URBAN DIRECTION

Janette Sadik-Khan in Philly to Receive Bacon Prize

2012-01-17T14:26:00.003-05:00

By Greg

New York's headline-making transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, will be in Philadelphia on February 1st to receive the Edmund N. Bacon Prize from the Center for Architecture. This is an annual award bestowed "on an accomplished figure who has achieved outstanding results in urban planning, development, and design through conviction of vision, effective communication, and commitment to improving their community."

The Bacon Prize is coupled with the awards ceremony for the winners of the Ed Bacon Student Design Competition--an international urban design challenge. The 2012 competition, INTERSECT competition challenges the next generation of urban thinkers to propose novel solutions to integrate Philadelphia’s major transportation corridors into its urban fabric. Students were asked to devise an Interstate solution that addresses freight and passenger traffic that currently flows along Interstate 95 on the Eastern edge of Philadelphia.

This should be a very interesting evening. You can buy tickets here: http://www.cvent.com/events/ed-bacon-awards-ceremony-2011/event-summary-b0c4bee25d574b50ba9b817c2a3d140e.aspx.

Remember the Neediest

2011-12-23T09:09:00.010-05:00

By Greg

I am excited to let you know that Travelers Aid Family Services of Philadelphia (of which I'm on the Board) recently brought on a new Executive Director, Gloria Guard. She is an experienced leader who will help us forge a bright future for the hundreds of families that Travelers Aid serves each year. Please read Gloria's appeal letter below, and consider whether you can spare any household items, toys, furniture, volunteer time, money or anything else that could help homeless families, as we contemplate a brighter 2012. I wish you and yours a joyous holiday season and a happy new year!

AN APPEAL FROM GLORIA GUARD

Dear Friends,

I have just accepted the position of Executive Director of the Traveler's Aid Family Services of Philadelphia. Known historically for helping stranded travelers, TAFSP has morphed into a shelter, social services, education, and housing agency for 150 homeless families. Like our families, the agency is living from "hand to mouth" and depends almost wholly on government grants.

When I started work this Monday, I was disappointed at the lack of any home-like amenities for our families. The staff is compassionate and professional, while being paid minimal salaries, and the board rolls up their sleeves and pitches in, but it is not enough to make our place cozy for the families.

[Imagine each bed with a pillow... more youth beds like this one. How about a real lounge? Or a coat tree for clothes?]

There is a way you can help us so that we can make the lives of the kids and parents comfortable and warm. Bring us your out-of-date furniture, especially small tables, floor lamps, clothes trees, bean bag chairs, new pillows, linens, and some fun trikes, saucers, big wheels, and rocking horses.

OF COURSE, we need financial support. It's difficult for us to afford even a half-day training workshop for staff, so you can imagine that fundamental organizational necessities are all in need of replacement or development. We need to massively upgrade our technology — not only internet access and faster/consistent phone and internet service, but we also need a system to capture important performance measurements.

We must create an efficient property management program for our 75 units of off-site apartments and develop a housing reserve for anticipated repairs. I would love to create an early infant and toddler program, bring on the capacity to spot early childhood developmental issues, add a part-time therapist and a drug/alcohol expert, and staff up a development and compliance department.

Even facing all these challenges, I am totally psyched! There is so much opportunity and so much room to grow. We have the essentials — the board governance and support, incredibly dedicated staff, a history of best practices in running family shelter and services, stable finances and solid audits — it's an organization that I am proud and lucky to lead.

If you want to help in any way, please contact me via email — gguard@taphilly.org, write me and deliver goodies to TAFSP, 111 North 49th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19139. My work phone is 215 471 9475. Sorry we have a real problem making pick-ups (no excess staff). For more info: www.taphilly.org

Please help, in any way you can!

- Gloria

Discussion with Mayor Nutter

2011-11-01T11:00:00.005-04:00

By Greg

I'm on the board of an organization called Philadelphia Committee on City Policy that dates back to 1905 and had its heyday when it gave birth to the City's political and charter reform movement in the early 1950s. Today it's still alive and kicking, but its work is solely educational, hosting monthly luncheons with civic leaders.

Our next event on November 22nd will feature Mayor Nutter talking about "Planning for the Future." It should be an interesting discussion. These luncheons are nice because there's food and it's personal and informal. I encourage you to come, chat with the Mayor, and get to know this historic organization. Here's info on the event.

Help Homeless Children and Families

2011-10-31T08:49:00.004-04:00

By Greg

Ok, so the other thing that has been keeping too busy to blog is my volunteer work on the board of Travelers Aid Family Services of Philadelphia, a 100-year-old organization that helps homeless families and children. The organization operates the city's largest family homeless shelter and provides a continuum of services including emergency housing, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and academic enrichment services for homeless children and youth. Each year Travelers Aid assists more than 200 homeless families in Philadelphia.

Travelers Aid is holding its Homeless Awareness Ball on Saturday November 19th, and hope you will show your support by buying a ticket here.

There are few organizations that focus on helping homeless children, and as you can imagine, there are not a lot of resources out there for these kids who grow up without a stable home and without a support structure, transferred from school-to-school. However, the work that Travelers Aid does is truly important in breaking the cycle of homelessness for the next generation and helping these kids succeed in life. Please show your support. I hope to see you at the event.

Center for Culinary Enterprises Under Construction

2011-10-26T11:05:00.002-04:00

By Greg

I know it's been ages since I've blogged. It's because I've been hard at work on my day job trying to finance and bring to construction Philadelphia's first large-scale food business center. We just broke ground finally on this 13,000 square-foot project in West Philly. Check out the press release here.

Here's the project in a nutshell:

The Center for Culinary Enterprises will be one of the nation’s most comprehensive commercial kitchen centers, designed to be an engine for creating food-related jobs and businesses, and to provide resources to emerging food entrepreneurs in Philadelphia. The CCE is a 13,000+ square-foot project at 310 S. 48th Street, including three state-of-the-art commercial kitchens for rent to culinary entrepreneurs, a youth-run training restaurant, the eKitchen Multimedia Learning Center, and two retail spaces. More at philafood.org.

Support How Philly Moves

2011-03-07T21:31:00.004-05:00

By Ariel

One of the most innovative public art projects in Philadelphia is "How Philly Moves." Local photographer JJ Tizoui shot average Philadelphians across three days, Philadelphians in native Aztec costume, street clothes and dressed for ballroom dancing. These photographs, blown up to an incredible scale, will stretch across one mile of the Philadelphia International Airports' garage. You can find out more about the project and how you can help JJ raise $25,000 in less than a month (support it now), here.

One Last Chance

2011-02-28T14:48:00.002-05:00

By Greg

Check out my op-ed today in the Philadelphia Daily News, "Philadelphia has one last chance for skateboarding at LOVE Park."

Transfer of Development Rights - or - Posing a question to our readers.

2011-02-23T21:55:00.003-05:00

By Ariel

In states such as New Jersey, advocates of smart growth have established an interesting method of providing tools for communities to manage sprawl and growth. New Jersey's State Transfer of Development Rights Act allows municipalities to individually or jointly, create what are called "Sending" and "Receiving" zones.

If a municipality (or a collaborative set of them) can predict both a significant amount of growth but has also identified areas it wants to protect, it could create these Sending and Receiving Zones. The Receiving Zones are areas where growth is most likely already to occur, the most desirable areas and regionally competitive and designating them as Receiving Zones guarantees that they will be dense (and supportive of transit). The rights to have access to this market and the ability to build densely there (and make more money) are of value.

The Sending Zones of course are ones a region wants to protect. Farmers who would be tempted to sell their land to leap frog developers, could theoretically sell the development rights instead. Historic buildings that could be razed for the land might be saved in the same manner. New Jersey's Authorizing Act creates a framework for what essentially becomes a density market where developers can buy density directly from other land owners or from "development banks."

What is amazing is that this mechanism creates value in keeping land under - developed and provides the owners of that land access to the value as well.

Generally these seem used and good for suburban regions, or at the very least, what about using it in a dense urban environment. There are parts of Philadelphia that are more likely to see more growth in a few years, or perhaps we want to promote transit oriented development?

Perhaps, we could protect historic areas, riparian or watershed land, etc, and provide the people on whose land we are trying to protect have access to the value created in such city density market.

Aside from a comments about what an optimistic view of Philadelphia's real estate market I seem to have (and don't worry, like any cynical Philadelphian, I think its terrible), I would love to know what you think...

This is a just a thought and I would love to hear what other

2010 Awards Ceremony Featuring Denise Scott Brown

2010-11-11T18:34:00.002-05:00

By Greg

Join us in celebrating the winners of the 2010 Ed Bacon Student Design Competition and the recipient of the 2010 Edmund N. Bacon Prize:

DENISE SCOTT BROWN, RIBA, Int. FRBIA
Principal, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates; Author, Learning from Las Vegas + more

Tuesday, December 07, 2010
6:00 - 6:45 pm Opening Reception
6:45 - 8:15 pm Presentation of Awards & Lecture by Denise Scott Brown
8:15 - 9:00 pm Closing Reception

$75 General Public
$25 Student or AIA Associate

Register online

Architecture in Film + Book Talk: Ed Bacon

2010-10-25T17:08:00.001-04:00

By Greg

Please join me for this event Thursday:

Architecture in Film + Book Talk: Ed Bacon

Thursday, October 28, 2010
7 to 9 p.m.
Presented by the Center for Architecture
Registration required. To register, click here.

Please join the Center for Architecture for a screening of selections from the film series "Understanding Cities" (1984) produced by Edmund N. Bacon. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring:

• Michael Bacon, Co-producer of the "Understanding Cities" films with his father.

• Gregory Heller, Managing Director at The Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation and Chairman of the Ed Bacon Program Committee

• Scott Gabriel Knowles, Ph.D., editor of "Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City" (2009)

• Moderated by Julie Hoffman, AIA, President-Elect of AIA Philadelphia

This event is part of a series hosted by John DeFazio, AIA (Architect & Associate Professor @ Drexel University) and Nick Groch, Assoc. AIA, which screens films that explore ideas and themes on architecture and architects. The theme for all films in the 2010/2011 series is "The City." Discussion is encouraged.

This I Believe

2010-10-10T19:10:00.005-04:00

By Ariel

It's not quite a truth universally acknowledged, but engineers often make for terrible public speakers, particularly when it comes to discussing highly technical issues that affect neighborhoods. They focus on the details and don't describe them in ways that people intuitively get. But engineers aren't the only ones who do that. Governments as a whole have had a very hard time communicating why they need to do the highly technocratic things they need to do, like invest in public transportation. Why else do people support Governors such as Christie who scuttle multi-billion dollar projects, if not because they do not understand the critical function that infrastructure plays in our society and how important city and region building is. And its because policy wonks don't often try and communicate it in any way other than the technocratic language they always do, and they don't let other people see the underlying beliefs which drive them. I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to do what I hope was just that, on WHYY's This I Believe, directed by Elizabeth Peres Luna. Listen over on WHYY.org, or read below:

For most people that first moment of liberation, of freedom, comes when they are handed their first car keys at sixteen. Mine came when I was twelve when I got my first trail pass. I still have the small yellow card with its bright red number 2. And to this day it's packed away in a box filled with the others just like it that I carried throughout middle school and high-school.

Suddenly the city was mine as I hopped on the train to go to school, the bus or subway to visit friends. I didn’t have to worry about learning how to parallel park or drive, all I did was jump on the next schedule bus and the city was mine.

Riding SEPTA was not just about a new freedom of movement I never had before. It was also about discovering new friends. I began to meet my neighbors, people I had grown up with but never knew lived right around the corner. Seeing these people day in and day out helped me gain a sense of community I never got when I was chauffeured around.

Later, when I took a year off of college to work at a local bakery, the Night Kitchen in Chestnut Hill, I was lucky that the very last train on the Chestnut Hill East line got me to work at 1 AM, the exact right time to start making muffins and cinnamon buns. If I missed it, the 23 took me through the heart of North Philly to the front door of the bakery.

I was raised in a neighborhood that grew up around the city’s first train lines. As an urban planner I can think of hundreds of reasons why transit is good for cities. But I don't need theory. Every day I see with my own two eyes how transit makes it easier to support thriving communities. Today I work in the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities because I have seen the impact transit has had on my city.

I believe that we as a region need to invest in our public transportation system, not simply because it is what economists call a “public good”; but because everybody should be so lucky to have transit lines to get them to work at 1 in the morning. And everybody should find new opportunities to make friends and meet their neighbors.

Complex Problems, Complex Solutions

2010-08-17T12:36:00.003-04:00

By Greg

University of Pennsylvania professor and former Daily News Columnist Mark Allan Hughes once wrote critically of “a world that demands simple solutions for complex problems…” The need for understanding and addressing the subtle and complex realm of urban development and public policy is the unspoken premise of John Kromer’s new book, Fixing Broken Cities: The Implementation of Urban Development Strategies. Kromer, a veteran civil servant, professor, and policy consultant, presents extraordinarily complex problems through the lens of someone who has been there, fought the battles, and can now reflect on what works and what doesn’t. The book delves deep into policy issues, but is very readable and generally jargon-free. For anyone who is involved in urban development or ever wants to be, Fixing Broken Cities, is a must read.

Kromer, who now roosts at the Fels Institute of Government at Penn, spent a career deep in the trenches of urban housing and community development. But he is quick to point out, “I do not have a degree in city planning, economics, or public administration; I have no political credentials to speak of…” Kromer’s qualifications come from raw experience. He worked his way up through the bureaucracy of Philadelphia’s housing agencies to become the City’s housing director and briefly the head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Later he temporarily headed Camden, New Jersey’s redevelopment effort, and more recently served as a consultant to Allentown, Pennsylvania. The book provides a detailed tour through Kromer’s career, focusing on each city and transferring ideas from one case study to the next, while providing exposure to the challenges and political battles that arose along the way.

Kromer explains that he has “devoted most of my career to implementing downtown and neighborhood reinvestment strategies in cities that are disinvested, de-populated, and cash-starved.” He writes about his episodes experiencing tough political realities, infuriating bureaucratic logjams, and staggering problems that needed to be solved with next to no resources. Such a career would have driven many out of public service. However, Kromer not only slogged through, he seems to have drawn strength from the utter complexity of massive urban dilemmas, feeding an endless optimism and faith that the future can be better.

In some ways Fixing Broken Cities is a sequel to Kromer’s earlier book, Neighborhood Recovery: Reinvestment Policy for the New Hometown. The two books deal with similar problems and ideas, but now Kromer has more experience under his belt, and the concepts in Fixing Broken Cities are often more defined, evidence-based, and pragmatic. The new book’s title captures Kromer’s optimism, expressing the idea that some cities are broken, but they can be fixed, and as the title implies, the book will show us how it can be done.

Much of the book focuses on the city where Kromer spent the lion’s share of his career – Philadelphia. Since the low point of Philadelphia’s urban decline in the 1980s, the city has seen a stream of programs and initiatives focused on downtown and community reinvestment. Kromer provides a survey of these programs, connecting them and providing first-hand perspective on their intended results, strengths, weaknesses, and impacts. The reader comes away seeing that Philadelphia’s recent resurgence is surely not accidental.

The programs and initiatives span from city and state tax credits and abatements, to the advent of Center City District, investments by the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia, and the City’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. Kromer never argues that these interventions were based on a single plan, ran smoothly, or were truly connected. However, he shows how collectively they built upon each other in a powerful and incremental way.

In the book, Kromer proceeds point by point to show how these programs played out. For example, he discusses the success of Philadelphia’s tax abatement program in attracting new development downtown and in promoting the rehabilitation of blighted and abandoned buildings. He uses this program to highlight challenges, namely that in a strong economy the abatement becomes a tax break for the rich. His solution: “Use post-abatement term tax revenue to support affordable housing.” Overall, he dubs this program, which continues to be controversial in Philadelphia, “a success in economic development terms and a failure in terms of human capital development.”

Kromer also goes into great detail about the implementation of Philadelphia’s massive Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) under Mayor John Street, which Kromer argues was flawed from beginning because “program decisions were being made in the absence of planning.” He explains, “If Mayor Street had identified community planning as the first step in redefining the working relationship between municipal government and neighborhoods, then every municipal agency would have been involved in the citywide dialogue.” Instead, Kromer swipes at the program, noting how it devolved into a “politically motivated” strategy that did little more than “improve the City’s ability to assemble land for development.”

The discussion of NTI is not entirely critical, but Kromer also notes, “Most of the development that occurred in Philadelphia during Street’s eight-year tenure was not NTI-financed.” The big point he leaves readers with is that “a transformation of neighborhoods could not be undertaken successfully unless preceded by a transformation of government.” One of the book’s great strengths is that Kromer never cites mistakes without proposing solutions. He always lays out a list of ideas, in this case including having the Mayor appoint a development policy chief, and giving the City’s Redevelopment Authority right of first refusal on foreclosure-eligible properties before they go to Sherriff sale or auction.

In his chapter about the revitalization of West Philadelphia, Kromer heaps praise on the series of interventions taken by the University of Pennsylvania, under its past President Judith Rodin, to invest in the communities surrounding the university. Kromer argues that this type of investment by place-based institutions is critical in today’s economy. He writes, “Many of these institutions cannot move to new sites; they have to succeed in place.” Penn developed a powerful approach, but encountered many naysayers about what could succeed in the marketplace. Kromer notes that Penn’s strategy also required a strong understanding of urban development, and “there was no opportunity for a suburban developer to play any constructive role.”

After discussing Philadelphia for over 200 pages, Kromer dedicates half as much ink to discussions of Camden and Allentown. This disproportionate focus on Philadelphia reflects the duration of the author’s own experiences. Yet the inclusion of other cities is valuable – broadening the book’s perspective. For example, during his stint directing Camden’s redevelopment program, Kromer had to deal with a small city under a state takeover, with different levels of government at odds as to who was in charge. It was a wholly different situation from the one he experienced in Philadelphia.

The account of the messy attempts in Camden to gain approval for redevelopment plans and attract developers is detailed and comprehensive. However, by the end of the Camden discussion, Kromer steps back to note a larger issue, sounding a less-than-subtle call to action: “The real barrier to Camden’s future success was the absence of a new generation of civic leadership... The places with the greatest potential to contribute to the growth of civic leadership in Camden are the city’s academic and health care institutions...”

In Allentown, the issues diverge even farther from those in Philadelphia. The Allentown City government brought on Kromer to advise on policies to address “the destabilization of neighborhood blocks, as a result of large-scale conversions of single-family homes to multi-family properties.” Kromer runs through an array of policy interventions to deal with the problems of a place that has seen significant real estate interest in purchasing investment properties – shifting a city of homes to one overrun with rental units, and the issues that arise from absentee landlords.

One of the intriguing elements of Fixing Broken Cities is that Kromer is clearly a participant in the narrative, not just an observer. For example, after the completion of new housing in North Philadelphia, Kromer received criticism for allowing “suburban-style” development, without a mix of uses or supportive services. Some of this criticism came from Mayor John Street’s wife in the middle of a meeting. Kromer writes, “So how do you respond to criticism from the Mayor’s wife? … Who did she think I was, Robert Moses, Jr.?” These types of entertaining episodes remind the reader that this is not a textbook or a sterile academic treatise. Rather it is a no-holds-barred, personal story and an honest assessment from someone who was there, and who still is.

In perhaps the most personal chapter, Kromer steps back from high-level policy and focuses on his own West Philadelphia community, and the controversial plans to redevelop an abandoned fire house into a farmers market. Even here, so close to home, he does not shy away from tough issues, delving into the dangerous waters of race and community politics. He asserts, “The best plan for the fire house would be one that appealed to both whites and blacks and brought residents from both sides of the 50^th Street divide together in an unforced, spontaneous way.” Using maps and data he convincingly shows how local perceptions of gentrification that created roadblocks for the project were not, in fact, the reality.

Kromer writes, “The controversy over the fire house was not a symptom of gentrification; it was a disagreement among a relatively small number of middle-class residents, most of whom had not grown up in the community… based on their perceptions – well-founded or unfounded – of what community should be.” He closes the chapter noting that the farmers market failed, but that the property’s current incarnation as a brewpub created “a valuable economic asset,” whose clientele is “primary white and under thirty.”

In a final chapter titled “The Future of Reinvestment,” Kromer argues that today’s landscape demands fresh thinking; the era of big government-supported urban renewal is over. Kromer writes, “the rules have changed; the money is spent; the show is ending.” In this chapter, he outlines “ten ways in which many city governments are unprepared to address the challenges and opportunities associated with twenty-first century reinvestment.” This section includes arguments like “Postindustrial cities and the states where they are located need a qualified twenty-first-century workforce more than anything else.”

He takes a biting swing at Habitat for Humanity arguing, “The last thing that highly distressed urban communities need is more low-income housing – and that is exactly what Habitat is producing in many urban areas.” He also criticizes the common strategy of cities requiring a certain percentage of business to go to certified minority-owned companies, arguing, “The reason why this approach fails is because the government mandate is not linked to a business services progress that is designed specifically to help small minority and neighborhood contractors develop the capability to bid competitively on city contracting and vending opportunities.”

However, he does not end on a pessimistic note. Kromer closes the chapter summarizing some of the major policy solutions that emerged from the book’s various chapters, connecting them to who should implement them (federal, state or local government, or institutions like universities and hospitals). For example, he encourages states to focus on both housing development and job training to a higher degree, and institutions to create incentives for employees to buy houses nearby their campuses and “to support one or more public schools.”

The book’s closing message is that cities require a focus on sustainability, but not in the environmental sense. Kromer explains, “Urban assets are unlike wetlands or wildlife areas; in order to preserve their intrinsic value they need to change; preservation and adaptation need to be linked.” This message is a powerful challenge. Do we understand our urban places well enough to value their preservation? Are we savvy and innovative enough to know how to adapt?

Fixing Broken Cities is fascinating and enlightening – surely one of the most important accounts of urban reinvestment policy that has come out in recent times. Kromer has a deep institutional memory and is a keen policy analyst. In the end, the book’s main lesson is that simple solutions will not cut it. Kromer argues “business leaders tend to like policies that are straightforward, clearly articulated, and easy to grasp.” Throughout the book, Kromer is clear that government, the private sector, and institutions need to think more long-term and comprehensively. Forget about the short-term, the easy-to-understand, the sexy initiative that can be communicated in a sound bite. They lack the power to be game changers.

DRPA debated on WHYY

2010-08-03T09:36:00.005-04:00

By Ariel

When scholars refer to an "Apology" they are not referring to someone saying, "I am sorry." Rather they are referring to a text that acts as a defense or explanation of someone's life or actions. Radio Times, a local radio show on WHYY, hosted a debate between John Estey and Monica Yant Kinney (MYK) last night. John Estey is the Board Chair of the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) and MYK is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a vocal critic of the DRPA. Estey delivered an amazing, thorough and insightful apology for state-sanctioned authorities, those strange quasi-governmental agencies that run our transit systems and build our bridges.

What is most interesting about this debate is MYK's consistent attempt to attack the DRPA institution, and how often it missed the mark. I counted only three instances where I found her criticisms right on the money. More often they displayed a lack of understanding of how these institutions work and why they do what they do.

No wonder our government has such a hard time explaining itself to the public, when the media itself does not understand what the imperatives of our institutions are. What they react to is a press that insists on anthropomorphizing our institutions and insisting they act like people not agencies.

This was one of the most riveting debates I have heard in some time and urge you all to listen.

What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs

2010-07-12T15:58:00.008-04:00

By Greg

In 1962, a journalist wrote of Jane Jacobs, “She has made a career of chopping city planners and urban renewal experts … into small pieces, which she feeds to cats.” After the publication of her landmark book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, 1961), and subsequent tour across the nation – where she excoriated the latest trends in urban planning – Jane Jacobs has never fallen victim to a lack of interest or attention.

Jacobs famously kept a low profile and seldom spoke about herself to journalists and would-be biographers. Yet, during her lifetime a number of books and an endless pool of articles featured the housewife from Greenwich Village and her approach to urbanism that valued street smarts and informed observation over expert analysis and the will of powerful bureaucrats.

Since her passing in 2006, several important books have come out about Jacobs’ life and work. Two notables, Anthony Flint’s Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City (Random House, 2009), and Roberta Brandes Gratz’s The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (Nation Books, 2010), recall Jacobs’ battle of ideas with New York’s urban development czar, memorializing a triumph of Vox populi and the value of the human city over the sterile, mega-scale ideas of the Corbusian Ville Radieuse.

Without a doubt, the implications of Jacobs’ ideas, gleaned from her New York experience and expressed so well in Death and Life, continue to influence much contemporary urban thought. It is for that very reason that What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs (New Village Press, 2010) resonates so powerfully. In the book, over 30 authors reflect – in short and readable chapters – on the modern relevance of Jacobs’ ideas, explaining how Jacobs’ work influenced their own. These are not all academics, architects or urban designers; far from it. These voices refreshingly reflect Jacobs’ own disdain for compartmentalization of disciplines, with chapters by a theater company founder, bloggers and journalists, community activists, and elected officials, as well as the expected thought leaders, professors, and practitioners.

What We See provides a clear picture of the broad range of Jacobs’ influence – focusing not just on her New York years, but on her more numerous Toronto years, and the significance of her other books, namely The Economy of Cities (Random House, 1969). Much of What We See connects Jacobs’ work with contemporary urban ideas, such as environmental sustainability and buying local. The authors trace Jacobs’ impact to places as diverse as Missoula, Toronto, Germany, and Mumbai, capturing the breadth of her ideas as well as a smattering of biographical reflections from those who knew her and learned directly from “Jane.” The book tries to do many things, and amazingly generally succeeds.

After a foreword by Michael Sorkin (former architecture critic for The Village Voice), the book’s editors, Stephen A. Goldsmith and Lynne Elizabeth, describe the volume’s main theme: “What we see is largely who we are and what we have learned to see. There is no such thing as an objective observer.” The book then unfolds in six sections, and some of its un-objective observers are very engaging.

In “Jane Jacobs and the “Battle for the Street,” journalist Ray Suarez lays out an excellent and concise discussion of urban renewal, focusing on the rift between intentions of building a better society and the reality of the destruction that it caused. Mindy Thompson Fullilove embarks on a fascinating exploration of the psychology of social disruption and violence, resulting from the events of urban renewal. She analyzes the impacts of America’s “catastrophic urban policies,” which contributed to conditions that can be better understood, she argues, by studying the psychology of Japanese internment camps, prisons, and other places with severe social isolation.

The 2008 recipient of the Jane Jacobs Medal, Alexie M. Torres-Fleming, recounts her parallel Jane Jacobs story. As a Latina in the Bronx, she worked from the grassroots to empower a violence-plagued and disenfranchised community to carry out a robust and successful resident-led planning process. While Jacobs’ own story is often characterized by efforts to kill proposed highways and stop the demolition of neighborhoods, Torres-Fleming talks about the value of rebuilding – of engaging communities in planning a bright future. She writes, “Communities are not just streets and buildings: they are the sacred spaces made up of living, breathing people whose hopes and dreams are wrapped up in those same streets and buildings. Planning can elevate or diminish that reality.”

