Walk Ketchum pedestrian program signage on streetlight poles, Idaho

So simple.  Any place can do this.

However, the Ketchum Master Transportation Plan doesn't mention this scale of pedestrian signage.  

Similarly, while the 2006 Downtown Master Plan does mention pedestrian wayfinding and offers some examples from elsewhere, it didn't include photos of what they ended up with.  Which is pretty subtle and easy.

There was a Walkable Ketchum group, but given that the last post is 14 years old, I'm guessing they accomplished what they wanted, and moved on.

Talking to strangers | Modern shotgun style houses as workforce housing for firefighters in Ketchum, Idaho + playgrounds

I take a lot of photos in public places, or not so public places, and people wondering if I am up to no good challenge me.  Because "I can talk" (your ear off), usually it's not a problem. 

There's an article in the Washington Post, "The mental health benefit of striking up conversations with strangers," about the value in talking with strangers.  For me, it's an opportunity to learn--to interview and interrogate, even if it doesn't seem like it.  From the article:

Nick Epley was commuting to work at the University of Chicago when he looked across the train and wondered: Why are all these people sitting elbow to elbow ignoring each other?

Epley, a professor of behavioral science, thought about how very lonely people are, and he challenged himself to strike up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him. It changed his life — and led him to write the book “A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health and Connection.”

After reading it, I decided to try the experiment myself. For the past month, on my commute to work, at kids’ birthday parties with my daughter, in the elevator at the office and on the street while walking my dog, I’ve been challenging myself to talk to strangers. Would it actually feel good, or just awkward?

I’ve always been a fairly outgoing person, but the idea of talking to strangers and befriending acquaintances still made me feel anxious. As I contemplated opening my mouth to talk to the stranger sitting next to me on a nearly-silent bus, I felt as if my jaw was sealed shut by fear. What if she didn’t want to talk to me? What if I said the wrong thing, or she felt like I was bothering her?

Ever since my involvement in college student government, I can "talk".  This increased manyfold as I got more involved in urban planning.

In my recent playground study for a grant application, I talked to people at "playgrounds," like the "senior" Fitlot at Columbus Center in South Salt Lake.  

Even though it was built with money from AARP, it turns out an Instagram group called  #slc.calisthenics organizes meetups there and at similar sets of equipment, and lots of people of all ages end up using it--part of my observation is that people/kids play with what's there especially when "more appropriate" equipment isn't present.  I saw a four year old doing pull ups on the same set.

I talked to little kids like this one.  She said the monkey bars are her favorite element at playgrounds.  (So did an older boy at a different playground.)  So I aim to have more types of monkey bars present at the playground.

Observations, analysis, and conversations made the application so much stronger.  Going to about 15 different playgrounds in a couple days educated me fast and deeply about playgrounds--including realizing I needed to be there when kids were, because I didn't know how they used certain equipment.

Young children like learning to bicycle on soft surfaces because it doesn't hurt when you fall.

We need wider sidewalks around the playground oval because there is mixed traffic--kids on scooters, bikes, skates, skateboards, adults on bikes (because we have inadequate bike parking, people walking, people sitting to the side, etc.

Greenhorn Fire Station Workforce Housing, Ketchum, Idaho.  When I was taking photos of these buildings at what turned out to be the Greenhorn Fire Station, I learned the back story, which I wouldn't have known otherwise.

I took the photos because I thought the buildings were an interesting interpretation of the New Orleans shotgun style house, and years ago, I helped write a chapter in a book compilation about the type.

618 Jefferson Street, Flickr photo by Elliott Cowand, Jr.

I learned after being challenged, not realizing it was a fire station, and photographers could be would-be terrorists, one of the tenants came out to ask me what I was doing.  As a result, I learned the back story of the complex, for which I would have had no idea about otherwise.

In an area of ever increasing housing costs because of its being a resort area, it's an effort by the North Blaine County Fire District to provide workforce housing.  They rent the land from Idaho DOT, for the Greenhorn Fire Station, and built eight prefabricated units, mostly with donated funds.  

The 870 s.f. units are rented below market rate to tenants who agree to serve as volunteer fire fighters ("Final housing units arrive at Greenhorn Fire Station" Idaho Mountain Express, "Greenhorn Firefighter Housing Fully Occupied," Wood River Weekly).

