Posters as an element of marketing transit stations and neighborhoods

I can't say I've thought about this much.  I do think about it terms of parks, and using National Park Service style posters with a design language created in the 1930s.

Original poster design, 1938.

Modern version.  Poster not produced by the National Park Service.

A Reddit user, u/Coup-de-Cous, in Los Angeles has produced similar designs for LA Metro stations and neighborhoods.

Now that I think about it, they are reminiscent of the transit marketing posters produced by railroads, and for transit specifically, the London Underground ("Birth of the London Underground Posters," Art Institute of Chicago, "Frank Pick: the forgotten genius of the London Underground," Gallery, Telegraph, "The Hidden Women Behind London’s Beloved Modernist Transit Posters," Bloomberg), and Chicago Transit.

London Underground Poster.

Modern CTA poster promoting rehabilitation of Wilson Station.  

Making these kinds of posters could be a way to engender goodwill for transit infrastructure projects.

Non CTA poster, done in the 1930s National Park style.

Promoting the Lincoln Square neighborhood.

This series of posters by the Chicago Neighborhoods Project

 is comparable to those by u/Coup-de-Cous for Los Angeles.

Art deco style railroad poster.

I know that I sound like a broken record: The importance of planning in government | property development in Portland, Bilbao, Liverpool, Salt Lake, Washington, DC

Some cities plan.  Some cities release RFPs.  Others do "stuff."

When Obama got elected, and seemingly was interested in focusing on urban issues, I thought about the Pasteur quote: Chance Favors the Prepared Mind.

What I took it to mean was that if you are prepared (with plans) you can pounce on opportunity.  

The difference with a plan is you come up with a vision, ideally with creativity and positive public input.  An RFP asks others to come up with a vision, which may or not be a good fit.  

A good example is with Kennedy School in Portland.  The community came up with a some ideas for what they'd accept.  What they got was a great bed and breakfast, music venue and brew pub, by the McMenamin Group ("Fall Asleep in Class at Portland, Oregon’s Kennedy School," NTHP).  

Sketch by Marlena Wyman.

Not an terrible outcome, but a similar Catholic facility deaccessioned in the Brookland neighborhood became a charter school.  When being located one block from the district's Main Street, 12th Street, it could have become a broader destination.

Later I codified this point as a part of best practice revitalization planning and in my concept of Transformational Projects Action Planning.  

-- "Updating the best practice elements of revitalization to include elements 7 and 8 | Transformational Projects Action Planning at a large scale"  (2022)  [this entry has other related links to other examples and iterations of the development of the TPAS concept]
-- "Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning" (2017)

Not only was Bilbao quick to act to land the Guggenheim Museum, they realized after it opened, that despite being close to the city's subway, they needed better surface transit to link various attractions, and added a tram within 4 years of the museum's opening.  The system continues to be expanded.  

It took DC 13 years to open its streetcar, and because the system never expanded (and because DC's elected officials were indifferent) the service will close this year, after a ten year run.

A couple examples are how, having a city revitalization plan in place, with an implementation organization and financing, Bilbao jumped on the decision of Graz, Austria to not host a Guggenheim Museum, and ended up with the Gehry designed international attraction instead, thereby rebranding and positioning the city as an international destination.

Liverpool's 2001 plan called for the city to be designated an EU Capital of Culture, when at the time in the current cycle, the UK wasn't even on the list as a participating country ("Liverpool regeneration as a process for regaining relevance at the regional, national, and global scales").  

A statue of the Beatles.

By the time UK was selected, Liverpool had at least four years of planning when other cities had none, so Liverpool was best positioned to be picked, and it was ("Almost two decades on, this vibrant UK city is still a ‘Capital of Culture’," Metro, "Liverpool event strategies," Spirit of 2012). 

Although there are differing viewpoints ("Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture legacy narrative: a selective heritage?," European Planning Studies, "The 'Liverpool model(s)': cultural planning, Liverpool and Capital of Culture 2008," International Journal of Cultural Policy, "‘Capital of Culture—you must be having a laugh!’ Challenging the official rhetoric of Liverpool as the 2008 European cultural capital," Social & Cultural Geography) which is true for Bilbao too.

