Two films on DC's waterfront to be screened tonight

(One of the many topics I've been meaning to write about is waterfront revitalization, in the context of some more recent efforts, especially in Chicago.  For example see the US News & World Report story, "Banking on the River," about Fort Wayne, Indiana and the Chicago Magazine story, "The River Queen," about Carol Ross Barney, the primary architect for the Chicago Riverwalk project.)

From email:

Sustainable Waterfronts shows two short films on DC Waterfronts tonight/7:00pm/Hill Center:

On the Waterfront with Arthur Cotton Moore.
Vimeo

This film highlights the work that Moore did in the 1960s and 1970s to rescue the Georgetown Waterfront from the stinky slum that it had become. Arthur Cotton Moore is a world-acclaimed architect for recently refurbished the interior of the Library of Congress.

Capitol Hill and Waterfront: A Bridge Across History. This new film was made with grant support from the Capitol Hill Community Foundation. It traces the historic relationship of the Southeast waterfront with the Capitol Hill community since the Capital was founded in 1791.

Sustainable Waterfronts is a 5013c foundation that focuses on the historic development of parks and rivers in the District of Columbia and beyond. Its mission is to help preserve the heritage of the city by producing educational films which can be distributed for free to community groups and public schools in the District. Washington is currently in the throes of great economic changes and social development. By offering a historical documentary on a vital part of our capitol, Sustainable Waterfront hopes to preserve a visual memory of a past that is slowly disappearing.

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Sustainable Waterfronts doesn't seem to have a website, but its main engine is John Wennersten, a retired professor who has written a number of books about rivers and waterfronts in the Chesapeake Bay region, including on DC:  Anacostia: The Death and Life of an American River and The Historic Waterfront of Washington, D.C..

I wasn't able to find the second film online.

Pay toilets

A recent issue of Store Brands magazine, on private-label food options for supermarkets, had a story on restrooms as an element of the supermarket store brand ("The bathroom: A significant store brand").

I wrote a brief piece this summer about the thing that surprised me the most about restrooms in public places, stores, museums, and train stations, was how compared to those places in the US, they were nice.  Really nice.

-- "Restrooms as an element of the public realm"

Here, we think going to the bathroom is dirty, something to be hidden and embarrassed about, and so public restrooms are value engineered.  And for the most part, a terrible aesthetic experience.

CityLab opines ("Pay Toilets Are Illegal in Much of the U.S. They Shouldn't Be") that whether or not restrooms are free doesn't matter if restrooms aren't made available. The quest to make pay toilets illegal was successful, but it ended up creating different problems. And anti-human responses, for example, San Francisco paints streetlight poles with an additive that "spits back" urine onto a person urinating on the pole ("San Francisco uses 'pee-proof' paint," CNN).

Public restrooms in public spaces, like in Camden Town or Covent Garden, and at train and bus stations in London, did have a small charge. I don't think there was a charge at Selfridges Department Store, I can't remember. Probably there was at the V&A Museum. They had a room for baby strollers, and it cost to use that too.

If the alternative is none at all, I say, have a small charge.

But imagine if stores took Store Brand's advice and made the restroom experience a key element of the brand experience, like the pink bathrooms at V&A Museum.


Some places that have nice enough restrooms in DC are Eastern Market, the National Building Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.

When I first came to DC, 30+ years ago, and used the facility in the Mayflower Hotel, I was surprised there was an attendant. (I don't know if that's still the case.) The city's hotels tend to have decent restrooms.

Although judging by "how hard" the restrooms are used at Union Station in DC, I believe that the cost of running public restrooms isn't cheap.

Who knew? There's been a freeway deck in Oak Park, Michigan over I-696 for almost 30 years

Freeways have been controversial in cities for many reasons.  They facilitate sprawl.  They sever neighborhoods.  They are noisy and impair air quality.  They've been used as a deliberate urban renewal device targeting low income communities and people of color.  They also support economic activity.

A more modern response to some of these problems is to tunnel freeways.  That happened with the "Big Dig" in Boston ("10 years later, did the Big Dig deliver?," Boston Globe) and is happening in Seattle, where the elevated Highway 99 is being re-created as a tunnel, although there the motivation isn't aesthetic, but has to do with the potential for earthquakes and re-engineering for withstanding them.

It ended up being cheaper to build a tunnel than to rebuild the freeway.  It will be opening early next year ("When does the viaduct close? How much is the tunnel toll? Your guide," Seattle Times).


Graphic of Highway 99/Alaskan Way Tunnel, Seattle.

It's happened in a bunch of cities in Europe including Madrid, Marseille and Thessaloniki.  Singapore has a series of underground freeways although the country has dialed back on the expansion of this network.

-- "City Parks, Like Madrid Río, Stand Where Highways Did," New York Times
-- "6 Freeway removals that changed their cities forever," Gizmodo

DC has some decks over I-395 between the National Mall (where it is tunneled) and between Constitution Avenue and K Street NE.

 A big development called Capitol Crossing is underway between Massachusetts Avenue and D Street, where a multi-building complex is being constructed.

Capitol Crossing freeway deck under construction

There's been talk about doing a similar development in Rosslyn, Virginia, but because the cost of construction is so high, it's not economically feasible to pursue it at this time, given the high vacancy rates for commercial office space in Northern Virginia.

I've suggested that such tunnels ought to be constructed in DC to divert commuter traffic from surface streets, because it has such deleterious impact on neighborhoods.

-- "Tunnelized road projects for DC and the Carmel Tunnel, Haifa, Israel example--tolls," 2011

Decks for parks.  The Bloomingdale Civic Association in DC is pursuing "decking over" part of North Capitol Street, not so much because they are looking to tunnel commuter traffic, but because of how the tunnel separates the Bloomingdale and Eckington neighborhoods, and they recently got a grant from the American Architecture Foundation to being planning for this.

They call this the Bloomingdale Village Square/Village Center project.

Separately, there is a parallel effort in the Dupont Circle neighborhood to deck over part of Connecticut Avenue where it is tunnelized, although I rue that it is not part of a broader package of complementary urban design improvements, something I'm long overdue in writing about.

-- Connecticut Avenue Streetscape and Deck-Over Project, DC Department of Transportation

The Klyde-Warren Park in Ballas is one example of a deck over a freeway for a park, and it's gotten a lot of press over the past few years because of its trendsetting nature ("Cities Are Banishing Highways Underground — And Building Parks," Stateline).

Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, before and after photos

It took decades to build finish building a suburban freeway in the Oakland County section of Greater Detroit, because it had to be threaded within existing communities ("AFTER 32 YEARS, MOTOR CITY GETS NEW LIFELINE," Chicago Tribune, 1989).

