An RFP isn't a plan: redux

I caution against cities releasing RFPs--requests for proposals--without being built upon a planning process.  Without a plan, anything can come over the maw and what comes reflects the developer's preferences, not necessarily either "the city" or "the public".  And proposals tend to be conservative because cities are conservative.

A great example of this is the redevelopment of the Walter Reed Military Hospital Campus in DC.  Hey, they've done a good job.  But it's mostly housing and retail, because the city economic development group is most comfortable with that ("Nice looking five story brick apartment building, Parks at Walter Reed development, Washington, DC," 2026).

Some of the RFPs included wacky hope of getting MIT involved, etc., because the campus included the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, which basically was a set of buildings turnkey that could have been used to start a medical school, biotechnology campus, etc.

That happened sort of, but not by the city's hands.  The Children's Hospital of DC separately lobbied Congress to get control of that property and they did.  Stuff's happening there, not sure about how breakthrough it is.

I wasn't involved at all in the public process around Walter Reed even though it's less than two miles from our DC house, because I had been working on a bunch of other stuff.  

Later, some people came to me with their concept of using the new hospital building (since torn down and it cost more than $125 million to do so) and the Pathology facilities to create a graduate medical education program (the aim was to get the Royal College of Surgeons Dublin to open a medical school, and with Washington Adventist University--there is a medical school at Loma Linda University and many Adventist colleges have medical professions education, and other institutions, open other allied medical education programs) and a biotechnology research initiative/research park.  And I wrote it up.

We were far too late in the process, again the city is conservative, and it didn't help that the leaders of the effort were somewhat wacky, one's focus was to use the H1B Visa program for funding, and we couldn't get either the Royal College or Washington Adventist to sign on the dotted line so that the city would take it seriously.

But in contrast to the housing and retail, it could have supported thousands of high paying jobs, including technology associate positions that didn't require postgraduate work.

St. Elizabeths East campus (West is for the federal government).

Later I wrote it up as a proposal for the city's St. Elizabeths campus in SE DC.

-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC:  Part Two: Creating a graduate health and biotechnology research initiative on the St. Elizabeths campus," (2018)

And after that went nowhere, suggested the University of Maryland could do it at the new Largo Hospital--UMD's biomedical research is mostly in Baltimore.

-- "University of Maryland could seed a complementary biotechnology and medical education initiative in Prince George's County" (2021)

I learned the importance of pre-planning from the example of Kennedy School in Portland.  Residents wanted a say in how it would be sold and remade.  They ended up supporting the idea of a bed and breakfast ("Vision and Versatility: The Story of McMenamins," Spirited Magazine, "Preservation Brotherhood," Chicago Tribune, 2004, "Preserved in Alcohol: Case Studies of Adaptive Reuse Projects by McMenamins, Inc.," thesis). And the McMenamins Company came up with an amazing response resulting in an award winning property.

Edgefield Manor

But they moved from brewpubs and cinemas to larger property redevelopment earlier, buying the 300 acre Multnomah County poor farm,  Edgefield Manor..

By the time they got the property it was pretty much wrecked.  They found the money to rehabilitate it.  Now it has a hotel, golf course, brewpubs, distillery, gardens, and other amenities.

They've gone on to do this with many properties in Oregon and Washington, they didn't stop with Kennedy School.

Sadly, it's rare to find a developer that is (1) super creative, (2) committed to historic preservation, and (3) willing to work with "white elephant" properties that are difficult and costly to redevelop.  (Note that while the firm doesn't deal that much with former public buildings, Jemal Development is fine with historic buildings, first in DC, then in places like Frederick, Maryland, Richmond, Virginia, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, among others.)

Northampton State Hospital in 2007.

Other cities have either been good or bad at this dimension.  This article laments that such a path and a company like McMenamins isn't active in Massachusetts, ("Miracle Manor," Valley Advocate), suggesting that the old Northampton State Hospital could have been developed similarly.

-- "A planning process done right | NYC to build affordable housing on a city parking lot & points about DC and Montgomery County" (2026)
-- "Adaptive reuse of a high school to a concert space in Portland, Oregion: Revolution Hall" (2023)
-- "One way to encourage community input into development planning" (2010)

TGM photo by Sammy Kogan.

Toronto Waterfront.  Conclusions in the Toronto Globe & Mail article "A bigger Biidaasige Park is another waterfront triumph for Toronto," encapsulates this argument, also mentioning the failure of the Province of Ontario in its quest to "revive" Toronto's waterfront separate from the City.

There is a lesson for other governments about how to make a place. Think hard up front, with public input, about what your goals are; then hire excellent designers, give them direction, and rigorously defend their vision.

... Mr. Glaisek says success began with decades of public advocacy – the citizen group Bring Back the Don was central – and basics: “We had strong leadership, we had funding, and we had the continuity of an organization that could focus attention for 20 solid years.”

While city staff and others helped realize the project, Waterfront has been at the helm. In meeting after meeting, year in and year out, their staff has defended the idea of “leading with landscape” and the specifics of this huge, complex, fragile project.

Of course, that presumes the local government doesn't blow off the opportunity.  In DC, like with Walter Reed, St. Elizabeths, and many other civic building projects. Which the writer points out is a problem with Toronto's city agencies.

Over at Toronto City Hall, none of those conditions exist. The parks department’s output is chaotic and nobody seems to know how its decisions are being made or by whom, much less what the guiding principles and design standards might be.

Waterfront has been different. The expanded Biidaasige invites thoughts of a city that can build great things, and whose greatest times are still ahead of it.

National Farmers Market Week, August 2nd - 8th

Food is more than just picking up the item and buying it:  Farm and farming issues.  I've been keeping track of some of the broader issues concerning farms and farming, as something we should be thinking about all the time, but especially when it comes to National Farmers Market Week.

========

Farmers markets as events.  Most people think of farmers markets as events--I call them activation devices--to go out and do something.  

WRT activation, many years ago I wrote a piece outlining the different reasons to sponsor a market, and how that should shape policy wrt what can be sold, and the distance away by which a farm can be considered local.  

-- "The reason(s) why a farmers market is created shapes the type and mix of vendors allowed to sell" (2011)

One reason is to support farm income and the regional economy.

In DC, you get lots of vendors from West Virginia and Pennsylvania because they get better prices in the big city.

