Does the US need a set of national urban parks? | Revisiting a comment from 2019

I bring this up because reading "backfile" articles about architecture and parks in the Toronto Globe and Mail, there is this year old article, "What Canada’s only national urban park can teach us about accessible, eco-friendly design." 

The Rouge National Urban Park is 30 minutes outside of Toronto, and is transit accessible ("One of the largest urban parks in North America is in Toronto and you can get there for free"), unlike most of the Canadian national parks in rural areas. (Or many US national parks and related federal park-type facilities.)

It's a single park unit, not an amalgamation of sites like an NPS National Recreation Area spanning multiple sites in an area like SF, Boston, Long Island, New York or outside Atlanta.

(WRT access issues and DC area national parks, see "A gap in planning across agencies: Prioritizing park access for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users compared to motor vehicle access" and "Revisiting: Access to Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national park in Washington, DC.")

Nor is it a National Heritage Area which typically isn't urban-focused specifically, they are focused on a large region and interpreting it thematically, such as the Rivers of Steel NHA for Greater Pittsburgh (although the one in Baltimore is; Boston has a National Historical Park including many different sites), but an area of historic interested spread out in a region of many hundreds of square miles. (In the Detroit area there is even an (inter)national wildlife refuge along both the US and Canadian sides of the Detroit River.

(Separately, I've argued DC should manage itself as a heritage area, whether or not it is federally designated as such.  See "A unified National Park Service Visitor Center for DC (and the region).")

Toronto as seen in the distance from Rouge National Urban Park.

The article makes the point that the Canadian Park Service wants to develop other urban parks.  From the article:

Dubbed the “people’s park,” RNUP is currently Canada’s only national urban park. But not for long. To connect more urban dwellers to nature, the federal government committed $130-million in 2021 to establish more of them across the country – looking at cities such as Windsor, Ont., Edmonton and St. John’s, with the aim of creating six by 2025 and a total of 15 by 2030. Parks Canada believes that creating these parks will improve resident well-being, air and water quality and commemorate Indigenous knowledge and culture. The government also recently announced RNUP’s expansion, scrapping plans for an airport in Pickering in favour of adding to the park’s footprint.

As RNUP expands and new urban national parks take shape, the question of how these spaces should look and function becomes more important. Planners and designers are grappling with how to balance ecological health, accessibility and public use, while also considering the role of beauty and aesthetics.

On the long ago entry, "Defining National Park Service installations in DC as locally or nationally serving" (2019), Ed Drozd made the point that there ought to be a systematic provision of "national" parks throughout the country:

First, in re whether locally serving, thinking about it, I wonder what should be the goal of the National Park Service. Clearly part should be iconic areas. But, I do think selected locally serving areas, whether National Parks or National Historic Parks, might be important as well. Not just as outreach between the NPS and most people, but also to connect people to history and/or environment.

Part first amended: my wife lives near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (full National Park) between Akron and Cleveland. I've been in it, and have been underwhelmed compared to, say, Acadia or Glacier, but it is truly lovely and can connect people to the environment like few other places in the area can.

But, why there but not places in NJ where I grew up? Granted there are National Historic Parks, but those are tied to history. However, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps it doesn't matter because of the programming.

If we think about this in terms of spreading the wealth of national parks beyond the signature parks, as far as urban parks go, there are a bunch of NPS installations, mostly historic site based, some "national recreation areas" like around Boston, SF, Long Island, etc.  They do have an urban program, or at least they did before Trump.

In a follow up comment I was in agreement, but now I am not so sure.  DC has a lot of national park sites, big and small, but the Park Service hasn't been that great about taking care of them, partially because they have a big portfolio, a backlog of maintenance, and because they aren't set up well to deal with urban parks.

Even though they produced a couple decent reports on how to do it, the Urban Agenda Call to Action Initiative more generally, and wrt DC specifically, the Small Parks Management Strategies document (report).

Cracked and broken tiles mar the appearance of Welcome Park, a plaza dedicated to telling the story of William Penn’s vision for the city. Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer.

And resource deficiencies aren't just a problem in DC, they are especially a problem at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park ("Large granite ‘join or die’ sculpture is among Independence Park improvements that still need funding," "Independence Park is ‘woefully behind’ for 2026 and in ‘grave need of resources,’ stakeholders say," "A Much-Needed Makeover: How Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park is getting ready for America’s 250th birthday," "More bikes and pedestrians, fewer cars: A $100M rethink of Philly’s historical district," Philadelphia Inquirer) 

-- Independence National Historical Park: Long-Range Interpretive Plan, National Park Service (2007)

A display describing the lives of enslaved people on the site where one of George Washington's homes once stood in Independence National Historical Park. Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer.

This is irrespective of the recent problems over historic interpretation ("The slavery exhibits at the President’s House are starting to be restored by the National Park Service," "Trump’s attempts to hide the unpleasant truths about our actual history are the real disparagement," PI) at the President's House and the Trump Administration's desire to whitewash over "minority" elements, especially "hurtful" history, as part of the good and bad of the national story.

