There should be community bulletin boards in commercial districts (and other places)

Flyers on a light pole, 2100 block Highland Drive, Sugar House, Salt Lake City.

It's so much harder to find about community events and such with the decline of traditional newspapers.  Some alternative weeklies used to publish lists, some much better than overs, others maybe just a feature listing a couple.

One such feature, sadly no longer a part of the editorial program of the Salt Lake City Weekly, led me to participate in a canoeing event on the Jordan River ("Canoeing on the Jordan River, one of the events from Latino Conservation Week in Salt Lake County").  ... that was before I was sick, and I biked there--it was about 8 miles away.

The Salt Lake Tribune has a feature listing select events, but it doesn't come out until Saturday.  

Now you have to subscribe to all kinds of feeds to get that information.  I can't even get through a day's email, so I don't do much social media--in itself bad because if I republished entries on Instagram and Substack I'd have way more readers--since blogs have been supplanted.  If only I could afford to pay someone to do it for me....

These days, libraries are good places for posting this kind of stuff.  And that's about it.  The Millcreek Public Market on the ground floor of the City Hall has a pillar that people post flyers on, just like light poles.  That's about the closest to community bulletin board I've seen in a civic building other than libraries.

Commercial places with a more community vibe, like coffee shops, certain restaurants, local food stores, etc., have bulletin boards

I hate to admit that I haven't read any Jurgen Habermas. He introduced the concept of the “public sphere." Based on an analysis of coffee shops in the 1800s England and France, "he theorized that democracy emerged and could continue to exist in a healthy form only if there was a space that was outside the control of the state, where deliberation and the exchange of ideas could freely occur."

In 2011, "Community cleanups (and other activities) as community building and civic engagement activities," seeming about cleanups and such, I also wrote about spaces for community organization and protest, and listed a variety of ways to communicate beyond the traditional media.  From the piece:

I am thinking along this kind of framework, from the personal to the group, but somehow the other dimension of support/expression vs. opposition and resistance needs to be incorporated:

- individual expression (graffiti, letter to editor, social media))
- group/community (block party, mural, neighborhood parks, street fairs, community media, smart mobs, pirate radio, etc.)

- community bulletin boards and community media -- providing space for such in civic and commercial spaces, e.g., bulletin boards in parks, libraries, etc., and do you have to get permission to post things? 

- public assembly (Hyde Park type speakers corners, public squares in cities, college campues, etc.)
- resistance/opposition, including suicide bombings in public space/transit infrastructure, what the IRA did in their London bombing campaign, wilding, riots, also celebrations, i.e., college sports related, that get out of hand, etc.). [Note that in Planning in the Public Domain, Friedmann distinguishes between radical practice, which accepts the existence of the state; and revolutionary practice, which does not]

Left: Bulletin board, Lamplighter Coffee Roasters, Richmond, Virginia. 

Right: concepts from Planning in the Public Domain.

2. Planning for community spaces in libraries and recreation centers, for meetings (yes we do that already), but what about spaces for community organizations located in libraries and other public buildings, bulletin boards sure, but how about galleries for local artists and other exhibitions, or spaces for regular exhibitions (that could rotate around the city) on community issues?  

3. What about having some funds available, like what the Humanities Council of Washington does, for community curation projects, for projects on urban issues, etc., that can then be shown in such facilities?

Urban Sustainability traveling exhibit, Montreal at a farmers market, 2010.  Sponsored by the Écomusée du fier monde. 

(The ecomuseum concept is worthy of a separate blog entry of its own.  At that one, I found a copy in the public communications area of the executive summary of the then Province of Quebec bicycle plan, "Making cycling a mode of transportation in its own right," while not necessarily transformational for Canada, certainly was wrt the US.  It's out of print and off the Internet but I'm trying to track down a copy.)

4. Or something I've said for about 5+ years, that all libraries should have collections of materials specific to their communities. The Georgetown branch of the DC Public Library has the "Peabody Room" which is a focused collection on Georgetown. But all libraries could have a filing cabinet full of stuff and finding aids.

5. Public squares, pocket parks, etc., in neighborhood commercial districts. E.g., I will take some responsibility for failing to advocate for this in the H Street NE revitalization plan, or for not thinking of the need for an expanded public space around the 2nd and N Streets NE exit at the New York Avenue Metro station in NoMA.

6. Having funds to support community festivals and events, even on a smaller scale.

7. And micro funds to support micro community projects. (Although ANCs do have some funds for this.)

8. How Arlington County government agencies exhibit in force at the Arlington County Fair. Or how some Baltimore City government agencies exhibit at Artscape.

In 2020, I wrote a series about building blocks for commercial revitalization, including "Part 2 | A neighborhood identity and marketing toolkit (kit of parts)."  I list what I think should be all of the elements of a complete identity program for commercial districts.  That has two relevant items:

3. Include directory/place/events identification signage at transit stations and in bus shelters. 4. Include directory/place/events identification signage at public buildings in the area such as libraries, schools, parks, human services offices, etc.

But I didn't specifically list a community bulletin board as a distinct element.  In 2018, in "Why not post outdoor Community Information Boards at public buildings and sites?" I mentioned kiosks and bulletin boards.

Bulletin board at the Queens Plaza bus station, Liverpool.

Bulletin Board, Mount Pleasant Plaza, Washington, DC.

Community bulletin board behind Hampshire Langley Shopping Center on Kirklynn Avenue, Takoma Park (Takoma Langley Crossroads). It might be that the big board is run by the shopping center. The smaller box to the right is managed by the community association.

Bulletin board at the Rhode Island Avenue pedestrian bridge trailhead, Metropolitan Branch Trail. Most are bike related.  I believe this was put up by the DC Department of Transportation. A community Little Free Library has been placed to the right of this sign.

Kiosk in Adams Morgan at the corner of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW.

Information board, Sligo Creek Trail, Montgomery County Maryland.

I've been thinking again from a public communications need in an environment with limited options, that public parks should have community bulletin boards too.  

This is something I will put on my long list of projects to pilot at Sugar House Park.

But I wrote about that too. I can't find a photo, but there is a community information board at every park site in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Bye DC Streetcar | Too small to reshape DC policy, Big enough to spur $1 billion in economic development

Flickr photo by Ted Eytan.

