Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

Another one from the archives: analyzing retail store failure

2012-01-27T11:51:00.004-05:00

One of the comments on this City Paper Housing Complex blog entry, "Going Backwards on Benning Road," indirectly and correctly makes the point that I was guilty of the over-generalizations that I often accuse others of employing, it's worth reprinting this piece from September 2007, when I was the program manager for the now defunct Brookland Main Street commercial district revitalization program.

I am particularly proud of the discussion of the four different "mixes" or subsystems of individual businesses, including what I call the store operations mix.

The link for the "Urban Retail Centers" document doesn't work anymore. This is one of the sections that I was referring to, in terms of the typical size and type of retail centers (you can sort commercial districts in cities in a similar fashion) and how many residents (retail trade area) you need to support the centers of various sizes.

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Why ask why? Because.

Slide from the Project for Public Spaces. I need to make a slide like this for individual stores. (See below) about the Retail Mix.

In the last couple months, 3 businesses have closed on the 12th Street NE corridor in Brookland, the commercial district I am charged with assisting. Another one is closing (this one is in large part a succession issue). On the other hand, in the last year, Yes! Grocery opened, and has a greater sales volume and number of employees than all of the stores that closed.

But when a store closes, the point isn't to make a statement "The store closed." The point should be to figure out why. That means asking questions. (I mention this because of one of the questions from someone in the audience at the session about Brookland at Friday's local ULI chapter conference made a statement about the failure of these businesses.)

The thing is that most people don't have any clue as to why the businesses close and don't have much insight into what is going on. In "Main Street at 15," Kennedy Smith wrote in 1995 about how marginal economies in our local commercial districts disconnected knowledge and success from the ability to open a business. She writes:

As retail dollars moved out of Main Street, a host of problems moved in. To begin with, the economics of owning commercial property downtown no longer worked. With fewer business tenants, downtown property owners had to depend on fewer rents. A building which might have once generated three $500 monthly rent checks might now only produce one or two--and building maintenance suffered. Downtown started looking run-down and shabby, in marked contrast to the spanking new shopping malls. Main Street`s retail space was suddenly second-class, at best. The businesses that could afford to pay the highest rents went to the mall; the rest came downtown.

Market demand had once shaped the mixture of businesses downtown. Now, anybody could open a business downtown with a few thousand dollars, regardless of his or her marketing savvy, business skills, or even knowledge of whether or not there was a market for the stuff he or she hoped to sell. Instead of a business district tightly synchronized with market-area consumer demand, Main Street had become a bizarre and eccentric assortment of junkshops, marginal businesses and other occupied vacancies.

After doing my presentation earlier in the week in Takoma Park, I realized I need to add a couple slides on the concept of a "retail trade area." So I was doing some research and reading about this yesterday. One of the best short discussions of some of the issues, and a listing of the size and population required to support various retail shopping places is this piece, Urban Retail Centers from UMN. (Note that you need up to 40,000 people to support 50,000 s.f. of retail. Most of the small neighborhood commercial districts have 50,000 to 100,000 s.f. minimum. H Street, including Hechinger Mall has 1 million square feet.)

One of the articles I dug up is called "Trade Area Mix and Retailing Mix: A Retail Strategy Matrix," from the Journal of Marketing, October 1976. In turn it cites an article from 1961, "The Retailing Mix: Planning and Management," from the Journal of Retailing.

The latter article proposes three components or sub-mixes of the retail mix:

Goods and services mix
• Variety and Assortment
• Parking [I would change this to Accessibility and Transportation]
• Sales Service
• Customer Service
• Credit
• Price Lines
• Guarantees and Exchanges
• Alterations and Adjustments
• Delivery

Communications mix
• Personal Selling
• Advertising
• [I would add Exterior Conditions of the Commercial District]
• Window Display
• Interior Display
• Public Relations
• Store Layout
• Catalogs
• Telephone Sales
• [now we would add online sales as well]

Physical distribution mix.
• Store Location
• Distribution Centers
• Inventory Control
• Transportation [of goods]
• Handling Goods

In terms of thinking more broadly in terms of the success of an individually-owned independent store, you can add another dimension called something like:

Store Operations mix
• Rent
• Quality of space and location
• Proprietor salary
• Personnel acquisition
• Labor costs
• Access to capital

The Rosenbloom article discusses the Trade Area Mix, linking broad market demand to the possibility of store (and commercial district) success:

1. Trade Area Geography: the geographical extent of the trade area
2. Trade Area Demand: the level of consumer demand within the geographically delineated trade area
3. Trade Area Heterogeneity: the mix of consumer market segments within the trade area and the diversity of consumer demand for products and services. The greater the demand, the higer degree of heterogeneity, characterized by more offerings.

When someone says "That store closed, the X commercial district is a terrible place to do business," the reality is a lot more complicated. Was it the owner? The concept? The commercial district? The property? Access to capital?

And it's not either/or, it can be and/and/and... For example, the Brookland commercial district has some significant spatial and access issues. Just like I write about "intra city sprawl," commercial districts need to ensure intensity and critical mass.

Slide © Project for Public Spaces.

And in terms of creating a "Commercial District Retail Strategy Matrix" for the city, the only way it will be possible to create strong retail centers in our neighborhood commercial districts in DC is through differentiation and a focus in part on cultural anchors to assist demand.

There is no way that DC with its current population can possibly fill the demand for all the new retail that is going to be created in the city, let alone the extant retail space, given the difficulty of developing independent retailers in the current environment, and the fact that asking prices for rents even in marginal neighborhood commercial districts are greater than $30/s.f.

Furthermore independent property owners, unlike the management of a shopping center, aren't likely to provide either build out allowances, a period of free rent, and/or rent rebates, which are necessary sweeteners often provided in order to set the stage for retail success.

Reprint: Bringing buildings back is really about bringing urban neighborhoods back

2012-01-27T08:11:00.002-05:00

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From September 2006.

It will be awhile before I have to chance to write in depth about the book that was launched last night by the American Assembly. (See previous entry.) Some of the discussion at the presentation troubled me, the overview was very powerful. The book is an extension of the report, "Reinventing America's Legacy Cities: Strategies for Cities Losing Population" which states 6 priorities for "legacy" cities that face long term shrinkage but also opportunity:

Building a Framework for Change
Understanding that one size does not fit all places, in this report attendees of the American Assembly lay out the following recommendations for fostering transformative change in cities that have lost substantial portions of their population:

1. Develop a creative vision for the future of the city, grounded in a thorough understanding of the city’s economic geography, the role it plays in its region, and its function in the global economy

2. Rigorously and objectively analyze the city’s assets, understanding both opportunities and constraints

3. Design strategies tailored to areas and opportunities with the greatest market potential, informed by social, environmental, and other values

4. Recapture surplus land for public uses in areas where private markets are not functioning

5. Build the city’s ability to execute complex revival strategies by:
• Strengthening governance and leadership
• Growing financial capacity
• Investing in information infrastructure

6. Forge supportive partnerships among federal, state, and local governments by:
• Targeting resources
• Revisiting regulatory policies
• Incentivizing regional collaboration

Alan Mallach was the editor for the project, and he is the author of the book discussed in the entry reprinted below.

The basic point is focus your revitalization strategies on your assets. The problems are bad enough that starting from what strengths you have is your most cost-effective opportunity.
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Yesterday, I wasn't going to go to the Smart Growth talk at the National Building Museum by Alan Mallach, about his new book, Bringing Buildings Back, because I have too much to do.

I'm glad I went.

Frankly, it's not like it was anything new. I've figured out most of what he said, based on 7 years or so of pretty serious involvement and analysis of urban revitalization, mostly in DC. But it would have been a lot easier and quicker to have had this book (just like I wish I had been able to read Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City before moving into the city).

But since you don't hear this from just about anybody else, it was great to have him confirm it (it also parallels the work done by organizations like NeighborWorks and the Casey Foundation in working to indentify the factors that influence comprehensive, successful neighborhood stabilization and improvement).

So I bought the book, which I don't often do.

His thesis, based on a lot of field experience and research, is that vacant buildings--I was impressed that he never used the words "blight" or "dilapidated" but called the buildings "abandoned" or "nuisances"-- are a tremendous underutilized asset providing cities with great opportunities.

We talked for quite a bit after he was finished with his book signing, and he used the phrase minimally acceptable market threshold, referring to how you augur urban revitalization, neighborhood by neighborhood, in ways that attract the people who have choices, the ability to live wherever they want. This dovetails with the quote from Richard Florida in yesterday's Post article, "The City as Modern Muse," about Brookland:

Extracted from a Washington Post graphic produced by Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso.

The reality is that you have to attract residents with choices because you need property, sales, and income tax revenues to fund city activities. (Another perspective on this is Rolf Goetze's Building Neighborhood Confidence, written in the late 1960s.) I had written a few comments about this in a thread on the blog Urban Commons last week:

Center cities only having "neighborhoods of and for people who have no other choices" well, it's not a competitive advantage. I will say that his argument in some respects parallels some of the discussion in Logan and Molotch's Urban Fortunes about historic preservation.

I think the point that they missed is the necessity of stabilizing urban neighborhoods, including downtown, vis-a-vis the suburbs. You have to have viable neighborhoods (which requires "place-based" investments) in order to retain residents, residents paying property, sales, and income tax (if the jurisdiction assesses it). Retaining low income residents isn't great for either the revenue or expenses side of the city government financial statement...

The more people you retain in the city that are middle and upper income the better, because you need the revenue, badly. Detroit has such a tremendous infrastructure left over from its days as a city with 2 million residents that its property taxes are sky high. A house assessed for $200,000 pays $8,000/year in property taxes. That's 3x higher than DC! And it's not like Detroit is full of amenities. (Although a house assessed for $200,000 in Detroit could be worth $600,000 in the right neighborhood in a strong market city.)

The problem is that while strategic investments are required in downtown and other areas, too often the bulk of the investments go downtown, or to big projects, that in the great stream of things, aren't necessarily strategic in terms of generating additional private investments and in-migration of residents.

It's a hard issue to work through. "Neighborhoods first" policies often don't generate the kinds of revenues cities need, especially if cities are still leaking business and population, particularly residents that pay more in tax revenues than they consume in services.

But too often, the downtown first interest groups have hogged the majority of the public investments.

The other problem, and in terms of Mallach's talk yesterday, it was the one thing he didn't discuss and his presentation suffered for it:

Most elected and appointed municipal officials still focus on big projects, with an urban renewal mentality, even though for the most part, as a theory of revitalization practice it is safe to say that it hasn't worked and is discredited. (Also see Peter Drier's nice piece on Jane Jacobs, "Jane Jacobs' Radical Legacy," from Shelterforce, the magazine published by the National Housing Institute, where Alan Mallach is the research director.)

A giant wrecking claw releases a torent of debris as demolition of the 100-year-old apartment building begins. It will take six weekends to complete the razing.(Sun photo by Doug Kapustin) Sep 16, 2006

This is a particular problem in Baltimore. I have been meaning to write a blog entry about how demolition of the Rochambeau building started last weekend, see "Building gives up ghost: The Rochambeau feels the wreckers' touch as a long battle to preserve the structure ends," as well as this story, "City houses to be razed," both from the Baltimore Sun. The latter story is about how 400 houses will be demolished across the city, to assemble land and develop larger parcels for development.

Crazy. Rehabilitating the houses and renting or selling them, or putting them into a community land trust would more likely "produce" affordable housing than their strategy. Plus it would likely be cheaper, especially given the quality and longevity of new construction, have higher appreciation possibilities, and it would maintain historic building stock in a way that strengthens Baltimore's identity.

See the National Trust report Affordable Housing and Historic Preservation: The Missed Connection by Donovan Rypkema, for more about this issue.

It makes me concerned about Martin O'Malley as governor of Maryland... Although from a "smart growth" and pro-transit standpoint, it'd be hard to be much worse than Governor Erhlich.

Mayor Martin O'Malley, left, and Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. debate at an event today hosted by the Maryland AARP in Timonium. At center is Joseph DeMattos, state director for AARP. (Sun photo by André F. Chung) Sep 14, 2006

See today's Sun editorial, "Smarter treatment." From the editorial:

But these upgrades can also allow sewage treatment plants to expand capacity. Reducing pollutants is good. Even expanding capacity is probably helpful. After all, if Maryland is going to have growth, better to have it hooked to a public sewer than a septic tank. Unfortunately, that's where matters get complicated.

Chesapeake Bay restoration grants are designed to clean up the worst polluting plants. The Maryland Department of the Environment doesn't factor in how the communities may potentially misuse any increased capacity. As a spokesman for the department told The Sun, "We don't look at what they do afterward." Controlling growth is considered a local matter.

That's a mistake. And it's another example of how the Ehrlich administration has repeatedly missed opportunities to build on Maryland's Smart Growth legacy. The Smart Growth concept demands that the state take a more active role in planning; without it, the MDE and other state agencies are merely enablers of bad local planning decisions.

The competitive advantages that cities have are centered upon historic architecture, urban design, and history (along with good transit). When you destroy historic architecture, you diminish your identity and your ability to compete. Granted if Baltimore were Detroit, the situation would be different. But it is well located, on the East Coast, well connected to other cities with rail, and in the core of a growing region, not to mention convenient to people priced out of Washington--the commuting distance by railroad to DC from Baltimore is less than that of many people who work in New York City but commute from other parts of New York State, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

But the average city official or planning department employee is shell shocked, and think that their best course of action is demolition. Sure their city has shrunk greatly. But nothing like Detroit.

As Alan Mallach said, "People aren't really buying houses, they are buying location."

If you wreck the advantages of your location, people won't be buying houses and choosing to live there.

Tonight: Book launch, forum to address solutions for America's ailing cities

2012-01-26T10:18:00.003-05:00

(From email)

New Book Offers “Legacy Cities” Best Advice from Nation’s Leading Urbanists.

Authors’ Forum Headlines Book Launch
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Forum: 5:00 p.m.—6:30 p.m.

Reception: 6:30 p.m.—7:30 p.m.

The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C

Born out of a major conference in Detroit – now the nation’s symbol for cities that defined the nation’s 20th century economy but find themselves in search of a new identity – a new book, Rebuilding America’s Legacy Cities: New Directions for the Industrial Heartland, explores strategies for retooling, reimagining and re-building these cities.

Published by the Columbia University-based American Assembly, the book from America’s most notable urbanists is a blueprint for cities, towns and neighborhoods seeking to recast their futures in the changed world economy and adopt policies that encourage the adaptive repurposing of land to make their cities competitive.

The book will be formally launched on January 26th at an afternoon forum and reception at The Brookings Institution. Three project co-chairs and co-sponsors – former Mayor and Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs Henry Cisneros, former Columbus Ohio Mayor Gregory Lashutka, and Dan Kildee, former Genesee County Treasurer and current President of the Center for Community Progress – will join Legacy Cities Project Director Paul Brophy; Hunter Morrison, Program Director of the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium; Lavea Brachman, Executive Director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Alan Mallach, book editor and Brookings Nonresident Senior fellow.

“Few cities and towns in the United States have escaped the shrinking revenues, high unemployment and dwindling private investment that characterize today’s economy, with ‘legacy cities’ hit hardest,” says Secretary Cisneros. “That dynamic can and must be reversed – nothing less than the very vitality of our nation is at stake.”

Historic preservation roundup

2012-01-26T06:12:00.005-05:00

Standard Record & Hi-Fi in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle. This example of streamlined art deco commercial storefront from the 1940s is slated for demolition and will be replaced by a light rail station. The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board decided against designating the building. It would be possible to incorporate the facade into the light rail station. Photo: Benjamin Benschneider, Seattle Times.

1. Conservation districts. An interesting set of articles in the Reading Eagle, "Historic district scope scaled down" and "Conservation sector in Lancaster praised as big plus for city" about creating not a historic district--because a historic district has "too rigid" a set of regulations concerning architectural details and materials--but a "conservation district," which only considers three things: demolition requests; new construction; and significant alteration.

In the past I haven't been too favorable on the idea of conservation districts, because I think materials and architectural quality do matter.

On the other hand, I do think that in DC at least, with the rise of property rights fervor and the lack of super good public relations and outreach on the part of preservation in the city, along with the fact that a majority of the City Council doesn't seem to be too favorable to preservation--seeing it as a hindrance to development (and yes, it can be, that's the point) and how the law requires a vote amongst affected property owners, that it becomes much harder to create a historic district in DC, especially one of major size--the big historic districts in DC, such as in Georgetown (actually created by a special law passed by Congress in 1950) or the Capitol Hill Historic District, which has as many as 8,000 buildings, were created when the laws were different and in different times--so maybe it's time for me to compromise, and give in on the idea of conservation districts as being much better than nothing, given that nothing is the level of protection accorded to so many buildings in DC, despite their eligibility for historic designation.

In Reading, the proponents of the conservation district argue that it can be a step to a full-blown historic district, as people experience that the reality of historic building regulations can be dealt with.

I argue that there is limited social, community and organizational capital, so the likelihood of incremental change from one type of historic district to another is unlikely, because it's too much work.

2. Religious exceptions to historic designation. I don't agree with it. In fact, churchly demolition of designated buildings by Capitol Hill Baptist Church, because they claimed they couldn't afford to pay for upkeep, so they tore down the buildings for parking, led to the creation of DC's local historic preservation laws. (One case going on in the city now is a church that wants to tear down buildings that they haven't maintained for a parking lot. See "A Tale of Two Razes" from the City Paper.)

In New York City, churches are organizing opposition to the creation of a historic district in the East Village. See "Historic District Plans in East Village Stir Opposition" from the New York Times.

3. The value of historic preservation to local character, authenticity and the local economy. In the context of DC, I argue that historic architecture, the pedestrian-centric urban design of the city from the Walking City era (1800-1890) and history, identity and authenticity are three of the city's key competitive advantages as a place to live especially vis-a-vis other locations in the Washington Metropolitan area.

Additionally, preservationists saved the city by stabilizing many of the city's fine urban neighborhoods during the many decades when trends for residential choice did not favor urban living.

Sadly, because we preservationists don't do a good job making this point, and instead are derided for holding back change (sometimes the derision is justified, because it is true that preservationists do have to figure out how to act in the 21st Century, when the goal isn't stabilizing neighborhoods that people don't want to live in, but is instead, accommodating new residents, people who want to live in the city, and whose income supports better municipal services and a broader array of retail options and attractions), the essentiality of preservation to the city's current resurgence is unheralded if not disputed.

The Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest Magazine has a nice piece, "Seattle's old buildings: Opportunities, not obstacles," that recounts these types of arguments in terms of Seattle. The article may not say all that much that is new (to me anyway), but the photos are fabulous and it's always nice to see the argument repeated.

4. Plus, speaking of Seattle, I mentioned awhile back that they are creating a "historic theater district" there, as a way to help preserve "old" theater buildings there. Some people have criticized this, because the district isn't contiguous, it's more of a type of building historic district. See "Council to vote on forming historic theater district" from the Seattle Times.

In any case, the Playhouse Theater District in Cleveland is a driving force for Downtown revitalization in Cleveland, which given the fact that the Cleveland metropolitan area continues to lose population, is key for helping the city to maintain economic vitality in the face of regional decline. See "In Cleveland, a Model of Economic Viability in the Arts" from the Wall Street Journal.

5. Incorporating "old" buildings into new projects. One thing worth separating out from the Seattle Times piece is that it starts out with a description of the old Standard Radio & Hi-Fi store in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, which is pictured in the image at the top of the entry.

This streamlined art deco building is being demolished for a light rail station. Something similar is happening in Calgary, Alberta, I think, but now I can't find the article. And of course, it happened in plenty of places in DC when the subway stations were constructed here.

6. Main Street conference in Baltimore, April 1st-4th. The National Main Street conference is in Baltimore this year. If you're into historic preservation and commercial district revitalization, it's probably the best place to learn a lot very quickly about commercial district revitalization in terms of the asset-based approach--assets aren't just "old buildings," they are people and organizations and of course, money.

While it is very difficult work, I am a hard core believer in the Main Street approach, although it's damn hard, if not near impossible to make work, especially in "hetereogeneous" communities like H Street.

It's hard, because you need to have some locational advantages, you have to be able to get some working consensus of different stakeholders, and while the merchants are the most motivated, they have to be willing to give up some control to residents, who bring different skill sets and desires to the table as well.

Plus, it's very easy to become an "events manager" by default. While I could do that, I'd rather do planning, business recruitment, etc., but it's the events that build out your promotional calendar and end up controlling your time...

For people in the region, you can attend the conference for free in return for volunteering some of your time to assist the people running the conference. If you're interested, email me, and I'll send you the contact information.

7. DC Historic Preservation Review Board #1. The City Paper reports in "Nancy Metzger and Historic Preservation’s Public Relations Problem" that Nancy Metzger's nomination to the HPRB is being criticized because she's too hard core a preservationist. F*** that.

Most of DC's zoning and building regulation processes are set up to ease new construction.

The system ought to have some checks and balances. The historic preservation law, regulations, and process, for good and bad, provides some checks.

I have a line "when you ask for nothing, that's what you get. When you ask for the world, you don't get it, but you get a lot more than nothing."

Without people pushing for the hard decisions, the hard course of action, you get very little movement toward it.

The funny thing is that amongst some preservationists in the city, Nancy is considered part of the system, and apt to support the government position even when challenged by more hardcore positions. Funny how the perception of "militance" is relative.

Disclosure: Nancy Metzger has provided advice and support over the years on various preservation projects or landmark nominations I'd been involved in. I learned from her, probably shared a dinner or two, and think she's an incredibly nice person who is one of the people who saved Capitol Hill during the many decades when inner-city living was considered "not of sound mind" by most "good Americans."

The City Paper quotes the testimony of David Garber as a kind of admonition:

I know that these nominees are qualified to be official advocates for the District's built heritage. But I also want to challenge them to see our old and historic places both as important aesthetic and cultural artifacts and as the patterns and teachers for a built future that might not look just like what's come before. Celebrate history, but encourage contemporary design in its interpretation. Require a village scale where appropriate, but allow for greater density where our infrastructure is built to handle it. Be vigilant about context and scale, but allow our library of good urbanism to be shaped by best practices sourced from around the world and across centuries and styles. See change as an asset to be worked with instead of as an enemy to be guarded against. Old is important, but so is eclecticism, environmental sustainability, and urbanizing development.

But to me, that's what historic preservation does already.

I don't always agree with the decision making, but I think that's because of many other faults within our general planning processes in the city, faults that I write about frequently.

Now David Garber is also a small housing redeveloper/flipper ("Lucrative New Life for the Obsolete: House Flippers Are Back Post Bubble," Express, January 28, 2011). Maybe he does great work. My experience in many parts of the city is that most people who do this kind of work do a bad job, be that as it may, what he says historic preservation should do is what it already does, what is called for by the Secretary of Interior Standards for Rehabilitation.

Now I don't necessarily agree with the focus on new construction looking decidedly new. I am more in line with Steven Semes' ideas (author of The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and Historic Preservation, review of the book from Traditional Building Magazine).

From the review:

This book rejects the Modernist ideology that is embedded in current preservation philosophy, which has led to government promotion of architecturally dissonant construction in historic places. Instead, Semes argues persuasively that visual wholeness and architectural continuity of historic areas should be the paramount design imperative. In many historic settings, new traditional architecture provides the best route to harmony with existing building fabric, and Semes calls for rethinking preservation policies that have blocked the use of compatibly styled traditional design.

But that doesn't mean that you can build new buildings that are both "big" which is what many smart growthers want and simultaneously "contextually designed to be complementary to historic buildings." For example, the most successful new condominium building in New York City was designed by Robert A.M. Stern to be just like a "pre-war" building.