For example, there is research about the social value of markets as community hubs--that's great for the attendees, but what about the value to the farmers? ("Do Farmers Markets Build Community? New Research Says Yes," PPS)

Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Market, University District Farmers Market, Seattle, Washington. Credit: Redstone Photography

Farmers markets are supposed to be places to buy food first and foremost, food that is locally produced ("Local, organic, and bipartisan: How Vermont is challenging Big Food,," Christian Science Monitor).  

Secondarily we think about how farmers markets are supposed to be ways to cut out the middleman in a quest to get better and local (regionally sourced) food, ideally at a cost lower than from the supermarket.  

This is an old photo.  This year stone fruits are in short supply in Utah because of a late freeze in early June.

Well, maybe just maybe cheaper than Whole Foods--last week at the Downtown Farmers Market in Salt Lake City, which is a great one, in large part because there aren't dozens of markets in the area, but a handful, making it worthwhile for a large number of vendors to show up, vendors were selling corn for $8 per dozen.  

Granted it's not the 70s when you could get that many ears from a truck farmer for $1.  Still that's a shocker.

While a lot of the items sold at markets are value added products--e.g., hot sauce made from locally grown peppers, and the sauce costs more than selling raw peppers--the fact is food comes from farms.  And cost-wise, inputs, labor, taxes, it might not be enough ("Massachusetts loves its small farms. Will that be enough to save them?," Christian Science Monitor). 

BLT at Middle Child.

Farm to Table/Featuring local foods in special ways promotes the regional food system.  Farm to table is a longstanding movement where restaurants make items based on what they can source from local farms and farmers markets.  Some restaurants even have their own farms.

Middle Child in Philadelphia features for one month heirloom tomatoes grown at Philadelphia's Urban Roots Farm in BLTs--also with locally grown arugula and bread from the artisan Merzbacher’s Bakery ("Middle Child’s BLT season has arrived. This is how they prepare for the frenzy," Philadelphia Inquirer).  They also offer tomato agua fresca, tomato water ice, frozen tomato pops, and tomato martinis.  

An increasing number of bakeries are using regionally-grown harvested and milled grains, rather than standardized industrial seed varieties ("Regionalizing Michigan’s Small Grains: Highlights from the 2026 Food-grade Grains Field Day," Michigan State University).

VINE Foods, a new agricultural innovator to the market, starts its inaugural harvest of vine-ripened tomatoes on June 25, 2026 at 4451 Knight Arnold Road in Memphis.  Photo: Stu Boyd II-The Commercial Appeal

Relatedly, VINE Foods in Memphis is a small urban farm aiming to grow items that are best grown and consumed locally, like tomatoes ("VINE Foods plants roots in Memphis with innovative urban farm," Memphis Commercial Appeal).  

This is sort of what Urban Roots Farm is doing, and could be done in more places.  They also focus on the recovery and reuse of vacant lots, which is important in cities that have lost population ("Memphis-founded VINE Foods turns abandoned lots into organic produce farms," ActionNews5).

Years ago, I came across the Tomato Independence Project initiative in Treasure Valley/Boise, which now seems inactive ("Building a Better Tomato" Edible Idaho) and if you've tasted a great heirloom tomato off the vine, you know how important it is to spread the understanding of food that is not so industrialized that the flavor is gone, which is a problem with most tomatoes sold at the supermarket.  

More farming and promotion initiatives like this need to be developed throughout the country, to promote the consumption of what is otherwise highly perishable but super tasty locally grown foods.  The Dwarf Tomato Project is a national version, still at a small scale, of the TIP.

Wasatch Community Gardens in Salt Lake holds an annual "Tomato Sandwich Party." (Photo at right.)

Now, VINE Foods needs to find a restaurant partner like Middle Child.

Food needs sun and water (and other inputs) to grow | Climate change.  Crops need sun and water and other inputs to grow.  And labor to tend to the crops and then to pick them.  Bad weather can be catastrophic ("Spring’s bizarre weather caused up to $200 million in lost crops in Pa. N.J. farmers also suffered." Philadelphia Inquirer, "A late spring frost wiped out much of Utah’s tree fruit crop. Here’s what growers are selling instead," Salt Lake Tribune).  Weather is becoming much more extreme due to climate change, and the geographic areas where food can be grown are shifting in response to higher temperatures.

Weeks after December’s historic floods, water remains on Yeng Lee Cha’s farm in Snohomish. Cha says her farm experienced up to 9 feet of flooding, and the water didn’t recede for nearly two months in certain areas. The rushing water damaged farm... (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

Flooding too ("WA’s Hmong farmers face floods at generational crossroads," Seattle Times).  Not just flooding, but land sinking as water is drained from underground aquifers ("Study finds California farmland is sinking shockingly fast," SFGATE).

1.  Food borne illness is a symptom of regulatory failure and the perils of large scale mass agriculture.  The media is full of reporting on cyclosporiasis associated with lettuce.  "Cyc­lospora isn’t new. Why it’s dif­fer­ent now," USA Today:

Every sum­mer, it seems, we get the same headline: a cluster of cyc­lospori­asis cases traced to fresh pro­duce, a recall, a brief wave of concern and then silence until next year. The news cov­er­age almost always frames this as a food safety story – con­tam­in­ated basil, bad lettuce, a sup­plier that slipped through the cracks.

I want to offer a dif­fer­ent dia­gnosis, because I’ve watched this exact pat­tern before, in a very dif­fer­ent dis­ease. This is a slow, envir­on­ment­ally depend­ent para­site with no capa­city to out­run a func­tion­ing sur­veil­lance sys­tem. It has no abil­ity to evolve its way past inspec­tion. It only needs one thing to spread fur­ther than it used to: for us to stop look­ing as care­fully as we once did. That’s the part of this story nobody is telling.

Import inspec­tion capa­city, pro­duce sampling at the bor­der, the state pub­lic health labor­at­or­ies run­ning whole-gen­ome sequen­cing to match an isol­ate from a sick patient to a spe­cific lot num­ber, the epi­demi­olo­gists con­vert­ing scattered case reports into a recog­nized cluster – this is the immune sys­tem pro­tect­ing our food sup­ply. And like any immune sys­tem, when you starve it of resources, you don’t get a health­ier host. You get a slower, blinder response to a threat that was always there.

Decades ago Jim Hightower wrote a book, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times, criticizing Agricultural Colleges and their research programs designed to promote big agriculture by creating nee tools and crop seeds modified for easier picking and distribution over great distances rather than for nutrition and flavor.

Who knew that one of the outcomes of Big Agriculture/Big Farming could be Big Diarrhea.