Yesterday, DC shut down its streetcar ("D.C.’s Streetcar is making its final stop, leaving a mixed legacy," ).  My joke is that DC and Seattle started planning for streetcars in 2003.  Seattle got its first segment in 2007.  DC in 2016.

The streetcar never got a chance to succeed.  Dan Malouff at Greater Greater Washington has written some good pieces about it ("Eight big-picture lessons from the DC Streetcar," "How DC’s mayor and council chair thwarted every effort to better the streetcar," "To the death of a dream: RIP DC Streetcar"). 

He makes three key points.  (1) Settling for a start with a "minimum viable segment" is a mistake and (2) success of the streetcar was dependent on it being but one segment of a larger network (3) but that was actively stymied by elected officials, in particular Mayor Bowser and Council Chair Mendelson.

Minimum viable segment means you start it, and hope to expand it incrementally, by building on the expected success of the first segment.  But that never happened.  The minimum was too minimal to have much effect on getting other areas of the city to want streetcar service.  

Imagining a streetcar on Georgia Avenue.  This is in Petworth.

(Even though the economic development benefits ought to have convinced many areas of the city it would be a great lever for improvement.)

And people committed to opposition don't ever stop opposing (even if not helped by the city's top elected officials).  It makes for an almost insurmountable hill.

OTOH, the minimum viable segment was enough for DC's development community to offer to the city an unsolicited proposal to manage, create, build out, and operate a streetcar network for the whole city, not just the itty bitty part it was currently serving.

DC's elected officials don't see transit as a core competitive advantage. DC's elected officials mostly come from car-oriented areas of the city ("DC as a suburban agenda dominated city").  The current generation is not known for visionary thinking.  

Despite the massive success of the city's revitalization centered around the creation of Metrorail and intensification of development in its wake ("Today WMATA Metrorail's 50th anniversary from the start of service | Part 1: many lessons can be found, if you look")--ironically the 50th anniversary of the start of the system was last week--the current generation of elected officials don't accept that without Metrorail the city would be s***.  Even Councilmembers who have served on the WMATA board.

Streetcar westbound on the 500 block of H Street NE.  Photo by Dan Malouff

Resident opposition.  And I have never understood resident opposition to the streetcar or light rail projects proposed for DC, Maryland, and Virginia.  DC was served by streetcars until 1962.  In fact, the H Street Line, Rte. 20, was one, although it was abandoned in 1949.

Media opposition.  While this Washington Post editorial is recent, "A streetcar no one desired," it's not a whole lot different from op-eds from 10 years ago ("Mayor Bowser should shut down streetcar operation, concede it was a bad idea").  

Although Washington City Paper disagreed ("H Street NE May Not Need the Streetcar. Benning Road Does").  WRT the City Paper's point, it was economic development misfeasance to not continue the streetcar to Benning Road Metrorail station, serving the Minnesota Avenue corridor.

This ad we created for H Street NE shows we understood the value of transportation access as one of the neighborhood's competitive advantages relative to the rest of the city.  This is at the corridor's "100%" intersection, 8th Street and H Street.

They act as if the metropolitan area has zero experience with successful fixed rail transit.  Sure Metrorail is the best--as advocates in Toronto used to say, "Subways are for everyone," but light rail and streetcar have their place within a robust transit network.

The fact is the city has 42 Metrorail stations.  At the core it has 31 stations, and for the most part, the commercial districts and neighborhoods served by every one of those stations have experienced massive economic improvement.

WRT the streetcar, it's not just that the city didn't do a good job planning network expansion.  Attempts to do so got bogged down in neighborhood opposition.  Which were seized on by elected officials to use appropriated money for other things.

At Whole Foods.  Photo by Dan Malouff.

Lesson One:  In economic development terms the Streetcar was a big winner for H Street NE.  I wrote about the cancellation last May ("DC makes yet another bad decision about streetcars: will replace the one line with a so called "fancy" bus | The Vision Thing") and last fall in "Streetcars: transit, economic development levers, source for discontent in local politics | Milwaukee HOP streetcar."  

My point all along is despite the planning and operational failures, which Dan does a better job explicating than I did, it's been a wild success from an economic development standpoint.

More than $1 billion of new development has been sparked, mostly outside of the catchment area of Union Station, which gets its ED oomph from Metrorail ("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," "Update/revision of H Street transit oriented real estate development table").

And in an area not directly served by Metrorail, H Street, because of the streetcar, has more intense development than any other area of the city similarly not immediately connected to Metrorail.

Revitalization didn't come about solely because of the Main Street commercial district revitalization program.  In 2002, a group of stakeholders got the corridor officially sanctioned as a Main Street improvement area.  The approach links historic preservation and business development and marketing, based on a model developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  It's now called Main Street America.

It brought attention to the district when it had been ignored, but can't take credit for the large number of new buildings on the corridor.  That's on real estate developers, and the streetcar as a "priming action."

H Street Land Use and Transportation Plans and Programs.  The designation and funding and technical assistance associated with it were complemented by the creation of an area plan for the corridor in 2004 (Revival: The H Street NE Strategic Development Plan), and a streetscape improvement plan (Great Streets Framework Plan: H Street NE – Benning Road).  Interestingly enough, a new plan is being developed ("H Street NE Land Use and Market Study Underway," H&K).

Other city investments in facade improvements, business development, etc. contributed to the improvement.

Sure, I'd like to take credit for it, given I was a key organizer of the Main Street program there ("The community development approach and the revitalization of DC's H Street corridor: congruent or oppositional approaches?").  

The 2004 economic development plan didn't foresee the streetcar, it aimed to leverage the economic energy of Union Station, so how the corridor developed, and how they anticipated it would develop became very different from what happened.

More than anything this change, especially further east from Union Station, was because of the streetcar.  Although having a land use plan when DC was at an inflection point--post Marion Barry--when urban areas not just DC were attracting new residents and new businesses, was key.  Big real estate consulting firms mapped all the opportunities on the corridor and started marketing them.  This intensified with the commitment to the streetcar. 

