Proposed ballot measure in San Diego would tax second "empty" homes

 "Proposed ballot measure that would heavily tax thousands of second homes in San Diego clears critical hurdle," San Diego Union Tribune.

A proposed ballot measure that would impose a hefty tax of as much as $15,000 a year on thousands of empty second homes in San Diego cleared a major hurdle Wednesday when elected leaders agreed to advance it to the full City Council next week.

The proposal, which initially calls for an annual $8,000 tax on more than 5,000 largely unoccupied homes — plus a $4,000 surcharge for corporate-owned dwellings — is being pushed by Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who just a month ago failed to win support from his colleagues for a far broader measure that would have also taxed whole-home short-term rentals.

An empty second home is defined as one that is left unoccupied for more than 182 days out of the year and is not an owner’s primary residence. Elo-Rivera argues that by keeping such homes off the rental or for-sale market, owners are depriving San Diegans of much needed housing.

A lengthy analysis prepared by the Office of the Independent Budget Analysis offered a more conservative estimate of anywhere from 1,790 to 2,812 empty homes that would be affected by the proposal. However, that estimate takes into consideration properties that would fall under a number of exemptions proposed by Elo-Rivera, as well as those instances where owners opt to sell their properties or convert them to short- and long-term rentals.

The Independent Budget Analyst’s office also concluded that the measure, if passed by voters, could generate from $12.1 million to $23.8 million in new revenue to the city during the first year of implementation. That could increase to $15.3 million to $30 million in the second year, which is still considerably less than the $51 million calculated by Elo-Rivera’s office.

Ideally, laws like this are less about revenue generation, and more about pushing properties back into the home ownership market.

Oxford Street pedestrianization us coming to London

Oxford Circus pedestrian crossing, Oxford Street and Regent Street, Westminster, London.  The street is also famous for its all-angle crosswalk.

I started this entry in 2018, when after Sadiq Khan became mayor of London in 2016, it was announced that Oxford Street, one of the main shopping streets in London, was finally going to move to pedestrianization ("London’s Oxford Street to be pedestrianised by the end of 2018 under plans by Mayor Sadiq Khan," CITYam). 

More recently, this has been an issue because of how new Crossrail stations there will further add to the number of people in the area on foot.

Oxford Street attracts more than 500,000 visitors each day. Taxis make up around 1/3 of the traffic on the street, but only accounting for 2% of the people throughput (10,000 people).  Most people walk or use the subway.  

Making this a reality took a change in national law.  London (like Montreal) is a city of boroughs.  While the Mayor of the city overall, particularly in London, has a limited set of duties, but a major one, public transit, this authority doesn't extend to most roadways.  At that scale the borough calls the shots, and Westminster Borough said no (" This article is more than 9 months old Banning cars in city centres has worked around the world. Why isn’t London’s Oxford Street pedestrianised yet?," Guardian).

But it required action by the national government to do so.  From "Oxford Street transformation – the state of play as 2026 gets underway":

On 17 September 2024, he revealed that the then brand new Labour government was backing his desire to bring “the nation’s high street” under his command.

This would not only entail putting Transport for London in charge of the highway itself, but also setting up a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) to annexe some of the area around it too. Control of that area would therefore be removed from Westminster City Council which, in May 2022, had become Labour-run for the first time in its history.

Business opposition at the outset reversed.  Initially businesses were against ("Oxford Street businesses are up in arms over the road’s planned pedestrianisation," CITYam).  But now, with the reduction in footfall from WFH post-covid and a decline in London nightlife, retailers are on board ("London mayor gives green light for pedestrianised Oxford Street," "Khan: Crossrail’s Bond Street station can revitalise “tired” parts of Oxford Street," CITYam, "In Detail: What is the future for London's Oxford Street?," The Industry Fashion).

Green light.  But today, the project is finally going forward ("Oxford Street pedestrianisation plans approved," BBC). 

World class cities give, not just take:  London "gives permission" to pedestrianize major streets.  I have a line that world class cities through their adoption of innovation, show how other places can act similarly.

The congestion charge in London is one, even though it wasn't the first.  It took a long time, but NYC was finally able to launch a similar program, to great success ("New York's Congestion Pricing Is Working. Five Charts Show How," Bloomberg).  

Large scale bike share by Paris is another.  Again, they weren't the first, but they were the first in terms of large scale deployment therefore generating large scale rather than low scale impact ("Vélib' - A Success Story on Bike-Sharing in Paris," Citibike). 

While cities like Washington later moved similarly, NYC's adoption of bike share at a wider scale is again an example for North American cities, along with Montreal, the first city adopting the Paris model on the continent ("S.F. moving to catch up with European bike-share programs," San Francisco Chronicle).

Paris is also a leader in pedestrianizing streets, more so than London, although London has a number of projects that pedestrianize streets in neighborhoods ("Low-traffic neighbourhoods reduce pollution in surrounding streets," Imperial College, "London could get 30 more Low Traffic Neighbourhoods," TimeOut) and by schools (School Streets Initiative).  

The low traffic neighborhood initiative has had push back by the motor lobby, and the then Conservative Government thought it would be a winning campaign issue in the last election ("Residents hate them … so why do officials keep making more LTNs?," "Low-traffic neighbourhoods ‘have little local support’," London Times).   It wasn't ("Labour is right about LTNs – the Tories need to learn the same lesson." Guardian). 

Low traffic neighborhood in Hackney.

What differentiates Paris is moving towards doing this at a subdistrict scale where instead of one street, multiple streets are changed simultaneously.

Conclusion.  In short, cities need to double down on those elements that differentiate cities from suburbs, and attract new residents and commerce.  As I wrote wrt pedestrianization, start with one block and build from there ("A point about pedestrianizing streets: Boulder; Alexandria, Virginia, Cleveland Park, DC").

