Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

The Business Journal of Milwaukee reports Madison-Milwaukee high-speed rail project on fast track

Came across the headline above after posting this. Still, will that be enough to get my city's administration to take notice?

Read the rest at: High-speed rail project on fast track - The Business Journal of Milwaukee

Rise of the Aerotropolis?

This past Thursday's Economic Development Commission meeting - a fairly frustrating experience; more on that later - featured a presentation by Tom Rave, executive Director of Gateway Milwaukee, on the AEROTROPOLIS concept. As the topic wasn't included on our agenda (i.e. we could do no advance research), I was taken by surprise as I heard described what is essentially a giant FedEx-based city plan that radiates outward from the airport.

John Kasarda [creator of the "aerotropolis" concept] obviously sees the aerotropolis as key to America's competitive agility, and a critical one at that. Implicit in his thinking is a coming world of exponential population increase and cutthroat competition for resources and profits. His vision may evoke everything Americans find terrifying about globalization--a civilization cast in quick-drying cement, packed with worker drones--but if you grant Kasarda's seemingly implacable logic, you have to ask: How willing or able are we to adapt?

Aerotropolis?

Read the rest at: Rise of the Aerotropolis | Fast Company

"We Americans are all infrastructure - and no people."

Excellent piece from this Sunday's paper:

A void paved over with concrete - JSOnline.

Posted: Nov. 7, 2009

By Richard L. Birch

My wife and I own an apartment in the European city where her parents came from. Almería's population is over 200,000, and it's been around for hundreds of years.

As a pedestrian, one is in constant negotiation with cars and scooters because the streets are jagged in shape, cramped, sometimes lacking in sidewalks - and teeming with life. Shop storefronts display dresses and shoes that would star at the Oscars. The window of a hardware store accommodates three centuries of door latches, from the rustic to the ultra-high tech. Every step has my head craning in one direction or another, even if it is to wave a car right through a stop sign as I slip around behind - faster and friendlier for both of us.

Arriving home from Spain, we drove through Milwaukee from Mitchell International Airport, and the eerie calm of sealing ourselves behind car windows settled over us; the "carness" of our life here spread out like a gray pall all around us.

Instead of people, conversation, shopping, eating and attending to business on the hoof, we were surrounded by access roads, parking lots, highways and bridges until we eventually passed under the shadow of the hulking three-story garage whose gloomy, and empty, cavern overshadows our magnificent art museum.

We Americans are all infrastructure - and no people.

Friends here are surprised that we don't own a car in Almería. There's no need, even though life there is pretty regular and not some outlandish eco-haven like Carmel, Calif., with its boutique clothing shops and celebrity clubs.

Everything we bought for our apartment in Almería we bought on foot. Plumbers, furniture stores, computer equipment and appliances are only a few minutes away. When we bought our washing machine, the owner's brother was waiting for us at our door, our washer on a handcart, even though we lingered for only moments on the walk home.

What's the cost for living our American way? It's not just the thousands of dollars for the second car, insurance and gas. We also have to support a lake of concrete around us - and gas, electric and sewer lines to stretch out past the near-vacant belts beyond the older suburbs. Property taxes in Almería on our condo are one-twelfth our taxes in Milwaukee, even though the value of the two homes is roughly the same.

One-twelfth. Oh, and they throw in free health insurance.

That's a lot of concrete, wire and pipes to keep up - and patrol. Milwaukee's close suburbs have residential streets that have room for two lanes of traffic going each way, plus both parking and turning lanes. Six lanes of concrete.

I was driving on a street like that recently - it's residential, so I was the only car in sight, although several white lines directed me around like I had a ring in my nose on the rare chance that a second car may venture into sight. Not so long ago, people's eyes grew large when a news announcer glowed about "six-lane super-highways" in Los Angeles. Now we have them to serve blocks where only a few houses stand.

Where are the people? Nobody is coming; nobody is going.

If we gained something for our money, I'd happily pay it. But I look south out the window of my downtown office and see streets and highways, of course. Plus parking garages, ramps, driveways, surface lots and street parking - not to mention the gas stations, auto-part stores and car washes.

