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.”

Our SoIn RDA wants YOUR input on what it already has decided, but only if you happen to be in Salem this Friday at noon.

Oh, dear. I'm going to be lubricating my pitchfork, right?

Regional RDA Seeks Public Opinion to Reimagine Community Development Plan on April 5.

NEW ALBANY, IND (March 28, 2019) The Our Southern Indiana Regional Development Authority (RDA) is seeking advice from the public on the revision of a 2015 regional development plan on Friday, April 5th, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Washington County Courthouse, 99 Public Square, in Salem, Indiana. Anyone living or working in Clark, Floyd, Jefferson, Scott or Washington counties is welcome to attend.

Scroll down for the complete press release. Apparently this invitation was disseminated on March 28. A reader at Fb nails it.

"Nice. Everyone can run out to Salem on their lunch hour to put stickers on posters."

Wait ...

"I've had lunch on the fifth full for weeks. So has anyone with a 9-5 or otherwise super busy. Assholes."

Why, yes.

It seems that all Their Our Southern Indiana's 2019 meetings take place at 10:30 a.m. on Friday mornings. That's a wonderful time for working taxpayers to observe backroom politics in action.

What is this new OSI acronym all about, anyway? It's a place for oligarchs to ...

IMAGINE EMPOWER ILLUMINATE ... Welcome to the Our Southern Indiana Regional Development Authority

Ministered, administered. Input, shinput. As another reader pointed out, the public "input" meeting on Friday is intended for the public to indicate a preference as to which pre-determined idea is least offensive.

The Our SoIN RDA is administered by One Southern Indiana, the chamber of commerce and state recognized local development organization for Clark and Floyd counties in Indiana.

That's how 1Si rolls, so why exactly do we tolerate them, anyway? Of course, what do I know? I'm just a humanities major.

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Regional RDA Seeks Public Opinion to Reimagine Community Development Plan on April 5.

NEW ALBANY, IND (March 28, 2019) The Our Southern Indiana Regional Development Authority (RDA) is seeking advice from the public on the revision of a 2015 regional development plan on Friday, April 5th, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Washington County Courthouse, 99 Public Square, in Salem, Indiana. Anyone living or working in Clark, Floyd, Jefferson, Scott or Washington counties is welcome to attend.

After fifteen months, the RDA Board of Directors has completed the ground work and is ready to look at adapting the plan to the changed circumstances. For example, the original plan, which was completed in 2016 in response to the State of Indiana’s Regional Cities Initiative, included Harrison County. However, the Harrison County Council voted not to participate and has since been replaced by Jefferson County in the five-county Southern Indiana RDA. In addition, many location and regional municipalities within the RDA footprint have adopted community development plans which will need to be considered when updating the proposal.

The input session will be an open house featuring several stations where members of the public may learn more about the planning process, share ideas and discuss interests. Members of the planning team and the RDA board of directors will also be available to answer any questions.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation granted the Our Southern Indiana RDA $150,000 in October of 2018 for this express purpose of updating the former plan. The goal of the Our Southern Indiana Regional Economic Development Plan is to chart a course, which if followed, will draw public and private investment and quality-of-life improvements to the Southern Indiana region.

In addition to setting goals for future projects, the plan will assess the regional assets and challenges and identify funding opportunities for the region and each county, as well as outline each county’s role in achieving regional goals. The end product will provide the RDA with a work plan that will become a sustainable guiding for the region for the next 15 years.

For more information 

Open house details are as follows:

Our Southern Indiana Regional Economic Development Plan Open House
• Friday, April 5, 2019
• Noon to 1:30 p.m.
• Washington County Courthouse, 99 Public Square
Salem, Indiana 47167

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 ...

"The mere existence of a park does not ensure that a community benefits from it."

Imagine having public discussion and community input before city government borrows millions of dollars, to be repaid by your grandchildren, to construct a parks system via the same old network of special interests.

Not here in New Albany, mind you.

Just imagine.

Are public parks an unalloyed good? Not always, by Thaisa Way (Fast Company)

Cities need parks, but not just any parks will do. How they’re designed plays a crucial role in determining whether they benefit surrounding communities.

In cities, access to parks is strongly linked with better health for both people and neighborhoods.

Children suffer higher rates of obesity when they grow up in urban areas without a park in easy reach. Because low-income neighborhoods have fewer green spaces, poorer children are most likely to face other health problems, too, including asthma due to poor air quality.

But access to green space is not the only ingredient in creating healthy communities, my research on urban landscapes shows. Parks are good for people only if people use them.

And that’s a question of design.

Impossible in New Gahania: "Jeffersonville seeks public input for arts district."

