REWIND: Good points aplenty ... "The big urban mistake: Building for tourism vs. livability."

Social media at Strong Towns reposted this link today. It appeared previously in this space in May 26, 2017. It has long been my viewpoint that grassroots "economic development" officials (municipal officials, non-profit organizations, business owners and other stakeholders) should use points like these as the basis for their discussions. Do they? Beats me, but I think we can all see how much Greg Fischer's "Bourbonism" has been worth in the year 2020. 

THE BIG URBAN MISTAKE: BUILDING FOR TOURISM VS. LIVABILITY, by Arian Horbovetz (The Urban Phoenix)

... I’m painting with a bit of a broad brush, but essentially what so many cities are currently experiencing is the dilemma of whether to invest in large urban draws that will bring outside money in, or invest in a growing and changing downtown residential population that yearns for investments in keeping them there. To put it simply, do cities invest in big projects that create an entertaining space that grows tourism, or do they invest in the people that have already taken a risk by moving back into their long-dormant downtowns?

LEAP

City leaders, this one’s for you. You can either cater to your new residents by going into the downtown apartment buildings and listening to real people, or you can hop on the big ticket project train en route to a revolving door downtown. You can either build for livability or build for fleeting, often overrated promises of tourism revenue. You can facilitate local small business and community development, or you can create a short-lived wow-factor by opening the floodgates to developers and business interests who take money out of our communities. You can empower and invest in your new downtown residents and let THEM be the ambassadors for our growing urban paradises, or you can ignore them and build casinos and other flashy complexes that cater to the outsider and likely line the pockets of someone beyond the boundaries of the community.

The choice, as always, is yours to make. Choose to invest in your residents and local business owners… the people that invested first… tourism, development and financial success will likely follow. Empower your people, honor the risk they took by taking one yourself, and like happy employees of a strong company, they will take care of everything else.

Vienna, beating the odds: "A livable city is a city where people live because they want to, not because they have to."

May Day parade in Vienna, 1987.

In the early 1980s I commenced a love affair with Vienna, and my visits there always have been rewarding. History was an enticement back then, but the more time I spent in Vienna, the greater my fascination with the present day.

Seldom is an article printed in its entirety; I hope CityLab doesn't mind, as it is critical to view an example of how it doesn't have to be the way we do it here.

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Secrets of the World’s Most Livable City, by David Dudley (CityLab)

Viennese lawmaker Maria Vassilakou explains why the Austrian capital ranks so high on quality-of-life rankings, despite its rapidly growing population.

If you’ve seen any “Most Livable City” ranking lists, you know Vienna: The Austrian capital is a perennial champion of these popular annual listings of places said to boast a notably enviable quality of life, based on factors like safety, health and education scores, access to transit and green space, cultural amenities, cost of living, and so forth. The real value of such rating exercises may be up for debate, but it’s hard to argue with Vienna’s utter dominance of the Municipal Livability Bowl.

“We must be doing something right,” said Maria Vassilakou, the city’s former deputy mayor. In her comments at this year’s CityLab DC conference, the Austrian Green Party lawmaker offered a crash course in assembling the good life, Viennese-style—beginning with how her city defines the L-word itself.

“A livable city is a city where people live because they want to, not because they have to,” Vassilakou said. That translates into an emphasis on children and families, and making sure that the city can accommodate their needs: “A city that is good for children is good for everybody.”

Those needs are growing: Vienna, a city of about 2 million, is adding about 25,000 new residents annually, and adds about 13,000 new units of housing to accommodate them. “We have to build a small town each and every year,” Vassilakou told the audience. But unlike in many North American cities, population growth isn’t coming in the form of suburban-style sprawl and an unaffordable central city, thanks to strict land-use codes and serious government subsidies for housing. About half the city is reserved for green space, she said, and 62 percent of the population, including a broad middle class, lives in social housing.

This housing-as-a-human-right emphasis is a key element in the city’s vaunted livability. The Viennese social housing model is a century-old tradition that endures despite population pressure from immigrants and political turmoil from the rise of the far-right national Freedom Party; it’s often invoked by affordability advocates in other cities as the gold standard in public housing. Many subsidized units are owned directly by the government, and rent control assures that housing costs remain a relatively modest share of residents’ annual income, especially compared to costly capitals like London or Washington, D.C.

The housing part of Vienna’s livability story in complemented by another important factor—the ease and affordability of transportation. Residents are served by one of Europe’s more comprehensive public transit systems, a network of subway, buses, and trams that residents can access for a flat annual fee of €365. And most do. “Close your eyes and imagine that, for one euro a day, you could go anywhere you want, as often as you want to, using public transit,” said Vassilakou. More than 73 percent of the city’s daily mobility needs are covered by modes outside of private cars.

