Multi-modal planning to break the pattern of automobile dependency.

"Many current planning practices reinforce a cycle of increased automobile use, more automobile-oriented community redevelopment, and reduced mobility options. There are good reasons to break this pattern."

What I like about this piece is the way Litman refutes the familiar and shrill "either-or" war-on-cars paradigm by which car-centrists tend to frame the debate.

Multi-modal planning is nothing more than redressing an unsustainable and counter-productive imbalance. As Bluegill noted elsewhere yesterday:

Drivers are often very quick to point out proportionality when they think they pay for all the streets and roads. I like to hook them up with actual facts and then ask which half or so of street space they prefer so other users can have the other half.

It's important reading.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be walking downtown to get my hair cut.

Breaking the Cycle of Automobile Dependency, by Todd Litman (Planetizen)

... People sometimes misrepresent these issues, implying that the alternative to automobile dependency is a car-free transport system, but in most cases the best system is multi-modal, in which people use the most appropriate option for each trip: walking and bicycling for local errands, public transit on major travel corridors, and automobiles when they are truly most efficient overall, considering all impacts. Multi-modal planning ensures that everybody, including people who cannot, should not, or prefer not to drive receive their fair share of public investments in transport facilities and services ...

Lausanne, Switzerland: "Can you correct the planning blunders of the past and modernize an older city without endangering its soul?"

Contrast this to Deaf Gahan's traditional approach.

This year, Lausanne has been piloting a radically inclusive public consultation into the area’s future. The city is not just offering the public possible options to choose from. By piloting months of information-gathering from local people that culminated in a three-day mass workshop, it is trying to spark an almost existential debate about what the squares mean—or could mean—to the many diverse, overlapping groups that form the public.

You can hear the wailing in the bunker. How can the usual campaign donors wet their beaks from an existential debate about anything apart from cold, hard cash?

In Switzerland, Everyone’s an Urban Planner, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

To reimagine its largest public space, the Swiss city of Lausanne organized a citywide consultation and workshop that asked: Just who is the public?

How could anyone mess up a space this impressive?

Lausanne’s Place de la Riponne, a grand square in the heart of Switzerland’s fourth-largest city, is the kind of historically significant, dramatically sited urban set piece that would likely be the tourist-thronged highlight of any North American city. Flanked on one side by the steroidally grandiose neo-Renaissance Palais de Rumine (the building in which Iraq’s borders were drawn up in 1923), the broad plaza stands at the foot of a hill stacked with layers of turrets and steeples, beyond which you can see snow-capped Alpine mountain peaks.

But somehow, the city has managed to mess it up. The square’s ring of late 19th to mid-20th century buildings—which range visually from decent to spectacular—has been somewhat rudely interrupted by a brutalist early 1960s headquarters for the state government that serves to mask the site’s interesting, funnel-shaped topography. By the standards of old Europe, the space has been warped by some ungainly traffic planning, with a strip of the square reimagined as the feeder road to a subterranean parking lot.

This parking lot, meanwhile, has rendered the square above it ill-suited to bearing heavy loads of equipment needed for major public events—events it would otherwise have seemed perfect for. Though it still has charisma, the square and its neighbor, Place du Tunnel, could stand as textbook examples of the problems of late 20th-century urban planning; they’re noisy, unloved, and faintly neglected underneath their thin patina of grime.

Still, if Lausanne shows how bad planning can screw up a magnificent space, the city is now trying hard to make up for it. This year, Lausanne has been piloting a radically inclusive public consultation into the area’s future. The city is not just offering the public possible options to choose from. By piloting months of information-gathering from local people that culminated in a three-day mass workshop, it is trying to spark an almost existential debate about what the squares mean—or could mean—to the many diverse, overlapping groups that form the public. Rather than providing ready-made blueprints, Lausanne is starting a process that the city’s Socialist mayor Grégoire Junod calls “turning a blank page to explore the field of the possible.”

"Domicology" is a new way to fight blight before buildings are even constructed.

I'm sure this number will jump out at you, too: "The U.S. reached a record high of 7.4 million abandoned homes in 2012."

Homelessness and a housing crisis, and yet ...

There is much to think about in this essay. Obviously "domicology" is a practice that must take hold on the front end of the building process; it will be decades down the road before the real benefits are felt. 

(cue the symphony of nail guns on the matchstick construction)

Domicology: A new way to fight blight before buildings are even constructed, by Rex LaMore, George H. Berghorn and M.G. Matt Syal (The Conversation)

Detroit has been demolishing about 200 vacant houses per week since December 2014, with a goal to take down 6,000 houses in one year. Much of the demolition work is concentrated in about 20 neighborhoods where the blight removal is projected to have immediate positive effects of improving remaining property values and clearing land for future development.

While Detroit may be an extreme example, economic decline, disinvestment, racial segregation and natural and human-made disasters have left other American communities with unprecedented amounts of structural debris, abandonment and blight, too.

As scholars who focus on understanding the complex circumstances that have led to blight, we also have some ideas about potential solutions that could prevent this cycle the next time around.

