Sunday Fact Fest, Episode 03: "How the ‘15-Minute City’ Could Help Post-Pandemic Recovery."

Automobile supremacy is a virus, too. 

How the ‘15-Minute City’ Could Help Post-Pandemic Recovery, by Patrick Sisson (CityLab)

A new C40 Cities report touts Paris’s model for putting essentials within close walking or biking distance as an economic boost for coronavirus-ravaged municipal budgets.

The Covid-19 crisis in the U.S. has torn a hole in city budgets, decimating urban economies across the country even as infections continue to roar back and the specter of second-wave lockdowns loom. Las Vegas faces “the most serious fiscal crisis” it’s ever faced. The pandemic is hitting Houston’s finances harder than Hurricane Harvey, according to Mayor Sylvester Turner. Tallahassee, Florida, city officials are trying to “defuse a time bomb” due to $23.4 million in lost revenue this year. Local governments may face a cumulative shortfall of hundreds of billions of dollars, small businesses are closing at staggering rates, and when the temporary boost in unemployment benefits expires, municipal sales tax shortfalls may get even worse.

An international coalition of cities believes that the only path forward for mayors is funding green stimulus plans focused on job creation. The newly released Mayors’ Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery, released July 15 by C40 Cities, an international coalition of urban leaders focused on fighting climate change and promoting sustainable development, was developed by the organization’s Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force. The far-ranging series of plans offers a green prescription for financial stabilization that emphasizes several familiar pillars of progressive urbanism — renewable energy investment, energy-efficient buildings, improved mass transit, and spending on new parks and green space. One core idea: Cities are the “engines of the recovery,” and investing in their resilience is the best way to avoid economic disaster.

One of its recommendations has a more novel ring to it. The agenda recommends that “all residents will live in ‘15-minute cities.’” That term echoes the transformative ambitions of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has doubled down on car-free transit and pedestrian infrastructure in the French capital. Hidalgo made the idea that Parisians should be able to meet their shopping, work, recreational and cultural needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride a centerpiece of her recent reelection campaign. The C40 proposal suggests that following such a model would help global cities live up to the document’s promise of equitable access to jobs and city services for all, and rebuild areas economically hard-hit by the pandemic.

“Fifteen-minute cities, micromobility, and more space for walking and biking are innovative solutions that will help our cities rebuild and restore our economy while protecting lives and cutting dangerous pollution,” Carol M. Browner, former EPA administrator and board chair of the League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement supporting the agenda ...

Design elements: Is it Market Street beautification or Il Duce's Italy?

Who knew Jeff Gahan was a student of pre-WWII fascist history? It's only a matter of time before Dear Leader channels Il Duce: "We must create a new art, an art of today, a Gahanist-HWC art."

As Bluegill wisely noted:

New Albany’s Market Street project is depressingly familiar - big money, long time, the usual political patronage, generic ugly car-centric result. New Gahania in a nutshell.

This nutshell includes the beautiful people rushing to praise the emperor's nudity as they overlook what he's done to terrorize the less fortunate among us.

Therein lies the biggest part of our city's problem -- that, and street light poles made out to look like Roman plinths for enormous ceremonial statues, which they might yet become during a third Gahan term.

We'll be invading Clarksville before you know it.

#FireGahan2019

New Albany's Fork in the Road to fall victim to HWC's whitewashed and IKEA-inspired design.

Work began yesterday on the latest downtown beautification project, the fundamental problems with which I summarized last July in a post that is repeated below (with links to other thoughts).

When the city's plans were revealed amid Terry Middleton's foyer in 2018, HWC's campaign finance donor luminaries had suggested relocating David Thrasher's seminal Fork in the Road to the sidewalk in front of the Jimmy's Music Center building. Now I'm told by a Team Gahan insider that our drain trust hasn't decided where to put it, and would welcome ideas.

Really?

Since when do they welcome ideas? Property owners fronting the Market Street block currently undergoing forced "beautification" never were asked their views on the process before the plans were minted, were they?

Why now?

Listen up: Since Thrasher's fork was installed circa 2012, it has been mildly divisive. Many observers, including a disproportionate percentage of disaffected older white males bearing purely literal imaginations, have expressed derision. Others with minds somewhat more open to whimsy have flocked to the Fork for selfies.

And this division of opinion is exactly the point. 

Art should prompt discussion, even at the risk of venom and incomprehension. We know that Jeff Gahan's personal preferences run to Dogs Playing Poker and Velvet Elvis; fine, and it's a free country, but public art is something quite different.

