I've been hearing a lot of discussion lately (and it really is a continuation of previous or other on-going discussions) about how the world is about to change big time and planners need to help get everyone ready for the change. The scenarios for this sudden change are usually about a dramatic alteration in our sources of energy, or sudden changes in climate (and the two are pretty closely linked together).
While I agree that change is coming and we need to think about it and plan for it, I take some exception to the sudden, almost doomsday nature of it. It's almost as if (again) there's some specific point in time for it (like the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012).
What's gotten me to thinking about this is a very good book I've been reading, called The Quest, by Daniel Yergin. Mr. Yergin is a noted expert on energy who won the Pulitzer for his book in the 1990's on the same topic, The Prize. Also an excellent book.
While lengthy and quite detailed, The Quest brings us up to date on the energy situation in the world, what's happening, and how it fits in politically and economically in global events. While acknowledging that there will be an end to fossil fuels sometime (they are indeed finite), it is remarkable what has been discovered, what technology has made possible, and what economic and political policies are doing. Suffice it to say that "judgement day" is coming, but it's still a ways off. More likely, because energy resources of all kinds have become global commodities in truly global markets in recent years, the issues may be more economic in the coming years.
What this all leads me to is yes, we need to plan for a future that is different, but we have some time. We don't need to rush and force things that may make people rebel. Climate change is part of this as well, and there is a good point for saying here that we need to start making changes for climate sake, because it's a long fuse. And why should we make those changes? Even if you're a climate skeptic, former Sen. Bob Bennett put it well in a recent opinion piece he wrote, saying that doing the things that we should for climate change, are also just good, common-sense things to be doing anyway.
I commend all the reading stuff I've linked to above, take a look, it'll make you think...
An excerpt from The Quest:
One of Mr. Yergin’s closing arguments focuses on the importance of thinking seriously about one energy source that “has the potential to have the biggest impact of all.” That source is efficiency. It’s a simple idea, he points out, but one that is oddly “the hardest to wrap one’s mind around.” More efficient buildings, cars, airplanes, computers and other products have the potential to change our world.
So does old-fashioned individual action. Mr. Yergin turns to the Japanese, who have rarely had abundant natural resources. He brings up the notion of “mottainai,” a word that is difficult to translate into English yet explains why the Japanese save wrapping paper from gifts to use again and again. The best translation of “mottainai,” Mr. Yergin writes, is “too precious to waste.”
Friday, December 16, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The Smart Growth Conspiracy!
"Speakers criticized the plan for forcing residents into dense housing and impinging on suburban lifestyles. Speakers questioned the notion of regional planning, claiming that top-down planning would usurp local control. These and other objections at one meeting were captured on a two-hour video shot by a Tea Party supporter and posted on the Internet."
Saw this in a story in the California Planning & Development Report titled "SB 375 Draws Ire of Tea Party," which reminded me of the presentation I attended at the APA National Conference in Boston in April by Robin Rather, talking about the economic downturn and how it seems to have brought back out the naysayers to Smart Growth.
Robin will be here in Utah on September 15 to talk to planners and local elected officials about "Planners and the New Political Reality." Jump over to the APA Utah website for details.
We've been fortunate in Utah, interestingly enough, given the strength of the Tea Party here, in not having the degree of rhetoric leveled against planning initiatives as has been happening in some other states. Much of the "accusing" has been about Agenda 21 - ever heard of it? According to some, it's a United Nations conspiracy that puts at risk
So join us on September 15, either at the APA Utah luncheon or at the Utah League of Cities and Towns conference, where Robin will also be speaking on Thursday morning, to get caught up on what's happening politically with planning in these economic tough times!
Saw this in a story in the California Planning & Development Report titled "SB 375 Draws Ire of Tea Party," which reminded me of the presentation I attended at the APA National Conference in Boston in April by Robin Rather, talking about the economic downturn and how it seems to have brought back out the naysayers to Smart Growth.
Robin will be here in Utah on September 15 to talk to planners and local elected officials about "Planners and the New Political Reality." Jump over to the APA Utah website for details.
We've been fortunate in Utah, interestingly enough, given the strength of the Tea Party here, in not having the degree of rhetoric leveled against planning initiatives as has been happening in some other states. Much of the "accusing" has been about Agenda 21 - ever heard of it? According to some, it's a United Nations conspiracy that puts at risk
- Private Property ownership
- Single-Family homes
- Private car ownership and individual travel choices
- Privately owned farms
So join us on September 15, either at the APA Utah luncheon or at the Utah League of Cities and Towns conference, where Robin will also be speaking on Thursday morning, to get caught up on what's happening politically with planning in these economic tough times!