To this very day, Team Gahan insists that one simply cannot paint crosswalks, and yet the 2015 photo accompanying this article clearly shows volunteers in Jeffersonville ... painting a crosswalk.

But how could it be, Dugout?

It's savvy on the part of Mike Moore to realize that not EVERY act of civic engagement must (a) bear his personal stamp, and (b) be capable of monetization into campaign finance.

Not only that, but "input from the community" is guaranteed to rankle New Gahania's pale (though enriched) bunker dwellers.

You can imagine the likes of Bob Caesar recoiling in terror from those words, as though he were a vampire and you were wearing a fashionable (and utilitarian) garlic necklace.

I've never seen him eating Hungarian food, either.

A COLORFUL FUTURE: Jeffersonville seeks public input for arts district, by Aprile Rickert (They Might Be Hansons)

JEFFERSONVILLE — As Jeffersonville nears the start of its first major projects in the arts and cultural district, the City seeks input from the community to help shape its future.

The first of three community gatherings, hosted by the city of Jeffersonville, the Jeffersonville Public Art Commission, and Redevelopment Commission, will be held Thursday, June 1, from 6 to 7 p.m. at 628 Michigan Ave., to help provide information on and gather feedback on the district.

A 20-minute presentation, including identifying what the arts and cultural district is and what it could be, research-based benefits and recommendations from other similar communities and renderings of potential space usage will be followed by time for discussion and input.

City announces Public Information Sessions.

From the city's Facebook page:

Yesterday evening, Mayor Jeff M. Gahan announced that a series of Public Information Sessions will be held regarding the outdoor aquatic center at the Camille Wright location and multi-sports facility at the Hoosier Panel location. The first Public Information Session will be held at Green Valley Elementary School on Monday, March 11th from 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m in the school’s cafeteria.

“These are information sessions that will allow members of the public to share their suggestions with our team,” stated Mayor Gahan. “Members of both my staff and the New Albany Redevelopment Commission will be in attendance to answer questions and take notes on comments from the public.”

More information will be released in the coming weeks regarding Public Information Sessions in other areas of the City.

Both Mikes hit the bullseye: Kerry and Ed and Jerry and Mitch intend to do as they wish, and their heads are in fact ...

More evidence to be ignored by our local "leaders," and two excellent responses.

What the public said about the bridges project; Comments critical of downtown portion and Spaghetti Junction; most want the east-end first, by Braden Lammers (N and T)

 ... While some commenters offered support for the project, or requested that only the downtown portion of the project be built, the majority of those who offered their opinion were opposed to some portion of the plan to build an east-end bridge, downtown bridge and reconstruct Spaghetti Junction.

One reader named Mike commented:

After reading this piece 2 times. Each time I came to the same conclusion, they are going to do what they want and it doesnt matter what we the people think or want. They dont care how yet another tax (yep tolls are instant tax money) is going to effect those of us whom are just making it these hard times. They dont care that more people from Indiana work in Ky then Ky works over in Indiana. They dont care what the tolls will mean for Ky's and IN economies. They dont care what we have known since the 50's that the east end bridge should be built 1st. It will ease alot of the conjestion downtown. And for the town of New Albany it will mean going back to way to much traffic on their streets because people won't want to pay those tolls. Spring street and the surrounding streets were a nightmare during that time the bridge was closed. Accidents were up at Cost and Spring some almost deadly. This problem will return. The dirt and dust and car emissons will be up as well for that area. The exhaust from cars blackened houses along Spring Street. The trash that careless drivers tossed out filled the streets and yards. Allyways became major streets as drivers cutting through to miss traffic lights putting children at risk. Again the people in charge of this project have not thought of the impact of what THEY want. All they are seeing is the money. 

And another Mike as well:

It doesn't matter. They are no longer listening to what Indiana residents really want or need, and they will destroy the character of Jeffersonville to achieve it. Stating that 'solely constructing the east-end portion of the project does not meet the purpose and need because it does not address safety issues and traffic congestion downtown' is just asinine. How could the presence of an east-end bridge, which would ALLEVIATE congenstion downtown from those commuting to the east-end as well as from truck traffic headed toward Cincy, NOT SOLELY address safety and traffic issues? Has anyone done a study on how much of the Kennedy Bridge traffic follows the 64/71 split? Someone has their head where the sun doesn't shine.

Empty bottles as means of sovereign action -- but who gets plunked first?

Yesterday’s artlessly choreographed Tolling Authority photo-op left a universally bad impression on attendees, although, in final analysis, expecting the best in performance art from an aggregation of very bad actors is like asking one of my housecats to read selected passages from Twain's Adventures of Huck Finn.