Trading farm futures on your phone.

2.  Tariffs, foreign policy fights, etc.  Many farmers have lost access to markets because of tariffs or responses to US foreign policy ("Already under financial pressure, farmers squeezed further by tariffs and Iran war," PBS).  

Plus the Iran War has impacted the production of fertilizer inputs and the transport of fertilizer using the Strait of Hormuz ("The Iran War threatened a food crisis. The next Gulf conflict could do the same," Reuters).

... another reason why many farmers are active in buying and selling futures.  Or going bankrupt ("Minnesota bankruptcies rise as a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges roils farm country," MinnPost).

3.  Farming is hard work and its hard to convince younger people to take it up ( "Why The Kids Won't Farm," New York Times).

4.  Food science and technology.  Growing food involves scientific research ("Her Lab Worked to Future-Proof Fruits and Vegetables," New York Times), some of which the US under the Trump Administration doesn't want to fund anymore.  Some favor large scale production--industrial food--others don't ("Stop Worrying, and Learn to Love Industrial Food,," and "What Our Industrial Food System Can't Do," NYT).

5.  Food as intellectual property/Big corporations and massive supply chains.  As seeds beome patented, problems are created for farmers, including if they aren't licensed ("A California farmer is giving away tons of nectarines that he’s not allowed to sell" AP).  

Driscoll's has shifted from being a large farming operation to a massive "systems integrator" operating across the globe to make strawberries available every month of the year ("Why Are Berries Everywhere, in Every Season? Driscoll’s," NYT).

A fire burns piles of grapevines and stakes after they were ripped out at Sarmento Vineyard. Photo: Nic Coury for The New York Times

6.  Big farmers are less flexible with major changes in conditions.  For example, because people are buying fewer canned peaches, Del Monte is closing canneries and peach orchards need new markets (s ("California farmers must destroy 420,000 peach trees after Del Monte closes its canneries and cancels more than $550 million in long-term contracts," Fortune Magazine).  

As people drink less alcohol, including wine, more vineyards are shutting down ("Sales Are So Low, California Wineries Are Burning Their Vineyards," NYT).

7.  Right to repair.  Like with the concept of food as intellectual property, farm equipment has become much more technologically complex, full of electronics and sensors and connections to data systems and services that make recommendations on how to plow particularly plots, how much seed and fertilizer, etc.  

As equipment becomes more complex companies like John Deere had licensing agreements that prevented farmers from fixing the equipment themselves.  They had to wait for registered technicians, which can put equipment out of service for days. 

For years farmers have been fighting for the "right to repair."  They made some gains at the state level ("Colorado gave farmers the right to repair their own equipment, but Great Plains, Oklahoma farmers continue waiting," KOSU/Oklahoma Public Radio) but enacting federal legislation was impossible.  

Nevertheless, John Deere, the leading manufacturer, finally capitulated ("John Deere owners will get the right to repair their own equipment under a new FTC settlement," AP).

Farmers Andrew Cadwallader and his father David Cadwallader (front) at Waldac Farms in Salem, N.J., on Jan. 29. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

8.  Smaller farms need multiple revenue streams to survive.  In the past, there has been opposition to farms adding event spaces and agritourism accommodations, new types of facilities,  

There was a dairy selling ice cream issue years ago in Baltimore County, selling out to housing developers, now solar and wind farms, which some farms aim to add to increase and stabilize revenues.  

Boston Globe photo.

Salem, Pennsylvania wouldn't allow a dairy farm to add solar panel electricity generation to add revenue ("Will this Salem County town love its last dairy farm to death?," Philadelphia Inquirer).  So they got rid of their cows.  From the article: 

The future of a family farm in rural Salem County was at stake, and after multiple meetings and hours of presentations, questions, pleas, and complaints, a local planning board was set to vote.

Before the vote, one longtime resident of Mannington Township came to the podium with a warning. In preparation for this crowded, mid-March meeting, Alice Waddington, 98, said she’d made a list of dairy farms she remembered from her decades in the little town.

At one time, she said, there were close to a dozen. “There’s only one farm left milking cows,” Waddington told the board, “and that’s the Cadwalladers.”

In Vermont, farmers are fighting similar kinds of restrictions ("A rural rebellion in Vermont is on the verge of unlikely success," Boston Globe).

9.  Some farmers are making more money off social media than farming ("The Family Farmers Making More From Clicks Than Crops," Wall Street Journal).  This is led by younger generations of the family.

Festivals are withering due to high costs for permitting

Fee for service versus community building and economic development. A challenge with street festivals is the desire for community building, and local economic development--festivals bring out lots of customers, and this can be significant at the scale of a city's economy.  From the Detroit News article, "Chinatown Block Party seeks to build unity, grow community in Detroit":

"And more festivals like this, more activations like this, where people can come together, learn, build and grow, are needed today," Sweets said. "As a Filipino American and a Detroiter, it's really nice to see an opportunity for not only Chinatown, but other Asian American businesses owners, individuals, cultures, to come and be represented, to show up what we are, who we are, what we do."

Artscape in Baltimore is one of my favorite festivals, not just with arts and crafts vendors, but the participation of programs at the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art, students presenting their work and projects, nonprofits, and arts organizations, along with music stages.

But covid and changes in government support make the festival very different and less successful today.

The H Street Festival in DC attracts more than 100,000 patrons to its one day event.

But cities focused on reimbursement fees for services--for street closure, inspection, and emergency services, etc.--make it increasingly difficult to hold events ("The economics are rapidly becoming impossible for your favorite street festival," Sherwood News).  

Covid didn't help because many festivals were cancelled during that time, and festivals lost their financing momentum and have had a difficult time getting it back ("The economic ripples of events canceled due to COVID-19," Marketplace, "Festivals in the COVID Age of Crisis," Contemporary Theatre Review).

Events are usually paid for by a mix of sponsorships and booth rental fees, but these "revenues" are often not much more, or less than the cost of the fees to the city, managing the event, and entertainment fees for bands and musicians.

-- "The tension between monetizing public space and placemaking | rethinking how neighborhoods are supported by local governments," 2018
-- "Two sides of the same coin: how to support community events in the face of high charges for permits etc.?," 2011
-- New Visions for New York Street Fairs , Center for an Urban Future, NYC

Security concerns/bollards.  Some reimbursement is justified, with increased concerns over security, as there have been terrorist attacks or devastating accidents at festivals, with deaths, from inadequately closed roads.  Streets closed frequently, such as for farmers markets, and large festivals, should have permanent retractable bollards installed.