Big League City: Big League States: Part 2, Salt Lake/Utah

"Big League City: Big League States | The real advantage is held by the sports team" is a follow up to "Big League City:  Small Cities." 

The latter is a bit of a review of the book Big League City, about the landing of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team and how it was of key importance to the sense of the city's self worth and inter/national branding because of how the NBA is followed around the world.

Big League States discusses this belief and competition for teams at another scale, how in metropolitan areas spanning states, states can be outbid by the other.  This has happened in Kansas, where the Chiefs football team will be moving from Missouri.  In NYC, where the two professional football teams are actually located in New Jersey.  In DC, where the football team has been in Maryland for almost 30 years, and is returning to DC after a big handout in incentives.  And it's a battle in Illinois, where Indiana is making a credible bid for the Chicago Bears.

This comes up again with Utah, more specifically Salt Lake, as The Athletic has penned a story "How Salt Lake City evolved into a sports boomtown — and MLB expansion frontrunner." It's not about competition between states like in Illinois, but more about a state becoming more prominent in the professional sports world.

Sports-wise the city and state have evolved since the 2002 Winter Olympics. 

While graduates of University of Utah and BYU are heavily invested in their football and basketball teams and the intra-state rivalry--BYU is also great in running, and Utah in gymnastics ("A Winning Formula: Utah’s college sports score big for communities and universities," Gardner Institute), there is the Jazz NBA team which for some years almost won the national championship, but the Olympics and adding a decent for a city its size light rail repositioned the city.

Pro soccer team came to the suburbs--although there are tons of pro soccer teams, it's not a particular distinctive addition to a community's sports scene to my way of thinking.

But like how the Thunder came to Oklahoma City from Seattle as an example of serendipity and the willingness to seize opportunity that I discuss in the case of cities like Bilbao (Guggenheim Museum) and Liverpool (EU Capital of Culture) [see "Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning" and "Liverpool regeneration as a process for regaining relevance at the regional, national, and global scales"] Salt Lake's jump into higher levels of the pro ranks is about serendipity too, in this case money.

The Utah Mammoth logo.

The economically sputtering Phoenix Coyotes finally destroyed all their goodwill with their host city and could no longer use the professionally-sanctioned arena.  Forced to use a small college arena, the team had to get a commitment to a new arena, or it would have to be moved.  They didn't get the arena, and Silicon Slopes Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith swooped in to buy the team--after recently purchasing the Jazz.

Now the Phoenix Coyotes are the Utah Mammoth.

There are complaints about the branding for the Olympics, both from shifting from focusing on Salt Lake to the State of Utah, and because the text is hard to read--the graphic designer defended it, saying he drew from the natural rock arches in Arches National Park ("Gov. Cox 'gets the criticism' for transitionary Olympic logo, jokes logo unified Utah," KUTV).

The article discusses how the city held the NBA All Star Game, not so great financially ("NBA All Star Game in Salt Lake, economic development hype | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pirates baseball team economics"), the state has won the 2032 round of the Winter Olympics, and is in good position to get a baseball team.

Salt Lake's metropolitan area is at the low end of population for a pro team, even smaller than cities like Pittsburgh or Kansas City, where city size is used as an excuse for the difficulty of those teams to compete with teams in much larger communities, but like with hockey, there is a wealthy, well connected owner in the wings.  

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Construction nears completion at The Ballpark at America First Square in South Jordan on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.

The Larry H. Miller Companies had been one of the largest automobile dealership groups in the country--the family sold it off a few years ago, and they got a $1 billion for the Jazz, and are active in real estate--they moved their minor league baseball team the Bees to the suburban Daybreak area in South Jordan, not because it would make more money as a team, but to provide a high profile amenity to an area where they are heavily invested in real estate. 

Despite selling the Jazz they didn't abandon professional sports.  They kept ownership of the Bees baseball team, and stepped up to buy the soccer franchise after the then owner got caught up in various controversies ("Larry H. Miller family buys Real Salt Lake, Utah Royals FC," Salt Lake Deseret News).  So they're all in.

(LHM Company) The Larry H. Miller Company released new renderings for its plans for the Power District development on Salt Lake City’s west side on Feb. 15, 2024. The 100-acre site along North Temple is where the Miller’s proposed Major League Baseball stadium would be built.

The Millers expressed their interest in a baseball team, put together a proposal and concept plan for a stadium and got the State Legislature to commit to $1 billion funding.

Because of their minor league ties, of the cities vying for a team now--Portland and Nashville are in the mix--the Miller Group is better connected.  Plus they are the ownership group pushing the bid, backed with real money, unlike the Nashville quest.

Interestingly, without text, the Utah Jazz logo is place-less.

Serendipity/Seizing the opportunity.  AND, as The Athletic points out, the State Legislature has put forth $1 billion for a baseball team (after already putting up $1 billion for a revitalized arena for basketball and hockey and an adjacent sports and entertainment district).  

They've put forth plans for a baseball anchored development, the Ballpark District, slightly west of Downtown, centered on an electricity plant due to be decommissioned.

So you have connections + money + Legislative dough + a solid proposal for a stadium.

It's likely = to a winning bid.

Money for billionaires.  Interestingly, while the State is fine with providing big money to the NBA/NHL and MLB, the pitch for the Olympics was from the beginning, "no state money" only private and other sources, including the LDS Church! which doesn't seem appropriate from a use tithing money to help people perspective ("LDS Church pledges ‘significant financial donation’ to support Utah’s 2034 Olympics," Salt Lake Tribune)..

(The Church owns a lot of income property downtown, where festivities will be held, and may see this as an investment in that area, "Mormon-Backed Mall Breathes Life into Salt Lake City," New York Times).

