Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

"It's time for Milwaukee to get on board before our long-term competitiveness and quality of life are left at the gas station waiting for the big numbers on the sign to get smaller."

Great piece in Sunday's paper from Steve Filmanowitz of the Congress for the New Urbanism. It will not be read closely by any of the old guard here in Franklin, I wager.

Noteworthy automatically-generated ad in the Journal Sentinel web page for this article: Countrywide mortgage services (see "The mortgage lending crisis explained").

From Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Design, build communities more intelligently

By STEPHEN FILMANOWICZ

Soaring gas prices have revealed an inconvenient truth about the communities we've been building around greater Milwaukee: They're designed perfectly for the cheap oil of years past.

Spreading subdivisions, malls, office parks and schools along highways made some sense back in the "Happy Motoring" days of $1-per-gallon gas - and back when the earth's climate seemed stable. But designing communities this way leads people to rack up lots of costly, carbon-generating driving miles, about 23,000 per year for the average U.S. household.

With the world's thirst for oil threatening to outpace exploration, the smartest thing we can do is design cities and towns to ease both our pain at the pump and the pain we inflict on the planet.

Fortunately, these communities don't have to be invented. Examples in our backyard include downtown Whitefish Bay, the older parts of West Allis and Milwaukee's fast-growing Third and Fifth wards. Here, stores, schools and often workplaces can be found around the corner - or even downstairs - from residences. Trips are shorter and don't always require a car.

Experts say that neighborhoods and their transportation options play a major role in determining our vulnerability to gas prices and our contributions to climate change. Even rail critic Randal O'Toole acknowledges that when you look not just at Priuses but at all cars, minivans and light trucks on the road, these vehicles generate 70% more CO2 per passenger mile than light rail systems and twice as much carbon as commuter rail like the proposed KRM line. They use 50% more energy per passenger mile than either commuter or heavy rail like Chicago's "L."

And because traditional neighborhoods conveniently mix uses, the daily distances people travel - whether by car, transit, bicycle or on foot - drop significantly. A transit ride becomes just one aspect of reduced car dependency. A 2007 study by the American Public Transit Association found that public transportation is so closely linked with efficient neighborhoods that every passenger mile on transit is actually associated with two miles of eliminated automobile travel. That means 37 billion fewer pounds of carbon in the atmosphere each year.

To see these differences at work around Milwaukee, explore the new interactive maps created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology for the Brookings Institution (htaindex.cnt.org). The maps use neighborhood characteristics across 52 metropolitan areas to calculate the amount of driving and transit use that result (based on detailed Census surveys).

A click shows, for instance, that in the subdivisions north of Highway 60 beyond Cedarburg, average households drive an estimated 22,386 miles per year, pretty typical for our exurbs. Around downtown Wauwatosa, the figure is 12,291 miles. In the Third Ward, it's 9,344. At Cass and Kilbourn, it's 7,974. In a compact Chicago suburb like Evanston with great transit service, these driving miles (and resulting emissions) are lower still. And the report has eye-opening comparisons of what happens when you factor transportation costs into monthly budgets. Those lured to "drive till they qualify" in far-flung subdivisions shoulder a heavy burden.

Fortunately, many southeastern Wisconsin leaders now recognize the value of connecting the region's walkable neighborhoods - and fostering new ones - with rail transit. Homebuyers recognize their convenience and value, too.

Yet in too many places, zoning still prohibits traditional neighborhoods. Whether it's funky Brady Street or Main Street USA, you can't build it. Transportation policies hurt, too. While transit projects usually require a local funding match, there are no such requirements for highway projects. So the state is plunging ahead with a $500 million widening and redesign of I-94 from Milwaukee south to the state line (on top of $1.4 billion simply for rebuilding), even though the project's environmental impact statement says much of that stretch is "not currently encumbered by congestion" so "reductions in travel time will be minimal."

Meanwhile, proposed commuter rail waits for local governments to create a new or expanded tax to cover "their share." If we stay on this course, future generations will wonder why the Doyle administration and Legislature invested so many tax dollars upgrading the transportation system of the dying cheap oil era, while starving the alternatives that offered relief and long-term efficiency.

Of course, it's more than future generations that are taking notice. Business investment is flowing to energy-efficient locations protected from gas-price risk. If we were connected to Chicago's Metra rail system, we might better see what's happening at the other end. BP Amoco announced this month that it is moving 1,000 jobs downtown from Chicago's western suburbs, accommodating "the desire of its workers" for an urban environment within "walking distance of rental housing and condos." BP joins United Airlines and CDW in moving jobs to the Loop to benefit from transit and proximity benefits that save employees many millions on gas and parking.

It's time for Milwaukee to get on board before our long-term competitiveness and quality of life are left at the gas station waiting for the big numbers on the sign to get smaller.

Stephen Filmanowicz of Milwaukee is communications director for the Congress for the New Urbanism, which advances walkable, neighborhood-based development. He uses a variety of modes - train, car, bicycle and teleconference - to commute to Chicago.

"The aspirational spending race brought to the lawn"

[Illustration: Slate.com]

When I was a youngster, the ball park and playground were close enough that we in the neighborhood felt those amenities were extensions of our back yards. Sure, there were the every-two-summers-or-so trips to the riverbank to get fresh sand (fresh sand!) for the sandbox, and most people had a little swingset with which to create minor injuries, but the real action - - and INTERACTION - - was at the playground and ball parks we all shared.

Of course, those days are over, and every suburban house is a world unto itself. I often look at the huge, elaborate Rainbow play structures in certain backyards - - out where they are accessible by all the surrounding houses, yet not usable by the neighbor kids because it's private property - - and wonder no more about where our civility has gone.

We began losing it when we lost neighborhood playgrounds. To save $18 a year on our property taxes.

From Slate.com:

Lawn Pox

Children's play equipment and the decline of the American yard.

