Urban planning when things are going well: DC, 2014 (The Office of Planning under Harriet Tregoning)

Oops.  When I do searches for articles within the blog, I come across articles that remain in draft form, as I never got around to finishing them.  This one is from February 2014.  Most of these drafts I delete, but this reads well and is worth publishing, even if it is 11 years late.

===============
Harriet Tregoning, the director of the DC office of planning, is leaving to take a position with the Obama Administration.  So there is a current article in the Post ("Departing DC planner Harriet Tregoning hailed as 'forward-thinking public servant") and a previous article in the City Paper ("Urbanista!: Inside Harriet Tregoning's Push to Reshape D.C.") which discuss how great she is.

Note that I like Harriet Tregoning a lot, and I love to talk about planning with her, but at the same time I try to be objective and analytical.

Planning as boundary spanning and serving multiple masters.  In textbooks on organizational psychology, behavior and development, there is an extended discussion of boundary spanning, where people have conflicting responsibilities to different groups with different priorities.  Planners are the classic example of boundary spanners.

Planners are beholden to their bosses, who are ultimately part of and beholden to the Growth Machine.  At the same time planners (and elected officials) are supposed to be helping the citizens. 

... it's a kind of contradiction as discussed in Planning the Capitalist City, where planners have to mediate between capital and the democratic impulse.  Property owners need assistance from the state in various ways to reduce risk and increase income, but it comes at the expense of public input into what they want.

Planning is about dealing with the future while residents mostly want things to stay the same.  At the same time, there is a different cleavage.  Planners are tasked with considering the future and dealing with it, not trying to prevent change necessarily, but instead working to manage it and mitigate and limit negative effects, in ways that are good for the city in general and neighborhoods specifically, simultaneously.

Growth and change is going to happen regardless, and so you need plans to deal with it.

Planners have dual responsibilities to satisfy simultaneously both city-wide and neighborhood goals and objectives.  Relatedly, in planning engagements, planners have two responsibilities, simultaneously dealing with "citywide" concerns as laid out in a master or comprehensive land use plan for the community, as well as neighborhood concerns, while residents typically only take responsibility for the latter.

Left: Central Perk coffee shop set from the Friends television show.  TV shows in the late 1990s and early part of the last decade showed urban living in a more favorable light than the suburban oriented shows from the 1970s and 1980s, shows like Brady Bunch.

This isn't helped by the fact that this dual and sometimes conflicting role isn't "named" and identified and  discussed.  It isn't out in the open.  

So at the end of a typical planning process, usually there is acrimony, because the residents feel screwed, believing that change was ramrodded on them.  The Brookland Small Area Plan is a good example.

I don't like acrimony.  And I have this "enlightenment-age" idea that we are capable of learning, of having discourse.

Growth vs. shrinking | young vs. old  | urban vs. suburban  | historic preservation vs. limited building regulation.  I argue that the dis-ease about what is happening in the city that seemingly pits younger and newer residents vs. older and long-time residents, that is mostly expressed by the young "smart growth" types and the older residents who are members of old line civic and neighborhood groups, is a function of looking at and dealing with the city from two fundamentally different perspectives. 

Fighting to save the shrinking city.  The old--and remember they started out as young--urban pioneer types no less starry eyed than the readers of Greater Greater Washington but they moved to the city in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when it wasn't cool at all--came to the fore during the many decade period when the city was shrinking, the municipal government was failing to execute its most basic responsibilities, the ascendance of Black Power,  and prevailing trends which did not favor urban living and urban investment.  Involved residents saw their primary task as stabilization of neighborhoods (and the city) in a time of limited resources.

Note that the historic preservation movement was the foundation for saving many DC neighborhoods, by stabilizing them as the city's population shrank, and repositioning their value in a market that dis-valued urban location and amenities.

This building is part of a set of new buildings that will bring retail, art space, and almost 900 new apartments to land on the west side of the Brookland Metrorail station, adjacent to Catholic University.

City revival.  Since 2003 the city has been growing--even with the recent hiccup of the recession + a slowing and braking on urban growth because of some shrinkage of the activity of federal government, especially in terms of leased office space and personnel.

Broader trends changed in favor of urban living, multi-unit housing has been/is being constructed in great quantities, areas of the city that had languished (east and northern sections of the "central business district" and in southeast and on the waterfront) are being revitalized, people are living and walking in places where it would have been unimaginable to see them even 10 years ago.

U Street NW.  

Revival spreads beyond the city core.  Development of new housing and retail is happening even outside of the city core, albeit mostly centered around subway stations (Columbia Heights, Petworth, Fort Totten, Takoma, U Street), but even in a couple areas (14th Street, H Street) where subway access is tangential.   

But it took until 2011 to begin to see a significant uptick in population.

And we have to acknowledge that this growth has yet to impact and benefit other more impoverished parts of the city, such as far northeast or east of the river.