Imagine my surprise earlier in the week to learn that there's been a park deck over the I-696 Freeway in Oak Park, Michigan in Oakland County for almost 30 years.

This happened a couple years after I had moved to DC, and the primary motivation for construction was to enable  people's ability to walk to temple on the Sabbath in a comfortable manner in a heavily Orthodox Jewish community..

It happens that now there are problems with the bridge and parts of it need to be reconstructed ("Park-like Oak Park bridge over I-696 slated for $25-$30M replacement," Detroit Free Press).

Apparently, part of I-10 is routed underground in Phoenix through the construction of a series of bridges over the freeway, creating a tunnel about one-half mile in length and is topped by a park ("a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-contributor/2016/11/01/why-does-downtown-phoenix-have-tunnel/92709238/">Why does downtown Phoenix have a 'tunnel?'," Arizona Republic). It was constructed in 1990.


Another building focused freeway cap.  In Columbus, Ohio, one of the overpasses for the I-670 freeway has a deck constructed alongside, for buildings, which connects the street fabric between the two sides of the freeway ("Ohio highway cap at forefront of urban design trend," Chicago Tribune).



Photo: Meleca Architecture and Urban Planning

A building cap over railroad tracks in Queens, New York.  This is comparable to the Lefferts Boulevard Bridge atop of the tracks at the Long Island Railroad Station in Kew Gardens, Queens, in New York City.  That bridge was constructed in 1930 and is in need of replacement ("A Bridge, the Rickety Heart of Kew Gardens, Gets a Reprieve," NYT).

Shopping local during the holidays: Small Business Saturday and beyond

The holiday shopping season is touched off by so called "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving.

The big chains offer lots of deal busters to get shoppers in stores, and over the past few years stores have been opening earlier and earlier, including no longer waiting til Friday and opening on Thanksgiving.

Promotion of independent commercial districts and stores can be a hit or miss phenomenon.  Some retailers are good marketers, many are not.

The "Main Street commercial district revitalization approach" was developed to bring new resources to commercial districts, beyond that which are normally possessed by the typical business owner.

An example of a national program designed to promote small business, but that is realized only if local businesses and commercial districts organize to leverage it is Small Business Saturday.

The event was created a few years ago by the American Independent Business Alliance, the group that actively promotes the "Shop Local" movement,.to promote holiday shopping at local and independently owned businesses, as opposed to how most holiday shopping is focused on big box stores and national chains,

Cyber Monday/Giving Tuesday.  Other "interest groups" have jumped on the bandwagon and have developed companion days riffing off Black Friday.  E-commerce retail aims to make the Monday after Thanksgiving their biggest shopping day of the season and year, calling it Cyber Monday, while nonprofit organizations promote receiving fundraising donations on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Giving Tuesday.

For the past few years, the event has been sponsored by American Express, which originally offered inducements to card members as an incentive to shop local on that day.

They continue to put a lot of money into marketing, advertising, and promotional support.

That affiliation with American Express was too corporate for Takoma Park's Old Takoma Business Association, which created its own parallel event but without signing on to the American Express effort.

The economic value of shopping locally.  Research results are piling up demonstrating the thesis that spending money in stores based locally has greater economic benefit than shopping in chain stores, which buy few services locally (excepting labor) and don't spend profits locally.

See "Economic impact of locally owned hardware stores vs. big box stores," which discusses an economic impact study done by the North American Retail Hardware Association, which also produced "shop local" holiday promotional materials for this holiday season.

Reminders to shop local are necessary.  A big campaign promoting shopping at independently owned stores and in traditional, usually town-city based shopping districts as opposed to shopping malls, reminds people that spending money at locally-owned stores is important.

The reality is, with so many other marketing messages, people need to be educated and reminded.

Hopefully, the kind of inducement previously offered by American Express to their cardholders isn't required.

I think this is likely to be the case, because so many other retailers and independent shopping districts are now participating in the program, and marketing to consumer bases that goes beyond the segment comprised of American Express credit card holders.

Still, as traditional commercial districts begin skewing their mix of businesses and attractions to food and drink, it becomes harder to "shop locally" at the neighborhood scale, but more possible for "regionally serving small business districts."

By that I mean places with a strong representation of quality independent shops selling goods, like Manayunk or South Street in Philadelphia, Carytown in Richmond, Hampden in Baltimore, to some extent Alexandria, Virginia in the DC area, although many commercial districts have some retail outlets that people can still visit--it might be reconditioned or resale of goods stores though.

The North Park commercial district in San Diego has a great gateway sign.  San Diego funds business improvement efforts with the equivalent of a BID assessment, but many of the programs are organized as "Main Street" programs, which are more volunteer-based groups compared to staff-driven "downtown" associations driven by property owners.

One example of how a county business promotion division is using "Small Business Saturday" as a way to promote its businesses and business districts is Macomb County, Michigan.  See "Macomb County Shops Make Big Deal of Small Business Saturday," C&G Newspapers.

Signboard listing holiday events in Takoma Park's Old Town Takoma commercial district.  

Holiday marketing beyond Small Business Saturday. Many community business districts have figured out the holiday season, providing a large number of events and activities in a coordinated fashion.  And they market these events as part of a comprehensive calendar.

Line up of Holiday Events, 12/2018, Main Street Takoma Park, Maryland

In the DC region, Fredericksburg, Virginia, Frederick, Maryland, and Takoma Park, Maryland do a particularly good job.

In the Petworth neighborhood of DC, this year marks the 13th edition of the Upshur Street Arts & Crafts Fair on  Saturday December 1st.  (Last year they did it two weekends in a row, I guess that didn't work out.)

Artisans sell items from booths on the street, and retail stores and restaurants participate as well. 

For the few years, the Friends of the Petworth Library have held a book sale at the library in conjunction with the event too.  That's a particular smart example of leveraging existing events for other purposes, "latching on" and extending the value of the event by adding complementary activities.

Holiday Markets.  More cities are sponsoring holiday markets, modeled after the famous Christmas markets in Germany.  DC has its Downtown Holiday Market, on F Street between 7th and 9th Streets NW, next to the Smithsonian Museums there.  Baltimore has created a similar event.  Although I will say that a city needs to have a reasonably large population to make such an event work.

Hanukah.  The Jewish holiday of Hanukah isn't a gift-oriented holiday, although gift giving has become an element of it because of how the event and religion exists alongside other traditions.

More communities are recognizing that religious traditions other than Christian need to be better acknowledged when planning such activities.

NYC lights a menorah each year in Manhattan, billed as the "World's Largest Menorah," during the week long "Festival of Lights" in early December.

(Because of DC being the National Capital there are National Christmas Tree Lighting and Menorah Lighting events, but they don't have ramifications for stoking retail buying in traditional commercial districts.)

