LINKS BIG BOXES
NEW RULES
PUSHING LOCAL BUSINESSCITIES & URBAN PLANNING
ALL ABOUT CITIES
AMERICA WALKS
ARCHITECTS - DESIGNERS -PLANNERS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
CITY FOR SALE
COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTS
COUNTIES RATED FOR SPRAWL
CRITICAL MASS
GREEN BUILDING SITES
DEVELOPMENT CTR FOR APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY
FIGHTING SPRAWL
NEIGHBORHOOD INFO
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GATEWAY
SPRAWL WATCH
WALKABLE COMMUNITIESCOMMUNITIES
CENTER FOR NEIGHBORHOOD TECHNOLOGY
COMMUNITY INVESTING
NEW RULESHOMELESSNESS
NATIONAL COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS
HOUSING
ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANITY
ECO VILLAGE
HOUSING PRICE INDEX
NATIONAL COALITION FOR THE HOMELESSPEDESTRIANS & BIKING
AMERICA WALKS
NAT CTR FOR BIKING & WALKING
WALKABLE COMMUNITIES
WALKABLE STREETSSPORTS & STADIA
FIELD OF SCHEMESTRANSPORTATION
AIRLINE MEALS
NAT ASSN OF RAILROAD PASSENGERSURBAN ECOLOGY
THE ECOPOLITAN
BOOKS THE GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD BOOK by Jay Walljasper. Abandoned lots and litter-strewn pathways, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffiti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood?The Great Neighborhood Book explains how most struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there. The author addresses such challenges as traffic control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality. Using a technique called "placemaking"-- the process of transforming public space -- this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and motivate others to make change.
BUILDING POWERFUL COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups That Can Solve Problems and Change the World, by Michael Jacoby Brown, Long Haul Press, $19.95.
CALLING ALL RADICALS: How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy, by Gabriel Thompson, Nation Books, $14.95.
TOOLS FOR RADICAL DEMOCRACY: How to Organize for Power in Your Community, by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, Chardon Press, $29.95.
CRABGRASS FRONTIER: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth T. Jackson.
CITIES, CULTURE AND GRANITE
By Edmund P. Fowler - In North America, we are generally desensitized to our surroundings, whether they are buildings or forests. This lack of awareness makes it easier to accept the fact that cities, towns, and suburbs are all built for us, not by us. It also makes sensible urban planning or policy difficult. The results have not been pretty. Cities are dysfunctional in part because we have built them in ways that pollute our ecosphere, something that harms our health in a direct way.THE USES OF DISORDER by Richard Sennett: Book News: "Sennett's compelling proposal for a city that can incorporate creative anarchy to goose its adults into expressive community"
SEPTEMBER 2008
THE NOT ALL THAT SMART GROWTH MOVEMENT
Sam Smith, Progressive Review - A movement to reduce the number of parking spaces in urban areas has attracted an odd coalition of developers and environmentalists. DC, one of the most developer abused cities in the country, is currently considering such a move. But, so far as one can see, developers are the only ones who will truly benefit from it, reducing their apartment/rental costs by $20-50k a unit from what it would be if they were required to provide parking for their clients.
To some environmentalists it has a nice anti-car ring to it, but on closer look a number of issues come up:
For example, if you don't want people to use their cars, give them less need to do so. I'm lucky to live in one of the best urban 'hoods you'll find - DC's Capitol Hill - one that owes a part of its charm and utility to the fact that much of it was built before automobiles yet provides - thanks to a lack of high rises and some of the biggest and best alleys you'll find - plenty of parking spaces for residences. It is one of the most dense parts of the city, achieved not with modern big boxes, but with attractive row dwellings, many with basement apartments. But that doesn't mean those on the Hill are excessively car dependent. In fact, thanks to the convenience and number of neighborhood commercial services available, it encourages walking in a big way. I could go to the gas station, hardware store, auto repair shop, UPS, Kinko's, Radio Shack, post office, fire and police station, public library, medical center and more than a dozen eating spots and never be more than ten blocks from my house. In addition, we have two convenience stores and two laundries within a three blocks walk.
This is in no small part thanks to places that were grandfathered into modern zoning - one of the major reasons we now use our cars so much. All over urban America are communities where it would be against the zoning law to emulate Capitol Hill. Little attention is paid to this issue by planners or environmentalists but it is far more important than reducing the number of parking spaces.
Further, people on Capitol Hill use their cars far, far less than the average person in the metropolitan area, yet it is precisely the sort of neighborhood the developers would like to densify, preferably without having to provide parking spaces for the their customers.
And who pays the price of this? The person buying or renting the apartment or condo adds it into the calculations when they move there in the first place. But the neighbors aren't consulted at all. They just find themselves with fewer places to park. Another neat developer trick.
These are the same folks who convinced the Washington area to build a subway that did far more for scattered suburban development than it did for real urban transportation. Meanwhile the bus system - which far more heavily serves poorer residents - is being short changed and the same government that claims to want people to leave their cars at home has also changed the taxi fare system in such a way as to drive many drivers out of the business.
Developers are also pushing for an end to the height limit that helps to give Washington its special character and for more high rise apartment cellblocks in the name of "smart growth."
Environmentalists would be wise to distance themselves from such cons, remembering that communities are ecologies, too. If, as DC has done, you close about a score of public schools (some undoubtedly to be sold to developers), you are hurting the community ecology. When you stuff a public library into a high rise as if it were just another Starbucks, you are hurting the community ecology. And when you dump cold, isolating high rises into an urban village you are harming that village's ecology. But few ever talk about things like that.
Here are a few far better ways for environmentalists to spend their time in our cities:
- Increase the amount of commercial services available within walking distance. This may mean some zoning changes, but it can still be kept attractive and pleasant through rules on signage etc.
- Oppose mass transit plans that are really development plans in drag. This was the great failing of the Washington Metro and there are lots of similar proposals around today. Favor truly urban transit plans that encourage people to stay with a reasonable area.
- Bring back the two or three story apartments over shops and offices that used to be common in America.
- Provide neighborhood business services - including copying facilities, desk space and teleconferencing - to help encourage telecommuting.
- Encourage large businesses to decentralize within an urban area.
- Follow the motto of Henry Thoreau who once said, "I have traveled widely. . . in Concord."
SECTION 8 HOUSING COMES TO THE SUBURBS
JAMES KUNSTLER ON THE END OF SUBURBIA
AUGUST 2008
THE END OF WHITE FLIGHT. . . AND ITS HIDDEN COST
US LAGS IN WORLDWIDE BICYCLING BOOM
Blaine Harden, Washington Post - The number of cyclists has doubled in a decade in cities as disparate as Berlin and Bogota. Global bicycle production has increased for six consecutive years, according to a report by the Earth Policy Institute. . .
Yet when it comes to using a bike for everyday transportation, the boom appears to have bypassed many countries. While Northern Europe and Japan have figured out how to make bicycle commuting a safe, cheap alternative to driving, the United States, Canada, Australia and Britain have not. And the world's two most populous nations, China and India, are discarding bicycles in favor of cars. A rising middle class in both countries views cycling as an unhappy reminder of the recent past, when nearly everyone was poor. . .
Commuters in Northern Europe have been lured out of their cars by bike lanes, secure bike parking and easy access to mass transportation. At the same time, steep automobile taxes, congestion-zone fees and go-slow rules have made inner-city driving a costly pain in the neck. In the Netherlands, where such carrot-and-stick policies have been in place for decades, 27 percent of all trips are by bike. . .
Although millions of Americans recreate on bikes, they ride them for just 0.4 percent of their trips to work, according to the U.S. Census.
Germans are 10 times more likely than Americans to ride a bike and three times less likely to get hurt while doing so. On any given workday, more commuters park their bikes at train and subway stations in Tokyo (704,000) than cycle to work in the entire United States (535,000), according to the Tokyo government and the U.S. Census.
Bill Quiqley, Truthout - Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. . . This is what New Orleans looks like today.
0: Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post- Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners.
0: Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.
0: Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed, privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.
