Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

So, now I'm a plan commissioner ...

Back in June of 2006, I started this blog as a research exercise upon learning that the neighboring cities of Franklin (where I live) and Oak Creek would somehow cooperate on developing 27th Street, which acts as a border between the communities.

That led me to the discovery of a book called THE GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE by James Howard Kunstler, a reading experience that utterly changed my view of the world around me. 

Haven't read it yet? Take a break and GO ORDER A COPY. I'll wait.

Anyway, attempting to follow the 27th Street drama led to my attendance at many Common Council and Plan Commission meetings, where, combined with my outside reading, I learned "how the sausage is made" in terms of suburban development. I discovered that our suburban built environment will continue to be bleak and uninviting (with precious few exceptions) unless citizens and stakeholders step up and voice their opinions. So very often, bad planning was a result of simply continuing with policies that "worked" in the past, without regard to our present reality or the long term effects of, for instance, making it impossible for kids to walk to school or sporting events.

So my blog became a voice in the suburban wilderness, introducing terms like "walkability" and "smart growth" into the public debate (I think I can take credit for the recent proliferation of the phrase "sea of asphalt" in local media). I began speaking at public meetings -- and, after a period of attracting little more than quizzical stares, I think the economic and social sense of what I was advocating began to take root.

I did my time on the Economic Development Commission; continue to work on connectivity issues while serving on the Trails Committee (including helping to capture a Safe Routes to School Grant); and kept plugging away at the Sprawled Out blog.

Recently, a vacancy appeared on the Franklin Plan Commission, and I threw my name in for consideration. Last night, the Common Council voted unanimously to endorse my nomination, so I am now a Plan Commissioner -- first meeting is tomorrow night.

I'm grateful for the opportunity, and hope to bring something of value to Franklin's overall vision. I also want to use this blog to increase transparency of the planning and development process in Franklin, so you can look forward to seeing, whenever possible, pdfs of the materials Plan Commissioners .have access to for each meeting and decision.

Onward ...

... And we wonder why my community seems stuck in reverse

Prepared a nifty little presentation on Digital Visualization for city planning and development at the request of Franklin's  (deep breath) "Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee."

Spousal negotiation to free up time for prep and presentation/discussion? CHECK.

Projector? CHECK.

Quick tutorial by city engineer on how not to break the projector's $400 bulb? CHECK.

PowerPoint? CHECK.

Adapter for Mac? CHECK.

Cool slides with bullet points and stuff? CHECK.

Handouts? CHECK.

 

Committee Quorum? NOPE.

 

In the age of cel phones, grown adults cannot call to say they won't be able to attend a meeting. So much for ambitious notions, proactive planning, grand plans and out-of-the-box thinking in Franklin, WI.

Pack it up; go home.

City Asks: Who Put Up All Those Stop Signs?

From NPR:

Authorities in Cranston, R.I., as WPRI-TV reports, say they've only partially solved the mystery of who put up nearly 700 stop signs that hadn't gotten proper approval.

State Department of Transportation officials have said their workers were responsible for about one-third of the signs. The other two-thirds? A spokeswoman for the mayor says many may have been installed by city residents.

"Anecdotally, people will tell you that in years past they would call city hall and a sign would go up," says that spokeswoman, Robin Schutt:

Our favorite part of WPRI reporter Kathryn Sotnik's report: The caution from the mayor's office that "drivers ... should not take this as a free pass. A stop sign is a stop sign."

Cranston is no small place, by the way. Population: Nearly 80,000.

 

Watch a local news report at: City Asks: Who Put Up All Those Stop Signs? : The Two-Way : NPR

The costly cul-de-sac in Milwaukee Magazine

Almost a year ago I wrote a well-received blog entry about expensive cul-de-sacs. That has evolved into an article I did for the November issue of Milwaukee Magazine, which you can download below.  

PDF:  Download Insider Milwaukee Magazine Cul-de-sac

Morning rainbow

Morning rainbow, originally uploaded by John Michlig.

 

City engineering by "gut": "Let's live on the edge and BUILD THE FOUR-LANER!"

