Students walking to St. John's School in Marshfield, Wis. Courtesy USDOT

I walked to school every day of my life, from kindergarten through high school. It was only a quarter mile to my elementary school, and it was less than a mile to the high school. And every street had a sidewalk.

But that was 30 years ago. Now, such a simple part of life seems to be a thing of the past:

In 2009 only 13 percent of K-8th Grade students were reported as walking or biking to school. That’s a huge shift from 40 years earlier when that number was 48 percent. In 1969, 89 percent of kids who lived within a mile of school walked or rode their bikes; in 2009 that figure was down to 35 percent.

That’s from a story on the U.S. Department of Transportation blog, “Indiana Schools Take Strides Toward Safe Routes to School.” Although those statistics are bleak, the USDOT congratulated Indiana for doing a good job of meeting what the Federal Highway Administration calls the 5 E’s:

1. Engineering – Creating roadway improvements near schools that reduce speeds and potential conflicts between motor vehicles and walking students and establishing safer crossings, walkways, and bikeways.
2. Education – Teaching children important bicycling and walking safety skills and launching driver safety campaigns near schools.
3. Enforcement – Partnering with local law enforcement to ensure traffic laws are obeyed in school zones and initiating community enforcement such as crossing guard programs.
4. Encouragement – Using events and activities to promote walking and bicycling.
5. Evaluation – Monitoring and documenting outcomes and trends to gauge success.

from Flickr user Mondo Tiki Man

A recent Atlantic Cities piece written by Kaid Benfield, “What Developers Get Wrong About Smart Growth,” profiles cities that have made a commendable effort to include public green space in and around adjacent urban infill projects, presumably completed by private developers.

As mentioned in the article, typical infill projects exist on such tight sites that every square foot is maximized for enclosed living spaces. Exterior park-like retreats are rarely prioritized high enough to be included in the project.

First, I contend that we — as private owners/clients and design and construction professionals — need to broaden our definition of “mixed use” and include public and/or private outdoor spaces as one of the most critical program elements right from the earliest design stages. Humans possess a primal need to connect with nature, and any initiative to encourage citizens to relocate to downtown live/work spaces should strive to include access to nature or “green” space.

Secondly, we should ask how we can better use our public park properties to supplement our urban environments.

This is not conceptual! This article poses a tangible challenge to all who believe in and desire to advance market-driven urbanism.

Several local leaders hope to re-create that venti-sized success through the Downtown Development Trust, a non-profit that allows them to sell properties at a discount to folks who promise to open businesses bound to draw crowds.

The trust is in final negotiations to sells its first purchase, the former Instant Copy building at 232 W. Wayne St. Officials expect to close the deal in May.

Supporters say the trust is an important vehicle for downtown renewal. But at least one city official worries that developers might rely on attractive deals available from the trust and pass up other downtown real estate ripe for reinvention.

Sounds like a non-profit, non-governmental trust could be a good idea, but Mitch Harper’s concerns are legitimate. What do you think?

— Photo by Cathie Rowand of The Journal Gazette

P.S. It’s like the Choose Chicago board read my previous post and wanted to rub my face in it.

P.P.S. Here’s betting you can’t listen to the entire five minutes. (I couldn’t.)

HT: The AV Club

I was not interested in an official city logotype or a slogan. City logotypes do little and slogans are a sign of insecurity. If your place needs a slogan, it has a problem. A brand is not just a logotype, it’s a set of values that are communicated through actions.

— Peter Saville, consultant creative director for Manchester, England

Source: The Atlantic Cities blog

My friend Scott Greider left some well-written commentary on The Good City’s post about our recent reboot that focuses on market-driven urbanism. I encourage you to read his entire comment here, but below is the paragraph I’d like to interact with:

All things being equal, yes, the market tends to work best. But all things are NOT equal. It’s far easier, cheaper, and more profitable to develop/live/worship/do business in Sprawlville than it is in the City. So while I’m committed to “market-driven” approaches (indeed, I live/work/play/worship downtown), they just won’t work here apart from massive government involvement.

Well… I’d say I’m suspicious of “massive government involvement,” and I think it’s for good reason. It’s massive government involvement in two specific ways that actually helped create and support the American suburbs:

• The federal government’s post-war spending on highways, which artificially lowered the cost of driving your own car.
• The federal government’s post-war subsidizing of mortgages for single-family homes,which didn’t cover existing housing or apartments and which encouraged residence-only subdivisions along all those new highways.