0.8: Percentage of rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied - a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.
4: Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.
10: Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.
11: Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.
20-25: Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current pace.
32: Percent of the city's neighborhoods that have less than half as many households as before Katrina.
36: Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.
38: Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.
41: Number of publicly funded, privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of total of 79 public schools in the city.
43: Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.
46: Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.
56: Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds compared to before Katrina.
80: Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.
81: Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the complete costs to repair their homes.
6,982: Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.
8,000: Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal government.
10,000: Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.
12,000: Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the bridges have been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.
14,000: Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance expires in March 2009.
32,000: Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving the public school population less than half what it was pre-Katrina.
39,000: Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding who still have not received any money.
46,000: Fewer African-American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than in 2003 gubernatorial election.
71,657: Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.
132,000: Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.
1.9 billion: FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.
2.6 billion: FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.
GREAT MOMENTS IN CHICAGO POLITICS
From a great five part series by the Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-bubblycreek-zoning,0,6832274.story chicagotribune.com
Chicago Tribune - Friends of Mayor Richard Daley made out handsomely when land they owned was rezoned in the 11th Ward, helping them sell the property for about $2.4 million more than they paid for it. A critic of the Daley administration didn't do so well, however. He couldn't get a zoning change, and the value of his property diminished by about $4 million, according to court papers.
Both decisions were made by a Daley ally -- James Balcer, the 11th Ward alderman who calls the shots on zoning in his South Side ward.
Zoning is one of the last bastions of power left for Chicago aldermen, who have been marginalized under Daley's control. The Tribune has shown that many of Chicago's 50 aldermen rely on campaign contributions from developers whose projects, in turn, depend on zoning changes.
In the 11th Ward, the ancestral home and power base of the Daley clan, Balcer enjoys so much support from the Daleys that he is the only alderman who doesn't have to raise campaign funds. . .
The Archer Avenue deal began in March 2002, when Richard Ferro, a political supporter of Daley, bought the property for $325,000. He and his business partner, Thomas DiPiazza, also a Daley contributor, later applied to City Hall to rezone the land for town homes.
DiPiazza and Ferro hired Jack George of Daley & George, the law firm of the mayor's brother Michael. In the last five years, Daley & George has handled 60 rezoning applications -- half of all the applications in the ward that weren't filed by Balcer himself, city records show.. . .
Like other zoning changes blessed by aldermen, the request sailed through the City Council.
Landowners who don't have an alderman's support rarely bother to seek a zoning change from the city, knowing it has no chance of being approved.
After Ferro and DiPiazza got their zoning change, they did not develop the land. They sold it.
But before they did, two well-known names were added to the deed as owners on June 18, 2004. One was Timothy Degnan, a political adviser to the mayor. The other was Fred Barbara, a friend of Daley's and a former city waste hauler.
Less than a week later, the land was sold for $2.7 million to another developer who built the town homes.
That sale price was about $2.4 million more than what the Ferro group had originally paid for the land. Before the property was sold, however, the group demolished an old building and cleaned up contaminated soil. That work would likely cost about $300,000, according to public records and estimates from three environmental consultants contacted by the Tribune.
Michael Kralovec, a lawyer for DiPiazza and Ferro, said the group had additional costs and the profit was less than the $2 million suggested by the Tribune's estimates. He did not respond to a request to provide the bills.
Degnan declined to comment for this article, and Barbara could not be reached.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-code-astroturfjan28,0,1829330.story chicagotribune.com
Chicago Tribune - An unprecedented Tribune investigation, including an analysis of 5,700 zoning changes over the last 10 years, found city neighborhoods being remade by a development boom greased by millions of dollars in political donations to aldermen.
As neighborhoods are transformed, advisory groups frequently offer no more than the illusion of community input. But the political cover they provide for aldermen is very real.
Even Ald. William J.P. Banks (36th), the longtime chairman of the City Council's Zoning Committee, doubts that recommendations from committees created by aldermen represent true community sentiment. Banks estimates that about half of the city's 50 aldermen appoint their own advisory panels.
"Any alderman can create a committee and make them do what you want them to do, or the applicants [for zoning changes] can stack the committee," Banks said.
In zoning matters, the City Council's unwritten rule is that aldermen retain ultimate say over what gets built in their wards.
Developers seeking valuable zoning changes that allow them to build bigger and taller projects often donate to the campaigns of aldermen. The city's ethics ordinance limits the size of campaign donations to aldermen from people seeking zoning changes, but the provision doesn't prevent aldermen from receiving additional donations from companies with ties to those same applicants.
ECO HOUSING FOR OUR CITIES
As we have noted, developers are busy conning environmentalists and others into supporting more urban high rises in the name of "smart growth." In Washington, DC, they have even started agitating for an end to the capital's historic height limitation which has helped provide its appealing cityscape. But there are far more human, community-oriented and attractive solutions, starting with the accessory apartment:
Sam Smith, Utne Reader, 2000 - Not everyone who leaves the city wants to. In a large number of cases, the cost and availability of housing provides the impetus. Among the factors that have raised the cost and lowered the availability has been gentrification. The gentrifiers not only upscaled the housing stock, they have reduced it, since they require more space per-capita in which to live than did former residents.
One of the simplest, cheapest and quickest ways to counteract this trend is to permit accessory apartments (sometimes called granny flats) in single-family zones. Many of these apartments exist illegally -- there are an estimated 40,000 in LA alone -- supporting my theory that one of the best places to look for good ideas is in the underground economy. If normally law-abiding people insist on doing something against the rules, there's a good chance that the people know something the law doesn't.
The advantages of such apartments include lowering the effective cost of housing for the homeowner, increasing the supply of housing, providing a social and economic mix within neighborhoods, allowing voluntary individual care to replace some of the need for social services (e.g. the young apartment dweller helping the aged landlord upstairs), providing neighborhood-based economic opportunity and increasing the number of eyes on the street.
Reviving the practice of taking in boarders could also greatly improve the availability of housing. The boarder tradition played a major role in the growth of the American city, proving newcomers with an inexpensive place to stay and adding a source of income to those who had lived in the city long enough to own a house.
A more radical approach is cohousing. Cohousing involves individual homes clustered around a large common house with such facilities as a dining room, children's playroom, workshops and laundries. The houses typically have their own kitchen and are otherwise minimally self-sufficient but with the emphasis on communal facilities. Each cohousing plan is worked out with intense participation by future occupants. There is no single plan for these projects; they are designed for specific and changing needs and hospitable to spontaneity., The cohousing approach has been used for condominiums, cooperatives and non-profit rental housing.
There are other things to do. We could encourage the construction of more two and three family homes that were once a staple of urban America. We could build "grow houses" such as the 575-square foot designs of New Haven architect Melanie Taylor that are being built for as little as $30,000 in the southeastern US. Even more novel are the modular homes designed to grow or deconstruct over time as required by the occupants' changing lifestyle. The design of the Center for Maximum Building Tecnologies in Austin, Tex., allows for modules to be detached and moved to another house when the current owner no longer needs them.
NY Times - Cincinnati officials are assembling financing for a $132 million system that would connect the city's riverfront stadiums, downtown business district and Uptown neighborhoods, which include six hospitals and the University of Cincinnati, in a six- to eight-mile loop. Depending on the final financing package, fares may be free, 50 cents or $1. The city plans to pay for the system with existing tax revenue and $30 million in private investment. . .
At least 40 other cities are exploring streetcar plans to spur economic development, ease traffic congestion and draw young professionals and empty-nest baby boomers back from the suburbs, according to the Community Streetcar Coalition, which includes city officials, transit authorities and engineers who advocate streetcar construction.
More than a dozen have existing lines, including New Orleans, which is restoring a system devastated by Hurricane Katrina. And Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City and Charlotte, N.C., have introduced or are planning to introduce streetcars.
"They serve to coalesce a neighborhood," said Jim Graebner, chairman of the American Public Transportation Association's streetcar and vintage trolley committee. "That's very evident in places like San Francisco, which never got rid of its streetcar system."
