Planners take Boston

I returned yesterday from the American Planning Association National Planning Conference in Boston.  It was a great time hanging out with fellow students and professionals learning about what is going on in planning.  My tweets cover some of the highlights, but a rundown of the sessions I went to are as follows:

• "City Planning 360: GIS for Intelligent Cities" showed some of the power of the new ArcGIS 10 platform.
• Adapting and using Dedicated Port Areas
• An opening keynote from Michael J. Sandel
• How to evaluate "authentic" features of suburbs and how they can be used during suburban retrofits
• Turning a small town train station into a transit village
• "LEED Guidance for Neighborhood Development" where speakers called out Grand Rapids as an excellent example and case study for writing 'green' standards into a comprehensive plan.
• Green preservation and economic growth in the North Loop area of Minneapolis
• Transportation and climate change
• Using social media as a means of public participation
• Regional food systems planning
• "Leveraging the Value of Older Buildings"

I can talk in greater detail in person.

I also went to a Boston Red Sox game against the Tampa Bay Rays, which was pretty cool.  Fenway Park was neat and being able to sit up on the green monster because the game turned into a 16-5 blowout by the Rays was awesome.

Fenway Park

From the Green Monster

Bullpens

Faux Urbanism?

New Urbanist principles are great things, but what happens when you build away from normal areas and start anew?  Places like Celebration, Florida are knocked because they are built in places without previous development and are essentially suburbs.  I guess a New Urbanist suburb is better than a regular suburb, but it's something to think about.  When I was in Boulder, Colorado for spring break I ventured to North Boulder.  North Boulder is a rapidly developing part of town, and there is quite the New Urbanist style to it.  I really like the architecture and it's not as far away as normal suburbs, but the public space seemed unused and more of a ruse than anything.  It is also expensive.  A 2-bedroom, 1.5-bath condo was for sale and advertised at $174,338 - a lot for something similarly sized to an apartment I lived in for a couple years.  Then again, it's Boulder.  More integration with downtown is probably needed, but I could see myself living here if the opportunity presented itself.  What do you think?

Unique Architectural Styling

Homes oriented to shared space.

Garages and parking behind the buildings.

Eyes on the street.

Looking toward the Flatirons.

Barren Public Space.

Trains Down the Middle

I am back from Colorado, but providing an update on what I did for most of the week is on hold while I work on settling back in and reorienting myself to "school."

I managed to buy a crazy amount of groceries, unpack, and clean up my room today, so hopefully the update will be sooner rather than later. For now, I leave you with a video a few of my classmates made to promote center-running light rail along the Woodward Avenue corridor in Detroit:

Detroit needs better transit options. You should submit some comments about it. More information at Transport Michigan.

The Future of Planning

Last Friday, the University of Michigan played host for the Michigan Association of Planning Student Conference.  There were also students from Michigan State, Western, Eastern, Central, Wayne State, and Lawrence Tech who attended the day-long event.  Unfortunately, because of work, I missed the afternoon session, but I did manage to catch some morning presentations, enjoy lunch, and make it back in time for the social gathering at Grizzly Peak, a local watering hole.

An opening talk was given by the Dean from LTU, on the topic of "Tales of Detroit & New Orleans Climate Change."  There are some interesting parallels between the two cities even though the problems of one occurred by natural disaster and the other by much more human oriented reasons.  Detroit can also look at New Orleans to see how it might be able to do some of its rebuilding.  However, the most intriguing part of the presentation was the suggestion that, because of climate change, Detroit and the rest of the Midwestern rust belt can rebound.

Most booming cities of the last few decades have been in the south and the west, or what is often called the Sun Belt because those regions have a much warmer climate, not to mention natural resources, space, and people.  People want to be where its nicer, but with climate change increasing temperatures these places may become unbearable for certain periods of time.  The Sun Belt is also prone to greater numbers of natural disasters than Michigan is, and those may increase in magnitude or happen more often.  So, it was suggested that if Michigan and the upper Midwest can maintain a minimal amount of diversity and create a decent economic climate, people will return once again.  There will be another shift from the Sun Belt back to the "Great Midwestern Greenbelt" where our summers will be like northern Arkansas and our winters like southern Ohio.

