In Cahokia Heights (formerly Centreville), Illinois, there is a crisis that illustrates the gaps in the silos that inform our local policy discussions. As discussed by the "Housing, Water and Flooding" panel at the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago this week, there is an ongoing problem there with houses flooding during and after any measurable rain, including overflowing sewers. It's a multidimensional catastrophe that defies neat assignment of responsibility:
As an ongoing situation, it's not a big storm that would call in the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency
it's exacerbated by climate change that brings more severe weather events, but it predates the current emergency
the Clean Water Act of 1972 is focused on water quality, not the quality of life of people nearb
addressing its impact on the community is complicated by our characteristic view of housing as an individual concern
the situation was exacerbated or at least complicated by the 1980 routing of I-255 through town
the low property values (FEMA could offer $20,000 per house) as well as the perilous finances of both town and sanitary district (neither of which can afford the $70 million cost of sewer repairs) are a legacy of decades of racial discrimination.
Flooded area in Centreville IL (Flickr photo by Anstr Davidson)
The panel included representatives of agencies focused on housing or climate change: Kennedy Moehrs Gardner is an attorney for Equity Legal Services in southern Illinois; Meleah Geertsma is a policy analyst-advocate for the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance; and Sheila Sutton, formerly with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is an attorney for Alliance for the Great Lakes. The panel was moderated by Cyatherine Alias for CNT, ably so in what she said was her first moderating experience.
As they discussed this case, and examples from Chicago, East St. Louis, Zanesville Ohio, and other places, it became clear that housing issues are inextricably connected to climate change, transportation planning, and even political dysfunction. All are "variations of the same (structural) problems" (Geertsma). The Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance, Geertsma's organization, published a report, entitled A City Fragmented, that found City Council member prerogatives in Chicago decreased land available for multifamily housing between 1970 and 2016; when only 20 percent of land is available for multifamily housing, it drives up rents and reinforces historic inequities that began with redlining. Affordable housing tends to be in areas that are environmentally vulnerable (cf. Keenan and Bautista 2019).
Climate change is already driving up the cost of homeowners insurance, which is an additional obstacle to affordability (Sutton). The South Side of Chicago has seen more house flooding since the reconstruction of the Dan Ryan Expressway in 2006. Housing issues themselves include both "historic destruction of black homeowner wealth" and housing supply and construction. Since disaster aid is based on property values, it tends to make white communities whole while leaving black communities worse off (Geertsma).
The key to addressing complex problems is complex conversations. Moehrs Gardner noted that "the law can only do so much," but that "getting everyone to the table could drive solutions and funding" for repairing affected neighborhoods. These conversations could be supported by the national government, which funded remedial sewer projects across the country in 1986 (Geertsma), but need to be locally-driven; as Pete Saunders points out, housing needs differ across cities and metros, and so certainly do environmental issues and racial histories.
Dr. William Barber is one of the premier prophetic voices in America today (Source: breachrepairers.org)
Having said my peace on this year's elections, I was anticipating a return to issues affecting our local communities. But a disturbing trend has emerged in the frustrated post-election expressions by Democrats and their liberal allies that I think needs addressing.
To start with, the 2024 election results were, despite all the weirdness of the campaign, rather "normal," in the sense that a typical electoral response to stressful times is to vote the other party in. It happened after World War II in a number of countries including the United States and Britain, and happened again this year after worldwide struggles with the coronavirus pandemic and the attendant economic dislocation. As in 1945-46, Britain and the United States changed legislative majorities, with the British going from right to left, and the Americans going from left to right. Go figure.
That said, many on the left criticize the Biden administration and the Harris campaign for ignoring the economic concerns of working people. There's a lot to be said for that argument, given that the decades-long trend towards greater concentration of wealth continues to gallop along. On the other hand, Biden proved adept as a crisis manager, and his deficiencies certainly don't explain why the answer was to turn the government over to a self-absorbed chaos agent with an actual policy record that promotes that greater concentration of wealth. Again, go figure. Maybe the explanations tentatively offered in my last post can help explain that.