This post is a comment in response to an item at a Franklin blog, Fred Keller's BATTLE JOINED -- please excuse a bit of localese as well as cut-and-paste linkage, as this was done quickly:

 

Fred: Your "Let's widen College Avenue" argument doesn't make a lot of sense, frankly, unless you are merely looking for a cudgel with which to hammer the mayor. And, any cudgel will do, right?

You ask: Why would the mayor and city officials argue for Contest Sensitive Design when a road is being built through our community?

Really?

The idea that road congestion will increase at a steady rate is just FALSE, reinforced by a road-building industry anxious to lay more asphalt. (A mile of freeway costs three to four times the annual operating expense to the state of a rail line connecting us to Madison and Chicago -- has that not occurred to you?)

"But we need to build capacity," you might say. (Actually, what you said was: "Let's live on the edge and BUILD THE FOUR-LANER!")

But - what's that? Traffic can DECREASE? Guess what - the engineers don't account for that in their forecasts. They are all about BUILDING IT UP. If traffic rates go up +.05 in a year, they tend to keep adding the same increase every year.

Let's apply engineer-style traffic analysis: My daughter grew 1.5 inches in the past year. At this rate, she'll be over 9 feet tall by the time she's my age.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/08dectvt/index.cfm (2008)

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/09dectvt/ (2009)

Your stance sees to be "gut instinct" against years of traffic studies NOT DONE BY ROAD BUILDERS that show widening roads actually INCREASES traffic and congestion (it's called "induced traffic"); and that creating alternative travel options (bike and ped) DECREASES traffic and congestion.

The Federal Highway Administration found in a study in Milwaukee that induced traffic accounted for 11-22 percent of the area's increased traffic from 1963 to 1991. ("Widening roads to ease traffic congestion is ineffective and expensive at the same time," said Roy Kienitz, Executive Director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. "It's like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt.")

I have no time to get fancy (a pillar of your argument: "waste time digging up stats for me!"), so I'm quoting here directly from another web site: A road diet on San Francisco’s Valencia Street reduced automobile through lanes from four to two, adding a center turn lane and two bike lanes. Following this change, collisions involving pedestrians declined 36%, accompanied by an increase in pedestrian traffic and a whopping 140% increase in bicycle riders – all without significantly altering automobile traffic capacity. (http://www.completestreets.org/complete-streets-fundamentals/factsheets/ease-congestion/)

Also: "When travel demand requires three moving lanes in each direction and/or double left turn and right turn lanes, the roadway impact on the adjacent community can become severe. From on urban planning standpoint, volumes of these magnitudes usually indicate too few arterial streets serving that particular corridor or a lack of freeway capacity for the longer trips that should not be on the arterial street system to begin with. Although it is recognized that geographic and urban development constraints may require these six-lane arterials in some situations, these conditions should be dealt with early in the planning process for new or developing suburbs, and some compromises and special design measures may be needed in existing corridors where other alternatives exist." (http://www.urbanstreet.info/3rd_symp_proceedings/Retrofitting%20Urban%20Arterials%20into%20Complete%20Streets.pdf)

"The phenomenon of induced traffic works in reverse as well. When New York's West Side Highway collapsed in 1973, an NYDOT study showed that 93 percent of the car trips lost did not reappear elsewhere; people simply stopped driving. A similar result accompanied the destruction of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway in the 1989 earthquake. Citizens voted to remove the freeway entirely despite the apocalyptic warnings of traffic engineers. Surprisingly, a recent British study found that downtown road removals tend to boost local economies, while new roads lead to higher urban unemployment. So much for road-building as a way to spur the economy." (From the book SUBURBAN NATION)

You also proceed from a FORTUNATE standpoint: You and your kids perhaps can (or will) drive. How about a bit of empathy for those of us who want to create an environment of moderate independent travel for the elderly of differently-abled? I can tell you for CERTAIN that I will not live in a community where my son cannot walk a few blocks to get on a bus or visit a friend. 

Interesting statistic: Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 15- to 20- year-olds. Franklin's 16-to-20 year-olds have NO OPTION but to drive.