The whole district gained thousands of new units of housing, not just by Union Station, with new ground floor space with high ceilings better suited for modern retail.  Whoever would have anticipated that a Whole Foods Market would have opened on H Street?  And that's just one example of significant change that never could have been anticipated when were organizing to be designated a Main Street district.  

Originally the building on the left had been an ugly small modular single story library.  It was redeveloped as affordable housing.  I wish it were taller with more units, but I guess they built what they could fund. They did a great job with the facade in terms of historic architectural design and building materials.                                                                                                                                        I do wish they had kept the library function as a public use on the ground floor, as a way to maintain the presence of civic assets in the corridor.  Photo by Dan Malouff.                                                                       
Although more so the retail and restaurants developed were not chains, but with great identity and branding systems ("Independent retail businesses can succeed and thrive"), not so much chains, although Giant Supermarket came first ("360 Apartment building + Giant Supermarket vs. a BP gas station, which would you choose?").  And now even Aldi wants to be in on the urban action.

Separately the rehabilitation of the Atlas Theater into the Atlas Performing Arts Center helped to anchor the eastern end, still with a lot of smaller historic buildings, as a night life district ("Joe Englert, DC nightlife impresario, dies | Lessons about nightlife-based revitalization," and "H Street NE nightlife district, failing").

DC's streetcar is another example, even if done so wrongly, that return on investment for economic revitalization may be best from significant improvements to transit infrastructure.

Counter examples: Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Tucson.  And despite complaints about the streetcar Kansas City ("12 transformative projects drive growth along the KC Streetcar in 2025 and beyond," Kansas City Star) and Milwaukee (cites above), the streetcar there is again, sparking significant economic development.

And Tucson ("Smaller than Jax, but I have rail: Lessons from Tucson’s Sun Link system," Jacksonville Today).  From the article:

According to research published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, half of Tucson’s population and housing growth between 2014 and 2021 occurred along the streetcar corridor. Real estate investment surged by $2.5 billion, and annual city tax revenues jumped 30%, adding $13 million each year.

Rendering, a new Commanders football stadium as the anchor of a mixed use entertainment and housing district.

What about transit service to and within the RFK campus?  It's also short sighted to drop streetcar service when it can be leveraged to provide additional service to the new campus being developed around the Washington Commanders football stadium and all its touted ancillary development.   

A streetcar loop could serve the interior of the campus, with cars leaving from the Stadium-Armory Station as well.

SF Muni light rail/streetcar service at Oracle Park, home to the San Francisco Giants baseball team.

DC is so full of missed opportunities.

Lesson two: a streetcar is intra-district transit not inter-city transit.  These days most pundits are criticizing "Obama era streetcar projects" as not having much effect ("Out of Favor," Governing).  

Part of the issue is whether or not the places served were the right ones, whether or not the streetcar is an isolated mode or integrated more broadly into the area's transit networks, inadequate frequencies, slow speeds, the focus on "minimum viable segment," and being street running.  From the JT article:

The success of Sun Link wasn’t about density; it was about connecting the right destinations with reliable, visible infrastructure that people trust. If Jacksonville wants to move forward, it must learn from cities like Tucson, not fear them. Innovation doesn’t mean chasing gimmicks, it means investing smartly in what works.

At the streetcar line scale, street running versus dedicated lane was the biggest criticism of the streetcar ("Sign In Subscribe Live TV Markets Economics Industries Tech Politics Businessweek Opinion Video More US Edition CityLab Transportation Hey, Streetcar Critics: Stop Making 'Perfect' the Enemy of 'Good'," Bloomberg).  

Or that they are more about economic development than transit ("Why Streetcars Aren’t About Transit: The Economic Development Argument for Trams," NextCity).  While the criticisms are reasonable, they miss the point about what kind of transit a streetcar is supposed to be.   

A streetcar should be transit + economic development.

My response to that article was "DC and streetcars #2: STREETCARS ARE ABOUT TRANSIT, just in a different way from how most people are accustomed to thinking about it."   

But I realized people were judging it wrongly.  A streetcar line is about "intra-district" transit ("Making the case for intra-city (vs. inter-city) transit planning").

Sure it gets people between districts along the line, but it also provides multiple stops within a neighborhood and its commercial district.  But people are judging it as if it is supposed to be a metropolitan area service, where people travel relatively long distances, and speed matters at lot more.  

Riders wait for the Cincinnati Bell Connector on the opening day of the streetcar following opening ceremonies at Washington Park. The 3.6 mile long route goes through downtown and Over-The-Rhine has been 10 years in the making. The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour

Although like as implemented in Cincinnati, streetcars in dedicated middle lanes would be optimal.  But if not could be addressed by aggressive traffic enforcement ("While progress has been made, Sun Link blockages still an issue," Arizona Daily Star).

For me, getting from the Metrorail station home, or to and from the grocery store, etc., would be a huge gain.

Lesson Three: Effects on the transit network/you need a streetcar network.  Plenty of streetcar stubs don't do much for the transit system overall.  There are many more examples than mentioned here, like Tampa.  But ones that are lines like Little Rock or multiple lines like San Francisco and Toronto, less so Philadelphia, have a great deal of success.

Adding fixed rail transit in the form of streetcar to a community without it can be transformational in reaching new audiences, and serving as a rolling marketing campaign.  For example, the KC Streetcar generates 30% of the area's total transit trips.  Yes, they are low generally, but from a marginal increase standpoint, not insignificant.

And DC did have plans for expansion (DC Streetcar System Plan: H St/ Benning Rd and Future Segments and Extensions).

The streetcar network that wasn't.

Lesson Four: Opportunity to reposition a community's economic development and transit messages.  I don't think it's communicated enough or right.  Cities other than DC recognize the economic development value of streetcars.  I think like I have written about light rail ("Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward") it's an opportunity to position a transit system and the business district and community more broadly as "design forward."

Portland streetcar as a mobile public art installation.  Art by Bobby Fouther.

Although in places that are very much car centric, it just might not matter so much.  People are committed to the car and can't see viable alternatives. 

Lesson Five: Expansion takes way too long.  DC never expanded.  Other streetcar projects have like in Portland, Seattle, and Kansas City.  This gets back to the minimum viable segment point.  It takes so much community and organizational capital to get a transit infrastructure project launched, that it's hard to keep raising the same level of organizational, community and financial support for expansion.  