Friday, August 26, 2011
To Overpark, or to Underpark, Aye, That is the Question!
Over the past couple of weeks, the SLC Planning Commission has been talking about parking standards in areas where business or high-density residential abuts single-family neighborhoods. As parking spills over from small neighborhood businesses or from apartment complexes into nearby residential streets, the reaction from the neighbors can get rather sharp (see video of the SLC Planning Commission on July 13).
My desire to blog about this was prompted by a story I saw in yesterday's New York Times, called "Should a 'Walking Paradise' Save Plenty of Room for Parking?", using Denver's experience as the primary example. No quick or easy answers to this one...
SLC, like a number of others around the country, has made a conscious policy decision to de-emphasize the car and make the city more pedestrian- and bike-friendly. One sure-fire way to do that is to not provide so much parking, so that people have to find other ways to get around conveniently. In 2008, the city changed its parking standards from 3 per 1,000 square feet for retail businesses to 2, and for restaurants from 6 to 2.
That seems to work OK in the downtown and large commercial areas, where there are numerous businesses, parking lots, and few residents to worry about the parking in front of their house. But it does lead to friction in those single-family areas adjacent to small businesses, like 9th & 9th and 15th & 15th.
There seems to be pretty good agreement that residents like to have the amenities that having small neighborhood-scale businesses provides to their areas - local services, coffee houses and small restaurants. But it is unlikely that those businesses can survive purely on the market area of those who can walk to the business. They need to draw from a larger area, and those people seem to get there primarily by car. And should a business get really successful (The Dodo, Eggs in the City, etc), there can be a substantial number of cars parked on nearby residential streets.
While the downtown and large commercial areas usually have transit to assist in getting people there, those options are much more limited in residential neighborhoods.
We've found, as we've done some research on this topic, that cities all over are generally reducing their parking requirements. Perhaps the conflicts that come with it are just part of the transition that's taking place from auto-centered to people-centered.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Who All Out There Thinks NIMBYs are Good?
Earlier this year, when I was teaching the Planning and Politics class at CA+P at the U., we discussed NIMBYs, why planners seem generally to hate them and what their role is.
It was interesting to hear the students in the class (many of them, at least) say they thought NIMBYs were actually a positive thing (my first reaction - you haven't been out on the front lines in a planning job yet, have you?)
But, there is some truth to that viewpoint, as NIMBYs can hold government's feet to the fire and make sure they follow their own rules, and protest things that really are negatives for a community.
But there is that flip side that most every planner (and developer) has experienced, which is that irrational opposition to ANY change at all, regardless.
That's why I thought a recent post by Scott Doyon on the Placeshakers website was pretty good on this topic. Read his post here.
Some quotes from Scott, to get you warmed up to the topic:
"Early on, NIMBY action centered around large, substantive initiatives with no shortage of arguable downsides. Nuclear plants. Landfills. Toxic industry. Projects universally loathed no matter where you went."
"But then a funny thing happened.
Somewhere along the way, NIMBYs began applying these new organizational tools and techniques not just to projects presenting some level of threat but to any project offering the prospect of change. Which is to say, any project at all."
"If you’re really about community improvement and not just about snark (and I admittedly teeter between the two), you have to examine not just the what but the why. Why have NIMBYs increasingly developed an opposition to everything?
The answer has little to do with development. It has to do with trust."
But, there is some truth to that viewpoint, as NIMBYs can hold government's feet to the fire and make sure they follow their own rules, and protest things that really are negatives for a community.
But there is that flip side that most every planner (and developer) has experienced, which is that irrational opposition to ANY change at all, regardless.
That's why I thought a recent post by Scott Doyon on the Placeshakers website was pretty good on this topic. Read his post here.
Some quotes from Scott, to get you warmed up to the topic:
"Early on, NIMBY action centered around large, substantive initiatives with no shortage of arguable downsides. Nuclear plants. Landfills. Toxic industry. Projects universally loathed no matter where you went."
"But then a funny thing happened.
Somewhere along the way, NIMBYs began applying these new organizational tools and techniques not just to projects presenting some level of threat but to any project offering the prospect of change. Which is to say, any project at all."