Or, sometimes it's scenario planning wrt to potential for austerity and acts by other governments impacting local governments.  

-- "Contingency planning in parks planning: Montgomery County Maryland edition," 2013
-- "Federal shutdown as another example of why local jurisdictions should have more robust contingency and master planning processes," 2013

Sugar House Park, Salt Lake City.  I mention I'm on the board of a park.  While it's jointly owned by the city and county for reasons of history, it's underresourced.  We don't have the money to do a full blown plan.  We do have a planning framework from 2008, but there are many gaps.

As I outlined in 2024 in a series on gaps in park master planning  I try to use objective frameworks for decision making in that context.

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part One | Levels of Service"

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Two | Utilizing Academic Research as Guidance"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Three | Planning for Climate Change/Environment"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Four | Planning for Seasonality and Activation"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Five | Planning for Public Art as an element of park facilities"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning, Part Six | Art(s) in the Park(s) as a comprehensive program"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Seven | Park Architectural (and Landscape Design) History" 
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Nine | Second stage planning for parks using the cultural landscape framework" 

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Ten | Park transportational access (2025) 

This is the last month of my first term--4 years.  And we were talking about it in a meeting.  I mentioned my biggest learning is that so much of our agenda is externally driven.  Anyway, we have lots of projects to pursue, some quite major, and we need to have formal plans to move forward.  

A rendering of a proposed 89-foot, seven-story hotel on the corner of 2100 South and 1300 East next to Sugar House Park. A plan to rezone the lot received support from the Salt Lake City Planning Commission.

On a really big issue ("Plan to build a 7-story hotel next to Sugar House Park gets key endorsement,"  "New Utah law could address remaining issue in proposed hotel next to Sugar House Park,"KSL ) where the board is split, me and another person have created a great vision plan for an alternative to the site--hopefully the lessee will entertain it, especially if the hotel project isn't approved.  

(The final decision will be made by the City Council over the next couple months.  I'm in the "no" camp as it punctures forever the perimeter of the park, and no major urban public park in the US has a similar commercial puncture within the park.)

But that's just a vision, it would need detailed planning and design to move forward.   

And we have up to three other projects requiring a similar process of vision plan + detailed plan.  Not to mention a bunch of other projects.  I liken us to beggars, doing a form of barter to get what we want when working with other entities.  And the amount of time I spent on the vision is considerable, and came out as fast as it did only because of prior knowledge.  The other plans will require more research.

Photo: Joanne Lawton, WBJ.

Washington DC.  The Washington Business Journal reports that Ward 3 Council Representative Matt Frumin wants the city to buy a building in foreclosure, 4000 Connecticut Avenue NW.  It's huge. ("Frumin rallies District to snag former Whittle School building as foreclosure auction looms").  From the article:

A D.C. councilmember is renewing his push for the District to acquire the leasehold interest in a high-profile Northwest D.C. mixed-use building that’s scheduled to be sold at a foreclosure auction next month.

In an interview Tuesday, Councilmember Matt Frumin, D-Ward 3, described the 666,202-square-foot 4000 Connecticut Ave. NW — formerly home to Intelsat’s headquarters, then the Whittle School & Studios — as an “amazing location” that he expects will be sold for “far lower” than it would have a few years back when he unsuccessfully rallied the District to acquire the property for use as a vast civic center.

“How could we leverage this building at a key site to the benefit of the city?” Frumin said. “There's lots of possibilities, and if it could be gotten for a very attractive price, I hope the city will think about it.”

The leasehold interest in 4000 Connecticut — the State Department owns the land under the building — is scheduled to be sold at an April 8 foreclosure auction at Alex Cooper Auctioneers D.C. office. Affiliates of New York-based investment firm 601W Cos. and commercial real estate developer Berkley Properties co-own the leasehold interest and owe $132.2 million on the note held by an affiliate of Jericho, New York-based Winthrop Capital Partners, according to a foreclosure notice filed Monday with D.C.'s Recorder of Deeds.