Modern streetcars, like those Cincinnati plans to use, cost about $3 million each, run on an overhead electrical wire and carry up to 130 passengers per car on rails that are flush with the pavement. . .
Streetcar advocates point to Portland, Ore., which built the first major modern streetcar system in the United States, in 2001, and has since added new lines interlaced with a growing light rail system. Since Portland announced plans for the system, more than 10,000 residential units have been built and $3.5 billion has been invested in property within two blocks of the line, according to Portland Streetcar Inc., which operates the system. . .
"In years gone by, people would move to cities to get a job," Cincinnati's city manager, Milton Dohoney, said. "Today, young, educated workers move to cities with a sense of place. And if businesses see us laying rail down on a street, they'll know that's a permanent route that will have people passing by seven days a week."
After looking into streetcar systems in Seattle, Tacoma, Wash., and Charlotte, Mr. Dohoney became convinced that they spur growth. "Cincinnati has to compete with other cities for investment," he said. "We have to compete for talent and for place of national prominence."
A hundred miles north, Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus, Ohio, has come to the same conclusion and is pushing to build a $103 million streetcar network along the city's High Street connecting Ohio State University with the downtown business district. The loop would be paid for through a 4 percent surcharge on concert tickets, sporting events and downtown parking and a $12.5 million contribution from Ohio State.
THE NEWS BEFORE IT HAPPENS: A 1972 LOOK AT STREET CARS
Sam Smith, DC Gazette, March 1972 - The end of January marked the tenth anniversary of the last streetcar run in the District. Curiously, only Jack Eisen of the Post, the local freeway lobby's favorite journalist, bothered to note the event. The City Council might have commemorated the occasion were it not engrossed in hearings on how to get DC Transit's O. Roy Chalk to remove an estimated 86 miles of streetcar track remaining in the city. Mayor Walter Washington might have joined also, but he was too busy trying to get congressional approval of a bond guarantee for the Metro subway system.
While generally sympathetic to the streetcar as a historical phenomenon, Eisen offered this ex cathedra assurance: "Streetcars as we knew them will never again run in Washington." Why not? Certainly logic does not rule out their return. Streetcars are efficient. Trolleys operating on surface streets can carry nearly ten times as many people per hour as automobiles and fifty percent more people than buses. Streetcars , while not non-polluting (since they require electrical power), at least remove the pollution from where it has its deadliest effect - high density center city areas. Further, streetcars are a pleasure to ride, are devoid of the noxious fumes created by buses and are aesthetically pleasing.
One of the major reasons streetcars went out - and will have a hard time returning - is that they compete directly with the automobile. At the time of their demise, anything that competed with the car was considered unpatriotic, anti-Christian and perhaps even a bit perverted. A decade later, as we wheeze our way through the atmospheric swamp that covers our major cities, we are beginning to view the car with a bit more skepticism. Not enough, to be sure, to do anything serious about restricting its use, but the first glimmers of comprehension are there. A generation that built its foreign policy on faith in Chiang Kai Shek and its domestic policy on faith in General Motors is beginning to doubt its wisdom. Now that Mr. Nixon has gone to China, perhaps his next major journey can be a ride on a trolley.
It is hard to write of streetcars without succumbing to nostalgia and laying oneself open to charges of infantile romanticism. But the reason one feels nostalgia is, after all, because one misses something one thinks was good. And since the choice of transportation modes is in part determined by psychological factors, as any Freudian analysis of the automobile in American society will point out, a system that engenders a certain amount of romantic attachment may also guarantee itself ridership as well.
Recently the city of Toronto reversed itself and decided not to end streetcar servi^ there. Said Ralph Day, chairman of the local transit commission, the streetcars are "liked by all users and detested by all motorists." Day has given us here a capsule criterion for the ideal urban transportation system. If we are to be-serious about building mass transit we must confront the automobile directly.
It is not enough just to provide alternatives to the car; we must put obstacles in its path.
One of the many fraudulent aspects of the Metro subway is that it is really designed not to compete with the automobile. One need look no further, than the freeway plans. The highway lobby hasn't whittled its ambitions one inch because of the prospect of Metro. Every freeway that was planned before Metro is still being pushed by highway builders. . . .
Metro has plenty of other problems as a mass transit system. It costs too much, for one thing. . . As the largest single public works project in the world's history, Metro hardly qualifies as an economy. There is no doubt that DC could get more mass transit for its money by not building a subway and turning instead to a mixture of surface mass transit including rail commuter lines, streetcars, buses and jitneys.
Secondly, Metro has already disrupted many communities in the city and will disrupt many more. Businesses and homes are being lost as Metro reveals its true nature as not merely an underground transportation system, but an aboveground land development scheme. Metro joined urban renewal as a major element in the city's reverse land reform program, which takes land out of the hands of the many and puts it in the hands of a. few. A surface transit system would not have been as amenable to such cynical and deceitful expropriation of land.
Thirdly, Metro is primarily another means of providing safe, fast entrance and egress to DC for non-taxpaying suburban parasites. A streetcar system, along with other surface transit facilities, would be much more orientated to the needs of the local citizenry, as it was when it existed.
Fourthly, Metro is inflexible. Where Metro goes, it will stay. The cost of adding new lines, or abandoning them, would be astronomical. Since a city is always in a state of flux, there is a need for a transit system that can bend to meet changing situations. A surface system is much more adaptable. . .
Let us not forget that we live in the city that, more than any other, has surrendered itself to the automobile. Of course, it began a long time ago. The original L1Enfant Plan of 1791 proposed that 59% of the area of the federal city be set aside for highways. Thanks to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the Congress, the first highway lobby was restrained somewhat, but L'Enfant's successors have more than made up for the loss.
Other cities have shown considerably more wisdom, and today some of these transit-oriented towns are taking another look at streetcars. Eisen reports that "Boston and San Francisco, aided by the U.S. Department of Transportation, have agreed upon the specifications for a new generation of trolleys to equip their remaining lines. . . San Francisco even has plans - and the promise of federal money - to expand its electric streetcar system as well as to renovate its cable car lines." And one of the least nostalgic men around, DC Transit's O. Roy Chalk himself recently wrote Eisen: "Maybe the reason passenger losses developed (in the transit industry) was not higher fares but elimination of trolleys. It is an interesting concept.
How about a new trolley system, instead of a subway, with automatic (i.e. reserved) trolley lanes?"If a streetcar system were built here, there is no reason that it should be a replica of the former one. The reserved lanes suggested by Chalk would be one improvement. Use of cars in tandem, as is done in Boston, is another. The streetcar could be just one element of a rational, flexible, urban-focused, economical transit system. . . The unused commuter rail lines that lead into the District could be turned into mass transit systems. And a range of bus types, from small jitneys (like airport limousines) to double-deckers, could supplement the rail systems, replacing the single-size buses that DC Transit uses on nearly all its routes. It is not likely that the government or business interests will press for these improvements.
It must come from the riders. The whole history of mass transit in this country is one of politics first, riders last. When jitneys started competing with streetcars in the early part of the century, the trolley companies got the courts and state legislatures to drive them out of business.
Later, as Eisen points out, "A national transit holding company allied with bus-manufacturing interests. . . embarked upon a deliberate program of replying trolleys with buses in dozens of cities from Baltimore to Oakland." And, of course, the bus companies got their come-uppance not long after as the auto craze was fostered by a combination of highway builders, car companies, and cooperative public officials.
The other day I saw an official of the Department of Transportation wearing a button that proclaimed: "Mix Your Modes." It's a nice sentiment, but one that has yet to gain credance in local transportation planning. Yesterday's fad was the freeway; today it's Metro. But monomania won't solve our transit problems. We have lots of different places to go and we need a variety of ways to get there. Streetcars should be one of them. Then getting there will no longer be half a pain.
WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE SUBURBS?
James Kunstler, NY Times - There are many ways of describing the fiasco of suburbia, but these days I refer to it as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.