But when I think about the alternatives to the historic preservation laws in DC, which are either no special provisions--like most of the city--or urban renewal and social housing disasters, the former in Southwest DC and pre-2005 H Street NE, the latter in many other places, I don't see a better alternative.

I do see a lot of people who are so caught up in the moment that they are unfamiliar with the past, both in terms of architectural history and urban history, and they are unfamiliar with (and I hate to say this) DC's exceptionalism of the moment in that it is now a "strong real estate market" whereas most other cities and metropolitan areas are not similarly "blessed".

Taking some time to make better, more informed decisions, is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Things have been s*** in many neighborhoods in the city a long time--many decades.

If a lot remains undeveloped for 18 months, even 5 years longer--e.g., 5 years is the difference in time between having a 50,000 s.f. BP gas station on the 300 block of H Street NE versus have a 200+ unit apartment building with a Giant Supermarket on the ground floor, that's okay.

8. DC Historic Preservation Review Board #2: Because you're "young" does that mean your appointment to a board is a victory for myopia and idiocracy?

The City Paper also reports, in "Smart Growthy Nominee for Historic Preservation Review Board," that Andrew Aurbach has been renominated to be on the HPRB.

Comparatively speaking, Andrew is young--43 years old or so--and committed to smart growth, and is involved in local campaigns as a resident committed to good government and being willing to work on campaigns helps get you situated to be selected for nomination to commissions and boards.

The comment about a victory for "myopic little twits" is a reference to a 2010 column, "D.C. election didn't just unseat abrasive Mayor Fenty. It was a populist revolt," by Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy, for ragging on the younger newer residents of the city who read blogs like Greater Greater Washington and advocate for crazy ass shit like streetcars and bike lanes, instead of grants to organizations willing to turn over most of the money to a Councilmember for his own use ("Harry Thomas's enablers" editorial in the Post).

Myopia and twitness aren't character flaws unique to the young, although the young often have the flaws, because their enthusiasms aren't always checked by rigorous debate (see "Brainstorming Doesn't Really Work" from the New Yorker--the basic point is that groups don't necessarily come up with better ideas than individuals, that ideas are made better through rigorous debate and challenge, that people come up with more and better ideas when they participate in such a process).

That being said, maybe Andrew is "young" age-wise and a smart growther, but I wouldn't call him myopic or a twit, while I might think that of many of the people that Courtland Milloy was thinking about when he wrote his column.

(DC) The Federal Urban Design Workshop, Tomorrow

2012-01-23T13:04:00.003-05:00

From the National Capital Planning Commission:

Tuesday, January 24, 2012 6:30 – 8:00 PM
@ National Capital Planning Commission, 401 9th Street NW, Suite 500 North, DC
- More about NCPC's Federal Urban Design Initiative available online
- RSVP

HELP WANTED: Urban design involves the enhancement of a place’s unique urban character through the development and management of its public spaces, including building yards, parks, plazas, and streets. The National Capital Planning Commission is developing a new urban design element for the Federal Elements of the Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital that will establish policies designed to make federal public spaces, campuses, and buildings more livable, functional, and sustainable, and we'd like your help.

Help plan for the future by joining us for the Federal Urban Design workshop. We want your ideas for how federal facilities and property can create better public space within Washington, DC and throughout the National Capital Region.

A response to my WA-OR sprawl post: urban growth boundaries aren't necessarily enough

2012-01-23T06:14:00.004-05:00

Brock Howell, King County Program Director, for Futurewise (the group was formerly named "1000 Friends of Washington" and is a smart growth advocacy group) writes:

Your recent blog post doesn't mention that Washington State also has a state land use system and requires the setting of urban growth areas set based on 20-year population projections.

Oregon is fairly lenient when it comes to setting the boundaries (although both states could be better in this regard). Washington falls short in the allowable density in rural areas and agricultural resource lands (max 1du/5ac or 1du/10).

Most of the sprawl over the last two decades in Clark County hasn't been in contradiction of WA's GMA. It's been in the rural area.

Consider the Columbia River Crossing project. The EIS basically says that there will be no sprawl in Clark County because they have a UGA and rural/resource land protections. What the EIS fails to mention is that the expanded bridge would induce more development of Clark County rural lands.

The CRC is a project that Metro has control over. It's unfortunate that the Metro council isn't thinking about the sustainability for the whole region, even though they clearly could, and would actually be of economic benefit to Portland.

Also, I don't think its fair to pick on this recent location if the investment firm to Camas. I bet if it located in Hillsboro, Beaverton, or Gresham or even Salem or Corvallis you wouldn't find cause to decry the move.

All these other places, I would assume you'd reason in part, are within a UGB. But so too is the new project in Camas. In fact, like many of the Portland suburbs, it was home to many tech jobs during the dot com bubble, so its not anything special to have a major employer in Camas.

You can pick on tax policies, but probaby not regional UGB coordination.

My response, besides recommending that people watch episodes #2 and #3 from the web program "Vancouvria", which is a parody of "Portlandia" and the Portland suburbs, is this:

Well, I should have said that an urban growth boundary isn't enough in and of itself to prevent sprawl, because plenty of land development that occurs within a growth boundary may not be "smart" because it still ends up being the perhaps unnecessary development of "greenfield" property that had been undeveloped.

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Note that the same point can be made about cities. Just because a development is in a city doesn't necessarily mean that it is created with sustainable transportation and land use planning precepts, or is appropriately urban. I call this "intra-city sprawl." A couple examples are how DC Government moves agencies to new locations around the city to places that require "more" travel to get there, and induce more trips by car or how the "Upper 14th Street" revitalization plan calls for more commercial development in an under-dense area, in a location only served by buses, when the corridor is just a few blocks from Georgia Avenue, which has more than 1 million of underutilized square feet of commercially-zoned property and yet another million or so new square feet of commercial development coming to the Walter Reed site. But there are many more examples everywhere, including those discussed in this book, The Suburbanization of New York: Is the world's greatest city becoming just another town?

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I didn't mention in the entry that for a time I worked in the planning office for Baltimore County, Maryland, which is one of the first places in the U.S. to have enacted a UGB, in 1967.

As someone aligned with the smart growth movement and ideal, I'd say that most of the county's policies (despite some good ones, and not necessarily what the plans say should occur) are focused on "growth" in Owings Mills and White Marsh, which for the most part isn't necessary, even though it's within what they call the URDL ("urban rural demarcation line"), because there are plenty of intensification opportunities in already developed areas of the county that aren't as far out as Owings Mills or White Marsh. (I wrote about this with regard to Owings Mills as an example of why Maryland needs a state land use plan like PlanMaryland here, "State vs. local control over land use: Maryland edition" and "What the State of Maryland still doesn't get about smart growth.")

The URDL keeps development within the line for the most part and outside of the rural area (they control development by not providing access to "city" water "outside" the URDL--the water system is run by Baltimore City in association with the county)--although the line changes when the Growth Machine demands it (e.g., development triggered by McCormick Spice's move to Hunt Valley in the late 1980s).

So you're right, just because development is within the URDL (or within an urban growth boundary) doesn't mean it's "smart."

Urban growth boundaries don't work when you cross state lines

2012-01-22T20:30:00.003-05:00

The metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon is unusual in that there is an urban growth boundary designed to limit "sprawl" forms of land use development, as well as an elected Metropolitan Government which also focuses on the UGB and is the designated metropolitan planning organization for transportation purposes.

At the same time, Washington State is just across the Columbia River--it's 9 miles from Downtown Portland to Vancouver, Washington.

And while it is not unprecedented for "metropolitan planning organizations" to cross state lines--it's done in the DC area, where the MPO covers DC, and parts of Maryland and Virginia, the Wilmington, DE MPO also includes part of Maryland, the MPO in the Philadelphia area includes part of New Jersey, etc.--the MPO for Vancouver, Washington is separate from the MPO for Portland, Oregon, and even if combined, likely wouldn't have the same kind of power over land use in the Washington State side of the region.

Development there is further complicated by the fact that Oregon doesn't have retail sales taxes, and Washington State doesn't have an income tax. So retailers do better in the Portland side of the region--Downtown Vancouver's retail is pretty paltry as a result. And many people prefer to live in Washington State, because of the lack of income tax.

The Seattle Times has an article, "California investment firm spurns Seattle area for rural Clark County," about how a financial firm relocated from California to Camas, Washington--15 miles from Downtown Vancouver, so 24 miles from Downtown--to a 170 acre campus that right now has about 400 employees, and adding to sprawl.

So the Washington State side of the Portland metropolitan area is a case study for how sprawl can occur, even in an area with generally stronger laws and regulations against sprawl.

Double design failure: Norfolk State University and light rail

2012-01-22T20:14:00.004-05:00

First, Norfolk State University made the Hampton Roads Transit system move their proposed light rail station off the campus, out of a perceived danger to students, to a site near the campus but across a 6-lane road.

Now they complain that students cross the street from the station to the campus directly, rather than walk two blocks out of their way to a controlled crosswalk.

From "NSU officials say Tide station poses risk for students" in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot:

Because of their safety concerns for students on campus, Norfolk State University officials forced a $7 million relocation of the light-rail station across Brambleton Avenue, to move it away from the school.

Now that station poses a different kind of safety issue - for students trying to get onto campus.

Students, who ride The Tide for free, often dash across six lanes of Brambleton traffic to get from the rail station to classes, instead of walking an extra block or two to use a controlled crosswalk. They cross in the middle of a busy block, between the Interstate 264 exit ramp and the Park Avenue intersection, which is traveled by nearly 50,000 vehicles a day.

"It's really dangerous," said Regina V.K. Williams, NSU's interim vice president for finance and administration and the city manager when Norfolk agreed to build the station across Brambleton. "We want people using light rail, but we want them to be safe."

This is such an obvious design failure--three in total--that it's almost not worth discussing. What did they expect? Their first decision to not place the station on campus was flawed and was compounded by the second decision to move the station off campus, and then to place the station in a proximate location to the campus, but without a crosswalk and traffic signal at the station.

Many universities have heavy rail, light rail, or street car stations adjacent to their campuses and they thrive. Portland State University has repositioned many of its programs and the design of their campus around the streetcar.

Streetcar at Portland State University. Image from Rethink College Park.

NSU had the same opportunity and blew it.

Fortunately, in the DC area, University of Maryland ended up making the right decision about light rail access for the Purple Line, after previous resistance. See "University of Maryland drops opposition to central campus route for Purple Line" from the Washington Post.

And of course, every university wants to get their name on the nearby subway station...

The Foggy Bottom station is on the George Washington University campus, and the Brookland station abuts Catholic University. In Arlington County, the Virginia Square station is a short walk--probably less than the distance from the Tide "Norfolk State University" light rail station to the campus--to the Arlington campus of George Mason University.

Yoga at the Art Gallery of Ontario

2012-01-22T19:34:00.002-05:00

Yoga classes at the AGO start in darkness at 7:55 a.m. and as the class progresses students are able to greet the sun. SERENA WILLOUGHBY/TORONTO STAR

Here's a way to reach out to new audiences. It's not likely to happen in a federally-controlled museum in DC however... See "Art Gallery of Ontario offers yoga classes in the Henry Moore gallery" from the Toronto Star.

Another example of phasing: how commercial and entertainment districts can change over time

2012-01-22T11:36:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I wrote the piece about the H Street commercial district in response to a screed that appeared in the Washington Informer about the changes happening there.

While I do agree that there are gaps in how the planning for the changes came about, resulting in under-formed provision of civic services and things to do that don't cost money, the reality is that cities change over time and the solution to disinvestment is investment, and that strategies that focus on keeping areas poor don't improve neighborhoods.

(To address What that means is that there needs to be a better focus on "community economic development," education and workforce development, etc., or the kinds of things discussed in Mihalio Temali's Community Economic Development Handbook; overview, review.)

So I suggested that commercial districts that are improving improve in phases, and in later phases it's more possible for retail to develop.

The Friday Weekend section of the Washington Post has a feature on what we might call "more upscale places" in Adams-Morgan, "What to do this weekend: Explore Adams Morgan."

Adams-Morgan became the more "downscale" weekend entertainment destination as Georgetown went more upscale. But over time, as the demographics of the area change, and as a new entertainment district is being created on H Street NE, Adams-Morgan has the chance and opportunity to reposition as well. This is seen in the greater variety of evening options now available there, as outlined in the Post article.

Similarly, for many years if not decades, Capitol Hill was derided as a place where it was impossible to find an upscale restaurant meal. Over the past few years, that's changed as well, as new developments, especially the baseball stadium, bring more potential customers to the area, and as 8th Street SE (Barracks Row) has developed into a small entertainment district destination as well.

The benevolent vision of the Growth Machine

2012-01-22T11:15:00.005-05:00

I am a fervent proponent of the Growth Machine thesis, first laid out by sociologist Harvey Molotch, in the seminal article, City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place. From the abstract:

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine.

Political scientist Clarence Stone, a professor at University of Maryland has a competing thesis, that of the "urban regime." I don't think these theories are competing so much as different sides of the same coin. "Growth Machine" theory explains the motivation of "the land-based elite," and "urban regime" theory explains in detail how the land-based elite operates and functions.

In the paper, "Now What? The continuing evolution of Urban Regime analysis," Stone writes:

An urban regime can be preliminarily defined as the informal arrangements through which a locality is governed (Stone 1989). Because governance is about sustained efforts, it is important to think in agenda terms rather than about stand-alone issues. By agenda I mean the set of challenges which policy makers accord priority. A concern with agendas takes us away from focusing on short-term controversies and instead directs attention to continuing efforts and the level of weight they carry in the political life of a community. Rather than treating issues as if they are disconnected, a governance perspective calls for considering how any given issue fits into a flow of decisions and actions. This approach enlarges the scope of what is being analyzed, looking at the forest not a particular tree here or there. (emphasis added, in this paragraph and below)

In discussing Atlanta, Stone writes: "Land use, transportation, and housing formed an interrelated agenda that the city's major economic interests were keen to advance;" and

By looking closely at the policy role of business leaders and how their position in the civic structure of a community enabled that role, he identified connections between Atlanta's governing coalition and the resources it brought to bear, and on to the scheme of cooperation that made this informal system work. In his own way, Hunter had identified the key elements in an urban regime – governing coalition, agenda, resources, and mode of cooperation. These elements could be brought into the next debate about analyzing local politics, a debate about structural determinism.

Closer to home ...

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein calls for the Growth Machine, in other words, business interests, to up their game and re-focus on a regional agenda with less inter-jurisdictional competition and squabbling between DC, Maryland, and Virginia. See " A call of action to Washington's business elite."

While I don't disagree that the metropolitan area's leaders need to re-vision and forge a new consensus vision going forward, a vision that works for the 21st century, I think its essential that the people who are "allowed" to set this vision be drawn from a grouping larger than business interests--which in this region the most motivated are mostly real estate developers.

Tysons Corner, Virginia as the culmination of the efforts of the 20th Century's Virginia contingent of the region's Growth Machine.

More on commerz in the 'hood

2012-01-21T05:50:00.005-05:00

An H Street e-list calls our attention to this piece, " D.C. Residents Call for Fewer Bars on H Street" from the Washington Informer, with quotes from African-American residents about the gentrification of the commercial district.

Note that this isn't a new story. See the blog entries from 2006, which responded to similar articles in the Washington Post, including "Whose H Street Is It, Anyway? A Dispute Over Restaurant Zoning Creates a Chasm Between Northeast Washington's Old and New Residents" (the first entry below includes cites to other Post articles about other neighborhoods, recycling the same issues):

-- Commerz in the 'hood... (aka "Commerce as the engine of urbanism")
-- Commerz in the 'hood, part two

-- Commerz in the 'hood, part three

-- Commerce dans de quartier de la ville, partie quatre (Commerz in the 'hood series)

Post graphic on the H Street revitalization plan, 2007.

From the Informer article:

Residents of the gentrified H Street area are troubled by the block on block of bars that line the Northeast corridor. Margaret D. Lewis said not all of the improvement projects left the corridor better than it was found.
"They have too many bars and too many restaurants," said Lewis who has lived in the area for more years than she cared to remember. "They need to have more retail stores." ...

Lewis' friend, who didn't want to be identified, shared Lewis' frustration. She was bothered by the lack of grocery stores in the area and also saw evidence she was being pushed out of the corridor.

"They have come and taken H Street over as their place," [Dineen Method] said. "It should be a place for anybody -- not just for them." She said she lived in the area when nobody else wanted to be here and made the best of a bad situation.

She also blamed city planners for not making Black people an integral part of the rebuilding of the H Street Northeast corridor. "They built it up around them," she said. "They are putting up condominiums, but they are not putting up low-income housing for people in the area. That leaves more people homeless and jobless."

... Meanwhile, if Darnell Thomas has his way, he would choose youth friendly activities to put on the corridor and fewer watering holes. The youth need places to go, too, said Thomas who is a Muslim.

"They took the library. Why would you take a library down? So now the youth have no place to go," he said, referencing the closing of the R.L. Christian Library kiosk in 2008. "Every neighborhood should at least have a library," he sighed.

He didn't understand the closing of the Children's Museum at 3rd and H streets. It was converted to luxury condominiums, one of which is occupied by former Mayor Anthony Williams, who targeted H Street as one of the areas slated for revitalization.

My response:

When there was a hearing on the Main Street program, convened by then Councilman Kwame Brown, at the Atlas in 2007, the same argument was made about the need for more retail stores.

My response at the time was that commercial districts revitalize in phases. My "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization" piece focuses on how restaurants/taverns are necessary to get people to resample commercial districts. And are needed so that people can "refresh" themselves (by eating, using the restroom, etc.) and stay longer in the district, rather than just accomplishing one or two errands and leaving.

This is a phase that lasts upwards of 10 years, before you can seed substantive retail. Plus, DC has a different dynamic going on with rents, and the rents are too high to allow for a significant amount of independent retail to develop, because the revenue potential of the space isn't high enough to support the asking price for retail rents. Whereas because of the small spaces, otherwise you'd think that these spaces would be great for retail...

- "Cleveland Park Retail, my off-hand assessment is that the rents are too high"
- "Commercial retail rents #2"
- this article by columnist Neal Peirce discusses how the period of Main Street revitalization is a 15-20 year process,

Although as certain blocks are redeveloped in a more large scale fashion, like 600, 800, 900, + parts of the 300 and 1200 blocks, especially after the introduction of the streetcar, chain retailers are likely to come to the corridor. The fact that Giant Supermarkets is building a store on the 300 block communicates to other retailers that the submarket is worthy of consideration.

The other challenge is that the economics of retail are much different than the economics of restaurants/nightlife establishments. People consume food every day. They don't buy apparel, furniture, books, etc. every day, or even as frequently as every month.

Therefore you need much larger numbers of people coming to your district to support retailers in these categories than are traditionally available within an immediate area. So the district has to become the equivalent of a "regional shopping center" (like Friendship Heights) to offer the array of retailers that people quoted in the Informer want.

And actually, that is how H Street functioned in its glory days, as one of the city's three primary shopping districts (after Downtown, and arguably ahead of 14th Street). H Street didn't have the downtown department stores, but it did have a Sears, and the "5 and 10 stores"--national chains and local versions, a local department store (Mortons) and apparel shops and all the rest.

Hechts didn't build its first suburban department store until the late 1940s. Once it did, other shopping districts formed in the suburbs, and DC's top commercial districts began to languish in response to the new and ever growing competition. In 1964(?, maybe it was 1962) Ourisman Chevrolet left H Street for Marlow Heights. Plus Kresge converted its store to its downmarket division ("Jupiter") banner, making it more of a dollar store, etc. These are indicators about how suburban locations became superior to city locations, at least in terms of H Street.

The riots were the denouement for H Street, and even downtown, which was also affected by national trends which made it almost impossible for locally owned department stores (Jellefs, Kanns, Woodward & Lothrop, etc.) to survive, further dooming downtown shopping districts (although that's a separate issue).

E.g. with regard to retail, look at 8th St. SE (Barracks Row). They have about 8-10 actual retail stores (2 bike shops, a gift shop or two, a couple housewares/kitchen stores, knitting, a couple cell phone stores including Radio Shack). But to show how districts develop in stages, the Main Street program there is about 13-14 years old, and now an apparel store is coming in. But most of the businesses in that area and along 7th St. by Eastern Market are restaurants/nightlife places. And the income demographics of the residential area there are much better than they are for H St.

I now have a term for this, entertainment/commercial districts rather than just "commercial districts."

Other points in the story are misleading. By relying on quotes and not digging deeper, the story takes on a bad tinge. E.g., the Children's Museum wasn't kicked out. They had no interest in staying. They saw the corridor as dingy and unable to improve. They wanted to leave and they did. But the H Street plan didn't even consider that the Children's Museum would leave and didn't recommend changes in its location.

Similarly, the H St. neighborhood was provided with tons of "low income" housing or lower income housing in terms of 2 senior housing complexes, the creation of a garden apartments complex (Pentacle) by tearing down a streetcar barn, a garden apartment type condo complex (Wiley Courts), and other lower cost new construction of rowhouses.

One could argue the new market rate construction is about providing a wider variety of housing at different price points. The reality is that people with income support retail. Whereas the building of low income housing may have stabilized urban neighborhoods (that's arguable), low income residents in and of themselves lack the income to support the development of a wide array of retail.

That's why the H Street Urban Renewal Plan, which was mostly successful*:
- bridge over the railyard
- Hechinger Mall
- 2 senior housing complexes
- Wiley Court condominiums
- Pentacle Apartments
- two office buildings on the 600 block
-3 sets of new rowhouses on the 700 block of 8th and 10th Streets, and the 800 block of 10th St. (on the 700 block of 3rd St. an old distribution complex was converted to gated condominiums as well)
- H street connection strip shopping center
- plus the DC government coming through and leasing the office buildings

didn't improve the corridor overall, because those initiatives didn't add enough income to the local micro-economy to spur revitalization of the retail corridor. Plus, Hechinger Mall, by drawing off the post office, Safeway, and CVS, diverted retail customers from H Street to the Mall, and forced them to drive to get there, and away from walking to shop.

* these projects added up to over $100 million when they were constructed, not in current values, which is higher, which is why I always LOL when people argue that the H Street neighborhood was ignored all those years by the city government.

The fact that the H Street Urban Renewal Plan" "worked" and yet the corridor still languished is what propelled me into urban planning as a profession. I've spent all this time trying to figure why investing $100+ million in the H Street commercial district didn't "fix" it.

The lesson was that in a city/neighborhood with historic architecture/great building stock, a pedestrian centric urban design, history, authenticity and identity, and great transit access (proximity to Union Station--subway, train, highways, high frequency bus service), an urban renewal strategy focused on building housing for poor people and wiping away the past was a losing strategy.

My other lesson came from the New York Avenue infill subway station. The development of that station meant that H Street was no longer a barrier for people with the ability to choose where they wanted to live. Because of the new subway station, people were now willng to buy and live north of H St.

E.g., seeing white people live on Orleans Place still boggles my mind, as in the late 1980s/early 1990s that was a key center for crack distribution in the city and dozens of people were murdered in that general area. Now, the demographics of the people walking on the streets north of H Street or K Street are truly shocking, given the past.

Anyway, seeing how the investment in the right kind of public transit (at New York Ave. station) propelled neighborhood revitalization faster than almost any other investment is what pushed me along towards transportation planning.

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Flickr photo by DCMatt.

Note: as pointed out by some of the people quoted in the Informer article, it is reasonable to acknowledge that the plans for H Street inadequately addressed the provision of non-commercial public places and spaces, other than arts-related functions around what became the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

This is the result of flaws in how we do planning in DC.