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Had the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade on tv a bit yesterday, while cooking.  Eventually changed from NBC to CBS because the latter focused more on the parade than all their various special sponsor promotions.

I can't remember which channel it was, but they featured a short story on how Ebay is a great option for holiday shopping.  Considering they were showing the "Macy's" Parade and that Macy's is primarily a "brick and mortar" store and that the department store category is declining in response to changes in shopper behavior along with e-commerce, I thought that was pretty ironic.

Of course, when NBC's feed did an interview with the CEO of Macy's, I helped offered the tv some suggested questions, such as "how many stores might you be closing next year?"

-- "A reckoning on 34th Street," video, CNBC-TV
-- "As Macy's shrinks its stores, CEO Jeff Gennette says this is what he will do with the extra space," CNBC-TV

First global benchmark for road safety in cities published by International Transport Forum

I've written from time to time on Vision Zero initiatives:

-- "A 'Vision Zero' Agenda for DC," 2014
-- "DC and Vision Zero Revisited," 2015
-- "Updating Vision Zero approaches," 2016
-- "A reminder about how the entitlement of automobility is embedded into law and democratizes death by accident," 2014

For the most part, DC's traffic-related deaths are about 30 people per year, half car-on-car and the other half involving pedestrians and cyclists ("Traffic deaths continue to soar despite cities pledges to get them to zero," Washington Post).

Because the number doesn't vary that much from year to year and "seems low" compared to other places, I've had a hard time figuring out whether or not DC is performing better or worse, and whether or not implementing all the various detailed recommendations I've come up with in the past would make much difference.

The International Transport Forum is a program of the OECD, and Safer City Streets is an initiative of the ITF.  SCS has just released a report benchmarking 31 cities ranging from Stockholm to Bogota.  In North America, Montreal and New York City are included.

They used the measure "deaths per 100,000 residents."  Stockholm had the fewest deaths on that score, 0.9 per 100,000, while Montreal had 1.8.


But with 700,000 residents, that means that DC's fatality rate is 4.28, almost five times higher than Stockholm, which has a population about 25% larger than DC, or 952,000 residents.  The study recognizes that better measures, including daytime population numbers--nonresident workers and visitors--are necessary to get a better handle on what the data means.

DC has a high daytime population, but so do most of the other comparison cities.  So now I see, comparatively speaking, DC's road-related fatality rate is pretty high.

The study finds that in cities, walking and cycling death rates are lower compared to countries as a whole, and within metropolitan areas, center cities are safer for vulnerable road users. Interestingly, the risk to men is about double that of women. Younger and older age cohorts are more vulnerable as well.

The report, Safer City Streets: Global Benchmarking for Urban Road Safety, makes some important recommendations, that cities should:

- create mobility observatories, to collect and report on a wide range of urban mobility and road safety data including on behaviors, attitudes and enforcement;

- collect traffic casualty data from hospitals, not only from police records, to obtain more accurate data;

- adopt ambitious targets to reduce the number of road casualties in cities;

- focus on protecting vulnerable road users;

- use appropriate indicators to measure the safety of vulnerable road users in cities;

- estimate daytime population to improve the comparability of traffic safety statistics (this would includes nonresident workers and visitors)

- prioritize research on urban road crashes.

I like the idea of creating "mobility observatories."

WRT DC, I've complained that the city's transportation dashboard doesn't provide data that is easy to interpret or actionable because it is gross-grained, with minimal detail.

For example, this article about pedestrian deaths in , details deaths by time of day and day of the week, etc.,

One advantage of "mobility observatories," which could be set up within city transportation or planning departments, is that by producing a standardized report and organized according to land use context, making the data comparable across jurisdictions.

Through benchmarking across jurisdictions--cities of different land use types, counties, etc.--jurisdictions could then get a better handle on directions and actions to take to achieve meaningful reductions.

Such data should be provided at the metropolitan state, and national scale, including a side by side listing of the nation's larger cities.

For example, San Francisco's population is not quite 900,000 and last year the city had 20 traffic-related deaths, although that was an anomalous 50% decrease compared to the general average of about 30 per year ("SF traffic fatalities in 2017 lowest in city's history," San Francisco Chronicle). Using the per 100,000 residents calculation, their rate for 2017 was 2.2, more than double that of Stockholm.

Boston had a similar number of deaths, 22, and almost two-thirds were pedestrians ("Fatal Pedestrian Crashes Up In Boston, According To City Report," WBUR/NPR), and the city has a population just under 700,000, so their rate was 3.14 deaths per 100,000 population, definitely lower compared to DC.

Etc.

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This Idaho Statesman article was interesting to me, "6 pedestrians hit, killed in Ada County in 2018. Would lower speeds, lights save lives?," because of how it differentiated data by time of day and other criteria, and seems a much more useful presentation that makes it possible to take real steps for change. From the article:

With a month and half left in 2018, the county has already had six pedestrian deaths. That ties the highest number of annual deaths in the past two decades, according to data from the Idaho Transportation Department. Canyon County has had one.

Last year, there were five pedestrian deaths in Ada County — and the number of people suffering incapacitating injuries doubled over the previous year from 20 to 43. That’s an injury that prevents a person from walking, driving and doing other normal activities. ...

Here’s what a review of ITD crash reports, police information and crash scenes showed:

• Three of the fatal crashes were in Boise, the others were in Garden City, Eagle and Meridian.
• Three occurred during the day, three at night. Poor lighting was a factor in the night crashes.
• Three of the pedestrians are believed to have been jaywalking when hit, one was standing next to a broken down car in the dark, one was laying in the road while doing mechanical work and one was in a crosswalk.
• One driver tested positive for alcohol but was well below the legal limit for driving. Two pedestrians tested positive for illicit drugs. That information is not yet available on the two most recent crashes.
• Four of the pedestrians killed were men, two were women. They ranged in age from 20 to 83.
• Four of the drivers were women, two were men. They ranged in age from 20 to 76.

“The one common denominator through most of them would be attention or lack of attention — whether that would be on the pedestrian’s part or driver’s part,” said Boise Police Detective Chad Wigington, who is part of the department’s crash reconstruction team

Separately, some newspapers, like the Toronto Star, have been running campaigns focused on vulnerable road users ("2017 another terrible year for road safety").

The Toronto Police Department provides a reasonably good traffic fatality dashboard. They just need to add time of day... It states that there were 62 deaths last year, so that makes the rate per 100,000 population 2.2, seemingly not terrible. But their pedestrian rate of death only would be 1.5 per 100,000 residents, which is high.