I say this because American suburbia requires an infinite supply of cheap energy in order to function and we have now entered a permanent global energy crisis that will change the whole equation of daily life. Having poured a half-century of our national wealth into a living arrangement with no future - and linked our very identity with it - we have provoked a powerful psychology of previous investment that will make it difficult for us to let go, change our behavior, and make other arrangements.
Compounding the problem is the fact that we ditched our manufacturing economy for a suburban sprawl building economy (a.k.a. the housing bubble), meaning we came to base our economy on building even more stuff with no future. . .
Here's what I think will happen: First, we are in great danger of mounting a futile campaign to sustain the unsustainable, that is, of defending suburbia at all costs.
In fact, it is already underway. One symptom of this is that the only subject under discussion about our energy predicament is how can we keep running all our cars by other means. Even the leading environmentalists talk of little else. We don't get it. The Happy Motoring era is over. No combination of alt fuels - solar, wind, nuclear, tar sands, oil-shale, offshore drilling, used French-fry oil - will allow us to keep running the interstate highway system, Wal-Marts, and Walt Disney World.
The automobile will be a diminishing presence in our lives, whether we like it or not. Further proof of our obdurate cluelessness in these matters is the absence of any public discussion about restoring the passenger railroad system - even as the airline industry is also visibly dying. The campaign to sustain suburbia and all its entitlements will result in a tragic squandering of our dwindling resources and capital.
The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins. In any case, the suburbs will lose value dramatically, both in terms of usefulness and financial investment. Most of the fabric of suburbia will not be "fixed" or retrofitted, in particular the residential subdivisions. They were built badly in the wrong places. We will have to return to traditional modes of inhabiting the landscape - villages, towns, and cities, composed of walkable neighborhoods and business districts - and the successful ones will have to exist in relation to a productive agricultural hinterland, because petro-agriculture (as represented by the infamous 3000-mile Caesar salad) is also now coming to an end. Fortunately, we have many under-activated small towns and small cities in favorable locations near waterways. This will be increasingly important as transport of goods by water regains importance.
We face an epochal demographic shift, but not the one that is commonly expected: from suburbs to big cities. Rather, we are in for a reversal of the 200-year-long trend of people moving from the farms and small towns to the big cities. People will be moving to the smaller towns and smaller cities because they are more appropriately scaled to the limited energy diet of the future. I believe our big cities will contract substantially - even if they densify back around their old cores and waterfronts. They are products, largely, of the 20th-century cheap energy fiesta and they will be starved in the decades ahead.
One popular current fantasy I hear often is that apartment towers are the greenest mode of human habitation. On the contrary, we will discover that the skyscraper is an obsolete building type, and that cities overburdened with them will suffer a huge liability - Manhattan and Chicago being the primary examples. Cities composed mostly of suburban-type fabric - Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, et al - will also depreciate sharply. The process of urban contraction is likely to be complicated by ethnic tensions and social disorder.
As petro-agriculture implodes, we'll have to raise our food differently, closer to home, and at a finer and smaller scale. This new agricultural landscape will be inhabited differently, since farming will require more human attention. The places that are not able to grow enough food locally are not likely to make it. Phoenix and Las Vegas will be shadows of what they are now, if they exist at all.
These days, an awful lot of people - the production builders, the realtors - are waiting for the bottom in the real-estate industry with hopes that the suburban house-building orgy will resume. They are waiting in vain. The project of suburbia is over. We will build no more of it. Now we're stuck with what's there. Sometimes whole societies make unfortunate decisions or go down tragic pathways. Suburbia was ours.
JULY 2008
JAMES KUNSTLER ON THE END OF SUBURBIA
JUNE 2008
AMERICA'S OTHER HOUSING CRISIS
KATRINA KIDS FACE LIFELONG HEALTH PROBLEMS
MAY 2008
WHITE GENTRIFIERS MEET THEIR BLACK NEIGHBORS. . . THROUGH THE WEB
IN URBAN TRAFFIC, TIMING IS EVERYTHING
NEW ORLEANS LEVEE LEAKING AGAIN
NEW ORLEANS: NO RIGHT OF RETURN
IS AMSTERDAM TURNING INTO A PRUDISH BACKWATER?
WHITE GENTRIFIERS MEET THEIR BLACK NEIGHBORS. . . .THROUGH THE WEB
I've lived on Washington's Capitol Hill for some 20 years in two spurts - including editing a neighborhood paper during the time of the riots in the 1960s - but I could not recall anything like the hostility, sense of entitlement and insensitivity of recent messages that started cropping on a local listserv in response to a few teenage muggings, for which responsibility was quickly assigned a nearby public housing project, Potomac Gardens. The project has been there for decades; many of the complainants have only recently arrived on the Hill, and, as in other gentrfying parts of town, are demanding that their new neighborhood meet their standards. One resident even suggest hiring Blackwater to deal with the problem, while someone else proposed a march, not on city hall or the police station, but on the public housing project itself. It was all pretty depressing - until other voices began to be heard and I realized I was getting a unique view of how the Internet can serve as mediator, introducing people who might otherwise never meet. Here are a few excerpts from the discussion. - Sam Smith
-- Why not march through Potomac Gardens to protest and call attention to at least the following: the consistently awful management of PG and places like it in the city; the inherent unfairness of the disproportionate number of calls for police and ambulance service to -- or as a result of -- residents residing, on the dole, at PG; the childish absurdity and paucity of the "no-snitch" code embraced and perpetuated by PG residents; the ineffectual lip-service paid to those of us who fund, through our taxes, places throughout the city like PG, but who are constantly victimized by its residents and particularly by the children of its lease-holders; the absurdity of DC's juvenile shield laws that seem to fly in the face of the 1st Amendment when it comes to sharing information. . . and finally, the simplest, we're just all sick of the crap we have been force-fed by our civic leaders, PC pundits, and apologists alike, that living in an economically, racially, and demographically diverse urban environment entails accepting that we should expect to be assaulted, stolen from, and abused by those among us who are deemed "less fortunate?" - S&P
A number of other white neighbors supported the idea but then. . .
-- I must say that I am alarmed by the idea of an angry mob storming Potomac Gardens and other public housing developments. . . I do not in any way underestimate the severity of the problem and the frustration and anger over these incidents, but a mass demonstration makes no distinction between the "good" parents and delinquent parents, the good kids and the bad. It comes across as an us/them confrontation, "we" the homeowners and "you" the "welfare beneficiaries of tax dollars." I don't like the sound of it and I don't see it as a way to promote any kind of dialogue or meaningful improvement. - Marika Rosen
-- I disagree with you. There needs to be a firmer and clearer establishment of "us" versus "them", specifically in the area of violent crime and victimization. We need to send a message that among "us," regardless of race and demographics, we do not tolerate being victimized by "them," consisting of people who directly and indirectly contribute to the violence against "us" and our victimization. I'm not suggesting writing off this generation of kids residing in places like PG, but I am stating emphatically that the time has come to forcefully send the message to them, their parents and their apologists that we, as a civilized and peace-loving segment of the greater community have had enough. That it is unacceptable for anybody living among us to violently and brutally assault and rob us.
- I feel for you and am so sorry about what happened to you on Tuesday night. I support your efforts to bring the community together to make our neighborhood safer. I've got to say, though, that a march on people's homes isn't the way to go. I know you're not trying to intimidate innocent families, and again, I fully appreciate your anger and desire to take back our streets, but honestly some of what I've read makes me think of KKK marches in the 60s. I agree with Tom and others who've said the main message is that we want to be safe in our neighborhoods. I like the idea of a broad-based march, but not a march on Potomac Gardens. - Marc
--- When I lived in Philly "Take Back the Night" marches were common and frequent. . . but these weren't people marching on the MLK Projects or the South Broad high rises. . . This was making a statement about the rights of people to walk down a sidewalk, sit on their porch or let their kids play on the stoop . . . I think that starting an idea with the assumption that people will turn this into a race and class thing is to allow it to become a statement that people aren't trying to make. This isn't about tearing down PG. . . t's about being able to be safe in our neighborhoods.
--- I honestly wonder if people know how they sound talking about the people who live in Potomac Gardens et al and the black kids in this neighborhood?
