Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Suburbs are built to encourage sloth, and sloth is expensive

ABOVE: "The way home" for students of a Franklin Elementary School.

This weekend my family traveled to Wauwatosa's St. Bernard school for my daughter's latest basketball tournament. St. Bernard is located just up the road from the State Street commercial area, and across the street from a complex containing a coffee shop, ice cream shop, restaurants, etc.

What a pleasure it was to park our family truckster one time and enjoy an afternoon walking from place to place on a brisk, sunny day. We were able to stroll to a nearby cash machine to get money, celebrate the team's effort afterward at the ice cream shop, and grab a coffee before returning to our parked vehicle, feeling invigorated by a pleasant walk and actual social interaction. The streets and sidewalks were bustling with neighbors out enjoying their surroundings, greeting one another en route to this or that errand.

What a contrast to the typical suburban experience that seems to serve sloth and bunker-to-bunker transport above all else. A few weekends back, my daughter and I went out to locate an off-season indoor batting cage so she could get some swings in before try-outs. Our target facility was closed, leaving us with lots of time before showtime for Avatar at Franklin's Showtime Cinema. Could we perhaps drive to the area and park, eat lunch, and spend an hour or so in a nearby coffee shop or book store before the movie? Perhaps even enjoy some spontaneous interaction with fellow Franklinites before or after the film?

Not in Franklin, where, like so many suburbs, "single use/single purpose" is the name of the game; Showtime Cinema is isolated in the middle of a field, with absolutely nothing attached or nearby that would encourage doing two or more things while simply parking once. You drive there to go to a movie. Period. Then you get back in your car and drive somewhere else.

 
ABOVE and BELOW: Corner of Rawson and 76th -- The area in Franklin sometimes referred to as "downtown." Enjoy. Now hurry up and get back in the car; you look suspicious.

 

Think about how absurd it is that, for example, while Sendik's and CVS Pharmacy are located right next to one another, you cannot safely walk between them -- nor are you invited to do so by the car-centric site plan.

Or, given data showing that walkability increases home values, how about encouraging development and construction on the city-owned vacant lot next to the library which would be a terrific place for a coffee shop or other "third place," thereby creating an actual multi-use community-commercial-municipal-recreation-business amenity -- in the heart of what is designated as Franklin's "City Civic Center District" --  that allows people to move from place to place and purpose to purpose on foot?

Nope. The Franklin Economic Development Commission did not spring into action on my suggestion, to say the least. 

Faced with no place in our fair city to merely hang out, my daughter and I drove to Greenfield and spent quality time -- and money --  in Barnes & Noble. We probably walked a total of 100 steps all afternoon; car to door, door to car, car to door, etc. 

In an article entitled "Crimes of the Heart," Newsweek magazine nails the overwhelmingly negative correlation between an arbitrarily "planned" built environment, our levels of health and fitness, and the expense incurred as a result:

Until last year, the residents of Albert Lea, Minn., were no healthier than any other Americans. Then the city became the first American town to sign on to the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project—the brainchild of writer Dan Buettner, whose 2008 book, The Blue Zones, detailed the health habits of the world's longest-lived people. His goal was to bring the same benefits to middle America—not by forcing people to diet and exercise, but by changing their everyday environments in ways that encourage a healthier lifestyle.

What followed was a sort of townwide makeover. The city laid new sidewalks linking residential areas with schools and shopping centers. It built a recreational path around a lake and dug new plots for community gardens. Restaurants made healthy changes to their menus. Schools banned eating in hallways (reducing the opportunities for kids to munch on snack food) and stopped selling candy for fundraisers. (They sold wreaths instead.) More than 2,600 of the city's 18,000 residents volunteered, too, selecting from more than a dozen heart-healthy measures—for example, ridding their kitchens of supersize dinner plates (which encourage larger portions) and forming "walking schoolbuses" to escort kids to school on foot.

The results were stunning. In six months, participants lost an average of 2.6 pounds and boosted their estimated life expectancy by 3.1 years. Even more impressive, health-care claims for city and school employees fell for the first time in a decade—by 32 percent over 10 months. And benefits didn't accrue solely to volunteers. Thanks to the influence of social networks, says Buettner, "even the curmudgeons who didn't want to be involved ended up modifying their behaviors."

in case you glossed over it, allow me to repeat, with proper emphasis, a startling outcome:

Health-care claims for city and school employees fell for the first time in a decade—by 32 percent over 10 months

That's dollars and cents.