As in so many other European cities, Vienna is actively seeking to further expand car-free options, via a host of pedestrianization projects that render the tidy and already-storybook-like capital even more charming. Most prominently, Mariahilfer Strasse—the city’s longest shopping street—went car-free in 2015.

Similar efforts to keep cars at bay in Paris and London have not been universally welcomed by residents, however, and Vienna is no exception. To overcome opposition, Vassilakou counseled bringing residents into the decision-making process. In Vienna, one way that happens is with a community grant scheme that bestows hundreds of modest €4,000 grants for small neighborhood-level public-space improvement projects. “Once one of these initiatives gets implemented, it changes the perspective of the whole neighborhood,” Vassilakou said. “I think this works because this is not top-down. It’s the bottom-up kind of inspiration that can change the city.”

Vienna’s unique approach to urban problem-solving has not rendered it immune from economic segregation and social inequality, but it has certainly helped mitigate some of the usual ill effects of growth. Considering how often it serves as a model for its peer cities, perhaps Vienna’s proper superlative is “most teachable.”

This week's must-read: "Life in the Spanish city that banned cars."

"A metro-style map of Pontevedra shows typical walking times."

No two places are exactly the same, and what works in one may not fly in another, but what this soul-boosting article informs us is that another way does indeed exist.

During the past seven years in New Albany, we've experienced a highly deceptive, and in my view purely intentional, bait 'n' switch. Road improvement projects primarily benefiting drivers of motor vehicles are pitched to us as offering enhanced "walkability," "safety," and various other buzz phrases of no more value than words used to sell breakfast cereal.

Conversely, the mayor in Pontevedra gets it. Try to wrap your brain around this statement.

I'm in awe.

“In effect, these are everyday public works that have been carried out in the context of a global project, but they cost the same or even less.” “We haven’t undertaken grand projects. We’ve done what was within our grasp.”

There is no pay wall at The Guardian, and consequently no excuse not to click through and read the whole article.

And that chart up there at the top of the page?

We need some of those here. If the city and/or Develop New Albany can't get it done, maybe downtown businesses can.

'For me, this is paradise': life in the Spanish city that banned cars, by Stephen Burgen (The Guardian)

In Pontevedra, the usual soundtrack of a Spanish city has been replaced by the tweeting of birds and the chatter of humans

 ... Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores has been mayor of the Galician city since 1999. His philosophy is simple: owning a car doesn’t give you the right to occupy the public space.

“How can it be that the elderly or children aren’t able to use the street because of cars?” asks César Mosquera, the city’s head of infrastructures. “How can it be that private property – the car – occupies the public space?”

Lores became mayor after 12 years in opposition, and within a month had pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre, paving the streets with granite flagstones.

“The historical centre was dead,” he says. “There were a lot of drugs, it was full of cars – it was a marginal zone. It was a city in decline, polluted, and there were a lot of traffic accidents. It was stagnant. Most people who had a chance to leave did so. At first we thought of improving traffic conditions but couldn’t come up with a workable plan. Instead we decided to take back the public space for the residents and to do this we decided to get rid of cars.”

They stopped cars crossing the city and got rid of street parking, as people looking for a place to park is what causes the most congestion. They closed all surface car parks in the city centre and opened underground ones and others on the periphery, with 1,686 free places. They got rid of traffic lights in favour of roundabouts, extended the car-free zone from the old city to the 18th-century area, and used traffic calming in the outer zones to bring the speed limit down to 30km/h.

The benefits are numerous. On the same streets where 30 people died in traffic accidents from 1996 to 2006, only three died in the subsequent 10 years, and none since 2009. CO2 emissions are down 70%, nearly three-quarters of what were car journeys are now made on foot or by bicycle, and, while other towns in the region are shrinking, central Pontevedra has gained 12,000 new inhabitants. Also, withholding planning permission for big shopping centres has meant that small businesses – which elsewhere have been unable to withstand Spain’s prolonged economic crisis – have managed to stay afloat ...

In New Albany, Jeff Gahan still is "cowering before the demands of drivers," but "more and more cities are deciding to wrest control of their streets back from the tyranny of the automobile."

Thanks, B.

Jeff Speck devised a plan for downtown street grid reform. It was emasculated by Deaf Gahan's anointed and indemnified cleaver-wielding assassins at HWC Engineering. Gahan declared victory and moved to the next opportunity to bundle campaign finance.

In New Albany and Florida, bicyclists and pedestrians remain at risk when planners refuse the change car-centric nature of the street grid.

Jeff Gahan's de-Specked two-way street reversion led HWC Engineering to tack on bike and pedestrian infrastructure without changing the car-centric nature of the state's transportation planning.