We’ve coined the term domicology to describe our study of the life cycles of the built environment. It examines the continuum from the planning, design and construction stages through to the end of use, abandonment and deconstruction or reuse of structures.

Domicology recognizes the cyclical nature of the built environment. Ultimately we’re imagining a world where no building has to be demolished. Structures will be designed with the idea that once they reach the end of their usefulness, they can be deconstructed with the valuable components repurposed or recycled.

Thinking about the end at the beginning

The U.S. reached a record high of 7.4 million abandoned homes in 2012. When people leave homes, the local commercial economy falters, resulting in commercial abandonment as well. The social, environmental and economic consequences disproportionately affect already struggling communities. Abandoned buildings contribute to lower property values and are associated with higher rates of crime and unemployment. Due to the scale of the problem, local governments are often unable to allocate enough resources to remove blighted structures.

All human-made structures have a life cycle, but rarely do people embrace this reality at the time of construction. The development community gives little thought to the end of life of a structure, in large part because the costs of demolition or deconstruction are passed on to some future public or private entity.

Currently, publicly financed demolition and landfilling are the most frequent methods used to remove abandoned structures, but these practices generate a huge amount of material waste. Upwards of 300,000 houses are demolished annually, which generates 169.1 million tons of construction and demolition debris – about 22 percent of the U.S. solid waste stream.

Here’s where a shift to a new domicology mindset can help. Unlike demolition, deconstruction is a sustainable approach to systematically disassembling buildings, which can result in up to 95 percent material reuse and recycling ...

Not often in New Albany, but imagining "what the world might look like if the people who designed it – politicians, planners, developers and architects – were more diverse."

OMG.

Mayor Jeff Gahan's pathological need for complete civic thought control has manifested itself in the form of institutional inbreeding in building and design.

A shockingly narrow (and yes, noticeably white-male-dominated) number of engineering, consulting and contracting companies increasingly are responsible for the city's design template, which appears to have been derived from frequent Bud Light Lime-soaked vacations at Disney World.

How we pay for it is another topic, for another time.

The same old inner circle suspects are contracted, and the same tithes magically appear in Gahan's exploding slush fund. The worst part of this isn't the shameless corruption, or the Dickeyesque complicity of the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party.

It's the numbing uniformity of design results, and to make this point, consider that to this very day in a place like Italy, the eight-decade-old fascist architectural legacy is so glaringly obvious that visitors barely need to look twice before thinking, yep, that's a Mussolini building, all right.

New Albany is being designed to be New Gahania, and these principles of design emanate from the C-minus mind of a Babbitt-grade veneer salesman.

City Hall should be encouraging diversity in design, but alas, design monoculture better serves the interest of campaign finance, and so we're becoming a theme park --and this theme is dismally bland, indeed. Read this wonderful essay about diversity in design, and remember:

#FireGahan2019, and #FlushTheClique

What would cities look like if they were designed by mothers?, by Christine Murray (The Guardian)

Architecture’s lack of diversity shows in environments created by people who never need step-free access or to take a bus

 ... Lately I’ve found myself imagining what the world might look like if the people who designed it – politicians, planners, developers and architects – were more diverse. I don’t believe that men and women design differently, or that poverty and ethnicity inform architecture, but lived experience is a great teacher. The regeneration projects of the past decade are more about planters and cappuccinos than access to free drinking water, public toilets, cheap groceries and a post office. They appear to solve only the first-world problems of the monocultural illuminati who created them.

What would our cities be like if mothers had more of a role in designing them? There would be ramps everywhere, for a start. Schlepping a pushchair around makes you think differently about stairs. I cried when my nearest station was revamped without the inclusion of a lift. To stand at the bottom of that flight of steps with two kids and a newborn in a pram is to experience the kind of despair usually reserved for rat-infested dungeons. Any station or public building undergoing refurbishment should by law be made step-free.

But I’m unlikely to find many sympathisers among architects. According to a recent survey by the Architectural Review, 75% of women in architecture don’t have children. Most architecture graduates think they’re designing access ramps for the odd wheelchair, not every child under three ...

"Here are three steps that would make our cities work for people of all ages."

Jeff "Swish" Gahan takes three down the middle of the plate -- and the bat never left his shoulder.

Maybe it's time for some seasoning in the minors -- say, from about January 1, 2020.

Click through to read the entire explanations, and while you're there, explore the good sense on display at Strong Towns. Team Gahan probably has blocked the site.

Want a city that works for people of all ages? Take these 3 steps, by Rachel Quednau (Strong Towns)

Growing older shouldn't have to mean relocating from the community and neighborhood you love, but in so many American cities which are oriented around cars instead of people, seniors end up relegated to suburban apartment complexes or become increasingly isolated in homes they can't manage. Simple adjustments to the way we structure our cities and neighborhoods could change that scenario and in turn, make life a whole lot happier, healthier and easier for everyone.