Perhaps the most provocative piece is Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava’s “The Village Inside,” which profiles the Dharavi slum of Mumbai. They portray Dharavi as a place that exemplifies the essence of Jane Jacobs’ philosophy and progressive urban ideology – mixed-use, creative communities, with live-work spaces, and vibrant locally sustained economies. The authors note that like many disinvested American urban neighborhoods, Dharavi is looked down upon by the government, which seizes on its “messy and makeshift appearance” as a rationale for redevelopment. Yet, this informal settlement exemplifies models of sustainable development that are sought after in wealthy, industrial cities.

Another notable piece is by Jaime Lerner, the firebrand former Mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, who famously reclaimed his city for pedestrians. Lerner challenges urban leaders to take decisive steps to improve our urban places, and asserts in the spirit of Jane Jacobs, “The idea that action should only be taken after all the answers and the resources have been found is a sure recipe for paralysis.”

Several of the authors creatively extend Jacobs’ ideas to broader concepts. Pierre Desrochers and Samuli Leppälä discuss the economics of “Jacobs spillovers,” the phenomenon that results from “…individuals who move frequently between different lines of work and/or regularly borrow ideas from fields other than the one they are working in.” Roberta Brandes Gratz talks about Jacobs’ “web thinking,” focusing on the way that issues are interconnected, debunking the allure of simplistic arguments. In one example she writes, “Yes, more electric cars and hybrids will help clean the air we breathe, but it won’t do anything to tame traffic, minimize the amount of land devoted to blacktop, limit sprawl, regenerate pedestrian-oriented places, or rebuild communities.”

Ironically (or perhaps appropriately) the most interesting chapters are the ones that have the least to do with Jane Jacobs. Janine Benyus’ chapter on biomimicry, and economist Saskia Sassen’s chapter on the intersection of the knowledge economy and 21st-century urban industry focus on themes that are, in one sense, related to Jacobs’ overall message, but on a broader level represent entirely independent scholarship.

While many chapters are highly enjoyable, and a handful are gems, some are less successful – overly simplistic, semantic, or jargony to the point of being nearly unreadable. A few seem to completely miss the essence of Jacobs’ message, like Clare Cooper Marcus’ chapter that encourages developments with cul-de-sacs and “privacy ‘buffer[s]’ such as a fenced yard or patio.” One weak point of What We See is its failure to adequately discuss the complexity of the Jacobs’ legacy. A few authors note criticisms of Jacobs – like her praise of the forces that ultimately led her beloved Greenwich Village to become hypergentrified – but overall the book reads like a Jacobs lovefest. Still, with so many different voices, and so much of the volume inspired by (rather than about) Jacobs, it holds together and feels satisfying by the end.

The book concludes with a lovely epilogue by Mary Rowe, recounting her personal interaction with Jacobs over tea, discussing the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Jane tells her at one point, “You’re thinking like a bureaucrat. The people of New Orleans will decide what to do about their city – not you.” Thus, the book ends with Jacobs’ never-ending faith that communities will take care of themselves through grassroots, self-motivated, incremental progress – that top-down thinking can only do harm.

Yet this conclusion contrasts with the underlying message of many of the writers, who seem to believe that through innovation and a more accurate understanding of how cities really function (informed by Jacobs’ wisdom, of course), we can build healthier, more sustainable, more vital places for all kinds of people. It is a new, entrepreneurial, 21st-century outlook. Indeed, the true message of What We See is that we have a fresh generation of urban thought leaders who have learned from Jane Jacobs, but are intelligent, passionate, and innovative enough to develop their own ideas, messages, and strategies for action.

Why Big Box Retail is Unsustainable

2010-06-15T08:14:00.006-04:00

By Ariel

An interesting statistic, and explanation thereof, came across my desk the other day. The New Rules Project crunched some numbers from the US DOT and found that while we are driving less as a nation, our shopping trips are much longer. I will let the excerpt from their report speak for itself.

Miles Driven for Shopping Continues to Climb, But Pace Slows

Newly released data from the U.S. Department of Transportation show that the average American household is driving less than it did in 2001. But, while the number of miles logged going to work, social events, and other activities declined over the last decade, the number of miles families drive for shopping each year continued to climb — although at a much slower pace than in the 1990s. The figures come from the National Household Travel Survey, which is conducted every 6 to 8 years. The 2009 data were gathered during some of the worst months of the economic collapse, from late 2008 into early 2009, which may have skewed the results somewhat as people were driving less than normal. The findings show that, since the last survey in 2001, overall miles driven per household fell 4.4 percent, but shopping-related driving bucked the trend, expanding by 1.3 percent to 3,102 miles per year for the average household… While suburbanization accounts for much of the general growth in driving, it does not explain why the number of miles households drive for errands grew so much faster. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the probable culprit is the rise of big-box stores. Where once a gallon of milk, a prescription, or a piece of hardware was available at a neighborhood store only a few blocks or short drive away, many of those small, local businesses are now gone. They've been replaced by a much smaller number of giant superstores, each of which serves a much larger region. As a result, the average trip to a store is now about three miles longer than it was in 1990. That adds up to a lot of additional miles when multiplied across 113 million households that make an average of 470 trips to stores each year.

Putting the brakes on TOD enthusiasm

2010-06-07T18:41:00.004-04:00

By Ariel

In this month's Atlantic, Chris Leinberger suggests that private developers should fund the development of street car lines because of the higher values that proximity to transit brings.

Over at the Next American City, Yonah Freemark has some pretty scathing criticism of Leinberger's enthusiasm. He writes that "Leinberger’s solution — that developers could benefit by spending their own money to build transit — is problematic. For one, it fails to account for the fact that most land speculators move on to new work once they’ve sold off their projects to home buyers. Who would continue to subsidize the operations costs of the new transit systems once the land has been sold? Is it fair to expect municipal transit operators to take over the servicing of privately developed systems? Second, Leinberger’s argument assumes that developers would be either wealthy enough or powerful enough to assemble the necessary right-of-way for said transit and then build it. Noting Detroit’s recent public-private streetcar deal, he posits that the federal government should be more willing to fund private-initiated public transportation, and it’s true that involvement from Washington would make such investments far more feasible."

Yonah's criticisms are pretty spot on, but they miss even bigger problems that would actually squash any of Leinberger's lovely dreams. When you actually look at the costs of building a light rail line, and you look at the scope of profits, and even the marginal growth in value induced by TOD, you still don't cover the costs of building a light rail line.

Even more importantly? The lead time to build a light rail line is HUGE, and long, probably much longer than the time a developer wants to spend building. Developers want no more than five years of pre-development commitment. Assuming that the costs justified the TOD, which I doubt, the amount of time required to build a light rail, is so long that it’s just not worth it for developers.

Finally, Leinberger who uses the early developers of regional rail and light rail as his model, forgets that they had a few different things going for them that made their 19th century projects a success:

low labor costs
control of LOTS of land. (Now its scattered sites, and even if you could control all the land, the market for people to move into these new neighborhoods would be a HUGE risk that no developer would take on, at least not in a city, maybe for greenfield development, and definitely not in this economy)
fair grounds: Lots of these developers had fairgrounds at the end of their lines, transit use was actually much higher on the weekends when people went to the fairs. That won’t work these days with much more competition for our entertainment dollars.

This isn't to say that there is not a role for the private sector in TOD, but we can't think we should just abdicate the role of the government in building our cities from the ground up.

Engines of Economies

2010-05-21T17:10:00.001-04:00

By Matt
This post is from our sometime contributor Matt C.

Small businesses create jobs, and everyone knows it, right? Mainstream media outlets and wonkish blogs alike have referred to small businesses as the "engine of job creation" for the United States. Talking heads sing their praises as local leaders woo them. Even Presidents extol the virtues of these diminutive economic saviors.

But even as leaders, reporters and conventional wisdom tell us that small businesses create jobs, new research is calling that assumption into question. This oft-repeated snippet of common knowledge may not actually carry the policy-driving implications we assign it. In one way, it's true that small businesses create a lot of jobs. The implied causality, however--that being small is what makes a business better able to create jobs--might be a complete illusion.

By analogy, consider this statistic: A lot of drownings occur on days during which a lot of ice cream is sold. It's 100% true. Drownings and ice cream sales are highly correlated. But while ice cream sales is a good predictor for drownings, there's a better one: temperature. When it's hot outside, people buy ice cream and go swimming (dramatically increasing drowning chances). Not every day with a lot of ice cream consumption leads to high drownings, but it's close enough to be useful if you don't have any weather information.

Likewise, economists and policy makers have been using the size of a business as a proxy for a much more important variable in predicting job creation potential: recency of entry to a labor market. To state the driving causal relationship, we shouldn't say that small businesses create jobs, but rather, that NEW businesses create jobs. And it just so happens that most new businesses are fairly small (just as most days with a lot of ice cream sold are reasonably warm).

Many small businesses are extremely weak engines of job creation, and most of them have been around for a while. Most sole proprietorships will never employ anyone for very long, and small, stable local businesses and stores don't expand their payrolls with much effectiveness. The small businesses which are best at creating jobs are the ones on their way to become large businesses; they don't stay small for decades. It's time to admit that the fifty year old corner store is not the engine of job creation for the country. It's Sergey and Larry, not Mom and Pop.

The age of the business is a better metric than size, but an even better indicator of hiring potential is the time a business has been in a particular labor market. A multinational conglomerate entering a new market can be an extremely powerful force for job creation. It's not discussed as widely and the impact of small businesses, but a one hundred year old company opening up a new plant or a new market is likely to create more jobs than entire towns full of small businesses.

Fine-tuning the metrics we use as predictors of job creation potential can help fine tune the "engine of job creation" so lauded in the press. Policy makers focusing incentives on new businesses instead of small businesses will be able to spend more wisely. Targeting small businesses in a major city can give hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to some of the organizations least likely to create new jobs. But targeting new businesses only would be a more precise scalpel.

When Philadelphia looks to encourage economic growth, leaders should pay attention to all the research available on job creation. By eliminating business size as a criterion, we avoid repeating mistakes which have taken money out of public coffers in favor of independent consultants and small law firms whose personnel tend to be well off and stable in number. Alternative strategies haven't worked either; efforts to give job creation incentives by targeting new real estate developments usually accomplishes more job movement than creation (while leaving a lot of empty office space). New entrants to the job market are much more likely to respond to incentives, and policy makers should target them accordingly.

It's time to rethink our approach to economic incentives, and restructure our notions of the engine behind American job creation. We have to disassociate our yearning for the idyllic quiet American main street lined with shops and businesses from our economic policy. Recovery isn't going to found in small town storefronts, but rather in garages, basements, and yes, the board rooms of expanding multinational conglomerates. It's time to reform the refrain. Let's get used to saying, "New businesses are the engine of job creation in the United States."

What parking really is

2010-05-13T09:00:00.004-04:00

If you read Underground garage hits high-tech heights you will be forgiven thinking that the only interesting thing about the article is the technology described therein. However I was floored by the following quote: "This advanced technological solution to what he calls 'this building's tiny footprint' came from Parkway Corp.'s chairman and chief executive officer, Joseph S. Zuritsky, a partner in 1706 Rittenhouse with developer Tom Scannapieco." In Philadelphia, Parkway is associated with commuters looking for early bird pricing and diners who have given up driving around for half an hour and are finally willing to pay upwards of $20 to park. But Parkway is also a real estate development firm, their website notes that:

"Parkway has been in the field of real estate development for close to 70 years. We own, operate, and manage over 100 properties in the United States and Canada including surface and multi-level parking facilities. We have office space and retail space for lease as well as properties available for sale, and co-development."

Cities across the US are only now beginning to realize that parking is not about just parking but it is about asset and land management. It's just a shame that they are far behind the curve of the parking lot companies themselves.

The Soul of a City

2010-05-11T08:01:00.002-04:00

By Ariel
Cities have souls. If humans, themselves collections of sinews, organs and tissues can have souls, surely so can cities with their streets, parks and electric grids. While different religions ascribe different properties to the soul of a man or woman, there are a few more standard proxies for measuring the soul of a city. They amount largely to two things, the strength of the neurosis that its citizens have about their city, and the percentage of people currently living in the city who are from said city.

Neurosis: There used to be a billboard (or so I am told) along I-95 that read "Philadelphia: it's not as bad as Philadelphians say it is." Residents with cities with souls have a neurotic obsession with their cities, an obsession with the identity of the city and how things get done there. It does not have to all be neurotic, New Orleans felt like a city suffering from collective post traumatic stress disorder when I was there, and San Franciscans seem to have an enormous amount of near narcissistic love for their city, seeing the city as the reflection of their own potential and ethos. While I may use psychological terms fast and loose, I do believe that these cities all actively acknowledge or wrestle with a sense of identity and what it means to be from that city.

Percentage of Natives: When someone asks you in Philadelphia or New Orleans, what school did you go to, they mean, what High School did you go to (not, like in Manhattan or DC, what college). This is not just evidence of a sort of parochialism, it is also a sign that natives have deep roots in these cities. Having a high percentage of people from the city, distributed across income brackets, means that people across the city have memories of the city. A friend of mine living in Albania, had an address that said "Mike, above where Disco-My-Heart used to be, Behind where the rice factory used to stand." While cities need immigrants and churn, new people moving in and out, for a city to have a soul, it needs people who remember what used to be on that corner a decade a go.

I often flippantly say that DC has no soul, so many people move in and move out so quickly in that City that its neighborhoods are forgotten and without identity. My friends who are from DC argue with me, noting that such a characterization is only applicable for NW DC, a white capital-hill-centric DC. I would be willing to concede some of that, but if half the city does not pay attention to itself, well I still think its souless. Manhattan too, it could be argued, is loosing its soul as it becomes more and more expensive and more and more out-of-towners live their and have lost the memory of a grimier and livelier past.

Some of this may sound like simple urban romanticism, but in the end successful cities are those that encourage people to live in them and raise their children in them. Not all these cities are functional, but they do have people passionately fighting for, well, their souls.

A TIGER drinks a Pepsi

2010-05-05T16:49:00.012-04:00

By Ariel

Recently the Planning Collective partnered with the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District to compete for $50,000 from Pepsi to transform a chaotic 6-way intersection into a community asset. They will, in essence, be bringing Broadway to South Philly: the very same reclamation of auto-dominated right of way and transformation into pedestrian node like was done in the heart of NYC and San Francisco could now emerge in Sou' Philly. I urge you to go here ,vote, and make this project a reality.

After you vote (early and often, in the truest of Philadelphia traditions) poke around the website, you will may see the future of planning in America.

As citizen's appetites for taxes diminishes even more rapidly, the federal, state and local governments have access to fewer and fewer funds to invest in their communities. This means not only that there is less money to play around with, but that it is harder to get. No wonder the US DOT made TIGER a competitive grant, it’s just disheartening that they received approximately $56 billion worth of proposed projects, for only $1.5 billion worth of funding. With less access to capital, planning and public investment will only get more competitive.

With foundations only able to pick up so much of the remaining tab (due to trust funds reduced by economic nose dives and their many different internal missions) it’s no wonder that the private sector is jumping in. I don’t know how many people have clicked on Pepsi’s website and registered their information to vote for their friends’ projects, but surely it’s worth the $1.3 million worth in grant funding they are distributing.

That being said, please do click here and help bring a little bit of green to South Philly.

Neighbors to be heard on school building sales

2010-04-15T08:54:00.001-04:00

By Ariel

The article "Neighbors to be heard on school building sales" is great news and a great opportunity to do some innovative public outreach. One of the biggest problems with public outreach is that when it's most thorough (i.e. when it's most extensive and has the most meetings), there is usually little opportunity to actually substantively change the project or include community feedback. By timing the public outreach with the actual transfer of title, the community gets in at the right point. Let's hope that the School District develops a process that does more than just listen to the community but also educates them (like a school district should) about development, and work collaboratively as the partners in the community they are.

The Future of Urban Retail

2010-04-03T09:55:00.006-04:00

Source

By Greg

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer column by Inga Saffron was about a trendy clothing shop that recycled the interior of an out-of-business bathroom fixtures store to create a hip and “eclectic boutique.” Saffron’s point was to encourage retailers to “cherish the design resources that are already here,” especially in a recession when storefronts are changing over on a more frequent basis. What I found most intriguing about the column, however, was a secondary point that Saffron hints at.

Near the end of the column she writes, “Bookstores are not likely to survive when the world is fully Kindle-ized, except perhaps for specialty shops. Ditto for music stores.” This passing remark begs a much larger question: What is the future of urban retail in the Internet age? My father recently pointed out in conversation that the easiest way to find the answer is probably to analyze what we buy online, and what we are less likely to seek on the web. At the moment, the top candidates for the latter seem to be food, clothing and furniture, services (hair/nail salons, medical offices), personal banking, experiences (dining out, theater, clubs, bowling), and items we need right away (toilet paper, toothbrushes, medicine). In other words, the Internet has not only redefined retail, it continues to offer a guide to what retail businesses are good bets for the future.

This is not just an urban phenomenon. The Internet has also changed the retail landscape in the suburbs substantially. I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs near the Plymouth Meeting Mall. On a recent business trip to a Plymouth Meeting office building, I was shocked to see that the mall’s exterior – once a blank wall, fronting the massive parking lots – was now activated, surrounded by dozens of new chain restaurants and a Whole Foods supermarket. In short, its management determined that the future of the mall was not rooted exclusively (or even primarily) in reviving the interior stores, but in bedecking its exterior with these Internet-resistant business categories.

Before the Internet, suburban-style big-box stores were the biggest threat to urban retail vitality. While some big-box chains that focus on the most Internet-vulnerable categories (like Borders) are threatened, it still seems like a number of national, big-box stores are fairly resilient today. Thus these major retailers are also necessarily part of the equation of figuring out urban retail in the Internet age.

Previously, almost none of these stores would locate in an urban-style context, insisting on building boxes in massive parking lots as their exclusive business model. Some big-box stores still do not have an urban design and won’t go beyond their familiar suburban-style look. But these days, many have wised up and now have urban design templates. Savvier cities have found ways to woo these stores downtown (I was recently in an urban-style Best Buy in Manhattan; Manhattan's Home Depot is shown above).

In today’s economy it becomes more important than ever for cities to figure out how to utilize these stores as anchors for urban commercial corridors. In Philadelphia we have many of these big-box stores, but located far away from the downtown and major commercial corridors. It is well known that big box stores have relatively short life spans in suburban-style locations, often staying open only ten or fifteen years before seeking a new spot, leaving vacant “grayfields” behind. Philadelphia should make it a focus to ensure that when its South Philly big boxes close down that the City provides the carrots and sticks to bring these retail anchors to dense, urban-style commercial corridors. This is something the City should be thinking about proactively, rather than waiting for the not-so-distant day that one of the South Philly mega-retailers is ready to shut its doors and move to the next shopping center down the block.

I would argue that cities still have the strongest chance to keep small, diverse, and privately-owned retailers open, but it depends on their ability to understand the new market forces brought on by online shopping, and the necessity of centralizing their major retailers so as to create the critical mass of shoppers needed to provide the kind of retail we have traditionally come to expect from urban shopping. Small commercial corridors can certainly stay relevant based on the perpetual need for place-based, Internet-resilient businesses. However, downtowns and larger urban commercial corridors continue to need anchors.

I want to ride my bicycle...

2010-03-25T11:10:00.005-04:00

By Ariel
Full disclosure, I work for Philadelphia's Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities. The following does NOT reflect any official policy of the City and only my own personal analysis.

Last month, the Philadelphia Bikeshare Concept Study was released. The study was commissioned for the City, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and the William Penn Foundation. On its release it was met with great fanfare, the advocacy group Bikeshare Philadelphia proclaimed “YES to bike share! The study verifies the viability of a Public Use Bicycle Program for the City of Philadelphia.” It is worth it to take a much closer look at this excellently researched study for yourself; not only because the study actually answers a slightly different question than the advocates claim it does, but because viability means something different for institutions than it does for advocates.

The study answers two interrelated questions, is there a market for bikesharing in Philadelphia, and if someone were to build a Bikeshare system, what would it look like? It starts by building a map of where bikesharing could work in Philadelphia based upon the density of people, jobs and retail activity as well as the presence of tourist attractions, parks and transit stops. It is no surprise that the Central Business District (i.e. Center City and parts North and South) and University City constitute this core market.

While this mapping exercise describes what parts of the city would best support bikesharing it does not tell you how big such a program should be. To do that the study reviews three surveys done in Paris, Lyon and Barcelona, big dense cities with significant Bikeshare programs. In each of these cities surveys were conducted that essentially asked, “Without a shared bicycle how would you have completed your trip?” In Lyon 1.4% of the people surveyed would have taken a bus or a subway, while 4.6% of Parisians surveyed gave up transit to use bikeshare (far fewer people gave up their car to use Bikeshare, only .06% surveyed in Lyon and .18% in Barcelona). The study then applied these percentages to kinds of trips people take in Philadelphia within the aforementioned market area. They found that within the core market area, anywhere from 5,900 to 18,200 people might ride Bikeshare on any given day.

This means that for Philadelphia to build a Bikeshare system it would need to have 50 to 160 bike stations with anywhere from 770 to 2,370 bicycles, costing anywhere from $2 to $6 million to set up (the final recommendation is for a $4.4 million dollar initial program that would deploy 1,750 bicycles in only the initial phase).

The issue of money is a big one. Advocates point to the success of the Parisian system, suggesting that bikesharing systems must be built into street furniture contracts with the advertising companies that build bus shelters, etc. But they miss a very important fact: J.C. Decaux only offered to build a Bikeshare system so as to win the contract and Paris must now pay $1 million a year to subsidize the program. With ad revenues as an unpredictable source of funding, and with the city scraping every penny, bikesharing looks less and less attractive from a municipal standpoint. While in Barcelona they pay for bikesharing through a parking fee and looking at the Parking Authority as a “home” for a bikesharing system may be initially attractive, there are serious ramifications for it. The PPA contributes money not just to the City but the School District. Moreover, raising the cost of parking in the City is not an attractive option, just look at the pushback over the soda tax.

The study also notes other issues that must be addressed for a bikeshare program to work in Philadelphia. The City would of course need to “upgrade… the bike-lane/path network throughout the core area to provide safe circulation options for both expert and novice riders. [The City would also need to provide] aggressive levels of education and enforcement to minimize conflict among bikes, cars, and pedestrians on the city’s constrained streets and sidewalks.” It is here where a difference in perspective, between that of the advocate and that of a municipality further diverge.

So far all the easy bike lanes in Philadelphia have been set, more bike lanes, which would make it easier and more attractive for people to ride in Philadelphia, require taking away parking. If anything that would make drivers angrier at bicyclists, and we don’t need more of that. The number of people who park is far larger than those who bike, walk or take transit. And they vote.

In other words, the implementation issue is not simply a financial one, it is a political one. Are we as the City willing to make the trade-offs necessary, and even some of the sacrifices necessary to make bikesharing work? Are we willing to reduce the amount of money that goes to different programs to fund bikeshare? Unfortunately that is not a decision that just the advocates can make. In the end, the most significant challenge is the education one, not simply because the tension between bicyclists, pedestrians and drivers in Philadelphia is untenable, but because all Philadelphians need to see the benefit of bikesharing, not just the bicyclists.

Homelessness: New Approaches to a Changing Problem

2010-03-16T18:35:00.002-04:00

Remember that very successful food access and community development forum in the fall? Well the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy is hosting another panel discussion, this time focusing on the topic of homelessness. It should be a fascinating discussion on an important issue. I hope to see you there!

Homelessness: New Approaches to a Changing Problem

A Panel Discussion Hosted by The Philadelphia Committee on City Policy (PCCP)

Wednesday April 14, 2010

6:00-8:00 PM

The Center for Architecture (1218 Arch Street, Philadelphia)

Free for PCCP members, $5 for non-members

Light refreshments will be provided

The face of homelessness has changed over the decades. Oftentimes, people sleeping on the street are the most common reminder of the thousands of Philadelphians who lack shelter and food on any given night. However, many of us rarely see the true spectrum of homelessness – the hidden population of men, women and children who are struggling to break the cycle, or are just a paycheck away from homelessness. The city has recently seen an alarming increase of homeless families with children. Each year, thousands of individuals arrive in Philadelphia and lack the means to return to a place where they have a support system – leaving these “stranded travelers” in the City’s shelter system.

While the homeless population has changed, so have solutions to deal with this complex issue. Today, having individuals end up in a shelter is no longer considered a positive outcome. The City of Philadelphia and array of innovative nonprofit organizations are practicing solutions that work to develop long-term housing stability, address social and health issues, and help people work toward self sufficiency. Recent policies focus on targeting the systemic roots of homelessness, working to break the cycle. PCCP will host an expert panel to focus on innovative policy and programmatic solutions to address this critical and complex issue.

Panelists include:

Sr. Mary Scullion, Executive Director, Project H.O.M.E.

Roberta Cancellier, Deputy Director for Policy and Planning, Phila. Office of Supportive Housing
Ted Weerts, Ph.D. Executive Director, Travelers Aid Family Services of Philadelphia

Joe Willard, Vice President of Policy, People’s Emergency Center

Moderator and opening speaker: Elaine Fox, Vice President of Specialized Health Services, Public Health Management Corporation and director of Philadelphia’s Health Care for the Homeless Program

Welcome remarks by Lynne Kotranski, Ph.D., member of PCCP’s Board of Directors and Vice President for Research and Evaluation, Public Health Management Corporation

Please RSVP to: suzydrinan@philcommitteeoncitypolicy.org

Urban Agriculture Workshops

2010-03-10T09:38:00.003-05:00

By Greg

On the topic of urban agriculture, here is an upcoming program that looks promising!

Income Opportunities in Urban Agriculture Workshops

Penn State Extension and The Enterprise Center will present two workshops on March 17, 2010: How to Write a Farm Business Plan (5:30-6:30PM) and How to Price Products for Market (7:00-9:00 PM). The workshops will be held at The Enterprise Center (4548 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19139). Each workshop costs $10. For more information, please contact Nicole Sugerman.

Public Conversations and Public Art

2010-03-10T07:18:00.002-05:00

By Ariel

Penn Praxis recently released a study called Philadelphia Public Art: The Full Spectrum. Commissioned by the William Penn Foundation, it examines the state of public art in the city and the opportunities for the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE) to better promote the creation and preservation art in the public sphere. All too often we look at public art, when we deign to pay attention to it, from an artistic standpoint and not from the perspective that shows how it gets built, installed and maintained. The study is notable for its historical examination of public art and for highlighting how Philadelphia’s policies for funding, managing and maintaining public art have not evolved along with the times, arts themselves and the living city. Praxis suggests that public art often gets short shrift from city agencies due to both budget pressures and from a lack of perceived value for the departments’ own missions’. They call for the OACCEE to “meet with representatives from all relevant departments and agencies for exploratory conversations and look for collaborative opportunities. Frame the OACCE and the Percent for Art Program as a resource instead of a requirement, offering to assist in that department’s work.”

This is a far more important recommendation than one might initially presuppose because it hints at a new way the city, communities and developers can interact when it comes to negotiating the impact on the community. Before I explain what I mean, a short digression is necessary to explain some of the problems with the process of community participation in planning and development. Be it a private developer who needs the community support to appear before a zoning commission, or a Streets/Highway/Transit Department that must complete an environmental review process before building a road or transit system, the builders of our cities must sit down with the communities who will feel the brunt of the impact of their project. The fact that developers and project builders must sit down with their community is not the problem, in fact it is rightly part of the whole development process. The benefit of such a process is two-fold, it is an opportunity to educate the public about a project, and it provides the developer (private or public) the political cover for some of their decisions. Problems arise can arise however when a community makes unfeasible demands or impractical demands and expectations are created for project aspects that are simply unable to be acted upon. It is one thing to ask for a place to sit, or a set-back in the highest portion of a tower, and it is another to expect a developer either not to go as tall as financially feasible or that they will fund the ongoing maintenance of a youth center. Out of such meetings, delays, costs and acrimony arise.