What an interesting and important project.

The men's restroom is closed. I ended up peeing behind the building, Brigham City Rest Area, I-15, Box Elder County, Utah | Tourist Services, Public Art

They should have brought in porta potties.  You see the world differently when one of your medications for heart disease is a diuretic (I actually take two different ones).

It might have been because the building seems like it is still under construction on the interior?  

The building was closed but the restrooms are to the side and were theoretically open.  The women's and a family restroom.  Men were directed to the family restroom.  I couldn't wait the line was long.

Many of the convenience stores in the Intermountain region have restrooms, as they are positioned to serve longer distance travelers.  Even in cities, Maverik convenience stores have restrooms.

But we stopped at one place, two stalls, one each for men and women.  

The line was so long, I decided it was easier to go to the gas station on the other side of the freeway--where the wait was blissfully short.

Alas, the Texaco brand is no longer in business.  They marketed clean restrooms as a featured element.  This ad is from 1941.

The Brigham City rest stop had some decent amenities, including a pollinator garden and a small fenced in pet area for small dogs.

The pollinator garden is an extension of my concept that we should plan for public art when building structures in parks, but in public buildings more generally ("Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Five | Planning for Public Art as an element of park facilities"). 

This case being purposeful landscaping that satisfies multiple constituencies, even insects (fauna).

Some municipalities like NYC have a percent for art program where they incorporate public art into new buildings.  This should be extended to landscaping.

In Utah, many public and private properties have nice plantings as part of their parking lots.  Years ago, I was blown away when then Mayor Sheila Dixon of Baltimore had herbs that people could pick as part of the landscaping at City Hall.

The Pollinator Garden at the Brigham City Rest Area on I-15 in Box Elder County, Utah was planted recently.

But it doesn't have to be complicated.  An elementary school in Hailey, Idaho has a small mural on the backside of the building.

And they've incorporated public art into bus shelter stops on Woodside Boulevard, which is served by the Mountain Rides Transit System, which like buses in a lot of resort areas (Sun Valley) is free, primarily as a transportation demand management strategy for employee transportation, to reduce demand for parking vis a vis "higher value tourists".  Also see "Bus stops as neighborhood focal points and opportunities for placemaking."

Another way to think about it is what Project for Public Spaces calls the "Power of 10" and how at different scales--city, neighborhood, destination, place--you need 10 things to do.

This Hailey bus stop also has a Little Free Library--and I snagged a couple myself.  

So three things to do (wait for the bus, look at the public art, browse the Little Free Library.  Considering this wasn't a primary arterial, that's pretty good.

Learning from anywhere and everywhere.  When I first got involved in the Main Street commercial district revitalization program in the DC neighborhood of H Street NE (""The community development approach and the revitalization of DC's H Street corridor: congruent or oppositional approaches?"), members from various programs across the city got some support to attend the national conference.  Early on it was in Baltimore.  

Most of the people from DC's "urban programs" were haughty with the "small town" problems, believing they had nothing to learn from them.  I argued that the programs weren't "all of DC" but smaller commercial districts outside of Downtown, and they were equal or smaller in size compared to many of the other programs.

I've always had the attitude I can learn from anywhere.  Ketchum, Idaho, where the Sun Valley Ski Resort is, and nearby towns like Hailey had plenty of best practice and/or provocative ideas that hit me at a good time, when I was in the midst of writing a large grant for a playground for Sugar House Park in Salt Lake.

My original concept had everything but the kitchen sink.  I joked there was a fine line between a playground and an amusement park.  Urban design features in both towns, plus Sun Valley, helped me look at my concept with fresher eyes, and the recognition that it needed "editing" and refinement.

Some elements make less sense now.  Other elements take on a new prominence.  But still editing and "simplification" of a sort--still a complicated project, but less cluttered, less full of stuff, and "cleaner" and better.

May is National Bicycle Month | More on the concept of adding services icons to bicycle route wayfinding signage

I have been so busy with other projects with hard and crunch deadlines, so I haven't had the time to write more about May's two big events, National Bicycle Month and National Historic Preservation Month.  I should have some time next week to catch up and finish some partially written entries on the two topics.   

This wayfinding sign for the Pioneer Historic Byway and visitor services in Soda Springs, Idaho, list public restrooms as a "destination."