Here are three steps that would make our cities work for people of all ages:

1. Make cities safe and easy to get around without a car.

2. Create housing options that work for people of all ages and abilities.

3. Build communities that give people purpose and meaning.

New rules of thumb in transportation planning provide thumbnails for scoring local political aspirants.

It occurred to me to backdate this post to 2004, thus providing enough time for 4th district councilman Pat McLaughlin to methodically consider the potential uses of thumbs.

OUR OLD PLANNING RULES OF THUMB ARE “ALL THUMBS”, by Joe Cortright (Strong Towns)

We all know and use rules of thumb. They’re handy for simplifying otherwise difficult problems and quickly making reasonably prudent decisions. We know that we should measure twice and cut once, that a stitch in time saves nine, and that we should allow a little extra following distance when the roads are slick.

What purport to be “standards” in the worlds of transportation and land use are in many cases just elaborate rules of thumb. And while they might have made sense in some limited or original context, the cumulative effect of these rules is that we have a transportation system which is by regulation, practice, and received wisdom, “all thumbs.”

SNIP

Our “all thumbs” approach to transportation planning leads to a specific pattern of development that is as inefficient for cars as it is hostile for persons traveling on foot, via bicycle and on transit.

What is needed are a new set of rules of thumb. Like all heuristics, this isn’t meant to be taken as a final set of “standards” to fit every situation – but there are some emerging ideas about what we might emphasize.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #1: CLOSER IS BETTER
Having more different destinations close at hand facilitates a wide range of mode choices, especially walking and cycling. Mixing uses, which is often anathema under traditional zoning codes turns out to be desirable for consumers and expeditious for transportation.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #2: SLOWER IS SAFER
When cars and people on foot and on bikes interact, safety comes from slow speeds even more than separation. Local streets that move traffic slowly are friendlier—and safer—for non-auto modes of transportation.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #3: SHARING IS EFFICIENT
Rather than require every use to provide parking for the peak hour of the year, arranging uses so people can park once, and walk mostly leads to less traffic, greater safety and more congenial, fine-grained development patterns.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #4: OUR OBJECTIVE SHOULD BE ACCESSIBILITY, NOT MOBILITY
Many transportation heuristics emphasize speed: how do we make things move faster. But what we really care about is getting to (or being at) our destinations, not rapidly traveling among them. Speed should be secondary to choice.

* “I want to highlight and emphasize that the city did not rush to make a decision on the finalization of the conversion project. Instead, the city took its time and was methodical. The City also was not afraid to compromise and modify the plan as needed, especially when it came to changes prompted by the feedback received from residents. This project exemplifies how local government, community members, and contractors can come together to design the best plan for their city,” stated City Council President Patrick McLaughlin.

"Not all development is fiscally productive. Urbanization, or more accurately, sub-urbanization, is not necessarily prosperity."

File under "Things that occur to me as I listen to the mayor brag about Breakwater and Summit Springs."

Or, "Things that I know local media won't ask when the mayor brags about Breakwater and Summit Springs."

Now, can we talk about the extreme degree to which "Summit Springs" sucks as a name for a development?

PLAYING “MONEYBALL” WITH YOUR CITY - AN APPEAL TO FELLOW CITY MANAGERS (AND OTHER STRONG CITIZENS), by Michael Kovacs (Strong Towns)

If you’re a sports fan, especially a baseball fan, you’ve probably seen the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt. It's the true-to-life story of the Oakland A’s and how manager Billy Beane, with a small budget to pay salaries, uses the expertise of his assistant’s math and statistics to figure out that players who get on base can make a big determination of whether a team will win or lose. They go on to win their first playoff series in years and made the playoffs for four consecutive years on their low budget. It's a great movie. I highly recommend it.

Cities are a lot like a sports team, and what we do is similar to what Billy had to do. He had salary money and used it to get players for a value, who could get on base. As City Managers, we help set the direction of our cities with our planners and councils, and as we build out, we have a finite amount of land along with our finite ability to maintain and replace (ideally) the infrastructure we accept. We use up land in our respective city limits/extraterritorial jurisdictions, and accept infrastructure dedicated from developers in order to create tax base from the value of private investments made.

SNIP

It’s time to start deploying tactical planning, growing slow and steady, building on our existing grids, getting denser while creating place, and showing the real costs of developments to our policy makers. Let’s start going for walks and base hits. Get on base, and our cities will start winning.

Toll readiness as defined by ... by ... by ... say, what is this, invisible ink?

Yes, that's the one.*

Yesterday with open arms we welcomed cynicism back into our lives. It had been nearly thirty minutes, and I was starting to sweat.

A new buzz phrase enters City Hall's bunker-speak: "Downtown Grid Modernization Project." We believe it's a synonym for "non-existent."

If you read the subsequent newspaper account of the state of Indiana's auto-centric million-dollar grant to Southern Indiana, and specifically New Albany -- for future state senate candidates, "asphalt aplenty" money like this far outranks Viagra -- you'll have noticed this passage, as attributed to the straw that stirs our collective Shirley Temple.