Of course, the suburbs would have certainly existed to some extent without government involvement, but federal spending was a huge impetus for the incredible spread of suburbia. And the current spending on highways and other infrastructure continues the trend. This is why I’d say that, in general, limiting government spending and expanding private property rights is the true solution to bringing some balance to the growth of a city.

But that’s the ideal. What do we do now that the Interstate and the suburbs exist? Are there places the city should spend to restore some urban/suburban balance? Perhaps. Are there some zoning ordinances and regulations the city should relax? Likely. But it’s all in the particulars, which is what this blog will explore for what I hope is a long time to come. And I certainly hope Scott and others keep contributing to the conversation!

The City of Fort Wayne, Citilink, Countilink, and the Northeastern Indiana Regional Coordinating Council have partnered in the development of a Bus Fort Wayne Plan. The Bus Fort Wayne Plan is a 10-year plan that will lay the foundation for establishing public transit (Citilink and Countilink) as a preferred transportation choice. Bus Fort Wayne will be a part of the City’s Active Transportation Campaign to encourage people to walk, ride their bike and use public transit to get to desired destinations.

Currently, our public transportation system primarily serves those who are transit dependent because they cannot afford a car or cannot drive. The current state of our economy, rising gas prices and demographic trends lead us to believe that now is the time to attract and plan for an increase in public transit ridership by “choice riders” or those who make a conscious choice to use public transportation instead of their car. In order to obtain information on this emerging market, our team has developed a Choice Rider Survey to gain information on potential choice riders of public transit.

The survey is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/choicerider.  The survey will close on June 15. The survey should take less than 5 minutes to complete.

Why I care about Market-Driven Urbanism

It seems to be generally accepted now that the past several decades of American sprawl has left our downtown cores with gaping voids and inactivity. A combined result of our dependence on the automobile and Euclidean zoning practices, both citizens and governments share the responsibility of the situation we’re in.

In the same vein, it will take action by both groups to reverse course and re-energize our city centers.

We have very talented urban designers and city planners among us, but we cannot rely on them to plan and execute the redevelopment of every downtown block, lot, and streetscape. That’s why we need to encourage private investment and development with reduced land use restrictions, and allow free-market forces to drive self-sustaining development that’s dense, vibrant, and walkable.

I’d like to use this forum to have a dialogue about alternatives to land use segregation, share examples of successes and failures in other communities, and work together to find opportunities in our own community to apply the principles of market-driven urbanism.

Shoaff has been a strong opponent of the city’s plan to widen State Boulevard through the Brookview-Irvington Park neighborhood, from Clinton Street to Wells Street. And during Tuesday’s common council meeting, Shoaff related a conversation he had with a city landscape architect about the proposal to separate the railroad tracks from South Anthony Boulevard.

The current plans include what Shoaff called very wide lanes and sloping ground that takes up “an enormous amount of acreage.” The plans were made in a way that the viewer has no idea how the street relates to the rest of the neighborhood.

Shoaff asked why the plans took this form.

“We were trying to make it a nicer experience for the drivers,” the landscape architect said.

“The drivers are going to be through there in 60 seconds,” Shoaff responded. “The people you have to worry about are the people who live there.”

Exactly. As Shoaff said, traffic engineers are very competent in their line of work, but they are trained to work on behalf of the motorist, not on behalf of the neighborhood. Neighborhood concerns should be truly weighed when road work is planned in the city.

Shoaff’s discussion on this conversation begins at about the 46-minute mark of the video.

But “State of State Boulevard” by Stacey Stumpf is an excellent read on the city’s plan to widen and straighten State Boulevard west of Clinton Street.

It’s excellent because it clearly presents the city’s case for the construction and residents’ concerns over the destruction of a portion of the neighborhood.

But my sympathies are with Councilman John Shoaff, who has been very critical of the city’s plans. From the editorial:

“The major problem is the concept and the goal is wrong,” Shoaff said. “Coliseum Boulevard was created to be a major arterial. I-469 was created to be a major arterial, and that’s all good and appropriate. State Boulevard was not. All of this is just a very inappropriate intrusion into neighborhoods with an arterial expansion.”

My thoughts: Wouldn’t the widening of State Boulevard be less necessary if the city goes through with its plan of extending Spring Street past Wells Street to Clinton? More narrow streets is a much more friendly solution than a four- to five-lane highway through an existing neighborhood.