At last - a Bike Lane for the Proudly Timid...

If you're interested in ways to make bike commuting a more viable option, check out the video above. It is a pretty simple, cost effective design that would make the most hazardous part of bike commuting - crossing lanes of traffic - a whole lot easier. As a person who loves to cycle, but doesn't have the nerves of steel (or sense of entitlement - take your pick) that allows some people to do things like cross three lanes of traffic to make a left hand turn, navigating across major roads can be a real hang-up. And since I consider my self to be not very far off the median as far potential biking hang-ups go, I think solving this particular problem would go a long way to eliminating the mental barriers of much of the public.

This solution is such an elegant one, it amazes me I haven't seen it before. Of course, it will impede traffic, so no one should expect city planning departments to fall all over themselves to be first to make this happen. But since it's becoming increasingly clear that roads will be used to capacity no matter how wide we make them, there's a good argument for fighting through that sentiment. The video is a bit on the long side, but it's a fascinating 5 minutes.

SOURCE: Liz Stinson, Wired, http://www.wired.com/2014/06/a-new-bike-lane-design-that-could-make-biking-more-popular-and-save-lives/

Ding-Dong the Mall is Dead?!?

Here's something we haters of the suburban lifestyle would never had suspected in 1,000 years; the Mall may be dying. Across the US (and indeed, across the world as seen here), malls are shuttering their doors and being left to rot. If you grew up in the 80's, you would understand what a titanic shift this is. Once upon a time, the Mall was cultural touch-stone for young people. A place to shop, yes, but also (and more importantly) a place to be seen; to mingle; to be with your peers.

Today that seems nearly as quaint an idea as drive-up dining and bobby-socks. So what is driving this shift? The short, unsatisfying answer is, a lot of things. Obviously, changes in taste are a factor, but changes in technology may also be having an impact. The mall took off as a social spot in part, because it was a place where suburban parents could drop off their teenagers, giving them a little bit of freedom without worrying about their security. But that was back when, if you wanted to have a private conversation with your friends, you had to be in the same room with them. Technology has changed that. I can't say I know what teens in the digital age do to build their own networks, but it seems hanging out at the mall isn't it.

Another factor hitting the malls is the economy. For more than 30 years, malls were developed in a frenetic way, without much apparent regard to market capacity. The center of commerce in my own home town was built around two malls less than a mile from each other. One of them is now dead, and although the death blow was a series of devastating floods which hit the region a few years ago, its slow decline was apparent for years. In the face of shrinking incomes - with its attendant shrinking consumption - these sorts of distantly located, retail specific structures simply couldn't stay solvent.

Of course, as a card-carrying hater, I knew this was going to happen. A car-dependent destination focused solely on selling things you don't really need (as opposed to home goods, groceries or other necessities), always seemed like terrible idea. And being the kind of person I am, I assumed my sense would, given enough time, be proved right. What I didn't know, is how quickly this would play out. While I lament with the rest of the community, the terrible waste of space and materials these empty hulking shells represent, I'll be all too happy to seem the Mall as a concept finally fade away.

SOURCE: David Uberti, The Guardian,  http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/19/-sp-death-of-the-american-shopping-mall

If you build it (roads), they (drivers) will come (drive)...

Building roads creates more traffic. That's the conclusion researchers have recently come to. Researchers looked at the data from the last 50 some odd years and found a nearly "perfect one-to-one relationship," between road construction and traffic.

Using Tech to Access City Services Ought to be in the Cards...

It's almost taken for granted these days that new technology, smartly applied, can be a big part of the answer to almost any problem. So it's long been frustrating, and more than a little baffling, how slow city and state governments have been to adopt it. However, a new program being deployed in Oakland, CA, may be a sign that this is finally starting to change.

Orange is the New Green...