Two commentators I greatly respect, Nicholas Kristof and Fareed Zakaria, take that critique farther to argue that Democrats in the Biden years lost working class support because they prioritized other issues. Kristof, who has written movingly of the struggles of his small Oregon town, has trouble explaining what could have been done to reverse its condition:
I think Democrats have far better policies for working class Americans than Republicans do. It was Democrats who backed labor unions, who raised minimum wages, and who under President Biden crafted a strategy to create manufacturing jobs and slash child poverty. Trump talks a good game about manufacturing, bui... Biden so far has seen an increase of 700,000 manufacturing jobs. (Kristof 2024)
So what's the problem? "Democrats increasingly are the party of university-educated elites, and they have an unfortunate knack for coming across as remote and patronizing scolds" (Ibid). What?!? This barely qualifies as analysis. (I scolded.)
Zakaria goes farther to blame the administration's failures on immigration, and a penchant for identity politics. This too is unsatisfying. Immigration is hard, and Trump was different less on outcomes than on the retributive excess of his approach. Zakaria's examples of identity politics are use of the term "Latinx"--by the administration? I'm not remember that)--and support for the transgendered. "One of Trump's most effective ads," he notes, "on trans issues, ended with the tagline: Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you" (Zakaria 2024). Aside from the fact that the ad itself is a flagrant example of identity politics, Zakaria is suggesting that transgendered people, like Mexican immigrants, are too unsympathetic to merit attention from a campaign that wants to win an election. (And has Zakaria forgotten that Biden lost a bipartisan immigration bill in Congress this year when Trump told Republicans to nix it?)
Look, I know plenty of people who agree with me on issues, but are so insufferable about their politics that I almost wish they didn't. And I find quarrels over terminology to be baffling and distracting. But that's no reason to treat anyone as less than fully human. We can't let everyone in the country who wants to come, and we can't give everyone everything they want, but we can treat everyone with human dignity. Kristof dings liberals for disdaining religion, but fundamental to the major religions of the Western world is the idea that we are all children of God. I'm not seeing that in the Trump immigration-mass expulsion policy.
Thankfully, we have with us one of the most passionate and cogent advocates of common life, the Rev. William Barber, who among many other things is co-director of the Poor People's Campaign. Barber too argues that Democrats in the administration and presidential campaign failed to address fundamental injustices in the American economy, and attributes the election loss precisely to that (cf. Goodman 2024). Yet he also sees a unity across issues, as he told a class he teaches at Yale University:
When people sit down across the lines that have tended to divide us – race, geography, sexuality – and then take an honest look at the politics of extremism,” he says, “they figure out that the same people who are voting against people because they are gay are also blocking living wages. ("Meet the Religious Leaders" 2024)
He concludes:
What are the major tenets of religion as it relates to the public square?” he asks. His answer is a litany his repeats often: “Love, truth, justice, mercy, grace, the least of these, the poor, the sick, the imprisoned. Look at this piece of legislation. How are these policies affecting people? How is it affecting their living and their dying? (Ibid.)
We don't have to dump the imprisoned in order to help the sick. Common life is not easily arranged, and Democrats have a diverse and fractious coalition, whose members compete for scarce resources and issue space. But as we push forward, or in the direction we hope is forward, we should remember the quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin: "We must hang together, or assuredly we will hang separately."
Don’t
make me waste a whole damn half a day here, OK? Look, I came here. We
can be nice to each other, or we can talk turkey. I’m here
for one simple reason: I like you very much, and it’s good for my
credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community. You know, on the East
Coast, they like being called Hispanics, you know this? On the West
Coast, they like being called Latinos. They
said, ‘Sir, please use the term Latino when you’re in New Mexico,’ and I
said ‘I’ve always heard Hispanic.’ … I take a poll, and it’s 97
percent. I was right. A free poll. As I was saying, I love the
Hispanics.--DONALD TRUMP, 10/31/2024
Ten years ago, in the mid-term elections of 2014, the Republicans gained a majority in the Senate and thereby unified control of Congress. Along the way they flipped the Iowa U.S. Senate seat that had been held for 30 years by Democrat Tom Harkin, and has been held ever since by Republican Joni Ernst. Ernst came to prominence with a hog-filled primary commercial in which she promised to "Make 'em squeal" in Washington. That vividly captured the Republicans' victorious message, which was directed at voter dissatisfaction while being vague about how they would make it go away.