Better bollards than vehicles, which can be displaced by a fast moving heavy vehicle.  The best bollards are rated for crashes at 50 mph.

Technical support.  10+ years ago, the Celebrate Fairfax (County, Virginia) organization used to sponsor workshops for organizations wanting to put on festivals.  While many cities have "Special Events Offices," they seem to be more about the regulatory aspect rather than also being charged with providing technical assistance to organizations so that festivals are both more successful and safe.

The Manayunk Arts Festival held on Main Street, which is closed for the occasion.  Tyger Williams, Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rising costs make festivals uneconomic ("Street festival organizers say the rising costs of Philadelphia police patrols are crushing them," Philadelphia Inquirer).

In 2019, the Manayunk Development Corp. paid just over $18,800 for the police patrols, sanitation services, and health and safety inspections required to throw the neighborhood’s beloved Manayunk Arts Festival. In 2023, the same amount barely covered the cost of the Philadelphia Police Department alone.

The two-day event is one of the largest outdoor arts festivals in the area, drawing an average of 40,000 people to a four-block stretch of Main Street every June since 1990 to peruse offerings from upward of 250 artists. At first, said executive director Gwen McCauley, the festival was so profitable it could help bankroll other community events. Now, she said, it’s barely breaking even amid increasing bills.

“We’re limping along,” McCauley said.

Also see "The Northern Liberties Night Market is canceled after the costs of required police patrols and sanitation services have more than doubled" and "Midtown Village cancels its fall festival after 20 years, citing rising costs," PI).

Thousands of visitors stroll down Danforth Avenue during the formerly annual street festival Taste of the Danforth, in Toronto, on August 11, 2019. Steve Russell/Toronto Star

Toronto ("When Toronto loses a public event like Taste of the Danforth, it loses more than just a street festival," Toronto Star).

There was a time when Taste of the Danforth, recently cancelled again this year, was a red dot on Toronto summer calendars: free to attend, with delicious food and drink and clever musical programming on offer. A relatively sober urban strip would become a bustling quasi-European thoroughfare; you’d see elders among the teens, interlopers from the west end making their annual pilgrimage to the east. .

Events like DoWest Fest, MixTO, Salsa on St. Clair, Geary Artcrawl and OssFest have supplanted Taste of the Danforth, but in a city of Toronto’s size, no number of street festivals is too high. Owing to our relatively orderly, responsible and respectful nature, Do West Fest, for instance, never rings too far off the hook despite more than a million visitors coursing through its veins over two and a half days.

Festivals are hard to pull off, even with a lot of resources.  It isn't always, but mostly, the "city's fault" that festivals don't reoccur.  At least in Toronto the city has formalized a $3.25 million fund to support festivals ("Here’s why the Taste of the Danforth festival keeps getting cancelled," Star).

Wicker Park Fest.  Photo: JMiller.

Chicago ("Chicago street festivals are struggling. Here's why," Crain's Chicago Business).  According to Crain's, Chicago festivals are having problems, some cancelling, because of a loss of sponsors and a decline in gate revenues.

Unlike festivals I've gone to in other cities, many Chicago festivals charge for admission.  And, like Philadelphia and Toronto, a rise in the various charges by government agencies for the provision of services like inspection and policing.  From the article:

Gate donations are a main revenue stream for Chicago street festivals, which are usually hosted by chambers of commerce to raise money for neighborhood improvement. Because the festivals are held on public ways — i.e., in the middle of the street — Chicago rules stipulate organizers cannot charge an entry fee. Instead, they ask for donations. Though it varies, gate donations typically comprise about one-third of a street festival’s revenue. Vendor fees and sponsorship are other primary revenue streams.

Music festivals.  Community festival issues are different from music festivals ("High costs leaving festivals 'struggling to survive'," BBC, "‘It becomes a no-go zone all summer’: How music festivals are ruining British parks," Daily Telegraph), which are more focused on arts as presentation, especially the presentation of non-local artists, with a place-based focused that is less connected than a community festival.

WRT music festivals, the Philadelphia Inquirer offers an observation that multi-day music festivals do better when they aren't generic, have a distinctive identity and a focus on community building ("How has the Roots Picnic continued to thrive while Made in America has been canceled again?").

Brockwell Park damage after a music festival. Alamy photo.

Another issue is damage, with ticketed or private events in regular public parks like Grant Park in Chicago, home to the Lollapalooza music festival.

There is a tension in holding ticketed/exclusive events in regular parks between the revenue they generate for the park system versus damage and other costs ("Lollapalooza producers to pay $410,000 to clean up Grant Park after this year’s music festival," Chicago Tribune, "The Tough Mudder run ripped up our London park, and residents are paying the price," Guardian), "One-third of Central Park's Great Lawn 'fully destroyed' after damage from Global Citizen Festival, rains," Fox News) and access restrictions ("A New Home for New York Fashion Week," New York Times). 

Solution: Cities should budget monies for festivals.  For community building, neighborhood planning, and local economic development reasons, cities should allocate monies to support these events functioning at the neighborhood and city-wide scales.  

Some cities make some monies available, but it can be very arbitrary on who gets money--connections matter.

Better to set up funding guidelines and a systematic process for awarding funding.

Crisis in higher education from all sides, but especially from the Trump Administration

The right's hate of higher learning, seen as dominated by progressive politics, is meted out in a multi-pronged campaign under the Trump Administration ("Chris Matthews suggests Trump 'smart' to target Harvard and elite universities," Fox News).  From the AP story, "Trump restricts federal research funding, a lifeblood for colleges":

“It looks like much of the playbook is intimidation, more so than actual substantiated legal findings,” said Michael Pillera, director of educational equity issues at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “I think all of this is designed as an attempt to intimidate all universities, not just the institutions under investigation.”

1.  Universities with students supporting Palestinians over Israel are attacked for being anti-semitic.  This happened after Israel retaliated by attacking the Gaza Strip after Hamas terrorist attacks in October 2023, equating the two acts as equally heinous (which I agree with).  Lack of virulent support of Israel has been attacked, with minimal space accorded to the Palestinian position.

Students protesting against the war in Gaza, and passersby walking through Harvard Yard, are seen at an encampment at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

2.  Which is used as an excuse to investigate Universities and cut off their federal funds. Columbia was told to give back $400 million because they claim the university is anti-semitic and they caved ("Columbia University caves to demands to restore $400m from Trump administration," Guardian). 