What about networking existing urban parks?  Now, and I might be biased because I am on the board of an urban park (granted it's 1/6 the size of Central Park in NYC), and knowing also that there are extensive networks of state parks in addition to the large park inventories typical in major cities, that maybe like how within Montreal, they have a set of parks they refer to as Network of Large Parks, some more urban and sculpted, others more natural, that instead, somehow we think of these park systems as networks, and promote and support them that way.

Parks People, the parks advocacy group in Canada, has created such a network there ("Park People launches first-of-its-kind network for Canada’s large urban parks").  Of course in the US there is the Trust for Public Land, an advocacy and consulting group--with an urban parks unit, and various national and state professional associations.  But judging from what I know about parks in Salt Lake City and County, state parks or natural resources agencies don't work that closely to help local and county park systems in terms of a network.

Still a role for the Park Service (and other federal agencies).  There is still a place for NPS in terms of linking various federally controlled sites through National Recreation Areas, Urban National Heritage Areas, Boston's National Historical Park, historic sites and landmarks, and other resources.  There's talk in Southern California of designating some of the beaches a national par ("Parks service says federal control of local beaches could spur new, protections, conservation efforts and economic activity," Santa Monica Daily Press).

But like as opined in the above-cited blog entry, there needs to be a strong interpretational, historic, and cultural resources framework for determining why such parks and sites should be designated as federal.  

And, there needs to be money appropriated to deal with additional responsibilities for new federally designated parks, rather than merely add to the current $10+ billion backlog in maintenance.

That doesn't even mention US Forests which may be located on the outskirts of urban areas such as in Los Angeles and the Uintah-Wasatch-Cache National Forest outside of Salt Lake.  The Forest Service has been underbudgeted for years, which has led to mergers of forests covering often disparate areas.

Back from the Brink, an oral history of the introduction and implementation of Broken Windows theory policing in New York City

I have been remiss in reviewing Back from the Brink, the book by Peter Moskos that is an oral history of the New York City Police Department during the Bratton period, where new strategies and tactics were introduced to suppress crime in significantly measurable ways.  (I first mentioned the book last September, in "Murder rate in Chicago is bad: "correct" applications of broken window policing.")

Unfortuately, I have a bad habit of if I don't write the review as soon as I read the book, I'm not likely to get back to it, partly because I have another bad habit of writing my notes on various different pieces of paper, some get mislaid etc.

But the review of the book by Michael Fortner, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in Washington Monthly, "How New York City Got Safe: A historical reconstruction of the Big Apple’s crime decline, told from inside the institutions responsible for public safety," reminds me that it is important to do so.

A New York Subway car before Broken Windows policing practice was introduced in the late 1980s.

Fortner covers the book pretty well, but I think he misses some points.  

I lived in DC during the bad times in the 80s and 90s, and am a fervent believer in broken windows policing theory.  

In general, especially in progressive academia, it has a bad rep because most departments interpreted it as "zero tolerance policing" with a lack of focus on major crimes and the creation of a siege mentality by arresting people for the least transgression, like lack of a seatbelt (also see "Looking Through Broken Windows: The Impact of Neighborhood Disorder on Aggression and Fear of Crime Is an Artifact of Research Design" Annual Review of Criminology, "Why the Fraudulent 'Broken Windows' Theory of Policing Refuses to Die," Current Affairs).

What I got out of Moskos book are a few key things.  

First, the interviews make clear that Bratton and the top people believed that crime could be suppressed.  CompStat was about (re)focusing police time towards proactiveness.  

Although as Fortner quotes one commander, it was a philosophy.  Moskos cites a cop talking about how they had a problem with bike-based robberies in his precinct and how they addressed it.  But others took out of CompStat meetings about this precinct "arrest bicyclists" rather than analyze whether or not bicycles were used repetitively in perpetrating crime.

Bratton's team believed that by addressing pattern crime, and arresting perpetrators crime would drop.  

While generally, the police department wasn't focused on "broken windows" or improving public spaces per se, the application of focused policing on the subway system was complemented by a refurbishment of subway stations and subway cars--not just buying new equipment--but by addressing graffiti, etc.

I really got a sense of the incrementalism of the effort.  The idea of "moving the success of broken windows from underground/the subways" to above ground wasn't just about the CompStat tracking system and delving deeply into crime patterns, precinct by precinct.. 

Two stories in particular cover the integration of policing with public space improvement were the campaigns to significantly improve the  Port Authority Bus Terminal and Bryant Park (although the program to improve BP began before the Bratton period of policing).  

But as the president of the subway system told Bratton during his interview "if we don't fix stations and subway trains in association with better policing people won't take the train," the success of Bryant Park likely would have taken much longer to come to fruition without better, focused policing in public parks and Bryant Park in particular.

Another element of public space improvement at the time had nothing to do with policing, but with the creation of business improvement districts, funded by local property tax surcharges, these groups provided extranormal cleaning services and public space improvements and monitoring in places like Times Square and around Penn Station.

And the proof is in the pudding.  Sure multiple cities had significant crime drops starting in the late 19890s.  But eg DC versus NYC.  NYC had a 75% drop in homicides, DC 38%.  I'm sure this quantum difference in results between NYC and other cities was across the board.

