?
- PRESERVATION, COMMON SENSE & THE ADA: “How the Heck are we Gonna Get a Wheelchair in Here?”
- THE DRAMA OF DECISION MAKING: Sharing the Vision and Making Connections
- PRESERVATION OF RAILROAD CORRIDORS AND TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT
- WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD! Introducing Maple Street to Main Street
- AFTER TWO CENTURIES BURIED BENEATH NEW YORK, THE WORLD TRADE CENTER SHIP
DOCKS IN MARYLAND
- BEYOND EMBODIED ENERGY: The Environmental and Climate Benefits of Preservation
- GET SMART! Sustainable Communities and Smart Sites

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I went in 2005 and it was very much worthwhile. There are tours, and special luncheons (at extra cost) for heritage areas and Main Street programs.

Arlington County Republicans: penny wise but pound foolish when it comes to transportation policy, bikesharing

Image of a Capital Bikesharing station in Rosslyn from Arlington Now.

Washcycle reports, in "Arlington GOP opposes Capital Bikeshare," that the Arlington County Republican party has blogged against bikeshare in the County, in part as a competition with the private sector, but also because it uses street parking spaces.

The bikeshare system takes up 8 parkng spaces. To sound reasonable, the GOP blog entry discusses the loss of revenue from parking meters. Although the amount of revenue, $10,000 to $20,000, is minimal.

Plus, each of the stations will have at least 10 bikes, and likely support many more trips per day than a parking space would.

The funny thing about transportation policy in Arlington County is that they have amongst the nation's best transportation plan for a county-level jurisdiction. How I describe the plan is that it is internally consistent on two levels, the policies of each of the elements flow from the goals in the Goals and Policies Element, and each of the elements is internally consistent as well. From the Goals Element:

Goal 2: Move More People Without More Traffic

Provide more travel choices and reduce the relative proportion of single-occupant-vehicle (SOV) through Transportation Demand Management (TDM), telecommuting, and travel shifts to other modes including transit, carpooling, walking, and bicycling.

Strategies
1. Implement land use policies such as transit-oriented and mixed-use development that result in better access and use of the transportation system.

2. Focus on minimizing person delay across modes rather than focusing exclusively on minimizing vehicle delay.

3. Encourage the use of environmentally sustainable modes, including bicycling, walking, transit, carpooling, and telecommuting.

Arlington's Parking and Curbside Management Element of the Transportation Plan is set up to support the MTP's goal of reducing the number of single occupancy vehicle trips--that means the automobile isn't prioritized in transportation policy, but mobility throughput is.

When it comes to the use of streetspace, what that means is that Arlington prioritizes uses that support optimal mobility--not car storage on the streets. So streetspace priorities do focus to the extent possible--after all, even in Arlington people want their cars--on providing space for pedestrians (bulbouts, etc.), transit (bus stops), car sharing, and bicyclists. In fact, it is the #1 Policy in the Element:

Policy 1. Prioritize the use of curb space, matching the various types of uses to the most appropriate locations. In commercial areas and high‐density residential areas, generally consider bus stops, curb nubs, taxi stands, paratransit pickup, short‐term retail and handicapped parking to be the highest priority. (bold in the original, page 4)

I highly suggest reading the entire plan, including the element on parking and curbside management.

Just as Arlington's suit against the State of Virginia with regard to HOT Lanes was completely in line with the goals of Master Transportation Plan to not encourage automobile trips, Arlington's use of parking spaces for bikesharing is fully consistent with their transportation plan and their priority for land use in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.

Arlington should be commended, not criticized, for following their plan. Ironically, I have criticized DC's placement of bikesharing stations as more focused on taking away sidewalk area, at the expense of pedestrians, rather than cars. (Although because of how corner lots are situated in the L'Enfant Plan of the city, often this isn't a problem.) See "Bicycle sharing location decisionmaking in DC" from last fall.

A penny is a small amount of money and a pound is a larger amount. "Penny-wise, pound-foolish" is to be cautious (wise) with small amounts of money but wasteful (foolish) with larger amounts. Example: "We've worked so hard to save money that if we took a vacation now it would be penny-wise, pound-foolish." People sometimes worry about spending small amounts of money; then they carelessly spend much larger amounts. Example: "He spends very little on food during the week, then blows all his money drinking on the weekends. He really is penny-wise, pound-foolish."

Graphic, "The Space-Time-Money Continuum" by National Building Museum curator Susan Piedmont-Palladino, from the Intelligent Cities initiative. It's fair to say that when it comes to transportation policy and parking spaces, the Arlington County GOP is penny-wise, pound-foolish.

