Local initiative in Huntsville, Alabama aims to improve security by banning problem customers across 18 bars

One of the first issues I got involved in in DC had to do with the overconcentration of liquor stores in my downtrodden neighborhood.  Such is linked to increased crime and community problems ("The Association between Density of Alcohol Establishments and Violent Crime within Urban Neighborhoods," Alcohol, Clinical and Experimental Research).  

I had learned about Seattle creating special zones to limit the sales of single bottles of beer, as an attempt to limit those problems ("Seattle may extend alcohol-sale limits to much larger area," "City tries to curb liquor sales," Seattle Times).  In 2003, the Washington Post published a story on those efforts ("Neighbors fight beer sales") and I got my picture in the paper (albeit on a slow news day)..

I wasn't against the sale of alcohol in managed situations (restaurants and taverns) unlike my neighbors, who couldn't see the difference in effect of on premise consumption of alcohol versus off premise consumption ("Restaurants and liquor licenses--How much is too much on H Street?," blog, 2005).

But the fact is, with establishments that are more alcohol-forward than food forward, with entertainment, music, dancing, etc., drinking can fuel violence.  I advocated for better security plans, and places did have them.

From "Bar Brawls," University of Toronto Magazine.

But one big problem is the focus not on sequestering and having the police deal with perpetrators, the plan is "to move them outside, off the premises, where it is no longer our problem."

All that does is displace the problem, it moves it from inside the club to outside, and the problem continues.  The media is full of articles about such problems all around the country, culminating in shootings and sometimes, deaths.

A consortium of clubs in Huntsville is dealing with this proactively, by maintaining a list of problem customers/people who have been banned, sharing the list across their 18-member group, and not permitting them to enter the premises to begin with ("North Huntsville bars band together to blacklist troublemakers across 18 venues," Fox 54/Rocket City News). 

The network allows participating venues to share information about patrons who have caused problems at any location within the group. When security staff scan a customer's identification at the entrance, the system immediately alerts them if that person has been banned from another business in the network, showing the duration of the ban, the reason for it, and which establishment issued it.

... Jabar Westbrook, owner of Goodtimez Billiards and other north Huntsville businesses, said the system addresses a common problem where troublemakers simply move from one venue to another after being ejected.

"Sometimes it's the same people going from place to place causing trouble, and so we're just trying to create consistency where no matter what, those people who are troublemakers can't just go somewhere else," Westbrook said.

This program makes a lot of sense, allowing bars to be proactive, instead of reactive.  It expands the range of options discussed in Assaults in and Around Bars, 2nd Edition (Center for Problem Oriented Policing, Arizona State University).

Health equity devolves to cities and states as the federal government cuts taxes for the wealthy

I have a bunch of pieces on equity planning and social urbanism, touched off by my experience on a DC Grand Jury.  As one of the court reporters said "breaking the cycle--man, we're just cutting the grass."  I figured that the city spends a couple billion dollars a year on the impoverished in DC, just to keep them in place.

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs" (2017)
-- "Equity planning: an update" (2020)
-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC" (2022)
-- "Experiments in Social Urbanism"
-- "'Social urbanism' experiment breathes new life into Colombia's Medellin Toronto Globe & Mail
-- "Medellín's 'social urbanism' a model for city transformation," Mail & Guardian
-- "Medellín slum gets giant outdoor escalator," Telegraph
-- "Medellín, Colombia offers an unlikely model for urban renaissance," Toronto Star

Some cities have launched poverty reduction and area-based economic development programs to address this, like GrowSouth in Dallas ("Cities Need Goals and Capital to Fight Poverty," Catalyst) or Invest SouthWest in Chicago ("Johnson Administration Breathes New Life into INVEST South/West Developments in Englewood," South Side Weekly, "Invited In Only To Be Shut Out," Block Club Chicago, Next Steps, West Humboldt Park, "City announces four new targets for Invest South/West," Crain's Chicago Business).  

United Way Greater Toronto for more than a decade has focused its program funding on languishing impoverished neighborhoods ("Guiding the United Way through the next decade," Toronto Star).  From the article:

United Way Greater Toronto just launched an incredibly ambitious 10-year strategic plan. We’re going to sustain the 10 community hubs we have and create 10 more. Hubs are like a one-stop shop for social and healthcare services in neighbourhoods that need it most. So, it improves access to services. It improves quality. It pulls together organizations under one roof, so it increases collaboration across organizations.

Our second goal is a community real estate vision. Seventy per cent of the community organizations we support are at risk of losing their space, and they’re also at risk of then being, in essence, priced out of communities that need them the most. We have a real focus on supporting those organizations to ensure the stability of those physical sites being owned by community organizations and stewarded for generations to come.

At least with the cities, the programs tend to wax and wane as new administrations succeed previous ones more committed to poverty. 

If we think that cities (and counties, see "Pontiac Michigan: a lagging African American city in one of the nation's wealthiest counties" and "East County, Montgomery County, Maryland: Council redistricting spurs ideas for revitalization | Part 1 -- Overview") should focus on addressing poverty with place-based solutions, I'm thinking it's the same with health equity.  Programs like Medicaid expansion--run at the state level in most places--provide health care to people who are medically needy.

This op-ed in City & State by NYC's health commissioner, "I am New York City’s doctor. This is how we treat chronic disease" makes the point that as the federal government cuts health programs (and medical research) cities and states should step up and fill the gap.

[RFK Jr.] has fired at least 20,000 employees from the Department of Health and Human Services. Billions of dollars in lifesaving medical research have been cut. Tens of millions of Americans, including millions of New Yorkers, will lose their Medicaid, Medicare, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits because of Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The record-breaking government shutdown multiplied the confusion and loss.

... My job is to support all New Yorkers in leading their healthiest lives, no matter their income or neighborhood. We have the experience and expertise to improve outcomes and even prevent chronic disease entirely. We know what approaches are proven to make a lasting impact.

That’s why, at the New York City Health Department, we recently released a city-wide chronic disease prevention strategy, which outlines how local government can address the root causes of chronic disease.

The strategy recommends promoting healthy living through nutritious foods and physical activity. But we must also meet people’s material needs. Improving access to basic resources – with direct cash payments, grocery credits and more – has a proven impact on health. And informed conversations around marketing, product design and creative media approaches can increase consumer awareness of the health impacts of the products they buy.