"If you’re really about community improvement and not just about snark (and I admittedly teeter between the two), you have to examine not just the what but the why. Why have NIMBYs increasingly developed an opposition to everything?
The answer has little to do with development. It has to do with trust."
OK, go read it and let's get some discussion going.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Walkability vs. Parking - The Gordian Knot?
As many communities around our fair state pursue strategies to become more walkable and transit-oriented, we continue to run into the 600-pound gorilla and what to do about it - cars and parking!
Last Wednesday night, at the Salt Lake City Planning Commission meeting, the issue once again became a hot topic.
First, some background. A few years ago, the mayor and city council took some very progressive steps toward encouraging walking and discouraging car use by generally reducing parking requirements throughout the city. Things such as exempting the first 2,500 square feet of business floor area from any parking requirement at all, and allowing for reductions in the number of required parking spaces for providing pedestrian amenities such as public benches, bike racks and stroller parking areas, were incorporated into the zoning ordinance.
The areas where this could have potentially the most impact were in the smaller neighborhood commericial areas, like 9th & 9th, 15th & 15th, and so on around the city. Being so close to or even a part of residential neighborhoods, the potential impact from cars coming to patronize these businesses was apparent.
But, the feeling among many in the community was that if we really want to be a walkable community, we must start doing things to encourage walking and discourage driving.
As new businesses in these neighborhood commerical areas began to take advantage of these relaxed requirements, complaints began to roll in from nearby residents about the cars now parking on the streets in front of their homes as people came to patronize the businesses.
Wednesday night the entire issue erupted again quite forcefully as a new residential development was proposed in the area of 1300 East 2100 South, near the Dodo Restaurant. Under the city's relaxed parking rules, the new development could count toward its parking requirement up to 9 spaces on adjacent public streets. Residents in the area, however, gave the PC an earful about the difficulties that already exist in the neighborhood because of the overflow parking from the Dodo. How were any more cars going to fit onto those streets, they said, and where were the residents themselves and their guests going to park?
The meeting got somewhat heated as a couple of residents stormed out in mid-discussion, and the planning commission was genuinely conflicted, as it took 4 different motions before the project approval was finally resolved. The commission did instruct the planning staff, however, to come back with presentations and discussion of the city's current parking standards in an effort to try and get some resolution to what has become a very difficult situation. If you'd like to see what occurred at the meeting, click here, click on the July 13 link, and scroll to about the last 45 minutes of the meeting.
As I've talked to some people about what happened at this meeting, I'm generally hearing two trains of thought: first, this is simply what happens as a community is transitioning from one style of development to another. Yes, it is painful for some in this transition as the community transforms and is not fully functional yet for the new style (walkable) that is being sought. Things will get better, but for now its going to be uncomfortable for some.
The second thought I've heard is, see, just goes to show you, our communities in the west are car-oriented and no matter how hard we try, we will never completely wean ourselves off the car culture. Reality suggests that we're trying to pound a square peg into a round hole - accept the fact that a significant portion of the community will always travel by car, and plan accordingly!
Interested in hearing your thoughts out there!
Last Wednesday night, at the Salt Lake City Planning Commission meeting, the issue once again became a hot topic.
First, some background. A few years ago, the mayor and city council took some very progressive steps toward encouraging walking and discouraging car use by generally reducing parking requirements throughout the city. Things such as exempting the first 2,500 square feet of business floor area from any parking requirement at all, and allowing for reductions in the number of required parking spaces for providing pedestrian amenities such as public benches, bike racks and stroller parking areas, were incorporated into the zoning ordinance.
The areas where this could have potentially the most impact were in the smaller neighborhood commericial areas, like 9th & 9th, 15th & 15th, and so on around the city. Being so close to or even a part of residential neighborhoods, the potential impact from cars coming to patronize these businesses was apparent.
But, the feeling among many in the community was that if we really want to be a walkable community, we must start doing things to encourage walking and discourage driving.
As new businesses in these neighborhood commerical areas began to take advantage of these relaxed requirements, complaints began to roll in from nearby residents about the cars now parking on the streets in front of their homes as people came to patronize the businesses.