On Friday, in "Man peeing in hiding because there are no restrooms," I mentioned how a half mile up from where this guy stopped to pee, is a new public restroom at the Glendale Regional Park.  

But why would he know that?  There is no wayfinding signage on the bike lane or sidewalk abutting the park that points people to the restroom.

I also pointed out that the Jordan River Parkway signs at the 1700 South entrances, don't list nearby restrooms.  

It's understandable for the new park, because Jordan River Commission hasn't updated signage for awhile and the Park just opened its first phase.  

But across the street is "the old" Glendale Park and it has restrooms too, and the Parkway signage didn't acknowledge that restroom either, and it's been there for many years.

I suggested that how the Iowa State Department of Transportation's Bicycle Map uses a standard set of icons related to services for bicyclists could also be ported/adapted/adopted for bicycle route signage as well.

Something like this.  Hey, I'm not a graphic designer.  It could also somehow include the distance and direction to reach these services, just like the signs on the highway do.

Below, on the left is a pedestrian scaled wayfinding sign from Europe, where the sign just doesn't point to single out disabled people for additional accommodations, but adds and acknowledges pregnant women, young children and seniors as people who could benefit from the ramp as well.  

On the right is an example of the off the highway signage that provides more detailed direction information to the services as listed on the highway sign.

There are many opportunities here for better and more innovative wayfinding signage treatments for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Even the award winning Route Verte network of long distance bicycling routes across Quebec could do a better job, listing not just bike routes, but services too.  Especially because VeloQuebec has organized a lodging certification program, "Bienvenue Cyclistes" to better serve cyclists on long distance trips.

A treeless expanse of 1700 South on Salt Lake City's west side | We need "Safe Routes to Parks" and "Nice Routes to Parks" initiatives

For her first term, Mayor Mendenhall ran on a platform including planting lots of trees, especially on the West Side of the city where the population is a preponderance of people of color, and there is the belief that the area was systematically disinvested (I happen to think it's more complicated than that, but that's another conversation-blog entry).  

The city aims to address this disparity by making the area preferred for new public investments in infrastructure.

The unexpected agenda imposed by real time and ever changing conditions like a massive windstorm, earthquake, and covid pushed that aside.  

But a street like this shows the need is still present.

The street is now the main route to a new regional park in West Side's Glendale neighborhood.

We don't plan for this because all government agencies tend to plan only for elements that it controls directly and the roads outside of a park are a transportation department's responsibility.  But as I said when I worked for a County, if we don't tell other agencies what we want, think, or have learned wrt intergovernmental matters, they won't ever know what we want.

Being out and about a couple weeks ago I realized a particular street is a main route in and out of Sugar House Park, especially for bicycles, but without a "Safe Routes to Parks" and a "Nice Routes to Parks" program we don't think about it enough.  And Departments of Transportation rarely think about it--although in Salt Lake the City has built nice enhanced bike lanes next to two parks.   But.... they don't think much about further enhancing decent enough crosswalks.

900 South next to Liberty Park.

900 East next to Fairmont Park.

Crosswalk on 900 West connecting to Three Creeks Confluence Parks.

Enhanced crosswalk for bicyclists and pedestrians on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail.

WRT Sugar House Park I do have plans to try to recapture elements of the eastbound side of 2100 South with a similar lane to Liberty Park, but with big additions of median plantings, plant-themed bus shelters, and a public art treatment of the main intersection into the Park.  

Top:  Median and main intersection into Sugar House Park

Middle:  Median plantings near Red Butte Gardens, Salt Lake

Bottom: Crosswalk in San Isidro, Lima (Perú) 2018 by Carlos Cruz-Diez, Venezuelan artist

It would be complemented by a new entry into the Park with dynamic signage.

1700 South to and from the new Glendale Regional Park deserves a similar treatment.

ESPECIALLY, because it abuts the Jordan River Parkway, which is the trail alongside the River (Blueprint Jordan River Action Plan).  

It's a multicounty trail that goes from Provo in Utah County, through Salt Lake County, and ending in Davis County for a total of 48 miles.  But it connects to the Legacy Trail which then connects to the Denver and Rio Grade Trail ("Denver and Rio Grande Rail Trail in Davis County, Utah: a great foundation, full of (missed) opportunity"), adding an additional 35 miles.  How cool is it that you can move over 80 miles from Provo to Ogden mostly on protected trails!.