My 2014 post-election post was full of mystification about the Republicans' content-free success, as well as Ernst's easy victory in Iowa. Rereading it seems like finding a letter from a previous civilization, as 2014 proved to be a turning point in Iowa politics. Beginning that year, the Hawkeye State has swung sharply towards the Republicans. Democratic presidential candidates had won Iowa every election but one from 1988-2012, but Donald Trump won by 10 percentage points in 2016 and eight in 2020 (uselectionatlas.org), and he is expected to win easily again this year. Republicans now hold more than two-thirds of seats in both houses of the legislature, and all statewide offices but one (which they lost by less than a percentage point.) Iowa is a good example of politics fueled by grievances that never get solved, while politicians that play to them become more popular. Turning red, indeed.
As different as 2014 seemed to be from 2012, it's easily recognizable in the political environment of 2024. Economic data indicate we have mostly recovered from a recent blow, but many people are not feeling it. The right track/wrong track average was 28-66 then, 27-65 now (Real Clear Politics). Economic inequality in America continues to rise, which surely contributes to that apparent discrepancy: the GINI Index was 41.5 in 2014, highest on record and highest in the developed world, and was 41.3 in 2022, the last year for which there are data (FRED). That definitely affects people's worldview, including political trust, efficacy, and engagement, though of course not all in the same way (Garon and Stacy 2024). It's a dry statistic that reflects the reality that a lot of people are feeling and expressing in all sorts of ways, viz. an apparent rise in road rage.
Another dry statistic is the number of degrees (1.9 F) the climate has warmed since the pre-industrial era, which is reflected in an increasing incidence and severity of natural disasters, including (this year) major hurricanes in the southeast, severe flooding in North Carolina and Spain, and weeks without rain in the Midwest as well as an admittedly gorgeous but abnormally warm fall. (On how climate politics contributes to lack of emergency preparedness, see University of Michigan 2024.) Natural disasters too impact people's lives in ways that aren't easily coped with, starting with increasing insurance rates.
So, it may seem strange for our national reaction to frightening change to be support for a party that plans to repeal the federal health insurance program, and a presidential candidate who has called global warming a hoax. (For projected impacts of Trump's climate policies after 2025, see "Analysis" 2024.) This same candidate, Donald Trump, held a grotesque rally in New York last weekend with warm up speakers spewing hate to a cheering crowd, followed by Trump's own rambling narcissistic rage. This is how Trump has rolled since he began his political career nine years ago, so comes as no surprise, and outside of some especially inflammatory comments barely qualifies as news (Koul 2024). There may be solid arguments for Republican policies, but instead we get name calling, and lies about Ohioans eating cats and dogs, gangs taking over cities, FEMA hurricane aid being diverted to undocumented immigrants, and the 2020 election. Always the election.
As President, Trump benefited from coming to office at a time of peace and prosperity. For four years, he was an agent of chaos and cruelty, managing to break a great deal of china in the shop even before the pandemic. His campaign is full of more of this (see links at Bruni 2024), salted with self-praise and the vaguest promises of good outcomes. So how is this guy standing at the brink of returning to the Oval Office? Why is he even above 20 percent in the polls, much less the 46.8 percent in today's 538 average?
In my capacity as political scientist, I have struggled for nine years to explain Trump's support. I feel less and less confident in my ability to assess national politics the longer this goes on. Just asking people about their political stances is often fruitless; often you get an echo of what campaigns are saying. (Why, for example, is immigration the "most important problem" facing Montana voters, and I think #2 in Iowa, two red states that are experiencing very little population influx of any kind?) So what follows is admittedly tentative.
I think there are three broad reasons why many people find Trump continually appealing. These are unscientific impressions, based on conversations with Trump supporters I know. They aren't mutually exclusive; in other words, some Trump supporters may share more than one of these perspectives.
1. Preference for Republican policy options(Trump is awful/embarrassing, but he's our only chance to get what we need/want). Trump's own policy expressions have been characteristically erratic, but if you strongly prefer, say, lower taxes, or an end to health insurance subsidies, or a ban on abortion, you're not going to get those from the Democratic Party. You'd have to discount Trump promising to jack up tariffs or deport millions of undocumented workers or bring the Federal Reserve Board under his thumb, not to mention sic the army on protestors, and all the other undemocratic things, but he says so many weird things that probably you can hope it's all just talk and you'll get some measure of traditional Republican policies under a Trump administration. "I don't like Donald Trump," billionaire Nelson Peltz reportedly told a fundraising dinner. "He's a terrible human being, but our country's in a bad place and we can't afford Joe Biden" (Glasser 2024: 46). Nikki Haley made a similar argument in The Wall Street Journal right before Election Day (Haley 2024). I'd hope there could be a better conservative messenger; as I said about abortion a few years ago, the more these ideas are tied to Trump, the more vulnerable they are to rejection when he is finally repudiated.