This is where public art comes in. At the crux of many communities’ complaints and demands is the sense that their community, where they have grown up and raised their children, is changing and that they have no voice or place in the future of their community. However Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program has created a tried and true method of transferring the collective aspirations and values of a community and expressing it visibly on the vacant walls of the city’s many neighborhoods. By using the public art process as the main venue for public outreach during the building process developers (again, public or private) not only make the public a meaningful part of the development process, but they can act as partners to bring new identify, beauty and sense of identity to a place and project. The community sees themselves as a partner and the developer sees an added layer of investment in their project. Bringing in the OACCEE to the development process, to help encourage and steer the development of public art “tangible commitment to the public environment.” Ultimately a commitment to public art is an expression of our collective values, both for art in general and more importantly for its contributions to the city we live in.

Community Planning Guidelines Approved!

2010-02-17T07:31:00.004-05:00

By Greg

Last month I posted about a set of Community Planning Guidelines that the Philadelphia City Planning Commission was considering. Yesterday at its monthly hearing, the Planning Commission officially approved those guidelines. This is an important step forward for the City.

Many neighborhoods have been creating community plans, at great time and expense, but there was no real link between these plans and City policy. On the flip side, the Planning Commission had no way of ensuring that these community plans were inclusive and open, or that they were consistent from neighborhood to neighborhood.

These new guidelines would require community plans to meet a set of criteria in order to gain "acceptance" by the Planning Commission. These criteria include involving the Planning Commission in the planning process, having open community meetings, being consistent with the City's official plans, reaching out to stakeholders, and having competitive bidding for plans paid for with public dollars.

On the Planning Commission's part, it will issue an acceptance letter and post accepted plans on its website, creating a catalog of current accepted plans for each part of the city. These plans will generally serve as the basis for future public planning efforts, and for policy recommendations related to zoning, land disposition, and capital funding. In this way, community plans will be directly related to City policy decisions.

One former long-time Planning Commission staff member testified yesterday, cautioning that these guidelines could give the green light to outsourcing community planning. However, in some ways these guidelines are more a response to the multitude of independent community plans that have already surfaced of late. There are certainly challenges and potential pitfalls to community-run planning processes. However, when done well they produce plans that have the kind of buy-in that is difficult to achieve through a City-run planning process.

Philadelphia is lucky to have such a passionate citizenry, willing and wanting to be involved in the planning of the city's neighborhoods. And now these guidelines create a link between these community planning efforts, the public process, and the policy instruments for making the plans reality. For a city long-known for disconnected and piecemeal efforts when it came to planning and development, this is a breath of fresh air.

It is important that the Planning Commission now take these accepted community plans seriously. If neighborhood groups get an acceptance letter from the Commission, but then see the plans have little impact into city policy decisions, they will become skeptical. Likewise the Planning Commission should take a hard line on the issue of acceptance. It should become known that groups without accepted plans are not going to get traction with the Planning Commission when they want to push for rezoning, land disposition, capital projects, or other policy topics. Gaining acceptance needs to mean something in order to gain participation and buy-in from neighborhood-based organizations.

Finally, it is critical that the Planning Commission work with other City departments and agencies to ensure that they too take this acceptance process seriously. If communities learn that the Office of Housing and Community Development or the Redevelopment Authority are not giving any value to accepted community plans, then that will be a major blow to the program's legitimacy. The Planning Commission's Executive Director is also the City's Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. These guidelines will only have impact if they become universal City policy, and that kind of mandate has to come from the top.

Urban Farming Links

2010-02-10T09:56:00.005-05:00

By Greg

While we wait for the blizzard here in Philly, I thought I'd get us thinking about spring with a few links to urban farm-related news.

First, in my day job we are building a mini-farm and grower's cooperative in West Philly. Here's a blog by one of the farm managers talking about the project's progress. I'll be sure to post more on this project in the coming months. Stay tuned.

I was interviewed recently by two U. Arts students working on a masters thesis to aggregate all of the urban farming resources and projects in Philadelphia. Philly has a ton of urban ag projects, but they are not well linked to each other. These students are hoping to identify what "needs to happen to transform the urban agricultural movement into a cohesive, effective system." Check out their blog.

Finally, across the country, in San Fran folks are turning an abandoned freeway ramp into a temporary urban farm. This looks pretty cool. Check it out!

For those of you on the east coast, enjoy the snow. Dream of spring.

Retooling Industrial Sites

2010-02-01T18:20:00.002-05:00

This should be interesting (this Friday):

What: The Retooling Industrial Sites exhibit will showcase over 50 projects from more than 30 design firms. The projects include some of the leading examples of industrial reuse in Philadelphia as well as projects from cities across the country that demonstrate the exciting possibilities for transforming former industrial areas into productive uses—including urban manufacturing. The exhibit highlights the growing interest in revitalizing industrial sites and the important role design plays in the integration of industrial and residential areas. The exhibit is presented by the Community Design Collaborative in partnership with the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation as part of Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites, the third phase of the Collaborative’s initiative to promote workable, innovative design solutions to revitalizing older, urban neighborhoods.

When: Friday, February 5 from 5:30-7:30 pm. Meet the designers and see the innovative projects. The exhibit will be on view through March 26 and open Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm.

Where: Center for Architecture, 1218 Arch Street, Philadelphia 19107

More: Submissions selected for the exhibit represent a diverse mix of built and un-built projects from warehouse conversions to Brownfield redevelopment to new industrial buildings; they range in scope from single buildings to neighborhood master plans. The projects include manufacturing facilities, office buildings, schools, community centers and mixed-use housing. The featured projects pay homage to the industrial past and provide a vision for a new industrial and urban renaissance.

Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses, Affordable Housing, and Gentrification

2010-01-30T08:45:00.003-05:00

Image Source

By Greg

For some time I have wanted to share my thoughts on a book that came out in 2009 called “Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City,” by Anthony Flint. The first thing worth noting is that Flint is not an academic. Rather he is the director of public affairs at a Cambridge-based think tank. The fact that Flint is involved in contemporary urban thought and policy is clear in the book. While it recounts historical events, Flint laces the book with references to modern ideas and events – tying the lessons of the past to the challenges and trends of the present and the future.

Most of us involved in urban development and planning are familiar with the work of Robert Moses and the way that Jane Jacobs contributed to permanently transforming the dialogue around urban redevelopment. This book provides a good refresher on the events surrounding several key “battles” in which Jacobs was involved in derailing urban renewal plans that Moses had a heavy hand in. For the general public who may not be familiar with this period of American urban history, Flint’s book is very accessible, recounting complex stories in a fairly concise (199 pages), engaging, and readable volume.

For folks who are already very familiar with these events, I urge you to read the book nonetheless, so you can get to the Epilogue. “Wrestling with Moses” is like a puzzle, selectively choosing elements out of the work of Jacobs and Moses, and building them together into a set of ideas that lay the groundwork for the Epilogue, which steps out of the historical and puts everything into its place in our modern context. By the end it is clear that the lessons the book brings to light are ones that are not just rooted in history, but that we need to address and discuss right now.

Flint spends a few pages explaining how profoundly Jane Jacobs shaped contemporary urban thought. He credits Jacobs’ work with a generation of “freeway revolts,” leading to halted highway projects and, more recently, highways torn down in cities across the U.S. Flint explains that “a new generation of citizen activists” saw Jacobs as “a kind of folk hero.” He recounts how professional organizations like the American Planning Association are incorporating Jacobs’ ideas into their core tenets. He discusses how her ideas influenced areas outside but related to planning, like crime prevention through environmental design.

Flint even goes beyond the planning profession (making a bit of a stretch, in my opinion) stating that “Everything from the design of workplaces to social media—the online networks of Facebook, YouTube, and open-source software—owes a debt to Jacobs and her original analysis of how decentralized, diverse, and ground-up systems function best.” He frames Jacobs as one of the seminal figures in American history leading to our current ideas about grassroots democracy.

Flint does not take the time to similarly clarify Moses’ contributions, perhaps because Moses’ work remains so obvious in physical development projects. Still, Flint points out that there has been some recent commentary on the need for a balanced philosophy that merges the best of Jacobs and Moses – the importance of investing in major infrastructure and also in community development and the human side of the city. He cites New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, who wrote “A city, to survive and flourish, needs both perspectives.”

Doubtless, Jane Jacobs played an important role in asserting a mandate for citizen participation in urban planning and development, and for creating a methodology whereby organized citizens can successfully fight powerful government and private-sector actors. There is something so essentially American about the notion of people in a neighborhood rising up in their own best interest and fighting City Hall.

Yet, it is too easy to frame this story as one of a dictatorial Moses trying to impose his will over the defenseless citizens. To his credit, Flint does not quite tell the story this way. While Moses was a powerful public official and Jacobs was a Greenwich Village housewife, the title of the book indicates that the battle between them was not one-sided. One blogger remarks on this point “Flint’s book really isn’t about planning. It’s about power. Pure and simple. … No question, Moses was a bully. But so, in her way, was Jacobs.”

Jacobs became a role model for active citizens, showing how they could put the kibosh on just about any development they did not like. While Jacobs’ own ideology was more multi-faceted, Flint acknowledges, “… the kind of thoughtful citizen involvement Jacobs envisioned has evolved into mere NIMBYism—the protest of ‘not in my backyard.’” Today, with very little federal money going into urban redevelopment, and generations of citizens studying Jane Jacobs and her followers, public and private actors across the nation often struggle to get any major projects built. Jane Jacobs wrote about a proactive view of urban development, but she practiced a reactive one that now shapes our urban context perhaps as profoundly as urban renewal did fifty years ago.

On the flip side, public-sector administrators in the urban renewal era of the 1950s and 1960s focused on affordable housing as a critical goal. The problem was the reliance on modernist, high-rise towers as the template for how to best house the poor. Jacobs was a critic of this type of housing, and today, urbanists universally acknowledge that this architectural and planning decision was misguided.

However, we often bundle the urban renewal together, rather than looking at the diversity of ideas that emerged from the public sector in this period. Not all affordable housing of the era was built this way. For example, in Philadelphia’s Germantown section, a significant amount of affordable housing was produced through historic rehabilitation, while the fabric of the neighborhood was restored around it with infill development. Jane Jacobs loved this approach, on one trip to Philadelphia admiring how “intermingled with the new, were old buildings, which were being restored, and corner stores.”

Perhaps more important than recognizing the diversity of approaches in the urban renewal period is the overall concept of what the public sector was trying to do. What receives far less attention is the basic notion that a generation of public officials were trying to figure out how to build a significant amount of housing for the poor. Some of that housing got built, but much did not. Today we are seeing the consequences of not building nearly enough.

Urban America went through a racially explosive period in the 1960s, and then an overall era of decline in the 1970s. New York famously was on the brink of bankruptcy. However, the 1990s saw the start of a new resurgence of interest in urban living, and today a number of U.S. cities are booming, while many others are steadily climbing back. As Flint explains, in places like New York, “urban neighborhoods have become so wildly popular that only the wealthy—and predominantly white—can afford to live there.” Flint continues, “Jacobs was convinced that the city was the best possible place for people to live, and in many ways gentrification proved her right.”

Jane Jacobs’ writings and persona have become a major force in re-defining the city as a livable place for middle-class working professionals. However, this same philosophy arguably laid the groundwork for the hyper-gentrification of many urban areas, and the pricing out of the individuals and businesses that created the diversity that initially attracted her to Greenwich Village — the same diversity that attracts so many city lovers to urban neighborhoods across the U.S. today. Now there is even such a strong image of thriving, upscale urbanism that whole cities and parts of cities are practically devoid of economic diversity. Jane Jacobs, personally, was in favor of affordable housing, but the public sector that she vilified was for affordable housing too – and on a much larger scale. We often forget this.

In his book, Anthony Flint retells the story of the interaction between two figure who significantly shaped our contemporary urban issues of redevelopment, affordable housing, gentrification, the need for infrastructure, and the role of citizen participants. He concludes with an Epilogue that ties these historical events to modern-day challenges, and leaves us with a number of unanswered questions. The story of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses is not about good and evil, but about the complexity of solving urban problems. The major question is: can we learn from the urban renewal era and apply its lessons to a contemporary world that is so different, and at the same time so much unchanged?

Good Things Do Happen

2010-01-26T18:50:00.003-05:00

By Greg

In the realm of public policy things tend to happen slowly, but good things do happen. Here is a case in point. On February 5, 2008 the Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed I wrote talking about planning and zoning reform. In that article I argued:

“communities have been creating plans on their own, without clear guidelines or a means to integrate those plans with city action. The Planning Commission should produce a set of criteria, ensuring consistency among community plans. The city should reward compliance with these criteria by giving benefits to communities whose plans are adopted, such as grant funding or inclusion of projects in the capital program.”

Well, guess what… last week the Philadelphia City Planning Commission staff presented a set of Community Planning Guidelines to the Commission for its review. This would finally provide some consistency for neighborhood plans, provide an incentive for community groups to get their plans officially recognized, and provide a link between community-based planning and official City policy.

The guidelines are on the Commission’s website for public review, and will be voted on at the next monthly meeting of the Commission. If you want to go show your support, the next Commission meeting is Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 1:00 PM at 1515 Arch Street, 18th Floor.

Book Talk February 17th

2010-01-24T16:52:00.003-05:00

By Greg

Please join me for a book talk on "Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City." The event is scheduled for Wednesday Feb. 17, 2010 at 5:30 PM at the University of Pennsylvania Bookstore (3601 Walnut Street). The event, hosted by Penn IUR, will be followed by a reception. The authors present will be Scott Knowles, Eugenie Birch, Harris Steinberg, and me. I hope to see you there!

Transit Works

2010-01-11T09:51:00.001-05:00

By Ariel Ben-Amos and Matt Crespi
Our sometime guest Matt Crespi brings us a thoughtful look at the importance of transit: namely that transit means jobs and more jobs than highways. Crespi does a great job of outlining the issue, and implicitly raises some more questions

- What does the investment in transit jobs mean for job growth and a tax base... How many more jobs would we need to create in transit for their to be a noticeable increase in the tax rolls for a city? Which leads to another question, what kind of transit service would we get out of that?
- More importantly, what kind of jobs are needed to maintain ongoing transit operations. Transit systems across the US are facing a critical staffing gap. As more and more engineering minded students go for hi paying jobs developing computer programs, there are fewer highly trained people able to maintain and fix the increasingly complex transit cars and subways.

What Crespi ultimately points to is that Philadelphia faces a challenge: how do we invest in people and transit for the betterment of both.

*

For decades we’ve known that investment in public transportation is often money well spent. In addition to encouraging more environmentally friendly behavior and serving as a keystone to any urban plan for sustainable development, it comes with numerous economic benefits. From attracting businesses to making a local labor market more efficient, good public transportation is a boon to residents in all socioeconomic strata. Now, thanks to a study by Smart Growth America, we can add one more fantastic claim to the list of benefits provided by that magic civic elixir: investment in public transportation creates almost twice as many jobs as other transportation projects.

Studying data from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, SGA found that a billion dollars devoted to public transportation produced 16,419 job months, where the same amount of money spent on a highway project produced a comparatively meager 8,781 job months. (What's a job month? A "job month" is a unit equal to one month of work for one person. The ARRA is less than a year old, so determining the exact retention rate, or creation of full-time jobs that are here to stay, is not yet possible. Estimates and experience, however, suggest that public transit creates at least as many jobs as investment in roads.)

Why the big difference? Building roads and highways requires significant amounts of land, while public transportation is more compact, complex and labor-intensive. Public transportation often requires a greater variety of skills to implement, which not only leads to more job creation, but also faster job creation (especially in areas with existing systems). Pennsylvania has been especially effective in turning stimulus money into jobs, and in less than a year has 100% of its Recovery Act funds under contract.

For Philadelphia, this affirms one of Mayor Nutter's key messages: improving sustainability doesn't have to be at odds with fighting a recession. Public transportation investment bring more jobs faster, and the jobs themselves are also greener. While a new highway and new public transportation can both reduce congestion, buses, trains and subways have a smaller environmental footprint, and the behavior they incentivize is far more sustainable.

Even ignoring superior job creation and environmental compatibility, the infrastructure itself would provide our region with a great return on investment. With SEPTA ridership increasing dramatically, more Philadelphians are prepared to embrace public transportation as a way of life than ever before (a trend holding true across the nation--the study points out that since 1995, transit use has grown at almost triple the rate of population growth). And now that we know the investment isn't just good for commuters and businesses, but also for the tax base and the city as a whole, the only thing stopping us is limited resources.

With this revelation, it is my hope that funding for public transportation will come in even more rapidly, as the rate of job creation currently seems capped only by limited government commitments. It would be nice if legislators in Harrisburg would wake up to the fact that allowing state transportation money to fund SEPTA projects is not a waste, but a way to raise state revenues and employ Pennsylvanians. That may be a pipe dream, but I think there is real hope that Washington will take notice. As the White House tries to get Americans back to work, future transportation funding initiatives might just include more funding for public transit than ever before.

The public opinion war is being won, and it's time for the supply to catch up with the demand. Public transportation too often seems to fall in the category of important but not urgent. But now, as we discover that these green investments create almost twice as many jobs as their land- and carbon-consuming counterparts, expanding public transit seems an ideal way to meet an urgent policy need while getting ready for a future which Philadelphians--and increasingly all Americans--are optimistically seeking.

Putting the T in TOD

2009-12-23T09:03:00.004-05:00

By Ariel

You don’t have to take Reconnecting America’s word for it, just ask your Realtor, housing that is closer to transit is worth more than housing that is farther away. This is the premise behind Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and it is a popular one among transportation policy wonks and developers. Cities and suburbs across the United States have changed their zoning codes to creating dense, walkable environments within a half mile from transit and counties, states and federal agencies are pouring money into affordable housing near transit stations. Recently the US DOT and HUD have banded together to create “Livable Communities” and target their funding to maximize the land-use / transportation connection. What excites me about this is not the seismic change in federal policy that this shift indicates, but the opportunities it means for Philadelphia, SEPTA and our metropolitan region.

To date, there are a few problems with TOD in the Philadelphia region. For one, TOD is often project based and project biased. Any new development within a quarter mile of transit is slapped with a TOD sticker of approval by developers hoping to cash in on available dollars and win good will. This means that when we look at TOD, we focus on the “D” and not the “T” which is a huge mistake. It’s a huge mistake because it assumes that all transit is good for development. As Econsult noted in their report on TOD for NeighborhoodsNow, the value of any development is contingent upon the value of the transit service provided. T’s value in “TOD” is only as strong as the frequency of service that it provides: i.e. fast frequent transit is good for development. However in Philadelphia our fastest, most frequent and reliable transit systems are in the core of the city, along the Market Frankford Line and Broad Street subway, both of which travel through our dense urban and underinvested core. Our oldest neighborhoods have been hardest hit by the late 20th century exodus into the suburbs. These potential TOD districts are marked by complicated land ownership patterns and markets developers don’t want to serve. Moreover, typically TOD’s are financed by bonds backed by rising real-estate values created by the transit service. However not only do those TIF (Tax Increment Financing) backed bonds work best when a new transit line is placed where none was before, but Philadelphia with its ten-year tax abatement and slow reassessment processes means that TIF around transit does not work in Philadelphia.

But this does not mean that there are no TOD opportunities for Philadelphia. If we ignore for a moment the D side of “TOD” in Philadelphia (three such projects are being built around Temple and Washington Lane regional rail train stations and one around the 46th and Market, elevated train line) and focus on the T potential, we find that there are regional opportunities for collaboration.

Focusing on the T in TOD means we need to think of two key measures of transit: the strength/ draw of the destination (another D in a popular transit policy acronym, O&D or origin and destination) and the frequency of service. While we have regional rail lines flowing into center city from the Main Line to Malvern, their TOD value remains relatively low: with only half hour peak headways (i.e. trains that come only once every half hour during rush hour) and hour long off-peak headways, they simply are not that attractive to Center City commuters or area residents. Increasing transit service frequency on regional rails that bring workers from the region’s wealthiest neighborhoods through its poorest and into the heart of the central business district and allows for easier access for casual day-trippers is critical and has been called for by area policy-wonks at both the Economy League and Econsult (and featured as part of a UPenn city planning studio vision plan).

There are major challenges to doing so. SEPTA can only accommodate so many cars in its tunnels during rush hour. However the bigger obstacle is how much such a project would cost, but the suburbs don’t have the tax abatements Philly does and TIF financing could potentially pay for this.

It would take a shift in mind-set; we are used to having TIF financing pay for buildings. However the very development of new buildings is actually one of the hugest impediments to TOD developers, neighbors are worried about having new buildings come in and with it new families (and more children which means more teachers) and more cars. Investing in transit itself can help build regional land values without raising taxes, building new buildings or bringing new children into the neighborhoods. This would be a win for both the counties and the city. The counties (and municipalities along the rail lines) become more competitive and more frequent service along transit lines that also pass through Philadelphia’s inner neighborhoods builds the value of the surrounding neighborhoods within the city. Most importantly it provides an opportunity for cooperation between counties and the City, who all too often clash over SEPTA and the allocation of resources within the system.

"The Future Is Now"

2009-12-20T12:25:00.006-05:00

Image: Philadelphia City Paper

By Greg

A review of Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City is this week's cover story in Philadelphia City Paper, written by Nathaniel Popkin. Check it out!

Beautiful Designs and Ugly Decisions

2009-12-04T08:08:00.001-05:00

By Ariel

Yesterday I had the opportunity to see an in-depth presentation by the Barnes Foundation about their new home on the Parkway at the Design Advocacy Group’s monthly meeting. There are those who argue that this public presentation was far too late in the offering; particularly because the building is so heavily subsidized by public funds. Even more so when such a presentation falls weeks after the project’s groundbreaking. I was pleasantly surprised by the Barnes Foundation’s responses to previous criticisms: they reduced the vehicular forecourt by half and increased the sidewalk entrance into their space and seem to have done all they could, within certain parameters, to address these issues.

The problem is these ‘certain parameters.’ They stem from the Barnes Foundation context of the decision-making that brought it to the Parkway in the first place. Proponents of the move praise the decision as one that brings the Parkway ever closer to the on-going dream of a Champs-Élysées, dense with cultural attractions. Opponents decry the flagrant breaking of Alfred Barnses’s will to bring a large tourist attraction to the Parkway. I myself am personally in favor of dense urban development of the Parkway and was initially hard-pressed to criticize something that I thought was for the ultimate good of the city. However as the design reveals, the Barnes Foundation, as an institution, is itself not amenable to being part of that dense urban development. One sees that first with the trees.

There is a grove of trees, four rows deep, on their site as it lining the Parkway. The trees are large and beautiful, and it would be a shame to cut them down. However if the dream of a Champs-Élysées-like boulevard is to be realized, new buildings along the Parkway actually need to come to the lot line and, I hate to say, the trees would need to be sacrificed to realize that dream. Instead what the architect prioritizes (largely, I am sure, at the behest of the Foundation and in an attempt to reflect the dream) is a sense of seclusion and quiet contemplation. That sense of seclusion and quiet contemplation is best served not on a busy urban boulevard, but in a suburban location. Oh wait, that is what they are moving away from.

Granted the Barnes Foundation had unique needs that its Cret building was not serving. There was little room for back offices, conservations labs, etc. However as the Barnes Foundation’s new building program was being designed, the clients added all these extra amenities that seem, in their own internal logic to be all well and good, but make little sense in the specific context of where they are going. The architects have created a park and fountain as a gift to the city, in what they consider to be the real entrance to the site, at the corner of 20th and the Parkway. Forget for a moment that most visitors will be coming via car (because that is how a majority of museum-goers actually travel) and think about another fountain in the area, the Logan Circle fountain which has seen massive investment and massive use. While certainly the Logan Circle fountain is hard to get to and this new one is less so (one must cross two lanes of traffic instead of four) I suspect that both fountains will suffer due to what might also amount to an over-saturation of fountains in the area, if such a thing is possible. What I am relatively more sure of is the certain over-saturation of auditoriums along the Parkway. The Barnes will include a 150-seat auditorium in the building; The Foundation is hoping to host movies and public concerts with the orchestra in the auditorium and they are pitching this as a new public gathering place for the city. The problem is that both the Free Library and the Academy of Natural Sciences both have large auditoriums literally across the street and I wonder who and why one will be chosen over the other. My real complaint about the auditorium is that I fear that the project funders have overburdened the Barnes itself with a series of amenities and features that will cost significant money to maintain, and will provide little real return. I can only imagine a new bail-out for the Barnes ten years down the line.

Ultimately, I think the building itself is beautiful; I just think the overall decision-making context that wrought it is ugly.

A brief aside regarding tax policy, fiscal crisis and why taxing Wall Street to pay for infrastructure is not quite right...

2009-12-02T13:02:00.002-05:00

By Ariel

I think it is fair to say that our current financial crisis was caused by the legalization and utilization of financial products whose risk was not properly appreciated. The failure of these products has cost the United States, and the world, dearly.

One might suppose that it is not surprising that Democratic representatives are looking to tax Wall Street to fund key initiatives. Recently Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) has argued that the US should levy a tax upon financial transactions to fund a jobs bill and Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR) would like to impose a small per-trade tax on the Wall Street oil futures market.

When James Surowiecki of the New Yorker writes about similar attempts to regulate the financial markets (as opposed to imposing the above mentioned taxes with very tenuous nexus) he characterizes the reaction against such initiatives as veritable chastisements of attempts to “stifle innovation.” Surowiecki argues that indeed, that is precisely the point: that we want only so much innovation, that such potential (and now actualized) risk is externalized to the public and not born only by the investors. I buy that argument. I’m not just indulging in a little populism when I say that I find it hard to argue that the any of these financial instrument portfolio managers (or whatever) who received six figure bonuses really suffered the effect of the damage they caused.

However, tax policy must be refined and not blatantly spread about taxes should be based upon some sort of nexus. I am highly ambivalent about the above-mentioned proposals, while they smell like bad policy I would love to get my hands on that tax revenue to build better transit service in Philadelphia.

An appropriate tax would integrate an assessment of the risk any given financial instrument has to our overall economy. HMO’s determine your monthly payments based upon your potential to cost them a lot of money. I would argue we need to tax financial products similarly. If you want to engage in risky home mortgage derivatives, you should pay for it with a transaction tax.

Not only does that discourage risky products (not risky for the investor, rather risky for the economy as a whole) from proliferating but we could use the generated revenue to either invest a hedge against such damage, or to invest in necessary reforms, etc.

This argument has its limits, I am uneasy with the parallels to the tobacco industry, and various states’ reliance on cigarette taxes to plug budget deficits and I am not sure how on earth you would even begin to measure such risk on the outset, none the less, I believe that is an avenue worth exploring.

You are paying more and more for Highways

2009-11-30T10:34:00.002-05:00

By Ariel

A study recently released by Subsidyscope shows that highway funding relies less and less upon the Gas Tax and more and more upon a variety of other property taxes and bonds (which we as citizens are required to pay back through our taxes). Contrary to people who argue that highways pay for themselves, we have ended up paying for them more and more. I won't try and go into detail here, the study is very readable and I urge you to read it.