It'd seem like it should be the opposite, billionaires pay, nonprofit initiatives get money.  Although now some monies seem to be going towards the Olympics ("Utah tax money will 'probably' be spent on 2034 Olympics," KUTV).

One rendering of an MLB stadium shows a kind of wide river there suitable for water-based attractions.  The Jordan River isn't that wide and without water diversion, can't support such a facility.

Conclusion.  I don't know what to think.  Basically, except for money spent by out of area visitors, sports spending is merely an element of household spending on entertainment and doesn't add much to the local GDP.  

While this is known, knowing where their bread is buttered, the Gardner Institute of Politics at the University of Utah is all in ("If they come, we will build it: Lawmakers back MLB, NHL pursuits with nearly $2B. Now what happens?," Deseret News).

But since these projects are approved without regard to economics, my focus is how to best mitigate potential problems and add value as best as possible through community investment.  These aims are discussed in these blog entries:

-- "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities," 2021

-- "Revisiting "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities" and the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team + Phoenix Coyotes hockey," 2022
-- "Stadiums and arenas as the enabling infrastructure for "money-making" platforms," 2014
-- "Good quote on arenas and stadiums as "performing arts centers" attractions for cities," 2024
-- "Sports facilities and the reproduction of retail space often doesn't work for the locals," 2025
-- "You get what you plan for: the multi-use Miami Hard Rock Stadium versus typical football stadiums | Washington Commanders," 2025
-- "Another example of RFPs versus plans and letting developers set the agenda: stadium projects in Chicago," 2025

School boards as an element of democracy and strengthening citizen participation in local civic affairs

I love how Charlie Kirk said some murders were acceptable collateral damage from having a strong Second Amendment providing for gun ownership rights (the US has gone far beyond the reading of the original meaning of this amendment in expanding gun rights to individuals rather than to militias.

The same goes for democracy more generally, and citizen oversight.  Sometimes it's messy  and fractious.  Sometimes it leads to fraud and corruption.  The solution isn't to eliminate the oversight when it's problematic but to improve it.

For example, with DC's Advisory Neighborhood Councils, to reduce financial abuse, I argue all the bank accounts should be run through the city system, with checks beyond the existing ones when an ANC has an account at a local bank branch.

Calgary.

As importantly, in response to complaints about effectiveness of neighborhood councils, my response is to say we don't provide a training and technical assistance infrastructure for them--whereas cities like Seattle and Calgary ("Community association planning committees a hidden gem?," Calgary Herald, "New life for community associations," CREB) do, very effectively ("On the Role and Future of Calgary's Community Associations," University of Calgary).

In Calgary, community associations run recreation centers, not the city, such as the Thorncliffe-Northview Community Association with 800+ members and a recreation center with community functions.  "Calgary's 151 associations include approximately 1,800 board members, along with another 18,000 volunteers who run programs, said FCC."

-- "National Community Planning Month | Civic Involvement" (2025)
-- "Setting up DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions for success" (2022)

School boards.  The same goes for school boards.  Citizen oversight has been problematic for a long time.  This was true when NYC in the 1960s created community boards to provide input.  And with school boards in inner cities and suburbs both.

My solution, unlike what is suggested in Ontario, ""Getting rid of school board trustees is the right thing to do" (Toronto Star), is a training and technical assistance infrastructure with participation tied to salaries--often school board members get paid, at least in the US.

From the Star:

Perhaps they tried to persuade you that trustees embody true grassroots governance of our schools. More probably, you have no recollection of ever seeing or hearing from your local trustee, let alone voting for him or her. Possibly you have no clue what their name is after all these years — and all those elections. The reality of local democracy today is that turnout for most trustee elections is abysmally low — typically in the range of 10 to 30 per cent of eligible voters.

Yet our freshly empowered trustees gain a free hand to meddle in massive school board budgets. And then point fingers in ideological or tangential debates about what’s taught in classrooms across the province. Trustees weren’t always so disconnected.

More than 200 years ago, school trustees were Ontario’s first elected politicians, predating by decades the MPPs and MPs who later sat at Queen’s Park and on Parliament Hill. In a province dominated by one-room schoolhouses, they played a pioneering role as “trustees.”

All these years later, trustees are no longer the leading edge of democracy, they are a lagging indicator of dysfunction and distrust. Today, trustees have been overtaken in relevance and importance by senior levels of government — municipal, provincial and federal — on measures of accountability and also accounting.  ... To date, a record seven local school boards have been taken over by outside supervisors

I know there are professional associations for school boards, plus conferences (often citizens criticize attending such meetings as a waste of money) and they do get technical assistance and training, but obviously there needs to be more and better and accountability about it. 

From the Education Week story "School Boards Are Struggling. Could a New Research Effort Help?":

... Jonathan E. Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Education research focuses more heavily on the work of teachers and administrators, and there’s a dearth of national data on how school boards form, how they function, and how their stewardship affects student learning.

Collins founded a new research lab this month to help provide solutions and paint a clearer picture of how the most local of local governing bodies operate. The School Board and Youth Engagement Lab, or S-BYE, plans to assemble a national data set on factors such as how boards are elected and how they interact with the public. It also will partner with local boards to pilot new communications tools.

An angry crowd at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting in June, 2021. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Separately, an issue in the US is fractious opponents filling school board meetings with vitriol and even threatening members to the point where they choose to no longer serve ("School boards get death threats amid rage over race, gender, mask policies," Reuters, "Mitigating Threats Against School Board Officials," Princeton, "School boards around the country are under fire. What exactly do they do?," CNN, "Culture Wars Could Be Coming to a School Board Near You," Time Magazine).  That's a different issue but one that needs to be addressed.