IKEA-inspired design versus the Fork in the Road? Here's a chance for the clothes-free emperor to intervene in the cloistered design process and urge a rethink.

Whaddya say, Deaf?

---

We're told that peak inner city suburban Gahanism on Market Street will be delayed. (July 17, 2018)

At this morning's merchant meeting, attendees were told by the city's business coordinator Tonya Fischer that the recently ballyhooed Market Street "facelift" between Pearl and State will not be finished before Harvest Homecoming. Rather, it is to begin afterward.

She hinted that burrowed deeply somewhere in the shadowy labyrinth of Jeff Gahan's down-low bunker, there'd been second thoughts about the final configuration of this expenditure with money donated by the Horseshoe Foundation.

One might hope, but Team Gahan doesn't take well to critiques or criticism, and my guess is it's about bad timing with regard to the annual festival.

But let's make no mistake. Nothing I've seen lately epitomizes the city's gorwing problem with "institutional inbreeding" quite as grandly as HWC Engineering's (who else?) hilarious mock-ups of this project, a Disney-meets-outlet mall pastiche of anti-urban design elements reflecting the emperor's perennial tastelessness as well as the apparent absence of integrity among staffers placed in charge of preserving an asinine median, adding a car-centric turn lane to westbound Market (which barely registers vehicular traffic), felling any and all nearby trees, truncating the sidewalk on the northern side, adding IKEA chairs and hideous commemorative median "art," then boldly declaring victory for pedestrians in a setting that has been "upgraded" for drivers alone.

Even George Orwell might register a guffaw at the sheer mindlessness of it. What's more, amid the comedy of the mayor's loyal kept Republican (David Barksdale) wrestling with the city engineer for control of the project on behalf of the redevelopment commission so he could ensure that all existing trees were designated for removal -- it's gotta be a fetish, folks, the dude who hates trees sitting on the Tree Board -- there was the fact that all the money was slotted for the north side of the street, and none at all on the south side, where two completely restored older buildings are about open for business.

It's the same closed-loop people making the same moribund and template-inspired decisions with the same continuing obligation to connect the dots between contract winners and the mayor's campaign finance war chest; currently they are completely exhausted of any semblance of creativity, and unfortunately, it shows.

We'll have to abide these cumulative design mistakes for decades, scraping to pay for genuinely useful improvements because there'll be nothing left in the till that isn't committed to the Reisz Mahal, the Summit Springs Mudslide & Fun Park and a parks department with a budget exceeding that of some postage stamp principalities.

There's an answer: FireGahan2019. Catch up with the lunacy via these links:

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Umbrageous boughs? Not on Market between Pearl and State.

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism as HWC recommends buying IKEA when two local furniture dealers are yards away from the redesign atrocity.

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism via faux "input," pre-determined outcomes, clear-cutting, IKEA chairs and raging HWC paranoia. Welcome to your "improved" Market Street.

Goodbye to the Fork in the Road, hello to "Mayor Jeff Gahan presents, "A Fork Amid the Sidewalk" -- and fork YOU if you don't obey.

We're told that peak inner city suburban Gahanism on Market Street will be delayed.

At this morning's merchant meeting, attendees were told by the city's business coordinator Tonya Fischer that the recently ballyhooed Market Street "facelift" between Pearl and State will not be finished before Harvest Homecoming. Rather, it is to begin afterward.

She hinted that burrowed deeply somewhere in the shadowy labyrinth of Jeff Gahan's down-low bunker, there'd been second thoughts about the final configuration of this expenditure with money donated by the Horseshoe Foundation.

One might hope, but Team Gahan doesn't take well to critiques or criticism, and my guess is it's about bad timing with regard to the annual festival.

But let's make no mistake. Nothing I've seen lately epitomizes the city's gorwing problem with "institutional inbreeding" quite as grandly as HWC Engineering's (who else?) hilarious mock-ups of this project, a Disney-meets-outlet mall pastiche of anti-urban design elements reflecting the emperor's perennial tastelessness as well as the apparent absence of integrity among staffers placed in charge of preserving an asinine median, adding a car-centric turn lane to westbound Market (which barely registers vehicular traffic), felling any and all nearby trees, truncating the sidewalk on the northern side, adding IKEA chairs and hideous commemorative median "art," then boldly declaring victory for pedestrians in a setting that has been "upgraded" for drivers alone.