Thoughtful Thanksgiving host/ess gifts beyond wine

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Aargh.  I should have posted this at least one week ago.  Had I put this in my calendar it could have been published earlier and people would have had time to grab one of the books. 
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It happens that the traditional foods at Thanksgiving--turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, even cranberry sauce, vegetables (but not the green beans grossed up with mushroom soup and French fried onions) including squash, breads, pie (pumpkin, apple, pecan, sweet potato) and ice cream--comprise my favorite meal.

Two years ago, the brother of our next door neighbor and his wife made the best roasted turkey I've ever tasted, but now that family is living in Guatemala.

One of our contributions is roasted vegetables (who knew that by simply roasting them in olive oil, salt and pepper, brussel sprouts could actually taste really good?).

I want to make pie, but another attendee is making pies, not me.

Suzanne is really tempted by the Cranberry Relish pie recipe from Sister's Pie that was featured in a promotion by Whole Foods.  There's also an article about the firm and the recipe in last weekend's Wall Street Journal. ("Pies That Bind: Thanksgiving Recipes From the Heartland"). But you can find it online.

For the past few years I've finally been making my own crusts after having used refrigerated pre-made crusts, but it took awhile before I committed to using vegetable shortening, rather than trying various somewhat unsuccessful alternatives.  Shortening makes all the difference.

I'm finally better at rolling out the crust, but really I need an 18x24 cutting board to have enough space.

Newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post run themed Food sections related to Thanksgiving (and Christmas/Hanukah).  In 2016, the Times section focused on immigrants and how they've adapted to the Thanksgiving holiday and ritual with recipes of their own and modifications of traditional "American" dishes.

-- Thanksgiving Recipes - NYT Cooking
-- Thanksgiving 2016 - NYT Cooking

The Wall Street Journal provides other advice ("How to Have Thanksgiving Dinner Without a Family Blowup") for getting through the family meal as does this blog entry, "Tips and Resources for Better Thanksgiving Conversations," from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation.  From the article:

1. Be an active listener
2. Keep an open mind
3. Be curious
4. Discuss stories rather than debating facts
5. Look for common ground
6. Try to end on a positive note

In 2016, the New York Times had a great piece by writer Ann Patchett, "Collecting Strays at the Thanksgiving Table," about her first attempt at cooking Thanksgiving Day Dinner in her otherwise empty dorm backed up by Joy of Cooking. 

Now I use a line from Patchett's article all the time.  When people tell her they can't cook, Patchett replies "can't you read?" making the point that if you read and follow a recipe, unless it's super complicated, you'll end up with edible food.

Since Thanksgiving is the kick off for the holiday gift buying season, it occurs to me that it's possible to develop a great new Thanksgiving tradition for "host" gifts that are food/foodways related, rather than a quickly bought bottle of wine (although the Wall Street Journal suggests prosecco and other bubbly wines, "Why the Best Thanksgiving Wine Is Sparkling").

1.  A gift subscription to a regional food magazine.  A gift subscription to one of the Edible Communities regional publications on the local food system would be great.  They now have 83 affiliates in the US and Canada. Each magazine covers its local food scene, from farmers and restaurants to markets and recipes.

There are some places with magazines that aren't Edible Communities related. Devour Utah in Salt Lake City and Feast Magazine in Missouri are other examples. There was one in Virginia called Flavor, then Foodshed, but I don't think they are publishing anymore.

2. Or to Cook's Illustrated, an independently published specialty recipe magazine or Milk Street.

3.  Gift subscription to a regional lifestyle magazine that covers foodways issues.  If you live in the South (Southern Living), in California/Pacific Northwest (Sunset) or New England (Yankee Magazine) these magazines are great guides about homes, regional traditions, travel, and food, with great recipes.

4.  Books on regional foodways/cookbooks.  There are a number of books published that explore regional foodways and systems, and I think it would be cool to come in hand with a great book on regional foodways. Darrin Nordahl's book, Eating Appalachia: Rediscovering Regional American Flavors, explores the Appalachian region. Writing primarily about (but not limited to) the Southwest, Gary Nabhun has written many books about food, cuisine, and agriculture.

A good local bookstore ought to be able to make recommendations relevant to your region.  I'm still looking for a killer recipe for Brunswick Stew, a dish that both Georgia and Virginia claim as their own.

And, I never knew about Sweet Potato Pie until I moved to Washington and started eating in soul food restaurants.  Or oyster stuffing, which is common in the Chesapeake Bay region and the Pacific Northwest, where oysters are grown.  Or Mashed Turnips instead of mashed potatoes--they're really good.

Awhile back we were visiting friends in New York State, and the lady of the house is into pro-biotics (she makes her own kefir) and pickling.  She had a book, the Art of Natural Cheesemaking, that looks really cool, which provides the right kind of guidance for being able to make your own cheese, and a wide number of varieties too.

5.  Group cooking/resistance cookbooks.  I've noticed in the post-2016 election days of political organizing that there has been a spate of books published on cooking for groups/utilizing eating together as part of organizing. See the Fast Company article, "The Creator Of “Resistance Kitchen” Explains Why Food Is Resonating In The Age Of Trump."

Titles include Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved and Feed Your People: Big-Batch, Big-Hearted Cooking and Recipes to Gather Around.

6.  I'm a big fan of farmers market related cookbooks.  I think they would make great gifts.  This one is omnibus, not specific to a particular market (e.g., I have ones for Lancaster's Central Market, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Pike Place in Seattle among others),  Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets.

I haven't read this one yet, Cooking from Scratch: 120 Recipes for Colorful, Seasonal Food from PCC Community Market, but it's from the food cooperative in Seattle that I tout that should have been used as a model for a reimagined food co-op in Takoma Park Maryland ("The lost opportunity of the Takoma Food Co-op as a transformational driver for the Takoma Junction district").

7. Planning-related books on food and gardening.  I was first introduced to Darrin Nordahl through his books on urban agriculture and transit. Produce: Cultivating Our Parks, Plazas, and Streets for Healthier Cities, published by Island Press and now in its second edition, explores how to utilize public land as a way to grow food.

A community-focused illustration of Nordahl's thesis is presented in The Urban Garden: How One Community Turned Idle Land into a Garden City and How You Can, Too.

It explores the programs of Garden City Harvest, a non-profit in Missoula, Montana.  They sponsor a variety of a farm projects, community gardens, school-based gardens, and CSAs, and the book discusses the impact of participation on individuals and the community.

It's in the vein of The Town That Food Saved, about a very small Vermont town which is reorienting its economy around artisanal food production.)

Edible City has been out for a few years, and explores Greater Toronto's food system.  It's a model for cities in how to cover this topic in a readable way, but focused on planning and policy.

(The book was published by Coach House Books as part of series called uTOpia, addressing various concerns in the Toronto region from a variety of perspectives.  That series too is a model of the value of having local publishing houses focused on publishing titles relevant to their region.)