Actually, almost all the biking infrastructure suggested by Speck was removed amid gleeful cheering by the irresolute likes of CM Greg Phipps (has he ever actually been on a bicycle?), but the analogy holds.

The two-way street grid project has not been transformative because Gahan didn't allow it to be ...

There's plenty of cowering and cowardice in New Albany. Maybe -- just maybe -- in 2019 we can start the process of changing the retrograde default into a paradigm that looks forward.

#FireGahan2019

Cars Are Ruining Our Cities, by Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey (New York Times)

(Mr. Gillis is working on a book about climate change. Mr. Harvey is the chief executive of the research firm Energy Innovation.)

SAN FRANCISCO — We might be living through a new age of miracles. Last month, Los Angeles decided against adding lanes to a freeway, an unexpected move in a city that has mistakenly thought for years that more lanes mean fewer traffic jams.

Shortly before that, Germany’s highest court ruled that diesel cars could be banned from city centers to clean up the air. Mind you, Germany is the land where diesel technology was invented ...

 ... As we write these words, we can sense the bile rising in some drivers. Americans have such a sense of entitlement about cars that any attempt to limit them can provoke a fight, as New York has discovered.

Yet the truth is that people who drive into a crowded city are imposing costs on others. They include not just reduced mobility for everyone and degraded public space, but serious health costs ...

The bottom line?

The bottom line is that the decision to turn our public streets so completely over to the automobile, as sensible as it might have seemed decades ago, nearly wrecked the quality of life in our cities.

Craig Ladwig ravages Bob Hall over Pleasant Ridge as Jeff "Me Too" Gahan pouts.

Don't worry, because Shane is here to help.

pluterperfect

Adjective
(comparative more pluterperfect, superlative most pluterperfect)

More than perfect

Usage notes: Seems to appear only in James Joyce's "Ulysses"

And now, also in Ladwig's column, although if Bob Hall is more than perfect, where does that leave Jeff Gahan?

Ladwig's going to need an excellent new word when he gets around to analyzing NA.

LADWIG: About Pleasant Ridge, by Craig Ladwig (N & T)

 ... We used to joke here about the occasional politician who seemed to wish that he commanded a better class of citizenry, that he could replace them with a more sophisticated bunch. Today, too many Indiana mayors and councils adopt that very attitude. In doing so, they thumb their noses at the true driver of community development — respect for individuals and property.

The pluterperfect bad example is Bob Hall, mayor of Charlestown. Mayor Hall told a judge the other day, “I know it’s not politically correct to say this, but when you have a low-rent district, it invites people who are not contributing to society.”

The mayor was referring to Pleasant Ridge, an older section of town whose residents say he is conspiring with a private developer to raze their homes. Their attorney has presented evidence that the city is secretly attempting to lower property values there using selective enforcement of city codes to force those “low rent” residents out and make way for the more aesthetically pleasing.

Municipal policy throughout Indiana increasingly is directed toward punitive zoning, tax breaks for politically favored developers and subsidies for “quality of place” projects such as upscale subdivisions, classy downtown apartments, sports facilities, jogging trails and other recreational and entertainment amenities.

These supposedly will attract that better class of citizen through national corporations and the young professionals they bring with them. Does it work? More specifically, does it work for the people who actually call your town home?

Not unless you are in a small circle of insiders and political operatives — and then only for a limited time until bonding and tax revenue is exhausted. The strategy ignores how wealth is created or how Indiana towns have historically prospered.

Dr. Berry Keating and Dr. Maryann O. Keating want you to consider another approach. They will present a white paper at the Dec. 2 meeting of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation comparing the sense of well-being of various Indiana cities.

It suggests that the cities that do best are those whose governments addresses the basic needs of actual residents rather than the aspirations of prospective ones.

The blog's junior editor nails it, but you were busy speeding through obliviously.

In the specific context of New Albany, it's noteworthy that so many of the outraged opponents of street calming live elsewhere.

Bluegill summarizes the hypocrisy with typical precision.

I've been speeding through other people's neighborhoods for years; 40 miles per hour plus, right outside their front doors. I can't believe they have the gall after all this time to try to make me slow down. Don't they understand that adding 2.3 minutes to my travel time will destroy the economy and ruin my quality of life? Don't they know the streets in their neighborhoods are supposed to be designed for me and not the people who live there? I mean, how selfish can you get?

One-way? It's the anti-social way, isn't it?

One hundred years ago, autos symbolized freedom. Now they're a tool for oppression, both financial and social -- not that I really expect folks like this to get it.

#SlowtheCars: Changing the way we view our roadways, their costs, and the impact on adjacent properties, and communicating the change.

It's interesting to contemplate the example of various community groups working together to achieve a goal of common utility for all. It should be noted that such a program of work can bubble up from the grassroots, as in this instance, and not always from the top, trickling down.