So called "small area plans" aren't comprehensive neighborhood plans covering all issues thoroughly, such as parks, open spaces, libraries, schools, and other civic assets as well as commercial property development opportunities and transportation.

Mostly, small area plans are management plans to address development opportunities. So the provision of cultural and other non-"commodified" spaces within a neighborhood or commercial district often is overlooked in DC planning processes. And this is the case in part with the H Street plan.

-- H Street corridor revitalization plan

This planning document "summarizes the successes" of the H Street small area plan so far. But it doesn't try to determine what if any gaps there were/are in the process and how to address them.

(Note that when the H Street revitalization process started, I knew a lot less about urban planning than I know today. I hope that I would have raised some of these issues back then, had I known.

A few years ago, I did raise with the chair of ANC6A's zoning committee the opportunity to carve out a public parklet at the southeast corner of 8th Street in association with the future redevelopment of the H Street connection strip shopping center. But it was too late in the process. Had ideas like this been addressed in either the H Street revitalization plan or the streetscape and transportation plan, the chances would have been much greater that something like that could have been done.)

What should be the future of the Children & Youth Investment Trust

2012-01-20T11:02:00.003-05:00

In last Sunday's Post, Councilman Tommy Wells, former chair of the Council committee with oversight over the CYIT, the quasi-city government organization that was the source of funds that were ultimately converted and used for personal aggrandizement by Councilman Harry Thomas, argues for the continuation of the organization. From "Undoing the damage to D.C.'s Children and Youth Investment Trust":

Former D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr.’s theft of more than $300,000 in city funds that were intended to help children was an outrageous and despicable act. But it does not justify disbanding the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp., the public-private nonprofit that was the source of the stolen money.

Instead, Mr. Thomas’s embezzlement of grant dollars through intermediaries for his personal use spotlights the urgent need for a leadership change at the trust and for a full review by the mayor and D.C. Council of the qualifications of the trust’s board of directors and president. And we need to make sure future appointees fulfill their responsibilities to strictly control the program’s funds.

In the current issue of the Washington City Paper, Alan Suderman has an important piece, "Who Do You Trust?," about how the problems with the CYIT date almost to its beginning.

The organization was set up as a nonprofit so that it could receive donations from foundations and businesses. Typically, foundations and businesses cannot give monies directly to a city government.

But the interest of foundations and businesses giving monies to the CYIT instead of to beneficiary organizations directly was minimal, so the CYIT mostly received monies from the city government, and the CYIT board--appointed by the Mayor--and officials, subject to the persuasive powers of Councilmembers, allocated monies too often at the direction of elected officials, who were able in the case of Thomas to take the money for their own benefit.

Personally, I think that the CYIT should be disbanded, and if the Council or Executive Branch wants to provide monies to nonprofit organizations--which I have no problem with necessarily--the monies should only be appropriated through an open, public, transparent process, with an application and review process independent of extranormal involvement by Councilmembers or the Executive Branch.

Note that if the City of Takoma Park, Maryland, with fewer than 17,000 residents, can manage to have an open, public, transparent, application process for grants to nonprofit organizations, there is no excuse for DC to not have a comparable process. From the city website:

Small Community Grant Program Information
January 18, 2012
Information on the City's FY 2012 Small Community Grant Program is now available online. Projects must be completed by June 30, 2012. The application deadline is February 8, 2012.

One way to do that would be through a "participatory budgeting" process, where citizens are engaged in the process and shape the results in a significant fashion.

I can see giving the CYIT one more chance, if it shifts to a participatory budgeting process. Otherwise, disband the organization, because it is set up to be a creature of elected officials, even if there is a seeming arms length distance from public officials and the appointees who oversee the organization, and the employees who divvy up the funds.

Another scale of planning failure: neighborhood vs. city-wide interests and food trucks

2012-01-20T09:58:00.004-05:00

Food truck at the H Street Festival, 2009.

In the discussion about the Uber taxi service ("Uber car service runs afoul of D.C. Taxi Commission," Washington Post) on the GGW blog ("Uber case is really about purpose of regulation") one of the points made about the Taxi Commission is the problem of "regulatory capture."

In economics, regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure, as it can act as an encouragement for large firms to produce negative externalities. The agencies are called "captured agencies".

While it happens that I don't think that's the issue when it comes to consideration and approval of innovative, or at least "new and different," services by the DC Taxi Commission (I think the issue is more indifference to "new and different" services, not a desire to protect taxicab drivers), the fact is that a form of regulatory capture occurs with regard to the new and different by neighborhood constituencies, be they business groups or residential interests.

I think that's what will doom the new plan by the city to give neighborhoods somewhat final authority for approving whether or not food trucks can operate in their particular geographies, as outlined in "D.C. to propose zones for food trucks" from the Post.

From the article:

Searching for a compromise in the bitter divide between brick-and-mortar restaurants and food trucks, the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs on Friday will propose creating “vending development zones” that would allow neighborhoods to decide how many mobile and sidewalk vendors to allow in their area.

“It’s our way to really try to make the best use of public space among street vendors and farmers markets, food trucks and bricks-and-mortar businesses,” said Helder Gil, legislative affairs specialist for the department. “It tries to force everybody into the room . . . and find something that works for everybody.”

This isn't compromise, it's conceding the issue by giving final authority to the neighborhoods and the groups which for the most part have resisted providing access to food trucks in the first place.

I have written about this issue quite a bit in terms of the tension between bricks and mortar businesses, business improvement districts and other commercial district revitalization groups, and managing a commercial district overall for vitality and excitement. See "Business improvement districts and boundary spanning " and "Food trucks as a way in."

The Washington City Paper also ran a good story on the topic in 2010, "Inside D.C.'s Food-Truck Wars: How some of Washington's most powerful interests are trying to curb the city's most popular new cuisine."

For the most part, there is a form of "regulatory capture" with business improvement districts by the business proprietor members. The BIDs represent the businesses more than they manage overall the commercial district.

So while it can be advantageous for food trucks to be an element of the retail, services, and attraction mix in a commercial district (not everyone wants to eat in a sit down restaurant, some cuisines aren't available for sale in a commercial district, restaurants aren't proximate to parks and other spaces where people happen to be, people want to be outside, etc.), the likelihood of business improvement districts advocating for food trucks at the seeming cost of their business members is infinitesimal.

If the city's planners (business development and entrepreneurship, land use, tourism, etc.) argue that food trucks are an important element of the mix, how does that desire play out when the city devolves responsibility for accepting food truck operation to neighborhood interests?

In short, it won't get recognized and food truck approvals won't happen.

This new proposal is a mistake.

And note that this is an issue in other cities across the nation as well, because the tensions between brick and mortar businesses and so called itinerant businesses are universal.

A clear signal of a failure in "metropolitan" transportation planning: a proposal to eliminate a subway station from Dulles Airport

2012-01-20T09:12:00.004-05:00

The caption on the back of this postcard reads, "Dulles International Airport ... is an international gateway to this country through Washington, our nation's capital. It is a jet airport of both beauty and efficiency, offering the most modern facilities to all its visitors.

The report yesterday, " Board weighs eliminating Metro stop at Dulles," in the Washington Examiner that the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority is recommending dropping the station planned to serve the Dulles Airport site for an alternative farther away, requiring a transfer to a bus and 1.5 miles to the airport is a perfect illustration of failures in the metropolitan area's "transportation planning" process.

From the article:

The airports authority in charge of building the Metro rail extension to Dulles International Airport is considering eliminating the Metro station at the airport.

Instead of stopping at the airport, Metro's new Silver Line would drop airport passengers off along Route 28 in Fairfax County. Riders would then have to ride a bus or a light rail train another 1.5 miles to the airport, according to a proposal discussed Wednesday by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

Altering the course of the Metro line, which is already under construction, would shave about $70 million off of a nearly $6 billion price tag...

Despite the fact that there is the Transportation Policy Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which is tasked as the "metropolitan planning organization" for federal transportation planning requirements, we don't really have a metropolitan transportation plan so much as a collection of transportation priorities by the three separate "state" jurisdictions, DC, Maryland and Virginia.

If there were a true metropolitan plan, there would be a master framework for transportation, focused on throughput more than modes, proposals for various types of transportation infrastructure would be subsumed under the plan rather than driving planning, and certain decisions, such as which activity centers to serve, would not be subject to whim or at least capriciousness.

For example, in a metropolitan plan, transit service to airports would be prioritized, and the planning of fixed rail transit service wouldn't be strictly a function of the separate jurisdictions. (I recommend a framework for this kind of process here: Metropolitan Transit Planning: Towards a Hierarchical and Conceptual Framework.)

The Silver Line planning and construction process has been a Virginia initiative, because in 2003 WMATA devolved responsibility for expansion planning to the separate jurisdictions.

And the planning process doesn't require that the impact of expansions on the core system be addressed simultaneously with expansion. So while it would have been possible to use the Silver Line extension to Dulles Airport as a way to drive forward the "separated blue line" in the core of the region, to provide another northern crossing of the Potomac River, and to provide redundancy and capacity in the core of the system, which is expected to reach capacity in the next decade, this didn't happen.

I wrote about this in 2006, "Blinking on urban design means you limit your chance for success."

As far as metropolitan planning goes, it's also an illustration of the failure to plan for the metropolitan area in terms of its role as a gateway to the U.S. and the National Capital. I write from time to time about how the publisher of Monocle Magazine, Tyler Brûlé, writes a weekly column for the Financial Times, and he is constantly writing about how the experience of flying into Dulles from overseas is a substandard one, not becoming to the United States. (For thinking about the region in terms of "nation branding" issues, I recommend Brand America: The Mother of All Brands by Simon Anholt.)

From "Let’s play ‘Guess where I am?’":

Gate agents screaming for transfer passengers, sniffer dogs and disorganised immigration officers greet travellers in this airport terminal ...

When I finally reach the front and am told what booth to stand in front of, I have to remind myself not to say anything smart as I’m likely to be thrown into detention and escorted back to my Lufthansa aircraft. OK, it’s time to make your guess. Where in the world am I?

You might think I’ve rocked up in some shambolic banana republic or poorly managed police state, but I’m actually at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport late on a Sunday afternoon.

Because no one agency seems to be considering this broad issue, maybe that's another task for the Visitor element of the Federal comprehensive land use planning process managed by the National Capital Planning Commission. (Although it requiring changing the plan to be about the "National Capital" as well as the "National Capital Region," which is among the responsibilities of the Commission.)

But I've argued that how fixed rail transit service to Dulles Airport needs to be planned less out of a focus on value engineering and more according to the Airport's role as a gateway to the region and the the country for awhile...

This has been a problem for awhile. See "Demanding excellence in public projects is too rare a phenomenon: #1 the subway station at Dulles Airport" and "Silver Line Metro expansion a classic example of the need to have true regional transportation planning."

Dulles Airport postcard view. Looks can be deceiving. How you get to and from an airport on the ground is just as important as how the airport looks from the air.

DC Public Schools as permanent snafu: the latest examples

2012-01-18T10:18:00.005-05:00

While many people think that the "reform" happening to the DC Public School system is positive and forward-oriented, my sense is that the system is being destroyed, with the exception of pockets of excellence in Wards 3, 2, and 6. Otherwise, most of the energy in K-12 education has been captured by the charter schools and most people make the mistake of connoting action with improvement.

I've written about K-12 education issues quite a bit since the start of the blog. I've always advocated a third way: that the stark choice between "bomb them [teachers and schools] back to the stone age" vs. "accepting poverty as an excuse" is a false one, that the point really is to build the systems and processes for students, families, teachers, principals, and schools, so that sustained excellence is routinized. This is not the path chosen by Michelle Rhee and her supporters, and it's unclear that the new regime has changed anything.

See this past blog entry, "Missing the most fundamental point about urban educational reform," which mentions this article, When ‘Unequal’ Is Fair Treatment" from Education Week, about Montgomery County Maryland's award-winning program focused on reducing and eliminating performance gaps between high income and low income children.

I've mentioned frequently how I've been influenced by a Harvard Business Review article on "positive deviance," "Your Company's Secret Change Agents."

The basic point is that even the most dysfunctional organizations have pockets of excellence, and that these pockets of excellence need to be expanded and extended to rebuild success--that other people in the organization can't excuse these examples as impossible "best practice" imported from elsewhere and therefore not relevant, because the "deviants" function in the same conditions.

One example of positive deviance in school reform is now retired area superintendent Kathleen Cashin of New York City. She was militantly ignored by Mayor Bloomberg's reform effort, yet the schools in her domain functioned more highly than most of the schools across the city, even though they served predominately low-income students. See the blog entry, "Positive deviance in New York City schools goes unrecognized" and "Positive Deviance and the DC Public Schools."

So here are at least three examples of positive deviance/success in DC schools:

- the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools

- the Langdon Montessori program in Ward 5

- the Spanish-English bilingual program at Oyster Elementary.

So the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools are serving as a foundation for improvement in Capitol Hill schools more generally. See "Has D.C.'s Black Middle Class Given Up on Neighborhood Schools" from the Washington City Paper.

The bilingual program at Oyster has been expanded.

For the 2012-2013 school year, the Montessori program at Langdon is being eliminated.

Interestingly, where I live, in Greater Ward 4, the Latin America Montessori Bilingual elementary school charter school is growing like gangbusters. It captures many of the children in my area--White, Hispanic, Black--and the school is growing from one campus on Military Road to include a new campus in Ward 5 and is slated to receive a building on the Walter Reed campus, once that land reverts to DC control. In the meantime, the DCPS elementary schools closest to me, Whittier and Takoma, have fewer than 300 students each, and many unused classrooms.

Is it any wonder that the city's public school system is failing?

Also see "Disruptive technologies: Charter schools for public school systems are like the impact of the Internet on newspapers" from May 2011.

In a separate initiative, one of the schools that's being declared surplus and being put up for sale is Young Elementary School on the Spingarn campus in Ward 5, off Benning Road. See "32 More Acres of the District Up For Grabs!" from the Washington City Paper.

The funny thing is that in 2001-2002, the DCPS contracted with the urban design studio at the U of Michigan to do a planning project for the Spingarn campus, which came up with multiple scenarios. The UD studio is led by Roy Strickland, who has published a book about schools. The book discusses the Spingarn example, and is summarized in this paper, "The City Of Learning: School Design and Planning as Urban Revitalization in New Jersey, Berkeley, and Washington, D.C.."

I never did track down their final reports but what a waste of resources to have done this study and then chuck it. Speaking of good resources on schools as community hubs, check out "If hubs are the solution, what's the problem?" from the Belonging Community blog (Toronto).

I haven't read the "multiple property" historic preservation context study for the DC schools, but clearly in the 1920s, a very specific decision was made to organize and create multi-school campuses, in high profile locations. Spingarn is one example, McKinley is another, where there are elementary, junior, and senior high schools. Coolidge is across the street from Whittier Elementary and on the backside of the campus is 4 blocks of public park and recreation facilities.

We've declined significantly since then.

Passing laws to require students to apply to college ("Kwame Brown Proposes Mandatory College Applications for DC" from NBC4-TV) is merely an "emperor and his new clothes" kind of tactic that completely misses the point.

Bike commuting infographic

2012-01-17T13:30:00.003-05:00

Notions Capital calls our attention to this cool infographic on bike commuting. Plus, Ralph Buehler's students at Virginia Tech have produced their class project, Capital Bikeshare Study: A Closer Look at Casual Users and Operations,a study on the behavior of "casual users" (people who don't have annual subscriptions) of Capital Bikeshare. The League of American Bicyclists has written about it here, "See-Rent-Ride: Bikeshare changes the way people see the city."

Speaking of Professor Buehler, you might also be interested in this paper, "“Determinants of Mode Choice: A Comparison of Germany and the USA,” Transport Geography, Vol. 19, pp. 644-657. From the abstract:

Germany and the USA have among the highest motorization rates in the world. Yet Germans make a fourtimes higher share of trips by foot, bike, and public transport and drive for a 25% lower share of trips asAmericans. Using two comparable national travel surveys this paper empirically investigates determinantsof transport mode choice in Germany and the USA.

Walter Reed site redevelopment planning meeting: Tonight

2012-01-17T06:58:00.001-05:00

To better understand the Small Area Plan process for Walter Reed and how it relates to the Base Reuse Plan please come to the Community Workshop.

From email:

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 from 6:30-8:30pm
Shepherd Park Elementary School, 7800 14th Street, NW

This open house format meeting will provide an opportunity for residents to provide input on the Small Area Plan for Walter Reed, such as urban design characteristics (e.g., building form and massing) and land use designations (e.g.., zoning).

District agency staff and project team members will be on hand to answer your questions regarding traffic circulation, connectivity to the surrounding community, sustainability features, historic preservation and the development program.

Your feedback will be considered as the draft Base Reuse Plan is being refined for Local Redevelopment Authority (LRA) approval in late January 2012. The final Base Reuse Plan will be presented at a community meeting on February 2nd.

Fabulous Pearlstein article on the future of the (DC) metropolitan region

2012-01-17T05:43:00.008-05:00

Steven Pearlstein, the former business columnist for the Post and now a professor at George Mason and scribe of a weekly column for the paper has a well done piece, "For development, all signs point inward" (the headline in the print edition was "Road to growth is out of the exurbs") in the Sunday edition.

From the article:

... the next phase of growth in the Washington region will focus on these underdeveloped areas in the eastern quadrants of the District and some of the region’s older, closer-in suburbs.

It’s not just smart-growth planners and anti-sprawl activists who think so; most developers I’ve spoken with in recent weeks agree. The models for the future, they say, can be found in Pentagon City rather than Dale City, along the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor rather than the far reaches of the Dulles corridor, in the NOMA area near Union Station and the downtowns of Bethesda and Silver Spring. The pressure of development now points inward toward the Capitol, not outward toward Germantown, Gainesville, Waldorf and Laurel.

Consider, for example, Crystal City, with its proximity to Reagan National Airport, spectacular views of the Potomac and the national monuments, its Metro stop and easy access to highways leading in all directions. If ever there was an ideal location for prime office and hotel space and high-end condos with all the amenities, this is it. And yet for years, legions of GS-13s and mid-level defense contractors toiled in its sterile office buildings and criss-crossed its warren of underground malls before driving home on streets devoid of interesting retail stores, restaurants or pedestrian life. It took the heavy hand of the Pentagon and its base closure commission to do what the market should have, forcing a redevelopment aimed at higher-paying, private-sector tenants.

The rationalization of land use in the region is now being driven by fundamental shifts in the economics of housing and commercial development.

Note that this is the thesis of Belmont's Cities in Full: Recognizing and Realizing the Great Potential of Urban America, which I consider to be the most important book in urban planning since Jane Jacobs. Belmont argues in favor of "recentralization" of commerce, housing, and transportation towards the core of a region.

Points in the article include:

- the value of proximity
- decline of traditional suburban shopping malls
- decline in value of suburban office parks
- rise in interest in mixed use developments by consumers and developers
- massive decline in the value (65% drop)
of distantly located subdivision developments
- rise/maintenance of real estate property value in inner core submarkets
- that infrastructure investment will be required
- planning commitment is required
- and it takes a long time (he says the development along the Wilson Boulevard in Arlington County took ten years, the reality is that the period was much longer)
- he recommends the creation of special taxing-redevelopment districts.

And Pearlstein focuses on the potential of Prince George's County, discussing how GSA made a mistake to not locate a major federal office complex in the County.

On this I disagree somewhat, not because PG County is poorly located, but because Pearlstein inadequately recognizes the value and necessity of the right type of urban design (grid network of blocks and streets) as a building block for intensifying development, combined with high quality transit service.

Smart Growth and TOD strategies for the most part, start with place, start with already extant centers.

PG County needs to change how it develops (the focus is still on large tracts of land, wherever they are, usually in distant locations, and not usually proximate to transit) and how it (re)designs how it develops--blocks and streets and mixed use and transit--before it can truly reap the value of its location within one of the nation's strongest real estate markets.

-- Trans-Formation: Recreating Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Centers in DC: Design Handbook (2003), report from the DC Office of Planning)

While it is true that the "Arts District Hyattsville" project on Route 1 in Hyattsville and the area around Prince George's Plaza too, are examples of the kind of recentered development that Pearlstein writes about, failures in urban design execution in these and other projects along Route 1 (apartment buildings focused on serving the college student population at the University of Maryland) show that the county lacks a commitment to creating fine grained walkable urbanism, at least so far--these places are mixed use, but the urban design doesn't fully work.

Fortunately, as I have argued before, PG County has the opportunity for a second chance at changing their urban design paradigm with the coming of the Purple Line light rail (and planning for its extension to Alexandria) and the ability to refashion areas around stations and corridors towards a newer transit-centric reality.

-- "A recommended new planning direction for Prince George's County," March 2011
-- "The future of mixed use development/urbanization: Part 3, Prince George's County, where's the there?," March 2011

This will be a multi-decade process, just as it is taking 3 to 6 decades for DC to fully leverage the subway system and the public investment in transit. First, new development came to the central business district, and then began spreading outward at transit stations, as the market strengthened and the political and governance environment within the District of Columbia began to stabilize beginning in the late 1990s.

The process has also been long in Arlington.

Arlington plan, dense corridor, low density residential outside the corridor, slide from a presentation by Chris Zimmerman of the Arlington County Board.

The Wilson Blvd. corridor of today represents not a 10 year process, but a process that started in the early 1970s--starting about 40 years ago--and it will take 15 more years to redevelop Rosslyn to fully reap the value of its location (which is being marketed by developers very heavily against DC), just as Crystal City is going through redevelopment changes now, and the county adds fixed rail transit.

Note that like much of Prince George's County, the urban design in Rosslyn and Crystal City hasn't been favorable to walkable urbanism, and wrenching changes are required to make those places work for the new future.

-- "For TOD to be successful, necessary antecedents are required, there's no magic wand," April 2011

In the meantime, Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, by getting the Silver Line subway line, have the opportunity to begin repatterning their urban design for the walkable 21st Century, while Montgomery County has already been investing in Bethesda and Silver Spring and Rockville and is redeveloping the White Flint/Rockville Pike area and Wheaton (see "Montgomery no longer a homogenous suburb" and "How to make Wheaton into the next Adams Morgan (or not)" from Greater Greater Washington) to reflect the new urban paradigm, emphasizing that DC and Prince George's County can't tarry too much if the jurisdictions want to remain competitive within the metropolitan landscape.

-- Short term vs. long term thinking: transit, the Washington Examiner, Fairfax/Loudoun Counties vs. DC," March 2011
-- "How to Kill the Center Cities, particularly DC: Phase 3," May 2009

Separately from the Pearlstein thesis, the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District released a report, Greenprint for Growth, about how development and intensification in association with the Green Line subway line is the next frontier.

I haven't had a chance to read the document yet, but I do think it is interestingly constrained as the report only looks at the impact of the Green Line from the Navy Yard to the Georgia Avenue-Petworth stations (10 stations in all, and most of the areas around these stations have been experiencing redevelopment already, especially in the Downtown core), although this makes sense, because the organization that contracted the report primarily cares about its geography along the Anacostia River, and not redevelopment in distant places.

For example, I see the intensification that is happening at Fort Totten Metro Station in DC as a harbinger of the future no different than what Pearlstein writes about, but it does demonstrate a new development paradigm for DC, although it happens to be the same paradigm employed by Arlington County along Wilson Boulevard.

Except in how the Central Business District has extended to M Street SE (Navy Yard) and eastward to NoMA/Union Station, for the most part, DC hasn't significantly upzoned for more intense development the areas around subway stations that are outside of the core of the city.

Columbia Heights is an exception. And the area around the Petworth station is intensifying as well, with taller buildings, although there had been 5 story apartment buildings already, as a result of the earlier streetcar era.