Being green isn't just for the hip anymore. Prisons across the country are turning to agriculture to cut costs and teach skills to inmates (and, I suspect, to give them something to do). I'm no fan of prison labor, especially when it generates profits through what amounts to slave labor. But idle hands being the devil's playthings, I can see the appeal of this kind of program. Especially since the "skills" prisoners are usually supposed to get as compensation for their labor don't count for squat if you can't get past the are-you-a-felon check box on most job applications. If you have to keep your inmates busy, helping them develop a connection to the food they eat isn't a bad way to go.

SOURCE: Derek Prall, American City and County http://americancityandcounty.com/public-safety/prison-produce

Fledgling Birdj! Fledgling Birdj!!

Here's the funny thing about living in the information age - no sooner do you have an idea, than you find out that, not only has someone has thought of it,  but they've fleshed it out and put into practice long before it ever popped into your head. That's how it felt when I read this article, anyway. Not 24 hours before I read this piece, I jotted down a quick sentence in my notebook which read simply, "Uber-like service for public transit?" Well, seems like I was once channeling the collective unconscious, because it turns out just such a service is about to launch in Boston.

The new service, called "Birdj" (I assume that's pronounced like "birdie,") aims to use the vast quantities of data regarding the travel habits of smart-phone users to make bus routes more predictable and efficient. The basic idea is to crunch all this data about the most used routes and direct buses accordingly. It's an interesting approach, although not really enough to disrupt public transit as we know it, I suspect. For one thing, the interaction with passengers is still passive. The algorithm might be able to predict the most traveled route near me, but what happens if that changes? It seems possible that users could suddenly find themselves without a nearby bus stop.  A better approach my be to use smaller vehicles that can be summoned actively by users.

At any rate, it's still in its "fledgling" phase (to lift a terrible pun from the article), so the system will likely change as it runs into real-life problems. Ultimately, it may well find a quick work around for obvious problems like the one I just mentioned. Even if it doesn't, I'll still need to teach myself how to program before I can offer an alternative. Until then, I'll wish this venture godspeed and hope someone with more skills is tuned into the ether enough to pick up what I'm laying down.

Borders? We Don't Need no Stinking Borders!

What's the point of a state? Have you ever asked yourself that? There was a time, not all that long ago, when nearly all economic activity was local. You made or grew what you could and you sold at the market to get what you couldn't. Everything you needed was rarely more than a couple days travel away. And, since you were likely traveling by foot, that means just about everything was within what you would likely still recognize as your community. Even after the industrial revolution got under way in earnest, and railroads rewrote the definition of "far away," you would still expect most economic activity would happen nearby. The mansions that still stand on the Westside of Providence were built by the people who owned the mills Down-City. They built in the community, they lived in the community and they spent a good deal of their fortunes in the community. 

With all that activity being so hyper-localized, it makes sense that the politics would be local too. The state provides a way for communities to protect their independence from outside influence. The economies of Boston and Providence have always evolved on more or less parallel lines, but the Boston industrialists were in Boston, and Providence industrialists in Providence. It made no sense that one should have too much influence over the other. 

But that was then. The mansions on the Westside are apartments now. The owners, employees and customers of Rhode Island businesses can, quite literally, come from anywhere. And while I still suspect that most of the economic activity in a given city is generated from within a community, the definition of "local" has been turned on it's ear. Take this recent work by City Lab. It looked at the economic interconnections of major urban areas and found they could easily be grouped into 12 national mega-regions, the largest of which being the Northeastern I-95 corridor. Modern infrastructure has created what is essentially a beaded necklace of urban cores connected by a long thread of suburbs and exurbs, stretching from Portsmouth, NH to Washington DC. 

While I have a hard time thinking of the economic fortunes of Providence as being tied to New Haven, let alone DC, it is difficult to think of our economy without including Pawtucket, Central Falls, East Providence, Attleboro, Fall River and any number of other cities stretching across political boundaries. What seems to be happening, is that infrastructure - especially information infrastructure - has finally begun to erase the social and economic conditions that made the state necessary. We seem to be entering an age where economic interdependence matters more than state lines. Just as once it made no sense for manufacturers in Boston to influence those who lived and worked in Providence, we have to wonder now whether it makes sense for Pawtucket to compete with Attleboro - two cities that share a border in name only - only because of the influence of voters in the Pioneer Valley.