Our cities (and Milwaukee still remains one of the most attractive) are dead zones with small pods of life barricaded between the elements that support the passage, storage and care of cars. In our most densely trafficked sidewalks, it is a hundred feet between businesses whose windows have a chance of being interesting to look in at while walking past. Throw in a bank or two and one has to take a taxi to get between shops where people congregate over a cup of coffee or buy a shirt.

No wonder we all drive.

Almería is modern enough to need cars. For the most part, cars brought into the city are routed to underground parking. As expensive as that might sound, what otherwise would be dead space at street level goes instead to businesses with apartments above, as well as an interesting collection of squares, parks and kiosks that are a part of every day's stroll.

Read this again: one-twelfth our property taxes.

Still, it's not about the money. It's about life. We stood on the street one night in one of America's few cities that are dense and walkable: New York City. A local television station was hosting a karaoke event. Tough-looking teenagers in floppy pants were singing along with suited Japanese businessmen, middle-aged housewives in sensible shoes, Orthodox Jews in yarmulkes, students in backpacks and a couple of tourists from Milwaukee. An older businessman waited at a crosswalk with me the next day, giving directions to a pair of young guys who would raise hair at the back of my neck if I ran into them on a lonely stretch. They thanked the older man and headed off. The businessman explained, "When you're on the street, everyone knows you have to deal with people. We're all in this together."

A more ominous view about our expansively concreted lives came from a Bulgarian programmer who has just moved here. Commenting about our infrastructure, America's glory and disaster, he said, "People who are separate are easier to control."

Malls are about the only public place in America where people aren't separate. Look around a mall, though - teenagers hang with their high-school friends, parents keep toddlers in the firm grip of their hands, bums sag alone on a bench, while walkers stride by in the world of their headphones. We're as sealed off from each other as first-class is from economy on a long and monotonous flight.

In non-American cities, you see grandparents sitting with teenagers or elegantly dressed women mixing it up in a café with workmen taking a lunchtime coffee or beer. I've often seen fathers reading to their young children. Right out in public - an act that would rank as deprivation here, when the tykes could be mesmerized instead by a video in the back seat of their Escalade or Tundra.

Almería is seven hours ahead of Milwaukee, and my wife happened to call me at what was 3 in the morning her time. She'd just gotten in from dinner and a concert (whole families are out at midnight; nothing about their crazy schedule surprises me anymore). She had walked home alone, though of course she was not actually alone on the street. I was just leaving for a friend's who lived some blocks away, past several alleys, garages and shuttered stores flanked by asphalt pads.

I drove.

Richard L. Birch of Milwaukee is a business writer.

In hard economic times, Libraries become important community resource for computers and internet

From Checking out what's next - JSOnline.:

The national library study, funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, found local libraries to be important technology centers for people needing computers with Internet access as well as training and job search resources.

According to the study:

• 90% of public libraries provide technology training, such as how to seek jobs online.
• 71% - and 79% of rural libraries - say they're the only place in their communities for free computer and Internet access.
• 66% of libraries rank services for job seekers as a top online feature they offer, up from 44% in 2007.

From a member of the Franklin "community," posting on another blog:

"USE YOUR PC'S AT HOME. If you don't have one, don't expect to leech off of the taxpayers."

Meanwhile, Racine libraries see their hours and budget cut further - even while circulation is up.

Milwaukee: Boring enough for Government Meetings?

Government Meeting? Stay Away From Fun City - WSJ.com.

According to an Agriculture Department employee familiar with the guidelines, the agency issued internal travel guidelines in the spring that encourage employees to hold meetings in cities that display three key attributes: a travel hub; low in cost; and "a non-resort location." The employee said cities on the list with those three attributes included Chicago; Denver; Portland, Ore.; St. Louis; Washington, D.C.; Milwaukee; Phoenix and Fort Collins, Colo.

Kid-friendly senior housing proposed - JSOnline

By Tom Daykin of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Feb. 6, 2009

Grandparents who are raising their grandchildren - often because the parents are in prison, have drug addictions or other problems - would have apartments designed especially for their needs through a development proposed for Milwaukee's north side.

The $10 million project, Villard Square, would create 47 apartments in the 3400 block of W. Villard Ave. It would be among a small but growing group of U.S. apartment developments that combine senior housing with kid-friendly features. The idea is to put children from broken homes into a stable environment, said Chris Laurent, of the development firm Gorman & Co.