Wednesday night the entire issue erupted again quite forcefully as a new residential development was proposed in the area of 1300 East 2100 South, near the Dodo Restaurant. Under the city's relaxed parking rules, the new development could count toward its parking requirement up to 9 spaces on adjacent public streets. Residents in the area, however, gave the PC an earful about the difficulties that already exist in the neighborhood because of the overflow parking from the Dodo. How were any more cars going to fit onto those streets, they said, and where were the residents themselves and their guests going to park?
The meeting got somewhat heated as a couple of residents stormed out in mid-discussion, and the planning commission was genuinely conflicted, as it took 4 different motions before the project approval was finally resolved. The commission did instruct the planning staff, however, to come back with presentations and discussion of the city's current parking standards in an effort to try and get some resolution to what has become a very difficult situation. If you'd like to see what occurred at the meeting, click here, click on the July 13 link, and scroll to about the last 45 minutes of the meeting.
As I've talked to some people about what happened at this meeting, I'm generally hearing two trains of thought: first, this is simply what happens as a community is transitioning from one style of development to another. Yes, it is painful for some in this transition as the community transforms and is not fully functional yet for the new style (walkable) that is being sought. Things will get better, but for now its going to be uncomfortable for some.
The second thought I've heard is, see, just goes to show you, our communities in the west are car-oriented and no matter how hard we try, we will never completely wean ourselves off the car culture. Reality suggests that we're trying to pound a square peg into a round hole - accept the fact that a significant portion of the community will always travel by car, and plan accordingly!
Interested in hearing your thoughts out there!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Are We Planners or Facilitators?
Nice to get things going with some really good comments on the first post! All commentors raised some good stuff (go read 'em), and Matt set things up nicely for one I've wanted to get some feedback on for some time. Take a look at this commentary by Thomas Campanella (it's a bit long, but it'll be good for you!) I am really interested to see your comments on this.
Some interesting quotes from it:
"Thus ensued the well-deserved backlash against superblock urbanism and the authoritarian, we-experts-know-best brand of planning that backed it. And the backlash came, of course, from a bespectacled young journalist named Jane Jacobs. Her 1961 The Death and Life of Great American Cities, much like the paperwork Luther nailed to the Schlosskirche Wittenberg four centuries earlier, sparked a reformation — this time within planning."
"Forced from his lofty perch, the once-mighty planner found himself in a hot and crowded city street. No longer would he twirl a compass above the city like a conductor’s baton, as did the anonymous planner depicted on the 1967 stamp Plan for Better Cities."
"The Jacobsians sought fresh methods of making cities work — from the grassroots and the bottom up. The subaltern was exalted, the master laid low. Drafting tables were tossed for pickets and surveys and spreadsheets. Planners sought new alliances in academe, beyond architecture and design — in political science, law, economics, sociology. But there were problems. First, none of the social sciences were primarily concerned with the city; at best they could be only partial allies. Second, planning was not taken seriously by these fields. The schoolboy crush was not returned, making the relationship unequal from the start. Even today it's rare for a social science department to hire a planning PhD, while planning programs routinely hire academics with doctorates in economics and political science."
"The second legacy of the Jacobsian revolution is related to the first: Privileging the grassroots over plannerly authority and expertise meant a loss of professional agency. In rejecting the muscular interventionism of the Burnham-Moses sort, planners in the 1960s identified instead with the victims of urban renewal. New mechanisms were devised to empower ordinary citizens to guide the planning process. This was an extraordinary act of altruism on our part; I can think of no other profession that has done anything like it. Imagine economists at the Federal Reserve holding community meetings to decide the direction of fiscal policy. Imagine public health officials giving equal weight to the nutritional wisdom of teenagers — they are stakeholders, after all! Granted, powering up the grassroots was necessary in the 1970s to stop expressway and renewal schemes that had run amok. But it was power that could not easily be switched off. Tools and processes introduced to ensure popular participation ended up reducing the planner’s role to that of umpire or schoolyard monitor. Instead of setting the terms of debate or charting a course of action, planners now seemed content to be facilitators — "mere absorbers of public opinion," as Alex Krieger put it, "waiting for consensus to build." "
OK, enough teasers. Go read the piece, then let's talk!
Some interesting quotes from it:
"Thus ensued the well-deserved backlash against superblock urbanism and the authoritarian, we-experts-know-best brand of planning that backed it. And the backlash came, of course, from a bespectacled young journalist named Jane Jacobs. Her 1961 The Death and Life of Great American Cities, much like the paperwork Luther nailed to the Schlosskirche Wittenberg four centuries earlier, sparked a reformation — this time within planning."