To be clear, this isn't some radical call for the abolition of the state.  States exist for a reason, and I don't think that reason can be obliterated just because someone invented the internet. But it is clear that the idea of the economically independent polity is becoming an increasingly thin fantasy. If the analyses like the one done by City Lab are in any way reflective of reality, then the economic potential of regional cooperation is truly staggering. By one estimate, the economic activity of the I-95 corridor already rivals that of Germany. And this is with cities acting as snobby little school-kids who won't admit they're playing in the same sandbox. If we're truly generating that much money by not cooperating, imagine what we could do if we did.

SOURCE: Richard Florida, City Lab, from the Atlantic, http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/03/dozen-regional-powerhouses-driving-us-economy/8575/

Come for the Produce; Stay because you can Afford to...

Farmers Markets provide access to high quality food and help build a vital local industry, but their cost and access problems have made it difficult for them to connect with struggling communities. Now, insurance giants Aetna and the Hartford are going to start offering shuttles to a Hartford area farmers market this summer to help mitigate this problem. In addition to this...

 "The Hartford and Aetna are helping to support the Double Value Coupon Program by donating money — a dollar donated for each dollar their employees spend at the farmers’ market."

Shuttles to bring people to where the food is, and double coupons to help them afford the cost. For people concerned with food security, this will be a program worth watching.

SOURCE: Matthew Sturdevant, the Hartford Courant, http://courantblogs.com/ct-insurance/aetna-the-hartford-offer-shuttle-to-billings-forge-farmers-market/

American Sprawl as art form

Christoph Gielen is bringing his experience in aerial photography to bear on questions of sustainable land-use. Gielen takes photographs of suburban development to highlight the impact on communities and the environment of car-centered development. Urbanophiles are well aware of the inefficiencies of suburban development, but seeing it from this perspective is quite breath-taking.

LINK HERE: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/photographer-goes-to-great-heights-for-call-to-arms-on-sprawl/

The Best Way for Small Cities to Support Car Traffic? Don't.

The Boston Globe recently covered an interview with the new mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, who, among other things, is trying to make the Eternal City less reliant on cars. This is no small feat. According to the article, Rome has "about 980 cars per 1,000 adults...versus 350 and 415 cars in London and Paris, respectively." And that number is down slightly. While he is taking a number of approaches, one in particular caught my eye, as it seems like it could be applicable to the smaller cities of the Northeast.

"[The mayor] decided to close the Via dei Fori Imperiali, a major thoroughfare with heavy traffic, to non-essential vehicles on weekdays, and created a pedestrian-only plaza on weekends. And he’s limiting traffic on Rome’s most noteworthy roundabout — the one at the Colosseum."

While the cities of the northeastern United States are obviously nowhere near as old as Rome, we are home to some of the oldest cities in the country. As such, our cities often have similar transportation concerns. After all, the technology that Roman streets were built to accommodate is more or less the same tech New England cities were built around; that is, horse, cart and foot traffic. Narrow roads and historic buildings do not make car-friendly infrastructure easy to develop.  In the past, this has been seen as a problem. Now, it should be seen as an opportunity.

The downtowns of several major southern New England cities (e.g. Providence, Worcester, Pawtucket, New Bedford) have all at one point or another been stuck in the quandary over how to force the square peg of the car culture into the round hole of historic preservation. And many of the compromises reached have had a lasting, and some would say, devastating impact. Providence, for instance, has found itself with a nearly a third of its historic buildings leveled for surface parking. Others, like Pawtucket, have seen their downtowns by-passed by new infrastructure entirely.