2. Low information(Trump is cool. And strong.)
If you've read this far, you probably pay more attention to politics than most people, and it's hard to remember that a lot of people are going off vague impressions. They may not know all the wacky things Trump says or does, or how many of his former staff are begging us please not to reelect this guy, because they're not paying close attention. A lot of them remember the pre-pandemic years as relatively placid, and assume Trump must have had something to do with that. Or they may hear something that Biden or Harris said and assume the hate is flowing both ways. Their support is less about a package of policies than an idea of Trump as folk hero standing against the elites--a latter day Jesse James, if you will, or a modern day Cyrus. Hence all those exaggerated images...
Source: amazon.com
...of a man who in real life is 78 years old, very overweight, and has difficulty climbing into the cab of a truck. But, as Glasser's long article in the New Yorker (cited below) documents, there are plenty of elites putting their fortunes behind Trump's return to office, and they're fine with you buying whatever it is he's selling.
3. Frustrated entitlement (Trump is fighting for me. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. He's coming for you, and I'm glad!)
On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out. We will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our school. Kamala Harris is a train wreck who has destroyed everything in her path.--DONALD TRUMP, 10/27/2024
As many people out there are understandably anxious about their futures, so for some reason is Donald Trump, based on his constant bragging, insults, and lying. He also has a very comprehensive sense of grievance, with which he's managed through considerable rhetorical skill to inspire millions of people to identify. If he, and we, aren't getting what we deserve, it must be someone's fault (cf. Nussbaum 2018)! Anything that goes wrong--the pandemic, inflation, Trump himself getting shot at a rally--must be the fault of some nefarious actors who must be crushed. Trump and his allies have effectively directed the blame for economic and social anxiety towards immigrants (always from Latin America), gays and lesbians and transgendered people, feminists, protestors, city residents, political opponents, reporters, poll workers, and anyone else they find inconvenient. This is the logic of replacement theory, the idea that difference is intrinsically threatening. Those seeds have certainly found fertile ground. Thousands cheered Tony Hinchcliffe's hateful comments at Madison Square Garden last weekend, while hundreds more were outside chanting "Kamala is a whore!"
Here politics is being used as revenge fantasy (Remember "Lock her up!") rather than as a means of deciding solutions to common problems. But none of the pro-Trump rationales, frankly, is good for our common life. No policy victory is worth what Trump is putting the country through. In the real-world communities in which we variously live, we have a lot to work through, and we have to make room for a lot of people who aren't us. These were challenging even before Trump galumphed onto the scene, and will continue to be so when he finally goes away. I only wish more people could join us in building community, and be better at critical thinking instead of joining Trump in punching down.
I think the answer, for now, is not to let our national political disease run our lives. I take heart in the people in my life and my town who continue to work for better community. "Where there's life, there's hope," as Tolkien's character Sam Gamgee says, and while we're hoping, we can hope for a more loving and more practical world.
"How did you know the world was waiting just for you?"
Mixed use building on 1st Avenue SW in Kingston Village
SOURCE: David Sucher, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village (Seattle: City Comforts Inc., revised edition, 2016)
It is one thing to note the unbalanced, car-dependent way in which Cedar Rapids's showpiece New Bohemia neighborhood--and to some extent, other post-flood areas like Downtown, Czech Village and Kingston--are developing. It is quite a different matter to suggest steps that ought to be taken to remedy matters. It is likely, for one thing, that the present situation has resulted from rational (if short-term-focused) assessment of what is achievable. We have the residential and commercial mix we have because those projects seemed most likely to succeed.