In proof of the adage that big issues never go away, just pop up again and again in slightly different guises, note the headline at the bottom of the page of this 1923 magazine cover.

8. Herb planters.  Or how about a set of seeds, planter and soil (planted by you) of herbs, a so called "kitchen garden" so that your host--after the plants have grown--has access to fresh herbs for cooking.

9. Locally-produced artisan food items.  They can be specially produced items, locally produced wine, or even ice cream.  For example, in DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Northern Virginia, bringing a couple half-gallons of Trickling Springs Ice Cream (my favorite flavor is Coffee Bean Frappe).

Virginia has a great variety of vineyards.  (We're fond of Ingleside Vineyards in Virginia's Northern Neck, which is on the way to the George Washington Birthplace National Monument.)

At least in the Maryland side of the DC area, it's pretty common to have vineyards, breweries, and distillers hawking their products at farmers markets, so that can be a place to score some locally produced alcoholic beverages.

10.  Besides bringing a gift, how about making a gift to a food-related charity in honor of Thanksgiving and in the name of the host/ess?  Food banks and community feeding programs of various sorts are an obvious choice.  Or farmers markets serving the underserved (like the Crossroads Community Market in Takoma Crossroads/Langley Park, Maryland).  Or community kitchen/food incubators, like the one being developed in Takoma Park.  Or programs working with youth like DC's Brainfood.

For Thanksgiving, FRESHFARM farmers markets have designated a food charity for each of their markets through a program they call the Fresh Food Drive.  Donations are used to buy fresh foods that the organizations will use in cooking holiday meals.

Last year, Ayanna Smith of the Escape Lounge on H Street NE started a tradition of her own.  But I think she has moved out of the area.

From email:

Hi Everyone,

As some of you may recall, last year around the holidays I collected toiletries and new socks for the homeless and a group of families and friends went out into the streets on Christmas day to distribute them to people in need.

A number of the people from the community who donated items said they requested guests bring items to holiday gatherings and that allowed them to make large donations to this effort. So, I wanted to hit you all up with this ask before Thankgiving, in case you may be willing to ask your dinner guests to bring items to donate.

Here's what you can donate to the toiletry bag drive:

• New packs of socks for adults and children
• Feminine products
• Travel size soap, lotion, toothpaste
• Toothbrushes
• Gloves (adults and children)

You can email or text me to arrange to drop off your donation at The Escape Lounge on H Street (202-664-0900). Or, I can pick it up. Those of you who know where I live can leave your donations on my porch.

I will continue to collect donations until Saturday, December 16th.

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What a great thing to do.  Better probably than spending time dishing out food at a food kitchen.

One of my neighbors, Erin Palmer, an incoming ANC Commissioner, is organizing a food drive for the new short term homeless family housing building in our Ward.
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11.  Set a place at the dinner table for a "silent, unseen guest".  In this vein, History News Network has a post, "This Thanksgiving Invite a “Silent Guest” to Dinner," about how students at Ohio's Mount St. Joseph University are leading a "silent guest" food program fundraising campaign ("Students revive 'silent guest' tradition," Cincinnati Enquirer. Apparently it is modeled after a campaign in the late 1940s ("Feed a silent guest and help promote peace," Wichita Eagle. From the article:

After World War II, thousands of American households took in "silent guests" at Thanksgiving. The "silent guest" campaign of 1947-48 asked Americans to open up their hearts and share their Thanksgiving bounty. Governor Robert Bradford of Massachusetts, a descendant of the Pilgrims who started Thanksgiving, proclaimed the new tradition of feeding a "silent guest" at the holiday meal.

American families were asked to donate the cost of feeding their "silent guest" to a committee in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The "silent guest" donations from Americans led to CARE packages of food being sent to starving families overseas. This was crucial for many countries in Europe, who were still reeling from the destruction caused by World War II. Drought had struck in the summer of 1947, causing severe food shortages.

The food from the "silent guest" helped keep Europe afloat until the U.S. backed Marshall Plan to rebuild could kick in. As Secretary of State George Marshall said, "food is the very basis of all reconstruction."

Enjoy the day.

Interesting semi-merger of public health departments for a city and county: RIchmond and Henrico County

Virginia is a very interesting state jurisdictionally, because cities are considered separate legal entities from counties, even if a city functions as a county seat.  Among other ramifications, that means cross-subsidization of cities by counties isn't possible, often cities have school systems separate from counties, and agencies in other states that are typically county serving, like a public health agency, are duplicated.

Richmond is the state capital of Virginia and legally separate from neighboring counties including Henrico and Chesterfield.  This creates problems for all kinds of services, especially transit.

But Richmond and Henrico County are aiming to have their public health agencies work more closely together.

They aren't merging the departments into a unified entity.

Instead, they have each appointed Dr. Danny Avula to be the director, and aim to create a single executive team to coordinate and manage the two different departments ("Richmond and Henrico launch collaboration on public health," Richmond Times-Dispatch).  From the article:

Dr. Danny Avula, a pediatrician, has served as the director of the Richmond Health Department since 2016 and has been acting director of the Henrico County Health Department since last year. This collaboration makes his leadership over both departments official.

“The reality is that public health issues don’t just stop at jurisdictional lines,” Avula said. “These issues we’re dealing with ... aren’t things that one locality can solve on our own. We really need to develop more thoughtful regional strategies.”

In the early 2000s and again after the recession, there was more of this kind of activity, mergers of agencies across city, township, and/or county borders, to cut costs, such as with library systems or fire and emergency services.

Some states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey (under former Governor Chris Christie) aimed to force mergers of various small districts, especially schools, into larger districts.

A now old report by the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County found that Pennsylvania has amongst the most fragmented structure of local government in the nation.

-- LITTLE BOXES” – LIMITED HORIZONS A STUDY OF FRAGMENTED LOCAL GOVERNANCE IN PENNSYLVANIA: ITS SCOPE, CONSEQUENCES, AND REFORMS

Retiring SF MUNI CFO Sonali Bose appears to be a dream hire from the standpoint of transit riders

The San Francisco Chronile reports ("Muni CFO Sonali Bose departs, creating another challenge for SF’s transit agency") on the retirement of Sonali Bose, the Chief Financial Officer of the SF MUNI transit system, one of the most highly used city-only transit systems in the US.  From the article:

The woman who doubled the budget of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency — replacing the junked buses of the past with a splashy new fleet — is heading out the door, creating a new challenge for an agency that is struggling to gain public trust. ...

Some call her a political fixer: the rare transit bureaucrat who urged her allies to chair commissions and lined up votes for the policies she wanted. Others deem her a truth-teller: the woman in a blazer and a cotton dress who gamely criticized mayors and department heads when she thought they made bad decisions. Most people praise her for fixing the budget of a $1 billion agency that was in disarray before she arrived.