Cycletrack on 15th Street NW.

Enjoying the benefits of the growing city.  This new growth has been embraced by the young, who see the city as an attractive, exciting place to live.

Newer residents see the city not from the vantage point of when it was shrinking, but during its  growth and rebirth.  They don't understand the people who see issues from the perspective of failure and shrinkage.

It doesn't help that the long-time residents haven't figured out that the skill set they developed fighting for neighborhood stabilization isn't necessarily the same skill set required to deal with opportunities for growth.

(Talk to someone who lived in a "blighted neighborhood" starting in the 1980s or earlier, a neighborhood that has changed over the past five years in ways that are visible to everyone.  We are astounded, shocked, and still somewhat dumbfounded by the change, changes we never thought possible...) 

DC's core is comprised of rowhouses and apartment buildings, while the outer city is a mix of attached and detached single family housing  and clusters of apartments, especially on arterials.

To me, the difference between our respective experiences being shaped by the city's state as shrinking versus growing is the most fundamental difference in outlook and viewpoint about where the city should be, both now and in the future.

This fundamental difference in outlook--abetted by the fact that neither "side" acknowledges that they are shaped at all--leads to much of the failure to achieve consensus about how to move forward. 

This is a real problem, because change will happen regardless of whether we embrace it or try to ward it off.

Our house is detached, and five miles from Downtown (but 3/4 mile from a Metrorail station).  The pattern and form of residential housing in the outer city can be very different from the core--especially because it was built during the automobile era, and the center city was not.

Time marches on.

Suburban mentality, urban expectations.   Most of us who come to the city from other places have been imprinted with a suburban planning paradigm outlook even if we don't recognize it.

Plus, how we think about the city is also complicated by the fact that DC is more of a urban-suburban city than it is an urban-urban city--not quite the difference between Manhattan and Staten Island, but close enough.

DC has eight wards.  Wards 6 and 2 comprise the bulk of the original L'Enfant City, which was designed for walking and to be densely populated.  Ward 1 has some L'Enfant City in it, and is designed with L'Enfant City principles.  In fact, it's the most dense of all of the city's wards.

So at best three wards of eight are urban, and even the residents of the urban core are not fully committed to all of urbanism's precepts.

The other wards are a mix of "real city" and semi-suburb, and tend to be car reliant (the poorer parts of the city have less car use even though they are mostly located in the outer wards).  They are dominated by a suburban approach to what should be urban issues.

Shouldn't an Office of Planning work to identify and address these kinds of differences in perspective and understanding?  I think it is the job of an office of planning to name-identify these kinds of issues, for citizens and elected officials, and to help us work through them and come to as much of a consensus understanding as is possible.

I believe that Harriet Tregoning, instead of helping to calm the waters, accentuated the differences.

She played to the young and smart growth crowd and helped to stoke the differences between groups, instead of trying to help the different "interest groups" (young and old, shrinking vs. growth, urban vs. suburban) work through their differences and come to, if not a common understanding, at least a better understanding of where we are and how we can move forward.

We needed to show the connections between perspectives and groups more than the differences, how current conditions are built on the efforts of the previous generations of people committed to urban living and how their contributions should not be unacknowledged and unappreciated, and how these efforts are "consumed" by new residents at minimal cost.

The Zoning Rewrite as one example.  The strife over the zoning rewrite is a perfect example. To me, a lot of the opposition is expressed by people who still see the city as having to be stabilized but at the same time, not needing to grow (a whole other issue). And for the most part, the most vociferous opponents to "change" are from more suburbanized sections of the city.

The office of planning should have provided a much better approach to the process. It happens I recommended a particular course which they investigated but ultimately they chose not to move that approach forward figuring it was too radical.

So what we have, in my opinion, are changes, but without a good framework for explaining them, or dealing with, and more importantly, for targeting the changes.  It's chaos.

For example, except for the issue of accessory dwelling units (and excepting issues concerning Georgia Avenue and the industrially zoned land along the railroad tracks), I imagine out of more than 150* blocks (*an estimate, not an exact count) in my greater neighborhood, change is only targeted/needs to be managed for 6-8 blocks, located immediately at the Metro and in the abutting commercial district.

That's 6 to 8 blocks out of more than 150 blocks.  But:

(1) "opponents" are applying what planners would call "neighborhood conservation goals" of keeping things the same to how they approach what should happen on blocks that are in fact targeted for change;

(2) even though the material conditions of those blocks--commercial, transit station adjacent, multi-unit, denser--are fundamentally different from traditional residential blocks;

(3) change and intensity are the goals for these 6-8 blocks in what we might call the "town center" of our neighborhood, while conservation-preservation-limited change are the goals for the other 144 decidedly residential blocks in the neighborhood which are a mix of one- and two-story houses with some three- and four-story apartment buildings mixed in a couple of places (mostly adjacent to the commercial district);

(4) Plus "opponents" keep pointing to the Takoma Central Plan, which was approved in 2002 and is based on planning and land use conditions from the late 1990s, so it is seriously out-of-date because in the last 15 years there has been massive change and material changes in those conditions, both in the neighborhood and in the city, so that the plan is somewhat irrelevant to how those 6-8 blocks should be addressed (and it's a shock that WMATA actually agrees, something I testified about almost 8 years ago).