The future of center city population retention and quality neighborhood schools

In the long blog entry I wrote a couple weekends ago, "The future of mixed use development/urbanization: Part 1, Housing," I probably buried the lead.

I wrote this:

Note that I do not fully buy into the belief that the housing market will totally and completely change in face of the onslaught of Gen Y.

It is true that a majority of the Gen Y cohort prefer to live in urban (Dupont Circle, Columbia Heights, Georgetown), "urban lite" (Capitol Hill, Friendship Heights, Clarendon, Ballston, Bethesda, Rockville), and maybe Silver Spring is "urban middle," locations when they are younger, while Gen X still was fine with living in the suburbs in their young adult phase and stay in the vicinity as their household changes over time.

But I do wonder as Gen Y ages, if their housing preferences will devolve to the mean somewhat. As they age and their household type changes (from single to married, from married without children to married with children) will they move to less connected, quieter locations, which could be in the city (e.g., moving from Dupont Circle or U Street to Brookland, Shepherd Park, or Takoma) as well as the suburbs. And that is independent of the phenomenon of moving to the suburbs when children are ready for school, because of poorer quality education options in the center city.

E.g., as people get older, they age out of hipper places to live like the Warehouse District in Cleveland and maybe U Street NW in DC, because they get tired of the noise etc. See the past blog entry "Daypart and age-group planning in mixed use (commercial) districts" from 2009, which discusses this.

It might be that Gen Y people will move, but with a greater preference for center city neighborhoods outside of the core, while previous cohorts expressed a stronger preference for suburban locations.

------
A few weeks ago I ran into a planning professional, who was openly derisive when I told him/her where I lived--the person couldn't believe that I wouldn't want to live in an active, amenity rich neighborhood like Dupont Circle, or up and coming places like Columbia Heights or H Street. Well, the fact is, I don't have enough money to live in Dupont Circle or Columbia Heights, and I have burnout with regard to living in a neighborhood like H Street or Trinidad--it takes a lot out of you to work on revitalization in places like that over time.

The fact is, although I don't have children, we can type neighborhoods according to household type and age. Capitol Hill is for older people, while Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, U Street, etc. are for younger people, especially singles and people in group house situations.

So what happens when people's households change, when they pair up? When they have children? As people age, if they stay in the city, they move to different neighborhoods better situated to satisfy changing needs. E.g., Brookland, where many of the houses have big backyards is great for children. Capitol Hill is pretty quiet at night, unlike U Street, and is better for people who are done with the hustle and bustle, etc.

Planning should have greater focus on how different neighborhoods satisfy different household types, and should work to ensure that the quality of the amenities desired actually meet and satisfy the expectations.

Over the weekend, I went to a neighborhood easter egg hunt for some of the households on or near my block. There were 8 children representing 5 different households. Of course I eavesdropped (and participated in) various conversations concerning what to do as the children get older and the quality of the schools they have access to and attend becomes of paramount concern. (A bunch more households with children didn't participate as it was a somewhat last minute thing.)

Two of the households specifically discussed moving to the suburbs.

As I have been mentioning, I understand why school improvement is a key urban issue, not just in DC, but in cities such as Chicago and New York City as well. Each of the cities now have mayoral control of the school system and mayors in other cities clamor for it. Baltimore also has a school improvement initiative, although it is half local and half state control.

I have advocated a third way on schools. I understand why Mayor Fenty and Michelle Rhee thought it was important to address school improvement. But I thought that their approach was completely and totally misguided and flawed* (* flawed is the other "f" word). Of course the social and community capital available to improving the public schools in DC is further dissipated amongst charter schools and the voucher movement.

(Note that the "enrollment increase" for DC schools this year was all in Pre-K preschool programs, not at schools in the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. Plus, for budget reasons, the school system is cutting back on successful initiatives such as Montessori education, because they don't want to have to pay for accredited Montessori teachers and the higher costs of maintaining the program.)

In my discussions on offices of planning, I make the point that for the most part, most of these agencies are really offices of land use, because they aren't responsible or seen as the lead agency and chief coordinator and director of all of a jurisdiction's planning activities. (This is a bit different in a community like Montgomery County, where the planning agency also does transportation planning, not just land use, as well as parks planning, but I am not sure how much schools planning they do.)

This is definitely the case in Washington, DC.

The schools improvement effort, and especially the maintenance of quality neighborhood schools in each neighborhood, should be seen as the foundation of the most important building blocks in neighborhood stabilization and improvement, resident attraction and retention, community building, etc.

