More topics local candidates don't talk about: Shifting from building MORE infrastructure to making BETTER use of what we already have.

As usual, Marohn locates the center of the target. One important question voters should be asking the Gahanites: Exactly how are we going to pay future maintenance costs for all these bright, shiny (and in so many instances, unnecessary) objects?

The Strong Towns Approach to Public Investment, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

We’re done building infrastructure. The idea that any city in North America will, in the future, have appreciably more roads or streets, more sidewalks and curbs, more pipes or pumps or valves or meters, is absurd. Some may add a bit here or there, but for the most part we’re done. What we’ve built is what we’ve got. That’s it.

In fact, I suspect that many cities will have less infrastructure in a decade than they do now. Two decades from now, I suspect contraction of infrastructure will be a common and shared experience across our cities.

This means that the task of city-building must shift dramatically, from building more to making better use of what we already have. For over seven decades, we’ve culturally viewed expansion as our pathway to success. Now we must develop strategies for thickening up our places, for going back and wringing more return out of the trillions in existing investment.

An Obsession with Maintenance
In my book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, I outline how local governments must use two complementary – but very different – approaches for making capital investments: maintenance and little bets ...

Redevelopment Commission hands $40,000 for infrastructure subsidy to a fast food chain on Grant Line Road. Where do indies queue for some of this action?

Just a random glance at small potatoes fixes, approved and forgotten. From the minutes of the January 22 Redevelopment Commission meeting:

The developer slated for $40,000 to improve a privately held parking lot:

No one argues that Muncy has upgraded an outmoded suburban asphalt pit. The location:

The latest cookie-cutter sandwich chain to titillate us with sheer meaninglessness:

My question, as always: Do independent restaurant operators have a snowball's chance in Guam of scoring a similar subsidy?

Break up into groups and discuss ... and don't forget to #FireGahan2019 ... to sweep clean those department heads, clear the appointed boards, and see if we can't make all this local system a tad more democratic (lower case "d").

Downtown stakeholders need to learn about issues pertaining to parking, and stakeholders shouldn't allow the city to conduct this discussion in secret.

"The goal here is to create a virtuous feedback loop, where parking fees are used to improve the downtown, an improved downtown draws more patrons, and those patrons generate more parking fees. This is how we turbocharge downtown development."
-- Charles Marohn

I mentioned this topic just last week.

What's a Parking Benefits District? DNA needs to pay more attention to matters that pertain to merchants.

In the essay linked below, Marohn touches on several sub-topics pertaining to the larger issues of downtown parking. His Brainerd and our New Albany are not directly comparable, but it doesn't mean that aren't parking universals applicable to either city, or both.

Give yourself 10 minutes, pour a coffee and read the whole article. I can't summarize it in a short, glib way, although the quote at the top comes close.

The first paragraph sets the mood, and points to something we're NOT doing in New Albany: having a "healthy conversation." Currently all discussions about parking are occurring within the limited confines of the Redevelopment Commission, so as to be kept safely in-house and controlled by the powers that be.

This is the exact OPPOSITE of how the conversation should be proceeding -- and couldn't Develop New Albany play a valuable role in making the discussion public?

Here's How to Build a Parking Garage, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

In my hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota, we’re having a healthy conversation about parking. I’m calling it healthy not because we’re all agreeing, but because we’re starting to question things that have long been taken for granted. That is an important first step.

A big part of this conversation is the realization that tearing down buildings to add parking destroys the tax base, makes the city less desirable a destination, and, ironically, makes the parking less necessary. Here parking is having the opposite of the Yogi Berra effect. (“Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”) Here, all the parking lots make it seem so desolate that not enough people want to go there. We’re starting to grasp that parking has become a liability.

That doesn’t mean the parking isn’t needed. Most patrons of our local businesses arrive by automobile and thus have a need to park. Most business owners and employees likewise drive to work. While it is clearly a winning strategy long-term to have more people living downtown and to improve walking/biking connections with the surrounding neighborhoods—both strategies that would add patrons without adding parking—that is not a viable short-term reality.

As cities (including ours) have a tendency to do, there is a push to skip to what everyone knows is the ultimate end condition: a parking garage (or parking ramp, as we call them here in Minnesota). I italicized “what everyone knows” there because I don’t actually agree with this conclusion. But many people in this conversation do, especially the ones who live outside of the city and drive in. For them, it’s obvious that we need a parking ramp, and so the process of justifying more debt to a struggling population in an already highly-indebted city is underway.

Those advocating for big action on parking ramps closely correlate to those calling for big action on a local initiative called River to Rail, a plan to spend millions on a reimagined city (to instantly make it more appealing to those who don’t live here). This past summer, I wrote about this initiative and identified three truths related to parking:

Truth #1: If we ask people who drive to Brainerd whether there is enough parking, they will say no.

Truth #2: If we ask downtown business owners whether the city of Brainerd should provide more free parking, they will say yes.

Truth #3: Whenever I go downtown—which is multiple times per week—there are always plenty of places to park within a block of my destination. Always.

As I wrote in that piece, I can agree with the eventual need for a parking ramp, I just think we have a lot of work to do to get there. Along those lines, I’m going to offer three phases of action that we can take, steps that will be applicable to far more places than my own ...

What's a Parking Benefits District? DNA needs to pay more attention to matters that pertain to merchants.

Yesterday Jeff Speck tweeted a thread briefly explaining Rule 19 from his new book, Walkable City Rules.

Yesterday I read this thread just after attending Develop New Albany's monthly merchant meeting, where a guest speaker discussed wealth management in the context of family-run independent businesses.

I appreciated his efforts, while at the same time shaking my head in disappointment. Downtown merchants should be discussing matters precisely like Speck's "Parking Benefits District" thread.

Aren’t topics like parking more relevant than wealth management to merchants in the here and now?

