An authentic street sign not likely in the MUTCD book

In this Sept. 12, 2005, photo released by the Brooklyn borough president's office, a sign on the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge proclaims "Leaving Brooklyn: Oy Vey!" The sign, bearing the Jewish expression of dismay or hurt, is intended as a way of acknowledging Brooklyn's large Jewish population. Borough President Marty Markowitz says motorists seeing it know it means "Dear me, I'm so sad you're leaving." (AP Photo/Brooklyn Borough President's Office, Kathryn Kirk)
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At this past weekend's Public Markets conference, I co-led a tour of four markets in Baltimore. People really liked my phrase "the commodification of authenticity."

Are hybrids really all that great?

Isn't it better to get people to drive less to begin with? This column, Forget hybrids, America; diesels will provide economy, performance, by Neil Winton of the European bureau of the Detroit News, dismisses hybrids.

Last week, Baltimore announced parking discounts for hybrids. See this article, "Hybrids to get parking discount. City garages will offer reduction on monthly contracts" from the Baltimore Sun. And hybrids are allowed in HOV lanes regardless of the number of people in the car.

It would be far better to give people incentives to use non-automobile transportation, or to car pool.

Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference in New Orleans, November 10–12

In AIA Puts Together Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference in New Orleans, November 10–12, the AIA discusses its upcoming rebuilding conference for the State of Louisiana. Say what you will about the new urbanists, they understand that this is about creating livable communities. Too often, architecture is about creating buildings as art objects completely disconnected from their surroundings (cf. David Sucher's "Three Rules").

Where would you rather live?

Peter B. Lewis Building, West View, Case Western Reserve University.

Rowhouses in Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. Photo: www.beyonddc.com

Royal Street, Garden District, New Orleans.

For more information on revitalization planning in Louisiana, click here, and here for the Mississippi Renewal project conducted by the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Speaking of Urban Design, City Comforts, and the idea of the book group

City Comforts is a great, profusely illustrated book about revitalizing city neighborhoods. The author, David Sucher, has created a companion blog which is just as great as the book. (I wish I could spend more time reading blogs, but I can't even get through a day's email.)

In the blog, he has provided an excerpt from the book, to explain what he refers to as "The Three Rules":

This is the most important chapter in this book. If the problem is to create a walkable, pedestrian-oriented neighborhood, much of the answer is architectural. Actually, it is not so much “architectural” in the usual sense of the word, for it ignores style. Site plan trumps architecture. That means the basic arrangement of the building on the site is far more important than what usually passes for architecture: the exterior appearance and “envelope” of the structure.

This chapter explains the Three Rules for creating such places. Let’s assume that we agree that the goal is to create this mythical urban village. How do we do it?

The key decision is the position of the building with respect to the sidewalk. This decision determines whether you have a city or a suburb.

Rule 1: Build to the sidewalk (i.e., property line)
Rule 2: Make the building front “permeable” (i.e., no blank walls)
Rule 3: Prohibit parking lots in front of the building

Maybe City Comforts should be one of the earlier books to read in the proposed "book group" that I mentioned in this blog entry last week.

GWU Master Planning Process and Document

The document is online here. As a colleague pointed out to me, George Washington University uses the term "urban town center" to refer to development planning for the Old GWU hospital site.

Don't they know that DC is a real city, so we don't need to use new urbanist or ULI terms to refer to the development of some land.

As long as we don't mess it up too much (which we do at almost every opportunity), we have real urbanism here.

BTW, if you don't know already, after the federal government, GWU is the largest property owner in the District of Columbia, and leased real estate makes up a significant proportion of GWU's endowment.

I don't know if you've been in the Marvin Center lately? The grocery store in the basement is a decent model for a small footprint urban supermarket. Just like how I keep pushing the idea of colleges putting their bookstore on the main drag in neighborhood commercial districts (Howard did but there is no neighborhood around where the bookstore is, rendering any spillover benefit moot), if this supermarket had been located on the street, it could have development significant non-student business.

A supermarket is one of the potential uses listed for the old hospital site.

Redevelopment of 815 Florida Avenue NW

I've been off the grid for the last few days, so I didn't know about this until it was too late. Interesting that HFA can do whatever...
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The Housing Finance Agency will hold a board meeting to hear presentaitons from the two developers that have been chosen as finalists to purchase and redevelop the agency's headquarters building at 815 Florida Avenue, NW, on Monday, October 31, 2005, at 6:30 PM. The public is invited to hear the presentations and ask questions of the developers. Public questions will be limited to three minutes per person and will be restricted to asking the developers about their development plans.

For details about the RFP process used to select the finalists, click here. If you have any questions, contact HFA's Thomas Redmond at 202-777-1606.

Gathering fosters positive attitude for neighborhood

The Enquirer/Glenn Hartong. Participants in the One Hundred Male March head down East McMillan Street on Sunday morning. Several groups marched in various parts of Cincinnati.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Only about a third of the expected 100 participants turned out Sunday morning for the One Hundred Male March. But that did not dampen the enthusiasm of participants. About 30 men, teenagers and boys gathered on East McMillan Street for prayer, song and brotherhood.

"The numbers don't matter. We're here doing what we're supposed to do," said Milton Trice III, a member of Ammons United Methodist Church, which helped organize the event. The march was the second of its kind in the neighborhood, which logged 813 crimes - including five homicides - between January and September, according to Cincinnati police statistics. The neighborhood accounts for about 21 percent of the total crimes in the city. It's murder rate is topped only by Avondale with eight, and Over-the-Rhine, with seven, and ties Bond Hill, according to police statistics.