The Office of Planning should be heavily involved in these decisions, and especially the decision to close schools. But I think for the most part, school siting decisions are out of the hands of the planning department.

My immediate neighborhood has three schools. The former Rabaut Junior High School has long been since given over to charter schools, which open and close over the years. It's two blocks away. Whittier Elementary School is about 5 blocks away, and Coolidge High School is about 6 blocks away.

Whittier Elementary School. Photo from the school website.
Coolidge is underperforming. It has fewer than 700 students with capacity for 2,000 or more. Meanwhile the Friends of Bedford Charter School wants to create a charter high school for Ward 4--with limited demand, how could this even be considered?

Whittier, I am not sure about the quality, I do know the enrollment is quite low. But judging by the number of families in the area, if the school captured more than 50% of the neighborhood children, enrollment would be much higher.

If these schools were uniformly excellent, the myriad of young families with children wouldn't be faced with the conundrum of "having to leave the city" as their children enter school, because we would have great neighborhood schools in our neighborhood, and every neighborhood of decent size in the city.

And the problem in my neighborhood is repeated across the city.

Because we can't count on neighborhood schools in DC, and in many other cities, I do not believe that the Gen Y preferences for urban living can necessarily be maintained if urban schools do not improve in lockstep with center city in-migration. Retention of families with choices will not happen if schools don't improve.

On the other hand, maybe all that matters is good pr. People think that Rhee improved the schools when she didn't. Although when it comes down to the level of the individual school, people aren't fooled. They try to get their children into the best schools, through out of boundary lottery procedures, or in charter schools. But even the best charter schools have limited capacity. Then, people think about moving...

Lessons of William Donald Schaefer, former mayor of Baltimore, Governor of Maryland

The Baltimore Sun has been full of articles about the legacy of William Donald Schaefer, since his death one week ago. (Coverage of William Donald Schaefer's life and death, from the Baltimore Sun) On Sunday there was an editorial, "The lessons of Schaefer" which is important on the eve of a special election in DC for an at-large Councilmember position amid all the turmoil in DC over alleged ethics problems with Mayor Gray and Council Chairman Brown, not to mention real and significant problems with former Mayor Fenty--despite all the hype, there were real problems with contract steering, etc.

The lessons, according to the Sun editorial are:

1. Build things;
2. Sweat the small stuff;
3. Do things for the right reasons;
4. Work your way up;
5. Be an executive, preferably mayor;
6. Focus on the job you have;
7. Be demanding but loyal;
8. Know when to quite;
9. Understand that it may not be enough.

For a similar take, also see the Blair Lee column from the Gazette of Politics and Business, "Schaefer's Secret."

LED stairs

LED stairs, a photo by Steven Vance on Flickr.

The photographer doesn't like it. It looks cool though...

Transvilles 01 [Valencienne tram]

Transvilles 01 [Valencienne tram], a photo by hpulling on Flickr.

Flickr photo. It definitely shows that it is not out of the question to integrate light rail trains, which tend to be bigger than streetcars, sensitively into urban fabric.

Boston initiative to raise property tax payments from nonprofits moves forward

PILOTs, or payments in lieu of taxes, on the part of nonprofit organizations are the holy grail for cities reliant on property taxes, and with property rolls heavy with nonprofit organizations (hospitals, universities, churches, etc.) whose tax exempt status extends to property.

Boston has a new initiative focused on this. See "City sends ‘tax’ bills to major nonprofits: Aims to triple voluntary payments within 5 years" from the Boston Globe.

Remember too that the Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, sought to impose a capitation fee on each student enrolled in higher education institutions in that city, as a way to raise revenue. See "More cities look to universities to share costs amid recession" from the Globe (archive fee access required).

DC Special election and who to vote for Council

Well, between the City Paper endorsement, "Vote for Bryan Weaver" and GGW's "Vote Bryan Weaver for DC Council at-large," I was ready to vote for and endorse Bryan Weaver.

Yes, the Post endorsed Patrick Mara, "Patrick Mara for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council," and my desire for outsider candidates to mix things up means I have a predilection to vote for Patrick, or Alan Page, candidate for the Statehood-Green party.

The Post has a pretty poor track record lately in endorsing the iconoclastic candidate for various slots. Basically, if they get the Post endorsement, the candidate is almost assured of losing (e.g., in the 2010 election, Dave Hedgpeth, Ward 3; Tim Day, Ward 5 in the general election; Adrian Fenty as Mayor; Vincent Orange for Council Chair in the primary--all lost).