Later in the article comes this suggestion:

Require that sidewalks and bike lanes be part of every federally funded road project.

The government already spends 1 percent of transportation dollars on such projects. It should increase the level to 2 to 3 percent. When sidewalks are built in neighborhoods and downtowns, people start walking. "The big win for city government is that anything built to a walkable scale leases out for three to five times more money, with more tax revenue on less infrastructure," says Dan Burden, executive director of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute. He recommends a "road diet" in which towns eliminate a lane or two of downtown traffic and substitute sidewalks. "When roads slim down, so do people," he says.

See also The Center-less Town Center.

Fountains of Franklin demise: Case Study One for new development task force

ABOVE: Completely arbitrary (and therefor as accurate as any other presented) artist's depiction of planned Fountains of Franklin retail development.

The long-languishing Fountains of Franklin development site faces a foreclosure suit.

The history of this project is, frankly, the stuff of reality TV, complete with "evil developers," a call for an alderman's resignation, sudden city "forgetfulness" regarding zoning, selective enforcement of ordinances, accusations of preferential treatment of developers whose names begin with "C" and end with "arstensen," incriminating spy photos, a comically-perturbed local blogger, startling new definitions for the term "upscale," and, finally, time travel.

That's why this project is a perfect case study for the new Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee, which was created, after all, to untangle the development process in Franklin.

So: I triple dog dare the Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee to look carefully at the development process as followed in the case of Fountains of Franklin. I submit that we would learn more in diagramming the twists and turns in that single debacle than in the pages of any expensively commissioned report.

 

What a tangled web we weave: Franklin impanels a group to examine the development process

As posted by Greg Kowalski on his Franklin Today blog, listed below are the suggested members of new Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee, proposed by Alderman Steve Taylor and charged with untangling the development process here in Franklin.

At Monday's Economic Development Commission meeting, both James Kerr and I answered the call for volunteers (the mayor requested one each from the Economic, Environmental, and Plan commissions). Given Mr. Kerr's enormous experience in process management (he was Deputy Airports Director/COO for the Milwaukee County Airport Division from 1983-2005), I notified the mayor via email that I think his skill set is exactly what this effort needs.

I'll be attending the meetings, however, because the prospect of hearing developers give real-life examples of their frustrations in working with the city promises to be fascinating.

Suggested step one: Invest in a HUGE whiteboard and create what will likely be a complicated, multi-colored process map. And make sure you have lots of fresh markers ....

CHAIRMAN: Mayor Tom Taylor

ALDERMANIC REP: Common Council President Steve Taylor

DEVELOPERS: Mark Carstensen, Jim O'Malley, and Jim Kupfer

PLAN COMMISSIONER: Randy Ritter

ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSIONER: Maryjane Ingersoll

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONER: James Kerr

Moving the Tipping Point for Creative Places

Human-scaled, creative development can't gain a foothold because most of the money in real estate comes from institutional investors that prefer predictable, large scale projects like subdivisions and strip malls, says Neil Takemoto of CoolTown Beta Communities:

Why is it that the vast majority of new development is at an institutional scale, and we don't see human-scaled fine-grained urban fabric, the kind that makes historic neighborhoods so desirable? Well, it's mainly because the vast majority of real estate development investment dollars come from institutional investors, and where does that money come from? Your pension and insurance dollars are sourcing this tremendous pool of capital that has to be invested somewhere. To those investment managers with billions to manage, why manage fifty projects if you can manage only ten instead? That simply means they'll prefer investing no less than $5 million at a time, which translates to $15 million projects. That precludes most every single human-scaled building you’d find, explaining why human-scaled neighborhoods weren't built since the 1920s, leaving only large-scale strip malls, subdivisions, office buildings…

The thing is, the emerging you-centric market is demanding customized and personal, not mass-produced and commoditized. So how in the world is the supply of investment capital going to accommodate this? By focusing on the long tail - which is essentially anything and everything else that’s a 'non-hit' or 'non-blockbuster', but in sum is greater. The good news is that it's inevitable - witness the rise of Netflix instead of Blockbuster; Amazon/eBay/iTunes instead of Wal-Mart; YouTube instead of TV, all of which focus on the thousands of individual niches of smaller interests that are in sum greater than the only the most popular interests. All that was missing was a reliable system of delivery.