Right now there is no integration between the two parks, but that seems to be slated for a later phase. I still have to read the Glendale Regional Park Master Plan ("Pool? Pickleball? Skating? Basketball? Here’s what SLC’s big new park will have," Salt Lake Tribune).  

There is the Exchange Club Marina for launching canoes and kayaks but it seems decrepit and unused.  It could be replaced and enhanced with equipment for rent, even paddle boats.

And there could be a nature center of some sort like the one by Tracy Aviary at 3900 South and the River in the City of South Salt Lake (Vision).

I guess there are plans to revive the decrepit marina, offer kayak rentals and such.  At that point, the River is wide enough.

On Saturday I took this photo there, on the Jordan River section.  

There was also a feral but cute black cat on the west bank, but I wasn't fast enough to photograph it before it snuck away through the plantings.

Dog poop powered lights at dog parks

I am working on a design brief for a new playground for Sugar House Park, for a grant due next Friday.

So yesterday I went to 11 playgrounds, a separate pocket park, and a dog park.  

Tomorrow I want to double check a couple I went to, including ours at the Park so I can lay out a separate but equal facility program with additional features to differentiate the replacement for our failing playground from the relatively newer and still in great shape playground.  One my camera died.  

Plus, a recheck of another park I saw a couple years ago, and one new to me.

It wasn't until I saw these discarded bags of dog poop at the South Salt Lake City Dog Park that I realized there were no trash cans there.  However, there was a single bicycle rack.

In parks planning, dog poop is a total pain in the ass.  (1) Technically it's hazardous waste.  (2) If uncollected it is a vector in pollution of our local creeks and the river into which they flow, the Jordan River, and ultimately into the Great Salt Lake.  (3) It's better than leaving it but putting it in a can makes it smell, and (4) if put in cans it's not supposed be put in, like a recycling bin, the whole load is discarded because it's contaminated.

If you don't see recycling cans in your park--and the parks in Salt Lake City and the County Parks too, as well as Sugar House Park don't have them--it's because of rampant contamination, eg. trash in recycle bins, recycling in trash bins.  It's no longer worth it.  

Ideally, people would follow the "take it in, take it out" guidelines, but most people think if they throw something in a can, even if it is recyclable or compostable.

The Park Spark project in Pacific Street Park, Cambrige, Massachusetts was created as an art project.  Photo by Matthew Mazzotta.

Possibly the best solution is to create dog poop digester stations in parks, especially dog parks.  It creates methane used to power a street light ("Coming to a park near you: dog poo-powered lamps," The Observers, "Dog poop has bright side: Powering Mass. park lamp," Seattle Times).

The Park Spark project did this in Cambridge, Massachusetts almost 20 years ago, but in terms of scaling it up nothing came of it because the artist who conceived it wanted to prove it was doable, not to try to build a business out of it and scale it up and outward across the country.  It also turns out the process of "turning it on" is complicated ("Artist's Poo-For-Fuel Project Gets Messy," WBUR/NPR).

But it's deserving of a new effort, not so much to power lights, but to divert dog poop at a bigger and better scale from the waste stream, make the environment nicer, to reduce contamination of land and water, and do something useful with it.  Imagine if when leaving a park, people could just put their bag in and the digester would go to work.

After all, now there are services that will pick up the poop in your yard, for people who are too gross to not do it at all--I knew a household like that, or because they don't want to do it.

For parks that don't have a formal dog park, they could still have a digester and use the power somewhere else.  For example a number of parks in the Salt Lake Valley serve as collection points for glass for people who don't want to pay a monthly fee for pick up (that's what we do).

Or we could use a poop digester to help power lights at the basketball courts.  Or along the bicycle path, etc.

A culture of waste versus a culture of waste reduction (zero waste).  Oh the things I saw in DC, like stopping at a sewer grate to throw away fast food containers, cars with Fraternal Order of Police license plates tossing litter--don't they get paid by the city to take good care of it?  A can rolling on the floor of a subway car.  A little kid said something to me, I said we had a responsibility to keep places clean.  His mother then said the opposite, etc.    Salt Lake City still has litter but so little compared to DC, even in comparatively nice areas.

It would be hard to build a culture where people would collect their dog poop and take it on occasion to these digesters, the same way our household saves up glass bottles to put in the dedicated glass recycling stations here (you can also pay to get it picked up).  