Even George Orwell might register a guffaw at the sheer mindlessness of it. What's more, amid the comedy of the mayor's loyal kept Republican (David Barksdale) wrestling with the city engineer for control of the project on behalf of the redevelopment commission so he could ensure that all existing trees were designated for removal -- it's gotta be a fetish, folks, the dude who hates trees sitting on the Tree Board -- there was the fact that all the money was slotted for the north side of the street, and none at all on the south side, where two completely restored older buildings are about open for business.

It's the same closed-loop people making the same moribund and template-inspired decisions with the same continuing obligation to connect the dots between contract winners and the mayor's campaign finance war chest; currently they are completely exhausted of any semblance of creativity, and unfortunately, it shows.

We'll have to abide these cumulative design mistakes for decades, scraping to pay for genuinely useful improvements because there'll be nothing left in the till that isn't committed to the Reisz Mahal, the Summit Springs Mudslide & Fun Park and a parks department with a budget exceeding that of some postage stamp principalities.

There's an answer: FireGahan2019. Catch up with the lunacy via these links: 

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Umbrageous boughs? Not on Market between Pearl and State.

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism as HWC recommends buying IKEA when two local furniture dealers are yards away from the redesign atrocity.

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism via faux "input," pre-determined outcomes, clear-cutting, IKEA chairs and raging HWC paranoia. Welcome to your "improved" Market Street.

Goodbye to the Fork in the Road, hello to "Mayor Jeff Gahan presents, "A Fork Amid the Sidewalk" -- and fork YOU if you don't obey.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Umbrageous boughs? Not on Market between Pearl and State.

Just our luck to live in a town where the mayor is allergic to shade.

umbrageous

Definition: (adjective) Affording or forming shade.
Synonyms: shadowed, shady
Usage: The chief beauty of trees consists in the deep shadow of their umbrageous boughs.

Chainsaws aren't my idea of kink, but different strokes and all. I suppose they do vibrate.

Following are posts about the awesomesauce Market Street median beautification project, which will result in trees falling on the north side of Market between Pearl and State, and don't forget: when your eyes bulge and your hair curls, and you think to yourself, "OMG this is tacky," you're actually insulting an engineer who knows quite a bit more than you (because money is to control what acorns are to oaks).

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism as HWC recommends buying IKEA when two local furniture dealers are yards away from the redesign atrocity.

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism via faux "input," pre-determined outcomes, clear-cutting, IKEA chairs and raging HWC paranoia. Welcome to your "improved" Market Street.

Goodbye to the Fork in the Road, hello to "Mayor Jeff Gahan presents, "A Fork Amid the Sidewalk" -- and fork YOU if you don't obey.

Goodbye to the Fork in the Road, hello to "Mayor Jeff Gahan presents, "A Fork Amid the Sidewalk" -- and fork YOU if you don't obey.

Photo by David Modica.

Ah, those blissful days of pre-Gahanista innocence.

More forks in the road. (November 29, 2011)

At this morning's Merchant Mixer meeting, Dave Thrasher explains what may lie beyond the stenciled fork in the road as Curt Peters holds a drawing of the 16-ft tall sculpture soon to occupy space on the west side of the traffic island at State and Market Streets. Bravo!

The new (and putrid) beautification plan looks like this.

We can't blame baseball hall of famer Jim "HWC" Rice for this one; it comes straight from Esteemed Leader, and nowhere else.

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism via faux "input," pre-determined outcomes, clear-cutting, IKEA chairs and raging HWC paranoia. Welcome to your "improved" Market Street.

There's nothing new in any of this. We already knew that Team Gahan views the notion of open, honest transparency with the same reverence as a vampire views garlic -- and speaking of Transylvania, it's also understood that just as comrade Ceausescu sought to remake Bucharest in his own Mussolini-filtered image, Jeff Gahan is striving to render downtown's physical appearance into a tableau worthy of a veneer salesman's insipidity, with all the tasteful flair of an exurban outlet mall by the interstate.

Jeeebus, the clique is engorged. Anyone for lancing the boil in 2019?

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism as HWC recommends buying IKEA when two local furniture dealers are yards away from the redesign atrocity.

Peak inner city suburban Gahanism via faux "input," pre-determined outcomes, clear-cutting, IKEA chairs and raging HWC paranoia. Welcome to your "improved" Market Street.