 

A protest calling on Harvard to fight back ("Amid crackdown on elite universities, Cambridge protesters urge Harvard not to concede to Trump demands," Globe).  Caption: Signs including "Hey Harvard Alums Say Grow A Spine!" and "Hands Off Free Speech" rise above a crowd at a Cambridge Common rally.Erin Clark/Globe Staff

Harvard was attacked too ("Why Harvard Decided to Fight Trump," New York Times) and hasn't capitulated ("Standing up to Trump was ‘a step on the road back for Harvard’," Boston Globe), so Trump retaliated further ("Trump administration freezes more than $2 billion in funding tied to Harvard," Globe), going as far as threatening the university's tax exempt status ("After Harvard rejects US demands, Trump adds new threat," Reuters).  

3.  Students espousing pro-Palestinian (or so called "anti-American") opinions are being denied visas and deported ("14 student visas revoked at UW, Seattle University, and Gonzaga," KUOW/NPR, "Trump administration revokes visas for over 25 students in the St. Louis area," St. Louis NPR, "Why are so many students in Mass. losing their visas? The answer lies in a little-known database," Boston Globe,"Nine people affiliated with MIT have had visas revoked, university president says," Globe) starting with Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University ("US judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his views" and "The case against Mahmoud Khalil is meant to silence American dissent" Guardian).  From the Globe:

At first it was just a handful of students with some connection to pro-Palestinian activity, then dozens more, many of whom had no link to the protest movement. Now the Trump administration has abruptly terminated the legal status of nearly 5,000 international students and scholars across the country, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, setting off waves of fear on campuses around the country.

4.  If it's not "anti-semitism" its DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.  Universities and other institutions ("The protectors of Santa Monica Bay are caving to Trump’s dangerous demands," Los Angeles Times) have been told to drop it, or not be grant eligible ("More than 50 universities face federal investigations as part of Trump’s anti-DEI campaign," AP).  Many universities have capitulated including the University of Michigan ("University of Michigan shutters its flagship diversity program," Guardian).  

Related is the plan to eliminate the cabinet agency the Department of Education ("Trump orders a plan to dismantle the Education Department while keeping some core functions," AP).

5.  Separately the Trump Administration is suspending, cutting or threatening to cut grants to universities more generally  ("Trump restricts federal research funding, a lifeblood for colleges," AP).  Northwestern has been told $750 million--almost all of the money they get from the government--is at risk.  

In the interim schools are cutting back programs ("Leading Harvard scientist ordered to halt research in funding freeze," Boston Globe), reducing graduate program enrollments, etc.  From the article:

After decades of partnership with the U.S. government, colleges are facing new doubts about the future of their federal funding. President Donald Trump’s administration has been using the funding spigot to seek compliance with his agenda, cutting off money to schools including Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. All the while, universities across the country are navigating cuts to grants for research institutions.

The squeeze on higher education underscores how much American colleges depend on the federal government — a provider of grants and contracts that have amounted to close to half the total revenue of some research universities, according to an Associated Press analysis.

It adds up to a crisis for universities, and a problem for the country as a whole, say school administrators and advocates for academic freedom. America’s scientific and medical research capabilities are tightly entwined with its universities as part of a compact that started after World War II to develop national expertise and knowledge.

Also see "These 77 Colleges Have the Most to Lose From Trump’s Cuts," Chronicle of Higher Education. 

To me, (1), (2), (3) and (4) are a violation of the first amendment ("Under Trump, freedom of speech in universities takes on a new meaning," NPR, "Harvard’s challenge to Trump administration could test limits of government power," AP).   Also see "A handful of college presidents emerge as leaders of burgeoning resistance movement against Trump," Globe.

(5) is devastating to research, and by extension the preeminence of US science, and long term economic development.  Some professors are decamping to other countries ("Yale professor who studies fascism fleeing US to work in Canada," Guardian), the same thing that happened with Britain after it left the EU and stopped participating in the Horizon research program.  If you can't get scientific grants they can't work.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch puts it like this:

In less than three months, the new Trump regime has gutted spending on scientific research and the humanities, broadly claimed “antisemitism” as a rationale for imposing or threatening massive federal aid cuts to elite universities, and chilled academic freedom with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and canceling student visas for foreigners. This all seems part and parcel with the GOP’s Maoist Cultural Revolution plan for a glorious American future in which the knowledge industry is abandoned for an economy of workers with tiny screwdrivers assembling iPhones.

China is already rapidly gaining on the US in terms of the amount of research, funding, and patents ("‘I think it is actively happening’: Is Boston’s biotech industry doomed?," Boston Globe, "China overtakes the US in scientific research output," Guardian). 

Conclusion.  Since destruction of higher education is the goal, appeasement won't work, they'll always up the ante ("Appeasing Trump Is Not the Answer," Chronicle of Higher Education).  From the article:

These three strategies — to sow dissension, to terrorize the vulnerable, and to suppress disagreement — are meant to work in tandem, to reduce the possibility that Columbia, or any university like it, might serve as a counterweight to the authoritarian, illiberal mode of democracy that the Trump administration is working to bring about, drawing on a playbook developed by Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

... the authoritarian playbook involves reneging even on provisional compromises to achieve its ultimate goal: eliminating any alternative centers of power. That is why it is no surprise that further funding has been pulled.

If we remain in the business of free inquiry, our activities will offend the government in power. Half-measures seem certain to damage our reputation irreparably without any guarantee of future security.

Also see the journal article "Enacting the “Illiberal Playbook” in Hungary and Poland," Perspective on Politics.

.College aged students aren't reading books.  ("Young people won’t, or can’t, read a book. Now democracy is dying. Coincidence?," Philadelphia Inquirer).

@rosehorowitch tells us about how high school and college education practices have shifted away from full-book reading, leading to a generation of students who lack the concentration to engage in deep reading for more than a few minutes; and @natmalkus talks about the alarming decline in literacy scores among students and adults, and how screens plus education policy shifts have fed a slow-burning crisis in literacy and deep attention

Fewer babies means fewer college students means many colleges will close, affecting the economic well being of many communities, and a shrinking of the knowledge economy ("The reason why dozens of Mass. colleges could close in the next decade," Boston Globe).  From the article:

But there is more at stake than the fates of colleges and universities. Massachusetts has disproportionately depended on its celebrated higher education sector to drive its economy. Education is the state’s third-largest industry, based on the most recent figures from the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. It also fuels the first and second biggest sectors: health care and professional, scientific, and technical services. As enrollment drops in the years to come, those industries are projected to face shortages of workers. There are expected to be 2,200 fewer graduates per year than are needed in life sciences, for instance, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Education Foundation.