What makes Mayor Marino's approach so interesting, is that turns the prevailing 20th century assumption - that if you want people in your downtown, you must accommodate their cars - completely on its ear. If narrow streets are bad for cars, then why not exclude them from the equation entirely? Small city centers can begin to make a certain kind of sense when experienced on foot that is completely imperceptible behind the wheel. Pawtucket's city center is notorious for insane traffic patterns and horrible parking. Yet the narrow streets are perfectly suited for pedestrians and cyclists to take in the beautiful remnants of it's early 20th century architecture.

The lesson of this and similar approaches (think the closing of Broadway in NYC) is that we need to start developing our cities around people again, not their machines. We've spent so much time and energy building to suit the automobile, it's not even clear if we've given any thought to the people inside them. Approaches like this, while they are certainly not magic bullets, at least show that development is moving in a direction away from machines and back towards people. And that has to be a good thing.

SOURCE: Martine Powers, Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/31/italian-mayor-not-that-one-declares-that-cars-are-longer-king/wVZWyoRGJUOHS6ceHg3rVK/story.html?utm_content=bufferdfe21&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Reports of my Death (by Bike-Share) have been Greatly Exaggerated...

One year and 14.7 million miles of biking have passed since New York opened its bike-share program, in what most people assume to be the dangerous city in the world for cyclists. Well, it turns out that, not only were the extreme portents of doom a little over-heated, they were flat out wrong. With over 8 million trips under its belt, Citibike is reporting that they had not a single reported casualty using their system. This is great news for cycling advocates. The longer a city like New York can go without reporting a tragedy, the more sensible bike-share programs will seem in other (decidedly less dangerous) cities.

SOURCE: Will Oremus, Slate.com, http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/30/nyc_citi_bike_zero_fatalities_in_new_york_city_bike_share_program_s_first.html

Economic Development in Rhode Island - It's GO Time

Last month, I was fortunate to play a small part in developing the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation's report, "Actions for Economic Development in Rhode Island." The report offers a wealth of potential action items policy makers can pursue to help boost RI's economic fortunes (hint: eliminating all taxes is NOT one of them).

The section I worked on, along with my colleagues at New Commons, Camoin Associates and Broadband Rhode Island, focused on developing a gigabit broadband infrastructure as a way to give a boost, not just to business, but to the entire ecosystem of commerce, including businesses, consumers, regulatory agencies, et al. If you're curious about how Rhode Island might be able to maximize its economic potential, then this report (put together lovingly by the folks at Fourth Economy) is definitely worth a read.

SOURCE: Greater Rhode Island, http://greaterrhodeisland.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/thinking-about-economic-development/

My New, New Thing

I have to confess, I have far too many blogs. Wordpress, Tumblr, social media feeds...all of them still standing and hardly any updated with any frequency. For the most part, this problem can be chalked up to a shift in interest. In the past three years I have gone from a focus on elections and politics, to a focus on cities and communities. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest is simple frustration. To be a true politics wonk, you need to be an activist or a policy maven; or else be content to observe and report on the movements of a heard of angry cats you have no hope of controlling. At any rate, there are few areas of politics that aren't resistant to innovation and experimentation, and none more so than electoral systems. If your area of interest is electoral systems, you'd better be happy to theorize. As it turns out, I'm not.

Thankfully, I get just as big a kick out of urbanism and planning. Cities are increasingly the gravitational center around which society coalesces. They are the engines of the information economy. They are the laboratories in which answers to the problems of climate change, economic resilience, social and economic justice are being sought.  And it is currently a very dynamic space. Cities are now more open to innovation and disruption than perhaps at any time in the last century.  To be involved in urban planning and development, is to be involved in shaping policy responses to some of the most pressing challenges we face as a nation.

With this new, new blog, I'm hoping to create a repository for ideas I find compelling enough to share. As I go through the process of graduate school (did I mention I'll be entering the Community Development and Planning program at Clark University in a couple of months), network with practitioners and get introduced to new ideas, I hope I can use this site as a place to share, digest and expand on what I'm learning. Or, at the very least, to finally use one of my blogs efficiently.