First, the renderings, then some of our trademark "hurtful" commentary.

"Surprise, surprise, surprise," said redevelopment commission appointee Gomer Pyle when gazing upon favored city contractor (and frequent Jeff Gahan campaign donor) HWC Engineering's antiseptic and robotic pastel mock-ups of the latest in a series of shameless aesthetic abortions of urban design, this one pre-determined, pre-authorized and pre-monetized to grace Market Street between Pearl and State, but only the north side of the street.

Why only the north side?

Probably because whenever a New Albany city official pontificates about walkability, we've know what he or she really means is car-centric imperatives camouflaged by lofty rhetorical nonsense, and so recalling that city engineer Larry Summers originally referred to this beautification project's wonderful benefits for pedestrians, you'll see that the north sidewalk is halved and the unnecessary median (which should be dynamited) truncated to permit a westbound turn lane for drivers.

In turn, this means that once again -- have we reached 50 times yet, or 75? -- David "I'm Beaming About Buildings" Barksdale of the largely fictitious Treeless Board is merrily presiding over the felling of at least seven healthy trees, proving yet again that irony in New Albany is stone effing dead -- and moreover, with Barksdale the council swing voter of the moment, he's buffed to a high sheen by the City Hall patronage machine and encouraged time and again to lube the chain saw as a means of glorifying objects, as opposed to people.

Sadly, David Thrasher's Fork in the Road sculpture will not survive the signed, sealed and delivered Disneyfication of the block. There being no way for Gahan to take credit for a previous mayor's decision, he instead must intervene somehow, perhaps skulking masked at 3 a.m. to the installation and etching an anchor tattoo into the cheese.

The Gahan Monetary Arts Council proposes moving Fork in the Road to the northwest corner of the intersection at Market and Pearl, rendering it into a Fork in the Sidewalk, and revealing once more that the artistic sensibility of Team Gahan ranks right up there with field mice blind drunk on spontaneously fermented persimmon juice.

Following are some details. The sole debatable topic on the agenda yesterday was: "Which ironwork design for the fattened mid-block median is your preference?" Note that 1813 refers to the official (and incorrect) date of the city's founding, while 1817 is a nod to the inception of the city market, which used to stand in the middle of the street. 

Below: (8) marks the spot of the Fork in the Rectum relocation.

That's right: IKEA furniture ... with shadeless tables next to parking spaces by a street adding a traffic lane, all in the service of walkability. They're literally too stupid to be embarrassed by this farrago of power-play suburban white bread foolishness.

---

On Thursday morning at 11:30 a.m., I learned that the Redevelopment Commission had scheduled a public "input" session about the Market Street median enfluffment and beautification project, to be held at 1:30 p.m. at appointed commission member Terry Middleton's gym on the north side of Market, between Pearl and State.

I sincerely thank my informant, without whom I'd not have known the meeting was taking place. As it was revealed later, the full extent of "official" public notification about this meeting, as ostensibly aimed at gathering public "input" toward a foregone conclusion, was limited to those unfortunates in attendance at Develop New Albany's self-congratulatory midday luncheon at The Grand.

Did the intellectual property pilferage seminar go well?

There's nothing new in any of this. We already knew that Team Gahan views the notion of open, honest transparency with the same reverence as a vampire views garlic -- and speaking of Transylvania, it's also understood that just as comrade Ceausescu sought to remake Bucharest in his own Mussolini-filtered image, Jeff Gahan is striving to render downtown's physical appearance into a tableau worthy of a veneer salesman's insipidity, with all the tasteful flair of an exurban outlet mall by the interstate.

As an aside, it should be noted that just last Thursday, at the conclusion of the city council meeting, I exercised my council speaking time to agree (!) with 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps, who earlier in the meeting had expressed interest in viewing the Market Street beautification proposals prior to their implementation.

Congratulating my councilman for this utterly atypical attention to detail, I added that there should be some way for the public to consider the hitherto guarded plan.

Councilman David Barksdale and redevelopment commission director Josh Staten were present and presumed awake, and heard me say this. Naturally, neither of them bothered to tell me about yesterday's meeting.

Perhaps they were in on the joke -- that the "input" meeting would come without any way of recording input aside from transmitting viewpoints orally to an HWC employee who didn't record them, but it matters little, given that as many as two, maybe even three members of the "public" were in attendance at a meeting few knew was occurring, otherwise lost amid the massed presence of City Hall's nepotistic, sycophantic governing clique, abetted by two of DNA's semi-professional grovelers and the duo of HWC operatives.