City Paper Cover Story--2 great stories in two weeks

Who knows if my continued grousing to Washington City Paper reporters about the relevance of their stories, as well as the unequal comparison to better papers like Philadelphia Weekly, Baltimore City Paper, and Philadelphia City Paper has had any effect. I do know that last week's cover story on Daniel Hudson and Ballou High School, and today's cover story on the difficulties of change in emerging urban commercial districts, are both pretty good. (I do plan to write a response to the latter story.)

Just to be perfectly clear

I prefer independent coffee shops to Starbucks, but Starbucks is an excellently managed company. Their coffee might not be that great, but the experience is well-done, the employees are helpful and friendly, even in stores in areas where you tend to get pretty crappy retail service generally (such as Washington, DC).

Where things are

Can't write any more today... coming up

1. a report on the Christopher Leinberger presentation plus some thoughts about this article, "Downtown Could Support Big Stores, Study Finds" and more contrasts between the independent unique retail of Portland and the chaining up of DC. And possible discussion of a similar report released in the last couple weeks in Baltimore, see "City ripe for retail rebirth, study says"

Pedestrians pass by a sign at Gage World Class Mens Wear store on Baltimore Street about going-out-of-business pricing. (Sun photo by Amy Davis) Oct 24, 2005

Letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun in today's paper:

City must do more to help retailers
When will Mayor Martin O'Malley and the Downtown Partnership wake up and smell the coffee? Another major independent retailer is leaving downtown and no one in City Hall appears to see this trend ("Gage era approaches the end," Oct. 25).

My store left Charles Street a year ago because it became too hard to do day-to-day business downtown. We did not get one phone call from a city official encouraging us to stay. We had to deal with an overzealous cop who constantly ticketed our delivery trucks, utility companies that felt free to pull up in front of our store at any time and start tearing up the streets for days or even months - the list goes on forever.

If the powers that be want good independent retailers to come back to downtown and survive and flourish, the city needs to make a major effort to support them, including a grand plan for retail development that involves incentives and cooperation with city officials.

Steven Appel, Baltimore

One of my biggest reservations about Chris Leinberger's talk yesterday, at least as it relates to the DC experience, is that there is little recognition of the need to specifically develop independent retail. If downtown is but another version of an average shopping mall, it provides little draw, because it will always be outdone by places like Tysons Corner if all you are looking for are lots of stores.

On a followup question, Leinberger did point out that in Albuquerque they developed training systems and other programs to help develop and nurture independent retail.

It's worth repeating this comment from Stacy Mitchell, which I reprinted in an earlier blog entry:

While many middle income people are coming back to cities now, the retail is no longer there, so chains are coming in to fill the gaps. Portland does not have that problem so much because the growth boundary supported neighborhood residential stability over the years.

Will a downtown of Walmarts ever recreate the experience of going downtown to look at store windows or to see Santa?

2. Comments about tax incentives for discount stores at Brentwood Center, see "D.C. to consider incentives for discount retail in NE" from the Washington Business Journal.

Incentives for Dress Barn? Photo: Aboite Independent.

3. And the piece "Speaking about Libraries, Public Assets, Community Amenities, and Leveraging Municipal actions.

Northwest Library, Portland Oregon. Zero-setback from the sidewalk, prominent streetcorner location.

Prison or Library? Watha T. Daniel Public Library, Rhode Island Avenue NW, Washington, DC. Photo: maps.a9.com

Northwest Library, Portland Oregon.

Changes in the retail horizon

From a thread on www.retailwire.com:

There has been considerable study done by WSL Strategies that concludes that we are in a society responding at retail to "supersizing" or "specializing." I would agree that to be caught in the middle is very unpopular ground and potentially a recipe for disaster. My belief is that specialization will ultimately dominate the landscape. Sure the super-big-box retailers will hold a commanding market position, it is those retailers that carve out a specialty niche and blanket the area of expertise completely that will be in a position to operate at a higher operating margin.

McDonald's brews a java war

Roland Ahlstrand packs coffee packets for McDonald's at the Green Mountain Coffee plant in Waterbury, Vt., Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005. Green Mountain Coffee, based in Waterbury, will supply Newman's Own Organics blend coffee to more than 650 McDonald's restaurants in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and in the Albany, N.Y., region.(AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

In "McDonald's brews a java war: Chain adopts gourmet blend in New England to take on local favorites," the Boston Globe informs us that:

Starting next week, the fast-food chain will replace its brew in all 600 New England stores with Newman's Own Organics Blend produced by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. in Waterbury, Vt. It's the only place in the country where McDonald's is making the switch, and the move, analysts say, will help the Golden Arches capture part of the growing gourmet coffee market and better compete with Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks.

''We certainly hope to drive customers into the restaurant more frequently, and if we see some of our competitors' customers, we'd have no problem with that and welcome them with open arms," said Steve Kerley, McDonald's vice president of operations in New England.

Children peer out the window while eating hamburgers in a Chicago McDonald's restaurant, December 26, 2003. REUTERS/John Gress.

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

McDonald's offering of gourmet coffee -- in the heart of the Dunkin' Donuts stronghold -- comes as other fast-food companies, including Burger King and Subway, are beginning to introduce gourmet brews to US customers. Newman's Own Organics, run by Nell Newman, the daughter of actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, is producing an exclusive blend of light and medium roast for McDonald's stores. Previously, McDonald's sold its own blend of java.
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In the realm of know what you are and know your customer, the fact is that 80% of McDonalds business comes from families with kids and young men under 30 (who eat in McD restaurants five times/week or more).

