Revisiting Takoma Junction and the Takoma Co-op development issue | A chance to start over

The Washington Post reports that the Montgomery County Planning Board has rejected the development proposal for the Takoma Junction parking lot site in Takoma Park, Maryland ("Montgomery planners reject Takoma Park development").

The Planning Board decided thusly because the project wasn't able to receive approval from the State Highway Administration for a layby for delivery access.  The SHA has jurisdiction because the site abuts a state arterial 

I wrote about this project in 2018 ("The lost opportunity of the Takoma Food Co-op as a transformational driver for the Takoma Junction district").

I lamented that the project is extraordinarily contentious because it involves the Takoma Co-op, the parking lot next door which is owned by the city, the general anti-development sentiment of "Tako-manians" (this was what someone I met calls residents of Takoma Park), and the ability of the member-based Co-op to mobilize its members to oppose what it wants to be opposed.

Currently the site is a parking lot, which has been used by many of the Co-op's shoppers, and also as a site for community events.

Takoma anti-development attitudes that are behind the times. Attempts to develop the site have meandered for 20+ years, comparable to the Takoma Metrorail site ("The Takoma Metro Development Proposal and its illustration of gaps in planning and participation processes," 2014) and the two sites share similar issues:

-- historical anti-development sentiment which resulted in key victories, shaping for 50 years  the ethos and attitudes of involved Takoma residents 

Note that these successes were key--fighting off proposals for urban freeways, and later, development proposals that were inappropriate for the Takoma Metrorail site, but those successes have led many people to reflexively oppose everything, rather than to be judicious in what they support as well as what they don't support.

- an unwillingness to acknowledge that anchor sites in commercial districts have different development conditions than residential areas typified by one and two story houses

Non profit food cooperatives can be part of mixed use developments. The 2018 piece lists a number of mixed use projects around the country with food co-operatives on the ground floor--Seattle, Minneapolis, Rochester, Minnesota, Brattleboro, Vermont, and Great Barrington, Massachusetts--with mostly housing above.  

Of course, the DC area, including Suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia, has plenty of examples of mixed use grocery projects involving for profit supermarkets, including Giant, Safeway, Harris-Teeter, the small independent Streets (three stores in DC and one in Arlington), Walmart, Aldi, and the smaller Yes Market Natural Grocery--in another project developed by the Neighborhood Development Company nearby on Georgia Avenue in the Petworth neighborhood of DC.

Takoma Junction is underpowered.  As a commercial district, Takoma Junction isn't particular successful, other than the Food Co-op, because it doesn't have a lot of nearby population.

Takoma Park is mostly single family residential with comparatively big lots, so other than the Co-op, a gas station and auto repair place, there isn't a lot going on there, and quality retailers don't tend to last.

Likely most of the Co-op's customers drive.

Ideally the parking lot site would be developed in conjunction with the Takoma Co-op, by incorporating its current site/building (and even the abutting Takoma Fire Station), allowing for a larger mixed use project, using as models the projects I mentioned in the 2018 piece.  

Instead because of the Co-op's intransigence, the parking lot project was designed to be separate from the Co-op, and because of residents reflexive opposition to buildings taller than two stories, not particularly transformational.

The Takoma Junction MC project adds space, albeit more modern, in an area where space isn't the problem, the problem is the attractiveness of the retail offerings and whether or not they are attractive enough to draw customers from a larger area.   

Not including housing is a significant opportunity cost, because of the clear demand for housing in the Washington Metropolitan Area, the almost zero availability of build out opportunities in the core of Takoma Park, and the fact that the site is within reasonable walking distance of the Takoma Metrorail Station.

On the far left is the Takoma Co-op, 

the buildings to the right are the proposed TakomaJunctionMC project

The best possible project would create an awesome co-op grocery, and a bit more retail space, while adding housing--2-3 floors of apartments, to add housing and broaden the range of housing types available in Takoma Park.  Ideally 3, even 4 stories of apartments, would be best, although it would be taller than other buildings in the Junction.

Examples of nearby projects as models would be the Takoma Central apartments on Carroll Avenue in DC, which peak at about four stories; the Gables Apartments on Blair Road, or the smaller Willow + Maple "garden apartments."

Gables Apartments

The Takoma Central apartments use different types of bricks mixed with modern elements.

Design wise it's not particularly, great, but it wouldn't have been difficult to make it better.

Rainer Square Tower, Seattle.  Wikipedia photo.

Puget Consumers Cooperative, Seattle. Last week the PCC Co-op in Seattle just opened its newest store ("‘Our city’s not dead yet’: PCC opening highlights promise of, and challenges to, downtown Seattle’s recovery," Seattle Times, press release) and while I haven't visited the store, I have visited others.  

It's part of a Downtown skyscraper,  58 stories, with other retail, offices, and apartments.  

Now PCC has five stores in Seattle that are part of mixed use developments.  There is also the Central Co-op in Capitol Hill, which is topped by apartments too.

The other co-operative + housing projects mentioned in the previous entry are all much smaller, and more typical of a site like the one in Takoma Park.

PCC is a top notch operation that would be a great model for the Takoma Food Co-op, as a way to reposition and expand.

The rejection by the  Planning Board provides an opportunity to start over.  The rejection of the development proposal by the Montgomery County Planning Board gives the stakeholders in Takoma Junction the chance to start over and create an awesome project.

The project as proposed was a waste of an opportunity to do something great.  Once a site is developed, it becomes much harder to redevelop, so better that the project not go forward at this particular time.

If Takoma Park is capable of breaking out of its narrow ways, the City, the Co-op (as a member of the National Cooperative Grocer Association, the Takoma Co-op should be familiar with best practice and mixed use cooperatives around the country), Neighborhood Development Company, and interested residents could start over, work together jointly, and develop a project they could be proud of, one that would improve: (1) the Co-op, (2)  Takoma Junction, and (3) Takoma Park, while (4) adding a significant number of housing units.

Another best in class example: Co-Opportunity Co-op in Culver City, California.  A year after I wrote the 2018 piece, in 2019, riding the Expo Line in LA, I noticed this co-op, and got off the train--a short walk from the Culver City stop--to check it out.  

While the exterior's architectural design doesn't appeal to me, the Co-op is part of the Access Culver City mixed use project, which includes the Co-op at 19,000 s.f., another 12,000 s.f. of retail, and 115 apartments.  The building is fronted by an outdoor patio, which extends"eat in" space for the Co-op.

