Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

"The human body works better when we walk."

The picture above is one I took this morning while out for a walk. While this blog is often where you see horrific examples of asphalt gone wild in the suburbs, anyone who lives in a community like mine can attest to the beautiful stretches of road that exist - - especially at this time of year.

If a person could string together a mile or so of the sort of roadway you see above -- particularly if it creates a useful route from home to a grocery store or cafe, for instance --  it wouldn't be hard to create an opportunity to walk each and every day. However, the majority of my route this morning was along 51st Street, where traffic averages 45-50 mph (it's posted 35 mph) and the "pedestrian lane" is a narrow edge of the roadway deliniated by a white line.

Fortunately, the city is working to continue a sidewalk that runs in front of the high school and currently gets you about 1/5th of the way between Drexel and Rawson. It connects people to the grocer, pharmacy, and convenience store/gas station that are at the corner of 51st and Rawson. Eventually, many people will be able to make a morning or evening walk towards a cup of coffee or a few groceries part of their daily routine.

That's the challenge we face: Connecting roads like the one above to other roads like the one above. That way, walking becomes organic to daily life.   

Why is this important? Watch and listen to the video below (BONUS: This gentleman has an enormously relaxing speaking voice, you'll find). 

"To stay competitive, suburbs need to create walkable urban places with a critical mass of activity"

ABOVE: Enjoying an evening in Sierra Madre, California

Many suburbs like Franklin, with committees and commissions populated by folks who settled here back when most of their neighbors were farmers and open fields, have a hard time with this concept.

Good center cities need not only retail and housing but offices as well, to make these places come alive day and night. On the commercial corridors, revitalization efforts should focus on the key intersections, where the shops and restaurants already want to go. People go where they will see other people.

"People go where they will see other people." The opposite of the "I moved here to get away from people" paradigm of the early far-flung suburbs -- but not mutually exclusive. Large suburbs can create central civic centers while maintaining sparse subdivisions, and people will self-select newer dense neighborhoods.

I'm quoting from a white paper entitled "The New Urban Workplace" by Rod Stevens of Spinnaker Strategies. The white paper describes the exodus of corporate headquarters from suburbs to downtown:

Talented young workers increasingly pick the city first and the job second.

The make-or-break for both companies and cities is their ability to draw college-educated workers who have come of age since the turn of the millennium. This is a generation that has grown up with more choice than ever before, that has learned to mix and match not only the clothing it buys, but its work and leisure time as well. Flexibility and convenience drive their lives. Many start the workday in mid-morning, break for a workout or a meal out with friends, and then go back to the office for more work far into the evening. The office of the future may look a whole lot more like the neighborhood coffee house.

Milwaukee Magazine's Newsbuzz site reports that the growing popularity of downtown is measureable:

In 2000, following the completion of the last U.S. Census, the Brookings Institution studied American downtowns and pegged Milwaukee as one of five (and the only one in the Midwest) with a residential population “on the edge of takeoff.” A couple years prior, in response to a Brookings survey, Milwaukee leaders guessed Downtown’s population would grow to 13,500 by 2010.

It’s beaten that mark, according to a report released earlier this year by Milwaukee’s Downtown Business Improvement District. Downtown population estimates prepared by a GIS consultant say about 15,000 people live in Milwaukee’s Downtown, more than Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland, Memphis or Nashville.

The Search for Community One Sleepover at a Time? | Planetizen

From a review for the book IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: THE SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY ONE SLEEPOVER AT A TIME:

What was most interesting to me was that almost all of the neighbors on Lovenheim’s street had an intense need to be part of a community and a social network, but they didn’t have the facilities to achieve it. One neighbor observed that public spaces have largely been privatized into commercial spaces. Think about the coffee shop, king Starbucks, bookstores. These are little self-contained units with a small entry fee.  Another neighbor contrasted American neighborhoods to African tribal villages whose homes are traditionally organized around acentral space out of a primal need for survival. She observed that American neighborhoods are designed for privacy to fuel the prevailing ideology that we can survive alone. And then she suggests the antidote to this landscape of isolation…parks! Brilliant.

Read the rest at: The Search for Community One Sleepover at a Time? | Planetizen

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.

The parking mess at the local Little League Complex is as eloquent a visual aid as you'll ever need for the tragic comedy that is suburban "planning"

When you can't walk or bike to a community's Little League Complex because the roads leading to it and bordering the complex are typical suburban speedways with no provision for walkers or bikers, what do you get?

Repeated pandemonium and rising frustration. 125 players on six diamonds means 125 cars, minimum. Now add the incoming cars for subsequent games, and you get pandemonium squared.

Parking lot culture replaces what used to be a valuable community gathering point.

New Report: “Bright Flight” means younger, more affluent cities. And suburbs sit on their collective hands.