Beyond this presentation, I went to a session of student presentations on data visualization, urban agriculture in Detroit, light rail on the Woodward Avenue corridor in Detroit, and the concept of a "Recovery Park" for a Detroit neighborhood.  These were all good presentations and showed some of the diversity of what planning students from around the state are working on.  Unfortunately, by missing the afternoon session, I was a bad peer and missed all of the presentations given by my Michigan classmates.

The conference was pretty good for what I made it for, including a delicious lunch and drinks afterwards.  It was nice to take a break from the normal schedule of classes for this, and seeing what other students are doing was cool instead of always seeing professors and professionals talk about their stuff.

Detroit Works

On Wednesday, another planner and I decided to attend a community meeting for the Detroit Works Project.  As everyone knows, the city of Detroit is struggling and has lost over half its population during the past 50 years.  Now, the city is trying to figure out ways to provide essential services like water and garbage pick-up, improve public transportation options, position the school system for success, and fix the problems of blight and vacant land.  Part of the solution may be creating incentives for people who move to different neighborhoods and increase density.  The list goes on.

This past fall, the city held a first round of large meetings that were overcapacity and resulted in yelling (or so I'm told because I didn't make it to any).  So, now the city is in the middle of providing 30+ meetings in various neighborhoods throughout the city in order to get feedback and hear about specific issues from those areas.

The meeting I went to was on the west side of the city, just north of Dearborn.  Information about some of the ideas that have been talked about was given, and a lot of questions were asked of the audience about these ideas.  Real-time answers were given on the screen by use of keypads that were located on each seat.  Following this was an extensive question and answer session, and members of various departments in the City of Detroit were present to provide the answers.

Nothing truly groundbreaking occurred, but it was awesome to see and be involved with the public process and see how citizens are being included with this monumental plan Detroit is trying to piece together.  The city will use the feedback from the questions to help gauge what needs to happen first or where to focus its investments.  Hopefully, in the end, this plan can help Detroit get back on track for greatness.

Sidewalks in the Kingdom

This is a month overdue, but over Christmas Break I had the time to read the book Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, which I finally got to after a year of owning it.  Being an urban planning student, this topic is something I find extremely fascinating and I thought I could benefit from having a greater Christian perspective on it.

Overall, the book is very straightforward and covers the issues as a New Urbanist would look at them, but adds a good Christian emphasis.  At times I found the book simplistic, but I think I may be beyond the intended audience a little bit.  As an introduction to urban issues, it does an excellent job at getting the basics and their importance across.  It could be infinitely helpful to people who have not thought about these things as much as I have.  In the end, I didn't so much learn anything new about New Urbanism, but I was impressed by the Christian emphasis it did give.  It definitely helped refocus my thinking about things and why I'm going to school for what I am.

I would recommend reading this book if you are interested in these kind of things, especially reasons why Christians should care about our cities.  It is a pretty easy read.  If you want to borrow it from me, just let me know.

GR: City with a Bleak Future?

Newsweek published something on America's Dying Cities last week using the most recent census data on population loss to examine those cities with the most total population loss and loss of those younger than age 18.

On this list is Grand Rapids, which happened to upset a bunch of people, prompted the mayor to write a response, and created a mini-firestorm on my Facebook homepage... I get it. Being from the Grand Rapids area helps me understand those angry people and the fault of Newsweek.  By simply using the census data, they only see a total population loss over a ten year period, but they fail to notice the low point was four years ago and the city is now rebounding.

Pittsburgh is on the list too in a similar situation, and I think what is written for it gives better insight that could be used for GR than the general stuff about Michigan that was actually given.  Since the populations have gone down, especially in the younger age groups, these cities will have a harder time moving forward than others like San Francisco or Portland that are attractive simply by existing...

I really like that Grand Rapids and Mayor Heartwell stepped up and pointed out Newsweek's flaws and the strengths of the city.  It needs to be done.  Negative media portrayal leads to situations like Detroit's where the good gets totally overshadowed by the bad.