The grocery is super attractive, with prepared foods and an eat-in area.

The Culver City site is bigger than the Takoma Junction site, unless they could include the adjoining fire station.

By going to four or even five stories, there's an opportunity to add 80+ housing units, as well as build an amazing new co-operative grocery store, and have underground parking.

A Takoma Junction project comparable to the Access Culver City project would be a win-win-win becoming a more significant anchor for Takoma Junction.

Takoma Co-op has to ask itself some hard questions.  First, do they want to be part of a great project, resulting in a better store?  Second, are they willing to work with others in a joint venture?  Third, are they willing to create a better store, by measuring their operation against best practice cooperatives operating elsewhere, and change to be better and more competitive?

WRT the third question, the Co-op has to consider whether or not it's willing to expand its product offerings to be able to appeal to a wider audience.  Beyond merely increasing the size of current, underpowered departments like produce, dairy, beer and wine.  Adding prepared foods and a cafe and selling meat should be on the table too.

Kelly Kawarchi is the head butcher at Blackbelly Market.  Photo: Boulder Weekly.

Takoma Junction as a food district. If the Takoma Co-op is willing to do some things and not others, but still participate in a bigger project as a joint venture, the city should consider trying to make the area a small "food district," recruiting other businesses to fill the holes in the current product offering.

This would attract patrons from beyond the immediate area.

There's already a great bread bakery across the street, Spring Mill Bread Company.  But the Co-op could add an in-house bakery operation too, with a broader range of goods.

If the co-op isn't willing to offer meat products, a high quality artisan independent butcher could be recruited.  In the DC area, Red Apron, the butcher operated by the Neighborhood Restaurant Group is one example.  But there are plenty of examples of such butchers across the country

Kaldi's Coffee House in nearby Silver Spring is an amazing experience and a good model for a great coffee shop.  

I don't know why the nearby, but not at Takoma Junction, Capital City Confectionary closed.  It was up the street on Carroll Avenue (albeit in a space where the businesses come and go).  If it were part of a bigger food district anchored by an amazing food co-op, it would have had a better chance of surviving.

A tenure of failure doesn't deserve encomiums: Paul Wiedefeld, WMATA CEO

WRT the encomium, maybe Wiedefeld did the best he could do.  But it's not enough.

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Almost two weeks ago, I wrote about how transit failures in the DC metropolitan area don't just have negative impact on transit within that area, but nationally, as transit opponents use failures in one place as justification for opposition for transit creation in other communities.

-- "Sometimes you have to wonder if transit/transit projects are being deliberately screwed up to make transit expansion almost impossible"

WMATA, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, operator of the Metrorail subway/heavy rail system serving DC, Northern Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland, has been in failure mode for more than ten years.  

Brochure, February 2000

Part of it wasn't the system's fault per se, but the failure of board members and jurisdictions to fund necessary quantum system maintenance as the system aged--they were warned.  In the 1990s, system planners warned leaders and stakeholders that this would be required in the coming years.

But nothing was done until the system started failing.

Since 2009 the system has been in perpetual crisis, when a signals failure resulted in a train crash killing 9 people--and the crash was "merely" the denouement after multiple signal failures over preceding years that fortunately hadn't resulted in death, but weren't seen as an indicator of system failure.  

But the problems haven't stopped, system service degradation as a repercussion of the system failure, tunnel fan failures (abetted by inspection failures) leading to another death, operational failures of various types, and over the past few months, a failure to address derailment/wheel problems in the 7000 series of cars which resulted in 748 cars being taken out of service, and the Metrorail system basically grinding to a halt.

Although WMATA did respond to the signals failures and need for substantive overhaul by creating the SafeTrack program to execute various system improvements (although at short term cost of closing sections of the system while repairs were made).

But the failure of the 7000 series cars is an illustration that the problems in WMATA operations go far beyond "a state of good repair."  The problems are structural, systemic.

Just after I wrote the piece, the CEO of WMATA announced his forthcoming retirement ("Metro’s general manager to retire after six years as top executive") and a few days later the Washington Post editorialized that he's great and restored the capacity, confidence, and the ability of the system ("Paul J. Wiedefeld’s tenure at Metro").

I don't think the writers ride the system much.

Wiedefeld is an experienced airport manager, but I think his tenure at WMATA demonstrates the necessity of a highly experienced rail transit professional to run the system.  

Just like his predecessor, a super experienced bus administrator, demonstrated the need for a highly experienced rail transit professional to run the system. 

(And maybe commenter charlie is right that we can't expect WMATA to run both rail and bus service excellently, that buses will always be second to rail.  See "Reviving DC area bus service: and a counterpoint to the recent Washington City Paper article," 2019).

I think this headline from a WTOP radio story is more accurate.  

At best the system is in stasis, with a repeated track record of failure over the past 10+ years, and rebuilding the confidence in transit and the consensus of the importance of transit is key.

The subway had been key to DC and Arlington County's resurgence, including residential and business attraction, and significant reductions in automobile traffic.

DC especially should be worried, not only about covid and its impact on the qualities that make urban living attractive, but about the likelihood of Metrorail recapturing its capacity to be successful.

Conclusion: What is to be done?

1.  Fix WMATA.  The first order of business is to hire top notch executives to run the system, people with experience in heavy rail, high volume transit service.  And then overhaul the agency from top to bottom.

-- "Getting WMATA out of crisis: a continuation of a multi-year problem that keeps getting worse, not better," 2015
-- "More on Redundancy, engineered resilience, and subway systems: Metrorail failures will increase without adding capacity in the core," 2016
-- "Reviving DC area bus service: and a counterpoint to the recent Washington City Paper article," 2019

Note that the first two entries were written at the outset of Wiedefeld's appointment, and I wouldn't say that WMATA is more stable and effective compared to 2015.

In Philadelphia, NBC10 is running a survey on the quality of the local transit service there ("SEPTA Riders: Tell Us What It's Like to Take Public Transit").

2.  Rebuild the regional consensus about the value of transit.  In 2009 after the crash, and in 2014, I suggested that the region needed to rebuild its consensus on the importance and value of transit.

-- "St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region,"
-- "WMATA 40th anniversary in 2016 as an opportunity for assessment"

This need is even greater now.  

3.  Create a regional transport association to plan, manage, and deliver transit and mobility services.  Also, I've argued that the metropolitan area/region should reconfigure how it manages, plans, and operates transit, along the lines of the German VV model.

By default WMATA is the main transportation planner and it shouldn't be.  