This means you have two and three story buildings for the most part around Metro stations, at least so far.

Fort Totten is seeing an intensification that is fundamentally different. Generally, the Fort Totten area is marked by garden apartments and single family housing that is attached, detached, or in duplexes. It is a low scale development paradigm.

The first wave was nothing special, a set of 4 story apartments built on land across from the Metro. Many people, not just me, deride the buildings for their uninspiring design.

Image from the story, "Fort Totten: Five Years Could Make a Big Difference," in the Urban Turf blog.

But the second wave is decidedly different, an intensification--for DC--of garden apartments owned by the Cafritz Foundation and a former strip shopping center that now is owned in part by JBG into buildings that are going to be 5 and 6 stories tall. Stores like Walmart will be coming to the area too. (Frankly, I prefer the concept as rendered by the previous developer.)

Top: Rendering of the JBG development on Riggs Road, Fort Totten. Bottom: rendering, Cafritz "Art Place" development.

I think over time this development energy will move outward within the DC catchment area of the station, as there is similar building stock present between North Capitol and Fort Totten Drive within easy walking distance to the Metro station, and in the areas abutting these developments, and even just across the border into Prince George's County where there is a large shopping center and a variety of garden apartment complexes that are close enough to Fort Totten that the proximity can be leveraged and marketed.

Similarly, when as Fort Totten builds out, development will jump to the area around West Hyattsville Metro, which has development intensification opportunities similar to that of Fort Totten--which face it, 10 years ago, people never would have believed that the area was capable of supporting the kinds of developments that are going into there now.

Etc.

The length of time it takes for others to take up an idea: music edition

2012-01-16T10:56:00.005-05:00

I joke with people I know that I my ideas are not really all that transformational, but merely 3-5 years ahead of most others. I guess I should give myself more credit, or at least a longer time frame. This comes up in the context of the Uline Arena. According to the Post, in "What’s going on with ... Uline Arena?" :

On Feb. 10, as part of its design fellowship, the Washington office of the architecture firm HKS will convene about a dozen design students from mostly local colleges and universities to determine how best to develop the building into a for-profit music museum. HKS designer Chad Porter and project architect Shantee Jamison said they discussed the idea with Paul Milstein of Douglas Development Corp., which owns the building, and heard that company founder Douglas Jemal had a similar vision.

“We started to talk about it and then [Milstein] sort of stopped us in our tracks and told us this was Doug’s dream, to bring a music museum to the city,” Porter said.

This is a pretty hysterical statement.

1. The people who led the effort to get the Uline Arena landmarked (I was the person who led the effort, with the participation of many others including Alan Kimber, Justine Christenson of the National Park Service, and the DC Preservation) League) made this point all the time. See the 2006 blog entry, "Uline Arena Landmarked."

At that time the Federal City Council kept pushing their National Music Museum proposal but never considered the Uline as an authentic venue for such an establishment. Instead, they did something at the Carnegie Building on Mount Vernon Square which failed miserably and pushed the Historical Society of Washington towards bankruptcy. See the blog entry from 2008, "Why did DC's attempt at a music museum fail?"

2. And the other point I kept making was that a music facility could be developed there in association with the then XM Satellite network, now Sirius, in that they could promote music and the development and promotion of their music and radio programming service. See the blog entry from 2005, "Speaking of creative asset utilization."

3. Later, the people who own 9:30 Club approached Douglas Development in hopes that they would be able to acquire the building, and open a concert facility there, but for the most part, Douglas Development never gave them the time of day.

And now, it seems like the 9:30 Club group is looking elsewhere in DC to open up a larger venue. (Although I am not at liberty to discuss the details of either.)

... So, maybe it took Doug Jemal 8 years or so to accept this idea, which he wouldn't consider before, but I guess it's merely an illustration of being ahead of the curve, and that it takes many years for people to accept (obvious) ideas that weren't originally theirs, and to move concepts along towards reality.

(I know I've moved on. I don't deal much with neighborhood revitalization or historic preservation anymore as I now do transportation-related work.)

Note that the entry "Why did DC's attempt at a music museum fail?" mentions cultural planning initiatives in Seattle and Chicago that address music. This entry "Planning your community's night time attractions in terms of music" discusses the Seattle initiative, with links.

-- Chicago Music Commission
-- Economic Impact study of Music in Chicago

Last year, Richmond, Virginia raised the concept as well. See "RVA Music Fest part of Harris' plan to promote creative capital" and "City Envy: Richmond Music District?" from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

A few seats are still extant in the Uline Arena.

Being across the street from a subway station repositions the Uline Arena's ability to be relevant and successful as a concert and events facility in the 21st Century.

Democracy is fine when it's 9,000 kilometers away, not 2 blocks away: two editorials in the Washington Post

2012-01-16T08:59:00.007-05:00

A sign posted January 8, 2012 in the Occupy DC encampment in McPherson Square in Washington, DC. Today marks the 100th day of occupation in DC. AFP PHOTO/Karen BLEIER (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images).

The Washington Post is okay with civil society and the role of protest in Egypt, based on this editorial, "Harassment in Egypt," but not in the U.S. and specifically DC, and not at McPherson Square, which is 2 blocks away from the Washington Post offices, and is probably not so pretty to look at up close, based on this editorial, " It may be time for Occupy D.C. to leave McPherson Square."

From the second editorial:

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE officials have bent over backwards to accommodate the First Amendment rights of the Occupy D.C. protesters at McPherson Square. Those rights, though, must be carefully balanced against other public interests. That’s why federal officials are right to take seriously the warning from D.C. officials about the health and safety risks posed by the increasingly unseemly encampment. The time may well have come to reclaim this public space.

From the first editorial:

ON DEC. 29, Egyptian security forces and troops launched an unprecedented raid on 17 offices of American and U.S.-funded civil-society groups ... Egyptian officials seeded local media with stories that portrayed the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as part of an international conspiracy to interfere in the country’s politics.

... the U.S. NGO offices as well as those of several Egyptian groups remain closed. Their computers have not been returned, and staff members are still being summoned for interviews with prosecutors who say that they are conducting a criminal investigation. In short, the Egyptian government is openly flouting the administration’s demand for a quick reversal of its harassment.

U.S. officials say that they are still pressing the issue hard. But in public, the administration’s rhetoric has been softening.

If the problem with the protest encampment in McPherson Square is rats, deal with the rats and other public health issues. Don't use public health concerns as an excuse to suppress democratic expression.

Don't shut the encampment down out of some mealy-mounted concern about public health, unless you also argue that the same kind of false messages being spread by pro-government groups in Egypt are equally accurate.

You can't have it both ways.

Protest and opposition and social movements aren't always pretty. And they don't follow a convenient, straightforward, linear narrative.

Ironically, the Post did editorialize in favor of democracy in DC, in the piece, "Fortress Washington," about the transferring of a part of the National Mall, Union Square, between the Capitol Grounds and 3rd Street, from the jurisdiction of the National Park Service to that of the Architect of the Capitol. (Also see "Capitol claims control of part of Mall.")

From the editorial:

“IN THE NAME of security.” It’s a phrase to which residents of the District have become wearily accustomed, as streets have been closed to traffic, ugly barriers and bollards erected and historic views blocked. Now comes word of the surreptitious decision to strip part of the Mall from National Park Service jurisdiction for security reasons. It’s only natural to worry that the public will be further restricted in what can be seen and done in the capital. ...

Because of Washington’s fortress mentality, numerous streets around the Capitol have been closed, the landscape has been littered with unsightly barriers and visitor flow has been restricted. Now it seems that national protests and other events will be moved farther from one of the great symbols of America’s open society. That’s wrong, and unnecessary.

Union Square on the map. Washington Post graphic.

The NPS should not be more bound than Congress by the Constitution in terms of the First Amendment, which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances

but there are legitimate concerns that under the Architect of the Capitol's control, this space will be excised in significant ways from public access and demonstration. (Also see the letter to the editor "Assessing the Union Square shift.")

The Post needs to be consistent in recognizing that expressions of democracy need to be supported, whether they take place "overseas" or in the U.S., even Washington, DC.

Statements about "security" aren't any different that statements about the state of "public health" at McPherson Square with the Occupy DC encampment or that civil society groups in Cairo are not really Egyptian but controlled by foreign agents.

This photo ran with the Post editorial on the McPherson Square encampment.

A battered U.S. Park Service sign sits among Occupy DC protestors tents in McPherson Square Park in Washington, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. Washington Mayor Vincent Gray has called on the National Park Service to remove Occupy D.C. protesters from McPherson Square, citing rat infestation and other health issues. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

DC as perennially last in small business rankings: the issue should be with the ranking, but how to respond

2012-01-16T06:35:00.008-05:00

Dupont Circle image from Life at the Top.

Christopher calls our attention to an opinion piece, "D.C. last again in ‘small biz friendliness’," in the Washington Blade, about the difficulty of DC as a good environment for the development of small business. The author makes an interesting point, that demographically, gays are more entrepreneurial and likely to own small businesses compared to the general population, and so small business policies on the part of local and state governments are particularly relevant.

From the article:

Little suspense precedes the District’s perennial dead last ranking in anticipation of the release of the Small Business Survivability Index: Ranking the Policy Environment for Entrepreneurship Across the Nation issued each year by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council. Not surprising, given the propensity for counterproductive policies and profligate spending that treat local businesses like ATMs. ...

Among local jurisdictions, Virginia improved on its 14th place ranking last year to climb to the 10th most favorable position. Maryland, however, fell closer to the bottom at the 38th spot, down from its 2010 ranking at number 36.

As discussed in this column last winter when reporting D.C.’s identically dismal 2010 ranking, a negative small business culture disproportionately affects gays and lesbians due to the significantly higher prevalence of our numbers engaged in entrepreneurial activities, as reported by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC).

The nonpartisan SBE Council this year expanded its comprehensive annual national report to include 44 major government-imposed or government-related costs affecting small businesses and entrepreneurs. ...

As detailed in the report, the District’s income and business taxes and other fees are among the very highest in the nation.

Additional considerations – obstacles such as Washington’s infamous parody of democracy allowing both small and unrepresentative groups as well as random cadres of disgruntled residents to employ an outsized ability to obstruct, delay and deny regulatory licensing and zoning approvals for community businesses, for example – were not included in the rankings. Small mercy, as including such barriers would merely add insult to our ignominious position.

Note that I do think there are some methodological problems with the report, but the results are still relevant when considering DC's culture and regulatory regime and whether or not it supports or hinders business activity.

When it comes to non-retail businesses, I think the issue is a little more complicated. I think that the business environment within DC is unfriendly to innovation generally, because for the most part business here is directed toward the federal government, which is bureaucratic more than it is innovative (cf. the discussion in Planning in the Public Domain by John Friedmann, that I have discussed here, "Government's good at some things and really bad at other things," among other places.)

Second, another problem is that city is basically a place for large institutions, be they federal or local government agencies or real estate developers, and generally, large institutions are more comfortable with dealing with other large organizations, rather than small businesses, despite various contracting initiatives and requirements that are supposed to, if not favor small business, encourage it.

(On this issue I have been influenced by the arguments of James Scott in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, which I have extended, along with arguments from Kirkpatrick Sale's Human Scale, to come up with the thesis that big institutions prefer to deal with other big institutions.)

When it comes to retail, a big part of the issue has to do with the lack of capacity development and supporting institutions within the city, including on the part of city provided or supported programs, including business improvement districts and commercial district revitalization initiatives such as the Main Street program.

I wish that the opinion piece in the Blade would have focused a bit more on solutions rather than laments. In that vein, the article below appeared in the InTowner community newspaper in DC, in January 2006 (pages, 3 and 6). But it's still relevant to this discussion.

DISAPPEARING SMALL BUSINESSES HERE & ELSEWHERE

Last month, The InTowner editorialized about whether or not Dupont Circle is “’washed up’ business-wise,” a response to a piece in the Washington Business Journal. [See, “From the Publisher’s Desk,” December 2005, page 2.] The WBJ piece focused on the dwindling number of independently-owned retail and restaurant businesses and their inexorable replacement by the marques of national and international chains, implying this was the fault of the neighborhood’s residents for not responding somehow, by seeking additional zoning protections.

A quick survey of the national press would see that this is an issue across the world, ranging from Los Angeles (see, John Pomfret, “Downtown Los Angeles Gets a $10 Billion Remake,” the Washington Post, January 2, 2006, page A-3) to Madrid (see also, Leslie Crawford, “Urban village changing for good and ill: A former ghetto in Madrid is a victim of its own success as higher rents close the old shops. Resident Leslie Crawford is saddened,” Financial Times [London, UK], January 7, 2006, page 15).

This is the result of three trends that are difficult for a group of ad-hoc citizens in Dupont Circle, or any city neighborhood, to address on their own. More intricate responses, at higher levels than a neighborhood, are required.

Ever since the end of World War II, the dominant trend in the retail industry has been the development of first regional, and then national and now international chains, of a size and specialization [and scale] far beyond that of independently-owned local stores in the downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts of center cities.

Simultaneously, the real estate industry has adopted a similar scale, moving from a very local industry to one that is organized on a national and international scale. A key space in Dupont Circle, the Commerce Bank branch at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and S Street, NW, provides a perfect example that illustrates both trends.

Commerce Bank [since acquired by TD Bank, formerly, Toronto Dominion Bank, one of Canada's six national banks], based in New Jersey, uses chain principles to guide its services and its growth. (The bank’s founder still owns a chain of Burger King restaurants in the mid-Atlantic.)

Commerce’s entry to DC has been facilitated by a real estate investment trust, Starwood, which bought the property on Connecticut Avenue, rid the space of the locally owned retail businesses within, leaving it empty for years, waiting for the right national tenant willing to pay the much higher rents, in comparison to the previous owner, that they were seeking.

Finally, as The InTowner editorial pointed out succinctly and eloquently, the property tax assessment model employed by the District of Columbia for commercial retail properties, often historic buildings with small footprints, appears to set values [at rates] independent of the building’s profitability as a property tenanted by (ideally) locally owned businesses.

If taxes keep going up, so do rents. But if retail sales revenues don’t increase at the same pace, small businesses will be driven out, first by restaurants that tend to generate more revenue per square foot than the average retail business [and therefore can pay higher rents], and then by chain businesses that have national marketing campaigns and economies of scale unmatchable by independents.

That this is happening should be of great concern to DC residents and government officials. One of the primary differentiating factors of center cities is a retail sector defined by independently-owned shops with unique products and identities.

Tourists and business travelers -- not to mention residents -- appreciate this “specialness” and spend (more) money in such stores. As the DC retail environment becomes more similar to the offerings of malls and lifestyle centers, our city becomes less competitive compared to other national and international destinations; and visitors will end up spending less time and money in DC stores.

In addition, we should be concerned about building a local economy that retains in the city more of the money spent within the city. This is called the multiplier effect. Chain businesses spend and send most of their revenues elsewhere. However, studies by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and others find that as much as “three times as much money stays in the local economy when you buy goods and services from locally owned businesses instead of large chain stores.”

To right these sorry trends, there are two policies that the District of Columbia government should pursue in order to make our city more hospitable to independent retail businesses.

First, the City Council needs to direct the Office of Tax and Revenue to create and implement a more appropriate property tax assessment methodology for small commercial retail properties. There is a bill before the Council providing for a 50 percent tax credit for such properties if

they have been owned by the same owner for at least 20 years. But that focuses on individual properties and length of ownership rather than the needs of the entire commercial district and the small and historic properties within it. (Plus, would a slumlord who owned a commercial building, often empty, for at least 20 years still be able to benefit from this law? I think so, the way it’s written currently.) [this proposed legislation was passed I think, very narrowly, to support a couple businesses, but not to deal structurally with the general problem.]

A “highest and best use” model that doesn’t differentiate between types of buildings will always price out anything other than commercial office, because such high revenue-producing, low-service requirement properties are the absolute best financial deal for any city.

The rule of thumb from the “Main Street” approach to commercial district revitalization is that a retail business pays from four to 10 percent of its annual revenues in rent -- or if the property is owned, mortgage plus property taxes and maintenance. Restaurants have higher revenues

and may pay as rent up to 15 percent of annual revenue.

Tax assessment models for commercial properties must be based on the revenue models for operating businesses located in such commercial districts. A tax assessment methodology focused on some “mythical” building worth independent of the businesses located within and the revenue streams they generate is disconnected from business reality.

This will lead to business displacement, particularly of independent businesses, in favor of chains, or in significant changes in the use, changes which may be incompatible with the needs and desires of residents and/or the retail mix of a thriving commercial district.

The current method of assessment isn’t much different than taxing farmland that is being farmed as if it could be redeveloped into residential tracts. Eventually the farmer will have to sell.

Second, the District government needs to look more carefully at its retail business attraction policies and incentives. Currently, most benefits are skewed to favor chain businesses at the expense of developing local businesses.

Since most independent retail has died on the vine, the infrastructure that supports independent retail has withered as both the various retail sectors (office supplies, clothing, restaurants, etc.) and the commercial real estate industry that develops and leases retail space have become organized as national and international enterprises.

Places like Richmond, Virginia and the State of Illinois have strong retail merchants associations providing a wide variety of services and training opportunities to support the development and maintenance of independent retailers. These organizations provide a great deal of assistance to local and regional businesses, without excluding the membership of national chains. To the best of my knowledge there is no equivalent association in the Washington region.

Cities like Los Angeles and Austin, Texas have created specific initiatives designed to attract, develop, and support independently-owned retail businesses. For example, LA’s Historic Downtown LA Retail Project provides extensive training, incentive, and development resources centered upon the development and strengthening of independently-owned shops and services; art galleries; cafés, restaurants and nightlife. [Also see the 2007 blog entry, "Retail and authenticity: continued.")

Clearly, much more than zoning overlays are required to right the trends that forcefully homogenize the retail districts in our neighborhoods and downtown Washington. And, I hope that The InTowner continues to publish articles about why this is so.

Artist request for information (DC)

2012-01-16T05:55:00.005-05:00

Image: work by Jo Ray.

Jo Ray has been selected to participate in the city's 5x5 Public Art Project that will run during the Cherry Blossom Festival--the project is designed to help bring festival visitors to the neighborhoods (I don't think it'll work, because you need more than one thing to bring people to neighborhoods, but it's still an interesting project) to promote local spinoff commerce as a result of the national event.

From Jo Ray:

I am a visitor from the UK searching for interesting signage in all parts of the city. Do you know of any existing or historical store fronts with interesting lettering or words, or any market vendors who write their own signs?

Handmade or idiosynchratic signage can be a powerful expression of the human story of a place...if you have any recommendations please let me know.

See the DCCAH press release "Five International Curators to Complete 25 Proposed Public Art Installations presented with the National Cherry Blossom Festival: Installations will be unveiled and showcased during the festival's Centennial Celebration, March 20-April 27, 2012" for a little more information about the program. From the press release:

5x5 is the new temporary art project that will result in 25 public art exhibitions and be installed concurrently throughout the District of Columbia to activate and enliven publicly accessible spaces and add an ephemeral layer of creativity and artistic expression to neighborhoods across the District. The Festival's Centennial Celebration commemorates the 100-year anniversary of the gift of trees from Tokyo to Washington, DC and will showcase unprecedented arts and culture. The groundbreaking 5x5 Public Art Project offers a unique cultural experience for over one million people expected to take part in the nation's greatest springtime celebration.

A five-member selection committee carefully chose five curators from more than 90 submissions. All media and art forms were considered, including, but not limited to visual art, performance, light, digital, projection, and event-based work. ...

The five selected curators named below must select five artists each to create five bodies of public work. These five curators will lead the 5x5 implementation process and will manage and oversee each artist's concept, budget and schedules. The installations can be of any duration, but they cannot exceed four months.

TriMet (Portland): CHALLENGES & CHOICES A Budget Discussion Guide

2012-01-15T08:29:00.002-05:00

Screen captures from the TriMet Challenges and Choices website.

Related to yesterday's entry on WMATA's proposed fare increases for transit in the DC region, and specifically the recommendations for subway fares, I came across an online budget exercise that TriMet of Portland has posted, to get public input into the budget process.

The Portland transit system relies in part on a transit payroll withholding tax, and with the recession, those revenues have dropped, impacting their budget.

I mention this exercise because it has four parts:

- Why is there a budget shortfall?

- What are the options?

- What are other agencies doing?

- Tell us what you think? (about the options presented, and other suggestions as submitted by the public)

and because it raises the issue of revenues other than fares.

The Portland TriMet exercise is still very much "transit operator" focused rather than "regional transportation planning" focused, but it's an illustration of the kind of exercises that I think ought to occur as part of a new regional discussion about the role of transit in the region's civic, social, and economic life, and its impact on the built environment and quality of life.

It would be better to make decisions on how to fund regional transit in that context, rather than on an annual crisis basis focused on the next year's budget.

This also gets to a point that Governor Jerry Brown made in the context of California's budget shortfall (this year over $9 billion, last year over $26 billion):

“Here's the dilemma: People don't want cuts in education and health care and policing, but they don't want to pay taxes, either.

“So the challenge for today's politics is to clarify the choices.”

From "Offering a clear choice on taxes" in the Santa Rose Press-Democrat.

Article about high speed rail comparing Spain and California

2012-01-15T06:34:00.003-05:00

"Spain's high-speed rail system offers lessons for California," from the Sacramento Bee. The article makes at least five interesting points:

- that Spain built the system because they wanted to--it was partly built as a post-Franco unification device

- but as a country, Spain doesn't have the population density to support economically many of the lines, based on ridership

- although there has been large shifts from driving and especially flying to rail as a result of the creation of the AVE high speed rail system in Spain (which is complemented by improvements in regional railroad transportation)

- that if you want to build support for high-speed rail, you need to build it first where people will use it, and build from there, unlike the way that construction for high speed rail is supposed to start in California

- that Spain should have prioritized investment in rail, to ensure the system's long term success.

There is a video with the story and this great graphic.

Tea party activists disrupt long range planning meeting in California

2012-01-15T06:07:00.006-05:00

From "Tea party activists interrupt regional planning meeting in Santa Rosa" in the Santa Rosa (California) Press-Democrat:

The activists appeared to oppose public transportation and to hold a general mistrust of government.

“We're tired of being pushed around,” said Mary Anne Black of Petaluma. “They want to force us, but I don't want a bike path in front of my property.”

Also see "COURSEY: This meeting was no tea party" "Santa Rosa hosts Bay Area land-use workshop Monday," and the editorial, "Keeping a civil atmosphere at civic meetings." From the Coursey piece:

The psychology of this group is fascinating. Their fantasy-based creed is that America is in the thrall of a United Nations/Socialist/Progressive conspiracy that is using the specter of global climate change to force all citizens to live in high-density slums, ride bicycles and vote for Democrats.

Or Republicans. Or something like that. For background, Google “Agenda 21” and read not just the UN documents, but the stuff from the conspiracy theorists, too. It's an education. ...

I wasn't at the meeting, but I've heard the arguments. The people who sit on the boards of regional agencies are not elected and don't represent the public. (Most of them are elected city council members or county supervisors appointed by their peers to serve on the regional boards). The planners want us all to live in high-density apartments next to train stations. (But who will live in those many hundreds of thousands of single-family homes that already sprawl across the region?) We're being forced out of our cars and on to buses, trains and bikes. (Last time I looked, the freeway was being widened, and a lot of people actually would like to be able to get around without getting in their cars.) ...

The fact is that the majority of people in the Bay Area, and particularly in Sonoma County, have said over and over again that they prefer new development to be focused close to city centers and transportation networks, they want to preserve open spaces and they want to expand transportation options.

That's what those evil bureaucrats at MTC are trying to do – just what the public has asked them to do.