However, we shouldn't just say Newsweek got it totally wrong and stop there.  We did lose population, and we have not gotten back to where we were before.  In terms of income on the metro level (suburbs included) taking a class in economic development last semester informed me the median income in Metro Grand Rapids is lower than the median for Metro Detroit. Yes. Worse than Detroit.

Obviously, Detroit is skewed upward by Oakland County, but Grand Rapids is probably affected in a similar way by EGR, Ada, etc.  Plus, we should also look at the low end of the spectrum where Detroit probably (extrapolating from its larger population) has a higher number of individuals and families with lower incomes.  Therefore, some kind of balance may be expected between the two.  In total dollars and wages for employees, our region is not anywhere near the economic power we may think.

ArtPrize, "green" building, and sustainability are great (I love them all), but they are just a start.  Success includes so much more than that.  In some ways we may be "thriving," but the opposite still exists too, and we need to continue working hard on making Grand Rapids the best city it can be.

Expanded Horizons

Every year, the University of Michigan planning program puts on Expanded Horizons.  It is a 5 day break from classes and takes many of the first year planning students on a trip to explore some city withing driving distance of Ann Arbor - all for a class credit (assuming we manage to participate and turn in a short paper when requested).

I returned from this one week ago.  Our destination this was Philadelphia, PA (which has a ridiculous number of one-way streets)!

Last Wednesday morning the planning students crammed onto a bus for our 11 hour ride to the City of Brotherly Love.  The trip went like most long rides and all of us were relieved when we finally arrived at our hotel: A Holiday Inn Express right in the center city.  After settling in, we went to wander downtown a little to grab some dinner and drinks.

On Thursday morning, we met up with the director of the Preservation Alliance, piled onto our bus again, and took a tour of the city learning everything we wanted to know about Philadelphia.  We went past Independence Hall, through Society Hill, Temple University, and many other places (some pretty sketchy).

After our tour, we went to Reading Terminal Market for lunch.  An indoor farmer's market, Reading had just about every kind of food you could want and was simply a unique place with many different people wandering its crowded paths.

In the afternoon we began splitting into groups, which went to various organizations throughout the city, to see what kind of planning-related activities were happening.  My first one was Greensgrow urban agriculture.  Like any urban agriculture project, Greensgrow was doing a lot with sustainability, education and outreach, and supplying healthy, locally grown foods via the market and the CSA (which includes some kind of protein with the vegetables each week).  However, it was interesting to learn that they did not start out of the local foods movement or for social justice issues, but rather as a way to simply use vacant land.

The farm is located on the site of a former factory that polluted the ground with many heavy metals and is an EPA-classified brownfield.  To "fix" the site, it was covered over by a concrete slab, so none of the farming is actually done in the ground of that site.  The first farming they did was for-profit hydroponic lettuce, which was sold to high-end restaurants in downtown Philadelphia.  Eventually they moved in the direction to where they are now as they responded to the needs of the neighborhood and added a nursery and market, etc.

Much of what they sell is grown above the concrete in raised beds within greenhouse structures or is purchased from other local farmers to distribute in the neighborhood.  They are just beginning to break even on the food growing side of their enterprise, but have been able to rake in money from selling flowers and other plants from the nursery to cover expenses.

On Thursday night, we held a social event and met up with a bunch of planning students from UPenn (Ivy Leaguers!) at the bar.

Friday was a continuation of meeting various organizations, and in the morning I went to the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.  Here we learned about how they are working to make Philadelphia more bicycle and pedestrian friendly.  Various types of bike lanes are being implemented and we walked down to look at one that included a buffer zone between drivers and riders.

Another project was the conversion of parking meters into bike racks.  As the city converts to parking kiosks for entire blocks of spaces and the old meters are removed, the poles are left behind and places to lock bikes to are being bolted on.  Other projects included larger bicycle trail systems and general education for drivers, riders, and pedestrians.