Although the grassroots stakeholders must be willing to do their own organizational work, for their own benefit.

Sheeple need not apply, and yet ...

SLOWER CARS = SAFER, MORE ECONOMICALLY PRODUCTIVE STREETS, by Will Burgin (Strong Towns)

... In Columbus (Georgia), the need to redesign 13th Street came to the forefront when an alignment of efforts between a number of community groups occurred. We could quickly move the articulation of this need from political favor to necessary for equitable transportation, community building, and improvement in the productivity of a space. Beginning in 2014, community leaders attended the Doable Cities Conference hosted by the Knight Foundation and 8-80 Cities. The Knight Foundation along with Gehl Studio continued to be involved in our community, funding the creation of a minimum grid plan to better connect our core communities and helping us assess our public space.

SNIP

The culmination of the minimum grid grant included funding for a demonstration project. Midtown, Inc. and the city of Columbus both were excited to help convert the section of 13th Street in front of my shopping center back to two travel lanes and a center turn lane. With the balance of the space, bike lanes were added for each direction of travel. Because this was a local street, was funded through a grant, and the staff believed it was in the best interest of the community, the project was approved and executed with little fanfare. In fact, we heard stories of some who drove on the street for a week before they noticed the change.

However, the effect of the change was immediate. The motorists on the roadway consistently ran at or below the speed limit. Those driving through the area felt more safe in their cars and all the businesses commented that their customers felt more comfortable coming and going from the center. The biggest change, though, was that the street became crossable. Tenants, their staff and customers began using the ample parking across the street and found that consistently crossing the street was easy. It has been a resounding success.

Good points aplenty: "The big urban mistake: Building for tourism vs. livability."

Team Gahan and Develop New Albany should be locked into a room together.

That'd be enough in itself, but they shouldn't be allowed to come out.

Okay, at least not until each one of them has read this article and are compelled to comment publicly.

As we know, they're unlikely to read this or any other essay, so sound off, fellow dissidents. How is Dear Leader doing according to the criteria herein? I'm sure the upper echelons at Flaherty and Collins have a point of view.

Public housing residents likely do, too. Thanks for the link, MW.

THE BIG URBAN MISTAKE: BUILDING FOR TOURISM VS. LIVABILITY, by Arian Horbovetz (The Urban Phoenix)

... I’m painting with a bit of a broad brush, but essentially what so many cities are currently experiencing is the dilemma of whether to invest in large urban draws that will bring outside money in, or invest in a growing and changing downtown residential population that yearns for investments in keeping them there. To put it simply, do cities invest in big projects that create an entertaining space that grows tourism, or do they invest in the people that have already taken a risk by moving back into their long-dormant downtowns?

LEAP

City leaders, this one’s for you. You can either cater to your new residents by going into the downtown apartment buildings and listening to real people, or you can hop on the big ticket project train en route to a revolving door downtown. You can either build for livability or build for fleeting, often overrated promises of tourism revenue. You can facilitate local small business and community development, or you can create a short-lived wow-factor by opening the floodgates to developers and business interests who take money out of our communities. You can empower and invest in your new downtown residents and let THEM be the ambassadors for our growing urban paradises, or you can ignore them and build casinos and other flashy complexes that cater to the outsider and likely line the pockets of someone beyond the boundaries of the community.

The choice, as always, is yours to make. Choose to invest in your residents and local business owners… the people that invested first… tourism, development and financial success will likely follow. Empower your people, honor the risk they took by taking one yourself, and like happy employees of a strong company, they will take care of everything else.

Since 2013 (and before), the Mt. Tabor Road beak-wetting boondoggle is a large millstone hung around Jeff Gahan's neck. Mayor overboard?

It's important to remember that Jeff Gahan did not become mayor until January 1, 2012. Before this, he served two terms as councilman for the 6th district, which includes the Mt. Tabor Road neighborhood referenced here.

In short, given the time generally required to mint and plan such big ticket roadwork boondoggles as the absurdly tagged "Mt. Tabor Road Restoration and Pedestrian Safety Project" (and I'm the one who uses too many words?), it obviously dates back into Gahan's council tenure.

By extension, given the ill-tempered stubbornness for which the mayor is renowned as far away as Bob Hall, it's equally evident that having spent a half-dozen or more years conjuring this asphalt-laden, traffic-speed-enhancing "gift" to the peasants, he's absolutely determined to ram the daintily wrapped arterial down their ungrateful throats, come what may.

In this context, Gahan's perennial joy in campaign finance enrichment -- no unwetted beaks left behind in New Gahania -- actually runs a poor second to the unfettered expanse of his ego. At NA Confidential, the story began in 2013. The following links are chronological, from oldest to newest.