They'll likely sell more quality coffee to parents, but is that really the question? To my way of thinking, the question is will they drive more customers to their restaurants, who are likely to make a positive decision because of the new coffee offering?

I think not. Half to 3/4 of the experience of going to a coffee place, Starbucks or whatever, is the experience. (See Ray Oldenburg's books about "the third place.")

Starbucks, www.adactio.com.

www.you-are-here.com

Even if McDonald's provided free wireless computing, they are not likely to become a force in the "office away from home crowd" or the people looking for a break during the work time...

www.juliefowlis.com

This Saturday, Ward 5 Economic Development Summit

Image from Councilmember Orange's website.

WARD 5 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SUMMIT
Trinity University
125 Michigan Avenue, NE
SATURDAY,OCTOBER 29TH
8:30 AM - 3:00 PM
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One of the interesting events that Councilmember Orange sponsors is an annual economic development summit on issues in Ward 5. I won't be able to make this weekend's event because of a prior commitment but it's worth attending. (Note that no other councilmember offers an equivalent annual event.)

I don't have the agenda yet, but I will post it if I can get it. I do know that one of the sessions will be about the proposed mixed use development in the current parking lot adjacent to the Rhode Island Metro Station.

Another topic will be proposals for revitalizing the Florida Market area (I am sorry I'll miss that) and I imagine there will be an update of the "Costco" Shopping Center off South Dakota Avenue/New York Avenue.

Why I am becoming an intellectual Marxist

This article from "The Mountain Press," based in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, "Past comes alive through Main Street Marketplace" demonstrates that the commodification of "authenticity" has an inexorable momentum.

From the article:

PIGEON FORGE - The developers of Main Street Marketplace intend to create a living postcard of America's small town past on 35 acres of the former Jake Thomas farm. As Michael McCall, president of Strategic Leisure Inc., sees it, the new attraction will evoke the best of a bygone world by providing shopping and dining in an interpretation of a small-town main street from the late 19th or early 20th century.

We've distilled it down to the essence of Main Street America," he said. "This is about giving Pigeon Forge the Main Street they don't have. What we've committed to bring to the market is a level of execution that may have not existed before.

"Where empty meadow currently exists, the developers plan to build about five entire city blocks. Walking down the street, shoppers will encounter archetypical buildings from the nation's urban past - such as a stables, a bank, an exchange, a train station and a post office. Architect/designer George Chang, who contributed to a redesign of Madison Square Garden in New York, has been the guiding hand in developing the visual look for the Pigeon Forge project...

The "Main Street" of Bowie Town Center in Maryland--no non-retail uses. No libraries, no churches, no non-profit organizations, no post office, no government offices, no schools. Just places to buy consumer goods, from branches of the same stores located in the same kinds of shopping districts everywhere else across the country.

Public Square, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Carytown, Richmond. Photo by Steve Pinkus.

The Green Trolley transports Shoppers between The Grove and Famers Market, Photo © Zeke Quezada.

(Text from Transit Rider.) Los Angeles has a streetcar line you may never have heard of. I am not talking about the lines run by MTA or even the San Pedro Red Car or Angels Flight. Off in Mid Wilshire, at the Farmers Market and The Grove shopping center is single battery powered car that shuttles over about a quarter mile (400m) of track. Unlike the San Pedro Red car, the streetcar itself is not a replica of anything in particular. Because there is only one car, there are no switches, sidings, or any other extra track work.

The Grove is a shopping center with stores that look like buildings dating from about 1900s to 1930s. The center of the shopping center is made up like a street complete with tracks set in bricks. The tracks continue west, crossing Gilmore Lane and ending at the Farmer's Market.

Why New Urbanism is often called New Suburbanism

Colorful, quaint and quirky Prospect is the brainchild of Kiki Wallace, who developed the community on what was once his family s 80-acre tree farm south of Longmont. (Post / RJ Sangosti). Photo from the Denver Post article "Prospect: Utopia shows its true colors. Nearly a decade into its test of new urbanism, the community with the daring palette finds everyone has his own picture of "perfect"."

Greenfield development does little to reorient development back to the center. I finally re-picked up Steve Belmont's Cities in Full to read in earnest. What an amazing book!

It's enough to get me off my butt and try to start the urban planning reading group that I talked about last year, although then I called it the "Jane Jacobs reading group" and certainly reading Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Economy of Cities, and Cities and the Weatlh of Nations would be on the list, maybe including books by Richard Florida, Joel Garreau, Roberta Gratz, and others.

Comment if you're interested.

Levittown, Pennsylvania.

Automobile apartheid -- another lesson from Katrina

Kevin Clark\The Washington Post. Pedestrians make their way across the street with the help of the crossing flags Tuesday afternoon along Connecticut Ave in NW Washington DC. From the article "Battle Flag of the Pedestrians".

This essay is relevant to all discussions about transit and even car sharing, and is but one of many reasons why Rosa Parks should be revered.

It's by Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money and former Director of Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources at the National Governors Association. He can be reached through SprawlKills.com. From the essay:

Automobile apartheid means anyone who wants mobility through walking, cycling, or public transportation suffers discrimination in a built environment designed for automobiles. In the past 20 years, as automobile addiction has increased, sprawl has run rampant, the number of trips people take by walking has decreased by more than 42 percent, and obesity has skyrocketed.

Personal freedom and independence should mean more than the ability to go wherever one wants, whenever one wants. Americans should also have the freedom to travel how they want. When cars are the only option, freedom is diminished.

Government has largely ignored public safety for second-class citizens. In the past 25 years some 175,000 pedestrians have been killed on America's roadways. Though Americans make less than 5 percent of their trips on foot, 12 percent of all traffic fatalities are pedestrians. Some 60 percent of those deaths occur in places where no crosswalk is available...