In the afternoon was my final session.  A group of us walked down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and talked with the executive director of the Fairmount Parks system (who has a niece that went to Calvin).  We began at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where Rocky ran up the steps and ended down near city hall.  Along the way we learned about the green space, traffic concerns, and current construction projects.  There are a couple of new and remodeled museums along the way as well as many other civic buildings such as the library.  It is quite the historic stretch of road: created as Philadelphia's ChampsElysees during the City Beautiful movement.

If I had to pick a session I didn't go to, but wished I had it would be Postgreen ... or Interface Studios: joint creators of the LEED Gold or Platinum, 100k home.

We spent Friday night bowling and socializing.  Making sure we got to know all the people who went on the trip - another purpose of such a trip.  Many of us ended up walking to the Piazza at Schmidt's, a development by Tower Investments - where a number of others went for one of their sessions.

Later in the night, a number of us decided it would be cool to head over the Delaware river to Camden, NJ - one of America's most dangerous cities.  Probably not the best idea ever.  The place seemed like a literal ghost town, and after talking to some police officers who said we were a "huge red flag" we went back to where we came from.

Saturday morning we did some community service work cleaning up parks and a business district.  We disposed of trash, raked, weeded, mulched, etc.

That afternoon, a number of us went to Tony Luke's to get cheesesteaks and then ended up at the bar to watch the Michigan-Indiana football game with the Alumni Club of Philadelphia.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip that allowed me to see a different city, learn quite a bit, and get to know my classmates a lot better.

In Defense of Calvin College

A couple of weeks ago I went to the bar with a friend and met up with his sister and a co-worker of his.  During the course of conversation it was brought up that I would be attending graduate school for urban planning, something my friend's sister though was pretty cool as did his co-worker.

Having a few drinks, the co-worker decided to rant to me a little about dumb street design and poor planning from the last few decades, which I heartily joined in on.  He wondered how I got into the whole urban planning thing, especially for someone from Calvin College, so I told him about being a geography major and taking an introductory course in planning while at Calvin.

This happened to be when the conversation shifted a little.  Having apparently attended Calvin for a while, the co-worker was surprised Calvin offered a planning course, and made the quick conclusion that it was probably one of the few good classes the college offers (he took philosophy classes).

His distaste for Calvin continued to be shown by talking about how Calvin abandoned it's campus in the city for the suburban real estate it currently occupies.  In some ways I agree with those sentiments, but we shouldn't direct the heat solely upon the school.

Calvin had grown beyond what the old campus could sustain and badly needed to undergo some kind of expansion.  Given that fact, they expanded to a location where the land was available.  We shouldn't fault them on jumping at such an opportunity, especially since suburbanization was the name of the game when these events took place.  It was not the school, but rather an entrenched societal ideal that came more into play.  Also worth mentioning is the fact that the former campus "in the city" was almost outside of the city.

To look back with disgust, I think, is inappropriate.  Instead, we should look at what is happening in the present and for the future.  Progress is happening.

Calvin has increased its presence in the downtown area with the creation of the (106) South Division Art Gallery.  The school has also begun to subsidize bus rides on the Rapid making them cheaper for students.  Unfortunately, there are many complaints to these.  The main one I see is that Calvin is not doing enough and should be doing more, such as fully subsidizing the Rapid so it is free and not just cheap.  I'm in the camp that says Calvin should do more too, but we can't just complain.  I think it really boils down to the administration and policy makers moving slowly and cautiously, which in many ways is quite admirable.  A lot of thought has to go into such decisions.

I also don't think we should compare Calvin to Grand Valley.  A lot of the arguments for making the Rapid free center on the fact that GVSU does it for their students.  Many differences should be noted.  First, GVSU is much larger than Calvin, although this is probably not that important in the grand scheme.  Next, there is actually a legitimate reason to offer free service to GVSU students: they have a campus downtown and often take classes there and out in Allendale and need a way to get between campuses easily.  Calvin doesn't have that issue.  Most students either live on campus or nearby, so there is no necessary reason to give free rides.  The closet comparison to Calvin would be Aquinas.  Aquinas only has one campus, albeit closer into town, and they offer a discounted rate of 40 cents.  This is comparable to Calvin's 50 cent fares.