---

October 19, 2013

The city is thinking about doing road shit. Really. It says so, over there behind that wall.

Duggins said that anything you've heard about the Slate Run Road, Mount Tabor Road and Captain Frank Road projects is true, unless it isn't. All are being contemplated, unless they aren't. The mayor will consider modifications, unless he won't. The usual suspects from Pool "A" will design these projects and build them, unless other usual suspects from Pool "B" are chosen instead. To reveal more would mean having to kill us all, and the street department can't manage such a clean-up.

---

November 5, 2013

Council meeting: Mt. Tabor residents advocate for two-way streets ... sort of.

The city's proposed changes would make the road in front of them more likely to be driven by a greater number of cars, and at a rate faster than before, a situation of induced demand likely to be taken advantage of by outsiders with no better reason than passing through because they can, thus rendering the corridor less safe for neighborhood residents ... and yes, that's right, creating a scene designed to negatively impact their quality of life.

---

December 26, 2013

ON THE AVENUES: Roundabouts make the politicians really ring.

Roundabouts are not intrinsically evil, but the Mt. Tabor Road residents looked past the surface dollar sheen and got to the heart of the matter: Roadway engineers would be altering conditions to suit the maxim of moving traffic through their neighborhood as “efficiently” as possible, and by doing so, would be reducing their quality of life in an almost mathematical, commensurate ratio.

---

December 27, 2013

The Great Roundabout Turnabout of 2013 and pedestrian friendliness.

In the newspaperman Suddeath's piece, city hall floats the notion that the Mt. Tabor roundabout was pulled because it abruptly became evident that it would not be "pedestrian friendly." Speaking personally, I believe this to be a red herring the approximate stature of the Elsby Building ... BUT if the Gahan administration wishes to stick to the walkability argument, I'm fully in favor of accepting it.

---

January 9, 2014

On the Rosenbarger planning conundrum, and FAN Fair, here I come.

Much like the sacrifice of Mount Tabor residential areas for poorly developed commercial strips on its fringes, the sacrifice of Spring and other nearby streets for Main has long been a part of the plan.

Rosenbarger's dismal performance at FAN Fair deserves another look, here.

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July 23, 2016

Council frivolity, slice of the second part: "Gahan Cares More About Concrete Than People."

John Rosenbarger sat at his desk. Outside his door, the clamor of the peasantry could be heard amid the clatter of pitchforks. He spat, then threw back his last shot of fiery sarsaparilla.

“The grandeur of my physique, the complexity of my worldview, the decency and taste implicit in my carriage, the grace with which I function in the mire of today’s world – all of these at once confuse and astound the buffoons at Mt. Tabor and Klerner Lane."

Rosenbarger gazed at his reflection in the framed portrait of Robert Moses.

"But Jeffie's got my back, bro."

---

August 2, 2016

The city's spin doctors have outdone themselves on this one: Meet the "Mt. Tabor Road Restoration and Pedestrian Safety Project."

It's simply amazing what vocal citizen opposition to a New and Improved Round O' Rosenbarger Cream Tort will do to bring David Duggins bounding full Sellersburg up the stairs from the Down Low Bunker to inform city council that with construction work about to start, now's the time for operatives to fan out through the neighborhood to alter misconceptions -- but not only that, there'll be a post-decision public meeting on August 22 to further encourage conformity.

---

August 4, 2016

Chronicles of New Gahania: Mt. Tabor Road residents form civil defense squad to guard against John Rosenbarger.

Decades of poor planning and development decisions on New Albany's outskirts have created automobile traffic and drainage problems where there were none. Now, the City says that by redesigning the road for more cars going even faster, they're improving pedestrian safety and by substantially increasing the amount of impermeable surface area they're improving drainage. If any of our city planners or engineers had an ounce of intellectual and professional integrity, they'd speak up in opposition. That's pretty much a guarantee they won't. A decent mayor, should we ever get one, will fire all of them.

---

August 4, 2016

ON THE AVENUES: Federal funding mechanisms total eighty percent. The other half is unalloyed political malice.

Clark County resident David Duggins duly was dispatched to spray gasoline on the brush fire, which he accomplished with his usual aplomb by threatening to send the Rasputin of Redevelopment and other city officials into the afflicted neighborhoods to knock on doors and remedy "misperceptions", which immediately sent panicked refugees streaming toward Silver Creek, into the newspaper’s Clark County coverage area.

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August 6, 2016

Look at Gahan hide, hide. Not to worry, because John "Human Shield" Rosenbarger is standing by, eager to obfuscate.

In other news, it took a long while, but the intentionally understaffed Jeffersonville-based "community" newspaper has clanked ineffectually into gear, producing drab content, but inadvertently shining a tepid light on the Gahan regime's boilerplate, namely that the mayor himself won't personally be touching this one.