It happens that there is an insulation company in the region spinning fiber from discarded glass, so it's economically feasible to recycle glass.  But the company estimates only 10% of glass is recycled.

(Salt Lake City, followed by Salt Lake County, is a leader in putting pro environmental messaging on its trucks.  But Momentum Recycling, which collects the glass [and also does biodigestion] doesn't.  They have beautiful trucks, but they don't have messages to tell people to recycle glass.)

 

Trash trucks should be seen as rolling billboards for environmental messaging.

We haven't built the culture in the US to support an "in your bones" understanding of and responsibility for waste reduction.  

Plenty of people think throwing something away so it's not litter is the extent of their responsibility.  While it isn't litter, maybe it is recyclable or compostable.

When I take "disposable" recyclables or compostable with me, or buy them while I'm out, I bring them home to properly dispose of (but not on vacations, except if possible I will bring recyclables home even still).

 

As a bicyclist often I would pick up bottles and cans and put them in recycle cans.  Virtually every time I would stop for glass, and depending on the circumstances pick up broken glass, because that punctures bicycle tires.

As a pedestrian I pick up litter and separate it out between trash, recyclables and compostables.  As I walk if I spy the right cans and they are close enough to the sidewalk so I don't feel like I'm trespassing, I'll toss them in respectively.  Otherwise I bring it home and separate it. 

As a driver, in parking lots and parking on the street, and sometimes when I see a preponderance of recyclables on and around the street and curb, I will stop and pick it up and take it home.

I wish more people would do the same.

Adding screening for privacy, porch on an apartment building on 1700 South, Salt Lake City

20+ years ago beginning work on revitalization of the H Street NE corridor in Washington DC, I saw a great photo of a new apartment building with people on balconies in the Los Angeles Times (this was before I used Flickr to store photos so I no longer have a clue on how to find it).

I thought "what a great activation device for the street."

Since then lots of big apartment buildings have opened on H Street NE but none have balconies.

Across the country, at least in commercial districts, most of the new big buildings are constructed without balconies, although Park Place in Petworth ("Chris Donatelli, a DC real estate developer, dead at 58") does.  

I have a photo of people on a balcony there, but flaws in Flickr's current search function means I can't find it.

And I have photos of balconies with bikes, as the only secure place to park a bike in a building without dedicated, secure bicycle parking like this one in Boise.

This photo shows what can be done with bigger balconies.

Although with smaller buildings in Salt Lake, yes, people climb up somehow and steal the bikes.

The photo at the top of the entry, of a building balcony just a few feet from a busy roadway and likely what is a very noisy place demonstrates that "my activation" is "someone else's space they have to live in and with" and they modify it accordingly.

Up high, like the photo in the LA Times or even Park Place which is on busy Georgia Avenue, the sound gets dissipated and the space is more usable.

But not when it's only one floor above the street and sidewalk.  Balcony screens are then a good device.

Similarly, this porch screen, with a garden motif is placed on a house on 2100 South, which at the location is six lanes, one for parking.

Man peeing in hiding because there are no restrooms

This man is stopping to pee in the trees on Jordan River Parkway at 1700 South in Salt Lake City.  This is a vote for those Throne restrooms.

The funny thing is with the new restrooms at Glendale Regional Park, no more than one mile behind him, he could have peed there.

But unless you know the park, which is brand new and in fact parts are still under construction, you wouldn't know because there isn't pedestrian or bicycle wayfinding signage for restrooms on 1700 South.

It makes me realize more than ever we need to add restroom proximity to wayfinding signage.

There is wayfinding signage on the Jordan River Parkway--although it's often out of date as here it points to "The Waterpark" as a destination and that's now the Glendale Regional Park.  It could highlight the restroom too.  It can be words like on the sign below, or the pictograms used in highway wayfinding signage systems.

Top: Jordan River Parkway Sign.  Wayfinding signage, Pioneer Historic Byway, Soda Springs, Idaho

Middle Top: new restroom at Glendale Regional Park.