Other reasons abound for Calvin (and Aquinas) to hop on board with free fares, and I would love to see that happen.  I think it is most important to realize that people at Calvin actually care about these kind of issues and some progress is evident.  It is also important to continue to pursue various avenues and push for quicker implementation of positive policies.

Finally, we should be grateful for what Calvin is as a respectable educational institution that is actually moving (however slowly) into greater harmony with the city.  At least we're not Davenport, who just recently abandoned their downtown campus for one out in the sticks by M-6.

Rant out. Good night.

"More Complete" Streets

A short blurb in today’s Grand Rapids Press informed me that federal transportation spending on bicycling and walking doubled from $600 million to $1.2 billion between 2008 and 2009.  To say the least, I’m a fan.

This and some other recent conversation and reading have led to this post.  In it I’ll wander around some topics that are interesting to my future-urban-planner nerd-ism.  Enjoy!

As oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, we should recognize even clearer than ever that we need to move beyond petroleum (As even BP tells us).  Now, I understand that bicycling and walking cannot replace all the uses of an automobile, but we should embrace alternatives to our car culture that relies on a finite resource.

Alternative methods to powering cars aside (any major changes are probably a ways out yet); by funding bicycling and walking projects we can work more immediately on the situation at hand.

This is by no means just about energy.  In fact, it might be least about energy.  By investing in “complete streets” that embrace cyclists and pedestrians we can make our cities more hospitable for those who elect to use those methods of getting around.  In some areas, walking or cycling is just plain insane.  28^th street is a good example of such a place.  5 lanes wide with a 40+ mph speed limit and sidewalks few and far between it is a nightmare to maneuver around without an automobile of some kind.

The good news is that funding for pedestrians is becoming more apparent even along 28^th.  By simple observation one can notice that for the last few months MDOT has been cutting in and paving a sidewalk between Division and Kalamazoo Avenue.  The project is accompanied by a road resurfacing.  There is also similar construction along Chicago Drive.  While I will remain skeptical of its possibilities to bring in new pedestrians to such a desolate landscape, it definitely creates a more hospitable and safe environment.  This is something I think Wyoming and Kentwood need in order to retain, and more importantly attract, businesses along that section of road.

Complete streets are also making headlines across Michigan with new legislation that was recently passed by the state House 84-22.  It was referred to the state Senate Transportation Committee.  If made into law, the bill would require all cities, villages, and townships in the state to include bicycle and pedestrian routes whenever road construction takes place.  Some exceptions do exist.

This is an exciting promotion of non-automobile travel.  Some cities are even ahead of the curve too, and this is apparent here in West Michigan as well.  Grand Rapids repaved a wretched section of Lake Drive this past spring and as a result the sidewalk was repaved and on-street bicycle lanes added. 

Even Grandville is hopping on the bandwagon with a project it first started back in 2004.  The city plans to use a complete streets type formula to improve its traditional downtown district at the intersection of Chicago Drive and Wilson.  Right now, two through lanes travel in each direction, the sidewalk is just plain concrete, and there are overhead utilities.  The center two lanes pretty much only get used for left turns and simply cause back-ups.  The plan would create a left turn lane and have a single through lane in each direction, relocate utility lines, and use remaining space to create on-street parking.

One question that I have overheard from my grandpa and his neighbors is “How do they plan to fit that all in the current right-of-way?”  The answer: you don’t.  There are 44 feet to work with currently.  Two 11 foot through lanes and a 10 foot turn lane use up 32 feet.  The remaining 12 feet is too little to accommodate parking on both sides of the road because you need 16 feet to do so.  The solution is to cut two feet into the sidewalk on each side.  People who pose this question do so because they are skeptical about narrowing the sidewalk, especially since the plan is to enhance the pedestrian experience.  The narrowing of the sidewalk is, in my opinion, absolutely fine.  There really wouldn’t be much loss of walking space anyway because the current utility poles push pedestrians away from the road’s edge.  On top of that, the sidewalk is quite wide along that section of Chicago Drive and parked cars also manage to create a safety barrier that “protects” pedestrians.  At the very least it makes them feel safer.