Living in DC at the time, there wasn't a lot of broken windows approaches, but there was a focus on involving neighborhood groups, the way that Patrick Sharkey in Uneasy Peace attributes some of the fall in crime during that period to civic and collective action ("George Kelling, co-creator of the "Broken WIndows" thesis, dies," 2019).

I myself participated in one such neighborhood group that was started in response to a major drug area, and over time it was negated.  The cops came to monthly meetings, problems were discussed, there were occasional walks with police and elected officials, etc.  (I also did small experiments in my neighborhood, with litter pick up and measurement of its impact on certain streets and in bus shelters.)

A blog reader once made the point that as crime dropped, maybe stop and frisk was in part a response of needing something to do, but with the lack of restraints applied during the post Bratton Guiliani years (although Bratton in his later stint did support stop and frisk; later he recanted).  

Obviously, Stop and Frisk was proven to be not productive.  Unlike the value of arresting fare jumpers and checking them for outstanding warrants, an early initiative of Bratton's on the subway system, less than 2% of the people stopped under Stop and Frisk had warrants.  

So for me, the biggest issue with BW is that it hasn't really been applied in a true fashion in very many places.  And with how the Bratton people were pushed out by Giuliani, my lesson from DC is that you can't ever stop being vigilant when it comes to crime and order versus disorder.  Once disorder returns it's hard to reverse.

The rise in social justice concerns, deserved somewhat, as crime dropped and fewer elected officials and academics had direct experience of the mess of disorder during the worst of 1990s, did lead to a rise in crime in places like DC ("The Coming D.C. Crime Boomerang," Atlantic), as crime decriminalization was seen by perpetrators not as a social justice move to help people "driven to crime because of life circumstances," but as a signal to commit more crime (by extension, "The role of physical environment in the ‘broken windows’ theory," University of Chicago)

BART's new fare gates, seen at the Coliseum station in 2025, have generated more money for the transit agency. Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle

BART and fare gates. Recently there was a super interesting BW finding in SF with BART stations with new fare evasion resistant gates ("BART’s long fight against fare evasion is finally paying off. Here’s how much," San Francisco Chronicle).  

Not only did rider attitudes improve, ridership and fare revenue grew, and instances of vandalism dropped significantly.  Like Bratton said, turnstile jumpers commit other crimes.  If they aren't on the subway because they didn't pay, well, then there is less likelihood for vandalism of subway infrastructure.

Note that NYC and DC subways ("Metro’s new, higher faregates reducing fare evasion by more than 70 percent"), and St. Louis and Minneapolis light rail ("Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023) are also implementing a new type of fare gate to reduce fare evasion.

Playgrounds and cafes were some of the positive use spaces added to the area.   Photo:  Jessie Cooper and Justin Roth embrace on a swing at a playground at Civic Center in San Francisco, California, on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

Revival of BART's Civic Center station.  Predating the fare gate program, the BART Civic Center Station became a center for nuisances and problems, where the two block "entryway" to the station became a gauntlet for problems.  

The City of San Francisco invested in improving the public realm on those two blocks, adding positive functions that brought about more positive use of the space, which were complemented by station-specific improvements by BART.  

Media coverage of the project make clear that the effort involved police and multiple other partners, agencies, some philanthropic funding, physical interventions and programming ("SF Civic Center’s new vision: soccer fields, shaded gardens and people," "SF Civic Center — cleaner and safer — now a place to play and have a bite," "Rejuvenating SF Civic Center Plaza: a challenge beyond design," San Francisco Chronicle). 

While the area’s transformation remains a work in progress, the differences are stark. In addition to two new playgrounds that cost $10 million, the space hosts a growing number of public events, including outdoor concerts, art installations and food-truck gatherings. A winter park — complete with a 6,000-square-foot ice rink — is set to open next month.

BART has developed a station modernization program equally focused on reducing public safety issues.

The Station Modernization Program revolves around 3 themes, focusing on increasing safety, capacity, sustainability, appearance, and enhancing the customer experience: 

• Vibrancy-- Reflect the energy of the surrounding community and enhance the station’s existing strengths 
• Connectivity – Strengthen multi-modal and universal access to the station and promote a safe and comfortable customer experience 
•  Sustainability – Incorporate sustainable materials and technologies into the station to increase the life-cycle value of the station’s infrastructure and to conserve natural resources and protect the public investment. 

Residents hope a similar program can be developed to improve the environment and public safety elements at the 16th Street-Mission Station ("Can BART bring a Civic Center-style revival to another dilapidated S.F. station?," SFC).   But in contrast to the Civic Center project, they are focusing more on BART, and less on engaging other agencies into creating a broader program.

 “If you really think about it, this is the living room of the Mission,” he said. “And the BART station is the front door. The first impression you have of the neighborhood is coming through the fare gate and up that escalator.”

As discussed in the 2013 entry "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," transit stations are entry points--porches or living rooms--to neighborhoods.  While transit systems typically don't plan them that way, it is a responsibility that goes beyond the transit agency, and should require ongoing coordination and planning with the local jurisdiction.

