Strong Towns Blog

Friday News Digest

2012-05-25T05:02:03Z

This is a bittersweet day for me. Nearly eight years ago, my oldest daughter Chloe was born. I was very lucky to be able to arrange my schedule so as to spend every Friday home alone, just the two of us. Spending family time together is important, of course, but there was nothing like that one day a week the two of us were there with only the other. After two and a half years, Stella was born and joined us on Fridays, making it three of us, something that continued until Chloe started kindergarten.

Since then Fridays have been all about Stella. Spending time alone with Chloe as an infant and toddler is a way different experience than being with Stella as a 4 and 5 year old. I've not only come to know and deeply enjoy her but have developed an appreciation for what it means to be the second, and youngest, child. With the school year coming to an end, Chloe will be joining us next week and, while I am looking forward to that, I know that with Stella starting kindergarten herself this fall, this will be our last Friday with just the two of us. I don't want to be overly dramatic, but I can't help but pause and notice how fast this time has gone. I'm so lucky to have been able to spend all this time with such an amazing person.

Stella Faith proudly displaying the fact that she is big enough to ride the Kali River Rapids ride at Disneyworld this past March. Despite her height and enthusiasm, in the end she was too nervous to go. I made sure and let her know I wasn't disappointed. Next time, Steef.Enjoy this week's news.

For those of you in Minnesota, it has been a while since I've given a Curbside Chat presentation where you could easily attend. That changes here over the coming month, beginning next Wednesday in Roseville where the Independence Party of MN has invited me to speak in their Independent Thinking series. I'm really excited about this one as they are expecting a really good turnout. If you can't make that one, check out the entire list of upcoming Chats and, if there are none near you, make a request and we'll see what we can make happen.

I was intrigued and flattered with a recommendation this week from the Land Use Prof Blog. We appreciate the link and are glad you found us.

Last Friday I was on MPR with Tanya Snyder of DC Streetsblog talking about the future of the exurbs. If you haven't heard that, it is worth a listen. You can also read Tanya's account on, where else, DC Streetsblog. The feedback I've gotten is that everyone loved the lobster analogy. Our long time readers know what inspired that.

And the blog Reinventing Parking linked to the guest essay from Michael Brown we posted earlier this year. It was an excellent piece that we've received a lot of feedback on. If you have a similar story, are a good writer and would like to try your handiwork out on this stage, we're accepting guest submissions for some of our off days (we routinely publish on Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Just email me at marohn@strongtowns.org and we'll see what we can do.

So who's sitting around waiting for the federal government to appropriate some money that will trickle down and help their city grow again? A highway project, maybe, or a new sewer system? Or how many cities have recently done projects with federal dollars, infrastructure they are now obligated to maintain, confident in the belief that you needed to get your share now and worry about the long term costs later? You may want to stop and consider not only your own solvency, but the solvency of your partner. What can't continue forever, won't.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

I'm becoming more convinced that the planning profession and the traditional advocates for "sustainability" have no clue what Agenda 21 is about. Too many simultaneously dismiss their concerns as ridiculous yet overestimate their potency as an organizing force. I think this is based on the pervasive and unfortunate belief that most people, especially those that may be found at a Tea Party rally, lack intelligence. Most Americans are incredibly intelligent and won't follow idiotic suggestions over the long run, but most also are highly skeptical of government, especially planners. (And rightly so, or do I need to mention urban renewal, suburbanization and other social experiments perpetuated by government planners to make the obvious point.) Here's another article in the same, disappointing, vein, complete with snarky speak and condescension. Read this and ask yourself how you would rephrase this from a Strong Towns perspective to build consensus among a broader audience.

To give you an idea of what they're aiming for, here are some of Minneapolis' goals: lowering green house gases, reducing air pollution, providing alternate forms of transportation, increasing bikeways, maintaining the tree canopy, having zero beach closings, boosting green jobs and redeveloping polluted industrial sites.(I didn't see anything about forced abortions or taking away people's right to travel.)

There are two ways to deal with that that fear Agenda 21. Get them to speak with precision about what they fear and respond to them the way Connie Moran has. The first will help many of them discover their own beliefs -- which, because most people are intelligent won't be incoherent -- and the second will give them an historical reference point in their own idealized past, a past they are yearning to return to. Notice how she doesn't try to argue walkability or sustainability but talks like a mayor, using terms like "market driven", "safety" and "choice".

Mixed-use buildings have been in Ocean Springs for over a hundred years, when many families lived above their shops. Developers want to build them now because they are market-driven. "Complete Streets" refers to making our streets safe not only for cars, but also for pedestrians and cyclists -- so we may offer transportation options for our citizens that do not bind them to their car.

New Urbanist principles create more freedom of choice, more housing opportunities, and more convenience. After Katrina our citizens demanded a more "walkable" community. We have built that in our Front Beach Master Plan (which won the 2010 Award of Excellence for best planning project from the Mississippi Municipal League) and in our Downtown Revitalization project.

I was interviewed a couple of months ago for a class project from the graduate program at the Humphrey Institute. It was fun and I like how they used my quotes, but it was especially neat to be featured along with the former VP of the United States. Not something that happens routinely in my life.

And while we spend $670 million on the Old Economy Project that Refuses to Die, policymakers in Washington D.C. deliberate on just how aggressive we are going to be in propping up our failing transportation systems. I find it incredible that we are debating a national budget for transportation that, on the high end, is going to be $55 billion per year when a state like California (to use just one example) has an annual maintenance deficit of $37 billion. Note that California's deficit already depends on a federal government that fully funds transportation.

Mica said Republicans on the conference committee were willing to work with Democrats on finding common ground on transportation funding, but he added "we're going to have to pay for this and pay for this responsibly.

"We're not going to raise taxes," Mica said. "Anyone who wants to raise taxes, you're on the wrong committee."

A preview of coming attractions: Detroit is looking to permanently shut down half of their street lights. Half the lights are shut down today because there is no money to maintain them. This policy shift would simply consolidate the ones being maintained to neighborhoods where it makes sense, a quite intelligent -- albeit politically difficult -- approach if you think about it.

There is a certain segment of our readership that always gets angry with me when I talk about public safety issues. Sorry, but I have to pass on this report, which addresses an issue I have seen from the public servant side of the ledger (the side that is benefiting from these transactions -- not the "criminal" side) that is not only ripe for abuse, but is being widely abused. Such abuse is a natural outcome of the complex systems we have created, where the public servant has six degrees of separation from the public they are serving. Again, this is not a flaw in the character of individuals but a flaw in systems that make this approach not only advantageous, but arguably necessary. Your disgust with me may be registered in the comments section.