-- "Don't over focus on "fixing" the WMATA Compact. Instead create a new Regional Transit Compact, of which WMATA is one component," 2017
-- "The answer is: Create a single multi-state/regional multi-modal transit planning, management, and operations authority association," 2017
-- "Route 7 BRT proposal communicates the reality that the DC area doesn't adequately conduct transportation planning at the metropolitan-scale," 2014

Although in the US, I've argued that such associations need to have a more expansive membership, and include for profit providers when appropriate ("Another example of the need to reconfigure transpo planning and operations at the metropolitan scale: Boston is seizing dockless bike share bikes, which compete with their dock-based system," 2018), airports ("Transportation demand management gaps, Salt Lake City International Airport and car sharing," 2021), and even highway operators ("Washington Post letter to the editor on repair-related closure of Rockville and Shady Grove Stations and corridor management," 2021).

-- "DC is a market leader in Mobility as a Service (MaaS)," 2018

4.  Elect the Board of Directors.  And that WMATA's board should be popularly elected, and treated as members of local government systems ("Why not elect DC's representatives to the WMATA transit agency board?," 2019, "Should DC's representatives to the WMATA Board be popularly elected?," 2014).  Eg., DC's elected board members to WMATA should serve on DC Council's transportation committee as ex officio members, and on a city transportation commission if one existed (item 9, "How I would approach organizing the DC master transportation planning process and plan," 2013)..

But this should be extended to the entire board, and include the representatives from Maryland and Virginia too (Virginia jurisdictions in the WMATA Compact mostly have transportation commissions already. Rockville, a part of Montgomery County, does also.)

5.  Fix funding.  I have also written that it was unfortunate that when the system was successful, the jurisdictions didn't come together and vote for permanent sales taxes to fund the system (""Let's Talk" -- What to do when your transit authority needs more money?: Washington region edition," 2014).  Now with the system's repeated failures, not to mention Republican Governors in Maryland and Virginia, it's almost impossible to believe that this could be accomplished.

6.  Expand and intensify the transit system.  You can't have a transit city without continuing to expand and intensify the system.  But WMATA only cares about Metrorail, and to some extent regional bus service.  That's why a transport association is key.

WMATA isn't interested in other modes, be they streetcars, light rail, railroad passenger services, etc.   For example, the light rail Purple Line will be run by the Maryland Transit Administration (as is the Takoma Langley Crossroads Transit Center) because WMATA wasn't interested.  (To extend the point made by Ted Levitt about GM in the book Marketing Imagination--WMATA isn't a transit/transportation "agency" but an operator of heavy rail and bus services.)

-- "Update to the Paul J. Meissner produced integrated high capacity transit map for the Washington metropolitan area," 2017
-- "One big idea: Getting MARC and Metrorail to integrate fares, stations, and marketing systems, using London Overground as an example," 2015
-- "A new backbone for the regional transit system: merging the MARC Penn and VRE Fredericksburg Lines," 2015
-- "Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 2 | proposed parallel improvements across the transit network," 2017
-- "Using the Silver Line as the priming event, what would a transit network improvement program look like for NoVA?," 2017
-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for a statewide passenger railroad program in Maryland," 2019
-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for the Metrorail Blue Line," 2020
-- "Metrorail shutdown south of AlexandriaNational Airport would have been a good opportunity to promote ferry service," 2019 (speaking of ferry service, "Ferry to D.C.? New analysis underway," Inside NoVA; note fwiw, there have been ferry studies off and on since 1992)
-- "Will buses ever be cool? Boston versus the Raleigh-Durham's GoTransit Model," 2017

-- Georgetown Gondola proposal (which isn't necessary with a separated blue or silver line)

WMATA has come up with some ideas of its own for Metrorail expansion ("The Blue Line Could Go to National Harbor One Day," Washingtonian), and they're better than previous iterations, but not expansive enough.

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What's a transport association?  In 1960, transportation planners in Hamburg realized that transit riders didn't care who provided what service, whether it was a bus, subway, train, or ferry in the core of the city or in the suburbs, that riders wanted an efficient and inter-connected set of transit services that was logically and comparatively easy to use.

At the time they started--and it took five years to get the organizations to agree to work together--it took as many as seven different providers and fares to get from one end of the region to the other.

-- HVV, Hamburg Transport Association
-- "HVV Celebrated 50 Year Anniversary, City of Hamburg
-- "Verkehrsverbund: The evolution and spread of fully integrated regional public transport in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland," Ralph Buehler, John Pucher & Oliver Dümmler, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (2018)
-- Transport Alliances - – Promoting Cooperation and. Integration to offer a more attractive and efficient Public Transport, VDV, the association of German transportation associations. (NOTE: clicking on the link triggers a file download.)

The city planners organized the transit providers into a single association and began the process of integrating services, schedules, and fares, and creating a separate planning and coordination system. Who offered what service was determined by who could do it best--in any case, transit planning was separated from transit operations.

Two agencies, Hamburg Hochbahn (subway and bus) and Deutsche Bahn/S-Bahn (commuter railroads) provide the bulk of the service, and a third, HADAG, ferry services. But 30+ operators provide services within the system, mostly bus, but also exurban rail services--the City-State of Hamburg is a partial owner of many of these services.

At the end of the day, this is what anti-vaxxing is all about

 

This is a screen grab from a Reuters video on Sunday's anti-vaccination protest in Washington, DC, on Sunday January 23, 2022 (video embedded within this article, "Anti-vaccine activists march in D.C. — a city that mandates coronavirus vaccination — to protest mandates," Washington Post).

I am unable to fathom how vaccination became a political issue and one of individual libertarianism.  Government's duty to protect the public health is one of the most basic functions of government.

I call the attitude of this protester "anarcholibertarianism" -- it joins anarchism, neoliberalism (pro market, anti government), and libertarianism not into a philosophy, but an attitude.

I hate to admit that recently I finally downloaded the Reddit app just so I could read r/HermanCainAward postings--people who filled their social media feeds with anti-vax, pro-conservative, anti-Democrat memes who then come down with covid and eventually die.

It's incredibly ironic to me that people believe they have "more control" from not being vaccinated, when in fact this makes them more vulnerable to sickness, health problems, and death.

For all the people who say -- "only 2% of people with covid die," what about the 25% of survivors who end up with long term medical conditions that they didn't have before, and the higher rate of death within one year of "recovery."