Managing to prevent disorder is an ongoing process.  The final lesson with BW in NYC is that it requires constant vigilance too.  That it's hard to maintain because people get burned out.  But also when elected officials want the credit, they push out the top cops who bring the changes about.  That definitely happened in NYC.  Most of the top implementers of BW at NYPD were gone within a few years of Bratton's departure.  Although fortunately, further down the ranks were commanders, inspectors, and captains who took the precepts to heart and continued to implement the approach.

Chicago.  Chicago is an outlier nationally, in that the city that has continued to have high murder rates, although they are dropping, despite purportedly adopting BW approaches.  (The city has had success with crime reductions in association with community intervention programs.)

"The federal help Chicago really needs," Crain's Chicago Business

At the University of Chicago Crime Lab, we have spent over fifteen years studying which interventions actually reduce gun violence and maximize the impact of government spending. We think we’ve found a clear path forward: Build the capacity of police commanders managing jurisdictions with the highest rates of violence. The Policing Leadership Academy has a simple premise — treat policing as a profession using the formula that has had tremendous success for private sector companies: investing in people’s leadership and management skills.

Also see "Policing and management," NBER, which makes the point about how the use of management time shapes outcomes positively or negatively.

How Trump celebrates Black History Month

Despite a White House proclamation honoring Black History Month, perhaps this is how Trump really feels (Trump’s racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash despite White House earlier defending it," Associated Press).

President Trump’s social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as racist.

... The deletion, a rare admission of a misstep by the White House, came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal for being racist -- including by Republicans -- the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously and it had been taken down.

... Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority Black countries.

San Francisco is not Santa Clara: How Santa Clara/San Jose are poorly represented by Super Bowl programming, even though it's home to the event

Yes, we're familiar with how many professional teams labeled after "their city" are no longer based in the city, but in the suburbs, e.g., the New York Giants and New York Jets play in New Jersey, the Arizona Cardinals play in Glendale, not Phoenix, and the San Francisco Giants moved from the city to the suburbs of San Jose in return for lots of subsidy--$80 million directly and hundreds of millions in bonds ("7 Things to Know About the Complicated Relationship Between Santa Clara and the 49ers," KQED/NPR).

Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara has the game but most of the sanctioned events leading up to it are in San Francisco. Kirby Lee/Imagn Images/Reuters

This is a problem when it comes to "economic benefits of the Super Bowl to the local economy," when the NFL will hold activities in "the big city"--New York City not suburban New Jersey, Phoenix not Glendale, and in the case of Sunday's Super Bowl, LV, in San Francisco not Santa Clara or San Jose ("Big game, big bill: Santa Clara mayor flags Super Bowl costs to the city," NBC, "Congrats, Your City Gets to Host the Super Bowl. The Party’s 40 Miles Away," Wall Street Journal, "Super Bowl LX week will once again be centered in San Francisco, but San Jose will kick off the fanfare," San Jose Mercury News).

From the WSJ:

San Jose got one sanctioned event—Super Bowl Opening Night. Mayor Matt Mahan opted to not get mad, but get even. He helped raise $5 million from businesses to field a competing roster of events, including a three-day block party called Super Fest, watch parties, drone shows and sold-out outdoor performances by the R&B singer Kehlani and DJ Dom Dolla.

I doubt the San Jose programs, scheduled against NFL sanctioned events held elsewhere, will have a significant effect in drawing fans to San Jose, especially if people are staying in hotels in SF.

The last Super Bowl in Santa Clara, in 2026, earned the city less than $1 million.  From "‘We’ll be on the center stage’: San Jose pulls out all the stops for 2026 sports bonanza," Local News Matters:

When Levi’s Stadium hosted Super Bowl 50 in 2016, reports found the Bay Area saw a $240 million boost to the local economy — San Jose, however, only saw 12% of those economic benefits, while 57% went to San Francisco. Santa Clara, where the stadium is located, only saw 7% of the benefits.

It's rare for a sports economic impact study to be so fine-grained.  They also subtracted out negative effects, and separately accounted for in kind project donations to area nonprofits.

Usually, small businesses don't benefit much from these events, as most of the money patrons spend is on travel, lodging, car rental, and food and beverage, and many of these firms are not locally owned.  From "Super Bowl LX preps spotlight local sourcing as NFL targets $360M economic impact," Silicon Valley Business Journal.

The NFL is also trying to keep the economic impact local, according to the NFL's Vice President of Global Events, Nicki Ewell. She said the league used a local-first sourcing strategy, sourcing from regional restaurants, vendors and local labor for stadium build-out and events so spending stays in the Bay Area.

Previous Silicon Valley Business Journal reporting shows that Super Bowl LX is projected to bring 90,000 people to the Bay Area in addition to a projected $360 million to $630 million in economic impact.

"This is huge," said Jayne Ancheta, owner of Santa Clara-based Macaron De Jayne and Source LX participant. "I secured multiple contracts for the Super Bowl events, and I had catering opportunities outside of the Super Bowl." The Super Bowl also marks an opportunity to spotlight the Bay Area, Ewell noted.

Note the same kinds of issues are present with "All Star Games" in baseball and basketball, etc.