Middle Bottom:  pictogram signage, Eight Dollar Mountain & Jeffery Pine Loop Trail, BLM

Bottom: Legend, Bicycle Map, Iowa State Dept of Transportation.  Wayfinding sign, Salesforce Park, SF

But there isn't signage like that on bike routes.  But it would be easy to do by adding it to the bottom of a sign, reserving the bottom section of the sign for "services."  I'm pretty sure I thought about that when writing about "Making Cycling Irresistible" but it's been almost 20 years.

The Throne automated restroom could be perfect for other spots on the trail.  

I don't love their design which could feel discordant in a nature setting.  But maybe just having a nature focused mural on three sides would make it fit better.

They are good because they're small and they don't need expensive connections to the water and sewage networks.  They have that self contained through tanks, albeit they have to be refilled.

Ah, the H Street Community Development Corporation

The Washington City Paper reports that the former director of the H Street CDC paid himself more than $1 million of unjustified bonuses, without notifying the board ("Former Housing Nonprofit Director Found To Have Diverted Funds for Six-Figure Bonuses").  

This was complicated by the fact that a long time ago, the CDC created a for profit division which allowed them more shenanigans with little oversight.  A previous director had created a janitorial service which got the contract to maintain facilities, but as the potential conflict of interest was disclosed, it was allowed, etc.  So top staff were able to generate additional revenue streams beyond their paychecks.

The DC Superior Court ruled that Kenneth Brewer, Sr. has to return more than $1.2 million.  Looking over the board members mentioned in the article, and on their website, I recognize a bunch of the names still, not all, even though that was 20+ years ago.   And I think it's interesting that on the current board there are no white people to reflect neighborhood demographics.

But as the neighborhood improved, the HSCDC could no longer compete in the market for property, so it moved to doing projects in still distressed areas of the city.

Things haven't changed much from 20 years ago.

=====

Community development corporations were created in the 1960s to stabilize inner city neighborhoods  in the face of outmigration.  Back then cities had two main types of neighborhoods: 

-- areas that could be stabilized: those with building stock that was attractive and that in turn attracted "urban pioneers,"-- basically white people willing to live in the center city when housing choice trends favored the suburbs.  Interest rates were high, neighborhoods were run down, city services constrained, and overall the city faced a loss of population.  Historic preservation efforts were the primary tool for neighborhood stabilization.

Preservation had the benefit of being low cost to cities.  Some regulation and staff time--supported in part by the federal government, and some investments in elements like brick sidewalks and historic facsimile light poles.  Otherwise the residents bore the costs of rehabilitation.

-- more distressed areas with a lot of population leakage and a preponderance of low income residents.  Cities tended to put their limited resources in these areas on equity grounds.  But the return on investment was minimal.

The areas were CDCs were directed to act were istressed and challenging economically. This was complicated/accentuated by and in areas of cities that experienced riots.  Riots decimated commercial districts especially, destroying the local micro economy.  A lot of housing stock deteriorated.

CDCs were created to address these issues in distressed areas, but mostly focused on what I call "building housing for poor people." Great on equity grounds, but didn't have much positive effect on the micro economy.

Some addressed commercial district issues but mostly focused on housing.

DC did create historic districts in two historically black areas of the city, one East of the River, that remains impoverish, and Le Droit Park, which is better situated in the NW quadrant is pretty central, abuts Howard University and became "gentrified" by income if not originally by race.

Lack of accountability.  Many CDCs lacked accountability and much success.  Although to be fair, CDCs were given difficult areas to try to fix.  The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story, "The Myth of Community Development" in 1994, in excoriating CDCs as an economic lever.

Some were good, some places had too many, there was always more demand for action than money, and the process of financing these kinds of deals was hard, even though back then the US Department of Housing and Urban Development actually provided money to cities for these purposes, which is a far cry from how it's been the last 20 years.

Leinberger's book made the point that before the change in attitudes, 70% of people wanted to live in the suburbs.  With the change, it was 30% cities, 30% suburbs, and 40% either.  That's changed though since covid.

Times changed: c. 2000 and the new demand for urban living.  OTOH, with the change in willingness to live in cities around 2000, momentum from private investment of large real estate developers and individual households reached a point of critical mass and was self-replicating.  Although distressed areas still lagged, and needed city and other subsidies to fund improvements.

Improvements also came through gentrification and displacement, where relatively low cost housing was bought by people with more money--they weren't necessarily rich but they definitely had more money than the people they may have replaced.  