When people can afford the things they need – housing, health care, the ability to put healthy food on the table – they aren’t waiting to be treated in the ER once they’re in crisis.

This also comes up in Chicago, with multi-decade differences in life expectancy based on race, income, and neighborhood ("As they live Chicago's 'death gap,' a 3-generation family fights to end it," Chicago Sun-Times).

These kinds of statistics are the basis of the concept of "social determinants of health" 

and programs to address the disparities.

I have a series of articles about developing a comprehensive program at the bigger city scale on health equity, but I never termed it that way.  City and county poverty amelioration programs need to focus on health equity as an element of equity planning, and these entries lay out a way forward.

-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC | Part One: Rearticulating the system of health and wellness care East of the River" (2018)
-- "Revisiting East of the River medical care: United Medical Center" (2018)
-- "Update on DC's plans to build a new United Medical Center" (2018)
-- "A glaring illustration of the need for comprehensive health and wellness planning in DC: Providence Hospital" (2018)

-- "Community Health Improvement Planning" (2019)

-- "Hospitals as urban anchors/revitalization levers, not usually, but with great potential to serve communities in important ways: Examples are two forthcoming projects by Intermountain Health and University of Utah Health" (2023)

-- "Big omission in blog series on advance hospital/health and wellness planning, public health planning: addiction services" (2024)

-- "Costly failures in the mental health system" (2025)

Redefining what public safety means: Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles

Defund the police versus... My big disappointment over the reaction to the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer was not the demonstrations, except when violent or used by thieves as an opportunity to commit crimes, was the slogan "Defund the Police" ("Is it too late to change the messaging on "Defund the Police"? How about "Reconstruct Policing"?"," 2020).

Redefining public safety.  The slogan certainly hasn't helped the Democrats, who've been wrong-footed on public safety ever since.  Most importantly, it obscured the real need, to redefine what public safety means and how to deliver it.

A multi-faceted public safety response, including police, at least initially costs more to deliver than the current system.  Although maybe not once savings are counted.

What is public safety? Is it to just arrest people after they commit a crime, is to provide the mental health care services that when not provided lead to people's problems being defined as criminal, is it to create lasting structural change with a number of moving parts, police--because face it, some people need to be "policed", mental health services and crews, programs to break the generational cycle of crime in low income neighborhoods. Etc.

Alex Vitale's End of Policing has some provocative suggestions about how to decriminalize many social problems, which have been criminalized because the lack of alternatives to police.

It's not "bad apple" police officers, the system is the "bad apple." It's unfortunate that the concept of "broken windows" policing ("Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety," Atlantic Magazine, 1982) got translated into practice as "zero tolerance" policing, with a focus on citing or arresting people for the most minor of violations.  

I often think that the New York City Transit Police--under William Bratton before he became overall Police Commissioner and the Transit Police were merged into NYPD--is the only place where true "broken windows" policing, with a focus on addressing disorder in terms of both people and place, was implemented.

-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany," 2019
-- "Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023
-- "Proof of Broken Windows theory in Philadelphia and New York City," 2024

Failures repeat and few officers face repercussions for their illegal acts.  The blog entry "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York" (2021) and the comments section discusses a broader paradigm for providing public safety focusing on continued problems in Rochester New York, when police respond to people with mental health issues.

Just last week, three Memphis police officers were exonerated for the killing of a man they cornered in a traffic stop ("3 former Memphis police officers found not guilty in the death of Tyre Nichols," NPR).  To me, these cases and those resulting in large payouts--e.g., Chicago spends millions of dollars per year on settlements over police misconduct--ought to be indicators of a need for a structural approach to change ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," 2020).

Spending billions to maintain a community's level of crime and poverty/equity planning.  After my grand jury service in 2013, I was left with the thought that DC spends a couple billion dollars per year just to keep the low income parts of the system the same, at a negative equilibrium.  In Los Angeles a similar estimate is many many billions of dollars per year.

That led me to write about equity planning and social urbanism.

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017
-- "Equity planning: an update," 2020
-- "Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago," 2021

Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles.  Besides NYC subways, Los Angeles probably has one of the most significant "public safety" initiatives built on broken windows windows principles in the US, the "Community Safety Partnership" ("How Watts and the LAPD make peace," Los Angeles Times).

I first wrote about the CSP in "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"" (2014) after seeing it featured on the old Bryant Gumbel HBO TV show on sports.

In 2020, I wrote a follow up speculative piece applying it to different kinds of neighborhoods not dealing with gang problems like LA, but the problems resulting from drug use ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)."

The heart of the program is building a new relationship between the community and the police department ("American Police Must Own Their Racial Injustices," American Prospect)

New article on the CSP.  Last week, Rolling Stone Magazine published an up to date article on the program, "Inside the Battle for the Soul of the LAPD."

... the most salient thing Coughlin did in 2011 was say yes to Emada Tingirides. Tingirides, a Black sergeant and unstoppable rock star in the LAPD, had been tasked with setting up four new squads to undertake the impossible in Watts: to make peace with its residents, build faith with its leaders, and break the gangs’ stranglehold on its corners. Those new units, to be known as the Community Safety Partnership (CSP), were the brainchild of a pair of ex-combatants: the newly named police chief, Charlie Beck, and a firebrand opponent of gang cops and chiefs, the social-justice titan Connie Rice. After years of warfare in open court — Rice, an attorney and civil rights activist, had spent decades suing men like Beck for their “blue grip” suppression of the poor — they’d come to a hard-won truth: Shock-and-awe policing didn’t work. Far from making Los Angeles safe, it wreaked war without end between cops and gangs, and turned Watts and Compton into domestic kill zones, forever blighting the lives of the kids raised there.