So I say, plan for extensions while constructing the initial segment, and move forward to design and engineering as soon as possible.  Kansas City's first extension opened nine years after the initial launch ("KC Streetcar Now Open at UMKC," UMKC).  

Cincinnati's considering it now, nine years later ("Streetcar expansion study? Most key Cincinnati City Council candidates open to it," Cincinnati Business Courier).  If they get the go ahead, it could be another ten years before it happens.  As these quotes from the article confirm, Cincinnati's had the same problems other places have had, with skepticism and opposition, as well as difficulties getting funding, etc.

The Cincinnati Connector streetcar has set new highs for ridership in every year since 2021, but the city, which opened the project in 2016, has never developed a plan to expand and extend the route, should funding ever become available. At the same time, two of the region's Midwestern competitors, Kansas City and Milwaukee, have expanded their streetcar lines.

... Streetcar supporters have never given up on expanding the project even though the political will at City Hall has been nonexistent. A previous council made the streetcar fare-free in 2021, which boosted ridership that has kept growing.

... “It’s an economic development tool,” Cramerding said. “We need to look at transit as an economic development tool to grow the city, not just move low-income people from point A to point B.”

Former Councilman Steve Goodin, who is Charter Committee endorsed, said the city does not have the money to study an extension and is against it. “It’s an amusement park ride, not transit,” Goodin said.

... Former Councilwoman Laketa Cole, who is Charter Committee-endorsed, described the current project as a failure. “They should have had the train go from Uptown to downtown,” Cole said. “To have it go around a circle, you set it up for failure.”

The project originally was supposed to extend to the University of Cincinnati, but then-Gov. John Kasich, a suburban Columbus Republican, killed state funding for that phase of the project. Then-Mayor Mark Mallory and City Manager Milton Dohoney declined to let the project die, securing more federal funding to complete its current iteration.

Conclusion: Comparing and contrasting systems.  Research by a professor at the University of Kansas compared two successful systems, Kansas City and Tucson, to two less successful systems, Atlanta and Cincinnati and ("Place-Making or Place-Taking? The Relationship between Goal Tension and System Performance of U.S. Modern-Era Streetcar Systems," Journal of Planning Education and Research). 

Interviewees were asked what influenced decisions that shaped the streetcar systems in their respective city. Mendez found that systems that prioritized economic development in decision making tended to perform poorly. The most successful systems were in cities that emphasized system performance and placed streetcar systems in areas where people lived, worked and wanted to go for entertainment, recreational and personal reasons.

“In cities that prioritized economic development, decisions reflected that focus,” Mendez said. “For example, if you look at corridors where poor performing systems were placed, you will find twice the number of vacant parcels and properties. Such placement can maximize the economic development impact of the streetcar, but it limits its ability to serve the immediate needs of the public.”

He makes a good point.  But I look at this a bit more nuanced, and should have earlier in my writings as well.  An economic development focus is fine, so long as the district or the city is in a strong real estate market.  H Street--close to Downtown and Union Station, in a city regaining population, is an example of this.  Aiming to spur development in a weak market is difficult, as the example of the Miami heavy rail Metrorail shows. 

I think Atlanta is somehow different.  It's not a weak market overall.  It may be because there while there is a lot of new development, much is in the suburbs ("A wrinkle on corporate headquarters: leaving the city as buildings age") or in what may as well be a suburb, the Buckhead District. This is seen in how the Braves baseball team moved to Cobb County, while every other baseball stadium redevelopment project has been city focused.  

Clearly, Atlanta had other issues.  Atlanta also has the separate Beltline project, although I wonder if transit will ever be added to it--it is experiencing growth because of the reposition, civic investments in trails, etc.  

If it had been linked to the Beltline, and at least of the portion of the Beltline got transit service, comparable to Maryland's forthcoming suburban Purple Line, which as built will be less than 20% of the initial concept) then it would be different ("Atlanta’s Beltline rail debate: To build or not to build?," ACPC).

DC as the supra outlier.  Being the only city in the era of modern streetcars shutting it down, DC is the foremost outlier.  Despite the clear economic success.  I'd argue DC's weak leadership by elected officials doomed the streetcar, even though overall the city until the new Trump Administration, had been experiencing a great deal of growth, construction of new properties, infill development, and population growth.

As discussed in the parallel series on Metrorail's 50th anniversary, it also suffers from many of the same problems ("Today WMATA Metrorail's 50th anniversary from the start of service | Part 1: many lessons can be found, if you look"). 

========

A shout out to Joe Fengler.  Joe Fengler was the chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6A, which covers a good chunk of the commercial district's geography.  

It occurred to him that it would be wasteful to tear up H Street for streetscape improvements, only to tear it up again for streetcar tracks.

He created a lobbying and advocacy campaign to install the tracks at the same time, instead of separately.  

He also thought--at the time Anacostia was being considered for the first line--having tracks in the ground would increase the likelihood the project would move forward on H Street first.

He got other ANCs along the corridor to agree, and the city decided to do what he suggested.  Some people, like in Dan Malouff's assessment, said this created problems down the line, when what would have been the best option was already constrained by the track layout.

Nonetheless, Joe was a visionary and he doesn't get much credit for it.

To bad he didn't get on City Council.  He would have been a great advocate for streetcars both for transportation and economic development.

The city let all his hard work go to waste 

Vis a vis the WAMU article, "As the DC Streetcar shuts down, leaders wrestle with H Street’s transit future."  

“We need to have a bold vision,” said Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who represents much of H Street and chairs the council’s transportation committee. “One that is more than just a segment, but one that actually is a connection that really connects neighborhoods, connects the city and works as part of an entire transit network…It’s got to be a bigger vision than just one segment or else we’re just repeating the mistakes of the streetcar.”

Now they're concerned?  They've had decades.

Good article in the New Yorker about political organizing

-- "What MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing—and Infighting" 

Distinguishes between "mobilizing" and "organizing," and grassroots determination of agendas -- "as Mao put it, letting one thousand flowers bloom."  Organizing is about creating leaders that do, while "mobilizing" is about showing up to something.