It remains that business owners have invested FAR MORE downtown than the city. Shouldn't they be part of the city's prospective solutions -- if any?

City Hall is fond of dictating from above. This process needs to be reversed.

How about it, DNA? Isn't that what you're here for?

---

Probably the most effective Parking Benefits District is the one that Donald Shoup helped establish in Old Town Pasadena. Begun in 1993, it paid for all of the benefits mentioned above, as well as a team of public service officers, the burying of overhead wires, and the conversion of a rear alley network into a lovely pedestrian zone. There are no dumpsters in Old Town; each block has its own industrial trash compactor.

The experience in Pasadena has been truly transformative: a virtuous circle in which improvement has led to more visitors which has led to more meter revenue and more improvement. Within five years of its inception, property tax revenue from the district tripled and sales tax revenues quadrupled. Clearly, this is an effort worth copying.

RULE 19: Re-price parking with an eye to Shoup’s 85% rule, and establish a Parking Benefits District to direct revenue toward local improvements. From #WalkableCityRules

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I've chosen a random on-line reference as an additional overview.

Parking management is an issue often overlooked in a city’s development plan. While it may seem like a secondary concern in the quest for economic development, parking management directly impacts accessibility to businesses, customer willingness to travel to certain areas, and the quality of life experienced by residents.

Current parking practices tend to favor generous parking supply at free or minimal cost which has unintended and undesirable consequences. Higher development costs, higher prices for goods and services, sprawl, and increased automobile travel leading to more traffic congestion, roadway costs, crashes and pollution emissions are just a few of the unwanted effects of free or cheap parking.

Several cities across the country have begun implementing alternative parking management strategies to ensure more convenient curbside on-street parking through better pricing. A Parking Benefit District (PBD) is an emerging strategy that uses better pricing to reduce the negative effects of parking and reinvests the increased revenue into improving the area streets and sidewalks.

Urban, suburban and UniGov: "Municipal consolidation will only amplify the underlying fragilities inherent in our development pattern."

I'm going to repeat something written two years ago during the pirate's mayoral campaign, but first, the 2011 article that prompts it.

CONSOLIDATION IS THE WRONG RESPONSE, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

... Consolidation is a response to the notion that our problem is essentially one of efficiency. The idea is that local governments are not efficient enough and therefore we can increase efficiency by combining them into fewer governments. Like the banking sector, fewer players means more efficiency, and like banks, fewer players will amplify fragility.

Take school consolidation as an example ...

LEAP FORWARD

... Our biggest problem as a nation right now is that our places are generally all vulnerable to the same things. That is because we have all used the same cookbook (standard zoning) and the same Mechanisms of Growth (government transfers, transportation spending and debt) to get to where we are now. Fundamentally, our cities are all pretty much the same. When gas prices rise, our cities struggle. When growth slows or stalls, our cities go into decline. When government aid goes away, our places start to implode. This lack of resilience will only be covered up by consolidation, the day of reckoning pushed off and made more difficult as a result.

Instead of consolidation, we should embrace the core strength of our system; an ability to innovate. This means loosening the controls we have placed on our cities and towns thus allowing local officials to try different solutions to the problems they face. The correct response is not to become more parochial, it is to become less ...

Indeed, county government no longer is "starved" of cash since last year's sale of Floyd Memorial Hospital. But the pattern of development remains exactly the same.

---

Urban, suburban and UniGov.

Hoosiers typically refer to combined city-county government as "Unigov," this being the catch phrase that originated 45 years ago when Indianapolis and Marion County undertook a "consolidation" of government pushed by then-mayor Richard Lugar.

What this notion of "combining" governments implies to me is an economy of scale -- but not the one we usually hear mentioned. We're told about the myriad small efficiencies to be derived from reducing or eliminating overlap, and while I don't contest these in every instance, what I see is a different kind of efficiency, or more accurately, inefficiency: Compact urban expenditures versus suburban sprawl subsidies.

It's the 800-lb gorilla in the room, as illustrated and explained here.

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.

To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

Halifax found the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced. On the rural end, each house sat on a 2.5 acre lot. On the very urban end, there were 92 people dwelling on each acre. Between those two extremes were several development patterns of varying density.

It costs more to "service" infrastructure for a few houses five miles off the main road outside Greenville than it does multiple homes located on a city block downtown. Precisely for this reason, Floyd County government is starved for money. Sprawl costs more, and revenues aren't sufficient to cover it. Somewhat surprisingly, the News and Tribune recently editorialized in favor of higher taxes to make up the difference, although the newspaper's editorial board didn't trace the need to the root cause: Sprawl costs more.

Of course there are areas suitable for sharing and cooperation between city and county government. These can and should be explored.

There's also a fundamental difference in settlement patterns between more and less densely populated areas, with ramifications for the cost of services and infrastructure maintenance. The latter represents a serious discussion we have not had.

Shall we begin?

Strong Towns and "Five Low Cost Ideas to Make Your City Wealthier."

Before arriving at the promised low cost ideas, allow me to reiterate a valuable resource.

I've joined Strong Towns, and encourage you to check it out.

As indicated elsewhere recently, one thing we surely can do during these tumultuous times is use our support dollars wisely, whether for the cause of principled journalism (The Nation, The Guardian, CounterPunch), public television and radio, and organizations doing the nitty gritty of what's going to be needed more than ever, like Planned Parenthood, Freedom from Religion Foundation and the ACLU.

Needless to say, the Strong Towns mission and that of local governance as usual, as we experience it on most days in Nawbany, are somewhat at odds; there are a few precious points of convergence, but not many, and this needs to change.

NA Confidential supports principled advocacy where and as we can, and Strong Towns fits the bill. A final thought: If you're of conservative inclination and believe Strong Towns is some sort of left-wing conspiracy, check it out -- but prepare to be very surprised at what you find.