Constituent services funds disbursements.  Another area where I've brought this up is with constituent services funds available from Councilmembers.  I think that the decisions should be made via participatory budgeting techniques executed by citizen committees within the office ("More on ethics: discretionary funding-constituent funds," 2011).

DC Metrorail transit ridership by station, daily boardings

WMATA and other transit agencies make data available about ridership for rail systems and bus lines.  

It would be easy for them to also produce it as a matter of course like in the graphic below.  

Similarly, such data could be presented by bus stop for bus lines.

Having such data easily presented makes it a lot easier to have discussions about transit stations and bus stops, whether or not bus stops could be cut in order to speed service, and what stations to invest in to improve user experience and increase ridership.

Who maintains community/cluster mailboxes in Canada?

Canada Post, to lower costs, forced a shift to group mailboxes for neighborhoods.  This was criticized for a couple reasons, one being wrt historic neighborhoods, the appurtenances aren't particularly fitting architecturally.  

Suburban and new subdivisions are outfitted with the group mailboxes and have been since the 1980s ("Super mailboxes, 'second-class citizens' and mail inequality," CBC).

Thus far, city neighborhoods still get door to door service ("An opportunity — if Canada Post chooses to take it," Winnipeg Free Press).  

Back when the change in how to deliver mail was first contemplated, wrt snow, another point was raised that one of the motivators for people to shovel their sidewalks was so that mail could be delivered ("Canadian Postal Workers Battle to Save Door-to-Door Delivery," Labor Notes, 2014).

Here, it seems that Canada Post doesn't take responsibility for snow clearance around their group mailboxes.

Image from "Canada gets cluster-boxed: Why it can’t happen here," Save the Post Office.  This article also discusses calls to create similar cluster boxes or community mailboxes in the US.

Another issue is general maintenance, such as dealing with people discarding mail at the box.  

Apartment buildings without front desks often have a mass-mess of discarded mail on the floor below the mailboxes.  This can be an issue in Canada too.

Does the US need a set of national urban parks? | Revisiting a comment from 2019

I bring this up because reading "backfile" articles about architecture and parks in the Toronto Globe and Mail, there is this year old article, "What Canada’s only national urban park can teach us about accessible, eco-friendly design." 

The Rouge National Urban Park is 30 minutes outside of Toronto, and is transit accessible ("One of the largest urban parks in North America is in Toronto and you can get there for free"), unlike most of the Canadian national parks in rural areas. (Or many US national parks and related federal park-type facilities.)

It's a single park unit, not an amalgamation of sites like an NPS National Recreation Area spanning multiple sites in an area like SF, Boston, Long Island, New York or outside Atlanta.

(WRT access issues and DC area national parks, see "A gap in planning across agencies: Prioritizing park access for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users compared to motor vehicle access" and "Revisiting: Access to Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national park in Washington, DC.")

Nor is it a National Heritage Area which typically isn't urban-focused specifically, they are focused on a large region and interpreting it thematically, such as the Rivers of Steel NHA for Greater Pittsburgh (although the one in Baltimore is; Boston has a National Historical Park including many different sites), but an area of historic interested spread out in a region of many hundreds of square miles. (In the Detroit area there is even an (inter)national wildlife refuge along both the US and Canadian sides of the Detroit River.

(Separately, I've argued DC should manage itself as a heritage area, whether or not it is federally designated as such.  See "A unified National Park Service Visitor Center for DC (and the region).")

Toronto as seen in the distance from Rouge National Urban Park.

The article makes the point that the Canadian Park Service wants to develop other urban parks.  From the article:

Dubbed the “people’s park,” RNUP is currently Canada’s only national urban park. But not for long. To connect more urban dwellers to nature, the federal government committed $130-million in 2021 to establish more of them across the country – looking at cities such as Windsor, Ont., Edmonton and St. John’s, with the aim of creating six by 2025 and a total of 15 by 2030. Parks Canada believes that creating these parks will improve resident well-being, air and water quality and commemorate Indigenous knowledge and culture. The government also recently announced RNUP’s expansion, scrapping plans for an airport in Pickering in favour of adding to the park’s footprint.

As RNUP expands and new urban national parks take shape, the question of how these spaces should look and function becomes more important. Planners and designers are grappling with how to balance ecological health, accessibility and public use, while also considering the role of beauty and aesthetics.

On the long ago entry, "Defining National Park Service installations in DC as locally or nationally serving" (2019), Ed Drozd made the point that there ought to be a systematic provision of "national" parks throughout the country:

First, in re whether locally serving, thinking about it, I wonder what should be the goal of the National Park Service. Clearly part should be iconic areas. But, I do think selected locally serving areas, whether National Parks or National Historic Parks, might be important as well. Not just as outreach between the NPS and most people, but also to connect people to history and/or environment.

Part first amended: my wife lives near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (full National Park) between Akron and Cleveland. I've been in it, and have been underwhelmed compared to, say, Acadia or Glacier, but it is truly lovely and can connect people to the environment like few other places in the area can.

But, why there but not places in NJ where I grew up? Granted there are National Historic Parks, but those are tied to history. However, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps it doesn't matter because of the programming.

If we think about this in terms of spreading the wealth of national parks beyond the signature parks, as far as urban parks go, there are a bunch of NPS installations, mostly historic site based, some "national recreation areas" like around Boston, SF, Long Island, etc.  They do have an urban program, or at least they did before Trump.

In a follow up comment I was in agreement, but now I am not so sure.  DC has a lot of national park sites, big and small, but the Park Service hasn't been that great about taking care of them, partially because they have a big portfolio, a backlog of maintenance, and because they aren't set up well to deal with urban parks.