It was no one’s intent to invent the future of policing when CSP was launched in 2011. But that is precisely what its founders have done: built a new breed of cop and retooled the social contract between a community and the officers who protect it. It’s premised in the notion that safety is a covenant between two parties: the cops who patrol the riskiest streets, and residents who trust and respect those cops enough to help them keep the peace. That is where CSP comes in. It deploys its cops less as foot patrolmen than as problem-­solvers. They get streetlights fixed, abandoned cars towed, and gang graffiti scrubbed. They find jobs for strapped parents, treatment for first offenders, and vocational education for at-risk teens. They sit gang leaders down and strike a pact: They’ll ignore petty drug deals and public drinking on weekends in exchange for those men leaving their weapons at home. Above all, they recruit every kid they can find for CSP rec teams and youth clubs. Volunteer-based outfits like the Police Athletic League have been around for decades, offering after-school programs, tutoring, and camps in major cities across the country, but L.A. is actually paying CSP cops to run cheer squads and reading groups. 

... He walks me through the protocols CSP established before it sent its officers into Watts. Stop the stop-and-frisk — a tactic Bratton endorsed — replace it with stop-and-chat, and get to know everyone on your beat. Focus less on crime than the problems that create it, especially with respect to school-age kids. Become their Pee Wee coach or their reading tutor. Take them out to Popeyes for heart-to-hearts. And when violent crimes occur, go arrest the doer, then return and ask his folks what they need: cash or food assistance, a job-training slot, an after-school program.

Despite the success, it's a constant battle to keep the CSP program in LA going, because it is so different from how police departments mostly operate on the principles of "warrior policing," "zero tolerance policing," "shock and awe" policing, mass incarceration, and focusing on car-based response to 911 calls rather than place-based policing.  It's another example that the problems of policing are structural, not the fault of a bad apple or two.

For example, a pilot CSP was created in the MacArthur Park area of LA.  But it never became part of the program, wasn't continued, and the gains have all been lost ("Community safety partnership for MacArthur Park in Los Angeles?").  And the program hasn't expanded to abutting neighborhoods that have similar problems.

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Exemplary public safety programs, that are mostly one-offs

• the above-mentioned Community Safety Partnership
• true broken windows policing
• Fullerton, California police department reorganized after officers beat a homeless man to death ("Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department," 2022)
• CAHOOTS (Eugene, Oregon) and other mental health response units here and there across the country--nevertheless most cities don't have enough teams to provide round the clock service and killings at the hands of police still occur
• Domestic violence response unit, High Point, NC and Appleton, Wisconsin  (""How High Point, N.C., Solved Its Domestic Violence Problem," Governing Magazine, "11 questions that could save a woman's life," Appleton Post-Crescent)
• Operation Ceasefire, gang intervention program, Boston ("Straight Outta Boston," Mother Jones)

Costly failures in the mental health system | Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times has a six part series of article on structural failure in the provision of mental health care in Illinois, which often has dire consequences:

To try to understand the reasons behind a spate of shocking crimes in downtown Chicago between 2021 and 2024, the Chicago Sun-Times examined four unprovoked killings and two nonfatal attacks, including a bizarre assault on a flight attendant from Mexico. Most of the attacks happened during the day. The victims: people who were just going about their lives. I 

n each case, the people charged — three who’ve been convicted — had a history of serious mental illness or delusional behavior and had drifted in and out of jails and hospitals, sometimes for decades, their conditions never regularly treated. 

Reporters pored over thousands of pages of police reports and court records, went to court hearings for a year for those who were charged, and interviewed family members, mental health experts, law enforcement authorities and government officials. 

What emerged most clearly from this reporting is that there is no system in Chicago to identify — let alone to help — the small percentage of severely mentally ill and violent people who commit these crimes. In each of these cases, it was only when they have been accused of murder or some other terrible crime that they were put on regular mental health medication — a finding that experts say is troubling but not surprising.

I realize in my series of articles on a more ideal health and wellness care system, there needs to be a separate article on mental health care, which is both a health and wellness care issue, as well as one of public safety.

-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC | Part One: Rearticulating the system of health and wellness care East of the River." (2018)
-- "Part Two: Creating a graduate health and biotechnology research initiative on the St. Elizabeths campus," (2018)
-- "Part three: the potential for donations around an expanded program," (2018)
-- "Revisiting East of the River medical care: United Medical Center," (2018)
-- "Update on DC's plans to build a new United Medical Center," (2018)

-- "A glaring illustration of the need for comprehensive health and wellness planning in DC: Providence Hospital," (2018)

-- "Community Health Improvement Planning," (2019)

-- "Big omission in blog series on advance hospital/health and wellness planning, public health planning: addiction services," (2024)

========

"Failure to treat, failure to project," main homepage, Chicago Sun-Times series on mental health care issues

-- "For accused mentally ill killers and their victims, help comes too little too late"

-- "Family still grieves for grad student prosecutors say was killed by a man 'terrorizing downtown' Chicago"

-- "A killer’s brother and mother: Fix mental health system so others don’t die"

-- "Cheerful day on North Michigan Avenue turns into a ‘nightmare’ for young flight attendant"

-- "How can Illinois prevent violent outcomes with better mental health treatment?"

-- "Released from the hospital and left on a sidewalk: ‘He literally fell through the cracks’"

From article 5:

• There’s no single entity overseeing the mental health care system in Chicago. That means, for instance, that homeless patients discharged from private hospitals might be given a bottle of medication and told to follow up at a clinic without what experts say should be a “warm handoff” to a treatment provider.
• Even though people experiencing homelessness and severe mental illness are more likely to become victims than perpetrators of crime, a small but visible number of them repeatedly cycles through the criminal legal system.
• With only about 1,200 state psychiatric beds in Illinois, he says more funding for community mental health would allow people who don’t need 24/7 hospitalization to leave state mental hospitals — meaning hospital spots could go to people in even greater need.
• But replacing long stays at state mental hospitals like the one in Elgin with comprehensive outpatient treatment would require a radical shift in thinking — away from retribution and toward treatment aimed at reducing suffering.
• It also would require supporting mechanisms that largely don’t exist, like providing housing for homeless people who have severe mental illness so they can be reached by medical and social service providers.
• “If the person who doesn’t get decent services commits a crime, now we have a crime victim, and that’s a cost,” he says. “And we have the cost of prosecuting her or him, and that’s a cost. And who’s paying for that?”
• Illinois spent an average of $49,271 on each person in prison in 2024, far more expensive than the cost of so-called wraparound services to keep people in treatment. The two biggest Chicago social service providers pegged these intensive services at $15,000 to $35,000 per client per year, depending on the person’s needs — which is as much as 70% less expensive than incarceration.
• Ideally, Antholt says, when mentally ill people are arrested, they’d get help before their release with housing, employment, disability services and mental health treatment, which currently exist in “very siloed” systems.
• ... He says the “magic bullet” for solving the problem is a “very good use of resources up front instead of very expensive institutionalization” because “the cost of prison and jails and hospitals and ERs is very expensive, and we can’t afford this in the long run.”
• ... She says that, when she went to the Elgin hospital to ask about her missing brother, she was told, “ ‘Oh, we’re not responsible. Once he’s released, our responsibility is just to drop them off. We don’t have to walk them into the actual shelter.’ ”

Some exemplary programs 

Nonprofit providers say they’re doing their best to keep people healthy and out of the criminal legal system. 