-- "Musing on the economic impact of cultural and sports events," 2019
-- "Not enough time for a 2024 DC-Baltimore Olympic Bid (to make sense)," 2014
-- "Big sporting events (World Cup/Olympics), economic development and trickle down economics," 2014
-- "Super Bowl," 2016
-- "More need for economic revitalization planning/linkage with sports stadiums: Las Vegas (+ Houston and the Super Bowl)," 2017
-- "Minneapolis Super Bowl: Urban Revitalization and Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2018

-- "NBA All Star Game in Salt Lake, economic development hype | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pirates baseball team economics," 2023

The Urban Land Institute disagrees ("Inglewood’s Transformation: How an NFL Stadium Brought the City Back from the Brink of Bankruptcy").  But not the Washington Post ("A home Super Bowl is good for the Rams. But is SoFi Stadium good for Inglewood?").

Special labor.  One point of difference that I failed to account for in the past in terms of economic impact is what we might call "special events labor"--the people who run lights, sound, etc. for the event.  There definitely is an impact here, where people might get paid for a couple week long temporary gig associated with the Super Bowl.

NFL Draft economic impact.  More recently, the NFL has made an event out of the Draft, which is now held each year in different cities across the country. Economic impact is claimed to be as much as one half of the economic impact of a Super Bowl, which seems outlandish to me ("NFL Draft Expected to Have Huge Economic Impact for Detroit," Corp!), but apparently many tens of thousands of people are attending. 

"NFL Draft: Fans flock to second day of NFL Draft as Detroit nears attendance record," CNN.

In 2024, it was estimated that 300,000 fans would come to Detroit for the Draft, more than double a typical Super Bowl.  

It makes no sense that these projections are accurate.  But this photograph from Detroit's Draft Days tells another story.

-- Economic Impact of the NFL Draft Event in Detroit, Andersen Economic Group.  AEG differentiates between direct and indirect impact, indirect has to do with the multiplier effect of money recirculating within the economy.  WRT sports event, indirect impact is somewhat reduced because some of the major beneficiaries are firms located elsewhere (like airlines, hotels, rental cars) and the money repatriates to those headquarter facilities.

I like this infographic on the economic impact, produced by the City of Detroit by Octane Design, in the Sports Travel Magazine article, "2024 NFL Draft Brings Detroit $213.6 Million in Estimated Economic Impact," Sports Travel Magazine.  

Neighborhood councils and civic engagement: snow removal as a community building activity

DC has what are called Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which are grassroots community organizations empowered with the authority to "weigh in" on matters before DC government agencies, such as zoning, planning approvals etc.

Most of them don't work that well because not much is invested in them by the city government in terms of training and technical assistance.  Although some do well because they organize as committees and allow non-elected residents to participate as full members of the committees, expanding the human capital available to the Commission.

Past writings:

-- "National Community Planning Month | Civic Involvement," 2025

-- "DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions," (2012)
-- "(Even more on) ANCs (Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in DC)," (2010)
-- "Setting up DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions for success," (2022) (lots of links within)
-- ""Networked solutions" for some problems with ANCs in DC," (2011)
-- "Dumb... to fix bad practices, make them democratic instead of just eliminating them," (2012) (also discusses participatory budgeting)

-- "Building civic engagement systematically: Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods," (2022)
-- "Framingham Massachusetts creates Citizen Participation Officer position" (2018)
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement and Positive Promotion of Democracy," (2024)

-- "Main Street and getting schooled in politics, constituency building, and building support for your program," (2006)

Government versus self-help/DIY | top down versus ground-up solutions.  Note that Neighborhood Councils can create a couple of other problems.  First, they tend to convert every issue to one of "what government should do", reducing the willingness of people to do self-help/DIY.

Not enough engaged citizens to "staff up" multiple neighborhood organizations.  Also, they do what I call "creaming" getting the best possible community members to participate in the Councils.  I think this can come at the expense of maintaining other organizations such as community associations, friends of libraries/parks, schools and PTAs, etc.  

We need more and better participants, and a range of thriving community organizations, not fewer.  

Note that communities like Capitol Hill, Petworth, Adams-Morgan, Mount Pleasant, to some extent Georgetown, and Takoma Park (the Maryland side, which DC residents can be free riders) have a great amount of community identity, with a number of organizations, volunteers, community festivals, community foundations, various public events, etc.

Commissioners representing Single Member Districts.  Years ago I suggested some strategies and tactics for making Commissioners more accountable and active.  One was a stipend, but only if they held four meetings per year (quarterly) in their electoral district.  Later I suggested that one of the four meetings should be a public/outdoor event, like a community cleanup.

Snow clearance as a civic act.  Cities on the East Coast got zapped by the recent snow storm because snow was followed by sleet and a drop in temperature, creating what some are calling "snowcrete."  

The crust is very hard requiring sledgehammers, pickaxes and other non-plastic shovels to break through.

In DC, groups of citizens have self-organized through Reddit and other social media to go out and clear crosswalks--the city has never really taken responsibility for such even though cleared crosswalks are essential for a walking-biking-transit city ("Cities, sustainable mobility users, and snow"). 

Sidewalks and bus shelters too.

This would be a perfect activity to engage residents in the activities of their local Advisory Neighborhood Commission.  

Columbia Heights Shovel Gang hard at work.