Minneapolis needs you, Ethan Kent, my friend from the Project for Public Spaces. I'm not an architectural critic or one deeply immersed in the nuance of the historic preservation debate, but I am one who is ready to move on. Convince me otherwise.

These days two of the plaza’s three fountains no longer work, their pumps and lines not easily replaceable. Concrete is stained and crumbling, exposing rebar. The reflecting pool is dry more often than not. And those intimate spaces are occasionally put to unsavory uses. Peavey Plaza’s time may be up. Even aspreservationists argue for rehabilitation of what they consider the finest surviving example of Mr. Friedberg’s work, the City of Minneapolis, which owns 75 percent of it, has commissioned a significant redesign of the space. The plaza has become another battleground in the wars being fought around the country between preservationistsdetermined to save what they see as underappreciated Modernist designs and cities and developers pushing to move on.

Steve Mouzon had some practical insights on skyscrapers that anyone advocating for increases in density should understand. Higher density is badly needed, but it must be accompanied by good urbanism and quality placemaking. Density alone is more a problem than a solution.

In most moderate climates, passively-conditioned buildings benefit from exterior walls with thermal mass, a property almost completely missing from glass curtain walls. Unfortunately, high-rise buildings cannot be retrofit with massive walls because the building structure would not support the many tons of additional weight. This, combined with the issues above, mean that glass-clad buildings that cannot be retrofit will be uninhabitable in a period of unaffordable energy costs.

I've only had the time to scan this report, but the question in the title -- Are we strangling ourselves with one-way networks? -- can definitely be answered YES and, from the conclusions that include a page of "strategies for restoring two-ways", this looks like a valuable read.

And for my Facebook friends that have been teasing me because Rhapsody started posted the songs I listen to on my timeline and they are rather young and girly, I offer you this glimpse into what Friday is all about here. This is Stella's current favorite band and song. I'll post this any day that she is still young enough to love it.

Enjoy the three day weekend, everyone, and please do what you can to honor those we are memorializing. I wish you all a safe, happy time. See you back here on Tuesday.

The Micro City Beautiful: Programming Drives Investment (Part 3)

2012-05-24T10:00:17Z

For the past three days we have featured the work of Barett Steenrod, recent graduate from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and College of Landscape Architecture. This year I have had the opportunity to get to know Barett and have been quite impressed with his work, particularly his research into my hometown of Brainerd, MN. For anyone looking to hire a bright young planner who has some wordly experience to go with a quality education, you can check out Barett on his website or meet him on LinkedIn.

-Chuck Marohn

When does a household decide that it is time to upgrade into a home that is newer, larger, or both

Answer one- abundance of wealth. Answer two- abundance of credit. Answer three- out of actual or perceived necessity. The household that justifies its move because it has grown larger than its home can manage is the household that is most justified in its investment from a cost/benefit standpoint.

Similarly, new infrastructure investment by a city is going to be most justified when the programming that the present infrastructure supports, either limits the expansion of successful programming, or works against the success/efficiency of programming in its current size.

The transition from one phase to another in my proposal for Brainerd depends on when the community of Brainerd knows that there is enough pent-up frustration with the state of existing conditions and begins demanding that, “the time has come to do something.” Remember, simple community demand for action to happen is not enough, the social capacity of the community must also be grown so that when people begin demanding that “it’s time for a change,” they will also be able to look around and say, “who wants to help me make this change?”

Yesterday, I touched on the assets of my study area of Brainerd. On the existing conditions maps below, the study area that I was focused on is shown at full color, the areas adjacent are much lighter.

Take notice of the assets and potential assets on this map; stripped of the site’s landscape minutia; i.e. shadows, cars, etc. you can see that the site consists of large buildings, large expanses of parking lots and streets, and some areas of turf. Within the entire map (not just my study area) there are around 1,200 off street parking stalls. You’ll notice some trails and venues (indicated by icons) that are social attractions for people (restaurants, bike shops, etc.). The challenge with Brainerd and many small cities that have a similar downtown footprint is how to expand upon the existing assets in a way that is simultaneously interesting, relevant, and economical.

Under the leadership of City Planner Mark Ostgarden, Brainerd has begun to make great strides in reconnecting to its region by seizing the opportunity to connect to the regional trail network that has continued to develop in recent years. Brainerd has built trails, is building more trails this year, and is demonstrating a proactive approach to make it easy for trail users to access destinations within the city.

My proposals in Phase 1 build upon the work the city has done.

(Note- there are a number of interrelated components that you will see on the maps that I will not have time to address. I am happy to field questions about aspects of Phases 1-3 that you remain curious about, but could not cover).

Phase 1- Marking the Change We Need

The city must communicate to residents and businesses that changes are afoot, and residents and business owners must be encouraged to do something “risky.” The change that is needed must be initiated and marked in a way is noticed. These changes should be inexpensive to implement, easy to do/undo, easily understood, and embody a no-to-low barrier of entry.

The practice of marking a surface, especially of a street or parking lot, has the consequence of altering people’s behavior. The use of surface marking is easily understood and relatively inexpensive. In phase 1, the city government partners with business/property owners to launch a campaign of marking pavement differently from what is typical of local practice. The marking does not happen alone, but as a result of a program that is centered on increasing Brainerd’s regional relevance through the creation of easy/desirable trail connections to destinations throughout the city.

East River Road is marked to facilitate safe passage for people in cars, but also for people who are not in cars. This 45’ road can be painted in a way that enhances access for all people. It is important to do this as it is thee connection between the athletic fields & riverfront parkland in the south, and the historic residential neighborhood to the north. East River Road is has moderate traffic volume, although I saw it used by a bicyclist and a longboarder in a span of 15 minutes, yet when I spoke to a mother about the idea of her children using this road to get to the Kiwanis Park, she feared for their safety as the road currently is configured. Programming this road to support safe movement on foot or in a vehicle is an easy first step.

You will notice that on the map, there are bright green areas that are scattered among some of the parking stalls within the lots. These are areas where alternative surface treatments may be appropriate. In the case of two or three parking stalls, seasonal pockets of “park” can be placed. In the course of one afternoon, a small group of people can provide some greenery, communicate that something new has happened in Brainerd, give employees and patrons a place to take a break, and placed more stock in Brainerd’s desire to be a regional trail users’ destination. The strategic placement of field turf, a few planters with trees, mulch, a picnic table and a bike rack onto an acre of asphalt lot has the ability to triple the layers of program being actively supported. More ever, it allows a business/property owner to call attention to itself in a positive way while reintroducing into downtown the qualities that attract people to the region in the first place- the ability to relax under the trees.