Some, including the largest in Chicago, Thresholds, run “Assertive Community Treatment,” or ACT, teams, providing intensive wraparound services to people with severe mental illness. The teams meet people as they’re being discharged from hospitals and take them home, get their prescriptions filled, make sure they have food, connect them with psychiatrists and work out immediate transportation needs.

Chicago Community Policing Study

Civic groups in Chicago joined in to commission a study, Operationalizing Community Policing Within the Chicago Police Department: A Summary of Current and Promising National Practices, to help the Chicago Police Department realize its goal to become an agency committed to "community oriented policing."

21CP’s study – which involved interviews with personnel and community stakeholders with direct knowledge of community policing practices in 17 jurisdictions nationally as well as a review of relevant literature –identified a number of elements that CPD’s community policing approach should reflect and incorporate going forward, including:  

• Community policing must be an express, defined overall philosophy. In many, but not all, of the departments studied, community policing is specifically identified as an overall philosophy of policing and an overarching way that the department does its work – and not a specialized program with its own label, name, or personnel
• Community engagement must be understood as part of, but not the same as, overall community policing. Because community policing involves dynamic partnership with community to co-produce public safety, it necessarily requires police personnel to foster relationships with community stakeholders. However, operationalizing “community policing” likely benefits from police departments systematically describing how that community engagement factors into a wider “community policing” philosophy or approach.
• Community policing likely benefits from formally codifying and tracking community problems, assets, and events – and from other types of centralized, department-wide coordination or administration. Even as community policing can and must happen at the level of individual officers, problem-solving efforts, community assets, and opportunities for community engagement must be inventoried, codified, and tracked so that progress can be made and measured. That is, it appears that departments benefit from maintaining some structures and processes to ensure that individual personnel are appropriately “plugged into” the department or a geographic area’s community policing concerns.
• Police agencies must articulate specific, granular performance expectations for personnel across all ranks (i.e., including supervisors) and roles on community policing responsibilities and provide training on such expectations. This may include: (1) Specific guidance on how to use unstructured community engagement time (2) Specific guidance on how to incorporate community policing principles into call response and enforcement activity (3) Specific guidance or instructions on promoting visibility (4) Designating specific expectations about the amount of time that officers should spend on community and problem-oriented policing activities; and (5) Providing personnel with responsibility for a defined geographic area
• Community policing programs benefit from mechanisms for gathering, analyzing, and using performance data and metrics. For a police agency to gauge whether its personnel are in fact conducting the types of activities that community policing requires, it will necessarily benefit from collecting and analyzing information from the field about officer performance. Although some departments have established mechanisms for gauging performance and outcomes, several departments with whom 21CP engaged said that data and metrics regarding community policing is an area that they are actively trying to address – recognizing that the absence of concrete information makes it more difficult for the department to gauge its level of success and share positive outcomes with community and external stakeholders.
• Many departments benefit from having some centralized, department-wide coordination or administration of community policing. Although departments must ensure that the existence of some individuals to oversee community policing is not seen by others as making community policing someone else’s role or responsibility, they can benefit from personnel ensuring that the department, as a whole, is aligning its activities with the community policing objective.

Also see the blog entry:

-- "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York," 

Experience economy/nightlife: Boston, LA, Pittsburgh, London, Santa Monica

I wrote about this issue recently, in "Ain't got that soul (when younger demographics leave the city): and musings about the nightlife economy" as well as some other pieces.  

This does not look very congenial.  BG photo.

This Boston Globe article,  "Downtown Boston is trying to find its post-pandemic identity. It’s fighting an uphill battle," hits a home run on the topic, that cities need to reshape their downtowns to remain relevant, that mixed use neighborhoods are more popular, that people tend to stay closer to home, especially if they don't work Downtown.  From the article

Measures of foot traffic and office vacancy haven’t fully rebounded. Hybrid work remains pretty common. Car traffic is worse. Empty storefronts persist. But more than anything, we just don’t mix like we did before.

A Northeastern University study of cellphone data found that when COVID hit, inhabitants of Greater Boston became far less likely to interact with people of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Those numbers have been recovering, but for many parts of the region, particularly in the suburbs, levels of what researchers call “social exploration” have fallen sharply.

And that’s bad news for a city whose culture and economy have, for centuries, been built on people mixing, connecting, and sharing ideas, said Northeastern University physicist Esteban Moro, who’s leading the study. Bad enough that it raises questions about what cities like Boston are for, now, and how we make them places that people connect once again.

... It’s an indicator of the diminished role that downtown plays in the daily lives of Bostonians. According to recent figures from the Downtown Boston Alliance, about 20,000 fewer people work downtown than they did five years ago, and they come in, on average, about three fewer days per month. Add it up, and the work trips into the core of the city district have fallen by almost half.

... “The fundamental thing that we’re asking is where are people?” she said. “Where is the center of gravity in the city, whether for shopping or for hanging out or for work? Where do people come together?”

Increasingly, that’s neighborhoods where people do more than work. While foot traffic downtown remains below pre-pandemic levels, according to city data, it’s nearly back citywide, and up in places such as Fenway and Longwood. What’s the difference? These “multipurpose” neighborhoods, as Moro describes them, provide chances to live, work, and play in more equal measure.

... To Crockett, even the word “downtown” feels a bit archaic, as it implies we’re all going to the same place. In this more splintered age, we aren’t. “If people are going to venture out of their home for any reason,” she said, “it’s to have a particular experience.”