Just because a few members of the public are willing to shout louder than the rest doesn't mean we should stop working toward a better future.

While I am the first to admit that public planning meetings can and are manipulated too, in how they are organized, and in the too often constraining of options to be considered, without a plan, you have nothing.

The Growth is going to come regardless, and your ability to deal with the changes are limited when you have no plan.

According to one activist website, here are the Soviet style planning initiatives that are reprehensive:

One Bay Area/Plan Bay Area Objectives

Performance Targets
- Equitable Access
• Decrease by 10% share of income spent on transportation
- Transportation System Effectiveness
• Decrease trip travel time by 10%

Equity Analysis
- Economic Vitality
• Average travel time for low income should be 19 minutes
• Average travel costs for low income should be $2.79 per day
- Transportation Effectiveness
• Decrease travel time by 10%
• Average per trip travel time 24 minutes

-- Plan Bay Area

-- One Bay Area sustainability planning initiative

-- 2 hour youtube video about the One Bay Area initiative as part of a UN conspiracy

One of the comments on the youtube video:

Why do we have to do Regional Plans in built areas that get in ways of other people's business?

Why not have regional plans that are marketed, offered, and not coded with new laws in VAST MILES EMPTY VACANT AREAS ?

To everyone who wants new high-density to large-lot single family housing let us all build them in new vast empty lands outside of the urban areas instead!

Let competition and flexibility rule!

What is frustrating in these arguments is not just the pro-sprawl bent, but also how the basic view is that what we have now was produced as part of some kind of natural order, rather than by a policy, legal, and financial system that found it advantageous to "sprawl" based on automobile centric transportation systems.

Harry Thomas: Guilty as charged

2012-01-14T16:56:00.002-05:00

(I'm doing some filing and came across the article, which I had clipped earlier.)

In honor of the above headline in the Washington Post, I recommend the song "Guilty as Charged" by John C. Reilly as "Dewey Cox,"

Public meetings: Western Baltimore County Pedestrian and Bicycle Access Plan

2012-01-14T13:02:00.003-05:00

The original highway sign, reading Pikesville and Essex, is on York Road in Baltimore County. The image was created by Shahid Rana of the Baltimore County Office of Planning.

Typically, I only write about public meetings in the DC region, even if I do believe that the blog is more national in scope, at least in terms of how people are expected to think about the information presented.

I was the project manager and chief author for the creation of the Western Baltimore County Pedestrian and Bicycle Plan, although the posted draft does not include all that was submitted. The plan was turned in at the end of June 2010 and posted in August 2010. (My position was funded by a grant which ended the day the plan draft was turned in.)

Even though the plan hasn't yet gone through public hearings, through an unusual confluence of events, many of the process design revisions were enacted into law in February 2011, as part of the creation of a county-wide Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Commission. The law is actually one of the stronger ordinances in the U.S. The trick will be to see how the systems are developed to bring about the changes. See "Baltimore County passes pedestrian & bicycle legislation unanimously."

The meetings (see "County to host public meetings on updated pedestrian, bicycle plan: 'Western' plan covers county neighborhoods from Lansdowne to Lutherville" from the Times newspapers of Baltimore County) that have been called:

• Wednesday, Jan. 18, 6 to 8 p.m. at the Benjamin Banneker Museum, Almanac Hall, 300 Oella Ave., Catonsville.

• Wednesday, January 25, 6 to 8 p.m., in the cafeteria of West Towson Elementary School, 6914 N. Charles Street, Towson.

have to do with getting public comments in advance of scheduling public hearings for approval, which evidently will be later this year.

I do plan to go to one of the meetings, probably the one in Towson, just to see if anyone shows up and to hear people's reactions "to my work product."

Walking the street because there is no sidewalk, Warren Road, Cockeysville, Baltimore County. This location is a few hundred feet from the area middle school. Photo taken during an informal workshop on walk to school/safe routes to school.

The plan isn't perfect. We just didn't have enough time to do everything. I wish that the County would have been willing to pop for a few months of ungrant money to pay me and my assistant to cover some additional issues, do fine tuning, etc.

But overall I think it's an important step forward and helped me understand better the constraints of working within government, and how to think about doing bike and pedestrian planning at various scales.

Also see "Best practice bicycle planning for suburban settings using the "action planning" method."

Proposed WMATA fare increases (DC region)

2012-01-14T09:22:00.004-05:00

Slide from my presentation, Metropolitan Mass Transit Planning: Towards a Hierarchical and Conceptual Framework.

Pressed once again to make budget projections, WMATA has proposed transit fare increases for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. See "Proposed Metro budget that would raise fares calls for hiring of 1000 workers" and "Metro board considers fare proposal, next budget" from the Washington Post.

Graphic from the Washington Post.

One of the proposals is to get rid of the $9 all-day pass, which is designed to meet the needs of visitors, and instead only offer the use of temporary subway fare cards--single purchase fare cards purchased for one time use--at rates comparable to the cost of a railroad train ride, rather than a typical in-region transit trip on subway, light rail, or bus.

The rates would change to $6 one way for a trip during rush periods, and $4 during nonrush periods. By way of example, $6 is how much MARC charges for travel to DC from the BWI Airport, 30 miles away (although that fare is going up too).

This changes the pricing scheme significantly, and makes ridership uneconomic for many people, especially groups. Why pay $18-$24 for a group of four to travel one way when you can just drive? Paying for parking in a parking structure for an entire day costs about this much or less, and wouldn't trigger a similar cost driving back. Or taxi rides become more competitive price-wise, etc.

In either case, more vehicles, rather than fewer vehicles on the regions roads is the likely outcome. It's a poor use of physical space too.

Amount of space required to transport the user the same number of passengers by car, bus, or bicycle. Graphic from the Urban Ambassadors, Des Moines, IA. (Note that when I first acquired this graphic a couple years ago, the Urban Ambassadors didn't have a website, just a Facebook page. Their website is worth a visit.

Charging exorbitant rates to visitors is not an unusual revenue generating strategy for communities. It's done with hotel rooming taxes, rental car usage taxes, and parking structure taxes in many cities, and in DC particularly, the tax on restaurant meals--10%--is much higher than in other places, in large part because of the belief that more of the tax is paid for by nonresidents than residents.

Typically, most of these taxes are used to support convention centers, tourism marketing, and related activities, although parking taxes tend to be a general fund revenue item.

So there is a precedent for looking to tag visitors with exorbitant prices to use the subway system, which already charges more for casual users versus SmarTrip card users.

But the fundamental issue has more to do with what is the purpose of the transit system:

• Is the transit system supposed to be used to get people to and from work, ideally where the workers have subsidized transit benefits (e.g., federal government workers are eligible for free transit benefits worth about $125/month)?

• Is the transit system supposed to be used as a mobility congestion management tool to reduce traffic and the need to build and maintain more roadways?

• Is the transit system seen as an element of a community's positioning and economic development strategy, shaping land use in sustainable ways so that the need to travel is reduced by placing more activities within walking, biking, and transit distance?

• Is transit a service of last-resort, for people who can't afford to own an automobile, so high subway fares are used to push low-income riders to buses?;

• Should a fare system be developed that supports the creation of "fare zones" and passes, so that transit use is encouraged, rather than discouraged, in terms of the cost of any one trip; etc.,

and how does that influence how the system is funded, and the strategy for fare revenue management?

These kinds of issues are discussed in the past blog entry "(Sort of a repeat) Without the right transportation planning framework, metropolitan areas are screwed, and that includes the DC area."

For the region, consideration of the transit system as the primary element of civic and transportation infrastructure within the region, as the leading means for shaping mobility and land use decision making, congestion management, and for creating great places and promoting high quality of life is paramount.

Therefore, how to fund the system in a manner that the WMATA budget planners aren't forced on an almost annual basis to engage in a kind of fare-setting "legerdemain" just to come up with the necessary funds ought to be the metropolitan area's chief priority right now.

This problem isn't unique to WMATA. Most transit operators nationally have the same kind of funding desperation because of drop off in local and state funding as a result of the recession, as well as drop offs in local tax receipts such as sales taxes and real estate transaction taxes and other taxes which have been used to support local transit operations.

But WMATA does have some special circumstances.

In the face of region's loss of trust with regard to WMATA after the train crash in 2009, which resulted in the deaths of nine passengers, I recommended that the transit system and the region engage in a high profile transportation planning initiative focused on rebuilding the region's understanding of the role and primacy of transit as the main engine of growth, mobility, and prosperity.

See "St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region."

St. Louis regional transit planning process, slide.

Other regions have/had similar initiative's such as Chicago's Moving Beyond Congestion Strategic Plan, the Go Ohio transportation planning initiative in Ohio, and Keep PGH Moving in Pittsburgh (although that campaign is more focused on obtaining state funding for the local transit system to reduce the number of cutbacks).

While people are familiar with special local tax initiatives to support transit expansion, such as Los Angeles' Measure R, clearly the DC region--DC, Maryland, and Virginia--need to consider such initiatives as a source of funds to help get WMATA onto a new track when it comes to fares and revenue management.

-- Center for Transportation Excellence, a research group that supports transit infrastructure funding and election initiatives

-- transportation benefit districts, Washington State Legislature
-- WA State Licensing: Local transportation benefit district fees

-- History of BART transit system, San Francisco Bay region, including discussion of how sales taxes became a source of system funding

This graphic, "Traffic Trouble: How Transit Cuts Will Affect Your Daily Commute" from the Pittsburgh City Paper, is brilliant in how it communicates that transit service is vitally important to a region, and perfectly illustrates my point in the very first image above, about how Level of Service and Level of Quality decisions about a transit system are too important to leave to the transit operator, which first and foremost is driven by budgetary concerns.

WMATA needs to reposition the conversation about funding so that these kinds of desperation moves with regard to the fare structure can be avoided.

Design as a city branding strategy: transit edition

2012-01-14T07:26:00.004-05:00

Images of the Montpellier tram. First photo from the Rugby Network; second photo from the transit operator.

According to the New York Times Travel Section's piece, "The 45 Places to Go in 2012," Montpellier France utilizes high quality design as a way to promote and brand the city and extends this idea to their transit system.

From the article:

France’s eighth-largest city is dressing up in designer style.

The most celebrated architect in France, Jean Nouvel, and a collaborator, François Fontès, introduced their blue and cube-like city hall in November, and early next year Mr. Nouvel’s RBC Design Center — another coolly modernist structure that will house the RBC brand’s furniture showroom — is to open its doors in this medieval, student-filled Mediterranean city.

Even more innovative, the long-awaited Pierres Vives Building from the star architect Zaha Hadid will be ready by year’s end. A long, sprawling edifice of swirly white concrete layers and green-tinted glass, the futuristic structure will hold a library, archives and municipal offices.

And to reach them, the city is installing what may be Europe’s sexiest tram system. The two existing lines sport exteriors of kaleidoscopic birds and flowers by Christian Lacroix, and two new lines with Mr. Lacroix’s trademark color-soaked style are on their way. Both will make their debut this spring with an underwater design theme and a solar theme, respectively, along roughly 17 miles of new track. Think of it as France’s longest fashion runway.

It is very rare that transit is marketed in the U.S. comparable to that of Montpellier, although some bus systems (Orlando, Boulder, Pittsburgh, Santa Monica) are known for particularly engaged livery designs.

A lot of people like the Circulator design in DC, which is decent. But generally, transit operators have dull looking vehicles.

The vehicles are rolling billboards, and while they are often used for advertising, the design of the bus or fixed rail transit vehicle has to be considered a key element in how transit is defined and the system is marketed.

Boulder's bus lines are named, rather than numbered. This one is called Hop. Image credit.

Transit vehicle design is moving forward, and the Van Hool buses that the DC Circulator system uses, some of the buses used by WMATA such as the New Flyer buses, and light rail vehicles (Citadis by Alstom especially) are well done.

But it needs to go beyond the vehicle and include using the livery in full-fledged design, to achieve significant communications and marketing objectives. Montpellier shows us how it can be done.

And this needs to be extended to other aspects of the system. For example, I make the point often that transit shelters are the key touchpoints for marketing transit, for communicating whether or not we value transit or merely look at it as a social service. See "Making bus service sexy" and "(Ir)rational planning #2: sexy (Circulator) vs. plodding (Metrobus) bus service"."

Also From Here to There: A creative guide to making public transport the way to go from EMBARQ: The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, is discussed in this post, "Increasing Public Transport Use with Smart Campaigns," from the American Society of Landscape Architects blog, The Dirt: Connecting the Built and Natural Environments.

In too many places, this transit shelter image sums up how people consider transit vis-a-vis other forms of mobility.

Building a Better Gas Tax – A New 50-State Report from ITEP

2012-01-14T06:55:00.004-05:00

Gasoline excise taxes, U.S. Washington Post graphic.

Maryland and Virginia are among 17 states that have not increased their gas tax in the last 19 years, according to a new report from the nonprofit, non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy entitled Building a Better Gas Tax: How to Fix One of State Government's Least Sustainable Revenue Sources. The report is the first of its kind to examine the impacts of every state's gas tax rates.

Note that both Maryland ("Md. commission proposes 15-cent increase in gas tax," Post) and Virginia ("Fixing Virginia's roads, at last," Post).

According to the executive summary:

Unfortunately, most state gas taxes are built to fail. Thirty six states levy only a fixed-rate tax that collects the same number of cents in tax, year after year, on every gallon of fuel purchased. But as this report shows, inflation has been eating away at these fixed rate taxes as the price of asphalt, concrete, and other transportation construction inputs continues to grow almost every year.

• After adjusting to account for growth in construction costs, the average state’s gas tax rate has effectively fallen by 20%, or 6.8 cents per gallon, since the last time it was increased. Among the 36 states levying only a fixed-rate tax, effective gas tax rates have plummeted by 29%, or 9.5 cents per gallon since they were last increased. New Mexico (20.1 cents), Montana (18.5 cents), and Maryland (15.8 cents) have seen larger absolute declines in their gas taxes than any state other than Alaska.

The report shows that the average state has not increased its gas tax rate in over a decade, and fourteen states have gone twenty years or longer without an increase. As the cost of paving roads and building bridges rises, the tax that’s designed to pay for them keeps shrinking.

Adjusting for construction cost growth, the average state’s gasoline tax rate has effectively fallen by 20 percent, or 6.8 cents per gallon, since the last time it was raised. Diesel taxes have fallen by a similar 18 percent, or 6.0 cents per gallon.

The report offers three policy recommendations for modernizing state gas taxes:
1. Increase gas tax rates to (at least) reverse their long term declines.

2. Restructure state gas taxes so that their rates rise automatically alongside the inevitable growth in the cost of transportation construction projects.

3. Create or enhance targeted tax credits for low income families to offset the impact of gas tax reform.

I make a similar point to #3 when objections are raised to congestion charging, car registration fees to support local transportation initiatives (this is a practice in the State of Washington), tolls, or increases in transit fares (more about this locally, later), because of the impact on people with lower incomes.

The point isn't to not do the right transportation policy, based on sound economics, because people with less income will have a harder time dealing with the cost impact, it's to provide other means of assisting people with lower incomes in dealing with the impact, such as with tax credits, special transit fare programs, etc.

For example, a transit agency isn't a social services program (well, it is but that's another issue, and is perceived as one by most people who don't ride transit besides). Fare decisions should be made based on system needs and regional transportation planning goals and objectives. Transit operators can and should set up programs to assist the less well off in using transit, but they should also be receiving monies from other sources to do so.

Kiplinger Library Open House on MLK Day! (Monday)

2012-01-14T06:50:00.002-05:00

From email:

Please join the Trustees, staff, and volunteers at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., for our special open house this Monday to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in service to the community.
The Kiplinger Research Library will welcome visitors from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.

Day-of-Service open house activities on January 16 will include general orientation sessions to acquaint attendees with the resources available to them at HSW. Attendees will also have an opportunity to meet board members, longtime volunteers, HSW’s interim management team; and enjoy a few highlights from the Kiplinger Washington Collection, recently donated to HSW by Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc.

HSW is planning to reopen the library on a limited basis two days a week and would like to garner community opinions about how and when reopening plans should move forward.

The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
801 K Street, NW at Mount Vernon Square
Washington, DC 20001

Neighborhood change/gentrification

2012-01-12T06:27:00.004-05:00

The fourth phase of the new headquarters that Vulcan is building for Amazon.com is seen at an unveiling on March 22, 2011 in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood. Elliot Suhr/seattlepi.com.

When I write about "gentrification" I make the point that the issue is really about neighborhood change, and that the "new people" are different from the "old people" and that these differences aren't always economic or racial, but can include differences in educational attainment, where you work, etc.

The South Lake Union neighborhood in Seattle is in a long term redevelopment process, not unlike the old urban renewal ideals but with better design, initiated by co-founder of Microsoft Paul Allen, and his Vulcan Realty Group. See "Vulcan completes most of new Amazon headquarters: Developer touts plan for taller buildings elsewhere in South Lake Union" from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The streetcar initiative in Seattle was pushed forward to support the intensification of this neighborhood. (South Lake Union streetcar case study, Reconnecting America.)

Apparently, not everyone is with the program, according to this piece, "Hey, ‘Am-hole!’ South Lake Union calls out Amazon employees," from the SPI, which describes and pictures a flyer posted around the neighborhood, with criticism of the behavior of workers from Amazon.com's headquarters complex--illustrating the complexity of thinking about and dealing with neighborhood change.

Photo via reddit user istrebitjel.

Using "arms-length" government controlled instrumentalities to support influence peddling

2012-01-11T11:04:00.004-05:00

(for the first time, I understand the value of twitter, when you want to communicate but don't have time to write a full entry.) In response to the Mike DeBonis piece, "Paying for an inaugural ball, the Harry Thomas way," in the Post...

From the article:

The trust [Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp.] is a nonprofit, public-private collaboration set up by then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams in 1999 to take government money for out-of-school youth programs, combine it with private and philanthropic funds, and dole it out to worthy community organizations. ...

The Thomas prosecution appears to be the culmination of a three-year tailspin for the trust, a trajectory precipitated by the encroachment of politics on what was intended to be an independent grantmaking process. More and more money sent to the trust during the time Thomas was fleecing taxpayers came in the form of “earmarks” — grants directed by council members to favored groups, absent any competitive process. In fiscal 2009, for instance, council members directed funds to 47 groups.

During the same period, the trust was roiled by then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s move to bring its board more solidly under his control. He ousted two longtime board members with deep ties to the philanthropy community — Federal City Council chief executive John W. Hill and youth advocate Diane Bernstein — and replaced them with several of his political aides and the wife of a member of his running team. In the aftermath, outside funding dwindled while political meddling ran amok.

Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) had oversight of the trust at the time, and he pushed back hard Tuesday against the suggestion that he could have done more to prevent the theft. He said he implored the trust to improve oversight of grant funds and moved to curb his colleagues’ interference in grantmaking.

With all due respect to Councilmember Wells, the creation of "off-the-book" government related entities like the Children's Youth and Investment Trust, that entity created by the DC Housing Authority which Mayor Fenty used for off-the-books construction, and the Foundation created to accept money for the DC Public Schools System is done to be able to have extra-normal ways of directing and receiving funds, in ways that are seemingly more flexible, but truly, more open to fraud.

In the case of the CYIT, it was created to make it easier for Councilmembers to influence grant funding to Ward-based organizations in ways that would benefit councilmembers.

The Housing Authority entity was used by the Executive Branch in a similar fashion, to expedite contracting while bypassing Council review of contracts over $1 million.

Etc.

The issue is to build robust regular operating procedures, so that the regular and expected outcomes are high quality and ethical.

Also see "A nose for rooting out fraud," from the Financial Times. With regard to ex-Councilmember Thomas, the piece sheds some light on familial aspects. From the article:

In the course of her work, she also uncovers all sorts of behaviour, such as bigamy and drug-taking. There are, she says, very few female fraudsters. In fact, Ms Brittain has only come across one. “She was doing it for love,” she says. “She wasn’t the brightest spark.”

Women do, however, play a strong supporting role. “The fraudster will have convinced the wife he is right and she will also [worry about] losing her standard of living.”

Note that all was not hunky dory with regard to corruption in the Thomas Family legacy, as opposed to how it's been portrayed in the media, such as in this Post article from the weekend, "Thomas dynasty may be near an end." Many people I've talked with over the years discussed the petty kind of graft that occurred around CM Thomas Senior.

Thus far, focusing on what to do with the Ward 5 seat ("Ward 5 ponders political life after Thomas," Post) while not addressing more fundamental systemic failures means that more of the same is the likely result.

More on that tomorrow, maybe. In the meantime, surprisingly one of the only articles that adequately captures the reality of problems with "the system" is by Deborah Simmons in the Washington Times, "Times are tough in a city without any kingmakers."

She makes the point that I have made in some community e-list discussions about the Ward 5 election, that the Mayor and Council Chair won't likely get to involved in making the special election part of the normal citywide election access and control system, so that the possibility of a progressive re-set is theoretically possible.

New high quality urban format Walgreens "pharmacy" in Chicago

2012-01-11T06:57:00.004-05:00

This ain't no 7-11. Image of Parker's Urban Market, Drayton Street, Savannah, from Yelp.

I've written quite a bit about the drive to create so-called "urban format" stores by "drug store" chains, in particular CVS.

"It only took them about 20 years to figure it out: CVS urban store format" from 2010 discusses this new format, which recognizes that as urban commercial districts have lost their convenience food stores, by default, the local pharmacy becomes in part, a "convenience store."

The urban format stores recognize this, by changing the product mix to include about 1.5 aisles of food items, including a fresh(er) food case with "grab and go" items.

Personally, I've been disappointed, not so much in the selection of products, but in the fact that for the most part the food items are priced very high, just like a convenience store... rather than being priced in a way that takes advantage of the buying volume that a retail chain like CVS, with more than 7,000 stores nationally, possesses. Maybe the prices couldn't be comparable to a reasonably priced supermarket, but ideally they'd be significantly less than a convenience store or corner market, given that the volume of a drug store company allows them to get better prices.

The Duane Read division of Walgreens upped the ante for retail pharmacy chains last summer, opening a premium version of an "urban format" store on Wall Street, with shoe salon, sushi, a high end selection of business periodicals, and other services. ("Duane Read opens big on Wall Street," Chain Store Age).

This took to another level Duane Read efforts, which in Brooklyn have gone to the extent where they sell craft beer on tap in a store in Williamsburg ("A Duane Reade in Brooklyn With a Beer Bar," New York Times).

And Walgreens is continuing to expand the use of high quality urban "convenience" store concept stores, with a newly opened store in Chicago. See "Sushi at Walgreens? New State Street store offers urban format" from the Chicago Sun-Times.

From the article:

Walgreens is trying a new approach at an old location: State and Randolph. The Deerfield-based drugstore giant is reopening Tuesday with a new format that shows just how high-end it can go, with a $450 imported wine and a $192 skin-care cream sitting amid a gleaming, well-lit smorgasbord of sushi, serve-yourself yogurt and an iPad-equipped health guide at the pharmacy clinic.

The store features ready-to-go packaged fruits and meals, a barista serving coffee, a three-person nail bar, an eyebrow-shaping service, a high-end cosmetics department and chocolates, cupcakes, cookies and beers made by Chicago companies.

This is one of those times now that I do appreciate store competition and wonder if Walgreens is considering bringing one of these high format stores to Washington, DC.

When I was in Savannah last month, I did happen across the Parker's Urban Market. Parker's is a regional convenience store chain with typical gasoline-convenience stores, but the Savannah downtown store and one other are super-high end stores, maybe not with $450 bottles of wine, but with a few thousand specialty products, ranging from hot sauce to imported cheese and serves up fresh-made breads, desserts, and meals-to-go 24 hours a day.