It's an interesting idea.  BUT 

• THE CITY HAS A POOR TRACK WITH PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (e.g., Eastern Market, "Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my unrealized master plan for the market")
• THE BUILDING IS F* EXPENSIVE
• ON EQUITY GROUNDS, PEOPLE OUGHT TO ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT SUCH A BIG INVESTMENT IN THE CITY'S WEALTHIEST WARD
• THERE IS NO PLAN.

Plus, usually with white elephant projects like this (and note the property is proximate to the University of the District of Columbia), the cost of the building is minimal, and an arts use gets developed like Cabelfactory in a former Nokia manufacturing plant in Helsinki, La Friche in Marseille (Design Handbook for Cultural Centres, Trans-Europe Halles), or smaller projects in the US, like GoggleWorks in Reading, Pennsylvania ("GoggleWorks finances go back to black," Reading Eagle, "Next phases of GoggleWorks development include apartments, educational space," WFMZ-TV).

Since "the arts and culture don't make a profit" it's best to start with low cost buildings ("Arlington's Artisphere, cultural planning and Arlington's identity").  And Artisphere was 1/10th the size of the former Intelsat building.

It's unfair to suggest that Frumin should do this but.... In my entry, "Outline for a proposed Ward-focused (DC) Councilmember campaign platform and agenda," one of the points was that a Councilmember should have a thumbnail plan (basically a vision plan) for commercial districts.  

I should have also included "and for big buildings that might become vacant."

Councilmembers don't do planning independent of the Executive Branch.  This is an example where it could and should be done.

But basically, while CM Frumin has ideas, he hasn't further developed them over the two years the building has been vacant ("First Intelsat HQ. Then failed Whittle School. What’s next for D.C.'s 4000 Connecticut Ave. NW?," WBJ), which is opposite of "Chance Favor[ing[ the Prepared Mind." So opportunity doesn't favor this project.  Especially when the city budget is being compromised by the Republican Congress in multiple ways.  And the need to get a majority of Councilmembers to agree.

Former Imperial Sugar Plant, Fort Bend, Texas.

Note that governments buy sites and buildings not infrequently, to control their development ("Mayor Elicker Announces Propospal to Transform the Former English Station Power Plant Property into Mill River Park,"City of New Haven, "Erie County acquires 148 acres of industrial land at the former Bethlehem Steel site in Lackawanna for redevelopment," "Sugar Land Acquires Historic Imperial Sugar Site for $50 Million Redevelopment Project," Covering Katy News, "After closed-door meeting, Salt Lake County buys former corporate headquarters outside Utah’s capital,"Salt Lake Tribune, "Utah to buy US Magnesium plant for $30M," KSL, etc.).

BTMFBA.  I myself am a proponent of arts organizations owning their own buildings.  And recommend that the locality set up a CDC to buy, hold, develop, and rehabilitate properties to preserve their use outside of the normal market forces of real estate.  While I often tout SEMAEST, the Paris CDC that does this with retail properties, Helsinki as a city does this with an agency called Kaapelli.  I've written about this in Philadelphia ("BTMFBA + programs to lease the properties to local businesses | Philadelphia").  And there are other examples.  

SEMAEST also has a retail incubator program allowing short term leasing in order to develop and test proof of concept ("Testing your business with Semaest: the example of Alma Grown in Town dedicated to urban agriculture" City of Paris).

-- "BTMFBA: the best way to ward off artist or retail displacement is to buy the building," 2016

-- "From BTMFBA to "community right to buy"," 2024
-- "BTMFBA: maintaining arts spaces in the face of rising real estate values | Seattle, New York City," 2024
-- "New form of BTMFBA in San Francisco," 2023
-- "A wrinkle on BTMFBA: let the city/county own the cultural facility, while you operate it (San Francisco and the Fillmore Heritage Center)," 2021
-- "BTMFBA: Baltimore and the Area 405 Studio," 2021
-- "Revisiting stories: cultural planning and the need for arts-based community development corporations as real estate operators," 2018
-- "BMFBTA revisited: nonprofits and facilities planning and acquisition," 2016
-- "BTMFBA: artists and Los Angeles," 2017
-- "BTMFBA Chronicles: Seattle coffee shop raises money to buy its building," 2018
-- "Dateline Los Angeles: BTMFBA & Transformational Projects Action Planning & arts-related community development corporation as an implementation mechanism to own property," 2018

But in the DC case, taking on a 660,000 s.f. building is pretty daunting.  Especially in that location.