"(The) downtown grid modernization project, which is a review of the downtown grid that will allow the city to ready itself for the completion of the Ohio River Bridges Project and the associated tolls."

Stop laughing and pay attention!

Shouldn't there be a follow-up question something like this one?

"Mayor Gahan, seeing as tolls begin in less than six months, can you explain precisely what this 'readiness' means, in the real world, and in the short-term, because after all, there is no long term when it comes to toll imposition."

The question hasn't been asked, except by me. A reporter should try asking it, for the only response I ever get goes something like this:

(crickets chirp)

(pins drop)

(somewhere, a dog forlornly barks)

(public access requests can be heard fluttering into garbage cans)

* thanks, J

Google New Albany? We'll just have the same architectural firm build another pole barn and stick it on a hill by State Street.

It's easy to be skeptical of such a vision, and Google's initial efforts were rejected by local planning authorities, although there has been movement recently toward a resolution: Google Might Build Its North Bayshore Campus After All.

Still, words and phrases jump out at you: Historic city models ... buildings that use less energy and water ... a humanistic spirit ... working with nature ... how transit will look in the future ... the undermining of quality of life owing to the needs of cars.

Ideas (useful or otherwise) cannot grow without passing into common currency, and they'll never become widespread without being mentioned aloud and discussed. Whether Google succeeds or not, the ideas are in the public domain at Mountain View.

In New Albany, we keep them imprisoned in Redevelopment. What we get is Summit Springs and rotary dial, not North Bayshore and Google.

It's a good thing we paved 5th Street eight months ago. It should last until 2023.

Shhh ... don't mention the war, and don't EVER mention 5th Street when the corporate attorney's in earshot.

It's coming around again, folks: What about downtown parking problems and/or solutions?

It has been only six months since this was posted, but the Green Mouse reports that word on the street is "the parking wars have begun." 

I welcome this debate, but that's the real point: There has not been a debate, not since then-mayor England suspended parking enforcement, with the explanation that merchants wanted it that way. 

What does Team Gahan think about it? There is no known answer. It should be interesting to see how this plays out. 

---

After I reposted at NAC's facebook page, there was a question: "So what would be a possible fix?"

On parking "opportunities" in downtown New Albany.

 ... Too many employers do nothing. The city does nothing. Both point at the other, expecting solutions, when neither will expend capital to find them. Free parking comes at a price, and the sooner we recognize this fact, the easier it will be to do something.

A plan would be a good start. At the moment, all is scattershot reaction, not pro-active thought. We have crisp new signs identifying parking areas, but no explanation of how they're to be used. Too many merchants abuse curbside spaces for the use of employees (and even more sadly, owners). Pages of parking regulations have been chucked, and are non-enforced according to the England Dictate that "no rules are beneficial."

Unfortunately, the unintended side effect of "no rules" is "no value," and without a value for parking, it is impossible to plan for sensible parking. It's the Wild West.

Jeff Speck has submitted a Downtown Street Network Proposal for New Albany. In his most recent book, which provides the context and conceptual basis for his proposal, he considers two of the issues that must be recognized when planning for parking.

The key passage for New Albany is underlined.

Sidetracks in Jeff Speck’s ‘Walkable City’, by Brody Dale (Next City)

II. Parking meters are good for storefronts, and higher prices make them even better, pg. 129

It was surprising to learn that the parking meter was first deployed in Oklahoma City, a place known for sprawl. Not only that, but when the first parking meters went in on one side of the street, it wasn’t long before business owners on the other side clamored for them.

How can that possibly be when downtown business leaders across the country routinely fight parking hikes for fear that it will drive away business? The reality is simple supply and demand. When the price is right for on-street parking, people use just as much parking as they need. Which a) means customer turnover is higher and b) customers are more likely to drive to a particular block because they feel confident they will find a spot when they get there. The market should play a greater role in setting parking prices. Which brings us to our next point.

III. American parking is socialist, pg. 116-120

Speck points out that American cities nearly universally have off-street parking minimums, usually designed around peak use. Under this system, everyone pays for parking, whether they use it or not. Mass transit users, cyclists and walkers all pay for parking they don’t need when shopping in stores built under minimum parking requirements. It’s pure parking socialism (my word, not Speck’s). We would all be better off if cities let the market decide how much off-street parking they need and build to their expectation.

In my review of Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue, I mentioned the growth a Metro stop brought to D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood. Speck writes about the same place, adding a depressing anecdote about the millions of dollars in waste brought about by minimum off-street parking requirements in a project that has otherwise been a runaway success.

The mere mention of parking meters generally causes panic, but as the passage makes clear, they are invaluable in determining value. As for parking meter revenues, these can be put into a downtown development corporation dedicated to infrastructure projects, meaning that customer and merchant alike know to what purpose the revenues are being put. The money stays downtown.

Following are two other links addressing the parking value issue.

The High Cost of Free Parking (book)

Free Parking Comes at a Price

Thoughts, comments, input?

ON THE AVENUES: The mayor’s race was about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won.