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August 20, 2016

Stop me if you've heard this one before, Mt. Taborites: "They’re looking at it as more of an arterial road to move traffic though than a quality of living project."

I can't agree with all the objections voiced by the Mt. Tabor Road residents, but from the very beginning, they've grasped an essential point, because the "project" has been one designed to make the road usable by an increased number of cars, and an increased number of cars means a decreased quality of life.

---

August 22, 2016

Tonight at OLPH: Mt. Tabor Campaign Finance Restoration and Propaganda Safety Project spoonfeeding.

This evening, what's already been decided will be explained to you. You're feeling better already, right? Someone asked whether Mayor Gahan will be in attendance.

---

August 29, 2016

An Orwellian wetting of beaks -- or, some thoughts about the Mt. Tabor arterial enfluffment and timbering project.

But you see, there's no way a euphemism like the Mt. Tabor Road Restoration and Pedestrian Safety Project cannot happen, once the federal funds have been committed. If someone else pays, the money must be used, whether to grease an arterial or construct a subway to Xanadu. Beaks must be kept wet. This is the cycle of political life, and it need not be connected to master plans or larger truths. It simply is.

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December 21, 2016

Phipps, McLaughlin pleasure mayor, oppose Blair's 6th district stormwater impact efforts, but the investigative measure passes council anyway.

Representatives of the usual engineering suspects and a handful of civic appointees were on hand at the council meeting to reiterate the municipal party line: As it pertains to stormwater, those Mt. Tabor area residents who insist on trusting their own two eyes instead of the mayor's should be ignored, and The Plan allowed to proceed.

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March 22, 2017

Shane Gibson is unaccountable yet again as "City of New Albany Withholding Public Records in Mount Tabor Road Land Grab."

Following is a press release, courtesy of local businessman Colin Receveur. Municipal corporate counsel Shane Gibson's cavalier disregard for public information requests is legendary. I'm delighted to his snared in arrogance of his own making.

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March 24, 2017

'Bune snoozes and IL gets the scoop: "City of New Albany, residents head to court over road improvement project."

“From all the discussion on this subject over the past 4 years, it has become apparent that the only person supporting dual sidewalks at this location is the Mayor of New Albany,”

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March 26, 2017

Mt. Tabor Road euphemism project: If City Hall looks bad, that's only because it's doing the damage to itself.

It isn't just that those federal 80/20 construction grants are like crack. It's that to Team Gahan, openness is like Ebola.

GHK Truss, a wide load, and untolled bridge, and why we can't have nice things.

GHK Truss's "number one priority is to you -- the customer."

Yesterday this vehicle traversed the world's longest interstate entrance ramp.

City officials giddy as New Albany finally makes Guinness Book of World Records (REPOST).

The trip began in Clarksville, and brought the drive past this sign, which serves as a reminder of New Albany's enduring enforcement dysfunction.

Further commentary would be superfluous. New Albany has built and maintained its downtown streets to be a pass-through for users like this one, and the rate of abuse can only increase when tolling regimes begin.

At this morning's Bored of Works meeting, the engineering firm hired by the city to mute and monetize Jeff Speck's Downtown Street Network Proposal will present its findings.

Will it be QOL, or GHK?

Welcome to another fact Bob Caesar can't/won't grasp: "High-Traffic Arterial Roads Reduce Quality of Life, Even Blocks Away."

You know, like a futility flow chart.

At Tuesday evening's city council meeting, 2nd district internal combustion fetishist Bob Caesar spoke stridently in favor of the ruthless suppression of noise, but only insofar as noise pertains to certain taverns playing the wrong music.

Is there any more persistent hypocrite in the entire city?

Each day, heavy trucks thunder back and forth on New Albany's high-speed, one-way arterial streets, generating noise, shaking residential windows and inflicting mayhem, as joined by all manner of boom cars, redneck motorcyclists with high-decibel sound systems and drivers oblivious to their surroundings.

Through it all, Caesar's carefully cultivated privileged white guy propriety is unruffled. In his mind, forever and always, New Albany is so very degraded that no one would think of coming here unless they're able to do so under the same conditions as an interstate highway.

Caesar's the very same type of guy John Mahorney wrote about in LEO, eagerly rolling down his car window to verbally harass bicyclists as jobless deadbeats who are no better than dope-smoking, anti-establishment hippies.

I mean, if you didn't want to witness soul-crushing, neighborhood-sapping roadway behavior, why didn't you live in Silver Hills in the first place?

Has any single council representative in this city ever misunderstood so many facets of the modern urban world, all at once, without the faintest glimmer of a pulse?