A unique blending of the methods used in the last two paragraphs can work within the long parking lot on the north side of the Crow Wing County Jail. This lot provides an asphalt connection between West and East Front Street that is seemingly underutilized. The lot has two 22’ two-way drive lanes and three perpendicular rows of parking stalls. This lot is large enough to support expansive types of programming- flea market sized affairs- but sits half empty much of the time. Therefore, in this first phase, the 22’ wide two-way drive aisle along the south side of the lot, is converted to a 15’ wide one-way drive aisle, 45 degree angle parking, and 8’ bicycle and pedestrian lane with a 2’ painted buffer.

The reorganization of this lot facilitates east-west connection for trail users coming into or departing downtown. Programs or events can be supported alongside the bicycle-pedestrian corridor in the one-way drive aisle and angled parking stalls while still allowing for two-way access through the lot in the north drive aisle. An additional benefit of treating this lot as a big adaptable stage is that the two-story north facing exterior of the jail, as well as the 16’ turf area between the jail and the parking lot can be treated as a backdrop by which art installations, imagery promoting local businesses, or other visually interesting locally produced media can be displayed.

In each of the Phase 1 strategies above, an existing land use is marked differently in order to maximize its benefit for as many users as possible through a diversification of programming. Phase 2 is a consequence of successful programs outgrowing the capabilities of the Phase 1 infrastructure.

Phase 2- Embracing the Change We Need

You will notice that in the Phase 2 map above, surface treatments begin to give rise to infrastructure investment. The city recognized that East River Road really was a parkway in disguise. The painting of a road that lead to safer trips between the northern neighborhood and the high school athletic fields and Kiwanis Park, has matured into a Boulevard Parkway, trees, shrubs, and grade all separate the uses within the right-of-way (ROW). The transition from painted street to planted parkway would occur when the demand of citizens upon this connection reached a critical threshold.

Similarly, infrastructure changes to the northern parking lot of the Crow Wing County Jail are subtle, but important enough to facilitate large changes in the programs that can be supported in the lot. Paint that was placed in Phase 1 gives rise to locally designed and constructed traffic bollards. Each bollard has LEDs to provide path/aisle illumination and legibility at night. Bollards are spaced 8’ apart with each 8th bollard being a utility bollard that provides potable water and 240 volt electrical connections.

Additionally, the bollards would be designed to serve as anchor points for securing events tents to.

Utility bollards would also be placed in the centerline of the parking row where the 45 degree angled parking heads on the 90 degree parking. Light poles currently are placed on this line, so spacing utility bollards in between light poles is a reasonable way to extend services to the entire jail lot for events that are really large.

Within Phase 2, the demand on the seasonal pockets of park space that have been the norm within parking stalls around the Phase 1 project site will have been great enough to warrant the installation of permanent pockets of park space. Within the parking lots of the Brainerd City Hall and the financial institution to the north, temporary parks give rise to a plaza that includes the type of infrastructure that creatively provides utility and services that enable public events to happen. The parking on site in Phase 1 is reconfigured in Phase 2. Interestingly, there is no loss of parking stalls by doing, a community amenity is created that can be leveraged to support infill development on the Phase 2 parking lots in Phase 3.

Phase 3- Being the Change We Seek

The last phase demonstrates one future outcome based on the initial steps detailed in the paragraphs above. There is a logical and fairly interesting progression of thought on my part that led to the forms you see in the map below, but regardless of whether these forms or another came to be in reality, a realistic outcome depends on the ability for a community to heed the recommendations and best practices from other places- especially those which concern the ability of a community to work together.

If there is divisiveness, contempt for cooperation, distrust, apathy, or discord in any measure, steps must be taken to mend relationships and build rapport among community members before any worthwhile homegrown economic revitalization will freely grow. Fortunately, the types of activities that people enjoy- festivals, concerts, petting zoos and the like, are programs that even the most die-hard opponents can cooperate on. If you can get your city’s political and civil adversaries working together in support of events that your community can celebrate… and you keep doing this, you will likely end up with a city that people come to and where decision makers start to get-along. When your successful programs begin to have this effect and continue to grow in size, then you can begin justifying a need for infrastructure while also contemplating visionary civic investment; because at that moment, you will have the capacity to do both.

The author of this series, Barett Steenrod, can be contacted from his website or on LinkedIn.

The Micro City Beautiful: Programming Drives Investment (Part 2)

2012-05-23T10:00:55Z

Yesterday, today and tomorrow will feature the work of Barett Steenrod, recent graduate from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and College of Landscape Architecture. This year I have had the opportunity to get to know Barett and have been quite impressed with his work, particularly his research into my hometown of Brainerd, MN. For anyone looking to hire a bright young planner who has some wordly experience to go with a quality education, you can check out Barett on his website or meet him on LinkedIn.

-Chuck Marohn

People are found where a place is interesting and relevant. Just as a speech, article, or blogpost must be interesting as well as relevant in order to find and retain a captive audience, so too must the spaces and places we create. If a place lacks relevance or interest, it will be a place that lacks the power to draw people to it. Places are most successful when they are planned, designed, and built with a program in mind that will be as interesting to people as it is relevant. The importance of a program with wide appeal cannot be understated in revitalization, which is why today I am going to explain how the application of programs within targeted areas of downtown Brainerd can begin to initiate revitalization.

In 1989, Brainerd was the recipient of an American Institute of Architect’s Rural/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT). At that time, the team identified a 25% oversupply of parking within the entire downtown. Of the 520 stalls needed to supply demand to existing businesses and government offices, there were found to be 650 stalls available. In my analysis of the northwest portion of downtown where my project was sited, I counted a supply of about 1,300 parking stalls, of which around 1,200 spaces are off-street. In 1989 the perception among residents was that there was insufficient parking space downtown; today that perception remains according to City Planner Mark Ostgarden.

There are two likely ways many of you might treat the amount of land in Brainerd dedicated to parking- as either as asset or as a liability. I believe the answer depends on ones’ mindset, and instead take the position that the six acres of land (not including driving lanes) these parking stalls represent is not an either/or proposition but an opportunity. They are an asset from the standpoint of being areas with good drainage, controlled access, and supportive of just about any load you can bring to bear. They represent an investment that should provide a return. They are a liability from the standpoint that they only serve one kind of active use of the land, are not destinations in and of themselves, they are not something of beauty, and the help contribute to a harsh downtown climate in summer and a harsh climate in the Mississippi River after snow melts or rain falls. These parking stalls constitute an opportunity in that they literally represent a place where government, a business, or a citizen to try something risky, innovative, or entrepreneurial with how civic space is defined and used in a community.

In a theatre, the stage exists to put on a show. A stage is where the action happens, it is where the sets get built, and it is notorious for being able to host a variety of very different scenes with ease. In fact, the infrastructure under, over and around a stage exists to support the programs that happen upon it. In the same way, the parking lots and underutilized streets of micro cities can be thought of as stages. They are built to host one type of programming, the safe and efficient movement and storage of 5,000 pound objects, but they can also just as easily be repurposed to host other programs.