In "the old days" it was common for center city hospitals to have more than 1,000 patient beds.  Granted it's not in the center city, but the new PG Hospital in Largo -- the University of Maryland Medical Services Capital Region Medical Center -- has 205 beds.

No health planner would have ever believed that 30% of the population would willingly choose to not be vaccinated in the face of a major public health threat, leading to a severe capacity strain on the part of hospitals that have spent the past three decades getting smaller--downsizing--in terms of the total number of hospital beds and ICU capacity.

The only silver lining in the needless deaths are the culling effects ("U.S. Covid Deaths Get Even Redder," New York Times).  

It's one of the few times when there are severe consequences for bad decision making and poor risk analysis and management.

The building blocks of neighborhood revitalization (reprint from 2005)

For the past few years, I've tried to append in the comments threads on entries of relevant articles, resources, etc., that I've come across since (so long as I remember the article).  While searching for an article to append I comment, I came across this one, from March 2005.  

I didn't blog in earnest til February 2005, so it's one of my earliest entries.  Meaning I've been blogging for almost 17 years.

The book House by House, Block by Block: Rebuilding America's Urban Neighborhoods, by Alexander von Hoffman, details success stories in urban revitalization. According to the book, there are five common threads to stitching a challenged community back together: 

• A sense of place. A community has to see itself as worth saving. It needs a central idea around which people can coalesce - whether it's a history visible in cobbled streets and gaslights, a central church or school about which people who've stayed in the neighborhood have fond memories, or something as simple as a name. 
• A group of tenacious leaders, reflective of the whole community. Reviving neighborhoods need "people with a certain kind of courage - maybe even foolish courage - in the face of devastation," says von Hoffman. That doesn't mean one charismatic leader. It means a broad coalition, including the "usual voices" - activists, religious and political leaders, philanthropists, developers - and voices less commonly heard: members of all the area's major ethnic groups, ordinary citizens who've never been politically active in their lives. 
• A problem, and good conversation about it. Groups start with a shared sense that their community has a problem. They probably don't agree on what that problem is, and they certainly don't agree on what to do about it. So the first step is to facilitate an exchange in which every voice gets heard, every grievance aired. This is a slow process, as everyone who's taken part in such a conversation acknowledges, because fundamentally it's about trust, and trust doesn't happen on a deadline. If participants have the patience to see the process through, however, they almost invariably arrive at a common sense of the problem they're facing - and a common vision of how to tackle it. 
• A sustainable plan, and the people who can implement it. At some point, though, it's time to stop talking and get practical. Community groups that aim for less - rehabbing a single building, constructing a swimming pool, repaving a street - often stop there, having failed to look systemically at what their area needs and what steps might really get them there. 
• Political support. The strongest coalition with the best plan is worthless without political leaders who take it seriously. Realistically, Chrislip says, you can't expect politicians to be behind every new neighborhood initiative that starts up. But the sooner they start coming to meetings, seeing a group's seriousness about change, and being engaged in the process, the better for that neighborhood's future.

Coyotl-Coyote, a 14-foot sculpture done by artist Larry Gonzalez Rivas, is unveiled during the Willits & Sullivan Beautification Project celebration at the intersection of Willits and Sullivan Streets in Santa Ana on Saturday, January 22, 2022. The sculpture is the first to be commissioned by the city’s Arts & Culture Office. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG).

The article I wanted to append is from the Orange County Register, "Santa Ana unveils new sculpture, part of a neighborhood beautification effort," because it's relevant to this series:

-- "The need for a "national" neighborhood stabilization program comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts: Part I (Overall)," 2020
-- "To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2," 2020
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisance programs: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)," 2020
-- "A case in Gloucester, Massachusetts as an illustration of the need for systematic neighborhood monitoring and stabilization initiatives: Part 4 (the Curcuru Family)," 2020
-- "Local neighborhood stabilization programs: Part 5 | Adding energy conservation programs, with the PUSH Buffalo Green Development Zone as a model," 2021 

White Tower, Thessaloniki.  Photo: Herbert Frank, Wikipedia.

Another very interesting article in my email feed yesterday is "Conceiving monument networks through lighting design" (Academic Letters, 2021).  It's relevant to various past entries on lighting as an element of activation and master planning:

-- "Philips Lighting changes name to Signify," 2018
-- "Lighting as an element of urban design and community identity: Cleveland chandelier + Chicago lighting design framework plan design competition," 2014
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014

Newspapers as public media: WBEZ, radio, an NPR affiliate, to merge with the Chicago Sun-Times

Newspapers have been crushed by the Internet, the migration of classified advertising to Craigslist, the migration of display advertising to other venues, decline in subscriptions with the migration to online news gathering, reading, and social media, the rise of new digital advertising networks, etc.

The decline in newspaper readership has had a significant negative impact on civic life.

-- "Newspapers, community media, and knowledge about and engagement in civic affairs," 2020

In response, private equity has bought many newspapers, split off assets from newspapers like buildings and other property, television stations, etc., that once had helped support newspapers financially.  

Over the past 20 years, many newspapers, especially community newspapers, have shuttered or severely reduced their staffs and the number of articles they run, especially when it comes to local coverage.

The decline of newspaper media groups even hurt the ability of the Newseum news museum in DC to build its endowment, leading to (hopefully a somewhat temporary) demise ("What the Fall of the Newseum Says About News, and Museums," Bloomberg).

A number of metropolitan newspapers have reduced their publishing schedule to less than seven days.  A number of Advance Newspapers only publish three days/week.  In Salt Lake, the Deseret News and Tribune each moved to a weekend only edition, although the Tribune recently added a Wednesday edition, complemented by daily digital newspaper publication and expanded digital operations.  In New Orleans, such a reduction led to the eventual demise of the Times-Picayune in favor of a 7 day/week New Orleans edition of the Baton Rouge Advocate.

A number of digital only news reporting entities have been created in response to this decline.  Some are for profit, some are nonprofit.

Nonprofit options 

1.  For decades, the Tampa Bay Times (previously the St. Petersburg Times) has been owned by a nonprofit institute.  

2.  A few years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer was acquired by a local group and then donated to the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

3.  Recently, the Salt Lake Tribune converted from a for profit to a nonprofit.   

4.  A group of NPR stations acquired online for profit digital operations, such as DCist in DC, acquired by WAMU-FM, and Gothamist in NYC by WNYC-FM, adding them to their radio newsrooms.

5.  And now WBEZ-FM in Chicago is merging with the tabloid newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times ("In Chicago, a public radio station comes to the rescue of the Sun-Times newspaper," Washington Post).