By Tom Vanderbilt
Posted  Friday, May 2, 2008, at 7:13 AM ET

---

The next time you drive down a street in suburban or exurban America, pay careful attention to the yards. Lurking somewhere, either peeping out from the back or nakedly displayed right in front, some form of children's play equipment, typically in plastic and typically in some bright primary color, will probably be splayed on the grass.

I'd like to raise just one question about this picture of domestic bliss: How often do you actually see a child playing on, or near, one of these devices?

On a recent weekend trip through a posh Connecticut suburb, the kind with moss-covered stone walls and dense canopies of mature trees, I was dismayed to find the sylvan harmony of the scene constantly disrupted by garish blights, from wavy slides to inflatable contraptions of the kind once relegated to seasonal carnivals. It was as if a McDonald's PlayPlace—some alien, mother-ship PlayPlace—was spawning its miniaturized brood across the landscape (and simultaneously vaporizing the kids).

The Web site of Little Tikes—which boasts an American flag banner noting that some of its polycarbonate products are "Made in the USA" and then, just below, slightly less triumphantly, "or Made in the USA with US and Imported Parts"—offers a representative field guide to this kiddie sprawl, listing such injection-molded contraptions as the "Endless Adventures Slide & Hide Tower" and the "6-in-1 Town Center."

The phrase "fun that lasts" pops up often on the Little Tikes Web site, as if the manufacturer were trying to allay the suspicion of the purchasing parent that the giant red, yellow, and blue elephant he or she is buying will soon be nothing more than a mowing obstacle. For parents were once children, and they know the iron law: The more time spent in assembling a toy, the less it will actually be used. (A corollary: The packaging is inevitably more interesting than what's inside.) My sister-in-law reports that each year, her upstate New York town's annual "cleanup" day produces a massive haul of slides, swings, tubes, and tunnels, all of which seemingly have half-lives of one weekend and swiftly find themselves headed for the landfill.

The environmental implications alone—each piece of equipment must represent a lifetime's worth of plastic shopping bags—are reason enough to eschew this stuff. Then there are the aesthetics. On this, I'm hardly alone in my displeasure. In her account of the perils of suburban gardening, Paths of Desire, Dominique Browning recounts how a new neighbor installed an enormous swing-set with a plastic slide facing her house: "Obviously, I had developed an exaggerated aversion to the plastic; I'm the first to admit it. But brightly colored plastic (and who decided kids enjoy these colors anyway?) in the garden is one of my peeves." Or, as one blogger more bluntly put it, "The only thing worse than a neighbor with fifteen different pieces of play junk in his front yard is a neighbor with fifteen different pieces of insanely brightly colored play junk in his front yard."

Before you dismiss such complaints as mere aesthetic snobbery, consider another of Browning's pet peeves: "Why [does] every yard have to replicate the same debris, swing after swing, marching down the backs of the houses?" Her question highlights a few larger problems with this seemingly benign landscape element. The first is the decline of the playground. In her book American Playgrounds, Susan Solomon notes how the fear of injuries and their litigious consequences forced the closing, or banal "post-and-platform" retrofitting, of many playgrounds. Gone are the kinds of things that defined my own childhood: terrifying metal "monkey bars" pitched over a pit of hard gravel or the towering, twisting, all-metal "tornado slide," as we called it, which was at once the most exhilarating and the most dangerous thing in my young life.

But, injuries aside, a larger specter began to haunt playgrounds, Solomon notes: "Told incessantly to be mindful of lurking dangers and the people who might inhabit the outdoors, [paranoid] parents often defer trips to public spaces. Going to a playground becomes too exhausting for a parent to contemplate." And so instead of a communal play space, each yard becomes a (rarely used) playground unto itself.

It's not just fear that underlies the American tendency toward elaborate play furniture. One parent-blogger recounted how his wife had purchased a massive water slide from Sam's Club. This led him to reflect that, once upon a time, only one house on each block had "the cool thing." "Today," he writes, "I live in a neighborhood where, if one kid gets a toy, everybody else eventually ends up with the same thing, albeit bigger and more ghastly looking."

Yes, it's the aspirational spending race brought to the lawn. Of course, it was already there, in the execrable outrages committed in the name of "outdoor living," the kind routinely chronicled in the pre-recessionary Weekend section of the Wall Street Journal (the Masters and Johnson of bourgeois anxiety): the grotesque waterfalls coursing over volcanic rock from Hawaii, the waterproof plasma televisions hovering over the pool, the backyard pizza ovens. But this impulse has spread to the short-pants set. How else to explain the ridiculous ensembles found at the higher end of the children's play equipment market? At Posh Tots, for example, one can purchase, for $122,000, a "Tumble Outpost" filled with ropes and swings and ladders, the kind that would sustain an entire playground but is meant for private consumption. Or feast your eyes on the capacious "luxury playhouses," like the "pint-sized plantation" known as "Oakmont Manor."

I have come to think of all these things, in both their lack of use and aesthetic alien-ness, as being symptomatic of the decline of the American lawn. I don't mean grass per se but, rather, the whole relationship of the house to its exterior; the meaning of the outdoor space as a pastoral enclave in a larger natural setting; the civility and beauty brought by the carefully considered arrangement of plants, trees, and shrubs—the sort of things one used to see in the so-called "garden suburbs."

U.S. Census Bureau data tell us that as American house sizes have grown (despite shrinking family sizes), the size of lots has actually shrunk. It is now not uncommon to see massive houses crowding to the very edge of their property line. Whatever lot is left is typically barren grass with a few random shrubs installed by landscapers (the lawn version of a bad hair-plug job). The scalped appearance of these lots is usually not accidental—developers often find it easier to cut down mature trees than to work around them.