But the discussion in the GGW entry reminds me that the real issue is does Vincent Orange get elected, because he has the biggest name recognition and the most money. Now, name recognition and money hasn't helped him for at large races before, either for Council Chairman or for Mayor. But since so few people tend to vote in special elections, maybe money and name recognition is enough to be first past the post.

The reason that I can't vote for Vincent Orange is that for the most part he is the candidate for political entrepreneurialism interests--where lawyers and business people with political connections manipulate the levers of government to favor their interests over others. (In fact, for the first time ever I voted for Kwame Brown, because Vincent Orange was running against him in the primary for Council Chairman.)

-------

From "Bring Back the Robber Barons: There's a big difference between entrepreneurs who make a fortune in the market, and those who do so by gaming the government" in the Wall Street Journal:

Market entrepreneurs like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Hill built businesses on product and price. Hill was the railroad magnate who finished his transcontinental line without a public land grant. Rockefeller took on and beat the world's dominant oil power at the time, Russia. Rockefeller innovated his way to energy primacy for the U.S.

Political entrepreneurs, by contrast, made money back then by gaming the political system. Steamship builder Robert Fulton acquired a 30-year monopoly on Hudson River steamship traffic from, no surprise, the New York legislature. Cornelius Vanderbilt, with the slogan "New Jersey must be free," broke Fulton's government-granted monopoly.

Note that this thesis is a bit oversimplified as Rockefeller and others not only built businesses on product and price, but through manipulation of business practices and relationships, in ways that benefited them extranormally, but you get the idea.

--------

Vincent Orange and his relationships with uber lobbyists like former Councilman John Ray, now lawyer at Manatt Phelps, makes him in no way the outsider he is claiming he can be, able to focus on cleaning up local government. He getting back onto Council, well, it scares me.

A perfect example of this was the designation through City Council legislation of favored interests as the master developers of the Florida Market, without there ever having been a request for proposals. It was one of the dirtiest deals I had witnessed as an involved citizen.

There are other examples like that which means that I can't vote for him and worry that he will get elected. So does that mean voting for Sekou Biddle, because since there are so many candidates, he has the best chance of winning, even though but because he is the candidate of the political machine?

The Democratic Party is worried that enough people will follow the Post's logic, from the editorial:

We enthusiastically endorse Patrick Mara. We think it would be healthy to temper the one-party domination of D.C. government, but that’s only the beginning of an argument. Mr. Mara is a socially progressive, fiscally conservative Republican who would bring diversity of thought and approach to the 13-member body. He has the strength to stand up for his beliefs but the pragmatism to form coalitions.

and vote for Patrick Mara. The Dems have a robocall operation active now, calling people and imploring them to not be fooled, and to vote Democratic in any case.

Hey, I wanted to support Patrick. I am pretty sure I voted for him back in 2008. We've talked before and he reads this blog, so he can't be half bad right? But we don't share the same positions on education issues and I think historic preservation as well. Plus, while I agree that the city shouldn't look at its citizens as ATMs, the City Paper captures my reticence about jumping on the Mara campaign:

Mara, who won the Post over, says the council needs tougher oversight of itself and the rest of the government, and he’s right. But his sense that taxes are way too high in D.C. doesn’t jibe with reality (many District residents actually pay less than they would in Arlington, Alexandria, or Montgomery counties). His reveries about gentrification in Columbia Heights only infrequently seem to be matched with a sense that the city could be doing more to manage the changes that have led a young, white Republican to want to live in the neighborhood. And though Mara’s no Tea Party aficionado, we’re not quite ready to enlist with the GOP.

A graduate of Howard University, the Statehood-Green candidate Alan Page is a lawyer who has lived in the H Street neighborhood for about 10 years. He's worked on neighborhood issues, he's done a variety of entrepreneurial things. I met Alan and his family (before Amina was born, but on the way) at meetings focused on the revitalization of the H Street commercial district. I want to vote for Alan out of sentiment and a preference for third party representation in local politics. But does Vincent Orange scare me more?

This is where I wish we had more options such as Instant Runoff Voting (see "Standard voting creates strategic quandary for at-large race" from GGW) or other forms of preferential voting (such as Ranked Choice Voting), see my past blog entry, "The highly paid DC City Council and governance and voting systems" as well as the entry "Does DC need more Councilmembers?" from GGW.

Combining strategy and sentiment, in an instant runoff system, I would probably vote like this:

1. Weaver

2. Page

3. Mara

4. Biddle

knowing that if my preferred candidates dropped out of the running, I would still have a vote in the running "against" Orange.