While New Orleans' illustration of automobile apartheid stands out, government officials have long enforced it in more subtle ways. The traffic-studies chief of Prince George's County, Maryland once said: "The street should be strictly for cars." New York City's Department of Transportation deactivated 77 percent of the pedestrian walk-push buttons at intersections and left the signs telling pedestrians to use them. For 25 years cars whizzed by hapless pedestrians waiting for a useless walk button to stop traffic.

In early 2003, Georgia's Department of Transportation disclosed it was against having trees between sidewalks and streets because sidewalks are "auto recovery zones." The commissioner said "the protection of intermittent foot traffic should not come at the expense of a motorist's life." Apparently air bags and seat belts are not good enough for first-class citizens.

Traffic backs up on the Capital Beltway in Fairfax. High-occupancy toll lanes built by private firms have been approved for this stretch of the highway. (By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post). From "Md. and Va. to Study Beltway Toll Lanes".

A comment on the May-Macy's merger--from retail as theater to a third or fourth run movie house?

Mall-based cinemas supplanted the old grand downtown theaters in the 1960s and 1970s.

This comment is from a discussion on the website www.retailwire.com:

Merging bland, promotional, regional chains into a national bland, promotional chain isn't going to take much expertise; just follow the Federated Five Point Plan so skillfully applied at Lazarus, Rich's, Burdine's, Bon Marche, and others:

1) Shutter the downtown stores
2) Close all the restaurants and similar customer amenities
3) Carry nothing not available at any other department store
4) Eliminate all professional sales people
5) Advertise and promote nothing but discounts, never fashion

I was in Chicago this week and nearly cried while shopping in Marshall Field's State Street to envision what havoc Federated is going to wreak with that iconic store and brand. The nation's last grand department store, doomed. Are we going to have to go to London to shop?
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The first "retail as theater" establishments were the grand old department stores. I still remember going to see Santa Claus at J.L. Hudson's in downtown Detroit. Making department stores "mass market" institutions destroyed their uniqueness. Yes, I still remember eating in the restaurant at Hudson's and trying to learn how to pronounce "mezzanine." And I enjoyed prime rib at the restaurant in Marshall Fields on State Street in Chicago...

I still believe that downtown department stores don't have to be an ananchronism, that they can be jewels, "retail theaters" capable of anchoring distinctively different downtown shopping experiences.

We'll see.

Metropolitan Theater on F Street in the 1950s, Washington DC. Image: www.restonpaths.com

Are department stores going through the same cycle of decline and industrialization experienced in the cinema-movie industry?

Smart Growth Talk Today

Smart Growth
Strategies for Revitalizing Downtowns
Thursday, October 27
12:30–1:30 pm

Though every downtown is different, common revitalization lessons can be applied anywhere. Christopher Leinberger, partner in Albuquerque’s Historic District Improvement Company and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, will discuss these lessons and the fundamentals for a downtown turnaround plan.
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I'm going to try to go to this. But if I (or you) miss it, one can just read: Turning Around Downtown: Twelve Steps to Revitalization, which was released by the Brookings Institution in March, and has been listing under the "Must Reading" section of links in the right sidebar for awhile.

Blog down time

I was mid-through writing an entry on "Speaking of Libraries, Public Assets, Amenities, and Leveraging Municipal Resources" when my computer crashed, particularly the CD-ROM drive (which means I might not be able to upload some of my Portland photos for awhile). Since I have a lot to do the next few days, including attending the Public Markets conference this weekend, and co-leading a tour, plus I want to attend the Leinberger talk today, I probably won't be writing much.

Click here, Markets at Their Best, for a great slide show of market images, including historic postcard images, as well as current shots from markets around the world.

The spread of public markets in North America is a recent phenomenon, but there is also a long history of markets in the US and Canada, as shown by this turn-of-the-century postcard from Dubuque, Iowa. Image courtesy of PPS.

And this link from Flickr will take you to hundreds of market photos on that website.

One (partial) solution to daytime congestion

Wendell Cox, the anti-public transportation advocate supported by the right, had a letter to the editor in the Post the other week, "Move From Roads to Railroads," which advocates expanding intermodal use of freight railroads--in other words, putting more truck trailers on railroad cars.

I am all for that, but I have another, cheaper and easier short-term solution, at least for cities, and for freeways: Do more traveling, time-shifting, at night. (I know that certain interstate freeways have high volumes of truck traffic all the time.) But even so most roads near and in the center cities are pretty empty after 8 p.m.

Presently, certain businesses in the city, such as the regional Yes Organic Grocery Store and the Au Bon Pain cafes, and some Starbucks, receive deliveries during the night. Many more businesses need to think about this.

Two areas where we need to require transportation demand management protocols for city businesses and institutions now:

1. Churches and nightime and Sunday parking and travel.
2. Businesses receiving deliveries over a certain overall volume.

This isn't much different than how the Neighborhood Services Coordinator in Ward One worked it out with a bunch of restaurants on a couple blocks of 18th Street NW in Adams-Morgan to get trash pick up service from the same one or two companies so that services could be coordinated and overall traffic in the alleys diminished.
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Note that for years the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach has been one of the most congested ports in the U.S. Part of the problem, they had open hours from 8 am to 5 pm. Recently, to even out traffic and to reduce waits, they have extended hours, including on Saturday. This kind of time-shifting, or looking at issues in a substantive, analytical manner, can reduce congestion without the need to "build more roads." In this case, it was a matter of using facilities that otherwise just sat empty.