Transit In-Equity

2009-11-18T13:56:00.003-05:00

By Ariel

This came across my desk today and is worth reading, as Planetizen noted "“Wealthier transit riders demand more expensive rail services and commute at peak hours; the poor commute using all modes, at all hours. Eric A. Morris argues that the MTA's new policy of off-peak pricing would help even out the inequity”

A Sustainable Future for Philadelphia

2009-11-17T07:38:00.005-05:00

By Greg

For five years now I have chaired the board of The Ed Bacon Foundation, a nonprofit organization that for the past four years has hosted a student urban design competition. This competition challenges students across North America to focus on a site in Philadelphia that needs some innovative new ideas. This year we have taken the program to the next level through a partnership with the Philadelphia Center for Architecture, which co-hosted this year’s competition.

This year the competition was an urban sustainability design challenge. Titled "Brown to Green," it focused on a site in the Grays Ferry neighborhood of South Philadelphia that has been home to the DuPont Marshall Laboratory. DuPont recently vacated this massive piece of land along the Schuylkill River, creating the potential for an innovative new vision for this property's green future. Students all over North America have submitted their concepts for remaking this important site to have a productive and sustainable future. An expert jury recently assessed the entries, and selected some outstanding designs to receive $6,000 in prizes.

I am inviting you to join us in honoring the student winners at an awards ceremony on Tuesday December 8th. This event is always rewarding for me. It is rare that we can step back and look at big-picture ideas offered by young, creative minds from across North America. Once a year, this program gives us such an opportunity. In addition, it is about bringing the eyes of the nation’s top design students to Philadelphia. Speaking with the student winners in the past, it is clear that Philadelphia is not on many students’ radar screens outside the region; this program has been a venue for changing that.

Each year when we announce and honor the student winners, we also bestow the Edmund N. Bacon Prize on a national figure in urban development, design, or thought. This year the Prize recipient and keynote speaker will be Maurice Cox, Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts and former mayor of Charlottesville, VA. Mr. Cox has been a dynamic leader at the NEA, and a champion for exposing elected officials to the importance of design issues. He is a speaker not to be missed!

I hope you will join us on December 8th, help us honor the student winners, spend an evening with Maurice Cox, enjoy a nice dinner, and celebrate the potential for building a bright future for our city. Full details are available here: http://edbacon.org/browntogreen/ceremony.htm. Thanks for your support. I hope to see you on December 8th!

A Forum on the Future of Bus Shelters and Street Furniture

2009-11-13T13:54:00.000-05:00

By Ariel

On Monday October 26th over 70 people attended A Forum on the Future of Bus Shelters and Street Furniture sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities. The forum began with a presentation on the City’s intentions to issue an RFP for bus shelters and street furniture by Deputy Mayor Rina Cutler. Joe Minott of the Clean Air Council and the Next Great City Coalition shared his perspective on how a well structured bus shelter and street furniture contract can increase transit usage and improve the visual appeal of the City. Mary Tracy, who leads SCRUB: The Public Voice of Public Space Spoke about limiting the role of advertising in public spaces. Representatives from the leading street furniture vendors: CBSOutdoor, Cemusa, JCDecaux and Clear Channel spoke about their work in cities around the world. All answered questions posed by the audience.

Background
While various different types of street furniture have dotted city streets for centuries, the development of large scale “Street Furniture Programs,” (SFP) where cities install an array of bus shelters, benches and kiosks in a coordinated and strategic fashion is something relatively new. They are more important than they used to be too. Since the early 1990’s the City of Philadelphia has earned about $10 million from the advertising that is part of Philadelphia’s bus shelter contract. There are 260 shelters managed by CBS Outdoor on behalf of the city, 27 “Arts in Transit” shelters in Center City managed and maintained by the Center City District, 12 sculptural shelters along Chestnut Street in Center city and non-advertising shelters maintained by CDCs and private institutions.

The release of a Request For Proposals (RFP) for a bus shelter and street furniture program presents an opportunity to markedly expand the amenities offered and the revenue generated for the city. Boston, Chicago and Washington have made similar deals in the last decade. Boston (with Wall/Decaux) installed approximately 400 bus shelters and a variety of newsstands, information/advertising kiosks & automated public toilets (APTs) and is on track to receive an estimated $21.3 million dollars over a 20 year period (~$1 million per year). Chicago (with JCDecaux) has around 2,000 bus shelters, with assorted newsstands, information kiosks and the like and expects to bring in nearly $300 million over twenty years (~$15 million per year). Washington DC (with ClearChannel) is installing 700 bus shelters as part of a 20 year contract that is estimated to return to the district $150 million in revenue. Several factors influenced these SFPs and are important to keep in mind in Philadelphia.

Just from comparing Chicago and Boston we can see several of the factors affecting their respective SFPs. It is little wonder that with 4.2 times more bus shelters and back-lit information /advertising panels, Chicago makes far more ad revenue than Boston. However, there is no direct relationship between the number of shelters in a city and the amount of revenue made. Chicago makes around 14 times more money than Boston because its market is worth more. Research by PriceWaterhouse Coopers suggests that more money is made and consumed in the Chicago metropolitan region ($460 billion) than in the Boston region ($290 million). Philadelphia does slightly better than Boston, with a regional GDP of around $312 billion, but does not come close to Chicago. The market, however, does not determine everything. Cities may require different levels of maintenance or the distribution of shelters in neighborhoods that do not draw in as much advertising revenue. These demands come at a cost. Companies do not measure their profit in simply the amount of money they earn, but the percent return on the investment, and the more they invest in both the short and long term, the less the amount of their profits they are willing to share with the City.

Perspectives Heard at the Forum
Joe Minott and Mary Tracy (SCRUB) both emphasized that a new Street Furniture Program must, in fact, increase the number of bus shelters in low income neighborhoods, have a proactive maintenance schedule, be well integrated into SEPTA and be well designed. This approach met with little resistance from the attending vendors (CBS Outdoors, Cemusa, Clear Channel and JCDecaux). JCDecaux noted that 30% of their bus shelters earned 75% of the revenue, and it was clear that vendors have experience providing street furniture in all kinds of neighborhoods. More importantly almost all vendors noted that the cleanliness of their shelters was in their own best interest. Vendors, in the end, cared most about clarity in the RFP and making sure that all rights and responsibilities were clearly articulated.

The public who attended were concerned about three different issues, all of them specific to Philadelphia. Many who showed up cared deeply about supporting the arts through discounted advertising. The Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities, Rina Cutler, noted that the City is committed to continue what is popularly known as the Arts-in-Transit program. There will be new guidelines and local non-profit arts organizations will be able to continue to promote their shows at

A representative of the Newsstand Association noted the concern of newsstand owners to keep the revenues from full-scale exterior ads on their stands. Newsstand owners frequently pay mortgages on their newsstand. The association requests that newsstands not be part of the RFP, but if they are to be included, the association wishes to work with the administration. The Deputy Mayor noted that she would be happy to meet with the association. The outcomes of such discussions will have real consequences on the value of other advertising in the city, and how much vendors are willing to pay. In fact, currently the City’s contract has a non-compete clause. If the City must compete with newsstand advertising, the value of the City’s advertising is likely to diminish and less revenue will come to the City.

Several noted that cities across the US have used SFP’s to fund bicycle amenities and bike sharing programs. These audience members hope that the upcoming Philadelphia SFP would provide an opportunity for the same in Philadelphia. Additional amenities such as bike racks and benches come at a cost and require additional revenue or a reduction in the revenue returned to the City. The addition of a bike-share system is even more complicated. In Montreal, each bike must generate over $1,000 of revenue per year to cover its costs. In Boston, each advertising panel brings in $888 dollars of revenue to the city per year. A bike share system in Philadelphia is not impossible, but the questions of how big must it be to work and how much less revenue the City is willing to accept, still looms large. The City has a study underway that outlines the market for a bike-share system in Philadelphia. It should be completed by the end of the year. It is not expected to be part of the street furniture RFP at this time.

So far the City has received over 1,000 responses to our online survey regarding street furniture and what respondents would like to see in the next contract.

• A majority of respondents suggested that real-time / next arrival schedule information should be an integral part of the next generation of bus shelters, followed by route maps and clear panels to be ale to see what is around the shelter. We will work with SEPTA in order to provide this information.
• Over 91% of Philadelphian’s think it is important to generate advertising revenue to support the City’s general fund and 66% are willing to add more advertising to generate additional revenue.
• Philadelphians are most excited to see Bus Shelters, Bike Shelters and Benches

As the integration of a Bike-Share system reveals, providing the amenities that citizens want within the context of a public-private partnership is complicated. The City sees an opportunity to inject non-tax revenue into the General Fund. All of the other issues such as low cost add space for arts and culture related non profits, a bike share system, and allowing advertising on privately owned newsstands has a cost to the city. Finding the right balance between revenue and amenities will largely dictate the amount of revenue the City will realize from this program.

Food Access Event a Success

2009-11-11T07:56:00.006-05:00

By Greg

Last night's forum on Food Access and Community Development, hosted by the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy was a success! We filled the room, had a fascinating discussion about important policy issues, and enjoyed wine and local cheese. What more could you ask for? Many thanks to the panelists Tracey Giang, Vanessa Briggs, Don Hinkle-Brown, and Beth Miller.

Here are some photos:

A Dangerous Precedent

2009-11-06T10:38:00.001-05:00

The following is from a guest blogger, Matt Crespi and is an interesting perspective on the transit strike.

With hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians affected by the TWU 234 strike, it’s not hard to find good reasons to be angry. Traffic jams, expensive cab rides, and other delays are irritating; hourly workers struggling to make ends meet being kept from work is heartbreaking; and students from kindergarten through college being kept out of school is appalling.

The disruption to daily life is rightfully getting a lot of attention, but there’s a larger, though less personally urgent, issue raised by the SETPA workers’ surprise strike, and it deserves consideration by both ordinary citizens and our highest ranking elected officials: a crippling transit strike took the city by surprise four hours before the polls opened.

This is no small matter. How many fewer votes were cast because of the strike may never be known, but it’s hard to imagine the number was not substantial. Though some voters rely on SEPTA to get to their polling places, they’re not the only ones were prevented from voting because of the strike. Major disruptions to routines and plans certainly make citizens less likely to vote, and the lack of warning ensured that creating backup plans would be as difficult as possible. Any parents who rely on SEPTA to get the kids to school and themselves to work woke up to two enormous problems, and any intention to vote would have taken a back seat to the immediate concerns of daily life.

Thankfully for the integrity of the election, most of the races were won in landslides, and it seems likely the strike made little difference. Were any of the major races close, the city might have seen apoplectic candidates tossing accusations of election tampering at union leaders, even demanding criminal investigations (perhaps not without cause).

Nine years ago, a few dozen inconvenienced voters here and there in Florida raised suspicions. A few hundred turned into court cases and questions of legitimacy. A transit strike on a busier election day could prevent thousands, even tens of thousands, of voters from getting to the polls. We shouldn’t wait for a transit strike on the eve of a closer election for a more visible office to realize this is a problem; public officials should eliminate that possibility immediately.

The citizenry wouldn’t stand for a strike designed to keep voters from the polls, but how is unintentional election tampering significantly better? And what’s to stop potentially immoral union leaders of the future, in Philadelphia or elsewhere, from orchestrating strikes for hidden political reasons? The current union leaders are already seen by some to be exercising too much power on their union’s behalf.

Police and firefighters aren’t allowed to strike because it would be a threat to public safety. Transit strikes on Election Day, especially surprise strikes, are a threat to democracy itself. Keeping voters from the polls undermines our entire political system, and doing so purposefully on a massive scale should be unconscionable to any American.

Transit strikes on Election Day should be made illegal, and the irresponsible union leaders who orchestrated such a strike this week owe the city a huge apology, if not their resignations.

How Goats came to LA

2009-11-02T13:10:00.001-05:00

By Ariel

Len Betz of the Community Development Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) first thought of using goats to manage the undergrowth of a vacant property on Bunker Hill based upon an NPR story he heard, where goats helped manage marshy waterways in Vermont. The animals were able to operate in a delicate environment, manage vegetation, and they had the added benefit of hooves that can gently break up the soil, plus droppings that are good fertilizer. Bunker Hill is not a marshy environment; it used to be a premier residential location in the 1800s and is now a thriving downtown office core. This dense cluster of office buildings is the result of the efforts of the CRA/LA and its redevelopment of a previously ‘blighted’ urban core. However there is one empty lot left, a 2.5 acre parcel of land which the CRA/LA maintains, and which Betz’s office over looks.

Betz’s project falls under the purview of the property management department for the CRA/LA with support by the CRA/LA chief executive officer, Cecillia Estolano, because it coincided with goals of investing in sustainability and clean technology. It didn’t hurt that as Betz puts it, the “setting was a pretty spectacular view.” The project, which utilized a goat herder an hour-and-a half outside of Los Angeles, was a significant public relations win, with five channels covering the project, one even from Japan. The goat herder, Ranchite Tivo Boer Goats, came with recommendations from Caltrans who used them to manage hilly land around their tracks.

Ranchite Tivo brought in 100 goats for a contracted five nights, though the work was done in two days. In addition to the permanent fencing surrounding the CRA property, portable electric fences were added as a precaution to kept the goats safely penned up. To that end a guard spent the night, and the local area Business Improvement District patrol kept a special eye out for the goats. But nothing happened, and this year no one is even spending the night.

Generally, Betz spends approximately $7,500 on clearing the lot, a price that is a function of how many weeds and how many people it would take to clear those weeds. It usually “takes a crew about 2 to three days to clear the hillside,” but the goats did it in just under half the cost and had the added benefit of being a hit with the office crowd. Not only were the goats very easy to get along with, “they [just] eat and sleep... and follow the leader” but they left it (having trimmed 98%) looking like “someone has manicured the property.” All the CRLA had to do was sweep off their droppings from adjoining sidewalks and staircases. They were so popular that neighboring Angelus Plaza senior citizen center hired them shortly thereafter to clean up their community garden.

Imagining Philadelphia

2009-10-30T22:02:00.005-04:00

By Greg

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a new book out called "Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City," in which I have a chapter. The premise of the book is this: Ed Bacon, Philadelphia's famous former city planner wrote an article in 1959 called "Philadelphia in the Year 2009," imagining his hometown 50 years hence. Bacon has been referred to as a visionary countless times, still there are few writings where he predicted the conditions of a future date in this way.

Now that it is in fact 2009, the book looks at how effectively Bacon's vision matches the reality. The original article is the first chapter of the book. The rest of the chapters use the article as a jumping off point to look at Philadelphia's historical development, where we have come since 1959, and where we may take Philadelphia over the next 50 years. The book is edited by Drexel University professor Scott Knowles, who also has a chapter in the volume. Other chapters are by Guian McKee (University of Virginia), Eugenie Birch (University of Pennsylvania); Harris Steinberg (Director of Penn Praxis), and me.

Even if my writing were not included in the book, I am sure I would feel this was a pretty cool project. I hope you will order a copy and give it a read. As a teaser, here is the text from my talk the other night at the book launch event during the Design on the Delaware Conference.

Remarks at Design on the Delaware – October 28, 2009

By Greg Heller

I want to thank Scott for putting this book together, and thank you all for the opportunity to be here this evening.

To chart Philadelphia’s future we need a firm grasp on how we got here. Considering the significance of Philadelphia’s post-World-War II era of planning and development, there is shockingly little written about it. Thanks to Scott’s leadership, we are beginning to change that. This book is not a definitive work. It is the tip of a massive iceberg that many Philadelphians did not even know existed.

Ed Bacon’s 1959 article, “Philadelphia in the Year 2009” – the basis of this book – is a snapshot in time. My chapter puts the article in context, telling the story of Bacon’s life experiences leading to the writing of the article and giving a brief description of the 46 years of his life that followed. The chapter contains a synopsis of a long and fascinating life story that I tell in greater depth in a forthcoming biography that I have authored.

Bacon’s early life is characterized by his Quaker family, conflict with his overbearing father, and a childhood split between city and country life. He went to college at Cornell, then embarked on world travels ending up in Shanghai. Returning to Philadelphia, Bacon worked briefly for a local architect before being accepted at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, under the tutelage of the Finnish architect-planner Eliel Saarinen. Bacon’s stay at Cranbrook was brief, however; Saarinen sent Bacon on assignment to the industrial city of Flint, where Bacon worked for several years.

Bacon was highly influenced by some new friends: Oskar Stonorov, Lewis Mumford, and Catherine Bauer – who were important figures in shaping the future federal priority on subsidized housing. Bacon began to believe that neighborhood design and housing could impact social conditions.

In Flint Bacon delved into local politics, mobilized grassroots organizations to lobby for better housing conditions, and was instrumental in gaining a federal earmark for housing funds. It was in Flint that he met and married his wife, Ruth. However, the powerful establishment thought little of the tenacious Bacon and his quasi-socialist ideas. In 1939 Bacon found his position eliminated, and no hope for a future in Flint.

Bacon returned to Philadelphia where he got a job as director of a nonprofit housing advocacy organization. He also became involved with a new young people’s group called the City Policy Committee. Through a long process that established the Committee’s legitimacy, the group successfully influenced City Council to create a modern city planning commission in 1942.

With World War II raging, Bacon quit his job and joined the Navy, where he was part of the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Upon returning home, Oskar Stonorov convinced Bacon to work with him on designing a massive city planning show – the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition.

To work on the exhibition, Bacon was brought onto the City Planning Commission’s payroll, where he remained after the show was over. After one director left and another died in office, Bacon was invited to become planning director in 1949. He accepted. In 1951, largely thanks to the work of the City Policy Committee’s members, Philadelphia gained a new charter and Joseph Clark was elected Mayor, marking the beginning of the reform era in Philadelphia government.

Bacon’s focus early in his tenure as planning director was on building communities with sound planning and better housing to improve the neediest areas of the city. The 1949 federal housing act presented cities with massive resources for urban renewal. However, Bacon rejected the popular notion of wholesale bulldozing of slums – arguing for a more sensitive approach that valued neighborhood preservation. Working with designers like Stonorov and Louis Kahn, Bacon tried to apply a philosophy of urban renewal that Architectural Forum characterized as “Clearing Slums with Penicillin, Not Surgery.”

Through the 1950s, Philadelphia proved successful in attaining substantial funding and attention, attracting the eyes of the nation to projects such as Society Hill, Eastwick, and Penn Center. However, research reveals that Bacon’s role in these projects was surprisingly limited. Bacon is often compared to development czars in other cities, like Robert Moses in New York, and Ed Logue in Boston. However, except for a brief period in the late 1960s when Bacon served in a dual capacity, he was not a development czar; he was the planning director.

Philadelphia had a development coordinator in the 1950s named Bill Rafsky, a man known for his skill in lobbying for federal funds, and his close relationship with the mayors. Rafsky steered the city’s redevelopment program in ways that Bacon disagreed with, but had little ability to change. Why then when Philadelphia gained international acclaim, was it Bacon who became the face of an era? This is a principle question that I seek to answer in my chapter.

When we study Bacon’s actual role we see that functionally Bacon was a department head with limited power and access to funds. However, through his own initiative he was continually putting himself in the spotlight to sell the media on Philadelphia’s progress. He sought out businessmen and high-level government officials, to convince them of certain ideas that he wanted to see realized.

I argue that Bacon’s success was rooted not primarily in his skill as a physical designer, but in his abilities as a salesman of ideas. He learned to market planning ideas effectively to powerful decision-makers, gain buy-in, and make the ideas resonate in the public consciousness. This was a tremendously powerful skill that other planners and designers of the era lacked or never knew was necessary. I state in my chapter:

Renowned Philadelphia-based architect Louis Kahn said, “If your ideas are right, they—the businessmen and the politicians—will come to you.” Bacon, in contrast, believed that an effective planner had to sell his ideas actively in a persuasive way. Kahn called Bacon “A planner who thinks he is a politician.” Kahn was largely right. Bacon spent his career taking new or existing ideas, filling them out into compelling concepts, and marketing them to key decision makers.

Bacon’s ability to work with governmental and private-sector players can be traced back to his days in Flint, where he carried out forays into politics that turned out disastrously. However, he learned from his mistakes, and after his experience with the City Policy Committee, Bacon was thoroughly familiar with how to work with powerful decision makers. The Better Philadelphia Exhibition taught Bacon how a strong visual image, marketed the right way can change people’s perceptions and expectations.

The evolution of Bacon’s skill as a salesman of ideas is a major thread of my chapter.

Penn Center – one of the projects for which Bacon is most famous – presents a strong example of Bacon’s salesmanship strategy. By the early 1950s Philadelphia west of City Hall was divided by the “Chinese Wall,” the Pennsylvania Railroad’s massive viaduct. Ideas for removing the wall and building a new civic space went back decades.

It is important to recognize that the City did not have jurisdiction over this land. It was the private property of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Bacon saw that in order for the Railroad to develop a major civic project – rather than selling off the land piecemeal – someone would have to convince the conservative executives that it was in their best interest to do so. While it was not in Bacon’s job description, he took on this task.

Initially Bacon worked with a committee of the American Institute of Architects chaired by Louis Kahn to conceive a vision to present to the Railroad. However, Kahn left for Rome, and Bacon decided to abandon the committee and find a new partner. He selected a young architect named Vincent Kling, who was experienced in working with corporate clients, was friendly with several members of the Railroad’s board of directors, and had already been hired for separate work with the Railroad. These factors were no accident. Bacon chose a partner who could help him reach the right people and sell his concept.

With Kling’s help, Bacon engaged in negotiation with the Railroad and its real-estate broker, and in 1952 when the Railroad announced that the Chinese Wall was coming down, Bacon followed with a presentation of what should replace it. However, while Kling and Bacon gained a certain amount of leverage through the power of persuasion, their efforts only went so far. As it turned out, the Railroad hired a New York developer and New York architect who created a design that was criticized universally in Philadelphia, including by Bacon. It was a major cohesive project, but few of Bacon’s design ideas made it to the final product.

Penn Center is but one example of how Bacon’s major role was selling ideas, and attempting to reach powerful decision makers. He took a similar tact throughout his career, marketing concepts to the business community that controlled the interests in what became Market East and Society Hill. Bacon ended up becoming associated with these projects, but other players, whose names we rarely hear, were arguably much more instrumental in actually carrying them forward.

I argue in my chapter:

Bacon’s strength, and the key to understanding his successful initiatives, was his ability to comprehend the power structure and work through the right channels to advance his concepts. Bacon promoted his ideas to decision makers and then (if he was successful) stepped away as others carried out his visions. Through this tenuous process, it is apparent how easily development projects evolved differently than Bacon planned.

In the late 1950s, Bacon assembled a Center City Plan for Philadelphia. Using vibrant images and diagrams, the plan connected disparate projects and visually showed them interlocking, forming one complete vision for Center City. This too was Bacon’s salesmanship at work. Society Hill’s Greenways ran into Independence Mall, which flowed seamlessly into a vision for the Market East shopping center, traipsing all the way to Penn Center. Center City was not a collection of projects; rather a single, cohesive vision.

This complete image of Center City was one that Bacon started to sell to the media, to audiences when he gave speeches, and in his own writings, including the “2009” article. Eventually Bacon landed on the idea of a major celebration of America’s 200th birthday as the greatest venue of all for selling Philadelphia on a massive scale. The 2009 article is the first significant instance of Bacon publicly articulating this total concept. Through the 1960s Bacon would hone his pitch and sell it through presentations, articles, and a film to venues across the globe.

In 1964 Bacon was highlighted as the key player of Philadelphia’s renaissance, with his face on the cover of Time magazine. While Philadelphia’s revitalization had a long ways to go, with still unproven results, Bacon had succeeded in selling Philadelphia to the nation, and selling himself as its lead figure. As his recognition grew, so did his local influence.

Ironically, Bacon largely failed at selling himself. Case studies of his work, his writings and speeches show a man obsessed with developing a successful methodology for empowering communities and helping citizens plan for themselves. Yet, Bacon is often recalled as a dictatorial, top-down planner. Perhaps due in-part to Bacon’s high profile and his forceful and argumentative demeanor, he was not able to effectively practice what he preached.

Another goal of my chapter is to tell parts of Bacon’s story that have not been well told. For example, as expressed in the 2009 article, Bacon’s focus on housing and community development never waned. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s he wrote and spoke prolifically about the need to build mixed-income, mixed-race communities. He despised high-rise public housing projects, and in the 1960s spearheaded a concept for America’s first scattered site public housing program.

Yet another side of Bacon that is not well known was his crusade to rid the world of automobiles, and his vision for a Post Petroleum City. Bacon started but never finished a book on this topic – imagining a world where people travel only by foot, bike, or transit. In 1966 he explained, “there is a ‘revulsion’ against the automobile and the destruction it does to cities and the countryside. The car is losing its luster as something worth sacrificing for.” Later he attempted unsuccessfully to organize an international conference on the post-petroleum city.

Bacon certainly had his faults, and they were substantial. He was intensely focused on physical design, and paid little attention to policy areas like education and workforce development. He could be unapologetically stubborn in his approach. Bacon did not foresee the extent of American urban decline that would occur in the 1970s and 1980s, and failed to prepare for this period.

Still, in the 2009 article, Bacon imagines a future Philadelphia that invests in a world-class downtown, has thriving neighborhoods, and slowly attracts back the middle class. Today, while cities like Detroit seem headed for the grave, Philadelphia appears on track for the kind of rebirth that Bacon envisioned in 1959. Clearly modern individuals and institutions play an important role, but it is hard not to wonder whether the 1950s and 1960s era actually laid a stronger framework for eventual success than we often give it credit.

Bacon’s role in Philadelphia was hugely significant. However, he was not a power broker, enabled to build physical projects at his whim. In many of the projects of the 1950s and 1960s Bacon was a much more minor player than we have come to believe. To appreciate Bacon’s contributions, he should be recognized as a planner who masterfully understood the dynamics of how society makes decisions – the art of getting things done. I will end this talk the way I end my chapter:

Edmund Bacon’s fame and his lasting influence largely stem from his ability to forge the link between planning and implementation, creating a new role for the city planner as both an active civic participant and salesman of ideas. This was just as rare a feature for planners in 1959 as it is today. The challenge for planners in 2009 is to understand and excel at this subtle art of selling ideas, inspiring decision makers to adopt ideas and transform them into a vivid reality.

Philadelphia Street Furniture Survey

2009-10-28T16:27:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

By the end of the year the City will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to provide, maintain and sell advertising for bus shelters in Philadelphia. The RFP will also invite proposals for additional pieces of street furniture. Street furniture is the collective term referring to objects and pieces of equipment installed on streets and sidewalks that are intended for public use. Transit/bus shelters and newspaper boxes are examples of street furniture currently in use in Philadelphia. Let the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities know what you think by completing this survey.

Shop SEPTA

2009-10-25T13:35:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

Recently Greg advertised a forum he will be speaking at regarding access to healthy food in cities. Food systems planning is a really important issue, one that is incredibly important to ensuring a healthy city; check out Amanda Wagner’s article in the spring 2009 edition of Context, the journal of the AIA Philadelphia, for a fantastic exploration of food system planning.

