Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

U.S. Secretary of Transportation: "Transportation is a public health issue"

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood: "People want options. They want to be able to be more physically active on streets that are friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists. And when adults model physical activity, our kids see it, and they get it."

From LaHood's blog:

Yesterday, DOT Undersecretary Roy Kienitz talked about how transportation decisions that value things like "vehicle throughput" instead of pedestrian safety affect America's communities. And about how transit decisions that emphasize "minutes-saved" pit outlying suburban commuters against their inner-lying urban neighbors. Recognizing that those policies have had an effect on public health, he said, "Transportation is about more than engineering."

But, as Undersecretary Kienitz told yesterday's meeting, DOT has taken steps to fix the formula and find a different approach.

Through our work with HUD and EPA in the Obama Administration's Partnership for Sustainable Communities, through our TIGER discretionary grants, and through a range of other programs like Safe Routes to School, we're funding the kinds of projects that will help develop livable communities and provide opportunities for people to walk, bike, or take transit.

Everywhere I go, I hear from Americans that this is what they want. In fact, walking and biking have increased by 25% in the last ten years.

Read the rest at: Transportation is a public health issue; DOT doing its part to keep kids moving - Welcome to the FastLane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation

The Rise of Walking and Biking

It's summer, and you may be seeing more people out on the street walking and biking. But it's not just because the weather is nice. There are more people walking and biking year round, and the Department of Transportation is responding by dramatically increasing the amount of money spent on projects for pedestrians and cyclists. This is a look at the rise of foot-powered travel in America.

Read the rest at: Transparency: The Rise of Walking and Biking - Transparency - GOOD

Big Box reuse in Milwaukee: Old Menard's converted to indoor bike park

Big Box reuse in Milwaukee:

Trek Bicycle Corp. didn’t just give Ray Petro a little boost to ensure he would be able to open a Ray’s Indoor MTB Park for riders in Milwaukee. The Waterloo-based company bought Ray’s business.

That was the news in a release sent out promoting the expected opening of a Ray’s in a shuttered Menard’s store at 8365 N. 76th St. in November.

Read the rest at: Trek buys Ray's Indoor MTB Park - ensures expansion in Milwaukee - JSOnline

Good news for fans of wine, beer, and fresh air

Local business THREE CELLARS had their plans for an outdoor Wine and Beer garden APPROVED last night by the Plan Commission. 

Perhaps a step toward making the old strip mall on 76th and Rawson a more pleasant place to visit.

I'm trying in vain to imagine the faintest possibility of something so progressive and economically foresighted occurring in my suburb

The greening of Greendale:

But Greendale has gone even greener by implementing a digital energy management system, timing lighting and recycling the heat that escapes from the pool’s surface. Grants from both WE Energies and Focus on Energy helped fund the pool’s thermal heating system. The total cost was just over $55,000 but Greendale paid only 30 percent, with grants from Focus on Energy ($19,343) and WE Energies ($19,343) paying the rest.

Read the rest at: The greening of Greendale | Milwaukee News Buzz

Smart Growth at 10 seems a success in Wisconsin

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

On the 10th anniversary of the state's Smart Growth law, leaders of the Wisconsin Builders Association and the Wisconsin Realtors Association gave the innovative comprehensive planning initiative a qualified endorsement.

At a conclave sponsored by 1000 Friends of Wisconsin called Smart Growth@10, Jerry Deschane, Builders Association executive vice president, said his organization went into the legislative process "kicking and screaming" a decade ago, but participated in the drafting of the law, which he now regards as "a good planning statute."

The new planning approach helped by making local plans "more data driven" and therefore more effective, he said.

Although implementation of the law is just beginning, Tom Larson, director of regulatory and legislative affairs for the Realtors group, said his organization is "cautiously optimistic" it will yield good results.

The drafting of the comprehensive plans at the local level over the past 10 years benefited greatly from the improved level of public participation and from making planning "more proactive instead of reactive," he said.

Nearly 90% of the counties, cities, villages and towns met the Jan. 1 deadline for completing their comprehensive Smart Growth plans. That's a big advance from 2000, when only one-quarter of local units had any kind of plan and only a small percentage had a comprehensive plan.

Many of those who were there at the creation of the Smart Growth Law convened at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison to evaluate what they had wrought. In general, they were happy with the progress, but each had an agenda for improvements.

Read the rest at   Smart Growth at 10 seems a success - JSOnline.

Making technology work: Lone blogger leapfrogs city's Technology Commission

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Hats off to Franklin blogger Greg Kowalski for doing what the City of Franklin's Technology Commission evidently cannot; Simply visit his Franklin Today Community Meetings and Events page and you'll be presented with a GoogleCalendar interface loaded with city events and meetings (see above).

If you have a GoogleCalendar account, one click of the "subscribe" button (the little "+" in the lower right corner) integrates all of these events to your calendar and it automatically updates as needed.

Technology Commission: Can you emulate Kowalski and get this simple-but-extremely useful Web 2.0 implementation on the City of Franklin website, ASAP?

Real Estate’s Next Big Thing: Walkable Communities

 
ABOVE: Get back in the car. FOR GOD'S SAKE, GET BACK IN THE CAR!

Why work to "rehabilitate" car-centric suburbs like mine? Because property values go UP in walkable communities.

To be a savvy investor in US real estate these days, you need to look beyond the business news headlines and target human-scale developments that will grow because of long-term demographic trends.

Human-scale homes and communities feature amenities that you can walk, bike, or take public transit to without getting in a car. I live in such a development in Grayslake, Illinois, where I can walk or ride to Starbucks, the supermarket, bank, dry cleaner, library, and hardware store. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else right now.

via www.minyanville.com

Some GOOD news: Secretary LaHood's Policy statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation Regulations & Recommendations | Congress for the New Urbanism

Change is good:

“Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized. We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.”

via www.cnu.org

The American Conservative(!) educates ideology-for-hire "reporter" John Stossel

 
ABOVE: John Stossel's "market-driven" heaven on earth (From the book Retrofitting Suburbia, 2009).

News Flash: To conservatives whose paychecks and livelihood are not intrinsically tied to protecting the interests of industries who grow fat on the sprawl-based policies, the concepts of Smart Growth and sustainable development are entirely consistent with their core values.

"Journalist" John Stossel -- a demagogue for whom "facts" are very malleable, to say the least --  proclaimed sprawl a "myth" (see "Myth #2"; he has since moved to FOX, which is entirely fitting).

GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE author J. H. Kunstler has nothing nice to say about Stossel and his slippery ethics. But you expect that from a lefty, right?

However, it is refreshing and worth noting when a conservative writer at a conservative web site points out the truth:

For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl.

Read the rest at The American Conservative » Sprawling Misconceptions.

Perhaps the best distillation of the reality of the situation comes from E.D. Kain at True/Slant:

Sprawl is a result of massive statist interventions into our culture and society, and its symptoms are equally enormous.  Everything that conservatism has historically stood for is undermined by sprawl.  It is not only the physical manifestation of our decline, it is a poison which continues to contribute to that decline.  Its repercussions can be felt in our discourse, in our speech, in our way of thinking.  This is not merely a matter of aesthetically pleasing communities, but of communities which allow individuals to be a part of the whole.  I doubt this is sustainable, this suburban maze – in any way: fiscally, socially, spiritually.  It is, as James Howard Kunstler called it, “a peculiar blip in human experience.”

See also the Atlantic Wire, and Andrew Sullivan.