ABOVE: Cities, like Washington, D.C., are attracting a younger, more affluent, white population. Photo by Poldavo (Alex).

From “Bright Flight” Means Younger, More Affluent Cities | TheCityFix.com:

A new study from the Brookings Institution, “The State of Metropolitan America,” shows that, for the first time, America’s suburbs are more likely to be home to minorities, the poor and a rapidly growing older population, while younger, educated whites move to cities for better jobs and shorter commutes. The report analyzes census data from 2000-2008 in the United States’ 100 largest metropolitan areas, revealing a reversal of historical demographic trends. (See an interactive map here.)

So, the question is: What will suburbs like mine do to meet this challenge?

I can tell you what Franklin, Wisconsin is currently doing: Nothing.

No initiatives, projects, forums, or incentive programs. In fact, we just pledged a half million dollars to a neighboring community for a superfluous highway interchange, a move that tells the world that Franklin is still about a decade behind the curve.

And, unfortunately, the collegial environment depicted in the photo above is virtually nonexistent in my suburb, and it's something savvy first-time home-buyers are much more aware of now than they were, say, ten years ago (I, for one, was not a savvy home-buyer when it came to judging the community surrounding my house.)

Last year I proposed, via my position on the Economic Development Commission, an city-sponsored effort to work with a developer to encourage creation of a coffee shop/co-working space next to the Franklin library. A member of the Commission argued for "green space" instead - next to a park. Another wanted to add a "friendly amendment" to the Commission's recommendation stating that no money whatsoever be spent on the effort.

So much for that.

Many trade city living for the traditionally strong school districts found in suburbs; "Sure, I'm isolated and can't get anywhere without a car, but my kids are in a good school." However, strangled as they are by ill-fated TIF deals and taxpayer revolts ("My property tax is too high!"), suburban school districts are facing imminent decline. Franklin's school district is cutting an alarming number of positions, and the high school is an old relic.

Suburban public amenities? "Community columnists" decry funding community libraries!

Why bother anymore?

We may be looking at a whole new attitude toward the idea of home ownership. From The Atlantic website:

Houses make sense when you're rooted, financially and geographically. The future of the America is itinerant, flexible, and wary of burying money in an immobile "economic trap." Throw in the 100 million Americans we're expected to add in the next four decades, and you've got a congestion problem that suggests we should replace front lawns and sedans with apartments and trains. 

The blog's author, Derek Thompson, is referring to opinions set forth in Richard Florida's new book, THE GREAT RESET (which is the very first e-book I purchased for my iPad).

Thompson quotes the following from Florida's book:

We've reached the limits of what George W. Bush used to call the "ownership society." Owning your own home made sense when people could hope to hold a job for most or all of their lives. But in an economy that revolves around mobility and flexibility, a house that can't be sold becomes an economic trap, preventing people from moving freely to economic opportunity. Not only has that piece of the American Dream grown dark, but it's also clear that financial excess in the housing sector was one of the central causes of the economic crisis. The rate of home ownership has been on the decline for some time now. Many of those who still choose to buy homes will choose smaller ones, while many more will opt for rental housing.

Our new way of life is likely to depend a whole lot less on the car. In October 2009, The New York Times reported "...After more than a century in which an automobile represented the American dream, car enthusiasm may no longer be a part of Americans' DNA." Car culture no longer exerts the powerful pull it once did. More and more families are deciding to share cars, and young people are putting off buying them and using public transit, bikes, their feet or Zipcars (membership-based, easy-access short-term car rentals) instead. It's not just that oil and gas have become expensive, it's that traffic and gridlock have become a deadweight time cost on us and our economy.

Compared with the end of 2008, the average household is now spending an extra $135 a month for fuel. But, to repeat: My suburb just pledged $500,000 to build a highway interchange that we don't need in a neighboring community. And it's not just money that will be going to the edge of town and over the border, it will be development as well. Why build a neighborhood-based coffee shop when you can toss up an offramp-serving drive-thru java shed right next to the freeway?

At the same time, Franklin is pouring money into a streetscape design for a commercial strip that all but ignores transit options like dedicated bus lanes and Zipcar facilities. Instead, our big-ticket item on 27th Street is "enhanced lighting"  - the seventh most popular item mentioned on preference surveys, as Franklin Alderman (and 27th Street Steering Committee Chairman) Steve Olson is fond of reminding us.

If success and sustainability are a destination, perhaps it's time suburbs - mine in particular - realize that the road that brought them here won't get them there.

My remarks to the Common Council regarding funding the Drexel Interchange

My remarks before the Franklin Common Council (made up of material posted here previously) made prior to their special meeting on funding the Drexel Interchange. More on the meeting -- and a fairly startling position taken by Northwestern Mutual -- later in the day:

This interchange will happen with or without our subsidy. 