Development surely is constrained by external factors beyond the control of anyone in the core: increasing economic inequality, siting practices of grocery chains, local transportation that particularly favors private motor vehicles, and physical isolation of the core from older residential neighborhoods, to name a few. To name another, the hyper-convenience of the Internet is changing shopping and work habits.
ped crossing island and bike lane, 3rd Avenue and 2nd Street SW in Kingston
I am not in business, and never have been, nor do I have professional training as a city planner. "I know what I like," to borrow a timeworn cliche, but so do a lot of other people, so this needs to be about more than my personal taste and preferences.
A good starting point for a conversation with stakeholders would be to know why they are in the core instead of some other place. I imagine they've specifically chosen to be there, but the owner of the (Downtown) CR Chophouse restaurant blamed its recent closure on the presence of homeless people and the lack of convenient parking (El Hajj 2024). If these truly were problematic, why on earth was the restaurant located where it was? This metropolitan area is replete with commercial opportunities with fields of parking and no homeless for miles.
3rd Avenue SW: The core has bike infrastructure and bus options, not great but often serviceable
Right now the core is heavy on apartments and bars, and light on pretty much everything else (except hair salons--why are there so many hair salons?). It is now the case, and likely to continue to be so for some time, that the economy of the core is heavily dependent on people from elsewhere in the region driving there to shop or dine or drink.
Waste of prime space: Surface parking, Kingston Village
You can be, I would think, the new hot spot only for so long. When I first arrived in Cedar Rapids, the area hot spots were the Amana Colonies and maybe the malls. Today those serve as object lessons: hot spots show their age pretty quickly. If the opening of the admittedly fantastic Big Grove location on 1st Street West has been a body blow to the other bars in the core, wait til you see what happens when the casino opens! Marion has invested a lot of money in restarting its downtown area, but counting on the government may not be your most reliable or timely option. Political decisions are unpredictable, and government finances are ever-shakier.
It seems the best long-term strategy for core areas is to become self-sustaining. That is, if the residential population in the center of Cedar Rapids can become large and stable and diverse enough, there will be a steady source of demand for goods and services throughout the day and week, as well as a steady source of people on the street to provide liveliness and atmosphere attractive to visitors. This will require a different mix of housing and businesses than can currently be found anywhere in or adjacent to the core. Some of this will happen of its own accord once the ball starts rolling, but it may need some advocacy to get started.
David Sucher called his development handbook City Comforts because:
Human comfort is the measure of a city.... The main task [of city building] is making people comfortable, the same task faced by the host at a party. (2016: 20)
The means to this end is mixed-use development, in order to facilitate "mixing" of people, or as he titles an early chapter, "Bumping Into People."
The purpose of mixing uses, allowing different activities to rub cheek by jowl, is to foster more complex and intertwined human relations and thus more interesting places. The purpose is to help create human connections--not to mix activities per se. There is nothing magic about mixing uses. (2016: 32)
wall, 1st Street SW
What an urban village can offer people, that car-dependent shopping corridors like Edgewood or Collins Roads cannot, is accessible, comfortable liveliness. That can be self-sustaining only if there are connections to a steady stream of people at different times of the day, rooted in local residents doing the stuff of daily life. (See Jacobs (1961) 2011: 65-71.)
In subsequent chapters, Sucher provides detailed recommendations, with plentiful illustrations, about transportation, sense of place, safety, child-friendliness, necessities, compatible building, and entry points. Some of this we can see in the core: most building is done up to the sidewalk, most building fronts are active rather than blank walls. (See his chapter 3.) My own sense is we could do more to welcome children, encourage transportation alternatives, and provide necessities like rest rooms, as well as to make new buildings compatible with the neighborhood's physical history, but maybe conversations will reveal other opportunities.
Ellen Shepherd of Community Allies speaks at Loyola University, 2016
There are a number of organizations that can support local grass-roots place making efforts. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ilsr.org) provides research and advocacy on behalf of locally-owned businesses; co-director Stacy Mitchell's 2017 post, "8 Policy Strategies Cities Can Use to Support Local Businesses," is a good starting point and conversation-starter. Community Allies (communityallies.net), based in Chicago, provides speakers and training towards building local economies. The Center for Neighborhood Technology (cnt.org) focuses on Chicago, but provides experience on which others can draw.
There are a lot of forces, and a lot of sunk costs, pushing the core to be a quaint, beer-soaked version of car-dependent suburbia. That doesn't mean we can't push back, and there are reasons to believe the long-term viability of the core depends on pushing back.