(Note- these pictures were found from around the web and are not my creation.)

In the collage of photos above, you’ll notice that despite the many types of activities that are happening, they all share some similarities. Each activity takes place in a street or a parking lot; the amount of planning needed to make each of the above programs happen will vary, but ultimately involves volunteerism and collaboration to happen. In some instances, one person working solo can bring an event to fruition. In other instances, many people working together will bring an event to reality. Some events will require coordination with the city and adjacent businesses, some will not. Most likely in all of these events, people with very different ideas of philosophy, politics, or economics can find ways to work together to make an event a success. Even if a group of people have sincerely held legitimate differences based on ideology, they should still be able to work together for the purpose of creating something that is fun and independent of ideology. Someone who is left-of-left politically may find it hard to agree with someone who is right-of-right, but if these two people are paired together as volunteers to insure the success of the registration table at their community’s First Annual Gus Macker Tournament, as mature adults, they should be able to work together successfully. I believe this because each person will understand that the outcome of the event depends on their willingness to put the success of the event ahead of personal grievances over ideology. The power of creating programs and events in one’s community is that the collaboration that is required of individuals by the event serves as the basis for helping a community grow its social network. The stronger the social network of a community, the easier it becomes for a community to cast a vision for itself and then go and make the vision a reality.

Today, we have identified assets and potential assets. We have seen the importance of using program to both create relevant and interesting purpose within the assets we have identified as well as shown how the creation of programming through events can grow the social network of a community. I have not specifically talked about quality of life, but hopefully you see how the process of bringing programming to assets as well as potential assets, begins to address quality of life issues. Tomorrow, I will walk you through the phasing proposals I have developed for Brainerd that are based on what we have covered today. It is within the phasing strategy that I will also cover how and when infrastructure improvements are justified.

The Micro City Beautiful: Programming Drives Investment (Part 1)

2012-05-22T10:00:23Z

The next three days will feature the work of Barett Steenrod, recent graduate from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and College of Landscape Architecture. This year I have had the opportunity to get to know Barett and have been quite impressed with his work, particularly his research into my hometown of Brainerd, MN. For anyone looking to hire a bright young planner who has some wordly experience to go with a quality education, you can check out Barett on his website or meet him on LinkedIn.

-Chuck Marohn

In the United States, there are 576 places that are not quite metropolitan regions and are not quite rural. These are micropolitan regions, or as I will refer to them, micro cities. Micro cities outnumber their larger metropolitan cousins, are home to around 30 million people, and face a unique challenge in the 21^st century; namely, how to stay economically viable in a globalized world.

As a recently graduated Masters student in, first, Landscape Architecture, and then secondly in Urban Planning, I was drawn to the challenge of trying to apply what I had learned in school to a micro city. I did this because of the 30 million people I mentioned earlier; these folks want a first world experience where they live, but as far as the disciplines of urban planning or architecture go, the micro cities do not seem to warrant a lot of attention. I wanted to do justice to the types of places where many of us live and work and apply some of my newfound design and planning knowledge to the benefit of small cities. Through a fairly rigorous analysis process, I eventually funneled down to a particular micro city to work with, which happened to be Brainerd, Minnesota. A week after Brainerd was in the bag as my project city, Providence demonstrated support for my project when Chuck Marohn (whom I did not know or seek out) was assigned to be a mentor to me in my final year of graduate school. So as a result of these circumstances, I come to you today to share what I learned in my work with Brainerd.

Between now and when I type my last word as a guest blogger on the 24^th, I will lay out a strategy for you to consider in your efforts to rejuvenate the small town or micro city you reside in. The suggestions that I share with you are not based entirely on my own opinion, but will be based from four sources: examples of success from other small cities; best practices from my interviews with entrepreneurs, developers, and other allied professionals in the design and planning fields; best practices from the world of urban retail design; and recommendations from the entrepreneurship literature. While my reading, research, and interviews were exhaustive within the confines of my efforts as a graduate student, they should not be considered 100% complete. However, as I worked on this project in Brainerd, I felt that to give credibility to my efforts, I needed to propose solutions that were based on a metric of one type or another, which is why I placed such an emphasis on finding best practices to draw from.

There are a number of best practices/principles that appeared to be most important, as I found them to show up with regularity in my research. The identification of assets and conversion of liabilities into assets is very important. Focusing on improving the quality of life for residents and visitors is important, as is growing the social network of a city. Starting small with events or initiatives and growing them into larger affairs is also key. Lastly, an investment of infrastructure is also considered important, and in some situations, critical for the success of some programs. Since these best practices appear to be more universal in their importance, I will focus on what their application looks like within a revitalization strategy for Brainerd.

The position that I lay out before you today, and will expand upon and defend over the next two days is that revitalization of a micro city does not depend on big public works projects or fancy initiatives, but on how a community communicates to itself and to outsiders what is an appropriate use for its most important and least important pieces of land.

In the meantime, I invite you to try and recall all the interesting and novel ways you have seen a parking lot or street used. Seriously. I want you to give this some thought. Start a list and see how many uses you can come up with. Your community’s quality of life and long-term economic health may depend on your ability to think creatively about what kinds of programs/events your city’s parking lots and streets can support.

I’ll help start you out on this list with a few easy ones…

Farmer’s Market
Antique/Muscle Car Show
Street Fair
Gus Macker Tournament
Chalk Art Festival

The Value of Value Capture

2012-05-21T10:00:25Z

Today we spend money on infrastructure in the hopes of creating growth. That's backwards. Infrastructure should not be a catalyst for growth but something that emerges in support of productive patterns of development. There has to be a relationship between the infrastructure we build and the value that is created.

Thanks to everyone who sent us such positive feedback regarding my appearance on Minnesota Public Radio last Friday. If you missed it, the audio from the entire show is available on the MPR website. I want to thank everyone that has supported us financially this year. Your contributions have given me the time to be able to take on more and more opportunities like that where we can spread our message to a huge audience. We're working on ways to do even more. In the meantime, I promise to keep at it as much as I can. Thank you.

Late last month I wrote about the return on investment of our highway projects (Paved with good intentions, April 30). I pointed out what is obvious to anyone who thinks it through: Even if modern transportation improvements really did create a lot of wealth, we capture too little of it to be able to continue this system as we have built it.

The example I used was a diverging diamond in Colorado, a high return investment by today's standards. The official numbers were that this $7.2 million investment would generate $157 million in wealth and prosperity. Instead of debating that -- demonstrating the fiction of such numbers is old hat for us -- we simply pointed out that $157 million in GDP growth would only return $260,000 to the federal coffers for highway projects. Since $260,000 is substantially less than $7.2 million, repeating this great wealth generation trick, not to mention maintaining this diverging diamond, is going to be difficult.