One of HWC's purveyors of drive-through expertise was in rare holier-than-thou form, but we'll return to baseball hall-of-famer Jim Rice's finger-wagging testimony -- which might be summarized as "engineers always rank higher on the food chain than nasty hurtful plebes" -- at another time.

As a postscript, the ever insightful Jeff Gillenwater inspires me to conduct a thorough analysis of spray paint options.

One day, someone much smarter than Gahan and his minions is going to tear down and paint over much of what they’ve done. I’m going to volunteer to help.

Strong Towns Week: "In an urban neighbourhood it is important ... that everyone has a park within a few minutes walk."

In New Albany, we've opted for the "grand park" approach. Millions in TIF borrowing have produced several mini-Disneys, but not the sort of neighborhood approach being advocated in yet another thoughtful posting at Strong Towns.

GRAND PARKS VS. NEIGHBORHOOD PARKS, by Andrew Price

When we talk about parks in cities, I think it helps if we can classify parks into two types: Grand Parks and Neighbourhood Parks (Like a lot of things, I am making up terminology here, but I feel that it is often relevant to have terms to distinguish between things.) When I am talking about parks, I do not mean greenspace, which is unnecessary filler. You can often tell the difference between a park and greenspace, because somebody loves a park enough, no matter how small it is, to give it a name.

Grand Parks are places like Central Park, Prospect Park, national parks, Chapultepec, etc. They can range from day trip destinations, or sometimes far-flung destinations in other states.

Neighbourhood Parks are sort of places you expect to find up the street - kids can play there after school, people walk their dog there, you can stroll down there with a book ...

One significant problem with New Albany's mini-Disney approach apart from the misuse of TIF is it being predicated on people driving their cars to the parks, while the notion of neighborhood parks supports walking or biking there.

We have relocated to the NYC area, and are now renting a 3 bedroom townhouse in Hoboken, NJ. It's a very nice family-oriented area, but it is highly urban and virtually the entire city of Hoboken consists of either townhouses or mid-rise apartments. People here either just do not have yard, or it is a tiny communal courtyard.

So, if you have children, or you want to read a book, or lay among the trees, or throw a ball with your dog, you need Neighbourhood Parks. Central Park, as beautiful as it is, is useless for this purpose if you live 50 minutes away - you are not walking there with your book after work everyday.

That is why I think in an urban neighbourhood it is important that if you do not have a private yard that everyone has a park within a few minutes walk.

Even if you have a private yard, Neighbourhood Parks can still serve a purpose. They can be the living room of the community. If I am reading a book or doing work, I find it more relaxing to be among the light flutter of activity found in a public park than to be in absolute solitude. This is probably also why I prefer working from my office, even if I have the ability to telecommute on occasion - it is nice just to be in the presence of others.

"In light of the United States’ century-long war on low-income housing, it’s something of a miracle that trailer parks survive."

This week's trophy for counter-intuitive statements goes to Gray's sentence:

"By combining these liberal land-use regulations with narrow streets shared by all users, we ironically find in many trailer parks a kind of traditional urban design more common in European and Japanese cities."

Time to hone the intuition, then.

RECLAIMING "REDNECK" URBANISM: WHAT URBAN PLANNERS CAN LEARN FROM TRAILER PARKS, by Nolan Gray (Market Urbanism via Strong Towns)

... Trailer parks are not only cheap due to manufacturing; they’re also cheap thanks to their surprising exemption from most conventional land-use controls. Most cities zone very little space for trailer parks—presumably a reflection of the general bias against low-income housing. But where they exist, they are often subject to uniquely liberal land-use regulation, with minimal setbacks, fewer parking requirements, and tiny minimum lot sizes. The result is that many trailer parks have relatively high population densities. The New World Economics blog explains:

If you had 70% home plots/15% roads/15% shared amenities like parks and squares, 1000sf plots, and 2.5 people per household, that works out to population density of 46,000 people per square mile — with one or two story construction! At this level of density, compared to about 9,000/mile for the denser Los Angeles suburb, you could easily have a lot of neat commercial stuff (bars, restaurants, shops, schools, etc.) within walking distance.

By combining these liberal land-use regulations with narrow streets shared by all users, we ironically find in many trailer parks a kind of traditional urban design more common in European and Japanese cities. With functional urban densities and traditional urban design, the only thing missing in most trailer parks is a natural mixture of commercial and industrial uses. Many urban trailer parks likely bypass this zoning-imposed challenge by locating within walking distance of commercial and industrial uses.