Universities and center city revitalization

From "WSU chief Reid's vision is textbook lesson for Detroit," in the Detroit News:

For a glimpse of what it takes to get people back into Detroit -- an occasionally hot topic in this fall's mayoral campaign -- take a look at Wayne State University. Where there used to be dingy old buildings and blight, there are new dorms. Where few places to eat, drink and buy books could be found, there are now Einstein's Bagels, a Jimmy John's sandwich shop, the obligatory Starbucks and a Barnes & Noble bookstore that caters to both students and the public. Others are coming.

And if President Irvin D. Reid gets his way, a prominent new addition to the growing collection of new businesses on the edge of Michigan's largest urban university will be a 200-room upscale hotel and conference center at the southwest corner of Woodward and Warren. "The idea is to bring more people into Midtown," Reid told me Tuesday. "Every facility we build on this campus has a retail element. That's the strategy."

This is a welcome voice of educational entrepreneurialism rising above the tiresome chorus of other voices saying "can't do," "need more money" and "Detroit is dead." It certainly isn't around Wayne State...
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There are tremendous opportunities posed by the presence of the universities in certain neighborhoods in Washington, DC.

The presence of women as an indicator of healthy public spaces

Keith Bedford for The New York Times. A man and a woman: Minding the gender gap in Bryant Park.

"The City" section of the New York Times has this article about Bryant Park, "Splendor in the Grass" which states:

It was lunchtime at Bryant Park, and thousands of office workers were gathered beneath the emerald veil of trees. Ever since the park was renovated 13 years ago, it has been a remarkable space, and one of its most remarkable aspects is that the number of men and women is about equal, a balance that is carefully monitored as a barometer of the park's health.

In 1980, when the space was rife with drug dealers and other scurrilous sorts, the ratio of men to women was about 9 to 1, said Dan Biederman, president of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation. But when the park reopened in 1992, the comfort level of women was seen as key to its resurgence, which is why the park's designers paid special attention to accouterments that appeal to women, like bathrooms with full-length mirrors, kiosk food and flowerbeds.

These days, the male-to-female ratio is just about even. And with this balance comes the possibility of triangulation, which Mr. Biederman defines with scientific precision as the tendency of an external stimulus to prompt strangers to interact. "If there's enough triangulation from things in the park," he said, "then people who don't know each other will break down and talk to each other."

To facilitate this mingling, Mr. Biederman and his staff made sure that the park was home to a variety of triangulation objects and events, among them wireless Internet access, chess boards, the carousel, summer movies and an ice skating rink set to open this month.

They must be doing something right. In 2002, the park played host to a party for couples who had met or were engaged or married there; 117 couples celebrated over oysters and crudités.

Here's something I wrote in August about the same issue:

"Prescott to make streets 'women friendly'" from the London Times is a provocative piece that encourages alternative thinking. Almost from the beginning of my involvement in Main Street commercial district revitalization I've made the point that since women conduct upwards of 80% of all retail transactions, unsavory commercial districts aren't likely to thrive.

John King made the same point in an April column about Minneapolis. (Hmm, what is it about Wisconsin and Minnesota anyway?) He starts out the column "Great architecture, clean streets, culture -- it must be Minneapolis" by describing how he saw a woman, obviously comfortable, running by herself late at night.

The ten points King makes dovetail nicely with the ideas and philosophy put forward by the Project for Public Spaces:

1. Street life thrives if you give it a chance.
2. Convenience isn't nearly as convenient as it seems.
3. The more [things to do] the merrier.
4. Culture adds spice.
5. Narrow streets are better than wide ones.
6. Play up the local angles.
7. Good architecture is good architecture, no matter the style.
8. Change is good.
9. Cleanliness counts.
10. Women know best.

Mixed use comes to the (Redford Township, Michigan) library

Velvet S. McNeil / The Detroit News. Kelly Ray serves customers at Mrs. B's Cafe in the Redford Township Library. The year-old restaurant was recognized with the "A Small Business Excellence Award" by Sen. Laura Toy, R-Livonia.

DC libraries have the lowest usage statistics of any of the regional library systems. In part this is because the city is rich in other libraries such as the Library of Congress, and other professional and trade association libraries with special collections (such as the library in the American Council of Education building or the Foundation center) as well as university libraries, most of which are open to the public without charge (not GWU; but CUA and Georgetown libraries are open), as well as the fact that a big segment of the DC population purchases a lot of books.

In "Restaurant makes mark among books: Cafe in Redford library offers friendly atmosphere," the Detroit News reports on the Redford Township Public Library (Redford is immediately west of Detroit, back in the day, I helped my cousin deliver the "Redford Record") and how a "cafe opened in September of last year, a month after the library opened. Owned by Dolores Bsharah, the cafe offers soups, chili, sandwiches and plenty of sweet treats. One glass display counter is filled with rich sour cream coffee cake, chocolate chip cookies and various types of brownies."

University libraries are adding such cafe functions, and actually this has been a trend in public libraries for some time. Don't you just look at the card catalog area in the foyer of the MLK library downtown and think: coffee and tea shop?

There is a big movement of "social entrepreneurialism." I think we can stand a dose of it within various DC agencies...

Velvet S. McNeil / The Detroit News. Erin Szakai, left, Ann Buland, Kathleen Whitney and Pat Holmes have their Wednesday half-way-through-the-week lunch at the cafe.

Rosa Parks

Montgomery Advertiser, via Associated Press. Rosa Parks riding a Montgomery, Ala., bus in December 1956, after the Supreme Court outlawed segregation on buses.