Many public television and public radio groups have redefined as "public media" or "community media" organizations, and in many communities like Boston or Salt Lake, the main public radio and PBS stations are often merged into one unified group.

Adding newspapers and digital newsrooms to the mix might be the next step, although running a newspaper especially one that publishes every day is a lot more expensive and potentially less profitable, especially with massive declines in circulation.

The Sun-Times has struggled over the past decades and went through some hedge fund ownership debacles.  One thing that kept it going was the development of a suburban network of weekly and six daily newspapers, like the Southtown Economist.  But they were sold off to the Chicago Tribune a few years ago, making the enterprise financially weaker ("Sun-Times’ parent company sells suburban newspapers to Tribune," Sun-Times).

Waterfronts/rivers/canals as districts needing special and ongoing "zoning" and environmental review

When I was briefly involved in the now scuttled Anacostia River Trust, I suggested that the group should advocate for a "Rivers and Waterfronts" element in the update to DC's Comprehensive Plan.  The Office of Planning wasn't favorable.  

Although a year later, they proposed a Waterfront Commission ("DC puts forward legislation to create Waterways Commission and Authority," ), something I'd been suggesting since 2006.  

I also suggested the organization should encourage Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in the communities abutting the Anacostia River to create a "River and Watershed Committee" to better address neighborhood environment issues arising from that proximity.

There are other efforts, like the Anacostia River and Potomac River Riverkeepers, the Alice Ferguson Foundation and its cleanup efforts, the Anacostia Watershed Society etc.  

And before that I advocated for more comprehensive planning initiatives along the river:

- "Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River corridor"," 2012
-- "DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River," 2014
-- "A world class water/environmental education center at Poplar Point as another opportunity for Anacostia River programming (+ move the Anacostia Community Museum next door)," 2014
-- "The Anacostia River and considering the bridges as a unit and as a premier element of public art and civic architecture," 2014

Basically, cities see waterfronts as revitalization opportunities, as once industrial and constrained places in cities were abandoned, providing new opportunities for residential, retail, entertainment, etc.   Baltimore's Inner Harbor revitalization -- "Harborplace" -- became an example relevant to efforts world wide ("On the Revitalized Waterfront: Creative Milieu for Creative Tourism," Sustainability Journal, 2013, "Baltimore's Harborplace in bankruptcy and what that says about certain development trends in urban revitalization," 2019).

Some waterfront revitalization efforts I've come across over the years include:

• the Urban River Visions revitalization planning initiative in Massachusetts
• San Antonio's River Walk, another international example
• water taxi and ferry services for tourism and/or transportation
• revitalization of communities around canals, like Oklahoma City's Bricktown ("Change is constant along Bricktown Canal," Daily Oklahoman)
• Bilbao, Liverpool, Thessaloniki and Marseille
• HafenCity in Hamburg
• South Street Seaport in Manhattan and the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia
• Paris Plages
• Newark, ("Newark, Meet Your River," Wall Street Journal)
• Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, 
• Chicago River
• smaller city efforts in Alexandria and Annapolis
  

Providence.  Reading a blog entry, "Save a Providence water view," in Architecture Here and Now, the writer, retired now from the Providence Journal, comments that planners and advocates could have done a better job in advocating for better projects along the waterfront.  From the article:

I feel sorry for people who have recently moved into the Benefit Street neighborhood. Perhaps they thought that this city, whose past is so clearly a model upon which to build its future, might adopt development policies that would protect and extend its built heritage. Not to mention residents with even longer tenure in the neighborhood. How could they imagine, after the excellent River Relocation Project of 1990-1996 that created a new, beautiful, traditional downtown waterfront, that the city would instead imitate most American cities, knuckling under to the profane demand, among “professionals,” for architecture that rejects the past and condemns us all to a purposely ugly future.

As the only architecture critic in Providence, and one of the few (if any) around the nation, who tries to follow and review vital projects through their stages of development from a classical design viewpoint, I share blame – for not nagging and blasting the city’s various design commissions (the so-called “experts”) with sufficiently harrowing curses.

I commented that cities like Baltimore and Cleveland (and in DC the federal interest is quality design is represented by the Committee of Fine Arts) have special urban design review processes for areas of special interest, usually downtown areas, and of course, historic preservation districts.

I guess it's in response to a competition to build a development on the waterfront ("'Massive and intrusive': Providence locals double down on waterfront apartment criticism," Providence Journal).  Oddly, the article is readable in my phone newsfeed but not on the computer.  Reading the article and others linked within demonstrate the importance of a waterfront "preservation and development" district calling for extranormal design review.  

Interestingly, because the parcel is part of the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission's purview, it's exempt from review by the city.  They say they will provide opportunity for review, but it isn't mandated.

Development proposal for the Providence, Rhode Island waterfront

As I say about this more generally, without remedies -- provisions within law calling for review processes -- you can't do s*** ("Without remedies there's nothing you can do: historic preservation in Chicago and DC," 2014, "To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2," 2020).

River corridors and waterfronts need to be special planning review districts too.

Philadelphia.  There are a couple of recent articles relevant to this.  This one on Fishtown makes the point that developments are being approved that are in areas that will be affected by rising water levels resulting from climate change ("Climate change should be a consideration in planning massive Fishtown housing developments," Philadelphia Inquirer).  From the article:

But along Philadelphia’s riverfronts, buildings are going up in areas that we know are going to flood. More than 600 new apartments are coming to the Navy Yard. New buildings will be constructed on the former PES refinery site in South Philly. And on the Delaware River in Fishtown, development is also being pushed through. I’m not a NIMBY, but a NIMBIIR: Not In My Backyard If It’s Riverfront.

Last summer, Philadelphia’s director of the Office of Sustainability, Christine Knapp, acknowledged the problem with unregulated, “piecemeal” development along our riverfronts in a Philadelphia Neighborhood Networks Zoom: “We need to have standards across the board that any new developments, that any new investments are made with the right science in mind,” Knapp said.

She continued: “When we let people build on the riverfront, it makes it worse for everyone else. But the city is also taking on the problem of what happens when that property floods and the city has to rescue folks, or the city has to be responsible for the response to that storm or that flood. It’s like a triple-edged problem. We absolutely need to get ahead of it.”

Also see "Blighted luxury houses facing Fishtown’s Penn Treaty Park will be demolished. Now what?," "Philadelphia officials stopped Rivers Casino from closing off its Delaware River trail, but that’s not enough," and "Lower Merion suddenly has a walkable riverfront, thanks to Pencoyd Landing development," by the Inquirer's fabulous urban design writer, Inga Saffron.