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THE MISSION OF STRONG TOWNS IS TO SUPPORT A MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT THAT ALLOWS AMERICA'S CITIES, TOWNS AND NEIGHBORHOODS TO BECOME FINANCIALLY STRONG AND RESILIENT.


I've edited the five ideas, so be sure to dance through and read the explanations in their entirety. For amusement, try imagining Team Gahan embracing any of them -- and be prepared to laugh out loud, because if Marohn is guilty of omitting any one relevant point, it's the explanation of how low cost ideas like these still maintain required lines of beak wetting to the imperial campaign finance machine.

FIVE LOW COST IDEAS TO MAKE YOUR CITY WEALTHIER, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

Yesterday we shared five ways in which federal infrastructure spending is making cities poorer. That piece included this observation:

What we have not figured out -- and what we won't figure out with another flood of federal infrastructure spending -- is how to translate maintenance into growth. How do we go out and fill potholes and fix leaking pipes and have that result in additional wealth in our neighborhoods? This is a daunting challenge that requires us to rethink -- from bottom to top -- how we develop our places. We need to modernize our zoning codes, building standards, housing incentives, insurance programs, etc. There are a lot of people trying to do this, but they get cast aside every time the federal gravy train rolls into town.

Here are some of the low cost initiatives that every city across the country should prioritize.

1. THE BETTER BLOCK
The Better Block uses small, low cost interventions to prototype larger scale projects.

2. INCREMENTAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE
Developers R. John Anderson and Monte Anderson (no relation) have made careers out of building small, incremental projects in existing neighborhoods. Now they are doggedly training the next generation of small scale developers, giving them the tricks and insights to thrive in a development world not built for them.

3. OSWEGO RENAISSANCE ASSOCIATION
With very small amounts of capital, the Association has provided matching grants and resources to blocks of individuals wanting to invest in improving the look of their street.

4. ECONOMIC GARDENING
What do you do when you realize your city is never going to be able to subsidize enough businesses to create the jobs you need? There was no way to fill this hole with traditional economic development techniques. They were forced to innovate. The result: economic gardening, an approach that focuses on growing jobs in existing businesses rather than paying a business to relocate to the community. It's gardening, not hunting.

5. SMALL CHANGE
Small Change is allowing the regular investor to use their resources to invest in small scale projects, improvements that often don't neatly fit standard financing models. It's a little like crowdfunding, but for real estate, and there is an expectation of a return on investment.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND (2014): "We have our own Big Four Bridge. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm."

ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four Bridge. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It's family reunion time again, and with it my turn to host the gathering on what will be the hottest weekend of the year. We should consider moving the event to spring or fall, or else transfer it permanently to Baffin Island.

Earlier today, the absentee News and Tribune was harnessing both of its 2-horsepower of electronic media presence to push a pair of radically different pieces by Elizabeth Beilman, one a paean to sprawl (yay), the other a breathless preview of new restaurants (yay), with both united by a single municipal location: Jeffersonville, otherwise known as not as the City by the Bay, but the Burg By River Ridge.

I'm not bitter that Jeffersonville is the feature on days like this. Rather, it's another example of how much the newspaper has missed during its unexplained 10-month hiatus from reporting on all things New Albany.

However, the chain newspaper's characteristically non-contextual coverage dislodged a striking memory from almost exactly two years ago -- to be exact, it was July 17, 2014, when I explained in this very space how New Albany might steal a march on Jeffersonville.

We subsidized an Indianapolis builder instead, and shifted mucho dinero toward the Gahan re-election campaign's already bulging coffers. As Vonnegut presciently wrote, so it goes.

Except that I was right in 2014, and I remain right today. 

Of course, two years later, we do now have our own Big Four ... Burgers. It's fine, but all we've achieved to date would be better if streets worked for progress rather than against it.

---

July 17, 2014

If car ownership is mandatory, [the place is] not urban.
– Donald Baxter

Seeing as you’re entitled to my opinion, here it is.

I believe it serves as evidence of a lack of imagination (at best) and a latent inferiority complex (at the worst) when we focus on the occasional yearly highlight at the expense of everyday possibilities.

Take Harvest Homecoming.

Please, take it.

(rim shot)

Actually, today I have come neither to bury Harvest Homecoming, nor to praise it. Rather, I’d like for you to consider the primary operational conceit of Harvest Homecoming, and by this, I don’t mean the festival’s parade, or its elephant ear-fueled events, or even its Wal-Martesque target demographic.

What I mean is the most, basic, elemental aspect of Harvest Homecoming itself.

It occurs only once each year.

It is designed to be a temporary annual festival, and has been designed and planned accordingly. In short, everyday reality downtown is radically supplanted, and a template of temporary reality superimposed atop it.

This spring, when New Albany city officials began exploring the conceptual threads that led to Boomtown, their thinking was the same. It was to be a special event, perhaps repeated once each year in May, so as to contrast and bookend with Harvest Homecoming’s October hegemony.

Note that by drawing this very contrast, City Hall is implicitly conceding that Harvest Homecoming’s autumnal invasiveness downtown will continue to go unreformed, but that’s a different topic for another time. Simply know that Boomtown differs from Harvest Homecoming in one highly significant way, because while it is a one-off event, it actually showcases downtown rather than buries it.

---

We might take this “special event” notion a step further, and posit that this thinking in terms of one-off festivals and celebrations is a recurring feature of city government, now and in the past. For instance, there’s the Bicentennial Park concert series and the July 3 fireworks.

Develop New Albany organizes special events like the Jingle Walk and the now mercifully defunct Exclusively New Albany. NA First is planning its third annual Indie Fest. Churches have their summer picnics, and so on.