The only issue I might take up with the project is the omission of bicycle lanes, but with the restrictions that are being dealt with, I’ll take the street parking over a bicycle lane.

Overall, I am impressed with the direction that the country and especially West Michigan is headed.  I love the complete streets ideal.  I am interested to see these changes as they occur and what the economic and other results happen to be.  I also hope to see other things happen as well: more public transit opportunities, alternative fuel sources, and new energy policy.  For the time being I’ll continue to hypocritically drive my car and work to increase my bicycle usage.

The Future of Urbanism

Today (yesterday), I attended the second day of a conference entitled "Future of Urbanism" at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  It was hosted by the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning (TCAUP).  The conference brought together many different architects, planners, and others from around the world to talk about where our urban future is heading.  Here is a little rundown:

The opening panel of the day talked about Urban and Regional Ecologies, and the discussion that followed had a lot to do with the importance of social/environmental justice.  They also emphasized the importance of having a situational awareness when creating regulations and approaching things with a new spatial perspective.  The latter of which I was happy about because of the emphasis on geographic knowledge that a spatial perspective requires.  We can call all of this "spatial justice".

The future of urbanism needs to be one that incorporates multiple disciplines.  One of the panelists proclaimed "Architecture, left on its own, will cannibalize us all."

The second group of speakers for the day spoke on MEGACITY / shrinking city.  This obviously took the form of two perspectives.  One looked at rapidly expanding cities in the world, particularly those in developing regions such as Africa and China, while the other side looked at the cities of the American Rust Belt, such as Cleveland and Detroit.  The goal was to think through how cities handle rapid development or how they deal with significant decline.

The speakers on the shrinking city were especially interesting to me, since I wrote a paper on Detroit last semester that suggested how it might be able to handle its situation by reducing its footprint.  I chose to look further into the topic after reading an article from TIME magazine, and recently Detroit Mayor Dave Bing began working toward something quite similar.

One of the speakers, Myron Orfield, is a law professor at the University of Minnesota, among other things.  He touched on the subject of urban policy and who makes it.  The general theme is political fragmentation and the average American has 7 governmental bodies above them working on policy issues (county, city/township, school district, and various special districts like watersheds).  Various harms result because of this fragmentation: sprawl, segregation, and inequalities.  He cited the examples of Portland, OR and the Twin Cities as ways to solve these problems with effective regional organization.

The other speaker on the shrinking city was the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, Jay Williams.  His perspective on how to fix problems associated with decline and try to reverse the fall was very insightful.

The third panel was on the topic "Urban Imaginary" and how we construct visual narratives that increase connectivity with the city in order to further understand a future urbanism.  Here there were a lot of great examples of GIS in practice.  Making urban form and the visualization of urban phenomena into something of an art form or connecting and aggregating photos from Flickr to a map based on geographic coordinates and descriptive tags.  Another part of this was the Copenhagen Wheel, which can probably be best described by paying a visit to the site.

I think the final piece to this panel (which was really the middle) is super interesting.  Marshall Brown, from the Illinois Institute of Technology, talked about architecture and urbanism as mashup.  He went through a history of mashup itself that culminated with DJ Dangermouse's The Grey Album and connected it to a cut, copy, and paste version of design that integrates multiple ideas in order to pull together an already heterogeneous cityscape.  Also, we must not confuse mashup with collage because mashup takes a lot of thought to put together an 'original' design instead of just throwing stuff together.

Something he said: "STEAL EVERYTHING"

Finally, the last session was on New Public Spaces and how new social media has affected the material city.

This is a very cursory review of what caught my attention the most.  In no way did I flesh out most of the details, and I would recommend checking out the TCAUP YouTube site to catch the video of some or all of the talks when they get posted in April.  In the meantime, they have video from their Future of Design conference that happened back in October for those interested.