Conclusion.  Without a good business plan, what Frumin proposes is a folly.  

Good/bad government -- murals in Seattle

The Seattle Times calls our attention to a set of murals in the law library of the William Kenzo Nakamura U.S. Courthouse in Downtown Seattle ("These Seattle murals speak to the Trump era. They're hiding in plain sight").

“The Effects of Good and Bad Government,” two 9-foot-tall panels featuring well over 200 figures, dramatize in intricate, elaborate, painstaking detail the tangible impacts government has on people’s lives.

In the “Good Government” painting, people are thriving. Under “Bad Government,” they’re dead-eyed, smoking and drinking. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times

Is our federal government making America “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before,” as Trump claimed in his State of the Union? Or has Trump “endangered the long and storied history of the United States of America being a force for good,” as Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said in the Democratic response? Either way, you’ll find a rich allegory in the paintings.

They are not always accessible, within the sporadically used Sixth Avenue downtown courthouse. But this week the four-decade-old paintings will be on display for all to see, showcasing the work of an artist who was thinking deeply about timeless themes of good and evil, justice and tyranny and how our American experiment in self-governance plays out every day in ways big and small.

The article introduces us to the artist, Caleb Ives Bach, once a very successful CIA agent, who left the profession somewhat disillusioned, and he became a teacher and artist.

The murals are open to the public monthly, but only when the Court is in session, which is about once per month, as the Court moves to a different part of the state other weeks. 

Great line about high quality definitional elements in waterfront development planning

A rendering of Hariri Pontarini’s proposed Ontario Science Centre design for Ontario Place. "Doug Ford’s new Science Centre: How the architects came up with the design of the $1-billion building," Toronto Star.

John Lorinc has a piece, "Underneath the shiny renderings of Doug Ford’s Ontario Place is an idea worth taking seriously," in the Toronto Star about the proposal for a new Ontario Science Center on the Lake Erie waterfront.  From the article:

[...] I’d also argue that this project, now tendered to a consortium and estimated to be worth more than $1 billion, represents something that has long been missing in almost three decades of waterfront revitalization: a signature cultural or social institution on the lakeshore.

That idea — wish? — goes back to Robert Fung’s waterfront task force, circa the late 1990s, and is still on the planning books, with proposed locations on or near the Port Lands, but without funding or a prospective tenant.

Photos: DTAH.

Queens Quay Boulevard abuts the Toronto Waterfront. 

Toronto being a keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ kind of place, we have often looked to other cities with such architecturally distinctive structures for inspiration — the Sydney Opera House, London’s Tate Modern, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and Hamburg’s exuberant concert hall in the revitalized harbour district known as Hafencity.

There’s a good reason why these landmark buildings have come to define their urban surroundings: post-industrial waterfronts demand more than glass-walled condos, office towers and parks to create a sense of place suited to the unmistakable drama of the water’s edge.

The architecture-urban design point he makes in the last cited paragraph is key.  It takes special buildings:

to create a sense of place suited to the unmistakable drama of the water’s edge.

-- Making Waves: Principles for Building Toronto's Waterfront 
-- Central Waterfront Secondary Plan
-- Central Waterfront Public Space Framework
-- Transforming the waterfront into a quintessential destination, DTAH design firm
-- Queens Quay Boulevard: Toronto's most democratic street, DTAH design firm

The boring stuff: government job pensions | Boring but an obligation that overwhelms many governments

San Diego went bankrupt over pension liabilities.  Chicago keeps doing budgetary dancing wrt their pension liabilities ("Chicago's Pension Debt Decreases $1.3B in 2024 to $35.9B," WTTW, "A new bill would force Chicago Public Schools to pay into municipal retirement fund," Chalkbeat), as does the State of Illinois.  As part of getting DC out of bankruptcy, the federal government took over the city's pension obligations.  Etc.