Organized snow clearing events by transit stations, bus stops, schools, libraries, plus crosswalks, etc.  Hot chocolate afterwards?

DC Government does have a volunteer hotline for people willing to shovel snow for people in need.

But I think it could be expanded upon greatly if ANCs were a fulcrum for organizing.

Then again, supporting DIY efforts separate from ANCs is a good thing too.

No news is bad news: Washington Post dying | Seattle Times business columnist Jon Talton dies

Yesterday, the Washington Post laid off 300 workers, including the sports desk ("The Washington Post’s sports desk is gone. It’s the latest blow to American sports journalism," Boston Globe) and most of the remaining reporters working in the local news "Metro" section.

There had been reports for about a week that this was going to happen.

That big story ("Washington Post cuts a third of its staff in a blow to a legendary news brand," AP) is not reflected on the front page of today's paper.

After a promising start with ownership by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and a significant rise in digital subscriptions with its coverage of the first Trump Administration, the paper hit a bit of slump. 

But the slump took on the force of an out of control roller coaster when Bezos killed the endorsement of Kamala Harris for President ("Over 200,000 subscribers flee 'Washington Post' after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement," NPR).  

And last year's evisceration of a left leaning editorial page section ("The Exodus from the Washington Post," Columbia Journalism Review, "Washington Post’s turnaround on its opinion pages is returning journalism to its partisan roots − but without the principles," Conversation) replacing it with conservative hacks writing about Bezos concerns about "personal freedom" and "free markets."

Hundreds of thousands of subscribers cancelled ("How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post," New Yorker, "The Washington Post Is Dying a Death of Despair," Atlantic).

Considering Trump's attacks on both personal freedom and free markets, he could have kept the old stable of writers.

These days, Bezos is more interested in protecting his business interests vis a vis the world of crony capitalism pushed forward by Trump.  

Such investments include donations to Trump's inauguration and to the new East Wing of the White House monstrosity, as well as funding a documentary about Melania Trump in the period up to the inauguration--it hasn't played well to critics ("He made a joke on his theater’s marquee, then Amazon pulled the ‘Melania’ movie," Seattle Times).  

And debilitating the Post ("Jeff Bezos Killed the Washington Post," Slate, "Jeff Bezos’ mass layoffs at the Washington Post a ‘case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction,’ former editor says," Fortune).

Alternatives that won't happen.  One sell the paper to someone more inclined to respect its history and purpose.  Two, Margaret Sullivan suggests creating a nonprofit to take the paper over (" Is Jeff Bezos going to destroy the Washington Post? It sure looks like it," Guardian), with a big stake from Bezos, the way papers in Philadelphia and Salt Lake have been converted to nonprofits in this era of declining newspaper profits.

Ironically, I'd reach out to Lord Rothermere in the UK, publisher of the Daily Mail, which is looking to buy the Daily Telegraph, the Tory Party standby after that paper suffered various ownership debacles.  While most of the Daily Mail papers are conservative, they do still own a piece of the Evening Standard, which is not ("Move over, Murdoch: will Lord Rothermere be Britain’s most powerful media mogul?," Guardian).

Three, when Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal he created a small news section on New York City, aimed at prying readers away from the New York Times.  The NYT has a strong readership in print and digitally within the Washington region.  Maybe they could publish a zoned section with local sports, metropolitan news, and editorials.

I wish self important billionaires like Tom Steyer wouldn't waste their money on stupid political campaigns.  How about funding a printed and digital US edition of the Guardian, based in DC?

Jon Talton, business columnist, Seattle Times dies ("Jon Talton, Seattle Times business columnist and author, dies at 69").  

He wrote about the regional economy, which reminds me that the Post hasn't had someone on that beat since Stephen Pearlstein left to teach at George Mason University.

He wrote about downtown, Boeing, of course the various IT businesses there, in particular Amazon and Microsoft, and how local politics intersected with business. About relevant national economic issues, population density, immigration, etc.

An important voice is lost, and his body of work is a demonstration of the value of solid local reporting and reporting-based opinion to an knowledgeable community.

Good article in the New Yorker about political organizing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the article:

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

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

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

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

And they bind together over those beliefs.  

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

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

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

From the article:

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

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

From the article:

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

National Park Service and climate change

The New York Times reports, "National Park Service Removes Sign on Climate Change From Fort Sumter," that the Trump Administration has removed a sign about climate change impacts at Fort Sumter, the site of the start of the US Civil War.

This is a result of both the desire to whitewash historic interpretation to avoid discussion of difficult histories, such as slavery and DEI, but also a directive saying climate change doesn't exist and change interpretation accordingly.

Based on possible negative impacts, federal agencies with large property portfolios, such as the Department of Defense, and the National Park Service, have devoted a lot of time and attention to planning for site futures in the face of climate change.