And experience is a big part of how developers aim to draw people out now. Food halls, for instance, are springing up across the city, not just catering to office workers seeking lunch but also tourists, families, and after-hours crowds into the night.

... A slew of for-profit “Instagram museums” and immersive art experiences have recently taken up residence in hollowed-out storefronts. A Harry Potter exhibit has lately drawn throngs to an empty old Best Buy at the CambridgeSide mall. “Competitive socializing” is all the rage in the Seaport, where different venues offer mini-golf, ping pong, bowling, pickleball, or darts. And the recent arrival of new spaces where people can both shop and linger — be it at Beacon Hill Books & Cafe, or the batting-cage-boasting Dick’s House of Sport in Back Bay — are models for how businesses can transform an errand into an event.

Complementary articles I've come across and/or written about over the past few months are "Once LA's nightlife epicenter, the storied Sunset Strip has a murky future," from the San Francisco Chronicle, "An interesting public space development project in Downtown Pittsburgh: extends the range of after-work activities to keep office workers engaged," about a forthcoming space in Downtown Pittsburgh that has some of the characteristics of experiential interaction discussed in the BG, and the Los Angeles Times, "‘Experiential’ retail surges as landlords try to lure customers back to the mall," mostly about Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade and its need for change in the face of the decline of traditional retail--it had been anchored by at least two department stores, and about the reproduction of a 1970s study on people's use of public spaces ("People aren't "hanging out" as much outdoors during the workday in the center city").

Plus, this "The suffocation of Soho: how London's creative rogue is being sanitised," on London's SoHo (Evening Standard).  It's more about how permanent residents want to put strictures on businesses. 

 Westminster borough has put together a report, After Dark, about their desires to quiet things a bit.

So I guess I shouldn't have been as derisive of Mayor Bowser's similar effort in DC ("Know your market #2: DC commercial property incentives"), the issue wasn't so much an overfocus on big things and converting office into residential, but that many steps are necessary especially because there is a hard ceiling on how many people want to live Downtown.

====

Also see, "Getting a filling — at the mall. Why dentists and other wellness tenants are in big demand," Los Angeles Times. and "A $100M bet on experiential entertainment by Chicago restaurant vets," Crain's Chicago Business.

Along the lines of the Pittsburgh project, "A historic gas station in Glendale becomes art when an artist fills it with color," Los Angeles Daily News, a streamlined old gas station maintained as a public art space, and "Pacific Science Center and Seattle Center forge new partnership," Seattle Times, on continuing to redefine and improve programs and spaces.

Since their creation for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, Pacific Science Center and the adjacent Seattle Center campus have operated independently: Seattle Center as a department of the city of Seattle and PacSci as a science and education nonprofit with its own buildings.

That’s now changing. Pacific Science Center and the city announced Wednesday morning their plans to integrate the two campuses as one public space, open to all, though PacSci will retain ownership of its buildings. The organizations will also explore city funding options for courtyard renovations and expanded public access.

The deal opens the door for more city funding and involvement for PacSci’s iconic but aging buildings. It likely also speeds up funding for the removal of its north gates and kiosks as well as improvements to its southern entrance.

Big changes are coming to Pacific Science Center, which neighbors Seattle Center.

 (Greg Gilbert / The Seattle Times.

This, leaders said, should make its beloved, currently gated courtyard more accessible, ideally by the FIFA World Cup in summer 2026. It will also help with previously announced renovations of PacSci’s aging courtyard and leaking pools.

... More broadly, the partnership charts a more sustainable path forward at a time when the future of both Pacific Science Center and Seattle Center — as well as Seattle’s downtown as a whole — are in flux, and as civic leaders aim to “revitalize” downtown ahead of the World Cup.

“This is our opportunity to help the Science Center ensure the future of its incredible campus,” said Seattle Center Director Marshall Foster, and “to breathe new life into … programming, activation, things that will give people reasons to visit Seattle Center and the Science Center.”

... But, like a cream pie, the building wasn’t really designed to survive forever — it was made to house the largest science exhibit ever assembled by the federal government at the time then move on. While the facilities ended up enduring under the umbrella of a private nonprofit, they’re in dire need of renovations, Daugherty said. Much of the courtyard isn’t ADA-accessible. The terrazzo is deteriorating. The pools are leaking.

Bollards as a security measure in DC

I can't believe in the Eastern Market entry ("Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my unrealized master plan for the market") I forgot to mention a key security element as part of the transportation element. Retractable bollards at key entry points to the pedestrianized area.  I did list it in the comments once I remembered.

When I ran a farmers market in the Brookland neighborhood of DC, we narrowly missed having an incident by an older man who basically said he was above the rules.

Retractable hydraulic bollards in the Liverpool pedestrian district.

I was on the Eastern Market Community Advisory Council for 13 years, and for many of those years I brought this up, because of vehicle incidents in markets world-wide.  Although the first one, in Santa Monica was not a terrorist incident at all ("Case is closed on deadly day at market," Los Angeles Times).

The killings in New Orleans ("How New Orleans failed to protect Bourbon Street from attack, block by block," Washington Post) should remind every jurisdiction that does regular street closures for events to install high quality secure retractable bollards, to provide an extra level of protection against ever increasing vehicular terrorism.

Also see "After New Orleans attack, how does Houston plan to keep crowds safe? Here's what officials say," Houston Chronicle.

Free New Year’s Eve rides

Many transit systems offer this.  It can be a good marketing touchpoint.  Chicago's subway and bus system, CTA, and the Metra commuter rail system are two such agencies.

21 years later H Street NE commercial district is still dirty

I've been amazed at how much cleaner Salt Lake City tends to be compared to DC.  

For example, a few years ago, I walked from Manor Park to Columbia Heights and back, and picked up and disposed of over 500 recyclables...

This is a query on Reddit DC, looking for people to help clean up H Street NE.  

As chair of the H Street Main Street Promotions Committee back in 2003 this is something we did too.  I wrote about it in a couple entries:

-- "Every Litter Bit Hurts," 2005
-- "Community cleanups (and other activities) as community building and civic engagement activities," 2011

I would say it gave me a much better ground-based appreciation about the nature of the trash.  In DC commercial districts, it's pretty typical for trash to flow into the first residential block on either side of the street.