I was really disappointed that nobody took me up on my challenge to defend the value of the overall system. I did receive a second hand rebuttal that essentially argued that my analysis was too simplistic, that I'm overlooking all of the (unidentified) second order and third order growth effects. This is what I call the "it's the system, dude" argument. Sure, we may lose money on each project that you measure, but the overall effect of the system generates more than enough wealth to keep it all going.

This is what I call the Infrastructure Cult. We have no proof for our belief that highway spending creates prosperity, we just believe it to be true. We believe it so strongly that we can easily dismiss evidence to the contrary.

I'm going to repeat my challenge: Someone demonstrate how highway funding, and American post WW II development in general, is not simply a large Ponzi scheme, where spending generates the near term illusion of wealth in exchange for massive, unfunded, long term obligations. Show us how it is making the country financially stronger. I'm dying for someone to make this case as opposed to simply spout the belief.

Let's examine the way the railroads were constructed. Nobody is arguing that there wasn't government subsidy of the railroads. There was. The land for the tracks and the towns along it were largely given to the railroad companies. Examine that investment, however. Land the government owned was given away. (I realize we can debate whether they owned it -- they didn't -- but that is another conversation.) There was no long term taxpayer commitment. There was no ongoing expense the government incurred.

The railroad then built the tracks. Did they build them and then charge a fee (the equivalent of today's gas tax) to pay for the construction? Absolutely not. That would have been far too speculative. In order to pay for the tracks they did something simple and obvious: they developed the towns along the way. The railroads owned the land, created the railroad stop, subdivided the land around it, sold it to speculators and others looking to develop and then used that money (minus some profit margin, for sure) to build the line. In other words, they used a value capture mechanism to pay for the infrastructure.

The railroads were land developers first, railroad operators second. Once the line was built and the land at the towns sold off, they were free of the need to pay off capital expenses. That meant that the fares that the railroad collected could go directly to covering operations and maintenance (and some profit, for sure). That's a viable model.

It is also a model with direct feedback. What happened when things didn't work out, when a town failed to develop properly or when the development of new towns got out ahead of the demand. If the railroads operated like today's highway departments, if the growth slowed down, we would simply build more railroads and towns. After all, the new infrastructure creates growth, right?

Of course, that is not what happened. Many railroads went out of business, and nearly all lost money, in the Long Depression of 1870, which was at least partially caused by over speculation along the railroad lines. That is what happens in a real market system when there is malinvestment and supply runs too far ahead of demand.

What happens today is that we get an infrastructure cult, where new spending on highways is justified because of a belief that it creates growth and jobs. Add to that a perverse tax like the gas tax -- where the system gets more revenue the more inefficient and wasteful people are with their use of resources -- and the ability to deficit spend at artificially low rates, and you have a system that is long divorced from financial reality.

One other thing to note about railroads and highways... When a railroad is built, it lasts a long time without needing to be replaced and without a ton of maintenance. In financial terms, you can amortize the maintenance charges over a long, long period of time. In contrast, highways require an enormous amount of maintenance, especially up north where I live. And even with good maintenance, a highway will last about a third as long as a railroad.

So understand what we have done with the Suburban Experiment. We took an affordable, efficient and long-lasting mode of transport that was funded privately by direct value capture and direct user fees and replaced it with an expensive, inefficient and maintenance-intensive system that is funded by politicians with deficit spending and a non-correlated fee.

See why we're broke?

So how would we shift from a gimmick system to one of value capture? I don't know in total, but I would start tomorrow with the assessment process. If I ran a DOT and a local government wanted a new improvement, I would assess them and their property owners for the value that is created by that improvement. That won't cover the second and third life cycles, but it would stop a lot of stupid projects from happening. In fact, it would probably stop every project from happening, and understand why.

When you are assessing someone, you are capturing the value created by the project. Highway enhancement projects wouldn't happen today because either (a) there is not enough value created to capture, or (b) the property owners won't be willing speculate that they can recoup the cost of the assessment.

The only reason this system feels normal to us is because it is the system we know. Step back and look at it through the prism of value capture and you will see just how bizarre it is. The Infrastructure Cult is driving us into bankruptcy. It is time we adopted a Strong Towns strategy.

Starting tomorrow, we are going to run a three day series by Barett Steenrod, a graduate student at the University of Minesota's Humphrey Institute, who wrote his master's thesis on my home town of Brainerd, MN. I am a graduate of the Humphrey Institute and they had asked me to mentor Steenrod this year. I really enjoy him and have been impressed with his work, to the point where I asked him if he would share it with you. Check back tomorrow for the first of three posts.

Friday News Digest

2012-05-18T10:00:33Z

This morning at 9:00 AM CST I am going to be a guest on Minnesota Public Radio's Daily Circuit. Tom Weber -- who I really enjoy -- is hosting and appearing with me will be Tanya Snyder, the Capital Hill Editor of Streetsblog. We are going to be discussing the future of the exurbs, which data suggests are slowly dying. I will confirm that data but question whether the pace will continue slowly or speed up dramatically at some point. You can tune in live from the MPR website or catch the podcast later.

This is going to require taking some time away from Stellaworld (which is what my five year old calls Friday when I'm home with her), but it is only an hour and then I'll be back to catching up after missing two Fridays in a row. She starts school in the fall so every Friday I miss home with just her is a tragedy. No more for a while.

Enjoy the news of the week.

I wanted to start this week by acknowledging Erik Reader and the Reader Area Development blog in Peoria, Illinois. He ran a short post last week recommending us to his readers. Thank you - that was very kind. The blog is a rather new and I found the author's bio compelling. He's one of us: smart enough to have real dreams and crazy enough to follow them. Hope we meet someday soon.

Reader Area Development, Inc. was established in 2011 by Erik W. Reader, a Financial Analyst at the time who realized he had a weak spot for renovating neglected properties. Reader left a career in the cubical with a software development company to move cross-country from Dallas, TX to Peoria, IL. The mission was to get involved locally with community redevelopment efforts, when time and money permitted purchase properties to rehab, and to become an advocate of all things smart and sustainable.

I received some confirmation from Joe Linton at the LA Creek Freak blog that I was not too offensive this week in my response to the question about Low Impact Design. Anyone who is a real creek freak is sure to understand that LID is not an end unto itself but a way to mitigate when all else fails.

Creek Freak has written about LID – Low Impact Development. It’s basically a sort of “green building” standard that requires new buildings to detain and/or infiltrate rainwater. While I think that LID is a step in the right direction, at least compared to development as usual, it’s nowhere near the end of the work on getting to healthy creeks and streams.