For a long time you didn't see displacement in DC, because with the exception of converting four unit apartment buildings to condos, a lot of the housing that was acquired and renovated had been vacant.  After all, the overbuilding of housing in the suburbs left a massive inventory of vacant housing in the cities.  

But this started to change after 2000.  For example, one subsidized development in Columbia Heights with great views was warehoused to be able to upscale it ("HUD Set To Seize D.C. Housing Complex," Washington Post).  I visited that complex as a Census worker in 2000 and I was astounded at the number of vacant units. And the beautiful hill over the city from being on the hill of the escarpment.  From the article:

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros announced plans yesterday to seize ownership of a federally subsidized apartment complex in Northwest Washington that he said is one of the 100 worst-maintained developments in the country.

There was a reason  Now it's a fine example of a market rate development

CDCs are a mixed bag.  An organization created in response to urban poverty, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, was created by the Ford Foundation to provide technical support and access to funds.  In some cities, LISC branches were robust and demanded accountability.  In other cities LISC was so so and definitely not pushing internal improvement.

Buildings weren't valuable.  Design wasn't valuable.  Only the ability to assemble land.  When I started getting involved, the H Street Community Development Corporation was the primary revitalization actor in the neighborhood.  The leadership didn't see any value in the historic building stock and the attractive architectural design it represented, either in the commercial district or the neighborhood, even though just a few blocks south, Capitol Hill was revitalizing because of people attracted to the "pretty buildings" and proximity to the US Capitol Complex and Downtown.   

H Street NE from the top of the Hopscotch Bridge (over the Union Station railyard.

Flickr photo by Mr. T in DC (he's in Maryland now).

They tore down one of the oldest and most historic buildings to build a s**** looking 3 bay retail unit.  And the strip shopping center, now replaced with an amazing building, was typical crap.  None of the buildings they constructed were designed sensitively in a manner that would complement and extend the historic architecture of the commercial district and the neighborhood.

It wasn't pretty, but this similar building in Brooklyn that tends to be a restaurant on the ground floor with apartments above show that rehabilitation was possible.  The building that replaced it is terrible, and the "second floor" is fake, it's just an extended facade.  In fact, I came across that building when it was the Hope & Anchor Diner, and I immediately thought it was relevant to the 8th and H Street NE intersection

Two more examples of historic preservation driven rehabilitation.  The now defunct Taylor deli on the 1200 block of H Street NE and a corner building at 7th Street and New York Avenue NW.

H Street Connection has since been replaced with...

The Avec Apartments on the 800 and 900 blocks of H Street NE.  

Now the corner space is operated by an Aldi Supermarket.  

Interestingly, Aldi still operates its first DC store which is just over one mile to the east.

Live Baltimore used to run ads in the Express, making the point that Baltimore houses were often bigger, but definitely cheaper, compared to rising prices in DC.

The Greater H Street neighborhood had the same conditions, except for poorer residents, and at the time maybe it could have flourished with a residential recruitment program like Live Baltimore, but it would have come with displacement.

In any case, the H Street CDC only saw value in the opportunity to capture and assemble land for bigger projects, and they rebuilt housing that had been frame (worth a lot more today) in 1980s style rowhouses in a number of places around the neighborhood, helped fund a suburban style shopping strip, etc.  

Houses built by the H Street CDC on the 700 block of 8th Street NE.  While I think they're ugly, some have an asking price of $1+ million.  Maybe I'm the person whose position is wrong-headed.

They did buy and hold the Atlas Theater, but they wanted to convert the interior to parking, or to build a roller rink.  Creating an entertainment focus for the business corridor never crossed their minds.

So when we created the historic preservation focused Main Street commercial district revitalization program for the corridor, complemented by a revitalization plan commissioned by the rejuvenated Office of Planning, we were at odds.  

(I wrote about this tension on the anniversary of LISC, "The community development approach and the revitalization of DC's H Street corridor: congruent or oppositional approaches?," in 2013, in response to a laudatory op-ed, "The seeds of the H Street ‘miracle’," in the Post.)

Banner from the Montana Community Development Corporation.

I thought CDCs sucked by definition ("The Community Development Corporation Model of Urban Redevelopment: A Political Economy Critique and an Alternative").  

But then I went to the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference in Cleveland in 2002, and their CDCs blew me away.  It turns out that the philanthropic community joined together to demand accountability and for a bunch of the CDCs to merge, since they covered similar areas, and would have more heft.  Funding was dependent on these changes.