To get away with not necessarily paying market rate wages for jobs, government agencies have provided good benefits packages including lifetime pensions.  But mostly cities never put away enough money to cover fully these obligations and now pension overhang is a serious problem in many cities ("What a $1.48 trillion pension gap means for cities and states," SmartCities Dive).

Oddly, Philadelphia, not known for being best practice in municipal management, is on track to have its pension obligations fully funded ("A decade ago, Philly’s pension fund looked like it could sink the city. Now it’s on pace to be fully funded by 2032," Philadelphia Inquirer).

A decade ago, the pension fund was only 45% funded and appeared to pose a significant threat to the city’s fiscal health. But a series of reforms carried about by successive mayors, state and city legislators, and municipal labor leaders have fostered a remarkable turnaround.

The city’s pension system pays for retirement benefits for city workers. Benefits vary based on when employees were hired. About 35,000 people are currently receiving benefits, according to the pension board’s most recent newsletter. That includes retirees, their beneficiaries, and disability claimants.

“The fiscal health of the Pension Fund continues its relentless upward climb since many reforms were put in place 10 years ago,” Brady, who sits on the city Board of Pensions and Retirement, said in a statement. “We’ve made smart investments, doubled our assets, reduced investment manager fees — resulting in a large reduction of the overall liability for taxpayers."

The reforms included increasing annual contributions from the city budget to the pension fund beyond the minimum amount required by state law; negotiating union contracts with higher employee retirement contributions; moving away from high-fee investment managers; and dedicating revenue from a 1% sales tax in Philadelphia to the pension fund.

Basically, they used all the tools at their disposal to make it work.  They made it a priority.  And the priority stayed a priority even as Mayoral administrations changed.

School closures and neighborhood effects

Given the decline in the number of school aged children, and outmigration from cities, school districts such as in Washington, DC, Chicago, and Philadelphia have been closing schools for decades.

The rational planning part of me is in favor because of the need to spend money efficiently, have enough students to be able to offer a wider range of programs, etc.

But the other side of my rational planning part also acknowledges that school closures have negative impact on neighborhoods, that elementary schools in particular are building blocks for neighborhoods (along with libraries).  

And that sports programs at the high school level can engender community pride, etc.

I pointed out this contradiction starting in 2011:

-- "One way in which community planning is completely backwards," 2011
-- "Missing the most important point about Clifton School closure in Fairfax County," 2011
-- "Rethinking community planning around maintaining neighborhood civic assets and anchors," 2011
-- "The bilingual Key Elementary School in Arlington County as another example of the "upsidedownness" of community planning," 2019
-- "National Community Planning Month: Schools as neighborhood anchors," 2022
-- "School closure and consolidation planning needs to focus on integration planning at the outset as a separate process," 2023

I suggested that cities ought to consider subsidizing continued school operation in some communities as a stabilization and revitalization measure.

Philadelphia is going through another round of school closure ("City Council members grill school district officials on plan to close 20 schools — and superintendent says he could have closed 40." Philadelphia Inquirer) and an op-ed about this "It’s not just about schools. It’s about neighborhoods," makes the same point as I did, but she describes better the effects of a school within a neighborhood beyond the curriculum.  From the article:

The conflict playing out in Philadelphia isn’t only about schools. It’s about the fact that the school district and City Council have different responsibilities for the same places, and the new facilities plan brings that conflict into sharp focus./p>

The facilities plan is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The trouble is that everything it was not designed to do.

A Philadelphia neighborhood school isn’t just one institution. It’s four, sharing an address. There’s the instructional platform: courses, teachers, schedules, the district’s domain. There’s the civic anchor: the building that signals to a neighborhood that its children count, and they belong. There’s the distribution node: where meals are served, where social workers operate, and where there is, most days, someone watching. And there’s the pathway to the future: where a counselor knows a family by name, where a student learns there’s a college or a trade or a life beyond the block.