When I talk about this, I've never made the distinction between mobilizing and organizing, but I always talk about what might be thought of as "long range planning," that for meeting X you already need to be setting up "next steps" and meeting or action Y.

I don't fully buy the comparison between the anti-drug use organization DARE and MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  The author argued that by letting people set up chapters in MADD with limited guidance, they had a lot more agency versus a more top-down organization with control of messaging and agenda by people at the top.  

Can a top-down organization work?  DARE didn't because it turned out that research on its curriculum and methods found that it didn't diminish drug use, and that in some cases, even encouraged it.  But what if the agenda and curriculum worked?  Would DARE have been successful with the mobilizing model and top down control.

Protest against ICE after the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by ICE agents.  Reddit photo.

The difference too between the two is that a more variegated infrastructure is created with the organizing model, providing the people at the top can be looser with control.

The article contrasts Democratic and Republican Party approaches, says the Republicans work it better because their only litmus test is whether or not you support Trump, not your position on guns, abortion, LGBTQ issues, etc.

It discusses the success of the Obama campaign, and how right wingers studied the model, and adopted and adapted it. 

From the article:

Ben Wikler chaired the Democratic Party of Wisconsin from 2019 to 2025. He recently told me that “Democrats should be learning from the Republicans about how to build small, socially interconnected communities.” Wisconsin had the tiniest swing toward Republicans among battleground states in 2024 because, Wikler believes, the state Party prioritized “neighborhood teams working year-round and socializing with their neighbors, to form real communities”—the same approach that governs Faith & Freedom. For liberals, he said, alternatives to church and the gun club include neighborhood organizations such as gardening groups and community centers. Whereas maga welcomes anyone wearing the red hat, Democrats often require people to use new terms on pronouns and race, and they can punish or exclude anyone who strays. “That doesn’t work,” Wikler said. “A movement needs people who feel safe with each other, who can hang out and talk about things besides politics. People who like each other. The Republicans are finding those people. The Democrats aren’t doing that enough.”

One problem, according to researchers, is that the left’s success in mobilizing large crowds may have caused leaders to misunderstand what spurs someone to become politically active in the first place. In the late nineties, the sociologist Ziad Munson began interviewing pro-life advocates, and he initially assumed that such people had been strongly opposed to abortion for years. “I was completely wrong,” he said. In fact, nearly a quarter of activists told him that they had been pro-choice when they attended their first pro-life event. A majority said that they had not had strong opinions about abortion. “But then something happened, like they moved to a new town or started going to a new church, or they got divorced and started joining singles groups, and the new people they met were pro-life,” Munson explained. “And so they found a community, and a sense of identity, and that’s when they became committed.”

Many leaders of local MADD chapters first sought the group out after their lives had been upended by a drunk driver, and they found that meeting other victims helped them process their anger and grief. Wolfson, the MADD researcher, told me, “They were mainly women who had never thought of themselves as public figures, and now they’re talking to legislators and spending time with people who understand them and making new friends. At that point, you’re all in.” The organization accepted everyone, regardless of ideological background (and drinking habits). “All you needed to join was to care about this issue.”

While not discussed in the article I think this is an element in anti-vaccination forces.  Besides the anti-science etc. people, a lot of people who made "mistakes" during covid, leading to death or serious and long term illness, if not of themselves, of people in the circle, need "someone to blame" other than themselves.

And they bind together over those beliefs.  

That becomes Anthony Fauci, Big Pharma--if ivermectin worked at reducing covid, Eli Lilly would have been marketing the hell out of it, hospitals, doctors, particular medicines and what they call "the protocol" which was remdesivir administered intravenously when hospitalized--they said it killed people.

Consistency and logic aren't part of the equation, such as the ivermectin thing--were the producers of ivermectin and hydroxychoroquine the Good Pharma and Pfizer and Moderna Bad Pharma?

Plus, you had people like DeSantis saying remdesivir was good, but don't get the covid shot.  Crazy.  FWIW, remdesivir helped me during my 8 day stay in the hospital as a result of my third and worst bout of covid.

From the article:

When researchers such as Munson look at today’s leftist movements, they often see the opposite approach. “The left has purity tests,” Munson said. “You have to prove you’re devoted to the cause. But that means that, once you join, you’re spending time with the kind of people you already know, because you already move in the same circles, and you’ve screened out people who might be ideologically ambivalent right now but might have become activists if you had welcomed them.”

Are they purity tests, some are like on trans issues--it killed me during the election to see ads from Trump saying "She cares about they/them.  We care about you."  But maybe at times it is more about logic and facts versus fabulism.  At least it is for me.

From the article:

The sociologist Liz McKenna, of Harvard, told me that movements succeed best when people feel welcome. A movement becomes sustainable when members feel empowered and find friends. “The left loves big protests, but protesting is a tactic in search of a strategy,” she said. There must be some shared core values among a movement’s members, of course, but the requirement can’t be that every value is shared. “Making room for difference isn’t a nice-to-have thing—it’s table stakes,” she told me. “The rallies are by-products of the community, not the goal.” Most of all, even though anger can be useful, a movement also needs to provide some joy. “Trump rallies are fun,” McKenna noted. “The Turning Point campus debates are fun.” For a long time, she said, the left was less fun and more angry, “and so the right was out-organizing them at every turn.”

Holy f***: Trump policy kills a woman in Minneapolis

Photo: Mathieu Louis-Rolland, Getty Images.

Protestors in Portland have been making fun of the extreme statements about Portland being out of control by wearing costumes at protests ("Portland’s Theater-of-the-Absurd Protests Reflect the Ridiculousness of Trump’s Lies," The Nation).

There's been a lot written about Trump using the National Guard as a tool to terrorize "Democrat cities" ("Trump’s use of National Guard troops on American streets is bad enough. This could be worse," Rhode Island Current), like Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago.  

Ostensibly, the troops have been sent to cities “overrun” with crime. Yet data shows that has not been the case. Troops have been sent to largely Democratic-run cities in Democratic-led states.

The case for political theater being the real reason behind the deployment certainly was strengthened when largely Republican Mississippi sent troops to Washington D.C., even though crime in Mississippi cities like Jackson is higher than in D.C. Additionally, there is an even more dangerous purpose to the troop presence — that of normalizing the idea of troops on the streets, a key facet of authoritarian rule.