The Detroit News has a special report with many articles about Rosa Parks. After leaving Alabama, Mrs. Parks moved to Detroit, where she later worked for Congressman John Conyers.

Pedestrians armed with flags, a rights vs. privilege dispute?

Babs Rivera carries a bright orange flag as she crosses Connecticut Avenue in Washington Monday, Oct. 10, 2005. The nation's capital is experimenting with using bright orange flags as a cheap and seemingly effective way of helping pedestrians make that harrowing walk across busy city streets with life and limb intact. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

AP has run another story based on earlier articles in the Washington Post. This time it's "Crosswalk Flags Aid Pedestrians in D.C. " (which ran in the Express today). From the article:

When 12-year-old Serena Seward and Sarah Appel cross a busy intersection in the nation's capital they carry a bright orange flag. It's a simple idea — the flags catch the attention of drivers and remind them that city law requires cars to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks...

Weird or not, the flags have been successful in reducing pedestrian accidents in cities that are using them, say supporters, including Washington Mayor Anthony Williams. "Pedestrian crossing flags definitely improved driver compliance," he said.

But the flags aren't a cure-all. The capital's transportation department reports that two people crossing with flags have been hit since the program began just over a year ago. In Berkeley, Calif., the program got off to a bad start when a woman carrying one was struck during its first week. Berkeley dropped it altogether last year after the flags kept disappearing.
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Again, this is another issue of the "rights" vs. the "privileges" of drivers. Driving is a privilege, not a right. It's pathetic that pedestrians must resort to carrying safety flags to cross the street.

Also see the blog entry from June, "Mayor launches 10-point pedestrian safety campaign -- in Seattle!" which has a link to the Post article referenced above.

Yes, Mary(land) developers aren't always above-board...

Amy Presley of Clarksburg Town Center points to differences between the plan residents were shown by developers and what is being built. Residents say they are not getting the neotraditional design they were promised. (Baltimore Sun photo by David Hobby) Jul 29, 2005.

Today's Washington Post reports, in "Clarksburg Developers Accused of Duplicity," on the debacle in Clarksburg, the new urbanist development in Montgomery County, Maryland. Residents testified for six hours(!). The developer will testify in response next month.

Clarksburg Town Center residents such as Amy Presley say developers have not created the community they promised. (Sun photo by David Hobby) Jul 29, 2005
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P.S. a great read on development is John McDonald's novel Condominium. It's particularly relevant given all the hurricanes down south this year.

3 words for the Washington Post Editorial Page

One word from "The Graduate" (1967)

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Two words from "My Tutor" (1983)

Father's Friend: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Bobby: Yes, sir. Father's Friend: Are you listening? Bobby: Yes, I am. Father's Friend: Computer Chips.

Three words for the Washington Post editorial "Growth and Its Discontents" (2005)

Urban Growth Boundaries.

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Until we have such a policy in the Washington region, deconcentration and sprawling land use cannot be halted, we will continue to have "THE CHOKING aggravation and daily hassle of suburban traffic and sprawl."

County planning tools will have no impact if county planning tools in the next county over have the opposite effect. And as long as each county plans for maximum "growth" in a manner that encourages deconcentration, i.e. described in yesterday's Post article "Exurbanites Occupy an Unsettled Place in Va. Politics" things can only get much worse.

From Mother Jones.

High Cost of Free* Parking Revisited and Car Sharing in DC

Entitlements aren't only for the "poor."

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There is a story that Abraham Lincoln represented a railroad in its quest to build the first bridge over the Mississippi River. The bridge was opposed by the steamboat owners, who sued to stop the bridge. The lawyer for the river interests closing argument was long, detailed, and well-laid. Lincoln's close was just a few words, centering on the question -- "Who has more rights? The people who want to cross the river? Or the people who travel on the river? Lincoln won the case, because the usage privileges needed to be balanced.
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All car users are not car owners. Do car owners have more rights than car users? Do car owners have more "privileges" than car users? And do car owners believe that privileges are "rights"?
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"The High Cost of Free Parking" was a blog entry from March. It's worth rereading because of the hullabaloo about providing dedicated street spaces to car sharing services such as Flexcar and Zipcar. The Washington Times published a negative article (with some great photos, alas, the WT isn't nearly as liberal as the Post in terms of putting up photos on their website) on Monday, "D.C. saves spots for car-rental parking" and DCist wrote about it in their Tuesday Transportation Roundup.

One of the DCist commenters mentioned the Arlington County Commuter website, in particular the section on Car Sharing, and the report, online, that Arlington produced based on their pilot study of this program. According to the Arlington website, various studies find these carsharing benefits:

• reduces car ownership,
• encourages more transit trips,
• reduces the number of cars on the road,
• reduces the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT),
• reduces pollution,
• saves gas, and
• provides for a more efficient use of parking spaces.
For details see Arlington pilot carshare program first-year report.

Matt Clausen and Margarita Diaz use a Zipcar for errands. Owning a car "was more of a hassle than anything," he said. (Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Anyway, in another blog entry on car sharing from March, "Dr. Transit: Car Sharing in DC" I wrote about the proposal for dedicated parking spaces and at that time, I wasn't fully positive, believing that DC should be paid some for the use of the public space. Now I feel somewhat differently, because of the positive public policy benefits. This is what I wrote on the DCist site:

(1) Why should car owners be the only people "entitled" to use parking spaces? Parking spaces are part of the public space-municipal property inventory that is "owned" by all citizens. My web entry about Donald Shoup's book, "The High Cost of Free Parking," mentions the fact that 16% of San Francisco's total public space is parking spaces on the streets.