... One of Massachusetts’ greatest strengths may be on the cusp of becoming a weakness. “There’s this symbiotic relationship between the universities and the knowledge economy in this state that it could be easy to take for granted and assume it would always be there,” says Mark Melnik, director of economic and public policy research at the Donahue Institute at UMass Amherst. “You don’t realize some of the vulnerabilities until they start presenting themselves.”

WRT the economic development impact, it's more about smaller, regional colleges: 

... The Harvards and MITs of the world “really don’t have much to worry about,” says Brendan Cantwell, a professor at Michigan State University who studies higher education economics. “But there are a ton of private colleges that are smaller and that have regional draw, that do not have big national markets, and that are really reliant on tuition. As the local market shrinks for those campuses, things are already difficult, and they will only become more difficult.”

Some states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have been consolidating and/or closing regional colleges for some time.

But not just local impact:

The economic impact goes beyond those college towns. It means fewer educated workers, in a state that disproportionately relies on them. “Our leading industries are here in large part because of the talented workforce,” says Edward Lambert Jr., executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. “One of the things that have kept them here is the talent pipeline.” If young people stop coming, and learning skills employers need, he says, “That affects not only the future pipeline, but present workers.”

Trump destroying a major US export, foreign students studying at US higher education institutions.  Higher education is/was one of the Countries biggest exports of services ("Trump is killing one of our strongest exports," Washington Post).

President Donald Trump says he wants to reduce our trade deficit. Yet he’s destroying one of our winningest exports: higher education. Colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined.

Community building versus economic development versus building a local economy

The article "Philadelphia’s Market Street East searches for growth and renewal — with or without a new Sixers arena," has an interesting section on a community meeting where people who weren't into the arena concept suggested alternatives.  They don't want an arena, they want green roofs...

The Save Chinatown Coalition brought over 140 community members (plus a waitlist) to a hall at the Center for Architecture and Design for a community-sourced design workshop to envision alternative uses for the 1000 blocks of Market and Filbert Streets in Center City, where the 76ers are proposing to build a basketball arena. (Emily Cohen for WHYY)

From the article:

For three hours the ideas flew, more than a hundred people gathered at a forum to suggest what besides a basketball arena could go at 10th and Market: a library, high school, public pool, garden, playground, health clinic, night market, art space, apartments, shops, or maybe a community center where seniors and children would be welcome and safe. .

... “It’s the people’s response to a site that we think should have a lot of input from the public,” said Rashida Ng, a University of Pennsylvania associate architecture professor who helped lead the session, cosponsored by the Coalition to Save Chinatown. The goal was to identify the most compelling suggestions and generate renderings and cost estimates. 

No one spoke in favor of a Sixers arena. And no one was keen to knock down part of the Fashion District, given the taxpayer dollars it has consumed and the cost of demolition. Instead, people wanted to open its walls so pedestrians could more easily move between Chinatown and Market East. 

The Bok Building served as a model, the former South Philadelphia high school now home to a bounty of small businesses, nonprofits, and artists, attracting people from around the city to the spectacular views of its rooftop bar. 

The Sixers called the group’s proposals “unrealistic and unworkable,” not ones that belong on a struggling commercial street. “This exercise proved what we’ve said all along,” arena-project spokesperson Mark Nicastre said in an email. “There is no proposal for another project. There is no other private investment for another project. There is no public funding to commit to another project.” 

People at the forum said the discussion needed to move off an arena-or-nothing dynamic. A problem on Market East and in Philadelphia, they said, is the city government only contemplates the future in response to developers’ wishes. Amenities that improve citizens’ lives, like libraries and playgrounds, are seen as expenses, people said. 

Also see "Penn professors spearhead workshop reimagining uses for proposed 76ers arena site near Chinatown," Daily Pennsylvanian, "Community groups say forget 76ers arena plan" WHYY/NPR.

Philadelphia has advantages.  The Walking City urban form is the "urban technology" that supports active cities ("Transportation and Urban Form: Stages in the Spatial Evolution of the American Metropolis," "Department stores are an "urban technology" built for walking not driving," 2024).

While Philadelphia is still a poor city, and the wage tax encourages businesses to locate in the suburbs, it has more than one million people, is pretty walkable, the Center City is quite active with people, the Center City District business improvement district is one of the best BIDs in the country, etc.  But the key is people.  Philadelphia, though much smaller, is up there with NYC in terms of lots of people in its center.

Personally, I think an arena is probably an acceptable choice, especially as it likely will increase transit ridership to events--the team estimates that the 70% of trips to the current arena by car will drop to 40%, with the change due to shift to transit, because of the much better transit location of Market East.

The challenges are (1) reduce the likelihood of negative impacts on Chinatown, (2) figure out how to make Market East incredibly active, (3) especially wrt the ground plane of an arena ("How do you make the ground floor of an arena strengthen the area around it, rather than diminish it? | Philadelphia 76ers," 2023).

Principles that drive my approach to urban revitalization (that the average citizen never thinks about).  I think the alternatives proposed by the community are ridiculous.

Community building versus revitalization.  While my sympathies are for community-based approaches, lots of time they have limited economic return and may cost more money to build and operate than is received ("The Battle for McMillan Why is the plan to redevelop the site of a decommissioned water treatment plant in Washington, DC so controversial?," "Park View Residents Continue To Oppose Redevelopment at Bruce Monroe Park" Washington City Paper, also see ""Temporary" uses as a way to foil development: Bruce Monroe Elementary School site, DC | from school to park to housing").  

I call this community building, not revitalization. 

-- "You gotta have community building," 2007

-- "Arts-based revitalization, community building, network strengthening, commodification, and Artomatic," 2009

And like with multi-faceted arts centers, better economic return comes from those that are adaptively reused than built from scratch ("Developing Creative Quarters in Cities: Policy lessons from “Art and Design City Arabianranta, Helsinki," Urban Research and Practice, 2013, "The story of Cable Factory," "Inside the UK's new $292 million arts center," CNN, ""Arts district planning" in Arlington County | Many communities don't know the difference between arts as production and arts as consumption," 2021, Trans Europe Halles).