Do you know that a pedestrian or bikers chance of death jumps from 45% to 85% when the speed limit jumps from a sane, residential 30 MPH to the Franklin-standard (and enforced by engineering) 40 MPH?

A 27th street public transit hub (i.e. better than the spotty bus service currently available) is a logical next step. The average American who lives in an area that's walkable and has transit spends only 9% of their income on transportation, while a person living in an area that requires driving spends more than 25%. College Ave. can feed bikes and pedestrians to a public transit hub IF ACCOMMODATIONS ARE MADE FOR THEM NOW. 

Of pedestrians killed in 2007 and 2008, more than 50% died on arterial roadways, typically designed to be wide and fast (ala College Ave).  Roads like these are built to move cars and too often do not have meet the needs of pedestrian or bicyclist safety. 

You can dismiss safety, induced congestion, and mobility for the differently-abled and elderly. But how about ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

http://www.ceosforcities.org/files/WalkingTheWalk_CEOsforCities1.pdf (WALKING THE WALK: How Walkability Raises Home Values in U.S. Cities, by CEOs for Cities)

http://www.walk21.com/papers/Litman(1).pdf (
Economic Value of Walkability)

Want to rely on something more reality-based than your "gut instinct"? Dig into these studies:

http://www.hsisinfo.org//pdf/10-053.pdf (Evaluation of Lane Reduction “Road Diet” Measures on Crashes)

http://www.completestreets.org/webdocs/resources/lanewidth-safety.pdf (Relationship of Lane Width to Safety for Urban and Suburban Arterials)

http://www.vtpi.org/cong_relief.pdf (Smart Congestion Reductions: Reevaluating The Role Of Highway Expansion For Improving Urban Transportation)

http://www.urbanstreet.info/3rd_symp_proceedings/Retrofitting%20Urban%20Arterials%20into%20Complete%20Streets.pdf (RETROFITTING URBAN ARTERIALS INTO COMPLETE STREETS)

 

Developer Industry survey confirms: "Smart growth has become the 'conservative' investment."

Great story to come across as I get ready to attend a meeting of the Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee: Money talks - sprawls walks.

In a survey of 1000 builders, developers and other industry professionals operating along the East Coast from Connecticut to Florida, sixty percent reported that, “to stay competitive, they are shifting away from bigger traditional home designs to conservative pedestrian-oriented mixed-use neighborhoods.”   In other words, smart growth has become the “conservative” investment.  The survey was sponsored by a group of real estate-related companies based in New Jersey, Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania and covered a wide range of issues in an effort to determine how current economic conditions are affecting builders.

Read the rest at: Industry survey confirms developers shifting to smart growth

The diaper on the curb: This is the new community?

ABOVE: Somebody else's business.

So, I was out on my run yesterday -- beautiful weather -- and once again saw my old friend the discarded diaper.

Way back on October 27th we were buffeted by windstorms. It just so happened that these days-long winds occurred during trash collection day on a certain street in Franklin, and a garbage can disgorged a tightly wrapped disposable diaper. I saw it on the curb as I ran my route a day or two after the storms.

And then I saw it again a few days after that.

Three days later -- still there. 

A week later; hadn't budged. (Evidently a hefty, er, load.)

I took the pictures above and below today, November 8th; that's 12 days after the windstorm. At least two trash collection days have come and gone, meaning the homeowners on either side of this discarded diaper looked right at it as they placed their garbage cans by the curb -- and did nothing.

They backed out of their driveways and looked at it -- and did nothing.

What if a neighborhood kid grabs it and gets curious? Didn't seem to occur to anyone living there.

 
ABOVE: Becoming a local landmark.

Every time I passed it I considered how I might discard it myself. However, carrying a weeks-old soiled diaper a mile-and-a-quarter back to my house never seemed like a good plan.

But surely, I thought, someone on this street full of carefully manicured lawns will take the time to come out with a plastic bag and take this refuse off the street. 

Never happened.

I'd see people out for a walk with their dog and doggie-doo bags; people who pick up raw excrement as a matter of routine. They'd walk right past it.

Today on my way to Moondance for lunch I stopped with an old Target bag and picked up the discarded diaper after I took these pictures. I could feel eyes on me from the surrounding houses. Probably a bit suspicious -- though, on the other hand, their long diaper nightmare had been successfully dealt with. Call me a socialist, if you must.