But I couldn’t just watch as a city with countless infrastructure and service deficiencies votes to commit half a million dollars of Franklin taxpayer money -- cleverly camouflaged -- to an interchange project that is unneeded by Franklin, a community well-served by two interchanges. [NOTE: Actually THREE, counting College Avenue]

And spending money on a superfluous interchange even as the Federal government launches initiative after initiative and grant after grant designed to bolster communities that pursue Smart Growth principles and alternative transportation options is poor strategy, to say the least. 

The smart community looks FORWARD, not BACKWARD; off-ramp development strategies are yesterday’s mistakes that we don’t need to repeat today.

I attempted to bring this topic up at Monday’s Economic Development Commission meeting -- the mayor reminded me recently that the EDC is ostensibly in charge of the Franklin half of the 27th Street Steering Committee -- but I was told we could not discuss $500,000 in “enhanced lighting” funds for 27th street and the possible diversion of those funds to an interchange as per the failed motion of last Tuesday’s meeting.

Also: I had heard that, at the last council meeting, former EDC member and 27th Street Steering Committee chairman Ted Grinjes claimed that the EDC had advocated for the interchange. I asked at the last EDC meeting, and was told that that is not the case.

Do WE need an interchange? When site location consultants evaluate Franklin, we get an “A” by virtue of two interchanges perfectly bracketing the city. 

Northwestern Mutual, it should be noted, owns an enormous parcel of land on the Oak Creek side of 27th Street, across from their campus. Their $1.6 million contribution has nothing to do with cutting 95 seconds off of their employees’ commutes. Also, they are quoted in the paper this morning as saying that the funds were pledged way back when they were building the campus, and are not reflective of the current economic or transit situation.

As a practical matter, the Rawson and Ryan interchanges create a natural traffic flow onto 27th Street, which is supposed to be our commercial jewel, the marketing alone of which is evidently worth our spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Frankly, a Drexel interchange breaks that advantageous flow. 

Perhaps the deal we make with Oak Creek is this: We will suffer the interchange’s diversion of traffic as well as Northwestern Mutual’s $1.6 million leaving our community -- a community that didn’t get Northwestern Mutual here for free, by the way -- in return for freeing our $500,000 “enhanced lighting” pledge so we can actively promote and incentivise economic development in and around our neighborhoods and commercial areas, creating higher property values and a deep, sustainable local economy.

On the other hand, Franklin can continue to postpone maintenance and needed upgrades. "Fiscal conservative" aldermen can continue to attempt to derail pedestrian facilities such as the one planned for in front of our high school as "too expensive," while tripping over themselves to send $500,000 to Oak Creek -- and get their hands on a Golden Shovel at the groundbreaking.

These same “fiscal conservatives” are fond of reminding us that “the market will determine” whether this or that development will occur. They are not fond of the idea of even small incentives created by the city to help shape development that is more economically and socially valuable to the community in the long term -- rather than simply a good turn of the dollar for a developer in the short term. 

Yet, here we are, willing to dump $500,000 into an interchange that the market does not seem to be begging for.

SO, after the meeting, get back in your car; if you want to enjoy a coffee and conversation it will have to be in another community, because Franklin has not been "creative" enough up to this point to inspire a single coffee shop, deli, ice cream store, or other public gathering place within walking distance of its library, city hall and central city park.

And, as soon as this superfluous Interchange goes in, any chance Franklin had at developing the sorts of neighborhood-based, human-scale amenities that spur growth of a deep, sustainable local economy will be dashed like a bug on a windshield. It'll be Starbucks, Perkins, Sbarro, Dairy Queen, Burger King, Pizza Hut, etc. -- the royal court of fast food --  all swarmed up close to interchange, suckling on the sea of cars exiting for a bite before they get right back on and back up to speed.

Because, you see, we're on the road to becoming a drive-thru town, and tonight will seal the deal.

Friends of Franklin's Parks forming

 

From Don Dorson (who also took the great picture above):

I am pleased to announce the creation of the Friends of Franklin's Parks!

Conceived and sanctioned the City of Franklin Parks Commission, The Friends of Franklin's Parks is an independent volunteer organization dedicated to supporting the parks and other publicly accessible lands located in Franklin. The Friends of Franklin Parks intends to work closely with the Parks Department , the City of Franklin  and other organizations holding publicly accessible lands in Franklin to promote the use of Franklin's wonderful parks and public spaces and by providing volunteers for work on specific or ongoing projects identified by the parks director, staff and/or the parks commission.
 
The first organizational meeting of the Friends of Franklin's Park will be held on February 24th at the Franklin Public Library in the Fadrow room A at 6:30.
 
For more information or to register as a Friend of Franklin's Parks visit our website at: www.friendsoffranklinsparks.webs.com

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.

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.