Even though they produced a couple decent reports on how to do it, the Urban Agenda Call to Action Initiative more generally, and wrt DC specifically, the Small Parks Management Strategies document (report).

Cracked and broken tiles mar the appearance of Welcome Park, a plaza dedicated to telling the story of William Penn’s vision for the city. Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer.

And resource deficiencies aren't just a problem in DC, they are especially a problem at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park ("Large granite ‘join or die’ sculpture is among Independence Park improvements that still need funding," "Independence Park is ‘woefully behind’ for 2026 and in ‘grave need of resources,’ stakeholders say," "A Much-Needed Makeover: How Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park is getting ready for America’s 250th birthday," "More bikes and pedestrians, fewer cars: A $100M rethink of Philly’s historical district," Philadelphia Inquirer) 

-- Independence National Historical Park: Long-Range Interpretive Plan, National Park Service (2007)

A display describing the lives of enslaved people on the site where one of George Washington's homes once stood in Independence National Historical Park. Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer.

This is irrespective of the recent problems over historic interpretation ("The slavery exhibits at the President’s House are starting to be restored by the National Park Service," "Trump’s attempts to hide the unpleasant truths about our actual history are the real disparagement," PI) at the President's House and the Trump Administration's desire to whitewash over "minority" elements, especially "hurtful" history, as part of the good and bad of the national story.

What about networking existing urban parks?  Now, and I might be biased because I am on the board of an urban park (granted it's 1/6 the size of Central Park in NYC), and knowing also that there are extensive networks of state parks in addition to the large park inventories typical in major cities, that maybe like how within Montreal, they have a set of parks they refer to as Network of Large Parks, some more urban and sculpted, others more natural, that instead, somehow we think of these park systems as networks, and promote and support them that way.

Parks People, the parks advocacy group in Canada, has created such a network there ("Park People launches first-of-its-kind network for Canada’s large urban parks").  Of course in the US there is the Trust for Public Land, an advocacy and consulting group--with an urban parks unit, and various national and state professional associations.  But judging from what I know about parks in Salt Lake City and County, state parks or natural resources agencies don't work that closely to help local and county park systems in terms of a network.

Still a role for the Park Service (and other federal agencies).  There is still a place for NPS in terms of linking various federally controlled sites through National Recreation Areas, Urban National Heritage Areas, Boston's National Historical Park, historic sites and landmarks, and other resources.  There's talk in Southern California of designating some of the beaches a national par ("Parks service says federal control of local beaches could spur new, protections, conservation efforts and economic activity," Santa Monica Daily Press).

But like as opined in the above-cited blog entry, there needs to be a strong interpretational, historic, and cultural resources framework for determining why such parks and sites should be designated as federal.  

And new systems need to be built that better gather public input on these facilities, especially for places treated as more like public parks--ordinarily the Park Service is pretty distant from local input.

Which is why I recommend that local parks master plans also provide guidance wrt federal, state, and county parks within their boundaries.  Some planners say, we don't have any authority so why bother.  My counter is without guidance from us we guarantee we're not considered ("Federal shutdown as another example of why local jurisdictions should have more robust contingency and master planning processes," 2013).

And, there needs to be money appropriated to deal with additional responsibilities for new federally designated parks, rather than merely add to the current $10+ billion backlog in maintenance.

That doesn't even mention US Forests which may be located on the outskirts of urban areas such as in Los Angeles and the Uintah-Wasatch-Cache National Forest outside of Salt Lake.  The Forest Service has been underbudgeted for years, which has led to mergers of forests covering often disparate areas.

Back from the Brink, an oral history of the introduction and implementation of Broken Windows theory policing in New York City

I have been remiss in reviewing Back from the Brink, the book by Peter Moskos that is an oral history of the New York City Police Department during the Bratton period, where new strategies and tactics were introduced to suppress crime in significantly measurable ways.  (I first mentioned the book last September, in "Murder rate in Chicago is bad: "correct" applications of broken window policing.")

Unfortuately, I have a bad habit of if I don't write the review as soon as I read the book, I'm not likely to get back to it, partly because I have another bad habit of writing my notes on various different pieces of paper, some get mislaid etc.

But the review of the book by Michael Fortner, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in Washington Monthly, "How New York City Got Safe: A historical reconstruction of the Big Apple’s crime decline, told from inside the institutions responsible for public safety," reminds me that it is important to do so.

A New York Subway car before Broken Windows policing practice was introduced in the late 1980s.

Fortner covers the book pretty well, but I think he misses some points.  

I lived in DC during the bad times in the 80s and 90s, and am a fervent believer in broken windows policing theory.  

In general, especially in progressive academia, it has a bad rep because most departments interpreted it as "zero tolerance policing" with a lack of focus on major crimes and the creation of a siege mentality by arresting people for the least transgression, like lack of a seatbelt (also see "Looking Through Broken Windows: The Impact of Neighborhood Disorder on Aggression and Fear of Crime Is an Artifact of Research Design" Annual Review of Criminology, "Why the Fraudulent 'Broken Windows' Theory of Policing Refuses to Die," Current Affairs).

What I got out of Moskos book are a few key things.  

First, the interviews make clear that Bratton and the top people believed that crime could be suppressed.  CompStat was about (re)focusing police time towards proactiveness.  

Although as Fortner quotes one commander, it was a philosophy.  Moskos cites a cop talking about how they had a problem with bike-based robberies in his precinct and how they addressed it.  But others took out of CompStat meetings about this precinct "arrest bicyclists" rather than analyze whether or not bicycles were used repetitively in perpetrating crime.

Bratton's team believed that by addressing pattern crime, and arresting perpetrators crime would drop.  