While food system planning tends to focus on the development of grocery stores, farmers markets and community gardens, it does not often make the link between transportation, shopping and food systems. In Europe, and across the world, where communities are more walkable and fresh local produce is more accessible, stopping by a Shouk or a Bazar after work to pick up a few vegetables is a way of life. In America our shopping habits are more concentrated and require more support: we shop for groceries once or twice a month, load up our cars and hope we finish our vegetables before we go shopping again. But when 36% percent of Philadelphians' don’t own cars and when car ownership imposes a significant burden on low income families, then you have a growing realization that there is a critical link between food systems and transit planning.

According to the latest American Community Survey, 26% of Philadelphians commute to work via transit. While they may use transit for work, far fewer use it for such things as shopping. According to a 2005 Econsult on commercial corridors, only 10% of trips to commercial corridors were taken via public transit. More over 52% of all trips to commercial corridors in areas where thirty percent of the population is below the poverty line were via car. However, only 37% of people in those areas actually own cars. Philadelphians with lower incomes have significantly less access to fresh and healthy food and everybody from The Reinvestment Fund, to the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition and State Representative Dwight Evans have been fighting to bridge that gap. Over 125,000 people shop at local farmers markets, and 167,695 Philadelphians live near commercial corridors without grocery stores. By partnering with supermarkets and the Food Trust (which oversees Philadelphia’s 27 farmers markets), by out-fitting buses with simple shelves, and targeted routing changes it is possible to “move the needle” and bring the number of people who shop via SEPTA closer to those who commute via SEPTA.

Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City

2009-10-25T10:08:00.003-04:00

By Greg

There is a new book coming out this week published by University of Pennsylvania Press called "Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City."

The book starts with an article by Bacon (Philadelphia's famed city planner) written in 1959, envisioning Philadelphia in the year 2009. The following chapters put the Bacon article in context and interpret its themes relating to Philadelphia's post World War II planning history. The final chapter talks about the promise of Philadelphia in the year 2059.

My chapter is the second in the volume, entitled "Salesman of Ideas, The Life Experiences That Shaped Edmund Bacon."

I invite you to come to a reception, panel discussion, and book signing this Wednesday, October 28th at the Design on the Delaware Conference. It costs $15 ($10 for AIA members and $5 for students) and you have to register online at www.designonthedelaware.com.

Here is the blurb from the conference program:

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2009

Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City - 1.25 AIA/CES LUs; CEU Eligible for PA Landscape Architects

In the fall of 2009 an edited book will be published—Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City—that seeks to add context and analysis to Edmund Bacon’s ideas and his works. Though many of the changes Bacon predicted for the city have come to pass, few of them arrived in the way he imagined. In this program, several of the authors in Imagining Philadelphia will give short readings from their respective chapters followed by audience questions and discussion of the book and its arguments.

Presenters: Eugenie L. Birch, FAICP, University of Pennsylvania; Greg Heller, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission; Scott Gabriel Knowles, Drexel University; Harris Steinberg, FAIA, PennPraxis

Cocktail Reception in Exhibit Hall – 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm (complimentary)

PROGRAM AND BOOK SIGNING - 5:30 pm to 6:45 pm in exhibit hall

TOD works

2009-10-23T09:45:00.004-04:00

By Ariel

If there is a problem with planning in general (and there are surely more than one) then it is the fact that plans or developments themselves cannot quickly respond to the market feedback. When New Coke debuted and sales plummeted, Coca Cola had very clear feedback, and could tell if its product “worked.” It took decades for planners to realize that Corbusian ‘plinths in a park’ didn’t work. As Professor Michael Larice often notes, there are no “post occupancy studies” of plans.

Recently The Oregonian featured an article titled Residents of transit-oriented Orenco Station still driving cars to work. The author notes:

"About two out of three Orenco residents drive to work in cars, slightly less than some other suburbs but hardly the car-free utopia many idealists expect of the transit-oriented area. Even as the neighborhood has grown closer, block by block, to the MAX light rail station"

At first glance this “post occupancy study” would suggest that transit oriented development does not work.

However, no matter how damning the headline or lead sentence may be generally one can find far more interesting data further along in a report. For one, it would appear that most people who live in Orenco tend to:

"...walk to shopping and use mass transit for nonwork trips – to the zoo or symphony, for example – at rates that beat other suburban communities… Orenco residents are five times as likely as [nearby neighborhood] residents to walk to shops and stores more than five times a week."

As Jennifer Dill director of the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium notes, only 20% of trips are journeys to work trips. The fact that their journey to work (JTW) still exhibit high car mode share is a function of where they are going. After all, every trip is determined by origin and destination, and if the origin is walkable but the destination isn’t, well, you will simply have to drive there. That is clearly evident when people in Orenco prefer to move around their neighborhood via foot and bike but still drive to work.

Ultimately this a reminder that any single TOD is only as effective as the entire region around it. TOD is not about specific projects here or there, but the rules by which we allow our entire region to be built.

Forum on Food Access and Committee Development

2009-10-17T11:29:00.005-04:00

Previously I posted on the issues surrounding food access in urban areas and how these policy topics intersect with community development. You can learn more and become part of the discussion at an upcoming forum hosted by the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy. I will be moderating the discussion. Hope to see you there!

Food Access and Community Development

A Panel Discussion Hosted by The Philadelphia Committee on City Policy

Tuesday November 10, 2009

6:00-8:00 PM

The Center for Architecture (1218 Arch Street, Philadelphia)

Free for PCCP members, $5 for non-members

Light food and refreshments will be provided

Please RSVP to: suzydrinan@philcommitteeoncitypolicy.org

Panelists:

Yael Lehmann, MSW – Executive Director, The Food Trust

Vanessa Briggs, MBA, RD, LDN – Executive Director, Health Promotion Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania

Donald Hinkle-Brown – President, Lending and Community Investments, The Reinvestment Fund

Elizabeth Miller – Executive Director, Community Design Collaborative

Moderated by:

Gregory Heller – Managing Director for Economic Growth and Community Revitalization, The Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation

Food access is one of the most important public health issues facing inner city communities today. Many low-income, urban communities lack access to grocery stores and produce markets. Yet food access is not a stand-alone issue; instead it is indelibly connected to local community development, economic growth, and urban planning and design. Philadelphia has recently been recognized as a national leader for efforts to bridge the food access divide, while also working to make the nexus to empower communities and provide assets that can increase neighborhood vitality. Please join the Philadelphia Committee on City Policy for a panel discussion featuring some of the leading experts and practitioners shaping Philadelphia’s nationally recognized achievements on addressing these issues.

Historical Memory

2009-10-12T19:36:00.006-04:00

Image Source

By Greg

I finally got up to New York to see the High Line. As expected, it is pretty cool. It was packed with people sunning themselves, walking, eating at a café – all experienced at an elevation to which we are not quite accustomed.

The High Line has some interesting features that attempt to retain the site’s historical memory as a an abandoned railroad bed, like overgrown vegetation and railroad tracks emerging out of the ground in some spots. I found these elements particularly important to the experience. No matter how expensive the park’s finishes (it cost $150 million so far) or the luxury buildings that abut the High Line, its designers want us to remember a period when this viaduct was abandoned and overgrown – a ghost of a vibrant industrial past.

Looking out over the edge of the High Line, it was clear that this linear park was the most recent addition to the living urban museum that is Chelsea. The surrounding neighborhood has similar features of industrial infrastructure captured in a semi-blighted state, adorned and modernized with expensive materials, made relevant through modern uses. Former industrial warehouses hold high-end restaurants, couture shops, and art galleries. Places like Chelsea Market relish the trendy aesthetic of crumbling brick contrasted with expensive lighting and modern art.

Later, from the ground looking up at the High Line I realized something; when there are gaps in the people walking upon it, there is no indication from the street that this modern floating park even exists. From below it still looks like an overgrown and blighted railroad viaduct. And that’s the point. Reusing historic infrastructure is trendy, but surely for the High Line’s designers the viaduct’s reuse was about retaining the historical memory of a less vibrant past.

Like many postindustrial urban areas, there was a time not too long ago when Chelsea’s fate was considerably more uncertain. In a story of urban revitalization that has become well known, Chelsea was rediscovered by artists in the 1980s and 1990s, then by main-stream New Yorkers. Today it is hypergentrified as the High Line floats above a Vera Wang boutique, and runs beside a new Frank Gehry building. Modern-day Chelsea has the privilege of recalling its darker days, while celebrating its affluent success. Many urban areas are not so lucky.

Staring up at the High Line, while eating lunch at an outdoor restaurant where beers cost $7, I thought about my hometown of Philadelphia and our own Reading Viaduct that some hope to turn into the next High Line-esque park. However, unlike in Chelsea, there is no Vera Wang or Barneys in Philadelphia’s Callowhill and Chinatown North neighborhoods. Instead Philadelphia still has postindustrial areas suffering from physical blight and urban decay.

No matter how neat a floating park could be in Philadelphia, the Reading Viaduct’s context makes this reuse inappropriate just now. Its surrounding neighborhoods are not in a position to memorialize the history of a blighted past; that blighted past has not yet become history. Those who feel that the Reading Viaduct is ready to become the next High Line are missing the underlying symbolic meaning of the High Line and its context.

I don’t mean to say that the Reading Viaduct should not be preserved and at some point transformed. However, if this happens, it must be part of a larger strategy that focuses on true neighborhood revitalization, rather than a standalone project.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a few years ago a group of community organizations came to the table and cooperated in developing the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan. The plan charts a course for a comprehensive approach to building physical connectivity, attracting new residential and commercial growth, addressing issues of affordable housing and local economic development, as well as adding new recreational sites (including restoring a major portion of the Reading Viaduct as a floating park). It’s a good plan that was developed through a consensus building process. The City and neighborhood groups should agree to put their weight behind it and make the plan a reality.

Urban revitalization is not about picking and choosing physical projects from other cities and sticking them into one’s own. Building a Reading Viaduct park in Philadelphia without the other investments included in the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan simply misses the point. In contrast, a focus on restoring the community around the Reading Viaduct, with a floating park as an eventual goal to celebrate the community’s resurgence, shows a more thoughtful view of how we rebuild cities, preserve the past, and connect our past to our future.

One final note: While Chelsea is gentrified to the point of no return, the areas around the Reading Viaduct maintain the potential for an equitable revitalization. If Philadelphia can figure out the formula for transforming neighborhoods while retaining diverse, livable, and affordable communities, then we have truly landed on something worth celebrating.

Why Community Planning Belongs in School

2009-10-04T15:50:00.014-04:00

Image of community planning models designed by Philadelphia
public school students, displayed at the 1947 Better Philadelphia Exhibition.

I was recently invited to participate in a Philadelphia public high school class where students engage in planning a community-based project (in this case a community garden, seating area, and food stand just a few blocks from the school). Each time I go to class, it strikes me how engaging this project is for building commitment to community, while using a physical neighborhood space as the means of teaching academic subjects and life skills. As part of the class, students are learning about planning, urban design, market analysis, business planning, and community involvement.

Teaching planning in schools is not a new concept for Philadelphia. During the fall of 1946, an experimental city planning course was introduced into the curriculum at sixteen public schools across the city. Staff of the City Planning Commission and the independent Citizens’ Council on City Planning spent months in the classroom working directly with the students, helping them learn about planning concepts, and ultimately guiding them to create their own plans, models, and drawings of the future of their communities.

The first round of student models, drawings, and plans were put on display at the Better Philadelphia Exhibition – a massive showcase of Philadelphia’s city planning work that attracted 385,000 visitors in 1947. Reports on the show praised Philadelphia’s foresight in preparing the next generation of citizens to plan a bright future for their communities. The program was a huge success and was subsequently permanently added to the Philadelphia schools curriculum. I don’t know when or why this planning course was dropped. However, the class I’m involved with today is not a standard feature for Philadelphia’s public school students.

If planning is such a great framework for teaching basic skills and building community values, why don’t we bring it back as a permanent element of the public school curriculum? A few years ago, I suggested this idea to some of my colleagues in education policy. The feedback was resoundingly negative. Their argument was that most public school students in Philadelphia lack adequate reading and math skills. Who has time for something superfluous like planning?

In a recent article Michael A. Rodriguez, a Bethesda, Maryland-based transportation planner, argued for the importance of teaching planning in school. In his article, Rodriguez notes, “To the nay-sayers who do not think schools have time to teach planning concepts, or worry more about 'core' curricula in math, science, and reading, I say that teaching planning concepts is fun and complimentary to teaching other subjects. They are not mutually exclusive.” He notes that teaching planning involves math, geography, and writing. I have seen this overlap with core subjects in the class I am involved with. The community planning element is a way to teach core subjects through an interesting and engaging subject that directly affects that place where the students live.

Rodriguez also adds another argument to the mix: “Planners often encounter ineffective public participation because of the fact that citizens often are not taught planning skills in school.” In other words, if kids aren’t taught the need for planning their communities, how can they become active community participants down the line when it really matters?

Going back to my previous post, it is clear that in order to build stable and thriving communities, we need to focus on developing engaged, concerned, and committed citizens. By teaching planning in schools, we are giving children the opportunity to understand that they can become engaged in their community, and that this engagement can be truly rewarding.

Some of my education policy friends may disagree with me. But ultimately I hope that these students – the parents of the future – will stay in their Philadelphia community (for some I hope this means returning after college). I hope they will become strongly involved in their community, and provide a better environment for living and learning than existed for them during their formative school years.

Education cannot be viewed as simply a process to get kids to a certain level of preparation in math and reading. It must be viewed as our major avenue for preparing the next generation of committed citizens. Otherwise we are missing a critical element of what school is intended to do. Without this element we may help a handful of students to escape and move on to better lives, but we do nothing to solve the underlying issues that afflict their under-served schools and communities in the long-term.

Internal and Political Development Set the Stage for Waterfront Development

2009-09-24T08:28:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

In his latest post Greg briefly notes that both Camden and Chester are cities on former industrial waterfronts. Greg is correct in his prioritization of investments needed to ensure that Chester’s Stadium and Casino actually act as agents of revitalization, however (by nature of his focus) he glosses over an important feature of urban redevelopment, the agencies doing the redevelopment. These public authorities have their own internal dynamics, that combined with the unique circumstances of every city provide a distinct local flavor to urban redevelopment.
On Monday September 21st, Peter Hendee Brown spoke at a lecture arranged by the Penn Institute for Urban Redevelopment about his new book titled America’s Waterfront.

The lecture provided an excellent analysis of the changing nature of Port Authorities and how their response to transportation trends and changing municipal landscapes has changed waterfront development for cities from San Francisco to Tampa.
Brown notes that the development of the shipping container (those large metal boxes that now float stack atop boats many times the size of football fields) spelled the end of the traditional dock: no longer were scores of laborers need to unload boats, cranes could just lift them onto trucks. Oakland invested heavily in these cranes, while San Francisco did not. It was that decision, and the resulting dilapidation which lead to the redevelopment of the waterfront into the retail district it is today: the development potential of many such waterfronts is related to the failure of those ports to keep up with the times, eventually letting their land go “fallow.” Other places, such as Tampa and Miami became the home of cruise lines. There both the shipping boat owners and the ports, realized the need to change with the times: the boat operators changing their ships to cruise lines while the Port Authorities invested in destination redevelopment to make their ports more attractive to the tourists getting on and off the boats. As federal and naval bases closed and opened even more land became available for redevelopment and San Diego built their convention center along the waterfront. These changes required a serious change in the Port Authorities’ staff, they suddenly had to become savvy developers, not just transportation operations officers.

Philadelphia’s waterfront has faced a few key obstacles, detailed by Brown, that inform the current state of unrealized potential. And no its not simply the fact that is cut off by I-95. For one, while the Delaware River Port Authority has been around for years, funded and built bridges spanning the Delaware between PA and NJ, it has never had joint control of the two ports. It wasn’t simply the railroads which blocked the periodic attempts to unite the port, the separate ports themselves did so. The latest attempt to “bridge” the ports was in 1992, and while that was defeated, one small sentence gave the DRPA was given the ability to fund economic development.

By the time they finally got around to it (it being economic development) the presence and the design of the impacts severely limited what could be done on the Philadelphia side of the river. 676 ventures further into New Jersey, leaving over ten blocks between the highway and the river, while Philadelphia is lucky to have two between I-95 and the waterfront. (676 was also built long after I-95 and by the time it was built the DOT required the highway to be connected to the bridge where it touched down on the shore, in Philadelphia people exit the Ben Franklin Bridge around fifth street). All of which is to say, by the time there was a mechanism to develop the waterfront, in Philadelphia there was little waterfront controlled by the DRPA (or by organizations particularly friendly to the DRPA) for its economic development money to go towards. It’s one of the reasons that the DRPA funded Chester’s stadium, there was simply little land, and even less vision, as to what to do on the waterfront.

If anything, this story reiterates the importance of the Praxis Plan / Civic Vision. The Philadelphia waterfront is divided among numerous (far too numerous) entities, few of whom under the leadership of a single entity. The Plan / Civic Vision provides a coherent goal around which partners gather (sometimes, whether they want to or not). In the absence of the institutional building blocks for waterfront development, civic visions have ever more importance.

Déjà vu?

2009-09-22T19:15:00.010-04:00

Camden, NJ's recent urban reinvestments

By Greg

The Philadelphia Daily News ran an article last week about the changing tides of Chester, the long-beleaguered Pennsylvania city near the Delaware border. The article noted Chester’s former industrial golden age, its recent reputation for drugs and crime, and a number of recent investments in the city that give hope for Chester’s future. These investments include the new Harrah’s casino, the soon-to-be-built Major League Soccer stadium, the University Crossing project (including a hotel, apartments, and a bank), a new recreation center, and the city’s planned river walk.

The article argues that in the midst of a recession, all of this construction is not just welcome, but highly encouraging for “Pennsylvania’s dark horse city.” Of course that progress is relative considering the above-mentioned bank will be the city’s first in 15 years, and Chester still lacks a supermarket. Much of the new construction is and will be highly subsidized by taxpayers. The question: Is Chester truly turning around or is this just the latest futile attempt to shock life back into an abandoned and dying city?

As I was reading the article I felt pangs of déjà vu. The language of the article and the types of investments seemed remarkably similar to another struggling small city near Philadelphia – Camden, NJ. Certainly Camden and Chester are very different cities, but they also have many things in common:

They are both small cities (Camden is 8.8 square miles with 79,000 residents, while Chester is 4.8 square miles with 37,000 residents).
They are both waterfront cities along the Delaware River.
Both are home to a university (Rutgers Camden and Widener University).
They were both old industrial cities that sunk so low that they were taken over by the state.
In both cases highways speed travelers past their borders, giving just a glimpse of the city’s face.
In both cities local police have been recently lobbying to remove residency requirements for the force.

And now they share the commonality that state and local officials are favoring the same general strategy for their revitalization. Camden built a baseball stadium, aquarium, and a major outdoor music venue, lined with a river walk – much of it built with major public subsidy. Nearby some private developers built a modest amount of new housing and retail. All of it was surrounded by a sea of parking lots so that out-of-towners could easily find a space and would not have to see the real Camden.

Today in Camden, the riverfront is bustling with activity (when there is a game or concert), but there are few promenaders on the river walk, and almost none of the visitors venture into the city. The downtown streets, just blocks away, are as depressed as ever, separated from the development by a moat of parking lots. Last I checked, Habitat for Humanity was still Camden’s biggest housing developer.

Chester’s reinvestment seems suspiciously similar. In place of the aquarium and music venue is a casino. In place of the baseball stadium is a soccer stadium. Granted, the casino and MLS stadium are going to attract more dollars from patrons than their counterparts in Camden; however, the basic equation is the same: stand-alone projects, plenty of parking, no connection to the heart of the city.

In a city like Camden or Chester that seems to be bleeding to death, some may argue that there is little room for pushing the envelope on urban reinvestment. To many it probably seems that any means justifies the end of attracting outside visitors and their economic development dollars. However, I would argue that this investment strategy of attracting visitors to auto-centric destinations, cut off from the city, is a shortsighted approach that will end up bringing in some revenue, but very little in the way of true urban revitalization.

With all of the money thrown in by the public sector and local charities in Camden, the city has seen too little improvement outside of the tourist-laden waterfront. I fear Chester’s foray into the spotlight will similarly stall in a few years unless the city takes a different track. Some could blame Camden’s unimpressive comeback on the current housing market. However, that is a relatively small piece of the puzzle. The main reason that Camden is not doing better is because the new developments did not follow the basic equation for reviving a city and its neighborhoods.

Presumably the ultimate goal is to restore the city and its neighborhoods so that Chester is no longer reliant on major state support. If this is the case, then projects that attract tourists to come for the day and leave will not cut it. Investments need to be targeted at restoring neighborhoods and supporting local business. This is a much tougher equation than building a stadium on vacant land, but it is necessary.

Rather than building stand-alone projects surrounded by parking, Chester should build linkages to connect these new projects to existing commercial streets. Stadiums in cities like Pittsburgh and Denver abut neighborhoods with new businesses serving as gateways, rather than parking lots. Even if there are few businesses now, these physical connections will allow entrepreneurs the chance to capitalize on the new projects, allowing the revitalization to eventually spread.

On-site parking must be consolidated and reduced as much as possible. If tourists can walk from their car right into the stadium or casino then there is absolutely no hope for spillover economic development. We cannot plan for how the city looks now – rather how it can look years down the line. Physical connectivity between the investments of today and the thriving neighborhoods and corridors of tomorrow is key.

Community investments can start in areas around assets like Widener University or the new waterfront developments, and work their way inward. These investments should focus on building new economic opportunities while restoring the physical plant of neighborhoods so that they can ultimately attract outside development and individual homeowners. Public investments must be made in ways that trigger a larger private reaction.

From the public side, investments can include elements like special services districts to clean and green; targeted, high-visibility projects like neighborhood parks; grants or low-interest loans for business owners; incentives for developers and for individual homeowners. To make an impact, all of these investments must be focused on a shared geographical area, rather than spread out across the city. That geographical area cannot be a tourist-only zone, rather neighborhoods targeted for revitalization.

Chester has two SEPTA rails stops and a transportation center. The City should utilize these assets to build new commercial corridors through transit-oriented development. Patrons will be arriving to the soccer stadium by train as well as by car. Their journey from the train station to the stadium should be lined with shops and restaurants. Once this corridor starts to transform, it is a key location for new housing near the station. The City is currently working with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission and SEPTA to look at the possibilities in this regard.

As the state and city invest, it is critical that local residents guide the revitalization, and do not feel like their elected officials are trying to attract newcomers to push them out. The public sector should empower and work with local community groups to plan for their communities and to implement these plans. Programs should be put in place to protect existing homeowners and make them feel comfortable that they will be able to enjoy their neighborhood’s future. The public sector should invest in programs to build entrepreneurship, and provide residents with access to capital and resources to benefit through new business opportunities.

Investing in planning and development is not enough. Public safety, education, and recreation are critical pieces of the urban revitalization puzzle. Major investments in these areas can payoff only if the other investments are coming as well. The idea is that over time crime will reduce and the schools will improve as the city’s neighborhoods rebound. Again, it is important to invest in these areas focused geographically. A comprehensive set of investments in a shared physical area has the best chance for making meaningful impact.

This complex mix of strategies and programs is certainly more difficult to implement than a few new single developments on the riverfront. Their impact takes much longer to be realized. However, if Chester does not want to share Camden’s fate of a half-baked revitalization that barely touches the city’s residents, then it should do things differently. Both of these cities have tremendous assets and potential to tap into a new national interest in downtown living. It’s up to Chester’s leadership to get it right. Urban reinvestment is expensive, and second chances can be decades in between.

Investing in Schools and Communities

2009-09-15T08:06:00.003-04:00

By Greg

Since Ariel brought up the topic of schools, I would like to expand on this discussion. There are few policy areas that influence each other as profoundly as education and community development. Yet, rarely do policy makers in these areas really sit down together to craft comprehensive solutions. Too often community development folks ignore schools as islands in our neighborhoods, and too often education folks only focus within the school walls.

A recent report by the Urban Institute looked promising in this regard. Its title is “Vibrant Neighborhoods, Successful Schools: What the Federal Government Can Do to Foster Both.” Unfortunately, the content of the paper hardly addresses the promise of the cover. The basis of the paper is the concept that “low-income children do better when they attend schools with middle- and upper-income children than when they attend schools where most of their classmates are poor.”

Thus the paper is predominantly dedicated to strategies for economic integration. Much of the paper discusses strategies for building affordable housing in wealthier areas, and for transporting poor children to better performing school districts. While improving the opportunities for some lucky students, neither of these approaches fixes the underlying problems of high-poverty neighborhoods with underperforming schools.

One short section deals with strategies for attracting families with means to impoverished areas with underperforming schools. This is the only piece of the paper that actually addresses strategies for re-investing in disadvantaged areas – thereby rebuilding neighborhood vitality. However, the paper never addresses the negative impacts of gentrification or other elements outside of housing, and after citing examples of this phenomenon by Georgia Tech, the University of Pennsylvania, Atlanta, and St. Louis, the paper concludes, “there is no single strategy for success.”

In all, the greatest failing of this paper is that it confuses vibrant neighborhoods with affluent neighborhoods. Additionally, it seems to imply that housing is the sole factor in determining neighborhood quality. There is no discussion of the many other factors that contribute to neighborhood vitality, like jobs and economic development, cleanliness and safety, recreation and open space, arts and culture, diversity and quality of retail, access to goods and services, the strength of local institutions, or transportation.

Needless to say, focusing only on building income diversity through housing policies is a short-sighted approach. Certainly, income diversity is important, but there are many other equally, if not more, critical neighborhood-based goals for impacting successful schools. Neighborhoods present the support structures that students experience daily. Tight-knit, livable and nurturing neighborhoods create an environment that is necessary for learning.

In some communities where I have worked, I have seen students go to school daily in neighborhoods littered with trash, with abandoned storefronts, and dilapidated homes. It is challenging to expect students to learn in a place where they see little hope in their own community for advancement and fulfillment. As such, many of the brightest students aspire to leave their old community behind – if they are lucky enough to be able to get out. The problem is, each child who makes it out of the community and never returns is one fewer parent of the future who could help transform the community into a vibrant and supportive environment for the next generation.

As the Urban Institute paper reminds us, “it is possible to provide quality education even when many students are poor and the surrounding neighborhood is distressed.” This has been one of the main arguments of the education policy folks, focusing on teacher performance, school administration, learning models, and merit pay. In many ways this argument is correct. However, with a strategy that uplifts communities while investing in schools, the struggle would be much easier, and the progress much accelerated.

The struggle to improve schools will be much aided by a focus on investing time and resources both inside and outside the school walls. However, communities will also be aided by investing in our schools. This issue is truly a two-way street. Just as vibrant communities are important for building strong schools, strong schools are also critical for creating vibrant communities. Neighborhoods serve as assets that attract homebuyers (as Ariel discussed in his last post, and as the Urban Institute article notes). However, more importantly, schools can provide the basis for building stronger communities.

Teachers are some of our most important community role models. School programs and after-school activities are critical community assets. School buildings can and should serve as physical centers for their surrounding neighborhoods. By reconnecting our school buildings and programs to communities we can provide greater opportunities for students, parents, and for neighborhood growth. Schools can become centers of community learning, not just student learning. At the same time, vibrant communities can offer the supportive environment, resources, contacts, life skills, internships and service opportunities that students will need.