And so then one sees it: the asymmetrical, triple-garage-fronted, architecturally confused house, towering over a lawn that's utterly stark—as if surrounding a prison so escapees can be seen—except for the assemblage of plastic junk and recreation equipment scattered here and there. Which is not being used, of course, because the entire family is inside the giant house, where the sounds of Nintendo echo off the high walls of the great room. The bright plastic begins to look like a memorial to the noble, dated idea of children playing outdoors. As historian Kenneth Jackson notes in his book Crabgrass Frontier, the shift to largely indoor living, accompanied by the much-reported decline of gardening and encouraged by everything from air conditioning (often now needed because houses seem to lack shade cover from trees) to front porches being replaced by garages, has left yards—when they even exist—curiously empty. "There are few places as desolate and lonely as a suburban street on a hot afternoon," he writes.

The unused plastic playthings and private playgrounds scattered in the barren yard speak not only to vanishing outdoor play but to a larger cultural disconnect from nature, from one's own environment. But there is a simple solution for this. Instead of buying cheap, potentially toxic plastic water slides and the like, plant a garden. Plant a tree. Plant something. It may not impress your neighbor, but it will last longer, it will look better, and it will have a better effect on the environment than plastic slides. And there is another benefit. In his book Second Nature, Michael Pollan writes touchingly about a hedge of lilac and forsythia at his childhood home on Long Island, N.Y. To the adult eye, the hedges were simply flush against the fence. But he had his own secret garden, a space between the hedge and the fence. "To a four-year-old, though, the space made by the vaulting branches of a forsythia is as grand as the inside of a cathedral, and there is room enough for a world between a lilac and a wall." He didn't need a plastic playhouse or an obscene mini-McMansion to find space to play. The natural world, when it is embraced, not only provides the opportunity for play—I imagine many of you, like me, have fond childhood memories of a swing hanging from a tree, or a tree house, or jumping in leaves, or running through the sprinkler as it watered the tomatoes—but connects us all to something larger and more lasting.

Tom Vanderbilt is the Brooklyn-based author of Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America and writes for many publications including the New York Times, Nest, the London Review of Books, and I.D.

McMansion blight

Clip from the film Subdivided

Home Prices Drop Most in Areas with Long Commute : NPR

Those looking for a more blatant economic basis for the elimination of sprawl-type planning and development may not have to wait much longer. (Thanks to Michael Mathias for the tip).

Kristine Bruce walks her son David Bruce, 2, through the Arlington, Va., neighborhood of Clarendon. The area is on Washington's Metro subway system. AP

Morning Edition, April 21, 2008 · Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.

The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable — urban sprawl.

The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has been hit hard. Prices tumbled an average of 11 percent in the past year. That's the big picture. But a look at Ashburn, Va., about 40 miles from the center of town, finds a steeper fall.

In parts of the county, housing prices have dropped 18 percent over that same period. New construction has ground to a halt.

Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic surveyed two rows of neat, new, brick townhouses on Falkner's Lane. "These were selling for about $550,000 at the peak, which was about August '05, and they're selling right now for about $350,000," Bogdanovic said. "Fifty percent of this community has been ether foreclosed on or is facing foreclosure."

For residents who work in the city, their commute is around an hour on trouble-free days. But that can extend upward toward two hours.

At a recent auction of foreclosed homes north of Washington, in the Maryland suburbs, there weren't many takers. All of the addresses are far from downtown, and average commute times are among the highest in the nation.

It's a different story for properties that are closer to the city's center — in areas of Montgomery County that are on the edge of Washington.

"When I have a listing in this neighborhood, there are often 40 to 60 people coming through the open houses," said Pam Ryan-Brye, an agent with Long and Foster Real Estate.

Inside the city, median home prices are actually up 3.5 percent from a year ago.

Jonathan Hill, vice president of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which tracks home sales, sat in his office recently, clicking through page after page of price data sorted by ZIP code. There were a lot of negative numbers, but not in places that are close in or near public transit.

The 20912 ZIP code, for example, showed almost a 10 percent increase in average sales price, Hill said.

David Stiff, chief economist for the company that produces the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, saw the trend in other cities, as well — including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, San Diego, Miami and Boston.

Stiff recently matched home resale values against commute times and found that in most of these major metropolitan areas, the trend is the same. The longer the commute, the steeper the drop in prices.

Stiff says home buyers' attitudes have changed. The old rule was, "Drive 'til you qualify" — meaning they should go out from the city until they could get what they wanted at a price they could afford.

Stiff says buyers are now asking different questions: "What is the cost of gasoline? What is the cost of my time?"

Recent studies suggest that buyers underestimated the costs of their long commutes. Those expenses can add up to more than the buyers saved on the home. Developers also miscalculated, lured by cheap land and rising home prices. They overreached, "partly because the bubble collapsed, but partly because these developments were just bad ideas to begin with," Stiff said.

Many of the projects were simply too far away from places that people need to go.

Builders have already shifted gears. David Goldberg of Smart Growth America, a national coalition of planners and environmentalists, points to what his hometown, Atlanta, was like in the 1990s.

"Atlanta was recognized as the fastest-spreading human settlement, probably in the history of the world," Goldberg said.

But while the suburbs spread, the city was losing population. Now the tables have turned. In the past two years, new construction in what had been forests and farmland has slowed by more than 70 percent, but construction in town has held steady.

Goldberg sees other cities rebounding, too, including Baltimore and Philadelphia.

"Philadelphia was losing downtown housing and in-town housing until very recently," Goldberg said. "And now that's the hottest part of their market."

Goldberg expects the trend to continue, even after the current housing crisis ends. Throughout the country, the percentage of families with children is shrinking. The share of empty-nesters, seniors and young people living alone keeps heading up. Those groups don't typically seek big green lawns.

"We don't live in the Ozzie and Harriet era anymore," Goldberg said. "We live more in the Seinfeld, Sex in the City era, in which young people find cities to be compelling."

So for now, at least, it seems that sprawl may have stalled — but not everywhere, and probably not forever. Experts are waiting to see what the next housing broom brings.