Read the rest at: Moving the Tipping Point for Creative Places | Planetizen

Franklin alderman wants to speed development process - JSOnline

This is a good idea -- as someone who has followed the progress of individual developments, it's abundantly clear to me that creating something worthwhile in Franklin is hamstrung by obstacles that do nothing to improve the quality of our built environment. I've inquired about this very issue in the past and was directed to the inch-thick "Ruekert/Mielke Planning Department Organizational Study" (see above). It's no fun to read.

If a developer wants to build an ambitious, mixed usage, Middleton Hills-type traditional neighborhood development subdivision, for instance, he or she will find ROOM to do so here in Franklin, but will likely look elsewhere after the first few administrative roadblocks and ambiguities appear.

"Speed" is not the specific issue; there are plenty of municipalities that have enviable fast development processes that lead to terrible results. 

The main thing is this: As long as a city's development process is clear and fair for all, that city can and should demand high quality results that will reward both the developer and the community. When a city's development process appears fragmented and arbitrary, you cannot blame developers who do no more than the bare minimum to assure their financial success.  

See Alderman Taylor's letter outlining his proposal at the Franklin Today blog, along with some conjecture by Greg Kowalski as to who might be on the committee.

Franklin alderman wants to speed development process - JSOnline.

Saying it takes too long to get developments approved in the city, Common Council President Steve Taylor is asking his fellow aldermen to create a committee to review the development process. 

Taylor is proposing a Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee to study what procedures work best in other communities to see if they can be implemented in Franklin. 

He said some developers tell him that a development proposed in other communities can be approved in 90 days but that it takes nine months in Franklin. 

Taylor is proposing that the committee be headed by Mayor Tom Taylor. The mayor would choose an alderman, three people experienced in development, and one member each from the city plan, economic development and environmental commissions to serve on the committee. The members would be approved by the Common Council.

CNU's Norquist in Hartford Courant: Fund real main streets — not highways — with the "Jobs for Main Streets" bill now in Congress | Congress for the New Urbanism

From the Congress for the New Urbanism website:

The rollout of Congress' latest stimulus bill has been all about "Jobs for Main Street." That's a great message, argues CNU President John Norquist in a timely op-ed in the Hartford Courant, except for one problem. When it comes to the jobs bill's largest expenditure — $27.5 million for highways and roads — Main Streets are largely missing. Writes Norquist:

The $27.5 billion isn't targeted to rebuild streets at the heart of older cities and towns, the cherished settings for Memorial Day parades and holiday light displays. No, the money will primarily go to projects that government knows best — the expansion of wide, motor-vehicle-only highways that go hand-in-hand with energy-wasting sprawl. This follows the earlier stimulus bill that favored massive highway projects, including a batch of expensive "highways to nowhere" that an examination by the Infrastructurist website concluded "make no sense."

The new bill does reserve $8.4 billion for transit and $800 million for Amtrak. But just when U.S. real estate markets are turning to Main Street and traditional neighborhood design, Congress throws $27.5 billion at the infrastructure — road widening — that supports sprawl.

Whether the setting is small towns like Guilford, older suburbs like West Hartford or bigger cities like New Haven, the traditional Main Street in Connecticut and other states is proving to be a model around which to build livable and energy-efficient communities. A report by economist Joseph Cortright for CEOs for Cities is the latest to find homes within walking distance of shops, schools and other amenities commanding significantly higher prices than sprawl counterparts.

And in the world of commercial real estate, the hot trend — named by Time Magazine as one of "ten ideas changing the world" — is "retrofitting suburbia" with walkable, mixed-use development. None other than Tyson's Corner, Va., the largest sprawl commercial complex in the country, is due for a multibillion-dollar urban makeover complete with traditional main streets.

The article goes on to extol the benefits of reinvesting in main streets and neighboring networks of walkable transit-served streets — benefits that include saving households hundreds of dollars monthly on transportation costs, promoting physical activity and reducing obesity, curbing greenhouse gases, and supporting more diverse economies. The research behind these conclusions is impressive and will be explored in greater depth at CNU 18  in Atlanta, "New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places" which is being oraganized in cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Writes Norquist:

Evidence shows these networks save money — and they save lives. Research by engineering professors Norman Garrick of the University of Connecticut and Wes Marshall of the University of Colorado-Denver reveals that traffic injury and fatality rates are three times higher in California cities with sprawling streets than in those with compact, connected networks.

Brookings-backed research from the Center for Neighborhood Technology shows that highway-served sprawling areas in region after region have the highest household transportation costs and highest per-capita carbon emissions. Each months, residents of walkable, transit-served neighborhoods save hundreds of dollars in average transportation costs.