"Forced from his lofty perch, the once-mighty planner found himself in a hot and crowded city street. No longer would he twirl a compass above the city like a conductor’s baton, as did the anonymous planner depicted on the 1967 stamp Plan for Better Cities."
"The Jacobsians sought fresh methods of making cities work — from the grassroots and the bottom up. The subaltern was exalted, the master laid low. Drafting tables were tossed for pickets and surveys and spreadsheets. Planners sought new alliances in academe, beyond architecture and design — in political science, law, economics, sociology. But there were problems. First, none of the social sciences were primarily concerned with the city; at best they could be only partial allies. Second, planning was not taken seriously by these fields. The schoolboy crush was not returned, making the relationship unequal from the start. Even today it's rare for a social science department to hire a planning PhD, while planning programs routinely hire academics with doctorates in economics and political science."
"The second legacy of the Jacobsian revolution is related to the first: Privileging the grassroots over plannerly authority and expertise meant a loss of professional agency. In rejecting the muscular interventionism of the Burnham-Moses sort, planners in the 1960s identified instead with the victims of urban renewal. New mechanisms were devised to empower ordinary citizens to guide the planning process. This was an extraordinary act of altruism on our part; I can think of no other profession that has done anything like it. Imagine economists at the Federal Reserve holding community meetings to decide the direction of fiscal policy. Imagine public health officials giving equal weight to the nutritional wisdom of teenagers — they are stakeholders, after all! Granted, powering up the grassroots was necessary in the 1970s to stop expressway and renewal schemes that had run amok. But it was power that could not easily be switched off. Tools and processes introduced to ensure popular participation ended up reducing the planner’s role to that of umpire or schoolyard monitor. Instead of setting the terms of debate or charting a course of action, planners now seemed content to be facilitators — "mere absorbers of public opinion," as Alex Krieger put it, "waiting for consensus to build." "
OK, enough teasers. Go read the piece, then let's talk!
Friday, July 8, 2011
Do We Really Want that TOD?
OK, time to get this blogging thing off and running again!
Going to start with a short article from Streetsblog.org about how in New York City, with all its emphasis on transit orientation and walking and livability and so on, that even there they have a hard time getting their zoning to actually reflect what their plans are trying to accomplish.
You can read the article here!
A couple of highlights from the story - Indeed, under one representative five-year period of Bloomberg and Burden’s city planning, three-quarters of the lots rezoned for greater density were located within a half-mile of rail transit, but so were two-thirds of the lots where development was further restricted
Why would this happen? Well, here's part of the explanation - Explaining the need for the new restrictions, the department writes on its website that “the residential neighborhoods in the rezoning area have been experiencing development pressure” and that the new rules are needed to “preserve the scale and context of these areas.”
But isn't that the point? When we want an area to change its character, wouldn't that happen most quickly when it is "experiencing development pressure?" Then we can get the new development to be what we want it to be according to the new plan?
I think we have a lot of this very thing going on right here in River City. Everybody talks a big game about how we want new patterns of development, often transit-oriented development. To get that to happen, we need the existing development pattern to change. But - those who live there don't want it to change, and we stay generally with what we've got.
Change is never easy...
Post your comments, let's get some discussion going!
Going to start with a short article from Streetsblog.org about how in New York City, with all its emphasis on transit orientation and walking and livability and so on, that even there they have a hard time getting their zoning to actually reflect what their plans are trying to accomplish.
You can read the article here!
A couple of highlights from the story - Indeed, under one representative five-year period of Bloomberg and Burden’s city planning, three-quarters of the lots rezoned for greater density were located within a half-mile of rail transit, but so were two-thirds of the lots where development was further restricted
Why would this happen? Well, here's part of the explanation - Explaining the need for the new restrictions, the department writes on its website that “the residential neighborhoods in the rezoning area have been experiencing development pressure” and that the new rules are needed to “preserve the scale and context of these areas.”
But isn't that the point? When we want an area to change its character, wouldn't that happen most quickly when it is "experiencing development pressure?" Then we can get the new development to be what we want it to be according to the new plan?
I think we have a lot of this very thing going on right here in River City. Everybody talks a big game about how we want new patterns of development, often transit-oriented development. To get that to happen, we need the existing development pattern to change. But - those who live there don't want it to change, and we stay generally with what we've got.
Change is never easy...
Post your comments, let's get some discussion going!
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