Irv Stumler aghast at the prospect of "A New Life for Urban Alleys."

Irv Stumler dozed off and dreamed of artists painting alley walls. He woke up in a cold sweat.

How can Padgett's erectiles navigate high-speed, one-way alleys when people are standing there gawking at ART?

A New Life for Urban Alleys, by Eillie Anzilotti (City Lab)

Once blighted and overlooked, these small streets are transforming into community and sustainability hotspots.

This one goes out to John Rosenbarger: "'Don’t Be a Dick' May Just Be the Best Motto Yet for Urban Designers."

Uh oh. Here comes the Municipal Time Servers Union to file a grievance on behalf of Pinocchio.

In rebuttal, let's turn to 2014, merely a brief segment of one year out of 35, but who's counting?

John Rosenbarger: Yes, it's a design flaw, and yes, we know who designed it. Why can't we do anything about that?

Answer the question, John Rosenbarger: Can Jeff Speck's ideas work here, or not?

Ranting on John Rosenbarger's fundamental contradictions in the aftermath of an atrocious day in the neighborhood.

As for the link ... too late, suckers.

“Don’t Be a Dick” May Just Be the Best Motto Yet for Urban Designers, by Danya Sherman (Next City)

In the past few years, the number of community-engaged design projects has boomed. Buoyed by good intentions and the recognition that resources in urban landscapes are still unequally distributed, designers, planners, architects and other professionally trained technical experts are working with impacted communities to prevent further harm and built more equitable cities.

But how do designers know when they are replicating harmful dynamics they wish to avoid? How can community-engaged practitioners, instead, be a part of breaking down persistent barriers and building the capacity of communities who have been denied access to resources (in some cases for generations) to take ownership of the neighborhood’s future?

Well, one thing they shouldn’t do is be a Dick. That’s the playful conclusion of a new children’s book-style guide to social impact design practice recently produced by the Equity Collective, a group of leaders and practitioners in the field of community engaged design. Available here as a free downloadable book, Dick & Rick: A Visual Primer for Social Impact Design was created with the intention of encouraging professionals in the field to practice self-reflection, remain aware of power dynamics and stay focused on an ultimate goal of advancing racial, economic and social justice in every decision made.

Narrow streets: They do more with less, but we'd rather allow Padgett to hold the city hostage.

The author Herriges rejects the grand wazoo approach in favor of something more organic, and offers a few interesting alternatives to grandiosity. Bob Caesar and Irv Stumler should read this essay.

They won't, and that's the Sorrow of New Albany (with apologies to Hugo Claus).

Narrow Streets Do More with Less, by Daniel Herriges (Strong Towns)

The same lesson applies to urbanism: In creating a great place, less is often more. The "recipe" for a good urban street is in fact remarkably simple, which is why societies all over the world have been able to replicate it, with some variations, for thousands of years.

This is good news for Strong Towns advocates concerned about the fiscal sustainability of our cities too, because simple design means less money that must be spent to build and maintain our public realm.

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.

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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.

"Streets are about economics and urban design more than engineering."

It's about human beings in a densely populated urban area.

Streets are about economics and urban design more than engineering, by Robert Steuteville (Better Cities)

 ... Recognizing that most trips are economic decisions and that people have choices puts a whole new spin on roads and traffic. As Hertz of City Observatory says:

"The economic, or behavioral, approach brings back humans—and with them, the idea that given amount of vehicle trips isn’t just a feature of the natural world, but the result of decisions by actual people who want to get somewhere in order to do something. The question then changes in a subtle but profound way: not how to speed vehicles through a road most efficiently, but how to best connect people with the places they want to go."

"Bringing humans back into the question also allows you to acknowledge that people have desires that aren’t directly related to transportation. Safety, for example. Reducing the number and length of vehicle trips translates straight to fewer car crashes, and fewer avoidable serious injuries and deaths. Making streets a pleasant place to walk and gather—something that’s difficult when sidewalks have been narrowed to make room for speeding cars just feet away—can pay serious economic dividends and help establish a sense of community. In the economic or behavioral approach to transportation policy, all of these goals suddenly become fair game."

Viewing congestion as an economic problem may also get transportation engineers to recognize that congestion is often good. The bad kind of congestion is when people are just sitting in traffic and little economic activity is taking place. But in a mixed-use downtown, congestion is a sign of life ...