As a restaurant and brewery owner, we sometimes think in a similar way as these groups. There’s Gravity Head each year, and the brew crew spends most weekends during the warm weather months showcasing our wares at annual outdoor celebrations throughout Indiana and Kentucky (and one in Wisconsin). It’s always fun to do something different.

But the trick isn’t in the special events, although they require hard work and expertise to execute correctly. Rather, the objective for a food and drink business is to provide consistency on a daily basis, each and every time the door is unlocked and customers are invited inside. To do so, we try to institute a routine. If the routine is working as it should, you’ll get a clean glass each time you order a beer, even if the contents vary in style.

Throughout the year, customers come to us all the time when we’re not doing anything “special” – but they are. Maybe it’s a date night, someone’s birthday, a promotion or a graduation. They come to celebrate their world, in our place, by drinking our beer and eating our food. We provide a canvas, but our customers do the painting.

It’s what a city does, too. The special event planning only makes sense if the daily routine of infrastructure is maintained for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Admittedly these days utility monopolies do much of it, although City Hall has successfully reabsorbed the sewer department.

The city controls a cemetery and a system of public parks, features of which are usable throughout the year. It also possesses the street grid, which is the biggest single chunk of municipal property, and therein lies my larger point.

Since the Big Four Bridge opened and Jeffersonville became the new regional hottest ticket, I’ve heard many worried comments and witnessed an epidemic of hand-wringing. Can’t New Albany get a bridge, too? Can’t we stage more festivals, more special events, and more one-offs – you know, like Jeffersonville does?

Well, there won’t be a pedestrian bridge for New Albany unless we pry the K & I out of Norfolk Southern’s (preferably) cold, dead hands, and while we’re on the topic, do you know what is the most important facet of the Big Four Bridge?

It isn’t special at all.

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The Big Four is open every day, and people use it every day. It isn’t open once a year, or once a month. It’s every day. As I write, metro Louisville residents are making the Big Four part of their daily arsenal of lifestyle and recreational choices. That’s all of it in a nutshell. Meanwhile, New Albany has the ideal means to steal a march not just on Jeffersonville, but on the remainder of the metropolitan area, by thinking about what makes the Big Four “special” on a daily basis … just without an actual bridge.

With our streets.

We have a street study coming from the nationally renowned Jeff Speck, who (believe it or not) knows even more about such matters than Bob Caesar, and when Speck’s study is finished, we must embrace walkability and embark upon a progressive, rapid, no-compromises program of traffic calming, complete streets and two-way street conversions.

By doing so, and by staking a claim to being the most walkable and bikeable neighborhood in metro Louisville, we can utilize the street grid we already possess to enhance our quality of life every single day, not just during those exhaustively conjured “special” occasions.

In effect, and to a far greater physical degree, New Albany’s street grid is our Big Four Bridge. The reformatted street grid is the canvas, and its users will do the painting. A walkable and bikeable street grid will be the daily complement to business and residential interests, rather than catering solely to cars and trucks alone, encouraging a broader base for the type of “special” activities the city currently takes upon itself to plan. They’ll happen more often, and more spontaneously, as instigated by businesses and residents.

In short, New Albany can be rendered “special” every single day by design, with the street grid supporting revitalization, not working against it – as our sad, outmoded truck-choked, speeding one-way streets do now.

All we have to fear is fear itself.

And that, my friends, is the biggest problem of all because boy, are we scared.

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July 14: ON THE AVENUES: Weeds, porch appliances and our civic Gospel of Appearances.

July 7: ON THE AVENUES: You say you want a resolution?

June 30: ON THE AVENUES: Irv Stumler screams, "We don't deserve two-way streets!"

June 23: ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business -- and it's none of your business.

June 16: ON THE AVENUES: When the engineer uttered that scandalous word aloud, it was like Christmas in June.

Secrecy vs. transparency as "governments turn to bank loans rather than bonds."

You're right.

I need to stop giving his new ideas for borrowing and secrecy.

The Hidden Risks of a Growing Way to Pay for Infrastructure, by Lynnette Kelly (Governing)

More and more, governments are turning to bank loans rather than bonds. But too often the terms of the loans -- and who is first in line to collect -- are secret.

A perilous new financial risk may be hiding in the fine print of loan agreements in state capitals, county seats and city halls across the country. The cost could be high for millions of individuals whose investment dollars help finance the public schools, water systems, bridges and roads that we all rely on and which in many cases are in desperate need of repair.

Investment in the nation's infrastructure has long been a partnership between state and local governments and retail investors. State and local governments prioritize public projects, investment bankers provide products to help spread costs over the life of the project, investors buy in to earn reliable, often tax-free interest income, and then taxpayer dollars repay the bonds. Today, more and more communities are opting for alternatives to this traditional municipal-bond model in the form of direct loans from banks. Estimates are that the bank financing of public projects has ballooned to more than $155 billion with another $25-$30 billion being added each year.

Borrowing funds from a bank to build a bridge is not inherently problematic. The problems arise when the extent of the borrowing -- and the precise terms of the loans -- are a secret. For municipal-bond financings, states and communities have obligations under federal law to publicly disclose material information to investors at the outset. But no such disclosure requirements exist at the time they receive loans from banks. Investors who hold a city's outstanding bonds may have no idea that the city has taken on more debt or that the bank making the loan has made sure it will be first in line to collect if the city runs into financial troubles.

That's just what happened in Lawrence, Wis. The small town borrowed heavily from local banks, and it agreed to put the banks before the bondholders in the event it someday couldn't cover all of its financial obligations. When a major ratings agency learned of the unfavorable terms for bondholders, it quickly downgraded Lawrence's bonds to junk status. Bondholders who thought they were holding investment-grade paper are now left with a far riskier asset.

No one knows how many other Lawrences are out there ...

The Baylor for Mayor meme, October 30: Borrowing isn't the same as investing.