Oregon, Wis.-based Gorman, which has built several apartment complexes in the Milwaukee area, and Northwest Side Community Development Corp., a neighborhood nonprofit group, would develop Villard Square.

It would be the first Milwaukee apartment building specifically marketed to grandparents who are the main caretakers for their grandchildren, said Laurent, Gorman's Wisconsin market president. Similar apartments have been built in Chicago, Boston, New York and other cities.

There's a strong demand for such housing in Milwaukee, Laurent said. According to the 2000 census, there were 7,052 grandparents in Milwaukee who were responsible for their grandchildren.

Read the rest at  JSOnline:

Next American City in Milwaukee: Public Transportation Symposium

Next American City in Milwaukee: Public Transportation Symposium:

During the symposium, panelists discussed the pros and cons of improving the public transportation system in Milwaukee. Featuring Rob Henken, president of the Public Policy Forum and Anita Connelly, CEO of the Milwaukee Co. Transit System, as panelists, the symposium is now available to you in full, exclusively on AmericanCity.org.

(Via NAC Daily News and Intelligence.)

Funny letters to the editor: "Walker's transit plan makes good sense"

With all due sympathy for the circumstances of George Torres's exit from Franklin's Plan Commission (illness forced him to resign), a letter like the one he wrote to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel doesn't make me want to lead a rally for his return:

Walker's transit plan makes good sense

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker supports a strong transit system. He told the Milwaukee County Transit System to submit a balanced budget for 2009 that did not cut routes or raise fees. The good news is that transit officials met that challenge.

Looking ahead, Walker has a plan to provide a long-term funding source for the transit system by pursuing a plan at our airport that is similar to the plan being approved by Chicago for Midway Airport. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley already has received $1.8 billion for the Skyway toll bridge and is anticipating

$3 billion for Midway through a long-term lease. Scott Walker is also seeking to use all of the $91.5 million in federal aid to improve and upgrade the bus system through Bus Rapid Transit. Mayor Tom Barrett's plan for a streetcar system in a three-mile radius of downtown Milwaukee would cut $3 million in state and federal aid from the bus system. BRT is the better plan for the future.

George A. Torres
Milwaukee County, Director of Transportation & Public Works
Milwaukee

In other news: Amy Winehouse's lifestyle should serve as a template for all others.

Readers of this blog may recall the name; George Torres was the sitting plan commissioner who felt comfortable writing a letter dated 1/2/07 to WISDOT in support of developer Mark Carstensen's Shoppes at Wyndham Village strip mall before seeing any definitive plans and before Carstensen's development had appeared before him in his role as plan commissioner - - a role in which Torres would and should be expected to show no positive predisposition toward a project that has not yet demonstrated compliance to the city's requirements.

Download TorresLetter.pdf

An especially cuddly passage from Torres' letter:

Mr. Carstensen has also proven to be committed to ensuring his developments meet all State and local requirements. He remains open and receptive to ideas and suggestions that must be met in order to allow his projects to move ahead.

Really?

You gotta hand it to Mark Carstensen, though. After hoodwinking both the the city of Franklin and a family into a situation where there is now a single family residence built right behind Target in "Franklin's City Civic Center District" (!!!), he had the brass coconuts to actually mention the debacle from the podium at the Sendik's opening! 

It's been almost a week and my mind is still reeling from some of the things I heard from that podium; more later ...

"The dismal failure of Milwaukee’s civic leaders to bring the region’s public transit infrastructure up to 21st-century standards is more than just another run-of-the-mill breakdown in leadership."

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor Marc. V. Levine gets it right in his op-ed from this Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Meanwhile, we have in County Executive Scott Walker a living example of willful obstinacy that is slowly and oh-so-surely killing Milwaukee and the surrounding region. This blind obstructionist is planning to proudly veto an advisory referendum on a (much-needed) 1-cent increase in the county sales tax! 

Read that again: Scott Walker is vetoing a vote in which the people decide - - in a nonbinding vote - -  whether it's worth a tax hike to fix the broken county.

He doesn't want to know how the citizens of his broken county feel about the current state of transit, parks, and other infrastructure?