The method I recommended would have allowed for a different approach, based on the Nashville Community Character Manual.  It would have defined conditions much more carefully, block by block, in terms of land use context, at the neighborhood and block scale, based on the character intent or goals for each  block.  

The CCM focuses on preserving, creating, or enhancing existing or envisioned community character and form, rather than focusing on purely density and land use as its predecessor LUPA did. The result is policy and planning principles that will inform development, creating design that fits the character of the community. ...

The CCM contains detailed design standards that are written to fit the character and form of the Transect Category and Community Element. The design standards are all pertinent elements of site design and development which residents may use to have an open dialogue with developers on proposals that affect their community. The design principles include: Access, Block Length, Building Form, Connectivity (Pedestrian, Bicycle, and Vehicular) Density / Intensity, Landscaping, Lighting, Parking, Service Area, and Signage. 

It would have provided a common framework for dealing with change, identifying where it would or could happen, and why it should happen in some places and not others, and how it should happen where it is going to happen, while acknowledging that outside of ADUs and maybe corner stores (which economically, won't happen anyway, with some exceptions, because of the cost of land) most blocks of the city will remain unchanged.

In the Takoma case it would have made very clear that mostly, the residential blocks of the neighborhood will remain the same, and that some change, a limited amount, would occur in a handful of blocks in the transit station and commercial district catchment areas, based on planning principles appropriate for those blocks, recognizing the need to fit in with the overall neighborhood context, even though the density and height will be different.

(Brookland's a similar case.  Change will happen to about 8-10 blocks around the Metro station, but also to some of the industrial land along the railroad tracks, and to some of the commercial district on 12th Street, but the bulk of the residential blocks in the greater neighborhood will remain unchanged.  There, maybe 20 blocks will change out of 200+, and those blocks aren't residential now anyway.)

Instead the whole process is incredibly acrimonious at all scales, with neighborhood plans, and with proposed changes to the general zoning code, and still, despite the seven years and counting all the work that's gone into it, the proposed new code lacks a robust framework and foundation.  I chalk that up to a failure of leadership and approach.

The Height Limit discussions.  Another area that I would chalk up to a failure of planning leadership is the discussion of proposed changes to the height limit law.  I won't go into it, because it has been discussed elsewhere.  But I would argue that the city has never provided a good economic argument for why changes are needed, other than "we are getting to a point where there will be no more land left to develop."

I think the more compelling arguments in favor would have focused on what benefits the residents get from allowing taller buildings, how population density allows for the provision of more and new types of retail, provides more income tax money to fund municipal services, would help the central business district preserve its place as a prominent site of commerce and exchange vis-a-vis the region, which constantly markets against DC, and is now competing harder by adding transit to once distant locations like Tysons Corner, Reston, and Loudoun County, in order to compete for federal office space, and how on very long time frames (50 years), a change in the height limit will almost certainly lead to a positive change in affordability for both multiunit housing and commercial space, etc.

But most important to me is that an increase in commercial property values would lead to increased commercial property taxes, and this could fund Metrorail transit expansion in the city, to a level and scale far beyond what is proposed by WMATA.

Without that increase in revenue, Metrorail expansion won't happen in our lifetimes...

Even though the Office of Planning made a reasonable proposal which would only increase height by 25% (I think it could have been higher), the City Council did not vote in favor of considering a change.

Recognizing that the process of getting change enacted is incredibly difficult, involving the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal Government, and the local government, plus winning support of a majority of citizens, the fact that the City Council didn't vote in favor again strikes me as an indicator of a failure of planning leadership.

Other gaps in the planning process.  I could write just as much about the evident gaps in how DC does land use planning and how there has been no fundamental attempt to improve the process.

Gaps include:

-- a failure to plan adequately at the three scales of the city: city-wide; sub-districts (areas, districts, or sectors); and neighborhoods ("small area plans" are not comprehensive neighborhood plans, but "build out opportunity analysis and management plans);

-- no open and transparent public process for capital improvements planning and budgeting (most jurisdictions do this on a six-year running plan);

-- many of the city agencies that should have master plans do not, this includes libraries, public schools, fire and emergency services, health and wellness/health care, transportation, and parks (both transportation and parks are doing master planning currently).

Shouldn't an office of "planning" be advocating for the city to do integrated, comprehensive planning at all levels and working to improve how the city and the agency approaches and carries out its work?

Conclusion.  Such failures are not worthy of acclamation and commendation.