ON THE AVENUES: The mayor’s race was about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

On election night, a friend in the beer biz messaged me.

John: Rooting for you from Chicago. Good luck.

Roger: Thanks, I'll need it. Democrats already have the cemeteries locked tight.

(John’s as hardcore a Chicagoan as it gets. He’s been in selling beer since forever, and knows where all those bodies are buried, too. We proceeded to have a chat via the marvel of electronics devices)

J: What’s the early returns?

R: Short version: I lost.

J: That sucks. Sorry Brutha. Don't give up the good fight.

R: Don't worry. I might have to go underground for a while, but being an underdog never gets tiring.

J: You've been underground since I've known you, lol.

R: Underground has levels ... like a parking garage.

J: The deeper it goes, the uglier it gets.

R: Just as Dante informs us.

J: Dante Bichette?

(That’s gut laugh hilarious; either you get it, or not. John bleeds baseball, hence the punch line)

J: You got big balls to try it. Lesser men prevail, I find as I get older. The Peter Principle speaks louder today than ever before.

R: Thanks, man. All one can do is get up, dust off and resume throwing punches.

J: Now go get fucked up.

(In short, these were words I needed to hear)

---

For eight months, I concede to having juggled conflicting emotions. Every time I was asked why I wanted to be mayor, it was necessary to suppress my inner Groucho Marx. After all, is anyone gullible enough to trust a person who really, really WANTS to be mayor of this or any other city?

It’s self-evident: There must be something terribly wrong with anyone who would seek the office, although the monetization’s undoubtedly savory, as the incumbent has proven.

Seeing as raw ambition’s never been my default setting, I eventually fell back on a long-term strategy for life in general terms: I work my side of the street, and you work yours. Do what you can with what you have, and never forget to have a life along the way.

I’d have liked to win, and failing that, it would have been nice to get more votes, but what I really, really wanted to achieve in this campaign for mayor was to locate, gather and articulate platform planks for a third way of local governance, in a future tense, and in the hope that they might still come in handy, if not for me, then for someone else.

I believe we succeeded in doing just that, and this achievement soothes the final result. Given local political tradition, the process of introducing subject matter ranging beyond the aptitude of one’s high school graduating class always was going to be tantamount to swimming against the tsunami.

We were a handful of insurgents without substantive financing, and yet almost 500 of you took notice, thought about it, and agreed with us. Thanks again. Next time we'll do better. Perhaps it’s little consolation at the moment, but I firmly believe we’ll be proven right in the end.

Over the short term, a whopping 53 percent of the 20-odd percent of registered voters in New Albany bothering to cast ballots chose surface glitz over substance and reality. Walt Disney’s hold is pervasive, but pyramid schemes never last.

We can hope only that when the hollow shell of Gahanism collapses into the ash heap of intellectual and fiscal history, the city still will have the opportunity to correct his many and manifest failures.

---

The year 2015 has been as intense a personal education curve as I’ve experienced in a while, and whatever comes next, I wouldn’t trade the insights gained for anything. Chief among them is a veritable epiphany as to the reasons why we keep fighting the same civic battles, over and over. It’s also a unifying theme to 11 years of analysis at NA Confidential, culminating in the mayoral bid.

It explains almost every misdirected act of the Gahan term, from Main Street beautification (nice flowers absent engineering benefits for the whole of the street grid) to feel-good parks lust (we need high tech rec centers for team sports, not places to ride bikes). It also says quite a lot about the thought processes of all the rest of the mayoral teams preceding the current one, probably dating back to the 1970s.

It’s all about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won. Then again, it always has. 

Without going too deeply into the historical patterns of suburbanization, we all understand that especially after World War II, a far-flung development pattern exploded across the American landscape. The seemingly limitless possibilities of inexpensive automobile ownership were almost evangelical in nature. The suburbs would render urban living obsolete apart from those too lazy or poor to pursue alternatives, and so laden with hidden costs, we expanded outward in all available directions.

Today, many of us see sprawl differently, particularly in a context of urban infrastructure cost efficiency. At the time, when it was happening all around them, urban power elites in places like New Albany first reacted by playing the role of the deer in your headlights. Then, after decades of flailing and inertia, they finally reacted to the gospel of suburbanism by converting to it, having concluded they were on the wrong side of history.

If you can’t beat it, join it. They were mistaken, but generations of city governments here and elsewhere reacted by applying suburban precepts to what were, and remain today, urban conditions. Political systems evolved accordingly, monetizing decay management.

In short, how often do slumlords live in the same neighborhoods as their properties?

You don't think they make political donations, do you?

In New Albany, urban density was gutted for the sake of suburban traffic patterns and auto-centric imperatives. We warehoused low-income people in housing projects rather than expose the "right" people to the "wrong" ones. We sought to cure downtown retail woes by negating the best conditions for downtown retail, and imposing mall-think.

Again and again, mayor after mayor, council after council, to the present day. Never have more than a few of them grasped what it means to exist as a densely populated urban area in need of little more than thoughtful policies to assisting its function as our founders originally intended.