Groningen cycling template makes proper use of one-way streets.

There is considerable irony in Groningen's experience, because this Dutch city has found a genuine use for one-way streets: They're deployed to keep cars out of the central district, not to enable their rushed passage through it.

I'd say it's a lesson we might adaptively learn, but then again, New Albany isn't a "learning" kind of place ... yet.

How Groningen invented a cycling template for cities all over the world, by Renate van der Zee (The Guardian)

“Instead of destroying old neighbourhoods, we wanted to restore them and convert them into pleasant areas for people to live in. The idea was to discourage motorised traffic and to give priority to pedestrians, bikes and public transport,” remembers Van den Berg. “All this was feasible because Groningen is a relatively small, compact city. The distances are short and can easily be covered by foot or by bike.”

Urban design promotes walkability, which reinforces urban design.

As yet, there is no indication that Jeff Gahan is serious about the prospects for a "walkable" New Albany, because if the notion carried any weight with him, City Hall would be leading a campaign to educate in preparation for a change in consciousness.

Instead, we're pandering to the usual vested interests, and panhandling for campaign cash.

In this City Lab article by Laura Bliss, two key components are identified that contribute to walkability in smaller cities like ours: Transparency (windows, not walls) and Imageability (unique visual identity).

designers-can-get-smaller-cities-walking/399545/">How Urban Designers Can Get Smaller Cities Walking: A new study identifies two important street features that draw pedestrians—outside of New York City.

Using similar methodology as in the New York study, the researchers spent 30 minutes counting walkers on 179 blocks in downtown Salt Lake City. Out of five broad categories of design features, they found that two had statistically significant relationships to the number of people on foot.

Mr. Padgett's Blues: "10-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Safer—and Still Move Plenty of Cars."

Narrow lanes are safer

Cars in wider lanes tend to go faster

Narrow lanes still carry lots of traffic

Evidence and factual research keep piling up. Jeff Gahan remains aloof, refusing to publicly embrace evidence and factual research.

Remember: You are invited to listen as Dr. John Gilderbloom preaches his "gospel of things urban" on Tuesday, August 4, at the library.

The smart money says that City Hall will boycott this meeting. It's what you do when you're completely out of touch, but hey -- let's all go swimming.

10-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Safer—and Still Move Plenty of Cars: The case against 12-foot lanes in cities, in 3 charts, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

... a new study by civil engineer Dewan Masud Karim (spotted by Chris McCahill at the State Smart Transportation Initiative) ... evaluating dozens of intersections in Toronto and Tokyo, Karim linked lower crash rates to narrower lanes—those closer to 10- or 10.5-feet wide than to 12-feet. Sure enough, wider lanes meant speedier cars, and yet narrower lanes were perfectly capable of moving high volumes of traffic.

He concludes:

Given the empirical evidence that favours ‘narrower is safer’, the ‘wider is safer’ approach based on intuition should be discarded once and for all. Narrower lane width, combined with other livable streets elements in urban areas, result in less aggressive driving and the ability to slow or stop a vehicle over shorter distances to avoid a collision.

Is (your city name here) a city designed for women?

This may be the first essay I've seen that explicitly applies Jeff Speck's walkability pillars and other urban design theories to the needs of the female population.

Opinion: Is Brisbane designed for women?, by Kathleen Noonan (The Courier-Mail)

... Is Brisbane a city designed for women? What makes a great city for women – and, therefore, everyone else? Because when you make a great city for women, you improve the fabric and experience of human life.

No matter where you are in Queensland this morning, it’s a valid question: is this town a great place for women and children? Because let’s not forget, women and children are the majority.

Is your town a safe welcoming place for elderly women, migrant women, women with disabilities, young female students, for all women? Most women need “porous’’ and connected cities because their lives often meld their two shifts – their work/career and their work/family.

Have you ever sat in a children’s playground or park thinking it was designed by someone who had never met a child? How do we get it so wrong so often?

Don’t worry. It is not just Brisbane or Australia. All over the world, cities have been in the throes of reinventing themselves with fewer cars and more feet. Some of the fixes are so very easy and not expensive.

Women should experience their city exactly as men do. Their city should be utterly, entirely fair.

"Cities, with the encouragement of the Obama administration, are rethinking their street plans."

Except in Louisville.