 

(Via NPR: .)

Third place coffeehouses and coworking sites as economic development tools

Ray Oldenburg, an urban sociologist from Florida (and author of the book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community) writes about the importance of informal public gathering places: "Houses alone do not a community make, and the typical subdivision proved hostile to the emergence of any structure or space utilization beyond the uniform houses and streets that characterized it." Oldenberg argues that "third places" are central to local democracy and community vitality.

But can a community MONETIZE this vitality?

One major commercial development here in Franklin,  Shops at Wyndham Village, has already cynically sold out the promise of a true community space - - in what is supposed to be Franklin's City Civic Center District - - as illustrated in restrictions listed in this document, which the City of Franklin had no knowledge of until I brought it to their attention. (Wyndham Village's poor design is compounded by the inclusion of a DRIVE-THRU Starbucks!)

Missed opportunity, to say the least.

As I've noted here before: Why not encourage, through subsidies and other incentives, LOCAL cafes and coffee houses that support a growing population of entrepreneurs and telecommuters as coworking sites while at the same time provide commercial and community vitality in our public spaces? The area surrounding City Hall and the Library is crying out for amenities that would take advantage of the popularity of the Library, proximity to Legend Park, and connections to new commercial developments at Wyndham Village and Legend Creek.

Time to think CREATIVELY.

From Neil Takemoto at CoolTown Studios (emphasis added):

I first profiled Tryst back in 2003 as a popular coffeehouse third place in Adams Morgan, Washington DC. But five years later, ten years after it first opened, it's not only become a neighborhood institution, but it really should be seen as a contemporary model for job creation.

Here's the big picture:

1. A majority of big businesses come from small businesses, and small businesses are started by entrepreneurs... from their homes.

2. Many (not all) entrepreneurs who tried working exclusively from home will tell you one thing - it sucks. No human interaction, no place for meetings, no escape from spending most of your life stuck at home.

3. Coworking sites are ideal, but are often too pricey for the budding entrepreneur.

4. Thus, enter coffeehouses with free wifi and staff trained not to bug you too often if you've decided to park there for most of the workday. The good news is they're packed with entrepreneurs all day. The bad news is that they're not very profitable until they leave.

In the meantime cities are investing tons of capital in contrived business incubators that often fail. Why not redirect that capital into economic development tax breaks for coffeehouses that provide evidence of effectively acting as free workplaces for entrepreneurs?

On the one hand, Tryst makes no money before 6 pm. On the other hand one can't get a seat during the day. It seems to be an economic travesty not to have enough workplaces for the neighborhood entrepreneurs. Proactive cities will overcome this, but it obviously hasn't happened in Adams Morgan yet.

See also:

- Milwaukee's Bucketworks coworker site

- Wausau's CitizenDesk coworker site

- the Coworking Community Blog.

- Coworking wiki

- BusinessWeek: "Where the Coffee Shop Meets the Cubicle" and photo profiles

- Sprawled Out: The "Paradox of Sociability" and "The Third Place"

- Sprawled Out: "Are we turning into self-absorbed silos with little to no time to care about others?" Getting back "the third place"

 

Franklin Candidate Forum notes: part 3

I've got six pages of notes on the mayoral candidates forum, but I'm going to toss those and focus on the specific issue that jumped out at me that is both appropriate to the theme of this blog and an area where Franklin is hurting.

To wit:

Mayor Tom Taylor has on different occasions expressed his idea of where Franklin's downtown is or will be located. Sometimes it's Fountains of Franklin; other times it's Shoppes at Wyndham Village.

On the night of the forum, it was 76th and Rawson, of all places (aka the intersection of Ugly and Bleak). He then identified a separate civic center for Franklin roughly radiating outward from the library and eventually connected by walkways.

ABOVE: 76th and Rawson - downtown Franklin?

I cannot disagree more with that non-unified, scattered, "pod" vision of community life - the very definition of "hither and yon."

When did we get it in our heads that we can (or should) separate civic and commercial amenities? I'm mystified by that notion. The very reason that vibrant community centers  - and the cities within which they thrive - become so popular and lucrative is the fact that useful and desired facilities are within walking distance of each other. Take the kids to the park, then walk over to the coffee shop. Drop off dry cleaning after story-time at the library. Grab a sandwich before mailing a package at the post office.

In the meantime, meaningful interaction occurs again and again, and money changes hands between citizens and merchants again and again.

Did it not occur to anyone leaving the library on the night of the forum that you were, once you hit the parking lot, effectively nowhere? No nearby coffee shop, deli, bar, or restaurant to which to adjourn; everyone to their cars and back to their pods.

Challenger Basil Ryan impressed me with his alternative vision: Let's utilize the investments and infrastructure already in place (and already paid for) - -   beautiful library, a palace-like "Law Enforcement Center," city hall, and park - - and make that Franklin's nominal downtown and civic center by using the city-owned land between facilities in a more efficient manner.

He said:

We need the vision to do it here, right in our backyard, with the land that’s available here. We can tie in the police department, city hall, the library. We DO have enough space. We need someone with a creative vision, work with the existing buildings, and if we do that I think that would be your downtown. The land is there and we can encompass the buildings we’ve already paid for - - the city owns that land in between.

This was something I suggested in this blog last year using the photo below. The areas in green have potential.

And, as I noted a few days back: how sad is it that locally-owned Moondance Coffee goes out of business in a crummy 27th street location when we have no coffee shop in walking distance of the well-used library? The simple injection of two or three commercial amenity-type businesses in the area around Legend park and the library will create a much-needed civic AND commercial center that will pull together the eventual Shoppes at Wyndham Village and Legend Creek commercial developments as well. That's how you create a vibrant, tax-base expanding community focal-point. Add a literal Civic Center building (or the Franklin Cultural Arts Center), and now you have a real town center.