I love watching our work be taken and applied to local problems elsewhere. The site Transportation Nexus did just that this week with a piece about Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago. The author said it was a "complete road" and that it furthered the mentality of a "45 mph world". Awesome! Then came the recommendation, which was spot on. Keep going!

If we’re really concerned about safety and about reducing pedestrian, bicycle and auto injuries and fatalities in this city, speed cameras are not the answer. Better design is. This is what I would recommend:

Reduce the width of the lanes to 10′ widths, perhaps even dropping a lane. Most of Milwaukee Ave. south of the UP-NW line into downtown is two lanes. This frees up room for the bike lane. In addition, there will be room for a median with protected pedestrian crossings.

The term STROAD is catching on so widely I had to change one of the chapters of the book I am working on to include it. I hope it doesn't become polarizing to anyone (except engineers) the way "sprawl" and "smart growth" have because I would like to continue using the word. It's like penicillin, people. Use it sparingly, only when it is needed and only when it will be effective. Let's all do our part.

One highlight from Marohn’s discussion was a pervasive feature on the American landscape that he termed the “stroad.” With its auto-centric design and drive-in commerce, a “stroad” tries to function as both a street and a road. Marohn described stroads as the “futon of transportation options” because they try to do too many things — accommodating businesses and moving cars, pedestrians, cyclists and transit users — while doing none of them particularly well.

The important conversation over Elvis Presley Boulevard continues in Memphis. I'm only highlighting this again because I so badly want them to do this the right way. Getting this one right could be a watershed moment for so many things there. If you live in Memphis or have friends/family that do, encourage them to get involved. We need lots more success stories like this one to help Memphians forget about this one (so sorry, Griz fans).

Two and a half years later, Victory is a flagship of the revitalized Broad Avenue Arts District in Binghamton, an area once left for dead that’s experienced a resurgence of its own thanks to the spirit of ownership of a group of new tenants determined to make the previously blighted area thrive once again.

If you need another CNU fix, my friend and fellow NextGen'r Joe Nickol wrote an insightful piece about the pivot point we are at with the New Urbanism. This is the essence of the change that I alluded to in my final remarks at the Why We Write session, a conversation that comprises the entire Kunstlercast this week. My comments are at the 1 hour, 16 minute mark (and with all respect to Duncan who thought the session was great, I will fault nobody for skipping the entire thing).

As a next generation of urbanists, we firmly believe that what we have built is not disposable.

Our historic neighborhoods, towns and cities are not just our built heritage but hold the key to the sustainable future of communities across our country.

We have the great opportunity and responsibility to leverage what we have learned through building in a controlled, lab-like setting of our new towns, resort towns, and edge towns and get back to the urban field to begin the monumental task of regenerating our cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

Despite the good and honest efforts of many bright people, I am highly skeptical of the idea that we will have wide scale suburban retrofit or "sprawl" repair. Pick your favorite term, the idea is that we start to fix the urban fabric (or create an urban fabric) in these places in response to the failure of the Suburban Experiment. In theory, okay, but if I live in a suburb and am going to be retrofitted into a poor rendition of a real place, why don't I just move to a real place? And if I can't sell my home or otherwise leave, but I want to, I'm not likely to vote to make the very expensive, structural changes necessary to make it all happen, let alone the uber-expense of simply maintaining the infrastructure already in place. I'm becoming more convinced that we're ultimately going to find ourselves, once again, experimenting on the poor in a cruel reversal of urban renewal.

I did visit a housing development last year that offered “quartets,” McMansions subdivided into four units with four separate entrances. These promised potential buyers the status of a McMansion with the convenience of a condominium, but the concept felt like it was created more to preserve the property values of larger neighboring homes than to serve the needs of the community’s residents.

Shocking news from Southwest Minnesota that the Mn/DOT District there has re-investment needs over the next ten years that exceed revenues by 30%. Is is shocking because, if that is actually the number, that's pretty low. I think going out 25 years would be a tremendous eye opener. It is good to hear someone actually openly discussing this problem that pretty much all engineers and transportation planners in senior positions understand.

In a story in the West Central Tribune, the state said the area’s main corridors — state Highway 23, and U.S. Highways 212 and 71 — will continue to be maintained to meet MnDOT standards for mobility and pavement condition, but within a few years motorists will find pavement conditions on portions of nonprincipal arteries — state Highways 9 and 4 were among those named — will not meet MnDOT technical standards. Business leaders said this would have a negative effect on Willmar and the region.

The fact that this conversation does not open up with a frank and honest accounting of our projected revenues and projected obligations -- and the enormous gap therein -- means that I can't take it seriously (or respect those that do). I don't even think such an accounting is contained anywhere in our dialog. It is taboo. Mn/DOT, you lost me at "dreams and wishes" (which for me would be teleporting and ice cream on the way home from work, respectively).

Instead of obsessing about today's road problems — cursing those potholes and traffic construction delays — MnDOT wants us to take a long-term view, looking 50 years down the road with transportation dreams and wishes.

The state agency is holding a series of 10 workshops around the state, looking for ideas about transportation in the future. They're calling it MinnesotaGo.

"Minnesota GO is our opportunity to hear from Minnesotans about their expectations for transportation today and for the next generation of Minnesotans," said Tom Sorel, MnDOT commissioner. "We are committed to creating a transportation system that will sustain and connect a vital economy, healthy environment and strong communities."

Congratulations to South Bend for hiring one of the best minds on the market, Scott Ford, to be their economic development director. I know Scott through NextGen and have immense respect for his talents. Way to go, South Bend.

"Scott will be a great leader for the city of South Bend's neighborhood and economic development staff," Buttigieg said. "This department is critical to the growth and quality of life in South Bend, and Scott brings the vision, experience and work ethic to make an immediate impact."

A dear friend of mine told me that she heard this story from NPR and it reminded her of me so she recommended that I listen to it. I saved it here to listen to and share but the night is late and I'm not going to be able to preview it before posting it. Hopefully it is not about some psycho nut from high school.

Finally, while I sit on a school board for a local charter school, and I am interested in helping the students learn about geography as a prelude to understanding cities, places and everything I am passionate about, I can't see us investing in Zombie-Based Learning. Although apparently many others did as his project is more than funded. Geez, my eight year old has nightmares over a book we read on Pompeii; I'd hate to see what zombie math did to her.

Take care, everyone, and have a great weekend.

If you value what you read here, consider a donation to help support the Strong Towns movement. Your support -- at whatever level -- will go a long ways towards giving us the resources and credibility we need to spread this important message. And tell a friend about us. It all helps us spread the Strong Towns message.