Now, with a mother lode of alternative strategies available to rectify the imbalance, our local political system remains firmly embedded in suburban envy. It’s more than just a revenue stream for the aggrandizement of politicians (see Coffey, Wizard). It’s a set of mental assumptions that presuppose all planning and decision-making.

It’s what I ran for mayor against. Not against Gahan, but against his political worldview.

I’ve never met Darin Givens, an urbanist from Atlanta, but he does a fine job here of explaining what we campaigned for. New Albany isn't Atlanta, and yet if you substitute one place name for another, there is remarkable symmetry.

City leaders bend over backwards as they prioritize mega developments like stadiums and corporate relocations. That’s when they bring out the big guns and use all the available municipal tools for making something happen — rezoning, tax breaks, grants, partnerships, fees… whatever it takes.

Leaders are likewise capable of prioritizing things like safe streets, blight, disused land near transit stations, geographic segregation of economic classes, the need for comprehensive services for people experiencing homelessness … all of this and more. Those issues should be getting the priority treatment.

Atlantans: don’t be afraid to step up and lead with boldness or to support others who will.

Stand up to the voices that dismiss ideas about good urbanism by claiming “that won’t work here” or “Atlanta isn’t that kind of place.” A great city is never a single kind of place. It has multiple personalities that all serve a diverse and changing population. Innovations in urbanism can have a positive impact on all those people and help the city roll with the changes in a sustainable way.

If a leader tells you that Atlanta is “world class” because it has attractions and offices that appeal to suburbanites, challenge that view. A great city center doesn’t exist to serve suburbs. Instead, it’s a livable place that carefully juggles the needs of residents and visitors together, while prioritizing the former rather than the latter.

Welcome to the next four years. We may be down, but we're not out.

---

Recent columns:

November 5ON THE AVENUES: Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance.

October 29: ON THE AVENUES: A year later, the backroom politics of pure spite at Haughey’s Tavern still reek.

October 28: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

October 26: ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: Gahan says speeding sucks, but street safety can wait until after he is re-elected.

October 22: ON THE AVENUES: My career as a double naught capitalist.

October 19: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Courtesy bicycle to the Hotel Silly (2010, 2013).

October 15: ON THE AVENUES: To the New Albanians, each and every one.

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: There’s an indie twist to this curmudgeon’s annual Harvest Homecoming column.

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.

Downtown parking solutions?

After I reposted at NAC's facebook page, there was a question: "So what would be a possible fix?"

Baylor for Mayor: On parking "opportunities" in downtown New Albany.

 ... Too many employers do nothing. The city does nothing. Both point at the other, expecting solutions, when neither will expend capital to find them. Free parking comes at a price, and the sooner we recognize this fact, the easier it will be to do something.

A plan would be a good start. At the moment, all is scattershot reaction, not pro-active thought. We have crisp new signs identifying parking areas, but no explanation of how they're to be used. Too many merchants abuse curbside spaces for the use of employees (and even more sadly, owners). Pages of parking regulations have been chucked, and are non-enforced according to the England Dictate that "no rules are beneficial."

Unfortunately, the unintended side effect of "no rules" is "no value," and without a value for parking, it is impossible to plan for sensible parking. It's the Wild West.

Jeff Speck has submitted a Downtown Street Network Proposal for New Albany. In his most recent book, which provides the context and conceptual basis for his proposal, he considers two of the issues that must be recognized when planning for parking.

The key passage for New Albany is underlined.

Sidetracks in Jeff Speck’s ‘Walkable City’, by Brody Dale (Next City)

II. Parking meters are good for storefronts, and higher prices make them even better, pg. 129

It was surprising to learn that the parking meter was first deployed in Oklahoma City, a place known for sprawl. Not only that, but when the first parking meters went in on one side of the street, it wasn’t long before business owners on the other side clamored for them.

How can that possibly be when downtown business leaders across the country routinely fight parking hikes for fear that it will drive away business? The reality is simple supply and demand. When the price is right for on-street parking, people use just as much parking as they need. Which a) means customer turnover is higher and b) customers are more likely to drive to a particular block because they feel confident they will find a spot when they get there. The market should play a greater role in setting parking prices. Which brings us to our next point.

III. American parking is socialist, pg. 116-120

Speck points out that American cities nearly universally have off-street parking minimums, usually designed around peak use. Under this system, everyone pays for parking, whether they use it or not. Mass transit users, cyclists and walkers all pay for parking they don’t need when shopping in stores built under minimum parking requirements. It’s pure parking socialism (my word, not Speck’s). We would all be better off if cities let the market decide how much off-street parking they need and build to their expectation.

In my review of Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue, I mentioned the growth a Metro stop brought to D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood. Speck writes about the same place, adding a depressing anecdote about the millions of dollars in waste brought about by minimum off-street parking requirements in a project that has otherwise been a runaway success.

The mere mention of parking meters generally causes panic, but as the passage makes clear, they are invaluable in determining value. As for parking meter revenues, these can be put into a downtown development corporation dedicated to infrastructure projects, meaning that customer and merchant alike know to what purpose the revenues are being put. The money stays downtown.