I by no stretch of the imagination think that what the kids who have been attacking people are right. I do think that they should be punished. That being said, every black youth who crosses your path in this neighborhood doesn't live in Potomac Gardens et al. I know of many black kids who live in a house just as nice as many of yours.
Also, did it occur to you that many of these kids are pissed off because their families have been displaced by the crazy prices of homes around here? The houses that they knew as their Grandma's, Aunties, cousin's are now yours. Yes, their anger is displaced but just think about it for a second. Then there is the fact that many of these kids are kids that have had to leave the neighborhood because their families couldn't afford the houses anymore and they come back to hang with their friends they grew up with. . . which again means they didn't come from the projects or section 8 housing.
I hope that you don't look at my daughter and just assume because she's black that she's in the projects. I mean really, we black people can and do amount to more than that.
This whole discussion has taken on an elitist, racist, angry mob slant. Isn't the whole idea to find a productive way to stop this? Can't something be done without making it look like this list is saying "hey all you poor black people, we don't want your kind around here?" I suddenly don't feel so welcome in this neighborhood anymore. - Manda (A single black parent who hopes her daughter never has to feel that she isn't wanted in her neighborhood!)
-- If you hadn't noticed, Potomac Gardens and the other low-income housing in the area are predominantly housed by African Americans. How could Manda, Bessie, or I not be offended by the tone and focus of your "idea". and - to make matters worse, your subsequent postings continue to suggest that low-income residents (a) - don't have morals; (b) don't know how to raise their children; and (c) - don't value living in a crime-free neighborhood.
I wonder what your exposure to inner-city life has been. I wonder just how many low-income housing projects you've lived near. And finally, I wonder if you really understand the dynamics of crime. Your focus on the low-income areas of our neighborhood and the people within them is the very thing that angers minorities (and maybe non-minorities) faced with an influx of "gentrifiers". This "us" versus "them" mentality is exactly what divides a community. How can you even suggest this approach and use "us" versus "them" in a message about building a community against crime??
Your repeated defenses of your statements later in the postings really demonstrate your ignorance of how to effectively deal with these kinds of issues. And I'm not saying I'm an expert on crime prevention or community development, but I'm pretty sure that community development can't result in a march directed on poor folks who are in our community.
In the past, we tried to combat crime by reaching out to our neighbors in hard-hit areas and encouraging them to join in the fight. To me, this would mean knocking on the doors of your neighbors who you don't ordinarily talk to and ask them if they would be willing to be more active in a neighborhood watch. . . or perhaps if they would participate more regularly in the Orange Hat activities or other. Or simply ask people to leave their porch lights on and call 311. It would not mean organizing a posse and marching on the homes of innocents and criminals, demanding change. How do you know that those criminals are even based in Potomac Gardens? How can running in the direction of a complex mean that the crime emanates from that complex? It might be your neighbor's nephew visiting his aunt who engaged in criminal mischief. But you'll never know because your blinders have you directed toward the low-income side of town.
For my part, I will continue to try and work within the community (insofar as my work schedule allows) with additional neighborhood watches, leaving my porch light on, and keeping a vigilant eye. I would not mind meeting with city officials to see if they have any ideas about how we can address these concerns - but I don't think the Housing Authority is the source for a solution . . .
I fully expect to get a heated response from you or others, but please think and breathe before writing back - I did, and I think calming down is what I needed to do. Please think about what you've said in past postings (perhaps re-read them) and think about what others have said in response to the postings and maybe we can come up with a more constructive solution to crime in the area - one other than a "march" on a housing project that some have only assumed holds criminals. - Rochelle, African American
--- I have been watching the conversation of the past several days, trying to figure out how to comment constructively. I'm pretty sure this post will fail spectacularly, but I am too angry and ashamed to stay quiet any longer.
Martin Luther King and his fellow marchers were Americans protesting immoral laws that rendered them second-class citizens. For people with every advantage (affluent, educated, white) to invoke Dr. King's name as they plan a march on their disadvantaged neighbors appalls me.
There have been constructive voices, people who speak of building alliances across racial and economic lines to achieve a common goal. But so many of the posts to this list have been angry and vindictive and, yes, racist and classist. (You don't need to use the n-word to be racist; repeat the word "babymomma" enough times and you've achieved the same effect. Likewise, saying, "it's because they're poor" is pretty much the definition of classism.)
I can't figure out what this march is supposed to achieve, either. I saw a reference to closing Potomac Gardens ­ what, so homeless kids are less likely to commit crime?
Someone mentioned threatening parents of truant children with jail time. I must've missed the news that putting parents in prison improves their children's prospects ­ I thought the evidence pretty clearly demonstrated the opposite.
If you're so passionate about reducing juvenile crime, how about proposing an intensive mentoring program at Potomac Gardens, so we can reach kids before they mug someone?
Another poster mentioned the carrot and the stick. Sticks might work on donkeys, but carrots are far more effective at changing human behavior. (Sticks tend to piss us off.) A lower birth rate isn't a cause of affluence; it comes as a result of it. If we want young women to stop having a lot of children at an early age, we have to increase their opportunities so they have an incentive not to. If we want young men to steer clear of their criminal behavior, likewise: They need an incentive not to.
What if HillEast funded a modest scholarship toward the college tuition of any child at Potomac Gardens who earned his or her high school diploma and did not get pregnant or get into trouble with the police? That's an incentive to straighten up and fly right.
A march whose message seems to be "We're rich and white and better than you, get out of our way!" might be more satisfying than other, more constructive options ­ but it's an incentive to commit mayhem.
Look, I get it: You're scared and angry. Guess what? So are those kids. Scared they'll have to leave the only home they've known, scared that their neighborhood is changing, scared they'll never know anything but poverty, scared they'll die before they're 20. The truth is, they have a lot more reason to be scared than you do. And just because they're expressing their fear as anger doesn't mean you can't come up with something more constructive. - Molly Wyman, Hill resident for 40 years come Tuesday
--- Hey Molly. . . you and I live fairly close to each other, so let's talk about who is appalled, and let's talk about fear. Think of this. . . if MLK was alive today, would he be appalled to know that he gave his life to civil rights, and this is how the kids and families use those civil rights against white people. Would he be appalled that these young black kids are committing racially motivated hate crimes. I think both you and I know the answer is a resounding yes, he would be appalled. Hey white people deserve peace and justice too!
So, he fought to end immoral laws that rendered blacks being placed as second class citizens. Well, I'm not about to become a second class citizen to the criminals. I'm not about to live in fear that my partner and I (gay partner, not business partner) might get beaten down by some young ignorant thug who has an equally ignorant parental structure. That is my fear everyday, that my tall skinny blonde boyfriend might not make it home from the metro because of these thugs. I'm not going to stand for it. I don't care "why" they are that way. I don't care if they are poor, or black, or have baby mommas, or were a product of one. I care about my loved one getting home from the three block walk safe. . . Clearly, you will not be part of the solution.
--- I suppose I'll attend to be community like. . . but is charging those rock throwing arms of the "gang of four" with our home cooked meals really going to solve the problem? I think, probably not. Then again, they'll know we are out of our homes, so please make sure to lock your roof hatches.
--- I'm proposing a weekly Friday Night Potluck Dinner and Discussion to be held at Potomac Gardens ­ open to all members of our community. I will invite Chief Lanier and Commander Kamperin from MPD to join us, as well as the leadership at Potomac Gardens, and I hope to create a conversation about safety, perceptions, and how our neighborhood builds strength in the community among all neighbors.
I'll host the first Friday Night Potluck in two weeks on Friday May 30th, 6:00 ­ 7:30 pm. Given Memorial Day Weekend next week, I think this is our first opportunity. We'll hold them each week on Friday evening through the month of June and if the residents feel we need to continue, then we can keep it going on a weekly basis after that. - Best, Tommy (the white city councilmember from the area)
CANDIDATES DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT CITIES
END OF THE ROAD FOR CUL-DE-SAC?