From October 9, 2015:

Campaign Diary, Vol. 8: My answers in the News and Tribune questionnaire.

Chattanooga is kicking ass with hyper speed Internet connections.

“While that’s more bandwidth than you can imagine needing now – it’s an enormous blank slate of possibility for whatever opportunities innovative thinkers can dream up next."

The preceding thought has never occurred to an entire generation of New Albany politicians, whether pertaining to Internet or any other aspect of infrastructure in this city.

A regular reader offers this link (below), and a few thoughts.

10 Gigabit per second is 2,000 times faster than the internet I'm able to obtain in my home in New Albany. The download rate provided by AT&T U-verse in my home is 5.63 megabits per second. My upload rate is a measly 0.69 megabits per second.

What's your internet service allowing you in New Albany? Check it out with this webpage: Speed Test

Why not ask your readers to send in their internet stats?

There won't be any "high-speed" gigabit internet in them there luxury apartments… will there?

My upload rate is 1.14. Feel free to quote yours in comments.

Want fast Internet? Move to Chattanooga, by Mario Trujillo (The Hill)

Chattanooga, Tenn., is rolling out Internet speeds hundreds of times faster than the federal broadband benchmark through its city-owned utility company.

The city announced Thursday that it would allow any of its residents to purchase 10 gigabit per second Internet connections for the price of $299 per month — in what is the largest rollout of those hyper speeds in the country.

The Tennessee town has offered 1 gigabit speeds for the past five years through its fiber network, which was helped along by tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.

To put the speed in context, 10 gigs is 400 times faster than the 25 megabit per second (Mbps) baseline broadband speed the Federal Communications Commission set earlier this year. Many homes, however, have speeds in single-digit Mbps.

Two other cities in North Carolina and Vermont have offered the 10 gig speeds, but to a more limited population. Chatanooga has a population of about 170,000.

Observers say the massive bandwidth is overkill for any traditional household at this point. It is unclear how many residents will take up the offer of speeds usually only needed for large businesses. The city already offers its 1 gig speeds at a fraction of the cost and has attracted about 6,300 customers, according to city officials.

“With 10,000 Mbps of Internet speed, that's enough bandwidth to stream 1,754 online movies all at the same time – in HD – from a single Internet connection without experiencing any buffering or lag time,” the city boasted. “While that’s more bandwidth than you can imagine needing now – it’s an enormous blank slate of possibility for whatever opportunities innovative thinkers can dream up next."

Verizon has recently tested out a 10 gig fiber network. It said the speed would only be attractive to businesses at first but noted that will change with the use of high-definition video and an increasing amount of connected devices in homes.

Other large Internet service providers, such as AT&T and Comcast, have rolled out 1-2 gig speeds in limited areas. And Google Fiber has also expanded its 1 gig network to a number of cities.

Chattanooga has been at the center of a federal fight as the Obama administration and the FCC sought to override state laws that put restrictions on the expansion of city-owned broadband networks, which they allege are being pushed by major Internet providers seeking to cut out competition.

The FCC earlier this year voted to override a Tennessee law that prevented the city from expanding the super-fast Internet service outside the boundaries of its utility service. Tennessee is fighting the move in court.

Baylor for Mayor: Urban, suburban and UniGov.

Hoosiers typically refer to combined city-county government as "Unigov," this being the catch phrase that originated 45 years ago when Indianapolis and Marion County undertook a "consolidation" of government pushed by then-mayor Richard Lugar.

What this notion of "combining" governments implies to me is an economy of scale -- but not the one we usually hear mentioned. We're told about the myriad small efficiencies to be derived from reducing or eliminating overlap, and while I don't contest these in every instance, what I see is a different kind of efficiency, or more accurately, inefficiency: Compact urban expenditures versus suburban sprawl subsidies.

It's the 800-lb gorilla in the room, as illustrated and explained here.

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.

To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

Halifax found the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced. On the rural end, each house sat on a 2.5 acre lot. On the very urban end, there were 92 people dwelling on each acre. Between those two extremes were several development patterns of varying density.

It costs more to "service" infrastructure for a few houses five miles off the main road outside Greenville than it does multiple homes located on a city block downtown. Precisely for this reason, Floyd County government is starved for money. Sprawl costs more, and revenues aren't sufficient to cover it. Somewhat surprisingly, the News and Tribune recently editorialized in favor of higher taxes to make up the difference, although the newspaper's editorial board didn't trace the need to the root cause: Sprawl costs more.

Of course there are areas suitable for sharing and cooperation between city and county government. These can and should be explored.

There's also a fundamental difference in settlement patterns between more and less densely populated areas, with ramifications for the cost of services and infrastructure maintenance. The latter represents a serious discussion we have not had.

Shall we begin?

It's just boilerplate to pay someone to make a profitable investment, right?

Yesterday we were breathlessly told to prepare for yet another apocalyptic weather event that never arrived. Out in search of flashlight batteries and cans of beans, I happened upon representatives of Flaherty Collins, loading the trunks of their cars with cases of champagne.

Sly Stone once observed a riot going on. In New Albany, we specialize in anointments.

Coyle site TIF abuse: "Because subsidizing wealthy, out of town developers is the only thing our economic development director knows how to do with our tax money."

There was a gently facetious comment posted about the preceding, and while normally I wouldn't repeat it, the sentiment is deserving of open refutation proportionate to the backroom greasings that have produced the Coyle site deal.

How dare them foreigners (from Indiana) invest in our town! Xenophobia is alive and well in some quarters.

If the investment "in our town" is credible (read: profitable), as developers like Matt Chalfant, Steve Resch, the Carters and others seem to think it is, then why must we in effect pay someone to invest in NA?

This is what we're doing with Flaherty Collins.