Following are two other links addressing the parking value issue.

The High Cost of Free Parking (book)

Free Parking Comes at a Price

Thoughts, comments, input?

Baylor for Mayor: On parking "opportunities" in downtown New Albany.

Thanks to JS for the Google Map view.

There is a popular perception that downtown New Albany has a parking problem. This perception is mistaken, and results from two factors, both of which involve an abdication of responsibility.

First, downtown merchants and business owners have been unwilling or unable to become better informed about parking, and to speak as one voice about parking. Worse, not all of them have policed parking on behalf of downtown's better interests, as when employees (and owners) are allowed to use customer parking spaces.

Why would you do this?

Second, beginning with Doug England's third term, the city of New Albany has chosen not to enforce any semblance of a level playing field as it pertains to downtown parking. When an employee uses a parking space for eight hours during prime time, there are no consequences.

Why would you do that?

Too many employers do nothing. The city does nothing. Both point at the other, expecting solutions, when neither will expend capital to find them. Free parking comes at a price, and the sooner we recognize this fact, the easier it will be to do something.

It seems almost as though neither the merchants nor City Hall wishes to actually lead by deciding what works best for the most users in the broadest physical space, implementing a policy, using the bully pulpit to educate and inform, and connecting parking solutions to an overall plan for multi-modal use of streets and sidewalks.

We have no overall multi-modal street and sidewalk plan, no goals, and no notion of what vitally necessary steps like Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposal entail in terms of preparing ourselves for implementation and making walkability an aspect of design, rather than an accidental outgrowth of serendipity.

Parking's a part of this. Public safety for all users is a part of this. All of this currently is being neglected, and this neglect will cease during my administration.

Water Parking: Wait no more, for the Great Oz has spoken.

Fundamentally cleaner.

Mayor Jeff Gahan has faxed a statement from the surreal depths of his down-low bunker.

Holy Family has been a great neighbor to our facility, and we appreciate the church leaders working with us as we move forward to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship.

He refers to this:

ON THE AVENUES: A citizen's eloquent complaint about the parking debacle at River Run reminds us that planners and brooms go hand in hand.

 ... The city and mayor has brought a great hardship on my parish community of Holy Family. We have had to barricade our parking lot off to the general public so we can have parking for our parishioners, especially our senior citizens. Unfortunately the busiest times of the new water park coincide with the busiest times of our parish community.

Jeff Gahan's team of campaign finance monetizers couldn't have come up with a more auto-centric water park, but they've somehow managed to make it even worse -- and where have you heard this before? -- through a complete and comprehensive failure to communicate with the neighborhood around River Run.

Now it's on television.

 ... The temporary solution to the problem comes in the form of a five minute walk down the road to a makeshift lot with about 50 parking spaces.

“I don't want the neighbors to be inconvenienced, but at the same time I don't want to drive anybody away from our park,” said Mayor Gahan.

Or. as a friend states it:

The city's asking patrons of the new pool to park on the corner of Green Valley Rd & W Daisy Ln - the lot where McCartin tore down the arts and crafts house. The grass roped off with perky little signs reading "Pool Parking."

So folks are supposed to park on someone's private property, walk alongside a busy street with no sidewalks, trespassing as they come and go - what a planned project!

Gahan insists he has read Jeff Speck's book, and secretly advocates principles of walkability so long as no one sees or hears him do so, but still, this isn't at all what Speck had in mind.

Of course, amid the parking fiasco, previous truths remain just as glaringly evident: The water park cost $9 million payable by your grandchildren; it's in the wrong place; it can be used only a few months out of the year; we might have had neighborhood splash pads and a regulation pool for swimming (imagine that) for equal or probably less expense; there's been no accounting for future upkeep; it does nothing to keep our young people from fleeing town ... and on, and on.

See also: ON THE AVENUES: "Water on the brains: Much less for far more will keep us swimming in it."

Defending hated buildings, and building a better New Albany.

Empire State Plaza, Albany NY (from the article)

One of the central misnomers about historic preservation is that is espoused to the exclusion of new buildings. Rather, the idea that the greenest building is the one already standing impels preserving and reusing what we already have, even as we contemplate the functionality and aesthetic of "next."

This being the 30th anniversary of my first European vacation, I've been contemplating my exposure to cities (Berlin, Vienna, Budapest) that suffered significant damage during World War II, and the way that their urban tapestry embraces old, new, and everything in between. I've often observed to those commending the revival of downtown New Albany that the real turning point will be when surface parking lots created by demolishing older structures become the site of new construction.

That's why ill-considered projects like the farmers market expansion make so little sense. Prime acreage is lost for what is supposed to be, by its very nature, a transient institution.

If we insist on subsidizing and incentivizing companies from elsewhere to erect new buildings, as with the sewer tap-in waivers granted Flaherty and Collins for the apartment buildings at the moribund Coyle property, then we'd be better off stepping outside the box and borrowing a page from Columbus by encouraging boldness in design.