URBAN KIDS BOOMING IN DC, NY, ELSEWHERE
HALF OF NEW ORLEANS POOR PERMANENTLY DISPLACED
MINNEAPOLIS RANKED MOST LITERATE CITY
THE IGNORED GREENNESS OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION
TOP BICYCLE CITIES OF THE WORLD
GARBAGE BURNING OVENS FOR MEGACITIES
THE NEW URBAN CORRUPTION: SELLING OFF PUBLIC ICONS AND PUBLIC SPACES
THREE GUIDES TO BUILDING NEW COMMUNITIES
GAY NEIGHBORHOODS BEING HIT BY GENTRIFICATION, TOO
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE URBAN RENAISSANCE?
WAL-MART REPEATEDLY ARGUES THAT WAL-MART LOWERS PROPERTY VALUES
SOME PLACES QUESTIONING THEIR TACTICS IN DEALING WITH GANGS
NOVEL IDEA FOR THE HOMELESS: GIVE THEM A HOME
CITIES TRYING TO LIMIT TEARDOWNS
APRIL 2008
WHAT'S TO LOVE ABOUT A CITY
If you listen to the average planner or big city politician, you'd think that urban happiness is the product of massive redevelopment, sports stadiums and convention centers. Your editor lives in a neighborhood that has two stadiums on its edges but has happily managed to avoid much of the other manipulations that pass for urban progress, having been largely laid out in the 19th and early 20th century. Washington's Capitol Hill is a community characterized by row houses; it is almost evenly divided between owners and tenants (many of the latter living in basement apartments). It is about 60% black and in an area of a few square miles has 18,000 jobs, its own waterfront, a beloved hardware store and a farmer's market. It also has the third highest density in the city - over 15,000 people per square mile - but contrary to the developer-serving mythology of the smart growth movement, it accomplished this with few high rises (although brutalist planners of the DC have recently torn down much of its public housing and are replacing it with condo towers). Only 16% of the population lives in buildings with ten or more units. In other words, it is an urban community that works, has density without human warehousing and is quite self-sufficient. It is, in short, a good model of how a city should function - in no small part because it has done it itself without too much inference from the urban planners and pols.
A bulletin board for one of the communities of Capitol Hill, Hill East, recently asked readers what they liked about their neighborhood. The answers are exceptional only because they offer a good sense of what attracts people to any well working 'hood. Note that the only governmental contribution mentioned in any of the replies is the Metro subway system and the weekly testing of the DC Jail siren. The answers are a good example of why so much of what we hear and read has so little to do with what really makes cities work. Some of the replies:
I like Speilberg Park (even with its graffiti and trash).
I like walking and riding my bike everywhere.
I like the sausage and cheese from Eastern Market.
I like Frager's [Hardware Store]
I like Troop 500.
I like the long growing season in our urban heat island.
I like the racial diversity of my neighbors and the fact that my daughter doesn't seem to care about skin color at all.
I like the tall trees on E St.
I like our proximity to the Metro.
I like chatting with neighbors from my front porch.
I like all the well-maintained flower boxes along the sidewalks. I like maintaining flower boxes.
I like that Jennifer Howard organizes so many neighborhood cleanups.
I like that Jim Myer is always goading us into action.
I like that Scott Christian runs the "toxic drop-off shuttle" each time DC has a hazardous waste collection.
I like all the babies in strollers.
I like the lattes at Bread and Chocolate.
I love the salsa at La Lomita.
I like it when kids at Lincoln Park ask if they can pet my dog.
I like my neighbors; they say hello to me every day.
I like the man on his porch that asks me what I am cooking on my way home from Safeway.
I like the kids chalk art on the sidewalk.
I like the guy that sells Street Sense.
I like watching the basketball, hockey, football and others sports being played at the school on D and 12.
I like the crazy lights on the house around the corner.
I like talking to the artists in the Eastern Market.
I like.. . .
Being able to walk my dog in Congressional Cemetery before sunrise and watch the big sun rise over the ridge east of Anacostia River
Seeing a full moon also rise over the same eastern ridge
Seeing folks I know while in Metro and sharing a conversation with them while riding to work
Occasional sound of a train whistle when a train crosses over the Anacostia River
DC Jail siren tests every Saturday at 12 noon
Hearing the songs of mockingbirds
Level terrain throughout the neighborhood
Not having to mow a lawn
I like the provolone cheese at Eastern Market
I like the prosciutto at Litteri
I like the fish tacos at the Argonaut
I like the dance classes at the Joy of Motion
I like the people who ride the X8
I like the tree in front of my house, even though the roots are knocking our sidewalk bricks out of whack
I like . . .
that the Marvelous Market at Eastern Market stocks Skybars, which I haven't been able to find for years.
that we have an amazing book store like Riverby Books.
being able to say to friends when picking a place to eat, "Do you like Belgian?"
margaritas at Banana Cafe.
watching the 4th of July fireworks from the roof of our front porch and realizing that people all across the country are sitting in their living rooms doing the same thing.
Things I love about our hood:
The cute blond cheese lady at the cheese kiosk in Eastern Market who never lets me walk by without feeding me some cheese.
Walking my dog to Eastern Market and noticing how many people know his name and not mine.
The ladies in their fancy hats that come out of the Church by the CVS, along with all the singing that goes on during their service.
The moral: the next time your city government talks about "revitalizing" your neighborhood, ask the people who live there what they already like about the place. You may find it is pretty revitalized already.BRINGING URBAN PLACES ALIVE WITHOUT SPENDING MILLIONS FEBRUARY 2008
STUDY FINDS RED LIGHT CAMS INCREASE ACCIDENTS
RICH SHOPES, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE Cameras at intersections increase, not decrease, accidents, according to a University of South Florida study published the day after Hillsborough County commissioners voted to allow the cameras at 10 intersections. The university's yearlong review, published in the campus journal Florida Public Health Review, warns that drivers are at higher risk of having accidents at intersections where cameras are installed.
"People see a yellow light and normally they would drive through it, but at camera intersections they do the quick stop. They slam on the brakes and that means everybody else behind them slams on the brakes," said Barbara Langland-Orban, one of three co-authors of the study and an associate professor in USF's Department of Health Policy and Management.
USF examined five red-light camera studies. It concluded that two were flawed and found that the other three drew the same basic conclusion about cameras at intersections. . .
She pointed to a seven-year study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council that showed crashes at intersections with the cameras increased 29 percent.
Another study, by the Urban Transit Institute at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, looked at almost five years' worth of data. The study concluded that accident rates increased 40 percent at intersections with cameras; injury crashes rose between 40 percent and 50 percent.
The USF review contradicts other studies showing a decline in wrecks, including a report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that is frequently cited by camera advocates. . .
Instead of using cameras to catch red-light runners, the study suggests that engineers look at the timing of yellow lights and make sure the signals are visible to motorists.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/mar/12/na-red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-usf-study-/
WALL ST JOURNAL - For the first time in nearly a century, railroads are making large investments in their networks -- adding sets of tracks, straightening curves that force engines to slow and expanding tunnels for bigger trains. Their campaign is altering the corridors of American commerce, more so than any other development since interstate highways spread to the interior.
For decades, railroads spent little on expansion, even tore up surplus track and shrank routes. But since 2000 they've spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned.
Increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities. . . Railroad operators are pressing for advantage over their main competitor, long-haul trucking, which has struggled with rising fuel prices, driver shortages and highway congestion. Railroads say a load can be moved by rail using about a third as much fuel as it takes to haul it by truck. . .
Trucking accounted for 82% of the U.S.'s truck-and-rail intercity-freight spending in 2004, up from 78% in 1990, according to Eno Transportation Foundation, a research organization in Washington, D.C. But trucking companies, notably industry giant J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, Ark., are using railroads for the long-haul part of some trips because it's cheaper. . .
It's been a century since railroads embarked on a similar spate of capital investment. Between 1900 and World War I, they launched a huge rebuilding program across the U.S. midsection to handle freight and passenger trains. Traffic was booming as the economy roared back from a financial panic in the 1890s. Railroads added second, third and fourth sets of tracks along main routes, built tunnels and bridges and installed stronger locomotives.