There are fundamental differences in training and mission between military troops and civilian law enforcement, with troop presence raising the potential for escalation and excessive force, and the erosion of both civil liberties and military readiness.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the justification used by the Administration was flawed, and ordered them to stop ("Supreme Court rejects Trump’s effort to deploy National Guard in Illinois," SCOTus blog, "The Supreme Court has taken the National Guard away from Donald Trump," Economist).  Separately, as DC is subordinate to the federal government, NG troops are still in the city.

Of the many objections to the entry of federal law enforcement personnel into cities is their lack of training on urban policing, nor in de-escalation.  Armed troops are by definition escalatory.  It doesn't help that the Administration lies about what happens in their various engagements with protestors.

Another objection is that putting such forces in cities provides reputational risk to the military, because it's not what they are supposed to do.  In a way, although a bit different, it's not unlike how the British, during the Revolutionary War, forced residents to billet soldiers, at their own expense.  Here, it's a city being forced to take the brunt of the action by the military.

We know about the Administration's multi-faceted anti-immigrant program ("Protecting The American People Against Invasion" White House) with overtones of White Christian Nationalism ("The wrath of Stephen Miller," Atlantic), which has resulted in the imprisonment and/or deportation of many thousands of people.  It's not uncommon for US citizens to be swept up in the actions, and imprisoned ("We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days," ProPublica).

Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel are able to operate in cities independent of the court judgements about the National Guard.

Chicago: A federal immigration enforcement agent points a crowd control weapon at a protester at East 105th Street and South Avenue N in the East Side on Oct. 14. Protesters gathered as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers awaited the removal of their vehicle after it crashed during a pursuit.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

And they are armed and aggressive.  Armed, not well trained Guardsman killed protestors at Kent State University in 1970 ("Kent State University marks 55th anniversary of May 4 shootings," Ideastream/NPR) but before that at the Historically Black College, Orangeburg State College in South Carolina, in 1968 where three students were killed ("Feb. 8, 1968: Orangeburg Massacre," Zinn Education Project).

One particularly egregious aggression was the raiding of an apartment building in Chicago ("“I Lost Everything”: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime," ProPublica, "Stories from the federal siege of Chicago," Chicago Sun-Times).

Community members pray at the scene where a federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, 37, of the Twin Cities earlier on Portland Avenue in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

That's escalated.  Today, we have the killing of an American citizen in Minneapolis ("Eyewitness describes ICE shooting that killed woman in Minneapolis," NBC).

With the director of ICE as part of the operation!

The Boston Globe has a video link of the engagement, and there is no question the ICE agent murdered the driver, a 37 year old woman.  ICE agents too, aren't well trained, for urban incursions.  This is the result.

U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino joins federal agents at the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (Ellen Schmidt/MinnPost via AP) Ellen Schmidt/AP

Ironically it's 5 years plus one day since the Trump-inspired violent protests at the US Capitol ("Jan. 6 insurrection," Washington Post).  The Administration just put up a webpage lying about what happened ("White House unveils Jan. 6 webpage saying Democrats ‘staged the real insurrection,’ criticizing Capitol Police," The Hill). 

One protestor, Ashlii Babbitt, was shot and killed by a member of the Capitol Police.  She's been made a martyr of the hard right, and under Trump, her family got a payout ("Trump administration to pay nearly $5M in wrongful death lawsuit of Jan. 6 rioter shot by police," Politico).  She was rioting.  Rioting isn't protected speech.  She was a criminal.  Trump also pardoned most of the people found guilty of rioting that day.

A bullet hole is seen in the windshield as law enforcement officers work at the scene of a shooting involving federal law enforcement agents, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, in Minneapolis. Tom Baker/AP

Not the lady in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good, she's just dead.  Say her name... ("‘She was an amazing human being’: Mother identifies woman shot, killed by ICE agent," Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

The Administration is justifying the murder ("Live updates: Hundreds protest in Minneapolis after ICE officer kills woman," AP).  Calling the person driving away a "domestic terrorist" ("DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s comments in wake of woman’s fatal shooting by ICE agent," MST).

“He’s been in situations like this before, and he certainly has been out there and followed his training today,” said Noem at the evening news conference in Minneapolis.

A federal agent sprays a protester with a chemical agent at the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (Ellen Schmidt/MinnPost via AP) Ellen Schmidt/AP

Noem appeared to reference the same officer when she said that, back in June, he’d been rammed and dragged by an “anti-ICE” motorist.

Emergency medical technicians carry a person on a stretcher at the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (Ellen Schmidt/MinnPost via AP) Ellen Schmidt/AP

The Republicans in Congress are supine in the face of the Administration's aggressions not just against the Constitution, but of the American People.

You would think this killing would be a moment comparable to when Senator Joe McCarthy's lies were challenged by Joseph Welch, the U.S. Army's chief counsel at one of McCarthy's many hearings about communists in government.  

He said: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

That was the moment of McCarthy's downfall.  Were this to be a similar moment.

Sanctioned state violence.  The Trump Administration is one of the most violent in terms of how it deals with citizens and immigrants.  But this is not unique to the nation's history, with raids against "communists" in the 1870s and 1920s, anarchists (1910s), labor unions (1890s-1930), and the treatment of certain immigrant groups throughout history (Chinese, Mexicans, Jews).

But today it seems the US is taking its cues from Hungary and Russia, where the media is controlled and universities are subjugated, and countries like Chile under Pinochet, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel, China--Israel ("Watched, Tracked, and Targeted Life in Gaza under Israel’s all-encompassing surveillance regime," New York Magazine) and China are probably the most developed surveillance states in the world, more intricate than the Apartheid period of South Africa.  

Trump constantly threatens to stop elections and interfere with elections ("Trump’s Jokes About Canceling Midterm Elections Aren’t So Funny Anymore," Esquire), which is front and center in Erdoğan's regime in Turkey.

Plus there is the prosecution of Trump "opponents" such as James Comey (former director of the FBI) and Letitia Wilson (State Attorney General of New York).

Poland is an example that had degraded in terms of freedoms of citizens but is on a turnaround, with the election as president of Donald Tusk.  So it can be reversed.