We need a new paradigm where urban neighborhoods and schools are seen as a single unit – where they succeed or fail together. We need innovative federal, state, and local programs to invest in communities and schools at the same time – not just in terms of housing. This new paradigm should view the school not as an island, but as a critical part of the community life, with programs and opportunities flowing both ways between school and community. At its core, this is an issue of education folks and community development folks sitting down together and realizing that ultimately they need each other to succeed.

We're #100!

2009-09-13T19:51:00.003-04:00

By Greg

News Flash: Recently Wikio named Urban Direction the #100 ranked English-language architecture and design blog on the web! To all of you out there, thanks for reading, linking, and emailing!

Investing in Schools

2009-09-12T16:28:00.003-04:00

By Ariel

A community (real estate) development professional in Philadelphia notes, that the steadiest indicator of whether a family will move out of her stable and popular neighborhood, is the year their child must enter fifth grade.

In the 1990's the (in)famous School District Superintendent David Hornbeck tried to get the Philadelphia School district to shut down the city's magnet schools: he thought the schools segregated the brightest children from the peers which meant that students in neglected schools never had bright peers to learn from and with. He was unable to do this because it is popularly believed that doing so would have driven the last of the middle-class out of the city. I myself went to a magnet school and I am not sure what my parents would have done, not being able to afford a private school, had they not had one (Masterman) to send me to, other than move out of the city. The link between housing values and school districts is one that is well established in the literature. Of course you probably know that, if you yourself (or your parents)have not moved into a suburban school district because of the better schools, you know plenty of people who have.

While it is well known that we are willing to "vote with our feet" and buy more expensive houses and pay more expensive taxes to make sure our kids have access to better schools, a new report published by the Wharton School suggests that we are underfunding our schools, not only in terms of what it takes to make sure they have adequate funding, but in terms of what we are actually willing to pay for them.

The study examined the general obligation bonds that California voters agreed to float to finance school facility investment. These bonds meant that tax payers were required to pay higher real estate taxes in order to build more and better schools. As the authors note

"We find that passage of a bond measure causes house prices in the district to rise by about six percent. This effect appears gradually over the two or three years following the election and persists for at least a decade. Our preferred estimates indicate that marginal homebuyers are willing to pay, via higher purchase prices and expected future property taxes, $1.50 or more for an additional dollar of school facility spending, and even our most conservative estimates indicate a willingness to pay of $1.13."

This investment in schools is critical. Nearly 100,000 of our public schools are in need of renovation, expansion and repair. As the study notes "A third of public schools rely on portable or temporary classrooms and a quarter report that environmental factors, such as air conditioning and lighting, are “moderate” or “major” obstacles to instruction." One can only imagine what the statistics are for large urban school districts such as Philadelphia. According to the historian George Thomas, quite a few of Philadelphia's schools, designed during the 1920's were built by architects known more for designing prisons than schools.

However, as education policy analyst Claire Robertson-Kraft, editor of A Grand Bargain for Education Reform notes, the educational increases measured in the study "are pretty marginal compared to other academic interventions, like teacher quality." Which naturally leads to the question, could the Alhambra Unified School District spend the $85,000,000 in its bond issue on teachers instead. However not only does that amount to only $1,000 per student, but there are significant legal and policy constraints on spending bond revenues on operations.

What this points to is a mismatch in how we fund our education, Californians (and by extension probably most of us) are willing to pay more, and we have to finally fess up and start paying more for our education. It certainly pays us back, not only in housing values, but in our own future.

An Urban Sustainability Design Challenge

2009-09-09T23:03:00.005-04:00

The Ed Bacon Foundation and The Philadelphia Center for Architecture announce...

THE 4TH ANNUAL ED BACON STUDENT COMPETITION
"Brown to Green"
A design competition open to college and university level students in North America.

Pre-Registration Form due September 30, 2009.
Entries due Friday, October 30, 2009.

"Brown to Green" challenges students across North America to create a new vision for South Philadelphia's Grays Ferry Crescent. With the industrial DuPont Marshall Laboratory complex closing down and the Schuylkill River Development Corporation extending its riverfront park trail along the edge of the site, this area offers strong potential, but also great challenges. The competition gives students the opportunity to push the envelope on cutting-edge ideas for transforming brownfields of an industrial past into sustainable environs for a green future.

More info here

Beaux's Arts come and gone, and come again...

2009-09-01T22:12:00.006-04:00

By Ariel
The following is an unabridged version of an article that is scheduled to appear in Context Magazine, the AIA Philadelphia's journal of record.

While Philadelphians await the arrival of the Barnes Museum, they have been eagerly attending the Academy of Natural Sciences Urban Sustainability Forums. Though they have been mourning the loss of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s (PMA) free Sundays, they have also embraced its new Perelman Building and its more than 150,000 square feet of exhibition space that display costumes, textiles, prints, drawings, and photographs collection and are waiting for the expanded new underground galleries designed by Frank Gehry. As advocates push for a skate board park along the Schuylkill River Park and Philadelphians continuing to flock to the annual Welcome America festival it is worth reconsidering the role of the Parkway in Philadelphia’s life. And as Philadelphians its worth asking if this ever evolving public works project is worth the money we continually pour into it generation after generation. Will the vision of the Parkway as a grand boulevard first imagined in the mid 19th century and itself conceived as a work of art ever be complete?

The first proposal to create a parkway was floated in 1858, when what was wanted was a connector between the center of the city and the soon to be created Fairmount Park. The idea, however, did not gain momentum until the 1890’s and the beginning of the City Beautiful movement. Inspired by the sense of grandeur, order and civilization they saw in the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, civic boosters across the United States advocated large scale transformation of their cities that included the creation of boulevards, the erection of grand libraries, and the making of impressive civic spaces.

The City Beautiful movement was founded on aesthetics but filled with moral and capitalist ideas. Industrial and corporate leaders claimed that beauty was an investment in middle class values and culture, and that it also was good for business. Finally in 1907 construction began on the Parkway, designed by Jacques Greber and Paul Cret, and was capped in 1924, by the instillation of the still popular Swann Fountain. The making of the Parkway required the destruction of an entire industrial neighborhood, its factories, and homes replaced by museums, parks, and boulevards. But mourning the loss of that old urban fabric only gets you so far, after all Philadelphia is no longer the workshop of the world. However one of Philadelphia’s biggest businesses is tourism and the Parkway, whose institutions draw upwards of 3 million visitors a year and contribute more than $385 million dollar a year to the city economy. And it is still the heart of thriving neighborhoods, Logan Square, Spring Garden, and Fairmount. The last census counted 6,922 living in the row houses to the south and north of the Parkway, interspersed among the apartments and condos that flank it; and that was before the neighborhood experienced significant growth starting in 2003.

Yet users of the Parkway are in conflict. On an average day the Parkway sees nearly 5,000 average cars per lane, and Eakins Oval in front of the Art Museum sees almost twice that. At 21st street, one has to walk over 250 feet to cross from one side of the Parkway to another. However, making the area more walkable is not
simply a matter of changing road width, it’s a matter of making the area more interesting to walk through. Andy Toy of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association thinks that the area “need[s] more density” and that with “more people moving into our neighborhood” retail opportunities, activities and foot traffic will grow.

Since its inception, the Parkway has been the focus numerous studies, projects, and interventions, many aimed to bring more pedestrians to in an attempt to make it look more like the famous Champs Elysees, its Parisian model. This “dream” of the parkway as some sort of arena for the display and inculcation of culture lives on. This Parkway ideal, with people strolling up and down its sidewalks, visiting the museums and other institutions, is limited by the design of the Parkway itself and by Philadelphians’ habits relating to where and how often they choose to expose themselves to the arts.

Since the mid 1990’s planners have been trying to tame the Parkway, conquer its notorious traffic volumes and make it easier to walk along. In 1999 the CCD produced a plan that would have consolidated traffic lanes and create a raised plaza between Eakins Oval and the Art Museum. Though that plan never saw fruition, other work spear headed by the CCD has transformed the Parkway. The CCD built the new Cret Café on 16th Street and is planning a “discovery garden,” community center and café in front of the Cathedral. For over nine years, the CCD has also managed the Phlash, a short shuttle loop bringing tourists to institutions’ front doors. Its recent expansion to the Please Touch Museum in Fairmount and Franklin Square has extended its reach bringing Philadelphians and tourists all the way from Old City directly to the Parkway and beyond.

In 2004 new crosswalks were placed along the Parkway’s diagonal, making it easier to reach the restored Swann Fountain in Logan Square, and two years ago the CCD installed significant informational signage and just last summer, a consortium of foundations and non-profits such as the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society joined the state and the city in announcing $19 million to enhance lighting and green space along the Parkway.

Getting people into the museums themselves and “exposing them to culture” takes much more than simply building new buildings or galleries or sidewalks leading to them. It means making the art itself far more accessible to modern audiences. This July’s suspension of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s “pay what you will” Sundays (due to fiscal constraints), is an unfortunate step in the wrong direction, but initiatives at a variety of institutions might pick up the slack. The Moore College of Art has seen as 264% increase in gallery visits in the past two years (it doesn’t hurt that they are free) with such innovative exhibits as Bicycle: people +
ideas in motion on display now. Additionally, the Fairmount Park Art Association will be debuting the Museum Without Walls, a project that the FPAA’s executive Director Penny Bach describes as making “Information about the sculptures along the Parkway… accessible by cell phone, and the stories behind the sculptures will be told by people with direct connections to the sculptures.” Such a project is critical for helping people have a better understanding of the over 35 statues already lining the Parkway, without the need of a sheltering museum.

However as Dr. Happy Fernandez, former city councilwoman and current president of the Moore College of Art notes, to truly connect Philadelphians to the art along the parkway “you need to build the audience,” and that requires significant outreach to schools and community groups, not only by the institutions themselves but through arts education in our schools. It does not necessarily matter how many works of art are now more readily accessible if there is not a market and appreciation for the art in Philadelphia in this and the next generation.

Bach notes that the FPAA was founded in 1872 by people who were spurred by the thought that “art could be an antidote [for] industrialization.” The Parkway, built by people who felt similarly and who thought that architecture and grand urban vistas could do the like, remains a grand turn of the century monument to the City Beautiful movement. Built to express a specific sense of grandeur, it easily turned into an auto-dominated concourse that injects people straight from the Northwest straight into Center City. However, it is also the site for huge public gatherings, from Live8 to the 4th of July celebrations. The Parkway is built for capacity, be it for museums or festivals, and its actually something uniquely suited for the 21st century and the new over-riding imperative of “economic development.” In the 19th Century cities were racing to create grand, sweeping vistas; in the 21st century they are racing to capture tourist dollars.

But is it worth it, and will it ever be “finished? Yes and no, respectively. Judi Rogers, the Executive Director of the Parkway Council Foundation argues that “The Parkway is the iconic vista that many people think of when they think of Philadelphia.” Having the Rocky steps and Swann fountain indelibly imprinted on both Philadelphians and our visitors’ minds is no small thing: such symbols have civic and economic value for our collective imagination and wallets.

This is not to say that this continuation of a 19th century ideal is not problematic. Some of the Parkways most visible visitors, its homeless, are an affront to our idealized notion of what the Parkway should be and a threat to its marketability. However they are also a reminder that the Parkway not only belongs to all Philadelphians, but that our efforts to improve the lives of all Philadelphians extends beyond simple landscaping.

The problems that bedevil the Parkway are likely to stay, and our attempts to correct or mitigate them are as much part of the character of the Parkway as the flags that line it are.

Monopolies of Violence and the Politics of Infrastructure in Albania

2009-08-17T21:28:00.003-04:00

By Ariel

A few years ago I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Albania. I often sent dispatches home from my time there, and will occasionally post some of those dispatches which I think are still timely and will hopefully be of interest to our readers...

People newly arrived in Albania often remark on two things, which those of us who live here often over look; the fact that cafes are always filled, regardless of work hours, and the constant state of construction. Buildings are raised continuously throughout this country, little one or two story buildings in the country side, and massive apartment buildings, colloquially known as ‘pallati’s or “palaces.” These buildings sprout in cramped quarters and in fields, and around them ripples the not so faint signs of their construction, mounds of trash, and an ever present haze of dust and dirt. In a country with no other means of investment real estate is the preferred depository of choice for the nation’s capital. In Vlore especially, they are convinced that there is a market for these apartments, the usual suspects of people in other cities, Kosovar and Macedonian Albanians. They would rather not consider the possibility that a good portion of that money comes from people laundering dirty cash (though to be fair, I doubt that the new generation of buildings are built for that purpose).

All of this is background to one of the more unusual aspects of the politics of infrastructure which pervades Albanian life, which is the constant tearing down of illegal buildings. Such buildings are everywhere in this country, cropping up in the middle and at the outskirts of major cities. There is an entire police force devoted to monitoring and destroying illegal buildings (not that this is saying that much, there are far too many police forces in this country, Water police, Electricity Police, Building Police, Road Police, and City Hall Police, to say nothing of the normal police). The problem, in many ways, is what constitutes legal or illegal. This is not to dispute the fact that people here do build completely with out permit, its just that often there are so many jurisdictions that they got one permit, and didn’t bother with the rest, assuming they were ok. That or they pay off the right person. After all they never destroy the veritable fleet of hotels which illegally occupy, like large colorful blocky concrete meek-rats all staring out, row upon row, out to see, stretching along a good a good kilometer of beach front around Durres, and down the coast from Vlore. All too many buildings are legal, stamped and approved, despite large gaps between their existence and what is called for in the zoning code.

TV news stations, national and local, salaciously cover the destruction of illegal buildings, sometimes prior to the actual tearing down. In many ways this destruction is the only way that the government, on any level, can prove that it is enforcing the rule of law. Max Weber calls government “a monopoly of violence” and here where the country is governed by a politics of infrastructure, the destruction of buildings has not so much to do with the maintaining of any specific building code, but of the validation of governmental authority.

Let's Talk About Gentrification

2009-08-10T20:08:00.007-04:00

Source

By Greg

One morning in early June, neighbors around 48th Street and Baltimore Avenue awoke to find the Gold Standard Restaurant defaced. Paint-filled balloons had been thrown at the restaurant, and the word “Gentrifier” (or some more vulgar derivation thereof) was sprayed onto the new façade. In early July the anti-gentrification vandals struck again, pasting signs onto the bases of the lamp poles, newly installed by University City District. The vandals’ signs encouraged passersby to deface the banners hanging from the poles. In the coming weeks a number of the banners were, in fact, torn down.

For at least a half century there has been tension between West Philadelphia communities and institutions accused of trying to change the neighborhood. However, gentrification is a complex topic – a set of mysterious forces, often misunderstood. Cedar Park resident Ray Murphy wrote a post pointing out the irony of the Gold Standard vandalism. The restaurant is the latest iteration of a business run by 30-plus-year residents. Similarly, just a week before the vandals posted their signs, dozens of long-time residents and community leaders gathered with Mayor Nutter in Cedar Park to applaud the unveiling of the lamp poles and banners.

In the coming weeks I heard a number of views on the lamps and banners from neighbors. Most people I spoke with felt that they were a positive addition to the community, but some had suspicions about the motives of University City District. In addition, there was plenty of speculation about the profile of the vandals – how long they had been in the neighborhood, and whether they really represented the community’s voice. Their naiveté regarding the Gold Standard’s ownership seemed to indicate that they did not.

Still, in Cedar Park and elsewhere in Philadelphia, I have seen plenty of wariness from older residents about new community investments. Concerns about gentrification are being felt all across the city. As such, it would serve us well to look deeper into what this mysterious force is, and what it really means. Ultimately the underlying concerns have nothing to do with lamp poles and new restaurants; people are afraid of losing control of their communities. They worry that upgrading a community leads to residents being priced out, and cultural shifts that make old timers feel unwelcome in their own neighborhood – legitimate concerns.

However, what has evolved in many communities is a state of affairs where some residents feel the need to choose between improving their neighborhood, and being able to afford their home or feel comfortable in the communities they helped shape. A letter in the University City Review a few years ago voiced this opinion, that the community should say no to the then-proposed new lamp poles, because they would lead to gentrification.

However, it seems to me that this cannot be an either/or equation. It simply does not make good sense that the only way to maintain a community is by halting any new projects. We have to find a way to make it possible to improve our communities while also avoiding the negative impacts of gentrification. Gentrification is a real issue. It has to do with people’s ability to afford to stay in their homes, maintain their businesses, and enjoy the culture of their community. However, often what gentrification foes attack are the cosmetic elements that have nothing to do with these concerns.

The fact is that communities are not powerless. Far from it. There are effective policies, programs, and strategies that can be employed to combat the negative impacts of gentrification, while allowing new investment to improve the quality of life in our communities. However, community members need to know that these policies and programs exist, and they need to push their elected officials to put them into place. I have written extensively about some of these policies. Here are a few:

Incentives for developing affordable housing in transitional communities.
Linking community-created plans to real implementation tools.
A targeted community reinvestment strategy. Here’s another article about this.
A tax freeze or deferment for low-income homeowners, to allow residents to stay in their homes when taxes rise. Here’s a blog post on that strategy. And here’s another one.
Transition counseling to link communities with knowledge and resources to understand and benefit from new investment.
Strategies for making historic preservation a positive tool for low- and moderate-income communities.

There are plenty of other strategies that I have not written about for allowing communities to benefit from redevelopment, and allowing new investment to create jobs, equity, and opportunity for existing residents and business owners. Change can come, but it is critical that residents and business owners feel control over that change, rather than being swept up in it.

Reaching this goal is more challenging than pasting signs to lamp poles. It requires honest dialogue about what various members of the community want to see, followed by a proactive approach to linking those ideas to policy and practice. This means residents, business owners, institutions, and elected officials working together. If we take on gentrification the right way, everyone will win, and it will be worth the effort.

Art Works

2009-08-09T19:01:00.002-04:00

By Ariel

In a recent article in the New York Times the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, discussed his vision for the agency. Insisting that “Art Works” this former mutual fund manager and theatre producer will pursue an agenda that not only invests in high quality art, but the arts economic development potential. This is a commendable approach. As the NYTimes reports, Rocco wants to invest in a program “called “Our Town,” which would provide home equity loans and rent subsidies for living and working spaces to encourage artists to move to downtown areas.

“When you bring artists into a town, it changes the character, attracts economic development, makes it more attractive to live in and renews the economics of that town,” he said. “There are ways to draw artists into the center of things that will attract other people.” The program would also help finance public art projects and performances and promote architectural preservation in downtown areas, Mr. Landesman added. “Every town has a public square or landmark buildings or places that have a special emotional significance,” he said. “The extent that art can address that pride will be great.”

It is wonderful to see an NEA director not only understand the economic development potential of the arts, but the role it can play in revitalizing neighborhoods. More impressive however is his understanding of the role of NEA funding; not simply to pay for art exhibits or programs but to provide developers a stable rent stream, one that dramatically reduces operating risk. That kind of investment not only increases the likelihood that a developer can get funding, but it also reduces the artists' risk as well. As Philadelphia arts entrepreneur Matty Hart noted in a Young Involved Philadelphia forum about North Broad street’s revitalization a year ago, “artists are entrepreneurs, small businessmen.”

However I was concerned when Mr. Landesman suggested, in contrast to “Dana Gioia, his immediate predecessor, [who] made a point of spreading endowment funds to every Congressional district… [that] he expected to focus on financing the best art, regardless of location.” I would argue that by doing so the NEA misses out on an important opportunity to do something federal agencies often have a problem doing, which is think regionally. Artists chose to live based not so much on political boundaries, but on proximity to transit and cheap rent. Moreover I suspect that, arts and their impact grow not on the basis of the quality of the art but on their proximity to other artists and more importantly, the art market.

A regional focus on arts funding, one that prioritizes access to arts markets and institutions would seed artists up and down the Philadelphia / New York corridor and help Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York. Hitting many states is actually very important for the very health of the NEA itself. Any institution that wants to grow a paltry (on the federal scale) $155 million budget needs to create as many allies as possible, in as many states as possible.

Finally, Mr. Landesman did not mention education. I am not about to digress into a discussion that is being seen more and more these days, about how the nature of our education system and larger society makes it harder and harder for young people to be creative problem solvers, that over programming of children’s lives and a focus on test scores destroys creativity. That is the focus of books, and another blog entry.

However I would argue that there is, for the health of our society, an ever greater need for arts to be creatively integrated into education, and that the NEA and the Department of Education should, like the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development in their Sustainable Communities initiative, combine forces and deliver arts programming that are good for schools, students, the arts and the economic development of communities.

Be it loan forgiveness for Art teachers or apprenticeship programs, there are critical links that must be filled between areas and between regions.

Should We Fight the Height?

2009-08-06T18:24:00.023-04:00

Source

By Greg

Philadelphia is no stranger to the phenomenon of community groups opposing developers who are trying to build tall buildings. I have seen numerous community groups and civic associations hold up or kill projects in the entitlement process, on the grounds that they are too tall – out of character with the surrounding neighborhood.

Many Philadelphia neighborhoods do not have very tall buildings, and in some cases proposed buildings would introduce a new typology to low, residential communities. Whether or not that is a bad thing can be (and often is) debated. However, even in Center City Philadelphia, where tall buildings abound, community groups often oppose proposed tall developments.

This phenomenon is being played out on a whole different level in New York right now. Hines, the Houston-based mega-developer, is proposing an 82-story tower (shown above) designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Jean Nouvel, for 53rd Street next to the Museum of Modern Art. The new tower would include condos, a hotel, and substantial new gallery space for MOMA. Despite great reviews from the critics, some neighbors have come out strongly against the project, due to… you guessed it: the height.

Granted this would be one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan. And also granted there are some reasons why tall buildings could create undesirable impacts for communities. Depending on the siting and massing they can create shadows and contribute to a wind tunnel effect. They alter the skyline, and can block people’s views. On the flip side of the coin, tall buildings also have the power to create stunning works of beauty that define a city and capture the imagination.

However, is height really the biggest worry for communities? Has height just become the standard offensive element selected by neighborhood groups wanting to protect the status quo? Or is there something about a developer coming into a neighborhood with a tall building that seems naturally imposing, offensive.

The problem comes when this opposition to height ends up killing projects that are actually quite good – especially ones that succeed at the ground level, or that provide important community assets (like the Nouvel tower that incorporates 50,000 square feet of art museum floor space).

Even more problematic is the issue of community groups focusing on height, while ignoring more important aspects of the project – such as gaping parking garage entrances, dead ground-floors, lack of pedestrian accessibility, and few neighborhood amenities. I have seen a number of contentious projects in Philadelphia end up with developers compromising on the height, while leaving much more offensive elements intact.

The bottom line is that in cities across America, from Philadelphia's rowhouse neighborhoods to sky-scraping Manhattan, community groups and developers alike exhibit the trend of looking toward the sky – though with very different intentions and outcomes. More complex are the questions of why, and how this trend will shape our urban landscapes.

Wawa Redux

2009-08-04T17:03:00.004-04:00

By Greg

I'm not sure why now, but the Illadelph blog reprinted my letter to the Inquirer from several months ago, discussing Wawa's policy of suburbanization. Anyway, I'm not complaining. Check it out.

The High Line, the Reading Viaduct, and the Future of Chinatown

2009-07-23T19:18:00.008-04:00

Source: Chinatown Neighborhood Plan

By Greg

The first section of New York City’s long anticipated High Line – the abandoned 1930s rail viaduct transformed into an elevated park – is now open. And the response has been impressive. According to The New York Times, after having been open for a month now, the park draws up to 20,000 visitors daily. When all sections are completed the High Line will be a mile-and-a-half-long park, floating over several West Side Manhattan neighborhoods.

Although still under construction, the High Line has already captured the imagination of New Yorkers. According to the Times, the High Line has organically developed its own “economy” and “arts scene.” A friend of mine recounted running into a crowd on one section of the High Line, just in time for a makeshift “cabaret,” performed by neighbors from the porch of a nearby apartment building. This kind of unusual park, cityscape vista, and opportunity for quirky urban culture is compelling, surely making some folks in other American cities with abandoned railroad viaducts green with envy.

Case in point: In Philadelphia, architecture critic Inga Saffron recently wrote about the High Line, including praise for the work of the University of Pennsylvania’s James Corner, who was part of the High Line design team. Saffron lauded the High Line, calling it “a delightful new way to experience the city,” and asserted that it “should be a model for Philadelphia’s unloved Reading Viaduct.”

Saffron is referring to Philadelphia’s own abandoned elevated rail bed, constructed about 100 years ago, and used until the mid-1980s. Today the abandoned Reading Viaduct cuts through the “Chinatown North” neighborhood, branching off to the west for about .35 miles to Broad Street, and to the northeast for about .6 miles, terminating at Fairmount Avenue and SEPTA’s active regional rail tracks.

Some Philadelphians have been interested in reusing the Reading Viaduct as a park, for more than a decade. In 2003 a diverse group of locals formed the Reading Viaduct Project to drum up support for preserving the viaduct, transforming it into a High Line-esque park. In 2004, design studios at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University focused on re-imagining the viaduct in this way.

However, all Philadelphians are not in consensus about the viaduct’s future. This disagreement surfaced from 2002-2004 during the process of creating the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan. This planning process was coordinated by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), and developed by the design firm Kise, Straw & Kolodner (KSK), involving seventeen different stakeholder groups, including Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), Asian Americans United (AAU), and Callowhill Neighborhood Association.

In the “Chinatown Neighborhood Plan,” published in December 2004 the Reading Viaduct is just one element, but it is clearly an important piece of the Chinatown puzzle. For those not familiar with Philadelphia Chinatown’s political and historical context, here’s some quick background: Since the 1960s the Chinatown neighborhood residents and businesses have been in the streets fighting major development projects that have encroached on their community. These include the Vine Street Expressway, Gallery I & II, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center. All of these projects were built.

As such, the 2004 neighborhood plan describes a community that has slowly been hemmed in to the south, encouraged to look north for future expansion. Additionally, Chinatown has seen rapidly rising residential prices, creating a stated need for affordable housing in the community so that it can continue to serve as an ethnic and cultural gateway.

This background explains some of the controversy over the Reading Viaduct issue. Some in the Chinatown community see the land under the viaduct as dark, dirty and unsafe. At the same time, some see it as prime real estate for the public sector to gain control, demolish the viaduct, and redevelop the land as much needed affordable housing. Some also see the viaduct’s diagonal northern spur as a hindrance to positive growth, creating a swath of small, triangular parcels that cut through the neighborhood.

Yet, others in Chinatown and Callowhill see the potential for an elevated park as a very positive element. The Chinatown plan clearly shows this diversity of opinions and apparent lack of consensus. It includes statements like: “This massive structure is viewed simultaneously as both an obstacle to redevelopment in Chinatown North and as a potential elevated ‘rails to trails’ linear park space.”

Through a multi-year process, the plan’s creators worked hard to build consensus and compromise. The published plan offers such a compromise solution: “Initial thinking on the future disposition of the viaduct has traditionally focused on an ‘either/or’ scenario: complete removal or complete preservation. An alternative scenario is the possibility of selective demolition and the retention of certain segments of the viaduct.”