Sonali Bose was inspired to “get into (SFMTA) and figure out what the hell is going on” after buses passed her while she waited at a stop one day in 2003. Photo by Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“When I walked in, I went, ‘Whoah,’” Bose, 60, said. “It was 2006, and the agency was starved of talent and resources. The budget was about half what it is today.”

Over the next 12 years, she raised the SFMTA’s credit rating to be the highest of any transit agency in the country. She oversaw a new parking program that adjusts rates at meters and garages to match demand. She helped fund the biggest increase in Muni bus and rail service that San Francisco has ever seen and increased the revenue from the agency’s advertising contracts from $400,000 to $30 million. ...

“She wasn’t just a CFO — she was this tireless, in-your-face advocate for the SFMTA,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, chair of the Transportation Authority, the body that makes decisions on sales tax spending and some projects.

“She was the kind of person who would text me in the middle of a Transportation Authority meeting, either berating me or provoking new thoughts,” Peskin said. “She did not allow her behavior to be boxed in politically or financially.”

He and others called Bose a “guiding force” who fought relentlessly to improve the financial situation at the SFMTA, and who saw results.

Interesting rapid transit videos: London; Chicago; Glasgow

Nigel, our e-correspondent from New Zealand, has found some interesting videos that most of us probably haven't seen.

London Underground.  There was a Channel Five series on the London Underground--multiple parts--which isn't available in the US per se, but is up on Youtube ("Inside the Tube: Going Underground series on Channel 5," WIRED UK).



Chicago Transit Authority.  He also found videos that CTA has produced, showing their various lines.  Like this one for the Orange Line.


-- CTA "Ride the Rails" videos

It reminded me of a presentation I saw a couple years ago by the then president of Amtrak, illustrating the various problems and bottlenecks in the system through "train ride" videos.

That wasn't done here--using the videos as a supporting argument for making and financing improvements--but it would be a good model for NYC Subways and WMATA/DC area Metrorail.

Glasgow Subway.  This well produced video by a fan is interesting and looking at some of the images of the above ground entrances, the use of architectural lighting on escalators, and the way the "S" subway sign is lit at night made me think of my points about "transportation infrastructure as elements of civic architecture."

-- "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," 2013
-- "Transit stations as an element of civic architecture/commerce as an engine of urbanism," 2016
-- "Transportation infrastructure as a key element of civic architecture/economic revitalization #1: the NoMA Metrorail Station," 2016
-- "Transportation Infrastructure and Civic Architecture #3: Rhode Island Avenue Pedestrian Bridge to the Metrorail station," 2016



It also made me think that maybe transit doesn't have to be "fun" a la Darrin Nordahl in his Island Press published book My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation, but certainly through architecture and design it can be made a lot more interesting and yes "fun."

An update to Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization on the failure of wine bar restaurants in DC and Baltimore

The original "Richard's Rules" post dates to 2005, and was a response to an article about "destination restaurants" as key to neighborhood revitalization in Philadelphia.  I countered that restaurants to be successful needed to focus on developing neighborhood residents as frequent customers eating out at their establishment multiple times per week.

-- "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Driven Revitalization (updated)," 2005, is the basic piece, with five rules (below) and a list of elements denoting quality restaurants
-- "Revisiting Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization," 2010, discusses a couple restaurants which repositioned away from upscale to more "comfort" food, to better meet the desires of neighborhood consumers
-- "Updating Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Driven Revitalization," 2013, continues to discuss this in the context of commercial retail district development
-- "DC restaurants: location and equilibrium," 2014, ditto.
-- "A note on food halls," 2017
-- "Successful retail today often includes food, experiences, social elements, and isn't rote," 2016

Last year's piece "Destination restaurants as a call for revisiting "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization"," updated this discussion some in line with the city pushing 700,000 residents making it possible to support the outward spread of restaurant creativity beyond regionally-serving restaurant clusters like Downtown and Georgetown.

Ruta del Vino.

But the failure of a wine bar, Ruta del Vino, a Latin American wine and food concept, on Upshur Street NW ("Ruta del Vino Wine Bar Closes After 2-Year Run in Petworth, Eater DC) and Baltimore's Wine Market Bistro/Ludlow Market ("Ludlow Market Closes in Locust Point" and "Ludlow Market opens as more casual replacement of Wine Market Bistro,"  SBmore.com) provides an opportunity to further refine the discussion.

Categorizing restaurant districts.  While neighborhoods are supporting expensive destination restaurants, recognizing that the customer base for these restaurants is mostly derived from non-residents, the demand isn't unlimited, and some concepts probably work better in restaurant districts that are more central and have a larger customer base with positioning that isn't reliant on an individual restaurant "having to do all the advertising and marketing themselves."

There are at least five primary categories of urban restaurant districts:

(1) regional and touristy-serving, like Downtown and Georgetown, but also Alexandria and now The Wharf district in SW DC, probably the Ballpark District/Navy Yard

(2) center city/metropolitan serving, like 14th Street NW, Adams-Morgan, U Street NW, and H Street NE in DC, or Bethesda and Silver Spring in Montgomery County, Maryland

(3) day-time office district serving (which can be a "daypart" distinction for regional and center city districts that serve different market segments at night)

(4) larger neighborhood serving districts like Dupont Circle, Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights

(5) smaller neighborhood serving districts like Old Takoma in Takoma Park Maryland, abutting DC.

The "Rules" call for food and by extension, drinking, concepts that aren't super specialized, a more common denominator, like "Mexican" food, not Indian, with the suggestion that Thai food is now a more universal cuisine, etc.

Granted places like Bad Saint (Filipino) in Columbia Heights, Himitsu (Japanese) in Petworth, Rose's Luxury in Capitol Hill are super specialized and/or expensive and they do fine in "neighborhood" locations.

But maybe there is a limit to how much specialization can work in neighborhood restaurant districts.

Are "neighborhood" wine bars too specialized for today's food and beverage preferences?  I wonder about "wine bars."  I'm thinking that these business failures mean that at a minimum wine bars as a sub-category of restaurants need to be more carefully located, probably in "metropolitan-serving" districts that have much larger customer bases and are more convenient to get to than neighborhoods that may be more out of the way and harder to reach by transit

Both establishments were reasonably well-regarded.  Wine Market Bistro had been in business for almost 14 years, but Ruta del Vino only 2 years.  Both found that the customer base for "heavy" wine consumption was declining.

I can't speak of Wine Market Bistro because I never went there but I did go to Ruta del Vino.

First, Suzanne's the wine drinker not me, I prefer craft beer (and porters at that).  But second, the food while good was overpriced vis a vis the quality and the value (the ceviche was great, the parillada needed more meat, but was cool as a dish served for two).