That never happened in DC.  LISC was weak.  A couple CDCs did some decent work, but even then they had a hard time showing quantum improvement.

The Washington Post did a hard hitting series in 2002 ("Falling up -- Accountability and DC Community Development Corporations").  We thought we were vindicated but nothing came of it.  And this was when the Post was still doing important local coverage and investigative reporting.

-- "Federal Money Flowed With Little Oversight: City Promises to Cut Off Ineffectual Groups"
-- "D.C. Revitalization Promised, Not Delivered: Nonprofits Collect Millions as Work Goes Undone, Neighborhoods Left With Eyesores"
-'"Risky Ventures, Little Accountability: After Years of Public Funding, Nonprofits Have Completed Few Projects"
-- "Blighted Sites May Revert To D.C.: Revival Has Stalled Under Nonprofits"
-- "$100 Million Down the Drain" [Editorial]
-- "D.C. Housing Authority Fines Nonprofit: Development Group Sold Two Row Houses, Meant for Individuals, to Investor"

I guess that's when I learned that $100 million didn't go very far anyway, let alone when grift and graft is involved. 

Conclusion.  A few years later the groups won awards from the DC Building Industry Association.  And in 2011 the Post ran similar stories ("(Some) Community Development Corporations still screwing up").

Now in 2026, we basically have embezzlement.  That's 39 years of experience all right.

All the stuff I've experienced gets referenced in my thinking.  The point about accountability mechanisms that I wrote about in terms of best practice revitalization, was based on good and bad examples in Europe in a series I wrote for the EU National Institutes of Culture Washington Chapter on culture based revitalization in Europe.

From "Updating the best practice elements of revitalization to include elements 7 and 8 | Transformational Projects Action Planning at a large scale":

1. A commitment to the development and production of a broad, comprehensive, visionary, and detailed revitalization plan/s (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool);
2. the creation of innovative and successful implementation organizations, with representatives from the public sector and private firms, to carry out the program. Typically, the organizations have some distance from the local government so that the plan and program aren't subject to the vicissitudes of changing political administrations, parties and representatives (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool, Helsinki);
3. strong accountability mechanisms that ensure that the critical distance provided by semi-independent implementation organizations isn't taken advantage of in terms of deleterious actions (for example Dublin's Temple Bar Cultural Trust was amazingly successful but over time became somewhat disconnected from local government and spent money somewhat injudiciously, even though they generated their own revenues--this came to a head during the economic downturn and the organization was widely criticized; in response the City Council decided to fold the TBCT and incorporate it into the city government structure, which may have negative ramifications for continued program effectiveness as its revenues get siphoned off and political priorities of elected officials shift elsewhere);
4. funding to realize the plan, usually a combination of local, regional, state, and national sources, and in Europe, "structural adjustment" and other programmatic funding from the European Regional Development Fund and related programs is also available (Hamburg, as a city-state, has extra-normal access to funds beyond what may normally be available to the average city);
5. integrated branding and marketing programs to support the realization of the plan (Hamburg, Vienna, Liverpool, Bilbao, Dublin);
6. flexibility and a willingness to take advantage of serendipitous events and opportunities and integrate new projects into the overall planning and implementation framework (examples include Bilbao's "acquisition" of a branch of the Guggenheim Museum and the creation of a light rail system to complement its new subway system, Liverpool City Council's agreement with a developer to create the Liverpool One mixed use retail, office, and residential development in parallel to the regeneration plan and the hosting of the Capital of Culture program in 2008, and how multifaceted arts centers were developed in otherwise vacated properties rented out cheaply by their owners in Dublin, Helsinki, and Marseille).
7. commitment and time.  Revitalization is a forever process that takes a long time to begin to see results.  It needs to continue beyond the vicissitudes of changing political administrations.
8. adaptive management. Visionary revitalization requires continuous process improvement.  Other ways to think about it are using the design method or adaptive management instead of remaining static.  Programs can always be improved and should be.

But we have plenty of our own good and bad examples in the US. DC CDCs and the H Street CDC in particular.  Fleetwood Mac sang the song, "You can go your own way."  That hasn't worked out so well for DC ("Urban economic development best practice is not found in DC").