So clean up programs should include the abutting residential areas where appropriate.

It also illustrates that commercial district revitalization is a never ending effort.  Perceptions of public safety are shaped by cleanliness, the presence of graffiti, etc.

-- "Updating the post The "soft side" of commercial district revitalization," 2006/2016

Decades ago, DC used to pay people to clean the streets of commercial districts, but that program ended when the city was in bankruptcy.

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This article is interesting.  Back when I did Main Street commercial district revitalization work, I used to make the point that small cities and big cities often missed the point when approaching their work.  A big city wasn't all downtown.  The neighborhood commercial districts are more akin to smaller town commercial districts.  Therefore small towns can learn from neighborhood commercial districts in cities and vice versa.

This article about commercial district revitalization in smaller towns across Minnesota illustrates the point ("From Owatonna to Red Wing, Minnesota's small downtowns see resurgence," Minneapolis Star Tribune, archive.ph copy).

Vision Zero initiatives on the decline: Cache County Utah shows another way

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "Mayor Parker’s budget slashes funding for Vision Zero, a program designed to end traffic deaths," that the mayor has cut funding for Vision Zero programs, which are designed to reduce traffic fatalities.  Other cities have had mixed to negative results from similar initiatives.

Past writings:

-- "Revisiting Vision Zero in DC and NYC," 2021

-- "A more radical approach to Vision Zero," 2019
-- "A reminder about how the entitlement of automobility is embedded into law and democratizes death by accident," 2014
-- "A "Vision Zero" agenda for DC," 2014
-- "DC and Vision Zero Revisited," 2015
-- "Updating Vision Zero approaches," 2016
-- First global benchmark for road safety in cities published by International Transport Forum," 2018
-- "Traffic safety," 2022
-- "It's a mistake to remove "Enforcement" from the "E's framework" of bicycle and pedestrian planning," 2022
-- "D.C. cuts speed limit to 20 mph to curb pedestrian deaths: a step forward but not enough | New thoughts on a comprehensive Vision Zero agenda," 2020
-- "Pedestrian fatalities and street design," 2019

To my way of thinking, it's because a lot of the crashes are due to negligence or deliberate behavior, which isn't addressable by design.

-- "The Road Not Taken | a response to a letter to the editor in the Washington Post about DC, traffic deaths and traffic safety," 2024
-- "Social marketing and aberrant driving," 2020
--  "When the car lobby encourages law breaking," 2012
-- but only recently after some high profile deaths is DC addressing this ("Reckless drivers in spotlight as D.C. hits 16-year high on traffic deaths," Washington Post

And because we don't provide actionable information and the structures to address the problem.  

For example, in a blog entry in 2016, I suggested that such information be provided at the Council District scale and that ward-focused committees address traffic safety and sustainable mobility in concerted ways.

The Cache Valley Daily reports, "Local stakeholders to host transportation safety summit at Logan Library," that the MPO there is holding a traffic safety conference next week, to support its plan to reduce crashes and deaths.  

From the article:

Cache Valley residents are being invited to attend a transportation safety summit at the Logan Library on Thursday, May 16.

That gathering is being called by safety stakeholders, including representatives of the Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Utah Department of Transportation, emergency responders, Crash Data and Safety experts as well as local interest groups.

CMPO’s 2024 Safety Summit will be held from 9 to 11:30 a.m. in the Community Room of the Logan Library on May 16.  

The planning documents, Safe Streets for All Action Plan and Safety Data Analysis in particular, have a lot of great graphics communicating information in various ways about where crashes occur, demographics, etc., exactly the kind of information you need to be able to address in real terms, crash reduction.

Disorder | Fare evaders at Columbia Heights Metrorail Station, Washington, DC

This is a screengrab of a tweeted video from Maria on X.  I can't figure out how to embed the actual video in Blogger.  

It's pretty disturbing.  This is clear evidence that the evaders don't care too much about community, public goods, etc.

And it's a point missed by the social justice types who fueled the decriminalization of fare evasion ("D.C. Council decriminalizes Metro fare evasion: ‘I’m sad that’s Metro’s losing money, but I’m more sad about what’s happening to black people.’," Washington Post, 2018, "Metro cracks down on fare evasion in D.C., leading to jump in fines," Post, 2024).  

While people don't like the language, fare evasion is a gateway act to disorder and likely increases disorder and criminal acts.

The one thing I learned in DC during the 80s and 90s when things were really bad is that there is a fine line between order and disorder, and letting disorder fester ("Defining Deviance Down: How we've become accustomed to alarming levels of crime and destructive behavior," Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "Explaining Urban Social Disorder and Violence: An Empirical Study of Event Data from Asian and Sub-Saharan African Cities," International Interactions, 2012, "Disorder in urban neighborhoods -- does it lead to crime?," DOJ) always has bad outcomes.  From the DOJ paper:

The research produced an alternative interpretation of the link between disorder and crime, one that sees many elements of disorder as part and parcel of crime itself. Typical activities categorized as social disorder, such as soliciting prostitutesand loitering, and incivilities like painting graffiti are evidence of either crime or ordinance violations. The forces producing these minor crimes may be the same as those that produce more serious crimes, with the difference only in the degree of seriousness. Viewed this way, disorder and crime are manifestations of the same phenomenon.

And that it is easy for things to decline unless you always remain vigilant and focused on maintaining order.

As charlie points out, it was the public safety improvements starting in the late 1990s, culminating in severe crime drops, that led people to choose to live in cities starting in the 2000s  after decades when trends dissuaded all but the most motivated people from city living ("Claims of ‘lawlessness’ on New York City subways increase danger, critics say," Guardian).

-- What caused the crime decline, Brennan Center
-- Crime analysis for problem solvers in 60 small steps, DOJ
-- Center for Problem Oriented Policing, Arizona State
-- "Does "Broken Windows" Law Enforcement Reduce Serious Crime?," DOJ

Many elected officials and stakeholders don't seem to be aware of that or acknowledge it or recognize it or keep that top of mind when they make decisions ("Inside the D.C. Council’s turn away from progressive crime strategies," Post).

I understand that structural racism is bad, and have argued for community investment to address it ("Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021) but it doesn't obviate responsibility for your acts and behavior, which the social justice movement doesn't acknowledge, especially with the crime law overhaul that passed in 2023, and has just been reversed with the recent changes.