Third, others complained that the service wasn't that great, although in comments, the owner "complained" that it was difficult to find good help, but also that business was spotty.

Inside the space was a knock out, although outside there were issues (the way a garbage dumpster for an adjoining building is out front, a bus shelter right next to the patio, unkempt treeboxes, etc.).  They didn't invest much in maintaining the public space outside the restaurant.

But to go there a lot you have to want to drink a lot of wine.  Most people aren't doing that when they go out to eat.  A special occasion restaurant needs to draw on a larger "retail trade area" beyond that of a neighborhood to keep seats filled.

And they have to be able to execute the quality-value-price-service equation.

Wine bars/in-city wineries as destinations/experiences.  Note that District Winery in the Navy Yard and City Winery in Ivy City ("City Winery Is Opening in Ivy City DC for Music and Wine Fans Alike," Washingtonian Magazine) are destinations, hold events, and are owned by well-funded restaurant groups with multiple interests. 

These establishments operate on a much different scale than Ruta del Vino or Ludlow Market and they are located in "metropolitan" serving districts.

I think Ruta del Vino, had it been able to execute, would have done much better on 14th Street NW in Logan Circle/P Street, or Wine Market Bistro/Ludlow Market on Charles Street or in Federal Hill, or possibly in the private Belvedere Square Market, which functions like a public market.

Grand Cata wine shop.

Selling bottles for off-premise consumption + food and drink on-premise as a way to make the restaurant work?  Possibly, Ruta del Vino could have been more successful had it been paired with a sales shop, like Grand Cata on 7th Street NW in Shaw, but that didn't work for Ludlow Market.

On the other hand, a Ruta del Vino type restaurant next to Grand Cata, if well executed, would probably do just fine.

So how much of this comes down to operators?  Although again, with Ludlow Market, that was a concept run by a highly experienced operator and it had worked for a long time, until it didn't.

Cideries.  Another drink concept that seems to me to be over-expanding a bit is cider ("Two Consultants Quit Their Jobs to Open a Cidery in DC Later This Fall," Washingtonian).

DC has Anxo, on Florida Avenue NW (left) and with an outpost on Kennedy Street NW, and the new Capitol Cider House on Georgia Avenue in Petworth.

These are destinations.  I think over the long term, firms need to carefully consider where they locate their concepts.

Anxo on Florida Avenue and Capitol Cider House on Georgia Avenue ("Capitol Cider House Opens in Petworth with a Local-Only Bar," Washingtonian) are very visible and likely have staying power.

Locations in neighborhood-serving districts, like Ruta del Vino, Ludlow Market, and Anxo on Kennedy Street NW may have more difficulty being sustainable.

... people are likely to be less inclined to drink cider than wine.

Train station platform "safety"

A Newsday article, "Crowded Penn Station platforms have LIRR riders on edge - literally," discusses problems at Penn Station on Long Island Railroad platforms, because the platforms are too narrow for the number of passengers.

The article references Katherine Hunter-Zaworski, a professor at Oregon State University and a co-author of a forthcoming TCRP report on the subject, TCRP A-40 Manual to Improve Safety at the Platform-Train Interface (PTI). (Presentation by Professor Hunter-Zaworski on the outline for the report.)

I am not well traveled, but I have been in train stations in Germany and the UK. The main station in Hamburg is as busy or busier than the busiest train stations in the US.

The big difference is that the platforms are much wider. Hamburg train station.


Liverpool Lime Street Station


Penn Station


Granted LIRR/MTA/Amtrak/USDOT don't want to reconfigure the trackage system under Penn Station because it would be an engineering and cost nightmare, but width of the platforms is the biggest issue. Without changing platform width, everything else is just dealing with the constraints.

It occurs to me in passenger train service there should be a manual like the Shared-Use Path Level of Service Calculator, to determine ideal widths of multi-use trails, based on regular usage numbers.

Unshared parking

One of the problems of financialization of real estate as well as outsourcing is the disconnect that can occur between different functions of a property. 

This happens a lot with the parking function, which tends to be outsourced to an independent firm specializing in parking. 

Such firms only operate according to the dictates of the contract and are more concerned about maximizing profits, not about managing parking as a resource that supports the economic activity of the firms located in and around the building.

This is the case with a matter I am dealing with on Capitol Hill, related to Eastern Market, the city's public market.  In a meeting, one of the people was going on about how "they should care because the customers of the building's tenants also use the parking" and I countered that in all likelihood, the parking function is "jobbed out" to a different firm--she scoffed but of course it turned out I was right.

Some customers were confused by the signs in the Stansted retail park near Stansted. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian.

The Guardian has a story ("Is this Britain’s most ridiculous parking fine?") about this in London, where properties adjacent to Stansted Airport seemingly have a shared parking lot, but don't, and the parking contractor has put in an array of CCTV cameras so that they can "fine" transgressors to the tune of £60, because they park in the lot of one firm but go instead to an adjacent tenant.

This angers the customers of the businesses, but the businesses in turn are renters also, and don't have any input into the master agreement between the property owner and the parking manager. The parking manager is not incentivized to manage the parking in a way that benefits customers.  (Another example is the City of Chicago's long term lease of parking structures and street meters to private investors, who again, are interested in maximizing economic return, not contributing to the public good.)

There are many similar examples. Every few years this comes up in Bethesda in Montgomery County, where people park in a place like a bank or a business that is closed, and then get towed/ticketed by managers of the lot ("Predatory Towing Continues In Downtown Bethesda," Bethesda Magazine).

And the Wharf district in DC should have created an underground parking structure unified across all the properties, but because some buildings have different ownership that isn't possible. But had it been done that way, all the motor vehicle traffic could have been captured on the perimeter of the property, and the interior could have been exclusively pedestrian.  See "Multiblock Underground Shared Parking" from Urban Land Magazine.

When I first learned about the concept of "shared parking" about 12 years ago, it was revelatory   ("Onsite Parking: The Scourge of America's Commercial Districts," Planetizen).

-- "What is shared parking?," International Transportation and Development Institute

Now it just upsets me that virtually zero progress has been made.

-- "Parking districts vs. transportation/urban management districts: Part one, Bethesda" (2015)
-- "Parking districts vs. transportation/urban management districts: Part two, Takoma DC/Takoma Park Maryland" (2015)
-- "Reston Town Center parking issue as a "planning failure" by the private sector" (2017)
-- "Testimony on parking policy in DC" (2012)
-- "Municipal taxes and fees #2: parking" (2010)
-- "The High Cost of Free Parking" (2005)

Could "fast freight rail" service be a way to make High Speed Rail more viable?

High Speed Rail is uniformly discussed in terms of passenger service, and is usually promoted for operation in high density corridors between major cities, pairs such as New York-Boston, or San Diego-Los Angeles-San Francisco, or Dallas-Houston.