It's true that east coast convenience store chains Sheetz and Wawa, both based in Pennsylvania, are known for their expanded prepared food offerings, making the stores more like prepared to order fast food restaurants, as well as places to buy other goods and gasoline, but we haven't seen a lot of innovation by equivalent companies like 7-11, who tend to be more active in urban settings.

Now while I didn't want to spend $1.49 for a bagel or $8.49 for a large bottle of Siracha sauce and I didn't like that they only sold 1/2 ounce portions of cream cheese rather than an 8 ounce brick, having access to those items close by is great, not to mention the extensive beer and wine selection, book department (cookbooks by Paula Deen, etc., given that most of the tourists make her restaurants one of their stops while visiting, prepared foods, and even (ugh) gasoline.

--_--

Added

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Another format-breaker is Tesco's Fresh & Easy concept in the West (AZ and CA mostly), which is bigger than a convenience store but smaller than a supermarket. But they've lost a billion dollars learning the U.S. market, and I am not sure how good a model this is. (See "Pushback against the 24 hour/creative city" from 2008.)

And in Texas, the regional supermarket leader is HEB. While they don't do smaller convenience store sized offerings unlike the GetGo chain from Pittsburgh's Giant-Eagle, they do some pretty amazing supermarkets, called HEB Plus, with home and garden centers called Texas Backyard, and electronics and other sections with competitive pricing. See "My H-E-B" from Progressive Grocer.

... although in the 1960s, many regional supermarket chains, including Giant in the DC region, did develop discount store divisions comparable to KMart, and had some integrated stores. Most of these kinds of store combinations and experiments ended in the 1970s.

Planning for intensity of land use: the question is at what scale are we planning?

2012-01-10T06:39:00.003-05:00

Kaid Benfield at NRDC's Switchboard blog, has a post, "A strong case for a rail- and transit-oriented California," that raises some interesting issues about scale of metropolitan and regional development. He calls our attention to research (Charting our Future, Vision California) and an op-ed, "Why California needs high-speed rail," in the San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Calthorpe that suggests that high speed rail can be the fulcrum to repattern land use in ways that intelligently allow the state to absorb a projected new residents.

From the blog entry:

The envisioned benefits would come from a “growing smart” scenario that would leverage the construction of a planned high-speed rail network with smart land use around and near the network's stations and additional intra-city transit systems. The scenario would include a more balanced housing mix, more infill development, and greater transportation options than under a business-as-usual scenario, which assumes a continuation of dispersed, auto-oriented development patterns (albeit with continued modest improvements in automobile, building, and energy generation efficiency). Even greater comparative benefits would be realized under a more ambitious “green future” alternative.

In the 2009 entry, "Second iteration, idealized national network for high speed rail passenger service," I discussed how transportation planning within the U.S. should occur on five distinct but interconnected levels:

- international (connections between countries);
- national (such as the Interstate Highway system or the proposed High Speed Rail Initiative);
- regional or multi-state (freeways sure but also railroads, such as passenger railroad service in NY, CT, NJ, and PA) [including inter-city bus service];
- metropolitan such as the subway and bus system for the Washington metropolitan region, which is anchored by the WMATA system and the VRE and MARC railroads; and is supplemented by
- submetropolitan transit networks at the suburban and city levels.

Interestingly, at the local level, I am often critical about attempts to do "transit oriented development" at commuter railroad stations in the greater region, because for the most part these stations are on the outskirts of their respective metropolitan areas, in areas where the land use pattern and context, from the standpoint of the New Urban transect, is not very dense (T2/T3).

Monocentric and polycentric transit patterns, from Belmont, Cities in Full.

A related issue is whether or not the railroad stations are in fact key elements of their local communities or disconnected pods used by people from elsewhere in the region. For example, while adjacent to the Arbutus community in Baltimore County, the highly used Halethorpe MARC railroad station is used not by residents from the immediate neighborhood, but people who drive to the station from around the metropolitan area who appreciate that the station is easily accessible from the Baltimore Beltway (I-695).

If you were to develop Halethorpe intensively for "smart growth" reasons, the desired impact likely would not occur, because the land use around the station is low density single family residential, with a small town center.

Transect diagram.

But at the regional scale, is it still in fact better to promote development around railroads, such as the proposed high speed rail system in California, rather than via highways, such as the proposed Virginia I-95 bypass proposed by groups such as by the pro-roads Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance?

Calthorpe outlines the difference in development paradigms in his op-ed:

Transit-oriented development built around high-speed rail and local transit would be denser. Detached single-family homes would drop from 62 percent of our state's housing to just over half, with the difference filled by townhomes, apartments, lofts and bungalows. Given that large-lot suburban homes now have declining value, this is a reasonable shift in housing type, ultimately making housing stock more affordable.

This shift also results in 67 percent less developed land and would save prime farmland in the Central Valley and key open space and habitat in the coastal regions of the state. The more compact future means smaller yards to irrigate and fewer parking lots to landscape, saving an average of 3.4 million acre-feet of water per year - enough to irrigate 5 million acres of farmland in our water-poor state.

In the transit-oriented development future, average vehicle miles traveled per household would be reduced 40 percent, the equivalent of taking 18.6 million cars off the road. There would be fewer roads and parking lots built, less runoff water to be cleaned and stored. New highway construction is reduced by 4,700 miles, saving the state about $400 billion.

MARC Commuter railroad system map, Maryland/West Virginia

The question becomes is it appropriate to intensify those areas, because for the most part those areas aren't developed now? Does this development support monocentric or polycentric development patterns, does it add to sprawl, rather than containing sprawl?

This came up on the urbanists e-list, where I made the point that in the context of rural opposition to PlanMaryland, the state of Maryland plan that coordinates and directs state investments to extant areas rather than undeveloped areas, a "new urban" residential development in St. Mary's County or Carroll County, would be considered smart growth at the scale of the county, but sprawl in the context of the metropolitan region.

See "Maryland To Offer Preferential Funding For Smart Growth" from WAMU Radio, this letter to the editor by a St. Mary's County Commissioner in the Baltimore Sun, "PlanMaryland is a bureaucratic takeover," and "PlanMaryland concerns local officials" from the Salisbury Times.

In fact the regional scaled Smart Code would call such developments sprawl. But on the other hand, you can argue that at the regional and multi-regional scale, this kind of land use change might in fact be a good thing.

I'm not going to argue with the Vision California research or Calthorpe's points, even if I am making the point that at least in the DC region, rather than focus on creating pods of development at commuter railroad stations we should be focusing on intensifying land use in areas served by transit systems, which operate at the metropolitan and sub-metropolitan scale, rather than railroads, which operate at the regional and multi-regional scale.

And, at the same time, we should be focused on intensifying investment in transit systems, not so much focusing the systems outward in more polycentric-development supportive ways, in the DC region, such as proposals to extend the Metrorail system to Prince William County or to BWI Airport, but by adding to the system within the core of the region, such as the "separated blue line" proposal providing additional service in the core of the city, or other projects to add better transit service, via the Purple Line light rail project in Montgomery and Prince George's County Maryland, and further extending this concept into Northern Virginia, rather than focusing sprawl-promotion energies on freeways.

Purple Line concept map, Sierra Club

Separated blue line map, 2002, Washington Post graphic

Participatory Budgeting conference in NYC in March

2012-01-10T02:18:00.000-05:00

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Given the ethics challenges in local government in DC and elsewhere, I am intrigued by the concept of "participatory budgeting" and making over appropriations processes as opportunities for civic engagement and public agenda setting. For example, using PB processes for the allocation of monies from constituent funds would be a way to make the funds more useful, and is a much better response than the constant suggestion of the Washington Post editorial page to eliminate the funds altogether.

See the past blog entries:

- Missing the point on constituent service/discretionary funds available from legislators
-- More on ethics: discretionary funding-constituent funds

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Via the Comm-Org e-list from:

International Conference:
Participatory Budgeting in the US and Canada

March 30-31, 2012 - New York City

Conference website

Conference Fees
There will be a sliding scale conference fee from $10 for students and low-income people to $50 for full registration. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

The conference dates have been finalized, and we are already planning an exciting lineup of sessions and activities. Here’s a taste of what to expect:

• Site Visits to Observe PB Voting in NYC;
• Presentations on PB processes in New York, Chicago, Toronto Community Housing, Guelph, Montreal, Porto Alegre, the UK, and elsewhere;
• Sessions on e-Participatory Budgeting & Digital Media, Community Organizing, Arts & Culture, Public Housing, and Youth Engagement
• Focused discussions for elected officials, practitioners, and community organizations

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
In a time of widespread budget crises and plummeting trust in government, politicians and community members are searching for more democratic and accountable ways to manage public money. Participatory Budgeting (PB) offers an alternative. PB is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. The process was first developed in Brazil in 1989, and there are now over 1,000 participatory budgets around the world. Most are for city budgets, but counties, states, towns, housing authorities, schools, and other institutions have also used PB to open up public spending to public participation.

PB is now common in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa - and in some cases even required by law. Yet it has only recently appeared on the radar in the US and Canada, with a few Canadian processes starting in 2001 and some initial US experiments starting in 2009.

This first regional conference on PB will take place in New York City to allow participants to observe and celebrate the closing of the city’s first PB cycle. The conference will provide a space for participants and organizers of the initial PB processes in the US and Canada to share and reflect on their experiences so far, alongside interested activists, practitioners, and scholars.

Conference Themes
As an opportunity to reflect upon early PB initiatives in the US and Canada, and build new relationships and collaborations between practitioners, the conference will focus on the following questions. We encourage all submissions relating to these and other similar themes.

1) What is the current state of PB practice in the United States and Canada? How are current experiments progressing and what efforts to establish new PB processes are underway?

2) What common themes or conditions underlie PB experiences in the US and Canada?

3) How do experiences in these countries differ from PB in other parts of the world?

4) How do PB experiences in the US and Canada inform key ongoing debates on PB worldwide?

5) How can PB practitioners, activists, and participants in the US and Canada support each others’ efforts?

NCPC presentation this Wednesday:(r)Evolutionary Parks: The Future of Public Space

2012-01-09T07:34:00.000-05:00

From the NCPC

In today's evolving world, how can parks and public spaces like the National Mall thrive while successfully responding to the diverse and often competing array of future needs?

The National Capital Planning Commission, the Trust for the National Mall, the City Parks Alliance, and the National Archives host a panel discussion to explore new ways to think about public space. The public program features a dynamic panel:

§ Jason Schupbach, Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts (Moderator)
§ John Bela, founder and principal, Rebar
§ Theaster Gates, artist and cultural planner
§ Tupper Thomas, former President of the Prospect Park Alliance and Administrator of Prospect Park

Wednesday, January 11, 2011 7:00 – 8:30 PM
William C. McGowan Theater National Archives700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC

The program is a companion event to the Trust-sponsored National Mall Design Competition that seeks to redesign three spaces on the National Mall. The public is invited to attend and contribute their thoughts to the discussion which will be incorporated into the competition.

-- RSVP

Car parking vs. parks vs. restaurant patios

2012-01-07T14:44:00.003-05:00

Image: Herald Square, New York City. Credit.

Not every "parklet" is a park. A number of the parklets in San Francisco ("S.F. parklets: a little tour of a major trend" from the San Francisco Chronicle) are used as gathering spaces and apparently for restaurants. But many of the spaces are park-like, and not spaces for economic activity.

See the past blog entries:

-- San Francisco Sustainable Mobility Agenda presentation
-- Parallel Park in Vancouver, BC: temporary parklet

Similarly, people can eat at the public spaces created along Broadway (and other places) in New York City, but there isn't restaurant-provided "table service" at the chairs and tables.

So it's important to make a distinction about what and how these "parklets" function before they are all lauded as public spaces, even though for the most part I don't have a problem with restaurant patios capturing some parking places. See "Long Beach joins the national 'parklets' trend: Three restaurants have won city approval to convert a few highly valued parking spaces into green space. In some cities, the parklets are open to the public, but these will be for patrons' use only" from the Los Angeles Times.

A restaurant patio is still a restaurant patio.

Willa Lolif, 2 1/2, plays on the eucalyptus trunk that provides seating in the parklet at Trouble Coffee on Judah Street. Liz Hafalia / The San Francisco Chronicle.

Reprint: Tom Sherwood, Duncan Spencer, Anwar Amal, and thinking about what I call the "Uncivil War"

2012-01-07T11:55:00.003-05:00

Given the recent political developments with regard to the guilty pleading and resignation by Harry Thomas Jr. as Ward 5 Councilmember as a result of "conversion" of public monies (technically, it's not embezzlement), it's worth reprinting this blog entry from 2005. Clearly, my reservations about the election of people like Vincent Gray and Kwame Brown to Council are being borne out, although now I'd argue even more strongly that it's about the political system more than the individuals.

As I pointed out in another blog entry earlier in the week, DC's politics, political discourse, and system may have reached its maximum level of incompetence. Given the ethical challenges the city has faced as of late, and the newest evidence of this, the piece remains relevant and apt with regard to today's events.

What will be interesting is over the next two elections in 2012 and 2014 will the majority of Councilmembers be turned out, not unlike what happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Also see "Throw the bums out?: Six D.C. Council members deserve to be challenged." from the Post.

I am not expecting this to happen.

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Tom Sherwood is the DC politics reporter for NBC4 (WRC-TV). He used to write for the Post (I don't know why he left) and he writes a weekly "Political Notebook" column in the Current Newspapers. He is the co-author of a very important book on understanding DC politics and the "race divide" --Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington.

Even though I owned the book for years, I didn't read it until about 18 months ago. The book is about the city under home rule, and really it's about the Marion Barry mayoralty. (Note: it was from this book that I learned that Marshall Brown, father of City Councilmember Kwame Brown, was one of Mayor Barry's chief field organizers...)

The chapter on land use and real estate development should be required reading for any local activist concerned with these issues, and it dovetails nicely with the thesis of Logan and Molotch's Urban Fortunes: A Political Economy of Place and the "Growth Machine" thesis that all local politics is really focused on local economic development and "growth," regardless of intra-elite competition.

Speaking of the "racial divide," Duncan Spencer's column in The Hill this week has a piece that is relevant to this ongoing debate (and note: Spencer's piece starts off with a discussion very similar to something I wrote about these issues in October 2001--I guess I will dig up that posting and put it in a blog entry).

A new gentry, with old quarrels

Accelerating change has come to the section of Capitol Hill known as Near Northeast.

Ten years ago, its small, tight row houses were the logical starter homes for up-and-coming Hill rats. Now it is under siege by economic engines on all sides: Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers have moved into the giant Station Place building on Second Street. Developer Jim Abdo is building more than 300 new upscale apartments and condos at the former National Children’s Museum. H Street N.E. is rapidly turning into a shopping, arts and entertainment corridor.

The community has been energized by an incoming group of young, affluent people, many of them white, while older black families have been threatened by higher rents or have sold out at prices unimaginable 10 years ago.

Friction between the new and old of Near Northeast has coalesced around a single very public point — a long-standing block party on Father’s Day at Sherwood Recreation Center, 641 G St. N.E. It was over this issue that one of the backers of this often-raucous event, Jordan Washington, made the claim that “New Washington” does not understand (or much approve of) “Old Washington.” The clear subtext was a clash between affluent young white homeowners and longtime black residents.

Though the event occurred without serious incident, much has been made over the confrontation between activist Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Joe Fengler (who wants the event to be limited, if not denied a public-space permit) and Washington, who has loudly defended the event as a celebration of black neighborhood culture. Exacerbating the friction is the issue of “leash free” parks in the neighborhood, something backed by “New Washington” but not by “Old Washington.”

Now that lines have been drawn and sides taken, it will only be a matter of time before another issue rises. At stake: Which culture owns the streets of Near Northeast?

What's going on here is really a fight about change and change in power and control. And it's happening all across the city.

The fact is, if you read any of the local community newspapers or listservs, articles in the District Extra section of The Washington Post, subscribe to themail@dcwatch.com, or go to a neighborhood association meeting or a meeting of one or more Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, you see that "tiffs" are everywhere -- in places like Columbia Heights (Boys-Girls Club, Giant sidewalk issues, etc.), in Brookland over the idea of creating a historic district, on U Street about the changing demographics, in the H Street neighborhood about the role of the H Street Community Development Corporation, etc.

I am not a trained sociologist, but these are termed issues of "contested space."

Part of the contest concerns what Logan and Molotch call the "use value of place"--and this influences our sense of ownership, how we manage such spaces as a community, and how we connect with others. My involvement in the issue of alcohol sales and how this contributes to disorder in the public space is one aspect of this.

Logan and Molotch would call this an interference with the use value of the "Daily Round", and reading the book (another absolute requirement for inner-city activists) made me feel somewhat guilty about this.

Richard Layman stands outside Family Liquors, which has had its license renewal locked in a protracted battle. "It's amazing the difference," Layman said of the neighborhood on Sundays, when law forces the store to close. "It truly is a day of rest." (Michael Williamson, The Washington Post, August 31, 2003)

BTW, the discussion of "use value" is essential to understanding how urban renewal devastated lower-income communities, by destroying the informal networks that communities built up over generations, networks that helped people survive being poor and/or being discriminated against. And it presaged the arguments in the book Root Shock by almost 20 years.

And the understanding of the "exchange value of place" is essential to understanding what the "Growth Machine" is all about.

This wrecking of city neighborhoods for urban renewal, particularly of SW, still impacts the city today, as many of today's most distressed city neighborhoods were the places where those dispossessed from SW ended up.

BTW, this is the same kind of impact that Prince George's County is experiencing, particularly with skyrocketing health care costs at Prince George's Hospital (see "Shakeup, Bailout Sought for Maryland Hospital") and an increase in violent crime and murder in parts of the county particularly close to Washington, DC. The state of the schools too...

I assert this is a result of the displacement of thousands of people from Wards 7 and 8--which I discussed in a couple blog entries about a week ago.

Ward 9 is a real issue, one of "blowback".

It's a reversal of the role that DC has traditionally played vis-a-vis the Maryland and Virginia suburbs for the past forty years--DC as the "catchment" area for the region's poorest, has had to put more money into programs for these demographics, while counties like Fairfax and Montgomery were able to put comparable amounts of money into quality of life promotion projects... I always have thought of this as a "quality of life" subsidy that DC provides to the surrounding counties.

An album cover from the 1970s. Who would have thought that the repercussions of urban renewal are still so stark, 30 years later?

Many people, justifiably think of what happened with "Urban Renewal" in the 1950s to the 1970s as "Negro Removal," and it colors their attitudes about what is happening today (and often, in my opinion, leads to an overly simple, facile, and often incorrect interpretation about "current events") . But DC (and New Haven) were the pilot programs--urban "renewal" happened here first--and we still see the debilitating effects upon our community. Certainly, everything I read about New Haven communicates the same message.

In September 2004 before the primary election, I was toying with the idea of writing a piece about this topic for themail, which I intended to call "The Uncivil War." But I chickened out.

I saw the election of Kwame Brown, Vincent Gray, and the return of Marion Barry as but another salvo over the issue of the "contested space" of the streets, neighborhoods, power, and control in the City of Washington.

Many of the subsequent actions of these councilmembers can be seen in this context, such as their unwillingness to support legislation in favor of greater disclosure over donations to Electioneering Exploratory Campaigns (Gary Imhoff in themail called them "The Corruption Caucus").

Or in the Post a couple weeks ago there was an article about how these three councilmembers support a particular bid to buy the baseball team because the leader of that bid has donated money in the past to community activities in Southeast DC. ("Council Members Push Bid of Nats Suitor: D.C. Entrepreneur Would Do More to Help City, They Say.")

Photographer: Susan Biddle, The Washington Post. DC Council members Marion Barry, Kwame Brown, Vince Orange, former council member Frank Smith with Jon Ledecky and co-bidders for Washington Nationals, the Hidary's. They gathered on a baseball diamond outside Barry Farm Recreational Center in SE Washington.

Note: the pandering to "the seniors" and "the children" by developers and the land use lawyers that represent them, who buy off--in effect--neighborhood activists and ANC Commissioners for paltry donations to community groups and events, well, let's just say it gets to me.

Not that I think the other bidders for the baseball team are necessarily any better. Fred Malek? Speaking of Watergate and the Nixon Administration, which is in the news of late. (Yes, I know Malek wasn't involved in Watergate, but he was involved in monitoring perceived opponents of the Nixon Administration. Go Nationals!)

I used to say people took money, now I call this "green love," given libel and slander laws. It's not really payoffs, but a couple hundred dollars to a block club party shouldn't mean that you are owned for life...

Recent articles in the Post and the City Paper have discussed the ascension of Marshall Brown, and include this one: "Mendelson Faces 2nd Challenger In 2006 Race for D.C. Council Seat," which mentions that At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, known as a strong community activist, is facing opposition next year from A. Scott Bolden (ex-chair of the DC Democratic Party and lawyer with the municipal (and other) bond firm ReedSmith) and David Bowers, a housing advocate.

Mendelson has faced serious opposition from the DC Development Community ever since he was elected. Twice the development community (once supported by a Post endorsement) put up Beverly Wilbourne as a candidate against him. (Plus, I never realized that Marshall was part of the "niggardly" episode that led to the firing of a DC government employee for a time...)

The space gets ever more contested.

2011: A bad year for Ward 5

2012-01-04T14:55:00.005-05:00

-- continued strife in Brookland over intensified development around the Metro Station ("Brookland development hits snare," Washington Examiner)

-- former ANC5B Chairman William Shelton embezzles close to $30,000 ("ANC5B Commissioner to Repay Nearly $29000 in Misappropriated Funds in Agreement with Attorney General’s Office ," DC Office of the Attorney General press release)

-- the Korean restaurant on Morse Street in the ~~Florida Market~~Union Market is closed for many many months (this was the biggest for me, although Elise of the Frozen Tropics blog, the go-to blog for the H Street NE neighborhood tells me that they reopened finally), but other places have closed in the market as well, including La Villa, which was was a great place to buy Latino foods for good prices

-- Councilman Harry Thomas is accused of misusing more than $300,000 in public funds ("D.C. attorney general: Harry Thomas Jr. diverted public funds" Post)

-- Developer Rick Walker announces a Walmart-anchored shopping center for New York Avenue ("D.C. planners have 'issues' with first Wal-Mart proposal," Post)

-- The DC Farmers Market in the Union Market catches fire, putting dozens of vendors out of business. And the ethical cloud over Councilman Thomas makes it difficult for these vendors to get extra-normal help to reopen on a temporary basis. ("DC Farmer's Market closed after fire," WJLA-TV)

- Councilman Harry Thomas' has records, a motorcycle, and SUV seized by the FBI during a multi-hour raid on his home ("Photos: Federal Agents Raid Harry Thomas Jr.'s House," Washington City Paper)

-- and supporters of Harry Thomas continue to support him... ("D.C. council member's home searched," Post)

(and as mentioned in the previous blog entry, CM Thomas is going down, although Marion Barry has proved that there are plenty of opportunities for comeback in the city's political arena, although maybe we're entering a new era?)

Although

-- the part of the ward close to H Street gets to benefit from H Street improvements (H Street is in Ward 6)

-- NoMA is adding housing in the W5 section (most of NoMA is in Ward 6)

-- new development by Abdo Development and Bozzuto Development has broken ground at Brookland, on land owned by Catholic University, complementing the rowhouse development by EYA on part of the grounds of St. Pauls College

-- housing and some retail is being constructed at the Rhode Island Metro Station (my photos are on the laptop with the currently broken screen...)