(2) Other residents deserve access to street parking spaces, to serve their needs, and these needs are met in part by providing dedicated street spaces to car sharing programs.

Since the overall impact is a reduction in the number of cars owned by District residents (which means fewer cars competing for a limited number of parking places), providing such dedicated spaces is sound public policy.

Finally, comparing DC's DDOT website section on Car Sharing to Arlington's, we've got a ways to go in terms of marketing alternative transportation options in the city. Arlington's Commuter Page is a great "customer-oriented" website that likely is a best-practice model.

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* Parking isn't exactly free for residents. Most have to pay for ward residential parking permit, but the cost is negligible.

Sierra Club Happy Hour tomorrow nite

I am working so I can't go, but if I wasn't working, I'd be there. You go in my stead...
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Sierra Club and Beer Night
This Week!
Wednesday, October 26th, 7-9pm

Meet New People. Enjoy Free Beer. Protect the Planet.
For information or directions, email Chris Carney.
Environmental Trivia ● Scary Corporate Monsters

Negative review (of the inside) of Eastern Market re: Annapolis

Eastern Market Interior. Photo by Keith Stanley.

Just came across this article, "Mixed reviews for Site Realty market in D.C.: Patrons, vendors evaluate a D.C. market run by the company recommended for Annapolis' Market House," while doing some research for a tour I'm co-leading this weekend. It's from the Baltimore Sun and will only be available online for a few more days.

The company that has the contract to manage Eastern Market is trying for the same contract for the Annapolis Market, which is currently closed. So Annapolis sent a group of people over to Eastern Market to check it out.

Site visits, what a concept!

More about churches

The Cleveland Free Times has an article about churchly actions in Cleveland, "God's Country: Churches and their parking lots dominate some East Side neighborhoods. It’s a mixed blessing at best." There was a comment on my post about Shiloh Baptist Church ("Losing my religion: Shiloh Baptist Church and Neighborhood Destabilization"), that I just ran across:

(slightly edited) from Andy--

It seems that most of your comments about churches are negative. Churches often are a vital part of a community and a resource for neighborhood.

I would like to point out one church that did "get it". Luther Place Memorial Church (on Thomas Circle) had acquired land behind the church that was at one point destined to become nothing more than a parking lot. Yet after the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, the church realized that it needed to reach out to the community.

While it took many years, the final outcome was the creation of N Street Village which provides housing (and many other services) to homeless and low-income women. It has proven to be a wonderful success that should be a model for others.

I am sure that there are other churches that recognized the meaning of being an urban church and have acted responsibly. I hope that you will be able to promote the churches doing good work in addition to critiquing those that need to change.
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Andy makes a great point. If I were religious, Luther Place may well have been my church. Other churches in the city, such as New York Avenue Presbyterian, Western Presbyterian, the Washington Ethical Society, Quakers, etc., do important work.

What I am most concerned about though is the effect and impact of churches in neighborhoods, particularly those neighborhoods that need help to lift themselves up. And there, the story is more negative, similar to the story in Cleveland. I won't repeat my arguments...

Interestingly enough, Cleveland has one of the most kick butt Community Development Corporations in the country, and it is church-affiliated, the Famicos Foundation. They take on some of the most challenging projects in the city, and they succeed, because of their dedication and faith. And the Cleveland Restoration Society has a historic churches initiative that provides architectural lighting for church steeples, which makes for some majestic views around that city.

Trinity Lutheran Church, Ohio City, Cleveland, church steeple lighted through the CRS program.

And just so you know, I actually love church architecture and stained glass windows. In fact, when I was involved in H Street stuff a lot more than I am now, one of my ideas was to try to work it out to light at night the stained glass windows of Douglass Memorial Methodist Church (at 11th and H Streets NE) to add more warmth to the corridor.

Because our real estate market is changing, the problems experienced in Cleveland are lessening in DC. From "God's Country:"

“You have a large number of churches,” Stone says, “[but] you don’t have a huge economic return … Churches aren’t businesses selling tangible goods, so there is no job creation.”...

In the late 1990s, the church’s staff started buying vacant land parcels around its perimeter. This wasn’t difficult, as lots open to decline became a bargain hunter’s paradise. But there were consequences. Every Sunday, the church’s staff and congregation would return to find litter and remnants of drug activity, Haughton says. Before parishioners arrived on Sunday morning, needles, trash, beer cans and liquor bottles had to be swept away by a volunteer crew.

Over the years, as more worshipers found their way to the Church of Christ, the church needed more space. First, it came in the form of parking lots. Then the church considered grander plans that would eventually become its $6 million facility that opened in 2002.

Today, the Church of Christ has more than 3,000 members, and it has six parking lots. With membership still growing — from outside Glenville, and as far as Akron and Elyria — even that won’t be enough...

BACK IN MT. PLEASANT, resident Diane Coates is irate. An activist and the owner of a local copy shop, Coates openly questions why there are so many churches around her and why they seem to do nothing.

"It’s not just the parking lots,” she says. “Those churches, those doors are shut [most of the week]. They open on Sunday for a few hours, and on Wednesday for Bible study.”...

"Some churches don’t like to be part of organized efforts to address ills of the community,” Tatum says. “And some churches don’t have any desire to deal with the social ills, they don’t feel that’s their calling. They preach within their four walls and that’s enough for them.”...

Kirksey says that with the rest, discussions usually go nowhere. “I have no authority to do anything,” she says. “The city needs to get involved with zoning and design restrictions, so you don’t have block after block of parking lots.”

Providence Baptist Church. Big Lots, but the church is short on parking spaces. Cleveland Free Times photo.