It happens that the freeways connecting these cities typically are engorged with delivery truck traffic too.

Passenger rail service in the modern era isn't hugely profitable, at least in the US, while freight delivery remains reasonably profitable.

Plus, demand ("More surcharges, rejected freight sting US truck firms," Journal of Commerce) is making it hard to find drivers ("'What Does a Trucker Look Like?' It's Changing, Amid a Big Shortage," New York Times)) and simultaneously, demand for long distance truck delivery services is increasing, in part because of the rise of online commerce.

Why not consider trying to shift some freight service to a high speed rail network? Which would also help to reduce truck traffic on major interstates, reduce GHG emissions, etc.  It would also make HSR more economically viable.

Italy is about to launch such a service.  From Railway Gazette International ("Mercitalia launches high speed freight service"):

FS Group freight subsidiary Mercitalia is to launch its first high speed freight service on November 7. FS says the Mercitalia Fast service is designed to meet the needs of express courier companies, logistics operators, producers and distributors.

Operated by a converted ETR500 trainset, the Mercitalia Fast overnight service will convey express parcels and premium freight between the Maddaloni-Marcianise terminal near Caserta and Bologna Interporto, using the country’s north-south high speed line. According to Mercitalia Logistics General Manager Marco Gosso, Mercitalia Fast will be the first express freight service to use the Alta Velocità/Alta Capacità high speed network. With the train running at an average speed of 180 km/h, the end-to-end journey time will be just 3 h 30 min.

The trainset has been adapted to carry 1 m3 roll cages with a 220 kg payload, which will make loading and unloading ‘quick, efficient and safe’. With the 12-car train able to carry the equivalent of 18 articulated lorries or two Boeing 747 freighters, the daily train is expected to relieve the main north-south A1 motorway of around 9 000 lorries a year, reducing CO2 emissions by 80% compared to road haulage.

If it works, they intend to expand the service to other nodes in Italy's high speed rail network.

In Dresden, Volkswagen uses the local light rail system to move vehicles and parts between plants, with a special trainset called the "CarGoTram."  That example has spurred more local transit agencies to look at their light rail systems for other opportunities in freight logistics and delivery ("Light rail network used for freight transport," Rail Freight).


Granted, this is more of what I call intra-district transit rather than long distance freight transportation, but it's still an example of rethinking passenger transit systems as being solely focused on passenger service.

Back in the day, sttreetcar systems and interurban--a mode that mixed shorter distance streetcar transit over long distances today the South Shore Line in Indiana and Illinois with service to Chicago is the only remaining functioning interurban in the US--would be used for overnight freight service.

Canada has a "Municipal Benchmarking Network"

-- Municipal Benchmarking Network Canada
-- 2017 MBNCanada Performance Measurement Report

Its most recent report draws attention to the fact that Montreal spends a lot more money on roads than other cities, yet the quality of the roads does not match the spending.

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I point out frequently that municipal dashboards in many cities aren't particularly robust, don't provide actionable information, and lack comparison information so that one can figure out whether or not the functioning of a particular agency is better or worse.

Today (November 8th) is World Urbanism Day/World Town Planning Day

Oops.
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And October was National Community Planning Month.

-- World Town Planning Day, American Planning Association
-- World Town Planning Day, International Society of City and Regional Planners
-- World Town Planning Day, Royal Town Planning Institute

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Feedspot has named "Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space" a Top 100 Urban Planning blog.


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In honor of the day, below is a reprinted entry from 2011.  Also see "Rethinking community planning around maintaining neighborhood civic assets and anchors."
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Thursday, May 26, 2011

One way in which community planning is completely backward

I hate to be put in the position of agreeing with Washington Examiner editorial writer Barbara Hollingsworth, of whom I normally have the tendency to excoriate, but her piece, "Fairfax school officials to review closing Clifton Elementary," on the closure of Clifton Elementary School, a community school serving a rural section of Fairfax County, illustrates a problem that we have in cities also, when decisions to close schools based on enrollment levels or the cost to rehabilitate the school end up having devastating impacts on the quality of neighborhood-community life. (Also see this article about the school from 2010, "Parents, officials 'appalled' at decision to close Clifton school.")

This morning's Washington Post also has a long piece on Clifton School, "Closure shuts many doors," focusing on the community-connectedness, volunteerism, and involvement of the community within the school and outside of the school deriving in part from the way that the school knits the community together.

I joke sometimes that "offices of planning" aren't really planning offices, but "offices of land use" or even "offices of land use development" because so much of the "planning" done by the other government agencies isn't coordinated by the office of planning and/or never comes before the office for substantive comment.

A key example is schools planning, which for the most part, is the domain of the local public school system, with limited input from other agencies, including the office of planning.

As far as delivering educational programs that's fine. (Well, it isn't, but that's another story.)

But the problem is the disconnect between the reality that schools, especially elementary schools, are a basic building block and foundation of quality neighborhoods and local community.

Schools are the fulcrum of community activity in so many places, and provide the means for people to meet and interact within communities outside of strict propinquity--meaning you have a chance to meet and become friends with a wide variety of people, not just the people you live next door to or across the street from.

Just like I believe that transportation planning needs to be done at two levels: (1) at the metropolitan level, setting requirements for network breadth and depth, level of service standards for the network and specific services; and (2) at the level of transit operations; schools planning in terms of providing a base level of "coverage" and neighborhood strengthening qualities and programs should not solely be the domain of the school system.

Instead, the community's land use, neighborhood, and economic development planning initiatives need to take the lead on this so that all neighborhoods are served by at least one quality public school.

But in my neighborhood, which is gaining households with children, I don't know any families that send their children to the local elementary school, which is five blocks away. Mostly, their children go to charter schools or private day care. Although I guess people with children (and the people who live next door to them) end up meeting other families with children throughout the neighborhood because when they are out walking with their children, the kids end up being a "social bridge" that ease the process of meeting and making others' acquaintance.

In Baltimore County, the school system and the parks and recreation department have had for at least 50 years a memorandum of understanding about joint use of public school facilities for recreation programs.

In practice, that means that schools are used for more hours of the day and that the County doesn't need two different buildings to serve different functions. At the same time, certain school facilities such as gyms and auditoriums may be "overbuilt" so that they also can handle larger community functions, but that the money to pay for this comes in part from the Department of Recreation and Parks.

This idea needs to be extended so that a base number of schools are designated as what we might call "neighborhood foundation" schools, and the resources provided to the school would be funded in part for neighborhood stabilization and resident attraction and marketing purposes, meaning that some funds to maintain the schools in such places would come from outside of the budget of the school system.

Fixing the quality of the education program that is delivered is another question, one that I have written about plenty over the years.