It's incredible though that the US has reached this nadir.  I never thought that when I studied Latin America in political science courses in college, that the readings foreshadowed today's United States of America.

DC District Bike Summit, 12/7/2025

The first annual.  

FWIW, I suggested something like this in 2010.  Montgomery County's Civic Federation, with the support of people in the planning department, did it if not in 2010, 2011 and 2012.  But I don't think it continued.

The MoCo meeting got some media coverage, at least with WTOP-radio, and by being co sponsored by the Civic Federation, it engaged older people in an area of interest often seen as dominated by younger demographics.

It's hardly an innovative suggestion.  Most state bike promotion groups have annual meetings.  

Eg it's been a long time, but I'd attended a couple of the meetings in Maryland, which are held in Annapolis, to facilitate interaction with state legislators and executive branch appointees.

Five years or so before 2010, I suggested an annual regionally-focused advocacy meeting on transit, moving from DC to Maryland and Virginia in succeeding years.

FWIW/2, DC has a bike promotion organization, Washington Area Bicyclist Association, while Chicago has a sustainable mobility organization--biking, walking, and transit--called the Active Transportation Alliance.

ATA grew out of the Chicago Bicycle Coalition.  NYC's Transportation Alternatives also addresses biking, walking, and transit.  

I think it makes more sense to have one organization addressing the three interconnected pro-environment modes.

I'm not sure about biking, but Montgomery County's Action Committee on Transit does address pedestrian issues too.

And rotating meetings across the jurisdictions.

National Community Planning Month | Citizen advocates matter

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Melanie Winter, who fought for embracing nature along the Los Angeles River, dies," that a prominent advocate for the LA River, which decades ago was converted into a concrete ditch, has died.

From the article:

Winter worked persistently for nearly three decades to spread her alternative vision for the river and its watershed, calling for “unbuilding” where feasible, removing concrete and reactivating stretches of natural floodplains where the river could spread out.

Leading her nonprofit group the River Project, she championed efforts to embrace nature along the river, saying that allowing space for a meandering waterway lined with riparian forests would help recharge groundwater, reduce flood risks and allow a green oasis to flourish in the heart of Los Angeles.

She developed ambitious plans for rewilding parts of the river channel and nearby areas, and helped spearhead new riverfront parks as well as neighborhood “urban acupuncture” projects that replaced asphalt with permeable paving, allowing rainwater to percolate underground instead of running in concrete channels to the ocean.

“I think what always drove her was the sense of, it was a river that had been contained in concrete … and that nature-based solutions could do a better job,” said Conner Everts, a friend and leader of the Southern California Watershed Alliance. “Her goal was to re-create a natural meandering river, with the ability to recharge into the [San Fernando] Valley and restore nature, as much as possible.”

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Individuals do make a difference.  And often they provide for us a way to look at things we've taken for granted in new and innovative ways, recognizing that the status quo isn't enough. 

 

Minneapolis television news anchor creates documentary saying that Minneapolis is a shithole

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "What to make of ‘A Precarious State,’ the new film that sees Minneapolis through a dark lens." Rick Kupchela produced it, paid for it to be broadcast on local television--it's on YouTube too--in advance of Minneapolis' mayor election.

Billed as a public education campaign, the film, “A Precarious State,” has drawn some 300,000 views on YouTube and aired statewide on ABC affiliates last week as a paid advertisement.

Asked if it was released to influence city elections, Kupchella, in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, said it wasn’t, but he also said it was necessary to release the film while it was still relevant.

The film doesn’t interview or mention Mayor Jacob Frey, who’s battling several challengers for a third term, but a woman who appeared in the documentary told the Star Tribune she agreed to be in it after she was told it would portray Frey in a positive light.

Kupchella won’t say who paid for the film, though he did tell the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead that it was produced with the help of “business and community leaders.” He said donors weren’t eager to come forward publicly in today’s supercharged political climate. “I think it’s a very important story that we uncovered here,” he said in an interview.

He says state school results are poor, city crime is out of control, that the city is socialist--like Seattle some Democrat Socialist of America members sit elected to City Council and this year the mayoral campaign features another ("Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh is a democratic socialist. Here’s what that means," MST).  DSA representatives are in the State Legislature and on St. Paul's City Council as well.

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Interestingly, American Prospect has an article, "The ad campaign for capitalism," about the national business community's campaign in the 1970s to save capitalism.

And Rolling Stone on billionaires wanting to control politics, "The Right’s Secret Plan to Help Billionaires Buy Elections."

And it turns out Trump's proposed university compact ("Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT," Bloomberg, "Inside the Trump Administration’s Assault on Higher Education," New Yorker) was provided in draft form by a trustee of the Wharton Business School at Penn ("The Billionaire Behind Trump’s Deal for Universities," New York Times).  Note that even if a college president is against signing, a conservative board might force the university to agree ("‘One-sided deal’: College presidents see Trump offer rife with peril," Politico).

Speaking of socialists ("America's Socialist Experiment," TwinCities PBS), Professor Joshua Freeman argues that the ostensibly Fiorello LaGuardia, NYC's mayor during the Depression, had a socialist agenda ("How Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Transformed New York City," Jacobin).

Urban unrest (riots versus uprising), Watts anniversary

A couple weeks ago, PBS World Channel repeated an episode, "The Riot Report," from the PBS American Experience documentary series, about the Watts riots in 1965 (I learned about them when I was 12ish, reading the fiction book, The New Centurions), urban unrest in other cities, how it led to the creation of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders––informally known as the Kerner Commission, after the chair Otto Kerner, Governor of Illinois, but that politicians, including President Johnson, weren't prepared to act on the recommendations, which were published in book form (I think I have a copy somewhere).

In this Aug. 12, 1965 file photo, demonstrators push against a police car after rioting erupted in the Watts district of Los Angeles. It began with a routine traffic stop 50 years ago this month, blossomed into a protest with the help of a rumor and escalated into the deadliest and most destructive riot Los Angeles had seen. The Watts riot broke out Aug. 11, 1965 and raged for most of a week. When the smoke cleared, 34 people were dead, more than a 1,000 were injured and some 600 buildings were damaged.(AP Photo)

I hadn't realized that their rebroadcast inadvertently presaged the 60th anniversary of the Watts riots, the first major urban riot after WW2 (if you don't count other civil rights battles as riots, which were often started by those opposed to civil rights).  Riots in Newark and Detroit followed, and many many more in 1968.