After World War II, though, cars began wiping out passenger-train service. New interstate highways unleashed trucks as a freight competitor. By the 1970s, U.S. railroads were deep into a decline. . .
JANUARY 2008
THE NATION'S FIRST GREEN HOMELESS SHELTER
INSIDE BAY AREA - With solar panels supplying electricity and water-based hydronic heaters warming rooms in the 125-bed shelter, the Crossroads building of the East Oakland Community Project is said to be the first "green" homeless shelter in the nation. It replaces a cold, damp and leaky building up the road on International that has been housing homeless for the past 17 years.
"You'll wake up here and feel good because it's an environment that is healthy. We are asking our people to deal with some heavy issues, so it is best that we support their health," said Wendy Jackson, executive director of the East Oakland Community Project. "Many of the clients are ill, about 60 percent are ill, often with chronic diseases of asthma, diabetes, so we wanted to do whatever we can to make this as healthy an environment as possible," she said. The building, with high windows for natural light and walls painted with a green paint that does not emit toxins, has an airy, good feel to it.
HIGH RISE TOWN HOUSES WITH GARDENS
TREE HUGGER - Rotterdam designer Reinier de Jong notes: "Housing in big city centers seems to consist of small apartments. High rise equals apartments. Or so it seems. However many cities economically really need well-to-do middle class dwellers. They flee to suburbia as soon as salaries go up and kids arrive."
So he takes the standard suburban typology, the two story house with a garden, and stacks them on top of each other, "so we will diminish the suburban sprawl that is swallowing up our precious land.""The project TUIN ('garden') combines high rise with a typical suburban housing typology: a two storey dwelling with garden. A height of seven meters and a depth of one meter of soil guarantees a true garden. Enough for sunlight, rain and wind to enter and nourish trees, shrubs, flowers and grass."
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/reinier_de_jong.php
DECEMBER 2007
MATHEMATICIANS SOLVE MYSTERY OF TRAFFIC JAMS
PHYSORG - Mathematicians from the University of Exeter have solved the mystery of traffic jams by developing a model to show how major delays occur on our roads, with no apparent cause.
The team developed a mathematical model to show the impact of unexpected events such as a lorry pulling out of its lane on a dual carriageway. Their model revealed that slowing down below a critical speed when reacting to such an event, a driver would force the car behind to slow down further and the next car back to reduce its speed further still.
The result of this is that several miles back, cars would finally grind to a halt, with drivers oblivious to the reason for their delay. The model predicts that this is a very typical scenario on a busy highway (above 15 vehicles per km. . .
http://www.physorg.com/news117283969.html
THE GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD BOOK
By Jay Walljasper
Abandoned lots and litter-strewn pathways, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffiti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood?
Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a civic garden or placing some benches in a park.
The Great Neighborhood Book explains how most struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there. The author addresses such challenges as traffic control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality. Using a technique called "placemaking"-- the process of transforming public space -- this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and motivate others to make change.
Jay Walljasper is a Senior Fellow of Project for Public Spaces (PPS), whose mission is to create and sustain enriching public places that build communities. He is a former editor of Utne Reader and currently Executive Editor of Ode Magazine.
BUSH REGIME DESTROYING PUBLIC HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS
BLOOMBERG - In New Orleans, public housing doesn't mean bleak high-rise towers. The city has thousands of units with Georgian brickwork and lacy ironwork porches that came through Hurricane Katrina barely scathed.
Yet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, last week approved $31 million worth of contracts to demolish 4,500 public housing units of such high quality that some are on the National Register of Historic Places.
The demolitions, scheduled to start as soon as Dec. 15, come as the city faces an unprecedented shortage of rental housing. To add insult to injury, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last week that it would evict hundreds of residents of emergency trailer parks in New Orleans over the next six months, even though they don't have houses to return to.
Merry Christmas, poor people. . .
New Orleans tracts have been among the worst managed, suffering most of their damage from neglect by the Housing Authority of New Orleans. HUD took over the local agency and had determined before the storm to evict residents and demolish thousands of units.
Low-income housing advocates were not the only defenders of these projects. Sturdily built and sensitive to local history, the tracts always had the potential to lose their "project" stigma and join the rest of the city as an invigorating mixed-income neighborhood. . .
HUD and the local housing authority have steadfastly resisted revamping thousands of units on four other public housing sites, preferring to bid them out for new construction of mixed-income developments that will take years to build and house a fraction of the neediest.
Washington policy makers see homeowners as the only class of residents who deserve aid. So billions have been poured into financing to stretch inadequate insurance payouts, like "soft" second mortgages that become grants. And these programs have worked. Neighborhoods of mostly owner-occupants are swarming with contractors completing repairs.
Renters -- about half the households in New Orleans -- have been left to fend for themselves. Before the storm, many landlords could make a profit renting out aging ranch houses or Creole cottages at modest rates. Few were subsidized, most served people of modest income and many are remarkable works of historic architecture that could catalyze more growth if fixed up.
ROBERT DAVID SULLIVAN, BOSTON GLOBE - In all, there were 16 gay bars in Boston and Cambridge, according to Pink Pages directories from 1993 and 1994. Today, that number has been cut to less than half. . . The gay population may have political clout and the right to marry in Massachusetts, but it has fewer and fewer public spaces to call its own.
The disappearance of places like Buddies and Chaps may sound like a problem limited to gay men, but it is part of a much larger trend reshaping American cities. As gay bars vanish, so go bookstores, diners, and all kinds of spaces that once allowed "blissful public congregation," as sociologist Ray Oldenburg described their function in his 1989 book "The Great Good Place."
In New York, the Jewish deli - a staple of the city's identity - has all but vanished. In the Boston area, many of Harvard Square's bookstores, Kenmore Square's student eateries, and myriad other places that guaranteed a diverse urban experience have closed their doors, replaced by a far more uniform lineup of bank branches, chain stores, and upscale restaurants. . .
Oldenburg calls public gathering spots a "third place" where we can temporarily step out of our household and workplace roles. Besides taverns, he cites drugstores (the kind with soda fountains), pool halls, and barber shops as examples. . .
NOVEMBER 2007
NY TIMES - Seattle now recycles 44 percent of its trash, compared with the national average of around 30 percent. . . Its goal, city waste management officials said, is to reach 60 percent by 2012 and 72 percent by 2025. In many other parts of the country, recycling is in the doldrums . . . As the law now stands in Seattle, residents of single family houses are allowed to mix food scraps with yard waste, which is then shipped off to be composted. Recycling of food scraps will become mandatory in 2009.
The new law may add yet another container for curbside pickup, which already includes receptacles for non-recyclable trash, yard waste, glass and other recyclables. . .
Seattle also found itself in a recycling skid a few years back, losing ground to apathy despite being a pacesetter in the boom years of the late '80s. "We hit a cardboard ceiling," said Tim Croll of the Seattle Public Utilities.
The city's response was to ban paper and cardboard from non-recyclable garbage - with enforcement penalties - followed by allowing food scraps to be mingled with yard waste.
ANOTHER REASON YOU MAY NOT WANT TO WRECK THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
JOEL KOTKIN, WALL STREET JOURNAL - For much of the past decade, business recruiters, cities and urban developers have focused on the "young and restless," the "creative class," and the so-called "yuspie"--the young urban single professional. Cities, they've said, should capture this so-called "dream demographic" if they wish to inhabit the top tiers of the economic food chain and enjoy the fastest and most sustained growth.
This focus--epitomized by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's risible "Cool Cities" initiative--is less successful than advertised. Cincinnati, Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark, Detroit and Memphis have danced to the tune of the hip and the cool, yet largely remain wallflowers in terms of economic and demographic growth. Instead, an analysis of migration data by my colleagues at the Praxis Strategy Group shows that the strongest job growth has consistently taken place in those regions--such as Houston, Dallas, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham--with the largest net in-migration of young, educated families ranging from their mid-20s to mid-40s.