SEE ALSO:
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities [Modern Library, (1961) 2011], esp. chs 13 ("The Self-Destruction of Diversity") and 14 ("The Curse of Border Vacuums")
Alexander Garvin, The Heart of the City: Creating Downtowns for a New Century (Island, 2019). His "six lessons for any downtown" (ch. 6) include:
Establish a distinctive downtown image that is instantly recognizable and admirable
Improve access into and circulation within downtown
Enlarge and enhance the public realm esp. reconfiguring space used by pedestrians, moving vehicles, and parking
Sustain a habitable environment downtown (trees, parkland)
Reduce cost of doing business for both governments and private actors
Flexible land use, building use and new construction
Coffee at: Converge Cafe in the Geonetric Building, 415 12th Ave SE [round trip 4.6 miles]
One Million Cups day at Geonetric!
I was Two-Days-Ago Years Old when I found out about the Coffeeneuring Challenge, an annual celebration of autumn, bicycles and coffee, on a Mastodon post. Coffeeneuring was begun by twelve individuals in the Washington, D.C. area in 2011; in 2021, the last year for which there are data, there were 329 riders from 41 states and the District of Columbia, as well as thirteen other countries. Decorah, Des Moines and Waverly, Iowa were represented, but... not Cedar Rapids! I'm fixing to change that this year.
Coffeeneuring season begins this week. My first ride was to 1 Million Cups, the Cedar Rapids locus of the Kaufmann Foundation's national gatherings of entrepreneurs. I rode over about 8 a.m., which is when Cedar Rapids traffic is as busy as it gets, but managed to elude most of it. I take my coffee black, today opting for the Colombian blend. Today's featured speaker was Shafira Rizki, whose organization Lead With Her promotes leadership by women in southeast Asia.
Shafira Rizki (right) presents at 1 MC Cedar Rapids
2. Friday, October 11 (sunny, 87F)
Spiced cider at: Roaster's in the New Bo City Market, 1100 3rd Street SE [round trip 4.4 miles]
Bike parking at the Market
New Bo Open Coffee on the second and fourth Fridays of each month was an institution by the time I started frequenting the district eight years ago. In its heyday it drew 15-25 people from nearby businesses. Alas, time, relocations, and the infamous pandemic have reduced the crowd to three very persistent men, of whom I am one. Today it was just Sam and me, with Bill checking in by video call from Wisconsin. Celebrities spotted included Anna Dombkowski, the Market's new development director; former Cedar Rapids mayor Brad Hart; and Corridor MPO transportation planner Roman Kiefer.
Today was close to the ideal bike commute. Another 8 a.m. call meant riding through traffic, but I was lucky in finding gaps in it so I could make the necessary left turns on my route. Too many cars means I'm fighting a losing battle for space, but I like having someone around to protect me from turning traffic, and to trigger the traffic lights. The weather's been ideal for biking, but of course our unseasonable warmth is inextricably connected to the horrible hurricanes that have been ravaging the southeast, and here it hasn't rained in six weeks.
We had a frost last night, and it was still in the 30s when I set out this morning. This is more seasonable weather than we had last week, but not my favorite for biking. It was not too windy riding in; with a light coat and leather gloves, though, I was fine, except for my ears.
Today I was meeting a friend at Craft'd, barely a block from City Hall, in the space formerly occupied by Early Bird. It was hopping when I arrived just before 9; I counted 16 customers, including some gathered to celebrate a co-worker's 40th birthday. (I took a picture... not sure what happened to it.) I did not have a reusable cup recommended in the Coffeeneuring Challenge rules, but I brought my crocheted sleeve, which I'd bought at New Bo City Market in the days BP (before-the-pandemic).
I like my dessert bars like I like my cities: dense and diverse
The ride home was windier, but by mid-morning traffic was sparse, so no complications except for these garbage cans on 3rd Avenue which are apparently stored in the bike line. (Garbage pickup was four days ago!)