Hear the cash registers?

At the same time, why not use that opportunity to give locally-owned businesses first dibs by offering subsidies and incentives to them for a change? Moondance Coffee should be right where the enormous (and useless) front lawn of the library is currently, a public courtyard between. With a coffee shop nearby, I defy you to visit the library without stopping for java and/or a bagel while there.

Money changing hands!

Mayor Taylor said at the forum: "Business will go where business will do well." Drive by the library parking lot on any weekday - it's always nearly full - and do the math.

Ryan further impressed me by shifting focus away from 27th Street and calling our attention to the area around the House of Corrections. We can either develop it ourselves or wait for the County to place an undesirable - and non-lucrative -  facility or facilities there. What he didn't mention is that we will actually increase security for the area by making it inhabited and trafficked; hard to sneak off the jail property and melt into the surroundings when the surroundings contain alert humanity and lit streets.

We are a city without a center, and to further "decentralize" Franklin with talk of separate "civic" and "commercial" areas will merely reinforce Franklin's identity as a loose collection of subdivisions and strip malls with no vibrant community focal point.

And guess what? Tech companies don't want to move their employees to a "placeless place," no matter what kind of TIF you wave in front of them. On the other hand, TIF or not, progressive companies are hot for progressive communities; they and their money sniff out places like Middleton Hills and, if they follow up on certain plans, Oak Creek.

What does this mean for the mayor's race?

At the forum, Mayor Taylor claimed "in recent days and months we are being literally inundated with requests to build commercial development in the Franklin School District." If that's so, we need a person in the lead who is able to convey in no uncertain terms Franklin's vision and identity along the lines I laid out above. If we present an unambiguous set of standards and a confident plan, developers will be glad to work within Franklin's vision and indeed contribute to the process rather than rail against it.

Which candidate will strengthen the city Plan Staff (whose mandate is smart, effective, forward-thinking growth) and take it out from under Economic Development (whose mandate is just "growth" at all costs)?

Which candidate can look a big box in the eye and make them happy to become part of Franklin's plan, rather than the other way around?

Which candidate realizes that subdivisions need not be speedways, and that sidewalks and right-angle turns save kids' lives?

Which candidate recognizes the needs of the elderly and differently-abled to the extent that he will hold developers to a standard of walkability and accessibility in their site plans rather than mere sheds surrounded by parking lots?

Which candidate is willing to think creatively about mixed-used zoning and better, more cost-effective use of current infrastructure rather than more single-use pods and expensive sprawl?

If the southwest portion of Franklin is to be developed, which candidate is ready and willing to meet with a developer with ambitious plans for a Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) plan, and effectively communicate that plan and its strengths to nearby residents so they understand its value to them as taxpayers and community members?

Which candidate sees the value of leveraging all of the above to create a strong, vibrant, desirable community identity that will attract more business and expand the tax base without the need for subsidies and TIF's?

I'll vote for, and then work with, that guy.

Shoppes at Wyndham Village: Handing the keys to Minneapolis, Minnesota

Think I exaggerate?

Well, you won't after taking a little stroll through a document entitled "Operation and Easement Agreement Between Target Corporation and Wyndham Village Retail, LLC for Shoppes of Wyndham Village Shopping Center, Franklin, Wisconsin."

This is a document on file with the Milwaukee County Register'€™s Office. You can't get it at Franklin City Hall, and you can't make an Open Records request for it unless you know it exists (thank you to the tipster).

Also, the cost to procure records from the Milwaukee County Register's Office is $2 for the first page and a dollar for every page after that. This is an eighty-two page document - - not exactly chump change. In other words, the information is "freely available," but it's far from free.

Selling out the city center

As a reminder, the map below (which is from the "Operation Easement Agreement") shows how the Shoppes site is divided between Target and Carstensen (click any image to enlarge):

And below is my now Nostradamus-like map from last June, when I predicted the "Target sell-out":

To read this "Operation and Easement Agreement" is to understand that, in the end, it all comes down to The Deal. All that talk about "doing what's best for the community"€ and "looking to Franklin's future"€ can be bought off for ... well, just over $2.5 million, it turns out.

When Mark Carstensen sold the land and building on the "Target Tract"€ to Target Corporation Property Development, he did more than redefine the relationship of Target to the City of Franklin's nominal City Civic Center ("Our downtown," said mayor Tom Taylor); he gave Target Corporation nominal control of the entire Shoppes at Wyndham Village property.

The "Operation and Easement Agreement" spells out in no uncertain terms that we answer to Target Corporation when it comes to what we want to accomplish with this central "incubator" for future commercial growth. Make all the noise you want about the details of the City Civic Center District as "mandated" by the City of Franklin; this is Target's strip mall now.

Pie in the Sky

While petitioning to change the property from R-8 Multifamily to Commercial, Mark Carstensen appealed to a combination of elitist fears ("You could have -shudder -€“ multi-family apartments in that field!") and pretty pictures of city center commercial developments with multi-story buildings (and no big-box in sight). He asked to be rezoned as a City Civic Center District. "You can count on me to deliver quality and what's best for Franklin."€

There were people who doubted his vision, and they were poo-pooed and called "ungrateful."€ When Target was brought on board, there were additional objections and warnings. The dissenting voices were called "anti-Target" and shouted down as "elitist."

Welcome to the consequences of blind faith.

The Target-Carstensen agreement contains some sensible prohibitations that any retailer would ask for, of course: No establishments selling obscene materials; no "smelly" businesses; no gambling facilities; no head shops.