While generally, the police department wasn't focused on "broken windows" or improving public spaces per se, the application of focused policing on the subway system was complemented by a refurbishment of subway stations and subway cars--not just buying new equipment--but by addressing graffiti, etc.

I really got a sense of the incrementalism of the effort.  The idea of "moving the success of broken windows from underground/the subways" to above ground wasn't just about the CompStat tracking system and delving deeply into crime patterns, precinct by precinct.. 

Two stories in particular cover the integration of policing with public space improvement were the campaigns to significantly improve the  Port Authority Bus Terminal and Bryant Park (although the program to improve BP began before the Bratton period of policing).  

But as the president of the subway system told Bratton during his interview "if we don't fix stations and subway trains in association with better policing people won't take the train," the success of Bryant Park likely would have taken much longer to come to fruition without better, focused policing in public parks and Bryant Park in particular.

Another element of public space improvement at the time had nothing to do with policing, but with the creation of business improvement districts, funded by local property tax surcharges, these groups provided extranormal cleaning services and public space improvements and monitoring in places like Times Square and around Penn Station.

And the proof is in the pudding.  Sure multiple cities had significant crime drops starting in the late 1990s.  But eg DC versus NYC.  NYC had a 75% drop in homicides, DC 38%.  I'm sure this quantum difference in results between NYC and other cities was across the board.

Living in DC at the time, there weren't many broken windows approaches, but there was a focus on involving neighborhood groups, the way that Patrick Sharkey in Uneasy Peace attributes some of the fall in crime during that period to civic and collective action ("George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies," 2019).

I myself participated in one such neighborhood group that was started in response to a major drug area, and over time it was negated.  The cops came to monthly meetings, problems were discussed, there were occasional walks with police and elected officials, etc.  (I also did small experiments in my neighborhood, with litter pick up and measurement of its impact on certain streets and in bus shelters.)

A blog reader once made the point that as crime dropped, maybe stop and frisk was in part a response of needing something to do, but with the lack of restraints applied during the post Bratton Guiliani years (although Bratton in his later stint did support stop and frisk; later he recanted) it became a big problem.  

Obviously, Stop and Frisk was proven to be not productive.  Unlike the value of arresting fare jumpers and checking them for outstanding warrants, an early initiative of Bratton's on the subway system, less than 2% of the people stopped under Stop and Frisk had warrants.  

So for me, the biggest issue with BW is that it hasn't really been applied in a true fashion in very many places.  And with how the Bratton people were pushed out by Giuliani, my lesson from DC is that you can't ever stop being vigilant when it comes to crime and order versus disorder.  Once disorder returns it's hard to reverse.

The rise in social justice concerns, deserved somewhat in response to structural racism, as crime dropped and fewer elected officials and academics had direct experience of the mess of disorder during the worst of 1990s, did lead to a rise in crime in places like DC ("The Coming D.C. Crime Boomerang," Atlantic), as crime decriminalization was seen by perpetrators not as a social justice move to help people "driven to crime because of life circumstances," but as a signal to commit more crime (see the argument, by extension here, "The role of physical environment in the ‘broken windows’ theory," University of Chicago)

BART's new fare gates, seen at the Coliseum station in 2025, have generated more money for the transit agency. Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle

BART and fare gates. Recently there was a super interesting BW finding in SF with BART stations with new fare evasion resistant gates ("BART’s long fight against fare evasion is finally paying off. Here’s how much," San Francisco Chronicle).  

Not only did rider attitudes improve, ridership and fare revenue grew, and instances of vandalism dropped significantly.  Like Bratton said, turnstile jumpers commit other crimes.  If they aren't on the subway because they didn't pay, well, then there is less likelihood for vandalism of subway infrastructure.

Note that NYC and DC subways ("Metro’s new, higher faregates reducing fare evasion by more than 70 percent"), and St. Louis and Minneapolis light rail ("Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023) are also implementing a new type of fare gate to reduce fare evasion.

Playgrounds and cafes were some of the positive use spaces added to the area.   Photo:  Jessie Cooper and Justin Roth embrace on a swing at a playground at Civic Center in San Francisco, California, on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Revival of BART's Civic Center station.  Predating the fare gate program, the BART Civic Center Station became a center for nuisance and crime including drug dealing, where the main two block "entryway" to the station became a gauntlet for problems.  

The City of San Francisco invested in improving the public realm on those two blocks and beyond, adding positive functions that brought about more positive use of the space, which were complemented by station-specific improvements by BART.  

Media coverage of the project make clear that the effort involved police and multiple other partners, agencies, some philanthropic funding, physical interventions and programming ("SF Civic Center’s new vision: soccer fields, shaded gardens and people," "SF Civic Center — cleaner and safer — now a place to play and have a bite," "Rejuvenating SF Civic Center Plaza: a challenge beyond design," San Francisco Chronicle). 

While the area’s transformation remains a work in progress, the differences are stark. In addition to two new playgrounds that cost $10 million, the space hosts a growing number of public events, including outdoor concerts, art installations and food-truck gatherings. A winter park — complete with a 6,000-square-foot ice rink — is set to open next month.

BART has developed a station modernization program equally focused on reducing public safety issues.

The Station Modernization Program revolves around 3 themes, focusing on increasing safety, capacity, sustainability, appearance, and enhancing the customer experience: 

• Vibrancy-- Reflect the energy of the surrounding community and enhance the station’s existing strengths 
• Connectivity – Strengthen multi-modal and universal access to the station and promote a safe and comfortable customer experience 
•  Sustainability – Incorporate sustainable materials and technologies into the station to increase the life-cycle value of the station’s infrastructure and to conserve natural resources and protect the public investment. 