-- DC Justice Lab
-- Criminal Code Reform Commission, DC Government
-- "What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About DC's Crime Bill," Washingtonian Magazine
-- "The Sentencing Project Condemns DC Council’s Passage of Secure DC Crime Bill"

Proof of Broken Windows theory in Philadelphia and New York City

Broken Windows theory ("Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety," Atlantic Magazine, 1982) posits that communities where there are vacant buildings, litter, abandoned cars etc. communicate that it's okay to commit crime.  Unfortunately, there are few examples of its implementation, as police departments did mostly "zero tolerance policing" calling it community policing.  

New York City did data-based policing, but still not community investment, and it was very successful in reducing the crime rate.  But as crime dropped police needed stuff to do, and Giuliani was more of a hard ass, so they moved to Zero Tolerance Policing--stop and frisk.

And so there is a huge contingent of progressives and academics who argue that Broken Windows is b.s.

Broken windows successfully implemented on the NYC Subway in the early 1990s. One of the only places Broken Windows was implemented truly was the NYC Subway system under David Gunn, and transit police chief William Bratton.  

It's discussed in Bratton's second autobiography, The Profession: A Memoir of Community, Race, and the Arc of Policing in America ("Bill Bratton Explains His Ideas of Good Policing," New York Times).

During his interview for chief, Gunn took him around the system.  Gunn said we can fix the trains, eliminate graffiti on them (which is why miscreants now use acid to etch cars and windows), and run them on time, but if people have to experience chaos in the stations, they won't ride.

Broken windows theory in action.  An op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Home repairs decrease gun violence in Philadelphia," references research done at University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University that found investing in fixing up abandoned properties led to significant neighborhood improvements including a marked reduction in gun violence.

From the article:

One study of Philadelphia’s Basic Systems Repair Program found that when even one home on a block received repairs, there was a 21.9% decrease in homicide rates. And the more home repairs a block received, the more homicide rates fell. The data reflect what we already know: When people’s basic need for a safe, stable home is met, it decreases violence in our neighborhoods. 

But that message isn’t getting through to our local government. As we talked to close to 200 Grays Ferry residents, the stories poured in. Many residents have applied for home repair programs — for plumbing, roofing, weatherization, insulation, and other renovations — but haven’t heard back, have been denied, or have had to wait many years. Philly residents need home repairs, and we know home repairs are a key part of reducing violence, so why isn’t our city making them more accessible? It is literally lifesaving work to keep longtime Black residents in their homes ... 

Our Council member, Kenyatta Johnson, is now also Council president, and he has enormous power to protect affordable housing in his district and beyond. We need him to work with community advocates to pass citywide policies that prioritize low-income housing and opt the 2nd District into the mixed-income neighborhood overlay, which would require housing developers to ensure 20% of their units are affordable. 

 -- "Fighting blight by fixing up homes could bring down Philly gun violence, new study shows," WHYY/NPR
-- "Abandoned house repairs reduced nearby gun violenceAbandoned house repairs reduced nearby gun violence," Penn Today (2023)
-- "Urban Blight Remediation as a Cost-Beneficial Solution to Firearm Violence: A Citywide Cluster Randomized Trial," Journal of the American Medical Association (2022)
-- "Urban Blight Remediation as a Cost-Beneficial Solution to Firearm Violence," American Journal of Public Health (2016)

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Past blog entries include:

-- "George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies" (2019)
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016 (references the speech by Ronald Clarke upon receiving the Stockholm Prize in Criminology)
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do"
-- "Night-time safety: rethinking lighting in the context of a walking community," 2014
-- Crime prevention through environmental design and repeated burglaries at the Naylor Gardens apartment complex," 2013

Social urbanism is a related concept to Broken Windows, first introduced in Medillín, Columbia, which during the program experienced a 90% drop in the number of murders.

-- "Experiments in Social Urbanism"
-- "'Social urbanism' experiment breathes new life into Colombia's Medellin Toronto Globe & Mail
-- "Medellín's 'social urbanism' a model for city transformation," Mail & Guardian
-- "Medellín slum gets giant outdoor escalator," Telegraph
-- "Medellín, Colombia offers an unlikely model for urban renaissance," Toronto Star

I've written about ways to implement it in the US.

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC" (2021)
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)" (2020)

The Road Not Taken | a response to a letter to the editor in the Washington Post about DC, traffic deaths and traffic safety

There's a letter to the editor in yesterday's Washington Post, "D.C. must step up on road deaths."  It's a good letter.

I started writing a response in the comments, but it was too long.  So a blog entry is better.  

Definitely this is another example of DC government's failure to focus and to be innovative.  It's amazing how much I've written about this topic, providing guidance for something that could have been great.

Ward focused traffic safety programming.  Years ago I wrote a piece ("Outline for a proposed Ward-focused (DC) Councilmember campaign platform and agenda," 2015) about what would be an ideal approach to a truly ward-focused Councilmember election and governance platform, including having a dashboard on ward-specific data on traffic safety.  

And that there should be ward-specific subcommittees of the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committees to put greater focus on ward specific improvements (this was something I wrote into the Pedestrian and Bicycle Plan I did for Baltimore County in 2010).

Safe routes to school programs.  Separately, the State of Washington Safe Routes to School program recommends that all cities create traffic safety committees to address such issues as they relate to schools, and SRTS improvements simultaneously benefit neighborhoods.  The state requires that SRTS maps be created for all elementary schools, and some cities go beyond and do it for all schools.  Seattle's Feet First advocacy group is a great resource for such programs.  The City of Tacoma separately has an SRTS plan that is first rate.

-- "Why isn't walking/biking to school programming an option in Suburban Omaha? | Inadequacies in school transportation planning," 2022
-- School Walk and Bike Routes: A Guide for Planning and Improving Walk and Bike to School Options for Students
-- Safe Routes to School program, Washington State
-- City of Tacoma SRTS program, including SRTS Action Plan
-- Starkville in Motion

A failed job interview with DDOT.  I interviewed for a job with DDOT (still don't understand why I didn't get it) to liase with ANCs on these kinds of issues.  I prepared a sample data-focused infographic that could be a kind of dashboard for ward-specific transportation as part of my interview.  