Study: High-Traffic Arterial Roads Reduce Quality of Life, Even Blocks Away, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

... A new study from the University of Colorado Denver, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, builds on (previous) research — finding that high traffic on your street isn’t the only type of traffic affecting what you think of where you live. Researchers Wesley Marshall and Carolyn McAndrews found that living near, but not on, a wide, high-traffic arterial can also reduce residential satisfaction.

The research is a repudiation of the suburban style of traffic calming that dominated the U.S. for decades, where cul-de-sacs and lack of through streets limits traffic on residential streets by diverting cars to major arterials. It turns out, pouring traffic onto inhospitable arterial roads is negatively impacting nearby residential areas, too ...

Someone pry Bob's eyes open, will you? He's about to miss the best part -- again.

... Marshall and McAndrews recommend that neighborhoods try to improve quality of life by addressing shortcomings in arterial roads, focusing on reducing crime, adding more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and supporting land uses that encourage street life.

The bottom line is that sometimes, a neighborhood is only as strong as its weakest arterial road. “Livable cities require a network-level approach,” the authors wrote, “that looks beyond accounting for the livability of individual streets.”

Service amenities: "The Real Source of America's Urban Revival"?

But they'd still have to drive to the water slide.

The Real Source of America's Urban Revival, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

Millennials, housing costs, and shorter commutes are the usual explanations. But a careful new study points to another reason young college grads returned downtown in the 2000s.

 ... New living habits of Millennials and Baby Boomers, delays in starting a family, a tougher home-buying market, a hatred of long commutes—those social factors have all altered cities in recent years. But Couture and Handbury pin the return of downtown on a new fondness for service amenities: music venues, theaters, bars, gyms, and the like. Not the growth of these things but a fresh taste for living near them, a broad cultural shift that could make urban revival more durable.

“If this revival comes from a change in preference, then it could be a long-lasting phenomenon,” says Couture. “We have ruled out various explanations based on temporary trends.”

But of course I'd live in Vienna. In a heartbeat.

Note that this assessment of "quality of life" is found in the newspaper's business section. It reads like a campaign ad for Bernie Sanders, who if he lived in Vienna would be considered center-right.

Vienna named world's top city for quality of life, by Patrick Collinson (The Guardian)

Vienna is the world’s best city to live in; Baghdad is the worst, and London, Paris and New York do not even make it into the top 35, according to international research into quality of life.

Bullet points from the article:

• The study examined social and economic conditions, health, education, housing and the environment, and is used by big companies to assess where they should locate and how much they should pay staff.
• (Vienna's) social democratic government has a long tradition of investing in high-quality social housing, making Vienna almost uniquely affordable among major cities.
• US cities perform relatively poorly in the study, largely because of issues around personal safety and crime.
• “You don’t realise how safe Vienna is until you head abroad,” said (Helena) Hartlauer. “We also have terrific public transport, with the underground working 24 hours at weekends, and it only costs €1 per trip.”
• “The fall of the Berlin Wall helped define Vienna as the hub for companies wanting to do business in central Europe.”
• Zurich in Switzerland is named by Mercer as having the world’s second highest quality of life, but the Viennese say their city is far more fun.

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 101: An election changes nothing in Downlowburg.

Now you see our city's potential ...

... and now you don't.

Back on September 8, I left off with Part 100, and might have snapped another few hundred views of diesel mayhem, but things were a bit hectic. Welcome to the continuation -- of the "truck through" series, and New Albany's cold steel ecstasy.

Mailer Wars '15: Let's take a closer look at KZ's four platitudes.

Let's look at each in turn.

Better Management: Localism does not factor into it; instead, it's the very same incentive-laden "attract and retain" boilerplate that's written on the back of David Duggins's business cards. You'd think that at some point, the GOP would realize that Beach Mold & Tool and Padgett actually are local businesses. How will KZ compete against the superior incentives available at River Ridge?

Better Neighborhoods: "Enforcing existing codes" is a code phrase itself, meaning "no rental property registration or inspection" -- and yet rental properties remain the crux of so many neighborhood issues. Also, there's nothing to stop neighborhood associations from being created and strengthened now. The truth is there's no grassroots pressure for this to occur. If KZ intends to create these entities, isn't that top-down thinking of the sort we're trying to purge?

Better City: In my estimation, KZ's vow to run City Hall transparently is sincere. He's surely seen how it works from the other side of the wall, being the only Republican on a council dominated by Democrats.

Better Life: Reading the words "an exceptional place to raise our children" reminds me of a weekend discussion about sporting opportunities for young people. Whenever the topic of team sports is raised, the discussion inevitably turns to a collective responsibility on the part of suburbanites to provide "opportunity" to low-income, inner-city children who can't afford team sports. Curiously, it seldom turns to a chat about what we might do to provide economic opportunity overall, period, rather than continuing to regard the one-in-a-million, lottery-winning inner city future NBA star as constituting equitable opportunity.