The images in the plan illustrate how this solution could work. The quarter-mile, masonry-supported spur west to Broad Street would be retained and transformed into a park. The northern spur would be retained for about .2 miles, up to Ridge Avenue, where it would ramp down to the surface and connect with a planned new “town square” park, surrounded by mixed-use development. In this compromise solution, the remaining .4 miles of the northern spur of the viaduct would be demolished. This compromise would allow Chinatown to develop its own “dramatic downtown overlook or ‘sky park’” while also clearing some land for redevelopment.

The viaduct compromise is just one element of the Chinatown Neighborhood Plan. Others include capping a portion of the Vine Street Expressway for a new community park, the aforementioned town square, mixed-use development, affordable housing, and streetscaping. In addition to the viaduct park, the plan also calls for substantial surface park construction.

Also in 2004, the Philadelphia Commerce Department commissioned an environmental study to establish cost estimates for the potential demolition or reuse of the viaduct. When it came out, just after the neighborhood plan, the study showed that demolishing the whole viaduct would cost about $36 million. Demolishing the sections identified in the neighborhood plan would cost about $11 to $13 million. Meanwhile remediation and capping would cost about $5 million. The plan does not assess the costs of building a true park on the viaduct (New York spent $152 million on just the first two sections of the High Line). So the short of it is that demolition would be expensive, remediation and building a park would be much more expensive.

Cost and feasibility aside, after the 2004 planning process, it seemed that the various factions had found some common ground. Keep part of the viaduct for a park, and take down other sections for community development. However, a meeting in Chinatown last night, revisiting the 2004 plan, showed that such consensus has not yet truly occurred. The meeting at Holy Redeemer Church drew a crowd of over 100, featuring John Gibbons of KSK, John Chin of PCDC, and Laura Spina from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Barry Seymour, DVRPC’s executive director, was also on-hand.

The audience members, aided by Mandarin and Cantonese translators, asked questions about a variety of topics. However, the viaduct seemed to steal the show. After John Gibbons described the neighborhood plan, including the viaduct compromise, Sarah McEneaney of the Callowhill Neighborhood Association stood up and explained that the Reading Viaduct Project is still committed to saving the “entire” viaduct and that there were petitions at the front of the room.

She was followed by Andy Toy, past chairman of PCDC, who explained that the vision in the neighborhood plan is “a compromise that allows the viaduct to stay in place.” The rest of the audience remained fairly quiet on the issue, and one resident had never heard of the viaduct – showing that it had not yet gained the mass public awareness of New York’s High Line. There was no resolution to this issue, and so far as the viaduct is concerned, clearly more dialogue needs to happen.

For those focused on turning the viaduct into a park, it is critical to realize that this vision does not currently have the political support to move ahead. The community stakeholders who are still at odds need each other to achieve their desired ends. As such, a success for the viaduct and for Chinatown North will rely on compromise, with stakeholders bridging their differences, acting in concert around a shared vision. As Andy Toy said at the meeting, “We can’t move forward in any way if we continue to disagree.”

At its core, this issue is not just about the viaduct, but about the historic dynamic between Chinatown and the rest of the city and region. The Chinatown residents and business owners must be empowered to determine their neighborhood’s destiny. At the same time, it is important for the community stakeholders to recognize the potential significance of the viaduct as a powerful regional asset.

The Chinatown Neighborhood Plan lays out a strong vision for a physical compromise. Whether the stakeholders can agree to rally around it will determine their ability to convey a shared vision – necessary for generating political support and funding. Whether the stakeholders can find common ground will ultimately determine the fate of this neighborhood’s urban landscape, and Philadelphia’s shot at getting its own floating park.

The Market for Design

2009-07-18T19:07:00.005-04:00

By Ariel
It is ironic that at the same time the City of Philadelphia is facing considerable constraints on the choices it can make regarding its budget, Philadelphia as a whole has quite a few choices regarding the creation of public spaces in and around the city. The Center City District is advocating the rehabilitation of Dilworth Plaza and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation is hosting a design competition to redo Pier 11.

When projects such as these are criticized it is often on the basis of issues related to site lines, the nature of the preservation of historic elements and other design specific criteria. And well they should. However more basic questions undergirding public (and private) investment in these spaces need to be asked first. This is not to say that Dilworth Plaza and the concourse beneath it do not call out for attention, or that creating a visionary civic space on the Delaware has the ability to be the catalyst for change on the waterfront. Rather it means that the nature of those interventions depends on a variety of issues that are not so much in the realm of design criticism but relate more to market forces and economics, the bugaboo of urban design.

An illustrative point might be Philadelphia’s failed pedestrian thoroughfare experiment along Chestnut Street. In 1976 the city spent over $7 million dollars to create a pedestrian thoroughfare that stretched from 6th to 18th Street, blocking Chestnut Street to all but bus traffic. The failure of businesses and the migration of activity one block south to Walnut Street are all blamed on this street closure. The lesson Philadelphia learned was that street closures are a bad idea. It’s a shame, because street closures, and the pedestrianization of public spaces are wonderful urban amenities. The thing is that they need to be more targeted; not simply smaller (and able to grow with demand) but they need to be appropriate to the retail mix of the street, and yes, they need to accommodate parking as well. All of which is to say that one needs to approach street closures (and all other public spaces) with a bit of an economic eye towards demand and need.

The redesign of Dilworth Plaza features too prominent features, a lawn and walkable fountain. The basic supposition is that if you build it, “it” being a lovely patch of grass to picnic for lunch, they will come. However Love Park has for years remained an underutilized space for workers lunches and I suspect Dilworth Plaza is not the right location for Bryant Park-like; placing a respite oriented picnic spot in such a highly (foot) trafficked area would discourage workers looking for a break. I’d argue that investing similar amounts of money in redoing Love Park, increasing green space, and sidewalk accessibility, would provide a much more popular amenity for workers.

And therein lies the rub, because there is no way so much money will be spent on re-doing Love park, while Dilworth Plaza, sitting atop train station (and not a parking lot) it has a few more constituencies and is eligible for all sorts of federal transit dollars. Big projects and public spaces are designed according to the impetus of the big players building them, and not the market forces demanding them.

Fairmount Park Forever

2009-07-16T22:07:00.001-04:00

By Ariel

The Urban Sustainability Forum continues to impress; tonight they brought together a wide range of speakers from St. Louis, Portland, and our own backyard to talk about Parkland’s Use and Protection. Lucie Springmeyer, the Executive Director of the St. Louis non-profit Forest Park Forever and Zari Santner, the Director Portland Parks & Recreation were joined by Michael DiBerardinis, the Commissioner of Philadelphia’s newly formed Department of Parks & Recreation in a panel discussion that ranged from park planning to fundraising.

Springmeyer’s work with Forest Park Forever (FPF) was particularly impressive as it illustrated the flexibility that enables park systems to thrive, grow and prosper. A few key principles have helped Forest Park continue to serve its 12 million annual visitors, and ensured that the park (500 acres larger than Central Park) remains relevant, over 100 years after its creation.

For one, FPF ensures that no development or non-natural use of parkland can be built without replacing similar acreage elsewhere in the system. More over the design of recreational activity abides by strict guidelines that preserve the wildlife; the golf course is designed according to standards set by Audubon International. FPF has established a delicate balance that proves that evolution, change and preservation do not have to operate at opposite ends.

However where FPF stands firm is in ensuring a superior level of maintenance. No new construction is begun without appropriate additions to the maintenance trust. The trust is governed by both the City and FPF who have equal votes in its administration and ensures a close working relationship between the city which owns the park and the friends group which has raised over $100 million for the parks rebirth.

How did they raise so much money, half of it from private sources? They did it by ensuring that all their work was built on time and on budget. It’s funny how powerful that word pair is, “on time and on budget” is, but it proved both to private donors and public partners that they could be trusted with their money. Portland Oregon asked its citizens to approve a $10 million bond and their management of public funds was rewarded by another bond approval five years later.

Parks are a unique public service, not only are they universally loved but their good stewardship is easily evidenced. If anything, the most important part of parks is that very stewardship; it is that maintenance of trails and relationships that allows parks to bloom.

Architectural Tour of Fishtown

2009-07-13T13:31:00.001-04:00

Source

Young Involved Philadelphia continues its 'Explore Philadelphia' Summer Series with an exciting and insightful walking tour of Fishtown.

Situated to the northeast of Center City, Fishtown figured prominently in Philadelphia's great industrial age of the late 19th/early 20th century when it was developed to house many of the workers who were employed by the major industries that built factories in this part of the city. Discover how Fishtown's residences are going through restoration as it becomes a sought after location in which to live.

We'll head over to Memphis Taproom after the tour to enjoy some afternoon lunch and drinks (lunch and drinks not included in ticket cost so be sure to bring extra cash.)

This tour is brought to you by the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.

Buy tickets ($10) here.

Is Removing I-95 a Possibility?

2009-07-05T14:48:00.004-04:00

By Greg

I know I said the next few posts would be about planners and implementation, but I want to note that the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an editorial today suggesting that Philadelphia should consider either covering over some of I-95 or removing it and rebuilding the highway as a surface urban boulevard. This editorial followed up on an article last week by Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron on the same issue.

For those of you who are not from Philadelphia, I-95 is an expressway that runs along the eastern side of the city, and that many have blamed for cutting the city off from its Delaware River waterfront. As part of the Central Delaware Riverfront Planning Process, endorsed by the City and led by Penn Praxis, rethinking I-95 was a major issue in the visioning workshops.

Last December I blogged about this issue of rethinking I-95. The reason for that post was a speech by John Norquist, the president of the Congress for the New Urbanism and Milwaukee's former mayor, in Philadelphia, in which Norquist called on Philadelphians to remove I-95, replacing it with an urban boulevard, and reconnecting Philadelphia to its waterfront.

A number of cities (New York, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Portland, etc.) have done exactly this: removing highways (some with higher traffic volumes than I-95) and replacing them with boulevards. Nobody knows whether this is a possibility in Philadelphia because nobody has seriously studied alternatives to rebuilding I-95. Yet, PennDOT will have to rebuild the highway over the next 15-20 years giving Philadelphia a once-in-a-generation opportunity to study and rethink its future.

It is good to see the Inquirer pushing the envelope. However, in order to get any serious support for rethinking Philadelphia's connection to its waterfront, it will take some serious action from citizens and decision makers. Let's see how this issue unfolds.

A Sad Dog This Greyhound

2009-07-04T09:01:00.009-04:00

Source

By Ariel

Recently I traveled to Hilton Head, South Carolina, via Greyhound bus. A friend of mine who had been abroad for the past two years was vacationing with family in the Palmetto state. I was both broke and eager to see the South, so Greyhound seemed like a wonderful idea, despite the twenty hour trip time.

Greyhound is a critical part of our national transportation system; not only does it serve those who cannot afford to travel via rail or air, it provides access to rural areas not served by the same. Thus it is a national shame that it's such a terrible way to travel.

I suppose the first indication of the problematic trip to come was the four scheduled transfers I would have to make; every time one has to change vehicles there is an opportunity for something wrong to happen. Thing is, the trip actually had at least seven changes between Philadelphia and Beaufort. While the trip down was without incident coming back a bus driver not only placed an unscheduled pit stop, but his break took four times as long as he mandated us to have (he said, “be back in five” but he took twenty, minutes). This meant that we were forty five minutes late for our 3 AM connecting bus to DC. Greyhound, which was normally pretty scrupulous about having an extra bus to accommodate excess passengers, did not have any buses ready to take the entire bus full of people traveling north and we waited until six in the morning before we caught the next transfer. Miscommunication and lack of information were endemic on the return trip, drivers not sure of connections, ticket agents giving information contrary to drivers’ understandings, etc.

Transportation is as much about information as it is about reliability, and Greyhound failed in both regards.

What was even more ironic was how little of the US I actually got to see. While I had not made it out west to the grand deserts, or long plains of Kansas and Nevada, I had assumed that the difference between the South Carolina and Delaware would be more pronounced. Good Magazine recently profiled the loss of distinctive highway rest-stops across the country, shuttering due to shrinking state budgets and ballooning McDonald’s concessions dotting interchanges and the like. However its not just a matter of unique architecture. It’s the entire roadway, the landscape of the system. While states have begun to build “context sensitive” roadways — highways and interstates that are more sensitive to the topography and local context — our national highways are still anonymous and say little about where we are driving. I mean any state with such towns as Coosawatchie should celebrate its local heritage along the highways in more ways than just signage.

It's this anonymity, lack of reliability and misinformation that drives most Greyhound customers crazy. I did not see one person happy to be traveling by Greyhound. It wasn’t just that the drivers were forced to lecture us about good behavior at the start of each trip (sad not simply because of the resigned and exasperated tone with which they gave that speech but that it was necessary at all). Rather people were obsessed with people cutting in line and the manners of the people around them; with so much out of their control people looked for some way to exert control of their environment. The only point of humanity during the whole trip was when the bus driver woke us up to announce that Michael Jackson was dead.

Greg suggested in one conversation that BoltBus, a subsidiary of Greyhound known for catering to college students and urban professionals, is proof that Greyhound discriminates against the poor (i.e., if BoltBus can run on time, with clean buses and friendly customer service, why can't Greyhound do that for the rest of the system?)

While I suspect that there are matters of scale that wouldn’t translate, the criticism at the heart of this is right. However this is not a matter of one single carrier. In their recommendations for the next transportation authorization bill, “The Route to Reform,” Transportation for America calls for a national transportation system “that allows for seamless travel using multiple modes, vehicles, or transportation providers.” Traveling from a big city in Pennsylvania to a small town in South Carolina should be easy and reliable (and multi-modal) for people of all income levels.

What Is the Planner's Job?

2009-07-02T22:48:00.003-04:00

By Greg

I attended a community planning meeting last night in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Tioga. The several dozen residents in this disinvested area surrounded by Temple University’s health system buildings, congregated in a local church and listened as the planners discussed the latest ideas for improving their community.

Tioga is one of a handful of communities in Philadelphia that has seen lots of planning and little action. Some of the residents have watched and participated in over 50 years of planning. Yet vacant homes and lots dot every block. Trash blows in the streets. There is crime, drugs, and lack of basic services.

The meeting ran nearly an hour late. The residents had lots to say. Some community members expressed distrust of the planners. Others wanted to see a certain issue addressed. Some were afraid that the plan would bring gentrification, rising taxes, and displacement. Others were afraid of the opposite: that nothing at all would come of this plan, just as with decades of prior plans.

The planners attempted to answer the residents’ questions, while moving through their market analysis and urban design ideas. However, many in the crowd seemed unsatisfied. When it came to issues like realizing the concepts in the plan or protecting residents from gentrification, the planners had little to contribute. Their answer was largely that this was the job of City Council. The plan was just a set of concepts, the planners explained to the crowd. Transforming the plan to reality relied on City Council introducing legislation, active community groups taking initiative, and private developers investing.

The planners were answering honestly, but this meeting (and dozens of others like it that I have attended) exhibited an important question. By passing off implementation to policy makers, are planners really satisfying the needs of communities? Does the planner perhaps have a new responsibility in today’s world?

Planners in Philadelphia and nationally have dramatically reshaped their roles over the past forty or so years. Today planning necessarily is a balance of offering expert design ideas, while not standing in the way of the community’s ability to have a voice and shape its own destiny. This democratization of the planning profession was once groundbreaking; now it is commonplace. The new question is: what is the planner’s role once the plan is complete?

Often planners see the plan as the end of the journey. They step away, and leave it up to policy makers to implement the plan. The problem is, too often the policy makers don’t really understand how to go about it. Of course the planners in Tioga cannot really be blamed. We have processes, agencies, roles, funding constraints, and hierarchy that set the boundaries of how far the planners can and should go.

But perhaps this paradigm could change. What if the plan were the beginning of a process, rather than the end? What if part of the planner’s job were to connect the plan concepts with the appropriate policy makers, and to help those policy makers follow through? What if high-level city officials gave the planners a stronger role in the process of spending city money and enacting policies?

Is the planning profession ready for this paradigm shift to planner as facilitator of plan implementation? Are other city officials? Will the city power structure allow it or embrace it? How will communities react? These are the questions I will discuss in the next few posts. Stay tuned.

More Food Access

2009-06-30T14:57:00.005-04:00

Source

By Greg

I want to continue my food access discussion by mentioning that some folks have been working on the issue of developing designs for urban markets that can be community assets and anchors. The Community Design Collaborative's Infill Philadelphia initiative focused on this topic, and exhibited designs back in February. They included a prototype for the new Weaver's Way store in West Oak Lane, a community food co-op in Chester, and a supermarket in Brewerytown.

This project was supported by some of the same folks who are running the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, showing an awareness of the intersection of these issues — food access and community development. However, awareness is not enough. The City needs to take proactive steps to ensure that through incentives, regulations, zoning, design guidelines, and/or public education that the next wave of urban markets look more like the renderings in the Infill Philadelphia document than the stores that have been built on the ground.

Picking our readers' brains.

2009-06-29T23:09:00.004-04:00

By Ariel

Folks, I know you read this, some of you for some reason read us again and again (and we thank you for it). Generally we are content to do the research and thinking for you, but today I hope you can help us.

For some time I have had a theory that the general population explosion in the South could not have been made possible without the creation of the air-conditioning unit. Recently, while in South Carolina, I made that assertion in mixed company. By mixed company I mean I was the only Yankee amidst an assortment of Southerners... So now I want to test my theory. While it should be fairly easy to track Southern demographic growth via the census, figuring out how to track the spread of air conditioning in the south is a bit harder. Any suggestions? Or comments? (I am sure the massive electrification of the south also had something to do with it as well, though I would welcome any sources on that as well, aside from Robert Caro's biography of Johnson)

Food Access, Meet Community Development

2009-06-24T11:45:00.010-04:00

Carrot image source, House image source

By Greg

I received a lot of interest via email regarding my recent post on local food. One thing I neglected to do in my previous post was to put in a good word for the Greenworks Philadelphia plan, which includes this target goal: “Bring local food within 10 minutes of 75% of residents.” I look forward to seeing Philadelphia’s strategies for reaching this goal.

One of the programs that will probably help the city along is the state-wide Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative (PFFI). This program was recently featured in The New York Times, profiling the new ShopRite in the West Philadelphia Parkside neighborhood. This financing program is extremely valuable in helping to make urban stores feasible. However, while the Parkside supermarket fulfills a valuable need in the community, I would argue that in another way it is far less successful — even damaging to other important goals.

The Times article profiled residents who walk to the new supermarket, but what the Times does not explain is that there are precious few people who can do this. The new supermarket is not an urban store in any sense of the word. It is a stand-alone, suburban-style structure in the middle of a brand new strip mall, surrounded by a sea of parking. Only a few dozen homes are within reasonable walking distance of the store, and even then residents have to walk through a gigantic parking lot.

Here's a view of the new Parkside shopping center:

Source

And here is what the surrounding neighborhood looks like:

Many of these new supermarkets in Philadelphia are mainly accessible by car, and require a huge amount of space, designed at a scale that makes sense in the suburbs, but that is not appropriate for dense, urban communities. The stores are not very transit accessible, and do not contribute to uplifting older, struggling, commercial corridors. These supermarkets are physically in neighborhoods, but not part of communities.

Often in Philadelphia we seem to be satisfied to take what we can get — especially for poorer communities — rather than pushing for excellence. In the same article, the Times discusses New York City’s proposed zoning changes to include incentives for developers to integrate supermarkets in their mixed-use projects, and to reduce the parking requirements for urban supermarkets. At the same time New York is implementing its own food access financing program.

While New York is taking steps focusing on both local food access and making sure that new stores are seamless contributors to community vitality, Philadelphia has only gotten half of the equation right. Sure, we can argue that local food access is ultimately more important, and we should appreciate how far we have come. We can argue that Philly does not have the development market of New York; Supermarkets are certainly difficult to finance and sustain.

These are very real issues. However, I think we can do better if just set our mind to it.

Not too far from Parkside is the Fresh Grocer by the University of Pennsylvania’s campus. This supermarket got it all right: urban, walkable, built right up to the street edge, integrated into the surrounding area, parking stored in an upper-level garage. While the area around the Parkside supermarket is barren, the area around the Fresh Grocer is vibrant and booming. There are other examples of successful urban-style supermarkets in Philadelphia, such as a Trader Joe's in the ground floor of an apartment building at 22nd and Market, and the urban-style WholeFoods and SuperFresh on South Street.

Just because a neighborhood is poor, does not mean that it should have to settle for a half-baked supermarket. We should find the resources, the political will, and the incentives to bring supermarkets within close proximity to every community, and ensure that those stores can be positive contributors to community revitalization. These new stores should be a stimulus for reviving commercial corridors, and should be built for residents who rely on walking and transit. If built right, a supermarket can provide local food access and also act as a positive force for reviving communities.

Too often in urban policy we tend to separate issues, and then frame them as if they were in conflict with each other. If we want to provide both supermarkets and generators for community revitalization, then Philadelphia needs to set the bar higher, make new policies, and work harder to truly give our neighborhoods the resources they need for a healthy and prosperous future.

Bike Art

2009-06-17T07:42:00.000-04:00

The Moore College of Art has a new art exhibit devoted to Bicycles. Check it out.

Light Reading about Heavy Matters

2009-06-16T08:37:00.005-04:00

By Ariel

Recently a bunch of interesting articles have crossed my path that I thought I would share for a variety of reasons; the article on Philadelphia, Panama and Shipping will appeal to those of you who, like Heller and me, are obsessed with all things Philadelphia while the article on Paris should appeal to a few more of you.

I suppose I should no longer be surprised that Philebrity brings in some interesting news for the dorks in all of us (it does a surprisingly good job on politics big and small around Philly). However I have to thank them for finding the following article about a shipping agreement between Philadelphia Ports and Panama. This is big news. Rendell clashed publicly with Corzine across the river (and with tons of environmentalists and other skeptics) to dredge the bottom of the Delaware to widen it by some five feet. Philadelphia has historically thrived when its ports have, as an Economy League report notes.

Philadelphia’s ports rank sixth in the U.S. in imported cargo value and 22nd in export value. The Delaware River ports employ 4,056 workers who earn $326 million and generate $1.3 billion in economic output annually.

Port activity in Greater Philadelphia supports 12,121 jobs, creates $772 million in income and generates $2.4 billion in economic output annually.

But Philadelphia’s ports are relatively shallow for modern container shipping. The deal reported in the JOC suggests that Philadelphia Ports are proactively taking advantage of this upcoming new depth.

I am skeptical that the added benefit of this dredging (and this added volume of shipping signaled by this deal) will out weight not only the environmental damage done by the dredging, but what the $379 million could have been spent on instead. While talks of “missed opportunity costs” are not always applicable in big projects such as these (that amount of money would never be spent on housing for instance, unfortunately), one really can only hope that this deal brings in lots of ships if only to justify all the work Rendell put into getting the dredging.

In other news, one more bone for me to pick with the French; they turn to architects to re-imagine their city, in this piece in the NYT Magazine. While architects are indeed great at “visioning.” etc., many of their answers to Paris’s plans smack of physical determinism and the idea that great buildings will lift the smallest soul. This is not to say that great architecture can’t do great things, its just that the plans covered here seem to ignore market realities or are just too theatrical in concept. It could very easily be that I am full of professional jealousy that architects and not planners are planning Paris, and I would love to have such grand visions for Philly be as seriously considered here as they are there.

Operational Sustainability

2009-06-14T19:31:00.006-04:00

Source

By Ariel

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has made a concerted effort to make Philadelphia the greenest city in America. Early in his administration he established the Mayor's Office of Sustainability, hired a Bike-Ped Coordinator and has increased recycling frequency in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, and recycling opportunities in the central business district.

In April of 2009, the Mayor and his Office of Sustainability announced a Greenworks, “sustainability plan” for Philadelphia, one that targets the City’s own energy consumption, the promotion of mass transit and bicycling and “green” jobs and infrastructure. While Greenworks outlines a variety of large institutional changes from how the city monitors and pays for its energy to how disposes of waste, there remains opportunities for further “sustainable reform.” More importantly there are opportunities for making sustainable operational, part of everyday municipal functions.

The West Coast has long been a pioneer in sustainable practices and they are often praised for such larger initiatives as urban growth boundaries or new transit lines. However their efforts have also targeted less ambitious municipal practices; since the 1990’s cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle and San Fransisco have used goats to manage over grown vegetation in vacant lots and landfills. Goat aided vegetation management has the ability to both boost “green jobs,” save the city money and reduce the city’s carbon footprint.

Goats were first used in Los Angeles in the early 90s as an “effective tool for clearing underbrush on fire-prone hillsides” (McDonald). Not only did Sierra Nevada and Oakland quickly adopt this practice, but other departments within Los Angeles, adopted them the use of goats. The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (LA CRA) began using goats to clear vacant lots and “won't collect a pension or charge for working overtime and won't call in sick” (Pool).

Today private land owners use goats to clear lots as well, and its not just large property owners such as Google who used over 200 goats to mow their 26 acres of property in Mountain View California. Small contractors such as John Iwanczuk of Seattle use goats on sites a as small as a quarter acre. In an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer Iwanczuk related that he was

“faced with a steep quarter-acre lot on Dearborn Street covered with impenetrable brush. He figured it would take a crew at least a week to clear the lot, filling eight to10 trucks with waste. Four days and 60 goats later, the blackberry vines and Scotch broom were gone, and Iwanczuk had risen to neighborhood hero status. Elementary school groups came to watch and pet the goats as they dozed on the sidewalk. Moms brought freshly baked cookies. Local gardeners lusting for free fertilizer scooped the lot clean of droppings. Iwanczuk estimates he saved $6,000 to $9,000 on the job.”

Google, the LA CRA and Iwanczuk all hired goats from what are essentially professional goatherds, such as Goat Trimmers or California Grazing who for a fee transport a herd of goats and manage their consumption of thistles, shrubs and weeds. It is a practice that “Redevelopment agency head Cecilia Estolano said the goats were being rented for $3,000. The cost of hiring workmen to clear the 2 1/2 -acre hillside would have totaled as much as $7,500” (Pool). With savings ranging anywhere from $4,500–$9000 it is clear that their use could provide serious cost efficiencies to Philadelphia’s land management operations.

While the project has significant potential, there are serious questions that would shape its implementation in the City of Philadelphia. Any analysis of the use of goats in land management must analyze a variety of issues such as

The portfolio of land used by Philadelphia, where would the use of goats be most appropriate, in vacant lots, at the Philadelphia International Airport or in Fairmount Park
The management issues associated with the use of goats, their care, transportation and waste removal
The actual cost savings associated with their use

Goat aided vegetation management has the ability to both boost “green jobs,” save the city money and reduce the city’s carbon footprint. With such a large municipal commitment to sustainability, one that is evidenced at all political levels, it is time to see if such practices can be put to use here in Philadelphia.

What’s a Henweigh?

2009-06-11T10:19:00.006-04:00

Source: Chicken Owners Outside Philadelphia

By Greg

As most of my friends know, my father and his partner, Nancy, keep a flock of chickens in their backyard in Springfield Township, just outside the Philadelphia city limits. Not only do they keep chickens, but they run a chicken owners’ co-op called Chicken Owners Outside Philadelphia (COOP). Yesterday, Nancy, the chickens, and COOP were featured in Philadelphia CityPaper, in Bruce Schimmel’s column. Check it out!

So what do suburban chickens have to do with the future of urban America? As the CityPaper article touts, “in this little hamlet just outside Chestnut Hill, suburbia is slowly reverting to rural.” The COOP website lists 30 active members within this small community. On Dad and Nancy’s block, several families raise chickens, others have backyard gardens, and one family has goats.