An interesting and relevant program is being developed in Philadelphia ("William Penn Foundation is giving $1.65 million to create a new Delaware River Climate Corps," Philadelphia Inquirer).  Training programs for watershed stewards, like by the Anacostia Watershed Society, and Riverkeeper advocacy programs have similar elements.

Further, a number of the city's rivers are deemed "impaired."

Pennsylvania.  Another Inquirer article, "Nearly 2,400 more miles of Pennsylvania’s streams are impaired now compared to just two years ago; Philly has the highest percentage," makes me think that as part of a 21st Century New Deal, dealing with rivers and water quality should be a priority and could be a way to better connect Democrats to rural-relevant issues and voters.  Of 85,000 miles of rivers, 28,000 miles are impaired.

Especially because rivers are the primary water source for most communities, the impact of climate change especially drought, etc.

DC.  There's a Post op-ed, "Everyone should be able to swim in the Potomac."  And DCist reports that five spots on the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and the Washington Channel are already clean enough to swim in ("Water Quality Data Show Where Swimming Beaches Could Be On D.C. Rivers").

Badeschiff Pool with beach, Berlin. 

Again, when I did the ART stuff, I wrote a memo about how even though most of the Anacostia Riverfront in DC north of the 11th Street Bridge is controlled by the federal government, DC has the lease of the RFK Stadium and "campus" and there is a stretch of waterfront there that could be "converted to a beach" as a way to give people an opportunity to "touch" the river.  

This would increase interest and the ability to mobilize citizens to change the dynamic within federal control ("Engaging citizens in DC's rivers and waterfronts as a way to drive improvements in water quality").  One of my ideas was to have a freshwater pool in the river.

Badeschiff, River Spree, Berlin.  Photos: Amusing Planet.

It's obvious that should have happened with the Potomac River a long time ago ("Pools in rivers to promote access and awareness," 2016).  

The funny thing is that outside of Georgetown, the east side of the river is pretty much all under the control of NPS.  And NPS rules make it very difficult to have local involvement and activation.

Worse, the Georgetown Waterfront Park, another NPS park, was created in part with land given to NPS by DC, because DC didn't want to take on the responsibility of having a park there.  What a lost opportunity.

Separately, wrt federal control, I argue that Anacostia Park should revert to DC because it is locally serving ("Defining National Park Service installations in DC as locally or nationally serving") and that maybe golf course isn't the best use for the Langston Golf Course ("DC, parks planning, and golf," "Golf, parks planning, and too many courses"). 

Maybe as part of improving access to Roosevelt Island ("Revisiting: Access to Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national park in Washington, DC") a pool could be created in the Potomac too.

Music barge/Cinema.  Another activation device is concerts on the river ("Music barge designed by Louis Kahn could anchor in Philadelphia as a concert stage," Philadelphia Inquirer).  We once took in the BargeMusic program in Brooklyn, although it's enclosed.

Reuters photo.

Paris screened movies to people on paddleboats ("Movie magic as Paris turns the Seine into open-air cinema," Reuters).  Chicago too.

Daylighting rivers and creeks.  Such review districts could include rivers and creeks that have been undergrounded ("Set the underground rivers free," Boston Globe).  From the article:

Exhuming waterways that run beneath developed areas and restoring their natural flow and width is known as “daylighting.” And in the Northeast, you don’t have to look far to find formerly lost rivers that have been brought back into the light. From Providence to New York to Boston’s Emerald Necklace, these forgotten waters are being surfaced to rejuvenate parks, revive local economies, and create bigger reservoirs that can prevent flooding during increasingly dangerous storms. ...

But for more than a century, putting streams in pipes or covering them with roads was a standard thing for cities to do. To create more paved ground for their expanding urban infrastructure, cities routed inconvenient waterways into culverts and conduits, overlaying the pipes with concrete. ...

It’s not just flora and fauna that can thrive when waterways are uncovered. During the 1990s, Providence daylit the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket Rivers by removing highway and railroad infrastructure that had covered them for decades. This sparked the construction of Waterplace Park, a lagoon and a cobblestone riverwalk that became the hosting ground for the WaterFire festival led by the artist Barnaby Evans. Since its first river lighting in 1994, WaterFire has brought millions of visitors — and their wallets — to the city’s formerly depressed downtown. In 1997, the architect Friedrich St. Florian, who designed the Providence Place mall, called WaterFire “the crown jewel of the Providence renaissance.”

Daylighting success stories like Providence’s demonstrate why cities such as Detroit, Berkeley, Calif., and Yonkers, N.Y., have daylit lost rivers of their own. In the next few years, New York City will spend more than $130 million to excavate Tibbetts Brook, long buried beneath the Bronx.

Conclusion.  Definitely cities should create special interest design and environmental review districts for rivers, waterfronts, and canals.

What do universities owe abutting communities? | Penn to invest in Lea Elementary School in West Philadelphia

Not unlike how so many state capitals don't foster urban revitalization and a thriving local community, when you would think otherwise, plenty of urban universities are cloisters with limited positive impact on the areas outside their campuses--Yale and New Haven, Providence and Brown, Columbia University and Manhattan are prime examples.

The New York Times recently published an article, "Have Urban Universities Done Enough for the Neighborhoods Around Them?," about this wrt Columbia University, recent tragedies of students killed just off campus, and the general unwillingness of the university to invest in community safety and revitalization around the campus.  

Separately, Columbia has agreed to many millions in community benefits in association with expansion, but for years has provided only $5,000 per year to the Friends of Morningside Heights Park, the place where Tessa Majors was murdered ("NYC teen who murdered Barnard student Tessa Majors gets 14-years-to-life in prison," New York Daily News).

Universities and colleges (unless overtly for profit) are exempt from local property taxes, making their presence not always economically positive, even though generally universities have positive local economic impact, although that's usually at a scale greater than the immediate neighborhoods around a campus ("The economic impact of universities: Evidence from across the globe," Economics  of Education Review).

Some cities try to get universities to contribute money to local government, called PILOTs -- payment in lieu of taxes -- and a mayor in Providence, Rhode Island even suggests an annual per capita payment per student ("Mayor Proposes a College Attendance Head Tax In Rhode Island," Tax Foundation).

Former president of Penn, Judith Rodin, wrote a book, The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets, about her experience reorienting Penn to West Philadelphia.