Read the rest at: Norquist in Hartford Courant: Fund real main streets — not highways — with the "Jobs for Main Streets" bill now in Congress | Congress for the New Urbanism

METROBURBIA, USA: Community-building and "Intersubjectivity"

Asphalt, concrete, parked cars, and -- benches notwithstanding - - no life.

From the excellent METROBURBIA, USA, by Paul K. Knox:

The basis of both individual lifeworlds and the collective structure of feeling is intersubjectivity: shared meanings that are derived from the lived experience of everyday practice. An important part of the basis for intersubjectivity is the routinization of individual and social practice in time and space. A positive and distinctive sense of place stems in large part from routine encounters and shared experiences that make for intersubjectivity. This requires plenty of opportunities for informal, casual meetings and gossip; friendly bars and pubs and a variety of settings in which to purchase and/or consume food; street markets; a variety of comfortable places to sit, wait, and people-watch; a sense of ease with changing seasons; and, above all, a sense of belonging, affection, hospitality, vitality, and historical and cultural continuity: not the attributes that anyone associates with American suburbia.

Suburban strip malls: There's no "there" there

Franklin's own Shoppes at Wyndham Village -- Good news: A handy Target store! Bad news: In no danger of being named one of the Great Places in America

Retrofitting Suburbia on suburban strip malls:

At best, the promise of freedom inherent to the road and the promise of self actualization promoted by consumerism endow the strip with the capacity to satisfy a broad range of individual needs and desires. At worst, the collective aspirations expressed by the commercial strip speak of the willing suppression of local identity by national systems of corporate investment and mass consumption.

Creating Neighborhood Capital from Strip Malls | Planetizen

This is a concept being talked about at dense urban levels - but what about suburban strip malls? Can it be possible to convert dead or dying strip malls into community-building assets?

"It's very clear to me that the rules have changed and that it's very possible for somebody who has a really good idea to create an audience that can sustain that idea if it’s really well branded and really cunningly conceived," says Sherman. "But developers, for the most part, are not those types of people. They're in a different silo."

From: Creating Neighborhood Capital from Strip Malls | Planetizen:

Strip malls probably don’t fit into the definition of progressive urbanism for most people, but maybe they should. Well, maybe after a little organizational tweaking.

The small retail centers are ubiquitous in American cities, with their generic shops selling donuts or beer, offering dry cleaning or key-cutting. They're a part of many neighborhoods, but not necessarily an essential part. They bring goods and services to the area, but are ultimately of the greatest benefit to their owners – off somewhere cashing monthly rent checks from the moms and pops running the little businesses within. That model can change, according to Ava Bromberg. She's a PhD student in UCLA's School of Public Affairs who is developing a new vision for small retail centers that would transform them into engines of social and economic capital at the neighborhood level.

"It's part mall, part business incubator, part cultural hub," says Bromberg. The idea is to overlay a distributed ownership model on the typical strip mall that enables the value created by this commercial real estate to cycle back and benefit the neighborhood it serves. Consumers are also business owners, property shareholders, and decisionmakers. In this model, the building goes from being a cash cow for one owner to being a bank for the community, into which investments can be made and from which public benefits can be funded.

But it's also about activating disused retail space for more than retail. Bromberg wants the spaces to partner with local institutions like hospitals and universities to create learning environments and job training opportunities on-site. The idea is to retool the existing neighborhood infrastructure to serve unmet needs within the community.

Read the rest at Planetizen.

Institutionalizing sprawl and looking past existing infrastructure

Shoppes at Wyndham Village: Fill vacant space or BUILD MORE?

So, the Sentry grocery store at the corner of Rawson and 76th has announced that it will close by the end of October. The store was superfluous (throw a rock in Franklin and you'll hit a Pick n Save; I have three to choose from in proximity to my house), but the property will be a blight as long as it stands vacant. Across the street from that soon-to-be-empty building are a vacant coffee shop and vacant martini bar. The Shoppes at Wyndham Village outbuildings are largely vacant as well.

Meanwhile, at the Economic Development Commission meeting last night, I suggested that we focus at least part of our efforts on nurturing small, local businesses to fill some of these vacancies and encourage rehabs and retrofits. A fellow (and long-serving) commissioner responded to my suggestion by gravely reminding all assembled  that "our mission is development of tracts of land to attract business."

Really?

I will argue in a series of subsequent posts (and at the next EDC meeting) that our mission must be much, much broader than that. Stay tuned.