But couldn't these monies be used to augment the non-subsidized local investments already taking place, by developers working on their own, from no more than a profit incentive borne of risk and opportunity?

Didn't I read somewhere that this is the essence of the free market?

Perhaps there is more than the immediately obvious to "boilerplate" economic development strategies.

Now is the time for tactical urbanism in New Albany.

Fighting Padgett with paint (brushes).

We've talked about it, and now that Greg Phipps' new best incumbent friend intends to delay street grid reform for up to 18 months out of naked political terror, it's time for tactical urbanism to begin.

Let's roll.

If you're interested, let me know. I'm not speaking here of my campaign. Rather, it's about what we can do to jump-start initiative, and to dispense with the perennial top-down thinking of the usual suspects, who cannot undertake any worthwhile reform without first tying the largesse to campaign finance.

Tactical Urbanists Are Improving Cities, One Rogue Fix at a Time, by Emily Matchar (Smithsonian)

And city governments are paying attention, turning homemade infrastructure changes into permanent solutions

One rainy January night in Raleigh, North Carolina, Matt Tomasulo went out to commit what some would call vandalism. Along with his girlfriend and a friend, the graduate student walked around downtown hanging homemade signs on lampposts and telephone poles. The signs featured arrows pointing the way to popular downtown destinations, along with average walking times. Tomasulo called the project “guerrilla wayfinding.” His decidedly un-criminal intent was to promote more walking among Raleigh citizens.

Frustrated by the syrup-slow pace and red tape of the traditional civic change process, citizens across the country are bypassing the bureaucratic machine entirely and undertaking quick, low-cost city improvements without government sanction. They’re creating pop-up parks in abandoned lots. They’re installing free library boxes on street corners. They’re creating homemade traffic-slowing devices using temporary obstacles like potted plants to make their streets safer.

New York-based urban planner Mike Lydon coined the term “tactical urbanism” several years ago to describe the phenomenon. Now, Lydon and fellow planner Anthony Garcia have come out with a new book, Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change, offering a history of the movement and a guide for aspiring practitioners.

"Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development."

Just remember this when David White comes knocking to speak with you about NA-FC "unigov."

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.

To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

Halifax found the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced. On the rural end, each house sat on a 2.5 acre lot. On the very urban end, there were 92 people dwelling on each acre. Between those two extremes were several development patterns of varying density.

Louisville bicycling progress: "While we are painting bike lanes and sharrows, other cities are doing much more."

Note that in New Albany, the current regime intends to do precisely that: Chart cycling progress by gallons of paint purchased to inscribe meaningless sharrows symbols on otherwise unaltered city streets.

Opinion: Louisville needs more than bike lanes to achieve real cycling progress, by Chris Glasser (Insider Louisville)

... Yes, it is true that in the last two years Louisville has invested more in its on-street bike infrastructure than ever before. But it is also true that while we are painting bike lanes and sharrows, other cities are doing much more.

Fundamental traffic calming and a willingness of political leaders to take ownership of the project? Two more aspects we shan't be seeing in New Albany any time soon.

1) We need to stop thinking simply in terms of bike lane miles and start building infrastructure that vastly improves safety and convenience. We should be implementing cycletracks like those in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati (and lots of other places), providing fully-separated, on-street pathways for bikers. And we should be investing in traffic-calming measures like they have in Seattle and Portland — speed humps, traffic diverters, or simply just more four-way stop signs on residential streets.

2) Since it’s not really about money, we need local political leaders (from neighborhood associations to Metro Council members to Mayor Fischer) to really go to bat for this idea. Mayor Bill Peduto in Pittsburgh has done it for his city, while Seattle neighborhood associations have spearheaded massive change there. There will always be bikelash, but the argument for biking is sound and easy to make: it’s good for the health of citizens, good for their pocketbooks, good for the local economy, and good for urban revitalization. Louisville needs a voice that will simply say this as many times as it needs to be said.

Following up: Progressive embarrassment, political cowardice and NA falling behind Jeffersonville.

There was this, and quite a lot of you read it today. I'm thankful.

ON THE AVENUES: Really, the word “progressive” embarrasses you? That’s okay, because political cowardice disgusts me.

... Of course, right now, as it stands, the city’s interminable, fear-driven delay of street grid reform is quite effectively achieving the very same result (small business failure), by leaving in place a one-way arterial street grid that nullifies every penny-ante ribbon cutting and “stay open late” promotion tossed into the air by increasingly desperate indie shop owners in the absence of a downtown economic development plan, because while street grid reform could be so very helpful, and constitute an economic development plan in itself, it would fatally embarrass a Democratic mayor to be seen openly advocating it.

Subsequently, JeffG succinctly applied my column's conclusions to a real-life evening with real, live people.

K and I spent last evening at BSB with a group of artists, musicians, and writers preparing for an exhibit and performances in New Albany. Initial conversation was about redevelopment in various areas of the metro. When it came to NA, the very first thing mentioned (and not by K or me) was that there are some good things happening (independent businesses and arts) but that the streets "are so wide and fast, it makes it all less appealing". The first response? Another person pointed to Elm Street where they'd just been, saying, "Yeah, people do what seems like 80 mph just on that street, and it's smaller than some of the rest", pointing out Spring as worse. When I explained that some of us are aware and have been petitioning the City for change, the original commenter said "I'm sure you are, it's needed" and then proceeded to make a comparison with Jeffersonville, where the streets are narrower, slower, and more visitor friendly. Then someone else mentioned that the general consensus among their acquaintances was that they wished New Albany's businesses and activities were in Jeffersonville.

That's right, Jeff and David and John and Adam.

In Jeffersonville.

Back in July, I clearly repudiated Big Four Envy, and enunciated the program by which New Albany could have its own "Big Four." We're due for a reprise, so here is an excerpt.

ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

... The Big Four Bridge is open every day, and people use it every day. It isn’t open once a year, or once a month. It’s every day. As I write, metro Louisville residents are making the Big Four part of their daily arsenal of lifestyle and recreational choices. That’s all of it in a nutshell. Meanwhile, New Albany has the ideal means to steal a march not just on Jeffersonville, but on the remainder of the metropolitan area, by thinking about what makes the Big Four “special” on a daily basis … just without an actual bridge.

With our streets.

We have a street study coming from the nationally renowned Jeff Speck, who (believe it or not) knows even more about such matters than Bob Caesar, and when Speck’s study is finished, we must embrace walkability and embark upon a progressive, rapid, no-compromises program of traffic calming, complete streets and two-way street conversions.

By doing so, and by staking a claim to being the most walkable and bikeable neighborhood in metro Louisville, we can utilize the street grid we already possess to enhance our quality of life every single day, not just during those exhaustively conjured “special” occasions.

In effect, and to a far greater physical degree, New Albany’s street grid is our Big Four Bridge. The reformatted street grid is the canvas, and its users will do the painting. A walkable and bikeable street grid will be the daily complement to business and residential interests, rather than catering solely to cars and trucks alone, encouraging a broader base for the type of “special” activities the city currently takes upon itself to plan. They’ll happen more often, and more spontaneously, as instigated by businesses and residents.

In short, New Albany can be rendered “special” every single day by design, with the street grid supporting revitalization, not working against it – as our sad, outmoded truck-choked, speeding one-way streets do now.

There's the tourist slogan: "New Albany: For 196 Years, We Coulda Been a Contender."

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

Council and city hall in unison: "New Albany Farmers Market project not high on priority list."

The $270,000 in question actually should be used for infrastructure improvements at our perpetually orphaned amphitheater. If applied to the farmers market, it would be money better spent to move the market to the municipal parking lot between State and West 1st, freeing the current location for residential infill construction.

However, the central point has not changed: For a farmers market to be successful, what we need are vendors with food, and consumers to buy it. That's all, and these we have in place already. The farmers market likely would continue to function in the same way as it does now, situated atop any number of downtown surface parking lots. I'd continue to buy tomatoes there.

The ongoing absence of a downtown economic development plan is a prime culprit in the confusion surrounding issues like this. In this specific instance, we're seeing somewhat the rational and correct outcome. However, it still must survive election politics in 2015.

Let's wait and see who needs a plaque six months from now before bowing to the prevailing giddiness.

New Albany Farmers Market project not high on priority list, by Daniel Suddeath (Tuscaloosa Down Low Times)

NEW ALBANY — Plans to expand the downtown New Albany Farmers Market are on the back burner, though city officials said they remain open to improving the existing facility in less expensive ways ...

... A committee consisting of council members Diane McCartin-Benedetti, Scott Blair, Shirley Baird and Gonder met once this year after the initial project was delayed. Benedetti said council members generally expressed that they wanted to wait until after planner Jeff Speck completes his New Albany street study to move forward with any project regarding the farmers market ...

... (Scott) Blair believes the market is successful where it’s at without the additional features called for in the improvement project.

“I think that project is more on the back burner now,” he said. “I do think we’d like to add some portable restrooms.”

ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

If car ownership is mandatory, [the place is] not urban.
– Donald Baxter

Seeing as you’re entitled to my opinion, here it is.

I believe it serves as evidence of a lack of imagination (at best) and a latent inferiority complex (at the worst) when we focus on the occasional yearly highlight at the expense of everyday possibilities.

Take Harvest Homecoming.

Please, take it.

(rim shot)

Actually, today I have come neither to bury Harvest Homecoming, nor to praise it. Rather, I’d like for you to consider the primary operational conceit of Harvest Homecoming, and by this, I don’t mean the festival’s campy parade, or its elephant ear-fueled events, or even its Wal-Mart target demographic.

What I mean is the most, basic, elemental aspect of Harvest Homecoming itself.

It occurs only once each year.

It is designed to be a temporary annual festival, and has been planned and designed accordingly. In short, everyday reality downtown is radically supplanted, and a template of temporary reality superimposed atop it.

This spring, when New Albany city officials began exploring the conceptual threads that led to Boomtown, their thinking was the same. It was to be a special event, perhaps repeated once each year in May, so as to contrast and bookend with Harvest Homecoming’s October hegemony.

Note that by drawing this very contrast, City Hall is implicitly conceding that Harvest Homecoming’s autumnal invasiveness downtown will continue to go unreformed, but that’s a different topic for another time. Simply know that Boomtown differs from Harvest Homecoming in one highly significant way, because while it is a one-off event, it actually showcases downtown rather than buries it.

---

We might take this “special event” notion a step further, and posit that thinking in terms of one-off festivals and celebrations is a recurring feature of city government, now and in the past. For instance, there’s the Bicentennial Park concert series and the July 3 fireworks.

Develop New Albany organizes special events like the Jingle Walk and the now mercifully defunct Exclusively New Albany. NA First is planning its third annual Indie Fest. Churches have their summer picnics, and so on.

As a restaurant and brewery owner, we sometimes think in a similar way as these groups. There’s Gravity Head each year, and the brew crew spends most weekends during the warm weather months showcasing our wares at annual outdoor celebrations throughout Indiana and Kentucky (and one in Wisconsin). It’s always fun to do something different.

But the trick isn’t in the special events, although they require hard work and expertise to execute correctly. Rather, the objective for a food and drink business is to provide consistency on a daily basis, each and every time the door is unlocked and customers are invited inside. To do so, we try to institute a routine. If the routine is working as it should, you’ll get a clean glass each time you order a beer, even if the contents vary in style.