The church parking lot issue is simply not high on the city’s list of priorities, Kirksey says. “It’s in our neighborhood. We see it everyday. It’s not as important for the city.” A Lee-Miles community organizer who declined to be named suggests that it’s not apathy but willful ignorance. “Politically, it’s suicide,” the activist says. “If you think about churches, for councilmen or anyone in City Hall, they won’t touch it because automatically people will say they’re against churches.”

But Cleveland Planning Director Bob Brown says that neither politicans nor community activists have brought these matters to his attention. “We can only know of a problem if the community organization comes and asks us” for help, he says.

And there are possible solutions. In the Buckeye neighborhood, for example, Brown says a new zoning district going into effect will be both pedestrian- and retail-based, with no houses or churches allowed on the ground level. “It’s the only neighborhood in the city that has requested that kind of zoning,” Brown says. ...

In addition to rewriting zoning ordinances, there are other solutions on the table as well, at least one of which is being considered by Haughton and the Church of Christ in Glenville. Instead of buying up vacant lots or tearing down abandoned buildings to produce surface parking, the city can also help churches think about tiered parking, underground lots, and shared parking with businesses that close on Sundays.

The latter is what Church of Christ’s Haughton hopes to do. His church is in talks with businesses — and the church even has preliminary blue prints ready — for plans to share parking on Sundays. “That’s better for the neighborhood,” Haughton says, “because you don’t want blocks and blocks of parking.”

One Nation, Under Toll Brothers?

Stephan Lechner and his sons, Nicholas, 6 (left) and Noah, 6, play on their front lawn in new community Dominion Valley in Haymarket, Virginia. Washington Post Photo: Tracy A. Woodward.

Today's Post has the story "Exurbanites Occupy an Unsettled Place in Va. Politics: New Enclaves Lean GOP, but Residents Seem Isolated From State, Local Government," about farther out residents who are increasingly disconnected from local and state politics.

Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State, wrote his dissertation on "The Politics of Mobility and Business Elites in Atlanta, Georgia." I don't have a copy of the paper in front of me, but he titled the segment of the population increasingly disconnected from the affairs of the city "secessionist automobility."

This is something I've written about from time to time, that the farther people live away from the center city is an indicator of their interest/unwillingness to participate in local affairs.

Quotes from the Post article:

Jamie and Stephan Lechner liked their house in Germantown well enough, but in recent years, they said, the neighborhood began to change in ways that made them feel less comfortable. There were some discipline problems in the school where Jamie taught. There was a shooting in a low-income area not too far from where they lived and other, smaller signs that made them think things were headed downward...

"We had conflict," said Jamie Lechner, referring to her old Germantown neighborhood. "And we wanted to move away from that. . . . That's why we're here -- to be sheltered."...

And yet behind the landscaped gates of Dominion Valley, where lines were two and three hours long in the last presidential election, voters said that few local issues besides traffic and sprawl rise to the level of requiring a political solution. Many said they would vote in the Nov. 8 elections more out of civic duty than passion, using long-held party affiliations as a guide.

"We never discuss politics," said Nina Kraemer, who was hosting a scrapbooking get-together at Dominion Valley's sports complex the other night. "I don't know, I guess something would have to spawn a conversation for one to occur. We talk about traffic -- we talk about that to the nth degree. We're afraid to go to the Target because we might not get back to the bus stop on time" to meet the children after school...

One reason local politics seems so distant, residents say, is that when issues do arise -- say, speed bumps vs. stop signs -- they tend to look to their own private government, the homeowners association, for a solution. The association is controlled by Toll Brothers, the developer, whose red flag flies alongside the American flag at the entrance to Dominion Valley...

From the Organization Man and Levittown to Stepfordton under the watchful eye of the subdivision developers. You vote for us when you sign the check: The Toll Brothers.

Perilla, who does vote, moved to Dominion Valley from a house in Manassas, which is in the older, more developed part of the region, a diverse area where Mexican and Central American immigrants have settled and where neighborhoods of single-family homes might be adjacent to townhouses and apartments. Like the Lechners, she and her family moved in part because the old neighborhood was changing.

"It sounds awful," Perilla said, "but it was turning into a more working-class neighborhood. More pickups -- not that there's anything wrong with that. . . . There were problems we didn't want to deal with -- at least on a personal level."...

In moving, they traded an area that was about half-Democrat, half-Republican for one that is mostly Republican, as they are. They left an area that was about 59 percent white for one where at least 83 percent of their neighbors look like them. And they left an area where residents are dealing with issues of cultural and economic diversity for one where such problems, for now at least, are abstractions.

"At a certain point, you want your kids to grow up in Mayberry," Jamie Lechner said. "And this is as close to Mayberry as we can get."

The New Mayberry?

Individuals can and do make a difference

Rosa Parks, Rest in Peace.

The bus on which Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 is pictured in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. African-American civil rights pioneer Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955 sparked a movement to end legally imposed racial segregation in the United States, has died at the age of 92 at her home in Detroit, Michigan(AFP/File/Jeff Kowalsky)

A Montgomery (Ala.) Sheriff's Department booking photo of Rosa Parks taken Feb 22, 1956, is shown Friday, July 23, 2004, in Montgomery, Ala. (AP Photo/Montgomery County (Ala.) Sheriff's office)

Rosa Parks is escorted by E.D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama NAACP, on arrival at the courthouse in Montgomery March 19, 1956 for the trial in the racial bus boycott. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)

Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks sits in a 1950's era bus in Montgomery, Ala. Saturday Dec. 2, 1995 some forty years after being arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white person. (AP Photo/Pool)