1600 block of 3rd Avenue SE
Week Three
4. Tuesday, October 22 (morning shower, 76F)
Coffee at:Veritas Cafe, 509 3rd St SE [round trip 4.1 miles + 0.5 miles swimming]
The sky was surprisingly dark with clouds when I set out this morning just before 8, and I saw one flash of lightning to the west, but I made it safely and drily to the YMCA. I would have been okay with getting wet, though, as it's been weeks since we had any rain at all. It rained a little while I was in the pool, and I saw more streaks of lightning, but it was over by the time I left. (Back in the day, they used to close the pool when there was lightning. I'm not sure when that practice changed. Maybe there's better indoor pool protection technology.)
With puddles on the ground and on my bicycle seat, I portaged two blocks to Veritas Cafe, a third place of sorts inside the Baptist-affiliated Veritas Church. They're remodeling the interior of the church, so the seating areas are less spread out and more defined. I had black coffee and this voluptuous cranberry muffin:
I read City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village by David Sucher (City Comforts Inc., revised edition, 2016) while I drank my coffee. The cafe was well-attended but not crowded, mostly with younger people. There were slips of paper to write prayer requests, but the cafe is not doctrinal in spite of the setting, and the canned music was mostly by Fleetwood Mac. In 1953 this was a grocery store, according to the Polk's Directory. I could see that; anyhow this is a great example of successfully adaptive reuse.
The sun was out, the air was cooler, and my bicycle seat was dry, by the time I emerged for the ride home. I keep reading on Facebook and Mastodon about people riding 60 or 75 km for their coffee. I feel like a bit of a piker by comparison, going barely 7 km today. I'm certainly fortunate to live so close to so much coffee.
5. Thursday, October 24 (sunny, windy, 66F)
Coffee at:Uptown Coffee, 760 11th St Suite A, Marion, IA [round trip 16 miles]
I took my car in for an oil change this morning, which put me close enough to the Cedar River Trail for a mostly-trail ride to Uptown Marion. The trails are slated to be connected at 51st Street NE, and that was supposed to have happened this year, but now has been delayed until spring or early summer. 51st Street is adequate in the meantime, wide and not heavily trafficked.
Near the movie theater: Washing something off the trail
I didn't have any difficulty this morning until I was almost to the coffeehouse in Marion: The traffic light at 7th Avenue and 10th Street never gave me a green, so after waiting through one cycle and for traffic to clear, I ran the red. I don't feel good doing this, but if only cars can trigger the light I have no choice.
Uptown Artway: Looking towards Uptown from this whimsical bike rack
This picture was taken later in the day, but it is included to show the profusion of color we are living right now. It made for quite the picturesque ride!
I get credit for my hi-viz Bike to Work Week t-shirt today, though on the streets no one could see it under my jacket
Coffee was supposed to happen somewhere else this morning, but while that somewhere had been open Sundays back in March, they no longer are. Thankfully, the coffeeneuring rules allow for one repeat place, which I am claiming today, and Craft'd was just a couple blocks farther on. I caught up with my friends there.
I finally got a picture of the interior, which was not full when I arrived a little ahead of 9:30, but by 10 was fully hopping.
One more ride to go...
7. Tuesday, October 29 (sunny, windy, possible-record 84F)
3rd Avenue SW: mural featuring Lucille Ball and the planet Saturn
Weird summerlike weather continues for another day or two--great for biking, not so great for the long-term prospects for life on Earth. I rode from the tire store, which gave me an extra ride through the near northeast side, past the house we rented our first year in Cedar Rapids.
bike parking at Dash
I met my friend John at Dash in Kingston, across the river from Downtown Cedar Rapids, and near the Linn County Elections Depot where John is helping people vote early. He reports steady high numbers of early voters every day, though what that augurs no one can tell. Iowa is not one of the seven states that will decide this election anyhow.
my coffee and incredible strawberries and cream scone
The building was a dry cleaners in 1953, with a dentist's and doctor's offices above.
I happened to see on Instagram that Dash is celebrating Deviled Eggs Tuesday, so I scored some for us. The chef added "the warming comfort spices of Pho" to create a fascinating flavor.
Happy Deviled Eggs Tuesday!
Now I have completed Coffeeneuring Challenge 2024! All that remains is to fill out the form when it appears on the Chasing Mailboxes site. I'm looking forward to next year, when I anticipate some more trail options for out-of-town coffeeneuring--although it's hard to imagine more ideal biking weather than we've had this October. In the meantime, I can revel in the number of coffee options within a couple miles of my house that are not multinational corporations!