Residents hope a similar program can be developed to improve the environment and public safety elements at the 16th Street-Mission Station ("Can BART bring a Civic Center-style revival to another dilapidated S.F. station?," SFC).   But in contrast to the Civic Center project, they seem to be focusing more on BART, and less on engaging other agencies into creating a broader response.

 “If you really think about it, this is the living room of the Mission,” he said. “And the BART station is the front door. The first impression you have of the neighborhood is coming through the fare gate and up that escalator.”

As discussed in the 2013 entry "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," transit stations are entry points--porches or living rooms--to neighborhoods.  While transit systems typically don't plan them that way, it is a responsibility that goes beyond the transit agency, and should require ongoing coordination and planning with the local jurisdiction.

Managing to prevent disorder is an ongoing process.  The final lesson with BW in NYC is that it requires constant vigilance too.  That it's hard to maintain because people get burned out.  But also when elected officials want the credit, they push out the top cops who bring the changes about.  That definitely happened in NYC.  Most of the top implementers of BW at NYPD were gone within a few years of Bratton's departure.  Although fortunately, further down the ranks were commanders, inspectors, and captains who took the precepts to heart and continued to implement the approach.

Chicago.  Chicago is an outlier nationally, in that the city that has continued to have high murder rates, although they are dropping, despite purportedly adopting BW approaches.  (The city has had success with crime reductions in association with community intervention programs.)

"The federal help Chicago really needs," Crain's Chicago Business

At the University of Chicago Crime Lab, we have spent over fifteen years studying which interventions actually reduce gun violence and maximize the impact of government spending. We think we’ve found a clear path forward: Build the capacity of police commanders managing jurisdictions with the highest rates of violence. The Policing Leadership Academy has a simple premise — treat policing as a profession using the formula that has had tremendous success for private sector companies: investing in people’s leadership and management skills.

Also see "Policing and management," NBER, which makes the point about how the use of management time shapes outcomes positively or negatively.

How Trump celebrates Black History Month

Despite a White House proclamation honoring Black History Month, perhaps this is how Trump really feels (Trump’s racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash despite White House earlier defending it," Associated Press).

President Trump’s social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as racist.

... The deletion, a rare admission of a misstep by the White House, came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal for being racist -- including by Republicans -- the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously and it had been taken down.

... Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority Black countries.

San Francisco is not Santa Clara: How Santa Clara/San Jose are poorly represented by Super Bowl programming, even though it's home to the event

Yes, we're familiar with how many professional teams labeled after "their city" are no longer based in the city, but in the suburbs, e.g., the New York Giants and New York Jets play in New Jersey, the Arizona Cardinals play in Glendale, not Phoenix, and the San Francisco Giants moved from the city to the suburbs of San Jose in return for lots of subsidy--$80 million directly and hundreds of millions in bonds ("7 Things to Know About the Complicated Relationship Between Santa Clara and the 49ers," KQED/NPR).

Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara has the game but most of the sanctioned events leading up to it are in San Francisco. Kirby Lee/Imagn Images/Reuters

This is a problem when it comes to "economic benefits of the Super Bowl to the local economy," when the NFL will hold activities in "the big city"--New York City not suburban New Jersey, Phoenix not Glendale, and in the case of Sunday's Super Bowl, LV, in San Francisco not Santa Clara or San Jose ("Big game, big bill: Santa Clara mayor flags Super Bowl costs to the city," NBC, "Congrats, Your City Gets to Host the Super Bowl. The Party’s 40 Miles Away," Wall Street Journal, "Super Bowl LX week will once again be centered in San Francisco, but San Jose will kick off the fanfare," San Jose Mercury News).

From the WSJ:

San Jose got one sanctioned event—Super Bowl Opening Night. Mayor Matt Mahan opted to not get mad, but get even. He helped raise $5 million from businesses to field a competing roster of events, including a three-day block party called Super Fest, watch parties, drone shows and sold-out outdoor performances by the R&B singer Kehlani and DJ Dom Dolla.

I doubt the San Jose programs, scheduled against NFL sanctioned events held elsewhere, will have a significant effect in drawing fans to San Jose, especially if people are staying in hotels in SF.

The last Super Bowl in Santa Clara, in 2026, earned the city less than $1 million.  From "‘We’ll be on the center stage’: San Jose pulls out all the stops for 2026 sports bonanza," Local News Matters:

When Levi’s Stadium hosted Super Bowl 50 in 2016, reports found the Bay Area saw a $240 million boost to the local economy — San Jose, however, only saw 12% of those economic benefits, while 57% went to San Francisco. Santa Clara, where the stadium is located, only saw 7% of the benefits.

It's rare for a sports economic impact study to be so fine-grained.  They also subtracted out negative effects, and separately accounted for in kind project donations to area nonprofits.

Usually, small businesses don't benefit much from these events, as most of the money patrons spend is on travel, lodging, car rental, and food and beverage, and many of these firms are not locally owned.  From "Super Bowl LX preps spotlight local sourcing as NFL targets $360M economic impact," Silicon Valley Business Journal.

The NFL is also trying to keep the economic impact local, according to the NFL's Vice President of Global Events, Nicki Ewell. She said the league used a local-first sourcing strategy, sourcing from regional restaurants, vendors and local labor for stadium build-out and events so spending stays in the Bay Area.

Previous Silicon Valley Business Journal reporting shows that Super Bowl LX is projected to bring 90,000 people to the Bay Area in addition to a projected $360 million to $630 million in economic impact.

"This is huge," said Jayne Ancheta, owner of Santa Clara-based Macaron De Jayne and Source LX participant. "I secured multiple contracts for the Super Bowl events, and I had catering opportunities outside of the Super Bowl." The Super Bowl also marks an opportunity to spotlight the Bay Area, Ewell noted.