The Park Service has a number of resources. Even if taken down, they'd be available via archive.org

• the original policy memo calling for the development of policy, Climate Change and Stewardship of Cultural Resources
• a one pager on Communicating Climate Change in National Parks
• one of its classic style brochures on Climate Change in National Parks generally, and for the Western Parks
• the Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy report
• and a 2023 update
• a webpage listing various resources
• reports organized by park region about the potential for impact and the preferred response
• reports on park-specific climate futures
• Enhanced Monitoring to Better Address Rapid Climate Change in High-Elevation Parks
• Understanding the Science of Climate Change Talking Points: Impact to the Gulf Coast
• A Collaborative Science Agenda on Climate Change for Southern California Coastal Parks
• Large Rivers Water Quality Monitoring Protocol: Great Lakes Inventory and Monitoring Network
• Climate Change Vulnerability of Terrestrial Areas in National Capital Parks-East
• Weather and Climate Inventory National Park Service Northeast Temperate Network 

Martin Luther King Day

I'm filing stuff from years ago, and a few items I've come across are relevant to the Day and the idea of strengthening the Black community.

Glen Ford, a key figure in progressive black journalism ("Glen Ford, Black Journalist Who Lashed the Mainstream, Dies at 71," New York Times).  

He was co-founder of the syndicated television program "America's Black Forum," and later the website, Black Agenda Report.  He co-founded Black Commentator, which among many important works, published a great five-part series on urban revitalization, which was focused on black empowerment

This entry includes links to the full series:

-- "Wanted: A Plan for Cities to Save Themselves," 2003

2.  There's been a ton of work and media on African American and foodways.  One person is chef Bryant Terry, who has created a publishing imprint to bring those stories to print ("With 4 Color Books, Bryant Terry Looks to Color Outside the Lines," NYT).

Village Market, Portland.

3.  In 2001, the St. Johns Woods low income housing project in North Portland, reached out to a local youth support organization, to create a community garden as a youth program--now called Village Gardens.  

The impact on the neighborhood was swift--within 8 months, police calls dropped, there was a notable reduction in litter, and on time rent payment metrics improved.  The Garden created a safe environment for youth.  

A community store, Village Market, developed later as part of the initiative ("Village Market, a healthy corner store, opens in North Portland's New Columbia," "Nonprofit grocery store in North Portland's New Columbia turns 1, learns to adjust," Portland Oregonian). It's still going strong 15 years later.

... it’s a unique nonprofit grocery store with a mission to provide fresh and healthy food to residents in and around New Columbia.

While officially a mixed-income neighborhood, New Columbia is also the state’s largest public housing development built to be home to some of the city's poorest residents. The community along this stretch of North Portland between Interstate 5 and the St. Johns Bridge is listed on city of Portland and USDA maps as a “food desert,” or an urban neighborhood where residents must travel extensively to get fresh produce.

The Village Market opened May 28, 2011, on the same corner where two previous businesses, Big City Produce and AJ Java, tried to make a go and failed. A year on, the grocery is still operating on grants and adjusting its nonprofit vision to the reality of the neighborhood. “It’s been an adventure,” said Amber Baker, the store's program director for Janus Youth Programs, which operates the market. “The goal is to be self-sustaining in four years. We’re hoping for that.”

4.  Oasis Fresh Market(s) was opened by Aaron Johnson, a former football player at the University of Tulsa, to bring food to an underserved area ("North Tulsa welcomes Oasis Fresh Market," Black Wall Street Times).  The market has developed a wide variety of support programs for the community, such as breakfast and lunch for kids in the summer ("Oasis Fresh Market launches free breakfast, lunch for Tulsa kids," BWST), and support for SNAP recipients denied benefits.  They're going to open a second store downtown.

A rally against critical race theory in Leesburg, Va., June 12, 2021. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, AFP/Getty Images.

5.  A story on Derrick Bell, "The Godfather of Critical Race Theory" (WSJ).

In the life of any big idea, there comes a moment when it stops belonging to the thinkers who invented it and becomes public property. Today, critical race theory is undergoing that kind of transformation. When the term came into use in the 1970s and 1980s, it described the work of scholars like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado and Kimberlé Crenshaw, whose work was hotly debated in legal academia but little known outside it. But over the last year, critical race theory has moved to the center of American political debate.

In their book “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,” Mr. Delgado and Jean Stefancic list several of its core premises, including the view that “racism is ordinary, not aberrational,” and that it “serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group,” that is, for white people. In recent years, these ideas have entered the mainstream thanks to the advocacy of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was catalyzed by several high-profile cases of police violence against Black people, as well as the New York Times’s 1619 Project and bestselling books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.” Critical race theory also informs instruction at some schools and other institutions.

These ideas have now become a major target of conservative activism. In September 2020, the Trump administration issued a memo instructing executive branch departments to cancel “any training on ‘critical race theory,’” which it equated with teaching “that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country.” This year, legislators and school boards in many states have introduced proposals to prohibit the teaching of critical race theory in schools, with Florida’s State Board of Education adopting such a rule earlier this month.

6. While tenancy was and is not limited to African-Americans, there is a new National Public Housing Museum in Chicago ("A National Public Housing Museum opens," NPR, "In Chicago, LBBA repurposes a New Deal–era building into the National Public Housing Museum," Architect's Newspaper).

The institution is the first of its kind. NPHM was founded by public housing residents—its goal is to become “a place to experience stories of hope and personal achievement amid struggle, resistance, and resilience,” NPHM said in a statement.