For the past sixty years, most American metro areas have gotten used to the trend of urban decentralization and sprawling suburbs. Could backyard farming start to change this adopted land-use pattern by reclaiming inner-ring suburbs as semi-rural land? My parents’ backyard farm community, adjacent to the pristine, 426-acre Erdenheim Farm (recently permanently preserved) makes me wonder. When I take visitors out there they often are amazed that this is the closest inner-ring suburb to one of America’s largest cities. What does this mean for land-use and for local food production?

By farming their own eggs, these suburban chicken owners are part of the emerging local food movement in America. There are several important impacts of the local food movement: to reconnect people to where their food comes from, to build local food economies, enhance regional security, promote environmental sustainability, and to combat hunger and obesity. By now there are a number of books and organizations devoted to these issues.

In the Philadelphia region, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission is running the Greater Philadelphia Food Study aimed at “a broad range of food supply issues, such as agricultural production trends, natural resource constraints, processing and distribution facilities, the origins and destinations of food imports and exports, and the efficiency of transporting from farm to plate.”

From an urban perspective, access for low-income communities to affordable, healthy food is a major problem. There are so-called “food deserts” in many inner-city areas, where there is no supermarket or outlet for purchasing affordable produce, meat, and dairy. Philadelphia is lucky to have two organizations working on this issue: the Food Trust and Farm to City. In addition the city is lucky to have a number of active urban farms.

On Monday the Philadelphia Daily News featured West Philly’s Mill Creek Farm in an article called “The little half-acre that could: Urban minifarms, like Mill Creek, are keeping many Philadelphians from going hungry.” Philadelphia has an impressive amount of urban farmland, from the Walter B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences, to Weavers Way Farm, to Greensgrow Farms.

It its 2008 sustainability rankings, SustainLane ranked Philadelphia 7^th in the nation in the category of “Local Food and Agriculture.” This ranking was based on farmers markets, community gardens, and urban farms per capita. Philadelphia was the only city with a population over one million in the top ten for this category. New York was number 25 and Chicago was number 27. In other words, for a city its size, Philadelphia is really a leader on urban farming and local food access.

One of the major arguments for local food has to do with transportation. On average, Americans’ food travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate. By promoting local food production, we can significantly cut down on a major culprit in America’s greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, local food production ensures greater access for a region’s communities. In other words, by focusing and investing in the local economy, residents can have access to fresh food closer to home.

As some of you know, my girlfriend, Annie, did an experiment last summer trying to only eat food that had not been transported by car or truck. While some items (like salt) are not produced locally, I was shocked by how much success she found. She grew food in her local community garden. She discovered that Weavers Way Farm transports some of its food by bike and commuter train to the Reading Terminal Market. She obtained local meat by biking to Saul High School, and dairy from Merrymeade Farm in Montgomery County, accessible by train and bike.

Of course, just because it is possible to eat almost 100% local and carbon free does not mean it is easy, or that it can go mainstream. However, it does show that in Philadelphia at least, it is possible. And that gives us a strong foundation to build up local food access and create a more sustainable and accessible food system for our region’s residents. We are going to get there through big-picture policy like the work that DVRPC is developing, and grassroots efforts by people who create a market for local food, and who produce their own (like the backyard chicken owners).

The CityPaper article points out that while chicken owning is legal in Springfield Township, it is not legal in the city of Philadelphia. However, there is a movement to lobby City Council to legalize chicken owning and egg farming in Philadelphia. According to thecitychicken.com, chicken owning is legal in a number of U.S. cities including Denver, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Minneapolis, St. Louis, New York, and Seattle.

If Philadelphia is serious about wanting to increase its access to local food for its residents, perhaps this would be a smart step forward. Meanwhile, here is a list of municipalities in the Philadelphia suburbs that are chicken friendly.

And for the record, the answer to the title question is three to ten pounds, depending on the breed and age.

I want to land a dirigible on the Comcast Building; or Airports and Economic Development

2009-06-05T13:25:00.004-04:00

By Ariel

Key to understanding urban growth is the transportation and land use connection. On this blog, Heller and I tend to focus on issues surrounding transit and pedestrian oriented development; the benefit of living near transit or in walkable communities. The size of city blocks, the width of city streets and the availability of transit are all markers of what makes a city livable. However there is a different, older and more fundamental connection between transportation and cities. The earliest cities all grew up around trade routes, rivers, oceans or cross-roads. America’s major metropolises sit atop major transportation hubs, the ports of New York and Los Angeles and the rail road yards of Chicago.

Philadelphia’s street car suburbs of West Philadelphia or Mt. Airy, or the rail lines that stretch through north Philadelphia, are a testament to Philadelphia’s rich transportation and land use heritage. However Philadelphia’s earliest success was related to the nature of its freshwater ports which were a boon to early wooden ships. The City’s early aristocracy grew rich off of the trade from the piers and luminaries such as Stephen Girard built their fortunes by controlling fleets and docks. For a whole slew of reasons (though it starts when those pesky New Yorkers built the Erie Canal) Philadelphia’s port is no longer the pre-eminent port in the U.S; ports such as Los Angeles and New York which can handle much larger container ships see much more cargo passing through their docks. None the less as the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia notes in their recent report Maritime Commerce In Greater Philadelphia the “Delaware River ports employ 4,056 workers who earn $326 million and generate $1.3 billion in economic output.”

However these ports were also important not simply because of the goods they moved, but the people they moved as well. New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles were the historic ports of call for the Italians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Jews (and the list goes on) who built this country. There are many who suggest that Philadelphia’s ability to attract new immigrants (which will account for 66% of America’s population growth over the next 50 years) relies on our airport. They argue that the more countries that first touchdown in a city (such as Philadelphia) the more likely immigrants are to settle in that city.

Airports are not just about moving people, in a New Yorker article (4/18/2005) “Out in the Sort” John McPhee describes the inner workings and impact of UPS’s cargo sorting and shipping hub in Louisville Kentucky. These hubs employee people around the clock, and in the case of UPS also pays for them to go to college; these hubs are economic and workforce development engines. Jon Ostrower of Flightblogger (more on him shortly) suggests that UPS might even be the largest private employer in Kentucy.

So what about the Philadelphia International Airport? UPS does in fact have workers and sorters at a facility at Philadelphia International Airport (PHI) though I doubt it is as large as complex as the UPS or FedEx hubs at Louisville or Memphis or even their satellite hubs in such as those in Indianapolis, Anchorage, Oakland, etc. Moreover some studies suggest that Philadelphia’s airport is threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges. It is also an airport plagued by expansion woes and busy airspace caused by neighboring smaller, regional airports.

To get a better understanding of the airport, and its potential for economic development I spoke with Jon Ostrower of FlightBlogger, an industry expert who blogs about the Airline industry for Flightglobal, “the world’s leading provider of aerospace news and data.”

To talk about the future of airports one has to get a better understanding of the airline industry. I began by asking Ostrower to describe the future of the industry, and what we as consumers can begin to expect. Ostrower noted that “From a passenger point of view, in terms of trends for business prospect, you are not going to pay one price for a ticket, one lower price, and then you will have to pay for everything else, bags, food. There business model has been found not to have worked. Oil is going up, the economy is going the other direction and fares not high enough to justify the flight.” In other words, over the long run, we can expect fewer and fewer flights that are likely to be more and more expensive.

However this gradual loss of passengers does not mean that airports necessarily close, even though nationwide there may be around fifty airports (Toledo, Ohio and Meridian, Mississippi) that have recently lost all commercial service. While there is, as Ostrower puts it “there is a net loss of runway ever year” airports keep running, though they tend to rely more on business and general aviation; that is to say charter flights and recreational flying. Airports make their money off of landing fees, gate fees and food services contracts, and they serve airlines shipping cargo nationwide as well. Which is to say, that there is a significant amount of business going on at airports, and with airlines, that we simply don’t know about or see on a regular basis as we are waiting in line to take off our shoes, belts and key chains. In fact Ostrower notes that if you really want to gauge the health of the Airline industry, or the economy as a whole, one should track the health of the cargo market; cargo numbers dropped long before other indicators of economic collapsed. The complex nature of airports, built off of trade and travel are holistic gauges of an areas health, the desire of people to go there, and their buying power.

While they are important gauges of urban economic health the important thing to look at when it comes to airports, as it always is with all transportation related issues, is access. While Ostrower notes that you can judge the success of an airport by the incentives used to bring airlines in, the cost of fuel, the length of the runway, quality of food or the on time performance, the key really should be the ability to move people and goods through the hub. Which means that in many ways the airport only as good as its connections to people and goods; i.e. an airport is only as good as its multi modal connections to different markets of people and goods.

Ironically, some of the most vociferous opponents of high speed rail are the representatives from districts with small regional airports. As Ostrower puts it “the US market is the largest market in the world for single isle short haul air craft” for flights between Boston and DC. These smaller airports see high speed rail as direct competition for the delivery of people into the hinterlands.

However the questions should be not whether an airport is thriving, but is it connected to other ports and other people? The development of the Philadelphia International Airport depends on its ability to be connected by rail to thriving regions in and around Philadelphia (which is the 8th richest metropolitan region in the world) and to its system of ports around the Delaware river.

Denver: Building a Strong Foundation

2009-06-04T16:43:00.011-04:00

Source

By Greg

I spent the past few days at a conference in Denver, Colorado. And, I’ll tell you, that city impressed the heck out of me. It’s a medium-sized city (just under 600,000 residents), and you can walk across its downtown in about twenty minutes. While the scale is much smaller than my hometown of Philadelphia, Denver seemed to be doing things other cities are only dreaming of.

Denver has a beautiful and efficient light-rail and bus system. The 16th Street pedestrian mall is vibrant, beautiful, and well-used. A free (!) two-way bus system runs every few minutes to take passengers across the fifteen blocks of stores, restaurant, entertainment, benches, trees, lamps, and chess tables. They also have bike sharing!

Cherry Creek and the Platte River run along the west side of the downtown with an extraordinary set of walking and biking trails. At the confluence of the creek and river, one encounters beautiful Commons Park and a stunning vista of the skyline. The gorgeous Millennium Bridge takes pedestrians from Commons Park to the pedestrian mall. The scenery is beautiful, all the while, surrounded by the Rockies.

The architecture definitely impresses. I am not usually a Daniel Liebeskind fan, but his Denver Art Museum is stunning. The new, edgy buildings of the civic center mix well with the historic architecture of the state capitol and other older government buildings. The Denver Convention Center is also a pretty exciting building (yes, that's a big blue bear pushing against the wall).

Everywhere I looked there was major public art. This is a city that clearly cares about creating a beautiful place for its citizens and visitors. Meanwhile, a host of new condo and apartment buildings are filling in the landscape, bringing more residents downtown.

The Colorado Rockies’ stadium, Coors Field, is right downtown, surrounded by stores and restaurants. It borders the hip Lo Do district and its brewpubs and nightlife. On my first day in town I walked to the ballpark (it took ten minutes from my hotel). Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Families streamed through the downtown streets to make their way to the stadium.

Mayor John Hickenlooper, who gave the keynote address at the conference I was attending, explained that the City did not build new car parking for the stadium. Since it was downtown, people could park in existing garages, or take the train, and walk five to ten minutes to get to the game. On the way they could stop at stores and restaurants.

Well, it works great. Unfortunately the Padres beat the pants off of the Rockies while I was at the game. But you know what? In the long-term a well-placed, downtown stadium will do more good for a city than a winning team.

Mayor Hickenlooper (whom, I will note is a Wesleyan alum from the Philadelphia region), is a newbie to politics. Before getting himself elected he ran the Wynkoop Brewing Company (they make the best milk stout I’ve ever had). In his talk, he told the audience how he runs the city the same way he ran his company – getting to know people, building partnerships, working cooperatively.

Perhaps the most stunning example of regional cooperation under Mayor Hickenlooper’s tenure has been the passage of an eight-county referendum to increase the sales tax to pay for mass transit expansion. Denver already has better light-rail than most cities, but after the FasTracks system is completed in 2016, the region will have 122 miles of new light rail and commuter rail, 18 miles of bus rapid transit service, and 57 new transit stations. All this in the middle of the wild west!

As I walked for hours around and outside Denver’s central business district, it was clear that despite its stunning success stories, Denver has a long way to go. The landscape quickly transforms from urban to suburban. Walking east out of the downtown, I saw the thriving center morph into a landscape of check cashing and fast food restaurants. Even downtown there is not all that much there yet. Parking lots still dot the urban landscape.

However, this is changing… fast. Through my hotel window I could see one brand new skyscraper, another starting to rise from a construction site, and a large surface parking lot that was likely next in line for development. I called up fellow Urban Direction blogger, Ariel, and exclaimed of the light rail and other projects: “It looks like they are laying the infrastructure for a city that isn’t here yet.” Ariel answered, “Isn’t that what we are supposed to be doing?”

Ariel is exactly right, and so is Denver. A few folks at the conference told me that Colorado is a pretty strong property-rights, car-loving type of place. However, here is a region that does not yet have a huge downtown hub, that does not have major congestion, and yet its residents are farsighted enough to vote for increasing their taxes to pay for a light rail system that runs through areas that have not yet been developed! The FasTracks referendum passed with almost 60% of the vote. This sounds to me like a region that has its priorities straight.

As is true anywhere, all is not sunny in Denver. The city has seen new challenges arise over the past 15 years. The city’s foreign-born population nearly tripled from 1990 to 2000. However, only about 8% of Hispanics in Denver hold a bachelors degree, and the city’s poverty rate is about 18% for individuals. Meanwhile, the state of Colorado had major job loss in the beginning of the 21^st century. Denver is facing serious issues of inequality between the minority and white populations, a need for more jobs and affordable housing.

Still, Denver has been growing at a pretty steady pace (which is more than some cities can say). According to the Brookings Institution, “Among the 23 Living Cities, Denver had the second-fastest growth in household incomes, the sixth-highest share of college graduates in 2000, and the lowest poverty rate among African Americans.” While Denver tackles its challenges of poverty, education, jobs, and centralizing the region’s sprawling growth, the city is clearly doing a lot of things right. The question is: Will it be enough to really make Denver thrive?

In my opinion, the answer seems to be yes. I think that Denver is moving its way over the tipping point. The city is making the right investments to grow its population, encourage economic development, and make itself the competitive hub of the region. While the city still seems rocky (excuse the pun) in some respects, I would bet that in a decade or two Denver will be the envy of many major cities. Other cities that, like Denver, are only starting to boom, but are not investing in infrastructure are going to be kicking themselves. Denver has challenges to overcome, but it is laying a strong foundation for doing so.

So, to Denver, thanks for a sunny day at the ballpark, some great nights at the brewpubs, wonderful walks around your fair city, a fine conference venue, and a glimpse of what regions can achieve when they dream big, cooperate, and are not afraid to take bold action. I wish you the best and hope to come back soon.

Philadelphia 2040: Updated

2009-06-03T18:19:00.005-04:00

By Ariel

Recently I discussed a Vision Planning process I participated in over the course of the past semester. I would be remiss if I did not mention or post the work of the other two teams. Collectively we envisioned a Philadelphia in 2040 that was:

Enjoy!

Traffic and Building a Multi-Modal Culture in Philadelphia

2009-06-01T21:23:00.004-04:00

By Ariel

I recently finished reading an interesting and compelling book by Tom Vanderbilt called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) and it’s particularly interesting in light of Greg’s last post. The book both helps to explain (though not excuse) much of the worst in drivers’ behavior and also illuminates the challenges intrinsic in creating a culture of multi-modality. If that last sentence was too wonky for you, don’t worry, the book will still entertain you, but you also probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.

Both Heller and I have routinely argued that one of the biggest impediments to a Philadelphia that embraces all modes of transportation is the education of its drivers and bicyclists alike. However there are significant challenges, particularly for those who drive, and to do so we have to have a better understanding of the nature of traffic itself. Vanderbilt’s book is choc-a-bloc it with studies (as well as anecdotes and miscellany) but it has, I would argue, three main points that undergird it.

• The act of driving is fundamentally alien to how human beings have successfully adapted to travel, information processing and communications over the course of thousands of years. The difference between thousands of people streaming down Manhattan’s sidewalks and thousands of people driving down its streets is the amount of information that pedestrians and drivers can exchange. Passing walkers can easily talk to each other and say “watch it,” “excuse me,” or the like. However drivers must deal in a world of asymmetric information. A honk could mean “I like your bumper sticker” or it could mean “you are an a**-hole.” More importantly, the way our brains process information cannot, among other things, properly judge the speed of approaching objects or appropriately manage risk.

• Traffic has its own “physics.” Congestion is as much a result of origin and destination supply and demand, as it is a result of the ten to twenty feet before and after any given car. The two to three seconds that it takes a driver to signal something to another, to slow down or shift lanes, has repercussions for the car right behind it, all of which flow backwards in a cascade. As Vanderbilt suggests, traffic is not so much like water flowing through a funnel, but like rice or cereal, that ends up bulging and straining the middle of the cereal box.

• Traffic is cultural. I feel more comfortable stepping out into traffic in the middle of Skanderbej Square in Albania, than in the middle of an American road. I trust Albanian drivers to stop quicker and to even be on the look-out for the unexpected. Similarly, pedestrians in New York or quite different from those in Madison.

Promoting driver “education,” particularly as it relates to interacting with bicyclists and pedestrians in order to avoid tragedies such as those mentioned in Heller’s post, cannot be done without understanding the physics, culture or human elements of driving. Simply spending two or three more days in a AAA drivers ed. course on bicyclists won’t do it. Driver’s “education” requires communicating with drivers in such a way that acknowledges how human beings process information, it requires looking holistically at street design, and it requires political action.

Vanderbilt shows not only that drivers have too much information to process (and subsequently ignore all that information) but that with both smarter and significantly smaller amounts of signage, we can increase safety. The Netherland’s famous woonervern, those streets with few or no curbs, obstacle laden roads with no signs that force drivers to actively process information as opposed to simply allowing the smaller signals of what Vanderbilt calls the “traffic world” (as opposed to the “social world” of normal human interaction) are much safer for pedestrians, children and bicyclists. While woonervern may not be appropriate for all roads (though the lack of signage improves safety in other situations, as Vanderbilt shows), there are better ways to communicate with drivers. I would argue that the city of Philadelphia should invest in a fleet of mobile plexi-glass statues that mimic pedestrians jotting out on to the curb (or we could simply raid the Comcast Center) that they randomly distribute across critical intersections. Drivers tend to perceive information that they are already looking for, and forcing them to see bicyclists and pedestrians where they least expect them will ensure that they will see them everywhere else.

Implementing traffic calming measures at specific intersections prone to accidents is not enough. For traffic calming to truly work, similar measures should be designed and implemented along an appropriate radius out from a particularly worrisome intersection. Don’t just build a bulb out in the intersection where the most pedestrians cross, build bulb outs three or four blocks in either direction.

Only a public and prolonged political commitment to bicycles and pedestrians will change the culture of drivers in Philadelphia. Initiatives, such as creating an East – West connector between the rivers (no matter how many parking spaces it cannibalizes), closing down neighborhood thoroughfares for “bike holidays” during the summer, and proactively enforcing traffic laws will (over the long term) prove a political and civic commitment to bicycles and pedestrians that will truly create a culture of multi-modality.

Shifting Values, Shifting Behavior

2009-05-28T14:46:00.003-04:00

By Greg Heller

This post continues the discussion about the balance between cars and people. As I mentioned previously, I am seeing a real shift in focus, with much more planning and concern for pedestrians and cyclists. This shift brings opportunities, but also challenges. Here is a Philly-local case in point.

The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia has been out every day this week holding a safety education campaign. The location is the mid-block crosswalk that connects the Schuylkill River Park trail with the multi-use trail on the opposite side of Martin Luther King Drive. The impetus for this campaign was last week’s crash at this location that badly injured a father and son, out enjoying a bike ride.

Here’s the story: A law-abiding driver stopped to allow the father and four-year-old son take their bike over the crosswalk. However, another impatient driver in an SUV zoomed around the stopped car, and struck the pair as they reached the median island, knocking down the “pedestrian crossing” sign, and badly inuring the father and child.

This incident could be blamed on one unsafe driver. However, I have crossed at this and other mid-block crosswalks in Philadelphia many times, and drivers simply do not stop for pedestrians. I have seen firsthand that in other states drivers are extremely conscientious about yielding for pedestrians. I have been plenty of places in the U.S. where drivers slam on the breaks if a pedestrian even gets near the curb by a crosswalk. Many drivers in Pennsylvania are either unaware of the law or unwilling to abide by it.

And so I joined the Bicycle Coalition this morning. About a dozen Bicycle Ambassadors and Coalition members stood at least 20 feet from the crosswalk holding yield-to-pedestrians-within-crosswalk signs. The Coalition stationed some individuals about 100 feet away from the crosswalk, and others just near the crosswalk. They also positioned orange traffic cones on the shoulder and centerline to alert drivers.

Even with all of this activity, when pedestrians were waiting to cross, most drivers still cruised on through. So I tested something. I started waving and pointing at pedestrians when they were waiting. I noticed a significant increase in driver compliance when I did this; more drivers stopped when I motioned for them to glance toward the curb. This tells me that some drivers simply are not paying attention to the curb line – the possibility of a waiting pedestrian.

Another interesting phenomenon was that some pedestrians were hesitant to cross, even when traffic was completely stopped for them. It often took one of us telling the pedestrian “you may cross now,” before the individual took a step into the roadway. Pedestrians in Philadelphia are, sadly, so used to drivers not stopping for them, that they are caught totally unaware when drivers actually obey the law!

After the Bicycle Coalition members leave, I’m sure that the crosswalk will go back to its normal hazardous condition. So what can we do?

I have heard some folks say they think the City should install a pedestrian traffic signal at this location. Certainly there are plenty of other engineering solutions to make this crosswalk safer that do not include signalization (I know something about this since in my day job I am part of a three person team that carries out an annual traffic calming study). However, these types of interventions do not solve the larger issue. We can fix this location, but that would not change the Philadelphia region’s cultural ignorance to the yield to pedestrians law.

What we really need is a total commitment by the City and State to educating drivers about the law, while engineering the roadway to naturally slow traffic at crosswalk approaches, and have heightened enforcement of the law. Other states, regions, and cities have a different culture – one where it is common sense and the norm for drivers to stop for pedestrians waiting at a crosswalk. We should demand nothing less in Philadelphia.

We cannot engineer our way out of safety issues. Traffic calming literature is clear that safe roadways rely on a three-pronged approach: engineering, education, and enforcement. It was evident, standing out there this morning, that many people probably just do not know the law, are not used to complying with it, and do not often look out to the side of the road to see if pedestrians are waiting. Better roadway engineering needs to be coupled with a massive public education campaign, and periodic enforcement by the police.

Public education needs to come from the top. It is great that the Bicycle Coalition is taking this initiative, but ultimately educating drivers is the job of the police and the Department of Transportation. Car drivers do not deserve all the blame. Philadelphia’s cyclists are notoriously bad at following the law – often running red lights, swerving between cars, riding on the sidewalk, or riding the wrong way down one-way streets. We need better education and enforcement across the board if we want to bring true change to Philadelphia and to Pennsylvania.

We can alter the status quo. As our nation begins its shift to valuing pedestrians and cyclists, we also need to shift our behavior, values, and expectations. These shifts will come, but it needs to come from the top and from the grassroots at the same time.

Cars and People

2009-05-27T18:48:00.008-04:00

Source: New York Times

By Greg

As you have probably heard by now, in New York City, part of Times Square is now pedestrian-only. According to the New York Times’s “Wheels” blog, the impact on traffic during the weekend and during rush hour has been just fine (“how would such a change in the heart of Manhattan affect weekday rush hour? / Not too much, actually.”) The Big Apple has defied the notion that pedestrian zones only work in Europe, and created a wonderful space for people in the heart of America’s largest city.

Meanwhile, the New York Times also recently profiled Vauban, the “car free” suburb of Freiburg, Germany. Seventy percent of the town’s families do not own cars, and cars are not allowed on most streets. I remember when I lived in the city of Regensburg, Germany, cars were practically not allowed anywhere in the old city. Vauban gets attention because it was designed deliberately as a car-free community, but plenty of European cities have significant car-free cores. I was recently in Galway, Ireland where there is a smaller, but still bustling car-free downtown area.

In the U.S., most Americans are still very attached to their cars. A dialogue hosted by the Times makes this point abundantly clear. This dialogue featured some major urbanist voices, such as Chris Leinberger and Witold Rybczynski. However, I was more interested in the readers’ comments. Some readers explained their success living car-free. Others explained how miserable it was trying to live carless. There are the typical car-loving commentators, for whom cars represent freedom. Then there are those who argue the utter impossibility of shopping, transporting a child or “a large sick dog” without use of a car.

I wrote previously about the notion of freedom of mobility. We rely on enormous government funding to build and maintain our road and highway network. We currently lack sufficient funding to keep it maintained. Studies show that oftentimes adding roadway capacity worsens congestion. There is bumper-to-bumper traffic on our highways on a daily basis (or so my radio tells me), and a breakdown can entirely throw off one’s scheduled arrival. Not to mention the costs of owning a car, insurance, parking…

The fact is, a car only represents freedom for people who can afford its enormous costs, where there is an extensive and well maintained road network, and where there is no more than minor congestion. Otherwise, cars represent entrapment. It traps people who need a car to make every little errand, who sit for hours in traffic each day, who spend more money on transportation than dwelling, who are children, seniors, or the disabled and cannot drive.

Likewise, freedom without a car only occurs in places that are walkable, bikeable, and that have decent mass transit. The difference is that the latter scenario is much more cost effective, equitable, and healthy. As many people have written about, the American love of the car is cultural and nostalgic more than it is based in the contemporary reality of auto mobility and our nation’s fiscal ability to maintain our transportation systems.

In Germany my friends and neighbors walked to the grocery store, bought their fresh groceries, then walked home with them. In high school, when I did a summer exchange in Germany, I took the public bus forty minutes to school each day. It ran frequently. On the weekends there were special buses that took teenagers, like myself, to and from the nightclubs. I lived in a town of fewer than 8,000 people, but I had total freedom of mobility!

Much of this kind of thinking will require a cultural change. Nine out of ten Americans own a car, and people like myself who don’t own one may still feel like social outcasts in much of the U.S. However, I think we are at the beginning of a shift in cultural values. Foremost is President Obama’s commitment to high-speed rail. However, at the grassroots level I am seeing a shift, too. American cities are really trying to design spaces for the pedestrian, and value bikes and walkers on their streets. In the suburbs I am also seeing a shift to a more pedestrian-oriented mindset.

However, as we build more for the pedestrian, there is an important education component that has to go along with this shift. Last week in Philadelphia a father and son were badly injured by a car that hit them while they were in a well-marked, well-signed crosswalk in broad daylight. In cities like Philadelphia that have historically valued the automobile, drivers are less aware or respectful of the law.

So, in closing, for all of you Pennsylvanians out there, the law says that drivers must yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, whether it is at an intersection or not. That means drivers must stop when they see a pedestrian crossing.

In any case, I do not want to end on that negative note. How about this: It’s a beautiful day, go out and take a walk or a nice bike ride!