The "curbside diaper" is an unfortunate visual metaphor for how insular we've become. Though there are surely subdivisions in Franklin and other suburbs that are cared for beyond each homeowner's property edge, there are far too many like this street, which you would be hard-pressed to characterize as a neighborhood. It's just a fast road with houses on either side. I see "perma-refuse" in these kinds of non-places on a regular basis. 

Perhaps they are waiting for the city to deal with these sorts of things. The same city which is cutting back municipal services because the cry has gone up that property taxes are too darn high.

But they still want a discarded diaper to magically disappear.

I feel old, because it used to be different. My dad and I used to go for long walks, and he'd pick up whatever refuse he saw -- and tell me to do the same -- and we'd deposit it with the next neighbor we saw out on the porch or out washing their car. There would be "howdys" and the unquestioning acceptance of whatever my dad and I had picked up; into the garage garbage can it would go. You didn't even have to ask -- this was our neighborhood, after all.

But, in my city, this diaper could not be budged from its position.

So, the question is this: When did we start believing that our "community" -- our responsibility --  ends at our individual driveways?

 

Redefining Home in a Depressed Market - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Curtains at last for McMansions?

How has the collapse of the housing market changed people's attitudes toward homeownership and their expectations for how they will live? Is the yearning for a McMansion on the edge of a corn field really dead?

In his column on Monday, David Brooks said that when the economy tanked, the "great age of headroom" -- supersized houses being the main example -- came to an end. "The oversized now looks slightly ridiculous," he writes, and "social norms have since changed."

Some urban planners and housing market analysts say that demographic trends back up that thesis: the housing landscape that emerges from the recession, they say, will be driven not only by older empty nesters who don't like to drive at night anymore but also by Generation Y, the millennials who grew up in supersized houses in far-flung suburbs and who want to live differently, at least as long as they are childless. But historians and other experts on sprawl are not so sure.

What will the housing landscape be, if and when the market recovers from the recession? What should government's role be in promoting where and how Americans live?

 

Read the debate at: Redefining Home in a Depressed Market - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

• Downsize and Retrofit

   Ellen Dunham-Jones andJune Williamson, architecture professors

• No Suburban Morality Tale

   Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Reform Before New Building

  Edward Glaeser, economist, Harvard

• A Radical Re-alignment

   Laurie Volk andTodd Zimmerman, housing market analysts

• Preventing Future Busts

   Gregory K. Ingram, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

 

The Political Environment: High-Speed Rail Is A National Economic Development Plan

As Wisconsin's new Governor-elect works to pull the coffin-lid shut on Wisconsin's middle class and fully enable corporate socialism, here's another excellent reality-based post by James Rowen on the importance of Wisconsin's participation in regional and national economic development:

Lost in the rhetoric and misstatements about the Madison-Milwaukee train is that it is a segment of a network of trains connecting Chicago and the Twin Cities, and eventually a portion of a truly national rail system.

It makes no sense to excise Wisconsin from the line. Check out this map of the Midwest plan, and remember that it will connect to routes service other regions, too.

It will make the state an inaccessible economic backwater.

Short-to-medium length trips are not always available by air; often airports are distant from central business districts or other job centers, and last-minute air travel can be pricey.

And many people - - the elderly, the young - - do not drive, do not own a car or have access to one. Rail opponents, often suburbanites, need to realize that not everyone has a minivan.

The rail system is intended to fill in these gaps, providing connections among businesses, universities and tourist destinations not easily served by aviation.

Trains also offer a working environment not replicable inside a car.

Modern trains are fast, wi-fi-equipped, comfortable and imminently practical.

A new national rail network makes an infrastructure investment that fills a need, puts people to work and was to be made available in Wisconsin at no construction cost, and an annual operating charge statewide of about $60,000 a month.  A bargain, as I said a few days ago.

As the scribe Wisconsin State Journal philosopher scribe used to say, "What could be more fairer?"

Read the rest at: The Political Environment: High-Speed Rail Is A National Economic Development Plan