But that's not all. Under "ARTICLE V  - OPERATION OF THE SHOPPING CENTER," the following uses are prohibited by Target in the entire Shoppes center:

• Bowling alleys
• Skating rinks
• Movie theaters
• Live performance theater
• Bars or taverns
• Any restaurant or other establishment "whose reasonably projected annual gross revenues from the sale of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption exceeds thrity-five percent (35%) of the gross revenues of such business."
• Any training or educational facility including but not limited to: beauty schools, barber colleges, reading rooms, places of instruction or other operations catering primarily to students or trainees rather than to customers; provided, however, this prohibition shall not be applicable to (I) on-site employee training by an occupant incidental to the conduct of Its business at the Shopping Center or (II) up to two nationally recognized learning centers that are commonly located within first-class shopping centers such as a Sylvan Learning Center, Kaplan Learning Center not to exceed 4,000 square feet of Floor Area In the aggregate.
• Any "€œsecond hand"€ or "€œsurplus"€ store

In other words, we are prohibited by our "extended government" in Minneapolis from opening a neighborhood pub, or a restaurant with a lounge (which would be any high-end restaurant), or a live-music venue with an open-mic night, or a locally-owned used-book store (or a Half-Price Books, for that matter), or another martini bar.

We are prohibited from doing this in OUR OWN CITY CIVIC CENTER.

Community-type businesses, and the kind that can be locally owned, are "targeted" for exclusion, see?

Want to open an independent, locally owned coffee shop? Forget it - Target has a Starbucks inside its store; Starbucks will have a (Lover's Lane-clogging) drive-thru outside. And you won't be allowed to offer local live music in your cozy cafe, anyway. Comic and collectibles shop? Nope - that's virtually a "second-hand" store.

Neighborhood pub that you can walk to and from? No, all bars should be out where you have to drive home.

There’s more.

Target decrees that, except for "Building 3," you cannot build a two-story structure in Shoppes at Wyndham Village, contrary to Carstensen'€™s assurances that his buildings were designed for another floor if and when demand dictated. On page 22 of the document, Target slaps that notion down, hard:

No building shall exceed one (1) story (except within Building Area 3 as shown on the Site Plan, within which the building may be two (2) stories, nor the following height restrictions:

(A) On the Target Tract       -45 feet
(B) On the Developer Tract (exclusive of Building Area 3)    -25 feet
(C) Building Area 3   

    (I) Two (2) Story Building    -30 feet
    (II) Any Other Building    -26 feet

So forget the idea of efficient use of space and additional utility by putting offices above commercial. And no living quarters or apartments, either, to create eyes on the street for increased security. And the subdivision across the street's wonderful view of the Target strip mall will never, ever, be relieved by classy storefronts, nor will parking lot noise be abated by the height of handsome two-story buildings facing Drexel. Sprawl enforced.

Got a problem with that? Take it over the border to Minnesota, because we answer to them now.

What about Sendik's?

And what about Sendik's?

Well, plainly the deck is stacked against this particular store in a market that is suddenly flooded with grocery stores. It was bad enough when they were the second Sendik's in Franklin; now they're the third Sendik's in a pretty tight radius, and I have it on good authority that another Sendik's(!) will be announced just to the west of Shoppes.  I haven't even mentioned Woodman's in Oak Creek, which, as a giant, no frills warehouse-style operation, will be a monster in this market.

Add the fact that the Shoppes Sendik's is farthest from a freeway, has poor east-west access, is in a much less dense part of the region, is not pedestrian friendly, and you have tough sledding. Pile on the Target aggressor next door, and you're Mike Holmgren in Green Bay last Saturday (that is to say, eliminated).

Target will sell a great many of the same things you can get at Sendik's, up to and including refrigerated and frozen foods. On top of all the brand names under the sun, Target has an entire private label aimed at health conscious consumers called Archer Farms.  And, as any specialty grocer will tell you, you make your money on those piles of incidentals that shoppers put in their carts along with the nice cut of meat or deli item. Shoppes customers will get their incidentals at Target while picking up tube socks and sneakers.

Consider this: Target Corporate knows all of the above, and their preferred business model is to construct Target Greatlands and SuperTargets - - the Target stores that offer full-service groceries. But Franklin's retail space restrictions wouldn't allow a structure the size of a Super Target or Target Greatland.

What to do, what to do ...

Be patient, that's what. And wave big bucks in front of the developer so he creates - and clings to -  a site plan and property delineations that facilitate the long term plan (see above).

What if you built next to a grocer whose building is attached(!) to your "standard Target"? And what if the square footage of that grocer almost exactly matches the typical square footage that Target allot to groceries in its Super Target and Target Greatland locations?

So much the better if you get the builder to make the grocer's facade look pretty ... familiar.

ABOVE: Shoppes at Wyndham Village Sendik's

BELOW: Target Greatland (photo by John Reed)

If Sendik's begins to feel pressure and needs out, Carstensen will go to the Common Council and say, "You don't want an empty building there, do you? Target needs an exception to the square footage limit."

An alderman might ask: "What about Toys R Us? They want in."

Nope - "Operation and Easement Agreement," page 38, states "No toy store exceeding five thousand (5,000) square feet of Floor Area shall be permitted." Target rules - not Franklin rules.

One particular alderman might say, "You know what would solve all this, buddy? Just let Target annex the building and make a Target GreatLand."

And, bottom line, if that wasn't the plan all along, they would not have included a line in the "Operation and Easement Agreement" that says this:

Couldn't even muster the respect to spell "Sendik's" correctly, much less acknowledge Franklin UDO restriction on retail square footage that clearly prohibits a Super Target in the City Civic Center District.

Another strip mall; more chain stores; more community decay

Those of us who saw this coming are not pleased with being vindicated. Franklin continues to suffer the ills of sprawled development, now further reinforced by this huge missed opportunity:

• Lack of lively public spaces
• Underfunded local infrastructure
• Lack of connectivity
• Overburdened collector streets
• Lack of logical "city center"
• Diminishing sense of community and local identity

But the citizens of Franklin should be aware of how the Common Council was "gamed," and perhaps derive from this experience the indignation required to hold their aldermen - -all of whom tripped over themselves voting "yes" for the project - -  more closely accountable. Ask candidates for contested seats how they will attend to the details differently. And while you're at it, ask your alderman for the guest list at his last election victory party.