-- some good things are happening neighborhood-restaurant wise in Bloomingdale ("Boundary Stone Opening Tonight In Bloomingdale" and "Corner, Meet Pub" from the Washington City Paper), complementing the Big Bear Cafe and the Bloomingdale Farmers Market (open May to November)

-- and a Costco anchored shopping center will be built on South Dakota Avenue.

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-- "Today's News is Yesterday's News" lyric from the song "Goodbye" by the Psychedelic Furs

-- "Nothing changes on New Year's Day" by U2

-- and the concept in the lyric, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" from "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who (meet the new year, same as the old year)

A sad day: DC elected officials and the Peter Principle

2012-01-04T09:15:00.005-05:00

WUSA-TV reports that Councilman Harry Thomas will plead guilty to felony charges concerning "misuse" of funds ostensibly provided to support youth sports but instead which he used. See "DC Councilman Harry Thomas, Jr., Will Resign In Plea Agreement."

As part of the deal, he will resign, and spend some time in prison.

I can't help but wonder about the DC politics generally and the children of this generation of DC politicians, who have been taking over their positions within city politics:

• Christopher Barry, whose father wants him to take over his position as Ward 8 Councilman ("Barry said to be eyeing son as possible successor on D.C. Council," Post) but who has many other issues;

• Kwame Brown, whose father was a chief lieutenant for Marion Barry, under investigation for the misuse of campaign funds ("Kwame Brown to face campaign finance charges") not to mention the past impecadillo concerning the provision of a city-leased automobile ("Vince Gray, Kwame Brown Drive $2000-a-Month SUVs," Washington City Paper);

• Kevin Chavous, running for the Ward 7 Council seat once held by his father, being picked up on a solicitation charge ("Ward 7 candidate arrested on solicitation charge," Post);

• the sad story of Harry Thomas, Junior, son of Harry Thomas, Senior, a politician who came to the fore during a different time;

and the Peter Principle:

in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

In this case of course, we're referring to local DC politics as an anthropomorphic object that may have reached its ultimate level of incompetence.

I am hopeful that this is a sign of the current regime playing out, that local politics has reached its maximum level of incompetence and is ready for a new day.

Given the crop of political office hopefuls in 2012, I won't hold my breath, but even incompetence might be better so long as it isn't associated with criminality as well.

The fundamental issue that remains is the overall system and culture of corruption and how contracts and grant awards provided to community organizations and contractors are still unduly shaped by elected officials rather than through an open and transparent contracting process.

So far, a commitment to rebuilding the system to not support corruption while supporting a robust and engaged civil society is not evident.

Gaming a possibility at National Harbor, Prince George's County?

2012-01-03T14:23:00.004-05:00

Takoma Park residents in the Fourth of July Parade, 2008, spoofing plans for casino gaming in the State of Maryland. The second banner suggests a casino for the Sherman Avenue neighborhood. Flickr photo by JLWinder.

At the Takoma Park Fourth of July parade in 2008, residents in the parade carried a banner jokingly promoting the placement of a casino in Takoma Park. I thought that was interesting, from the standpoint of Maryland aiming to place casinos in a manner to capture tourist traffic from DC.

Maryland didn't do that. Instead, they focused attention on tourist areas elsewhere in the state.

But agitation for slots/gaming at Rosecroft Raceway in Prince George's County ("Slots site in Prince George's faces tough road to passage" from the Post), ostensibly to provide revenues to help revive that facility, which has declined precipitously over the years, having been in bankruptcy, could lead instead to the license being captured by the National Harbor development, not unlike how a slots casino is going to be located at Anne Arundel Mall instead of the Laurel Park Raceway ("No Slots At The Mall: Cordish, anti-mall group wage battle over slots referendum" from the Baltimore Sun).

This point was suggested by Post columnist Robert McCartney in his New Year's Day column, "Make picks in these '12 predictions."

Another installment of "it's about the rents" (retail closings)

2012-01-03T13:39:00.003-05:00

Flickr image by JSDesign.

The Washington City Paper reports in "Melody Records Will Close This Winter" that Melody Records on Dupont Circle is closing and that Barnes and Noble in Georgetown has closed, according to WTOP, "Georgetown Barnes & Noble quietly shuts its doors."

Note that technically the issues between the two companies are a little different. Retail stores have tight margins, record/cd and bookstores have tremendous competition from online sources as well. But rents in Dupont Circle are pretty high, making retailers with small average dollar transactions vulnerable.

Similarly, in Georgetown, Barnes & Noble was probably profitable--I still find it shocking that the recent Borders Bookstore bankruptcy and closure shuttered 200 stores that were in fact profitable--but likely has been outbid on rent by a concept that can pay higher prices, in that case, probably a food concept.

In high demand locations, where there is a limited inventory of quality spaces, being outbid for space is an issue.

In either case, likely the stores could be successful in different locations, still highly visible, but in places where the rents aren't as high.

The problem is that generally, commercial properties are overly valued in DC, because the downtown real estate market is a national/international market, leading to an overvaluation of all commercial properties across the city, whether or not they are located in submarkets with national/international actors.

Now both Georgetown and Dupont Circle do have national actors present in the market for commercial real estate, but even so, properties are valued (and taxed) higher than they are worth based strictly on the ability of the properties to generate income based on their use as commercial retail, restaurant, and office properties.

WTOP also reports that the pinball museum formerly located in the Georgetown Park Mall has relocated to Baltimore and makes me think of the point I made in the commercial district revitalization plan for Cambridge, Maryland, that the retail and attractions mix for a commercial district needs to be planned and managed independent of the property owners.

Georgetown's loss of Barnes & Noble definitely affects the retail mix, and further shifts the district to evening entertainment oriented establishments rather than retail.

The pinball museum likely wasn't a significant attractor of patrons, but other attractions could be, and for other commercial districts (e.g., think of the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens in New York City) can be a more significant part of the retail/attractions mix offered by a commercial district.

Lincoln Theatre and the movie, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

2012-01-03T05:00:00.004-05:00

Lincoln Theatre, Washington DC. Nelson Architects managed the most recent renovation effort in 2003.

Given the resurgence (see "Donatelli Development sells the Ellington — harbinger of change on U" from the Post) of the U Street corridor, it's sad that the Lincoln Theatre is not a success.

That it isn't a success shouldn't be surprising. See the past blog entry, "Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

The building is beautiful, the marquee a landmark object within the streetscape. Seemingly, such a facility should be wildly successful, although size and sense of the market is apparently an issue (see "Historic theaters, buildings in D.C. are resurrected as entertainment spots" from the Washington Post).

Given that the city doesn't have a real arts and culture plan and a good track record for such, the fact that the Lincoln Theatre is now under city management ("Lincoln Theatre gets new management: the city" from the Post) isn't necessarily a sign that better days are to come for the theater.

Still, the fact that Mayor Gray inked an agreement with Landmark Theaters to allow the film "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" to premiere at the Lincoln and show there for a month is a good sign. If anything, I consider that the most significant achievement of Mayor Gray's first year.

The movie will be showing until about January 20th.

If you were planning on seeing the movie anyway, why not see it at the Lincoln?

Sure the sound isn't the greatest, but the theater is beautiful, it's across the street from the U Street exit on the Green Line subway, and afterwards you can go out to dinner or do something else fun within a couple blocks of the theater.

Preservation problems in San Francisco (and elsewhere)

2012-01-02T18:20:00.003-05:00

The New York Times has a story, "An Unlikely Group Rebels Against Preservation Districts," about resistance to historic preservation designation in San Francisco, because residents see the regulation that comes with it as a burden.

The article discusses how with a recent change in the law, the historic preservation review board in San Francisco now has enforcement powers and it didn't before.

But the opposition to increased enforcement, pro-property rights sentiments, etc., seem to me to be almost universal, judging by the articles I read from around the country that concern historic preservation.

But as the entry "Food for Thought…" from the Preservation Maryland blog states:

I find it curious that everyone thinks of anything having to do with historic preservation as being the ‘historical society.’ Honestly, if you weren’t a person involved in historic preservation how would you know what all the different organizations are or what they do? How would you know that the National Park Service is the keeper of the National Register and not the National Trust? You wouldn’t and sometimes when people are trying to wrap their minds around it all it gets pretty confusing. So if the general public automatically reaches out to the historical society for everything preservation oriented that means our local historical societies play a very critical role in terms of public relations for the rest of us in the field. What that speaks to is the need for these organizations to have the knowledge they need to direct people to the correct resources and potentially a revamped mission in some ways. Today a lot of historical societies are going through an interesting metamorphosis. They’re trying to be more relevant, innovative and dynamic in a culture that for many years has been somewhat static. It’s a challenge, but one way is for historical societies to become greater advocates for historic preservation. Without the houses and landscapes, how can you make the history come to life? Just something to think about as we edge towards the end of the year. Let’s try something different, go in a new direction and better yet, support each other in important ways that help all boats rise.

DC uses the same standards as the National Register of Historic Places. To be on the NR, there has to be an affirmative vote of the affected district. With that condition, in my opinion it's almost impossible to create a historic district of significant size now. The biggest historic districts in DC, e.g., Capitol Hill Historic District, with more than 6,000 buildings, were created long before that requirement was in effect, plus at a time when each individual building didn't have to be documented.

But people do rebel against the enforcement. DC has historic district building enforcement, but not enough inspectors, under the regular building regulations.

Preservationists haven't done a good job in making the case for HP in the 21st century. It's a shame because in cities like DC, preservationists saved the city--the attractive residential neighborhoods in the core specifically--during the many decades when trends did not favor urban living.

Brownstone Awaiting A Wrecking Ball, NYC 1959, by Dmitri Kessel.

It's especially bothersome to me that smart growthers, although I understand the sentiment, deride HP because they see it as obstructive. At the same time, there is some room for criticism.

I think preservation came to the fore during the time of the shrinking city and disinvestment and loss of population was the major issue, so they focused on stabilization and house-by-house investment, while today the city has the opportunity to grow--in population, property tax revenue, sales tax revenue, and in the case of DC, income tax revenue, with the addition of selective infill and land use intensification (the city needs this because household sizes have declined, therefore to increase population, we need more housing units)-- preservationists don't have a framework to work with.

Condominium advertisement, 2007.

The solution is to pass design review and maintenance building regulations (including concerning demolition) that are city-wide, based on the age of a building, regardless of whether or not buildings are located within defined historic districts.

People might not like the additional level of review, but for the most part it's warranted. It's the rare house in areas that aren't designated that is "upgraded" with respect for its historic character, style, and materials. Too often it's butchered, added onto in ersatz ways, etc.

A little more review is a good thing, especially given the fact that buildings altered in significant ways can have a negative impact on the property value of adjoining properties and the neighborhood overall.

New York City is the #1 tourist destination in the U.S.

2012-01-02T09:25:00.003-05:00

and has achieved its goal of 50 million annual visitors 4 years early. See "New York's great tourism leap: The city draws more travelers than anywhere else in the U.S.from the Los Angeles Times.

From the article:

At $47 billion a year, tourism has grown to be New York's fifth-largest industry and the fastest-growing sector of its economy, which the mayor has said softened the effects of the Great Recession on the city. Tourism dropped 3% in 2009, but picked right up again and now is responsible for 320,000 jobs.

It helped that dozens of new hotels sprouted in all five boroughs, many in Manhattan's old Garment District, so that the city now has 90,000 rooms with another 7,000 in the pipeline. The average hotel stay costs $314 a night.

Statistics from 2010, the last full year for which numbers are available, stand out. Not only was New York America's most popular destination, outpacing Orlando in domestic travelers, but the city also accounted for 33% of all overseas travel to the United States.

Together, Los Angeles and Miami — the second and third most popular destinations — got fewer foreign visitors in 2010 than New York did.

Downtown living ... in Nashville

2012-01-02T09:10:00.007-05:00

Caption: Laurie Sheinkopf originally bought her condo as a weekend getaway but gradually began spending more and more time there. / Larry McCormack/The Tennessean.

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is profiled in this article, "Demand for downtown: With high interest in urban living, new flood of apartments expected," in the Nashville Tennessean, illustrating the argument that living in center cities, downtowns, and in conurbations (like Bethesda or Silver Spring) is a trend, that despite the way lots of anti-city commenters on blog entries characterize these choices as outliers, with momentum and staying power.

From the article:

Laurie Sheinkopf used to live in a large house in Franklin, but now she owns a downtown Nashville condominium and enjoys shopping at a grocery store in her building and walking to concerts at the Schermerhorn and Titans games at LP Field.

“I ended up falling in love,” she says of her 1,600-square-foot condo in the Viridian building on Church Street.

Sheinkopf isn’t alone. She’s one of about 5,650 residents living in downtown’s 3,836 condos and apartments, according to a recent survey by the Nashville Downtown Partnership.

More residents, and more apartments, are on the way. The organization predicts there will be more than 7,600 downtown residents by the end of 2014. To meet that demand, developers are either building or making plans for 1,247 new apartments.

“Rental occupancy is 96 percent, even with conversions” of condos into apartments during 2011, says Tamara Dickson, vice president of economic development for the Downtown Partnership.

A vacancy rate of 4% for downtown housing in Nashville is pretty intense, demonstrating the demand for housing there. As more people attract better retail and other attractions are brought to downtowns as part of general revitalization initiatives, demand for housing there increases.

Years ago I read how a Downtown Lexington KY group had regular house/apartment/condo tours, like a house tour in a historic district, showcasing downtown living.

You see examples of that here and there--it's been done in Mount Vernon Triangle here in DC--but more communities need to make this a regular feature of their commercial district/Downtown promotion programs.

And I've suggested that model apartments and condominiums could be staged by local houseware and home furnishings stores, further developing the idea of shopping and buying local.

A lot of the issue is promoting familiarity and comfort to people who haven't a lot of experience patronizing center cities and downtowns over the past 20-30 years--face it, those of us with great memories of shopping and going downtown have these memories up to the early 1970s at the latest--since then, suburban shopping centers have mostly supplanted the downtown shopping experience.

From the article:

Downtown resident Bernie Cox eventually plans to buy a condo in Nashville’s urban center, but for now he enjoys renting an apartment at The Cumberland on Church Street.

Cox, who has been a resident in the building for six years, especially enjoys being able to walk to work at the Wildhorse Saloon on Second Avenue.

“The money I save on wear and tear on my car and gas and parking makes it cost effective. When traffic’s crazy and people are coming in late, I’m there,” he says.

Renting has been a great way to check out the neighborhood, which Cox says is safe, with a visible police presence, and clean.

“There’s hardly a scrap of paper,” he says.

Cox walks to nearby restaurants and coffee shops and to work out at the Downtown YMCA. He has his choice of grocery stores, including the Turnip Truck Urban Fare in the Gulch and the H.G. Hill Urban Market in the Viridian.

Another idea I have is treating some apartments in a building as a kind of bed & breakfast, but can also be used as accommodations for people considering the move downtown, not unlike how Bernie Cox has been testing living in Downtown Nashville.

2012, A New Year

2012-01-01T10:28:00.006-05:00

Children of migrant workers lie on the snow to form the number '2012' while celebrating the coming new year in front of a snow sculpture in Harbin, China, Friday. AP photo.

On New Year's Day last year I wrote a bunch of posts with dozens of suggestions for policy for the 2011. If I were to go back and read each entry, likely few of the suggestions were taken up and little has changed, and that's irrespective of the ethics cloud that hangs over City Council and the Mayor's Office.

-- New Years post #2: sustainability and energy

-- New Years post #3: How about more community self-help? (Peter Riehle and Eastern Market Metro Plaza)

-- New years post #4: How to Keep Resolutions and change behavior

-- New years post #5: DC City Council Committees and striving to be a world class city

-- New years post #6 -- the crazy thing about U.S. zoning is that it's not designed to maximize overall land value

-- New Years post #7: Anacostia and sustainable economic development and revitalization

-- New years post #8: Shattering the myths of sustainability

One of the legitimate criticisms of my blog entries is that they are too detailed and complete and ask for too much. Most people can't fully grasp even one idea, let alone 20 ideas.

So for 2012, I'm going to lay out the five to seven most important items and leave it at that.

1. The City and its leadership, including the Washington Post editorial page, should commit to supporting, encouraging, and enabling substantive public participation, democracy, and civic engagement.

For the Post, that means treating citizens and public processes in the city with the same respect they treat protesters in Tahrir Square in Egypt, Russia, and other "foreign" countries.

It means instead of constantly suggesting through editorials that civil society be constrained, instead put forward proposals that enable and strengthen civic involvement through capacity building and the creation of robust open and transparent processes that are citizen-centered.

For example, instead of forcefully advocating for the elimination of constituent services funds or "earmarks" to arts groups, call for open and transparent funding processes, including civic engagement strategies such as "participatory budgeting" exercises where citizens shape the allocation process.

For the executive and legislative branches of the city, it means according citizens the respect that their position in democracy warrants--government derives from the people--and thereby reorienting practices and policies that respect citizens, including:

a. opening up information instead of forcing citizens to file FOIA requests;

b. scheduling public meetings in places that are convenient to get to and Metro accessible for a majority of the citizenry;

c. developing a robust protocol for District/neighborhood planning (comparable to sector and neighborhood conservation district planning in other jurisdictions in the region) that defines citywide and neighborhood objectives, and works to make them more congruent;

d. developing a robust capacity building infrastructure that supports civic engagement and community organizations (like the training infrastructure of the Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program and the Massachusetts Citizen Planner Training Collaborative, the "Government 101" programs offered by many cities, and , the Urban Information Library at the main branch of the Dallas Public Library).

Kiosk on Broughton Street, Savannah, flyers promoting citizen involvement in the city-county zoning rewrite process.

That means that we need to be better more engaged citizens too.

2. The Washington Post needs to run more local news.

In the Metro section on Friday, one of the key articles was about how someone who went to the University of Maryland is running for Congress--IN CALIFORNIA!

So what. It's not a story relevant to us in terms of the region's local news, so it's not a Metro section story.

Put it in the national news section if you think it's an important and interesting article that has something to say, but don't waste the precious newshole dedicated to "local" news on a story where the local news value is minimal or nonexistent when there are so many other stories to tell.

In looking at Post articles, issues, and sections from decades ago, far more local news ran in the paper, stories about neighborhoods and developments. Now, very little of that kind of coverage seems to be running in the paper.

While traveling last week, I came across an article, "Durham architect Freelon named to national arts commission," in the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer about architect Phil Freelon of Durham being appointed to the US Commission of Fine Arts--the body in DC that weighs in on urban design in the city as it relates to the federal interest--and I was thinking that this is an appropriate "local news story" for the Washington Post, because the CFA is an important local body, making decisions that shape the city for decades to come. Yet, I expect we'll never see such a story in the "local" paper.

Granted the Post covers the metropolitan area, and DC proper is only the third or fourth largest submarket for the paper--Fairfax, Montgomery, and Prince George's County have more subscribers, and at least in the days of the go-go real estate market, much of the real estate section advertising came from the outlying areas, I know that the "city's" major metropolitan area has a lot more to cover than in the "old days" when the city made up the bulk of the region's population and activity.

Still, without reading the local community papers--the Gazette papers in Maryland (owned by the Post actually), the Current newspapers in DC, the Connection papers in Northern Virginia--it's almost impossible to get a sense of what's happening in the Metro area or DC by relying on the Washington Post.

I know that the digital information revolution has completely changed the role of newspapers as primary media, but if the paper doesn't cover the local region, it ends up having no real anchor, because increasingly, "national" news, or the coverage of the federal government is being supplanted by specialized publications like Politico.

Digital media entries aren't enough--the Post has journalist-bloggers covering the local jurisdictions--articles need to run in the paper, because otherwise the articles aren't retained and indexed for posterity.

3. Rather than spend so much time on achieving "statehood" maybe the Executive and Legislative branches ought to be focused on making the city be great in the here and now--a "city on the hill," where the city's achievements would be seen as supporting evidence for statehood claims, rather than blaming prevailing mediocrity as the product of lack of self-determination.

The fact that DC's elected officials are just as ethically challenged as officials from states with full self-determination isn't enough to offer as argument for why the city deserves statehood.

4. The organization of City Council should probably be changed.

a. Make it a part time legislative body truly;

b. By cutting the salaries to about $60,000 from $130,000 currently ("D.C. Council members bring in second-highest salaries among big cities" from the Examiner);

c. Increase the size of the body (I go back and forth about this) to 24 members + the Council Chair -- it's 12 members + the Council Chair currently -- to 2 members for each Ward and 8 At-Large members;

It seems counter-intuitive, but adding more members will make elected office more competitive, because the winner take all system advantages incumbents and the dominant party, in this case the Democratic Party, stultifying the political environment in ways that are truly deleterious to local government and civil society.

It will also make it harder to pass legislation -- 13 members will be required to pass legislation instead of 7 members now. This would add a level of discernment and a kind of check that isn't in place now ("Is D.C. overgoverned? Or undergoverned?" from the Post).

This will add members to committees. Plus it will provide residents with additional representation and more competition between legislators to provide better service and representation within Wards, and hopefully, to the city as a whole, by the at-large representatives.

And if Councilmembers have day jobs, more hearings would likely occur in the late afternoon and early evening, when citizens are more likely to be able to attend.

(Note that in such a change, the At-Large members, not the Ward Councilmembers, should be in charge of ANC redistricting, to provide a level of objectivity that is often missing from the current process.)

5. At the same time I wish the Councilmembers would take their responsibilities seriously and research ideas and concepts before writing and introducing cockamamie legislation and then putting surveys up afterwards to get input after the legislation has already been submitted.

E.g., were I a college student submitting the equivalent of such legislation as an assignment for a class, I shouldn't be surprised at getting a C grade. But legislators shouldn't be content with such poor marks.

Take a survey research class or read a book about surveys. E.g., Practice of Social Research. Note that Chapter 9 is on surveys. this is on chapter 9 too.

6. DC should create robust master transportation and parks and recreation plans for the city, and transform its planning processes to engage and educate the citizenry.

(Note that DC is doing a sustainability plan, and often the momentum involved in such planning spills over in positive ways on both transportation and parks and open space policy. See "D.C. mayor planning environmental initiative" from the Post.)

I've written plenty on that over the years. This link lists a bunch of entries on parks planning and the connection between parks planning and quality of life.

DC is going to do a transportation plan over the next 18 months or so. If you read the Arlington County Master Transportation Plan, then you'll be much better positioned to participate in the process and understand what a robust plan looks like. Also see the past blog entries, "Best (or at least better) practices in bike parking and bicycle facilities implementation" and "It's time for a new "city beautiful" movement in DC."

Note that as part of the development of a master transportation plan, the city should take the opportunity to consolidate oversight of taxi policy and service within the transportation department going forward.

Legislation to change how the taxi system works (see "Drivers decry D.C. taxi system overhaul bill" from the Post) should be put on hold.

7. Related to being more engaged and knowledgeable citizens, more of us should read a book or two on urbanism, so that we can be more knowledgeable and engaged citizens when it comes to urban revitalization. These three are the books that I recommend the most often, because they are well written and easily graspable:

Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown by Roberta Gratz. I think of this book as a primer based on Death and Life of the Great American City, but with more examples and case studies making the concepts much easier to grasp, and the positive examples show a way forward rather than making revitalization seem out of reach. Review from Shelterforce.

Cities in Full: Recognizing and Realizing the Great Potential of Urban America by Steve Belmont. I think this is the most important book in urban planning since Death and Life of the Great American City. It puts numbers to the concepts in Death and Life and explains why recentralization and critical mass of commerce, transportation, and housing are so important.

Reclaiming Our Cities & Towns: Better Living with Less Traffic by David Engwicht. This book is about enhancing exchange, livability, and quality of life in communities through focused management of mobility. The concepts of transportation demand management and traffic calming developed out of this book. Review from Social Anarchism.