Urban centers that have been traditional favorites for young singles, such as Chicago, Boston, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have experienced below-average job and population growth since 2000. San Francisco and Chicago lost population during that period; even immigrant-rich New York City and Los Angeles County have shown barely negligible population growth in the last two years, largely due to a major out-migration of middle class families.
Married people with children tend to be both successful and motivated, precisely the people who make economies go. They are twice as likely to be in the top 20% of income earners, according to the Census, and their incomes have been rising considerably faster than the national average.
There is a basic truth about the geography of young, educated people. They may first migrate to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or San Francisco. But they tend to flee when they enter their child-rearing years. Family-friendly metropolitan regions have seen the biggest net gains of professionals, largely because they not only attract workers, but they also retain them through their 30s and 40s. . .
Contrary to popular belief, moreover, the family is far from the brink of extinction. Most Americans, notes the Pew Research Center, still regard marriage as the ideal state. . .
The evidence thus suggests that the obsession with luring singles to cities is misplaced. Instead, suggests Paul Levy, president of Philadelphia's Center City district association, the emphasis should be on retaining young people as they grow up, marry, start families and continue to raise them.
Mr. Levy notes that the remarkable transformation of once sedate Center City--the area's population has grown to over 90,000--has indeed been due primarily to young singles, childless couples and a few "empty nesters." The proliferation of clubs, restaurants and bars has created an almost Manhattan ambiance. But he suggests that the district is reaching the limits of its success. . .
Boosters such as Mr. Levy look increasing towards reviving the traditional family neighborhoods which surround Center City. His organization has worked closely with local public and private schools, church and civic organizations to build up the support structures that might convince today's youthful inner city urbanites to remain as they start families. "Our agenda," Mr. Levy says, "has to change. We have to look at the parks, the playgrounds and the schools."
NY TIMES - With nearly 2,000 miles of small service streets bisecting blocks from the North Side to the South Side, Chicago is the alley capital of America. In its alleys, city officials say, it has the paved equivalent of five midsize airports. Part of the landscape since the city began, the alleys, mostly home to garbage bins and garages, make for cleaner and less congested main streets. But Chicago's distinction is not without disadvantages: Imagine having a duplicate set of streets, in miniature, to maintain that are prone to flooding and to dumping runoff into a strained sewer system.
What is an old, alley-laden city to do? Chicago has decided to retrofit its alleys with environmentally sustainable road-building materials under its Green Alley initiative, something experts say is among the most ambitious public street makeover plans in the country. In a larger sense, the city is rethinking the way it paves things.
In a green alley, water is allowed to penetrate the soil through the pavement itself, which consists of the relatively new but little-used technology of permeable concrete or porous asphalt. Then the water, filtered through stone beds under the permeable surface layer, recharges the underground water table instead of ending up as polluted runoff in rivers and streams.
Some of that water may even end up back in Lake Michigan, from which Chicago takes a billion gallons a year.
The new pavements are also designed to reflect heat from the sun instead of absorbing it, helping the city stay cool on hot days. They also stay warmer on cold days. The green alleys are given new kinds of lighting that conserve energy and reduce glare, city officials said, and are made with recycled materials.
The city will have completed 46 green alleys by the end of the year, and it has deemed the models so attractive that now every alley it refurbishes will be a green alley.
OCTOBER 2007
SOME PLACES QUESTIONING THEIR TACTICS IN DEALING WITH GANGS
CHANGING THE COURT - According to [an] article from the New York Times, policy makers and law enforcement leaders in jurisdictions such as Los Angeles and Texas that pioneered hard-hitting anti-gang tactics in the nineties (which included laws prohibiting two or more gang suspects from congregating in a public place, broad sweeps of suspects, and long jail sentences for gang-related crimes) think those tactics may have worsened the problems they were meant to solve by alienating poor communities from the police and hardening juvenile delinquents into serious criminals. Now, they're focusing their strategies and funding priorities on prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation. For an interesting example of what that means to the court system, and a question about the issue of culture read more.
The article cites an example of a young man, 16, who was arrested for possessing a knife at his local public school, and then arrested a second time for being high on marijuana at his alternative state school. It was only after these arrests that he decided to join a gang and commit an unarmed robbery along with several other young men. These types of charges are viewed as "minor" within the courts. While media attention and decision-making is driven by high profile killings, it is the response that the justice system makes to these low-level criminal offenses that might have the biggest impact on the gang problem.
The article also raises the issue of culture. Officials and community leaders are quoted wondering how police and communities should react when young people who are not necessarily gang affiliated wear gang style clothing and make gang gestures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/us/13gang.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
CITIES TURNING BIKE FRIENDLY
CHARISE JONES, USA TODAY - "There's never been so much attention from cities collectively for cycling as a mode of transportation," says Loren Mooney, executive editor of Bicycling magazine. . . New York for the first time is creating a special lane, modeled on those used in European cities such as Copenhagen, Denmark, that will separate bicyclists from motorists. The Ninth Avenue bike lane in Manhattan is being built between a sidewalk and a lane for parked cars. . .
Chicago is striving by 2015 to have 5% of all trips shorter than 5 miles to be taken by bicycle. Mayor Richard Daley also is considering launching a bike program he saw in Paris. That effort, begun in July, allows residents and visitors to check out a bike at one location, ride free during the first half-hour and park the bike at another location near their destination.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose city is considered one of the friendliest to cyclists by the League of American Bicyclists, says he wants at least 10% of all trips in the city within three years to be made by bicycle.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-07-bicyclists_N.htm?csp=34GREAT MOMENTS IN ACTIVISM:
THE BLUE TAPE SCREEDTHE NEW URBAN CORRUPTION: SELLING OFF PUBLIC ICONS AND PUBLIC SPACES
DC CITY DESK - The battle to have identifiable and attractive libraries in several neighborhoods - not swallowed up in office or condo development - is being treated as a strictly local issue. It isn't. It is a citywide problem stemming from the contempt political leaders have for the citizens in contrast to their ever growing obeisance to robber baron contributors. What is at stake here is the preservation of local public icons - libraries, schools, fire stations etc - in the face of runaway corrupt development plans.
This is not just another problem for our neighborhoods or for DC. Never in history have politicians treated the symbols of community with such utter disrespect. These buildings should be places of public honor and not jammed into a high rise like they were just another coffee shop.
What's next? Will Mayor Fenty replace parks by putting grass on rooftops? Pave over the Anacostia for a new town, reducing it to the world's largest sewer?
Stay tuned.
[Yesterday, we mentioned the possibility that Mayor Fenty might start selling off city parkland. Turns out it's not a joke. It's already happening in Detroit]
http://prorev.com/2007/10/dc-tuesday_30.htm
ZACHARY GORCHOW, DETROIT FREE PRESS - One-quarter of Detroit's 367 parks could be sold under a proposal designed to help the city shed dozens of its smallest and most worn-down parks in an effort to aid others and position the land for redevelopment. More than half of the 92 parks are less than an acre in size -- so called pocket parks -- tucked in neighborhoods. Some have swing sets, jungle gyms, slides and benches. They make up 124 acres of the city's roughly 6,000 acres of parkland.
Many of those neighborhoods are no longer dense in population and are dominated by urban prairies as the result of demolished homes, conditions Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's administration cites in its proposal. The plan to sell off city parkland has generated relief among some neighbors hoping to see the lots improve and anger among those who say the city is getting rid of precious assets. . .
The scope of the proposal has alarmed members of the City Council, which must approve land sales. "It looks like every park in the city, every small park, is on here," Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. said at a meeting last week as he examined the city's list. "If we sell everything, we'll look up one day, and there won't be any place for kids to play for recreation.". . .
GAY NEIGHBOODS BEING HIT BY GENTRIFICATION, TOO
NY TIMES - [San Francisco's] most popular Halloween party, in America's largest gay neighborhood, is canceled. The once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders, and there has been talk of moving it outside the district because of increasing violence. Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration.
For many in the Castro District, the cancellation is a blow that strikes at the heart of neighborhood identity, and it has broug