I'm not grading these mailers, but KZ's second mass communication manages to narrow his platform to four basic points, even if they are vague and generalized. It's probably where he needs to be in terms of agitprop.

For greater substance, I believe you know where to look. Just search "Baylor Mayor" at NAC, make some coffee, and settle in.

Urban trees: Not bright shiny objects, just supremely useful and necessary for "quality of life."

Rosenbarger Deforestation Project, Thomas Street Edition.

I saw a comment on social media from a friend. He was lamenting the loss of trees being removed to make way for the expansion of Beach Mold & Tool. For those unfamiliar with New Albany, the firm is located on the north side in a suburban setting, at the foot of the Knobs. It may be small consolation, but at least a fair number of trees remain nearby.

My reply was that there ought to be a law: Remove a tree and plant five in its place.

Since we moved into our house in 2003, we've been forced to remove one diseased tree. We've planted about 16, and I like those odds.

As a city, we have a tree board, an arborist and a tree plan. I don't need to spend time researching this issue to know (not guess) that we're not being sufficiently pro-active in restoring an urban street canopy battered by disasters over the past decade. We all know this is because of non-prioritized funding. We've bonded $20 million for parks improvements, which have included the planting of trees in parks, and yet there are entire residential blocks downtown with none.

As this article attests, and as anyone who ever walks downtown in summer can verify, shade equates to coolness. In times of escalating temperature, anything equating to coolness that can supplement the electrical demands of air conditioning is a bonus.

Trees do that. They're a need ... not a want.

Why Urban Trees Solve Most of Our Problems

 ... The unequal allocation of city greenery means that many low-income and nonwhite urbanites are missing out on the benefits of having trees on their city blocks, which, it turns out, are significant.

If your street is peppered with Magnolias and American Sweet Gums, your neighborhood will look better, sound better, and be less windy. Trees in urban spaces suppress noise, beautify monochromatic pavement, and reduce wind speeds.

If offensive city noises do traverse the leafy canopy outside your window, you'll be less stressed about it.

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 100: Mister Padgett's coal train has hauled it away.

As in the preceding 99 episodes of this depressing series, we present diesel-powered visuals, the essence of which vividly contradict the original design and best present use of multi-modal streets running through densely populated urban areas -- streets once redesigned to interstate highway specifications, for reasons that were bad then and worse now, and which are in desperate need of reversion to their original aim as routes for people, not fast-moving machines.

All other expenditures and efforts we undertake to "revitalize" neighborhoods are flatly contradicted, and often cruelly usurped, by our arterial, one-way street design -- and yet, the political response in New Albany has been consistent in only one way: Ongoing, unprincipled and sniveling cowardice.

This needs to change.

Every one of  600+ trucks pictured in this series over a period of almost two years WOULD STILL BE ABLE TO USE city streets completed and calmed according to Jeff Speck's plan -- not to be confused with the idiotic Main Street beautification aberration -- and so would everyone else.

We'd all use the streets more slowly, and more safely. Walkability and bicycle use would be enhanced.

The "ripple effect" so often mistakenly cited by dime store time-servers to describe the mythical fallout from bonded capital projects actually would have the chance to occur, in both reality and real neighborhoods, as manifested by greater quality of life and heightened property values; as we've pointed out on numerous occasions, these two-way benefits are being objectively charted and are the subject of steadily amassing fact, not fiction.

Trucking interests and heavy industrial operators belong in an industrial park near the actual interstate, not in downtown areas more suited for human habitation and use, and we have the as yet unused acreage on the north side.

Let's make a deal, because multiple positive outcomes occur when business is being done where it should, and people are living their lives where they should.

Making it happen will require thinking outside matchbook-sized "economic development as usual" boxes, and a fair dollop of political courage.

See any of these qualities in candidates standing for office this November? Then vote for those who have them, and as for those who don't ...

 ... sorry, Jeff. We'll have to let you go, but maybe Mr. Padgett can hire you to run one of his coal trains.

You DO have a CDL, right?

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 99: Trucks, institutional cowardice and another Bored to Tears of Works Tuesday!

The months roll past like the heavy haulers, equipment and machinery, and the bored?

They do nothing.

Some day, preferably when the current occupant has returned to selling veneer, perhaps this scenario will change, and we'll realize that the logic of the interstate is the illogic of densely populated urban areas.

But not just yet.

Institutional cowardice and anti-intellectualism make for a toxic mix. Diesel fetishists, enjoy the weekly collection of Things the Mighty Oz Doesn't Acknowledge from Behind That Curtain.