Then connect the dots.

Senior Citizens: Sprawled into the margins

I found quite a few resources at Smart Growth America related to aging Americans and mobility that are well worth sharing as a follow-up to my post of a few days back, which touched on the sad fact that poor planning, lack of useful public transit, and sprawl development policies are dooming senior citizens to a segregated existence.

600,000 people over age 70 stop driving every year

But they still have places to go, people to see, things to do. So how do they stay mobile once their ability to drive is gone?

As we’ve noted frequently, seismic demographic shifts are underway as America races towards 400 million in population. One of them is an approaching “senior tsunami,” with nearly 1 in 5 Americans expected to be over age 65 by the year 2030. The overwhelming majority of seniors prefer — and will choose — to age in place. But many of their places aren’t made for aging non-drivers.

Resources (via Smart Growth America):
The Aging in Place Initiative
AARP - Livable Communities and Aging in Place
 SGA - Aging Americans: Stranded Without Options

From The Washington Post:

Drive to Keep Going
On Any Given Day, Millions of U.S. Residents Over 65 Stay Home Because They Don't Have Transportation. The Race Is on to Change That.

By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 8, 2007; B01

The ride in Betty Lee Thatcher's snazzy red Volkswagen Beetle was short and uneventful. But it meant everything to Patricia LaRue.

LaRue, who never learned to drive, traveled everywhere by bus, train or Metro, including to her job at the State Department. But since her cancer was diagnosed last year, LaRue has needed a little extra help getting around Northern Virginia.

"I just haven't gotten up the nerve to get on the bus," LaRue, 60, said. "I feel like one of those little wobbly dolls."

LaRue has to rely on friends or volunteers for door-to-door transportation, so she signed up for a ride with the Annandale Christian Community for Action, which coordinates volunteers from 27 Fairfax County churches to ferry senior citizens to medical appointments.

But the organization, which has been around nearly 40 years, is running out of drivers because so many volunteers are too old to drive. Thatcher, who drove LaRue to a doctor's office Tuesday, is 80. LaRue's driver for a follow-up visit is 87.

"I'd say the average age is 89 and rising," said Nancy Hall, president of the group. "The oldest driver retired at the age of 93. We just don't have the younger folks because they work longer. Or maybe they're not as charitably minded. There are people who say that, but I don't agree with that."

With the Jack Kerouac generation already well on the road toward retirement, demographers and experts on aging are urging policymakers to invest in new public transportation options. The shortage of suitable transportation for older residents will become especially acute in the suburbs, not only because transportation there revolves around the automobile, but also because boomers who grew up in the suburbs appear to be staying there.

The number of senior citizens is expected to double by 2030. As that population swells, experts said, so will the need for new ways to get around as more people live well beyond the age when they quit driving. A 2002 study by the National Institute on Aging found that about 600,000 people who are 70 or older stop driving every year and become dependent on other forms of transportation. The study found that men who stopped driving would rely on public or other means of transportation for an average of seven years. Women would need public transportation for 10 years.

A substantial number of older Americans already have difficulty getting where they need to go because they no longer drive. This is true even in areas with a host of transportation options, experts said.

"We have data that show people are stranded," said Elinor Ginzler, AARP's director for livable communities.

More than 20 percent of Americans age 65 or older do not drive. Of those, more than half -- about 3.6 million people -- stay home on any given day because they have no transportation, AARP says. The problem is more pronounced for those who are frail or poor and those who live in rural areas.

Those who cannot get around become isolated, and isolation can have serious consequences on a person's mental and physical well-being. For example, AARP says those who are unable to find transportation make 15 percent fewer trips to the doctor.

Many older people do not use mass transit, often because of real and perceived obstacles, Ginzler said. The multitude of services can frustrate senior citizens -- and others -- who struggle with bus schedules and multiple transfers. Such obstacles help explain why nearly 90 percent of older residents use private vehicles. Even when an older person decides he can no longer drive, he slides over to the passenger seat, and studies show that older residents will walk before taking public transit, Ginzler said.

In Fairfax, for example, low-income seniors can sign up for Seniors-on-the-Go, which lets riders buy subsidized coupons to pay for taxi fares. Others may qualify for MetroAccess, a paratransit (door-to-door) service sponsored by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for disabled passengers, or FASTRAN, the county-run paratransit. The county also offers a volunteer driving service similar to the Annandale Christian Community for Action's. And there are senior citizen discount rates on almost all public transportation, including Metro and Metrobus.

Grace Starbird, director of Fairfax County's Area Agency on Aging, said one of many initiatives undertaken by the county to enhance transportation for seniors is a proposal for a "one-stop shop" that would coordinate transit services for older residents.

Other governments and nonprofit organizations across the nation have explored strategies to help seniors get around, including implementing new approaches to volunteer driving services, revamping bus lines to make them more flexible and redesigning streets and highways to accommodate older motorists and pedestrians.

In Maine, for example, Katherine Freund, whose 3-year-old son Ryan was hit by an older driver nearly 20 years ago, started a nonprofit organization to help seniors get around. (Her son recovered and now attends the University of Oregon.)

Through Independent Transportation Network and ITNAmerica, which is working to replicate her model across the country, younger volunteer drivers can get credits to receive rides later or donate them to others. Residents who stop driving can donate their cars for credits, and merchants can help pay for rides for older customers.

A similar time-banking program operates in Annapolis, where the city's Transportation Department teamed with Partners in Care, a Pasadena, Md.-based nonprofit that helps seniors stay in their homes.

Partners in Care, which also operates in Frederick, administers a time-banking system so that a person who volunteers to transport an older resident will earn credits that could be used for home repairs.