Best wishes for a productive and successful 2012

2012-01-01T06:56:00.001-05:00

Scan of a new year's card from the Center for Jewish History, NYC.

Low income, high income, the market and the right to the city

2011-12-31T05:44:00.003-05:00

There are some pieces on "gentrification" out there that are getting play, but I don't think they contribute to the discourse much, because they don't make connections to earlier work on the topic.

In Salon, Will Doig has an article, "Can gentrification work for everyone?," on higher income "African-American" "gentrification" in Anacostia, and Southern California NPR ("The cultural mashup dictionary: gentefication") and WAMU, the NPR affiliate in DC ("Gentrification, Try Gentefication"), have a couple of pieces on the same subject, the Cali piece focuses on Latinos.

The process of reinvestment described in the "gentefication" process is similar to the way some immigrants continue to invest in their old communities as described in Arrival City by Doug Saunders as well as many articles in the media (I can think of articles from the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post and the New York Times specifically) about how Latino immigrants in the U.S. invest in their communities "back home" and how this changes those communities. It's just a matter of focusing that investment on "arrival neighborhoods" in the U.S. instead of back "home." And it's just a scalar difference from earning money abroad and sending it home to the family--economists call it "currency transfers."

Two things that make the discussion of gentrification difficult in the US concern how people still tend to (1) believe that living in cities is undesirable and is counter to most trends concerning residential choice; and (2) ignore class/economic distinctions, or make sweeping generalizations about them, thinking that most people of color (African-American and Latino in particular) are poor.

They also don't think much about the fact that the US is decidedly a market economy, albeit with plenty of government intervention in the housing market (both policy and financial), and for areas in demand or areas that become more attractive, good deals/low prices lead to increased demand, and in situations with increased demand, people with more money win out over people with less money.

Just like how some people believe that only white people can be racist (not true), others believe that only white people moving into center city neighborhoods are "gentrifiers."

By thinking this way, what they fail to appreciate is that the process of in-migration of this type is about money and class, not race.

-------------------------

This excerpt from a past blog entry is about 7 years old:

Gentrification effect (2) is what I think people really mean when they are talking about "gentrification," new and different people coming into a neighborhood. Of course, in neighborhoods like CH, displacement is really happening.

As far as displacement goes, it's part of what people call "gentrification". But gentrification is phenomenon with multiple effects, which I describe as:

(1) new investment in a previously underinvested area;

(2) change and different people coming into a neighborhood -- most importantly, different people from those currently in residence (the differences--race, class, ethnicity, levels of educational attainment, attitudes toward the urban experience, etc.--are usually not "celebrated" (I make this point because I still remember first being taught about diversity and multiculturalism in 7th grade, and I specifically remember the "melting pot" and "celebration of differences" phrase -- I have a hard time seeing the celebration, at least in DC);

(3) increase in conversion of previously rented dwellings to owner-occupied, leading to a displacement of renters and an overall reduction of the number of rental units available in the neighborhood;

(4) related to the new demand for living in the neighborhood is an increase in rental rates, which contributes to the displacement of low- and moderate-income residents;

(5) neighborhood improvement as investment (primarily through the renovation and sale of houses to new residents) continues to increase and begins approaching critical mass (cf. Goetze Building Neighborhood Confidence);

(6) faux-displacement as long-time residents decide to "cash out" and take profits on the sale of the finally appreciated property (this is accelerated by, in my opinion, the still prevalent pro-suburban, anti-city attitudes embraced by particular demographics that tend to represent the long time population groups in traditional center cities); and

(7) ongoing increases in property tax assessments which contributes to the displacement of longtime residents on fixed or lower incomes (note that this effect is hard to separate out from [6]).
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While the academic study of gentrification focuses on national and global processes of "the reproduction of space" rather than seeing gentrification as mostly an issue of race, I still believe that the urban sociology subfield of gentrification in the U.S. has one major flaw, that the cycle of urban development should go only one way--outward, and that neighborhoods are born; grow; and decline, and in the declining phase become home to the less well off; rather than recognize that decline is not inevitable when considering multi-decade time frames.

This is based on the 1920s work of the "Chicago School of urban sociologists," in particular Robert Park and Ernest Burgess. Their work was based on the idea that the well off wanted to be separate from the less well off and so they continually moved outward from the core of the city.

As neighborhoods were "abandoned" by groups as their economic situation improved, they were replaced by new immigrants and in-migrants and the process began again. This process has a number of terms to describe it, including invasion-succession theory, ecological succession, or concentric zone theory. And the 1970s housing improvement theory called "filtration" is based on this idea as well.

The first diagram is from The City by Park and Burgess, the second is a more modern rendition and might be easier to read.

Much of the study of gentrification over the past 30 years is based on the work of geographer Neal Smith and his book New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. Other work that I like (Loretta Lees' Gentrification, co-authored with Elvyn Wyly and Tom Slater, and her paper in Urban Studies Journal, "Super-gentriﬁcation: The Case of Brooklyn Heights, New York City") utilizes a similar thesis, that inner city communities, usually minority, are underinvested and this allows people with higher incomes and power to acquire property transform space, and displace the less advantaged.

The supergentrification thesis is subtly different and very much relevant to global cities. It's about how people with extranormal income, such as Wall Street financial types, reshape the market for residential real estate in desirable submarkets like Brooklyn Heights. This idea can be extended to the idea of second, third, and fourth homes in desirable cities such as Charleston, SC, Downtown Washington, South Beach in Miami Beach, San Francisco, etc.

Locals are displaced by capital flows from outside the region. Capital flows from outside the region are shaping the DC housing market at many levels.

A good overview of the academic take on gentrification is in this book chapter, "Gentrification and the City," by Tom Slater.

I think what's happening in California in Latino communities is different from what's happening in Anacostia. African-Americans of means moving to Anacostia for the most part don't have previous connections to the neighborhood, unlike the Latinos profiled in the SCPR piece.

The back to the city phenomenon on the part of African-Americans is still a pretty localized phenomenon and counter even so to the multi-decade out-migration of middle class and upper middle class blacks from DC, especially to Prince George's County (and from there to Charles and Anne Arundel Counties).

But this isn't a huge demographic wave, not yet. See the blog entries from earlier this year, "Revitalization in stages: Anacostia," and "Gentrification, neighborhood change, and wacked discourse."

My sense is that those African-Americans in-migrants who do want to live in the city are being priced out of more desirable areas and are picking Anacostia as a result. (Very much like how I chose to buy a house in the H Street NE neighborhood in 1988--although I don't live there now. Then, prices throughout the city were constantly rising, the H Street neighborhood was seen as less desirable so prices were much lower, although it was close just as close to Downtown as Capitol Hill with comparable--but smaller--housing stock date from the 1880s to the 1920s, and I thought if we didn't buy then we'd be forever priced out of the market.)

I do think as Anacostia improves and becomes more safe, it's possible that the in-migration of whites and Latinos could make the market even more competitive and over very long frames of time, the area could experience significant non-African-American in-migration.

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To those of us who have been in the city for 20+ or more years, and lived in areas seen once as undesirable, we know this is a distinct possibility. I talk with my next door neighbors--they are lifelong Washingtonians and in their 60s--and we are all amazed at "seeing white people" and baby carriages or bicyclists on various blocks, say the 600 block of Orleans Place NE, which in the late 1980s was one of the city's chief distribution centers for crack and the location of dozens of murders over that time, or at 1st and M Street NW, etc.

This was completely unimaginable even 10 years ago.

----------------

Although it's probably a 30+ year process--it will take that long for significant redevelopment to occur east of the Anacostia River because it will take 20 years or so for more desirable parcels located west of the river in SE, SW, and NW to be developed although places located on subway lines will be absorbed first (Capitol Riverfront, Southwest Waterfront and Southwest, NoMA, Reservation 13, McMillan Reservoir, areas near transit stations such as Fort Totten and Brookland, and parcels near Rhode Island Metro, Takoma, the Armed Forces Retirement Home, H Street NE, lower U Street, Walter Reed, etc.).

This could speed up a bit if a more concerted effort to link the Capitol Riverfront development west of the river with the development opportunities at Poplar Point east of the river in a joint revitalization planning process and program occurs.

I think that could have more positive effect than the focus on the St. Elizabeths Campus, which is pretty much self-contained (see the old blog entry from 2006 "Enclave development won't save Anacostia") and therefore has less capability to generate "trickle down" and "trickle up" improvements.

But the point of the academic literature on gentrification is that the poor are displaced. New investment doesn't help the less advantaged all that much.

But cities need investment and in-migration in order to thrive. So the reflexive oppositional stance vis-a-vis in-migration and investment is counterproductive, at least if you want to have the money to pay for public safety, quality schools, and other municipal services.

David Harvey's paper (expanded into a book), "The Right to the City," first a lecture then published in New Left Review, makes the point that the right to the city is imbued in us as citizens, and transcends our place as defined by the market economy.

In a market economy, for this to be the case, Social Darwinism as the predominate social policy has to be supplanted by a much broader agenda, which in a time of economic privation, it's very difficult to find proponents for such an agenda.

Frankly, I don't think the issue should be preserving places for the poor as they are as much as it should be on assisting people so that through education, training, and other assistance, they are prepared, able and capable of participating in the market economy. I can't claim to have a particularly good set of policy proscriptions to do that although I have a bunch of ideas:

- a robust affordable housing policy and a robust program to maintain affordable housing stock through portfolio investment programs, new production of affordable housing, community land trusts, and cooperative housing programs

- great public schools

- year round school, extended day programs, co-operative high school programs

- free access to higher education and other training programs, including trades (e.g., "A woman who teaches men to weld provides other life lessons too" from the Los Angeles Times)

unification and synchronization of various social service programs into community centers, sometimes called "community schools," one particularly good example is the effort in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego by Price Charities and programs described in this 2006 blog entry, "Public assets: public school buildings used for more than school"

- caseworkers assigned not to multiple families but having one or two families only as their clients (think of what this article discusses on routinization of positive health behaviors and apply it to participation in the market economy, "Gentle Nudges Work to Get People Exercising," from the Wall Street Journal).

Until we take this step, in-migration into the city and the process of improving and repositioning neighborhoods will continue to be traumatic and contested.

Los Angeles light rail experimenting with late night hours

2011-12-30T11:17:00.003-05:00

From "Night life, night train finally connect in L.A." in the Los Angeles Times:

Their train could be coming. As it has for several years, Metro is giving late hours a holiday trial run this weekend. On New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, all five Metro Rail lines and the Orange Line busway will operate 24 hours, with rides free from 9 p.m. Saturday to 2 a.m. Sunday, Metro spokesman Marc Littman said.

What's more, in mid-November, Metro took the first step toward 24-hour service by dropping the time between night trains from 20 to 10 minutes. Depending whether the "More Trains, More Often" pilot program takes off , the agency could extend subway hours after dark, perhaps even going to round-the-clock service, Littman said.

"We're a 24-hour city," he added. "People are going to their proms on the subway."

It's about time. Some of L.A.'s liveliest night life is clustered around the trains: L.A. Live, with its array of concert venues, restaurants and sporting events; the downtown Art Walk; and Hollywood's dance clubs. Even the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach has evening events.

The proliferation of smart phones is flushing out night owls for the train. Phone apps tell you when the next train is coming, how far you have to walk to your bus connection, how many calories you are burning and even how much you are reducing your carbon emissions.

Few subway systems in the U.S. provide 24 hour service. New York City and Chicago do. And some places have "Night Owl" bus service along the subway lines when they are closed.

Downtown and the Department Store as key "public" spaces

2011-12-30T06:55:00.006-05:00

Last month I blogged about DC's Central Library and proposals to "co-locate" commercial space on the library site, to generate revenues to pay for renovations and expansions. See "The DC Central Library, the Civic identity and the public realm."

I mused about the key civic assets in a community, how they define the community, and whether or not communities would allow such key buildings as the City Hall, Courthouse, Main Library, or main public park to be commercialized.

As mentioned in the entry, some "public spaces" are in fact privately owned. I mentioned the railroad station--although these days for the most part these are publicly owned facilities--and while I didn't mention the primary Downtown commercial district specifically, I did mention the buildings that are/were there, such as the city's department stores, majestic theaters, signature restaurants, and other retail.

Of course, these shopping districts have long since been supplanted by the suburban shopping mall.

The Boston Globe opines about the loss that derives from the way retail shopping has changed, how department stores and the city's main shopping district have long since been supplanted, in "What is Christmas without the department store?"

For those of us with memories of the department store Santa--for me it was at Hudsons, in Downtown Detroit, but every city has its own examples, this of course resonates. Also see "How J.L. Hudson changed the way we shop" from the Detroit News.

Other resources

-- The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960 by Richard Longstreth (he has written a lot of great journal articles on department stores and commercial districts, including "The mixed blessings of success: The Hecht Company and department store branch development after World War II" and "The Neighborhood Shopping Center in Washington, DC, 1930-1941."

-- Going shopping: consumer choices and community consequences

-- Harvard Design School guide to shopping (Chapter 4 makes the point that the history of shopping is also in part about the history of women. After all, about 70% of retail transactions are conducted by women. And department stores were created to make shopping like theater.)

-- English Shops and Shopping

-- Downtown America

"Final Sunset" The Requiem for Hudson's Suite, Lowell Boileau 1998. Demolition of the Downtown Hudsons Store, Detroit.

Police unions and municipal decision-making

2011-12-29T17:17:00.004-05:00

It's very hard for politicians to criticize police officers (and fire fighters) and it's hard not to acquiesce to their wage and pension demands--after all, they put their lives on the line.

Plus, the unions make donations to political campaigns.

But at the same time, the union represents police officers as laborers, and they aren't usually focused on police department management and managers as working to reduce crime and improve public safety as much as they think of them as evil overseers.

In Stockton, budget cuts to the police department are being fought by the police officers union with incendiary billboards and other very direct tactics. See "Debt-ridden Stockton a battleground for police union, City Hall" from the Los Angeles Times.

Steve Anderson installs one of the billboards the police union is using in its fight over cutbacks. The police union also bought the house next to City Manager Bob Deis. (Craig Sanders, The Record / December 29, 2011)

Missing the point on constituent service/discretionary funds available from legislators

2011-12-29T16:49:00.005-05:00

The point isn't that the funds exist, but the arbitrariness and/or self-serving nature of how the funds are used/allocated.

The solution to the lack of democracy, openness, logic and transparency isn't taking the money away/eliminating the funding source--groups and projects need the opportunity to garner funds for worthy projects--it's to make the process more open, transparent, participatory, and democratic.

To use a hip term, "crowdsourcing" or some such might make the point better that the issue is to address the arbitrary and capricious nature of the allocation process, not to eradicate the funds.

The participatory budgeting process embarked upon by four New York City Councilmembers (blog entry: "More on ethics: discretionary funding-constituent funds"), where they are using public, open, transparent, "crowdsourced" like processes to divvy up "discretionary" funds allocated to their Council District/Councilmember is what DC ("D.C. Council’s ethics package leaves many unsatisfied," Post) and Prince William County ("Should Prince William Board have discretionary funds?'" from the Post) is the kind of process that needs to be adopted to correct the problem.

-- Participatory Budgeting Project

-- Participatory Budgeting in New York City
-- Materials, Participatory Budgeting in New York City

Also see "Participatory Budgeting" from the Polis blog and the webpage for Alderman Joe Moore of Ward 49 in Chicago.

If they can do participatory budgeting in an aldermanic ward in Chicago--a city which makes the ethically challenged in DC more akin to choirboys--it can be done in DC or Prince William County.

The 2011 projects for Ward 49 in Chicago, chosen through a participatory budgeting process:

Bike Lanes on Albion, Eastlake & Pratt (Phase II). This is a Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) project. We are awaiting the resurfacing of Pratt (see Street Resurfacing below).
Bike Racks. Twenty racks will be purchased, with CDOT matching with an additional 20 racks. The site locations are being determined.
Improvements to Ridge, Touhy & Rogers Intersection. Final estimate was given by CDOT and we are awaiting scheduling.
Improvements to Metra Underpasses at Birchwood, Estes & Touhy.This is a joint effort by CDOT and Union Pacific. The project will include washing, lighting, repainting, and pigeon abatement.
New Playground at Touhy Park. The initial estimate assumed matching funding from the Chicago Park District. If it is not forthcoming, we will need to reasses the project scale or seek an additional funding source, or both.
Path Extension at Jarvis, Leone & Loyola Parks. Same issue as with the Touhy Park Playground (see above).
Street Resurfacing of Pratt, Wolcott, Columbia & Jarvis. This is a CDOT project. Repaving of the 12 blocks was delayed from Fall 2011 to Spring 2012 to coordinate with the People’s Gas new gas line project throughout the 49th Ward.

Bus transit, for choice riders

2011-12-29T12:46:00.007-05:00

In my blog entry ("Detroit in Underdrive") on Detroit's decision to not build light rail but to do "bus rapid transit," Brian Morrisey criticizes the entry in comments (on my home computer some bug prevents me from using the comment function) saying that it's

disingenuous considering that nowhere in the US is BRT truly implemented with all its necessary components. Most just are just dedicated bus lanes that still must contend with traffic and existing infrastructure.

I don't think it's disingenuous, just reality.

Only in Pittsburgh does BRT function mostly like how BRT does in South America, with one major exception, there isn't pre-payment before bus entry, and the buses don't have low floors with multiple entry doors.

But the most important factor, travel on dedicated busways, is the way most of the Pittsburgh BRT routes function. Even so, the routes have never achieved anywhere near the expected ridership. That being said, they have much better ridership, especially for the region's population, than most of the other BRT routes in the U.S.

Most of what we might call BRT in the U.S. is more what I've called "bus rapider transit" but maybe is better termed "branded bus transit," where the buses have attractive livery designs (like the DC Circulator), more attractive bus shelters, and better branding campaigns, including the provision of signage, mapping, etc.

Metro Rapid bus, Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

Zum bus, Brampton, Ontario. Photo: Christopher McKechnie, About.com.

Bus shelter, Silver Line BRT, Boston. Photo by Steve Pinkus.

Metro Rapid map sign, Los Angeles. Photo: TBSH.

Here's a resource I just came across but haven't read yet, Developing the Next Frontier: Capitalizing on Bus Rapid Transit to Build Community, which is a ULI task group report evaluating the opportunity for development in association with new BRT services in Seattle.

Plus there is the EMBARQ: The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport report on transit (bus) marketing, which is very good as well, From Here to There: A creative guide to making public transport the way to go.

This is an issue too with inter-city bus services vs. railroad transportation.

I find it interesting that conservative newspapers like the Washington Examiner continually push bus "rapid transit" over fixed rail transit.

Ostensibly it's about cost, but at some level it's about supporting roadways and the sprawl paradigm--because buses use the same roads that cars use and because heavy rail, light rail, and streetcar systems are focused on intensifying land use and are typically focused on center cities and inner ring suburbs more than exurban locations, while bus rapid transit is more about providing exurban transit service, more like commuter bus service rather than transit as part of the firmament of sustainable communities.

Today's Examiner editorial, "Stop being so 'Kardashian' about mass transit," is typical, although I bet if "push came to shove" and it was a matter of taking away roadway lanes from all traffic and dedicating them to busways, the paper would editorialize in favor of the automobile.

From the editorial:

The cost of the 15-mile CCT "train on rubber wheels" -- including dedicated lanes -- is about $491 million. Compare that to the $1.93 billion it will cost for the 16-mile Purple Line connecting Bethesda to New Carrollton, or the $2.2 billion for Baltimore's 14-mile Red Line. These two light rail projects are sucking up state and federal transit funding. Had state and county officials chosen BRT instead, they would have had enough money to build the Purple and Red Lines and the CCT -- with $3.2 billion to spare.

Detroit also planned to spend $528 million on a 9.3-mile light rail line serving its hollowed-out urban core, but city officials wisely pulled back because of very real concerns that Detroit could not afford the light rail line's annual operating costs. They are now shifting $500 million to a 110-mile BRT system that will connect three counties and the airport, and help 60 percent of still-employed city residents get to their suburban jobs. Motor City will soon have largest BRT system in the nation, joining other cities with successful BRT lines such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Vancouver, British Columbia

Since BRT is so much cheaper and way more flexible, and provides mass transit to a much larger area for the same capital costs, why would any public official even consider fixed rail?

BRT is cheaper and arguably it is more flexible, but the reality is that cheap and flexible aren't the right questions, especially if you are focused on maximizing use, not minimizing initial cost.

The answers to the question of why would any public official consider fixed rail over buses are pretty simple:

1. More people ride fixed rail transit than buses;

2. The non-transit dependent (choice riders) will ride fixed rail transit when they don't appear to be willing to ride buses, even better branded buses;

3. Fixed rail transit investment repositions communities around transit and within their respective regions as choice locations--this is an essential and key difference between the modes;

4. As a result, fixed rail transit spurs significant private commercial and residential development and investment, at many times the cost of the public investment in transit. In the U.S., this has not been the case for investments in branded bus transit.

But I would argue that in order to generate these benefits, you need to have a network of fixed rail transit, one or two lines isn't really enough, at least for communities on a significant downward spiral. For example DC vs. Baltimore. Both were declining cities when subway systems were first proposed.

DC got a five line subway system. Baltimore got a truncated subway line, later complemented by a light rail line using an existing industrial railroad alignment.

DC's central business district and a couple dozen neighborhoods have since revitalized as a result of transit service, while Baltimore continues to languish. The subway has stanched DC's population losses, while for the most part, there has been minimal private investment spurred within Baltimore as a result of the subway and light rail lines.

The same issue of "bus" versus "railroad" comes up for inter-city transit service.

Initially with the so-called "Chinese buses" and now with upgraded services from Greyhound (Bolt Bus), Coach USA (Megabus), along with other services operating regionally.

The Washington Times ran an op-ed by James Bacon of Virginia's Bacon's Rebellion blog, "The intercity bus revolution," highlighting the success of entrepreneurial inter-city bus services over more expensive railroad-based services. From the article:

While President Obama dreams about spending hundreds of billions of public dollars building a high-speed, intercity rail network, an entrepreneurial revolution in the old-timey bus industry is scoring dramatic gains in market share for intercity travel - without government subsidies.

After decades of losing customers, the intercity bus industry began experiencing an entrepreneurial renaissance in the mid-2000s. And 2011 was the best year yet. According to a study published by DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, intercity bus was the only major long-distance passenger mode to grow appreciably this year. Daily intercity bus operations expanded by 7.1 percent.

But the article doesn't acknowledge that these bus systems are in fact highly subsidized, because they are "free riders" (other than gas taxes and tolls) on the already developed local road and highway system, and their use of an ill-defined curbside infrastructure can be problematic in terms of quality of service, not to mention that companies may stint on maintenance to reduce costs, which puts customers at risk.

See "Firm with routes to New York told to take buses off road" from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and "Chinatown buses' offer cheap rides to NY" from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That being said, I think the services are great because they enable low cost inter-city transit for people who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

Railroads and airlines use a dedicated infrastructure, which is more costly, but also allows these modes to travel much faster (ideally, in the case of railroads, where dedicated right of way without crossings doesn't always exist) than buses.

Plus high speed railroad service is being developed to provide alternatives to air travel, given concerns about reduced access to oil, and even if it is true that oil production will increase because of new technologies, the fact remains that concerns over greenhouse gas emissions encourage the consideration of railroad travel, not to mention the fact that providing airline service and airports is economically costly--as an industry, airlines have mostly lost money throughout the industry's entire existence, with some exceptions like Southwest Airlines.

It's not the same question, and confusing the modes by asking and answering the wrong questions doesn't move our transportation system forward generally, and certainly doesn't move it forward in terms of the question of a more sustainable and robust paradigm either.