Note the same kinds of issues are present with "All Star Games" in baseball and basketball, etc.

-- "Musing on the economic impact of cultural and sports events," 2019
-- "Not enough time for a 2024 DC-Baltimore Olympic Bid (to make sense)," 2014
-- "Big sporting events (World Cup/Olympics), economic development and trickle down economics," 2014
-- "Super Bowl," 2016
-- "More need for economic revitalization planning/linkage with sports stadiums: Las Vegas (+ Houston and the Super Bowl)," 2017
-- "Minneapolis Super Bowl: Urban Revitalization and Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2018

-- "NBA All Star Game in Salt Lake, economic development hype | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pirates baseball team economics," 2023

The Urban Land Institute disagrees ("Inglewood’s Transformation: How an NFL Stadium Brought the City Back from the Brink of Bankruptcy").  But not the Washington Post ("A home Super Bowl is good for the Rams. But is SoFi Stadium good for Inglewood?").

Special labor.  One point of difference that I failed to account for in the past in terms of economic impact is what we might call "special events labor"--the people who run lights, sound, etc. for the event.  There definitely is an impact here, where people might get paid for a couple week long temporary gig associated with the Super Bowl.

NFL Draft economic impact.  More recently, the NFL has made an event out of the Draft, which is now held each year in different cities across the country. Economic impact is claimed to be as much as one half of the economic impact of a Super Bowl, which seems outlandish to me ("NFL Draft Expected to Have Huge Economic Impact for Detroit," Corp!), but apparently many tens of thousands of people are attending. 

"NFL Draft: Fans flock to second day of NFL Draft as Detroit nears attendance record," CNN.

In 2024, it was estimated that 300,000 fans would come to Detroit for the Draft, more than double a typical Super Bowl.  

It makes no sense that these projections are accurate.  But this photograph from Detroit's Draft Days tells another story.

-- Economic Impact of the NFL Draft Event in Detroit, Andersen Economic Group.  AEG differentiates between direct and indirect impact, indirect has to do with the multiplier effect of money recirculating within the economy.  WRT sports event, indirect impact is somewhat reduced because some of the major beneficiaries are firms located elsewhere (like airlines, hotels, rental cars) and the money repatriates to those headquarter facilities.

I like this infographic on the economic impact, produced by the City of Detroit by Octane Design, in the Sports Travel Magazine article, "2024 NFL Draft Brings Detroit $213.6 Million in Estimated Economic Impact," Sports Travel Magazine.  

Neighborhood councils and civic engagement: snow removal as a community building activity

DC has what are called Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which are grassroots community organizations empowered with the authority to "weigh in" on matters before DC government agencies, such as zoning, planning approvals etc.

Most of them don't work that well because not much is invested in them by the city government in terms of training and technical assistance.  Although some do well because they organize as committees and allow non-elected residents to participate as full members of the committees, expanding the human capital available to the Commission.

Past writings:

-- "National Community Planning Month | Civic Involvement," 2025

-- "DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions," (2012)
-- "(Even more on) ANCs (Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in DC)," (2010)
-- "Setting up DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions for success," (2022) (lots of links within)
-- ""Networked solutions" for some problems with ANCs in DC," (2011)
-- "Dumb... to fix bad practices, make them democratic instead of just eliminating them," (2012) (also discusses participatory budgeting)

-- "Building civic engagement systematically: Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods," (2022)
-- "Framingham Massachusetts creates Citizen Participation Officer position" (2018)
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement and Positive Promotion of Democracy," (2024)

-- "Main Street and getting schooled in politics, constituency building, and building support for your program," (2006)

Government versus self-help/DIY | top down versus ground-up solutions.  Note that Neighborhood Councils can create a couple of other problems.  First, they tend to convert every issue to one of "what government should do", reducing the willingness of people to do self-help/DIY.

Not enough engaged citizens to "staff up" multiple neighborhood organizations.  Also, they do what I call "creaming" getting the best possible community members to participate in the Councils.  I think this can come at the expense of maintaining other organizations such as community associations, friends of libraries/parks, schools and PTAs, etc.  

We need more and better participants, and a range of thriving community organizations, not fewer.  

Note that communities like Capitol Hill, Petworth, Adams-Morgan, Mount Pleasant, to some extent Georgetown, and Takoma Park (the Maryland side, which DC residents can be free riders) have a great amount of community identity, with a number of organizations, volunteers, community festivals, community foundations, various public events, etc.

Commissioners representing Single Member Districts.  Years ago I suggested some strategies and tactics for making Commissioners more accountable and active.  One was a stipend, but only if they held four meetings per year (quarterly) in their electoral district.  Later I suggested that one of the four meetings should be a public/outdoor event, like a community cleanup.

Snow clearance as a civic act.  Cities on the East Coast got zapped by the recent snow storm because snow was followed by sleet and a drop in temperature, creating what some are calling "snowcrete."  

The crust is very hard requiring sledgehammers, pickaxes and other non-plastic shovels to break through.

In DC, groups of citizens have self-organized through Reddit and other social media to go out and clear crosswalks--the city has never really taken responsibility for such even though cleared crosswalks are essential for a walking-biking-transit city ("Cities, sustainable mobility users, and snow"). 

Sidewalks and bus shelters too.

This would be a perfect activity to engage residents in the activities of their local Advisory Neighborhood Commission.  

Columbia Heights Shovel Gang hard at work.

Organized snow clearing events by transit stations, bus stops, schools, libraries, plus crosswalks, etc.  Hot chocolate afterwards?

DC Government does have a volunteer hotline for people willing to shovel snow for people in need.

But I think it could be expanded upon greatly if ANCs were a fulcrum for organizing.

Then again, supporting DIY efforts separate from ANCs is a good thing too.