A vigorous exchange of ideas about public issues characterized the panels I virtually attended at this year's Iowa Ideas conference organized by the Cedar Rapids Gazette. It's the ninth edition of the conference, but my first. Previously classes or professional travel kept me away; our obscenely summer-like weather almost kept me away this year, but after a day trip to Backbone State Park I eventually showed up to three panels. All were in the Economic and Community Development track.
Backbone Lake during the Iowa Ideas conference
1. The Future of Public Transit
Participants:
Nate Asplund, Railroad Development Corporation
Mike Barnhart, Horizons Family Services
Darian Nagle Grimm AICP, Iowa City Transit
Cindy Gerlach and David Lee for the Gazette
Iowa City is trying a more ridership-oriented approach to their bus service. Nagle Grimm said they have tried to make service faster, more frequent, and more reliable; coordinated operations with the neighboring city of Coralville; begun a two-year fare-free experiment; and improved comfort and lighting at bus stops. She said ridership has increased 43 percent, or about 500,000 rides, since August 2023. which has required more buses as well as making up the (only) ten percent of system revenue that came from fares.
Iowa City's Court Street Transportation Center connects several bus lines (Google Earth screenshot)
Asked "what you want Iowans to know" about transit, Nagle Grimm said we can no longer depend entirely on personal vehicles due to "unintended consequences" (readers of this blog will not require elaboration), so we need to "invest in a true multimodal system." Barnhart noted ongoing unmet needs of rural residents and suburban seniors. Asplund, hoping for a return to commuter train service, said bicycles and trains go together "like Reese's Peanut Butter Cup," which I think means that trains can extend the reach of cycle commuting while bicycles solve the last mile problem.
2. New Life in Old Buildings
Participants:
Pete Franks, The Franks Design, Glenwood IA
Jordan Sellergren, Iowa City Historic Preservation Commission
Heather Wagner, Eastern Iowa Arts Academy
Megan Woolard and Brian Shewry for the Gazette
This panel was made up of an architect, a preservation advocate, and someone planning a move into a century-old school, so nice things were said about historic preservation. Wagner cited the benefits of allowing compact development, less consumption of new materials, and lower upfront costs. Franks added that maintaining familiar buildings increases people's connection to and pride in their communities, helping to counteract the widely-touted epidemic of loneliness. Of course, as Franks pointed out, buildings can be degraded to the point that it not economically feasible to salvage them, and not all building uses can be quickly exchanged. (He notes firehouses make great restaurants, though.)
Arthur School (1914), seen from the parking lot of Trailside School (2024)
The panelists discussed the public in largely supportive contexts. They understand the value of older buildings, and sometimes have a personal association. Wagner mentioned one man who wanted to be reassured that the cafeteria mural he'd helped paint would still be there. (Yes.) On the other hand, public support for Wagner's Eastern Iowa Arts Academy to renovate and move into the former Arthur Elementary School was predicated on it not being housing or retail. Good luck solving the housing crisis, or reintroducing walkability, with those attitudes.
3. Collaborative Economic Development
Participants:
Nancy Bird, Greater Iowa City Inc
Stephen J. Van Steenhuyse AICP, City of Mason City
Jill WIlkins, NewBoCo
Megan Woolard and Eric Caldwell for the Gazette
The three panelists from different worlds had remarkably similar views on the subject of collaboration in economic development. Van Steenhuyse from city government said government couldn't "do it all," so relied on partnership with business and other organizations; Wilkins from the nonprofit world said their operation relied on partnerships with city governments, chambers of commerce, businesses, and school districts; and Bird from a business group said "economic development is naturally collaborative." The unstated assumptions were that there is some activity called economic development which is separate from the growth of specific businesses, and that this activity was done collectively and cooperatively.
Mason City's Historic Park Inn dates from 1910, and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (from their website)
Moderator Woolard asked in several ways about what made collaboration successful, which brought out another characteristic, which is that the activity is done intentionally. Bird started by stressing clear goals and identification of stakeholders. Wilkins talked about inclusiveness and openness in defining the set of stakeholders. Van Steenhuyse talked about commitment to the action or goal, while regretting that Mason City lacks a clearly-defined coordinating leader like Greater Iowa City.
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.jpg?format=2500w "Historic Park Inn, Mason City, Iowa")