Is it really progress to obliterate the historic tavern at 922 Culbertson, which stood the test of time and could have been rehabbed, with houses made of pressboard and balsa wood -- ones designed primarily for campaign press releases, and not sustainability in a neighborhood so desperately needing it?

The underlying point in each of the following defenses of "hated" buildings is that civilization is renewed through the new, in addition to honoring the old. Every day is a snapshot of a composite.

In a place like New Albany, these decisions must be removed from the money mill of partisan political considerations, as so tirelessly exploited by Team Gahan, and based instead on rational decision-making and consistent, demonstrable criteria.

Seven Leading Architects Defend the World’s Most Hated Buildings, as told to Alexandra Lange (New York Times)

Can the field’s top minds change the way we think about a doomed housing project in Naples or the most abhorred skyscraper in Paris? Allow them to try.

Point taken: "New Albany is further behind conceptually than kindergarten."

Yesterday we went to kindergarten.

Smart growth, holistic cities ... and New Albany as conceptual kindergarten.

As pertains to any consideration of "smart growth" in the context of New Albany, it is vitally important not to forget the old joke about the musician who begins as a bright young up-and-coming artist, and elects to skip the next few career phases in favor of graduating directly to "too drunk to play" ...

A very good comment was posted at Fb, and it is reprinted here.

As a 62-year observer of the New Albany scene (since I could read the Tribune and comprehend adult conversation about civic affairs) IMO New Albany is further behind conceptually than kindergarten. Tabula rasa, perhaps? At the risk of offending some readers, planning and zoning have never been the community's strong suits. Groups can commission studies for only so long before progressive, creative, locally based and locally interested (read: funded) civic-minded, as opposed to self-interested, leadership, with voters' confidence, must step forward. Otherwise a truck stop on the Coyle property sounds like a mighty good idea.

Smart growth, holistic cities ... and New Albany as conceptual kindergarten.

As pertains to any consideration of "smart growth" in the context of New Albany, it is vitally important not to forget the old joke about the musician who begins as a bright young up-and-coming artist, and elects to skip the next few career phases in favor of graduating directly to "too drunk to play."

Accordingly, we're somewhere in the vicinity of puberty, pre-legal drinking age.

But dude: Check out our aquatic center.

Link courtesy of JG.

Kaid Benfield’s Blog: Moving beyond "smart growth" to a more holistic city agenda (Switchboard)

... I say that it is time to become more ambitious and holistic in our thinking about cities, towns and neighborhoods. In the interest of being provocative and starting a conversation, I propose a list of ten questions that every community should ask in order to identify ways to improve. These questions embrace smart growth, to be sure, but they don’t stop there. Here they are:

1 Are neighborhoods fully hospitable to residents with a range of incomes, ages and abilities?

2 Does the community respect nature, integrating natural areas and systems into regional planning and neighborhood design?

3 Do buildings and infrastructure take advantage of resource-efficient design and management practices?

4 Do the community design and social structure encourage healthy living and well-being?

5 Is the overall metropolitan or community development footprint discernible and no larger than necessary?

6 Does the community include public spaces of beauty, character, and utility?

7 Are there convenient, safe, affordable and efficient transportation choices?

8 Does new development use land efficiently, with appropriate attention to the context?

9 Does the community respect and enhance important local conditions, resources, and culture?

10 Does the community encourage collaboration in planning and development?

Shhh, you'll wake up John: "Noise reduction (as) part of the city planning process."

Imagine that: Slower traffic speeds to help reduce noise. Can someone tell John Rosenbarger? Hint: wait until he's finished laughing.

Slicker City: How Can We Make Cities Quieter? (fastcodesign.com)

Noisy traffic might be just as dangerous to public health as traffic accidents, according to a new report from researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Scientific evidence suggests that prolonged exposure to high noise levels are associated with loss of sleep, elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, and heart attack, not to mention hearing loss.

So how do we make the world a quieter place? We could start by thinking about the acoustics of new buildings and street networks--in effect, making noise reduction part of the city planning process, the researchers say.

John Gonder does not do gesture politics.

Thank heavens for that.

Main Entry: gesture politics
Part of Speech: n
Definition: any political action focused on public opinion or publicity rather than making a significant change or contribution
Usage: politics

Now, read as John denounces pre-constrained visions. Right on.

No Brainers

 ... This (Big Four pedestrian bridge) successful, concrete, example of a community-wide reach beyond our pre-constrained vision of the place we live, made me think of what other no-brainers, perhaps obscured by the darkness of our self-imposed limits, simply wait for a light bulb to click on to bring them into view.

Then, upon reflection, I thought, we are awash in a different kind of no-brainers as well, and it is those people that block out the light, whether for budgetary, or cognitive-comfort reasons. Or is it simply because they are, themselves, dim bulbs?

The no-brainers, however, that most interest me here are the ones which, if brought to life, would be widely recognized as positive additions to our local scene. Of course, the list here is by no means exhaustive.