Why Would You Have a Highway Run Through a City?, by Daniel C. Vock (Governing)

That’s what a growing number of cities are asking themselves -- Syracuse being the latest that may tear down its elevated urban expressway.

... At the same time, cities, with the encouragement of the Obama administration, are rethinking their street plans. Amenities such as bike lanes, wide sidewalks, streetcars and green space are becoming more common. Traffic engineers, (John) Norquist says, are moving away from the old model of channeling cars from residential roads with cul-de-sacs, to service roads, on to arterial roads and ultimately to freeways. Instead, he says, engineers are using much more nuanced models for the roads they create.

Changes in society are at work too. The automobile, while still by far the dominant mode of transportation in the U.S., has lately lost some of its appeal. It used to be that the number of miles Americans drove went up every year. Since the recession, though, the country’s driving has leveled off. Teenagers are waiting longer to get their driver’s licenses. And young adults flock to cities and neighborhoods where restaurants, bars and shops are within walking distance -- or maybe a short bus trip or train ride away.

But none of those factors guarantees that scrapping elevated highways will be popular, or smart, in every city. Such a fundamental change in a city’s landscape raises big questions of whom the transportation network should be designed to serve, and at what cost.

John Rosenbarger: Yes, it's a design flaw, and yes, we know who designed it. Why can't we do anything about that?

Today's drive to Indianapolis shouldn't be much different than a daily jaunt down Spring Street, so let's pop the tabs on a six-pack of Rosenbarger Light.

Main Street Deforestation Project: If John Rosenbarger's lips are moving, chances are he's lying about traffic diversion. Here's why.

In other words, Main Street should be the officially designated through route bisecting downtown from east to west. It should be signposted as the One True Through Route. In particular, through trucks should be compelled to use it.

Of course, it's a design flaw. Guess who designed it?

Jeff Speck on John Rosenbarger's 12-ft wide Spring Street traffic lanes: “A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane."

England and Rosenbarger claimed victory, by changing absolutely nothing. They built two unbuffered bike lanes next to 70 mph traffic lanes. They did nothing else, and they want you to believe that what they did was heroic and innovative, primarily so one of them can run for office again while the other keeps his job -- again.

Until the reign of error is over, citizens are treated to recurring rounds of double dealing.

ON THE AVENUES: Bridge envy in a time of 18-wheelers.

Trust me on this one: When I’m elected mayor, Rosenbarger will become the highest paid cigarette butt remover this city has ever seen, leaving him free to mutter like a plucked peacock about the eternal stupidity of his political bosses, and the boundless depravity of the general public, but deprived of his ability to punish us any further with Gail Wynand-style “improvements” to the street grid.

Even his greatest achievements must eventually give way to the cold, hard logic of t he intersection.

Rosenbarger giveth and He taketh away; thus shall autos be glorified at the Beechwood intersection with Charlestown Road.

Recalling that John Rosenbarger regularly has hailed this situation as proof of his urban design prowess, read on as Chris Morris gives us the LOL punch line.

The city did not have to buy right-of-way to expand the intersection. Rosenbarger said the bike lanes through the intersection will be absorbed for the road expansion.

But as the photos show, there are no bike lanes through the intersection.

We'd need a matchbook cover to list the achievements.

Answer the question, John Rosenbarger: Can Jeff Speck's ideas work here, or not?

Rosenbarger's appearance at the FAN Fair followed much the same script, including open public doubt as to whether what he is paid to do, can ever actually be done in this city.

It begs a rather obvious question:

Then why pay you at all?

Ever since he decided to use the FAN Fair as a forum to explore the dimensions of his own under-achievement, I've decided to call his bluff. I'm not going to swallow the duplicity any longer. You shouldn't, either.

Ranting on John Rosenbarger's fundamental contradictions in the aftermath of an atrocious day in the neighborhood.

Rosenbarger spend quite a lot of his time yesterday mumbling about the unacceptable costs of congestion, which pretty much proves something I've been saying for a while about inbred political cowardice, and although I'll have more to write about this with time, what I think about this, I phrased in the form of a tweet to Jeff Speck yesterday afternoon:

@JeffSpeckAICP When your city planner outlines complete street options by parsing 50 shades of traffic congestion, you grasp political fear.

He retweeted it, and that makes me feel very good.

Then again, Speck's never seen anything like it, either. Verily, New Albany remains the place where brains go to atrophy. Here's the bonus: Jeff Speck in New Albany: “I’ve never seen anything like that in America."