Alan Page, and his daughter Amina. (We can see ourselves growing older in seeing how children grow up. I remember Amina as a baby. Now look at her.)

Urban green follow up

There are so many urban green efforts that show the kind of evolved approach to environmentalism mentioned in the previously cited pieces from the Project for Public Spaces, including "Placemaking as a New Environmentalism: Reinvigorating the Environmental Movement in the 21st Century" and "Place Capital: The Shared Wealth that Drives Thriving Communities" that I didn't mention.

1. Washington City Paper has a nice piece on LEED-ND, "Easy Does It," where Lydia DePillis makes the point that I make all the time, that cities are green from an energy standpoint already and does a LEED certified building really help, if people still drive to it?

2. Urban agriculture is covered here all the time, but always worth re-mentioning. There is a publication from the people who do Hobby Farm, called Urban Farm.

Vertical gardening, community gardening, utilizing tree boxes, urban orchards, etc. are some of the things that people can do.

3. Baltimore has the great Urbanite Magazine and Philadelphia has the magazine Grid: Towards a Sustainable Philadelphia. Both focus their April editions on green/Earth Day related content.

4. One of the people I met at the "Life in the 20-Minute Neighborhood" workshop that was part of Baltimore's Green Week lives in the Patterson Park neighborhood in Baltimore. She told me that the community is developing a green master plan.

They have a charrette scheduled for May 14th. See the blog entry, "TL assists with Green Master Plan for Patterson Park" for more information. From the entry:

Topics discussed and ideas generated will include Transit – options, biking and walking!, Cleanliness – neighborhood-level trash reduction and appearance; Pollution Prevention – upstream and down, harvesting rainwater and Greening – beautification through environmental strategies & landscape. The GMP team will collate the responses from the charrette and incorporate them into the final Green Master Plan report which will be our roadmap for the future enabling us to be the cleanest, greenest and healthiest neighborhood in all of Baltimore!

More neighborhoods ought to take up similar initiatives.

-- Green Streets Strategy Discussed at Ecodistricts Summit, Portland, Oregon

-- DC Southwest Ecodistrict Initiative, next meeting is May 19th, 2011

5. I wish that instead of the summer youth employment program in DC, that they would convert a number of high schools to a cooperative education program that functioned on a year round basis, including summer employment for a longer period in the summer.

One of the things they could do is have an agriculture/horticulture program, utilizing the now decrepit greenhouses present at many of the city's high schools. Somewhere I remember a program involving high school aged youth growing plants which were then planted throughout their community as a beautification initiative.

6. The Financial Times had an article on the volunteerism benefits of community gardening and horticulture programs last week, "Dutch dig big society." From the article:

She is also chairman of the Leiden Schools Gardens, where volunteering is on an even bigger scale. Leiden’s Schools Gardens scheme began nearly 80 years ago. Twelve schools in the city participate and between them offer 625 little plots of ground in Leiden for cultivation by their Dutch schoolchildren, mostly aged between 10 and 12. By 2000, the school-plots were falling into disorder and the entire scheme needed a new grip.

Carla and her team provided it. They recruited 60 adult volunteers to help to perpetuate the school tradition. The role of the adults is to guide and instruct the children and encourage them to sow and grow the right crops. In 2004, the Leiden city authorities were considering closing the scheme altogether and abolishing the green plots. They reckoned without Carla and her team. They dressed up their young gardeners as anything from piglets to beetroots and demonstrated for their future, bringing 600 children to sing prearranged songs and influence the council. They succeeded and Carla is now chairman of a formal board with a budget of some £20,000 a year and a manager, Marian Kathmann, who studied botany at university.

7. DC (and many other cities) are not at the forefront of sustainability planning when it comes to developing citywide composting programs. Cities like Seattle and Toronto are best practice in this regard. Even NYC does some pretty good stuff.

8. And why not manage the urban forest for stewardship and income generation? If companies like Weyerhauser can manage their forests, why not cities? When trees come down, why can't they be either milled or set up to become firewood, instead of mulched or just thrown in the waste stream?


9. DC isn't motivated to manage its waste stream because we sell our trash to Fairfax County so that they can burn it up and generate energy in their cogeneration facility. Communities need to consider this when they take up this issue. Is it better to burn "waste," or to reduce-reuse-recycle? Can they be complementary practices?

Fort Totten Waste Transfer Station, outdoor yard.

10. As a historic preservationist, I am not necessarily "into" solar panels on pitched roofs, because they are discordant on old buildings. However, Premier Power is one of a number of companies (I think) that is now producing solar tiles that look like roof tiles.