Mailbag: LID and NU

2012-05-16T10:00:18Z

We received this email a few weeks ago and I wanted to take the time to answer it here.

Charles,

I’d like your opinion on what seems to be a discord between practitioners and advocates of LID, Low-Impact Development or Green Infrastructure, techniques to manage stormwater and water quality, and practitioners and advocates of New Urbanism.

Both seem to be viable alternatives to our current patterns of development, land and resource use. Although, my concern with the latter is that it often ends up producing only very expensive housing.

In any case, LID is an essential component in moving into a sustainable future. It also fits quite well with returning roads to community streets. There really should be no contention or disagreement between LID and New Urbanism. It would be unfortunate if this chasm were to continue unnecessarily.

Thank you,

Ann P.

I may disappoint you, Ann, along with others who may hold Low Impact Design and Green Infrastructure in high esteem. I have no such inclination myself.

First, let's get on the same page as to what is meant by Low Impact Design (LID) and Green Infrastructure. Both are very concerned with the management of stormwater, with a secondary concern (and my experience has been that this is a FAR secondary concern) being habitat preservation. From Wikipedia (which I think is fairly accurate), some of the benefits of LID are described as:

...protecting animal habitats, improving management of runoff and flooding, and reducing impervious surfaces. LID also improves groundwater quality and increases its quantity, which increases aesthetics, therefore raising community value.

LID can also be used to eliminate the need for stormwater ponds, which occupy expensive land. Incorporating LID into designs enables developers to build more homes on the same plot of land and maximize their profits.

My skepticism toward LID is based on my observation of how it has been applied.

First, I see LID being applied almost exclusively to new projects, which are largely themselves on greenfield sites. The stormwater ponds and other such approaches are used to mitigate the negative impacts of the development. This is a sub-optimal outcome because, in almost every instance I have ever seen, the development is the result of a series of government policies that favor greenfield development.

These tend to be poor compromises that ultimately have little impact. Over time, stormwater areas made with pervious pavers or other pervious materials lose their capacity. Ultimately they will fail. There is no mechanism built into any local bureaucracy for measuring their rate of decline or replacing them with materials of similar performance once they do fail. So we ease our conscience a little bit when we require these things, but long term, it only enables bad development.

Which is really the main reason why I have no love for LID. I can't tell you how many times I have been at a meeting where a developer comes in with a terrible project that has been "greenwashed" (I don't like the term, personally, but it makes the point here) by having all of the LID elements in place. Or the LEED certification, for that matter. (Check out Kaid Benfield's post on how the EPA pulled this on their new remote campus in Kansas City). At that point, we're just mitigating negative impacts. I prefer avoidance.

So how would we avoid them in the first place? Well, since we have more infrastructure than we have the capacity to maintain by a startling margin, I would focus development on our core cities where we already have the infrastructure investments in place. Unfortunately, the LID advocates often oppose that type of development as well.

I often point out how the new, sprawling campus that the county built in my hometown comes complete with a nature band aid; rain gardens in the middle of the downtown. Personally, I would rather use that space to build some good urban structures that could house people and businesses and take some of the pressure off the real wetlands we are filling on the periphery of town. (In fact, it should be noted, I would end all of the subsidies of those structures on the periphery and, if that were done, few would ever be built.)

Again, I can't tell you how many meetings I have been at where the LID advocates show up and demand certain checklist items, not understanding the overall context of the site. The two block comparison I wrote about to start the year is a prime example. You have a project that devolved the city, eroded the tax base, reinforced the auto-dependency of the community and the environmentalists were happy with it because it had stormwater retention ponds. That's one dimensional thinking, and it's not good enough.

So I think LID enables the worst kind of development, and really is not that low impact over the long run. Yes, if you insert me into a design review process where the site is set, the building is set and all we are doing is reviewing their site plan, I would push for all of the mitigation efforts I could. Great, but that is a little like Moses advocating for condoms once someone decides to commit adultery. There is a reason the ten commandments are short; they are not encumbered with a lot of nuance.

Maybe we need nuance, and if we do, LID can be it. As for is being a governing philosophy or an optimal approach, it is clearly not.

Neither is New Urbanism, for that matter. At least not the "build a better suburb" type. But if you had been in West Palm Beach last week hanging out with me and the other NextGen of the New Urbanists, you would see that the better bad approach is completely out of favor. There is little tolerance amongst the new flock for the lesser of two evils. Amen to that.

I would strongly recommend reading the work of Steve Mouzon, particularly his book The Original Green. In that, he talks about the way our ancestors used to live and, guess what, it was a lot softer on the environment than what we do today (gadgets, gizmos, gimmicks and all).

Our cities are in the early stages of contraction, with exurbs being the first place where it is really manifesting itself. (Incidentally, I'll be on Minnesota Public Radio this Friday talking about the future of the exurbs -- 9AM CST at MPR.org). I don't want LID to get in the way of building productive places within our core cities and neighborhoods. Concurrently, I want our countryside to return to the low impact pattern of development that dominated North America until recent decades. I think both are likely to start happening as soon as we come to grips with the fact that we can't afford to fix our highway system.

Ann, I know your question was asked with all sincerity. I think we want the same thing and I hope that my lack of support for LID does not keep you from working to build a strong town.

CNU 20 Recap

2012-05-14T10:00:48Z

I just got back from spending a week in West Palm Beach, meeting with New Urbanists and, together, plotting a makeover and economic revival of America.

My voice is gone and after successive nights of little sleep and 14 hours of travel Sunday, not much stamina either, but I'm left with one thought that I want to share today. It is this: the great strength of the Congress for the New Urbanism is the constant, self-reflecting insistence on improvement that all members seem to hold.

I have spent many years as a member of the American Planning Association and the National Society of Professional Engineers. Both professions have their accreditation process and their gatherings are hostage to the continuing education merry-go-round. APA in particular has a cattle car feel, where you run from session to session to get your credits in law or ethics or whatever you need to check off for that year.

At my very first CNU in Denver, I was confused about why the breaks between sessions were so long. Lunch was often two hours and, even then, the sessions afterward didn't start on time because people weren't back. Do New Urbanists just like to eat? No, they have a lot to talk about.

The highlight of my week was a late evening conversation Friday night with mostly NextGen members. We arranged chairs out on the courtyard following a CNU reception and we talked about our vision for the future. What are the big changes that need to happen in America? How do we bring them about? Are we thinking big enough or are we still hostage to some flawed assumptions? It was invigorating.

As I get home then, I receive a link to two videos, one recalling the accomplishments of the first 20 years of New Urbanism. The second reflects on what we did wrong or should be doing better. I can see other professional organizations publicly releasing the first, but can you imagine an organization like the American Society of Civil Engineers releasing the second.