For years I wrote that the DDOT safety dashboard was crap ("DC DDOT transportation access portal doesn't really say anything," 2010).  It has since been significantly improved.

ANCs need transportation/traffic safety committees.  In preparing for that interview, I looked at the websites for all of the city's Advisory Neighborhood Commssions (ANCs are block and neighborhood specific councils that weigh in on matters before DC government) and just a handful had transportation/public space committees.  All should, with support from DDOT, the Office of Planning, and the police department traffic and data analysis units. 

And public health.  In Ontario for example, public health officials have been leaders in analyzing traffic deaths and addressing the issues (Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario: Pedestrian Death Review), and in Toronto ("Dozens of cycling deaths probed," Toronto Star).

It was a great interview, the lead walked me out and we talked, and then.... nothing.

FWIW, I also didn't get a job at Utah Department of Transportation on Vision Zero related issues, although I was a finalist.  They said I wasn't innovative enough!  Maybe they were right. Maybe I just come across badly. But I don't think so.  However, I did mess up the interview a bit, and I had a mistake in my cover letter...

Then again, traffic safety related deaths in Utah, including bicyclists and pedestrians, are falling but only slightly, and in cities especially pedestrian deaths aren't abating ("Deaths on Utah roads down from 2022 but road rage still a concern," ABC4).

-- "Yard sign, Person running for District Six Council in Salt Lake using traffic safety as a campaign issue," 2023

Transportation management districts.  Since 2005 or 2006 I have been recommending that the city create Traffic Management Districts as a way to coordinate transportation management and improvements at the commercial district scale (e.g. for Downtown, H Street NE, Capitol Hill, etc.).  

The city did create "pilot parking districts" but they weren't super well structured and are limited.  The plans created for them impressed me in terms of how ad hoc and unstructured they were.  And they never functioned the way I suggested (e.g., see the discussion on transportation wrt Eastern Market, "Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my never realized master plan for the market," 2023).

Urban design/walkable community plans at the neighborhood scale. Out of the Silver Spring Purple Line writings:

Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District from 2017:
-- "Part 1: Setting the stage
-- "Part 2: Program items 1- 9
-- "Part 3: Program items 10-18

I got interested in the concept of urban design plans for neighborhoods, sparked by Dupont Circle and the opening of the Wharf in SW DC.

-- "Planning urban design improvements at the neighborhood scale: Dupont Circle, DC," 2019
-- "More about making 17th Street between P and R a pedestrian space on weekends," 2019

Later I realized it's not about the mode--creating a pedestrian plan, but creating broader walkable community plans.

-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021

... and freeway/tunnel decking. Like the neighborhood initiative in Bloomingdale ("Bloomingdale Village Square Initiative will be holding its third Community Forum on the proposed North Capitol Deck-over Park," 2020), similar discussions in Dupont Circle, the SE-SW Freeway, etc.  

It's a travesty that the planning units in DC think this should be done by the neighborhoods, not the city.

Pedestrian safety audits.  Similar to Safe Routes to School.  FHWA publishes materials on Pedestrian Road Safety Audits.  There is the PEDSAFE: Pedestrian Safety Guide and Countermeasure Selection System to see if there are urban design improvements that can be made after analyzing a crash (also for biking).  

-- All About Walk Audits, America Walks

WalkDenver has done interesting work in this arena too, such as the Walk Audits on Colfax Avenue, including a report on West Colfax.

Vision Zero.  Focused on DC, I've written tons over the years about Vision Zero initiatives to reduce traffic deaths and traffic safety.  

-- "A more radical approach to Vision Zero," 2019
-- "A reminder about how the entitlement of automobility is embedded into law and democratizes death by accident," 2014
-- "A "Vision Zero" agenda for DC," 2014
-- "DC and Vision Zero Revisited," 2015
-- "Updating Vision Zero approaches," 2016
-- First global benchmark for road safety in cities published by International Transport Forum," 2018
-- "Traffic safety," 2022
-- "It's a mistake to remove "Enforcement" from the "E's framework" of bicycle and pedestrian planning," 2022
-- "D.C. cuts speed limit to 20 mph to curb pedestrian deaths: a step forward but not enough | New thoughts on a comprehensive Vision Zero agenda," 2020

In "Revisiting Vision Zero in DC and NYC" (2021) I made these points:

1.  How to measure and benchmark traffic deaths?
2.  The issues are unchanging.
3.  Government has a bias for inaction.
4.  Planning for mode versus planning for place and livability.
5.  Not treating the road system as a network.
6.  Traffic deaths can be broadly categorized into three segments.
7.  How do you get reckless drivers off the street? 
8.  Traffic enforcement.
9.  Oversight Committees at the City/County and District/Ward scales.
10.  Systematic review of crashes/accidents in a public fashion.
11.  Mapping pedestrian, bicycle, transit and car accidents

Lots of links within each section.

Street design and pavements.  The fact is, except for overly wide avenues, the L'Enfant Plan design for the city and its network of streets and sidewalks prioritizes sustainable modes--walking, biking, and transit.  

But roads and cars are overengineered to allow cars to drive at high speeds regardless of land use context.  

That's why I've argued for years to have differentiated pavements for commercial districts, and areas by parks, libraries, schools, and transit stations, to better match desired operating speeds of vehicles with land use context.

-- "A more radical approach to "Vision Zero" is needed: reconstructing streets out of different materials to reduce speeds," 2019
-- "Pedestrian fatalities and street design," 2019

Note that one element of the L'Enfant Plan, radial avenues, was a big innovation for pedestrians and bicyclists as it makes it faster to get from place to place by moving diagonally, instead of in squares and rectangles.

Reckless driving.  In DC, most traffic related injuries and deaths in DC are related to reckless driving, not street design.  This is something that advocates don't really get, as after each high profile crash and death(s), they say it's because of street design.  Sometimes there are issues, admittedly, but mostly it's recklessness.

I've mentioned this for years ("Social marketing and aberrant driving," 2020, "When the car lobby encourages law breaking," 2012), but only recently after some high profile deaths is the city addressing this ("Reckless drivers in spotlight as D.C. hits 16-year high on traffic deaths," Washington Post).