Oops.

I've gathered opinions from several quarters, from print media to Facebook. Television coverage is not included because I seldom watch local television news, but if you wish to add links in the comments area, feel free.

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Via e-mail, from No 2 Bridge Tolls:

Last night’s “public input and information meeting” seemed to be more about information and less about public input. The Bridges Authority seems intent on going forward with creating a tolling authority to implement tolls on all bridges (new and existing), and possibly all junction traffic, even vehicles not crossing the bridges.

If you were unable to attend last night, you can still have your voice heard by filling out the comment form at: http://www.bridgesauthority.com/contact/

Please bookmark www.No2BridgeTolls.org to keep informed. And most importantly you need to contact your legislators. Their information is on our website and we have a template letter on the site. Please edit the letter in your own words to let the Bridges Authority know how tolling is a bad idea and what the personal impact will be. Please also visit our Facebook page and “Like” us to receive news updates. Thanks for your support of NO Tolls. Together, we can have a voice and make an impact, but we must get the message out to our legislative representatives.

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An Architect’s (Steve Wiser) Thoughts On The Bridges Meeting, at The 'Ville Voice blog:

...I am a half-glass full optimist, but if tolls on all bridges is approved, I hate to say it but, I will be a half-glass empty pessimist. I hope you do not sign a death warrant for this community.

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That’s right – the Bridges Authority is terrified to look the public in the eye, also at The 'Ville Voice.

They’re just going to tie your hands behind your back, cut off your feet and then pig eff you until you pass out and forget about tolls, two bridges, eight bridges, Waterfront Park, whatever. Once again, a handful of people making all the decisions for our beautiful city ... (Linked to David Morse at Facebook).

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Surprise, Surprise: Small Businesses Oppose Bridge Tolls, by Scott Fluhr at the Hoosierpundit blog.

The Courier-Journal treats this as some sort of amazing revelation; it shouldn't be for anyone with a brain and anyone that has been following the issue of the construction of new bridges (plural, multiple bridges, even though only one is really needed) between southern Indiana and Louisville.

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THE GREAT DIVIDE: Toll boosters and bashers have their say; Some members of the public unhappy with format of meeting, by David A. Mann (News and Tribune).

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At least 150 attend hearing devoted to public input on bridges project, by Marcus Green (Courier-Journal).

Tolling Authority "input" session utterly without the redeeming presence of strong liquor.

The Tolling Authority staged a meticulously choreographed mini-rally this afternoon. In a bit of biting irony that surely escaped most of the tolling authoritarians present for duty, it took place at the Muhammad Ali Center, an edifice celebrating democratic empowerment, which was not at all on the menu of this "public input" session.

The best line of the night: "This isn't a public input session. This is a groundbreaking ceremony."

Somehow, I lasted the whole three hours, and spoke with most of the tolling authoritarians present, at least one of whom forbade me from ever using his name again in print. However, flattery will get him (and them) nowhere.

Let's just say that in all conceivable respects, the gathering was thoroughly Orwellian. After the first hour, the logic became so circuitous that I feared having been drawn into an Escher drawing.

Yes, I made it a point to track down David Nicklies of the Bridges Coalition, which is connected to the Tolling Authority in most significant ways except for anyone actually admitting to it, and he repeated to me that all businesses always should be willing to sacrifice for the wider community benefit.

No, I did not ask Nicklies for evidence that he has ever followed this dictum.

With nuanced condescension, Nicklies then remarked that upon closer inspection, his comment in the morning paper to the effect that only 3% of the community opposes tolling was exaggerated; it's even less than that, he said.

Nicklies in person is even more of a dismissive, unctuous dirtbag than voluminous prior notice might have indicated. Two showers later, and I'm still not clean.

Here are a few photos.

David Hawpe presses the flesh with workers from the building trades prior to the start of the meeting. Hawpe, who escorted an chirpy, exhumed Leni Riefenstahl to the confab, happily left the premises before the public session began, having presumably made his point in private prior to the elevators being opened.

In short, we must be innovative to finance the bridges boondoggle, and even if we didn't need to be innovative and could finance all of it without tolls, in 15 or so years there'd still be an antiquated 1950's solution to a 2050's problem with not a cent left to do it right in terms of genuinely enhanced mobility.

Wanna comment? Right this way, and a steno will take your testimony, which we promise to study in depth for voting Thursday on a plan that's a plan, but isn't really a plan if you mean something bad by it. Got it?

It was a farce from start to finish. If I can muster the strength, I'll churn out another column for the Thursday edition of the Tribune. If not, I probably will, anyway.