If forced to, their video would go something like this. "What have we done wrong.....well, I suppose we should have made a stronger case for more highway funding."

This is the stuff that makes me proud to be a New Urbanist. If you're not there and you think you know these people, I'm going to humbly suggest that you don't. Plan to be there next year in Salt Lake City and add your voice to the mix.

Our coverage of CNU 20:

Day 1, NextGen9

Day 2, Thursday

Day 3, Friday

Day 4, Saturday

Podcast: Mike Lydon

Podcast: Jennifer Krouse

Podcast: Andrew Burlseon

Podcast: Russell Preston

We'll be releasing more audio in the coming days, so stay tuned. Thank you to everyone who followed us remotely. Hope to see you all in Salt Lake City in 2013.

CNU 20, Day 4

2012-05-12T19:57:30Z

Today has been really crazy. After a late night full of intense discussion and debate, I had an early breakfast, a session and then I was a judge at the annual AuthentiCITY competition. For some reason the wifi here at the convention center has stopped working with all of my devices (three problems makes me think it is not me) and so I've been using my phone wifi. Now that I am able to sit and blog, the phone is nearly dead.

For that reason, I'm going to go back to the Twitter feed and then tweet updates at the hashtag #CNU20. I'm in a session on small towns and small businesses. James Kunstler is speaking at this one (yes, I'm recording). After this is the final plenary and then (a nap?) the closing party.

What an amazing gathering. You can follow what is remaining here.

Thanks everyone who has been with us here during CNU 20.

CNU 20, Day 3

2012-05-11T14:09:10Z

I promised our neglected podcast listeners that they would receive a little more attention while I was at CNU 20 and I've delivered a down payment on that promise. Not only did I record a new session before I left (actually two, but I'm saving on for release next week - sorry), but I've now posted four of the NextGen sessions from the first day of the Congress.

Mike Lydon on Tactical Urbanism

Jennifer Krouse on Open Source

Andrew Burleson on creating value

Russell Preston on adapting to the Next American Urbanism

These guys are all my friends, but they are also brilliant thinkers. I hope you enjoy them -- more to follow shortly.

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We just got done with the big group photo. You know how at family reunions they make everyone crowd together for a big group shot -- imagine that with a bunch of New Urbanists. Then throw in an eight foot diameter beach ball and something that feels like the awkward moments of the movie Christmas Vacation. Loved it, actually.

I've migrated to the session on Transect Principles, which is a subject I am still struggling to fully grasp, although I am starting to have the sinking feeling that it is not my lack of understanding but that I am looking for something that is not there. Don't get me wrong; I think it is brilliant and the people that have put it together and sheer genius. I'm not sure what it is, specifically, that gives me hesitation but it feels like we are still too obsessed with alternative models of greenfield development.

I'm really here to get my Duany fix. I was really frustrated yesterday to have to miss Duany speaking in what I was told was "vintage Andres" and a real "tour de force". Hopefully that is available by video.

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One thing I'm more plugged into this year than in prior years is the Twitter feed. I'm going to share that here because there is a lot of great sutff there. The hashtag for the conference is #CNU20.

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For those of you that, like me, are huge fans of the Kunstlercast, Jim and Duncan are going to be putting together a podcast in Room 1J here at 12:30. I was scolded by Duncan for my old school recording methods, despite having high quality equipment. He says that makes all podcasters look bad. He's right. I'm going to be consulting with him shortly on how to up my game.

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I've joined the Adaptation and Resilience session here after a NextGen planning lunch. On that last item, if you want to be part of a great discussion this evening, NextGen is planning a conversation at the Art of New Urbanism (following the opening ceremony) this evening at 7:30 PM. The discussion will be on the BIG NextGen initiative; a new vision for the next version of American prosperity. Without consulting with my NextGen pals in specific (so these are my thoughts), I would categorize the prior phases (acknowleding the WASP-centric domination of this narrative, which is what the narrative actually was) as:

Colonization -- The promise of a new world.
Westward expansion -- The promise of prosperity for all willing to work for it.
Suburbanization -- The promise of a higher quality of life for the average American.
(NEW) Next America -- Real improvement in our quality of existence, an operating system for our existing places that provides for continual, incremental improvement of the human condition.

This will be an interesting discussion. There are a lot of really bright people committed to building on this concept and embedding it in the CNU (or taking it elsewhere, although I believe the CNU is ready for this change in conversation.)

Back to the session....A term came up that I had heard before -- Jevon's Paradox -- but had not really explored to any degree. Here is an article from the New Yorker that touches on it (something to come back to later). The concept, as briefly postulated here, is that the more efficiently a resource can be used, the more of that resource will be used. The first thing that came to my mind: corn. Let me know if this is a topic that has deep relevance that we should explore here.

Karja Hanson brings up the transition town movement. She calls it economic secession, which is not perhaps how they themselves would categorize it, but is a provocative concept. She claims that some of them have rejected paying taxes since the taxes are being used to promote destructive development practices. Maybe a way to unite Agenda 21 and the communists?

I've been sitting next to Jim Kunstler, who I've been able to speak with a little and find just as enjoying in person as I do in print and podcast. I'm recording this session so I'll share his stuff. He does a lot of public speaking and I've heard him a ton (never bore of it) and so I'm most interested in how you keep things fresh going over it again and again for different audiences. That's a challenge I've faced. Hopefully I can chat with him and learn how he does it, because it always sounds good.

Some quotes:

America has taking gambling from a marginal activity and made it central to our lives, even how we fund things through the government, reinforcing the notion that we can get something for nothing.

There is a destructive notion that "they" are going to come up with something and save us. This is techno narcissism. It's not going to happen.

How long can we continue to be a nation of overfed clowns? Our men today are dressing like babies, a destructive trend. We need to man up.

Jim's latest book, Too Much Magic, is coming out in June. Can't wait.

Duncan Crary, host of the Kunstlercast and author of the book by the same name. Refers to the website Stuff White People Like, #18 of which is "raising awareness". Great speaker and fun stories -- catch our podcast.

Duncan is a publicist and talked about the "stunts" that he has done as part of that. He talked about his summer project of riding on a tugboat. Him and I talked about it on our podcast this past winter. I got to see a website he is setting up and the audio that goes with it -- really fascinating stuff. It is a project that is going to bring a lot of insight -- both current and for posterity, really -- to a way of life that used to be far more common. The website for the undertaking is canalers.com. I'm hoping to do another podcast with him on this subject in the near future.

Duncan Crary at CNU 20.

I'm headed to an open source session at 3:45 with some great people from Memphis to talk about ways we can do some low cost, high leverage projects there to help them reach a tipping point on their path to becoming a strong town. Anyone is welcome so, if you are here, come on down to the first floor and join us.