Who does this sort of thing? A politician who is plotting a run for governor and who fears the likes of Mark Belling, that's who. Scott Walker is looking out for Scott Walker.

Once again, self-interest reigns, and Milwaukee's reputation as a non-starter that cowers under the clumsy brickbats of conservative radio talkers - - a cartoon-character breed that squeals in desperate search of attention and ratings and without regard to any larger truth - -  spreads across the nation as surely as this poorly formed, run-on sentence spreads across your screen.

It's time to ignore the talk-radio narcissists and pandering politicians and do what needs to be done. And if a County Executive fears an advisory vote by the people that may hinder his political future, his time is up.

Dim light at the end of the tunnel

The region needs higher wattage ideas for transit

By MARC V. LEVINE

The dismal failure of Milwaukee’s civic leaders to bring the region’s public transit infrastructure up to 21st-century standards is more than just another run-of-the-mill breakdown in leadership.

It is a public policy debacle that threatens the very economic viability of this city and region — and it comes at a time when we already are struggling with stagnant growth, spreading poverty and shockingly high rates of joblessness in the inner city.

Skyrocketing gas prices and awareness of climate change are reshaping the way Americans live, work and play. Mass transit ridership is surging in cities with rail transit systems, as commuters seek alternatives to $4.50-a-gallon gasoline. Suburban and exurban communities, whose growth was predicated on cars and cheap gas, are facing bursting housing bubbles and an uncertain future.

In this new era, the economic winners will be cities and regions that have invested in state-of-the-art mass transit. Unfortunately, few metropolitan areas are less prepared for these changes than Milwaukee.

Unlike in virtually all other large U.S. cities, leaders here have balked for two decades at building any form of regional rail transit.

By contrast, other cities, such as Baltimore, St. Louis and Minneapolis have built light rail systems since the 1990s (and ridership has soared by 15% this year in all three places). In 2004, Denver voters approved a $4.7 billion bond issue, underwritten by a sales tax, for a 119-mile expansion of their system, while Kansas City recently approved financing of a $1 billion, 27-mile light rail line.

Even in conservative, historically anti-tax “red states,” civic leaders and voters have understood the economic imperative of investing in rail transit. Salt Lake City recently raised the sales tax to expand regional rail. Phoenix is building a 20-mile, $1.3 billion light rail line. And in Texas, that bastion of big-government liberalism, Dallas is investing $4 billion to double the size of its regional light rail system to 90 miles.

In an era of expensive gas and pressures to reduce carbon footprints, it takes some magical thinking to believe that Milwaukee can remain economically competitive as one of the nation’s only large cities without such infrastructure.

The intransigence of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, bolstered by know-nothing talk radio hosts, columnists and bloggers, is obviously the biggest impediment to sensible transit policy.

Fortunately, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett supports rail transit. Unfortunately, he has offered an inadequate plan: a streetcar Downtown Circulator that would run in a three-mile loop around downtown, which is too small and too slow to generate either of the two key economic benefits of rail transit — linking workers to employment hubs in the region or promoting development along rail corridors.

Barrett sees the Circulator as a “starter” investment toward a more elaborate rail system, touting its links to the vastly oversold KRM commuter rail proposal. But it’s likely that the mayor’s trolley to nowhere would draw meager ridership, thus providing more ammunition to the opponents of light rail, foreclosing future investments and leaving us with an underutilized white elephant ringing downtown.

Barrett, properly concerned about fiscal responsibility, notes that “advocates have failed to explain how to fund a more extensive system.”

Yes, public finances are tight everywhere. Yet leaders in places as varied as Denver, Baltimore, Dallas, Minneapolis and Charlotte have financed the construction or expansion of their systems in recent years. Moreover, even in fiscally strapped Milwaukee, we’ve found a way to spend billions in the past decade on a baseball stadium and a convention center, mega-projects that nearly all economists agree contribute precious little to regional economic growth.

Surely, then, given the existential importance of transit for metro Milwaukee, a financially sensible, $1 billion regional fixed-rail plan can be crafted:

• Using the $91.5 million in federal funds already allocated.

• Minimizing capital costs by extensively utilizing existing rail rights of way.

• Creatively deploying such tools as tax incremental financing.

• Selling station-area development rights.