... Sunny Fischer cofounded NPHM and now sits on the board. She grew up in the Bronx at a public housing campus. Fischer called NPHM a Site of Conscience, or a space to remember and address past injustices and their ongoing legacies.

“As a Site of Conscience, we join museums around the world committed to telling complicated and difficult stories, preserving history, and imagining a more just future,” Fischer said.

Upon entry, visitors can see illustrative WPA advertisements for public housing, bygone relics from a time when the federal government invested in such things. Three historic apartments were reconstructed at a 1:1 to scale to show how different generations of public housing residents lived.

Instead of your conventional gift shop, the museum store is co-operatively run by public housing residents. NPHM also has a REC Room, a curated space by DJ Spinderella showcasing the beats and melodies born on public housing campuses. The Doris Conant Demand the Impossible Advocacy Space is meant to encourage discussions about social justice.

Life After Cars | US Metropolitan areas where 8% or more residents use public transit to get to work

One of the points I used to make wrt transit advocacy is that people needed to recognize that most of the US--92% of all trips involve a car--has no concept that a transit-centric mobility and lifestyle paradigm is even possible.  

This is why this graphic (via Reddit) is so compelling.  Sadly.  Because it shows how few areas of the country are at least somewhat transit-centric.  

I always say I was privileged to have lived in DC for 30+ years, where it is possible, practical, and frugal to rely on transit (even better when you add biking, walking, and the occasional car share) rather than having to own a car.  Not owning a car at the time supported $100,000 of our mortgage.

If I were healthy, and maybe with the addition of an electric bike, I probably could live car light, not car free, in Salt Lake.  But I am not strong enough yet to be able to use an electric bike, and I have scads of doctors appointments, occasional hospital stays, etc.

"Gasoline is up and GOP sees an easy target: Biden," Politico.

Like when President Biden proposed a federal excise tax holiday on gasoline when prices rose, advocates were quick to say, "no, instead make transit free."  When comparatively speaking, everyone drives, and they are more concerned about gas prices than transit use.

What I always argue is that it took 50+ years to build our automobile-centric transportation system, and while it shouldn't take that long to build up a sustainable mobility system, we need to take a variety of steps, including actively helping people take up bicycling and shift trips from the car.

-- "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 26 programs"  2024

As some people say, "biking is the freedom that car television ads claim to provide."

This reality is why I didn't bother trying to track down a review copy of the book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, which has received a fair amount of coverage ("‘Car Brain’ Is Making the US Unhealthy and Dangerous. EVs Won’t Fix It.," Bloomberg).  

I think it's great to think of a no car lifestyle as a thought experiment, a way to think about how you get around, and what you can change to do so without a car as much as possible.

But to argue seriously that it should be the policy of the land, given where we are now, is ludicrous and I would think, for most people is an argument that can't ever be taken seriously.

Note that I am pleased by recent various pro-sustainable mobility gains:

•  electric bikes are successful in shifting trips away from the automobile
• bike sharing systems in DC, New York City, and Toronto are having record years
• each year more and more people take part in Safe Routes to School programs
• coverage within SRTS programming about "bike buses" ("More Children Are Powering Their Own Wheels to School as Part of ‘Bike Buses’," Inside Climate News)
• the expanded use of cargo bikes as alternatives to the car 
• winter cycling promotion initiatives including a winter Bike to Work Day in many cities
• and that transit use is rebounding after taking a hit during Covid.

Last year's entry, "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part three -- transportation" has links to what I consider to be my best writings on transportation.

It is possible to shift people away from the car, partly by alternatives, partly by changes to urban form, and the creation of mixed use communities.

My ability to be mobile waxes and wanes depending on (if any) recent hospitalizations.  Before my last trip to the hospital, I was walking two miles per day and doing a variety of exercises.  I haven't worked back to that level, but I can walk a mile, better if split half and half.

Where I live that means I can walk one half mile east to a decent shopping center with a supermarket, Shake Shack, and various other retail in one direction, a little farther from that adds a dry cleaner, shoe repair and copy shop to the range.  

Walking west, another half mile, is a small group of businesses on four corners of a neighborhood intersection with a smaller upscale supermarket, drug store/apparel shop, two restaurants, and salon and light office (for awhile I saw a doctor as my PCP in an office above the direction).

In yet another direction is another grouping of shops, including where I get my hair cut (sometimes I spring for a razor shave too) where I walked to just last week.

There's a park in another direction.  And if I can walk a bit farther, a neighborhood library (more like 3/4 mile each way).

Again, it's a privilege to live in a place with access to all those amenities easily reachable by walking or biking.  (And by car, two major hospitals within 15 minutes, north and south of where I live, among other amenities.)

Again/2, if I could bike right now, I'd have access to a great deal more amenities, all in less than a 5 mile radius.  

And that's not even taking advantage of the light rail-based transit shed in the metropolitan area (it's not too proximate for me, the nearest station is almost 3 miles away, on the University of Utah campus).  Bus service isn't too bad, but degrades with distance.    If you're in the rail transit shed, you can live car light definitely, and depending on where you work, no car.

My hospital is 5.4 miles away, easily bikeable when I am healthy, not when I am really sick, but takes more than an hour transferring from one bus to another....