Cities cost money to operate.  Cities have to earn money to pay for all the things that people say they want.  An art gallery type building won't have near the economic return as a sports arena, provided it is super well planned.  (That doesn't mean don't do the art gallery building, it means don't treat it as a co-equal substitute to an arena.)

Similarly, a couple of suggestions from someone I know in Salt Lake.  Replacing the minor league baseball stadium with pickleball courts--they don't make money they cost money, at a big site 1.5 blocks from a light rail station.  Similarly, a school in her neighborhood is closing and she suggests it become a library, even though it's a good site for multiunit housing, when the main library is just a few miles away.

The average resident doesn't think about the big picture, certainly not the cost of running a city and needing to raise revenues as costs rise.  Plus they have a bias against development to begin with, think developers are monsters because they make profits, etc. 

I make this point often that planning engagements are set up to fail from the outset because planners have to achieve both city (or county) wide goals like economic development) as well as neighborhood specific objectives, while residents tend to take responsibility only for the latter.

Transformational Projects Action Planning  ("A wrinkle in thinking about the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach: Great public buildings aren't just about design, but what they do," 2022)  is an approach I push for thinking about master planning and the planning of big infrastructure projects, in how plans can be leveraged with anchor projects that push the goals of a plan from vision to implementation, and in big infrastructure projects, how complementary improvements can be driven across the related ecosystem, improving both the success of the project and the infrastructure system within which it is embedded. 

TPAPs should be implemented at multiple scales: 

1. neighborhood/district/city/county wide as part of a master plan; 
2. within functional elements of a master plan such as transportation, housing, or economic development;
3. within a specific project (e.g., how do we make this particular library or transit station or park or neighborhood "great"?); 
4. in terms of architecture and design; and 
5. program/plan for what the functions within the building accomplish.

Ultimately, buildings are envelopes or containers for what's really important: what happens on the inside and how they connect to, improve and extend the qualities of place around them.

Building a local economy -- I say there is a difference between building a local economy and economic development.  Many economic development planners don't know the difference.  

The difference comes down to the economic multiplier effect and the net revenue that remains local and recirculates within the local economy.

Graphic from the Lee's Marketplace website.

The capital flow from "economic development" tends to be outward, like the revenues touted from special events like the Super Bowl, most of the money is spent on transportation and lodging, which typically doesn't remain local.

The book Community Economic Development Handbook is very good on microenterprise development and the development of locally owned businesses and the differential impact on the local economy.

The Salt Lake Valley regional independent supermarket, Lee's Marketplace, has an excellent webpage on the impact of spending at locally owned versus chain stores--a Kroger affiliate is the largest supermarket chain in Utah--illustrating this point.

Economic Development.  A lot of economic development for cities centers around tax abatements and subsidizing developers ("Make eminent domain fair for all," Boston Globe).  

Sadly, in DC's case, once an abatement expires, many firms decamp ("CoStar Group Leaving DC HQ After 14 Years," Commercial Observer).  

The way it's supposed to work, in order to receive the benefits, the company has to meet conditions.  Often, they don't, and the development doesn't have near the value that was touted ("Tax incentives to attract business: Wisconsin's Foxconn debacle"). 

Note that I am not against TIF and abatements, just that there needs to be a balance between the public and private interest, and that the public interest should be a prominent element of the outcome.

Eckington is a small neighborhood in Northeast Washington that is tucked among Florida Avenue, Rhode Island Avenue and North Capitol Street. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad established its freight yards there, which encouraged the growth of a rich industrial sector, which remains today. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post) "In Northeast D.C., Eckington offers an oasis of calm amid commotion of the city."

Return on Investment. Return on Investment is the economic value received from an investment.

The point of incentives isn't to build dependence on government funding streams, but to generate positive economic return--greater value in the long run than the money "given up" or foregone ("Tax incentive programs underfund schools," 2024).  

In revitalization, one of the best examples for me ever was the NoMA Metrorail infill station ("Where We Live: NoMa, the wrong side of the tracks no more," Washington Post, "NoMA: the neighborhood transit built," Urban Land) in DC.  

Union Market at Dusk.  Washington Post photo by Craig Hudson.

The new buildings behind the old market building would have never been built without the addition of the NoMA Metrorail station.

It cost $120 million to build.  But has generated billions in new development, and, in 20 years hundreds of millions in tax revenues.  

This station has had significant economic impact on five areas around it.  

The NoMA district, Eckington across New York Avenue NE, the now thriving Union Market District ("All the places to eat and drink at Union Market," "Every night is a fiesta at El Presidente in Union Market," and "In a once-gritty D.C. market, these wholesalers’ world is slipping away" Washington Post, "Edens' latest megaproject aims to create 'northern gateway' to Union Market," Washington Business Journal), the small industrial area from the station east along M Street and New York Avenue, and the H Street residential north of H Street--I argue the station made people with choices willing to choose north of H Street when before they would not ("White people have flocked back to city centers," Washington Post).

Building the station cost a lot.  But just the impact on one area, the values of houses north of H Street increased 6x or more, close to a billion dollars for 1,700 houses.  Plus the economic impact on the other four areas, totaling in the billions of new construction.

Velocity of positive economic change from public investment. The other element that was educational for me was the velocity of change resulting from the new station.  Granted a lot of development was going on in DC at the time.  But the addition of this particular station sped up the velocity of development in those areas by at least 10 years.

Photo of the then Verizon Center. Toni L. Sandys,  Washington Post.

Another example of stoking the velocity of change is the CapitalOne Arena. 

I argued for years that the move by the teams to DC from the suburbs weren't the reason that the Downtown East End began revitalization.

Eventually I conceded that the move was a vote of confidence in urban living and commerce, and it helped reposition DC's image vis a vis the suburbs, just before residential choice trends began revaluing center cities after many decades of denigration ("Pollin: With Opening of MCI Center, 'I've Got Everything I've Ever Done in My Life on the Line'," Post, 1997, "Without Verizon Center, does Chinatown still thrive?," Washington Business Journal, 2016).  Probably a speed up of at least 10 years also.  

More recently a deck was built over part of I-395, for Capitol Crossing, a project that had been touted for 20+ years before it happened.  While a little far from the arena, the arena being an anchor helped move this project forward ("ENR MidAtlantic Project of the Year: Capitol Crossing Restores D.C.’s Historic Grid," Engineering News Record).  And decking freeways is still pretty rare, most places don't have the kind of economic return necessary to make it pay off.