Throughout the year, customers come to us all the time when we’re not doing anything “special” – but they are. Maybe it’s a date night, someone’s birthday, a promotion or a graduation. They come to celebrate their world, in our place, by drinking our beer and eating our food. We provide a canvas, but our customers do the painting.

It’s what a city does, too. The special event planning only makes sense if the daily routine of infrastructure is maintained for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Admittedly these days utility monopolies do much of it, although City Hall successfully reabsorbed the sewer department.

The city controls a cemetery and a system of public parks, features of which are usable throughout the year. It also possesses the street grid, which is the biggest single chunk of municipal property, and therein lies my larger point.

Since the Big Four Bridge opened and Jeffersonville became the new regional hottest ticket, I’ve heard many worried comments and witnessed an epidemic of hand-wringing. Can’t New Albany get a bridge, too? Can’t we stage more festivals, more special events, and more one-offs – you know, like Jeffersonville does?

Well, there won’t be a pedestrian bridge for New Albany unless we pry the K & I out of Norfolk Southern’s (preferably) cold, dead hands, and while we’re on the topic, do you know what is the most important facet of the Big Four Bridge?

It isn’t special at all.

---

The Big Four is open every day, and people use it every day. It isn’t open once a year, or once a month. It’s every day. As I write, metro Louisville residents are making the Big Four part of their daily arsenal of lifestyle and recreational choices. That’s all of it in a nutshell. Meanwhile, New Albany has the ideal means to steal a march not just on Jeffersonville, but on the remainder of the metropolitan area, by thinking about what makes the Big Four “special” on a daily basis … just without an actual bridge.

With our streets.

We have a street study coming from the nationally renowned Jeff Speck, who (believe it or not) knows even more about such matters than Bob Caesar, and when Speck’s study is finished, we must embrace walkability and embark upon a progressive, rapid, no-compromises program of traffic calming, complete streets and two-way street conversions.

By doing so, and by staking a claim to being the most walkable and bikeable neighborhood in metro Louisville, we can utilize the street grid we already possess to enhance our quality of life every single day, not just during those exhaustively conjured “special” occasions.

In effect, and to a far greater physical degree, New Albany’s street grid is our Big Four Bridge. The reformatted street grid is the canvas, and its users will do the painting. A walkable and bikeable street grid will be the daily complement to business and residential interests, rather than catering solely to cars and trucks alone, encouraging a broader base for the type of “special” activities the city currently takes upon itself to plan. They’ll happen more often, and more spontaneously, as instigated by businesses and residents.

In short, New Albany can be rendered “special” every single day by design, with the street grid supporting revitalization, not working against it – as our sad, outmoded truck-choked, speeding one-way streets do now.

All we have to fear is fear itself.

And that, my friends, is the biggest problem of all because boy, are we scared.

Two C-J article chart a housing "boomlet" in downtown New Albany, coincidentally making the case for complete two-way streets.

Dude: Grace Schneider just lapped the 'Bune, although to be fair, the latter has been quite busy cheerleading in Jeffersonville lately.

First, there's this, in which it is revealed that after two and a half years on the job, the city's economic development officials at long last want to know all about the moribund Reisz building on Main:

Shining new light on an old store in New Albany

Then this, collating numerous recent building and property acquisitions into a coherent whole, including the (gasp) prospect of infill construction:

Boomlet begins in New Albany

Random observations after reading these two pieces ...

1. Nowhere is it mentioned that Chalfant, Carter or other investors require a $12 million parking garage as collateral for money they don't have. How very refreshing. What's DNA have to say?

2. Implicit acknowledgement abounds: Without previous entrepreneurial investments in restaurants, bars and shops (largely unassisted by the city) over a period of eight year, there'd be no demand for living space.

3. Yet again, the city is coming in on the tail end of something already begun. Charitably stated, it is belatedly asking what it can do to help, which brings us to the single most obvious answer ...

4. ... the fact that taken as a whole, Grace's two write-ups constitute some of the best slam dunk evidence yet of the pressing need for two-way street conversions and complete streets in New Albany.

5. In part, this is because the developers see the presence of an untolled bridge as highly beneficial, meaning you should reread #4 as the corrective for the problems we'll experience along with the upside.

6. Noted in passing: The prospect of infill construction nearby on the 300 block Main is the best reason offered to support this blog's position on the farmers market location. Anchoring the farmers market to its current spot means sacrificing infill potential, and there's a municipal lot behind Wick's that is far better suited for the permanent farmers market location.

I might continue; feel free to comment here or at Fb.

"There is enough real estate in our core city. The infrastructure’s already there. Why further tax yourself by trying to extend infrastructure?"

Bottom-line thinking about civic resources from Mayor AC Wharton of Memphis, Tennessee, who was asked "why he’s been such a supporter of protected bike infrastructure in a city that, before he came to office, didn’t have a single bike lane."

Real Talk: Why the Mayor of Memphis Is Building Protected Bike Lanes, by Michael Andersen (Streetsblog USA)

 ... Our favorite moment from this conversation is in the short video clip above, when Wharton took a moment for some Real Talk about the tradeoffs he faces as an allocator of civic resources.

There is enough real estate in our core city. The infrastructure’s already there. Why further tax yourself by trying to extend infrastructure, sewers, schools, whatever, into areas rather than just take advantage of the beautiful facilities and the beautiful land that you have already? … It is much more cost-feasible for me to fix up Broad Avenue, Madison, with some stripes on the pavement, protected bike lanes, than it is for me to go way out somewhere, put in sewers, street lights, have garbage pickup, all this stuff. So it bodes well for our citizens and their health — both physical and emotional — but it also bodes well for the finances of the city.

The tax rolls show that Wharton’s theory has paid off. Modest public investments in bike infrastructure on Broad have not only unlocked generous philanthropic support, they’ve stimulated private investment in a neighborhood that’s been suffering disinvestment ever since highways cut it off from its surroundings.