• Receiving infrastructure support from the State of Wisconsin.

• And, yes, implementing a regional sales tax (with rebates to low-income residents) to fund transit improvements and operations.

If Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, more federal funding likely will be available for rail transit. Obama’s campaign platform calls for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that could provide an infusion of funds to cities like Milwaukee to invest in transit (as well as in other infrastructure vital to economic development).

But the biggest problem is not fiscal but political.

Barrett and his allies should boldly confront the anti-rail demagogues, advocating a comprehensive fixed-rail plan for Milwaukee’s future that would link key hubs (downtown, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the County Grounds and the airport) and stretch from the North Shore suburbs through the central city, perhaps to Brookfield.

The region’s corporate leaders, represented by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the Greater Milwaukee Committee, supposedly support regional rail transit. If that’s true, they should make it the centerpiece of the Milwaukee 7 initiative, turning it into a more muscular regionalism that could underpin an economic revitalization of the city and region.

Rail is not a panacea for Milwaukee’s economic woes: It will not single-handedly solve the crisis of inner city joblessness, end poverty or create a culture of economic innovation here (although it will help in all of those areas).

But imagine a future of $8-a-gallon gas, in which Milwaukee is one of the few large cities in the United States without rail transit.

Businesses increasingly will locate in transit-friendly regions that offer the efficient and economical flow of people, goods and services. A Milwaukee without rail transit runs the risk of becoming economically obsolete, a city whose leaders failed to invest in its economic future.

Investing in rail is not like flipping a switch; the lead time is substantial. We already are way behind other cities, and our economic viability is slipping away.

The time for action is now.

Marc V. Levine is a professor of history, economic development and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The Decline of the Exurban Lifestyle: Still not convinced?

Though this blog is more concerned with improving present suburban communities than it is in seeing them wiped out, a story in today's New York Times paints a pretty dismal picture for those suburbs that are even more far-flung - - the so-called "exurbs"; collections of subdivisions that are utterly and completely dependent upon automobiles for their very existence.

Sure, people like having their space and their 5-car garages, but ...

... life on the edges of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. Mr. Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Mr. Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel fuel. In March, the last time he filled his propane tank to heat his spacious house, he paid $566, more than twice the price of 5 years ago.

Though Mr. Boyle finds city life unappealing, it is now up for reconsideration.
....

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com.

Car-worshippers (and Bush-Cheney-Big Oil apologists) who constantly confound Milwaukee's efforts to get a sane light rail system built would do well to observe Denver, Colorado's experience:

A $6.1 billion commuter rail system has been in the works over the last four years, drawing people downtown without cars, while stimulating swift sales of densely clustered condos near stations.

Coors Field, the intimate, brick-fronted baseball stadium for the Colorado Rockies, has transformed the surrounding area from a desolate skid row into fashionable Lower Downtown, a neighborhood of restaurants and microbreweries in restored warehouses. Along the Platte River, new condos set on a park strip offer an arresting tableau of glass, steel, and futuristic geometry, attracting throngs of buyers at rising prices.

“This is a city where it’s fun to be in the center,” said Tim Burleigh, 56, who sold his house in the suburbs and now walks to Rockies games from his downtown condo.

But, alas, you gotta spend some real money and change the one-person-per-car paradigm to get out from under the thumb of Big Oil. The same "conservative" attitudes (and a few liberal ones as well) that have led to the current crumbling state of our national infrastructure and dismal community standards (optional sidewalks?) are raising the stakes of the upcoming crisis by obstinately denying the fact that we desperately need a mass transit re-fit program at the level of 1956's Federal Aid Highway Act.

And, what the heck, put the word "defense" in the name of whatever act we come up with (ala the Highway Act's alternate name, National Interstate and Highways Defense Act). Imagine a foreign policy scenario wherein OPEC-member nations observe an entire nation gearing up to drastically reduce consumption of their cash cow. Imagine NOT spending lives and money in Iraq (because that's an oil war, pure and simple).

The full NYT story is after the jump. (NYT story Via Calculated Risk:)

See also this entry from Calculated Risk linking to an LA Times story that describes a California community where 15%(!) of homes are bank-owned or in some level of foreclosure.

New York Times Graphic (click to enlarge)