Transit and economic development.  The velocity of change from NoMA Metrorail station was so significant it convinced me that the public investment with the fastest ROI, at least when done right, is in transit, shifting me towards transit and economic development, c. 2004.

But it's important to point out that there is plenty of transit investment that isn't all that great.  It's expensive to build.  Many transit oriented development projects are built in the wrong place. For example, instead of connecting people to existing places and to places you want improved, the Miami subway system was designed only for the places that needed to improve, making it hard to have much positive impact.   

H Street streetcar.  Flickr photo by BeyondDC.

And investments in bus don't have near the ROI that fixed rail transit does. (Note that Cleveland's BRT is touted for spurring development, but I believe they overstate the case.  Successful universities and medical centers are always growing, whether or not there is quality transit and I believe that the likelihood these new projects only started because of a new bus line is spurious.)

For example, I consider the DC streetcar "failed" from a planning perspective.  But arguably it has spurred about $1 billion in new development ("DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," 2015, "Capital One Arena, Wizards and Capitals may move to Alexandria | Why not the RFK campus?," 2024).

This 1964 Esso London road map is an extremely rare example of a gas station map acknowledging a local subway system.  It's even more unusual in that it presents the actual map used by the transit system instead of rendering it differently.

Or single lines instead of networks--DC has a transit network, now 6 lines, while Baltimore, which was too late to the game to get more funding, only has one Metro line which is truncated, and a charming industrial light rail line that has minimal capacity to generate ridership over most of its route ("More remonstration about the molasses of change: Transit planning, Baltimore County, Maryland and Towson," 2022).

The monocentric subnetwork of the DC Metrorail system serves the core of DC.

Ironically, the DC Metrorail system wasn't set up to improve DC, but did because at the core of the system within Washington, 31 stations serve historic or now new neighborhoods (like NoMA, Southwest, etc.).  

So while the transit system was designed for suburban commuters, it helped the city more.  I argue that that section of the Metro operates "monocentrically" while the overall design of the system is polycentric, which doesn't help the city so much--BART is a great example of a polycentric system, although SF doesn't really need it because it has its own rail-based transit system. (This concept is discussed in Cities in Full.)

Transit oriented development.  The one thing to remember is that TOD can take a long time to be realized.  I know of projects that are still underway 20+ years in DC ("360 Apartment building + Giant Supermarket vs. a BP gas station, which would you choose?," and "The Takoma Metro Development Proposal and its illustration of gaps in planning and participation processes" ).   

-- Trans-Formation: Recreating Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Centers in Washington, DC | A Design Handbook for Neighborhood Residents, DC Office of Planning, 2002
-- Ten Principles for Successful Development Around Transit, Urban Land Institute, 2003
-- Station Area Planning: How To Make Great Transit-Oriented Places, Reconnecting America and Center for Transit-Oriented Development
-- Rails to Real Estate: Development Patterns along Three New Transit Lines, CTOD

Arlington County is a national best practice example in aiming to leverage density for extranormal community benefit (Encouraging Transit Oriented Development: Case Studies that Work, EPA, "Other Places Nipping At Heels Of Arlington’s Transit-Oriented Development," MobilityLab).

Phoenix has been good at proactive planning around affordable housing and transit rather than the more trickle down approach in the DC area  ("Light rail housing fund spurs 15 projects in metro Phoenix" and "Why you don't see more vacant lots along light-rail route," Arizona Republic).

And so does seeing the impact of investment from large scale transit systems.  It takes at least 30 years, at least it did for Metrorail, and that was at the core in DC and Arlington, although there were other positive examples.  30 years is a long time.  And academic research earlier than that didn't find a lot of benefits.

Obviously, places outside of the core benefited less during that 30 year period 

-- Understanding the Impacts of Transitways The Hiawatha Line: Impacts on Land Use and Residential Housing Value, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, research brief, full document

But after 30 years, places outside the core that had less positive conditions, like Brookland, started to intensify development around the Metrorail station and the local microeconomies improved ("I worked on this 16 years ago... "Metro seeks development partner for Brookland-CUA Metro station"").

To better leverage the value of proximity to transit, density bonuses of at least a couple stories should be a standard policy.

Traffic studies for multiunit buildings at the Takoma Metrorail station find that only 25% of rush hour trips are by car.   

WMATA's 2005 study, Development-Related Ridership Survey, found significant car trip reduction associated with the buildings in Metrorail station catchment areas, even in areas outside the core.  Also see "The analysis of transit-oriented development (TOD) in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore metropolitan areas," Transport Policy, 2014.

The Willow and Maple development is a couple blocks from Takoma Station, off the main street.  It's three stories, but there is parking for every unit.

The Takoma Central apartment building is about 4 stories and a block from the Metrorail station  ("Takoma Central Apartment Building Trades For $51M," Bisnow).

Buildings this close to transit stations, even outside of the core, are logical choices for transit related density bonuses.  If anything, it should be required.

Fort Totten.

Scale and density at transit stations: don't move too fast/timing.  Most citizens think two stories is too high.  

Related to leveraging the value of transit infrastructure as a tool for economic development is timing.     

If done too soon, likely a development will be less intensely developed because construction finance uses current conditions for economic analysis versus longer term conditions.  Economic growth over time from transit access is hard to predict, and construction financiers don't care about the long term anyway.

Park Place Apartments, Petworth.

Good examples in DC are the difference between Fort Totten and Columbia Heights/Petworth (7 story buildings versus 3 and 4 story buildings).  There is tremendous opportunity cost in not building higher.  

It costs DC more residents, income tax, property tax, eyes on the street, customers for business, etc.  To my way of thinking, even 7-8 story buildings might not be tall enough.

Or Silver Spring has a bunch of rowhouses about one long block from the station (behind the McDonald's( built in the 1980s.  If the land were developed later, it would have been done more intensely.  Definitely not single family housing one block from the station in a commercial district with tall office buildings.

Ironically, residents successfully fought off similar proposals for rowhouses at Brookland in the 1990s ("The mix: It's the making of Brookland" Post, 1997) and Takoma in the 2000s ("Foes of Takoma Metro Project Say Glendening Sold Them Out: Town House Plan Isn't Smart Growth, Residents Contend," Post, 2000) did the city a favor, because now those sites are being developed more intensely.

Although this is difficult for developers.  Banks lend on the basis of current conditions, not the future.  And building around transit stations should be determined more by future conditions.