One school that has invested a lot in community and revitalization is the University of Pennsylvania (and of course there are others, see "Better leveraging higher education institutions in cities and counties: Greensboro; Spokane; Mesa; Phoenix; Montgomery County, Maryland; Washington, DC," "The other George Miller idea: creating multi-college innovation centers in (cities) Philadelphia | Creating public library-college education centers as revitalization initiatives," "University President Freeman Hrabowski and an agenda for urban universities," "President of Washington State University dies: fostered development of the "University District" adjacent to Downtown Spokane," and "Universities as elements of urban/downtown revitalization: the Portland State story and more"). 

A bunch of colleges also have mortgage programs to subsidize loans to faculty and staff for living in neighborhoods near campus ("DC giving money to universities to give to their employees to live in the city," 2011).  Mercer University in Macon, Georgia initiated a neighborhood revitalization program for lagging neighborhoods around its campus in the late 1990s ("Beall’s Hill Neighborhood Revitalization Project," MU, Neighborhood Revitalization Guide, Historic Macon Foundation, "Historic Macon Foundation will expand revitalization efforts in Macon’s Beall’s Hill neighborhood with $3 million from Knight Foundation," Knight Foundation).

After considering relocating to Philadelphia's suburbs in the 1960s, Penn instead re-committed to Philadelphia, and began investing in West Philadelphia off campus.

A key initiative is the creation of a business improvement district, the University City District, which also includes Drexel University, Amtrak, and other institutions.  

Memorial Gate at Penn.

While it was pointed out to me that these organizations created the initiative as a way to ward off PILOTs and other property tax attempts, the group does a lot to improve the area, has workforce development initiatives, clean and safe services, etc.

Another was the creation of a new elementary school, Penn Alexander, partly as a lab for university initiatives, but primarily as a way to make the neighborhood more attractive to faculty and staff affiliated with the school, as well as higher income segments of the market not necessarily affiliated with the school, but who would be attracted by its proximity to Center City Philadelphia.

Penn is now extending their support of local elementary education to an additional school, Henry Lea ("Penn to invest nearly $5M over 5 years in another West Philly school," Philadelphia Inquirer). Lea is close to Penn Alexander, but significantly under-enrolled.  From the article:

It would be the second such transformational, recurring commitment Penn would make to a Philadelphia School District school. The university already partners with Penn Alexander, providing it with $1,300 a student - money used to pay for extra staff and other supports. ... 

The reason? Penn, the district, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers “wish to emulate the success of the Penn Alexander School and desire to collaborate to support the Henry C. Lea School,” according to the board resolution. The money “will further support the provision of the highest-quality educational opportunities for children in West Philadelphia and Penn’s desire to collaboratively support Lea.” ...

Penn Alexander was not a preexisting district school, but arose from a 1990s Penn idea: Build a strong public school as a way to revitalize the neighborhood surrounding the university, in part to make it an attractive place for Penn faculty to live. The university helped design Penn Alexander, which opened in 2001 with extra staff and opportunities not available in most other district schools. 

Despite being just a few blocks away from each another, Penn Alexander and Lea have significantly different student makeups. Most Penn Alexander students live inside the catchment area; 45% are white, 26% Asian, 14% Black, and 4% Hispanic. Just 46% are economically disadvantaged, far less than district average, and 7% receive special education services. The school scores a 90 out of 100 on the district’s School Performance Report, placing it among the top performers in the city; it won the coveted National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence distinction from the U.S. Department of Education in September. 

Penn Alexander often has a waiting list for kindergarten; for years, parents camped outside the school for days to secure a spot for their children. (The students who did not win a seat at Penn Alexander were most often sent to Lea, which typically is not full.) ... 

Lea is more representative of the school system as a whole: 43% of its students live in the catchment area; 65% are Black, 13% white, 12% Asian, and 5% Hispanic. Three-quarters of its students come from economically disadvantaged families and 15% receive special education services. It scored a 53 out of 100 on the district’s internal metric, landing it in the second-highest performing group of schools.

It will be interesting to see the impact on Lea compared to Penn Alexander, and if more resources and attention is enough to improve student outcomes in significant ways for students of color.

A more systematic approach to center city public school improvement.  Like other center cities, Philadelphia's schools lag ("‘Stubborn inequity’: 6 in 10 Philly kids still attend low-performing schools, report says," Philadelphia Inquirer).

Recently I wrote a couple pieces in response to an op-ed by Temple University professor George Miller, about expanding higher education opportunities for Philadelphia residents ("HBCUs and the city: Relocating Cheyney University to Philadelphia?" and "The other George Miller idea: creating multi-college innovation centers in (cities) Philadelphia | Creating public library-college education centers as revitalization initiatives").

(Also see "A MILLION MILES AWAY: Temple, Philadelphia’s ‘diversity university,’ has seen a plummeting share of Black students over the last 25 years, even as it rapidly expanded enrollment," Philadelphia Inquirer, "Capital One announces partnership with Delaware State University," Capital One Foundation.)

At the same there should be a similar visionary approach applied to the city's public school system, involving as many of Philadelphia's universities as possible.  

While there have been many failures in urban school reform, there are positive examples ("Surprising gains in 5 school districts you’ve never heard of, plus Chicago," Washington Post), usually involving the use of AP and International Baccalaureate programs for high schools, and magnet and other programs for elementary and middle schools.  

Additional resources for Title I Schools, Co-operative High School (one of my ideas), Summer School, Year Round School, Pre-K 3-5, etc., should also be included in achieving transformational programmatic improvement in large public school districts ("Successful school programs in low income communities").  From the Washington Post article "America’s most accelerated math program blasts through pandemic":

The Pasadena public schools, where most students are from low-income families, have had a mediocre reputation for decades. But in recent years its administrators have created strong AP and International Baccalaureate programs with high levels of participation. It has established magnet schools and dual-language immersion classes.

The "Schools as Community Center" approach should also be used, whereby schools are expanded through the co-location of other civic assets such as libraries ("Update: Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets"), public health clinics, etc.  (In DC, Briya Charter Schools have a co-location agreement with Mary's Center clinics, a couple elementary schools in Salt Lake City have public health clinics.)

-- Cincinnati Public Schools Community Learning Centers approach

There are many other examples, including Arlington County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland's approach to Title I schools, etc.

Fixing buildings initiative.  Separately, Penn has agreed to a $100 million investment in the school system, over ten years ("Penn’s $100 million pledge has a backstory," WHYY/NPR), but I don't think that is enough.  