... When that school building closes, all of those other things close with it. Some of those functions were formal educational programs. Others accumulated because families had nowhere else to go for them. The school became the place where paperwork was explained, problems were addressed and solved, and someone always knew which door to knock on next.

City Council doesn’t get to vote on the facilities plan, but it funds roughly 40% of the district’s $2 billion budget.

... What closes with a school building is not limited to instruction. Council’s budget is the instrument for the functions the facilities plan does not govern: housing investment, community infrastructure, colocated services, and neighborhood anchors that exist independent of school enrollment.

The conclusion to the article is succinct.

The district’s plan answers an educational question. What replaces the neighborhood functions housed in those buildings is a civic one.

That answer does not sit with the school district.

Recommendation.  School systems need to work more closely with city planning departments, to ensure decisions are made in a manner that promotes neighborhood stabilization and improvement.  If necessary, could funds be identified that could be provided to keep certain schools open, and to improve enrollments to make it more financially efficacious for doing so.

Drinking Water Utilities Climate Risk Index

 It's an index that's been calculated, but isn't an online calculator ("Tapping into risk in America’s drinking water" Carnegie Mellon University, "Climate change risk index and municipal bond disclosures of United States drinking water utilities," Nature)

By cross-referencing 1,455 medium and large water utilities across the country with what those utilities reported in their bond disclosures (financial documents that show investors the risks associated with lending money to these utilities), the study finds a gap between the actual climate risk and the risk reported in their disclosures.

Utilities serving 67 million people were rated as high risk, but more than a third of their bonds (36%) do not mention climate change, leaving communities exposed to potentially unsafe drinking water during extreme weather events and investors unaware of hidden financial liabilities. The municipal bonds studied represent $39.3 billion in debt, most of which will mature within the next 20 years. Of that total, $9.2 billion was issued by utilities identified as having high risk to climate change, but with limited evidence of climate risk awareness.

Interestingly, in Utah there is a bill pending in the legislature calling for a tax on water use to fund big new water infrastructure projects, but the projects haven't been vetted in terms of overall water use planning ("Utah bill to address water infrastructure needs advances, but not everyone's happy with it," KSL) and they presume future water supplies which may not come to fruition, given Western drought.   

Utah has amongst the lowest water rates, because they are in part subsidized by property taxes.

‘The Lake, directed by Abby Ellis, details the precipitous decline of the Great Salt Lake.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

And while not related to drinking water, but to use of water overall and the impact on the shrinking Great Salt Lake ("‘An environmental nuclear bomb’: documentary examines fight to save Great Salt Lake," "Great Salt Lake’s retreat poses a major fear: poisonous dust clouds," Guardian), the state seems to be seeking the federal government out to be the savior.  

But the federal government has negligible additional powers to act--the state has plenty ("Trump promises to work with Utah to make its salt lake ‘great again’").

From the Guardian:

The lake, often called “America’s Dead Sea” (though it is, in fact, four times larger than its counterpart in the Middle East), hit a record low in 2022, having lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area from excess diversion for agriculture and other water use.

The new film [The Lake] warns, in no uncertain terms, that going over the edge would spell catastrophe for the state’s public health, environment and economy.

Toxic dust clouds laden with mercury, arsenic and selenium from the desiccated lakebed would increase pollution for a city whose air quality is already worse than Los Angeles, provoking a respiratory and other cancer-related issues. Birdlife and recreation on the lake, already disappearing with its surface area – now less than 1,000 square miles, down from three times that in the 1980s – would vanish completely. The lake’s disappearance would inflict billions of dollars of economic damage on the region, imperil the lucrative extraction of minerals from the lakebed, and threaten ski conditions at the numerous resorts in the nearby mountains (including the slopes of Park City, looming over the film’s premiere).

Three years ago, Abbott, along with more than 30 other scientists, co-authored a report warning that absent major intervention, the 11,000-year-old Great Salt Lake would disappear within five years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oxford Street pedestrianization is coming to London

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Low traffic neighborhood in Hackney.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Utah Mammoth logo.

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

Now the Phoenix Coyotes are the Utah Mammoth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's likely = to a winning bid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calgary.

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

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

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

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

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

From the Star:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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