A number of buildings are left gutted and smoldering after being set afire during Los Angeles' six day riot in August 1965. Damages from looting and fires were estimated at $100 million, with hardly a store in the Watts area left untouched and whole blocks of buildings gutted to their foundations.

Ironically, the report was issued in late 1967, about five months before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which sparked rioting all over the country.  It's also ironic that Trump federalized the DC police department this week.

-- pdf version of the Kerner Commission Report

Late last year a book was published, positioned as an update of the Kerner Report, Creating Justice in a Multiracial Democracy New Will for Evidence-Based Policies That Work.  

It's all the more relevant given how the Christian/White National policy of the Trump Administration ("White Christian nationalists are poised to remake America in their image during Trump’s second term, author says," CNN) sweeps aside policies and funding for programs to alleviate poverty and to address the inequity that derives from racism ("With anti-DEI and ESG battles, Trump is waging war against freedom," The Hill).

There's been press coverage of the anniversary (""Watts Rebellion" 60th anniversary renews call for Kerner Report plan to fight poverty," Axios, "Watts riots, 60 years later: See National Guard’s response to LA chaos," USA Today, "Watts: 60 years after riots, challenges persist, but this South LA community marches on," Los Angeles Daily News).

Note that in talking about this issue, with people who participated in the 1968 riots, which destroyed thriving retail corridors like H Street NE, where I ended up living when I first moved to Washington in 1987, they didn't see them so much as what are referred to criminally as "riots," but as an "uprising" or "rebellion," still attacking and challenging the state, but with legitimate grievances.  From the LA Times:

For a moment there was even the temptation to make my own dash into one of the burning stores. But that quickly passed. One of my friends kept repeating with his face contorted with anger: “Maybe now they’ll see how rotten they treat us.” In that bitter moment, he said what countless other Black people felt as the flames and the smoke swirled.

The Watts article in the LADN is a retrospective, and identifies needs today that have existed for a long time.

800 block of H Street NE burning during the 1968 riots'. Joe Silberman, Washington Star.

Note that in talking about this issue, with people who participated in the 1968 riots, which destroyed thriving retail corridors like H Street NE, where I ended up living when I first moved to Washington in 1987, they didn't see them so much as what are referred to criminally as "riots," but as an "uprising," still attacking the state, but with legitimate grievances.

The Watts article in the LADN is a retrospective, and identifies needs today that have existed for a long time.

My lesson is that few places have the financial capital to be able to recover from a riot, it's like a natural disaster.  That was based on the forlorn nature of H Street, in 1987, roughly 20 years after, and in 2001, more than 30 years after it was still grim--despite being in the National Capital. 

In Watts too redevelopment languishes, " L.A. bought land in Watts and promised jobs. Now, it’s weeds and shanties' here,"  "Six decades after the Watts riots, too little has changed," LA Times, "Researchers, nonprofits working in Watts, South Central reflect on the region 60 years after riots," LADN).  From the second LA Times article:

... [the burning streets are] impossible to forget for another reason. Exactly six decades later, some of those streets look as if time has stood still. They are dotted with the same fast-food restaurants, beauty shops, liquor stores and mom-and-pop grocery stores. The main street near the block I lived on then is just as unkempt, pothole-ridden and trash littered now as it ever was. All the homes and stores in the area are hermetically sealed with iron bars, security gates and burglar alarms.

A special officer looks over the damage to a surplus store in the Watts area on Aug. 13, 1965, following the second night of rioting in the Watts district of Los Angeles. At dawn 900 officers armed with automatic weapons scattered the crowds. Bettmann Archive Via Getty Images 

In taking a hard look at what has changed in Watts — and all of America’s neighborhoods like Watts — since the riots, the picture is not flattering. According to Data USA, Watts still has the runaway highest poverty rate in L.A. County. Nearly one-third of the households are far below the official poverty level. It has the highest jobless rate. It is still plagued by the same paucity of retail stores, healthcare services, chronically low educational test scores and high dropout rates.

The only reason H Street NE finally did is the post-2000 recovery of interest in urban living, and its proximity to Downtown, Capitol Hill, and transportation assets.  We capitalized on that, when a group of us--good timing--organized a commercial district revitalization initiative.  

There have been ups and downs, and I'd say it's down somewhat now ("Progress, remembrance in Washington’s H Street Corridor," Washington Post), because of competition from other commercial districts elsewhere in the city, covid, and not as great subway access--which was addressed through venture capital subsidized trips on ride hailing vehicles--Uber and Lyft ("H Street NE nightlife district, failing?," "A follow up on the H Street article: Learning from Philadelphia | More sophisticated daypart, retail, cultural, and experience planning"), which has since dried up.

OTOH, since the 2000s, Greater H Street has experienced more than $1 billion in new development, which I see as an overall win ("DC makes yet another bad decision about streetcars: will replace the one line with a so called "fancy" bus | The Vision Thing" [2025]).

Brenda Hackett-Hall, 75, has lived in Watts since about age 2. She recalls the store her mother worked at got looted during the 1965 Watts Riots. Although she trusts the police, many in her community still do not, she says. (Photo by Linh Tat/Southern California Newspapers Group)

WRT crime, a somewhat different issue, in Uneasy Peace, Patrick Sharkey attributes a good deal of the 2000s era crime drop to community organizing and the creation of community organizations.  I think that's a part of it.  But it's not enough to have community organizations to turn around a riot corridor ("Watts after 50 years: ‘Still here. Not done’," LADN, from 2015).

You need capital + people's willingness to live there.

A Minneapolis liquor store going up in flames on May 28, three days after George Floyd’s death in police custody. Kerem Yucel/AFP.  The lot, at a major intersection, is still vacant 5 years later.

I think the destruction of Lake Street in Minneapolis after the George Floyd unrest, will be hard to recover from ("Red tape, rising costs slow efforts to rebuild businesses burned after Floyd’s murder," Minnesota Public Radio).

I think H Street and 14th Street NW in DC are rare examples of substantive post-riot revitalization.