It's for buildings, not unlike MAPS4Kids in Oklahoma City, and while schools and neighborhoods around them were improved, a failure to invest in programs apart from buildings meant that the buildings improved but outcomes for students from diverse backgrounds remained unchanged ("Maps for Kids wraps up," Daily Oklahoman).

By contrast, Oklahoma City spent almost $500 million on the core school district.

Leighton Harris, 4, in pink, and her classmates learned about shapes in the prekindergarten class at the James Rushton Early Learning Center in Birmingham, Ala. The Alabama program is free and meets more quality benchmarks than Massachusetts' pre-K system, according to national experts. Photo: JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF

Pre-K initiative in Alabama as a model.  A city-wide pre-K program could be a great initiative.  The Boston Globe has an article, "Families in Alabama have free, full-day prekindergarten while many Mass. families can only dream of it," about a statewide initiative that appears to have significant positive outcomes. From the article:

Massachusetts prides itself on having its schools top some national rankings on test scores, but that glow can obscure the gaps. Large swaths of low-income students and students of color are left behind from a young age due to the state’s uneven access to early education, which enriches children when their developing brains are spongiest, say experts, making it a critical tool in closing achievement gaps. 

Studies have found that children who attend high-quality pre-K grow up to have better high school graduation and college attendance rates, less criminal activity, and higher salaries. 

Alabama’s program is still young, but research already shows promising results: Students who attended the state’s pre-K were less likely than their peers to later be chronically absent, need special education services, or be held back a grade — and as middle-schoolers, they were more likely to read and perform math at grade level. ...

In Alabama, the state increased its funding for pre-K by 26 percent last year, and by 16 to 20 percent in previous years. Enrollment has grown from 1 percent of Alabama’s 4-year-olds in 2002 to 44 percent this year, officials said, and is on track to reach at least 70 percent by 2026.

And DC.  A similar initiative has also worked well for DC, with positive impacts on children, mother employment and income, and in retaining as residents families with residential choice (The Effects of Universal Preschool in Washington, D.C., Center for American Progress, "What Can D.C.’s Universal Pre-K Program Teach Us?," The Century Foundation).

Britain Sure Start.  Under Labour Government, the Sure Start program was created to provide extra support to low income families ("Sure Start worked. So why is Theresa May out to kill it?," Guardian). But the program has mostly been eliminated by succeeding Conservative governments. From the article:

The reality is that Sure Start was a groundbreaking success. A commitment to supporting families in the early years of their children’s development shouldn’t have been revolutionary, but it was. When the Labour government announced Sure Start in 1998, the programme was targeted at the poorest 20% of wards in England. From there it grew into a network of 4,000 children’s centres across the country, each dedicated to improving the life chances of young children and the wellbeing of families.

Children’s centres offered employment support, health advice, childcare, parenting help – unified service delivery designed to prevent isolation and, ultimately, to reduce the gaps between rich and poor children which, as a growing body of evidence shows, often go on to define lives. ...

A study by Oxford University revealed by the DfE just before Christmas was the most detailed ever conducted on the impact of children’s centres – and it found the centres benefited parents and families who regularly attended classes in poorer areas, contributing to less disruptive home lives, better maternal mental health, and improved social skills among children and adults.

From a university standpoint, it's opportunity to involve programs in health, medicine, public health, etc. 

Community broadband network with schools as key nodes.  An op-ed in the Inquirer, "The Black community needs better internet access now," makes the point that limited access to high speed Internet is an access and economic development issue in poor communities ("The Digital Divide Is a Human Rights Issue: Advancing Social Inclusion Through Social Work Advocacy," Journal of Human Rights and Social Work).

The article isn't particularly visionary, pointing out that the Biden infrastructure bill provides a $30/month discount on broadband for low income families, and that there should be hard core advocacy and outreach to get people to sign up.

By contrast, the Murray School District in Utah created a high speed community broadband wireless network, through an antenna-based system, where high speed cables deliver broadband to schools, and through antennas on the roofs of schools, a wifi network has been created, so that students can access it from home and other places ("This Utah school district has built its own internet service so students can log on from home," Salt Lake Tribune).  From the article:

In the school district that covers this small suburb of Salt Lake County — a nearly perfect 3-mile by 3-mile square that includes some of the poorest neighborhoods in the state — every student will soon be connected to high-speed internet at home. 

It will be delivered through a network dreamed up and built entirely by Murray School District, an extraordinary undertaking that no other district in the nation has ever pulled off. And the service will be free for the kids there at a crucial time, when the pandemic has made access to broadband as essential to education as books. 

“We’re pioneering it,” said Jason Eyre, the technology supervisor for Murray schools, who has been called “the godfather of Utah’s new educational broadband plan” after working on the project for more than two years. ... 

There are 44 towers total, including six at the district’s one high school. The structures look like metal trees with an antenna on top and are placed largely on roofs to create the LTE network. The acronym for “Long-term Evolution” refers to an upgrade of wireless data networks that dates back about 10 years, and included switching to new radio spectrum. 

Before now, the radios at Murray schools have mostly provided Wi-Fi inside the buildings. But Murray has used federal funding for COVID-19 to purchase and engineer higher quality towers that can send an internet signal much farther — between 900 feet and a mile, to the houses and apartments of all of its 6,000 students. 

The district will now be distributing hotspots and other receivers to its kids to place in a window of their home. That will pick up the signal from the towers, and when a student opens a Chromebook from the district, it will automatically connect online.

By using other civic sites: parks; libraries; recreation centers; and other government buildings; a network with greater depth and breadth can be created.  And of course, universities, as their IT departments typically have a lot of experiencing in dealing with high speed Internet connections, heavy use of the system, providing wifi over long distances, etc.

Granted Comcast is based in Philadelphia, and provides local cable, but creating this kind of community broadband network could be a great repositioning move for the local school system and the city at large, just as the Gig network is doing for Chattanooga ("Chattanooga as a "smart city": next steps").

The trick is to make it available to community members as well.  But how to do that without degrading the quality?  OTOH, the school system could take extra steps for student access--providing computers etc. as well as hotspots and receivers.

In any case "Maps4Kids"-like building rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts should include the construction of a community-wide wifi network.

Conclusion.  Maybe all of this is already being done, but I doubt it.  The next step for addressing "what Philadelphia universities owe Philadelphia" should be a focus on getting involved in significantly improving the public school system.