"There are a whole host of seniors who need help getting out the front door," said Barbara Huston, the organization's co-founder and president. "Our niche is to provide people with arm-to-arm, door-to-door transportation."

Partners in Care started with 125 enrollees; today, there are 4,800. The city promotes the service and pays for background checks of a volunteer's driving record.

Prince William County offers "flex-routing" on its OmniLink bus service, said Christine Rodrigo, spokeswoman for the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission.

The service allows any resident in Manassas, Manassas Park and some parts of the county to schedule a deviation from the regular route of up to 3/4 of a mile. There is a $1 extra charge for riders using the flexible service unless they are older than 60 or disabled.

Early proponant of Traditional Neighborhood Development?

Challenge: Walk to Franklin High School from any nearby subdivision. You're disqualified if you are grazed by a vehicle.

From The Daily Sprawl, this quote - read and then guess who might have said it:

The age of leisure and abundance can destroy vigor and muscle tone as effortlessly as it can gain time. Today human activity, the labor of the human body, is rapidly being engineered out of working life. By the 1970’s, according to many economists, the man who works with his hands will be almost extinct.

Many of the routine physical activities which earlier Americans took for granted are no longer part of our daily life. A single look at the packed parking lot of the average high school will tell us what has happened to the traditional hike to school that helped to build young bodies. The television set, the movies and the myriad conveniences and distractions of modern life all lure our young people away from the strenuous physical activity that is the basis of fitness in youth and in later life.

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John F. Kennedy writing an article for Sports Illustrated entitled "The Soft American"

"You tell me, was there any culture in history that worked because it was entirely unto itself and not willing to help the next person?" The importance of neighbors.

Contrary (but welcome) information in an age of increasing isolation - - isolation aided and abetted by short-sighted developers and planners who continue to build subdivisions and commercial sites devoid of public amenities that contribute to a "community feel."

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

 

It seems there's a need for neighbors

Survey shows we savor those community ties

By LISA M. SCHMELZ
Special to the Journal Sentinel

Diana Paul misses the Wauwatosa block where she grew up, where neighbors would pop by for visits, often unannounced, and linger with her parents over coffee and conversation.

So when it was time for her and her husband, Tom, to buy a house, they looked in the same area. In 2000, they ended up with a restored 1928 English Tudor. Since giving birth to the couple's daughter, Grace, three years ago, she has found her own way to connect with her neighbors.

"When I lock myself out of the house, which happens fairly regularly, it's always my neighbors I turn to for help. I've definitely done it more since I had (Grace), so maybe I'm doing it subconsciously because I want my daughter to have what I did growing up," Paul said.

Virtual communities may be cool and newsy, but most of us still spend most of our time in the real world. And, according to a national survey released this year by Roper Consulting, we like it that way. Family communities come first, reported survey participants, but geographical neighborhoods were a strong second, outranking religion, work, hobby and, yes, virtual communities.

More than half - 53% - of survey participants reported a strong connection to their neighborhoods; 76% say they know their neighbors well; and 65% would like to spend more time with their neighbors. Thankfully for the sometimes keyless Paul, 74% believe neighbors should help each other out more.

Back to our old ways

Judith Kenny, chair of the department of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, says even though we're living in an era when headlines trumpet the appeal of virtual communities, the Roper findings make sense.

"It was not entirely surprising, and maybe perhaps a relief," Kenny said. "Perhaps we're merging our social and environmental needs and returning to earlier patterns of neighboring. For so long, it was about the loss of community and neighboring, and this is about the return."

What exactly is it that grounds Americans' deep agreement about the importance of neighborhood, and just what is it that fosters a sense of community among people whose houses happen to be in physical proximity?

According to the Roper study, good schools, friendly neighbors, the presence of worship facilities and central gathering places such as parks are all crucial in forming the ideal neighborhood.

Early lessons

For Joanne Suchy, an Elkhorn social studies teacher, it's the little things that make a neighborhood.

"Let's go back to your basic values that your mother taught you," said Suchy, who with her husband, Joe, a software engineer, has lived on Broad St. in Elkhorn for the last 21 years, raising three children, Sara, 21, Eric, 20, and Alex, 16. "The bottom line, from the Pilgrims on, from the basics of history, is that we must all work together. It takes effort to go out of your nice little corner, yet when you do leave the house, and you do spend time with others, you are enriched.

"Everybody needs a 'Hi. How are you?' and you get it from your family, but you get it from your neighbors, too. If I were in need, I know my neighbors would be there for me. There are so many times over the years where my neighbors have been there for me when I needed it, and sometimes when I didn't even know I needed it."

The Suchys' longevity on their block has helped them form close ties over the years. Still, this matriarch of Broad St., whose household is fast approaching the empty-nest years, makes it a priority to reach out to new families.

"All neighborhoods go through ages and stages. We used to be the young family on this block. Now that's changing. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy meeting the new families and their children. I like sharing in their lives, and watching their kids grow the way our neighbors used to watch our kids grow," she said.

Getting to know you

Two-income households and busy schedules can be barriers to neighborly friendships.

"People's schedules have become less predictable," said Keith Hampton, of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.

"You can shop on the weekend. You can shop at two in the morning. There are all sorts of reasons that we're less available for things like neighboring."

The Pauls found that an annual block party has catalyzed friendships with those who share their street.

"In this day and age, it's refreshing to know your neighbors and to live someplace that has a block party. A lot of people I talk to don't know their neighbors as well, and they're impressed that we know almost all of ours," said Diana Paul.

On Broad St., in Elkhorn, seasonal swapping provides reliable context for conversation.

Suchy said the borrowing of ladders, snowblowers, leaf blowers and the sharing of a garden's bounty are all commonplace.

"It's how we reach out to each other," she said.

"You tell me, was there any culture in history that worked because it was entirely unto itself and not willing to help the next person? That's what a good neighborhood is."

From the Dec. 2, 2007 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel